She swung round to me. “There’s the pretty little story. A true story, for a change.” She dropped down on the sofa, tucking her legs under her. “Thank God it’s out. I don’t feel quite so much like throwing up any more.”
I had expected Mrs. Friend to show maternal indignation, but she didn’t. With a shrug that was almost meek, she said: “Marny’s right, Gordy. I suppose it’s just the mother in me. I keep on thinking of you as a little boy in sailor pants with an eye on the cookie jar. Of course, you’re grown up and responsible. It’s an insult to try to keep the truth from you. “‘So you’re not keeping any more truth from me?”
My relief was so great that I wanted to laugh. They were still lying to me, of course. But the thing they were lying about seemed absurdly unimportant now. I had suspected them of such satanic evil. I had convinced myself I was in the clutches of murderers who were planning to foist their guilt upon me. And the real secret behind their charming façade had merely been—this.
Marny with her girlish impetuosities had been exaggerating. They weren’t fiends at all. They were just a bunch of very uncomfortable people in a jam.
Mrs. Friend was watching me. “So you will do it, darling, won’t you? It’s not just for our sakes. It’s for your sake too.” I was amused that I could ever have thought of her as anything more ominous than a handsome woman in a hell of a hole.
“For my sake?” I queried.
“Of course, dear.”
“Don’t you mean for Gordy Friend’s sake?”
She stiffened. Selena and Nate exchanged a glance. It was all pitifully obvious.
“Gordy, dear,” began Mrs. Friend.
“It’s really not worth while going on with the lies,” I said. “Where is Gordy? Off on a bat, I suppose. No, toot is the word, isn’t it? How embarrassing of him. The whole Friend fortune at stake and Gordy’s off in a dark tavern somewhere, debauched in a careless carouse.”
Dr. Croft said crisply: “This is beyond a joke, old man.”
“You think so? I think it’s terribly, terribly amusing.” I grinned at him. “I suppose you unearthed me in your sanatorium. You certainly delivered the goods, didn’t you? One amnesiac, fake Gordy Friend guaranteed to recite the
Ode to Aurora
to Mr. Moffat, and win a fortune for the Friends.”
Mrs. Friend had risen. Her face was as pale as paper. Selena had slid off the chair arm too. They stood on each side of Dr. Croft, facing me. Once those two women, grouped together, watching me, had seemed as formidable as two Fates. They didn’t any more.
“How about it?” I said. “Do we go on playing Guess Who I am? Or do we come clean?”
Suddenly Marny laughed. She got up from the couch. She pushed her way through the others and kissed me enthusiastically.
“You did it,” she cried. “From the beginning, I knew you’d win. Oh, peace, peace, it’s wonderful.”
“Which means, of course, that I’m not Gordy Friend?”
“Of course you’re not Gordy,” said Marny. “Until Nate brought you home from the sanatorium, we’d never any of us seen you before in our lives.”
Mrs. Friend
grabbed Marny’s arm with sudden ferocity and swung the girl away from me. For a moment the two of them stood, staring at each other—the leader of the conspiracy and the Judas who had betrayed it.
I’m sure they had forgotten me in their mutual antagonism. I had almost forgotten them, because my whole being was concentrated on adapting myself to this new reality. They had needed Gordy desperately for their inheritance. They couldn’t find him. They had invented a false Gordy. It was as simple as that. Now I knew the embarrassing facts about the will, there was no need to ascribe more sinister motives to them.
They were after their money. That was enough to explain everything. Why now should I cling to my far darker suspicions which had never had anything but the flimsiest evidence to support them?
The silence was long enough and tense enough to make me conscious of it. Nate had taken Selena’s hand. With a stirring of annoyance, I saw she made no effort to release it. They were both watching Mrs. Friend and Marny as if their destinies, somehow, depended upon what happened between the two women.
When Mrs. Friend spoke, her voice was gentle. It was not real gentleness though.
She said: “We’ve worked so hard. It’s been so difficult. Why did you have to do this now?”
“Do what?” challenged Marny. “Tell him the truth? He’s got to be told the truth.”
Mrs. Friend shrugged wearily. “You could at least have left the decision up to someone more responsible.”
“Who’s someone more responsible? You?” Marny laughed. “A wonderful job you’ve made of it. You with your elaborate web of lies that had us all tangled up before we could look around. He’s a clever man. You and Nate have been handling him like a moron. Five minutes after he returned to consciousness he was beginning to suspect he wasn’t Gordy.”
