The Carnelian Cube

Six:

Finch had no flashlight but as the door was without a transom, there seemed no particular objection to putting on the lights. He started at the dresser, going over every inch with a thoroughness known only to archaeologists and customs inspectors, but there was no little red cube of carnelian, incised with Etruscan characters. Now, let's see—it might be in the stuffing—

"Hello, Arthur. How's burglary?"

Finch whirled. Eulalie, very fetching in blue and with her best smile glued to her face, was standing with her back to the door.

Finch felt his smile was a trifle sickly. "Not very good, though what makes you think of burglary?"

She did not give him a direct answer. "You know," she said, "when a man becomes too much of a liability to a House, being hauled up all the time for advertising, indolence, burglary, and a lot of other things, the Courts may decide that it's no use trading him off and they might as well fertilize him"

"What him?"

"You know—convert him to fertilizer. Oh, well. I don't think you'll ever get into anything like that. By the way, I'm going to be a single woman soon."

"You are?"

"Precisely. I am certainly not going to Fairbanks; the climate wouldn't be good for my complexion. Besides, I don't like the way Bill orders me around, and as I'm only a second-class wife, I can divorce him without proceedings, just as easily as he could me. But it would make a scandal, wouldn't it, after he showed he was so jealous of you, and you practically told everyone in public that you were in love with me by reading that sonnet?"

"Well—" Finch tugged at an ear-lobe.

"You wouldn't want people to talk about me, would you? And I don't think you'd like to be fertilizer; it's so unpleasant,"

Finch said: "Eulalie, do you honestly think I'm going to be blackmailed into marrying you?"

She rolled her eyes in mock horror. "What an awful thing to say! Why should I have to blackmail you? After all, you're entitled to two wives and you haven't even one yet. Am I so much worse than anyone else?"

Finch swallowed. "I had a wife once, and was very well satisfied. I've never wanted another."

"That's not much of a compliment to her. If you were happy in one marriage, the thing to do is enter another as soon as possible. Now, my dear but elusive man of increasing status, let's stop playing. I don't want to be single and' have to work for a living and you don't want to be fertilized. Do we join forces or do I summon the Proctors?"

Arthur Finch pulled down one corner of his mouth in a wry grin. "All right, my dear Medea. I suppose I must."

"We can go to the Registrar's right now. They keep the office open in the evening for people like us. What was it you called me?"

"Medea? Just the poetic name of a lady who knew what she wanted. Come along."

Two hours later the forms required to change Orange Eulalie Mrs., to Finch Eulalie Mrs., had been fulfilled, a messenger had been dispatched to notify the banker of his bereavement, and Finch and his bride stood at the door of the new and larger apartment.

"Well," said Eulalie, "good night, Arthur, and thank you. We really ought to give an orgy to announce this; it will help with our status, and I'll take care of the details for you."

"What do you mean, good-night?" asked Finch.

"Why—I'm going back to my own apartment, of course. The bill will come to you now, dear."

Forebearing to argue the point, Finch gave a narrow-lipped smile and his right hand shot out to seize Eulalie's wrist. It was a broad and reasonably powerful hand, its back covered with sparse black fur. Before the girl could do more than squeak, Finch whipped her through the door into his livingroom. Then he turned and locked the door.

Eulalie stared at him with amazement and something akin to horror that gradually changed to indignation. "You're—strong, aren't you?" she said. She looked at him steadily a moment. "I think I'm going to owe you something for that and when I collect, you aren't going to like it."

"That may be, my charming wife," said Finch, "but for this evening, I propose to be the one who does the collecting."

... Arthur Finch yawned, stretched and oriented himself. Being married might turn out to be fun, after all, he decided. The years of iron self-sufficiency had worn upon him. For the moment he was content. His patron was Cal-thorp Milo Professor, who was a fairly decent sort, rather like a freshman dean, who could doubtless be handled like one. If he made the right sort of impression at breakfast calls and Eulalie could be persuaded to exercise some of her indubitable ambition in directions that would benefit both of them—

As though for answer Eulalie appeared through the doorway, dressed, chic and unperturbed. Finch's eyes sought the clock.

"O tempus fugitivus!" he ejaculated. "How in Hell did I sleep till ten? Why didn't you wake me up at seven-thirty?"

"Why should I?" said Eulalie. "You're a big, strong boy, Arthur. You should be able to get yourself up."

"But I missed my patron call and my breakfast."

"I really don't see what you want me to do about it now. Are you coming down town with me today? Wilberforce leaves with the car in a few minutes. Or are you going to see about the car you're entitled to?"

Finch heaved himself from the bed. "I really ought to put in some study on the historic families of Kentucky first,"

"All right," said Eulalie, cheerfully. "See you when I get back this evening."

She waved a hand and was gone. Finch rubbed his fore-pate with his fingertips as he watched her depart, wondering how he would make his peace with Calthorp Milo Professor and how he could acquire some breakfast before perishing of hunger.

