Christmas. Very busy, in fact engaged! I don’t believe a thing about him.
That night, while Dulcy lay in a bathtub, the room shuddered, the bathwater moved in a new direction, and the buildings across the street swayed. She watched the window glass move and thought about what might happen next: she’d fall, more or less intact and still wet, through the six floors below her, crushing the innocent beneath her cast iron, cushioned by water and bubbles and the fact that right now, feeling the ground throb, she felt a great indifference. People who cared the most were struck down in a disproportionate ratio; death would only happen to her when she no longer wanted it to.
When everything stopped moving, she slid down into the water so that only her face and knees showed. Even underwater, she could hear Walton howl in happiness through the wall. An hour later, when she went to say good night, his bed was empty. Henning found him at midnight at a tavern near the station, a ticket to Sacramento and a suitcase in hand, four whiskeys into his escape. Walton had never been much of a drinker, and he was sick on the way back to the hotel, ruining Victor’s car. He told Dulcy he’d been on his way to Lone Pine, to relocate a successful mine, and when he managed speech over the next few days, he said many other things: that he had sold the African mines, that he hadn’t, that he’d been paid, that the buyers had refused to pay him, that there were no mines to sell, that he had been in Chile, not Africa, that his head hurt terribly, that someone should tell his mother he’d be home soon.
•••
Woolcock’s account of tracking Walton through Africa arrived in seventeen numbered telegrams. Number fifteen was missing, which put Victor into spasms of paranoia; he and Henning had been off courting money when it arrived, and Dulcy was in the habit of checking his desk. It had alluded to her illness in Africa three years earlier, and it was nothing Victor needed to know. She burned it while she sat on the fire escape, smoking another cigarette.
The sale of the mines had been scheduled for September 12. Walton had asked the purchasers to draw up a single bank check, without percentiles to the partners (80 percent to Victor, 15 to Walton, 5 to Henning), and said he’d carry the check to Johannesburg himself. On September 10, he delayed the transfer of ownership by requesting gold and an escort in lieu of paper; such a request wasn’t out of the ordinary in post-war southern Africa. He had asked Woolcock about who would be safe to hire but insisted that he not worry about coming for the transfer.
Now, Woolcock learned that the Bengalis he’d suggested as escorts had never heard from Walton, and people allied with the new owners said that Walton had arrived with five black men and left with gold. Nothing more, nothing less, everyone in a fine mood. The staff at the Mount Nelson said Walton had arrived alone on the evening of September 16. He seemed tired and carried a satchel. No one at the stations in Johannesburg or Cape Town had seen an escort of blacks, or heavy freight.
Dulcy had a fantasy: They would put her on a boat. Having proved herself with Woolcock, she would sail off, find the money, save the day, and disappear. Over the next few days, while telegrams darted back and forth and Victor roared directly at Walton about bankruptcy, humiliation, ruin for the first time, this fantasy—of running away being a useful thing, instead of a convenient act of cowardice—took hold, and during longer daytime walks Dulcy headed up Second Avenue for useful travel items, and up an even greater hill on Pike for the sake of character improvement and fitness.
On a windy day after the delivery of telegram seventeen, she turned to catch a section of a newspaper that had just blown from her hands and thought she saw Henning. Looking like Henning was not an average thing. She waved, but the man disappeared.
The next day, she left a bookstore (a new Baedeker for Sicily, Tunis, and Corfu) shadowed by the same sort of man, but this version of Henning had red hair. She walked on to the post office with letters for Carrie, her aunts, and Walton’s brother, Christopher, who was the Methodist minister of Pachuca, near Mexico City. When her follower didn’t have the sense or nerve to come in with her, she left by the side door, shedding him and trying to leave behind a crushing but nonsensical disappointment at the idea that Victor and Henning did not trust her. She should be flattered: they thought her capable of running away, maybe even of stealing a million dollars.
When she reached the apartment and the hall to the bedrooms, she saw Henning come through the door to the servants’ stair. He slept at the other end, the guard dog near Victor’s bedroom, but he was straightening his shirt, and when he saw her he looked away.
“You’re a busy man,” said Dulcy. “It’s good that you have brothers to help with chores. What are their names, again?”
Henning met her eye as he fixed his tie, and behind him, in the stairwell, she heard a maid’s footsteps. “Carl, Martin, Ansel, and Lennart. I believe you saw Martin.”
“Where do you think I’m going to run away to?”
“Anywhere, I suppose,” said Henning. “But he’ll keep you here until the money’s found or your father is dead. Make the best of this.”
“Send me to find the money, then,” she said. “I can’t bear this.”
He walked away without answering her.
Dulcy spent the next three days walking miles, losing her Swedish tails behind produce stands, in the museum, and—cruelly—on the ladies’ underthings floor of the Bon Marché. The bone from her childhood break still hurt sometimes, but she embraced this bitterness, too. On the fourth day, Henning drove two of his brothers down to the harbor for a reversed version of Walton’s travels—Seattle to San Francisco to Hawaii to Melbourne to Cape Town. She wanted to snap out a Walton quote—They couldn ’t wade through hummingbird shit in boots —but she ran out into the rain for one more walk, and when she returned, she stayed in her room or in Walton’s, and listened to Victor walking the hall.
A few days after the Falk brothers departed, Walton announced that the proceeds from the sale of the mines would arrive with a man named John Viram Singh, on a packet ship called the Silver Moon , in the form of a check from the Bank of Cape Town, a different branch than the one he’d first remembered. He should have told them earlier. He had forgotten.
No such ship was scheduled into Seattle, but a Silver Star was due into San Francisco in five days, carrying a passenger named V. Singh. Dulcy, sensing misdirection and envisioning the debarkation of an elderly Sikh cloth or curry merchant, grew queasy when Victor reacted with elation. Henning decided to go to San Francisco himself, and Victor insisted that they go to the station together. At the platform, though she knew Henning was watching her, she studied the times for the eastbound Empire Builder. He did not look worried—Henning looked however he liked—but he leaned down and whispered, “Don’t hook it, Dulcy.”
“No one says that anymore,” said Dulcy.
“Your father does,” said Henning.
•••
It rained; with Henning gone, Dulcy again stayed in her room or in Walton’s unless she knew Victor had left the building. They’d gone two days without having to see each other when there was a knock on her door.
“Let’s go out,” Victor said. “We should have a conversation.”
“I’d rather not,” said Dulcy.
“I’d rather we did,” said Victor.
One of Henning’s remaining brothers drove the car to the feeble new botanic gardens. It wasn’t raining for the first time in days, and as they walked, not talking, Dulcy peered at plant labels.