With great difficulty Mrs. Friend managed one of her smiles. “Well, dear, there’s not much point in mutual recriminations. The damage has been done.” She turned the remnants of the frayed smile on me. “You must please believe me that we’ve been acting for what seemed to be the best.”
“Best for whom?” flared Marny.
Nate Croft moved towards her. Behind the smooth, doctor front, he was a very angry man. “Okay, Marny. You’ve had your fun making your pretty little scene. Now keep out of this and leave it to someone who has some conception of the importance of the situation.”
“The importance?” Marny turned on him savagely. “The importance of having the no-good Friend inherit Father’s money on a sham? The importance of keeping Dr. Croft’s holy nose clean?”
“Really...!”
“Really.” Marny’s lip curled. “For a doctor, you have an extraordinary conception of importance. Do you think it’s attractive the way we’ve been treating this man? He’s lost his memory. The poor guy doesn’t know who he is. We try and make him believe he’s someone he isn’t. He sees through it. And yet he’s stuck here with a broken arm, a broken leg, completely at our mercy. We’ve been torturing him. That’s what we’ve been doing. And you talk smugly about my not realizing the importance of the situation—when you’re doing this to one of your own patients just because you’re besotted with lust for Selena.”
Nate’s flush deepened. Selena, who alone seemed as calm and amused as ever, laughed. “Marny, darling, try just for once to keep lust out of your dialogue.”
“If you kept it out of your life, I might keep it out of my dialogue.” Marny turned to me. Her hand went out hesitantly. “I couldn’t bear watching what they were doing to you. I wanted to tell you the truth. But I knew I couldn’t—not till it came out naturally, like this in front of them all.”
Mrs. Friend said acidly: “You’re developing these lofty sentiments rather late in the day, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I’m not trying to white-wash myself.” Marny was still watching me. “I’m as guilty as they are. We all went into this together. But please, please, try to think that I’m not quite as much of a louse as the others.”
Selena laughed again. “I’m beginning to see the light. Our little Marny has developed one of her well-known weaknesses for the tortured victim in the wheel chair.” She smiled at me affectionately. “Watch out, baby. She’s not your sister any more, you know.”
Marny flared: “Shut up, Selena.”
Selena grimaced. “Oh, dear, I brought lust into the dialogue again.”
I looked at the two girls, Marny who had defied her family and risked a fortune to help me, Selena who from the start had serenely, with absolutely no qualms, made a sucker out of me.
Why was it Selena who still made my pulses beat quickly?
Marny, her straight brown eyes fixed on my face, repeated, “Do you hate me?”
I grinned at her. “On the contrary, after the things I’ve been suspecting, I could take you all, Nate included, in my arms and give you big, juicy busses. How about giving with the facts, though?”
“What is there to tell? You must have guessed almost all of it.” Marny threw a defiant glance at Nate. “Hold on to your diploma, Nate. Here we go.” She turned back to me.
“The night Father died, Gordy went off on a drunk. You don’t know Gordy, but there was nothing unusual about that. He’d been drinking all day. I was the last to see him. He passed me in the hall, saying he was fed up with the family and was going off to Los Angeles. I saw him drive away. I didn’t try to stop him, because we didn’t know till later that Father was dying and none of us had the slightest idea he was leaving that clause in his will anyway. Afterwards, of course, when we read the will, Gordy mattered terribly. We ransacked L. A. for him. Mother even has detectives out after him.”
“But you haven’t found him?”
Selena gave a rueful shrug. “No, baby. He’s probably in Mexico by now. Gordy’s drunks usually end up in a Mexican bed with some small town senorita and vermin. There’s nothing you can do about him. When he’s ready to come back, he’ll come back.”
Mrs. Friend had sunk into a chair. She looked resigned now and tired—almost old. Only Nate was still standing, alert, hostile.
I said: “So there you were with no Gordy and everything depending on him. It looked as though the Aurora Clean Living League was going to walk away with the dough uncontested. Then Nate picked me up. Where did he find me?”
Nate shuffled. Marny said: “In his sanatorium. You were brought in. Some people had found you lying on the side of the road between here and San Diego. You must have been knocked down by a hit-and-run driver. Later, when you’d been operated on and had your arm and leg fixed up, Nate discovered you’d lost your memory. That’s what gave him the idea.”
