Ellery Queen’s Anthology. Volume 1, 1960
a book to remember... In this book you will investigate crime with such Famous Detectives as Perry Mason Nero Wolfe Ellery Queen and read stories of detection and suspense by such Famous Mystery Writers as Agatha Christie John Dickson Carr George Harmon Coxe Charlotte Armstrong Hugh Pentecost and be surprised at tales of mystery and crime by such Famous Literary Figures as W. Somerset Maugham Ben Hecht, John Van Druten A book to remember, a book to read and reread — a book to treasure and keep permanently in your library...
Ellery Queen’s Anthology. 1960
And Poe said: Let there be a detective story. And it was so. And when Poe created the detective story in his own image, and saw everything that he had made, behold, it was very good. And he cast the detective story originally in the classic form. And that form, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, the true form. Amen.
Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made for permission to reprint the following:
Editors’ Note
Dear Reader:
At the very first planning of this anthology we settled on two clear and definitive editorial policies:
First, that every story selected must meet the twin standards of
Second, that we would not include a single story from any anthology previously edited by Ellery Queen.
Thus, by our two standards of selection, we aimed at a double objective: quality and freshness — the quality of stories that have true anthology status, and the freshness usually found in newly written stories.
Here, then, is happy hunting — in the Land of Perfect Escape. Here, for your reading pleasure, is a compendium of crime, with murder in full measure — a king-size mystery package worth a Queen’s ransom — a veritable Who’s Who of whodunits.
Read hearty!
Hugh Pentecost
Murder in Manhattan
Breakfast was always at 11 in the morning. Mike asked only one thing of the two girls, and that was that they come to breakfast and be on time. Since he never went to bed much before 5 in the morning, himself, it wasn’t asking much. Joan usually had been up for quite a while and had only coffee at the 11 o’clock session. Erika was often with Mike on his morning rounds, and when she wasn’t, she was usually on some kind of tear of her own. She’d complain sometimes about having to get up at 11. Mike pointed out that he always took a nap in the late afternoon and there was no reason she shouldn’t do the same.
“Breakfast is the only time we have for any kind of family get-together,” Mike always said. “We’re going to have it if it kills us.”
That morning I was putting the personal mail alongside Mike’s place at the table in the dining-room when Kathy Adams came in. About thirteen or fourteen years ago Kathy came to New York to make her fortune as a secretary or a model. She’s 32 now and she could still do all right as a model, except that she’s probably the most fabulous private secretary in existence, working for the most fabulous boss, and, I might add, drawing the most fabulous salary for the job. The only thing that happened over the years to mar her model-like good looks is a fine line between her blond eyebrows that’s become engraved there from a frowning concentration on the general fabulousness.
“Fine thing,” she said, “Erika’s not home.”
“Been and gone, or never came back?” I asked.
“Her bed hasn’t been slept in,” Kathy said. “I looked on the telephone pad, but there wasn’t a message.”
“Maybe Mike took it when he came in this morning,” I said.
The little groove between Kathy’s eyes deepened. “I don’t think so. I spoke to William. He says he didn’t hear anything from her.”
William is a former club steward whom Mike picked up somewhere during his travels. William does all the cooking and general housework in the place.
You might say that everyone who works for Mike does a little bit of everything. I was a cub reporter on a small New England newspaper when he picked me up. Now I do leg work for him, write some items for “Off-Mike,” his column, act as bodyguard, advance agent on his trips out of town, and general handy man. I love it. I love him, and I mean it quite sentimentally.
At 52, Mike Malvern has more energy, more brains, and more courage than any guy I’ve ever met anywhere. He can be wrong about things, but never because he was too lazy to find out the facts. His opinions may not be the same as yours, but he arrives at them from thinking, not from irresponsible emotions, and he’s afraid of no man, no power, and no influence on earth.
He is probably one of the most widely read columnists in America. He believes in God, in his country, and in calling a spade a spade — to coin a phrase. A lot of people hate him for the spade-work, but not nearly so many as love him for it. He’s never been afraid of the haters for himself, but he worries about his daughters. His wife died when Joan was born and he’d brought the girls up himself. There was one standing rule in the household, and it went for us as well as for Erika and Joan: Stay out as long as you like, do what you want, but if you’re not going to be where you say you’re going to be, phone in! If you’re not coming home when you’ve said you were, phone in!
Erika hadn’t phoned in that day. She hadn’t come home and she hadn’t phoned.
If it had been Joan I’d have worried. Erika was another dish of tea. She forgot once in a while, and Mike would call her down for it, and she’d put her arms around him and snuggle up to him, and two minutes later she was forgiven. Joan always phoned, but if she hadn’t, the lightning would have struck, and good!
William came in with the hot dishes — eggs, sausage, bacon, broiled lamb chops. Mike ate breakfast and he ate again about midnight, and that was all.
William said Erika hadn’t called in during the evening. “Not at no time,” he said.
The front door bell rang while Kathy and I were talking to him.
“You keep on with the breakfast, William,” I said. “I’ll take that.”
There were two guys at the front door I’d never seen before. One was tall and thin and looked like an up-and-coming copywriter for a smart advertising agency. The other was short, fair, and my first impression was that he was the dreamy type. Then he looked at me out of the frostiest blue eyes I’d ever seen, and I changed my mind. This one flipped a police badge on me in a little black case.
“McCuller. Lieutenant. Homicide,” he said, and put the badge away.
“I’m John Rand, Assistant D.A.,” the other one said. “Is Mr. Malvern in?”
“He’s in, but he’s just getting dressed,” I said. “Our day starts late here. I’m Vance Taylor, his assistant. Can I help you?” I felt a faint prickling sensation at the back of my neck. These men meant business. Homicide and the D.A.’s office. Erika hadn’t phoned in!
“We’ll wait until he’s dressed,” McCuller said.
I took them into the library. “What’s up?” I asked them.
“I think I mentioned I’m from Homicide,” McCuller said.
“We haven’t killed anybody here,” I said, trying to make it sound light.
“Please,” McCuller said wearily. “I’ve been up all night.”
“A man named Waldo Layne has been murdered,” Rand said. “We believe Malvern can give us information about him.”
Mike could give you information about almost anybody in the country, or get it for you. Waldo Layne he knew all about, to his sorrow. Waldo was Erika’s divorced husband. And Erika hadn’t phoned in!...
Mike was at his place at the breakfast table when I came back from the library. Joan and Kathy were seated at the table. Mike, I saw at once, was in a foul temper.
“Oh, there you are,” he said to me. “Sit down.”
“There’s a couple of guys in the library,” I said.
“I don’t want to see a couple of guys in the library,” he said. “Sit down.”
“But these guys—”
“Sit down, Vance. What’s the matter with you?”
I sat down, and William brought me a cup of coffee. It’s hard to describe Mike. He has a kind of pixyish quality when he’s in a good mood. He is small and lithe and his hair is light brown without a touch of gray in it. His hands are graceful, and he uses them when he talks. He plays a very good nonprofessional piano, both hot and classical.
I watched him eat. He’s a gourmet, and he insists that everything be cooked for him just so, and then he eats it so fast you can’t imagine that he’s really tasted a mouthful of it. Besides, he talks while he eats, in short machine-gun blasts.
“
“No.”
I saw the shadow of worry cross his face. Everybody who knew Mike was aware of his almost heartbreaking devotion to Erika. When his wife died he’d concentrated all the love and affection he had on his older daughter.
Erika would give anybody something of a jolt the first time he saw her. She had everything. She had a perfect figure, naturally red hair, and gray-green eyes that glowed with an almost electrical excitement. Except for the brief period of her marriage to Waldo Layne, Erika was Mike’s constant companion. She made the rounds of the hot spots with him at night, she went on his holidays with him, she knew how to do all the things that flattered and pleased him. When he gave one of his rare parties she presided as hostess with dignity, charm, and just the right amount of casualness.
She knew her way around Mike’s world with a sure instinct. As far as I was concerned, she was as out of reach as the top ornament on the Christmas tree at Radio City — so far out of reach that I didn’t really want her. And also there was Joan. But I admired and respected Erika.
That morning, sitting at the breakfast table, still holding back the news about Waldo, I remembered a conversation I’d had with her one day. It came after a row with Mike over something that had gone wrong which he thought was my fault and I thought wasn’t. Erika was sitting in the library, which opened off Mike’s office, and I guess she couldn’t have helped overhearing the argument.
“Take it easy, Vance,” she said, as I came storming out of the office.
“That maniac!” I said. “He’ll never admit he’s wrong about anything.”
“And he never is,” Erika said. She took hold of my arm and pulled me down on the couch beside her. “He can be mistaken, Vance, but he’s never wrong in principle. That’s what’s so wonderful about him.”
“Right now he’s for the birds, as far as I’m concerned.” I said.
She looked past me with a kind of a dreamy light in her gray-green eyes.
“I get rebellious myself once in a while,” she said. “He’s so arbitrary about some things. But it’s never out of meanness, or cantankerousness, or vanity.”
“It’s all very well for you to talk,” I said. “All you have to do is ask for the moon and he’ll get it for you.”
She smiled. “Sometimes I wish that wasn’t true. There is so much to live up to! Still, it’s a wonderful thing to be loved like that, Vance.”
I remembered that now, as I saw Mike’s worry. He put his knife and fork down on his plate. “I won’t have the rules broken,” he said, “particularly now. I won’t have it from any of you.”
He said it straight at Joan. I saw her look down at her hands. Joan is a small, somewhat darker edition of Mike. Some people may not think she’s pretty. I think she’s beautiful. The trouble is she doesn’t know I’m alive. She treats me like the boy next door. She knew and I knew and Kathy knew what was eating Mike. He wished one of us, not Erika, had broken the rules. I never knew Mike’s wife, but they tell me Erika is a ringer for her. It kills him when Erika makes him worry, because he idolizes her. If it were Joan it wouldn’t matter so much.
“Why ‘particularly now’?” I asked.
He took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. “I don’t want to believe it,” he said. “I
“That’s impossible,” Kathy said quietly.
She’s the one who handles everything. Information comes to Mike from every conceivable source; from people he pays and from people who volunteer it. It comes from hat-check girls and society matrons, from bartenders and bank presidents, from punks and chiselers and ministers and statesmen. Some of it is usable and some of it isn’t. Some of it is fact and some of it is just plain filth. But all of it is on file.
To protect himself, Mike makes a record of every piece of information that comes his way, the exact hour and minute and place where he received it, and whom it came from. There’s material in that file that would blow thousands of people sky-high if it was ever released. The file was kept in a modern vault in his office off the library.
I don’t think the vault could be broken into. It certainly never had been. It was never left carelessly open, Kathy had access to it. I had access to it. Kathy knew everything that was in the file. I could find out if I wanted to. There was just us.
“All right, all right; stop looking sore,” Mike said to me. “If I can’t trust you and Kathy I’d better blow my brains out. But there has been a leak, all the same.”
“Look,” I said. “A guy gives you a piece of information. It gets out somehow. He blames you. But maybe he told other people, or maybe someone else knew.”
“Of course,” Mike said. “I figured that angle, Vance. I figured it had to be that way. Stuff
Joe Ricardo is what the newspapers like to call an “Overlord of the Underworld.” He’s a smooth, tough guy who, so far as I know, has been able to keep clean of the law — but he’s not to be fooled around with, all the same.
“Ricardo has heard the rumor that I was leaking stuff,” Mike said. “Get this — he heard I was using private information for purposes or blackmail. He thought if the racket was big enough, he could give me protection. For a price, naturally.”
“Mike, how absurd!” Kathy said.
Joan just sat there, looking down at her hands.
“Ricardo framed me,” Mike said evenly. “He rigged up a story. It was an item on Ed Johnson, the producer. He and Johnson are friends. You know the item, Kathy. It’s in the file — about Johnson and Ricardo’s girl.”
Kathy nodded.
“Johnson was approached yesterday with a blackmail demand on the basis of that item,” Mike said.
“By whom?”
“A phone conversation. A man. Johnson couldn’t identify the voice. But you see where that leaves us? They planted the story with us to see if it would leak, and it did.” He looked around at us. “How?”
I didn’t have an answer. Neither did Kathy or Joan. It wasn’t possible.
“My whole life, my whole career, depends on my handling the information I get with integrity,” Mike said.
“The leak isn’t here,” I said. “The leak is at the source somewhere.”
“We have to prove that, Vance. We have to prove it or we’re in bad trouble.” He pushed back his chair. “And we aren’t going to do it sitting here.”
Then I remembered McCuller and Rand. “You’ve got to see those guys in the library,” I said. “A homicide dick and an assistant D.A.”
“What about?” Mike asked.
I took a deep breath. “It seems somebody caught up with your ex-son-in-law last night.”
“Waldo?”
I could see it all flash behind his eyes — the anguish Erika’s unhappy marriage had caused him, the way he hated Waldo Layne’s guts.
“I don’t know any of the details,” I said.
I saw Kathy look from Mike to Joan. Joan was staring down at her hands, motionless, almost as though she’d heard none of it.
Mike put out his cigarette in the ash tray on the table. “Let’s go talk to them,” he said. He started toward the door, and then turned back to Kathy, whose face had suddenly gone very white. “Find out where Erika is,” he said. “I’m worried about her.”
As nearly as I can make out, Waldo Layne had always been a heel. He grew up in a family with money, and he never went without anything he wanted until he was a grown man. He went to the best schools and to a famous Ivy college. He was an athlete of sorts, and might have been really good if he’d had the proper temperament. But he was a show-off from the word “go.” Once he intercepted a forward pass and ran 40 yards for a winning touchdown against Princeton. He would describe the play in detail without any encouragement whatsoever. Some remote disability kept him out of the Army. Then his family lost all their money and Waldo was on his own. He fiddled around, trying to be an actor, but he didn’t have the talent for it. He finally wound up being a kind of glamor-host for a night spot on the East Side. He carefully cultivated women with money.
It was in his capacity as host at the night spot that he met Erika. Mike took her there one night on his rounds. I don’t know what she saw in Waldo. She could pick and choose her men. Waldo had something for her, that’s all. The marriage came as about the biggest shock Mike ever had. He and I had gone to Chicago to cover a political convention, and when he came back Erika and Waldo met us at La-Guardia with their little announcement. Mike never showed them by the turning of a hair how he felt, but he took it hard when I was alone with him.
Waldo had no money. Mike put up the dough for a charming little apartment on the East Side. Waldo gave up his job and tried to chisel his way into Mike’s act. On that Mike wouldn’t give an inch. The truth was he couldn’t have anybody on his staff he couldn’t trust. Nobody trusted Waldo. He would turn up from time to time with items for Mike, obviously expecting to be paid for them. They were rarely usable, and, besides, every cent Waldo spent came indirectly from Mike.
It lasted about a year, until Erika began coming home in a state from time to time, once with a black eye. Waldo was drinking and he had begun to chase around after other dames. The marriage came to a breaking point and Mike whisked Erika out to Reno, where she got a divorce. Since then she’d been living at home again, and Mike was relatively at peace. He was never happy when she was very far out of his sight...
In the library it was Rand who told us what had happened. McCuller seemed satisfied to sit back and let the assistant D.A. do the talking. Waldo was living in a cheap theatrical hotel just off Broadway. About 3 in the morning the hotel clerk got a phone call from a woman, who wouldn’t give her name, saying there was something wrong in Waldo’s room. The clerk and the house detective went upstairs, and found Waldo lying on the floor with a bullet hole between his eyes. There was no gun, and the homicide squad hadn’t turned up anything in the way of a clue.
“The Wakefield hasn’t a very savory reputation as a hotel,” Rand said. “Layne could entertain anyone he chose at any time of day or night, as long as his bill was paid. Of course the management denies this, but it’s true. We figure the woman who made the phone call was someone who came to see Layne early this morning, found him dead, slipped away, and phoned from outside. We haven’t any kind of a lead to her.”
Mike stood during the whole recital, his hands locked behind him. His face was frozen in a fixed expression of detachment, almost as if he weren’t listening. But when Rand finished he spoke.
“What do you want of me?” he asked.
“Please!” McCuller said, speaking for the first time. “The man was a member of your family for a while. Who are his friends? Who had it in for him? Add him up for us, Malvern.”
“You’ve added him up for yourself,” Mike said. “He was a heel.”
McCuller sighed. “You don’t want to help?”
“Any way I can.”
“Incidentally, we’d like to talk to Mrs. Layne,” Rand said.
A nerve twitched in Mike’s cheek. “She’s not at home just now.”
“When do you expect her?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Mike said. He looked down at his fingernails. “She went out before I was up this morning. I don’t know where she is.”
“You’re not sorry Layne is dead,” McCuller said casually.
“I don’t wish any man a violent death,” Mike said. “I particularly and pointedly disliked Layne, if that’s what you’re asking.”
McCuller heaved himself up out of his chair. “Just routine,” he said, “but I suppose you can account for your movements last night and early this morning.”
Mike smiled faintly and nodded at me. “My perpetual alibi,” he said. “I never go anywhere without Vance.”
“I can write you out an itinerary,” I said. Then I glanced at Mike, wondering. There had been a period of nearly two hours last night when he’d gone up to Joe Ricardo’s apartment and left me waiting for him in a bar across the street.
“Write out the itinerary,” McCuller said. He turned to Mike: “I won’t wait for Mrs. Layne, but I want to see her as soon as you can get in touch with her.”
“Of course,” Mike said. McCuller started for the door, and Mike checked him. “I’m a newspaperman,” he said. “Because of Layne’s connection with me I can’t ignore this, although it’s not strictly my department. Would it be possible to see his room at the hotel?”
“Why not?” McCuller said. “We’re going there now.” He looked at me. “Bring along a piece of paper and you can write out that itinerary on the way in the taxi.”
Mike told Kathy where we were going and told her if Erika called she was to phone him at Layne’s room at the Wakefield. If he didn’t hear from her he’d check back with Kathy as soon as he left there.
I found out on the way to the Wakefield that McCuller wasn’t kidding about the itinerary. He even lent me his pen to write with. I had no chance to check with Mike, and I couldn’t get any kind of tip-off from him. He seemed to be studiously avoiding me. It wasn’t that there was any reason why he shouldn’t have visited Joe Ricardo. That sort of thing was part of his work. The point was that I couldn’t really alibi him for a two-hour stretch. I don’t know why it bothered me. The idea that he might have killed Waldo never entered my head.
I finally wrote everything down just the way it had happened, including a list of people we’d seen and talked with in various spots during the evening. When I handed it to McCuller he didn’t look at it. He just folded it up and put it in his wallet.
The Wakefield was a dingy place. There was something shifty about the manager, the clerk, and the house dick. It was hard to tell whether they had something to hide about Waldo, or whether they were afraid that general violations might be unearthed during the murder investigation. They were too greasily co-operative, somehow.
Waldo’s room was a mess. Clothes strewn around, the desk a mass of unsorted notes, letters, and papers, cigarette butts everywhere. The smooth, slick young man you saw at night clubs was revealed here as disorderly and unfastidious. Waldo himself was gone. I wasn’t sorry.
“The door has a snap lock,” Rand said, “and it hasn’t been forced. The house detective had to use a passkey to get in after they’d had the phone call from the woman.”
Mike stood looking around the room with an air of distaste. I imagined he was thinking that Erika had had to put up with this sloppy unpleasantness.
“The woman must have had a date with him,” Mike said, “came upstairs, found the door open, and went in. She probably ran out, closing the door behind her.”
“That’s the way we figure it,” McCuller said.
“The gun?” Mike asked.
“Small caliber,” McCuller said. “I haven’t the ballistics report yet. Probably the kind of gun a woman could carry in a handbag.”
“What makes you think a woman killed him?” Mike asked sharply.
“I don’t think anything,” McCuller said. “I just say it was that kind of a gun.” He shook his head. “A case like this you just check and check and check,” he said. “His friends, his acquaintances, everyone he saw yesterday, everywhere he went, his past, present, and what might have been his future. That’s where you and Mrs. Layne can help us, Malvern. I’d like to get at it.”
“He had no friends,” Mike said quietly. “He fed off people until they had no more to give, or couldn’t take him, and then he turned to others. That was his past and his present.” He raised his eyes to look directly at McCuller. “I think his future was always what happened here last night.”
“Somebody was bound to get him sooner or later?”
“Violence of some sort,” Mike said, and turned to the door...
You can’t go anywhere with Mike that he isn’t recognized. We left McCuller and Rand at the Wakefield, after promising to let them know the minute Erika showed up at home. We went across the street to a little bar and grill. The proprietor spotted Mike at once. He would have given Mike the joint, and he acted hurt when Mike said all he wanted was some plain soda with a half a lime in it. I ordered a cup of coffee. We went to a booth at the back of the place. Mike lit a cigarette and sat there staring at the table-top until the soda and coffee came and we were alone again.
He took a sip of his drink and looked up at me. “I’m
“Why should you be?”
He took a deep breath. “Work has to go on just the same,” he said.
“Yeah.”
He took out a pocket notebook. There were some clippings in it. I cut them out every morning and leave them for him, along with the mail, on the breakfast table. They’re usually news items I think he might be interested in following up. He glanced through them quickly.
“How come we didn’t hear of this fire at the Hotel Spain while we were doing our rounds last night?” he asked.
“It happened while you were at Ricardo’s,” I said. “Nobody knew where we were.”
“Twelve people burned to death.” He shuddered. “Death by fire is the worst of all.”
“Not pleasant.”
“You’d better dig up what you can on it. There’s no list of the dead or injured here.”
“It was from an early edition,” I said. “Don’t you want to cover it yourself?”
He shook his head. “Check with the fire chief on the cause,” he said. “There are probably dangerous violations in places like that all over the city. It might make a running story.”
“Right.”
“When you’ve got all you can, come back to the house.”
“You’re going there?”
“I want to see Erika the minute she gets back,” he said. “Layne’s death will be a shock to her. She did love him once, you know.”
“Or thought she did.”
“What’s the difference?” he said. “I want to be with her when she hears about it. She’ll need me.”
So we separated, and I went to see what had happened at the Hotel Spain. Ordinarily, it would have been an interesting story to cover, but I couldn’t get over my feeling of uneasiness about Erika. Some months ago, when Mike was getting some anonymous letters threatening him and his family, he bought Erika and Joan each a small .22 revolver to carry, and got licenses for them. That was the first thing I’d thought of when McCuller mentioned the type of gun used to kill Waldo Layne.
The fire at the Hotel Spain had been pretty grim. It was an old family-type hotel about twelve stories high. The fire had started on the fifth floor, and it must have been a lulu, because the seven top stories had been completely gutted. The twelve people who had died in the fire had all been trapped above the fifth floor. Others had escaped, but those twelve had either been unable to get to safety or had not become aware of the danger until too late. Bodies had been taken to the morgue, and so far there had been no definite identifications. That is to say, the authorities had, by checking with the survivors, been able to tell who the twelve dead were, but the bodies themselves had been burned beyond recognition.
I looked over the list of the dead and saw no names there that meant anything to me. It’s cold-blooded, but my concern was with names that would mean something in the news. The fire department wasn’t prepared to make any sort of statement as to how the blaze got started, though they hinted someone might have dropped a lighted cigarette in some trash can. There was no suggestion of arson.
I had a look upstairs. My press pass and my connection with Mike got me most places I wanted to go. When I finally returned to the lobby the place was jammed with anxious people, checking on the safety of friends or relatives. I started to push my way through the crowd toward the front doors, and then I stopped dead. Standing in the center of the crowd was Joan Malvern.
She didn’t spot me until I’d worked my way over to her and put my hand on her arm. She swung around to face me and I was shocked by the look in her eyes. She was scared stiff.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I... I had a friend who lived here,” she said.
“Who?”
“A... a girl I know.”
“What’s her name?”
“Vance, what are you trying to do? Give me a third degree?”
“What’s the matter with you?” I said. “I happen to have a list of the casualties here in my pocket. What’s your friend’s name?”
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Eloise Morton,” she said.
That was a facer, because I remembered the name. It was about third from the bottom on the list of the dead. I took Joan’s arm in a firm grip. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.
She didn’t say anything till we got out on the sidewalk. Then she stopped and faced me. “Her... her name is on the list?”
“I’m sorry, Joan.”
Her legs started to buckle under her. I grabbed her and started looking for some place to take her, but she managed to get hold of herself.
“Would you buy me a brandy, Vance?”
I found a place a couple of doors down the street. She drank the brandy, choking a little on it, and I ordered her another. We sat at a little table, and she didn’t say anything. She just twisted and untwisted her handkerchief around her fingers.
There was no use not talking about it. “I never heard you mention this friend of yours,” I said.
“She... she was an old school friend,” Joan said.
“Oh.”
“Where’s Father?” she asked, her eyes fixed on the twisted handkerchief.
“He’s gone home to wait for Erika. The police want to talk to her. Waldo’s death will be a nasty shock.”
“Yes.”
“Look, Joan; we all have to die sometime. Maybe it comes easy or maybe it comes hard.”
“I know.”
“It’s funny,” I said. “I’m sorry about Eloise Morton, and I never heard of her till ten minutes ago. I knew Waldo well — and I’m not sorry.”
“The early afternoon papers have the story on Waldo,” she said. “The police say some woman who came to see him tipped them off.”
“That’s right.”
“Have they found out who she was?”
“Waldo had a million of them,” I said. “She called from outside. She didn’t give a name.”
Joan didn’t say anything more. She just sat and stared at the handkerchief.
“Joan,” I said, “you remember that little revolver Mike gave you a few months back.”
“Yes,” she said listlessly.
“You know where it is?”
“In my top bureau drawer at home. I never carried it, Vance. I couldn’t have shot anybody if my life depended on it.”
“Maybe I better take you home.”
“No,” she said sharply.
“You still look pretty rocky.”
“I... I better get in touch with Eloise’s family,” she said.
“Can I help?”
“No, thanks, Vance. No; thanks very much.”
She stood up, and I never saw anybody look so white. But she walked quite steadily out of the place...
We were getting it in reverse when I got back to the house. Reporters were hanging around the front entrance, along with a dozen or so photographers. They all crowded around me, demanding in:
“You know how it is, Vance. It’s a job we have to do.”
“I’ll see what I can work out for you,” I told them, and opened the front door.
Inside, I glanced at my wrist watch. It was nearly 4 in the afternoon. I went through the library into Mike’s office.
He was sitting at his desk, but he wasn’t working. His elbows rested on the desk and his face was buried in his hands. He lifted his head quickly as I came in. “Any news?”
“It was quite a fire,” I said. “Twelve known dead. It turns out one of them was an old school friend of Joan’s.”
“I didn’t mean that,” he said impatiently. “Is there any news of Erika?”
“I haven’t been looking for Erika,” I said. “Haven’t you heard from her?”
“Would I be asking if I had?” Then he turned away. “I’m sorry, Vance. I am afraid I’ve gotten panicky. There hasn’t been any word from her. Surely she’d have heard about Waldo by now and gotten in touch.”
“That girl can sleep the clock around,” I said. “If she holed up with some friend for the night she may not be awake yet, not if they did a late turn.”
“Thanks,” he said drily.
“For what?”
“For not saying what you really think.”
“That
He brought his fist down hard on the desk. “There’s something badly wrong. We all know it. We just don’t want to admit it.”
“Okay,” I said. “Then let’s do something practical about it. We’ll start calling her friends. One of them will—”
“What do you think Kathy and I have been doing all afternoon?” he cut in. “We’ve called everybody we can think of that she knows. We’ve called every number in the address book on her telephone table. We’ve called the hospitals” — his voice cracked — “even the morgue.”
“Well,” I said, as cheerfully as I could, “if there hasn’t been an accident and she isn’t in the morgue, that ought to take part of the load off your mind.”
“She could have driven out of town with someone. There could have been an accident somewhere else — Jersey — Connecticut — Long Island. How can we begin to cover those possibilities?”
“Look, take it easy,” I said. “The best bet is that she tied one on last night with some of those crack-brained friends of hers. She rolled in at 5 or 6 in the morning somewhere and stayed overnight.”
“Why wouldn’t she call me?” Mike said. “She knows the rules. Even at 6 or 7 in the morning she should call.”
Ordinarily, he’d get sore if you suggested Erika might have been drinking. He was so worried now he almost preferred to think so.
“She knows you don’t like her to get tight,” I said. “It’s just after 4 now. If they rolled in, say about 6 this morning, it’s only ten hours. Erika’s just getting her second wind of sleep when it’s ten hours.”
He smiled, very faintly. “Erika’s sleeping jags were a family joke.”
“And let’s face it,” I said. “We don’t know
He seemed to relax a little. He reached out for a cigarette in the box on his desk. “Thanks for the pep talk,” he said. He gave me an odd, narrowed look. “I don’t know how I’d have got on without you these last few years, Vance.”
I grinned. “I hope you never do find out how.”
“I hope not,” he said.
Somehow, the way he said it wiped the grin off my face. “There’s a mob of reporters outside, Mike. Don’t you think—?”
“No. Not till we hear from Erika,” he said.
“I’m going to grab off a sandwich from William. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
“Okay,” he said. I started for the door, and he called after me: “What was that you said when you first came in, about some friend of Joan’s?”
“Girl named Eloise Morton,” I said. “Joan went to school with her. She burned to death at the Spain.”
“Morton?” He frowned. “I don’t seem to remember her. Does Joan know?”
“I ran into her at the Spain, checking. She took it pretty hard. I bought her a brandy and she went off to see the Morton girl’s family.”
“This seems to be a rough day for a lot of people,” Mike said, and forgot I was there.
I went out through the library and started back toward the kitchen. Kathy hailed me. She was coming down from upstairs. She didn’t look herself, either. I guess the strain was telling on everyone.
“What do you make of it, Vance?” she asked.
“She’s asleep somewhere,” I said.
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“It could be,” I said. “You’ve checked for accidents, Mike tells me. That makes it more likely.”
“Vance, I’m scared,” she said. “Mike dictated some notes to me on the Layne business. The gun — the small-caliber gun—”
“You, too?” I said. “I thought about those toys Mike bought the girls.”
“I just checked upstairs,” Kathy said. “I can’t find them.”
“Let’s face it,” I said. “Erika takes a pot shot at Waldo and goes into hiding!”
Kathy’s eyes widened. “But both guns are missing, both Joan’s and Erika’s,” she said...
McCuller showed up at the house about 5 o’clock. He looked shot and I realized he’d been on the go steadily since he’d been called to the Wakefield at three in the morning. He also looked as though his patience had frayed a little at the edges. He had another guy with him, an old man with a loose, twitching mouth. McCuller told him to sit on a chair by the front door. He didn’t introduce him.
“Mrs. Layne?” McCuller asked me.
“She hasn’t turned up yet,” I told him.
“Where’s Malvern?”
“In his study.”
“Let’s go.”
“I don’t think he wants to see anybody right now.”
“That’s too bad,” McCuller said.
Mike apparently hadn’t moved since I left him. He gestured to us to come in, and tried to make an effort to straighten up and be himself.
McCuller came over to the desk and stood looking down at Mike. “Let’s stop kidding around,” he said. “Where’s Mrs. Layne.”
Mike played it straight. “The honest truth is, I don’t know, Lieutenant,” he said.
“That’s better,” McCuller said. “She didn’t come home last night, did she?”
“No,” Mike said. “I’ve been trying to locate her. I’ve called her friends — I’ve checked hospitals — the whole routine.”
“You should have told me this morning,” McCuller said. “I’d have started a systematic search.”
“I didn’t think it was serious this morning,” Mike said. “It’s not unusual for her to spend the night with friends.”
“Without telling you?”
“That isn’t usual,” Mike said, “but it has happened. I expected to hear from her at any time.”
“Do you expect to hear from her now?” McCuller asked, his voice expressionless.
“Of course,” Mike said.
McCuller’s eyes moved slowly around the room. “Do you have a photograph of Mrs. Layne?”
“Yes. In my bedroom upstairs.”
“May I see it?”
“Vance—”
I went up to his room and got the leather-framed portrait of Erika that stood on his bedside table. It was one of those two-picture frames, and in the opposite side from Erika’s was a picture of her mother. They did look alike.
When I came back downstairs I noticed the old guy was no longer sitting on the chair by the front door. I found him in the study with McCuller and Mike.
The detective reached out for the photograph. He studied it a moment and then handed it to the old man. “The one on the right,” he said.
The old man stared at it with rheumy, frightened eyes.
“Night elevator man at the Wakefield,” Mike said casually. “He remembers taking a dame up to Waldo’s room about 2:30 this morning.” Mike didn’t seem worried.
“Well?” McCuller said.
The old man shook his head, first uncertainly, and then with more assurance. “It wasn’t her,” he said. “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t her.”
“Pretty sure?”
“Positive,” the old man said. “I’m positive, Lieutenant.”
McCuller sighed. “We’ll check again in the flesh when Mrs. Layne turns up,” he said. “This is a good likeness, Malvern?”
“Excellent,” Mike said.
McCuller put the picture down on the desk. “What do you propose to do about finding her?”
“If she’s in New York I’ll know in the next two or three hours,” Mike said.
“How?”
Mike smiled faintly. “Every head-waiter, bartender, hat-check girl, and half the taxi drivers in town are my friends,” he said. “They’ll locate her if she’s around. I’ve already spread the word.”
“How about Missing Persons?” McCuller said.
“I’d rather hold off for a few hours,” Mike said. “I still think she’s with friends somewhere and hasn’t heard the news.”
McCuller looked at his watch. “At 8 o’clock I send out a general alarm for her,” he said. “I don’t know why I wait, except I need a couple of hours’ sleep, myself.” He took a pencil out of his pocket and wrote a phone number on Mike’s desk pad. “My home. Call me there the minute you hear anything.”
“I will, and thanks,” Mike said.
I walked out through the library with McCuller and the old guy. Just as we got into the entrance hall the front door opened and Joan came in. During the moment the door was open I could hear the reporters on the front steps still gabbing at her. She threw us a quick look and went straight for the stairway.
The old guy reached out and tugged at McCuller’s sleeve. “That’s her.”
“What?”
“That’s her — the one that came to the hotel last night.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure I’m sure, Lieutenant. That’s her, all right.”
“Just a minute, miss,” McCuller called out.
Joan turned to face him, holding tightly to the stair rail...
Mike stood by the window in his study, his back turned to us, looking out at the darkening street. Joan was huddled in the big leather armchair beside Mike’s desk. McCuller prowled back and forth in front of her, firing questions at her. I stood off to one side, the inside of my mouth dry.
“You know I don’t have to give you the break of questioning you here in front of your father, Miss Malvern,” McCuller said. “I could take you down to headquarters and really put you through it.”
“I know.” Joan’s voice was small and far away.
“You went to see Waldo Layne at 2:30 this morning. Why?”
“Personal reasons,” Joan said.
“Miss Malvern, I’m not going to take that kind of answer. What personal reasons?”
“I... I wanted to see him,” Joan said.
“You don’t say!” McCuller was angry. “I didn’t suppose you had any other reason for going there. But why did you want to see him?” Joan didn’t answer, and he shouted at her.
“I... I was in love with him,” Joan said.
I saw Mike’s shoulders sag, but he didn’t turn. My own world went floating off into space. Joan and Waldo!
“Were you in the habit of visiting him in the middle of the night?” McCuller asked.
“No.”
“What was the reason for this visit, then?”
“I... I hadn’t heard from him for days,” Joan said. She didn’t look at McCuller or me or Mike. She just stared straight ahead. “I was worried. I... I couldn’t stand it any longer so I went to see him.”
“At 2:30 A.M.?”
“It may have been,” Joan said. “I wasn’t concerned with the time.”
“You got to the hotel and went up in the elevator. You didn’t announce yourself?”
“No.”
“What made you think Layne would be in?”
“If he... he hadn’t been I’d have waited for him upstairs.”
“But he was?”
Joan’s eyes closed for an instant, and then opened in that fixed stare. “His door was half open. I knocked. When he didn’t answer I looked in and... and I saw him, lying on the floor.”
“You went in to the room?”
“No. I... I ran,” Joan said.
“You didn’t even stop to see if he was alive, if he needed help?”
“I didn’t think he was alive.”
“Why?”
“I... I don’t know. I just didn’t think so.”
“So you ran away and left him?”
“Yes.”
“Then what?” McCuller asked, as if he didn’t believe a word she’d said.
“I ran down the service stairs and out into the street.”
“You didn’t want to be found there?”
“No.”
“You loved this man,” McCuller said, his voice rising, “but you ran away, without making sure he was dead, without trying to get help for him?”
“About a block from the hotel I found a drugstore that was open,” Joan said. “I called the hotel from the coin box and told them something was wrong with Waldo.”
“And then?”
“I came home,” Joan said. McCuller paced back and forth for a moment. “Were you having an affair with this man while he was still married to your sister?”
“No!”
“It began after they were separated?”
“Yes.”
“And now he was tired of you?”
“I... I suppose so,” Joan said.
I felt sick at my stomach. I wanted to get out of there, but I couldn’t move. Joan, carrying on with that louse Waldo, and we’d never even dreamed of it.
McCuller went over it in earnest now. He made her describe the hotel lobby, the clerk, the old elevator guy, the color of the rug in Waldo’s room. It was as though he wanted to shake her story, but she had every detail of it cold. She didn’t miss up on a thing. And all the time Mike stood with his back to her, staring out the window. Finally McCuller came to the point I’d been waiting for and dreading:
“Do you own a .22 caliber revolver, Miss Malvern?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“In my bureau — in my bedroom upstairs.”
“Did you carry it with you last night?”
“I’ve never carried it,” Joan said. “My father gave it to me some months ago when we’d received threatening letters, but I never carried it.”
“You didn’t have it with you last night and you didn’t shoot Waldo Layne?”
“No!”
McCuller let his breath out slowly. “Let’s go look at it.”
Mike didn’t move. I hesitated, and then followed Joan and McCuller upstairs. McCuller didn’t seem to notice I was there. Joan went straight to the bureau and opened the top right-hand drawer. She reached into it, seemed surprised, pulled the drawer out farther and really searched. Then she turned to McCuller.
“It... it doesn’t seem to be here,” she said.
“It seems open and shut, Miss Malvern. Woman scorned — that’s the motive. You were there. You own the right kind of gun, which has disappeared. I don’t have any choice.”
“I... I can see that,” Joan said.
“For heaven’s sake, Joan, if you took the gun last night—!” I started to say.
“I didn’t take it, Vance,” she said. “I don’t know what’s become of it.”
“Joan,” I said, and I guess my voice cracked a little.
“I’m sorry, Vance,” she said.
After that McCuller took her away. As he said, he had no choice...
Mike never showed. He never came out of his study when McCuller left with Joan. I warned Joan not to do any more talking till we got our lawyer to her, and then I went to find Mike.
He was back at his desk when I went into the study, and he looked at me as though I were a stranger.
“McCuller’s taken her downtown,” I said. “Her gun is missing. You’d better call Charley Carson and get him down to her at once.”
“I’m through with her,” he said, slowly and distinctly.
“That’s no way to talk, Mike! She’s your daughter.”
“I’m through with her,” he said again. He got up and walked over to the window. He started to talk, with his back to me. “She killed her mother getting born,” he said, in a voice I’d never heard. “She has never brought me anything but tragedy. Now this! Waldo Layne! Sneaking out at night to see him! Loving
I was so shocked I couldn’t speak for a minute. “No matter how you feel,” I said, “she’s your daughter and you can’t let her go undefended. Call Carson.”
“The courts supply lawyers,” he said.
“If you don’t call Carson, I will.”
He turned back from the window. “Let me remind you, Vance, you are an employee here. You’ll do as I say or you’ll go out the front door so fast you won’t know what hit you.”
“Are you going to call Carson?” I asked. I could feel the blood pounding in my temples.
“No,” he said.
“Good-by, Mike,” I said. “It was nice knowing you — up until tonight!”
I ran out of the room, and almost collided with Kathy, who was just outside the study door. I could tell by the look on her face that she’d heard. She didn’t say anything, but she took hold of my arm and walked out through the library with me into the entrance hall.
“Take it easy, Vance,” she said. “I’ve already called Carson.”
“Then you better go pack your trunk,” I said.
“A good secretary anticipates her boss’s wishes,” she said. “I assumed he’d want Carson on the job. He didn’t tell
“What’s the matter with Mike?” I said. “He talks like a crazy man.”
“Find Erika,” she said, “and he’ll come back to normal. How much can a man take in one day?”
“I walked out on him,” I said. “That’s that.”
“Don’t be foolish,” Kathy said. “He’ll have forgotten it, and so will you in a couple of hours.”
“That he should hate Joan so much—” I said.
She looked up into my eyes. “Love and hate are back to back on a coin, Vance,” she said. “You haven’t been kidding me, buster. I know how you’ve felt about Joan. What do you feel about her now?”
“I guess that’s the $64 question,” I said. “Right now I don’t feel anything — about anything.”
“Go somewhere and cool off,” Kathy said. “Be on the job tomorrow morning. I’ll fight out the Carson thing with him.” She turned her head, that little frown between her eyes, to glance at the study door.
“Since you just let down my back hair,” I said, “how about I let down yours? You’ve been in love with Mike ever since you went to work for him.”
“Sure, I have,” she said quietly. “He’s the most wonderful guy in the world. But it doesn’t do me any good.” She patted my shoulder and then started off for the study...
I suppose every man who has ever gotten a sock in the teeth from the woman he loves has reacted foolishly about it, all the way from getting drunk to punching the wrong guy in the nose. I thought I would be smart and do neither of those things. I would keep busy. It was important, if anybody was going to act sanely, to find Erika. I knew all of Mike’s contacts in the city. I set out to check on who’d seen Erika last night and whom she’d been with. And it was at the sixth place that I came across my first lead. There was a young playwright around town named Austin Graves who had been giving Erika quite a rush, and I heard that they’d been having cocktails together in the bar in the Bijou Club around 7 o’clock.
I didn’t call Graves. I went to his apartment, a brownstone in the East Fifties. He opened the door to me, and when he saw me his face went the color of the chartreuse walls in his living-room.
“Vance!” He didn’t try to stop my coming in. There was a glass shaker of Martinis on the coffee table in front of the fireplace. Our Austin had been drinking alone.
“What’s the matter with you? You look sick,” I said.
“Is there any news about Erika?” he asked.
“Would I be here if there was? When did you hear she was missing, and how? It hasn’t been made public.”
“Miss Adams called me.”
I should have known Kathy would be miles ahead of me.
“I told her all I know,” Austin said. “I bumped into Erika on Fifth Avenue around 6 yesterday, and invited her to the Bijou Club for a cocktail. We sat around for an hour or so. I... I tried to persuade her to have dinner with me, but she said she had another date.”
“Who with?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Why are your hands shaking?” I asked him.
He stuffed them in his pocket. “I’m worried about Erika,” he said.
“Why? She’s just gone off with some friends and forgot to let us know.”
He didn’t say anything to that. He just stood there, wetting his lips.
“You got a different theory than that?” I asked him.
He shook his head.
“Then what are you worried about?”
“Layne being murdered,” he said, “and then Erika not turning up.”
“You think there’s a connection?”
“Look, Vance; I—”
“You’ve been thick as thieves with Erika for months,” I said. “You must know where she went after she left you.”
“So help me, Vance, I don’t. We separated at the Bijou Club about 7 — and that’s the last I saw of her. This noon I read about Layne in the papers. I tried to call Erika at home but the phone was always busy. Finally Miss Adams called me, and I heard Erika hadn’t come home last night and was still missing.”
“What did you do after Erika left you last night?”
“I... I ate dinner at the Bijou and came back here.”
There was something about him I couldn’t put my finger on. Concern for Erika was natural, but he acted scared out of his wits.
“Listen, Austin; if I find out you’re not telling me everything you know, so help me I’m coming back here and take you apart, piece by piece.”
“Why shouldn’t I tell you everything I know?” he said.
“I’m darned if I know, Austin, but for some reason you don’t smell good to me.”
“I swear I’ve told you everything I know,” he said. For a minute I thought he was going to cry...
When I got out into the cool night air again I began to work on really big ideas — technicolor ideas. I started thinking about Joe Ricardo, and the leak from Mike’s files, and Ricardo’s little frame-up of the phony item. I wondered if Ricardo was playing rough. He might think he could use Erika as a means of twisting Mike’s arm, and was waiting for Mike to get good and worried before he put the twist on. My ideas were big, and I felt brave.
I went straight up to Ricardo’s hotel suite and asked to see him, which was not much less foolhardy than the Charge of the Light Brigade.
A smooth guy let me into the place and nobody acted tough at all. I had to wait only a minute or two before somebody took me into a small living-room where Ricardo was sitting at a desk going over some papers. Ricardo is strictly not a movie-type mobster. He has gray hair and a friendly face and you can tell he spends time at a gym keeping down his waistline.
“Hello, Vance,” he said; “you’re too late.”
“What do you mean, too late?”
“The cop beat you to it.”
“What cop? What are you talking about?”
He looked a little bored with me. “McCuller. What other cop?”
“Look, Joe; let’s start over,” I said. “And this time make some sense.”
Ricardo leaned back in his chair. “Tell Mike I’m surprised at him. He ought to know I always play it strictly on the level.”
“Joke,” I said, “but I don’t get the point.”
“I could get annoyed with you, Vance,” Ricardo said. “I would not frame an alibi for anybody, not even my mother. I might need to be believed some day on my own account, so I couldn’t risk a phony.”
“Frame an alibi?”
“Even if I would have done it, I’m not a mind reader, Vance. If Mike wanted me to say he was here for two hours instead of about 25 minutes he should have said so.”
It seemed suddenly very hot in there and Ricardo’s face looked blurred. I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly. “Mike didn’t need you to say he’d been here for two hours last night. I said so. I know. I waited for him across the street.”
Ricardo’s shoulders rose and fell. “I didn’t say you weren’t across the street for two hours, Vance. But Mike wasn’t here for more than 25 minutes and I’m not going to perjure myself to say so. I told McCuller the truth.”
“I want to get this straight,” I said. “I came in here with Mike. I saw him go up in the elevator. Then I went across the street and waited—”
“There are about five different ways out of this hotel, Vance.” He let that sink in for a long time and I swear there was a look of sympathy on his face.
“I don’t know what’s going on, Vance,” he said. “Confidential stuff has been leaking, and I’ve proved it. Mike has had a reputation for honesty. That’s why he gets away with what he gets away with. Now he offers the cops a phony alibi. His ex-son-in-law is murdered, one daughter is arrested for that murder, and the other daughter disappears. I don’t know what’s going on, as I said. But don’t stick your neck out too far, Vance, until you know what you’re sticking it out for. That’s just common sense.”
When I got down into the lobby of Ricardo’s hotel I was still trying to juggle times and motives in my head. It had been about midnight when Mike and I went to Ricardo’s the night before. That meant that from 12:30, roughly, until 2, when he picked me up in the bar across the street, Mike had been on the loose somewhere. He’d left me sitting in that bar for an hour and a half while he went somewhere he didn’t want me to know about. Somewhere like Waldo Layne’s room.
A blind anger swept over me. If that was it, then he was deliberately letting Joan take the rap for something he knew she hadn’t done! That wasn’t like Mike, though. He always played dead level, even with people he had no use for, and he couldn’t hate Joan
I tried to put myself in his place after his talk with Ricardo, when he’d discovered, without any question, that someone was leaking the stuff out of his files. The story was that somebody had called up Johnson, Ricardo’s friend, and tried to blackmail him with the framed story. The somebody had been a man. If I’d been Mike, and I wanted to start checking, I’d have gone to see Johnson and asked him about the phone conversation.
Johnson is a threatrical producer and I knew he had an office at the theater where his production of
“If Malvern wanted any more information from me he should have come himself,” Johnson said.
“I’m here on my own,” I said. “If you’ve heard the news today you know things are pretty messed up in Mike’s life.”
“That’s the understatement of the week.”
“Mr. Johnson, did Mike come to see you last night?”
“I ran into him at Lindy’s around one o’clock,” Johnson said. “I don’t know that he was exactly looking for me.”
“You talked to him about the blackmail phone call?”
“Yes.” Johnson was smiling at me in an odd way.
“Would you repeat the gist of that conversation to me?”
The odd smile widened. “I got a distinct impression, Vance, that he was trying to find out if I’d recognized your voice over the phone.”
“That was the gist of it,” Johnson said. “I wouldn’t get too burned up about it. He’d just had it proved to him that there was a leak somewhere and that a man was involved. You, I take it, are the only man who has access to his confidential records. He’d have to check on you, no matter how much he trusted you, wouldn’t he?”
An hour after I left Johnson I went into a quiet little place off Broadway and ordered myself some food and coffee. I’d done some more checking and I began to understand why I’d been left sitting in that bar across from Ricardo’s hotel twiddling my thumbs. Mike had been investigating me! He must have had some idea of other items that had leaked. Two or three guys who were usually very friendly with me had acted queer and reserved. Mike’s questions had left them wondering about me.
It hit me hard to discover that Mike had doubted me so actively. Well, it didn’t matter. I was clean and he must know it by now. Also, though his two-hour alibi at Ricardo’s wouldn’t hold up, I’d discovered half a dozen places he’d been in that time. There were gaps in it — big enough to make a short visit to Waldo possible — but it was still a pretty good alibi.
Alibis made me think of Charley Carson, Mike’s lawyer. He should have seen Joan by now if he’d acted on Kathy’s call. I had his private number in my pocket notebook and I dialed it from a booth in the restaurant. Carson is one of the topflight boys in his trade, and his particular specialty, as far as Mike was concerned, was a vast knowledge of the libel laws. He worked on a retainer for Mike, and any time there was anything the least bit touchy in one of the columns, Carson saw it before the proof was okayed.
“Hi, Vance,” he said, over the phone. “You been talking to Kathy?”
“Not recently. Why?”
“I’ve been trying to reach you. Kathy said you were out on the town somewhere. Can you come over to my place for a few minutes?”
“Sure. How’s Joan? You’ve seen her?”
“I’ve seen her,” Carson said. “Get over here, will you, son?”
Carson lives on Central Park South, a fancy penthouse overlooking Central Park. He’s a big, fat, easygoing guy who likes the good things of life, and earns them by being sharp and hard as nails at his job. He let me in and took me into his library. He was wearing a silk lounging robe and smoking a cigar that smelled like about two dollars’ worth.
“I understand Mike has blown his top over this thing” he said, as he settled himself in the armchair back of his desk.
“Things are rough,” I said. “Erika missing. Joan charged with murder. Somebody stealing stuff from his files.”
Carson has the heavy, hooded eyes of a gambler. You can never read in them what he is thinking. “I didn’t know until after I’d seen Joan that he hadn’t wanted me called.”
“He was pretty hard hit about then. He’ll have calmed down when he hears about it.”
“He has heard about it. He told me to lay off.”
“What are you going to do?” I said.
“I told him to go fly a kite,” Carson said. “I told him Joan had retained me personally.”
“Good for her,” I said.
“Of course she didn’t. That’s where you come in, Vance. I want you to go see her and tell her I’m working for her, not her father.”
“What’ll she use for money?”
I said it bitterly.
“Who said anything about money?” The hooded eyes turned my way. “You ought to have your behind kicked,” Carson said amiably.
“I? What have I done?”
“You’ve been mooning around over Joan for a couple of years,” he said. “I had an idea you were really in love with her.”
“I was — only, she wouldn’t give me the time of day.”
“Was?” His bushy gray eyebrows rose.
“I don’t know where I’m at right now,” I said. “Waldo Layne! When I think of her — and Waldo—”
“I’ll be glad to do that kicking right now,” Carson said. “You never loved that girl. If you did you’d know what kind of a person she is.”
“I thought I did.”
“Would the girl you loved have given Waldo Layne the time of day?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so. But—”
“You wouldn’t have thought so! You fathead! What’s changed her?”
“I don’t know. I—”
“Nothing changed her!” he said emphatically. “She was no more in love with Waldo Layne than I am. And I handled his divorce and know just the special kind of louse he was.”
“But—”
“You sound like an outboard motor! But, but, but. Why don’t you use your heart and your head? Why is she telling this cock-and-bull story?”
“There’s no question that she went to the hotel,” I said.
“Who said there was? She was there, she found Layne dead, she ran away, she phoned in the alarm. All those things happened. But she hasn’t said why she went or what it was all about. Of course, you and Mike, who love her, are perfectly prepared to believe she could care for a heel like Waldo.”
I felt a lump in my throat. “Mr. Carson, you really don’t think she—?”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” he said impatiently. “I’ve known Joan since she was toddling around in a baby-walker. I’m not in love with her, but apparently I know her better than those of you who are supposed to be.” He paused, and I had to look down, because my eyes felt hot and salty. Then he went on in a matter-of-fact tone: “Frankly, I couldn’t get anywhere near the truth from her, Vance. She kept repeating that silly story about Waldo. Maybe you can break her down.”
“I’d like to try,” I said.
“Good. I’m going to give you an authorization for her to sign, retaining me as her counsel. I’ll arrange for you to see her now. Okay?”
