86
JASCHA KESSLER
able damp and dreary hole in the cursed sand to pay social calls on
my working hours."
But Mr. Acker felt himself strangely possessed, and paid her
no attention. Though he too was surprised at his boldness, he man–
aged to look over her frowning face, trying not to seem to notice her
perfect grey wig with its forty-year-old ironed hairdo that never
changed a strand. Beyond her he found what he had been searching
for: a small white-washed door: the door to his dumbwaiter. With
rude glee he pointed at it, "And what is that,
if
you please, Mrs.
Jewett?"
"What is what, Acker?" she answered with another question,
a suspicious note of brass in her voice.
"That door there. Does anyone use it?"
Unwillingly she looked where he pointed. "What do you mean
by that question, sir, if I may ask?"
"I mean-" he tried to sound disingenuous, though firm
"--does anyone use it, for anything, at all?"
"I
am
not
anyone, Mr. Acker, and I do not
do anything."
He found himself almost violently impatient to stop this in–
direct cross-questioning of her and get to the bottom of the lead he
thought he had found. He brushed past the girls, pushed open the
mesh door to her sanctum, and pressed himself in, knocking over a
stack of new sheets. From the side of his eye he noticed that the
housekeeper's mouth was open: probably no one had forced himself
into her private cubicle in forty years. He was indeed risking her
bitter enmity. But
if
there was a first time for him there could even
be a first time for her!
No one had the right not to be questioned!
Anyhow, his job and his repute were at stake, he reflected; and so
set his teeth together and went on. Inadvertently he upset more
linen; worse yet, stepped on them, again inadvertently, as he
reached for the catch on that door. Yanking it open, he saw what
he had suspected: halfway down in the opening was his dumb–
waiter.
"Mrs. Jewett! What is this?" he hissed.
"The dumbwaiter, Mr. Acker. What else?"
"I mean, what is it for? I mean, I just saw it moving. I was
upstairs, in the kitchen."
"It
is a very lucky convenience providence designed for me,