Selena moved from the couch and, pushing past Marny, sat down on the floor at my feet. “We were pretty desperate then. Only a week to go and no Gordy. Nate called me about you. You seemed to be the answer to prayer. You see, Gordy and I had only been out here a couple of weeks and Gordy’d been drunk most of the time. Neither Mr. Moffat nor Mr. Petherbridge had ever seen him and, after Father’s death, we’d fired all the old snooping servants. There wasn’t anyone connected with anything who knew Gordy by sight except Jan. And Jan doesn’t count.” She smiled up at me. “Baby, nobler characters than us would have been seduced by that set-up. All we had to do was to claim you, tuck you in bed, convince you you were our long-lost Gordy. Once you’d been pushed through your routine in front of Mr. Petherbridge and the Aurora Clean Living League, the day was ours.”
“Even having your right arm broken fitted so admirably,” Mrs. Friend gave a small sigh. “A left-handed signature on the abstinence pledge couldn’t have been proved a forgery.” She scooped up strands of uncooperative hair. “It was a heroic attempt anyway. Hand us that. And, whatever you feel about us, you must admit that we were pleasant hosts. We did all we could think of to make you comfortable.”
Slowly, I realized, the mood was changing. After Marny’s outburst, I had been the outraged victim saved from the unscrupulous plotting. Now, almost imperceptibly, we were drifting back into the Friends’ typical atmosphere of amiable chumminess. Marny had been eased into the background. Mrs. Friend was smiling at me almost as if I were a fellow conspirator. Selena’s hand, absently it seemed, found mine. The warm pressure of her fingers was as exciting as it had always been—more exciting because I no longer thought of her as an enemy.
I said: “Very neat so far. But what were you planning to do after I’d got you the money and the real Gordy showed up? Once Mr. Petherbridge and Mr. Moffat saw the real Gordy the whole conspiracy would be obvious.”
“But they would never have seen the real Gordy, dear.” Mrs. Friend sneaked that “dear” in so deftly that I hardly noticed it. “You see, we would have left California, sold the house. We none of us particularly like it anyway.”
“And me? What would you have done with me?”
“That we hadn’t exactly planned.” Mrs. Friend’s lips drooped ruefully. “We thought we’d wait and see what your attitude would be after we’d told you the truth. At least we could have pointed out that we had taken care of all your hospital expenses. And, if you were the type of person who was interested in money…” She paused, adding: “You mustn’t please feel insulted because we didn’t know you at the time. But, if you had been interested in a reward for services rendered, we were prepared to give you a handsome cash present, a very handsome present.”
“And if I’d decided to blackmail you indefinitely? I’d have had a complete hold over you. You realize that?”
“That was a gamble we were prepared to take. After all, having money and being blackmailed is better than having no money and not being blackmailed. Besides…” Mrs. Friend reached for her knitting. “We’d been resigned to blackmail anyway. Before Nate produced you, we had been playing with the idea of hiring some unscrupulous character to put on a deliberate masquerade. A man like that would certainly have blackmailed us.” She smiled. “I don’t think, somehow, you would have done anything like that, would you?”
“Of course he wouldn’t, Mimsey,” said Selena. “He’s a divine man.”
Mrs. Friend’s fingers did serene things with the coral wool. “I suppose we’re all criminals really and should feel guilty about it. I’m afraid I don’t. Not at all. Your father’s… I mean, my husband’s will was immensely stupid and unfair. You must admit that. We have every moral right to the money. And the prospect of it going to the Clean Living League…” She shivered. “Wait till you see them tomorrow, dear. Mr. Moffat with a couple of million dollars! The very thought curdles my blood.”
There was a moment of silence. Marny, curled on the couch, was scowling at Selena who was still holding my hand. Nate Croft hovered uneasily. It was as if they all realized Mrs. Friend had successfully created an effect which they did not want to impair.
In her good time, Mrs. Friend’s placid gaze came to rest on my face.
“Well, you know the truth now. Marny was right. We should have given up the pretense earlier. Really, what handsprings we’ve been turning trying to keep you in the dark. I fired that dreary, drunken Netti because I was afraid she was making you suspicious. Selena invented that mythical Cousin—what was his name?—to explain away Gordy’s photograph. We bundled poor Peter off to board at the vet’s. And, really, the time we’ve had with Grandmother! You see, because she’s so old and a teeny bit wandering, poor dear, we thought it would be safer to keep her out of the conspiracy. We just told her Gordy was back and hoped to keep her in her room until the danger was over. She embarrassed us terribly by creeping into your room that way. Selena was stupid trying to pretend she didn’t exist, but she was scared you’d ask to see her and Grandmother would give everything away.”