“Wonderful,” I said. “One thing, Mr. Carson — about the revolver. The fact that it’s missing is damaging, isn’t it?”
“Don’t tell me that along with your other asininities you think she shot Waldo?”
“No, of course not. All the same—”
“Until they find the gun and ballistics proves it was the one that killed Waldo it’s just a gleam in McCuller’s eye. Good heavens, do I have to tell you again? She didn’t kill Waldo. She wasn’t in love with him. She’s covering for someone, and I wonder if I have to tell you who that is, too?”
“Erika?”
“Dear, sweet, lovable, little Erika.” Carson’s voice dripped acid. “But you don’t know the girl you love, so how could you possibly know Erika?”
“I think I know her,” I said.
“A greedy, self-interested—” He jammed out his cigar in an ash tray on the desk. “She’s a cannibal, Vance. She been feeding off people all her life — off Mike, off Joan, off her friends, off Waldo. You know, I actually felt sorry for Waldo when he fell into that trap. It served his chiseling soul right, but I wouldn’t wish Erika on my worst enemy. She sucks you dry and leaves you for the Sanitation Department to collect with the morning trash. As I said, she’s a cannibal.” He smiled grimly. “Well, maybe this time she over-ate!”
“But what could Joan be covering?”
“Vance, you can’t read anything but the large print, can you? Who
Carson had been a shot in the arm to me. Why hadn’t I relied on my certainty about Joan instead of accepting her story? Well, maybe it wasn’t going to be too late to make it up to her.
I picked up a paper on the corner and then took a taxi downtown to where they were holding Joan. I turned the ceiling light on in the cab and looked at the front page. Waldo had made it, with pictures. There was a background piece on his marriage to Erika and, of course, some mention of Mike. But there was nothing about Erika being missing. If McCuller had sent out a general alarm, as he threatened, it hadn’t been picked up by the newspaper boys, at least for this edition.
I was about to put the paper down when I noticed a follow-up story on the fire at the Spain. All but three of the twelve dead had been claimed by relatives or friends — two men and one woman. The unclaimed body of the woman was assumed to be that of Eloise Morton, Joan’s friend. That was odd, I thought, because Joan had been on her way to break the news to the Morton girl’s family when she’d left me at the Spain. The answer, I figured, was that the girl wasn’t Eloise Morton. Then I read the piece over again. No one had come forward to identify the body assumed to be Eloise Morton’s! The reporters must have slipped on that one.
Instead of the regular visiting cage at the jail I was ushered into a captain’s office.
“McCuller’s orders,” I heard one of the cops say.
Five minutes later they brought Joan in and left us alone. Poor darling, she looked all in. I didn’t say anything, but I did something I’d never dared do before. I walked over to her and put my arms around her, and the next thing I knew she was clinging to me and her whole body was shaken with sobs. I just hung on to her and stroked her hair and let her cry it out. Finally I gave her my handkerchief to blow with, and that made her smile a little; and then I moved her over and sat her down in the swivel chair at the captain’s desk.
“Listen,” I said. “For two years I’ve been wandering around like a smooch waiting for you to give me some kind of sign before I said anything to you. Well, I quit! I’m telling you, sign or no sign, that I love you, that I was a fool to believe that line of yours about Waldo, and that I’m going to keep on loving you whether you like it or not.”
“Oh, Vance,” she said shakily.
“Sign this,” I said, and put Carson’s authorization down on the desk in front of her. “It’s a technicality,” I told her. “Carson has to have this to show you want him on your side.” No use telling her Mike had walked out on her. Mike would be back, I told myself.
She signed the authorization and I put it in my pocket. I pulled up a straight chair and sat down.
“Now let’s start this thing over from the beginning,” I said. “Why did you go to the Wakefield to see Waldo last night?”
She turned her face away.
“Look, darling, I’m sure you have a reason for telling the story you did,” I said. “But I’m Vance, remember? You can tell me what the real reason was.”
“I can’t,” she said, her face still turned away.
My heart did a bump against my ribs. Those two words were an admission that she’d been lying.
“Where’s Erika?” I asked her quietly.
Her head turned quickly back to me and I saw that her eyes were wide with fright. “You know where she is, don’t you?”
She just stared at me, and I tried again: “She killed Waldo?”
“No!” It was just a whisper.
“What is it, darling? Did you suspect she was going to do it, and get there too late to stop her?”
“No. Erika didn’t kill him, Vance. She couldn’t have!”
“But you thought she might and you went there to warn him?”
“No.”
“Joan, for heaven’s sake, let me have it straight!”
She shook her head slowly. “I can’t, Vance. I wish I could.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“With my life,” she said. She gave me a little twisted smile. “If you were to ask for it”
I kissed her on the mouth then. We didn’t say anything for quite a while.
“We’ll announce it right away,” I said. “That’ll kill this other story.”
“No, Vance. We’ll have to wait.”
“For what?”
“For things to be cleared up,” she said. “Please, darling, don’t keep asking me to tell you something I can’t.”
“If it isn’t Erika you’re protecting, who is it? Is it Mike? Because he’s got an almost foolproof alibi.”
“Please, Vance, it has to be this way,” she said.
I could see I wasn’t going to break her down then, at least. “You better get as much rest and sleep as you possibly can,” I said. “McCuller will probably start to work on you when he wakes up. Don’t talk unless Carson is here.”
“I won’t talk,” she said.
I reached in my pocket for a cigarette, and felt the folded newspaper. “Oh, by the way — there’s a piece in the paper tonight that mentions your friend, Eloise Morton.”
“Who?” Joan said.
“Eloise Morton, the girl at the Spain!”
“Oh.”
“It says no one has claimed her body. Didn’t you get in touch with her parents?”
“I?”
“You were going to get in touch with her parents when I left you this morning.”
Joan had been pale when I arrived. Now her face was the color of chalk.
“Oh, yes,” she said.
“You saw them?”
“No... no, they’re out of town.”
“Look, honey; you better tell me where they live, so the department can get things straightened out.”
She just stared at me. She moistened her lips but she didn’t say anything.
“Darling, what is it? I know it’s hard for you, but if you’ll give me the Mortons’ address I’ll handle it for you.”
She twisted her body around in the chair as though she was suddenly in mortal pain.
Then it hit me, right between the eyes, and it had been there all day for me to see and I had been too stupid to see it. Eloise Morton — E. M. Erika Malvern — E. M. The grief and panic on Joan’s face when I’d met her in the lobby of the Spain. The death of a school friend
I took Joan by the shoulders. I had to push my breath out hard to make a sound. “Erika?” I asked her.
She didn’t have to answer. It was there in her eyes.
Joan didn’t cry. It would have been almost better if she could have. Now that it was out between us, she talked, dry-eyed. It wasn’t a pretty story.
Most of the people who stayed at the Spain were permanent residents, elderly, not too well off. There was no smart bar or cocktail lounge. You just wouldn’t go there unless you knew someone who lived there.
Joan had been doing some volunteer work at one of the hospitals and had made friends with one of the patients, a little old woman who lived at the Spain. When this woman was released from the hospital she made Joan promise to come and see her, and only yesterday Joan had kept that promise. As she was crossing the lobby to the desk she ran smack into Erika. They went through a “What are you doing here?” routine. It seemed they had both come to visit someone.
Erika was just starting out when a bellboy came up to her. “There’s a phone call for you, Miss Morton,” he said. “Do you want it in the booth, or shall I have them hold it till you get up to your room?”
I guess the way the boy said it, his smile, his ready recognition, made it impossible for Erika to bluff it out. She took Joan upstairs to her room and there, she told her:
“You and I are different, Joan. You’re satisfied to live the way we do — in a goldfish bowl. Because of father and his business everything we do is watched and commented on. You’re content to wait till the right man comes along, marry him, and live happily ever after. I’ve
She’d chosen a name with the same initials because her accessories, bags, handkerchiefs, were monogrammed. She said there was no harm in it. It was just that Mike insisted on choosing her friends for her, making her pIans for her. She wanted some part of her life, she said, where she could make her own friends and be out from under Mike’s supervision, loving as it might be.
Joan was shocked but, being Joan, she tried to understand. She could understand how, after a year of complete independence, Erika might find Mike’s chaperonage chafing from time to time. Erika tried to make her promise she wouldn’t say anything to Mike. Joan wouldn’t promise, but she did say she’d think about it and tell Erika before she went to Mike, if that was her decision.
“Last night I was in bed,” Joan said, “But I couldn’t get to sleep. Kathy had gone to bed. About one o’clock the phone rang. I picked it up quickly so the ringing wouldn’t disturb Kathy. It was Waldo. He sounded as though he’d been drinking. He wanted to talk to Erika. I told him she wasn’t home. Then he said, ‘I know I can count on you, Joan, to keep your mouth shut. Find her, Joan, and tell her I’ve got to see her. Tell her if she doesn’t get in touch with me within two hours — by three o’clock — I’m going to tell Mike Malvern she’s been using his confidential files for a cozy little racket. I have a hunch he might slap even Erika down for that kind of double-cross. And tell her that goes for her play-writing boy-friend, too.’
“I wanted to ask him more, but I heard, or thought I heard, the click of one of the extension phones. I didn’t want Kathy to hear what Waldo was saying... Oh, Vance, I knew then that Erika and Austin Graves must be using Mike’s confidential material for blackmail. Erika was with Mike so often when he picked up stories; she even made the records for his file. It wouldn’t have been too hard for her to discover the combination to the vault. And he loves her so, Vance. He loves her so that the possibility would never enter his head. He thought of you, he thought of Kathy — people whose loyalty is beyond question. He never thought of Erika.”
“Whose loyalty was even farther beyond question,” I said.
Joan nodded. “Excitement was like a disease to her,” Joan said. “Even as a little girl she’d do crazy things, just for the thrill of it. She didn’t need money — Mike would give her all she needs. But she would steal information from Mike and blackmail people with it — just because it was dangerous, and because she liked to control people. Mike has power, you know, but he uses it for good. Erika wanted it to use for excitement, for thrills.” Joan took a deep breath. “I knew Waldo wasn’t fooling, Vance. I didn’t know if Erika was still at the Spain, but I took a chance and called there. I couldn’t get a connection.”
“The fire,” I said.
Joan nodded. “Of course, I had no way of knowing whether she was there. I tried all the friends I could think of, without any luck. I tried her favorite night spots. Then, without any particular plan, I got dressed and went out on the town looking for her. Around half-past two I hadn’t found her. I was beginning to get panicky about Waldo. I called the Wakefield, but his room didn’t answer. He’d said Erika was to get in touch with him there by three, so I thought maybe he’d be there again. I... I went there just as I’ve told you, and found him. I just wanted him to hold off, not do anything crazy until we located Erika.”
“Poor baby,” I said.
“Then, this morning, there was no word from Erika — and all the talk from Mike about the leak. I’d read about the fire at the Spain, but there was no list of the injured or dead in the early editions. As soon as I could get free I went over there — as you know.”
“But, Joan, darling, why didn’t you just tell this as you’ve told it to me?”
For the first time her eyes filled with tears. “Vance, you don’t know what it’s like not to be loved by someone you love and need. Mike has never forgiven me because my mother died giving birth to me. He’s never been unfair, but he’s never loved me. It’s been Erika, always Erika, he adored. I couldn’t be the one to tell him the truth about her. He would hate me even more for knowing. When I knew this morning that Erika was dead I knew I’d never tell him. It may never have to come out now, Vance.”
“It’ll have to. I—”
“You’re not going to tell, Vance.”
“But, Joan—”
“I didn’t kill Waldo, so they can’t prove it. They’ll have to let me go after a while. The chances are they’ll never identify what’s left of Erika unless they’re given a lead, and they’re not going to get it from you or me. It’s better for Mike that she should just disappear. In time he’ll convince himself it was some underworld enemy of his who did away with her. Anything would be better than that he should know she never really loved him and that she quite calmly betrayed him.”
“And you’d let him go on thinking that you and Waldo—?”
“What does it matter? He can’t have less regard for me than he’s always had.”
I shook my head. I felt a little groggy. “Joan, how do you know Erika didn’t kill Waldo? You were so positive about it.”
She looked at me, her eyes wide. “But, darling, don’t you see? Waldo called at one o’clock. As soon as he hung up I called the Spain. It was on fire then, and she was there, trapped!”
It was about midnight when I left Joan. I felt as if I’d been beaten around the head. I remembered I’d promised Carson I’d call him when I got through talking to her. I went into a drugstore and rang him.
“I don’t know any more than I did when I left you,” I said.
“You’re lying,” he said cheerfully.
“Oh, she’s hiding something,” I said, “but I don’t know what it is.”
“Ought to have your mouth washed out with soap,” Carson said. “You talked to the woman for three hours and all you did was tell her you loved her?”
Three hours!
“You’re wrong about one thing, though, Mr. Carson,” I said. “Erika didn’t kill Waldo.”
“How do you know?”
“I can’t tell you,” I said, “but that’s one thing I did find out.”
“No, you idiot!”
“Okay, Romeo; have it your way,” Carson said. “But remember one thing: Joan is safe in Jail with her secret. You’re walking around loose with it. Somebody might not like that.”
“But I tell you she didn’t—”
“Tell it to the Marines,” Carson said.
So I took a cab uptown, nursing my headache and my secret, and thinking about what Carson had said. Someone — the someone who had shot Waldo — might be watching to make certain no one got on his trail. I know I had some weird ideas on the trip uptown. I thought first that maybe Ricardo had discovered that Waldo was in the know, and that Waldo had been making a nuisance of himself. So Ricardo had had Waldo rubbed out! It was a nice, clean, simple answer and didn’t hurt anybody I loved. But then I had a picture of one of Ricardo’s boys blasting someone with a woman’s toy revolver. With Joan’s revolver, because I was unpleasantly convinced that the missing gun was the one McCuller needed to convict her.
The whole thing kept coming back to us — to Mike, and me, to Erika, and Joan, and Kathy. We were the only ones who could have taken that gun out of Joan’s drawer and used it, and Erika had to be eliminated because she hadn’t had a chance to use it. She was being broiled alive when Waldo was killed. Not me. I knew that, if no one else did. Not Joan. And how on earth did Kathy fit into the picture? She loved Mike; she might have overheard Waldo’s phone call to Joan and she would protect Mike from hurt if she could, but to commit a murder just to protect the man you loved from having his feelings hurt — that was hard to take.
That left Mike.
As I thought about it I could feel the small hairs rising on the back of my neck. To begin with, Mike no longer had a real alibi. He could have been at the Wakefield. He certainly could have taken Joan’s gun, although he had one of his own that he was licensed to carry. Motive? Well, there were a dozen ways to figure that. There was one simple one: Suppose Waldo had gotten in touch with Mike last night — after he’d talked to Joan. Suppose Mike had gone to his room at the Wakefield and Waldo had said to him, “Mike, Erika is the one who’s been stealing your stuff and blackmailing people with it.” Mike hates Waldo, figures he can handle Erika himself, so he draws his gun and lets Waldo have it. But not his gun — Joan’s gun. The use of Joan’s gun suggested premeditation, a scheme.
I tried another tack: Waldo didn’t get in touch with Mike, but Mike, on his rounds, ran into something that convinced him Waldo was part of the blackmail setup. He could put two and two together. It would have to be Erika who was working with him. So he goes to the Wakefield and plugs Waldo, covering his tracks by using that little revolver which would have the police looking for a woman. And deliberately put Joan on the spot?
Oh, brother! But nonetheless, where could you go but Mike? Where could you possibly go but Mike?
The palms of my hands were damp when I paid off the driver and walked up the steps to Mike’s house. I had a key, of course, and let myself in. There was a light on in the library and I could see through into Mike’s study. There was a light on there, and though he would usually be out on the town at this time, it didn’t surprise me he was there now.
I remember I stood in the entrance hall and lit a cigarette. I was trying to figure out just what I’d say to him, just how I’d go about talking to him without involving Joan. Even then I wasn’t kidding myself about being a detective. There was probably something quite obvious that would clear Mike entirely. Actually, I hadn’t done anything like a complete check on his alibi. Maybe it would turn out to be airtight. McCuller had probably checked it already and found it was okay, or Mike wouldn’t be running around loose. Well, the first thing to do was find out if I was fired.
I walked through the library to the study. The door to the vault where he kept his files was open and I could hear him puttering around in there. I walked over to his desk, put out my cigarette, and lit another one. I could hear the file drawers open and close. He was hunting for something special, I imagined. Well, Kathy did the filing, not me.
I saw down in the chair beside his desk and closed my eyes. They felt hot and tired. It had been the longest day of my life, measured in stresses and strains.
Then I opened my eyes again and saw her standing in the vault door.
“Don’t move, Vance,” she said. “I’ve go to think this out.”
It was Erika! She was pointing the little .22 at me, her gray-green eyes as bright as diamonds.
The room began to do a slow, rhythmic spin. I’ve never fainted in my life, but I imagine I was as close to it then as I’ll ever be. The spinning stopped and Erika came back into focus. She had the gun in one hand and she had a small suitcase in the other.
“I counted on your being out with Mike,” she said. Her red lips moved in a smile. “Looking for me!”
“That’s what Mike is probably doing,” I said. I could feel anger beginning to rise up in me, hot, blind anger.
“Poor darling,” she said.
“I’ve seen Joan tonight,” I said. “She’s taking a rap for you, too.”
“My luck’s been so good up to now,” she said. “It seems to be changing. Joan told you things?”
“Joan told me things.”
“She’s protecting Mike, of course. How very noble and self-effacing.”
“She thinks you’re dead,” I said. “She’s not protecting you.”
The gray-green eyes narrowed. “She
I began to think in terms of feet and inches then. I was about eight feet away from her. I wondered how accurate she could be with that popgun if I made a dive for her.
“Yes, my luck has gone very bad,” Erika said. “Sooner or later I knew she’d tell someone about the Spain. The fire was my first piece of luck. I wasn’t there, but someone died in my room — probably someone who got caught in the hallway and ran in there for safety. Joan would talk, I thought, and my passing would be duly mourned. You see, don’t you, how your coming home is very bad luck, Vance, darling?”
“You killed Waldo?”
“Waldo was far too greedy,” she said.
“I made a mistake tonight, myself,” I said. “I had a chance to break Austin Graves’ neck and I didn’t. He is your partner in blackmail, isn’t he?”
“Poor Austin, he’s probably half dead of fright by this time,” Erika said. “He started shaking last week when Waldo accidentally caught on to our little pastime.”
“I can understand why,” I said. “Who tipped you off that Waldo was going to spill to Mike?”
“I heard his chat with Joan on the library extension. I had just come in. I thought Joan and Kathy were asleep.” She smiled. “Needless to say, I went right out again to... to calm him down, shall we say?” Her eyes narrowed. “You know, Vance, perhaps your being here now is providential. I can tell Mike I found you rifling the vault, and when you tried to get away I shot you.”
“With the gun you used to kill Waldo? It will be hard to explain.”
She laughed. “Darling, I’m not a complete child,” she said. “I took Joan’s gun a long time ago, in case of emergencies. I used it to kill Waldo and it’s at the bottom of a Broadway sewer at this moment. This one hasn’t been used to kill anyone — until now.”
“And Joan? Are you going to kill Joan, too?”
“Why? Poor Joan — always behind the eight ball. I admit, Vance dear, to the horrible sin of leading a double life. I expose you as the double-crosser. Mike will forgive me, after he’s scolded me. He will be grateful to me for stopping the leak — by putting a bullet in you. It will be my word against Joan’s. Who does Mike always listen to?”
I tried getting my feet under me so I could make a fast move. Erika was thinking this out all too clearly.
“You’re a nice boy, Vance,” she said. “It’s really too bad for you it had to happen this way. But when you get into the kind of jam I’m in you have to get out of it.”
I made my move then, without much hope. Waiting would get me no place. I dived forward, as low and hard as I could. The gun went off, and the sound of it was much louder than I’d expected. I didn’t feel anything, except the jar of my shoulder against her knees, and then she went down, and I fumbled frantically for her right hand.
“Vance!”
It was Mike! I turned my head and saw him standing over me. At the same moment I heard a moaning noise from Erika, and I saw the little .22 lying a couple of feet away on the polished floor. I reached for it, and rolled clear of Erika and stood up. I saw her right hand, shattered and bloody.
Mike had a gun in his hand. It was his gun I had heard, not Erika’s. Mike’s face was the color of ashes, set in hard anger such as I’d never seen it. He made no move to help Erika.
She played it, right to the end: “Father, you don’t understand. Vance was in the vault. I found him there. I—”
“Call McCuller,” Mike said to me.
I went to the desk and started dialing police headquarters. William, attracted by the shot, came running from the kitchen.
“Get the first-aid kit from upstairs,” Mike said to him.
Erika, clinging to her injured hand, struggled up to her feet. Mike made no move to help her. I got police headquarters on the phone and told them to send McCuller.
“Father, you’ve got to listen to me,” Erika said.
“I have been listening to you,” Mike said, “for the last five minutes.”
William came in with the first-aid kit.
“Do what you can for her, William,” Mike said. Then he turned and walked slowly and steadily away into the library.
I went after him. He was standing by the fireplace, looking down into the dead coals in the grate.
“I’m sorry, Mike,” I said.
He didn’t answer, for a moment. Then he whirled around on me. “What’s the matter with me?” he cried. “People are my business! I’m supposed to know people — understand them! Until I heard her talking I’d never seen her before in my life.”
“Maybe you just saw her as a replica of somebody else,” I said. “Because you wanted it that way so badly.”
He reached out to me. “Vance, do you suppose Joan will ever understand? Is there any way I can ever make it up to her?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” I said. “She’s quite a girl.”
Agatha Christie
The Mystery of the Blue Jar
Jack Hartington surveyed his topped drive ruefully. Standing by the ball, he looked back to the tee, measuring the distance. His face was eloquent of the disgusted contempt which he felt. With a sigh he drew out his iron, executed two vicious swings with it, annihilating in turn a dandelion and a tuft of grass, and then addressed himself firmly to the ball.
It is hard when you are twenty-four years of age, and your one ambition in life is to reduce your handicap at golf, to be forced to give time and attention to the problem of earning your living. Five and a half days out of the seven saw Jack imprisoned in a kind of mahogany tomb in the city. Saturday afternoon and Sunday were religiously devoted to the real business of life, and in an excess of zeal he had taken rooms at the small hotel near Stourton Heath links, and rose daily at the hour of six a.m. to get in an hour’s practice before catching the 8:46 to town.
The only disadvantage to the plan was that he seemed constitutionally unable to hit anything at that hour in the morning. A foozled iron succeeded a muffed drive. His mashie shots ran merrily along the ground, and four putts seemed to be the minimum on any green.
Jack sighed, grasped his iron firmly and repeated to himself the magic words, “Left arm right through, and don’t look up.”
He swung back — and then stopped, petrified, as a shrill cry rent the silence of the summer’s morning.
“Murder,” it called. “Help! Murder!”
It was a woman’s voice, and it died away into a sort of gurgling sigh.
Jack flung down his club and ran in the direction of the sound. It had come from somewhere quite near at hand. This particular part of the course was quite wild country, and there were few houses about. In fact, there was only one near at hand, a small picturesque cottage, which Jack had often noticed for its air of old world daintiness. It was towards this cottage that he ran. It was hidden from him by a heather-covered slope, but he rounded this and in less than a minute was standing with his hand on the small latched gate.
There was a girl standing in the garden, and for a moment Jack jumped to the natural conclusion that it was she who had uttered the cry for help. But he quickly changed his mind.
She had a little basket in her hand, half-full of weeds, and had evidently just straightened herself up from weeding a wide border of pansies. Her eyes, Jack noticed, were just like pansies themselves, velvety and soft and dark, and more violet than blue. She was like a pansy altogether, in her straight purple linen gown.
The girl was looking at Jack with an expression midway between annoyance and surprise.
“I beg your pardon,” said the young man. “But did you cry out just now?”
“I? No, indeed.”
Her surprise was so genuine that Jack felt confused. Her voice was very soft and pretty with a slight foreign inflection.
“But you must have heard it,” he exclaimed. “It came from somewhere just near here.”
She stared at him.
“I heard nothing at all.”
Jack in his turn stared at her. It was perfectly incredible that she should not have heard that agonised appeal for help. And yet her calmness was so evident that he could not believe she was lying to him.
“It came from somewhere close at hand,” he insisted.
She was looking at him suspiciously.
“What did it say?” she asked. “Murder — help! Murder!”
“Murder — help, murder,” repeated the girl. “Somebody has played a trick on you, Monsieur. Who could be murdered here?”
Jack looked about him with a confused idea of discovering a dead body upon a garden path. Yet he was still perfectly sure that the cry he had heard was real and not a product of his imagination. He looked up at the cottage windows. Everything seemed perfectly still and peaceful.
“Do you want to search our house?” asked the girl drily.
She was so clearly sceptical that Jack’s confusion grew deeper than ever. He turned away.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It must have come from higher up in the woods.”
He raised his cap and retreated. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw that the girl had calmly resumed her weeding.
For some time he hunted through the woods, but could find no sign of anything unusual having occurred. Yet he was as positive as ever that he had really heard the cry. In the end, he gave up the search and hurried home to bolt his breakfast and catch the 8:46 by the usual narrow margin of a second or so. His conscience pricked him a little as he sat in the train. Ought he not to have immediately reported what he had heard to the police? That he had not done so was solely owing to the pansy girl’s incredulity. She had clearly suspected him of romancing — possibly the police might do the same.
By now he was not nearly so positive as he had been — the natural result of trying to recapture a lost sensation. Was it some bird’s cry in the distance that he had twisted into the semblance of a woman’s voice?
But he rejected the suggestion angrily. It was a woman’s voice, and he had heard it. He remembered looking at his watch just before the cry had come. As nearly as possible it must have been five and twenty minutes past seven when he had heard the call. That might be a fact useful to the police if... if anything should be discovered.
Going home that evening, he scanned the evening papers anxiously to see if there were any mention of a crime having been committed. But there was nothing, and he hardly knew whether to be relieved or disappointed.
The following morning was wet — so wet that even the most ardent golfer might have his enthusiasm damped. Jack rose at the last possible moment, gulped his breakfast, ran for the train and again eagerly scanned the papers. Still no mention of any gruesome discovery having been made. The evening papers told the same tale.
“Queer,” said Jack to himself, “but there it is. Probably some blinking little boys having a game together up in the woods.”
He was out early the following morning. As he passed the cottage, he noted out of the tail of his eye that the girl was out in the garden again weeding. Evidently a habit of hers. He did a particularly good approach shot, and hoped that she had noticed it. As he teed up on the next tee, he glanced at his watch.
“Just five and twenty past seven,” he murmured. “I wonder—”
The words were frozen on his lips. From behind him came the same cry which had so startled him before. A woman’s voice, in dire distress.
Jack raced back. The pansy girl was standing by the gate. She looked startled, and Jack ran up to her triumphantly, crying out:
“You heard it this time, anyway.”
Her eyes were wide with some emotion he could not fathom but he noticed that she shrank back from him as he approached, and even glanced back at the house, as though she meditated running to it for shelter.
She shook her head, staring at him.
“I heard nothing at all,” she said wonderingly.
It was as though she had struck him a blow between the eyes. Her sincerity was so evident that he could not disbelieve her. Yet he couldn’t have imagined it — he couldn’t... he couldn’t—
He heard her voice speaking gently — almost with sympathy.
“You have had the shell-shock, yes?”
In a flash he understood her look of fear, her glance back at the house. She thought that he suffered from delusions...
And then, like a douche of cold water, came the horrible thought, was she right?
Jack endeavoured to reason matters out with himself. “If I hear the damned thing again at twenty-five minutes past seven,” he said to himself, “it’s clear that I’ve got hold of a hallucination of some sort. But I won’t hear it.”
He was nervous all that day, and went to bed early determined to put the matter to the proof the following morning.
As was perhaps natural in such a case, he remained awake half the night, and finally overslept himself. It was twenty past seven by the time he was clear of the hotel and running towards the links. He realised that he would not be able to get to the fatal spot by twenty-five past, but surely, if the voice was a hallucination pure and simple, he would hear it anywhere. He ran on, his eyes fixed on the hands of his watch.
Twenty-five past. From far off came the echo of a woman’s voice, calling. The words could not be distinguished, but he was convinced that it was the same cry he had heard before, and that it came from the same spot, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the cottage.
Strangely enough, that fact reassured him. It might, after all, be a hoax. Unlikely as it seemed, the girl herself might be playing a trick on him. He set his shoulders resolutely, and took out a club from his golf bag. He would play the few holes up to the cottage.
The girl was in the garden as usual. She looked up this morning, and when he raised his cap to her, said good-morning rather shyly... She looked, he thought, lovelier than ever.
“Nice day, isn’t it?” Jack called out cheerily, cursing the unavoidable banality of the observation.
“Yes, indeed, it is lovely.”
“Good for the garden, I expect?”
The girl smiled a little, disclosing a fascinating dimple.
“Alas, no! For my flowers the rain is needed. See, they are all dried up.”
Jack accepted the invitation of her gesture, and came up to the low hedge looking over it into the garden.
“They seem all right,” he remarked awkwardly, conscious as he spoke of the girl’s slightly pitying glance running over him.
“The sun is good, is it not?” she said. “For the flowers one can always water them. But the sun gives strength and repairs the health. Monsieur is much better to-day, I can see.”
Her encouraging tone annoyed Jack intensely.
“Curse it all,” he said to himself. “I believe she’s trying to cure me by suggestion.”
“I’m perfectly well,” he said irritably.
“That is good then,” returned the girl quickly and soothingly.
Jack had the irritating feeling that she didn’t believe him.
He played a few more holes and hurried back to breakfast. As he ate it, he was conscious, not for the first time, of the close scrutiny of a man who sat at the table next to him. He was a man of middle-age, with a powerful, forceful face. He had a small dark beard and very piercing grey eyes and an ease and assurance of manner which placed him among the higher ranks of the professional classes. His name, Jack knew, was Lavington, and he had heard vague rumours as to his being a well-known medical specialist, but as Jack was not a frequenter of Harley Street, the name had conveyed little or nothing to him.
But this morning he was very conscious of the quiet observation under which he was being kept, and it frightened him a little. Was his secret written plainly in his face for all to see? Did this man, by reason of his professional calling, know that there was something amiss in the hidden grey matter.
Jack shivered at the thought. Was it true? Was he really going mad? Was the whole thing a hallucination, or was it a gigantic hoax?
And suddenly a very simple way of testing the solution occurred to him. He had hitherto been alone on his round. Supposing someone else was with him? Then one out of three things might happen. The voice might be silent. They might both hear it. Or — he only might hear it.
That evening he proceeded to carry his plan into effect. Lavington was the man he wanted with him. They fell into conversation easily enough — the older man might have been waiting for such an opening. It was clear that for some reason or other Jack interested him. The latter was able to come quite easily and naturally to the suggestion that they might play a few holes together before breakfast. The arrangement was made for the following morning.
They started out a little before seven. It was a perfect day, still and cloudless, but not too warm. The doctor was playing well, Jack wretchedly. His whole mind was intent on the forthcoming crisis. He kept glancing surreptitiously at his watch. They reached the seventh tee, between which and the hole the cottage was situated, about twenty past seven.
The girl, as usual, was in the garden as they passed. She did not look up as they passed.
The two balls lay on the green, Jack’s near the hole, and the doctor’s some little distance away.
“I’ve got this for it,” said Lavington. “I must go for it, I suppose.”
He bent down, judging the line he should take. Jack stood rigid, his eyes glued on his watch. It was exactly twenty-five minutes past seven.
The ball ran swiftly along the grass, stopped on the edge of the hole, hesitated and dropped in.
“Good putt,” said Jack. His voice sounded hoarse and unlike himself... He shoved his wrist watch farther up his arm with a sigh of overwhelming relief. Nothing had happened. The spell was broken.
“If you don’t mind waiting a minute,” he said, “I think I’ll have a pipe.”
They paused a while on the eighth tee. Jack filled and lit the pipe with fingers that trembled a little in spite of himself. An enormous weight seemed to have lifted from his mind.
“Lord, what a good day it is,” he remarked, staring at the prospect ahead of him with great contentment. “Go on, Lavington, your swipe.”
And then it came. Just at the very instant the doctor was hitting. A woman’s voice, high and agonised.
“Murder— Help! Murder!”
The pipe fell from Jack’s nerveless hand, as he spun round in the direction of the sound, and then, remembering, gazed breathlessly at his companion.
Lavington was looking down the course, shading his eyes.
“A bit short — just cleared the bunker, though, I think.”
He had heard nothing.
The world seemed to spin round with Jack. He took a step or two, lurching heavily. When he recovered himself, he was lying on the short turf, and Lavington was bending over him.
“There, take it easy now, take it easy.”
“What did I do?”
“You fainted, young man — or gave a very good try at it.”
“My God!” said Jack, and groaned.
“What’s the trouble? Something on your mind?”
“I’ll tell you in one minute, but I’d like to ask you something first.”
The doctor lit his own pipe and settled himself on the bank.
“Ask anything you like,” he said comfortably.
“You’ve been watching me for the last day or two. Why?”
Lavington’s eyes twinkled a little.
“That’s rather an awkward question. A cat can look at a king, you know.”
“Don’t put me off. I’m in earnest. Why was it? I’ve a vital reason for asking.”
Lavington’s face grew serious.
“I’ll answer you quite honestly. I recognised in you all the signs of a man labouring under a sense of acute strain, and it intrigued me what that strain could be.”
“I can tell you that easily enough,” said Jack bitterly. “I’m going mad.”
He stopped dramatically, but his statement not seeming to arouse the interest and consternation he expected, he repeated it.
“I tell you I’m going mad.”
“Very curious,” murmured Lavington. “Very curious indeed.”
Jack felt indignant.
“I suppose that’s all it does seem to you. Doctors are so damned callous.”
“Come, come, my young friend, you’re talking at random. To begin with, although I have taken my degree, I do not practise medicine. Strictly speaking, I am not a doctor — not a doctor of the body, that is.”
Jack looked at him keenly.
“Of the mind?”
“Yes, in a sense, but more truly I call myself a doctor of the soul.”
“Oh!”
“I perceive the disparagement in your tone, and yet we must use some word to denote the active principle which can be separated and exist independently of its flesh home, the body. You’ve got to come to terms with the soul, you know, young man, it isn’t just a religious term invented by clergymen. But we’ll call it the mind, or the subconscious self, or any term that suits you better. You took offence at my tone just now, but I can assure you that it really did strike me as very curious that such a well-balanced and perfectly normal young man as yourself should suffer from the delusion that he was going out of his mind.”
“I’m out of my mind all right.”
“You will forgive me for saying so, but I don’t believe it.”
“I suffer from delusions.”
“After dinner?”
“No, in the morning.”
“Can’t be done,” said the doctor, relighting his pipe which had gone out.
“I tell you I hear things that no one else hears.”
“One man in a thousand can see the moons of Jupiter. Because the other nine hundred and ninety-nine can’t see them there’s no reason to doubt that the moons of Jupiter exist, and certainly no reason for calling the thousandth man a lunatic.”
“The moons of Jupiter are a proved scientific fact.”
“It’s quite possible that the delusions of to-day may be the proved scientific facts of to-morrow.”
In spite of himself, Lavington’s matter-of-fact manner was having its effect upon Jack. He felt immeasurably soothed and cheered. The doctor looked at him attentively for a minute or two and then nodded.
“That’s better,” he said. “The trouble with you young fellows is that you’re so cocksure nothing can exist outside your own philosophy that you get the wind up when something occurs to jolt you out of that opinion. Let’s hear your grounds for believing that you’re going mad, and we’ll decide whether or not to lock you up afterwards.”
As faithfully as he could, Jack narrated the whole series of occurrences.
“But what I can’t understand,” he ended, “is why this morning it should come at half-past seven — five minutes late.”
Lavington thought for a minute or two. Then—
“What’s the time now by your watch?” he asked.
“Quarter to eight,” replied Jack, consulting it.
“That’s simple enough, then. Mine says twenty to eight. Your watch is five minutes fast. That’s a very interesting and important point — to me. In fact, it’s invaluable.”
“In what way?”
Jack was beginning to get interested.
“Well, the obvious explanation is that on the first morning you
“I’m sure I didn’t.”
“Not consciously, of course, but the subconscious plays us some funny tricks, you know. But anyway, that explanation won’t wash. If it was a case of suggestion, you would have heard the cry at twenty-five minutes past seven by your watch, and you could never have heard it when the time, as you thought, was past.”
“Well, then?”
“Well — it’s obvious, isn’t it? This cry for help occupies a perfectly definite place and time in space. The place is the vicinity of that cottage and the time is twenty-five minutes past seven.”
“Yes, but why should
“Ah! that we can’t tell at present. It’s a curious thing that many of the best mediums are made out of confirmed sceptics. It isn’t the people who are interested in occult phenomena who get the manifestations. Some people see and hear things that other people don’t — we don’t know why, and nine times out of ten they don’t want to see or hear them, and are convinced that they are suffering from delusions — just as you were. It’s like electricity. Some substances are good conductors, others are nonconductors, and for a long time we didn’t know why, and had to be content just to accept the fact. Nowadays we do know why. Some day, no doubt, we shall know why you hear this thing and I and the girl don’t. Everything’s governed by natural law, you know — there’s no such thing really as the supernatural. Finding out the laws that govern so-called psychic phenomena is going to be a tough job — but every little helps.”
“But what am I going to
Lavington chuckled.
“Practical, I see. Well, my young friend, you are going to have a good breakfast and get off to the city without worrying your head further about things you don’t understand. I, on the other hand, am going to poke about, and see what I can find out about that cottage back there. That’s where the mystery centres, I dare swear.”
Jack rose to his feet.
“Yes?”
Jack flushed awkwardly.
“I’m sure the girl’s all right,” he muttered.
Lavington looked amused.
“You didn’t tell me she was a pretty girl! Well, cheer up, I think the mystery started before her time.”
Jack arrived home that evening in a perfect fever of curiosity. He was by now pinning his faith blindly to Lavington. The doctor had accepted the matter so naturally, had been so matter-of-fact and unperturbed by it, that Jack was impressed.
He found his new friend waiting for him in the hall when he came down for dinner, and the doctor suggested that they should dine together at the same table.
“Any news, sir?” asked Jack anxiously.
“I’ve collected the life history of Heather Cottage all right. It was tenanted first by an old gardener and his wife. The old man died, and the old woman went to her daughter. Then a builder got hold of it, and modernised it with great success, selling it to a city gentleman who used it for weekends. About a year ago, he sold it to some people called Turner — Mr. and Mrs. Turner. They seem to have been rather a curious couple from all I can make out. He was an Englishman, his wife was popularly supposed to be partly Russian, and was a very handsome exotic-looking woman. They lived very quietly, seeing no one, and hardly ever going outside the cottage garden. The local rumour goes that they were afraid of something — but I don’t think we ought to rely on that.
“And then suddenly one day they departed, cleared out one morning early, and never came back. The agents here got a letter from Mr. Turner, written from London, instructing him to sell up the place as quickly as possible. The furniture was sold off, and the house itself was sold to a Mr. Mauleverer. He only actually lived in it a fortnight — then he advertised it to be let furnished. The people who have it now are a consumptive French professor and his daughter. They have been there just ten days.”
Jack digested this in silence.
“I don’t see that that gets us any forrader,” he said at last. “Do you?”
“I rather want to know more about the Turners,” said Lavington quietly.
“They left very early in the morning, you remember. As far as I can make out, nobody actually saw them go. Mr. Turner has been seen since — but I can’t find anybody who has seen Mrs. Turner.”
Jack paled.
“It can’t be — you don’t mean—”
“Don’t excite yourself, young man. The influence of anyone at the point of death — and especially of violent death — upon their surroundings is very strong. Those surroundings might conceivably absorb that influence, transmitting it in turn to a suitably tuned receiver — in this case yourself.”
“But why me?” murmured Jack rebelliously. “Why not someone who could do some good?”
“You are regarding the force as intelligent and purposeful, instead of blind and mechanical. I do not believe myself in earth-bound spirits, haunting a spot for one particular purpose. But the thing I have seen, again and again, until I can hardly believe it to be pure coincidence, is a kind of blind groping towards justice — a subterranean moving of blind forces, always working obscurely towards that end...”
He shook himself — as though casting off some obsession that pre-occupied him, and turned to Jack with a ready smile.
“Let us banish the subject — for tonight at all events,” he suggested.
Jack agreed readily enough, but did not find it so easy to banish the subject from his own mind.
During the week-end, he made vigorous inquiries of his own, but succeeded in eliciting little more than the doctor had done. He had definitely given up playing golf before breakfast.
The next link in the chain came from an unexpected quarter. On getting back one day, Jack was informed that a young lady was waiting to see him. To his intense surprise it proved to be the girl of the garden — the pansy girl, as he always called her in his own mind. She was nervous and confused.
“You will forgive me, Monsieur, for coming to seek you like this? But there is something I want to tell you I—”
She looked round uncertainly.
“Come in here,” said Jack promptly, leading the way into the now deserted “Ladies’ Drawing-room” of the hotel, a dreary apartment, with a good deal of red plush about it. “Now, sit down, Miss, Miss—”
“Marchaud, Monsieur. Felise Marchaud.”
“Sit down, Mademoiselle Marchaud and tell me all about it.”
Felise sat down obediently. She was dressed in dark green to-day, and the beauty and charm of the proud little face was more evident than ever. Jack’s heart beat faster as he sat down beside her.
“It is like this,” explained Felise. “We have been here but a short time, and from the beginning we hear the house — our so sweet little house — is haunted. No servant will stay in it. That does not matter so much — me, I can do the
“Angel,” thought the infatuated young man. “She’s wonderful.”
But he maintained an outward semblance of businesslike attention.
“This talk of ghosts, I think it is all folly — that is until four days ago. Monsieur, four nights running, I have had the same dream. A lady stands there — she is beautiful, tall and very fair. In her hands she holds a blue china jar. She is distressed — very distressed, and continually she holds out the jar to me, as though imploring me to do something with it — but alas! she cannot speak, and I... I do not know what she asks. That was the dream for the first two nights — but the night before last, there was more of it. She and the blue jar faded away, and suddenly I heard her voice crying out — I know it is her voice, you comprehend — and, oh! Monsieur, the words she says are those you spoke to me that morning. ‘Murder— Help! Murder!’ I awoke in terror. I say to myself — it is a nightmare, the words you heard are an accident. But last night the dream came again. Monsieur, what is it? You too have heard. What shall we do?”
Felise’s face was terrified. Her small hands clasped themselves together, and she gazed appealingly at Jack. The latter affected unconcern.
“That’s all right, Mademoiselle Marchaud. You mustn’t worry. I tell you what I’d like you to do, if you don’t mind, repeat the whole story to a friend of mine who is staying here, a Dr. Lavington.”
Felise signified her willingness to adopt this course, and Jack went off in search of Lavington. He returned with him a few minutes later.
Lavington gave the girl a keen scrutiny as he acknowledged Jack’s hurried introductions. With a few reassuring words, he soon put the girl at her ease, and he, in his turn, listened attentively to her story.
“Very curious,” he said, when she had finished. “You have told your father of this?”
Felise shook her head.
“I have not liked to worry him. He is very ill still” — her eyes filled with tears — “I keep from him anything that might excite or agitate him.”
“I understand,” said Lavington kindly. “And I am glad you came to us, Mademoiselle Marchaud. Hartington here, as you know, had an experience something similar to yours. I think I may say that we are well on the track now. There is nothing else that you can think of?”
Felise gave a quick movement.
“Of course! How stupid I am. It is the point of the whole story. Look, Monsieur, at what I found at the back of one of the cupboards where it had slipped behind the shelf.”
She held out to them a dirty piece of drawing-paper on which was executed roughly in water colours a sketch of a woman. It was a mere daub, but the likeness was probably good enough. It represented a tall fair woman, with something subtly un-English in her face. She was standing by a table on which was standing a blue china jar.
“I only found it this morning,” explained Felise. “Monsieur le docteur, that is the face of the woman I saw in my dream, and that is the identical blue jar.”
“Extraordinary,” commented Lavington. “The key to the mystery is evidently the blue jar. It looks like a Chinese jar to me, probably an old one. It seems to have a curious raised pattern over it.”
“It is Chinese,” declared Jack. “I have seen an exactly similar one in my uncle’s collection — he is a great collector of Chinese porcelain, you know, and I remember noticing a jar just like this a short time ago.”
“The Chinese jar,” mused Lavington. He remained a minute or two lost in thought, then raised his head suddenly, a curious light shining in his eyes. “Hartington, how long has your uncle had that jar?”
“How long? I really don’t know.”
“Think. Did he buy it lately?”
“I don’t know — yes, I believe he did, now I come to think of it. I’m not very interested in porcelain myself, but I remember his showing me his ‘recent acquisitions,’ and this was one of them.”
“Less than two months ago? The Turners left Heather Cottage just two months ago.”
“Yes, I believe it was.”
“Your uncle attends country sales sometimes?”
“He’s always tooling round to sales.”
“Then there is no inherent improbability in our assuming that he bought this particular piece of porcelain at the sale of the Turners’ things. A curious coincidence — or perhaps what I call the groping of blind justice. Hartington, you must find out from your uncle at once where he bought this jar.”
Jack’s face fell.
“I’m afraid that’s impossible. Uncle George is away on the Continent. I don’t even know where to write to him.”
“How long will he be away?”
“Three weeks to a month at least.” There was a silence. Felise sat looking anxiously from one man to the other.
“Is there nothing that we can do?” she asked timidly.
“Yes, there is one thing,” said Lavington, in a tone of suppressed excitement. “It is unusual, perhaps, but I believe that it will succeed. Hartington, you must get hold of that jar. Bring it down here and, if Mademoiselle permits, we will spend a night in Heather Cottage, taking the blue jar with us.”
Jack felt his skin creep uncomfortably.
“What do you think will happen?” he asked uneasily.
“I have not the slightest idea — but I honestly believe that the mystery will be solved and the ghost laid. Quite possibly there may be a false bottom to the jar and something is concealed inside it. If no phenomena occurs, we must use our own ingenuity.”
Felise clasped her hands.
“It is a wonderful idea,” she exclaimed.
Her eyes were alight with enthusiasm. Jack did not feel nearly so enthusiastic — in fact, he was inwardly funking it badly, but nothing would have induced him to admit the fact before Felise. The doctor acted as though his suggestion were the most natural one in the world.
“When can you get the jar?” asked Felise, turning to Jack.
“To-morrow,” said the latter, unwillingly.
He had to go through with it now, but the memory of that frenzied cry for help that had haunted him each morning was something to be ruthlessly thrust down and not thought about more than could be helped.
He went to his uncle’s house the following evening, and took away the jar in question. He was more than ever convinced when he saw it again that it was the identical one pictured in the water colour sketch, but carefully as he looked it over he could see no sign that it contained a secret receptacle of any kind.
It was eleven o’clock when he and Lavington arrived at Heather Cottage. Felise was on the look-out for them, and opened the door softly before they had time to knock.
“Come in,” she whispered. “My father is asleep upstairs, and we must not wake him. I have made coffee for you in here.”
She led the way into a small cosy sitting-room. A spirit lamp stood in the grate, and bending over it, she brewed them both some fragrant coffee.
Then Jack unfastened the Chinese jar from its many wrappings. Felise gasped as her eyes fell on it.
“But yes, but yes,” she cried eagerly. “That is it — I would know it anywhere.”
Meanwhile Lavington was making his own preparations. He removed all the ornaments from a small table and set it in the middle of the room. Round it he placed three chairs. Then, taking the blue jar from Jack, he placed it in the centre of the table.
“Now,” he said, “we are ready. Turn off the lights, and let us sit round the table in the darkness.”
The others obeyed him. Lavington’s voice spoke again out of the darkness.
“Think of nothing — or of everything. Do not force the mind. It is possible that one of us has mediumistic powers. If so, that person will go into a trance. Remember, there is nothing to fear. Cast out fear from your hearts, and drift... drift—”
His voice died away and there was silence. Minute by minute, the silence seemed to grow more pregnant with possibilities. It was all very well for Lavington to say “Cast out fear.” It was not fear that Jack felt — it was panic. And he was almost certain that Felise felt the same way. Suddenly he heard her voice, low and terrified.
“Something terrible is going to happen. I feel it.”
“Cast out fear,” said Lavington. “Do not fight against the influence.”
The darkness seemed to get darker and the silence more acute. And nearer and nearer came that indefinable sense of menace.
Jack felt himself choking — stifling — the evil thing was very near...
And then the moment of conflict passed. He was drifting — drifting down stream — his lids closed — peace — darkness...
Jack stirred slightly. His head was heavy — heavy as lead. Where was he?
Sunshine... birds... He lay staring up at the sky.
Then it all came back to him. The sitting. The little room. Felise and the doctor. What had happened?
He sat up, his head throbbing unpleasantly, and looked round him. He was lying in a little copse not far from the cottage. No one else was near him. He took out his watch. To his amazement it registered half-past twelve.
Jack struggled to his feet, and ran as fast as he could in the direction of the cottage. They must have been alarmed by his failure to come out of the trance, and carried him out into the open air.
Arrived at the cottage, he knocked loudly on the door. But there was no answer, and no signs of life about it. They must have gone off to get help. Or else — Jack felt an indefinable fear invade him. What had happened last night?
He made his way back to the hotel as quickly as possible. He was about to make some inquiries at the office, when he was diverted by a colossal punch in the ribs which nearly knocked him off his feet. Turning in some indignation, he beheld a white-haired old gentleman wheezing with mirth.
“Didn’t expect me, my boy. Didn’t expect me, hey?” said this individual.
“Why, Uncle George, I thought you were miles away — in Italy somewhere.”
“Ah! but I wasn’t. Landed at Dover last night. Thought I’d motor up to town and stop here to see you on the way. And what did I find. Out all night, hey? Nice goings on—”
“Uncle George,” Jack checked him firmly. “I’ve got the most extraordinary story to tell you. I dare say you won’t believe it.”
He narrated the whole story. “And God knows what’s become of them,” he ended.
His uncle seemed on the verge of apoplexy.
“The jar,” he managed to ejaculate at last. “The blue jar! What’s become of that?”
Jack stared at him in non-comprehension, but submerged in the torrent of words that followed he began to understand.
It came with a rush: “Ming — unique — gem of my collection — worth ten thousand pounds at least — offer from Hoggenheimer, the American millionaire — only one of its kind in the world. — Confound it, sir, what have you done with my BLUE JAR?”
Jack rushed to the office. He must find Lavington. The young lady in the office eyed him coldly.
“Dr. Lavington left late last night — by motor. He left a note for you.”
Jack tore it open. It was short and to the point.
“My dear young friend:
“Is the day of the supernatural over? Not quite — especially when tricked out in new scientific language. Kindest regards from Felise, invalid father, and myself. We have twelve hours start, which ought to be ample.
“Yours ever,
Erle Stanley Gardner
The Case of the Irate Witness
The early-morning shadows cast by the mountains still lay heavily on the town’s main street as the big siren on the roof of the Jebson Commercial Company began to scream shrilly.
The danger of fire was always present, and at the sound, men at breakfast rose and pushed their chairs back from the table. Men who were shaving barely paused to wipe lather from their faces; men who had been sleeping grabbed the first available garments. All of them ran to places where they could look for the first telltale wisps of smoke.
There was no smoke.
The big siren was still screaming urgently as the men formed into streaming lines, like ants whose hill has been attacked. The lines all moved toward the Jebson Commercial Company.
There the men were told that the doors of the big vault had been found wide open. A jagged hole had been cut into one door with an acetylene torch.
The men looked at one another silently. This was the fifteenth of the month. The big, twice-a-month payroll, which had been brought up from the Ivanhoe National Bank the day before, had been the prize.
Frank Bernal, manager of the company’s mine, the man who ruled Jebson City with an iron hand, arrived and took charge. The responsibility was his, and what he found was alarming.
Tom Munson, the night watchman, was lying on the floor in a back room, snoring in drunken slumber. The burglar alarm, which had been installed within the last six months, had been bypassed by means of an electrical device. This device was so ingenious that it was apparent that, if the work were that of a gang, at least one of the burglars was an expert electrician.
Ralph Nesbitt, the company accountant, was significantly silent. When Frank Bernal had been appointed manager a year earlier, Nesbitt had pointed out that the big vault was obsolete.
Bernal, determined to prove himself in his new job, had avoided the expense of tearing out the old vault and installing a new one by investing in an up-to-date burglar alarm and putting a special night watchman on duty.
Now the safe had been looted of $100,000 and Frank Bernal had to make a report to the main office in Chicago, with the disquieting knowledge that Ralph Nesbitt’s memo stating that the antiquated vault was a pushover was at this moment reposing in the company files...
Some distance out of Jebson City, Perry Mason, the famous trial lawyer, was driving fast along a mountain road. He had planned a weekend fishing trip for a long time, but a jury which had waited until midnight before reaching its verdict had delayed Mason’s departure and it was now 8:30 in the morning.
