Man Sinister

Papa Joe’s wife had been my mother’s dearest friend. She had taken me in after I had lost my mother, and she had loved me like her own son. I’d eaten cookies baked by her in the same range that Ellen used today. When she, my foster mother, had died the soul had gone from Papa Joe’s home.

After dinner Vera and I wandered toward the parlor, talking idly.

“I noticed you called Mr. Cranford ‘Papa Joe,’ ” she said. “Why is that?”

“With my own parents dead,” I explained, “I felt that I shouldn’t call him ‘Papa.’ childish notion. So I tacked the name ‘Papa Joe’ onto him, and soon everybody was using it, including grown-ups.”

“He doesn’t like the name, does he?”

“I don’t know. Now that you mention it, I suppose he doesn’t.”

She laughed. “I’m glad I’m getting to know you, Steve. You’re refreshing. You accept things at face value, in perfectly good faith. You’re resilient. You keep right on acting in good faith even when life lets you down.”

“I really appear that way to you?” I was surprised.

“Of course. Did I say something wrong?”

I grinned wryly. “You might have done something easy, like swatting me with that vase over there. I’ve acted with less faith than anybody I ever had the displeasure to meet. Sometimes I think I’m the most decayed one of the whole tribe.”

“You mustn’t think such things about yourself!” she chided.

“It isn’t healthy, normal, is it?”

“No,” she said distantly.

I was sorry our talk had been routed into this channel. She was a nice kid. She loved Harold. If she would bear the selfishness I knew to run deep in him, she would enjoy a nice life as the wife of a successful artist.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You know I have a wife, don’t you? Harold told you what I did to her?”

“No, I didn’t know. Now it’s my turn — I’m sorry.” She offered her hand and I shook it. We were friends again, and I was glad.

From upstairs, Harold called to her. After she had gone, I lighted a cigarette and went out on the porch to smoke it.

I was finishing the cigarette when the stranger came. I was instantly almost sure it was the same man I’d seen watching the house. Short, blocky, dressed in a baggy suit.

When he stepped on the front porch I got a look at his face in the light spilling from the hallway. A heavy Irish face. Eyes of cold slate. A red stubble of beard. A mouth that could be either generous or tough as they come.

I hadn’t moved out of the shadows. “Cranford,” he said, “I hope you didn’t think I would give up so easily.” His voice was deep, rumbling in his chest, his words spoken with a clipped Yankee accent.

His belligerence annoyed me. I said, “I’m not Cranford. I’m his foster brother. Would you like to give him a message?”

“I’d like to talk to him.”

“I could see if he’s in.”

“He’s in. He hasn’t left the house since he drove back an hour or more ago. His car is here, and he hasn’t left the house walking unless he went out the back way.”

“You’re saying you’ve been watching us?”

“I’m saying that I’ve been trying to see him. Now will you tell him I’m here?”

Harold himself stepped out on the porch. “I’ve nothing more to say to you, McGinty. Except that this has got to stop! You understand?”

Harold was deeply shaken, facing this man he called McGinty as if the act required every ounce of courage-he possessed. He was in a dangerous mood, his back to whatever wall McGinty had erected.

McGinty said, “We can’t talk here.”

“There’s no more talking to do!” Harold said flatly. “You’ve been wrong from the beginning, McGinty. You’d do well to make yourself scarce.”

McGinty stood with his hands jammed in his pockets, a thin smile on his face. “I’m getting you just about where I want you,” he said. “Just about to the breaking point.”

His words reacted on Harold like short, hard punches to the mid-section.

“We’ll talk,” McGinty said.

Harold dropped a glance at me. I interpreted it as resignation. He wished to speak to McGinty alone. I went in the house.

The door of Harold’s room was open when I passed down the upstairs hall. Vera was alone in the room, sitting rigid beside the bed, as if waiting for something to happen, something beyond her control.

“Hello,” she said, attempting a smile as she saw me stop in the doorway.

“Hello.”

“Harold is down there now talking with a strange man, isn’t he?” she asked.

“Yes.” I stepped inside the room. “What’s it all about?”

“It’s that damn painting.” Falling from her lips, the invective stunned me.

“One of Harold’s?”

“Yes. Now and then he decides to do a serious piece of work. Occasionally he even manages to get around to it.”

“This man — this McGinty — is after the painting?”