The store closed at six on Easter Eve. The last potted lily had been sold, but some housewives still lingered in the museum galleries, trying to tempt from the stock boys the secret of the eggs. At quarter after six the doors were locked. At half-past six the lights were turned off and Mr. Freeley was alone in the office with the eggs. He took the chart out of the safe and studied it. A few minutes later Emile came up the stairs. Everyone else had gone home. Mr. Freeley showed him the treasure and gave him the chart. His plan was to store the eggs in the back of Emile’s car. He would be waiting on the sidewalk in front of Emile’s house at two in the morning and they would begin their mission from there. Before they took the crates of eggs down from Mr. Freeley’s office they made a careful examination of the waste bins and empty cartons at the back of the store to make sure that no housewife had concealed herself there. The eggs filled the luggage compartment and back seat of Emile’s car. It was dusk when they began their work and dark when they had finished. They shook hands in a pleasant atmosphere of conspiracy and parted. Emile drove home cautiously as if the eggs at his back were fragile as well as valuable. The power of felicity and excitement they contained seemed palpable. There was an old garage behind the house and he put the car in here and padlocked the door. He was excited and a little oppressed by the fear that something might go wrong. The secret was not out but neither was it perfectly concealed. He knew that there were at least ten people at the store who, through a process of elimination, had come to suspect that he might be in charge of the treasure and he had had to deal with their questioning.
Mrs. Cranmer, having decided that Melissa had preyed on her son’s innocence, had resumed her peaceable life with Emile. In spite of her age and the sorrows she had borne Mrs. Cranmer was still able to engage herself in friendship as passionately as a schoolgirl. She was easily slighted and easily elated by the neglect or attention of her neighbors. She had recently made a new friend in Remsen Park—the low-cost development—and talked with her on the telephone much of the time. She was talking on the telephone when Emile came in. Emile read the paper while he waited for his mother to finish her conversation. Mr. Freeley’s exploitation specialists had taken the back page of the paper and the copy was inflammatory. There were pictures of the five European cities and an assurance that all you had to do was to look in your grass in the morning and you would be on your way.
They ate supper in the kitchen. When the dishes were washed Mrs. Cranmer got back on the telephone. Now she was talking about the eggs and Emile guessed that many conversations in the village that night would be on this subject. It had not occurred to Mrs. Cranmer that her son might be chosen and he was grateful for this. After supper he watched television. At about nine o’clock he heard a dog barking. He went across the hall to his room and looked out of the window but there was no one by the garage. At half-past ten he went to bed.
Mr. Freeley felt very happy that evening. The store had begun to prosper and he felt that the trips to Madrid, Paris, London, Rome and Venice that would soon be hidden in the dewy grass were the result of his own generosity, his own abundant good nature. Kissing his wife in the kitchen he thought that she was as desirable as she had been when he married her many years ago; or if she was not that, she had at least kept abreast of the changes time and age had worked in him. He desired her ardently and happily and looked at the clock to see how long he must wait before they would be alone. There was a roast in the oven and she moved out of his embrace to baste it and then again to set the table, draw the baby’s bath and pick up the toys, and as he watched her go about these necessary tasks he saw the wanness of fatigue come into her face and realized that by the time she had washed the dishes, ironed the pajamas, sung the lullabies and heard the prayers she might not have the strength to respond to his passionate caresses. This conflict in generative energies left him uncomfortable and after supper he took a walk.