His fishing clothes, rod, wading boots, and creel were all in the trunk. He was wearing the suit in which he had stepped from the courtroom, and having driven all night he was eager for the cool, piny mountains.
A blazing red light, shining directly at him as he rounded a turn in the canyon road, dazzled his road-weary eyes. A sign,
Mason stopped his car.
The man with the badge, deputy sheriff, said, “We’d better take a look at your driving license. There’s been a big robbery at Jebson City.”
“That so?” Mason said. “I went through Jebson City an hour ago and everything seemed quiet.”
“Where you been since then?”
“I stopped at a little service station and restaurant for breakfast.”
“Let’s take a look at your driving license.”
Mason handed it to him.
The man started to return it, then looked at it again. “Say,” he said, “you’re Perry Mason, the big criminal lawyer!”
“Not a criminal lawyer,” Mason said patiently, “a trial lawyer. I sometimes defend men who are accused of crime.”
“What are you doing up in this country?”
“Going fishing.”
The deputy looked at him suspiciously. “Why aren’t you wearing your fishing clothes?”
“Because,” Mason said, and smiled, “I’m not fishing.”
“You said you were going fishing.”
“I also intend,” Mason said, “to go to bed tonight. According to you, I should be wearing my pajamas.”
The deputy frowned. The traffic officer laughed and waved Mason on.
The deputy nodded at the departing car. “Looks like a live clue to me,” he said, “but I can’t find it in that conversation.”
“There isn’t any,” the traffic officer said.
The deputy remained dubious, and later on, when a news-hungry reporter from the local paper asked the deputy if he knew of anything that would make a good story, the deputy said that he did.
And that was why Della Street, Perry Mason’s confidential secretary, was surprised to read stories in the metropolitan papers stating that Perry Mason, the noted trial lawyer, was rumored to have been retained to represent the person or persons who had looted the vault of the Jebson Commercial Company. All this had been arranged, it would seem, before Mason’s “client” had even been apprehended.
When Perry Mason called his office by long-distance the next afternoon, Della said, “I thought you were going to the mountains for a vacation.”
“That’s right. Why?”
“The papers claim you’re representing whoever robbed the Jebson Commercial Company.”
“First I’ve heard of it,” Mason said. “I went through Jebson City before they discovered the robbery, stopped for breakfast a little farther on, and then got caught in a roadblock. In the eyes of some officious deputy, that seems to have made me an accessory after the fact.”
“Well,” Della Street said, “they’ve caught a man by the name of Harvey L. Corbin, and apparently have quite a case against him. They’re hinting at mysterious evidence which won’t be disclosed until the time of trial.”
“Was he the one who committed the crime?” Mason asked.
“The police think so. He has a criminal record. When his employers at Jebson City found out about it, they told him to leave town. That was the evening before the robbery.”
“Just like that, eh?” Mason asked.
“Well, you see, Jebson City is a one-industry town, and the company owns all the houses. They’re leased to the employees. I understand Corbin’s wife and daughter were told they could stay on until Corbin got located in a new place, but Corbin was told to leave town at once. You aren’t interested, are you?”
“Not in the least,” Mason said, “except that when I drive back I’ll be going through Jebson City, and I’ll probably stop to pick up the local gossip.”
“Don’t do it,” she warned. “This man Corbin has all the earmarks of being an underdog, and you know how you feel about underdogs.”
A quality in her voice made Perry suspicious. “You haven’t been approached, have you, Della?”
“Well,” she said, “in a way. Mrs. Corbin read in the papers that you were going to represent her husband, and she was overjoyed. It seems that she thinks her husband’s implication in this is a raw deal. She hadn’t known anything about his criminal record, but she loves him and is going to stand by him.”
“You’ve talked with her?” Mason asked.
“Several times. I tried to break it to her gently. I told her it was probably nothing but a newspaper story. You see, Chief, they have Corbin dead to rights. They took some money from his wife as evidence. It was part of the loot.”
“And she has nothing?”
“Nothing. Corbin left her forty dollars, and they took it all as evidence.”
“I’ll drive all night,” he said. “Tell her I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“I was afraid of that,” Della Street said. “Why did you have to call up? Why couldn’t you have stayed up there fishing? Why did you have to get your name in the papers?”
Mason laughed and hung up.
Paul Drake, of the Drake Detective Agency, came in and sat in the big chair in Mason’s office and said, “You have a bear by the tail, Perry.”
“What’s the matter, Paul? Didn’t your detective work in Jebson City pan out?”
“It panned out all right, but the stuff in the pan isn’t what you want, Perry,” Drake explained.
“How come?”
“Your client’s guilty.”
“Go on,” Mason said.
“The money he gave his wife was some of what was stolen from the vault.”
“How do they know it was the stolen money?” Mason asked.
Drake pulled a notebook from his pocket. “Here’s the whole picture. The plant manager runs Jebson City. There isn’t any private property. The Jebson company controls everything.”
“Not a single small business?”
Drake shook his head. “Not unless you want to consider garbage collecting as small business. An old coot by the name of George Addey lives five miles down the canyon; he has a hog ranch and collects the garbage. He’s supposed to have the first nickel he ever earned. Buries his money in cans. There’s no bank nearer than Ivanhoe City.”
“What about the burglary? The men who did it must have moved in acetylene tanks and—”
“They took them right out of the company store,” Drake said. And then he went on: “Munson, the Watchman, likes to take a pull out of a flask of whiskey along about midnight. He says it keeps him awake. Of course, he’s not supposed to do it, and no one was supposed to know about the whiskey, but someone did know about it. They doped the whiskey with a barbiturate. The watchman took his usual swig, went to sleep, and stayed asleep.”
“What’s the evidence against Corbin?” Mason asked.
“Corbin had a previous burglary record. It’s a policy of the company not to hire anyone with a criminal record. Corbin lied about his past and got a job. Frank Bernal, the manager, found out about it, sent for Corbin about 8 o’clock the night the burglary took place, and ordered him out of town. Bernal agreed to let Corbin’s wife and child stay on in the house until Corbin could get located in another city. Corbin pulled out in the morning, and gave his wife this money. It was part of the money from the burglary.”
“How do they know?” Mason asked.
“Now there’s something I don’t know,” Drake said. “This fellow Bernal is pretty smart, and the story is that he can prove Corbin’s money was from the vault.”
Drake paused, then continued: “The nearest bank is at Ivanhoe City, and the mine pays off in cash twice a month. Ralph Nesbitt, the cashier, wanted to install a new vault. Bernal refused to okay the expense. So the company has ordered both Bernal and Nesbitt back to its main office at Chicago to report. The rumor is that they may fire Bernal as manager and give Nesbitt the job. A couple of the directors don’t like Bernal, and this thing has given them their chance. They dug out a report Nesbitt had made showing the vault was a pushover. Bernal didn’t act on that report.” He sighed and then asked, “When’s the trial, Perry?”
“The preliminary hearing is set for Friday morning. I’ll see then what they’ve got against Corbin.”
“They’re laying for you up there,” Paul Drake warned. “Better watch out, Perry. That district attorney has something up his sleeve, some sort of surprise that’s going to knock you for a loop.”
In spite of his long experience as a prosecutor, Vernon Flasher, the district attorney of Ivanhoe County, showed a certain nervousness at being called upon to oppose Perry Mason. There was, however, a secretive assurance underneath that nervousness.
Judge Haswell, realizing that the eyes of the community were upon him, adhered to legal technicalities to the point of being pompous both in rulings and mannerisms.
But what irritated Perry Mason was in the attitude of the spectators. He sensed that they did not regard him as an attorney trying to safeguard the interests of a client, but as a legal magician with a cloven hoof. The looting of the vault had shocked the community, and there was a tight-lipped determination that no legal tricks were going to do Mason any good
Vernon Flasher didn’t try to save his surprise evidence for a whirlwind finish. He used it right at the start of the case.
Frank Bernal, called as a witness, described the location of the vault, identified photographs, and then leaned back as the district attorney said abruptly, “You had reason to believe this vault was obsolete?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It had been pointed out to you by one of your fellow employees, Mr. Ralph Nesbitt?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what did you do about it?”
“Arc you,” Mason asked in some surprise, “trying to cross-examine your own witness?”
“Just let him answer the question, and you’ll see,” Flasher replied grimly.
“Go right ahead and answer,” Mason said to the witness.
Bernal assumed a more comfortable position. “I did three things,” he said, “to safeguard the payrolls and to avoid the expense of tearing out the old vault and installing a new vault in its place.”
“What were those three things?”
“I employed a special night watchman; I installed the best burglar alarm money could buy; and I made arrangements with the Ivanhoe National Bank, where we have our payrolls made up, to list the number of each twenty-dollar bill which was a part of each payroll.”
Mason suddenly sat up straight.
Flasher gave him a glance of gloating triumph. “Do you wish the court to understand, Mr. Bernal,” he said smugly, “that you have the numbers of the bills in the payroll which was made up for delivery on the fifteenth?”
“Yes, sir. Not
“And who recorded those numbers?” the prosecutor asked.
“The bank.”
“And do you have that list of numbers with you?”
“I do. Yes, sir.” Bernal produced a list. “I felt,” he said, glancing coldly at Nesbitt, “that these precautions would be cheaper than a new vault.”
“I move the list be introduced in evidence,” Flasher said.
“Just a moment,” Mason objected. “I have a couple of questions. You say this list is not in your handwriting, Mr. Bernal?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Whose handwriting is it, do you know?” Mason asked.
“The assistant cashier of the Ivanhoe National Bank.”
“Oh, all right,” Flasher said. “We’ll do it the hard way, if we have to. Stand down, Mr. Bernal, and I’ll call the assistant cashier.”
Harry Reedy, assistant cashier of the Ivanhoe Bank, had the mechanical assurance of an adding machine. He identified the list of numbers as being in his handwriting. He stated that he had listed the numbers of the twenty-dollar bills and put that list in an envelope which had been sealed and sent up with the money for the payroll.
“Cross-examine,” Flasher said.
Mason studied the list. “These numbers are all in your handwriting?” he asked Reedy.
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you yourself compare the numbers you wrote down with the numbers on the twenty-dollar bills?”
“No, sir. I didn’t personally do that. Two assistants did that. One checked the numbers as they were read off, one as I wrote them down.”
“The payrolls are for approximately a hundred thousand dollars, twice each month?”
“That’s right. And ever since Mr. Bernal took charge, we have taken this means to identify payrolls. No attempt is made to list the bills in numerical order. The serial numbers are simply read off and written down. Unless a robbery occurs, there is no need to do anything further. In the event of a robbery, we can reclassify the numbers and list the bills in numerical order.”
“These numbers are in your handwriting — every number?”
“Yes, sir. More than that, you will notice that at the bottom of each page I have signed my initials.”
“That’s all,” Mason said.
“I now offer once more to introduce this list in evidence,” Flasher said.
“So ordered,” Judge Haswell ruled.
“My next witness is Charles J. Oswald, the sheriff,” the district attorney announced.
The sheriff, a long, lanky man with a quiet manner, took the stand. “You’re acquainted with Harvey L. Corbin, the defendant in this case?” the district attorney asked.
“I am.”
“Are you acquainted with his wife?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, on the morning of the fifteenth of this month, the morning of the robbery at the Jebson Commercial Company, did you have any conversation with Mrs. Corbin?”
“I did. Yes, sir.”
“Did you ask her about her husband’s activities the night before?”
“Just a moment,” Mason said. “I object to this on the ground that any conversation the sheriff had with Mrs. Corbin is not admissible against the defendant, Corbin; furthermore, that in this state a wife cannot testify against her husband. Therefore, any statement she might make would be an indirect violation of that rule. Furthermore, I object on the ground that the question calls for hearsay.”
Judge Haswell looked ponderously thoughtful, then said, “It seems to me Mr. Mason is correct.”
“I’ll put it this way, Mr. Sheriff,” the district attorney said. “Did you, on the morning of the fifteenth, take any money from Mrs. Corbin?”
“Objected to as incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial,” Mason said.
“Your Honor,” Flasher said irritably, “that’s the very gist of our case. We propose to show that two of the stolen twenty-dollar bills were in the possession of Mrs. Corbin.”
Mason said, “Unless the prosecution can prove the bills were given Mrs. Corbin by her husband, the evidence is inadmissible.”
“That’s just the point,” Flasher said. “Those bills
“How do you know?” Mason asked. “She told the sheriff so.”
“That’s hearsay,” Mason snapped.
Judge Haswell fidgeted on the bench. “It seems to me we’re getting into a peculiar situation here. You can’t call the wife as a witness, and I don’t think her statement to the sheriff is admissible.”
“Well,” Flasher said desperately, “in this state, Your Honor, we have a community-property law. Mrs. Corbin had this money. Since she is the wife of the defendant, it was community property. Therefore, it’s partially his property.”
“Well now, there,” Judge Haswell said, “I think I can agree with you. You introduce the twenty-dollar bills. I’ll overrule the objection made by the defense.”
“Produce the twenty-dollar bills, Sheriff,” Flasher said triumphantly.
The bills were produced and received in evidence.
“Cross-examine,” Flasher said curtly.
“No questions of this witness,” Mason said, “but I have a few questions to ask Mr. Bernal on cross-examination. You took him off the stand to lay the foundation for introducing the bank list, and I didn’t have an opportunity to cross-examine him.”
“I beg your pardon,” Flasher said. “Resume the stand, Mr. Bernal.”
His tone, now that he had the twenty-dollar bills safely introduced in evidence had a gloating note to it.
Mason said, “This list which has been introduced in evidence is on the stationery of the Ivanhoe National Bank?”
“That’s right. Yes, sir.”
“It consists of several pages, and at the end there is the signature of the assistant cashier?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And each page is initialed by the assistant cashier?”
“Yes, sir.”
“This was the scheme which you thought of in order to safeguard the company against a payroll robbery?”
“Not to safeguard the company against a payroll robbery, Mr. Mason, but to assist us in recovering the money in the event there was a holdup.”
“This was your plan to answer Mr. Nesbitt’s objections that the vault was an outmoded model?”
“A part of my plan, yes. I may say that Mr. Nesbitt’s objections had never been voiced until I took office. I felt he was trying to embarrass me by making my administration show less net returns than expected.” Bernal tightened his lips and added, “Mr. Nesbitt had, I believe, been expecting to be appointed manager. He was disappointed. I believe he still expects to be manager.”
In the spectators’ section of the courtroom, Ralph Nesbitt glared at Bernal.
“You had a conversation with the defendant on the night of the fourteenth?” Mason asked Bernal.
“I did. Yes, sir.”
“You told him that for reasons which you deemed sufficient you were discharging him immediately and wanted him to leave the premises at once?”
“Yes, sir. I did.”
“And you paid him his wages in cash?”
“Mr. Nesbitt paid him in my presence, with money he took from the petty-cash drawer of the vault.”
“Now, as part of the wages due him wasn’t Corbin given these two twenty-dollar bills which have been introduced in evidence?”
Bernal shook his head. “I had thought of that,” he said, “but it would have been impossible. Those bills weren’t available to us at that time. The payroll is received from the bank in a sealed package. Those two twenty-dollar bills were in that package.”
“And the list of the numbers of the twenty-dollar bills?”
“That’s in a sealed envelope. The money is placed in the vault. I lock the list of numbers in my desk.”
“Are you prepared to swear that neither you nor Mr. Nesbitt had access to these two twenty-dollar bills on the night of the fourteenth?”
“That is correct.”
“That’s all,” Mason said. “No further cross-examination.”
“I now call Ralph Nesbitt to the stand,” District Attorney Flasher said. “I want to fix the time of these events definitely, Your Honor.”
“Very well,” Judge Haswell said. “Mr. Nesbitt, come forward.”
Ralph Nesbitt, after answering the usual preliminary questions, sat down in the witness chair.
“Were you present at a conversation which took place between the defendant, Harvey L. Corbin, and Frank Bernal on the fourteenth of this month?” the district attorney asked.
“I was. Yes, sir.”
“What time did that conversation take place?”
“About 8 o’clock in the evening.”
“And, without going into the details of that conversation, I will ask you if the general effect of it was that the defendant was discharged and ordered to leave the company’s property?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And he was paid the money that was due him?”
“In cash. Yes, sir. I took the cash from the safe myself.”
“Where was the payroll then?”
“In the sealed package in a compartment in the safe. As cashier, I had the only key to that compartment. Earlier in the afternoon I had gone to Ivanhoe City and received the sealed package of money and the envelope containing the list of numbers. I personally locked the package of money in the vault.”
“And the list of numbers.”
“Mr. Bernal locked that in his desk.”
“Cross-examine,” Flasher said.
“No questions,” Mason said.
“That’s our case, Your Honor,” Flasher observed.
“May we have a few minutes indulgence?” Mason asked Judge Haswell.
“Very well. Make it brief,” the judge agreed.
Mason turned to Paul Drake and Della Street. “Well, there you are,” Drake said. “You’re confronted with the proof, Perry.”
“Are you going to put the defendant on the stand?” Della Street asked.
Mason shook his head. “It would be suicidal. He has a record of a prior criminal conviction. Also, it’s a rule of law that if one asks about any part of a conversation on direct examination, the other side can bring out all the conversation. That conversation, when Corbin was discharged, was to the effect that he had lied about his past record. And I guess there’s no question that he did.”
“And he’s lying now,” Drake said. “This is one case where you’re licked. I think you’d better cop a plea, and see what kind of a deal you can make with Flasher.”
“Probably not any,” Mason said. “Flasher wants to have the reputation of having given me a licking — wait a minute, Paul. I have an idea.”
Mason turned abruptly, walked away to where he could stand by himself, his back to the crowded courtroom.
“Are you ready?” the judge asked.
Mason turned. “I am quite ready, Your Honor. I have one witness whom I wish to put on the stand. I wish a subpoena
“Who is the witness, and what are the documents?” the judge asked.
Mason walked quickly over to Paul Drake. “What’s the name of that character who has the garbage-collecting business,” he said softly, “the one who has the first nickel he’d ever made?”
“George Addey.”
The lawyer turned to the judge.
“The witness that I want is George Addey, and the documents that I want him to bring to court with him are all the twenty-dollar bills that he has received during the past sixty days.”
“Your Honor,” Flasher protested, “this is an outrage. This is making a travesty out of justice. It is exposing the court to ridicule.”
Mason said, “I give Your Honor my assurance that I think this witness is material, and that the documents are material. I will make an affidavit to that effect if necessary. As attorney for the defendant, may I point out that if the court refuses to grant this subpoena, it will be denying the defendant due process of law.”
“I’m going to issue the subpoena,” Judge Haswell said, testily, “and for your own good, Mr. Mason, the testimony had better be relevant.”
George Addey, unshaven and bristling with indignation, held up his right hand to be sworn. He glared at Perry Mason.
“Mr. Addey,” Mason said, “you have the contract to collect garbage from Jebson City?”
“I do.”
“How long have you been collecting garbage there?”
“For over five years, and I want to tell you—”
Judge Haswell banged his gavel. “The witness will answer questions and not interpolate any comments.”
“I’ll interpolate anything I dang please,” Addey said.
“That’ll do,” the judge said. “Do you wish to be jailed for contempt of court, Mr. Addey?”
“I don’t want to go to jail, but I—”
“Then you’ll remember the respect that is due the court,” the judge said. “Now you sit there and answer questions. This is a court of law. You’re in this court as a citizen, and I’m here as a judge, and I propose to see that the respect due to the court is enforced.” There was a moment’s silence while the judge glared angrily at the witness. “All right, go ahead, Mr. Mason,” Judge Haswell said.
Mason said, “During the thirty days prior to the fifteenth of this month, did you deposit any money in any banking institution?”
“I did not.”
“Do you have with you all the twenty-dollar bills that you received during the last sixty days?”
“I have, and I think making me bring them here is just like inviting some crook to come and rob me and—”
Judge Haswell banged with his gavel. “Any more comments of that sort from the witness and there will be a sentence imposed for contempt of court. Now you get out those twenty-dollar bills, Mr. Addey, and put them right up here on the clerk’s desk.”
Addey, mumbling under his breath, slammed a roll of twenty-dollar bills down on the desk in front of the clerk.
“Now,” Mason said, “I’m going to need a little clerical assistance. I would like to have my secretary, Miss Street, and the clerk help me check through the numbers on these bills. I will select a few at random.”
Mason picked up three of the twenty-dollar bills and said, “I am going to ask my assistants to check the list of numbers introduced in evidence. In my hand is a twenty-dollar bill that has the number L 07083274 A. Is that bill on the list? The next bill that I pick up is number L 07579190 A. Are any of those bills on the list?”
The courtroom was silent. Suddenly, Della Street said, “Yes, here’s one that’s on the list — bill number L 07579190 A. It’s on the list, on page eight.”
“What?” the prosecutor shouted.
“Exactly,” Mason said, smiling. “So, if a case is to be made against a person merely because he has possession of the money that was stolen on the fifteenth of this month, then your office should prefer charges against this witness, George Addey, Mr. District Attorney.”
Addey jumped from the witness stand and shook his fist in Mason’s face. “You’re a cockeyed liar!” he screamed. “There ain’t a one of those bills but what I didn’t have it before the fifteenth. The company cashier changes my money into twenties, because I like big bills. I bury ’em in cans, and I put the date on the side of the can.”
“Here’s the list,” Mason said. “Check it for yourself.”
A tense silence gripped the courtroom as the judge and the spectators waited.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand this, Mr. Mason,” Judge Haswell said, after a moment.
“I think it’s quite simple,” Mason said. “And I now suggest the court take a recess for an hour and check these other bills against this list. I think the district attorney may be surprised.”
And Mason sat down and proceeded to put papers in his brief case.
Della Street, Paul Drake, and Perry Mason were sitting in the lobby of the Ivanhoe Hotel.
“When are you going to tell us?” Della Street asked fiercely. “Or do we tear you limb from limb? How could the garbage man have?—”
“Wait a minute,” Mason said. “I think we’re about to get results. Here comes the esteemed district attorney, Vernon Flasher, and he’s accompanied by Judge Haswell.”
The two strode over to Mason’s group and bowed with cold formality.
Mason got up.
Judge Haswell began in his best courtroom voice. “A most deplorable situation has occurred. It seems that Mr. Frank Bernal has... well—”
“Been detained somewhere,” Vernon Flasher said.
“Disappeared,” Judge Haswell said. “He’s gone.”
“I expected as much,” Mason said calmly.
“Now will you kindly tell me just what sort of pressure you brought to bear on Mr. Bernal to—?”
“Just a moment, Judge,” Mason said. “The only pressure I brought to bear on him was to cross-examine him.”
“Did you know that there had been a mistake made in the dates on those lists?”
“There was no mistake. When you find Bernal, I’m sure you will discover there was a deliberate falsification. He was short in his accounts, and he knew he was about to be demoted. He had a desperate need for a hundred thousand dollars in ready cash. He had evidently been planning this burglary, or, rather, this embezzlement, for some time. He learned that Corbin had a criminal record. He arranged to have these lists furnished by the bank. He installed a burglar alarm, and, naturally, knew how to circumvent it. He employed a watchman he knew was addicted to drink. He only needed to stage his coup at the right time. He fired Corbin and paid him off with bills that had been recorded by the bank on page eight of the list of bills
“Then he removed page eight from the list of bills contained in the payroll
“Then he drugged the watchman’s whiskey, took an acetylene torch, burned through the vault doors, and took all the money.”
“May I ask how you knew all this?” Judge Haswell demanded.
“Certainly,” Mason said. “My client told me he received those bills from Nesbitt, who took them from the petty-cash drawer in the safe. He also told the sheriff that. I happened to be the only one who believed him. It sometimes pays, Your Honor, to have faith in a man, even if he has made a previous mistake. Assuming my client was innocent, I knew either Bernal or Nesbitt must be guilty. I then realized that only Bernal had custody of the
“As an employee, Bernal had been paid on the first of the month. He looked at the numbers on the twenty-dollar bills in his pay envelope and found that they had been listed on page eight of the payroll for the first.
“Bernal only needed to abstract all twenty-dollar bills from the petty-cash drawer, substitute twenty-dollar bills from his own pay envelope, call in Corbin, and fire him.
“His trap was set.
“I let him know I knew what had been done by bringing Addey into court and proving my point. Then I asked for a recess. That was so Bernal would have a chance to skip out. You see, flight may be received as evidence of guilt. It was a professional courtesy to the district attorney. It will help him when Bernal is arrested.”
John Dickson Carr
Strictly Diplomatic
Now that he was nearly at the end of his rest-cure, Dermot had never felt so well in his life.
He leaned back in the wicker chair, flexing his muscles. He breathed deeply. Below him the flattish lands between France and Belgium sloped to the river: a slow Flemish river dark green with the reflection of its banks. Half a mile away he could see the houses of the town, with the great glass roof of the spa smoky in autumn sunshine. Behind him — at the end of the arbor — was the back of the hotel, now denuded of its awnings.
They had taken down the awnings; they were closing up many of the bedrooms. Only a few guests now pottered about the terrace. A crisp tang had come into the air: work, and the thunder of London again, now loomed up as a pleasant prospect. Once, hardly a month ago, it had been a nightmare of buses charging straight at you, like houses loose; a place where nerves snapped, and you started to run.
Even with that noise in his ears, he had not wanted to go away.
“But I can’t take a holiday now!” he had told the doctor.
“Holiday?” snorted the doctor. “Do you call it a holiday? Your trouble is plain overwork, a complaint we don’t often get nowadays. Why don’t you relax? Not hard up, are you?”
“No, it isn’t that.”
“You’re too conscientious,” the doctor had said, rather enviously.
“No. It’s not a virtue,” said Dermot, as honestly as he could. “I can’t help it. Every second I’m away from work, I’m worrying about it until I get back. I’m built like that. I can’t relax. I can’t even get drunk.”
The doctor grunted.
“Ever try falling in love?”
“Not since I was nineteen. And, anyway, it’s not something you can take down like a box of pills and dose yourself with. Or at least I can’t.”
“Well,” said the doctor, surveying him. “I know a rising barrister who’s going to come a cropper unless you get out of this. Now I warn you. You get off to the Continent this week. There’s a spa I know — Ile St. Cathérine. The waters won’t do you any harm; and the golf will do you good.”
Here the doctor, who was an old friend of Andrew Dermot’s, grinned raffishly.
“What you want,” he added, “is adventure. In the grand manner. I hear there’s a fenced-off area near Ile St. Cathérine, bayonets and all. The casino is probably full of beautiful slant-eyed spies with jade ear-rings. Forget you’re turning into such a moss-back. Pick up one of the beautiful slant-eyed spies, and go on the razzle-dazzle with her. It’ll do you all the good in the world.”
Alone on the lawn behind his hotel, Dermot laughed aloud. Old Foggy had been right, in a way. But he had gone one less or one better than that. He had fallen in love.
Anyone less like a slant-eyed spy than Betty Weatherill would be difficult to imagine. In face even the tension which tautened nerves in the rest of Europe did not exist in lie St. Catherine. It was a fat, friendly, rather stodgy sort of place. Looking round the spa — where fountains fell, and people got very excited on the weighing-machines — Dermot wondered at old Foggy’s notion of bayonets. He felt soothed, and free. Bicycle-bells tingled in the streets under once-gilded houses. At night, when you ordered thin wine by the glass, a band played beneath lights in the trees. A mild flutter in roulette at the casino caused excitement; and one Belgian burgher was caught bringing his supper in a paper packet.
Dermot first saw Betty Weatherill on the morning after his arrival.
It was at breakfast. There were not many guests at the hotel: a fat Dutchman eating cheese for breakfast, half a dozen English people, a foreign envoy, a subdued French couple. And, of course, the sturdy girl who sat alone at the sun-steeped table by the windows.
Dermot’s nerves were still raw from the journey. When he first saw her he felt a twinge of what he thought was envy at her sheer health. It flashed out at him. He had an impression of a friendly mouth, a sun-tanned complexion; of eagerness, and even naÏvete. It disturbed him like the clattering coffee-cups. He kept looking round at her, and looking round again, though he did not understand why.
He played execrable golf that day.
He saw her again next morning. They ran into each other buying stamps at the cash-desk. They both smiled slightly, and Dermot felt embarrassed. He had been trying to remember whether the color of her hair was fair or chestnut; it was, he saw, a light brown. That afternoon his golf was even worse. It was absurd that he, thirty-five years old, should seem as stale and crumpled as an old poster against a wall. He was a nerve-ridden fool. He fell to thinking of her again.
On the following day they went so far as to say good morning. On the third day he took his nerve in both hands, and plumped down at the breakfast-table next to hers.
“I
The words gave him a start. Not a ladies’ man, this move of his had struck him as distinctly daring. Yet he felt the communication between them, an uncomfortable awareness of each other’s presence. He looked up, to find her eyes fixed on him.
“Do what?” he asked quickly.
“Manage Continental breakfasts,” she answered, as though they were old friends discussing a problem of mutual importance. “I know I shouldn’t, but every day I order bacon and eggs.”
After that their acquaintance was off at a gallop.
Her name was Betty Weatherill. She was twenty-eight, and came from Brighton. She had been a schoolmistress (incongruous idea); but she had come into a small inheritance and, as she confessed, was blueing part of it. He had never met a girl who seemed so absolutely right: in what she said, in what she did, in her response to any given remark.
That afternoon they went to the fair and ate hot dogs and rode round and round on the wooden horses to the panting music of an electric piano. That night they dressed for the casino; and Andrew Dermot, shuffling roulette-counters, felt no end of an experienced gay-dog. And the knowledge came to him, with a kind of shock, “Good lord, I’m alive.”
Betty was popular at the hotel. The proprietor, Monsieur Gant, knew her quite well and was fond of her. Even the fat Dr. Vanderver, of the Sylvanian Embassy, gave her a hoarse chuckle of appreciation whenever she went by. Not that she had no difficulties. There was, it appeared, some trouble about her passport. She had several times to go to the prefecture of police — from which she emerged flushed, and as near angry as it was possible for her to be.
As for Dermot, he was in love and he knew it. That was why he exulted when he sat by the teatable on the lawn behind the hotel, at half-past five on that lazy, veiled autumn afternoon, waiting for Betty to join him. The lawn was dotted with little tables, but he was alone. The remains of tea and sandwiches were piled on a tray. Dermot was replete; no outside alarms troubled Ile St. Cathérine; no black emblems threw shadows.
This was just before he received the greatest shock of his life.
“Hello!” said Betty. “Sorry I’m late.” She came hurrying out of the arbor, with the breathless smile she always wore when she was excited. She glanced quickly round the lawn, deserted except for a waitress slapping at crumbs. Dermot got up.
“You’re not late,” he told her. “But you swore to me you were going to have tea in town, so I went ahead.” He looked at her suspiciously. “Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Have tea.”
“Yes, of course.”
For no reason that he could analyze, a chill of uneasiness came to Dermot. His nightmares were cured. But it was as though an edge of the nightmare returned. Why? Only because the atmosphere suddenly seemed wrong, because the expression of her eyes was wrong. He drew out a chair for her.
“Sure you wouldn’t like another cup? Or a sandwich?”
“Well—”
Now he thought he must be a fool reading huge meanings into trifles. But the impression persisted. He gave an order to the waitress, who removed the tea-tray and disappeared into the arbor. Betty had taken a cigarette out of her handbag; but, when he tried to light it for her, the cigarette slipped out of her fingers, rolled on the table.
“Oh, damn,” she whispered. Now he was looking into her eyes from a short distance away; they seemed the eyes of a slightly older, wiser woman. They were hazel eyes, the whites very clear against a sun-tanned face. The heavy lids blinked.
“I want to know what’s wrong,” Dermot said.
“There’s nothing wrong,” said Betty, shaking her head. “Only — I wanted to talk to you. I’m afraid I’ve got to leave here.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
Dermot sat up. It seemed to him that there was a stranger sitting across from him, and that all his plans were toppling.
“If you must, you must,” he said. “But I’ve got to go myself at the beginning of the week. I thought we were going to leave together.”
“I can’t. Very shortly” — she spoke with some intensity — “I hope I can explain to you what a beast I am. All I can tell you now is that it’s not altogether safe for me to be here.”
“Safe? In this place?”
Betty was not listening. She was wearing white, as he always remembered afterwards, with a white handbag. Again she had opened this handbag, and was going through it in something of a hurry.
“Derry.” She spoke sharply. “You haven’t seen my compact, have you? The white ivory one with the red band?” She looked round; “It didn’t fall out when I opened my handbag before?”
“No, I don’t think so. I didn’t see it.”
“I must have left it back in my room. Please excuse me. I’ll be back in half a tick.”
And she got to her feet, snapped shut the catch of the handbag.
Dermot also got up. It would not be fair to say that he exploded. He was a mild-mannered man who arrived at all emotions with difficulty. But in the past few minutes he felt that a door had opened on a world he could not understand.
“Look here, Betty,” he said. “I don’t know what’s got into you; but I insist on knowing. If there’s anything wrong, just tell me and we’ll put it right. If—”
“I’ll be back in a moment,” she assured him.
And, disregarding the hand he put out, she hurried back through the arbor.
Dermot sat down heavily, and stared after her. A veiled sun had turned the sky to grey, making dingy the cloths of the little tables on the lawn. The cloths fluttered under a faint breeze.
He contemplated the arbor, which was a very special sort of arbor. Monsieur Gant, the proprietor of the Hotel Suchard, had imported it from Italy and was very proud of it. Stretching back s full twenty yards to the rear terrace of the hotel, it made a sort of tunnel composed of tough interlaced vines which in summer were heavy with purplish-pink blossom. A line of tables ran beside it, with lights from above. Inside the arbor, at night, Chinese lanterns hung from the roof. It was one of the romantic features of the hotel. But at the moment — cramped, unlighted, hooded with thick foliage — it was a tunnel which suggested unpleasant images.
“A good place for a murder,” Betty had once laughed.
Andrew Dermot could hear his watch ticking. He wished she would come back.
He lit a cigarette and smoked it to a stump; but she had not returned. He got to his feet, stamping on the chilling grass. For the first time he glanced across the tea-table at Betty’s empty chair. It was a wicker chair. And, lying on the seat in plain view, was a white ivory compact with a red band.
So that was it! She had been too much upset to notice the compact, of course. She was probably still searching her room for it.
He picked up the compact and went after her.
Inside the arbor it was almost dark, but chinks and glimmers of light flickered through interlaced vines and showed him an arched tunnel some ten feet high, with a floor of packed sand. There was a stagnant smell of dying blossom; the Judas tree, did they call it? Obscurely, he was relieved to find the gnat-stung arbor empty. He hurried along its length to the arch of light at the end, and emerged on a red-tiled terrace where there were more tables under the windows.
“Good eefening, Mr. Dermot,” said an affable voice.
Dermot checked his rush.
He almost stumbled over Dr. Henrik Vanderver of the Sylvanian Embassy, who was sitting near the arbor, smoking a cigar with relish, and looking at him through thick-lensed spectacles.
“Ha, ha, ha!” said Dr. Vanderver, laughing uproariously and for no apparent reason; as was his custom.
“Good evening, Dr. Vanderver,” said Dermot. His uneasiness had gone; he felt again a nerve-ridden fool. “Sorry to barge into you like that. Is Miss Weatherill down yet?”
Dr. Vanderver was proud of his English.
“Down?” he repeated, drawing down his eyebrows as though to illustrate.
“From her room, I mean.”
“De young lady,” said Vanderver, “iss with you. I have seen her go through dere” — he pointed to the arbor — “fifteen, twenty minutes ago.”
“Yes, I know. But she came back here to get a compact.”
Vanderver was now anxious about his English.
“Please?” he prompted, cupping his hand behind his ear.
“I said she came back here to get a compact. You know. This kind of thing.” Dermot held it up. “She walked back through the arbor—”
“My friend,” said Vanderver with sudden passion, “I do not know if I have understood you. Nobody has come back through this arbor while I am sitting here.”
“But that’s impossible.”
“Please?”
Dermot thought he saw the explanation. “You mean you haven’t been sitting here all the time?”
“My friend,” said Vanderver, taking out a watch and shaking it, “I am sitting here one hour more... more! — where I sit always and smoke my cigar before I dress. Yes?”
“Well, Doctor?”
“I have seen the young lady go through, yes. But I have not seen her come back. I haf not seen nobody. In all dat time the only liffing soul I see on this terrace is the maid which gather up your tea-tray and bring it back here.”
The terrace, always dark in the shadow of the arbor, was growing more dusky.
“Dr. Vanderver, listen to me.” Dermot spoke coldly and sharply; he found Vanderver’s thick-lensed spectacles turning on him with hypnotic effect. “That is not what I mean. I remember the maid going back through the arbor with the tray. But Miss Weatherill was with me then. I mean later. L-a-t-e-r, several minutes later. You saw Miss Weatherill come out through here about ten minutes ago, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“But you must have! I saw her go into the arbor on my side, and I never took my eyes off the entrance. She isn’t in the arbor now; see for yourself. She must have come out here.”
“So!” said Vanderver, tapping the table with magnificent dignity. “Now I tell
By nine o’clock that night, terror had come to the Hotel Suchard.
Until then Monsieur Gant, the manager, had refrained from summoning the police. At first Monsieur Gant appeared to think that everybody was joking. He only began to gesticulate, and to run from room to room, when it became clear that Betty Weatherill was not to be found either in the hotel or in the grounds. If the testimony were to be believed — and neither Dermot nor Vanderver would retract one word — then Betty Weatherill had simply walked into the arbor, and there had vanished like a puff of smoke.
It was certain that she had not left the arbor by (say) getting out through the vines. The vines grew up from the ground in a matted tangle like a wire cage, so trained round their posts from floor to arch that it would be impossible to penetrate them without cutting. And nowhere were they disturbed in any way. There was not — as one romantic under-porter suggested — an underground passage out of the tunnel. It was equally certain that Betty could not have been hiding in the arbor when Dermot walked through it. There was no place there to hide in.
This became only too clear when the Chinese lanterns were lighted in the greenish tunnel, and Monsieur Gant stood on a stepladder to shake frantically at the vine-walls — with half the domestic staff twittering behind him. This was a family matter, in which everybody took part.
Alys Marchand, in fact, was the backstairs-heroine of the occasion. Alys was the plump waitress who had been sent to fetch fresh tea and sandwiches not fifteen minutes before Betty’s disappearance, but who had not brought them back because of a disagreement with the cook as to what hours constituted feev-o’clock-tay.
Apart from Dermot, Alys had been the last person to see Betty Weatherill in the flesh. Alys had passed unscathed through the arbor. To Monsieur Gant she described, with a wealth of gesture, how she had taken the order for tea and sandwiches from Monsieur Dermot. She showed how she had picked up the big tray, whisking a cloth over its debris like a conjuror. A pink-cheeked brunette, very neat in her black frock and apron, she illustrated how she had walked back through the arbor towards the hotel.
Had she seen Dr. Vanderver on this occasion?
She had.
Where was he?
At the little table on the terrace. He was smoking a cigar, and sharpening a big horn-handled knife on a small whetstone block he carried in his pocket.
“That,” interposed Vanderver, in excellent French, “is a damned lie.”
It was very warm in the arbor, under the line of Chinese lanterns. Vanderver stood against the wall. He seemed less bovine when he spoke French. But a small bead of perspiration had appeared on his forehead, up by the large vein near the temple; and the expression of his eyes behind the thick spectacles turned Andrew Dermot cold.
“It is true as I tell you,” shrieked Alys, turning round her dark eyes. “I told my sister Clothilde, and Gina and Odette too, when I went to the kitchen. He thrusts it into his pocket — quick, so! — when he sees me.”
“There are many uses for knives,” said Monsieur Gant, hastily and nervously. “At the same time, perhaps it would be as well to telephone the police. You are an advocate, Monsieur Dermot. You agree?”
Dermot did agree.
He had been keeping tight hold of his nerves. In fact, he found the cold reason of his profession returning to him; and it was he who directed matters. Instead of bringing back the nightmare, this practical situation steadied him. He saw the issue clearly now. It became even more clear when there arrived, amid a squad of plainclothes men, none other than Monsieur Lespinasse, the
After examining the arbor, M. Lespinasse faced them all in the manager’s office. He was a long, lean, melancholy man with hollow cheeks, and the Legion of Honor in his buttonhole. He had hard uncomfortable eyes, which stared down at them.
“You understand,” said Lespinasse, “we appear to have here a miracle. Now I am a realist. I do not believe in miracles.”
“That is good,” said Dermot grimly, in his careful French. “You have perhaps formed a theory?”
“A certainty,” said Lespinasse.
The hard uncomfortable eyes turned on Dermot.
“From our examination,” said Lespinasse, “it is certain that Mlle. Weatherill did not leave the arbor by any secret means. You, monsieur, tell one story.” He looked at Vanderver. “You, monsieur, tell another.” He looked back at Dermot. “It is therefore evident that one of you must be telling a lie.”
Vanderver protested at this.
“I remind you,” Vanderver growled, with a significant look, “that it will be unwise for you to make mistakes. As an acting representative of His Majesty the King of Sylvania, I enjoy immunities. I enjoy privileges—”
“Diplomatic privileges,” said Monseur Lespinasse. “That is no concern of mine. My concern is that you do not break the civil law.”
“I have broken no law!” said Vanderver, purple in the face. “I have told no lie!”
The
“And I tell you in return,” he said sharply, “that either your story or Monsieur Dermot’s must be untrue. Either the young lady never went into the arbor, in which case Monsieur Dermot is telling a falsehood. Or else she did go in, and for some reason you choose to deny that you saw her come out. In which case—” Again he held up his hand. “It is only fair to warn you, Dr. Vanderver, that Miss Weatherill told me you might try to kill her.”
They could hear a clock ticking in the overcrowded room.
“Kill?” said Vanderver.
“That is what I said.”
“But I did not know her!”
“Evidently she knew you,” answered M. Lespinasse. His sallow face was alive with bitterness; he fingered the rosette in his buttonhole. Then he took a step forward. “Miss Weatherill several times came to me at the prefecture of police. She told me of your — murderous activities in the past. I did not choose to believe her. It was too much of a responsibility. Responsibility! Now this happens, and I must take the responsibility for it at least. One more question, if you please. What have you to say to the maid’s story of the horn-handled knife?”
Vanderver’s voice was hoarse. “I never owned such a knife. I never saw one. I call you a son of—”
“It will not be necessary to finish,” said the
“Our search of the arbor,” continued M. Lespinasse, “was perhaps more thorough than that of Monsieur Gant. This was found buried in the sand floor only a few feet away from where monsieur was sitting.”
There were more than damp stains of sand on the bright, wafer-thin blade in the newspaper; there were others. Monsieur Lespinasse pointed to them.
“Human blood,” he said.
At eleven o’clock Andrew Dermot was able to get out of the room.
They told him afterwards that he had made an admirable witness; that his replies had been calm, curt, and to the point; and that he had even given sound advice on details of legal procedure, contrasting those of England with those of the present country.
He did not remember this. He knew only that he must get out into the air and stop himself from thinking of Betty.
He stood on the front terrace of the hotel, as far removed as possible from the arbor in whose floor the knife had been buried. Half a mile away the lights of the principal street in the town, the Promenade des Francais, twinkled with deathly pallor. A cool wind swept the terrace.
They took Vanderver down the front steps and bundled him into a car. There was a chain round Vanderver’s wrists; his legs shook so that they had to push him up into the car. The car roared away, with a puff of smoke from the exhaust — carbon monoxide, which meant death — and only the
Andrew Dermot put his hands to his temples, pressing hard.
Well, that was that.
He sat down on the terrace. The little round tables had red tops, and the color did not please him, but he remained. He ordered brandy, which he could not taste. The brandy was brought to him by the same underporter who had suggested an underground passage in the arbor, and who, agog, seemed to want to entertain him with speculations about motives for murder. Dermot chased him away.
But if Betty had to go — “go” was hardly the word for that — where was the sense in it? Why? Why? Vanderver was presumably not a homicidal maniac. Besides, all Dermot’s legal instincts were bewildered by so clumsy a crime. If Vanderver were guilty, why had he from the first persisted in that unnecessary lie of saying Betty had never come out of the arbor? Why hadn’t he simply faded away, never professing to have seen anything at all? Why thrust himself at that entrance as though determined to ensure suspicion for himself?
What Dermot had not permitted himself to wonder was where Betty herself might be.
But suppose Vanderver had been telling the truth?
Nonsense! Vanderver could not be telling the truth. People do not vanish like soap-bubbles out of guarded tunnels.
Presently they would be turning out the lights here on this windy, deserted terrace. The Hotel Suchard was ready, in any case, to close its doors for the winter; it would close its doors very early tonight. Behind him, in lighted windows, glowed the lounge, the smoking-room, the dining-room where he had first seen Betty. The head porter, his footsteps rapping on hardwood, darkened first the dining-room and then the lounge. Dermot would have to go upstairs to his room and try to sleep.
Getting to his feet, he walked through the thick-carpeted hall. But he could not help it. He must have one more look at the arbor.
It was veritable tunnel now: a black shape inside which, for twenty yards, Chinese lanterns glowed against the roof. The sand was torn where the knife had been dug out. Near that patch, two shovels had been propped against the wall in readiness for deeper excavations next morning. It was when he noted those preparations, and realized what they meant, that Dermot’s mind turned black; he had reached his lowest depth.
He was so obsessed by it that he did not, at first, hear footfalls on the tiled terrace. He turned round. Two persons had come out to join him — but they came by different windows, and they stopped short and stared at each other as much as they stared at him.
One of these persons was M. Lespinasse, the
The other was Betty Weatherill.
“And now, mademoiselle,” roared Lespinasse, “perhaps you will be good enough to explain the meaning of this ridiculous and indefensible trick?”
M. Lespinasse, his cheek-bones even more formidable, was carrying a briefcase and a valise. He let both fall.
“I had to do it,” said Betty, addressing Dermot. “I
She was not smiling at him. Dermot felt that presently, in the sheer relief of nerves, they would both be shouting with laughter. At the moment he only knew that she was there, and that he could touch her.
“One moment,” said Lespinasse, coldly interrupting what was going on. “You do well, Monsieur Dermot, to demand an explanation—”
“But I don’t. So long as she’s—”
“—of this affair.” The
Betty whirled round. “You know how?”
“I know, mademoiselle,” snapped the other, “that you planned this foolishness and carried it out with the assistance of Alys Marchand, who deserves a formidable stroke of the boot behind for her part in the affair. When I found Alys ten minutes ago capering round her room waving a packet of thousand-franc notes, her behavior seemed to call for some explanation.” He looked grim. “Alys was very shortly persuaded to give one.”
Then he turned to Dermot.
“Let me indicate what happened, and you shall confirm it! Miss Weatherill asked you to meet her here, even specifying the table you were to occupy, and said she would arrive after tea?”
“Yes,” said Dermot.
“At half-past five she came through the arbor — first making certain that Dr. Vanderver was on the terrace in the place he always occupied, every day, to smoke a cigar at that hour?”
“I... yes.”
“Miss Weatherill was easily persuaded to have a fresh cup of tea?”
“Well, I asked her to.”
“The waitress, Alys, was then pottering round for no apparent reason among otherwise deserted tables?”
“She was.”
“You gave the order to Alys,” said Monsieur Lespinasse grimly. “She picked up your tray — a big tray — whisking over it a large cloth to cover the dishes? Just as we later saw her do?”
“I admit it.”
“Alys then walked away from you through the arbor. As she did so,” leered Lespinasse, so intent that he made a face, “Miss Weatherill distracted your attention by getting a light for her cigarette. And kept your attention fixed on herself by dropping the cigarette, and pretending an agitation she did not feel.”
Dermot gave a quick look at Betty. Whatever else this might be, it was not a hoax or a joke. Betty’s face was white.
“Miss Weatherill held your attention,” said Lespinasse, “so that Alys could slip back out of the arbor unnoticed.
“Miss Weatherill was then ready to play the rest of the comedy. ‘Discovering’ the loss of her compact,
Monsieur Lespinasse broke off.
He looked flustered and dishevelled, but in his wicked eye there was a gleam of admiration.
“Monsieur Dermot, I tell you a psychological truth. The one person in this world whose features nobody can remember are those of a waitress. You see her at close range; yet you do not see her. Should you doubt this, the next time in your abominable London you go into a Lyons or an A.B.C., try calling for your bill in a hurry and see if you can identify the particular young lady who served you with a cup of tea. I know it. So did Miss Weatherill.
“She was already wearing a thin black frock under her white one. The tray in the arbor contained the other properties by which a blonde is changed into a brunette, white stockings and shoes change to black, a tanned complexion is heightened to a vivid ruddiness. It was the clumsiest possible disguise because it needed to be no more. Dr. Vanderver never glanced twice at the black-clad figure in cap and apron who walked out of the arbor carrying a tray. He saw no black wig; he saw no false complexion; he saw nothing. In his mind there registered, ‘waitress-has-passed’: no more. Thus Miss Weatherill, inexpertly got up as Alys, passed safely through the dense shadow which the arbor casts on the terrace — carrying before her the tray whose cloth nearly hid the discarded white dress, stockings, and shoes.”
The
“Very well!” he said. “But what I wish to know is:
“You don’t see it even yet?” asked Betty.
“My deepest apologies,” said Lespinasse, “if I am dense. But I do not see it. You cannot have liked cutting yourself so that you might get real blood to put on the knife you buried. But why? How does all this nonsense help us, when Dr. Vanderver has committed no crime?”
“Because he’s Embassy,” answered Betty simply.
“Mademoiselle?”
“He has diplomatic immunity,” said Betty. “The government can’t search him; can’t even touch him. And so, you see, I had to get him arrested by the
She turned to Dermot.
“Derry, I’m sorry,” she went on. “That is, I’m sorry I’m not quite the candid-camera schoolmistress burbling to high heaven that I pretended to be. But I want to be just that. I want to enjoy myself. For the first time in all my life, I’ve enjoyed myself in the last month. What I mean is: I want to be with you, that’s all. So, now that I’m chucking the beastly job—”
Monsieur Lespinasse swore softly. After remaining rigid for a moment, he picked up the brief-case and the valise he had dropped.
Both were in green leather stamped in gold with the royal arms of Sylvania.
“—and of course,” Betty was saying almost wildly, “the fellow’s name wasn’t ‘Dr. Vanderver,’ and he’s no more a neutral than I am. Only he’d got that job on forged credentials, and he was safe. So I had to keep telling the
Monsieur Lespinasse could not break the lock of the brief-case. So he opened a wicked-looking knife of his own to slit the leather; and so he found the secret.
“The English,” he said, “are not bad.” He waved the knife, which glittered against the light from the windows. “Dr. Vanderver will not, I think, leave the police station after all.” He swept Betty Weatherill a profound bow. “The complete plans,” he added, “of the underground fortifications whose fall would break the whole line of defense along this front.”
MacKinlay Kantor
The Hunting of Hemingway
Inspector Bourse looked very tired. He had been awake all night, and he was not as young as he had been in the days when he wore a gray helmet and sported a walrus-mustache.
The two young men and the two blowsy, over-dressed women crowded close around him as he sat crouched in the deep, gaudily upholstered chair.
Bourse asked, “How’s your watch, Ricardi? And yours, Nick Glennan?”
Coonskin cuffs slid back from two husky wrists, and for a moment there was silence.
“Eight-eight, sir.”
“That’s me, Inspector. Eight-eight.”
“You ladies” — he slurred the word — “got your guns in your pocket-books?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then,” said old Inspector Bourse, “I’d like to know what’s keeping you. Go to it. Don’t give ’em a break. They never gave a break in their lives, least of all Hemingway. And remember them vests. Shoot ’em in the kisser.”
Said one of the women, whose name was Cohen, “That reminds me—”
“Shoot him in the pants,” nodded the old chief, “the coat and vest is mine. All right, gentlemen.”
They went out through the kitchen, and a uniformed patrolman opened the rear door. They went down two flights of bleak stairway and crowded into a red and black taxicab which had been waiting at the alley entrance with idling motor. Nobody said anything. The driver seemed very husky for a taxi driver — he should have been able to command an occupation more fitting to one who scaled two hundred and eight pounds and whose shoulders were all steel and wire.
At the Balmoral Street end of the alley, the taxicab turned left, and left a second time at Dorchester Avenue; now it was heading east and parallel to the alley where it had stood waiting a moment before. This block was lined almost solidly with apartment buildings of the less-than-first-class variety, though here and there an old residence stood out solidly, resisting the cheap encroachment of red and yellow brick walls.
“Right here,” said the youngest, handsomest man, and the cab slowed to the curb in front of Number 1441.
