Pat Frank - Mr. Adam

“Why didn’t he mention it before?” I demanded.

“You dunce!” Maria said. “At first he thought it was going to be an abnormally small baby, and after the end of June he thought it might be an unusually long pregnancy. He didn’t want to say a word about it until he was absolutely sure.”

“And is he sure now?”

“There can be no doubt of it. The baby was conceived exactly nine months ago—three months after those damn uranium rays sterilized all the men. Blandy brought all the records of the case to my office this morning.”

“Why did he bring them to you?” I asked, looking for a loophole I was sure existed.

“I am,” said Maria, “on the executive board of the New York City investigating committee for the N.R.P. Besides, he knew there would be a great deal of publicity after the baby was born, and he wanted my advice. I said,” she continued sarcastically, “that I might persuade you to handle the press, since you had some experience along those lines, and were sometimes considered reliable.”

“Bless you! Maria. Bless you!” I exclaimed.

“What’s going on here?” Marge interrupted.

“Quiet!” I shouted.

“You’re not going to leave me out of this,” Marge said. She went to the closet and took out a blue dress. Then she began to pull underthings out of a drawer.

“Maria,” I said into the phone, “where is this child being born?”

There was a pause, and I knew she was searching for a memorandum. I considered all the things that J.C. would want me to do. “The address,” Maria said, “is The Gatehouse, Rosemere, Tarrytown.”

“That sounds like an estate,” I said.

“It sounds like the gatehouse on an estate,” Maria amended. “You’d better get going, Stephen, because it may happen any time this afternoon, according to Blandy. And remember, I’m depending on you to help him out.”

My pajamas were off before I was out of bed. “I never,” said Marge, startled, “saw you move so fast in all my life before.”

“Throw some shirts and socks and shorts and my shaving kit and handkerchiefs into a bag,” I yelled. “A baby is being born!”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Tarrytown.”

“But that’s only—”

“If this thing is true, I’m going to stay.”

“You mean we are going to stay. This is just as important for me as it is for you. More!” I could see that Marge was already dressed, and was packing two bags, swiftly and efficiently, as if we were off for the weekend, and the train was going to leave in twenty minutes.

We caught a cab on Fifth Avenue, and the lights were with us all the way to Grand Central. The next train for Tarrytown was the Croton local. I bought a paper, and we fidgeted over a couple of milk shakes until it left.

It was an absurd train that crawled up the Hudson, pausing like a crosstown trolley at every intersection. I ticked off the stations—Glenwood, Greystone, Hastings-on-Hudson, Dobbs Ferry. Finally there came Irvington, and the next stop was Tarrytown.

There was a taxi at the station. “Do you know,” I asked the driver, “where Rosemere is? I think it’s an estate.”

The hackman removed the stub of a cigar from his mouth. “Sure,” he said, “been living here all my life. You want to go to Rosemere?”

“That’s right,” I said, throwing the bags into the back seat.

“Don’t you want to put them in the trunk compartment?” the driver asked.

“No!” I said. “No! They are perfectly okay.”

“You’re in an awfully big hurry, fellow,” the driver ventured.

I didn’t say anything. I kept wondering what sort of people lived in the gatehouse. Probably, I thought, servants. Probably a butler and an upstairs maid had had some sort of an affair.

“Stephen,” Marge said, “sit back and take it easy. You can’t make it go any faster.”

We crawled up the hill, and the cab stopped before stone gateposts with a chain stretched between them, and a gravel drive beyond. “You want to go to the big house?” the hackman asked. “I hear it’s closed up. The people go South this time every year.”

“No,” I said. “The gatehouse.”

He unhooked the chain, and the cab crept up the driveway for fifty yards. The gatehouse was a compact, squat, two-story cottage, solidly constructed of field stone, with a mangy oak arched over the faded red tiles of its roof. There was a forty-six Buick sedan parked in front, with the little green marker that identifies the physician attached to its license plate. I gave the hackman a dollar, he backed down the driveway, and I pushed the bell and then knocked loudly on the door.

The door swung open, and Marge and I entered, carrying our weekend bags. “You’re Smith,” said a stocky, red-faced, perspiring man, perhaps forty-five, perhaps fifty. He was coatless, and his sleeves were rolled to his elbows. He looked as if he had been working.

“I’m Smith,” I said, “and this is Mrs. Smith.”

“How d’you do,” he said, “I’m Blandy. Can’t shake hands. Just washed ’em. Ostenheimer told me about you. She didn’t say anything about Mrs. Smith.”

“I just horned in,” said Marge. “If I’m in the way—”

“Not at all. I’ve got a good nurse upstairs, but there are plenty of things you can do later. Anyway, your first job is to take care of him.” Blandy nodded towards a corner which I had dismissed as being inhabited completely by a grand piano. Then he puffed up the steps.

In the corner, half-hidden by the piano, and seated on a green hassock, utterly uncomfortable and miserable, with his long chin cupped in his hands, and his knees and elbows askew, was a man. I said, “Hello.”

“Hello,” he said, and got to his feet, unbelievably stretching out to some six feet plus four or five or even six inches. “I’m Adam.”

“You’re what?”

“Adam. Homer Adam.”

“You’re the—”

“Yes, I’m going to have a baby. I mean Mary Ellen is.” He kept putting his hands into his coat pockets and taking them out again. They were long, bony hands, and they were trembling. His shock of bright red hair appeared to be attempting to fly off his scalp in all directions.

“Now, look, fellow,” I said with what I believed to be cheerful confidence, “take it easy. My name is Steve Smith, from the AP. I’m here to help you. Don’t be so nervous. You’d think there’d never been a baby born before.”

“There hasn’t been, recently,” Adam said. “That’s just it.”

Marge, who had been prowling the room, examining the hunting prints, the fireplace, the bookcases, and the curtains, giggled. “I like him,” she said to nobody in particular. “He’s nice.”

From the upstairs came a sharp, feminine cry, suddenly bitten off in the middle. Adam began to shake. He collapsed on the sofa, and I was startled by the small number of cubic feet he occupied, sitting down, contrasted with his height, standing up.

“Look, Homer,” I said, sitting down beside him, “I’m going to have to ask you a lot of questions, so I might as well start now.”

Marge produced highballs, and an hour later she appeared with sandwiches. Just after dark the sounds from upstairs became more businesslike, and then Dr. Blandy shouted: “Hey, down there. It’s all over. It’s a girl—a fine girl! No trouble at all!”

“How much,” I yelled back, “does she weigh?”

“What an inane question!” Marge said.

“I know, but you always ask it first.”

Dr. Blandy shouted: “She’s average and normal. When they’re average and normal I always say they weigh seven pounds.”

I walked to the phone on the hall table and called Circle 6-4111, and asked for Pogey. “J.C.,” I said, “here is a flash.” I enunciated each word clearly: “Flash—a girl baby was born to Mr. and Mrs. Homer Adam in Tarrytown, New York, at”—I glanced at my watch—“six fifty-one today!”