Too Many Cooks

He was still grinning. “Honest to God, it’s too good not to tell you. You would enjoy it better if you knew Crisler. But it wasn’t only him. Another trouble was that I never get any time to myself around here. Sixteen hours a day! That’s the way it works out. I’ve only got one assistant, and you ought to see him, he’s somebody’s nephew. I had to be on duty from sunrise to bedtime. Then there was Crisler, just a damn bile factory. He had it in for me because I caught his chauffeur swiping grease down at the garage, and boy, when he was mean he was mean. The nigger that helped me catch the chauffeur, Crisler had him fired. He was after my scalp too. I made my plans and they worked.”

Odell pointed. “See that ledge up there? No, over yonder, the other side of those firs. That’s where I was when I threw stones at him. I hit him both times.”

“I see. Hurt him much?’

“Not enough. His shoulder was pretty sore. I had fixed up a good alibi in case of suspicions. Crisler checked out. That was one advantage. Another was that almost whenever I want to I can say I’m going out for the stone thrower, and come to the woods for an hour or two and be alone and spit and look at things. Sometimes I let them see me from the bridle path, and they think they’re being protected and that’s jake.”

“Pretty good idea. But it’ll play out. Sooner or later you’ll either have to catch him or give it up. Or else throw some more stones.”

He grinned. “Maybe you think it wasn’t a good shot the time I got him in the shoulder! See how far away that ledge is? I don’t know whether I’ll try it again or not, but if I do, I know damn well who I’ll pick. I’ll point her out to you.” He glanced at his wrist. “Jumping Jesus, nearly five o’clock. I’ve got to get back.”

He scrambled up and started off headlong, and as I was in no hurry I let him go, and moseyed idly along behind. As I had already discovered, wherever you went around Kanawha Spa, you were taking a walk in the garden. I don’t know who kept the woods swept and dusted off the trees for what must have been close to a thousand acres, but it was certainly model housekeeping. In the neighborhood of the main hotel, and the pavilions scattered around, and the building where the hot springs were, it was mostly lawns and shrubs and flowers, with three classy fountains thirty yards from the main entrance. The things they called pavilions, which had been named after the counties of West Virginia, were nothing to sneeze at themselves in the matter of size, with their own kitchens and so forth, and I gathered that the idea was that they offered more privacy at an appropriate price. Two of them, Pocahontas and Upshur, only a hundred yards apart and connected by a couple of paths through trees and shrubs, had been turned over to the fifteen masters—or rather, ten—and our Suite 60, Wolfe’s and mine, was in Upshur.

I strolled along carefree. There was lots of junk to look at if you happened to be interested in it—big clusters of pink flowers everywhere on bushes which Odell had said was mountain laurel, and a brook zipping along with little bridges across it here and there, and some kind of wild trees in bloom, and birds and evergreens and so on. That sort of stuff is all right, I’ve got nothing against it, and of course out in the country like that something might as well be growing or what would you do with all the space, but I must admit it’s a poor place to look for excitement. Compare it, for instance, with Times Square or the Yankee Stadium.

Closer to the center of things, in the section where the pavilions were, and especially around the main building and the springs, there was more life. Plenty of folks, such as they were, coming and going in cars or on horseback and sometimes even walking. Most of those walking were Negroes in the Kanawha Spa uniform, black breeches and bright green jackets with big black buttons. Off on a side path you might catch one of them grinning, but out in the open they looked as if they were nearly overcome by something they couldn’t tell you, like bank tellers.