The street looked innocent enough. It was then about eight-thirteen of an ordinary week-day morning, and Dorchester Avenue was an ordinary weekday street if ever there was one. A milk truck was parked ahead of the taxicab, and an express delivery van across the street. Protruding from a nearby delivery lane was the rear end of an Eclipse Laundry truck, and its driver was nowhere in sight. Apparently he had taken his little collapsible cart and vanished within the nearest building, where no doubt he was gathering loads of soiled linen or distributing the unsoiled variety. From behind the flimsy, opaque curtains of an opposite apartment, Inspector Bourse looked down at all these things and called them good.
He knew, as well, that behind 1441 Dorchester Avenue a junkman was driving through the main alley and was just about to have an altercation with a city garbage truck which blocked his way. He knew that not all the tenants of 1441 were still asleep or sitting over early breakfasts. No, at least a dozen of those tenants had taken occupancy during the previous day and night — slyly, carefully, silently — and just now they would have firearms ready to hand.
In the stupid four-and-a-half story building which was numbered 1441, a young man sat in the tiny sun parlor of Apartment 327. He would have been exceedingly interested had he known that Inspector Bourse was watching his windows. He was not a nice young man. His face was the color of the paper in which your butcher wraps meat, and his mouth had come down directly from a remote ancestor who served as a torturer for a Louis.
He was twenty-seven years old; he had killed men in Chicago, Dallas, Saginaw, Fort Wayne, Kansas City, Tulsa and in the town where he now sat. Mail trucks and banks had been levied upon, women had been forced to bestow their caresses upon Him, and strangely enough some of them didn’t have to be forced. The man’s name was Chester Hemingway, and he had a personal, cash estate of three hundred and fifteen thousand dollars.
The young man was chewing something. His thin jaws worked knowingly, cruelly, and not with the comfortable carelessness of the habitual gum-chewer. They went crunching up and down, pulverizing some mysterious food between their gleaming white teeth. It was horrible but forever fascinating, to watch Chet Hemingway chew. He was always chewing.
“Chet,” came a voice from the next room.
Without turning his head, Hemingway said, “Yeah?” There was a scowl upon his face whenever he spoke.
“What’s down there?”
“Cab. Couple of broads with two college boys in coon coats.”
“They was making a lot of noise. I just wondered—”
Chet Hemingway told his companion, “Well, I’ll do all the wondering that’s done around here. Sure they’re making a lot of noise. Anybody’s making a lot of noise that’s fried. These folks are fried — especially the two broads.” He leaned an inch closer to the window and his icy green eyes stared down at the gay party advancing toward the court entrance directly below. “And broad is the word,” he muttered to himself. “I like mine thinner than that.”
He thought of Lily.
“Tomsk,” he called, “where’s Lil?”
“Still asleep, I guess.”
“I wish to hell she’d get up and get us some breakfast. Tell her to get up.”
He heard Tomsk mutter to Heras, and Heras went padding down the short hall to knock at a bedroom door. “Hey, Lil. Get up. Chet says for you to get up.” Lil’s fretful voice came back after a moment: “Oh, for God’s sake!” She yawned. “Oh, all right,” she said, “I’m comin’, tell him.”
Hemingway smiled. If one of those monkeys ever made a pass at Lily, he’d shoot his teeth out of his ears. Really, he must be getting fond of Lil — fonder than he’d ever been of anybody. That wouldn’t do, to get fond of her. One of these days he’d have to get rid of her, one way or another. But for the present—
He heard the party of four — coon-skin college boys and fat, painted women, come lumbering up the stairway. His hand went to his belly-gun, then away from it. Drunks. Hell-raising punks with a couple of alley-cats they’d picked up during a night of revelry. Nobody to be alarmed about... Two Railway Express deliverymen came across the street, carrying a heavy box between them. Far down the hallway, a milkman clinked his bottles. There was the mutter of rubber tires close at hand — that laundryman was coming down the hall, knocking on doors as he came.
The radio mourned:
Chet chewed and swallowed, swallowed and chewed. To the next room he called, “Hey, Tomsk. I hear the laundry guy coming. Tell Lil to get ready to go to the door. You scram, you and Heras.” With sullen boredom, he lifted his eyes to the ceiling above his head. How long, how long would they have to stay in this damn building, this damn town? But it was too hot to try for South America, yet. Maybe another month—
At that moment, he had the first notion that it might be a good idea to take Lil along with him when he went. He had meant to ditch her in New Orleans — give her a roll, if he felt she was safe, but ditch her. If he felt she wasn’t safe, he could always put a hole through her and drop her off a bridge with an old steam radiator wired to her neck and legs. That had happened before, too. But not to Lil. That was Jenny. Jenny had never turned up again, either — the quicksands down deep in the river took care of that. It was one rap they’d never have against him.
Actually, Chet Hemingway was falling in love with Lil, and didn’t realize it. It was funny: after all these weeks, and on this day when she was to be killed, that he should fall in love with her.
In the short stairway between the second and third floors, Detective Nick Glennan said to Detective Pete Ricardi, “Okay. Dave will be opposite that little service door in the side hall. Horn will go down there as soon as we pick up the Tom-gun.”
One of the women, whose name was Cohen, gave a shrill and alcoholic laugh. He shone in the annual police vaudeville, did Benny Cohen. The other woman, whose name was Detective Barney Flynn, laughed even louder. But it was a coarse bellow; Flynn didn’t make as good a woman as Cohen.
“You’ll be bringing them out here, armed to the teeth,” muttered Nick Glennan. “You sound like a hippopotamus, Barney. Okay,” he said again, as they reached the third floor. Nick wasn’t a sergeant yet, but he was commanding this squad, and if nothing went wrong he might very soon be a sergeant.
Detective Horn came trundling his laundry cart down the hallway. He bestowed one solemn wink on the inebriated college boys and their blowsy companions; his face was rather pale. Ricardi leaned forward and lifted a Thompson submachine gun from under the pile of soft blue bags in the little cart. His coonskin coat slid from his shoulders; his slim hands moved capably from drum to trigger and back again; Ricardi was the best machine gunner in the department.
The women were doing things to themselves. Their coats and henna wigs vanished — the dresses were brief and sketchy and wouldn’t bother them much, though they lost their rhinestone-buckled shoes in a hurry. They emerged from their disguises looking like nothing on land or sea, but they had .38’s in their hands.
All this conversation, whispered as it was, and all this hasty disrobing and assembling of armature, took about three jerks. Horn ambled ahead, laundry cart and all, and vanished around the turn into the side hall where Sergeant Dave Glennan, Nick’s fat brother, would be waiting inside the door of the opposite kitchen.
It didn’t look like Hemingway and Tomsk and Scummy Heras had much of a chance. Across the street, Inspector Bourse and Chief of Detectives Moore were having a severe case of the jitters. Another minute, another two minutes—
The two Railway Express men dumped their box inside the vestibule on the opposite side of the court, and turning, drew their guns. In the alley at the rear, three detectives on an odoriferous garbage truck and two more detectives on a junkman’s wagon, all became embroiled in a vituperative argument, which made it necessary for them to descend and gather opposite the back stairways.
A milkman came along the hall. He wore white and had an account-book, but his name was Detective Kerry. Silently the four other officers crept down the hall beside him. Kerry jangled bottles in the little wire basket he carried.
They were on each side of the door of apartment 327. Nick Glennan pressed the little pearly button; Ricardi motioned for Kerry to jangle his bottles again, and under cover of the musical tinkle he made ready with his machine gun.
They heard a distant blatting of the kitchen buzzer; that was Horn.
“Milkman,” chanted Detective Kerry.
“Laun-dry...” droned Detective Horn, far around the corner.
“Who’s there?”
“Milk-mannn...”
The door opened a crack. Cohen reached up with his foot and shoved it back; the man inside was Two-faced Tomsk, and if indeed he had possessed two faces he couldn’t have looked any more surprised.
“Stick ’em up, Tomsk,” whispered Glennan. “You haven’t got a chance.”
They heard Sergeant Dave Glennan’s voice from the kitchen door: “Look out, Horn!” and they heard the sharp report of a small automatic. Lil wasn’t taking any chances, either — she must have carried a gun with her when she went to the door.
Two-faced Tomsk threw himself forward in a dive, wrenching out his revolver as he came. Scummy Heras had been lying flat on the high-backed davenport, out of sight, but he came up with a .45 in each hand.
Tomsk had fired once and his bullet went between Kerry’s arm and the side of his body, and then Tomsk continued forward to the floor with two of young Nick Glennan’s Police Positive souvenirs in his head.
Scummy Heras was more of a problem. The stool pigeon hadn’t lied when he talked about bullet-proof vests. Ricardi’s machine gun dusted the davenport in a quick staccato, but all it did was bruise Heras’ ribs. One of the gangster’s guns was empty by that time; he had put a bullet through Barney Flynn’s chest, and a lot more too close for anybody’s comfort.
Through the kitchenette and little hallway, Sergeant Dave Glennan and Laundryman Horn came roaring in a flank attack. “Drop it, Scummy,” they were yelling, but Scummy didn’t mind worth a cent. He was backed against the French windows, and he kept going as long as he could. A fistful of slugs from Dave’s sawed-off mashed him back against the yielding windows — the panes went crackling to bits, and Heras’ body dropped, turning and twisting, to the paved court three stories below.
But where was Mr. Chester Hemingway, who had slain men in Chicago, Kansas City and points east and west? When the screaming roar of exploded cartridges died down, the little radio was still mourning about the lonesome prairies, but Chet Hemingway wasn’t around. Nick Glennan tripped over an upset chair and raced on into the sun parlor; his brother and Horn were diving into bedrooms, and from every stairway came a thunder of feet as the squads converged on apartment 327. But Chet Hemingway was not at home to receive them.
Nick flashed one baffled glance around the sun parlor. There was the radio, and there was Chet’s half-burned cigarette already scorching the carpet, and there was — Nick swore, heartily. He climbed up on the table and stepped from there on top of the radiator. A square hole had been sawed in the ceiling, and through that hole it was evident that Chet Hemingway had gone soaring.
“Two apartments,” Nick sobbed to himself. “Two! And nobody had an idea about it — 327 —
He thrust his hands through the ragged opening and found solid wood still warm and slippery from the clutch of Chet Hemingway’s hands. He hauled himself up into apartment 427. A scraping sound, somewhere — and, sure, he might have had a bullet through his head if Chet Hemingway had lingered to give it to him...
The apartment was furnished, like the one below, but it was evident at a glance that no one lived here. They had rented it for only one purpose — the very purpose which it had served. With a little more warning, the whole gang would have climbed through that square hole and disappeared.
The door into the hallway was wide open — Nick ground his teeth. A ladder stood against the wall at the end of the hall, and a trap in the roof was opened. To think that those devils would have anticipated the whole thing — ladder and all! He paused only to bellow at the men below him, and then swarmed up the ladder.
He came out into a glare of cold sunlight, and a bullet screeched beside the trap door. Nick Glennan growled, and raised his gun. On the next roof but one, a slim figure in white shirt and black pants was vaulting over a three-foot barrier. Nick had one unexploded shell left in his cylinder. He spread his feet wide apart and took careful aim; the gun banged. The distant figure fell forward, recovered its balance, and sprinted ahead with torn shirt fluttering.
“Those
But it was all too late, now. Hemingway went up on one side of a taxicab; he thrust his gun against the driver... The detectives started after him one minute later, but that minute made about a mile’s difference. And in crowded city streets, a mile is a mile. Still chewing and swallowing, Hemingway rode out of the detectives’ lives. Temporarily...
For all the secrecy with which this coup was planned, there had been a leak somewhere in the department. The press had been tipped off, and for once the press had not gummed things up. Men from the
Inspector Bourse and Chief of Detectives Moore fought their way through the crowd and up to apartment 327. With grim satisfaction they contemplated the prone body of Two-faced Tomsk and the shattered window where Scummy Heras had taken his last tumble. But when they looked around, hopefully, for another corpse — and found it — they were not so pleased. Miss Lily Denardo was the other corpse.
“Well,” said the old Inspector. He looked down at the pretty, white face and the ridiculous folds of stained crêpe-de-chine which swathed the slim figure. “How’d this happen?”
Sergeant Dave Glennan’s jowls trembled slightly. “I don’t know. I’m afraid it was me.”
“Had a gun, eh?” Bourse’s foot touched the little automatic. “I don’t think we’ll be blaming you for this, Dave me boy.”
The sergeant said, “That wasn’t it. She did take a crack at Horn and me, but her gun jammed or something. Just one shot, and no more. She started in here — Scummy was shooting at the whole world, and I ups with my shotgun—”
Bourse looked at him. “And kills the girl with a .45 caliber bullet?” he asked calmly.
Glennan blinked. “Thank Heaven for that! I never realized, sir. Yes, that hole does look like a .45. I... thought—”
“Never mind what you thought. Let’s find the bullet.”
“Here it is, sir,” said Horn.
The bullet had driven through Miss Lily Denardo’s heart, with the sad artistry of which that caliber is capable at close range, and had lodged in the wall. They dug it out.
“Who was shooting .45’s?” barked the Inspector.
Kerry scratched his torn sleeve. “Nobody except the Tom-gun — Ricardi. We all had regulation guns. And Ricardi’s bullets would have had to ricky-shay to hit her where she was a-standing. No, sir — take a look at Scummy’s guns. There one on the floor, and I guess he took the other with him when he went through the window.”
The ballistics expert established it later in the day; Scummy Heras had shot Lily, by design or accident. They never knew just how or why. It didn’t matter. All the detectives were glad that none of them had killed her. She was too pretty.
“And so,” Inspector Bourse grunted, at three o’clock that afternoon, “you let him get away. The meanest devil this side of hell, and you let him slide through your fingers.”
Every man who had taken part in the Dorchester Avenue raid — except Flynn, who lay in the hospital — was in Inspector Bourse’s office.
“Mind,” he said, “I’m blaming not a mother’s son of you — individually. You all worked hard and had your nerve with you. Young Nick Glennan especial. I’ll say that. When he went kiting through that hole in the ceiling, he took a mighty chance.”
Nick sat there and looked at his shoes. He felt his cheeks burning.
“But nevertheless, there you are. We had the best shots of the Bureau up there this morning, and we had the edge on that gang. And we let Hemingway get away. Sure, we didn’t know about that apartment upstairs. Nobody did. The stool pigeon didn’t. But our job was to get Chet Hemingway, more than any of the rest. We didn’t get him.
His desk telephone jangled. Slowly, Bourse reached down and lifted the bracket. “I told you not to bother me,” he growled at the operator. “I— What?... All right,” he said, “connect me.”
He looked at the rows of faces across his desk. “A man,” he said. “Claims he has something important about this morning.”
A new voice came on the wire. The eyes of Inspector Bourse froze bitterly as he listened.
“This,” said the voice, “is Chet Hemingway—”
“Yes,” said Bourse. His voice crackled. His hand slid across the transmitter as he snapped at Ricardi, who sat directly in front of him, “get on a phone. Trace this call!...”
“You didn’t get me this morning,” came Hemingway’s voice, “and I’m still in town. Listen, you dirty flat-foot — you had to kill that little frail — she was a peach of a kid — she—”
Bourse said, “We didn’t kill her, Hemingway. Scummy did it.”
“Yeah?” snarled Chet. “Listen — I’m not going to stay here long enough for you to trace this call. But I read the papers. Every damn sheet in town was shouting the praises of the noble detectives you had up there — and by
There was a click.
Bourse leaped to his feet. “Did you get it?” he roared through the open door where Ricardi had gone.
No, no. There hadn’t been enough time...
Briefly and pointedly, Bourse told the men what Hemingway had said. They weren’t much impressed; most of them had heard that story before. “Go out and get Hemingway,” said the old man in dismissal. And they went, hopefully.
But it wasn’t so funny an hour later. Chief of Detectives Moore came in, with no ceremony. “Ricardi’s dead,” he cried. “He was crossing the street at Comanche and Main, and a car came past and hit him. Head on. Dragged him three hundred feet.”
Bourse kneaded the cigar-stub in his fingers. “Must have been an accident,” he muttered. But in his heart he knew that it wasn’t any accident. He turned around and looked at the window.
“Hit-and-run?” he asked, over his shoulder.
“Yes,” said Moore. “Hit-and-run. They got the car ten minutes later. It was a hot car. But the driver was gone.”
The Inspector sat in silence for a time, drumming on the desk with his fingers, “We traced Hemingway how far?”
“Well, he took the taxi driver’s coat and cap, and made him get out of the cab at Fourth and Mississippi. They found the cab about eleven o’clock on Mulberry Street, ft had only been run nine miles in all, according to a check. We can’t say definitely that we traced him to Mulberry Street, as we don’t know what happened in between—”
Bourse nodded. “I’m thinking I’d better talk to my stool pigeon.”
“It may mean his life, now,” said the chief of detectives.
“So it may. His name is Adamic. Know him?”
“No. Who is he?”
“A pawnbroker and loan-shark down in the Delta. On Sage Street.”
Moore wagged his head. “I remember, now. George Adamic. A small, gray fellow with black eyes.”
“Yes. It seems that he knew Two-faced Tomsk from ’way back, and had disposed of some bonds for him after that Western Savings stick-up. Adamic is as close as the tomb. We could never have sweat nothing out of him; he came to me voluntarily, and made me swear—” Bourse made a wry face. “We both belong to the same lodge, and it’s one to which you belong as well. He made me swear I wouldn’t turn him in.”
Moore asked, “Why was he singing about Hemingway?”
“He knew they was in apartment 327 at 1441 Dorchester Avenue, and that was all he knew, except that they had a young arsenal and wore vests. Moore, it seems that Hemingway pushed over a man named Kolchak in Chicago last month. And Kolchak was George Adamic’s brother-in-law. Family ties — nothing less. That’s the only reason he talked.”
“You’d best talk to Adamic now,” nodded Moore.
Bourse took up his phone.
“If he’s still alive,” added Moore, softly.
And when George Adamic didn’t answer the telephone which rang so long and stridently in his narrow little shop, Inspector Bourse sent Squad Sixteen whistling in that direction. Sergeant Dave Glennan and Detectives Horn and Kerry found the store unlocked, and it was a wonder that folks in that scrubby neighborhood hadn’t looted the place of every last thing. Only their inherited terror of George Adamic and the power he wielded over their sad little lives, had kept them from raiding his shop, unguarded and defenseless as it was.
Detective Horn it was who found George Adamic in a dark washroom behind the rows of second-hand overcoats. Adamic was shot through the heart and the medical examiner estimated that he had been dead since about nine o’clock that morning.
Nick Glennan’s handsome face was a bit drawn. Inspector Bourse’s harsh accusation was still ringing in his ears; he felt that he had failed, miserably enough, when circumstances demanded the most of him. And now, to be sent for... private and special— Maybe old Bourse was going to ask him to turn in his gun and badge. And after being promoted to plainclothes only last tall! When, heaven knew that he must have deserved it.
“Sit down, Nick,” said the old inspector.
“Begging your pardon,” murmured Nick. “I’ll take it standing up.”
There was a sudden, misty twinkle in the older man’s eyes. He saw that his door was locked and the heavy shade drawn over the window, and then he sat down behind his desk and looked at Nick. Distantly a chiming clock announced that it was five-thirty.
“Glennan,” asked Bourse, “do you know why I sent for you?”
“I’m afraid I do. But I hope I don’t.”
Bourse grinned wearily. “Pshaw, why are you a-worrying? That was a bad break.” He smoked in silence for a moment. “Nick, you’re young—”
“Yes, sir. I’ll be getting over it as rapidly as possible.”
“You’ve got nerve.”
“I hope so, sir.”
“And brains.”
“Well,” said Nick.
“Every man in my department has nerve, and most of them have got a brain or two. But you have something else. You showed it when you was a rookie cop and helped clean out that gang on Acola Street; and you showed it when you ran down those Kentucky gorillas that had us all stumped, in the fall. That’s the reason you’re wearing plainclothes. You have that strange and fortunate thing which you have through no fault of your own: instinct, my boy. A nose for it.”
Bourse wrinkled his own pug nose in demonstration. “Your big brother Dave is a good sergeant; I wouldn’t be asking for none better. But he ain’t got the hunch that you have — the kind of natural, hound-dog notion of being a good detective — smelling things out. Nick, did any of your ancestors, rest their souls, have second sight?”
Nick wriggled. “I’ve heard that my father was the seventh son of a seventh son, sir. But I’m only the second son of a seventh son.”
“However that may be, what would you do about Hemingway?”
“I’d like to get him, sir.”
“I want you to tell me, me boy.”
Nicholas Glennan stood looking at the carpet for awhile. “We haven’t much to go on, sir.”
“Mulberry Street is right near Adamic’s place. You know about Adamic? Very good. Hemingway must have ditched his cab, walked in there, shot Adamic, and walked out again.”
“Yes, sir. But not in taxi clothes.”
“What would he have done?”
“At least he would have put on a good suit and hat, and maybe taken a suitcase or traveling bag. The store was full of ’em, and some not half bad. Hemingway’s always been one to take life easy and comfortable, sir, or so his record shows. Probably he had money on him. Maybe a belt, under that bullet-proof vest.”
Bourse nodded slightly. “I’m ’way ahead of you, boy. But he wouldn’t show that face around town — not with the papers full of it, and a million people gasping for the reward.”
“But he wouldn’t have had time for much disguise, sir. Not a hair-bleach or nothing like that. It would have to be quick and simple.”
“The usual? Glasses? Mustache?”
“That’s my notion, Inspector. This loan-broker had whole cases full of bankrupt notions — glasses of various kinds, even false whiskers, perhaps.”
Bourse sighed. “Blue goggles and green whiskers! I thought better of your perspicacity, me boy.”
“It’s doing fine, sir. My per — what you said.”
Bourse played with a pen-holder. “And then?”
“The witness to the killing of Ricardi said that a young man with glasses drove the car, sir.”
Bourse hunched his shoulders, as if expecting a bullet to come through the window behind him. “Do you think he’ll make good his boast, and stay around town long enough to get every one of us, as he promised?”
“No,” said Nick, promptly, “when he’s cooled off he’ll see that the average is ag’inst him. But he might try to get another one or two.”
“You feel certain of it?”
“He’s a mad dog, they say. What the stories call a Lone Wolf. A red-hot killer, and always has been. And like all of them, he is what you call an ee-gow-ist. He’ll want to write his name large before he leaves town.”
Bourse slammed up out of his chair. “I’m afraid we’re getting nowhere. What do you think is the best bet? What would you do if you had your choice and was playing a free hand? I’ve got men all over town, a-raiding here and a-raiding there, and every cop on every corner is on the lookout. But what would you like to do?”
“Begging your pardon,” whispered Nick, “but I’d like to stick beside the man he’s most likely to come after, next.”
“And that’s—”
“Yourself, sir.”
Chet Hemingway looked very dignified and circumspect. He did not look at all like a mad dog, although he might have answered up to Nick Glennan’s characterization as an egoist.
“Drive me,” he told the taxicab driver, “to 561 Alamo Street.”
“Yes, sir.”
The minutes passed to the feeble ticking of the meter. Dusk was here, and the low-lit auto lights swished past on every side. Alamo Street was a narrow, quiet court a bare mile from the heart of town; it was here, at 558, that Inspector Bourse lived with his plump wife and his plump, old-maid daughter.
The driver set Hemingway down promptly enough in front of the old apartment building numbered 561, and Hemingway paid the bill. He tipped not extravagantly or penuriously, but in an ordinary fashion; it was not well for the taxi driver to have a too clear memory of his passenger. Then Hemingway stepped into the lobby of the building and examined mail boxes until the cab drove way.
He walked back out to the curb and glanced to the east and west. Couldn’t be better. There were only two cars parked in the entire block, and between Number 561 and the next building ran a narrow sluice which led to a rear alley — he could see the lights back there glistening on the lids of garbage cans. Inspector Bourse lived straight across the street. If he had come home before this, he would be going out again. Hemingway’s mouth slid back in a bitter smile, his killing grin, as he reasoned how stupid the motive which had prompted Inspector Bourse to have his address and telephone number listed in the directory.
Chet Hemingway leaned among the shadows near the opening of the area-way, and waited. He could wait without jumping nerves or too eager mind; he had spent a good share of his life waiting for men to come, waiting for mail trucks, and bank watchmen. Once he had even waited eighteen months in a penitentiary before his chance came. But whenever the opportunity appeared, the opportunity for which Chet happened to be waiting, no one could grasp it any quicker than he. That was how he happened to have more than three hundred thousand dollars stowed in various corners of the country, and a good fifteen thousand dollars fastened next to his skin, under his expensive silk undershirt.
Two girls passed; an old man; a plump woman; solitary young men. Homegoing folks, bound for dinner and quiet evenings in their apartments. Only one person entered the building at 558, and that was a young girl — stenographer, probably. Idly, Hemingway wondered whether she knew Bourse. He put his hand into his coat pocket, took out his usual food, and began to crack it between his teeth.
He thought of Lily. Sentimental and superstitious, like most of his kind, he began to think of Lily as a swell dame — a kind of saint — now that she was dead. “I’ll get the dirty louse, kid,” he told her. This would look good in the tabloids.
He stiffened. Here was a cop, a big, stupid patrolman, lumbering down the street with idly-swinging dub. He might flash a light into the narrow path between the two buildings, and it wouldn’t be safe to hide there. Chet didn’t want to bump off a cop. He wanted to bump off Inspector Bourse.
So he bent forward and peered into the bloom. “Kitty,” he began to call, softly, “here, kitty-kitty.” The cop came closer. Hemingway still called to his cat. The heavy feet ambled past.
“Oh, officer,” Chet said.
The man stopped. “Yeh?”
“If you see a black kitten down the block anywhere, would you mind sticking it in the vestibule here at 561? My kid’s cat. Run away... Here, kitty-kitty-kitty.”
“Sure.” The cop lumbered away. Chet stared after him with narrowed eyes. Like to let him have it. Now he hoped that Bourse wouldn’t appear on the doorstep until the cop was around the next corner.
The patrolman had just disappeared when a big car hummed into Alamo Street from the Avenue. Its brakes crunched; it stopped in front of 558...
Chet swallowed the last tiny morsel in his mouth. He brought out his gun; the belly-gun from inside his trousers — he had two, now — and one had been taken from Adamic’s shop that morning. Wait until the car was at least half a block up the street. The old devil would still be fooling with his door key, or at least standing in the vestibule, plainly visible from outside. The men in the car would either have to turn it, or else jump out and run back; that was all the start Hemingway would need.
“Nine o’clock.”
“You bet, sir.”
A cab was coming from the direction of the avenue, coming slowly, as if hunting for an address. The big department car moved away from the curb — screeched into second gear — went purring away down the block. Chet’s left hand went to the automatic, Adamic’s gun, and brought it out. He would have to stop that cab before it interfered, though experience had taught him to fear nothing from the terrorized bystanders at such a scene.
Inspector Bourse’s portly body was sharply outlined against the vestibule lights. Oh, you old Mick, thought the bandit, I’ve seen you more than once before this... His belly-gun began to stutter. Bourse fell against the door. Those were soft-nosed bullets, and they would play hell with any man’s ribs. With his left hand, Hemingway turned his automatic toward the advancing taxicab. One shot in the radiator or windshield — he wasn’t particular—
A long, bright smear came from the side of the cab, and something tore at the skirt of Chet Hemingway’s coat. He snarled, and stepped back into the narrow court between the buildings. He had fixed old Bourse, but he wasn’t expecting this. Bullets squirted all around him, flattening among the bricks. He let his whole clip speed toward the taxicab, then he turned and ran. In his heart he was cursing savagely. Those damn fly-cops — they were half a block or more away, and out of the picture. But this cab— Who in—
A bullet screamed from the concrete beside him, and still he could feel that wrenching blow which had torn at his coat. Just that close... He sprinted twenty yards down the alley, dodged between a line of garages, and sped out into the street beyond. It was a through street, and there were plenty of cars, parked or moving. In the distance behind him he heard yells and pounding feet. At the first entrance he found, he dodged inside. Luck. Plenty of it. He needed it.
It was an office building with an L-shaped vestibule opening on the side street and on the avenue as well. Over here the humming traffic had drowned all the affray on Alamo Street. Chet strolled around the corner of the corridor, trying to still the hammering heart inside his body. The one elevator man on duty nodded at him.
Hemingway glanced at the directory on the wall. The little white line of names were swimming. He picked one out... Jacobson, Rudolph. 420. He turned to the elevator man.
“Is Mr. Jacobson gone?” His gasping lungs pushed up against his throat, but he fought them back.
“Yes, sir. It’s after six. Most everybody’s gone.”
“Okay.”
He went out to the avenue. A row of waiting taxicabs blurred before his eyes, and distantly he could hear a siren whining. These folks would think it was a fire truck. Well, it wasn’t any fire truck.
He stepped into the first cab. “Let’s go downtown,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
They went toward the bridge, through the evening crush of cars, and Chet Hemingway had the pleasure of watching traffic cops clear the northbound lanes to make passage for a rocketing squad car which hooted its way toward Alamo Street. He fumbled for a cigarette, and found a torn paper of matches ground into the hole in his coat pocket. The bullet of the would-be avenger had come just that close. He swore. But there was his food — a little of it, still left to him. Chet began to chew it.
He’d better get out of town as soon as possible. One way or another. They’d have picked men at every station, and the highways wouldn’t be very safe. He’d have to think.
He arrived at his hotel safely enough and went without further incident to his room. But during the next hour, when he sat munching, enjoying a cigarette or two and coldly reenacting the finish of Inspector Bourse, his leaping brain would have turned to jelly had it visualized the steel net which was closing in on him.
Bourse drew a long breath. “Glennan,” he said to Nick, “what was that about your being the seventh son of a seventh son?”
“It wasn’t me. It was the old man.”
“Nevertheless—”
“Heras will be hotter than ever in hell, sir, when he realizes that you was wearing his bullet-proof vest.”
The old inspector rubbed his sore body and examined the shreds in his clothing. “It’s a wonderful vest, boy. I don’t see why hoods always have these things better than the cops, but they do. At least nobody could ever blame you for not dropping Hemingway, up there on the roof.”
“I should have drilled him through the head, sir.”
Bourse fingered a tiny scrap of limp, gilded cardboard which he held in his hands. “At least you drilled this out of his pocket.”
“Yes, but it’s twice in one day that I had him under my gun and let him get away.”
They stood there together in front of a gleaming spot-light while officers swarmed through every nook and cranny along Alamo Street. Bourse turned to Sergeant Dave Glennan. “No use, Dave. He’s gone. But he left his calling card.”
The fat sergeant waddled over to the shaft of light. “I’ll take you on, sparrow cop,” he told his younger brother, “at any shooting gallery in the Palace Amusement Park, when it opens in warm weather.”
“You go to hell,” whispered Nick.
“Shut up your big gab, Dave,” added the inspector, kindly. “Nick was shooting from a moving taxicab, into the dark — shooting at gun-flashes — and anyway, if it hadn’t been for him you’d be getting your shoes shined for an inspector’s funeral.”
He offered the torn scrap of cardboard. “This was over there across the street where he stood, when we looked for bloodstains.”
Dave turned the fragment between his big fingers. He spelled aloud, “Diamond Match Com... E... L. And what’s this that looks like the west end of a spider?”
“It’s a coat-of-arms, Owl Eyes,” snarled his brother, “and that is by way of being his stopping place. You don’t recognize the souvenir matches of high-priced hotels, but the inspector does. He says that is part of a fold of matches from the Aberdeen Hotel.”
“Just because you found it there—”
“If you look close, Owl Eyes, you can see the fuzz of lead along one side. The luck of Nicholas Glennan was working; I ripped open his pocket, and half the torn paper of matches comes out.”
“But,” cried Dave, “that’s no sign he’s there!”
“He took a suit from Adamic’s store, or I don’t know where else. And do them second-hand guys leave matches lying around in the pockets of their suits? No, Macushla. He gathered that up today since he’s been on the loose. And not in no one-arm restaurant, but likely enough in a hotel room.”
The inspector said, “Get your squad together, Dave. Tell Rhineheimer to get his.”
“Yes, sir. But... God... you can’t raid the whole hotel. It’s got twenty-two hundred rooms!”
“We cannot. But we can soon get a list of the folks who registered today, and their room numbers. And after that, in case we run up against a snag, your kid brother that once was a sparrow cop in a park — well, he’s got an idea. And I’ve observed that his ideas are apt to be good.”
“What is this idea that he has, inspector?”
For reply, Nick displayed some very small, silvery fragments in the palm of his big hand. They were egg-shaped bits crusted with a strange and frosty deposit, and none of them was longer than three-quarters of an inch. “Over there on the sidewalk, beside that alley,” his polite voice announced.
“Them!” snorted Dave Glennan.
“Well,” said Nick, “I’ve seen them before. And many of them.” He dropped the fragments into his vest pocket.
“We’re a-wasting time,” Inspector Bourse announced.
The chambermaid — Number Seventy-two, she was, of the Aberdeen Hotel — had plenty of nerve. Really she didn’t need a lot of nerve, since she wasn’t compelled to place herself within the range of direct gunfire. When Nicholas Glennan tapped softly upon the door of Room 1661, and an answering bark came from inside, the woman controlled her quivering throat adequately.
She crouched close beside the thick wall and said, “Chambermaid.”
The man inside the room seemed waiting for something. Finally he spoke in a voice full of annoyance. “I don’t need you, girlie. Trot along.”
For a fatal moment there was silence in the hall, and inside the room.
“Just to clean up your room, sir.”
There had been people outside the door, up there in Dorchester Avenue — milkman, laundryman — the door had been opened, and then the law had come. Chet Hemingway wasn’t taking a chance in the world.
He snarled, “Run along and peddle yourself some place else!”
Gently, Nick Glennan drew the frightened chambermaid around the corner, past the house detectives and the group of hard-faced officers from headquarters. “What he says is good advice, lady,” he murmured. “You’d better go.” There was a tense shuffling of feet on the thick rug.
Glennan looked coolly into the eyes of a brother detective. “It’s him?”
“Sure. His voice. I was a witness in K. C. when they had him up for trial. Know it anywhere.”
“Okay,” breathed Nick Glennan.
He said, “Hemingway. Are you going to come out, or do you want to be carried? Last fall we said that to some hoods, and they decided to stay. We carried them out and embalmed them. What do you say?”
In 1661, Chet Hemingway took out his two guns and turned toward the door. He fancied how it would look, in the headlines. “I say come and get me, if you’re man enough!” He put a heavy slug through the door.
“I am,” responded Nick, “and here... I... come.”
A machine gun was lifted, but Nick’s gesture stayed the ready finger. “No,” he muttered, “I missed him — twice. This time it’s me or him.”
He took care of the lock with his first three bullets, and heavy pebbles of lead gouged whole strips out of the veneer as he kicked against the wrecked door... Inside, there was the distant slam of the bathroom door, so Glennan braced his whole body against the big slice of wood which blocked his way. He crashed to the floor, the sundered hinges flying wide. The bathroom door opened a crack, and in that crack was a jet of dancing flame... turned out the lights... well, one of them, there in the dark.
Flat on the floor, with the air splitting beside his ears, he took steady aim at a point above the flashes, and scattered his three remaining bullets there. There was sudden silence — a cough, and then the sound of a body falling into a bathtub.
They switched on the lights, and sniffed in the doorway.
“He got Glennan.”
Bourse groaned from the hall, “Oh, the black-hearted—”
“The hell he got Glennan,” said Nick. He climbed to his feet and pushed the bathroom door wide. For one in Hemingway’s messy condition, the bathtub was a very good place for him to be sprawled.
Inspector Bourse looked at the corpse.
“You must have second sight,” he muttered.
“No indeed, sir. It was the shells.”
He found them in his vest pocket, and juggled them in his hands.
“Pistachio nuts,” somebody said.
Nick Glennan nodded, soberly. After all, Hemingway had been a man and now he wasn’t anything. Rest his soul, if possible... “The nut shells was all over the sun parlor, up on Dorchester Avenue,” he said. “They was also scattered on the sidewalk tonight where he waited for the inspector. He was a pig for them, it would seem. When the bellboy said that the man in Room 1661 of this hotel had sent twice for pistachio nuts during the day, it had to be Hemingway and no other. Probably he’s feeding on them this minute, wherever he’s gone.”
“I’ll answer that,” remarked his brother, grimly. “If Hemingway is eating pistachio nuts this minute, he’s eating roasted ones.”
Dorothy L. Sayers
The Man Who Knew How
For perhaps the twentieth time since the train had left Carlisle, Pender glanced up from
He frowned a little. It was irritating to be watched so closely, and always with that faint, sardonic smile. It was still more irritating to allow oneself to be so much disturbed by the smile and the scrutiny. Pender wrenched himself back to his book with a determination to concentrate upon the problem of the minister murdered in the library. But the story was of the academic kind that crowds all its exciting incidents into the first chapter, and proceeds thereafter by a long series of deductions to a scientific solution in the last. The thin thread of interest, spun precariously upon the wheel of Pender s reasoning brain, had been snapped. Twice he had to turn back to verify points that he had missed in reading. Then he became aware that his eyes had followed three closely argued pages without conveying anything whatever to his intelligence. He was not thinking about the murdered minister at all — he was becoming more and more actively conscious of the other man’s face. A queer face, Pender thought.
There was nothing especially remarkable about the features in themselves; it was their expression that daunted Pender. It was a secret face, the face of one who knew a great deal to other people’s disadvantage. The mouth was a little crooked and tightly tucked in at the corners, as though savouring a hidden amusement. The eyes, behind a pair of rimless pince-nez, glittered curiously; but that was possibly due to the light reflected in the glasses. Pender wondered what the man’s profession might be. He was dressed in a dark lounge suit, a raincoat and a shabby soft hat; his age was perhaps about forty.
Pender coughed unnecessarily and settled back into his corner, raising the detective story high before his face, barrier-fashion. This was worse than useless. He gained the impression that the man saw through the manoeuvre and was secretly entertained by it. He wanted to fidget, but felt obscurely that his doing so would in some way constitute a victory for the other man. In his self-consciousness he held himself so rigid that attention to his book became a sheer physical impossibility.
There was no stop now before Rugby, and it was unlikely that any passenger would enter from the corridor to break up this disagreeable
“Getting tired of it?” asked the man.
“Night journeys are always a bit tedious,” replied Pender, half relieved and half reluctant. “Would you like a book?”
He took
“Thanks very much,” he said, “but I never read detective stories. They’re so — inadequate, don’t you think so?”
“They are rather lacking in characterisation and human interest, certainly,” said Pender, “but on a railway journey—”
“I don’t mean that,” said the other man. “I am not concerned with humanity. But all these murderers are so incompetent — they bore me.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Pender. “At any rate they are usually a good deal more imaginative and ingenious than murderers in real life.”
“Than the murderers who are found out in real life, yes,” admitted the other man.
“Even some of those did pretty well before they got pinched,” objected Pender. “Crippen, for instance; he need never have been caught if he hadn’t lost his head and run off to America. George Joseph Smith did away with at least two brides quite successfully before fate and the
“Yes,” said the other man, “but look at the clumsiness of it all; the elaboration, the lies, the paraphernalia. Absolutely unnecessary.”
“Oh, come!” said Pender. “You can’t expect committing a murder and getting away with it to be as simple as shelling peas.”
“Ah!” said the other man. “You think that, do you?”
Pender waited for him to elaborate this remark, but nothing came of it. The man leaned back and smiled in his secret way at the roof of the carriage; he appeared to think the conversation not worth going on with. Pender, taking up his book again, found himself attracted by his companion’s hands. They were white and surprisingly long in the fingers. He watched them gently tapping upon their owner’s knee — then resolutely turned a page — then put the book down once more and said:
“Well, if it’s so easy, how would
“I?” repeated the man. The light on his glasses made his eyes quite blank to Pender, but his voice sounded gently amused. “That’s different;
“Why not?”
“Because I happen to know how to do it.”
“Do you indeed?” muttered Pender, rebelliously.
“Oh, yes; there’s nothing in it.”
“How can you be sure? You haven’t tried, I suppose?”
“It isn’t a case of trying,” said the man. “There’s nothing tentative about my method. That’s just the beauty of it.”
“It’s easy to say that,” retorted Pender, “but what
“You can’t expect me to tell you that, can you?” said the other man, bringing his eyes back to rest on Pender’s. “It might not be safe. You look harmless enough, but who could look more harmless than Crippen? Nobody is fit to be trusted with
“Bosh!” exclaimed Pender. “I shouldn’t think of murdering anybody.”
“Oh, yes, you would,” said the other man, “if you really believed it was safe. So would anybody. Why are all these tremendous artificial barriers built up around murder by the Church and the law? Just because it’s everybody’s crime, and just as natural as breathing.”
“But that’s ridiculous!” cried Pender, warmly.
“You think so, do you? That’s what most people would say. But I wouldn’t trust ’em. Not with sulphate of thanatol to be bought for two pence at any chemist’s.”
“Sulphate of what?” asked Pender sharply.
“Ah! you think I’m giving something away. Well, it’s a mixture of that and one or two other things — all equally ordinary and cheap. For nine-pence you could make up enough to poison the entire Cabinet — and even you would hardly call that a crime, would you? But of course one wouldn’t polish the whole lot off at once; it might look funny if they all died simultaneously in their baths.”
“Why in their baths?”
“That’s the way it would take them. It’s the action of the hot water that brings on the effect of the stuff, you see. Any time from a few hours to a few days after administration. It’s quite a simple chemical reaction and it couldn’t possibly be detected by analysis. It would just look like heart failure.”
Pender eyed him uneasily. He did not like the smile; it was not only derisive, it was smug, it was almost — gloating — triumphant! He could not quite put a name to it.
“You know,” pursued the man, thoughtfully pulling a pipe from his pocket and beginning to fill it, “it is very odd how often one seems to read of people being found dead in their baths. It must be a very common accident. Quite temptingly so. After all, there is a fascination about murder. The thing grows upon one — that is, I imagine it would, you know.”
“Very likely,” said Pender.
“Look at Palmer. Look at Gesina Gottfried. Look at Armstrong. No, I wouldn’t trust anybody with that formula — not even a virtuous young man like yourself.”
The long white fingers tamped the tobacco firmly into the bowl and struck a match.
“But how about you?” said Pender, irritated. (Nobody cares to be called a virtuous young man.) “If nobody is fit to be trusted—”
“I’m not, eh?” replied the man. “Well, that’s true, but it’s past praying for now, isn’t it? I know the thing and I can’t unknow it again. It’s unfortunate, but there it is. At any rate you have the comfort of knowing that nothing disagreeable is likely to happen to
He rose and shook himself, buttoned his raincoat about him and pulled the shabby hat more firmly down above his enigmatic glasses. The train slowed down and stopped. With a brief good night and a crooked smile the man stepped on to the platform. Pender watched him stride quickly away.
“Dotty or something,” said Pender, oddly relieved. “Thank goodness, I seem to be going to have the carriage to myself.”
He returned to
“What was the name of that stuff the fellow talked about?”
For the life of him he could not remember.
It was on the following afternoon that Pender saw the news-item. He had bought the
“A distressing discovery was made early this morning by Mrs. John Brittlesea, wife of the well-known head of Brittlesea’s Engineering Works at Rugby. Finding that her husband, whom she had seen alive and well less than an hour previously, did not come down in time for his breakfast, she searched for him in the bathroom, where, on the door being broken down, the engineer was found lying dead in his bath, life having been extinct, according to the medical men, for half an hour. The cause of the death is pronounced to be heart failure. The deceased manufacturer...”
“That’s an odd coincidence,” said Pender. “At Rugby. I should think my unknown friend would be interested — if he is still there, doing his bit of business. I wonder what his business is, by the way.”
It is a very curious thing how, when once your attention is attracted to any particular set of circumstances, that set of circumstances seems to haunt you. You get appendicitis: immediately the newspapers are filled with paragraphs about statesmen suffering from appendicitis and victims dying of it; you learn that all your acquaintances have had it, or know friends who have had it, and either died of it, or recovered from it with more surprising and spectacular rapidity than yourself; you cannot open a popular magazine without seeing its cure mentioned as one of the triumphs of modern surgery, or dip into a scientific treatise without coming across a comparison of the vermiform appendix in men and monkeys. Probably these references to appendicitis are equally frequent at all times, but you only notice them when your mind is attuned to the subject. At any rate, it was in this way that Pender accounted to himself for the extraordinary frequency with which people seemed to die in their baths at this period.
The thing pursued him at every turn. Always the same sequence of events: the hot bath, the discovery of the corpse, the inquest; always the same medical opinion: heart failure following immersion in too-hot water. It began to seem to Pender that it was scarcely safe to enter a hot bath at all. He took to making his own bath cooler and cooler every day, until it almost ceased to be enjoyable.
He skimmed his paper each morning for headlines about baths before settling down to read the news; and was at once relieved and vaguely disappointed if a week passed without a hot-bath tragedy.
One of the sudden deaths that occurred in this way was that of a young and beautiful woman whose husband, an analytical chemist, had tried without success to divorce her a few months previously. The coroner displayed a tendency to suspect foul play, and put the husband through a severe cross-examination. There seemed, however, to be no getting behind the doctor’s evidence. Pender, brooding fancifully over the improbable possible, wished, as he did every day of the week, that he could remember the name of that drug the man in the train had mentioned.
Then came the excitement in Pender’s own neighbourhood. An old Mr. Skimmings, who lived alone with a housekeeper in a street just round the corner, was found dead in his bathroom. His heart had never been strong. The housekeeper told the milkman that she had always expected something of the sort to happen, for the old gentleman would always take his bath so hot. Pender went to the inquest.
The housekeeper gave her evidence. Mr. Skimmings had been the kindest of employers, and she was heartbroken at losing him. No, she had not been aware that Mr. Skimmings had left her a large sum of money, but it was just like his goodness of heart. The verdict was Death by Misadventure.
Pender, that evening, went out for his usual stroll with the dog. Some feeling of curiosity moved him to go round past the late Mr. Skimmings’s house. As he loitered by, glancing up at the blank windows, the garden-gate opened and a man came out. In the light of a street lamp, Pender recognised him at once.
“Hullo!” he said.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” said the man. “Viewing the site of the tragedy, eh? What do
“Oh, nothing very much,” said Pender. “I didn’t know him. Odd, our meeting again like this.”
“Yes, isn’t it? You live near here, I suppose.”
“Yes,” said Pender; and then wished he hadn’t. “Do you live in these parts too?”
“Me?” said the man. “Oh, no. I was only here on a little matter of business.”
“Last time we met,” said Pender, “you had business at Rugby.” They had fallen into step together, and were walking slowly down to the turning Pender had to take in order to reach his house.
“So I had,” agreed the other man. “My business takes me all over the country. I never know where I may be wanted next.”
“It was while you were at Rugby that old Brittlesea was found dead in his bath, wasn’t it?” remarked Pender carelessly.
“Yes. Funny thing, coincidence.” The man glanced up at him sideways through his glittering glasses. “Left all his money to his wife, didn’t he? She’s a rich woman now. Good-looking girl — a lot younger than he was.”
They were passing Pender’s gate. “Come in and have a drink,” said Pender, and again immediately regretted the impulse.
The man accepted, and they went into Pender’s bachelor study.
“Remarkable lot of these bath-deaths there have been lately, haven’t there?” observed Pender carelessly, as he splashed soda into the tumblers.
“You think it’s remarkable?” said the man, with his usual irritating trick of querying everything that was said to him. “Well, I don’t know. Perhaps it is. But it’s always a fairly common accident.”
“I suppose I’ve been taking more notice on account of that conversation we had in the train.” Pender laughed, a little self-consciously. “It just makes me wonder — you know how one does — whether anybody else had happened to hit on that drug you mentioned — what was its name?”
The man ignored the question.
“Oh, I shouldn’t think so,” he said. “I fancy I’m the only person who knows about that. I only stumbled on the thing by accident myself when I was looking for something else. I don’t imagine it could have been discovered simultaneously in so many parts of the country. But all these verdicts just show, don’t they, what a safe way it would be of getting rid of a person.”
“You’re a chemist, then?” asked Pender, catching at the one phrase which seemed to promise information.
“Oh, I’m a bit of everything. Sort of general utility-man. I do a good bit of studying on my own, too. You’ve got some interesting books here, I see.”
Pender was flattered. For a man in his position — he had been in a bank until he came into that little bit of money — he felt that he had improved his mind to some purpose, and he knew that his collection of modem first editions would be worth money some day. He went over to the glass-fronted bookcase and pulled out a volume or two to show his visitor.
The man displayed intelligence, and presently joined him in front of the shelves.
“These, I take it, represent your personal tastes?” He took down a volume of Henry James and glanced at the flyleaf. “That your name? E. Pender?”
Pender admitted that it was. “You have the advantage of me,” he added.
“Oh! I am one of the great Smith clan,” said the other with a laugh, “and work for my bread. You seem to be very nicely fixed here.”
Pender explained about the clerkship and the legacy.
“Very nice, isn’t it?” said Smith. “Not married? No. You’re one of the lucky ones. Not likely to be needing any sulphate of... any useful drugs in the near future. And you never will, if you stick to what you’ve got and keep off women and speculation.”
He smiled up sideways at Pender. Now that his hat was off, Pender saw that he had a quantity of closely curled grey hair, which made him look older that he had appeared in the railway carriage.
“No, I shan’t be coming to you for assistance yet awhile,” said Pender, laughing. “Besides, how should I find you if I wanted you?”
“You wouldn’t have to,” said Smith. “
When he had gone, Pender returned to his own armchair. He took up his glass of whisky, which stood there nearly full.
“Funny!” he said to himself. “I don’t remember pouring that out I suppose I got interested and did it mechanically.” He emptied his glass slowly, thinking about Smith.
What in the world was Smith doing at Skimmings’s house?
An odd business altogether. If Skimmings’s housekeeper had known about that money... But she had not known, and if she had, how could she have found out about Smith and his sulphate of... the word had been on the tip of his tongue then.
“You would not need to find me.
“Business at Rugby — a little bit of business at Skimmings’s house.” Oh, absurd!
“Nobody is fit to be trusted.
Lunacy! And, if there was anything in it, the man was mad to tell Pender about it. If Pender chose to speak he could get the fellow hanged. The very existence of Pender would be dangerous.
That whisky!
More and more, thinking it over, Pender became persuaded that he had never poured it out. Smith must have done it while his back was turned. Why that sudden display of interest in the bookshelves? It had had no connection with anything that had gone before. Now Pender came to think of it, it had been a very stiff whisky. Was it imagination, or had there been something about the flavour of it?
A cold sweat broke out on Pender’s forehead.
A quarter of an hour later, after a powerful dose of mustard and water, Pender was downstairs again, very cold and shivering, huddling over the fire. He had had a narrow escape — if he had escaped. He did not know how the stuff worked, but he would not take a hot bath again for some days. One never knew.
Whether the mustard and water had done the trick in time, or whether the hot bath was an essential part of the treatment, at any rate Pender’s life was saved for the time being. But he was still uneasy. He kept the front door on the chain and warned his servant to let no strangers into the house.
He ordered two more morning papers and the
Three weeks later he found himself at Lincoln. A man had died of heart failure in a Turkish bath — a fat man, of sedentary habits. The jury added a rider to their verdict of Misadventure, to the effect that the management should exercise a stricter supervision over the bathers and should never permit them to be left unattended in the hot room.
As Pender emerged from the hall he saw ahead of him a shabby hat that seemed familiar. He plunged after it, and caught Mr. Smith about to step into a taxi.
“Smith,” he cried, gasping a little. He clutched him fiercely by the shoulder.
“What, you again?” said Smith. “Taking notes of the case, eh?
“You devil!” said Pender. “You’re mixed up in this! You tried to kill me the other day.”
“Did I? Why should I do that?”
“You’ll swing for this,” shouted Pender menacingly.
A policeman pushed his way through the gathering crowd.
“Here!” said he, “what’s all this about?”
Smith touched his forehead significantly.
“It’s all right, officer,” said he. “The gentleman seems to think I’m here for no good. Here’s my card. The coroner knows me. But he attacked me. You’d better keep an eye on him.”
“That’s right,” said a bystander.
“This man tried to kill me,” said Pender.
The policeman nodded.
“Don’t you worry about that, sir,” he said. “You think better of it. The ’eat in there has upset you a bit. All right,
“But I want to charge him,” said Pender.
“I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” said the policeman.
“I tell you,” said Pender, “that this man Smith has been trying to poison me. He’s a murderer. He’s poisoned scores of people.”
The policeman winked at Smith.
“Best be off, sir,” he said. “I’ll settle this. Now, my lad” — he held Pender firmly by the arms — “just you keep cool and take it quiet. That gentleman’s name ain’t Smith. You’ve got a bit mixed up like.”
“Well, what is his name?” demanded Pender.
“Never you mind,” replied the constable. “You leave him alone, or you’ll be getting yourself into trouble.”
The taxi had driven away. Pender glanced round at the circle of amused faces and gave in.
“All right, officer,” he said. “I won’t give you any trouble. I’ll come round with you to the police station and tell you about it.”
“What do you think o’ that one?” asked the inspector of the sergeant when Pender had stumbled out of the station.
