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Updated: May 9, 2025
There was a long time I never noticed her, any more than you'd notice the cat. We used to sit of an evening around the table, as if you were Fedderson there, and me here, and her somewhere back there, in the rocker, knitting. Fedderson would be working on his Jacob's-ladder, and I'd be reading.
He'd been working on that Jacob's-ladder a year, I guess, and every time the Inspector came off with the tender he was so astonished to see how good that ladder was that the old man would go to work and make it better. That's all he lived for. If I was reading, as I say, I daren't take my eyes off the book, or Fedderson had me. And then he'd begin what the Inspector said about him.
He'd figured himself a martyr so many years, nursed that injustice like a mother with her first-born, sir; and now in his old age, so to speak, they weren't to rob him of it. Fedderson was going to wear out his life in a second-class light, and folks would talk that was his idea. I heard him hailing down as the tender was casting off: "See you to-morrow, Mr. Bayliss. Yep.
Next thing I knew, sir, I was down in the living-room, warm and yellow-lit, with Fedderson cocking his head at me across the table, where he was at that eternal Jacob's-ladder of his. "What's the matter, Ray?" said he. "Lord's sake, Ray!" "Nothing," said I. Then I think I told him I was sick.
And then, said he, there'd be a whole house-cleaning at Seven Brothers, because he'd gotten Fedderson the berth at Kingdom Come. And with that he slapped the old man on the back. I wish you could have seen Fedderson, sir. He sat down on my cot as if his knees had given 'way. Happy? You'd think he'd be happy, with all his dreams come true. Yes, he was happy, beaming all over for a minute.
"Johnson," said he, "what do you mean? You sound crazy downright crazy. Who?" "Her," said I. "Fedderson's wife." "Who?" "Her," said I. And with that he gave my arm another jerk. "Listen," said he, like a tiger. "Don't try that on me. It won't do any good that kind of lies not where you're going to. Fedderson and his wife, too the both of 'em's drowned deader 'n a door-nail."
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