“Yes, ma’am.”

Kate was restless. She put all of her papers neatly in the pigeonholes of her desk, and when Joe brought the tea tray she had him put it beside her bed.

Lying back among her pillows and sipping the tea, she probed for her thought. What about Charles? And then it came to her.

Charles was clever. In his crazy way Sam Hamilton was clever. That was the fear-driven thought—there were clever people. Both Sam and Charles were dead, but maybe there were others. She worked it out very slowly.

Suppose I had been the one to dig up the bottles? What would I think and what would I do? A rim of panic rose in her breast. Why were the bottles broken and buried? So it wasn’t a poison! Then why bury them? What had made her do that? She should have dropped them in the gutter on Main Street or tossed them in the garbage can. Dr. Wilde was dead. But what kind of records did he keep? She didn’t know. Suppose she had found the glass and learned what had been in them. Wouldn’t she have asked someone who knew—“Suppose you gave croton oil to a person. What would happen?”

“Well, suppose you gave little doses and kept it up a long time?” She would know. Maybe somebody else would know.

“Suppose you heard about a rich madam who willed everything to a new girl and then died.” Kate knew perfectly well what her first thought would be. What insanity had made her get Ethel floated? Now she couldn’t be found. Ethel should have been paid and tricked into turning over the glass. Where was the glass now? In an envelope—but where? How could Ethel be found?

Ethel would know why and how she had been floated. Ethel wasn’t bright, but she might tell somebody who was bright. That chattering voice might tell the story, how Faye was sick, and what she looked like, and about the will.

Kate was breathing quickly and little prickles of fear were beginning to course over her body. She should go to New York or someplace—not bother to sell the house. She didn’t need the money. She had plenty. Nobody could find her. Yes, but if she ran out and the clever person heard Ethel tell the story, wouldn’t that cinch it?

Kate got up from her bed and took a heavy dose of bromide.

From that time on the crouching fear had always been at her side. She was almost glad when she learned that the pain in her hands was developing arthritis. An evil voice had whispered that it might be a punishment.

She had never gone out in the town very much, but now she developed a reluctance to go out at all. She knew that men stared secretly after her, knowing who she was. Suppose one of those men should have Charles’ face or Samuel’s eyes. She had to drive herself to go out once a week.

Then she built the lean-to and had it painted gray. She said it was because the light troubled her eyes, and gradually she began to believe the light did trouble her eyes. Her eyes burned after a trip to the town. She spent more and more time in her little room.

It is possible to some people, and it was possible for Kate, to hold two opposing thoughts at the same time. She believed that the light pained her eyes, and also that the gray room was a cave to hide in, a dark burrow in the earth, a place where no eyes could stare at her. Once, sitting in her pillowed chair, she considered having a secret door built so that she would have an avenue of escape. And then a feeling rather than a thought threw out the plan. She would not be protected then. If she could get out, something could get in—that something which had begun to crouch outside the house, to crawl close to the walls at night, and to rise silently, trying to look through the windows. It required more and more will power for Kate to leave the house on Monday afternoons.

When Cal began to follow her she had a terrible leap of fear. And when she waited for him behind the privet she was very near to panic.

But now her head dug deep in her soft pillows and her eyes felt the gentle weight of the bromide.

Chapter 41

1

The nation slid imperceptibly toward war, frightened and at the same time attracted. People had not felt the shaking emotion of war in nearly sixty years. The Spanish affair was more nearly an expedition than a war. Mr. Wilson was re-elected President in November on his platform promise to keep us out of war, and at the same time he was instructed to take a firm hand, which inevitably meant war. Business picked up and prices began to rise. British purchasing agents roved about the country, buying food and cloth and metals and chemicals. A charge of excitement ran through the country. People didn’t really believe in war even while they planned it. The Salinas Valley lived about as it always had.

2

Cal walked to school with Aron.

“You look tired,” Aron said.

“Do I?”

“I heard you come in last night. Four o’clock. What do you do so late?”

“I was walking around—thinking. How would you like to quit school and go back to the ranch?”

“What for?”

“We could make some money for Father.”

“I’m going to college. I wish I could go now. Everybody is laughing at us. I want to get out of town.”

“You act mad.”

“I’m not mad. But I didn’t lose the money. I didn’t have a crazy lettuce idea. But people laugh at me just the same. And I don’t know if there’s enough money for college.”

“He didn’t mean to lose the money.”

“But he lost it.”

Cal said, “You’ve got this year to finish and next before you can go to college.”

“Do you think I don’t know it?”