“Up the pole an’ ’alf-way round the flag, if you ask me,” replied his subordinate. “Got one o’ them ideez fix what they talk about.”
“H’m!” replied the inspector. “Well, we’ve got his name and address. Better make a note of ’em. He might turn up again. Poisoning people so as they die in their baths, eh? That’s a pretty good ’un. Wonderful how these barmy ones thinks it all out, isn’t it?”
The spring that year was a bad one — cold and foggy. It was March when Pender went down to an inquest at Deptford, but a thick blanket of mist was hanging over the river as though it were November. The cold ate into your bones. As he sat in the dingy little court, peering through the yellow twilight of gas and fog, he could scarcely see the witnesses as they came to the table. Everybody in the place seemed to be coughing. Pender was coughing too. His bones ached, and he felt as though he were about due for a bout of influenza.
Straining his eyes, he thought he recognised a face on the other side of the room, but the smarting fog which penetrated every crack stung and blinded him. He felt in his overcoat pocket, and his hand closed comfortably on something thick and heavy. Ever since that day in Lincoln he had gone about armed for protection. Not a revolver — he was no hand with firearms. A sandbag was much better. He had bought one from an old man wheeling a barrow. It was meant for keeping out draughts from the door — a good, old-fashioned affair.
The inevitable verdict was returned. The spectators began to push their way out. Pender had to hurry now, not to lose sight of his man. He elbowed his way along, muttering apologies. At the door he almost touched the man, but a stout woman intervened. He plunged past her, and she gave a little squeak of indignation. The man in front turned his head, and the light over the door glinted on his glasses.
Pender pulled his hat over his eyes and followed. His shoes had crepe rubber soles and made no sound on the sticking pavement. The man went on, jogging quietly up one street and down another, and never looking back. The fog was so thick that Pender was forced to keep within a few yards of him. Where was he going? Into the lighted streets? Home by ’bus or tram? No. He turned off to the left, down a narrow street.
The fog was thicker here. Pender could no longer see his quarry, but he heard the footsteps going on before him at the same even pace. It seemed to him that they were two alone in the world — pursued and pursuer, slayer and avenger. The street began to slope more rapidly.
Suddenly the dim shapes of the houses fell away on either side. There was an open space, with a lamp vaguely visible in the middle. The footsteps paused. Pender, silently hurrying after, saw the man standing close beneath the lamp, apparently consulting something in a notebook.
Four steps, and Pender was upon him. He drew out the sandbag.
The man looked up.
“I’ve got you this time,” said Pender and struck with all his force.
Pender had been quite right. He did get influenza. It was a week before he was out and about again. The weather had changed, and the air was fresh and sweet. In spite of the weakness left by the malady he felt as though a heavy weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He tottered down to a favourite bookshop of his in the Strand, and picked up a D. H. Lawrence “first” at a price which he knew to be a bargain. Encouraged by this, he turned into a small chop-house, chiefly frequented by Fleet Street men, and ordered a grilled cutlet and a half-tankard of bitter.
Two journalists were seated at the next table.
“Going to poor old Buckley’s funeral?” asked one.
“Yes,” said the other. “Poor devil! Fancy his getting sloshed on the head like that. He must have been on his way down to interview the widow of that fellow who died in a bath. It’s a rough district. Probably one of Jimmy the Card’s crowd had it in for him. He was a great crime-reporter — they won’t get another like Bill Buckley in a hurry.”
“He was a decent sort, too. Great old sport. No end of a leg-puller. Remember his great stunt about sulphate of thanatol?”
Pender started.
“...looking at you as sober as a judge,” the journalist was saying. “He used to work off that wheeze on poor boobs in railway carriages to see how they’d take it. Would you believe that one chap actually offered him—”
“Hullo!” interrupted his friend. “That bloke over there has fainted. I thought he was looking a bit white.”
Q. Patrick
Little Boy Lost
The day his father died was chiefly memorable to Branson Foster because he was allowed to sleep in the small dressing-room off his mother’s bedroom. An end was thus made to the nights in the fourth-story attic where the little boy had lain obdurately awake, afraid of the hostile darkness, resenting the adult injustice that separated him from the mother who adored and spoiled him. It was his father who had been responsible for his exile, and now that formidable presence, whose black mustache smelt of mouthwash and the top of breakfast eggs, was gone.
His father’s death brought Branson not only comfort but freedom from the fear that had haunted him since his eighth birthday. The question of his departure to a boys’ boarding school had lapsed. Branny’s mother had given him tearful reassurance on that point as she kissed him goodnight and tucked him under the delicious warmth of the quilted eiderdown.
“You are the man of the house now, darling. You must stay and help your poor mummie run this silly old girls’ school.”
Almost certainly, the vague, bewildered Constance Foster never dreamed that her passionate adoration might be harmful for a son of nearly nine. In 1915, small English seaside resorts had not heard of mother-fixations. Nor was Dr. Sigmund Freud even a name at Oaklawn School for Girls in Littleton-on-Sea. With the death of her husband it seemed only natural to her that mother and son, sharing a common grief, should cling even closer together.
After the funeral, at which the wheezing voice of the vicar had consigned the mustache to eternal rest, Branny’s bed was put permanently in the little room adjoining his mother’s. Attics, Mrs. Foster argued, were dangerous in wartime. From then on, going to bed became a pleasure rather than a terror for Branny. He could read as long as he liked and when his mother came upstairs, he could hear her gentle movements through the quarter-opened door and bask in the warm certainty of her nearness and safety. And during her frequent spells of poorliness — for Mrs. Foster considered herself frail — he could tiptoe into her room when his anxiety for her goaded him too painfully, and satisfy himself that the fragile, cherished figure in the bed was actually alive and breathing.
Almost every day of this new life brought a major or minor delight. The older girls made much of their headmistress’s only son in his bereavement. The younger girls constituted a respectful audience for whose benefit he could strut as the only male in a household of women. And as a symbol of his importance, he was permitted full use of the front stairs, strictly forbidden to housemaids, girls, and even to junior mistresses.
Each golden day reached its climax in the evening when instead of taking plain supper in the school diningroom, he had light tea alone with his mother in his father’s erstwhile study. Often the meagre wartime fare would be augmented by a boiled egg, a tin of sardines, or some similar delicacy.
His mother would watch him devour these with a smile half-excited, half-guilty, murmuring:
“It’s naughty of me, I know, in wartime, but a growing boy really does need it.”
Luckily for the finances of Oaklawn School, she did not entertain a similar sentiment with regard to the forty or fifty growing girls under her care.
The middle weeks of the summer term passed for mother and son as an idyl. Mrs. Foster looked prettier than ever in her widow’s weeds which lent an air of pathos to the soft brown eyes and heightened the ethereal pallor of her perfect skin. She was careful to present the world with a decorous show of grief. But inwardly she, like her son, was happier than she had been in years. Her husband’s hand, heavy as his mustache, was no longer there to suppress her natural volatility. Branny spoiled her as she spoiled him. With her son she could yield to her moods of almost childish gaiety. She could also indulge the tendency to poorliness which Mr. Foster had so unimaginatively discouraged. When the responsibilities of her position became too irksome, it was delightful to pamper a mild headache in a darkened room while Branny hovered with solicitude and
As sole principal of Oaklawn School, Mrs. Foster dreamily muddled the accounts, allowed the servants and tradespeople to lead her by the nose, and let institutional discipline slide.
But, halcyon as this period was, it carried in it, unknown to Branny, the seed of its own destruction. The late George Foster had bought Oaklawn School for Girls with his wife’s money and had made her joint principal. But he himself had owned two-thirds of the goodwill and knowing his Constance, had anticipated just such a situation as had now arisen. He had loved the school, built it up through his own labors, and had made testamentary precautions to preserve it.
Hence the invasion of the Aunts. This started by what, in the second World War, would have been termed “infiltration.”
Aunt Nellie was the first to come. There seemed nothing particularly ominous about her arrival since she appeared toward the end of the summer term, wearing dark glasses as the result of a visit to an oculist in the nearby town of Bristol. Branny had seen Aunt Nellie only once before and connected her pleasantly with strawberries and cream for tea on the lawn and a “silver penny” on her departure for India. In the dim past, an amorous purser on a P and O liner had called her a “dashed pretty woman” and the epithet had stuck, although it had long since lost any semblance of accuracy.
Aunt Nellie was discovered in the drawing room just before lunch one day. Branny’s mother said:
“Come in, darling, and say how d’you do to your pretty aunt.”
Branny stared at Aunt Nellie solemnly. She said, giggling:
“Not pretty with these awful glasses on, Constance. There, I’ll take them off.”
Branny was still unimpressed. He saw a massive woman with fluffy pinkish hair, a great deal of jewelry, light bloodshot eyes, and a high color. Since he was in love with a small, dark woman with large eyes and ivory cheeks, he had every reason to remain unimpressed. When his aunt had removed the glasses, he said gravely:
“You aren’t so very pretty even now, are you?”
Aunt Nellie laughed again and said: “Now is that a gallant thing for a little pukka sahib to say?”
And being a woman, she never forgave him.
There was no silver penny this time — and no departure.
Aunt Nellie was currently without occupation or domicile. She had made the war an excuse to get away from India where she had left a dyspeptic colonel husband to his curries and concubines. Abandoning India, however, had not made her abandon its vocabulary. Everything around Oaklawn School became pukka or not pukka. Lunch became tiffin. Mrs. Foster was a memsahib, and Aunt Nellie drove the servants almost crazy by addressing them as ayahs and giving capricious orders in bastard Hindustani. Also, owing to the demands of her elaborate toilet, she spent an indecent amount of time in the bathroom.
But at first Aunt Nellie’s visit was rather a joke to Branny. Her garrulous intrusion upon his private teas with his mother was tiresome, but she brought compensatory delights. For example, he discovered the joys of exploring her bedroom and made the younger pupils goggle incredulously at the report of his discoveries there. Once, thinking Aunt Nellie safely in the bathroom, he had bedizened himself with her cosmetics, wrapped himself in her satin peignoir, and attaching a pinkish false front to his head, had run down to the second form classroom to the hysterical delight of a bevy of little girls.
But he had paid dearly for this short-lived accolade. Aunt Nellie was lying in wait for him behind the bathroom door as he sneaked upstairs. She swooped out, a bald, outraged condor, and seized him. Snatching her property, she shook Branny till his teeth chattered, slapped his painted face several times, and banged his head against the bathroom wall so hard that Mrs. Foster, attracted by her beloved’s outcries, hovered ineffectually, screaming:
Nor did Branny’s punishment end there. For a whole week Aunt Nellie refused implacably to eat at the same table with him and he was obliged for seven days to forego his teas with his mother and to partake once again of thick slices of bread without even jam at the “kids” table in the school diningroom.
These tribulations, however, did not greatly disturb Branny for Aunt Nellie, despite the length of her stay, was a visitor and must, surely, depart in time. Soon he and his mother would be alone again and life would reassume its untarnished bloom.
He wrote Aunt Nellie a polite little note of apology which was frigidly accepted. In due course the teas were resumed.
It was on the second evening of his rehabilitation that Branny began to suspect Aunt Nellie was not a visitor after all. Over the teacups his aunt and his mother were discussing the French Mademoiselle who had been recalled by a telegram to her native Paris.
“It’s about time, Constance,” remarked Aunt Nellie, “that I started to do my war bit,
And sure enough, when it came to the period for French next morning, there was Aunt Nellie to give the lesson, Aunt Nellie insisting on a far-too-French French accent from her pupils and making herself ridiculous by singing little French songs which no one understood.
From that day on Aunt Nellie gave up Hindustani and interlarded every sentence with a French word or phrase and embellished them with pretty Gallic gestures.
But Anglo-Indian or Anglo-French, she seemed to have become a permanency.
As the summer term drew to a close Branny continually begged his mother to deny this dreadful possibility but she put him off by references to the school’s goodwill which were meaningless to him.
The blow really fell about the middle of the summer holidays. For several days his mother had been busy with correspondence. The zeppelin raids over London had started and parents were rushing their children from the east to safer schools in the west. It had been necessary to have a new stock of prospectuses printed.
Idly Branny picked up one of these as he stood by his mother waiting for her to finish a letter. The front page riveted his attention. Under the heading:
in place of the familiar Principals, Mr. and Mrs. George H. Foster, he read:
Principals: Mrs. George H. Foster
Mrs. John Delaney
Miss Hilda Foster
Mrs. John Delaney was Aunt Nellie. Under other circumstances, that would have been sufficiently terrible. But Miss Hilda Foster was Aunt Hilda, the fabulous, almost mythical Aunt Hilda of whom the very memory was panic.
And she was coming here to Oaklawn to be joint headmistress with Aunt Nellie and his mother. The idea was beyond contemplation.
“But, mummy,” he wailed, “she can’t come here. This is
Mrs. Foster kissed him a trifle wistfully and explained that his father had wished and willed things so.
“You’ll see, Branny,” she concluded, “with your aunts here we’ll have more time together. Time for walks in the country, picnics.”
But Branny felt desolation like a stone in the pit of his stomach. He locked himself in the lavatory and cried until he was violently sick.
Aunt Hilda arrived with the first days of September, about two weeks before the beginning of the winter term. She was even more terrifying than Branny’s memory of her.
Having been paid companion to a difficult lady of title, she had waited for her death and its consequent small annuity before descending on Oaklawn. She immediately showed that there is no female tyrant so absolute as one who has herself been under tyranny.
In appearance she was almost the exact opposite of Aunt Nellie. There was no false front about Aunt Hilda, either actual or metaphorical. A short, heavy woman, she wore her grayish hair back uncompromisingly from her forehead. Her manner was as uncompromising as a steam shovel. She creaked like one, too, as she moved heavily about, clucking at the inefficiencies of the establishment. She clucked over the school accounts, the tradesmen’s bills. She clucked over the laxity of the domestics, and several of Branny’s friends among the kitchen staff — especially those on whom he could rely for snatches of food at illicit hours — were sent away in tears. Aunt Hilda clucked disapprovingly over Mrs. Foster too, whisking away all her sister-in-law’s faint protests with an abrupt:
“Nonsense, Constance.”
When the more important things in the establishment had been clucked into a state of dull efficiency, Aunt Hilda turned her attention to Branny, who, she decided, was a shockingly coddled child. First of all she banished him once again to the fear-inhabited attic bedroom. Having neither the strength of will nor the command of vocabulary to defy her sister-in-law, Mrs. Foster tried at least to soften this blow for her son by providing him with a night-light. But Aunt Hilda snapped:
“Nonsense, Constance, stop pampering the child. Besides, it’s unpatriotic to waste tallow in wartime.”
It was unpatriotic, apparently, to waste quite a few things on Branny. The teas stopped almost immediately and his diet was rigidly overhauled. Meat, which he loved, was almost forbidden. In place of warm slices from a new cottage loaf with butter or jam, he had to make out with thick slices of yesterday’s bread scraped by Aunt Hilda’s own hands with a thin film of margarine. And at breakfast, even in holiday time when there were no pupils to consider, he had to endure the agony of lumpy porridge swimming in hot milk while his aunts, good trencherwomen both, partook liberally of ham, sausages, or poached eggs and bacon.
Exasperated one morning when Constance furtively slipped a sausage to Branny from her own plate, Aunt Hilda coldly pronounced the dreaded words:
“Constance, you are hopeless with that child. There is only one thing to do. He must go to a boys’ boarding school. He needs the discipline of boys of his own age. You are turning him into a milksop.”
There followed a heated argument at the end of which Constance dissolved in tears and Branny, goaded beyond endurance called his aunts “Two fat old pigs.”
Oddly enough in this impasse it was Aunt Nellie who came forward with a solution which more or less proved satisfactory to all parties. She approached Constance some hours later in her bedroom where she had taken her poorliness and Branny after the storm in the breakfast teacups. Aunt Nellie argued with sweet persuasiveness. No one wanted to get rid of dear Branson, of course, but Constance must admit it was not good for a child to be the only little boy in a school for girls. Now she, Aunt Nellie, had been writing to her friends in Mysore; indeed, she flattered herself she had worked up quite a neat little Anglo-Indian connection for the school. In some cases parents had not wanted their children to be separated, it being wartime and India being so far away, and several girls could be snared for the school provided their little brothers could also be admitted. The introduction of boys into the school would not only solve the problem of Branny, it would bring the sisters proportionate financial benefits.
It was this last consideration which won the nod of approval from Aunt Hilda, and the winter term was not too far advanced by the time Branny was sharing his attic — now pretentiously called the boys’ dormitory — with the first harbinger of the male contingent.
Branny might almost have been at boarding school, so far had he been severed from his mother. They had to scheme for their meetings like guilty lovers. Since Branny could do nothing, it was Mrs. Foster who developed craft. She persuaded one of the junior governesses that she was not “strong” enough and substituted herself as director of the younger children’s afternoon walk. She imagined ailments for the solitary male boarder so that she could sneak up to the dormitory for a surreptitious squeeze of Branny’s hand before “Lights out.”
These were, however, frugal crumbs of comfort for Branny. Life had become even bleaker than in the most flourishing days of the mustache. And with the stubborn simplification of the very young, Branny viewed the causes of this new regime and affixed all the blame for it on Aunt Hilda.
From then on he hated Aunt Hilda with a hatred that was the more bitter because there was no one with whom he could share it.
Although the admission of boys to Oaklawn had brought him no positive advantages, it did bring him a friend and ally who influenced him profoundly. This was the male boarder, a youngster of Branny’s own age, who was afflicted with the name of Marmaduke Cattermole. His father was the Vice-vice something-or-other of something-or-other in India and the son was Vice and Sophistication personified. A degenerate imp, as Aunt Hilda was to call him later, not without a certain approximation to essential truth.
Branny was a trifle overawed when this angelic-looking child first appeared. In fact everyone was overawed by Marmalade, as he himself chose to be called. Aunt Hilda, observing his ethereal complexion and remembering the alphabetic distinctions following his father’s name, decreed an extra blanket for him and a glass of milk at midday.
This milk, intended by Aunt Hilda as a special mark of favor, produced an unexpected result. For Marmalade had a passionate and whimsical hatred for milk and when it became plain that milk was to be forced upon him willynilly, this hatred transferred itself to Aunt Hilda as the instigator of his misery. In a short time his loathing outrivalled and outshone even that of Branny.
Indeed, Marmalade was obsessed with Aunt Hilda. He brewed malice against her with every breath and being a talented boy both with pencil and in doggerel rhythm, he mightily convulsed Branny with his verses and sketches. Outwardly he was honey-sweet to her but behind her back the angel was transformed into a monster. He invented innumerable names for her, among which the few printable ones were “blackbeetle,” “hellwitch,” and “the female gorilla.”
There is nothing like hatred to breed hatred in others. Branny and Marmalade fanned each other to a pitch of frenzy and in this new alliance with a boy of his own age against the Arch-Enemy, Branny forgot some of his hunger for his mother.
Gradually and imperceptibly Marmalade led the more timid Branny into action. It started with a terrifying, tiptoed investigation of Aunt Hilda s bedroom. The yield was less exotic than that of Aunt Nellie’s room. There were some severe black dresses with whalebone collar-supports which Marmalade promptly removed; a coroneted handkerchief sachet, doubtless the gift of the titled lady whose declining years had been cheered; some entrancing thick bloomers over which the two boys giggled; and several pairs of formidable stays.
The nearest approach to feminine daintiness was a bottle of
The most intriguing object was a key hidden in a small drawer. After frantic detective work it was found to open a small medicine closet on the shelf above Aunt Hilda’s bed. Its contents were disappointing too. Apart from a few household medicaments, there was an enema tube, whose purpose was unknown even to the sophisticated Marmalade, and a small bottle labeled brandy.
Marmalade pointed to it in delight. “Look, man. I bet the old blackbeetle guzzles brandy all night. Bet she gets drunk as a geyser, man.”
This allegation, though fascinating, was incidentally quite unfounded. Aunt Hilda was the soberest of mortals and kept a small supply of brandy as an emergency measure against sickness in others of less iron constitution.
Marmalade pointed excitedly to another bottle of approximately the same size and shape. It was labeled TINCTURE OF IODINE-POISON, and there was a red skull and crossbones.
“Coo, man, let’s pour some of that into the brandy,” he said daringly, “so next time the old witch takes a swig—”
“Gosh, no, man. You’d get put in prison or hanged.” Branny’s voice was awestruck. He had a wholesome terror of the forces of law and justice.
Marmalade snorted. “Who cares for the rotten old police? If old black-beetle was out in India, we’d do her in easy, man. One of my Dad’s house-boys pushed his wife off a cliff into the river and a crocodile ate her. Never found out either till someone killed the crocodile and found her bracelet inside. He didn’t get into any kind of a row.” Marmy’s saintlike face puckered in a simian grin. “Pity the poor crocodile that ate old hellwitch.”
But since there were no cliffs and no crocodiles at the Oaklawn School, little that was productive could be gleaned from this lurid reminiscence. Satisfying themselves with a last dribble in the
Apparently nothing was suspected and the conspirators exchanged ecstatic grins every time Aunt Hilda took out her handkerchief and a faint whiff of
Not long content with past triumphs, Marmalade’s fertile mind soon conceived a new plan of attack. Pleading scientific experiments, he made a surreptitious deal with Ruby, the most amenable of the scullery maids, whereby for the sum of one half-penny apiece she would hand over to him every live mouse caught in the kitchen traps. They soon had quite a flourishing family which they kept in a biscuit tin and fed on crusts from their supper.
At last the hour to strike came. Aunt Hilda’s only real self-indulgence was an hour of “forty winks” after tea. It was an immutable law and one could absolutely count upon it. Plans were duly laid. Branny was to stand guard at the foot of the front stairs while Marmalade stole up the back way with his biscuit tin and planted the mice in Aunt Hilda’s bed.
Branny waited breathlessly at his post. He could hear the clink of cups where his mother and aunts were taking their tea. Everything was running smoothly. Marmalade reappeared, his golden face beautiful with anticipation.
“Right between the sheets, man. All four of ’em. I bet the old—”
“Cave,” whispered Branny, for at that moment the study door opened and Aunt Hilda appeared. They withdrew into the shadows where they could not be seen but from whence they could watch the broad black back as it camelled its way ponderously upward over the drugget and stair rods.
The two children waited in the darkness, hardly daring to breathe.
At last it came — that faint scream which was probably the most feminine act ever perpetrated by Aunt Hilda. They heard her door open, they saw her appear, clad in a gray woolen dressing gown, at the top of the stairs.
Then, for all her bulk, Aunt Hilda ran down the front stairs as swiftly as a young doe, calling to no one in particular.
“The cat, quick! Mouse in my bed!”
The cat was duly obtained and shut in Aunt Hilda’s room where it allegedly left a half-eaten carcass under the bed.
Though the two boys hovered around, they never discovered the fate of the other mice. Whether they were squashed by the bulk of Aunt Hilda or whether they escaped to plague her further was forever shrouded in mystery.
But the reason for the mice’s presence in her bed did not long remain a mystery to the astute Aunt Hilda. The truth was made plain after a rigorous cross-examination of the scullery maid, Ruby, and Branny and Marmy received the Wages of Sin.
They were ordered to spend the rest of the day locked in their room, where they were to write one hundred times in their best copperplate hand the laudable sentence:
“Do unto others as you would be done by.”
No food would be served until Aunt Hilda was satisfied with their task.
They wasted considerable time trying to tie two nibs on to a single pen and thus do two lines at once. Finally they abandoned this and settled to their work, which they finished about an hour after their normal dinner time. They were, of course, ravenous, but they were too proud to signal their distress. However, they had a friend at court, for a faint rustling under the door attracted their attention and they saw six thin bars of milk chocolate appear under the crack. They fell on them and devoured them avidly without speculation as to their source.
It was typical of Branny’s love for his mother that he never subsequently caused her embarrassment by thanking her. In some respects he was a very tactful and gallant gentleman.
As the afternoon lengthened with no sign from their jailer, Satan inevitably entered to find mischief for idle hands. He started innocently enough goading Marmalade to write a number of lyrics all beginning with the line of their impositon.
But after a while this palled and the poet turned artist. Since they had used up all their paper, Marmalade adorned the end-leaves of Branny’s copy of
Although Marmalade remained the only male boarder, Oaklawn School for Girls prospered financially — an undeniable fact of which the aunts made capital, attributing it, of course, to their own efficiency and overlooking the geographical and chronological aspects of the case.
Branny, as far divorced as ever from his mother, dreamed of the holidays for which he and his mother had secretly planned a trip to Weston-Super-Mare.
But when the holidays came his dreams were shattered, for Aunt Nellie’s Anglo-Indian connection had been all too successful and there were several unwanted, homeless girls who had nowhere to go and had to remain under the school scare.
So Constance was required to stay at home and Branny stayed too, eating the same uninteresting food as during term time and denied even the use of the front stairs.
But life was not too impossible — at least not until the day that Aunt Hilda started, unbeknown to anyone else, to collect items for a local Church bazaar for the Belgian Refugee Fund. During the course of her probings, she came upon Branny’s books and it was not long before
It went to the vicarage along with other books, a faded lampshade, two broken parasols, a wilted pair of chintz curtains, and a supernumerary pair of andirons.
Branny was in the garden the next day when the vicar’s wife arrived. With the sure instinct of childhood, he knew that there was trouble brewing even before he saw
He gave her one of his slowest, sweetest smiles, but she hardly responded. Then his heart went sick because he saw what she was carrying.
She was shown to the drawing-room to see Aunt Hilda, and soon Branny’s mother and Aunt Nellie were sent for. Branny hovered around but acoustically the drawing-room was poor — that is, for people listening outside the door. He heard nothing but later, when the vicar’s wife left and the conference was transferred to the study, his eavesdropping was more successful.
“It’s entirely your fault, Constance,” Aunt Hilda was speaking. “You’ve raised the child without the first principles of discipline.”
“He needs a good whipping,” this from Aunt Nellie.
“It’s not his fault and you’re not to touch him.” Branny could hear his mother’s voice, tearful but determined. Then he caught the mention of Marmalade’s name.
“That degenerate imp... he’ll have to go... wouldn’t have had Mrs. Jackson... for the world... scandal... ruin the school... of course, Branny must go too.”
It was more than Branny could bear. He pushed open the door and marched in.
The three women were sitting around the center table. His mother held a handkerchief up to her face. Aunt Hilda’s arms were folded across a broad intransigent chest. Aunt Nellie drummed jeweled fingers. On the table lay
Branny’s eyes were riveted on them in horrified fascination. Then some strange impulse seized him and he started to laugh, helplessly, hysterically.
“Branson Foster.” Aunt Hilda’s voice thundered through the room. But it was Aunt Nellie’s ringed hand that delivered the sharp slap to the boy’s face.
“Stop it — at once!”
Branny’s laughter ended as abruptly as it had begun.
He moved toward his mother, seeking her face. But it was hidden behind her handkerchief.
Aunt Hilda demanded: “Branson, did you — er — perpetrate these... these—?”
Branson was still looking at his mother, paying no attention to Aunt Hilda.
“Speak up, you wicked child,” rapped Aunt Nellie.
But Branny did not answer. The aunts started talking, both at once. Branny had found his mother’s hand and was squeezing it. His touch seemed to give her courage because she spoke at last.
“Hilda, Nellie,” she faltered. “Leave us alone, will you, please?”
“Very well, Constance. He’s
“Innocent,” snorted Aunt Nellie.
“What he must have is a good whipping.”
Aunt Hilda took a ruler from the desk and pushed it across the table towards Constance. The two aunts withdrew.
Alone with his mother, Branny did not speak for a moment. His eyes turned again to the dreadful book on the table. Then suddenly, almost fiercely, he picked it up and threw it in the fire. The sight of the flames curling around the images of Aunt Hilda gave him a strange satisfaction.
His mother’s large brown eyes were staring at him inquiringly.
“Oh, Branny, did you... Oh, if only I knew what to do... if your father were alive.”
His eyes downcast, Branny said:
“I didn’t do it but... but I don’t want Them to know I didn’t.”
“But Branny...”
“I’ll take a whipping.” He took the ruler from the table and held it out.
“But Branny... if you’re innocent—”
“I’ll take a whipping,” he repeated doggedly.
“Oh, Branny, I know what it is. You don’t want to tell on Marmy.”
Still Constance did not move. Her large brown eyes filled with tears. With sudden determination Branny seized the ruler from her with his right hand and brought it down on his own left palm with hard, painful whacks. After each blow he uttered a realistic howl. He changed hands, striking at his right hand. With the sixth blow he gave vent to a burst of caterwauling which, for all its violence was almost sincere.
Then he rushed from the room, past his listening aunts who looked at each other and nodded in satisfaction. He could almost hear them saying:
“I didn’t know poor Constance had it in her.”
He ran up the front stairs to his room and stayed there almost all day.
When next he saw his mother alone, he learned that Aunt Hilda was adamant about his going away to a boys’ boarding school next term. Marmy would have to leave, too.
And when he went up to bed in his lonely attic, Aunt Hilda forbade him once again the use of the front stairs. That night he dreamed of Marmy’s Indian crocodile, but the woman toppling over the cliff into the reptile’s jaws was not the houseboy’s wife, it was Aunt Hilda. And when he awoke, a strange quivering of excitement was in him. If Aunt Hilda were gone, life could be golden again. Accidents did happen. Why couldn’t an accident happen to Aunt Hilda?
Once his mind had leaped this terrific hurdle, the idea was never out of his thoughts. He nursed it like a secret joy. An accident had happened to the wife of Marmy’s father’s houseboy and nothing had happened to the house-boy. Marmy had said so. The profundity of Marmy’s influence on him was beginning to show. Timid, unassertive, he would never have imagined what he was imagining if the other boy had not taught him that one can fight even the most formidable foe.
His dreamings were at first thrilling but vague. He remembered the blue bottle of iodine in Aunt Hilda’s room with its red skull and marked with the word POISON, and wondered what would happen if by chance some of it got into Aunt Hilda’s brandy. Iodine tasted bad. Branny knew that because he had licked some off once after it had been applied to a cut finger. Probably Aunt Hilda would taste the iodine and not drink the brandy. No, the accident wouldn’t happen that way.
Branny’s mind dwelt constantly and caressingly on Marmy’s Indian reminiscence of the unwanted wife, the cliff, and the crocodile. His days and nights were exalted with an image of Aunt Hilda falling from a high place, while below, its jaws gaping to receive its prey, squatted a monstrous but cooperative crocodile. In Branny’s secret dream world, Aunt Hilda gradually stopped being a human being. She became a symbol of Injustice. If something happened to her, it would not be something happening to a real person of real flesh and blood.
He brooded more and more, yearning for the old days of closeness and safety with his beloved. He grew so pale with brooding that his mother became quite worried about him. However, she ascribed his vapors to his dread of going away to boarding school, for arrangements were already being made with a gentlemanly but inexpensive establishment in Kent and his departure was scheduled for the beginning of the Easter term.
It was the Germans, those arch-experts in murder, who brought Branny’s secret desire out of the realms of dream and into reality. The zeppelin raids had now begun in earnest and it was rumored that they would not concentrate upon London alone but were planning to destroy the industrial cities of the midlands, even the nearby city of Bristol. These rumors were confirmed by a solemn visit from the vicar who, in his role of special constable, was responsible for seeing that all regulations were observed concerning the safety of Littletonians.
England was not yet blacked-out as it was to be later in the War and the street lamps had not yet been painted that bluish purple which, though picturesque, was to make the towns and villages so gloomy at night. The menace from the air — especially in the west — was nowhere near as great as in the Second World holocaust. Nevertheless, each little town in England was beginning to take itself seriously as a target especially picked by the Kaiser himself, and black cloth for curtains was at a premium.
The menace, however inconsiderable, was there. And the vicar, a resourceful and conscientious man, felt responsible for the safety of his flock, in particular for the young lambs entrusted to the care of the principals of Oaklawn School for Girls.
Consequently, he evolved a plan and called on Mrs. Foster and the Aunts for a solemn conference.
It had been arranged by the local authorities that the approach of Zeppelins should be signaled by the ringing of the church bell. At the first peal it behooved everybody to extinguish all lights and betake themselves to the security of their cellars. But the vicar realized that in a house of some sixty or seventy persons — mostly young persons — there might be panic or confusion resulting in serious accidents.
He suggested that the three Principals should divide up the duties among themselves or their appointees and having decided on their battle stations, they should hold a practice or two during daylight hours. In this way the girls and mistresses would get accustomed to the routine and then — when the fatal hour struck — they would hurry to the safety of the cellar like trained soldiers with the minimum of disorder. He further suggested that an air of jollity or “larkishness” should be given to the whole proceeding so that the children would not be unduly intimidated or alarmed.
“If I can be of any service,” he concluded mildly, “you can count on me.”
But that was sending coals to Newcastle. Aunt Hilda had grasped the idea perfectly. And her superb generalship was more than equal to it. In fact, it was exactly the task she relished.
After dinner the next day she addressed the whole school, including the staff and servants, allotting specific duties.
She tried, unsuccessfully, to give to the project an air of holiday or treat — a special amusement designed by herself for the delectation of the whole school. While attempting to make light of any possible danger, she managed to make her discourse sound like Pericles’ Funeral Oration.
The girls and mistresses smiled halfheartedly as they trooped out of the dining-hall.
However, the actual practice alert did prove to be more fun than had been expected. Aunt Hilda scheduled it for the second hour of afternoon school. She handled it with impressive thoroughness. Girls, governesses, even the servants were instructed to go upstairs to their rooms, to undress and get right into bed, just as if it were their normal bedtime. At the sound of the whistle, things were to begin.
It was far, far better than the algebra or French of afternoon school.
The girls loved it, especially the little ones. And how they giggled when — the whistle having sounded — Aunt Nellie appeared in a cerise peignoir and lighting the candle in broad daylight, advised them, half in English and half in French: “Look sharp, children, and prenny garde.”
Squeaking and tittering could be heard from every room, particularly from the senior domitory where Miss Earle — who had a flair for the dramatic — had appeared in a Japanese kimono with her hair actually done up in a full panoply of curl papers.
Branny enjoyed it all, too. He had, as the only possessor of a flashlight, been given a special assignment. His job was to stand at the top of the back stairs, flashing on his light when needed and shooing off any one who made a turn toward the front stairs. He entertained himself by flashing his light into the girls’ eyes as they scuttled down the stairs with a “boo, look out for the zeppelins” or a surreptitious pinch for those with whom he knew he could take liberties.
After the last girl and junior staff member had been shepherded down, Branny stood at his post and watched, fascinated, as Aunt Hilda emerged from her room in a snuff-colored dressing gown and conscientiously went through the motions of turning out the unlighted gaslights in each passage. Then, carrying a lit candle, she made her portentous way down the front stairs towards the gas bracket in the hall. She was moving fast and purposefully but on the last stair but one she stumbled and the candle fell from her hand.
As Branny scurried away to join the others in the cellar he suddenly knew what was going to happen.
A minute later, when Aunt Hilda came down, he heard her say to Ruby: “One of the rods is loose on the front stairs. See to it at once or someone will break her neck.”
Branny’s pulses were racing as he heard these words from the dark corner of the cellar where he was holding his mother’s hand.
The stair rod is loose... someone will break her neck...
Next time, perhaps, it wouldn’t be daylight. A stair rod might be loose at the top of the stairs rather than at the bottom. Then someone going down hurriedly in the darkness might easily fall all the way from the top and — break her neck...
That night, when going through the stereotyped formula of his prayers: “And bless mother and all kind friends and make me a good boy. Amen,” he added a rider:
“And please, God, make the zeppelins come here soon.”
During the ensuing days while he was waiting for his prayers to be answered, Branny was a model boy. He was good, so obedient, that everyone thought he must be sickening from some infectious disease.
He was particularly polite to Aunt Hilda, for he had inspected the front stairs very carefully. The carpet was overlaid by a drugget of thick, patterned linen. This was held in place by stair rods which fitted into rings at both ends. By pushing the rod an inch or two out of its rung on the banister side and by loosening the drugget, he found he achieved a surface almost as slippery and hazardous as a toboggan slide. Only a quick grab at the banister with the right hand could save anyone. And Aunt Hilda had held the candle in her right hand during the practice. After the fall, when the drugget would automatically be more loosened, no one could ever guess that the stair rods had been deliberately pushed out of their ring-sockets.
He decided on loosening the rods on two stairs — the third and fourth from the top — and practiced several times, even doing it with his eyes closed, since the final deed would have to be done in darkness.
With a child’s implacability he trained himself to the task as thoroughly and impersonally as a guerrilla, but he never really assessed what he was doing. There was going to be an accident. That was all.
Waiting was hard, especially at night when he lay sleepless in bed, his senses tingling in expectation of the sound of the church bell. That there might be any real danger from Zeppelins to himself or to his mother never even occurred to him. Branny feared no straightforward menace.
He was asleep when the church bell finally sounded at two o’clock on a bitter cold night in early December. He jumped out of bed shivering, put on his trousers and jersey, picked up his flashlight, and made his way to his appointed place between the front and back stairs.
From the girls’ bedrooms he could hear twitterings, less gay and giggly now that the real thing had come. He watched the governesses moving, candles in hand, from dormitory to dormitory. Then he slipped to his mother’s room and escorted her to the servants’ wing, whence she was to conduct the maids down the kitchen stairs into the distant safety of the cellar.
Before the procession started was his time for action. Very quickly, and quite calmly, he ran to the front stairs and loosened the rods and the drugget on the third and fourth stairs.
Soon afterwards the girls and governesses began to troop from their dormitories. The children, for the most part, looked frightened and bewildered. Branny didn’t tease them or pretend to be a zeppelin this time, but — as befitted the only male in the house — said encouraging things.
“The old zeps won’t get this far. We’ll shoot ’em all down over London. You see if we don’t...”
Then, when everyone had dispersed — including Aunt Nellie in her cerise wrap — Branny made his way down the back stairs and to the far end of the hall where he could keep the front stairs under observation.
He did not exactly want to witness Aunt Hilda’s downfall. There was no element of sadism or gloating in his scrutiny. It was simple a ruthless sense of efficiency which made him wish to reassure himself that the accident would happen.
The church bell had stopped tolling and the minutes seemed endless. In the near-darkness he could hear the grandfather clock near him ticking off the seconds like drum beats.
Then there was the opening of a door upstairs and he recognized Aunt Hilda’s heavy tread as she moved along the upstairs passages, turning out the gas. As he waited breathless, he heard another sound. Someone was running with light, swift tread up the back stairs. It must, he reflected, be one of the governesses who had forgotten something. He heard Aunt Hilda’s voice saying:
“Forgotten your coat? Well, hurry up and get it. It’s very cold in the cellar and I hope none of the girls...”
The sound of the light scurrying footsteps retreated. A door opened and closed. For a second or two there was no sound except the rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock and the pounding of Branny’s own heart.
Then footsteps again and — as he peered unseeingly into the darkness upstairs — Branny was conscious of someone approaching the top of the front stairs. Aunt Hilda must be coming down, but without her candle.
Now he could see her dimly as she moved. She had reached the small landing at the crest of the stairs.
She started down. He watched in a kind of appalled fascination.
Then there was the metallic rattle of stair rods. A scream... a crash... as she fell forward and hurtled down the stairs, landing on the tiles of the front hall.
A little moan... then silence...
For a moment Branny stood motionless. One impulse urged him to move forward, another held him back. A sense of triumph warred with a feeling of fear for what he had done.
In the dim light from the gas by the front door he could see the dark figure lying still — very still — at the foot of the stairs.
He felt nothing — only the certainty that Aunt Hilda was there — dead.
Then he heard a sound that made his blood turn to ice. There were heavy footsteps above him and a voice came from the upstairs landing: “Good God, what has happened? Did you have an accident?”
It was a horribly familiar voice.
Aunt Hilda was coming down the stairs. Then it could not be Aunt Hilda who was lying there, a dark pool on the tiles of the hall.
Through his agony of remorse and terror Branny heard Aunt Hilda’s voice again:
“Constance, Constance, are you hurt?”
There was no need for Branny to move closer. In the nearing light from his aunt’s candle, he could make out quite clearly the outlines of that figure lying there, could see the aureole of dark hair framing the beloved face, paler now than death.
“Mother!”
The word came in a groan of agony. Then Branny turned away and disappeared into the darkness.
There is a degree of suffering beyond which the human mind cannot go, even in childhood where suffering is so acute. It is beyond the realm of sanity and verges on the outer darkness beyond which there is no thought, no reason.
Luckily for Branny he reached that point of narcosis immediately. His only instinct was a blind desire to hide — somewhere far away, to fade and quite forget. Up in the attic there was a cupboard whose door he could lock from the inside. It was musty and dirty but he didn’t care. It was dark and as far away from the front hall as possible.
For hours he crouched there in the darkness, his mind mercifully blank. If any conscious thought came to him it was simply that he had killed his mother and if he stayed hidden up there long enough he’d die too and that would be that.
Somewhere in the house were voices and footsteps, the girls returning from their cellar and trooping back to their dormitories. And then someone was calling his name:
“Branny... Branny...”
But he didn’t move. He’d never come out of his hiding place... never... and when they found him, if they ever did, he’d be dead and they could bury him by his mother.
He sat there, dry-eyed, and immobile as a rock. He had no sense of time or place any more. He slept. He was dimly conscious of that when he awoke. He was dimly conscious too of faint light creeping through the cracks in the door which told him it was day. Then the daylight went again. It never occurred to him that he might be hungry. He did not even feel the aching of his body. Noises sounded occasionally, infinitely remote. He heard them but he didn’t try to interpret them. He slept again and awoke again to his stubborn grief.
At some point, it might have been aeons later, he heard Aunt Nellie’s voice and he knew that she was near, actually in the attic.
“The cupboard, Miss Snellgrove. When Miss Foster searched up here yesterday, she never thought of the cupboard. It is just possible...” And then Miss Snellgrove’s tearful voice. “Oh, Mrs. Delaney, hasn’t there been any new word from the police station?”
“Not a word, but it’s hopeless. They have searched everywhere, all over the countryside. I am convinced, Miss Snellgrove that the boy is...”
At that moment the door handle of the cupboard was vigorously shaken.
“See? It’s locked. Branny.” Aunt Nellie’s voice was kind but strained with anxiety. “Branny, I know you are there. Do come out, there’s a good boy.”
Branny crouched deeper into the cupboard and pulled some musty curtains over him. They were not going to get him out by any trick of kindness or anxiety.
They were both tugging at the unyielding door. “He must be there. Oh, Branny, do come out...”
At last they went away. It seemed a long time before anyone came again and then there was the sound of footsteps and a man’s voice. Branny recognized it at once as that of the doctor who had attended his father during his final illness.
“Branny—” this time it was Aunt Hilda speaking — “Dr. Berry is here to talk to you. He has something to tell you.” She added hurriedly: “I’m going away so you can talk to him alone.”
Branny heard her heavy footsteps departing and the doctor’s voice:
“Branson, my boy, won’t you come out? I want to talk to you about your mother.”
Branny did not answer. They were speaking softly and gently to him now but as soon as they got him out, they’d be harsh with him. Perhaps they had guessed what he had done on the stairs and he would be sent to prison.
Then Doctor Berry spoke again. “Branson,” he said quietly, “I want you to come with me and see your mother. She’s asking for you. She needs you very badly, my boy.”
Branny’s heart missed a beat. Through all those long hours in the darkness it had never occurred to him that his mother might still be alive.
Slowly his hand went up to the lock. Then he withdrew it again. No, this might be a trap — to lure him out so they could pounce on him.
“Branson, she’s down in the drawing-room waiting. You wouldn’t want to be unkind to her, would you? She’s had a terrible accident...”
Branny could bear it no longer. He crashed open the cupboard door and stood there facing Dr. Berry. For a moment the physician stared in astonishment at the child. Branny was covered with grime and dust. His hair was full of cobwebs and the expression on his pale face held in it all the misery of the world.
Dr. Berry was strangely touched and, dirty as Branson was, he drew him towards him. The kindness of a stranger was too much for the boy and the pent-up flow of unshed tears broke loose in a torrent.
For a moment Dr. Berry said nothing. He just held the quivering child close and patted his head while Branny wept his heart out. Then the doctor produced a handkerchief, wiped Branny’s eyes, and said cheerfully:
“Come on, now, old boy. You’ve got to be a man. Your mother needs a man to look after her and you’re the only one in the house, you know.”
Then in answer to an unspoken question, he went on: “She’s going to live, Branson, but she may never be able to walk again. That’s why she’ll need a man like you to look after her.”
He took Branny’s hand and led him from the attic. “Now, go on down and have a good scrub and then we’ll take you to see her. Come on, let’s see a clean smiling face and look sharp.”
Aunt Hilda and Aunt Nellie were waiting for him downstairs. They kissed him and Aunt Hilda said “poor little boy” as she produced the best Brown Windsor soap. Aunt Nellie got his Sunday suit and used her own comb and brush to brush the dust and cobwebs from his hair.
And then, when he looked clean and neat, Aunt Hilda said: “Your mother’s in the drawing-room, dear. Her bed is down there now and you can have the little study next door all for your own. So you can look after her. And you can have all your meals together.”
“And,” put in Aunt Nellie with a grim attempt at cheerfulness, “after a few weeks when your mother’s a little stronger, she’ll need you to push her wheel-chair. So you won’t be going to boarding school next term after all...”
Dr. Berry led him then into the drawing-room where his mother’s bed was placed near the window. She lay in it, frail and beautiful, her soft hair about her face.
“Well, here’s your new nurse, Mrs. Foster.”
Branny moved to his mother’s bedside and took the slender hand that she held out to him. They looked long into each other’s eyes like lovers.
“Branny,” she breathed. “Oh, Branny, darling...”
After the doctor had left, they stayed there, fingers intertwined. There was a faint fall of snow outside the windows and through an open door Branny could see his own bed in the little room that had been prepared for him. There was even a fire.
Soon Aunt Hilda came in, carrying a tea tray with two cups only. There was a boiled egg for Branny and muffins to be toasted.
“Now, Nurse Branson,” she said, “I’m going to leave you to take care of your patient.”
Branny felt his heart would burst with joy.
Thomas Walsh
The Good Prospect
McCann should have passed the buck with this girl whose name was Elizabeth Nolan, who was thin and tired-looking and too worried to be pretty, who faced him across the table and spoke in a low voice, her dark eyes fixed on him, her breathing unsteady despite the way she fought to control it. McCann should have used his head; he should have told her that the precinct house was no place to come with her story. Missing Persons, downtown, handled those jobs. This one, this husband of hers who hadn’t come home last night — well, there wasn’t anything mysterious about him, or his reasons, or his absence. He’d married her, yes. And then he’d lost his job, and there was a baby on the way, and things got so tough this one just ducked out. That happened — oh, a hundred times a year — and there wasn’t a thing in the world McCann could do about it. Not a thing.
But McCann didn’t tell her those things, of course; he couldn’t, maybe, because she reminded him of his own Edie, and maybe because twenty years on the Force hadn’t hardened his heart.
She had a picture — a small snapshot — and as McCann looked at it she tried to supplement the photo haltingly. Joe Nolan was twenty-four, five feet ten, a hundred and forty-five pounds. He had dark hair and eyes, no distinguishing marks. He was, or three months before he had been, an accountant. Then he’d lost his job, and he hadn’t been able to find another, not in that line. He’d tried, of course, but in the end he had answered an ad in the paper. Jarrett & Sons wanted salesmen; it was May, and soon people would be buying electric refrigerators.
Joe Nolan didn’t believe everything in the ad, of course. He thought he might, with luck, sell two refrigerators a week. That didn’t seem very difficult at first, because everybody at Jarrett’s was very nice, and they even had a school to train men who had no experience. There was no salary; but every refrigerator he sold would give him a straight ten per cent commission. Two would mean something close to forty a week.
“And there’ll be more some weeks,” Elizabeth told him, very surely. “People like you, Joe. You get on well with them. I know you’re going to make out fine...”
Joe thought so too, before doors began to close against him, before people said, “No, no,” and slammed them without even listening to what he had to say: before little white cards, stuck up neatly over the bell, said salesmen or canvassers needn’t ring, before Joe knew what he was up against. There were eight men in Joe’s crew, and that first month there were only two refrigerators sold. Neither of them was credited to him.
But the beginning was, their crew manager insisted, the most difficult time. He was a short, jolly little man, named Russell, and he never lost heart.
That was fine until Joe came home, alone, at night. Elizabeth always came out to the landing after he rang, and leaned over the railing, so that he could see her face dimly against the high shadows that hovered in the stairwell above her. He knew what she came out for, although she never asked; after he’d climbed up the stairs and kissed her he’d be very cheerful about some new prospects, about people who were going to buy, next week, next month. Most of the time he had no prospects; and when he contacted the Cramers, when they got interested, he didn’t say a word about them, because it seemed almost too good to be true, and because he didn’t want Elizabeth to know a thing about it until he had the papers signed and the deposit in his pocket. It was, till then, to be a secret.
McCann turned in the information he had to the Missing Persons Bureau that morning; and then, since he didn’t have much to do, since the pinched face of Elizabeth Nolan, so like his oldest, his Edie, if she were worried and alone, plagued him, he stopped in at Jarrett’s, though he was sure it wasn’t going to do him any good. The crew had just returned from canvassing; they were in the basement, in the employees’ quarters, listening to a brisk and hearty little man named Russell, who was giving them what sounded to McCann like a pep talk. He wasn’t greatly concerned over Joe Nolan, for he knew fellows like that were drifters. They came and went. They never got anywhere. Eying the crew, Mr. Russell said he had a good idea why Joe Nolan hadn’t come to work that morning. Probably he just lay down and quit, like a yellow dog.
McCann didn’t like this Russell much; he didn’t tell him that Joe Nolan hadn’t been home either. “Keep your lip buttoned, mister,” he said, “or someday someone might button it for you.”
The hospitals and the morgue were out too, he discovered later that afternoon. Nobody resembling Joe Nolan had been in an accident, or taken to either place, and that, McCann thought, was all he could be expected to do for her. It was up to the Missing Persons Bureau now, and when he stopped in to see Elizabeth Nolan later that afternoon he meant it to be only for a moment.
The chances were, he said, that everything was going to be all right. But a little thing sometimes gave them a lead; and if she could think of anything unusual he’d done, any remark he’d made, it might help them. If they had money in the bank, and he’d taken that—
He hadn’t. She got the bankbook from the bureau drawer, and showed it to McCann, without seeming to understand what he meant by the remark. Their one room and kitchenette faced east; it was shadowed now and hot, its windows looking out over backyards and clothes-lines.
Across from him, on a couch that at night must be their bed, Elizabeth Nolan folded a letter over and over in her slim fingers. It had come that afternoon, addressed to Joe, from his old firm; and she had opened it because she was afraid, because she hoped it — Her lips quivered wordlessly.
Muttering something, McCann took it from her hand. Four or five typewritten lines were all it contained, and as he read them he cleared his throat, for he could see easily how this would make her feel — now, when Joe had not been home. Due, it said, to the improvement in business conditions, they were able to take on their old employees again. Mr. Nolan’s former job was waiting for him, at the same salary; he could report in Monday morning, at nine sharp.
McCann tried to change the look on her face by questioning her gently again. But she could recall nothing, save that once or twice he’d been — queer, teasing her about a secret that he couldn’t tell to anyone, not yet. In the quiet room, desperately, she forced herself to remember.
“The secret?” McCann asked.
Mr. Russell was a convincing man. He could make you see how the law of averages always worked out, how the whole thing was mathematical. He could tell the crew now that a hundred thousand electric refrigerators would be sold in the city that summer. All over, people would be looking at Jarrett’s newspaper display, and wishing they had one. There was the market; all the crew had to do was bring it into the open. If they rang enough doorbells—
Joe thought that perhaps he hadn’t been ringing enough doorbells. The crew canvassed in the morning, from nine to twelve, because the housewives had their husbands and kids out of the way then, and were nearly always at home, cleaning the house up. Mr. Russell, from his wide experience, knew it was the best time to get them to answer the door. Afternoons were no good. They were taking a nap, then, or out to the movies — they rarely answered rings. So afternoons the crew hung around the store, or followed up earlier prospects, or even called on friends, for Mr. Russell could show you that if they were good friends they’d be only too glad to help you. Some afternoons, if you were worried about your wife, and about a bankbook that had less than eighty dollars in it, you might have done the thing Joe Nolan did. You might have gone out and canvassed alone, to make sure that you’d ring enough doorbells.
The second afternoon Joe did that, he rang the Cramers’ doorbell. It was a porched brick house, one of a row of porched brick houses in a quiet suburban street. The first moment, after Mrs. Cramer opened the door, went like all the others — the countless others. Mrs. Cramer took the folder and the cards he held out, said curtly, “Not interested,” and started to close the door. Then for some reason, looking at his face, she stopped.
