V
The time came when ill-health put an end to that strange game of hide-and-seek. Craig had to go back to our comfortable Monrovia house and lock the big wooden gates and keep them locked no matter who came. One man climbed over the gates and told her that he had just been released from the psychopathic ward at the Veterans’ Home in Sawtelle; that time, Craig called the police.
Her anxieties were the result of many experiences, extending over many years. I will tell one more story, going back to the Pasadena days. A Swedish giant, who must have been seven feet high, entered my study and told me in a deep sepulchral voice, “I have a message direct from God.” I, only five feet seven and cringing at a desk, said politely, “Indeed—how interesting; and in what form is it?” Of course, I knew what the form was because I saw a package under his arm. “It is a manuscript,” he said.
It was up to me to say, “You wish me to read it?” The sepulchral voice replied, “No human eye has ever beheld it. No human eye ever will behold it.”
I asked timidly, “What do you wish me to do?”
Then I heard Craig’s voice in the doorway, “Upton, the plumber is waiting for you.”
When it comes to hints I am very dumb. “What plumber?” I asked. Craig, used to my dumbness, continued, “There’s a leak in the basement, and you have to go and let the plumber in.” I got it that time and followed her, and we fled down to the other house and locked ourselves in.
As to Mrs. Gartz, Craig had finally made up her mind to face it out. When the celebrated “Red Dean” of Canterbury Cathedral visited Pasadena and Mrs. Gartz wrote demanding that we meet him, Craig locked our gates and let them stay that way. Mrs. Gartz came, with the communist prelate by her side. Her chauffeur got out and pounded on the gate, while Craig peered through a tiny crack in an upstairs window curtain. Afterward she wept, because of what she had done to an old and beloved friend.
Years later, another friend was driving Craig on one of the business streets of Pasadena, and they passed a mortuary. “Just think,” said the friend, pointing. “In there is all that is left of Kate Gartz—in an urn, on a shelf.”