"No better way of becoming acquainted," smiled Hedgerly. He leaned back
over the divan. "Let's go out and leave them alone," he said in a low,
quiet voice.
Tony shook his head. "I live in strict bachelor quarters," he said.
"And Joan couldn't have a visitor at this time of night. And I'll not
go out and sit on a park bench so that some bird can make time in a
comfortable living room with my fiancee."
Hedgerly shrugged. "This, then, is one time when four's company but
five's a crowd." He said goodnight all around and then left, knowing
that the two couples would talk for hours, and each word would bring
better understanding.
For this was it.
Hedgerly went to his hotel and called a private airport. "I want two
planes ready to be hired for a quick trip to Yuma," he said. There was
answer. "No, I'm not hiring both. I'm just telling you that there will
be another party inquiring. You'll see that they're satisfied. Let me
know when they do. I'm going in the second plane."
Then, because he knew he'd be up most of the night and early morning,
Hedgerly went to bed.
* * * * *
Back in Peter's living room, there was not a quiet discussion. It was
an armed rally.
"I'll speak plainly if I can," said Peter, striding up and down. "And
when I miss a point, someone can call me on it."
"I don't know what you're after," said Tony, who was holding Marie's
hand in a manner that should have disturbed Hedgerly's sleep. "But I'm
for it."
Peter smiled. "Hedgerly is supposed to be my grandson," he said. "I'm
to marry Marie. We are to celebrate a golden wedding. Fine and dandy.
Now look: The one weak point in Hedgerly's wild story is the question
of why he came back?"
"Because it is so written," suggested Joan.
"Fine," grinned Peter. "Now leaving all personalities out of this for
the moment, Marie, if you were introduced to me at a party, would you
be interested in me?"
"Perhaps," she said. "On the other hand, Peter, you're not a
spectacular chap. One must really know you before one can see what
makes you tick. Then they're not certain. I wouldn't know, really."
"But how do you feel now?"
"Resentful! As much as I know and admit that you are a fine man, Peter,
I feel as though I were being forced into a duty that offered little
compensation."
Tony nodded and then said: "Look. I can sum this all up, I think.
Peter, you are welcome to enter my home at any time. You can even be
known and recognized as my wife's best friend."
"Just so," interjected Joan, "he doesn't get too friendly."
Peter grinned. "We're a long way off of the track," he said. "This is
as much a time-cliché as the fiction about the man who stabbed his
father. The joker is, what do we do about it?"
"What can we do?" asked Joan helplessly.
"All we have to do is to foul him up just once," said Peter. "If he
doesn't come back to annoy us, then Marie and I may never meet."
"In other words," said Tony, "the pattern is complete only when
Hedgerly comes back and interferes."
Peter nodded. "Either we live by accident and die by accident or we
live by plan and die by plan. If our lives are written in the Book
of Acts, then no effort is worth the candle. For there will be those
who will eternally strive to be good and yet shall fail. There will
be others who care not nor strive not and yet will thrive. Why? Only
because it is so written. And by whom? By the omnipotent God. Who,
my friends, has then written into our lives both the good and the
evil that we do ourselves! He moves us as pawns, directs us to strive
against odds yet knows that we must fail because he planned it that
way. For those, then, that fail there is everlasting hell.
"So," said Peter harshly, "I plan that this goldfish shall try to live
in air." He plunged his hand into the aquarium and dropped a flipping
fish onto the table. "I direct that this goldfish shall try to live.
See, it strives hard to live in an unfriendly medium. It fails--of
course, because the goldfish is incapable of following my dictate."
Peter's face took on an angry expression. "It has failed to obey me,"
he thundered. "Ergo it must be punished!"
He lifted a heavy letter opener and chopped down, cutting off the head
of the still-gasping fish.
"And that," he said bitterly, "is predestiny!"
"All of which proves--?" asked Marie.
"Hedgerly exists," said Peter. "But suppose Hedgerly exists only as
a probability. A probability that he himself has made high. You see,
there is always the probability that any man will meet any woman.
Suppose the outcome of this probability was strong enough for the
outcome--Hedgerly--to invent time travel, and then come back here to
insure the probability?"
"I think I see," said Joan with a twinge of doubt.
"Well, all we have to do is to be darned sure that his own particular
probability does not occur. Then he won't occur, and all of this will
not occur, and we--"
"Look," said Tony excitedly, "it may be grasping at straws, but it
seems to me that anything that is as certain as your friend ... your,
ah, grandson ... Hedgerly claims shouldn't require a lot of outside
aid."
Marie brightened, and then looked glum. "There's one thing that we all
forget," she said unhappily. "We're speaking of predestiny as though
we were a bunch of people going through the lines of a play. That may
or may not be so. Let's face it, predestiny means that we may or may
not know what our next move may be. We do not know, and there seems to
be no way of finding out. Therefore whether or not our acts are all
written need not take any of the fun out of life."
Tony faced her in surprise, "Just what are you advocating?" he
demanded.