She was a tall woman, dark and thirty, with sullen black eyes and a narrow sullen mouth. There was something odd about the way she looked at him, as if she weren’t listening to his words, as if she were puzzled by something about him. But Joe was too busy talking to pay much attention to that — he scarcely noticed it, absorbed in the effort of remembering Mr. Russell’s words of advice, and how they should always harp on economy, economy, economy, when they spoke to women. He wasn’t quite sure that it was the right method to adopt with Mrs. Cramer; she didn’t seem to be listening to him at all. But Mr. Russell, after all, knew his business, because Mrs. Cramer admitted, when he’d finished, that she’d been thinking of buying a refrigerator; they needed one; if he came to talk to her husband some evening that week perhaps they could reach an agreement.
They didn’t, not that first night. William Frederick, Mr. Cramer, was a dark man just his own size, only two or more years older. He had a clipped mustache, and horn-rimmed glasses, with an expression in the eyes behind them that Joe couldn’t place. Fright, he might have said, if that hadn’t been absurd. Once, indeed, turning suddenly with his big leather salesbook, he saw them staring at each other silently, with a touch of amazement. But Joe put that down to his nerves; he was shaky all the time he was talking. The rich, telling phrases of Mr. Russell, so effective and subtly eloquent in imaginary interviews, creaked now, and seemed to sprawl out flatly before him.
But Mr. Cramer soon became friendly; he made Joe a highball, and asked him about his work. He supposed that the salesmen turned in their list of prospects at the store, so that their manager could check them every so often, and find out how they followed up their openings. Wasn’t that the way they worked? He didn’t know until Joe told him what some stores did — waited until a fellow had supplied them with a lot of leads, and then fired him before he could make the sale. With the names and addresses in the file, the manager got the credit, and the sale; the store saved the commission. Mr. Cramer nodded. His name, then, wouldn’t be turned in by Joe?
Joe grinned slightly.
“Not until I make the sale — if I do.”
Mr. Cramer assured him that he would make it. In a week or so they’d be ready to buy, and no one but Joe would get their order. At nine, when Joe left, he walked out with him to the porch and talked a moment there. Fenner & Lisle’s employed him — the wholesale grocers. Sometime, he thought, they’d need an accountant, and he would keep his ears open for Joe. That is, if he’d like a salaried job again.
Looking up at him, Joe could only stutter. If something like that — William Frederick Cramer pulled away from him, his face gleaming in the shadow. It wasn’t, he muttered, at all certain; he shouldn’t bank on it, or excite his wife about something that might never come to pass. He shouldn’t tell her a word about it — not until it was definite. Women built their hopes so high that they were crushed if something went wrong.
Joe could see that too, plainly enough to be sure that he’d never tell her a word of this. He hadn’t even told her about the sale; and he wouldn’t, until it was put through.
Fine, Mr. Cramer said, shaking hands — fine. Just for a moment, after his good night, Joe was struck with something very familiar about Mr. Cramer, an angle, a facet of his expression brought out by the light from the hallway tailing across his features as he turned. But on the walk home the faint impression faded from his mind; he could think only of the job.
“Take your time now,” McCann said. “Don’t get excited. Just think back, Mrs. Nolan; try to remember anything unusual that happened. A little thing — maybe something he said, or something he did — might help us a lot. He wouldn’t have gone out with some friends last night, and drank maybe a bit too much?”
The light, tremulous quiver that answered him moved and vanished across Elizabeth Nolan’s pale cheeks. Joe wouldn’t do that; he would never stay away all night, all day, without a word. And she couldn’t think of anything unusual; unless the dentist—
McCann prodded his plate with a faint scowl. He didn’t like to talk or even think of dentists. But what was out of the way about this one?
Elizabeth Nolan wasn’t sure. It had happened three or four days ago, and at the time it didn’t seem important; it was just a bad tooth that was bothering Joe. This Tuesday, when he came home, the tooth was out. He told her that he’d gone to a city clinic; but this morning, in his coat, she had found a card.
It was on the dresser now, and in a moment McCann had it propped across his blunt fingers. It all sounded funny. Why would this Joe lie about a city clinic? Dr. August Rapp, by his address, wasn’t doing any free work, not in that section. McCann knew it well; he knew it took a good practice, high fees, to stay there. The point was odd; it defied logic. Why would the boy lie? Getting up, he thanked the girl, and told her not to worry, trying to sound reassuring when he said it. On the street, after a brief period of fretful thought, he caught a cab and gave the driver Dr. August Rapp’s address.
It was then about three o’clock, Friday afternoon.
The second time Joe visited the Cramers a back tooth ached dully against his jaw. Mr. Cramer was, apparently, off that afternoon, for he opened the door for Joe, and was sympathetic when he heard about the tooth. It should, he thought, come right out, for something like that, if it was neglected—
He stopped there for a moment, thoughtfully, with a slight frown and then lit a cigarette.
“Here,” he said slowly. “I can fix that up. You’re worried about the money, of course. Isn’t that it?”
It seemed that Fenner & Lisle’s had a company dentist, who took care of the employees. And William Frederick Cramer had good teeth; he had never been to see this dentist himself. His point was simple; all Joe had to do was to see this dentist, and to say he was William Frederick Cramer. Mr. Cramer himself would make the appointment, the next morning, and Joe could call his wife in the afternoon, so that she could give him the dentist’s name, and the time for his appointment. The whole thing wouldn’t cost him a nickel.
At first Joe protested, because it didn’t seem right, and because somehow or other Mr. Cramer might get into trouble with the company. But that, Mr. Cramer said, was impossible, as long as he told no one, not even his wife. For women — well, he knew how Myra spread things around, sometimes without thinking about it at all. If Joe would promise to keep it entirely to himself, who could find out? The dentist had never seen him; he would of course accept him without question as William Frederick Cramer. If he kept it to himself, there was no chance to slip up.
And it was all right, even absurdly easy, though Joe all the time felt a little ashamed. Dr. Rapp didn’t ask him any questions; after Joe had given his name to the nurse as Mr. Cramer, he was ushered into the inner office, where the doctor pulled his tooth, and marked some others out on a chart he had. There was an upper molar that he thought should be looked after. Next Tuesday, at four, Mr. Cramer could have another appointment.
Joe said he’d phone if he could make it, since there was no sense pushing the thing too far, or taking advantage of Mr. Cramer’s kindness. Dr. Rapp merely nodded, and from the desk picked up a card with his name and phone number on it, under his address. It didn’t strike Joe at the time as an odd thing for a company dentist to do; when it was in his pocket he forgot all about it. He knew he wouldn’t be coming back.
Dr. Rapp was pretty positive at first that he’d never had a patient named Nolan. It wasn’t until McCann showed him the photo Elizabeth Nolan had given him that his eyes changed and showed interest. This was Cramer, he said — he’d seen him Tuesday. In the morning his wife had come in, to make the appointment, and to pay for the extraction — a fact which Dr. Rapp had thought at the time to be a bit strange, since most men preferred to pay their own bills. McCann nodded absently, thanking him; later he came back from the corridor to find if this Cramer had left his address. He hadn’t; but in the phone book there was only one William Frederick Cramer listed.
It was twenty minutes past four.
Thursday night when he went to close the sale with Mr. Cramer, so many things happened that the actual events were rather hazy in Joe’s mind. Mr. Cramer was waiting in the living room for him, dressed and shaved, with a suitcase at his feet. He was leaving that night for Albany, since he had to be there in the morning, on business; but the startling news he had for Joe was that he wanted him to go with him. There was an opening in the Albany office which he had just got wind of that day; and he knew Old Higgins very well. If Joe came with him now, so that he could be there in the morning to present himself when the office opened, Mr. Cramer was pretty sure he could land the job.
Joe thought, the first thing, of Elizabeth; it was the only detail that made him hesitate. But Mrs. Cramer said she’d be glad to take the trolley over and tell her what had happened, and after that there was no reason to stop. In half an hour they were out on the road, in Mr. Cramer’s small coupe, doing forty through a quiet countryside.
They didn’t talk very much until they were clear of the city; Mr. Cramer seemed a little worried now about the dentist. He said if they ever found out about that at Fenner & Lisle’s they’d fire him, and he wanted to know if Joe had told anyone, even his wife. Three or four times he brought that up; and every time Joe assured him that he hadn’t mentioned it to anyone.
But something else was really occupying his mind. Mr. Cramer had shaved off his mustache — tired of fooling with the darn’ thing he said — and now more than ever his features troubled Joe with an elusive sense of familiarity. This time, however, it worried him only briefly before it was clear, so astonishingly clear, that it seemed incredible he had never been able to place it before. The mustache helped to reveal it now, of course; but even then—
In his excitement he grasped Mr. Cramer’s arm, with an uncertain laugh.
“Maybe I’m a little dizzy about the job and all,” he said. “I thought you looked kind of familiar, though I could never just place it. The mustache being off has made it easier, I guess. You look an awful lot like me, Mr. Cramer. I bet if I had your glasses on I could fool your wife.” Mr. Cramer smiled. “Nonsense,” he said.
“It isn’t,” Joe went on earnestly. “If I had your glasses on—”
Something tense came up under Mr. Cramer s smile; a thin cord tightened along his jaw. Somewhat sharply he said he’d never noticed it. It was absurd.
When Mrs. Cramer opened the door for him, perhaps a minute after his ring, McCann had rid himself of his cigar. He looked a middle-aged, guileless fat man, who could murmur something about reading a meter without being questioned.
Mrs. Cramer was neither nervous nor friendly. It was pleasant and quiet, sunnily peaceful; in a way, McCann felt ashamed of himself. He thought he had a bad mind — a suspicious mind.
Nevertheless, he went out, after visiting the cellar, through the living room, as if he didn’t remember what door he’d used coming in. That was a pleasant room, too. But the thing that caught McCann’s eyes like a glaze of lightning was a framed picture on the upright piano. For an amazed moment McCann stared at it; and in the street, after he had rounded a corner, he took the snapshot of young Nolan out of his pocket to stare at it in turn. Without the mustache, without the glasses, the two pictures might have been those of twins.
At first McCann figured that was screwy. This Nolan, he thought, might be married to both of them. He’d read of things like that, of men having two families in the same town, a couple of miles apart. Only there was a catch so that, since young Nolan had been married to Elizabeth over a year now, and he’d never been away from home before — not for one night. If this Cramer had vanished a year ago, about the time young Nolan had married Elizabeth—
The newsman could check that. Every night, he said, Mr. Cramer came down for a late copy of the paper — every night but last night. McCann, prodding his plate thoughtfully, asked about the mustache. Cramer had one of those?
The newsman looked at him curiously. “Until two or three days ago. I was kidding him when he came down without it, he looked so young. What you want to know for?”
McCann grunted: “I’m writing a book.” His trolley came then and he ran for it, but all the time he stayed aboard he kept worrying about this thing. It didn’t seem to have any edges that would help fit it into place. The mustache placed William Frederick Cramer and it placed young Nolan. They were different men. Two or three days ago, perhaps the very day Joe Nolan went to the dentist, this Cramer shaved it off. Why? Why the dentist?
He was the solving piece, McCann thought — fit him in and the rest would follow. Teeth were as good identification, almost, as fingerprints.
McCann got off the street-car then, slowly, looking very pale, and telling himself he was crazy. Something like that — Still, from a booth he called headquarters, and then his home, to tell Molly he wouldn’t be there for supper.
At seven he called headquarters again. In a moment he hung up, something heavy and cold pressing around his heart. The last thing of all fitted in — the fact that in the American Eagle Mutual Company, William Frederick Cramer was insured for fifteen thousand dollars...
They were going so fast that it was chilly in the car; the wind rushed at them from the darkness with a drowsy snarl. Joe was just beginning to drowse when Mr. Cramer stopped.
“Carburetor trouble — always have it. I better look at it. You sit here.”
He got out, closing the door behind him, and raised the motor hood. Then he bent forward, his figure dark cut against the fanned-out yellow streams of the headlights laned before them, his head turned slightly toward Joe, as if he weren’t looking at the motor at all.
Joe couldn’t tell what had changed. He thought it was the stillness — the immense woods’ stillness — that made him jumpy. Then he saw the car parked ahead, and the sight of it brought a relief so great that his heart pumped inside him in one great bound.
“Maybe,” he said, “you better dim your headlights. It looks like there are some petters ahead of us.”
Mr. Cramer almost jumped. He glanced back across his shoulder to stare a moment at the dim reddish glow of tail reflectors showing faintly in the deep shadow of a clump of trees. Then he muttered something and leaned down below the hood, his right hand coming out of his pocket empty.
In a moment or two he got back into the car. “It’ll hold,” he said. “Now we better push on.”
Mr. Cramer stopped only once more, for gas; at eight o’clock they were in Albany. There he thought it might be better if he saw Mr. Higgins first, alone. Joe could take the car and store it at a parking lot, and then meet him at five, after his own business was done, outside Fenner & Lisle’s. That would, he thought, be best. The personal interview mightn’t be necessary.
At five Joe was waiting with the car before Fenner & Lisle’s warehouse.
Mr. Cramer appeared about six, long after the other men had gone home. And he didn’t come from the main building, but rounded the corner from, he said, the private offices. He looked very tired, very pale, as if he hadn’t slept at all; and his exhaustion made him irritable, despite the great news he bore. The job was Joe’s; it was all set now; he had the papers. Next Monday Joe was to report at the New York branch.
At seven they were clear of Albany, speeding southward in the gathering spring dusk, a few minutes after McCann had had his call from headquarters, and just as he was facing Mrs. Cramer once more on the porch.
“What I don’t know,” McCann was saying, “I can guess.” His fat face wasn’t kind or guileless any more; it was drawn down tightly around his mouth. “I guess you needed money — maybe your husband was out of work — and so you picked young Nolan because you saw right away how much he looked like your husband. Then you gave him some song and dance about going to this dentist and using your husband’s name, so that if anything ever came up Rapp could identify him as William Frederick Cramer.
“The very day young Nolan went to the dentist your husband shaved off his mustache, so that would fit. Probably a lot of people told him it made him look younger; it usually does. Whatever kind of accident you planned to rig up on Nolan, he’d be dead, and he’d look a hell of a lot like your husband, and anyone who saw him would just say how young he looked. They’d put down any difference to the mustache and the glasses. You both thought there wouldn’t be any trouble collecting insurance; someway or other you’d talked this Nolan into not telling anyone about you, even his wife. That made it perfect. Nobody knew he was coming here; when he was found he’d have your husband’s glasses on, and his license in his pocket. There wouldn’t be any identification question; he’d be brought here, and buried as soon as possible. In another town, where no one knew you, you could join up again, with fifteen thousand dollars in your pocket. Neither of you ever figured on a leak.”
She listened to him silently, looking out to the street, with her hands in her lap. It was hard to say just how McCann knew he had her, how he knew that any minute now she was going to crack.
“You got one chance,” he said. “Maybe not much of a one. If young Nolan’s dead I can’t help you; even if he isn’t I can’t promise anything. But if we stop it before it’s done, the charge won’t be murder. That’s worth thinking about. Where’d your husband take him?”
She watched McCann for a moment with queer, glazed dark eyes, and then she began to cry. The license number and the make of William Frederick Cramer’s car she whispered dully, clutching his arm, swearing between his questions that she knew nothing. Nothing! If anything had happened—
McCann had all he wanted when a dark coupe pulled up before the house and two men got out. They greeted him and sat stolidly on the porch, on either side of Mrs. Cramer, while he went inside and used the telephone.
“Shoot it to the state cops,” he said. “Have them cover every road out of Albany. His idea is to knock off the kid and leave him in the car, so that it will look like a hitchhiker did it. Maybe it’s over already; he could have pulled the job last night. Only if he did, someone would have found the body by this time. I think we’ve still got a chance. He’ll dawdle along and do the job pretty late, on a side road — that’s the safest way. Somewhere near a railroad too, so he can get away easy. It’s fifty-fifty we can get him first. Step on it, Larry.”
Then McCann hung up, wiping his face with a hand that shook slightly. There was nothing more he could do now — nothing but sit out there and wait, and hope that when he saw Elizabeth Nolan, very soon now, he could tell her everything was fine, there was nothing to worry about, her Joe would be home okay. Monday morning he’d be back to work at his old job, at a salary.
Mr. Cramer had evidently been drinking that afternoon. His breathing was heavy and sour, his face flushed; every time a car passed he glanced at it quickly out of the corners of his eyes.
Once they stopped for gas, and behind the car Mr. Cramer spoke in a low tone to the attendant. He seemed to be asking something about the railroad, though Joe didn’t pay much attention. He felt angry, both at himself and at Mr. Cramer; he wondered why he was jumpy again, and what was biting Cramer to make him act this way. Tiredness, maybe.
Outside the village they hit a dirt road, leading right. Mr. Cramer stopped just inside it.
“Take the wheel,” he said. “I’m sick of driving. Go straight up this road.”
It didn’t look like a short cut, but Joe didn’t argue.
“I should have relieved you before,” he said. “I guess you’re tired. You look bad, Mr. Cramer.”
“Do I?” the other man asked harshly. “Well, I’m fine. I’m all right.”
Joe tightened his own mouth. This Cramer, he thought, seemed to be getting screwy. Why would a remark like that make him so sore? They went up the road and came out over a low hill, above a railroad, with a dark field on their left, and a white farmhouse ghostly against it, one window framed in dim yellow. Cramer cursed when he saw it. They went on, bumping over ruts. They went past the house, a mile into woods. Cramer took his hand out of his pocket and held it down against his leg.
“All right,” he said. “All right. Stop the car.”
He was half swung around in his seat to face Joe; his words were as thick as his breathing. His expression was so queer Joe thought he was sick.
“I’ll help you out,” he said.
Cramer only shook his head. He got out by himself, leaving the door open, so that Joe could see his hand, and the gun in it.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s the matter?”
The feeling of last night — the disturbed emotion of quiet and loneliness that stretched endlessly around them — thickened his lips as if they were held away from his gums with pods of cotton. This Cramer, he thought — Behind them a car whined for the hill and Cramer looked back toward it, his face as pale as modeled wax.
“I am sick,” he said, wetting his lips. “I’m sick, Joe. I carry this gun for Fenner & Lisle’s, but I haven’t got a license for it. I came in here to get rid of it, Joe. I’m going to throw it in the field. Just let this car get by.”
The headlights got painfully bright on the mirror; in another moment, going very slowly, the car slipped by. It was a light coupé, dark-colored, very like the one that had passed them going the other way, before they turned off the state road. Joe thought that as he saw it, but he felt he was wrong. Why would it have turned to follow them? He had a sudden, crazy impulse to shout out at it, to ask it to stop. He didn’t. It went by.
“You can do it now,” he said.
The panic that had almost made him yell out deepened when he saw Cramer’s face. It didn’t help at all to tell himself that he was crazy, that Cramer was all right, a swell guy. He was thinking that no one in the world, not Jarrett’s nor Mr. Russell nor even Elizabeth knew he had ever met the Cramers.
Cramer didn’t throw away the gun. After the other car had gone over the hill beyond them, he raised it and pointed it at Joe. His face was covered with perspiration, and his eyes looked frenzied.
“Okay,” he said, with a chatter in his words. “Don’t move.”
“Wait a minute,” Joe said. “Wait a minute. Don’t point that thing—”
He was feeling with his left hand for the catch on the door behind him, but he couldn’t find it.
“Look out,” Joe said. “Don’t—”
Then he knew it wasn’t any use to talk any more. He knew that Cramer was going to kill him. There wasn’t time to think of Elizabeth, there wasn’t time to be frightened.
“Hey,” he said, and tried to grab the gun, as he saw by the crazy twitch of Cramer’s lips that he was going to fire. Plunging at him from behind the wheel, he saw the flash, he heard the report; slivers of glass from the windshield bit deep into his cheek. Then he was on Cramer, fighting, and Cramer was suddenly very big, and very strong, and he had turned into two men, confused and struggling in a shaky mass on the running board.
In a moment the second man, the big man, had Cramer flat against the hood, and was twisting the gun out of his hand. When he had it clear, he tossed it across the car and straightened Cramer up with a hand at his collar. This second man was in the uniform of a state trooper, and as he saw him clearly Joe remembered how slowly the other car, the coupé, had been going — slow enough for a man to swing off, behind them, where he wouldn’t be picked off by the headlights.
It must have been the coupé, for it was coming back to them now over the brow of the hill, while William Frederick Cramer sat on the running board, his head in his hands, and a little spot of blood on a knuckle of his right one, where the trooper had crushed it against the car, just before he fired.
Fredric Brown
Don’t Look Behind You
Just sit back and relax, now. Try to enjoy this; it’s going to be the last story you ever read, or nearly the last. After you finish it, you can sit there and stall a while, you can find excuses to hang around your house, or your room, or your office, wherever you’re reading this; but sooner or later you’re going to have to get up and go out. That’s where I’m waiting for you: outside. Or maybe closer than that. Maybe in this room.
You think that’s a joke, of course. You think this is just a story in a magazine, and that I don’t really mean you. Keep right on thinking so. But be fair; admit that I’m giving you fair warning.
Harley bet me I couldn’t do it. He bet me a diamond he’s told me about, a diamond as big as his head. So you see why I’ve got to kill you. And why I’ve got to tell you how and why and all about it first. That’s part of the bet. It’s just the kind of idea Harley would have.
I’ll tell you about Harley first. He’s tall and handsome, and suave and cosmopolitan. He looks something like Ronald Colman, only he’s taller. He dresses like a million dollars, but it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t; I mean that he’d look distinguished in overalls. There’s a sort of magic about Harley, a mocking magic in the way he looks at you; it makes you think of palaces and far-off countries and bright music.
It was in Springfield, Ohio, that he met Justin Dean. Justin was a funny-looking little runt who was just a printer. He worked for the Atlas Printing & Engraving Company. He was a very ordinary little guy, just about as different as possible from Harley; you couldn’t pick two men more different. He was only thirty-five, but he was mostly bald already, and he had to wear thick glasses because he’d worn out his eyes doing fine printing and engraving. He was a good printer and engraver; I’ll say that for him.
I never asked Harley how he happened to come to Springfield, but the day he got there, after he’d checked in at the Castle Hotel, he stopped in at Atlas to have some calling cards made. It happened that Justin Dean was alone in the shop at the time, and he took Harley’s order for the cards; Harley wanted engraved ones, the best. Harley always wants the best of everything.
Harley probably didn’t even notice Justin; there was no reason why he should. But Justin noticed Harley all right, and in him he saw everything that he himself would like to be, and never would be, because most of the things Harley has, you have to be born with.
And Justin made the plates for the cards himself, and printed them himself, and he did a wonderful job — something he thought would be worthy of a man like Harley Prentice. That was the name engraved on the card, just that and nothing else, as all really important people have their cards engraved.
He did fine-line work on it, freehand cursive style, and used all the skill he had. It wasn’t wasted, because the next day when Harley called to get the cards, he held one and stared at it for a while, and then he looked at Justin, seeing him for the first time. He asked, “Who did this?”
And little Justin told him proudly who had done it, and Harley smiled at him and told him it was the work of an artist, and he asked Justin to have dinner with him that evening after work, in the Blue Room of the Castle Hotel.
That’s how Harley and Justin got together, but Harley was careful. He waited until he’d known Justin a while before he asked him whether or not he could make plates for five and ten dollar bills. Harley had the contacts; he could market the bills in quantity with men who specialized in placing them, and — most important he knew where he could get paper with the silk threads in it, paper that wasn’t quite the genuine thing, but was close enough to pass inspection by anyone but an expert.
So Justin quit his job at Atlas and he and Harley went to New York, and they set up a little printing shop as a blind, on Amsterdam Avenue south of Sherman Square, and they worked at the bills. Justin worked hard, harder than he had ever worked in his life, because besides working on the plates for the bills, he helped meet expenses by handling what legitimate printing work came into the shop.
He worked day and night for almost a year, making plate after plate, and each one was a little better than the last, and finally he had plates that Harley said were good enough. That night they had dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria to celebrate and after dinner they went the rounds of the best night clubs, and it cost Harley a small fortune, but that didn’t matter because they were going to get rich.
They drank champagne, and it was the first time Justin ever drank champagne and he got disgustingly drunk and must have made quite a fool of himself. Harley told him about it afterwards, but Harley wasn’t mad at him. He took him back to his room at the hotel and put him to bed, and Justin was pretty sick for a couple of days. But that didn’t matter, either, because they were going to get rich.
Then Justin started printing bills from the plates, and they got rich. After that, Justin didn’t have to work so hard, either, because he turned down most jobs that came into the print shop, told them he was behind schedule and couldn’t handle any more. He took just a little work, to keep up a front. And behind the front, he made five and ten dollar bills, and he and Harley got rich.
He got to know other people whom Harley knew. He met Bull Mallon, who handled the distribution end. Bull Mallon was built like a bull, that was why they called him that. He had a face that never smiled or changed expression at all except when he was holding burning matches to the soles of Justin’s bare feet. But that wasn’t then; that was later, when he wanted Justin to tell him where the plates were.
And he got to know Captain John Willys of the Police Department, who was a friend of Harley’s to whom Harley gave quite a bit of the money they made, but that didn’t matter, either, because there was plenty left and they all got rich. He met a friend of Harley’s who was a big star of the stage, and one who owned a big New York newspaper. He got to know other people equally important, but in less respectable ways.
Harley, Justin knew, had a hand in lots of other enterprises besides the little mint on Amsterdam Avenue. Some of these ventures took him out of town, usually over weekends. And the weekend that Harley was murdered, Justin never found out what really happened, except that Harley went away and didn’t come back. Oh, he knew that he was murdered, all right, because the police found his body — with three bullet holes in his chest — in the most expensive suite of the best hotel in Albany. Even for a place to be found dead in, Harley Prentice had chosen the best.
All Justin ever knew about it was that a long distance call came to him at the hotel where he was staying, the night that Harley was murdered — it must have been a matter of minutes, in fact, before the time the newspapers said Harley was killed.
It was Harley’s voice on the phone, and his voice was debonair and unexcited as ever. But he said, “Justin? Get to the shop and get rid of the plates, the paper, everything. Right away. I’ll explain when I see you.” He waited only until Justin said, “Sure. Harley,” and then he said, “Attaboy.”
Justin hurried around to the printing shop and got the plates and the paper and a few thousand dollars worth of counterfeit bills that were on hand. He made the paper and bills into one bundle and the copper plates into another, smaller one, and he left the shop with no evidence that it had ever been a mint in miniature.
He was very careful and very clever in disposing of both bundles. He got rid of the big one first by checking in at a big hotel, not one he or Harley ever stayed at, under a false name, just to have a chance to put the big bundle in the incinerator there. It was paper and it would burn. And he made sure there was a fire in the incinerator before he dropped it down the chute.
The plates were different. They wouldn’t burn, he knew, so he took a trip to Staten Island and back on the ferry, and somewhere out in the middle of the bay, he dropped the bundle over the side into the water.
Then, having done what Harley had told him to do, and having done it well and thoroughly, he went back to the hotel — his own hotel, not the one where he had dumped the paper and the bills — and went to sleep.
In the morning, he read in the newspapers that Harley had been killed, and he was stunned. It didn’t seem possible. He couldn’t believe it; it was a joke someone was playing on him. Harley would come back to him, he knew. And he was right; Harley did, but that was later, in the swamp.
But anyway, Justin had to know, so he took the very next train for Albany. He must have been on the train when the police went to his hotel, and at the hotel they must have learned he’d asked at the desk about trains for Albany, because they were waiting for him when he got off the train there.
They took him to a station and they kept him there a long, long time, days and days, asking him questions. They found out, after a while, that he couldn’t have killed Harley because he’d been in New York City at the time Harley was killed in Albany, but they knew, also, that he and Harley had been operating the little mint, and they thought that might be a lead to who killed Harley, and they were interested in the counterfeiting, too, maybe even more than in the murder.
They asked Justin Dean questions, over and over and over, and he couldn’t answer them, so he didn’t. They kept him awake for days at a time, asking him questions over and over. Most of all they wanted to know where the plates were. He wished he could tell them that the plates were safe where nobody could ever get them again, but he couldn’t tell them that without admitting that he and Harley had been counterfeiting, so he couldn’t tell them.
They located the Amsterdam shop, but they didn’t find any evidence there, and they really had no evidence to hold Justin on at all, but he didn’t know that, and it never occurred to him to get a lawyer.
He kept wanting to see Harley, and they wouldn’t let him; then, when they learned he really didn’t believe Harley could be dead, they made him look at a dead man they said was Harley, and he guessed it was, although Harley looked different dead. He didn’t look magnificent, dead. And Justin believed, then, but still didn’t believe. And after that he just went silent and wouldn’t say a word, even when they kept him awake for days and days with a bright light in his eyes, and kept slapping him to keep him awake. They didn’t use clubs or rubber hoses, but they slapped him a million times and wouldn’t let him sleep. And after a while, he lost track of things and couldn’t have answered their questions even if he’d wanted to.
For a while after that, he was in a bed in a white room, and all he remembers about that are nightmares he had, and calling for Harley and an awful confusion as to whether Harley was dead or not, and then things came back to him gradually and he knew he didn’t want to stay in the white room; he wanted to get out so he could hunt for Harley. And if Harley was dead, he wanted to kill whoever had killed Harley, because Harley would do the same for him.
So he began pretending, and acting, very cleverly, the way the doctors and nurses seemed to want him to act, and after a while they gave him his clothes and let him go.
He was becoming cleverer, now. He thought, What would Harley tell me to do? And he knew they’d try to follow him because they’d think he might lead them to the plates, which they didn’t know were at the bottom of the bay, and he gave them the slip before he left Albany, and he went first to Boston, and from there by boat to New York, instead of going direct.
He went first to the print shop, and went in the back way after watching the alley for a long time to be sure the place wasn’t guarded. It was a mess; they must have searched it very thoroughly for the plates.
Harley wasn’t there, of course. Justin left and from a phone booth in a drug store, he telephoned their hotel and asked for Harley and was told Harley no longer lived there; and to be clever and not let them guess who he was, he asked for Justin Dean, and they said Justin Dean didn’t live there any more either.
Then he moved to a different drug store and from there he decided to call up some friends of Harley’s, and he phoned Bull Mallon first and because Bull was a friend, he told him who he was and asked if he knew where Harley was.
Bull Mallon didn’t pay any attention to that; he sounded excited, a little, and he asked, “Did the cops get the plates, Dean?” and Justin said they didn’t, that he wouldn’t tell them, and he asked again about Harley.
Bull asked, “Are you nuts, or kidding?” And Justin just asked him again, and Bull’s voice changed and he said, “Where are you?” and Justin told him. Bull said, “Harley’s here. He’s staying under cover, but it’s all right if you know, Dean. You wait right there at the drug store, and we’ll come and get you.”
They came and got Justin, Bull Mallon and two other men in a car, and they told him Harley was hiding out way deep in New Jersey and that they were going to drive there now. So he went along and sat in the back seat between two men he didn’t know, while Bull Mallon drove.
It was late afternoon then, when they picked him up, and Bull drove all evening and most of the night and he drove fast, so he must have gone farther than New Jersey, at least into Virginia or maybe farther, into the Carolinas.
The sky was getting faintly gray with first dawn when they stopped at a rustic cabin that looked like it had been used as a hunting lodge. It was miles from anywhere, there wasn’t even a road leading to it, just a trail that was level enough for the car to be able to make it.
They took Justin into the cabin and tied him to a chair, and they told him Harley wasn’t there, but Harley had told them that Justin would tell them where the plates were, and he couldn’t ever leave until he did tell.
Justin didn’t believe them; he knew then that they’d tricked him about Harley, but it didn’t matter, as far as the plates were concerned. It didn’t matter if he told them what he’d done with the plates, because they couldn’t get them again, and they wouldn’t tell the police. So he told them, quite willingly.
But they didn’t believe him. They said he’d hidden the plates and was lying. They tortured him to make him tell. They beat him, and they cut him with knives, and they held burning matches and lighted cigars to the soles of his feet, and they pushed needles under his fingernails. Then they’d rest and ask him questions and if he could talk, he’d tell them the truth again, and after a while they’d start to torture him again.
It went on for days and weeks — Justin doesn’t know how long, but it was a long time. Once they went away for several days and left him tied up with nothing to eat or drink. They came back and started in all over again. And all the time he hoped Harley would come to help him, but Harley didn’t come, not then.
After a while what was happening in the cabin ended, or anyway he didn’t know any more about it. They must have thought he was dead; maybe they were right, or anyway not far from wrong.
The next thing he knows was the swamp. He was lying in shallow water at the edge of deeper water. His face was out of the water; it woke him when he turned a little and his face went under. They must have thought him dead and thrown him into the water, but he had floated into the shallow part before he had drowned, and a last flicker of consciousness had turned him over on his back with his face out.
I don’t remember much about Justin in the swamp; it was a long time, but I just remember flashes of it. I couldn’t move at first; I just lay there in the shallow water with my face out. It got dark and it got cold, I remember, and finally my arms would move a little and I got farther out of the water, lying in the mud with only my feet in the water. I slept or was unconscious again and when I woke up it was getting gray dawn, and that was when Harley came. I think I’d been calling him, and he must have heard.
He stood there, dressed as immaculately and perfectly as ever, right in the swamp, and he was laughing at me for being so weak and lying there like a log, half in the dirty water and half in the mud, and I got up and nothing hurt any more.
We shook hands and he said, “Come on, Justin, let’s get you out of here,” and I was so glad he’d come that I cried a little. He laughed at me for that, and said I should lean on him and he’d help me walk, but I wouldn’t do that, because I was coated with mud and filth of the swamp and he was so clean and perfect in a white linen suit, like an ad in a magazine. And all the way out of that swamp, all the days and nights we spent there, he never even got mud on his trouser cuffs, nor his hair mussed.
I told him just to lead the way, and he did, walking just ahead of me, sometimes turning around, laughing and talking to me and cheering me up. Sometimes I’d fall, but I wouldn’t let him come back and help me. But he’d wait patiently until I could get up. Sometimes I’d crawl instead when I couldn’t stand up any more. Sometimes I’d have to swim streams that he’d leap lightly across.
And it was day and night and day and night, and sometimes I’d sleep, and things would crawl across me. And some of them I caught and ate. or maybe I dreamed that. I remember other things, in that swamp, like an organ that played a lot of the time, and sometimes angels in the air and devils in the water, but those were delirium, I guess.
Harley would say, “A little farther. Justin; we’ll make it. And we’ll get back at them, at all of them.”
And we made it. We came to dry fields, cultivated fields with waist-high corn, but there weren’t ears on the corn for me to eat. And then there was a stream, a clear stream that wasn’t stinking water like the swamp, and Harley told me to wash myself and my clothes and I did, although I wanted to hurry on to where I could get food.
I still looked pretty bad; my clothes were clean of mud and filth but they were mere rags and wet, because I couldn’t wait for them to dry, and I had a ragged beard and I was barefoot.
But we went on and came to a little farm building, just a two-room shack, and there was a smell of fresh bread just out of an oven, and I ran the last few yards to knock on the door. A woman, an ugly woman, opened the door and when she saw me she slammed it again before I could say a word.
Strength came to me from somewhere, maybe from Harley, although I can’t remember him being there just then. There was a pile of kindling logs beside the door. I picked one of them up as though it were no heavier than a broomstick, and I broke down the door and killed the woman. She screamed a lot, but I killed her. Then I ate the hot fresh bread.
I watched from the window as I ate, and saw a man running across the field toward the house. I found a knife, and I killed him as he came in at the door. It was much better, killing with the knife; I liked it that way.
I ate more bread, and kept watching from all the windows, but no one else came. Then my stomach hurt from the hot bread I’d eaten and I had to lie down, doubled up, and when the hurting quit, I slept.
Harley woke me up, and it was dark. He said, “Let’s get going; you should be far away from here before it’s daylight.”
I knew he was right, but I didn’t hurry away. I was becoming, as you see, very clever now. I knew there were things to do first. I found matches and a lamp, and lighted the lamp. Then I hunted through the shack for everything I could use. I found clothes of the man, and they fitted me not too badly except that I had to turn up the cuffs of the trousers and the shirt. His shoes were big, but that was good because my feet were so swollen.
I found a razor and shaved; it took a long time because my hand wasn’t steady, but I was very careful and didn’t cut myself much.
I had to hunt hardest for their money, but I found it finally. It was sixty dollars.
And I took the knife, after I had sharpened it. It isn’t fancy; just a bone-handled carving knife, but it’s good steel. I’ll show it to you, pretty soon now. It’s had a lot of use.
Then we left and it was Harley who told me to stay away from the roads, and find railroad tracks. That was easy because we heard a train whistle far off in the night and knew which direction the tracks lay. From then on, with Harley helping, it’s been easy.
You won’t need the details from here. I mean, about the brakeman, and about the tramp we found asleep in the empty reefer, and about the near thing I had with the police in Richmond. I learned from that; I learned I mustn’t talk to Harley when anybody else was around to hear. He hides himself from them; he’s got a trick and they don’t know he’s there, and they think I’m funny in the head if I talk to him. But in Richmond I bought better clothes and got a haircut and a man I killed in an alley had forty dollars on him, so I had money again. I went on to Philadelphia by bus, and Harley wanted me to stay there a while. So I got a job in a little printing shop. I got fired pretty quick, but the next job I held for a week. I wanted to go on to New York right away. I’ve got to find Bull Mallon, which will be easy, and the two men who helped him, which will be a little harder because I know only their first names.
But Harley keeps telling me to wait, that I need practice, that those fellows are big time and know their way around. Harley says we should travel around, too, and we’ve been doing that. Now we’re here. I’ve learned a lot of things. I can hold a job down now, for one thing, and people don’t think I’m too strange; they don’t get scared when I look at them. I don’t talk to Harley except in our room, and then only very quietly so the people in the next room won’t think I’m talking to myself. And I’ve learned how to use the knife quickly and efficiently. You’ll hardly feel it.
The bet I told you about came up because Harley kept telling me it’s one thing to kill someone who isn’t looking for it, and another thing to get a man who’s on the alert, like Bull Mallon, and Harry and Carl. He said I wasn’t ready for them yet, and I told him I bet I could warn a man I was going to use the knife on him, and tell him all about it, and why, and approximately when, and that I could still get away with it. He took me up.
That’s where he’s going to lose a bet, because I’m going to do just that. You see, I know you don’t believe this. You think it’s just another story in a magazine.
People are like that; you won’t believe that this is the
That’s where I’m putting one over on Harley; he didn’t think of doing it this way. He never thought how easy it will be for a good all-around printer to counterfeit one story in a magazine. I’m setting this up now on the Linotype late at night in the shop where I work days. I even have the boss’ permission — told him I was going to set up a story a friend of mine had written as a surprise for him and that I’d melt the lead back once I’d taken a proof for him.
I know the magazine I’m going to use, picked it because this shop can match the type-face and size perfectly. We’ve got a paper stock here that will match closely enough that you can’t tell the difference. I’ve got a copy of the current issue here.
When I’ve finished this, I’ll makeup the type in pages, and then pick out a story that takes up just that many pages in the magazine. I’ll folio these pages to match the ones of the story I’ll substitute it for. And run off one backed-up copy on the proof press. There’ll be a minute difference in type size because of mat shrinkage, but you won’t notice that unless you’re a printer.
It’ll be just as easy to print a new title page, and to write myself a blurb to fit the story. Not really necessary and maybe you think I’m going to a lot of trouble, but Harley will get a kick out of it if I do a really artistic job, and so will I.
I’ll cut the new pages to fit and bind them in; you won’t be able to tell the difference, even if a faint suspicion may cause you to look at it. Don’t forget I made five and ten dollar bills you couldn’t have told from the original, and this is kindergarten stuff compared to that job.
Tomorrow I’ll go to some newsstand or drug store — you know which one by now — and plant this copy with the others like it. I’ll be watching when you buy it.
The rest I can’t tell you, yet. You can be sure I followed you wherever you went after you bought this magazine. You can be sure I know who you are by the time you’re reading this story.
The rest depends on circumstances I won’t know until I follow you. Maybe — if it’s possible — I’m in the house with you right now. Maybe I’m in this very room, hidden, watching until you finish the story. Maybe I’m sitting near you on the streetcar or train, if you’re reading it there. Maybe I’m on a fire escape outside your hotel room. But I’ll be with you, or near you; you can count on that.
That little shiver of cold running down your spine — maybe it’s a window opening silently.
Don’t look around; you’ll be happier if you don’t know, if you don’t see the knife coming. I’ve killed people from behind and they don’t seem to mind so much.
Go on, just a little while, thinking this is just another fiction story. Don’t look behind you. Don’t believe this —
Mary Roberts Rinehart
The Dog in the Orchard
The man was sitting on the porch of the farmhouse. He sat very still, a rifle across his knee, his eyes fixed on the orchard and the wheat field beyond it.
The day had been hot. For hours he had watched the heat rising in shimmering waves from the dirt road that led into the farm. Now, however, it was cooler. A slight breeze ruffled the dust which lay thick everywhere, and moving carefully, he got out a bandanna handkerchief and dried his face.
In the wheat field beyond the orchard the dog raised his head with equal caution. He was panting heavily. He wanted water badly, but his eyes were on the figure on the porch. He knew now that it was dangerous to go to the creek or the horse trough. There was a nick out of one ear where a bullet had just touched him, and flies buzzed around it constantly. He could wait until dark. With the patience of his kind, he closed his eyes and slept.
It was twilight when he got to his feet. He had heard the slam of the screen door, and he knew what that meant. But even then he was wary. He stood, his eyes fixed on the house. So he remained for some time. Then at last, crouching low, he moved to the creek and drank. Thus revealed, he was gaunt to the point of starvation, his coat drab and dry. He was still drinking when he heard the car. He stood tense; then, abandoning all caution, he loped eagerly toward it, and the man inside saw him.
“Hello, Rags,” he called. “How are you?”
But the dog shrank back at the sound of his voice, and as he retreated, the man looked after him curiously. Looks half starved, he thought. Queer. I always thought Nellie was crazy about him.
He stopped the car in front of the house and got out. There was a lighted lamp inside, and someone was moving about. He got out and clumped up the steps.
“Hi, Foster!” he called. “Got a minute or two?”
There was a silence. Then the man came to the door. He looked uneasy. “I’m getting my supper,” he said. “What’s wrong, sheriff?”
“Nothing wrong. Just mending my political fences. Election soon.”
“Well, I’m for you. You know that.”
He moved aside unwillingly, and the sheriff came in. He knew the house well. It was the usual farmhouse of the district, and Nellie Foster kept it immaculate. It was untidy now, however. The kitchen sink was piled with dishes.
The sheriff looked surprised. “Nellie sick?” he asked.
“Nope. Gone to her mother’s.”
“Where’s that?”
“Indiana,” said Foster. “Old lady’s not well. She’s been gone a week now.”
“Looks like it’s time she came back,” said the sheriff, grinning. “That dog of hers looks it, too. Why don’t you feed him once in a while?”
Foster was working at the stove. He was a big man, handsome after a fashion, but now slovenly and unkempt. He kept his back to the sheriff.
“Damn thing won’t come near me,” he said. “I kicked him once, and he didn’t like it. Anyhow, he was her dog, not mine.” He added grudgingly, “How about supper? I’m going to fry some eggs.”
“Fine. I’ll wash first.”
The sheriff went out onto the back porch. There was a tin basin there, a pail of water and a ladle. He poured out some water and washed, drying his hands on a dirty roller towel and glancing about him as he did so. Certainly the place needed Nellie, with her active body and cheerful face. But he remembered that lately she had not been so cheerful, and that there had been some talk about Foster and the Burford girl on the next farm — a plump and brazen creature with an eye out for a man. Any man.
He shrugged that off. Foster was a solid citizen, a successful farmer. He had his feet on the ground, all right.
Nevertheless, the sheriff watched Foster surreptitiously as he moved around the kitchen. He might fall for a girl. He wasn’t old. Not over forty; and the Burford girl had a way with her.
While Foster fried the eggs, the sheriff poured his own coffee. Sitting at the table waiting, he saw the rifle in a corner and eyed it with surprise.
“What’s the gun for?” he asked. “Didn’t know you had one.”
“Bought it a year or two back,” said Foster. “Weasels got after the chickens.”
The two men ate companionably enough. Mostly the sheriff talked. It was in the middle of an anecdote that the dog barked in the orchard — a bark that ended in a long blood-curdling wail. Foster stiffened, and the sheriff saw it.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Is that Rags?”
“Yep. He does it now and then. Someday I’ll shoot him if he keeps it up. Damned nuisance.”
“Better not do that. He’s Nellie’s dog. She’d have a fit.”
But the sound continued. Out in the orchard the dog was standing, his long tragic face pointed to the sky. But he was weak from hunger, and gradually the sounds died away. He lay down on the ground, and inside the house the sheriff watched the sweat gather on the backs of Foster’s hands.
“How long’s that been going on?” he asked. “It doesn’t sound like Rags. He was a quiet dog.”
Foster rose and picked up the plates. “Since Nellie left, mostly. He misses her, I guess. Want some more coffee?”
“No, thanks. I’d better be moving.”
But the sheriff was thoughtful as he drove back to town, and as he got ready for bed that night he spoke to his wife.
“Saw Foster this evening,” he said. “He says Nellie’s gone to visit her mother.”
“Then that’s why she wasn’t at church last Sunday. I wondered.”
“Where is the mother?” he asked. “What part of the country?”
“Indiana, I think. Why?”
Well, that was all right. He was probably only making a fool of himself. He finished undressing, went to bed and to sleep.
Out at the farm, however, there was no sleep. The dog saw to that. He stood in the orchard and bayed his grief and loneliness to the sky. At last, in a frenzy, Foster picked up the gun and went after him. It was hopeless, of course. The dog was not there, and with an oath the man went back to the house, to lie awake waiting for the sound once more.
In the past week it had been like that, as though it were a game between the two, man and dog; the dog winning at night; the man winning by day. But the advantage lay with the dog. At intervals he slept. The man could not, and he was desperate for sleep. He would doze on the porch, his rifle across his knees, waking with a jerk to find his body bathed in sweat and the gun on the floor.
He did not work on the day following the sheriff’s visit, and that night after dark he met the Burford girl out by the barn. She was a big girl, handsome and frankly lustful. She put her arms around him, but he was unresponsive.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing. I couldn’t meet you last night. The sheriff was here.”
She eyed him. “The sheriff? What did he want?”
“Nothing much. Election’s coming soon. But he heard that damned dog.”
“Why don’t you poison him? I’ve said all along he’d make trouble.”
“He’s too smart for that. I’ve tried it. He won’t eat around the place. Anyhow the sheriff saw him. He might ask questions. Well, let’s forget it.” He pulled her to him and kissed her roughly. “Listen,” he said. “I’m going to sell this place and get out. You’ll come along, won’t you?”
“Sure.” But there was no conviction in her voice, and he pushed her away.
“You’ll come, all right,” he told her grimly.
It rained the next two days. The dog lay in the field and shivered. And on the third day the sheriff went into the store which was the local post office. He asked for his mail and chatted with the postmistress.
“Hear Nellie Foster’s gone away,” he said idly. “Out to Indiana.”
“That so? When did she go”?
“A week or so ago. Don’t tell me Nellie hasn’t written to Foster!”
“I don’t remember any mail for him. I don’t think he’s been in this week.”
“He can’t be anxious about her.”
“He’s pretty anxious about that girl of Burford’s. It beats me how a man with a wife will let a girl like that make a fool of him.”
“You sound pretty sure.”
“I am sure. I’ve seen them together.”
That day the sheriff had a talk with his deputy. “Maybe I’m crazy, Joe; maybe I’m not. I just don’t like it. Nellie was a homekeeping woman, and a trip to Indiana would mean something to her. What does she do? She doesn’t call up anybody and say she’s going. She just goes. It isn’t natural.”
“Sure sounds queer,” said the deputy.
“I think Nellie’s dog knows something. And it’s my guess that Foster’s out to kill him. He’s got a gun. It might be a good idea to go out there and look around, anyhow.”
They went out through the rain that afternoon. The roads after they left the state highway were muddy, and Foster was evidently not expecting company. As they turned in at his lane he was on the porch, and he had the rifle to his shoulder. He fired before he saw them.
“For God’s sake,” said the deputy, “what’s he doing?”
Then Foster saw them, and his face went blank. He put down the gun and waited for them.
“What’s the idea?” asked the sheriff, as he stopped the car. “Getting ready to go to war?”
“There’s no law against my shooting rabbits, is there?”
“Weasels and rabbits. You seem to have a lot of varmints around here, Foster.”
The sheriff got out of the car, and the deputy followed. They climbed the steps, while Foster watched them with suspicious, bloodshot eyes. He had not shaved, and he had been drinking. Not much. He was still wary.
“What do you fellows want?” he demanded.
“Well, I’ve got an errand, if you’re agreeable. I told my wife about Rag’s missing Nellie, and she said she’d like to keep him for a while.”
Foster shrugged. “You can have him if you can catch him. He’s gone plumb wild. Most ornery dog I ever saw. Won’t even eat.”
“Where is he?”
“He lies down in the wheat field a lot.”
“Well, I’ll try,” said the sheriff. He turned to go, then stopped. “Better get a license for that gun, Foster. You might get into trouble.”
They left him there, gazing after them. Let them get the dog if they could. He needed sleep. All he asked was a chance to sleep. He rubbed his bloodshot eyes and sat down heavily...
The two men moved toward the wheat field. Now and then the sheriff whistled and called, but there was no response. The dog had learned strategy. He was crawling away on his belly, his head low, following the furrow so that no ripple of the grain betrayed him. Finally he reached a culvert under the road and lay there, shivering in the water.
The sheriff also knew strategy. He spoke cautiously to the deputy. “Take a good look around, Joe,” he said. “Go over to the orchard and whistle. That’s where the dog howled from. And look at the ground. See if it’s been disturbed any. I’ll go on to the field.”
He called again, “Here, Rags. Good dog. Come on, Rags.”
But the dog lay under the culvert, motionless. He was still there when the two men drove back to town.
The deputy was talkative. “I didn’t see anything,” he said. “But there’s something up. The place looks like Foster hasn’t done a lick of work on it for a week. What is it, anyhow? Mrs. Foster have insurance?”
“He couldn’t collect without a body. That girl of Burford’s, most likely. They’ve been seen together.”
“What about the dog? Did you want him?”
“I had an idea he could tell me a thing or two if I could get him. Unless Foster gets him first.”
The sheriff dropped Joe in town and drove forty miles to the railroad junction. Here he questioned the men in the ticket office and around the station, but without result. A ticket for a woman going to Indiana. Well, where in Indiana? The sheriff didn’t know. To ask Foster would make him suspicious, so at last the sheriff drove home, depressed and uneasy.
But Foster was already suspicious. He saw the girl that night and told her about the sheriff’s visit. “What’s bringing him around?” he said angrily. “He didn’t want that dog. Hell, that wife of his wouldn’t have a dog on the place.”
“So what? Shoot him and bury him.”
“The sheriff knows he’s here. I can’t kill him. Don’t be a damned fool.”
His tone was rough. Already his feeling for the girl was changing. She both drew him and repelled him. If it hadn’t been for her, he would be sleeping at night, able to eat. But he needed comfort that night. He tried to kiss her, but just then they heard the familiar bark ending in a wail. The girl drew back and shuddered.
The next day, in his office, the sheriff spent some time in thought. He had nothing but a vague suspicion. Nellie Foster might be safe enough. But there was that picture of Foster, glaring at the dog with bloodshot eyes over the sights of his gun. There was, too, the entire moral and physical disintegration of the man. Something had caused it. But what?
The sheriff had one line to follow. How had Nellie got the message about her mother? The farm had no telephone, so it had come either by letter or by telegram. He went to the post office once more. There was no telegraph station in the village, and messages were telephoned there from the junction.
This time, however, he went in his official capacity. “Just keep this quiet,” he said. “Nellie Foster went to Indiana because her mother was sick. Got any idea how she learned that? By letter or telegram?”
The postmistress looked startled. “There’s nothing wrong, is there? About Nellie?”
“I don’t know. It’s a queer business.”
“She didn’t get a telegram. She might have had a letter. She and her mother wrote pretty steady. There’s just one thing — maybe it doesn’t mean anything.”
“What is it?”
“Foster’s trying to sell his farm.”
“The hell he is!”
“Matt Saunders has wanted it for a good while. Foster was in to see him today.”
The sheriff went away, thoughtful. So Foster was getting out. He didn’t like the look of it. Yet when he met Matt Saunders on the street, the matter seemed common-place enough.
“Hear you’re thinking of buying the Foster place, Matt.”
“Yeah. Been dickering for it for a couple of years.”
“And Foster’s selling.”
“Looks like it. Nellie wants to be near her mother, out West.”
But the sheriff was still not satisfied. That afternoon he sent for Joe and gave him some instructions.
“Now, mind this,” he said. “We’re outside the law, and Foster can raise the devil if he sees you. Besides, I have an idea he’s dangerous.”
“I’ll be all right,” said Joe.
“If he stays in the house you stay out.”