But he was fated to accomplish neither this morning. Before he was more than three-quarters dressed, there was a knock on the door and it admitted Terry, who nearly knocked him down with another lethal back-slap. "Congratulations, Arthur. Jest heered about you and Eulalie. Any time I got a wile cat I want to git tamed, I'll come and look you up."

"You'd probably have more luck if you looked up Eulalie," said Finch. "I think she would be more than a match for the Nemean lion."

"Maybe so," said Terry. His face had gone sober. "Say, Arthur, I'm in a awful picklement, and you're the only friend I got that can help me out. When kin I talk to you about it?"

"Right now, I suppose. I missed patron-call this morning, but I'm so far behind now it won't make much difference."

Terry sat down. "Now don't you go blamin' me for what I done, will you Arthur? We all make mistakes, don't we?"

"Well, all right, my dear Hercules; we make mistakes. What kind did you make?"

"We-ull, hit was this way. I tol' you they was goin' to be an orgy and some gamblin' at Highland Park House. So, since I got lots of sporting blood, I went to the gamblin' room after I done beat their athalete in the tennis-match and we had the orgy. I never seen such luck; I lost and I lost, and kep' doublin' my stakes—well, anyway, I won't go into the details none, but I ended up owin' the Highland Park House athalete and a couple other guys I met over there, an awful lot of money, a'most five hundred dollars more than I got in the bank."

"Well?" said Finch.

Terry traced intricate patterns with his toe. "Why, don't you see, Arthur? Ef you or some other true and faithful friend don't come to my rescue, they kin attach me and make me work out all that money. I'd be practically a slave for months and months and wouldn't get no chance to see you nor talk to you nor nothin'. What would you do without me to help you? What would pore Strawberry House do without an athalete? Hit would be the worst thing I could imagine. They might even trade me away. You won't let 'em drag me away from my home and hearth, will you? You wouldn't let 'em put me on some work like ditch-digging, which would ruin my coordination and spoil my career as a athalete? You wouldn't now, would you, Arthur? Me that's ben your best friend for years and years and years."

"Stop it for Heaven's sake," said Finch. "How do you propose I should get you out of your trouble other than by just giving you the money, which, I may say, I do not propose to do?"

"We-ull, I thought maybe as how ef I signed an enfeoffment agreement with you, you could pay off my debt, and I could work it out for you sort of gradual, instead of for a bunch of strangers. I wouldn't mind doing things for you, on account of we ben friends for so long."

"You'll have to tell me about an enfeoffment agreemerit. I don't think I've ever been involved with one before."

"You know. Hit makes me your bondservant, kind of, during the hours when I ain't worldng as a athalete for the House. Means you kind advise me, too. Look hyear, I brung one along with me, all made out. See, hit runs for six months. And I kin shore work out the five hundred dollars for you in that rime, cain't I? I kin do all kinds of things for you, and protect you from Orange Bill in case he tries to pull somethin' before he gets shipped to Alaska."

Finch mused: "I expect to be gone most of the time between now and Orange's departure. Still, I could do with a little help and protection on some things, perhaps. You might let me know what he's up to, for example. Let's see that agreement."

Finch found the involved legal phraseology only a trifle more difficult than hieroglyphic Hittite. By main force he plugged through the first three paragraphs of whereases, heretofores and parties of the first and second parts; then slammed the rest.

"Looks all right to me," he said. "Where's my pen?" He handed the instrument to Terry, thinking that his bank balance had shown a couple of thousand dollars, and there was not much one could with it anyway except gamble or buy trinkets for one's wife; and toothsome morsel though Eulalie might be, he would as soon see Terry use the money as her. "My first order to you," he announced, "is no more of those back-slaps. And now I've got some business to see to. I probably won't have anything for you to do until tonight,"

Calthorp Professor was inclined to be a trifle stiff over a new client who missed his first breakfast-call, but as Finch had foreseen, he was not impervious to academic conversation mixed with a little judicious flattery. The suggestion of a trip to Ireland, however, he received with frowning doubt. "The matter is one for Sullivan," he said. "Of course, if he wants youse to go, I will interpose no objections, though I am afraid I would hardly feel—uh —justified in allocating funds from the budget of the House Historical Section for such an expedition. I should think youse would start at the other end, say with the Daniel Boone records at Richmond, where they have so fine a collection."

The pronouncement for a substitute trip was so unmistakable and Sullivan would be so certain to learn of it in any case that Finch found it necessary to explain to the House Politician in taking up the matter with him.

"So youse'd be wanting to make business a pleasure and take your new bride on a honeymoon to the Emerald Isle?" Sullivan laughed, then glanced sharply at Finch: "And maybe to get out of providing that orgy for Orange Bill, all at the same time? Well, I've no objection, no objection at all, Arthur. But look here now, I'll tell youse something about the fine art of politics, the which clients should know as much about as politicians. It would just not be right now to run counter to your patron that way, though I understand his reasons, him wanting to spend that year in the northwest to look up the Kentucky families and the District not letting him. So off to Richmond with youse, the way Calthorp Professor suggests; and when youse get back I'll try and have him talked round for youse."

That was how Finch happened to go to Richmond instead of Dublin—a project in which Eulalie displayed no interest.