She reached up and took his hand. "Tony, never doubt that I love you.
Yet Peter is a nice fellow, and had I met him first I'm reasonably sure
that we could have been happy together."
"All right," nodded Tony. "Granted that love is a matter of
coincidence, of the desirable factors of personality, propinquity, and
propitiousness, so what?"
Marie looked unhappy. "He ... Hedgerly ... did win a nine-horse parlay,
didn't he?"
"Yeah."
"He is here."
"Indubitably--and damnably!"
"Well," concluded Marie, "it is distasteful, but it seems ordained.
And when--like going to the dentist--you're faced with something
distasteful, there's little point in fuming over it. Do it--and forget
it!"
Joan jumped to her feet. Then she sat down dejected. "Beating my head
against the wall," she said. "All right. I give up."
Peter thought for a moment. "Look," he said brightly, "sometimes people
must take chances. Sometimes people gotta ride close to the edge in
order to gain safety. I suggest that we all elope to Yuma and have a
double wedding!"
Tony advanced upon Peter with fire in his eye. "You're going to let
that character get away with this?" he demanded. "I'll kill him first."
"No," said Peter shaking his head. "That won't remove the truth of his
birth. What must be done is to prevent it in the first place!"
"By going through with it?" snorted Tony.
"We can all hope for a last-minute reprieve," said Peter. "And until
we're shotgunned into it, we can always have a double wedding with the
cross-couples getting married. Y'see, Hedgerly claimed there hadn't
been either a divorce nor a death-and-remarriage in the family for
generations. Now the thing we gotta do is to get married to whom we
want, and the only way we can even come close is to get close enough to
a preacher to have him do the job. All at once and no one first. Finis,
conclusion."
Tony nodded slowly. "Me, I've been half-psychopathically afraid of any
Gentleman of the Cloth ever since Hedgerly turned up," he said. "So we
can all go and be certain that the other is irreparably and thoroughly
committing nonretractable matrimony. Then pooh for Grandson Hedgerly!"
Peter went to the telephone and dialed the number of the private
airport. Ten minutes later they were on their way to the port, and when
they arrived they looked carefully, but did not see the odious one.
They paid no attention to the other plane idling in the background.
* * * * *
Hedgerly arrived as they took off into the blue. His plane was waiting
and he leaped in quickly and told the pilot to follow the other plane.
"What's the hurry?" grinned the pilot.
Hedgerly smiled a sly smile. "It's a very long tale," he said. "But
the summation of it all is that there are two couples in that ship who
intend to get married."
"Double wedding, huh?"
"Right. That's what they intend."
"And are you the irate father, the angry brother, or the jilted lover?"
grinned the pilot. He gunned the engine, and the plane roared down the
tarmac and lofted. The pilot wasted no time in following the other
plane. When the roar of the engine diminished for flying speed, the
pilot turned to Hedgerly, who was obviously waiting for a semblance of
silence before he spoke.
"I'm none of those," he said with a smile. "I'm merely a very
interested character whose future depends upon seeing the right thing
done."
"Such as?"
"Well, Party A wants to marry Party B while Party X wants to marry
Party Y. This must not be. However, it must be that Party A marries Y
whilst Party B marries X."
"Clear as a Raymond A. Chandler plot," grinned the pilot.
"Well, they've been trying to outwit me for quite some time," remarked
Hedgerly. "Right at the present time, they're heading for this double
wedding. The trouble is that they're so befuddled and worried about
doing the wrong thing that that they'll pay no attention to what the
preacher is saying?"
"Who does?" laughed the pilot.
"It would be better for their little plot if they did," said Hedgerly
with a sly grin. "For, you see, I'm going to see that the preacher
marries the proper parties."
"How?"
"I know how. You see, I've known about this plan of theirs for quite
some time. And I know how it will come out. There will be a lot of
confusion once this double ceremony is over and they think they're
safe. While this confusion is going on, the preacher-man will be
filling out the wedding certificates. He will, of course, have
forgotten the correct names of the married ones. He will look up--and
he will see me. I will tell him that I arrived a little late for the
festive event, but can I be of help? Let's not annoy the happy people
with details. You're confused? Then permit me to supply the details."
"Yeah?" said the pilot, interested.
"Then I'll supply the necessary details to make certain that the
marriage certificate handed to Tony Graydon will state that he is
solidly wedded to Joan Willson: conversely, the certificate handed to
Peter Hedgerly will irrevocably state that he is to have and to hold
until death do him part from Marie Baker. _Quod Erat Demonstrandum!_"
"Think there's a good probability of your getting away with it?"
"An excellent probability," stated Hedgerly. "This, chum, is it!"
* * * * *
Hedgerly arrived as the festivities came to a close. Quietly he slipped
into the back door of the cottage and walked through the house until
he came to the parson's study. There he waited until the gentleman
arrived, and then he said:
"I am a relative of one of the fellows involved, sir. I seem to have
been late for the big occasion, and I'd rather not interfere right at
the present."