“You bet!” said Joe fervently.
But Foster did not stay in the house that night. At dusk the dog had commenced once more its mournful wail, and when Foster met the girl at the barn he did not even embrace her. He stood off, red-eyed and unkempt, and his voice was hoarse with rage and fear.
“You got me into this,” he said brutally. “Now, get me out. Listen to that! That must be some way to get him. He might let a woman get near him.”
She nodded. “He might. He might think I was Nellie. See here, get me some of her clothes — things she’s worn — and some shoes and stockings. And you’d better bring meat and a rope.”
It seemed a sound plan. Foster felt more cheerful as he went back to his house. The weather had cleared, and the moon was out.
He never saw Joe, hidden in Nellie’s room, because as Foster started up the stairs, the deputy slid out the window and dropped lightly to the ground. But Foster was beyond fear or suspicion that night. His only thought was the dog. Nevertheless, as he mounted the stairs he was trembling, and in the bedroom, groping in the clothes closet, he made small whimpering noises, strange from his big body.
But the instinct for self-preservation was strong. He found what he wanted, and went downstairs. The girl was on the porch. She had slipped off most of her clothing, and the moonlight made her flesh gleam white and desirable. But he did not so much as look at her. All at once he hated her white body, and suddenly it occurred to him that she hated him, too; that only one thing united them now, and that was fear.
“Where’s the meat?”
“I’ll get it.”
“Well, hurry, you fool. I can’t stay out all night.”
She was dressed in Nellie’s clothes when he came back, and she took the pan of meat without a word.
The dog was lying in the familiar spot in the orchard. He was very weak. He breathed shallowly, his dull eyes closing, then opening with a jerk. But his ears were alert, and his sensitive nose. It was his nose that told him first. Meat, of course, but something else, too. He staggered to his feet and stood trembling violently. She was coming. She was coming at last. With a low whimper he ran to her.
“All right,” called the girl. “I’ve got him.”
He made no protest, save when Foster came near. Then he showed his teeth. Tied and locked in the barn, he wolfed down his food, and afterwards he slept. But there was no hope in him, and once in the night he howled again. Foster, lying awake, heard him and swore.
It was morning when Joe reported to the sheriff. He looked pleased with himself.
“Get in?” asked the sheriff.
Joe nodded. “Looks like the story’s straight, all right,” he said. “Foster nearly caught me, at that. But I had time to look around. Her clothes are gone, except the stuff she worked in.”
The sheriff grunted. “Either the story’s straight, or he’s smarter than I thought he was.”
Joe grinned. “Well, he wasn’t so smart, at that,” he said. “Look at this.”
He held out his hand, and in it was a plain gold wedding ring.
“In the pocket of an apron,” he said. “Like she took it off when she was working. Ain’t likely a woman would go on a visit and leave a thing like that.”
“No,” said the sheriff soberly. “No.”
Once more he got into his car and drove out to the farm. Already the atmosphere of the place had subtly changed, and so had Foster. He had shaved and put on a fresh shirt, and the porch had been swept. When the sheriff arrived, he was repairing the chicken-yard fence, and he looked himself again.
“Thought I’d make another try for Rags,” the sheriff said. “He kinda worries me. That is, unless Nellie’s coming back soon.”
Foster shrugged. “I don’t expect her. Her mother’s pretty sick.”
“You’ve heard from her, then?”
“Yeah. Had a letter a day or two ago. She won’t be back for a while.”
“Then I’d better see about the dog.”
“Dog’s gone,” said Foster. “I gave him to that girl of Burford’s. She was going to visit some relatives over in Carter County, and she said they’d take him. Left this morning.”
The sheriff looked at him. “I think you’re lying, Foster,” he said. “You haven’t heard from Nellie, and you’ve been trying to kill Rags for a week or more. Why?”
“He was a damned nuisance, that’s why!”
“Where’s Nellie, Foster?”
“I’ve told you where she is. You crazy with the heat or what?”
“Where is she? I mean, what town. What part of Indiana?”
Foster looked at the hatchet in his hand, then put it down and straightened. “Now, get this and get it right, sheriff,” he said. “I’m having no interference with my affairs. For a man running for re-election, you’re making a fool of yourself for nothing. What business is it of yours where my wife is, or my dog either? Now, get the hell out of here. I’ve got work to do.”
The sheriff reflected ruefully on that as he drove back to town. It was true. Nellie might be in Indiana. She might even have forgotten her wedding ring. All he really had was Foster’s lie about the letter and a dog howling in the night; and now even the dog was gone...
Certainly the dog was gone. Early in the morning the girl had led him out to her car and tied him in the back. But there was no fight left in him. He lay where she placed him, hardly moving through the long hours.
The girl, on the contrary, was cheerful. She felt that she had escaped catastrophe by her own shrewdness. When she thought of Foster, she laughed out of sheer relief.
The dumb fool, she thought. It’s the Women who have the brains.
She stayed the night at her cousin’s farm. The dog stood by while they looked at him, his head drooping, his tail between his legs. When the children fed him he ate, but only once did he show any emotion whatever. That was when the girl was starting back the next morning.
“Well, good-bye, Rags,” she said. “Be a good dog, won’t you?”
She leaned down to touch him, and he snarled and showed his teeth.
“Gosh!” she said. “I don’t believe he likes me.”
The dog was quiet enough after she had gone. The children petted him, and he was gentle with them. But he lay most of the time in his kennel, sleeping and eating. Now and then he moved outside, as though to test his legs. The rope which tied him was long. He would walk a bit, go back and sleep again. At the end of three days he looked better: his coat had improved; his eyes were clear. And that night he started to free himself.
It took him a long time, for the rope was tough; but before dawn he was free. He moved out of the kennel, shook himself and started for home.
Meanwhile, the sheriff had reached an impasse. Nellie had been a reticent woman. His guarded inquiries revealed no one in town who knew where her mother lived. And then one day his case, such as it was, blew up entirely.
Foster received a letter from Indiana.
“It was from Indiana, all right,” said the postmistress. “I couldn’t make out the town. He didn’t give me time to look at it.”
“He was here, was he?”
“He was waiting for me to sort the mail. He’s been in every morning for three or four days.”
“Would you know Nellie’s writing?”
“No, but it looked like a woman wrote it.”
The sheriff went back to the office and taking out the wedding ring, laid it on his desk. It was still there when the door opened and Foster came in. He looked well, and he was carefully dressed.
“Just thought I’d drop in,” he said. “You and I haven’t been too friendly, but I guess that was my fault.”
“Understand you’re getting out.”
“Yes. Sold the farm yesterday. I’ll be off in a day or two. Nellie likes it where she is. Anyhow, her mother’s pretty old.”
“Then you’ve heard from her?”
“Got a letter today.”
Foster took it out of its envelope and gave it to the sheriff. It was what might be expected, rather stiff and in a woman’s hand, and after the sheriff read it he handed it back.
“She doesn’t say anything about her wedding ring, does she?” he asked.
“Her wedding ring? What about it?”
“I had an idea she forgot it.”
Foster looked uneasy. “Well, what if she did?” he demanded angrily. “She forgot a lot of things. She always did.”
“This look like it? It’s got her initials inside.”
Foster’s face lost its color as he saw the ring. “Where the hell did you get that?” he shouted furiously. “If you’ve been in my house without a warrant I’ll have the law on you.”
“I am the law around here,” said the sheriff. “At least, until after election. Let’s see the envelope of that letter.”
But Foster stamped out of the office, and the sheriff was ruefully aware that he had overplayed his hand. When Joe came in, he was pulling on his pipe, the ring still in front of him.
“Foster’s had a letter, Joe,” he said.
“From his wife?”
“From some woman. Maybe Nellie, maybe not. Ever see the Burford girl’s handwriting, Joe?”
Joe blushed. “I had a note or two, way back,” he admitted.
“Know it again?”
“I may have a letter around somewhere,” said Joe uncomfortably.
“I’d like to see it. None of my business what it’s about. Think you can find it?”
“I’ll go home and look.”
An hour later the sheriff sat with the letter before him and a deep conviction in his mind. The Burford girl had written Foster’s letter; it had gone to someone in Indiana in another envelope and been sent back by request. The sheriff had another conviction too: that Nellie Foster was dead and buried somewhere on the farm. But where? He could not dig over a hundred and sixty acres. He probably had no right to dig at all, without more of a case than he had; and Foster was leaving. In a day or two he would be gone.
If only he had the dog! He grunted. The dog was probably dead, too.
But the dog was not dead. He was not only alive — he was on his way home. It was now, although neither knew it, a race between Foster and himself, between dog and man; the man to close up his affairs and escape, the dog to prevent that escape; the man living in terror, the dog living by sheer determination. But the dog had instinct, the man only his wits.
It was a long distance, and the dog was wary. He traveled mostly by night resting during the day; but his route was as direct as a homing pigeon’s. By what miracle he found his way, no one would ever know.
But find it he did. On the night before Foster was to leave, Joe came into the sheriff’s office. The sheriff was sitting there, his feet on his desk.
“Well, I’d better be going home,” he said. “No use sitting here worrying.”
“Nothing doing, eh?”
“Nothing. Maybe I’m getting too old for this job.”
Joe made ready to follow him. Then he remembered something. “Say,” he said, “if I didn’t know that dog of Foster’s was a hundred miles from here, I’d say I’d seen him tonight.”
“Rags? You saw Rags?”
“Well, I don’t know him well. Looked like him, though. He was heading for Foster’s place, and he was about all in.”
The sheriff reached into the drawer of his desk and took out an automatic. “Maybe I’m crazy with the heat, as Foster said,” he observed. “Again, maybe I’m not. But I think that dog was Rags, and if it was, I’m damned sure I know where he was going. Better come along.”
They drove out by the country road. It was a moonlit night, and a mile or so this side of Foster’s, they overtook the dog. He was moving along, his head and tail drooping, his whole body showing exhaustion. The men got out of the car and followed him on foot. They were only a few yards behind him when he turned into Foster’s lane. But he did not go to the house.
He went directly to the orchard, and once more lifted his long tragic face to the sky and sent out his heartbroken cry. The two men listened, their nerves strung taut. The wail ended, the dog began to scratch at the earth. He scratched furiously, and Joe caught the sheriff’s arm.
“Do you suppose she’s been buried there?” he whispered.
“I’m afraid so, poor woman.”
The sheriff started toward the house, Joe following him. When they were close by, Foster flung open the door, but he did not see the two men. He stood staring toward the orchard, and as the dog wailed again he made a strange gesture, as of a man defeated. Then he went back into the house and slammed the door. The sheriff leaped for the porch.
He got there just too late. A shot rang out inside, and when they entered, Foster was lying dead on the floor.
Hours later, when Nellie Foster’s body had been found in the orchard and taken away, the sheriff climbed wearily into his car. Joe drove, and the sheriff sat back, his eyes closed, while at his feet Rags slept the sleep of exhaustion. They were almost home when he spoke.
“You know, son, it’s a funny thing about Foster. He wasn’t fighting the law. He thought he had the law beat a mile. What he was fighting was this dog.”
“And the dog won,” said Joe.
“Yes,” said the sheriff. “The dog won.”
Ben Hecht
Rehearsal for Murder
My acquaintanceship with Dr. Charles Skyro began with the case of the trick throat, or “Laryngeus Legerdemain,” as he dubbed it in the private journal wherein the torments of his patients were sometimes whimsically catalogued.
I had heard of Skyro before that time as one of the more rococo sages of psychoanalysis. He seemed to have a double standing in the medical gossip — one, as a rattlebrained charlatan who should be jugged for malpractice; two, as one of the most brilliant minds ever devoted to the Freudian froth.
Accompanying my disturbed friend and attorney, Mark Cantwell, on his first fateful trip to Skyro’s office, I was struck to find that the source of all this controversy was a dehydrated little man past 60 who looked like a dead locust. Bulbous-eyed, glossy-skinned, wire-necked, and with a tubercular curve to his 110 pounds, Skyro reminded me of the interstellar characters who people the comic strips.
He greeted us from his desk without rising, peered at us for a moment through glasses as thick as paperweights, and then started an hour s monologue that permitted no interruption. I have never heard a man boast more shamelessly.
I had come merely as social ballast for the disturbed Cantwell, intending to vanish as soon as he was firmly docked alongside the analyst. But after Skyro had finished his discourse he turned his attention to me.
I was, he began, an oral sadist with a suicide complex, as anyone could tell by merely glancing through my books.
“I’m not here for treatment,” I said coldly, convinced by this time we had wandered into the lair of a Coney Island weight-guesser. “Mr. Cantwell is your customer.”
“What’s the matter with Mr. Cantwell?” Skyro looked at him irritably.
“He’ll tell you,” I said, “if you’ll give him a chance to get a word in edgeways.”
“I seldom take patients,” Dr. Skyro said. “I find them too boring. Mania is a cliche to me, and the disarrangements of the human psyche are too obvious for an intellect like mine. I am a man of great energy, physical as well as mental. I punch a bag every morning for five rounds. And I read a major work of philosophy and walk five miles every night, rain or snow, before going to bed. I never wear a hat or overcoat. Physicians are always astounded by my physique. Every organ perfect. Tissues those of a boy.”
I finally managed to silence the bantam braggart by standing up as if to leave. Skyro then turned to Cantwell.
“What did you say was bothering you?” he inquired fretfully.
“I’ll be going,” I said.
“No, you remain,” Skyro said. “Cantwell doesn’t like me. He’ll talk more easily in front of you.”
“How do you know he doesn’t like you?” I asked. “You haven’t given him a chance to say a word.”
“He’s said plenty,” Skyro beamed.
“I wasn’t aware I had spoken,” Cantwell frowned.
“Your stomach has been speaking for you,” Skyro said. “Stomach rumblings are an important form of speech — to the trained ear.”
“What’s it said?” I asked.
“Chiefly that it hates me,” Skyro beamed, “and that its owner is afraid of me — desperately afraid. I’ve seldom heard such low-toned rumblings of terror. What’s your profession, Cantwell?”
“I’m a lawyer.”
“And what do you think is the matter with you?”
“Well,” Cantwell said, “I’ve been very nervous of late.”
“Come, come!” Skyro cried. “You haven’t sought me out because you bite your fingernails. Nobody comes to a doctor with so horrible a reputation as mine unless he is practically
“Give him a chance to speak, for God’s sake!” I interrupted.
“Oral sadism, highly developed.” Skyro glared at me.
“My chief trouble is my throat,” Cantwell said. “My voice disappears — at intervals.”
“How old are you?” Skyro asked.
“Thirty-five.” Cantwell said.
“Married?”
“Yes.”
“Happily?”
“Oh, yes, very.”
“You’re a liar,” Skyro said, “as the two extra words in your answer prove. Go on. Your voice disappears. On what sort of occasion?”
“It happens usually in the courtroom,” said Cantwell.
“When you rise to address the judge or jury, I suppose,” Skyro said.
“That’s right.”
“Guilt,” Skyro beamed. “Obviously you are guilty of something. And when you appear in court as a lawyer, your subconscious fancies you are there as a criminal and you are stricken dumb with fear.”
“I’ve committed no crime.”
“Not yet,” Skyro said, “but you are in rehearsal. The criminal act itself — the performance for the world — is a brief gesture for which we often rehearse a lifetime. The subconscious makes no distinction between rehearsal and performance — as you can determine by consulting the Bible: As a man thinks, so is he. To the soul, a thought is a deed — a desire is a fact.”
The bloodless Dr. Skyro looked intently at Cantwell and added quietly: “You’re guilty as hell, Cantwell, and very likely of a murder you’ve been committing in the recesses of your psyche.”
“A murder!” Cantwell mopped his dark face. “That’s absurd.”
“Is it?” Skyro mused. “Is it, really?” He chuckled, winked at me, and went on, “Notice the enlargement of your friend’s eye pupils. And the contraction of his vocal cords, resulting in hoarsened, difficult speech. In a few minutes I could knock his voice out entirely, if I wanted to. Notice also the perspiring palms. From here you can see that his pulse has jumped to at least a hundred. All those are symptoms of guilt. An accomplished murderer with a genuine corpse on his hands suffers less than your friend does in his phantom abattoir. For which statement we move from the Bible to Shakespeare: Present fears are less than horrible imaginings. Are you dining at home tonight?” he asked Cantwell suddenly.
Mark nodded.
“I’d like to be your guest.” Skyro beamed and, turning to me, added, “You’re invited.”
The Cantwells live in a house beyond New York in one of those suburbs to which all the virtues and lawn mowers seem to have retired. There were three Cantwells — Mark; his soft-spoken and pretty wife, Ruth; and his calliope of a mother, Margot. They lived in a colonial house full of old rugs, old books, and old anecdotes — all the property of Madam Margot, For that shapely, black-satined beldam not only lived in the house, she flooded it from cellar to attic with her personality. She was that most triumphant of females, the wife-obliterating mother. For her part, Ruth bore up silently and sweetly, winning my own sympathy at all times, although I did yearn for the day when she would assert herself in some way.
The prospect of Dr. Skyro turned loose in such a bed of psychological catnip almost kept me from dinner. I dreaded his effect upon the mild-mannered Ruth, but I was curious to witness Madam Margot’s response to our little know-it-all. She was a woman of powerful aversions. The evening, I felt certain, would be one of those social blitzes in which cannons roar and homes are wrecked. Yet it turned out to be nothing of the sort. Our browbeating savant struck his colors on arrival and sat smirking at his case-history hostess without firing a diagnosis.
And I had never seen the queen-mother gayer or heard her more sprightly. She owned a stilted sort of wit, full of heavy cuteness. Aware that the wispy fellow at her right was somehow investigating Mark’s inner life, she offered numerous anecdotes about her son in which he starred always as an incompetent hero guided by a whimsical and doting mama. It was all rather nauseating — but endurable in the absence of counterblasts.
Ruth, as was her way, deferred in everything to the terrifying dowager, and for her pains was awarded the negligence and disregard of one and all. Cantwell seemed scarcely aware of her presence.
After dinner Madam Margot was persuaded by the conquered Skyro to show off the rooms which she had recently redecorated. And here, for the first time, I sensed that our sage was mysteriously at work behind his sycophantic front. He pranced along beside the mother, cooing over her achievements and throwing chummy little queries at her. But his manner had become as alert as that of a burglar “casing” a house.
“And this is Mark’s room.” Madam Margot stopped in front of a door. “It hasn’t been remodeled yet.”
“I’d love to see it,” Skyro purred. “Just to see what the house looked like before you took it in hand.”
Mark opened the door for us. It opened slowly, brushing over the carpet with difficulty. We looked into a skimpily furnished bedroom. While it was clearly a refuge which he shared with Ruth, I noticed that it was called “Mark’s room” and that no one else even seemed conscious of the reference.
“I suppose you’re going to change this fireplace, too.” Skyro pointed at a gas-log grate. “It’s rather out of place in such a palace of antiques as your home really is.”
“I’ve insisted for months on turning that into a real, cozy fireplace,” Madame Margot sighed with a pout at her son. “I think gas logs are utterly without mood.”
“But Mark likes it,” Skyro said, “and, of course, a man is always boss in his own bedroom.” Looking down, he added tenderly, “May I ask who bought this rug? It doesn’t seem your taste at all, Mrs. Cantwell.”
“Another of poor Mark’s efforts at decoration,” his mother answered. “It’s an awful thing, isn’t it? The auctioneer’s delight, I call it. Much too thick a pile, and
“I like it,” Mark said.
His wife Ruth smiled loyally. “It makes the room look very manly.”
“Dear little Mark.” Madam Margot slid her arm under her son’s. “He was always an unmanageable brat. But I always forgave him — everything. Horrid rugs, wrong fireplaces and all.”
And she kissed her frowning son tenderly.
Dr. Skyro greeted me the next day with a limp but friendly handshake.
“I sent for you,” he said, “because we are approaching the third step in your friend’s cure.”
“I was unaware of
Skyro rolled his beetle eyes behind the thick lenses. He was being rollicking.
“There will be five steps in all,” he said. “You witnessed step number one last night. I doubt, however, if you were aware of it.”
I shook my head.
“The gas log,” Skyro beamed.
“What about the gas log?”
“The gas log is responsible for Mark’s loss of voice,” Skyro said. “I knew your friend was guilty of plotting a murder, as I told you yesterday. And that this inner guilt deprived him of his voice in the courtroom. But I saw last night that Mark has not only dreamed subconsciously of murdering his wife; he has—”
“His
“But no. Your tormented friend feels he must murder his wife as a love sacrifice to his goddess-mother; he has also rigged up the mechanics of that phantom crime. And the mechanics are by no means phantomish. He has refused to have his gas log turned into a genuine and cozy fireplace,
“I don’t believe a word of it,” I said. “Mark is incapable of plotting so ugly and stupid a business as all that.”
“Go on,” Skyro beamed.
“He would obviously not have come to you for help,” I continued, “if he knew he were at work on a crime. A criminal doesn’t call on the police to advertise the crime he’s going to commit.”
“A crude analogy,” Skyro said. “Mark is not a criminal. He is only a half-criminal. His personality is split. What says the Bible — about the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing? Mark’s left hand is his subconscious. It is very busy buying rugs, rigging up gas logs, and preparing a crime. His right hand knows nothing of these activities. Hence his recourse to the police, as you call me.”
“I’ve always found it hard to believe in the Jekyll-Hyde idea,” I said. “But granting that a man may be blind to the things he is doing, your deductions still seem a bit arbitrary. How do you know it’s the gas log?”
“Mark’s throat trouble tells me,” Skyro said. “You see, it is not only guilt that closes his throat. He suffers also from gas-asphyxiation symptoms. When he is in the courtroom he becomes in his own mind a murderer instead of a lawyer. And, having become the murderer, he has a desire to atone; to punish himself for the crime of which he feels guilty. He does this by participating in his wife’s death. He also inhales the gas fumes — and starts choking along with her. Thus he murders and then atones for the crime by committing suicide — all on an unconscious level.”
Skyro’s glib conclusions were irritating, and I indicated as much.
“Don’t argue with me,” the little doctor smiled. “We are well past the discursive stage in the case. Step three has already been taken.”
“In what direction?” I asked.
“I have cast Madam Cantwell out of the house.”
“Mark’s
“To the contrary — very simple,” Skyro said. “I spent less than an hour with her. She’s moving all her things to the Winden Hotel this afternoon.”
I inquired how this miracle had been accomplished.
“By humoring the psychotic dreams of that wretched woman,” Skyro said. “I’ve assured her that the only way to wreck her son’s marriage is to leave the house. He will suffer so from need of her that he will quarrel with his wife, abandon her, and come to Madam Margot as her adoring son and slave.”
“She wants the marriage wrecked? I mean, she wants it that openly?”
“The old one loathes Ruth,” Skyro said. “She dreams only of winning her son to her side. It is a type of reverse motherhood that’s very common. The mother has a curious and impractical desire to recall her child.”
“What,” I interrupted him, “is your purpose in ousting Madam Margot?”
“That is step number four — and must remain vested,” Skyro said, “for the time.”
I was alarmed. The little man’s machinations seemed to me suddenly more than an adventure in psychology.
“If you’re even remotely right in your analysis,” I said, “and Mark has really been plotting his wife’s death — then good God — what are you up to?”
Skyro nodded. “Your fears are very flattering,” he said. “They show that you believe in me.”
“They show nothing of the sort,” I said. “I’m going to call on Mark and pull him out of this.”
“You’ll do nothing.” Skyro glared at me. “His life is in my hands. So is his wife’s. I hold them — like this.” He lifted both palms. “If you want your friend saved leave him here. There is no other haven for him.”
I was silent for several minutes.
“Luckily I believe in none of your abracadabra,” I said at length, “so I will not interfere with your little Halloween games.”
I stayed away from both Mark and Skyro for two days. On the third day Ruth telephoned me. She spoke in a spent voice.
“I’d like to see you,” she said.
I said I was busy.
“It’s about Mark,” she went on dully. “He’s drinking. And he’s beside himself. I have to do something. He blames me for his mother’s leaving us. I didn’t ask her to go. I didn’t want her to. But he won’t believe me. I don’t know what to do.”
“I don’t, either,” I said, “but I’ll talk to Dr. Skyro.”
“That horrible man!” Ruth began weeping. “He’s responsible for every thing. I know he is. He’s in a plot against me.”
“I’ll talk to him,” I repeated firmly. “And see you tomorrow.”
I was wakened by the telephone at 6 the next morning.
It was Skyro.
“Come to the Winden Hotel at once,” he said in a queer voice. “Suite seven hundred five. I’ll be there. Please hurry.”
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“I can’t discuss it over the phone,” the breathless voice answered. “Get dressed and hurry.”
Skyro arrived at the Winden a few minutes before me. He was standing in the hall talking to Mark’s mother when I opened the door. Mark, glowering and disheveled, was sitting hunched on the couch.
“The police should be here in a half hour,” Skyro was saying. “We have very little time to prepare ourselves. Very little time.”
“The police will be here for what?” I asked.
“For Mark.” Skyro stared at the collapsed lawyer.
Mark’s eyes were red. His attention was elsewhere. He seemingly had failed to recognize me. His mother, voluptuous in a cream-colored satin negligee, hovered over him like a Valkyrie.
“I was called at 5:30 this morning,” Skyro went on. “The facts are simple and complete. There is no chance of our altering them.”
“What are they?” I asked.
“Mark arrived at home around midnight last night,” said Skyro. “He was under the influence of alcohol. He quarreled with Ruth and then induced her to take two sleeping pills. His fingerprints are on the box of pills. They are also on the jet of the gas log. He turned the gas on around 2 A.M. Ruth was sound asleep, drugged. He shut off the damper in the fireplace. His fingerprints are also on the damper-iron. Then he left the bedroom, closing and locking the door behind him, and arrived at this apartment around 3:30 A.M. The clerk downstairs has the record of his arrival. The police have already traced his trip from Long Island to this hotel.”
Madam Margot smiled.
“That is no evidence,” she said. “Any good lawyer will be able to free Mark. He has done nothing wrong.”
A groan came from the couch.
“Have you, Mark?”
“Your son is unable to speak,” Skyro said quickly. “He is suffering from gas-poisoning symptoms, in an effort to atone for what he has done.”
“Nonsense.” Madam Margot raised her own uninhibited voice. “I won’t listen to such talk against Mark.”
“Your attitude isn’t going to help him,” Skyro said.
“That stupid, horrible misfit of a Ruth!” Madam Margot cried suddenly. “I’m
“Did you hate her as much as that?” Skyro asked unexpectedly.
“Hate her!” Madam Margot snorted. “I despised her! From the very first day Mark brought her home. I hated her every hour of their marriage. My God, they can’t touch Mark for ridding himself of such a foul incubus. She belongs where she is now!”
Mark stood up and stared at his mother. She held her arms out to him. He knocked them down.
“I thought you loved me,” he said, and Skyro beamed at the sound of his voice. “But that’s not true. You were only interesting in destroying
“Darling, darling!” Madam Margot cried. “You mustn’t worry. I’ll stand by you. We have money.”
“I came home last night” — Mark stared at her — “to kill her. I gave her the sleeping pills. I turned on the gas. Now I know what I’ve been dreaming about. Her death. Her killing.”
“You mustn’t say that!” Madam Margot cried. “Darling, sit down. Let me take care of you.”
“You gloating, evil creature.” Mark’s eyes were still on her. “It was your hatred that worked in me. It made me crazy. And I thought
“Get out!” he cried. “I never want to see you again — or hear your voice. Gloat all you want, and keep on gloating! After I’m executed you’ll know your hatred won.”
“They won’t touch you!” Madam Margot cried. “Because you’re mad! Every word you’re saying is mad.”
“I’m sane,” Mark answered quietly. “My horror of you proves it — if nothing else does.” He turned to Skyro and added, “Where are the police?”
“We can forget about them,” the little sage beamed. “I’m more interested in the fact that you seem to be cured of your laryngeus legerdemain. Also of your mother fixation, which was the cause of it.”
“Good God!” I exploded. “What good is a cure going to do him
“True, true,” Skyro smiled, “but I’m a very brilliant accessory. I’m accessory to a crime
“Ruth, Ruth,” Mark moaned.
“You can go back to her,” Skyro said. “She’s sleeping off the drug you gave her.”
“But the gas,” Mark whispered. “I turned it on.”
“True enough,” Skyro nodded, “but I took the liberty of disconnecting the gas log when I dined at your home. You turned it on — but no gas came out.”
“I smelled it,” Mark whispered.
“A natural part of your delusions,” Skyro beamed.
Mark swayed.
“You’ve saved her life — and mine,” he said.
“I prefer to consider that I’ve merely cured a throat affliction,” said Skyro.
I looked at Madam Margot. Her face was bloodless. Her body seemed to have aged as if under some more of Skyro’s necromancy.
“Aren’t you going to kiss me goodbye?” she wailed as Mark started out of the door.
“Neither goodbye nor hello,” said Mark. And was gone.
“I had the case planned the moment I saw the gas log,” Skyro beamed across a lunch table. “I needed only one bit of luck to cure our friend of his ugly dreams. That was a blurt of truth from his mother. Madam Margot really cured her son, not I. As I will assure her when I take her under my wing tonight. A fascinating woman. Maternal cannibalism is a rare thing. As is her other trouble — a need to destroy her own mother, for having held the love of her father. You see, this all began. when Margot herself was a child—”
“Please,” I interrupted, “I have little interest and less belief in your theories of psychoanalysis. And I’m averse to looking miracles in the mouth. You’ve reconciled a husband and wife, prevented a murder, solved a crime, given an evil woman her comeuppance — why not rest on these obvious laurels?”
Dr. Skyro shook his head sadly.
“To a man of my genius,” he said, “this thing you call a miracle is hardly more than the working out of a childish crossword puzzle. Call on me tomorrow — and I’ll tell you the tale of a real miracle!”
Helen McCloy
Murder is Everybody’s Business
She stood at the foot of the broad stairs, one hand on the newel post, looking up into the shadows on the floor above. “Mother? Peter? Here I am — Amy!”
A sense of inertia came through the silence. The house was empty. Amy was hardly surprised. She realized she had been foolish to imagine they would stay in because she was coming home. That wasn’t like them at all. Peter might be anywhere, but her mother was probably having tea with Esther Gregory.
Amy crossed the hall to the telephone table and found the Gregory’s number in the book. Time enough to call Allan after she had talked to her mother.
While the open line buzzed and clicked against her ear, she looked down at her cigarette, harsh white against the golden-brown of her skin. She could almost hear her mother’s voice:
“Operator, I’m still waiting for that number. Will you try it again?”
“Oh, didn’t you get them? I’m sorry. Just a minute, please.”
More buzzing... What proportion of their lives did people waste nowadays waiting for someone else to answer the telephone?
There was a click, and a man’s voice spoke, musical, a gentle, Negro voice: “Hello.”
“Is Mrs. Corbett there? This is her daughter.”
“Just a minute, please, I’ll see if she’s down at the stables.”
Since when had the Gregorys acquired a Negro butler and stables? Over the light humming of the wire she heard footfalls ring on a hard surface and die away. A cat was wailing at the other end of the line, sharp, nasal wailing. A Siamese? Here in the hall where Amy sat there was no sound but the surf and one shrill cry from a gull. This summer home was built on a dune, overlooking the sea. Double doors at either end stood open to the sunny, windy emptiness of sand hills.
Over the telephone line footfalls rang again on a hard surface. Another voice spoke — a white man’s voice: “This is dangerous. I don’t...”
A woman’s voice answered, high, rapid, clear, and rather cool: “We’ve got to... Where’s the Nembutal?”
“In my pocket.” The man’s voice was deep and hoarse.
Amy tried to interrupt: “Hello? Hello? Is this a crossed wire?”
The voices went on. These two could not hear Amy. Only some words were distinct, not complete sentences; as though the pair stood at some distance from the telephone. Not a crossed wire. Just two people talking in the same room as the telephone, unaware that someone else had left it off the hook. Amy was reaching for the telephone cradle to break the connection when the woman said, “I’ve been wondering... better a lethal dose...?”
“No! That... suggests murder... or suicide... We’ll... enough... befuddle senses and... they’ll call it accident. I wish... over!”
“Do you suppose I’m enjoying...?”
“Sometimes... think you do.”
“I’m not that tough, but...”
“You’re the toughest woman I know... Why I love...”
“I’m not... even talking... frightens me.”
“Why? No one can overhear... big room like this... 30 feet to door. You can... terrace from the picture window... no one outside.”
“Things... more real... put them into words. Murder... What a word for people like you and me to...”
“Somehow... doesn’t seem like murder when... you and I.”
“I know... Didn’t seem like adultery when it was you and I... Have you thought... when? What about... tonight...? Sooner the better. If...” The woman’s voice faltered now, a little breathless. “If anything should go... wrong, I hope... adjoining cells before... the end.”
The man’s answer came harshly: “Some prisons... men; others, for women. If... goes wrong, we’ll never meet again.”
“...meet in hell.” Her laugh was cold and bitter.
“Paolo and Francesca? Then hell will be heaven!”
He had matched her mood, yet her response was acid: “None, I think, do there embrace...”
Suddenly the voices ceased. There was only a faint humming. The line was dead.
Frantically, Amy jiggled the lever. “Operator, I was cut off. Give me that number again. Oldport nine seven four.”
A woman’s voice answered this time, a voice spiced with Irish brogue: “Mr. Gregory’s residence.”
“I... I called a moment ago. I was cut off. May I speak to the man who answered the telephone then? He was a Negro, a butler, I suppose.”
“There’s some mistake, ma’am,” the voice answered her cheerfully. “There are no butlers here and no Negroes.”
“Then the operator must have given me a wrong number that first time. May I speak to Mrs. Corbett? This is Miss Corbett.”
“Mrs. Corbett isn’t here now, ma’am, and she’s not expected.”
“Oh, thank you.” Amy jiggled the lever. “Operator, that first call was a wrong number.”
“I’m sorry, madam. Excuse it, please.”
“You don’t understand. I’m not blaming you. I just wanted to know what that wrong number was. It’s important.”
“But, madam!” The operator was bewildered. “If it was a wrong number, it was a mistake. I did it without knowing it. I can’t tell you something I don’t know myself, can I?”
“Oh! Then give me six five three.” But no one answered that number.
Twenty minutes later Amy tried again.
“Dr. Galt is not here now,” said a woman’s voice with a tart Yankee, twang. “But— Oh, wait a minute! I think I hear his car just coming into the drive.”
“Amy!” Allan Galt’s welcome was cordial. “I had no idea you were coming back today. When can I see you?”
“Right away. Unless you’re busy.”
“Something wrong? You sound upset.”
“I am. Something queer just happened. I need advice.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can. I have a few more house visits to make.”
Amy put down the telephone. Through the open doorway she could see dune shadows turning blue in the sand hollows, while the sunlight that lingered at the level of each crest was taking on its late afternoon luster, bright, still, golden. The day was dying, as summer itself was dying at this time of year. She shivered, suddenly aware of the threat of winter and night.
Amy frowned. Why was she so sure she had heard that woman’s voice before, somewhere, some time?
Upstairs, slipping into a white pique dress, she heard footfalls below. Allan already? It was little more than half an hour since she had telephoned him. She ran to the head of the stairs. A single lamp was lit in the dark hall below. Within its circle of light a flash of sapphires drew her gaze to her mother’s hands, arranging flowers in a vase on the table. Pale, slender hands, tipped with rose-petal nails.
“Why, Amy! I had totally forgotten you were coming today. You might have reminded me!”
“I did try to reach you by telephone when I got here.”
“Dear child, that was thoughtful!” Natalie Corbett beamed at her daughter as if she meant every word. In a way, she did. That was the funny part. It wasn’t quite the special compassion a mother feels for a child who is crippled or defective. It was rather the deprecating tolerance a breeder of dogs feels for the one puppy in a thoroughbred litter that hasn’t enough points to make the bench show.
“I wish you’d worn a prettier dress, dear,” Natalie was saying. “And as for that lipstick! The wrong color for your eyes. And crooked. There’s a new shade upstairs on my dressing table that Esther Gregory gave me.
“No, there isn’t.” Amy smiled. “I told you why I stopped wearing nail polish, Mother. At college I developed an allergy to it quite suddenly.”
“You never mentioned such a thing,” exclaimed Natalie.
“Yes, I did, Mother,” Amy said. “You’ve forgotten. I didn’t talk too much about it. I believe people don’t talk about their allergies until they’re cured. It’s humiliating to know that you’re so vulnerable to things normal people use without any trouble.”
“Thank goodness, nothing like that ever happened to me!” Natalie regarded her pearly pink nails with satisfaction. “That Allan Galt is here. He seems most anxious to see you. If I were you I wouldn’t hurry out to the terrace. I’d keep him waiting. A little finesse on your part wouldn’t be out of place at all!”
Amy sighed. “Mother, you know I can’t finesse with anybody and I don’t want to!”
“As you please!” Natalie shrugged as she moved toward the terrace door.
Amy hesitated on the threshold. The terrace seemed crowded, though actually there were only eight people. Natalie had gone over to the cocktail table. No one noticed Amy in the darkness. She recognized her sister-in-law’s fair, fluffy hair and kitten eyes, wide apart, round and wisely wondering. Peter’s wife was sitting apart from the others, and that seemed odd. Amy slipped into a vacant chair beside her. “Hello. Kate!”
“Why, Amy! I didn’t know you were back. How nice!”
“Only for a week. Where’s Peter?”
“Over there at the table with your mother, mixing cocktails.”
Now she had been told where to look, Amy picked out her brother’s figure in the shadows. Peter was like his mother, slim, neat, almost dapper. In the darkness, beyond the lamplight that spilled through the hall doorway, another woman sat on a wicker settee with two men. Amy could see only a whiteness of face and throat and arms against a drift of black dress. The hair must be dark indeed, for it blended with the night. The black lace of a mantilla would have been invisible without a crescent of diamonds that glittered through its mesh.
Kate’s glance followed Amy’s. “That’s Esther Gregory.”
“I’ve known Curtis Gregory for years,” said Amy. “But I think the only time I met Esther was at their wedding in town two years ago. She was a widow, wasn’t she?”
“Yes. A Mrs. Maitland from San Francisco. She’s become a great friend of your mother’s down here.”
“I’ve heard about that.”
Just then the woman’s laugh rippled, light but thin and chill, as the ring of a crystal goblet tapped by a fingernail.
Kate spoke quietly: “I don’t like her, because Peter likes her so much, I suppose. But she’s got a husband. Why does she want all the other men to dance attendance on her as well? Even Allan.”
“That doesn’t sound like Allan.”
“He’s changed, Amy. You’ve stayed away so long you don’t know. He’s over there in the dark sitting with Esther and her house guest, Mr. Payne.”
Amy was startled. Couldn’t Allan have made some excuse to leave Esther Gregory by this time?
“Kate, do you know anyone who has a living-room 30 feet wide?”
“If anyone has, I wouldn’t know it. I’m no good at guessing distances.”
“Well, just a big living-room, then, with a hard floor, stone or tile, and a picture window?”
“Lots of people have big living-rooms with hard floors and picture windows.”
“Are here many who have stables?”
“Probably. You remember there’s fox hunting here in the fall.”
“How many people have Negro butlers?”
“I don’t know any, but several have Negro chauffeurs.”
“Do many people keep Siamese cats?”
“The Pettys have one. What are you driving at, Amy?”
“Think, Kate. Do you know anybody at all who has all these things? A big living-room with a picture window and a bare, hard floor, stables, a Negro chauffeur, and a Siamese cat?”
“I can’t think of anyone. Maybe Allan would know. A doctor visits so many h#uses.”
“I thought of that, but...” Amy sighed. Had her voice sounded a little too upset over the telephone? A doctor who cares about his practice might not like to be mixed up in “something queer.”
“Kate, do you know any man at all who has an unusually hoarse, rough voice?”
“No. What is all this about, Amy?”
“I’m sorry, Kate, but I don’t want to tell you. I’m still hoping it was all a mistake of some kind. Somebody rehearsing a play or something like that. But there was something in their voices that made it seem — real. Two lost souls talking in Limbo. I suppose that’s the way people do talk when they’re in love and the love is furtive and criminal.”
A man’s voice interrupted: “Am I late?” It was Curtis Gregory standing in the hall doorway. “Amy, I didn’t know you would be here today.” His pleasant, usually grave face relaxed in a warm smile. “We never seem to see you in town. When you were twelve you didn’t avoid me like that!”
Amy returned the smile with affection. “When I was twelve I wasn’t running an art gallery in Manhattan!”
“You’re not drinking?” said Curtis. “May I get you some sherry?”
Peter had come over to welcome Curtis. “For heaven’s sake, Amy!” He spoke to his sister with a touch of patronage he had learned from their mother. “Sherry is such an affectation. Why can’t you drink Martinis like everybody else?”
“I’ll get you sherry.” On his way to the cocktail table, Curtis paused in front of the settee: “Esther, where have you been all afternoon? I thought you were going to meet me at the club for a swim.”
Amy didn’t hear the reply. She turned to her brother: “Is that all you have to say to me, Peter?”
“State Department tact,” put in Kate tartly.
“Oh, you know I’m glad to see you, Sis!” Peter’s grin was a little ashamed. “And I’m not in the State Department yet, Kate. I haven’t even decided.”
Peter had flirted with many possible careers — bonds, publishing, real estate. But somehow when it came to the point there was always some good reason for not leaving the pleasant homes his mother maintained in New York and Oldport. Obviously, Kate was beginning to worry about Peter’s emotional and economic dependence on his mother.
“You’ll have to do something,” she said wearily. “I’d rather have the simplest household of our own than go on living with your mother forever!”
Natalie could not have caught the words, but her quick ear picked up the tone and she acted swiftly to break up the trio: “Children, we really must go in to dinner!” She raised her voice slightly to include the whole company: “Allan, you’ll stay, won’t you?... Mr. Payne, Esther, please bring your glasses to the table. We can’t be late for the dance.”
Amy was scarcely conscious of Payne, the only stranger, as Esther stepped into the light from the lamp in the hall. She was a woman who drew and held the eye irresistibly. Under hair like polished onyx, her face had all the perfection of a marble image, Greek of the classical period. But there was something strange about her beauty, a disturbing touch of mystery that was emphasized by the slight, weary smile.
“Amy, dear, don’t you remember me? I remember you at my wedding two years ago. You were such an attractive child, so artless and serious.”
“I’m still rather artless.” Amy couldn’t trust herself to say more at that moment. Esther’s voice was high, rapid, clear, and rather cool. Unmistakably the voice of the woman Amy had heard on the telephone this afternoon. The voice that grew a little breathless and faltered when it said:
In the dining-room four long windows stood open to the terrace. The night was so still that the candle flames were as motionless as the candles. Mahogany brought out the fine detail of doily lace and doubled the flames in its dark red mirror. Natalie had spoken of dinner, but it was actually a buffet supper. Guests gathered around the sideboard, plates in hand, serving themselves, while the maid confined herself to pouring coffee. When Amy turned back to the table she found a place next to the Gregorys’ house guest, Payne.
Her first glimpse of him on the terrace had suggested a young man, tall, lean, muscular. The face he turned toward her now placed him somehere between 30 and 40. Lines had begun to form about the eyes and mouth. The skin was swarthy and weatherbeaten. A plain face, yet when he smiled it was transfigured by a flash of gaiety and daring. The smile of a bom adventurer, as different from other smiles as the warm, dancing light of a wood fire is different from the steady, impersonal glow of an electric bulb.
“You’re Miss Corbett, aren’t you? Nobody bothered to introduce us. I’m Matthew Payne.”
Amy’s breath escaped in a long sigh. This voice was deep and masculine, but it was mellow, almost soft, with a hint of Southwestern drawl.
And yet it had all fitted so neatly. A house guest of the Gregorys’, a mature man who looked reckless, a stranger whose voice Amy had never heard before. Was it conceivable that he was the man, that he knew someone had overheard him and that he was deliberately disguising his voice? Could anyone but an actor do that?
“Haven’t I seen you on the stage, Mr. Payne? Or in the movies?”
“Who, me?” His laugh was as uninhibited as his smile. “Do I look it?”
“It’s not your looks. It’s your voice.” She gazed at him directly. “I think I’ve heard it before.”
“I doubt that.” He frowned, apparently puzzled. “I’ve never been on stage or screen and I’ve been on the air only once. During the war when I was with the OSS.” He was smiling again. “Could it be that one radio speech?”
“No.” She managed to smile back at him. “What is your job now that OSS is disbanded?”
“Insurance. That was my last job before the war, too.”
“Your last job?”
“Before that I had all sorts of odd jobs — cowpunching in Texas, engineering in Mexico. Jack-of-all-trades and master of none.”
“Matt, you should take yourself more seriously!” The cool voice startled Amy. She had not realized that Esther, across the table, was listening. “You sound like an adventurer. Are you playing Othello to Amy’s Desdemona? She may look young and inexperienced, but she isn’t naive. Not at all.” Esther’s eyes dwelt on Amy for the moment enigmatically.
“So I’ve discovered!” Payne was amused.
“Matt has had a most interesting life,” Esther went on to Amy. “He has lived the sort of thing most people today merely read about. Especially when he was in the OSS.”
“I’m sorry if I seemed rude.” Amy turned to Payne impulsively. “It was the voice, really. I was so sure that I’d heard it before.”
“The voice?” Esther’s eyes glittered in the candlelight. “Where did you think you had heard Matt’s voice before, Amy?”
“I... didn’t know.” The tone of that question was disturbing.
After supper, in the hall, Allan said, “Will you drive with me to the dance, Amy? Then we can have that talk we planned on the way.”
There were two cars on the sweep of gravel outside. Amy recognized Allan’s little coupe. The big sedan must be the Gregorys’. Natalie was already arranging her skirts on the back seat of the big car, when Peter said:
“I don’t like jump seats! Esther, will you drive with me if I get my convertible? I can’t ask Kate or Mother, because they don’t like to get their hair blown.”
It was said lightly, easily, but Amy was conscious of effort under the ease, heaviness in the moment that followed the lightness.
Esther smiled. “I’d love to, Peter. Night is so much more lovely than day. It’s the one time I really enjoy an open car.”
Without a word, Kate got into the big car beside Natalie.
“That leaves you to sit with the ladies, Matt, while I drive.” Curtis Gregory spoke as if he were unaware of tension, and the big car moved away.
“Why is night more lovely than day?” inquired Allan.
“Can you ask?” Esther threw back her head to look up at the stars. Her mantilla fell softly away from her face, a part of the shadows like the filmy black of her dress. “Day is commonplace. Night has mystery. And awe.”
Peter’s convertible swung around the corner from the garage and came to a stop. Light from the house fell on the sleeve of his old topcoat as he reached out an arm to open the door of the car.
“Just a minute, Peter.” Amy was glad of the chance to shatter Esther’s romantic mood. “Something on your sleeve.” She was all sister, as she plucked at a tuft of tawny hair.
“Golden tress of a beautiful blonde?” suggested Allan.
“No.” Amy’s voice was colorless. “It looks more like the hairs of a cat. A Siamese cat.”
Allan’s car left the tree-lined lanes of Oldport for the State Highway that ran through farm and wasteland to the Yacht Club. The starlit road unwound before them swiftly as a white ribbon unreeling from a runaway spool. Allan’s dark, good-looking face was in shadow, but Amy saw the gleam of his teeth as he grinned. “You sounded very upset on the telephone,” he said. “What gives?”
Amy was silent. Then: “Allan, tell me something? What do you think of Esther Gregory?”
“She’s the most amazing woman I’ve ever seen. The word ‘beautiful’ is too shopworn for her. Every screen star and advertising model is called beautiful today. Usually a matter of clever camera angles and trick makeup. Esther’s beauty isn’t a trick. It’s Esther. It’s the way she steps and smiles and breathes and speaks. It’s the faint shadow in the hollows at her temples and the way her hair grows on the nape of her neck.”
Amy sighed. “Do you like her?”
“Of course. Don’t you?”
“I think she’s fascinating, but I’m not sure I like her.”
“You’ve only met her once or twice before this evening, haven’t you?”
“Once. At her wedding.”
“You’ll like her when you get to know her better. Has Esther got anything to do with this thing you want my advice about?”
They were passing a farm that stood in a clearing. The farmhouse was bright with lamplight, snug, warm, and safe. Why “safe”? Amy asked herself. Didn’t she feel safe on this familiar road with one of her oldest friends?
“Yes, Allan. She has, and it’s not a... a nice thing. Perhaps I’d better not tell you, if you’re such a good friend of Esther’s.”
“We’re not exactly friends.” Allan’s voice was calm, reassuring. “Not the way you and I are. Go ahead.”
He listened stolidly as she repeated the telephone conversation, slowing the pace of the car so they would have more time. “You’re sure you couldn’t identify the man’s voice?”
Amy could not see Allan’s face. His voice was expressionless. “No, I couldn’t. But I’m sure of the woman. Perhaps the telephone distorted the man’s voice. Anyway, we know he’s a man of cultivated tastes.”
“Do we? Everybody’s heard of Paola and Francesca.”
“But not everybody has heard of Andrew Marvell.” Amy quoted pensively:
“You said it was the woman who quoted that,” objected Allan.
“But she wouldn’t have quoted it if he hadn’t been the sort of man who would recognize it,” insisted Amy. “Allan, should I go to the police?”
He sighed. “Would that be wise? Your only evidence is subjective: your own identification of a woman’s voice heard briefly on an open telephone line. There are no other witnesses and you admit the telephone distorts a voice. You may be mistaken about the voice; you may have misunderstood some of the words as well. These people may not have used the word ‘murder’ at all. Even if you did hear and remember every word correctly, there may have been nothing more sinister at the other end of that telephone than a radio playing a snatch of dialogue from some crime play. Even if you don’t care for Esther herself, think how Curtis will feel if you go to the police!”
“But, Allan, that’s the whole point! If this murderous woman is Esther Gregory, there can be only one victim — Curtis himself!”
“Curtis? Wait a minute. Let’s stop and get this straight.” Allan swung his car onto the grass beside the road and then turned in his seat to look at her. “Did either of them mention Curtis by name?”
“No.” A throb in Amy’s voice betrayed her anxiety. “But, Allan! They were lovers, quite obviously.
“Ever hear of divorce?”
“Curtis has money, hasn’t he? He used to run some sort of importing business before he was in the Army. Silk, I think. If Esther has no money of her own and if the lover himself is poor...”
Allan looked down at his own hands, clasping the rim of the steering wheel. “I didn’t realize at first how serious you were about this. Now, there’s something I have to tell you. I recognized that room the moment you described it — the hard, bare floor, the width — 30 feet, the picture window overlooking a terrace, even the Siamese cat and the stables.”
“And the Negro?”
“He happens to be a white man from Alabama. Hearing him without seeing the color of his skin, anyone would take him for a Negro.” Allan smiled crookedly. “You didn’t know that I’d had my place done over this spring, did you? That room happens to be my own waiting-room.”
“Allan...” The word died in her throat for lack of breath.
“And now...” There was a new, hard note in his voice as he leaned forward to turn the ignition key. “We’re not going to the Yacht Club. We’re going to my place to find out just who was there late this afternoon.”
The car left the highway and turned down a lamplit, a most suburban road.
“Allan, it’s such a coincidence.”
“What is?”
“That I got your number when I got a wrong number.”
Allan laughed. “Don’t you see what must have happened? You planned to call me after you called your mother at the Gregorys’. My number was in the foreground of your mind, so, in a moment of abstraction, you gave my number instead of the Gregorys’. Perhaps you really wanted to call me more than you wanted to call your mother.”
“Don’t go Freudian on me!” protested Amy.
“If the woman you overheard really was Esther Gregory and if it was the operator who gave you a wrong number, the whole thing would be a mathematical impossibility. Out of all the numbers in Oldport, the operator selects one for you by pure chance that tunes you in on a room where a woman you already know is talking. I couldn’t believe that. But if the wrong number wasn’t chosen by chance, if you actually chose it unconsciously, it’s not surprising you overheard someone you knew.”
“Was Esther at your place today?”
“Not to my knowledge, but we’ll find out.”
Amy remembered Allan’s home as a long, low, white-painted house, standing in an open meadow that gave the place its name, The Paddock. Now, by the car’s headlight, she could see that the meadow had become a cultivated lawn enclosed in a neat hedge, and a new wing had been added to the house itself. A light shone from one of several outbuildings.
“Stables?” murmured Amy as the car halted.
“I keep a cow and a saddle horse. Curtis sold me the idea I should have a horse for exercise. Sold me the horse, too, for that matter. I ride on the beach mornings before I go to the hospital.”
“What sort of staff do you have here?”
“One of the local nurses comes during office hours to keep records straight and help with patients. Then I have a housekeeper, Mrs. Adams. Nice old soul. It’s she who’s responsible for the Siamese cat. Got him a week ago.”
“And the man from Alabama who talks like a Negro?”
