Robert Adams - A Man Called Milo Morai

Rosaleen O’Farrell was the first to arrive, and her initial action was to take Kathleen by the hair and slap her, hard , with palm and backhand on both cheeks, twice over. That effectively stopped the screaming. The cook’s muddy-brown eyes took in the strongbox chained to the wrought-iron bedstead, the hacksaw, the slightly damaged link and the massive padlock from the keyhole of which an ineffective wire pick still protruded.

“Caught them, did you?” she stated to Milo in Irish Gaelic. “I knew, I did, it’s telling herself I was that no good would come of them dirty furriner boys Kathleen has been bringing into this house. I think that one’s the Dutch Jewboy, Jaan what’s-his-name, a godless Bolshevik.”

At the shaken Pat O’Shea’s insistence, Maggie was rung up at the hospital and summoned home. She was advised, also, that it might be wise to bring a doctor along who was prepared to handle a compound fracture of the lower arm, as well as dislocations of both elbow and shoulder joints, not to mention a case of shock. The two night nurses from the third floor, both wakened by the screams of Kathleen, which had been of a timbre to wake a corpse, had raised the slight, fainting young would-be burglar and would-be knifer onto Milo’s bed, removed his shoes and tie, unbuckled his belt, ascertained the full extent of his injuries, then set about trying to slow his loss of blood, while keeping his feet elevated and his body warm.

By the time Maggie came puffing across the lawn from Dr. Gerald Guiscarde’s motorcar, her plump face nearly as white as her uniform, a few more judiciously applied slaps of Rosaleen’s hard hands and a stiff belt of neat whiskey pressed on her by her father had brought Kathleen out of her hysterics to a stage of red-eyed, moist-cheeked snuffling interspersed with shudders, gaspings and swallowings and the occasional horrified stare at the man called Milo Moray.

But when Maggie entered, Kathleen sprang up and flung herself into the stout woman’s arms. “Oh, Mama, Mama, he killed him! He did! Right in front of me! I saw him do it.”

“Stuff and nonsense, Mrs. O’Shea,” snapped Rosaleen from where she stood in the archway between front and rear parlors. “The Jewboy ain’t dead … yetaways. But it’s I’m thinkin’ he should be. The little bugtit, he’s been sneakin’ out money from Mr. Moray’s room for weeks, he has, either him or Kathleen, more’s the pity. Mr. Moray bought him a lockbox and chained it to the bedstead, he did too, but somebody”—she stared hard at Kathleen as she paused, and the girl flushed and refused to return the stare—“has been tryin’ to pick the locks.

“Mr. Moray and Miss Thorsdottar got together to catch the thief, and fin’ly, today, he did. When he went into his room this afternoon, he found Kathleen and that Jewboy takin’ a hacksaw to the chain, set to carry the box away, I’d say, I would, so’s they could bash it opened. And when they come to see him, Kathleen comminceted a caterwaulin’, while the Jewboy went at poor Mr. Moray with a switchblade jackknife, he did.

“Poor Mr. Moray, he should ought to’ve kilt him, but he didn’, just busted his arm a wee bit and unjointed his shoulther and elbow, is all. He—”

“God Almighty damn, Milo" burst out Dr. Gerald Guiscarde from the foyer, which he just had entered after parking his SSKL 1931 Mercedes-Benz in the parking area off the driveway. “For the love of Christ, man, sit down! How deep did the stab go, do you know? Do you feel pain,, weakness or giddiness? Any nausea?”

Not until the doctor had had up Milo’s bloody shirt and undervest to see what looked like a minor and closing scratch on the skin of the abdomen beneath would he believe his prized mystery man to be unhurt. Only then did he leave for the upstairs, guided by Michelle, the maid.

Maggie pushed her daughter from off her bounteous breasts and said, “Kathleen , . . ?” When the girl did not answer, merely stood snuffling, with downcast eyes, the older woman gave her a shake that rattled her teeth.

“Answer your mother when she speaks to you! If you think you’re too old for me to take down your knickers and paddle you, you’ve got another think coming, young lady!”

“Oh, Mama, he … he killed him. He just tore poor Jaan apart with his bare hands!” Kathleen’s voice had risen to a higher pitch with each succeeding syllable, and so the last four words came out as a near-scream.

Rosaleen resignedly took a step or two forward, her intent to administer a few more wallops of her sovereign Old Country cure for hysteria. But Maggie had her own brand of cure. She once more shook her slender daughter, a shaking that was painful to watch and revealed just how much power lay underneath the adipose tissue.

She nodded. “It’s true, then, isn’t it, Kathleen? You’ve been letting in hoodlums to steal from my boarders, haven’t you? Well, you shameless hussy, answer me?” She gave the girl another shake, of shorter duration but just as powerful if not more so. “Haven’t you?”

“Bububu …” Kathleen blubbered, her tears once more at full flow. “But, M-Mama, it … it wasn’t really stealing. Jaan ex—explained it all to me … to us all. Lenin said that—”

“Lenin, is it?” Pat O’Shea sprang up from his chair. “Is this what that damned university teaches you? I’ll not see you go back to learn more godless Boshevism, daughter. It’s to the nursing school, with your sister, you’ll be going, by God, there or as a novice with the Holy Sisters of Saint Agnes.

“Mrs. O’Shea, we should be ringing up the police to come and fetch that Dutch Jew up abovestairs. I’ll not be having a heathen Bolshevik longer under my roof!”

“Aye!” Rosaleen O’Farrell nodded her firm approval. “It’s doing it now, I’ll be. The jail’s the best place for the likes of that one. Corruptin’ young, witless, Christian girls!”

But Maggie O’Shea would not have the police summoned. Instead, when Dr. Gerald Guiscarde had done all that he could immediately do for Jaan Brettmann, he drove into the business area and brought back from his tailor shop old Josef Brettmann and his eldest son.

When the three men entered the parlor, Milo immediately recognized the youngest, not simply because of the strong familial resemblance to the injured knifeman, but because he recalled him from the office from which he received the papers and to which he returned the translations.

He walked forward, his hand extended, “Sol, what are you doing here?” he asked in Dutch.

The newcomer was slow to take Milo’s hand, took it only gingerly then, and quickly took back his own hand. Not meeting Milo’s gaze, he said softly, Mijnheer Moray, this is my father, whom you had not yet met. The boy, he who robbed you and tried to kill you like some commom thug, that is … is my younger brother, Jaan. The medical doctor explained all that happened while we rode here in his auto. Jaan has humiliated me, our father, all of our family before with his wild, radical ideas and schemes, but never to this extent, never housebreaking and attempted murder.

“I do not, cannot understand him and his university friends. America has been so good to him, to us all, has given us so much that we never would have had in Amsterdam or anywhere else. How could he have done, have even thought to do, such a horribleness?

“I do not know what your losses have been, but we— my father and I—will assuredly repay them. It may take time, but you will be fully repaid by the Brettmann family.”

He turned, “Papa, dit is Mijnheer Moray.” Then, switching languages, he added, “Mr. Moray speaks also Yiddish and Hebreish, Papa.”