• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 14431 0

years is not a long time in the eye of God, but it damned near takes the eye of God to spy much about the inside story of even a leading citizen like Le Moyne Carruthers who has been dead twenty-five years. I didn’t have the eye of God. I had to poke and pry and work newspaper files and pump the broken-down old bird who was city editor and cultivate the society of a fellow I had once known who was now a local hot-shot in the insurance game and get to know his friends. I ate roast duck stuffed with oysters and yams and that wonderful curry they make in Savannah, which tastes good even to a man like me who loathes food, and drank rye whisky, and walked down those beautiful streets General Oglethorpe laid out, and stared at the beautiful severe fronts of the houses, which were more severe than ever now, for the last leaves were off the arching trees of the streets and it was the season when the wind blows great chunks of gray sky in off the Atlantic which come dragging in so low their bellies brush the masts and chimney pots, like gravid sows crossing a stubble field.

I saw the Le Moyne Carruthers house. The old boy must have been rich, all right, all right. And when he died in 1904 he had been rich, according to the probate of the will. But it was nine years between 1904 and 1913, and a lot can happen. Mabel Carruthers had lived high. That was the story. But they all said she could afford it. And, according to what I could pick up, there was no reason to believe that the uncle in New York, who was the executor of the will, hadn’t known his business about handling Mabel’s investments.

It looked absolutely level. But there is one thing you must never forget: the judgment docket book in the courthouse.

I did not forget it. And there I found the name of Mabel Carruthers. People had had some trouble getting money out of Mabel. But this didn’t prove anything. Lots of rich girls are so rich they are just above paying bills and you have to pinch them to make them disgorge. But I noticed one thing. Mabel didn’t get the bad habit until 1911. In other words, she had paid her bills all right for the first seven years she had had her money. Now, I argued, if this amiable failing had been merely the result of temperament and not of necessity, why did it come on her all at once? It had come on her all at once, and in a flock. Not that it was the corner grocer by himself. He had some fast company, for Mabel didn’t like to pay Le Clerc in New York for a diamond pendant, and didn’t like to pay her dress maker, and didn’t like to pay a local vintner for some pretty impressive stuff. Mabel had lived high, all right.

The last judgment was to the Seaboard Bank for a loan, amounting to $750. Small change for Mabel. Now there was no Seaboard Bank in Savannah. The telephone directory told me that. But an old fellow sitting in a split-bottom chair in the courthouse told me that the Seaboard Bank had been bought out by the Georgia Fidelity back about 1920. Down at the Georgia Fidelity, they told me, Yes, back in 1920. Who was president of the Seaboard then? Why, just a minute, and they’d find out. Mr. Percy Poindexter had been. Was he in Savannah? Well, they couldn’t say for sure, times changed so fast. But Mr. Pettis would know, Mr. Charles Pettis, who was his son-in-law. Oh, you are welcome, sir. Quite welcome.

Mr. Percy Poindexter was not in Savannah now, and scarcely in this world, for after the exhalation of each breath you waited and waited for that delicate little contraption of matchwood and transparent parchment and filigree of blue veins to gather strength enough for one more effort. Mr. Poindexter reclined in his wheel chair, his transparent hands lying on the wine-colored silk of his dressing gown, his pale-blue eyes fixed on the metaphysical distance, and breathed each breath, saying, “Yes, young man–you have lied to me, of course–but I do not care–care why you want to know–it could not matter now–not to anyone–for they are all dead–Le Moyne Carruthers is dead–he was my friend–my dearest friend–but that was very long ago and I do not