“Sharpe. He comes in twice a day to look after the grounds and the stables. He’s a gardener, really, employed by a landscaping company to mow lawns and trim hedges on the big places around here. But he likes to make extra money, so he comes to me when he’s off duty.”
“And that’s the terrace and the picture window.” Amy was looking at the new wing.
Allan opened the front door without a key.
“Don’t you ever lock it?”
“In Oldport? Of course not!”
Allan led the way through a door on the left and pressed a light switch. The waiting-room was big, at least 30 feet wide, obviously new, aseptically impersonal. There were no rugs. The floor was some synthetic composite, a mottled gray that looked like marble and rang like stone under Amy’s heels.
“Allan! This must be the place.” Her glance came to rest on a desk with a telephone.
“That’s where the nurse sits. There are two other extensions, in my office and in my bedroom.”
“Wouldn’t the nurse be here at 5 o’clock? That’s the time I telephoned.”
“She leaves a few minutes earlier if there are no patients in the waiting-room and I am out on house visits, as I was today.”
“Then it’s no use asking your housekeeper whether Esther was here today or not. This room could have been empty when the telephone rang about 5 o’clock. The stableman, Sharpe, might have heard it, passing a window. He might have stepped inside to answer it, knowing you and the nurse had gone, not knowing whether the housekeeper heard it or not. Only, when I asked for Mrs. Corbett, why did he say she might be down at the stables?”
“Because she might.” Allan’s voice was sober, plainly worried. He looked heavier, more settled and weary than Amy remembered him. “Your mother and Peter have been here a lot this summer.”
“So Sharpe puts the telephone down on the desk, leaving the line connected, and walks out to the stables,” mused Amy. “That walk would take several minutes. While he’s gone, two other people come into the waiting-room — a man and a woman. They walk in unannounced because the front door is unlocked. If they are discovered they can always claim they came as patients.”
“But why come here at all?” demanded Allan.
Amy smiled. “Remember what the woman said:
“Holy Moses! I’ll check that at once.” Allan hurried through the door to his office. Amy followed, and found him standing before a wall cupboard.
“Do you always leave the key in the lock like that?”
“No. I carry one key and keep a spare in the desk drawer.”
“Where any patient might have seen it?”
He nodded. “That’s the spare.” He took a bottle of capsules out of the cupboard. The face he turned to Amy now was haggard. “There seem to be about a dozen capsules missing. I swear I can’t remember whether I took them out myself to put in my bag or not.”
“Now, do you believe my story?”
“I suppose I must.” He locked the cupboard. “Even so, I’m not sure you have enough evidence to go to the police. I can report the missing Nembutal, but that conversation you overheard is still a flimsy basis for accusing a woman like Esther Gregory. And you have no idea who the man was.”
“Perhaps we can find out now.” Amy’s eyes shone. “Allan, haven’t you wondered about afterward?”
“After what?”
“After that telephone connection was cut. The man, Sharpe, must have come back from the stables to tell me that Mrs. Corbett wasn’t there. Did he find Esther and the man still here or see them leave the house?”
Allan frowned. “Are you sure it was your sudden start that cut the telephone conversation? Isn’t it possible that the people you overheard discovered the open telephone line at that moment? In that case, one of them would cut the connection and they’d both get away as fast as they could, before anyone saw them. They couldn’t know that the listener at the other end of the line thought she had a wrong number. They would think she knew she was listening to a conversation in my house. So they couldn’t afford to be seen here at that particular time.”
“Even then they may not have got away fast enough. Sharpe may have seen them.” Amy turned toward the door. “Is he down at the stable now? There was a light there when we came in.”
After the aseptic, fluorescent glitter of office and waiting-room, it was hard to see, outside. Amy stumbled as they crossed the uneven turf.
Allan opened the stable door. “Sharpe?”
There was a thud of iron-shod hoofs on wood. Allan opened a door on the right and pressed a wall switch. The light of a naked bulb showed a concrete floor and a box stall of unfinished wood. A horse’s head lifted across the barrier — dark chestnut with a black mane. Amy saw the white rim that circled rolling eyeballs.
“Quiet there, old girl. What’s the matter?” Surprise edged Allan’s voice. “Usually Stormbird... Great heavens!”
Allan was looking intently into the mare’s box. She moved, and her shadow shifted with her, so that light fell on the farther wall. Now Amy could see the crumpled body of a man in overalls and the horseshoe curve of the wound that had crushed his skull, dark with blood against a bloodless face.
“Sharpe!” Allan whispered incredulously. “But Stormbird wouldn’t... I’ve been in that stall with her often.”
Amy turned away, fighting nausea. “It wasn’t Stormbird.” She closed her eyes, leaning her head against the wall. “Now we know what happened... afterward. And we can’t prove a thing.”
Never again would Amy enjoy the pungent smell of horse and hay and leather. She opened her eyes and walked numbly into the yard outside.
“Allan!”
“Yes?” He was at her elbow.
“I have to tell the police about that conversation now.”
“You’re not suggesting that Esther killed Sharpe?”
“Of course not. But the man who was with her did. Sharpe was the only person who knew that a Miss Corbett had called your number and been left listening to an open line that led to your waiting-room. Sharpe was the only person who could have seen the couple who came into that room while the line was still open without noticing it. Don’t you see? They were still there when he got back and he told them who had called. They realized instantly that, once I talked to Sharpe, he would identify them for me. And I was certain to talk to Sharpe as soon as I identified your waiting-room as the place where they had talked. Together, Sharpe and I were a menace. I could testify to the couple’s conversation. Sharpe could identify the couple. So the man killed Sharpe to save Esther and himself.”
“Would any man murder to escape a charge of attempted murder? That is the only accusation you and Sharpe could make!”
“Suppose they want to carry out their original plan of murdering Curtis and making it look like an accident? There must be some overwhelming motive for that or they would never have planned it in the first place! If I charge Esther now, or later, and she denies the whole thing, it’s just my word against hers. Without Sharpe’s corroboration, I have nothing but my belief that I identified the woman’s voice as Esther’s. Allan, what should I do?”
“Tell your story without identifying Esther. Then you have told the police everything that you actually know. You can’t name Esther when you’re not sure it was she.”
“Esther — always Esther! Are you so fond of her?”
“Don’t you understand? If you accuse Esther without proof they can’t arrest her. But they’ll have to question her. If she’s guilty she’ll know from their questions that you identified her voice and not the man’s. She will tell the man and—”
“And I’ll be in danger, too?” Amy broke off short. “Lights! See? A car coming into the drive.”
“Quick!” Allan started to run toward the house. “Keep them in the living-room, whoever they are, while I call the police from my office.”
The car had halted. A slender figure in drifting black stepped into the light. Fine brows arched. Dark eyes turned in Amy’s direction. Esther was smiling. “Amy! Your mother was getting worried, so we came to look for you. I thought we might find you here.”
Another figure stepped out of the shadows. “I was ordered to look for you. Esther came along for the ride. Where’s Allan?”
Amy looked from the mockery in Esther’s eyes to the blandly impudent face of her brother. She took a certain satisfaction in her calm rejoinder: “Allan? Oh, he’s gone to call the police.”
“Police?” Peter’s eyes widened, but Esther’s narrowed. A clear indication of temperament, thought Amy — the one, impetuous; the other, calculating. Or could it be that Peter was surprised and that Esther was not?
“A man has been killed. Allan’s stableman. Allan wants us to wait for the police in the living-room.”
“But it has nothing to do with us!” cried Peter.
“It has to do with me,” retorted Amy. “I was with Allan when he found the body.”
The living-room was cheerful and commonplace — gray chintzes splashed with cherry-red against gray walls and carpet. The only exotic note was the cat that sprang forward to welcome them, biscuit-colored with the seal-brown face and paws of a Siamese.
“Oh, Houri!” Esther put out her hand. But Houri spat at the hand and fled to the top of a bookcase.
Allan walked into the room. “They’ll be here in a few minutes.”
“Can’t they see Amy tomorrow?” demanded Peter.
“There’s something only I can tell them.” Amy turned to Allan. “You’ll let them know that my story is vital evidence, won’t you?”
Allan nodded. “Of course. I’m going outside to wait for them.”
“Vital evidence?” Peter looked at Amy with irritation. “You’re dramatizing yourself. What vital evidence?”
“I’d rather not tell anyone but the police.”
Peter lit one cigarette after another. Amy, herself, was restless. Only Esther was outwardly serene.
Allan came in again and shut the door behind him. “The man in charge is Murchison. Assistant District Attorney. Rather like a German police dog. If he were defending your rights, you’d think he was a faithful, well-trained animal. But if you were the man whom he was defending someone’s rights against, you’d certainly think he was a vicious brute that ought to be shot.”
“And which are you?” Esther’s voice was cool.
Allan shrugged. “He hasn’t decided — yet. The body was found on my premises, but it looks like an accident and I can account for most of my time. I was making house visits between 5 and 7, when Sharpe must have died, but of course there are some time-gaps between each visit.”
“Isn’t that less suspicious than a watertight alibi?” suggested Peter.
“Perhaps. Especially as I had no motive for killing poor Lem Sharpe.”
“Lem Sharpe!” Peter was startled. “The man who cuts our lawn?” He turned to Amy: “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know that you knew the man at all,” returned Amy.
“Everybody knows Sharpe,” exclaimed Esther. “He’s employed by Neilson and Eddington, the landscape gardeners. They take care of all the lawns and hedges around here on a weekly basis.”
Peter was smiling for the first time since he had entered the room. “The D.A. was just looking for excitement,” he said comfortably. “No one would kill an inoffensive chap like Sharpe.”
Amy spoke quietly: “I think he was murdered.”
“Why?” Peter’s smile vanished.
The door opened. The man who came into the room did have the long-legged lope of a police dog. The eyes, too — a light hazel that looked shallow and flat, with a small, hard core of black pupil. “Miss Corbett? Dr. Galt says there is something you want to tell me. Let’s have it.”
Amy looked at him in astonishment. Witnesses with vital information were always interviewed alone so others could not adjust their testimony to suit. “Mr. Murchison, I would rather talk to you privately.”
She saw a trace of amusement under the hard surface of his eyes. She had been wrong to trust Allan as go-between. Unintentionally or not, he had given Murchison an idea that her evidence was not vital at all.
Esther’s high, cool voice cut the silence: “Miss Corbett is young and inexperienced, Mr. Murchison. The shock of discovering this body has brought her to the edge of hysteria. Don’t you agree that at least one of us, I or her brother, should be present while you question her?”
“Well, Miss Corbett?” Murchison was indifferent.
Amy felt the color hot in her cheeks. Esther’s gentle patronage spurred her to recklessness. “All right. What I have to say concerns Mrs. Gregory.”
Once or twice Amy, herself, had doubted her identification of Esther as the woman whose voice she had overheard. Now all doubt died. In the first instant of shock a look flashed across Esther’s face that startled even Amy. A sudden, taut thinning of the lips, a sudden, wide blazing of the eyes, and that beautiful face became a tortured mask, a specter from the nightmare side of the human soul, glancing to the surface for the moment, then, as swiftly, submerged.
The men did not see it. They were all looking at Amy, herself.
Esther’s voice was as calmly modulated as ever: “I have no idea what you are talking about, Amy.”
“Sis!” Peter’s voice was harsh. “If you’re dramatizing yourself again—!”
“Trust a brother to give you a good send-off!” Amy turned to Allan: “Tell Mr. Murchison: Do I dramatize myself? And do I stick to facts?”
Allan looked at Peter, then at Amy, with embarrassment. “You try to be truthful. You are imaginative, but — you never distort facts knowingly.”
Amy had expected more from Allan. She began to feel as if she were struggling in an invisible net, fine, clinging, steely as a spider’s web. She told her tale badly, her very voice faltering, a witness against her.
Murchison was skeptical. “You understand that this is a very serious thing, if it is true? In effect, you are accusing Mrs. Gregory of plotting with a lover to kill her husband. But you have no evidence and no other witness to corroborate your statement.”
“There was a witness — Sharpe. Now he is dead. It can’t be coincidence!”
Peter broke in angrily: “See here, Murchison. My sister has always been erratic. Ask my mother if you don’t believe me! Amy is what they used to call a tomboy, and she has always neglected our mother, who is a very feminine person, herself. Today Amy comes down here and finds Esther Gregory taking her place with Mother, more like a daughter than Amy, herself, ever was. It’s easy to see how her sense of guilt would sharpen her jealousy of Esther. So when she overhears this conversation, probably a radio play, she imagines that she recognizes the woman’s voice as Esther’s.”
All this time Esther had had the wisdom to sit perfectly still, with only a slight expression of dismay. Subtly she was suggesting that Amy’s accusations were too wild to merit her denial.
“There’s another point worth considering,” said Allan. “There has never been the slightest breath of scandal about Mrs. Gregory. She and her husband are the most devoted couple I know.”
“Of course.” Peter was simmering. “Everybody knows that.”
Murchison pursed his lips and looked thoughtfully at Allan. “There’s one point you haven’t mentioned: the Nembutal. Some capsules may be missing, according to your statement. Perhaps your housekeeper saw some of the patients who called here between 5 and 7 this afternoon after you and the nurse had left.”
“She saw me,” said Peter defiantly. “I wasn’t going to mention it, because it didn’t seem to be relevant, but now I’ll have to. I came here this afternoon around 6 o’clock to get some emperin for my mother’s neuralgia. The housekeeper let me in, but there didn’t seem to be anyone else around except the cat. That’s how I got that bit of cat fur on my sleeve, Amy — playing with Houri.”
“And you just helped yourself to Nembutal?” suggested Murchison.
“Of course not! Why should I do an idiotic thing like that?”
Allan intervened: “You do understand that I’m not sure whether any Nembutal is missing or not?”
Murchison turned to Amy with a smile that was not unfriendly. “There goes the one bit of corroboration you ad. Better forget the whole thing and get a good night’s rest.” He became gravely polite as he addressed Esther: “Are you and your husband patients of Dr. Galt?”
“My husband has been his patient. I haven’t been ill since I came here.”
“And I suppose you can account for most of your time this afternoon tween 5 and 7?”
“Of course.” Esther smiled through her distress, sunshine piercing a storm cloud. “I was at home all afternoon until I went to the Corbetts’ for dinner. My husband was out, but our house guest, Mr. Payne, can probably assure you I didn’t leave the house. He was in his own room writing letters. The window beside the desk in that room overlooks the front drive. I am sure he would have seen me go out.”
“And the servants?”
“They were in the kitchen. Two maids, Bridget and Anna. So I couldn’t have gone out the back way, either. And there are no French windows.” Esther’s smile seemed to say, “Is all this necessary?”
Murchison’s answering smile agreed that it was not. “Thank you, Mrs. Gregory. That clears up everything.”
Amy felt physically ill. “Aren’t you going to — do anything?”
Murchison looked at her, no longer friendly. “What do you expect me to do? The District Attorney’s office has to decline prosecution if there isn’t enough evidence to win a case in court. In this case there’s no evidence at all. I really think you owe Mrs. Gregory an apology. Good night.”
Through a haze across her eyes and a drumming in her ears, Amy heard Allan and Peter saying “Good night” to Murchison in voices loud with relief as they escorted him out.
Amy looked at Esther. “Well?” Amy’s voice was hard.
But Esther answered softly, “Well?”
“It’s between you and me, isn’t it?”
If Amy hoped that the sting of her words would bring that revealing look of frenzy to Esther’s face again, she was mistaken. Esther’s smile was so gentle, so tired, that Amy began to wonder. Had she been deceived by a trick of the lamplight? Had she really surprised that look on Esther’s face at all?
“My dear child” — there was a slight vibrancy in Esther’s voice — “I am distressed to think you could believe me capable of such things.”
Amy looked at her steadily. “It’s witchcraft. Both Peter and Allan defended you, though it meant discrediting me. You could charm a dead man out of his shroud. You almost charmed me. Almost. Not quite. If only I knew who he was, the man you talked to this afternoon, the man who killed Sharpe. Peter can be a fool. Allan admires you. And Payne was at your home with you this afternoon while poor Curtis was out. Why couldn’t you and Payne have left the house together and come over here? Your maids were in the kitchen. They might not have seen you leave.”
Esther dropped her eyelids. Her face was still. “Can you really believe that I don’t love Curtis?”
“I’m sorry. You sound as if you meant it, but I heard you talking to the other man. If anything happens to Curtis now, I... I’ll spend the rest of my life bringing it home to you. I’m warning you.”
Amy could not understand Esther’s sudden smile. Honest anger or hypocritical scorn would have been normal responses. But why that look of sly, almost mischievous irony? As if Amy had done or said something utterly stupid that played directly into Esther’s hands...
Amy woke late the next morning. In a wan voice, she answered the tap on her door: “Come in!” A maid entered with a breakfast tray. Natalie followed, trailing an exquisitely fragile lavender peignoir. She lit a cigarette and waited until the maid had gone. “Amy, you know I love you, but why did you have to cause Peter such embarrassment last night? He tells me you practically accused his friend, Esther Gregory, of murder without any evidence at all.”
“His friend?” Amy put down her coffee cup. “I thought Esther was your friend. And there was evidence.”
As Natalie listened, a shrewdness came into her eyes Amy had never remarked before. “I suppose the man was Payne.”
Amy was amazed. “You believe me? You think Esther capable of such a thing?”
Natalie smiled. “My dear child, I’ve always suspected that Esther was capable of anything. That’s one reason she fascinated me.”
“But I thought she was your friend!”
“A woman my age doesn’t make friends, Amy. I don’t like Esther. I like being with her. She’s decorative and if I’m giving a party I know the men will have a good time if Esther’s there. But I’ve always thought she would be a dangerous woman if she were thwarted.”
“Then you don’t think I did wrong last night?”
“On the contrary, I think you did very wrong. Not because I care about Esther, but because I care about you. What business is it of yours if Esther has a lover?”
“No business of mine at all,” agreed Amy. “But murder is everybody’s business.”
“Murder?” It was Natalie’s turn to be amazed. “Esther is not a fool!”
“But I heard her say—”
“Oh, talk!” Natalie brushed the idea aside. “People who talk about murder don’t commit one. Just as people who talk about suicide never kill themselves. You happened to catch Esther and her lover at a morbid moment, daydreaming about something they would never have the nerve — or the stupidity — to carry out in cold blood. I’m not afraid of Esther’s murdering Curtis. I am afraid of his divorcing her and washing a great deal of dirty linen in public.”
Amy sighed. As usual she and her mother had been talking at cross-purposes. When Natalie said, “I’ve always suspected that Esther was capable of anything,” she meant anything scandalous, not anything criminal. Violence was something outside all Natalie’s traditions and experience.
“I don’t care what happens to Esther,” Natalie was saying. “But I don’t want my daughter mixed up in a nasty thing like this. Or my son.”
“But... Peter isn’t involved!” protested Amy.
“Are you sure?” Natalie frowned. “Esther is at the age when women make fools of themselves over younger men.”
“Then it was more hope than faith that made you say, ‘I suppose the man was Payne’?”
“He’s a likely candidate, but — Peter never did have the brains you have. The only thing now is to pick up the pieces.” Natalie cast an appraising look at Amy, the look of any mother whose daughter is ‘unpredictable.’ “Curtis Gregory is downstairs now. He wants to see you. That’s why I woke you. I have an impression that he’s as anxious to protect Esther as I am to protect Peter, and Curtis thinks you can help. I hope you’ll do whatever he suggests.”
Amy pushed aside her unfinished breakfast and began to dress. Natalie would never understand a woman like Esther. Natalie knew nothing of the height of passion or the depth of despair. She enjoyed playing the game according to the rules, but Esther was potentially lawless...
Curtis waited at the foot of the stairs. The face he lifted to Amy was drawn and sallow in the morning light. “Let’s go outdoors,” he suggested. “Where we can talk undisturbed.”
Amy led the way around the front of the house to a carefully cultivated patch of lawn, an oasis amidst the wind-blown poverty-grass of the dunes. There were iron chairs that Natalie had had painted dusty pink instead of the usual white. Curtis leaned forward in his chair, hands tense, eyes haunted, the eyes of a stranger.
“Amy, I want you to think carefully before you answer the question I’m going to ask you. Could you go on the witness stand and swear that the woman’s voice you overheard on the telephone was Esther’s?”
Amy shook her head. “I couldn’t swear. But I believe it. Don’t you?”
Curtis sat back in his chair, his face relaxed in the smile that was so familiar. “Of course not.” The glance he bent on Amy now was the old, quizzically affectionate glance she knew so well. “I’m not quite a fool, Amy,” he said comfortably. “And I’m a good many years older than you. If Esther cared about another man, I should know it. Do you believe me?”
There was unmistakable sincerity in his voice. Amy looked into the friendly eyes and felt a great compassion for him. If Esther was abusing such unquestioning faith, she was doing something more coldly evil than murder itself.
“You understand that I wasn’t just — gossiping?” said Amy. “I would not have said anything if there had been no talk of murder.”
“I understand that.” Curtis’s voice was quickly sympathetic. “You thought you were protecting me and you couldn’t warn me without accusing Esther. I just wish you hadn’t done it so publicly. There’s going to be talk now. Unpleasant talk. But we can fight that, if you’ll help. Will you?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“First of all, Esther wants to talk to you. Will you go to see her today?”
“What good will that do?”
“Amy—” There was surprise in his voice. “Don’t you like my wife?”
“I must answer honestly: We’re not congenial.”
“That’s too bad.” Curtis frowned. “Because she likes you so much. She feels that if she could just have a talk with you she could clear up any misunderstanding. Will you try, Amy?”
Amy was surprised at the almost physical revulsion she felt. “All right, I’ll try. To please you. Anything else?”
“Yes. Your mother thinks we should all appear in public together as soon as possible, behave just as if nothing had happened. It’s a matter of saving face.”
“That sounds like Mother,” murmured Amy.
“Your mother knows her world,” returned Curtis. “She has the nerve and the presence and influence to carry off a thing like this. The rest of us will have to play up to her.”
“Mother has no influence with the police.”
“She has social influence, which is more important now,” explained Curtis. “The police may be satisfied, but what about public opinion? If your mother appears in public with you and Esther, everyone will know that she never believed your charges against Esther and that you have withdrawn them.”
“Then it’s really Esther whose face we are to save?”
For a moment Curtis was silent. Then he spoke earnestly: “You don’t seem to realize, Amy, how much I love my wife. If your fantastic idea were true, if she actually did love another man, I would do everything to make divorce easy for her, once I was convinced she really wanted it. That’s why this idea of her planning my death is so ridiculous. She has no conceivable motive for wishing me out of the way.” His voice shook.
Amy wondered at his emotion. Under this brave front was he, too, beginning to doubt Esther? Moved, she said quickly, “When is this to be?”
“Tomorrow. We’ll dine at the club and stay for the dance afterward. We can meet at my place for cocktails — you and your mother, Kate and Peter and Allan, Esther and Payne and myself.”
“The same party we had last night.” Amy spoke with a sense of foreboding.
“It has to be,” insisted Curtis. “And you will go to see Esther today? Around teatime?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, Amy.”
She watched his tall figure move toward the car he had left in the drive. He turned to smile at her. “Don’t worry, Amy!”
She went into the house. In the living-room, Natalie was pretending to read the morning
“Well?” he said as Amy came in.
She spoke a little tartly: “Curtis doesn’t believe Esther is capable of violence. If she’s been indiscreet, he would much rather not know anything about it, so I made him happy by admitting I couldn’t swear the woman whose voice I heard was Esther. I’m to see her this afternoon and we’re all dining together publicly tomorrow.”
“Well, I’m glad it’s all settled!” Natalie spoke as if a minor domestic problem had been happily resolved. Her heels tapped briskly, almost gaily, as she trotted upstairs.
Amy crossed the room to Peter. “Tell me something, Pete.” It was a long time since she had used his schoolboy nickname. “You weren’t ever really serious about Esther?”
“What ever gave you that idea?”
“Something Kate said last night.”
“Oh, Kate!” He laughed uneasily. “She’s become quite possessive lately.”
“Did Esther ever encourage you?”
“Well—” Peter had the grace to color. “But it wasn’t serious.”
“Then perhaps you were only a smoke screen,” suggested Amy with sisterly realism.
“Smoke screen for what?” There was a touch of pique in Peter’s demand.
“For some other man, of course, who
Peter looked at his sister with malice. “The only other man Esther sees much of is your pal, Allan Galt.”
“What about Matthew Payne?”
“Could be,” admitted Peter. “But I can’t think of anyone else. Why are you so dead set against Esther?”
“Look what she’s done to Curtis. He used to have character, but now — I wouldn’t like her to do the same thing to you, Pete.”
“She won’t. Don’t worry.”
“That’s what Curtis said,” Amy sighed. “But somebody’s got to worry.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m morally certain that it was Esther’s voice I heard on the telephone. And I have no idea what her next move will be.”...
By teatime long feelers of sea mist were creeping into every highway and byway like an invading army of ghosts. Even the Gregory house and stable, two solid blocks of ivy-covered brick, seemed to float and shiver like something seen under water. But Esther herself, standing before a glazing driftwood fire in the long, oak-paneled living-room, had laid aside her air of mystery as if it were a cast-off garment. In a dark crimson sweater and a skirt of black-and-white tweed, she was the proper young matron — wholesome, competent, discreet, with just a dash of sophisticated charm used as sparingly as bitters in a cocktail or garlic in a salad. Amy felt shabby in her old trench coat, glad she had worn her good tweeds underneath.
“Tea?” said Esther brightly. “Or something stronger?”
“Tea, please.” Esther rang, and a maid brought in a tea tray, heels loud on the marble floor, bare for summer. An old-fashioned silver kettle swung from brackets above a flattened column of blue flame. The ample teapot was gay with the dark blue and red, white, and gold of old Worcester. But Esther was not pleased. “No toast?”
“Sure, an’ there’s mice in the bread-box again, ma’am.” The maid’s answer came in a West Irish brogue pungent as peat smoke. “If only you had let me keep the sweet little kitten that wandered in there yesterday.”
“That will do, Bridget. You know I don’t like cats.” Esther turned to Amy: “My first husband bred Persians and I had a surfeit of them then... Cream?”
“No, thank you. Just lemon.”
When Bridget had gone Amy said, “Esther, there’s one thing I must make clear to you: I really did overhear that conversation, every word about as I repeated it. But, as Curtis pointed out this morning, I cannot swear the woman’s voice was yours. So it’s only fair for me to give you the benefit of the doubt.” She paused to underline her next words: “As long as nothing else happens.”
Esther frowned. “What else could happen?”
“All sorts of things.” Amy looked at the fire. “Curtis really loves you, Esther. It would he horrible if he were disillusioned. Or if he were to — die.”
The frown had gone. Esther dropped her lids. Eyeless, her face was a mask chiseled from stone — pale and hard.
“I’ve made her angry. She doesn’t trust herself to speak,” Amy thought.
On a stand near the hall door a telephone pealed stridently. “Excuse me.” Esther walked down the room rapidly as if she were glad of the pretext to get away. “Hello?” She added, “It’s all right, Bridget,” to the maid who appeared in the doorway. Then, to the telephone: “I’ll call you back in a few minutes. Good-bye.”
From the hall door Esther looked back at Amy with guarded eyes. “I must get some information for the Horse Show Committee, but do wait. I’ll be back in a moment.”
Amy lit a cigarette. “If she hasn’t come back by the time I’ve finished this, I’ll go.”
“Miss Corbett!”
She started, and dropped her cigarette. Matthew Payne was standing in the music-room doorway. He offered her another cigarette from his own case.
“No, thank you.”
He lit one for himself. “You don’t like me, do you?”
“No.”
“That’s better than indifference.”
Amy began to draw on her gloves.
“Don’t go. Why do you dislike me so much?”
“You were in the next room listening deliberately just now. You’re the kind who does listen.”
“So do you — on telephones. And you don’t speak the truth.”
Anger flashed through Amy. “What do you mean?”
“You disliked me before you knew that I had been listening to your little talk with Esther just now. Why not admit the truth? You think I was the man you overheard on an open telephone line talking to Esther.”
“Weren’t you?” Amy looked at him directly and found his intent gaze disturbing.
But he was not disturbed. “Does my voice sound like it?” His tone was casual, almost impudent.
“Of course not. If it did I should have accused you last night. But that’s the only reason for thinking you’re not the man — your voice. If I could find some explanation for that, everything else would fit you. The only other men who have been with Esther frequently this summer are Allan and my brother Peter. I don’t believe my brother capable of violence. I’ve know Allan all my life. He hasn’t a romantic temperament like the man I overheard. Besides, I don’t think voices I’ve known so long could be distorted enough to fool me. That leaves you, a stranger. The telephone may have an especially distorting effect on your voice. I don’t know anything about your temperament, but you look like a romantic daredevil, quite capable of violence. You came here as Esther’s friend, somebody out of her past. You may have been her lover for years, before she married Curtis.”
“Then why did she marry Curtis?”
“Perhaps he could offer her some things you couldn’t.” Amy’s glance took in the dark luxury of the oak-paneled room, at its handsomest by firelight. “Now she’s got all this, she wants to keep it and have you, too. The only way is to get rid of Curtis. Even if he loves her enough to make divorce easy for her, he couldn’t give her every penny he has, so he would have to be eliminated some other way.”
“If you really believed all that you would be a fool to tell me so. I might get ideas about eliminating you. Look.” He went on hurriedly, “You’ve got the whole thing dead wrong. I wasn’t a friend of Esther’s. I was a friend of Charley Maitland, her first husband.”
“Isn’t that the same thing? You knew them both, I suppose.”
“Yes. But I liked Charley. I don’t like Esther. I’ve always suspected she killed him for his insurance.”
The silence seemed to sing in Amy’s ears. “You said your job was selling insurance,” Amy said finally.
“No, I said my job was insurance, not selling. Actually, I’m an insurance investigator. I investigated Charley Maitland’s death before the company paid his policy to his widow.”
“If they paid there can’t have been any evidence of murder!”
“No real evidence — just my hunch, and one discrepancy in Esther’s story. He was a cripple. He was killed by a fall downstairs when the brake of his wheel chair failed to work. Esther said he and she were alone in the house all that evening. But I happened to telephone about half an hour before the time Charley died and a stranger’s voice answered the telephone, a man’s voice that wasn’t Charley. That man was never traced. Esther denied, of course, that a man had been there. Since I came here I’ve been trying to decide whether he was Allan or Peter. Weren’t they both on the West Coast during the war?”
Amy nodded, speechless.
“Wasn’t Allan a poor man just out of medical school when he went into the Army? Isn’t Peter entirely dependent on his mother?”
Again Amy nodded.
“So, either one might have been a lover who could not offer Esther all the things that Curtis Gregory has given her.” Payne smiled wryly. “That shocks you, doesn’t it? You thought you had fitted us all so neatly into our little slots! Allan and Peter must be innocent — men you’ve always known and liked. But a stranger — he might do anything.”
“Not Peter!”
“That leaves Allan. Funny, I thought you liked him.”
“I do.”
“But your first cry was, ‘Not Peter.’ When a girl likes a man less than her broth—”
“Allan. I don’t believe it! If you dislike Esther why did you come here at all?”
“Because another insurance man told me that Curtis has just applied for $50,000 worth of life insurance, with Esther as beneficiary. Some criminals are psychopathic enough to repeat the pattern of a crime once it has succeeded. I wrote Esther from the West Coast and proposed myself as a guest. She couldn’t refuse an old friend of her first husband’s who had to come East anyway, and now you come up with this story of yours about a conversation heard over an open telephone line. Murchison gave me the gist of it when he came here this morning asking for confirmation of Esther’s alibi, but he didn’t go into details. Can you repeat the actual words?”
“I can try.”
Payne listened, his gaze on the fire. “There’s one odd thing. The sex of the potential victim is never mentioned. There isn’t a single ‘he’ or ‘she’.”
“What of it?”
“Obviously, two lovers were plotting to kill someone. But why assume it was the woman’s husband?”
“But who else—?”
“Isn’t it equally possible that these lovers were plotting to kill the man’s wife? Curtis may be willing to make divorce easy for Esther if she wants it, but would Kate be willing to make divorce easy for Peter? Or would she make the whole thing very unpleasant? Particularly unpleasant for a young man who is dependent on his mother?”
“Oh, no!” Amy was on her feet. Blindly she stumbled toward the picture window. Mist was swirling through the trees, across the hedges... Not Peter. Not Kate. Amy pressed her hot forehead to the cool glass. “Don’t let it be Peter!”
The picture window.
Then she knew.
Payne was startled by the look in her eyes as she turned. “Everything you’ve said was a lie. It was you all along. You are Esther’s lover. You killed Charley Maitland. You killed Sharpe. And you are going to kill Curtis Gregory. I see it all now. And I’m going to prove it.”
“You can’t, because it isn’t true!”
Amy ran into the hall. Footsteps behind her spurred her flight.
“What in heaven’s name—?” It was Esther’s voice.
Amy looked back. Esther was coming down the wide stairs. She had paused in the grace of arrested motion, one hand on the balustrade.
Payne, in the doorway of the living-room, was looking up at her. Their eyes met and held, unsmiling, intent.
To Amy the tableau was like an illustration of the snatch of drama she had overheard yesterday. The fire that smoldered so darkly in the woman’s eyes, brilliant against the dull pallor of her face. The buoyant posture of the man’s lean, supple body; the brooding look on his swarthy face, harder and more virile than a merely handsome face. A born gambler, a buccaneer to his fingertips. And the woman an outlaw, too, at heart. Both drawn irresistibly together when they met in an orderly, ponderous world like Curtis Gregory’s or Charley Maitland’s, where there was a place for every emotion and every emotion was kept in its place. These two seemed the star-crossed lovers of all time, desperate, doomed.
“Amy!” called Esther. “Where are you going?”
“To Allan’s!”
Amy turned and ran out to her car...
Allan’s car was standing in his driveway when Amy drove between the gateposts.
“Can’t it wait?” Allan stood in the driveway, bag in hand.
“Let your patients wait a few minutes. This is vital, Allan. The man was Payne, and I can prove it.”
“Payne?” Never before had Allan seemed so slow. “It can’t be Payne!”
“Why not? It is, and we must do something about it. Let me tell you.”
“All right.” Allan seemed dazed as he followed her into the house.
In the waiting-room he sat sidesaddle on the edge of the table and lit a cigarette. “I’m a busy man Amy. Please make it brief.”
“Allan! Aren’t you interested in saving Curtis Gregory’s life?”
“Not particularly.” His eyelids dropped as he shook ash into a tray. “Curtis is a grown man. Let him take care of himself. He’s been warned. I’ll do anything the police require, but I’m not going out of my way to stir up mud.”
“I’m not going out of my way, either!” Red flags were flying in Amy’s cheeks. “This was thrust upon me... Allan, you were wrong. It wasn’t here, in this room of yours, that those two — Esther and Payne — were talking when I overheard them on the telephone.”
“What?” She had really startled Allan this time.
“As Kate said last night, there are lots of living-rooms in Oldport that are 30 feet wide, with hard, uncarpeted floors and picture windows.”
“I know that,” retorted Allen. “But we have to explain the apparent coincidence; out of several thousand possible wrong numbers, you got one where you overheard someone you knew — Esther. There’s only one explanation — the one I gave you last night. My number was in your mind because you were going to ask for it next. Your tongue slipped and you asked for it the first time without realizing you had done so. We have the same friends, so it wasn’t surprising that here you overheard someone you knew, if you did. All quite simple.”
“Allan, it was simpler than that. Don’t you see it? I didn’t get a wrong number. My tongue didn’t slip.”
“You didn’t—?” He looked at her.
“Do you remember what number I intended to call first?”
“The Gregorys’.”
“Exactly. I did ask for the Gregorys’ number, just as I thought I did, and I got the Gregorys’ number. It was that simple. There was no coincidence at all. What threw me off at the time was the voice that seemed to belong to a Negro butler. For when I called the number a second time, the Irish voice of their maid told me there were no butlers and no Negroes there. That and the word ‘stables’ confused me. Curtis used to call that building the barn before he married Esther.”
“You mean Sharpe answered the Gregorys’ telephone that first time?”
“Why not? Sharpe worked for a landscape gardening company. That afternoon he must have been trimming the Gregorys’ hedges. He heard the telephone and no one answered, so he stepped inside and answered it himself, just as we thought he did here. Even my asking for ‘Mrs. Corbett’ made no difference. Mother was just as likely to be there as here. And what place safer for Esther to hold that conversation than their own home while Curtis was out and the maids in their own quarters? Once she discovered that I thought the conversation had taken place here, she said she’d been at home all afternoon. That’s why she looked so slyly pleased — I’d given her a sort of alibi.”
“But what makes you think Payne is the man?”
“Who else can it be? You were making house visits when Sharpe died. Peter was here getting empirin for Mother. That leaves only Payne. Last night Esther thought it safe to admit that he was home with her all that afternoon when Curtis was out, because the conversation I overheard was supposed to have taken place here. Of course, she said Payne was upstairs, while she was downstairs, but that could be a lie.”
“And the Siamese cat?”
“This afternoon the Gregorys’ maid said something about a stray kitten being there yesterday. I was never sure that the cat I heard was a Siamese; I merely thought it might be.”
Allan rose and began to pace the floor. “Why was Sharpe killed here? You think Payne followed him?”
“Of course. Payne and Esther couldn’t afford to have his body found there. Allan, don’t you see what must have happened in the middle of that conversation? Payne or Esther noticed the unhooked telephone and broke the connection. Sharpe came back from the Gregorys’ stable to the Gregorys’ living-room, expecting to find the line still open. They said they had broken the connection accidentally and asked him who had called. He answered, ‘Miss Corbett.’
“Esther and Payne realized I must have overheard something. They knew I couldn’t recognize the voices of Payne, a stranger, and Esther, a woman I scarcely knew. They hoped I wouldn’t identify those voices when I heard them again. But whether I did or not, I would never have any corroborating evidence as long as I never met Sharpe. He was the only witness who knew I had been listening to an open telephone line there while he went to the stable to look for my mother. He was the only witness who knew that Payne and Esther were the pair he found talking there when he came back from the stable.”
“And Sharpe wasn’t kicked by my mare at all?”
“Why assume that? Because he was found dead in the stable? Because the wound was shaped like a horseshoe? Couldn’t Payne strike Sharpe’s head with a horseshoe? And wouldn’t he do it in a stable, so it would look as if a horse had done it?”
Allan paused in his pacing. “The voice! I knew there was a flaw somewhere in your reasoning! What about Payne’s voice? It isn’t harsh and rasping.”
“That’s why I came here tonight, Allan. There must be some explanation. You’re a doctor. Think. Isn’t there something physical a man can take to change his voice? Some drug or irritant?”
“Wait!” said Allan sharply. “Payne had no reason to disguise his voice when you first heard him over the telephone because he didn’t know then that he was going to be overheard. And you can’t believe he’s been disguising his voice since then without Curtis noticing the difference. Curtis has known Payne ever since Curtis married Esther. He told me so himself.”
“Then it must have been a piece of pure gambler’s luck that Payne’s voice was different when I first heard it over the telephone. Is there any disease that makes a voice harsh for only an hour or so?”
“And then restores it to normal a few hours later?” There was relief in Allan’s smile, as well as amusement. “It’s no use, Amy. That voice is one thing you just can’t get around.”
Amy was reaching for the cigarette box, when she halted suddenly, looking down at one of the medical magazines on the table. “Allan, I have it! This word on the cover!”
“What word?”
“Allergy! That’s something that comes and goes suddenly, capriciously. I once had a skin allergy to nail polish, and I know. Suppose Payne has a throat allergy. Suppose he was exposed to the stimulus, whatever it may be, just before I heard him talking to Esther that first time. He would know that if he could get his voice back to normal before he met me at dinner, I would never identify it. Aren’t there new ways of controlling allergic symptoms? Antihistamine drugs? Bacteriophage? Sedatives? Even throat lozenges and inhalants can clear up hoarseness in a couple of hours.”
“It usually takes longer,” insisted Allan.
“But not always. Allan, don’t be so skeptical! If we look up the case histories—”
Allan grinned. “Have you forgotten I have patients waiting for me now?”
“Then let me look through these medical books while you see your patients. When you get back I may have found something.”
He looked at her dubiously, brows bunched together, mouth a thin line. “All right, but it happens to be Mrs. Adams’ night off.”
“The housekeeper? Then you can come home with me when you get back, and we’ll have dinner there.”
“Hasn’t this affected your appetite?”
“What do you mean?”
“The bloodhound act. It’s a job for the police. I want no part of it.”
“But—”
“You think I’m thinking of Esther. I’m not. I’m thinking of that poor devil, Payne. Suppose he did fall for Esther and all the rest of it. Do you think you’ll be very happy if he and Esther are arrested for murder because of you?”
“Do you think you’ll be very happy if you pick up your paper some morning and find they have killed Curtis because we did nothing to stop them?”
“All right, Amy. You win.”
After he had gone Amy drew a Venetian blind across the picture window, switched on a table lamp, and began to read. When she shut the book and looked up, night had closed in upon her. She was alone. There were not even any traffic noises now from the side road at the foot of the drive. She looked at the clock. Quarter of 8. What was keeping Allan?
She went out into the hall and turned on the lamp there. Houri, the Siamese cat, came toward her, pausing to dig claws into the rug, daintily and precisely. “You’re company, anyway.” Amy spoke largely to hear the sound of her own voice, and — the lights went out.
One moment she had been contemplating the sinuous ripple of the cat’s tail in the lamplight. Then there was no cat, no lamp, no light, nothing but impenetrable darkness, as if she were suddenly struck blind. That meant the light in the waiting-room had gone out, too, for she had left the door open behind her. A short circuit? A fuse blown? She had no idea where the fuse box was.
She would talk to Allan tomorrow. At the moment she wanted nothing so much as the reassuring brightness of her car’s headlights.
She opened the front door. Something brushed her ankles. Houri slipping out for a late prowl. Had she left her car on the right or the left? Night and mist together made it impossible to see. She groped her way toward the car.
Something hard caught her neck. Under a rough cloth sleeve she felt the pressure of an arm constricting her throat. A leather-gloved palm clasped nose and mouth, choking off breath. She struggled, but her feet slipped. She could not turn, for there was a knee against her spine. Blood began to beat and sing in her temples. Her head seemed to swell as her throat contracted. Somewhere a hard heel scraped gravel and a blow thudded close to her ear. She was thrown to the ground.
Her palms burned as they grazed the stones but she was scarcely conscious of the sting. She crouched, drawing cool sea air into her lungs in snatches, hardly aware of sore throat or pounding pulses. Somewhere in the distance someone was running.
“All right?” A pale beam of light crossed the gravel beside her hands. Someone was lifting her. She pushed tangled hair from her eyes with the back of her hand, and felt something cool and wet her hand left there — blood or mud, or both. She tried to stop panting, and looked up at the face in the dim glow of a flashlight.
“You!”
Matthew Payne sat back on one heel, the other knee upright, like a cowboy crouching before a campfire. A smile touched one corner of his mouth. “Whom did you expect?”
“But— Who ran away?”
“Someone who just tried to kill you. I would have followed him if I had known you were not injured.”
“Did you see who it was?”
“No. Did you think it was I?”
She tried to study his face in the faint light. “I... I’m afraid I did.”
The smile widened. “So much pleasanter to believe a murderer isn’t someone you’ve known all your life, isn’t it?”
“But why would anyone try to kill me?”
“Perhaps you’ve been asking too many questions. Or perhaps—”
“What?”
“Perhaps you were mistaken for someone else. It was very dark. You’re tall for a girl, and one trench coat is much like another... Let me help you to your car. I’ll drive you home.”
“You came here on foot?”
“There’s a short cut by foot. And I like walking.”
“In the mist?”
“Good cover if you’re watching somebody else.”
“Whom were you watching?”
“You. How else do you suppose I turned up in the nick of time? I heard you tell Esther where you were going when you bolted so unceremoniously. I saw the look on Esther’s face and I thought there might be trouble, so I trailed along. Just before the lights went out I thought I heard footsteps at the back of the house. I went around there to investigate, and came front again when I heard the noise of a scuffle here. That’s how I missed seeing whoever it was monkeying with the electric wires.”
Amy sank into the front seat of the car, with a shudder.
“Tell me,” said Payne. “Why are you so sure I’m a murderer? Aside from my being a stranger?”
“It wasn’t here at Allan’s that they were talking when I overheard them — Esther and the man. It was at the Gregorys’.” She told him how she knew. “You were alone with Esther at the Gregorys’ house that afternoon.”
“I was at the Gregorys’. But I wasn’t with Esther. I was upstairs, in my own room. She could have talked to anyone in her living-room.”
“Then why did you look at Esther so intensely this afternoon? I was sure you were the lover then!”
Payne chuckled. “Hate is intense as well as love. I told you I don’t like Esther.”
Amy groaned. “Then, if it wasn’t you, after all, we’re right back where we started — except that I like you better.”
“Because I came to your rescue?”
“You seem like another person.” What she had thought sardonic was now simply quizzical; what she had thought rash was now attractively daring.
“We’ve made some progress, in more ways than one.” He was smiling. “For one, I think that conversation did take place at the Gregorys’, just because it’s more likely you got a telephone number you thought you gave than a wrong number. Is there any detail that doesn’t fit?”
Amy leaned her aching head in her hands. “One phrase: ‘Where is the Nembutal?’ That sounds to me as if Esther were here in the waiting-room keeping watch, while the man was in Allan’s office getting the drug.”
“Not to me. No criminals would linger to discuss plans in a place where they’ve just stolen something. More likely, the man came here alone to get the Nembutal and took it back to Esther in her own home, where they could talk more freely. Anything else?”
“The man’s voice. Why was it so hoarse? No friend of Esther’s that I know has such a voice. Was it the man’s normal voice? Or had some physical cause affected it temporarily? An allergy?”
“Allergy!” Payne struck the steering wheel with one fist. “That does it, Amy!” It was the first time he had called her ‘Amy’. “Tomorrow I must talk with Murchison.”
“The police won’t be interested. They think Sharpe was killed by Allan’s mare.”
“They did at first,” retorted Payne. “But Murchison told me this morning that their lab man said the blow couldn’t have been inflicted by the kicking or trampling of a horse — not enough weight back of it. There was a human fist holding that horseshoe. And a human brain that didn’t know how nicely the weight behind a blow can be calculated from a wound.”
As Payne started the car and turned it, a swath of light swept over the gravel. Amy was jolted forward as he stopped suddenly. “Look!” Spotlighted on the gravel lay a small, still heap of fur.
“Houri! She belonged to Allan’s housekeeper! She was alive a moment ago. Oh, Matt! Why? And how?”
Payne shut off the engine and left the car. “Knife.”
“Could anyone stab a Siamese without being clawed?”
“Perhaps. If the knife were thrown. Certain branches of the Army taught a lot of men all about knife-throwing. And strangling.” Payne turned the cat’s body over with his foot. “The knife isn’t here.”
There was a wicked spark of anger in his eyes as he came back to the car. Somewhere in the depths of Amy’s mind a small voice whispered:
“Amy,” Payne was saying, “tomorrow night you shall hear that hoarse voice again. The one you overheard on the telephone.”
“You mean at the Gregorys’ dinner?”
“It’s the only way. And there is time to get things ready — a whole day tomorrow. I shan’t tell you more now. You might lose your nerve. And you must find the nerve to identify that voice tomorrow... Why the tears?”
“Only three people knew where I was this evening: Esther and you and — Allan.”
“Esther might have told someone else.”
“Then Allan isn’t involved in this?”
“Of course Allan is involved.” Payne’s glance strayed toward the sprawling house, glittering white in the glare from the headlights. “Building is expensive these days. Even in a fashionable summer resort a doctor doesn’t make enough in a year’s practice to pay for that new wing, plus a stable and a thoroughbred saddle horse.”...
Amy was the first to arrive at the Gregorys’ that evening. Esther was in the living-room alone. A collar of amethysts clasped her white throat. Her dress, glossy as her dark hair, was a Parma-violet color, falling in stiff folds and deep dimples that the rosy firelight flushed with orchid. Amy looked at the amethysts, suddenly conscious of the tulle that hid bruises on her own neck.
“A sore throat? My dear, I’m so sorry!” Esther’s apparent concern gave Amy a giddy sense of unreality.
Curtis came into the room, his face still and unsmiling. “Payne told me you were attacked, Amy.”
“Attacked?” Esther’s thin brows climbed.
“A strangler. What they call a ‘mugger’ in New York. But you don’t expect that in Oldport. She was leaving Allan’s house.” Curtis sat by the picture window, his profile silhouetted against a wide view of the evening sky. “You’re not very gay,” he said to Esther.
“Should I be?”
“This party’s for you.” His voice was toneless. Heavy brows shadowed his eyes. Something disturbed him. Could it be that his first, faint doubt of Esther was growing to intolerable proportions?
She spoke bitterly: “The party was your idea, not mine, and—” She broke off with a start that was almost guilty. Payne stood in the doorway.
“Come in, Matt!” Uneasiness made Esther curt.
Payne crossed the room with a loping, loose-hipped walk as Southwestern as his slight drawl. “A charming dress, Esther,” he said, halting beside her.
“Thank you.” She was in no mood for compliments.
Amy heard the purr of tires on gravel. A car door slammed. Allan’s voice was loud and cheerful as he came into the room: “Hello, Esther — Amy.” He nodded to Curtis and Payne. “Why are you all so solemn?”
“Amy doesn’t feel well.” Malice flashed into Esther’s eyes. “She claims some maniac tried to strangle her last night when she was leaving your house!”
“I didn’t say it was a maniac,” murmured Amy.
“You’re serious?” Allan was shocked.
“Yes.” Involuntarily Amy put a hand to her throat. “And he was sane enough to lure me outside by blowing a fuse or causing a short circuit, so the house was plunged in darkness.”
“There was a short circuit when I got back.” Allan stood under the light from the chandelier. For the first time, his gray eyes looked bleak and calculating to Amy. “Did you report this?”
“What’s the use?”
“But you should! He must be the same fellow who knifed poor Houri last night. That does look like mania.”
A second car purred into the driveway. Through portieres, Amy saw her mother and Kate going upstairs in outdoor wraps. Peter waited at the foot of the stairs until they came down again.
“Esther, dear!” Natalie came in briskly. “I think you’re splendid to go through with this. Of course, it’s perfectly clear to me that the man who attacked Amy is either a psychotic or a hoodlum from New York, but—”
“Why is it perfectly clear?” asked Payne quietly.
Natalie fluttered a little. “Well, the hoodlum technique. Mugging, you know. Who else had anything to gain by it?”
Curtis intervened: “Here come the cocktails. Let’s talk about something more pleasant, shall we?”
Kate had not uttered a word. Her eyes seemed larger than ever in her small, immature face. As the maid served cocktails, Amy made her way to Kate’s side. “Anything wrong?”
“Just Peter. And Esther. How is it going to end?”
Peter approached. “Not drinking, Kate?”
Her smile was sickly. “I’m not in the mood.”
“Oh?” He looked at her oddly. Just then someone choked.
It was Curtis Gregory. He set down his glass. Esther flashed him a lightning glance. Anguish? Despair? The choking became a cough, hacking, uncontrollable. He held a handkerchief to his lips. His eyes were red and watering.
“Swallow the wrong way?” Allan moved swiftly to his side.
Curtis shook his head, the handkerchief still masking his face.
“Aspirin, then. Hold the tablet in your mouth until it dissolves. It will check this at once.” Allan’s grip on the shaking shoulder was firm. “Don’t try to talk, old man. Come upstairs.”
They moved toward the door. It was Allan who stopped suddenly. His voice shook with anger: “What the devil is that beast doing here?”
Through the music-room doorway a small Maltese cat padded noiselessly into the room, sniffing at the unfamiliar odors of strange feet, letting an incurious green gaze slide over strange faces.
“Get out!” Esther backed away, withdrawing the hem of her skirt. A paw darted. A ripping sound left a scar on the violet satin.
“Upstairs! Quick!” Allan drew Curtis away.
But Payne barred their path. “Why are you taking charge, Allan?”
“Because I am Curtis’s physician!”
“Of course.” Payne’s smile twisted. “A doctor has so many opportunities for blackmail.”
“What do you mean?”
“There had to be a doctor who supplied the Nembutal two days ago. And there had to be a doctor who helped Curtis suppress the symptoms of that allergy yesterday, and for the last three years. Who else but a doctor trying to establish himself in practice after the war? A doctor’s fees vary according to the income of each patient. Even the income-tax people wouldn’t suspect a doctor who suddenly became rich. When the going got tough, you naturally did everything you could to protect such a source of income. That’s why you suggested to Amy that your waiting room was the scene of the conversation she overheard. You hoped that would diffuse suspicion. Anyone might walk into a doctor’s waiting-room. But only a few people had easy access to the Gregorys’ living-room.”
Allan dropped Curtis’s arm. “Blackmail! Preposterous! I—”
“Not only blackmail.” Payne’s voice was hard. “Accessory after the fact of murder. Unless you are going to talk.”
“Murder! You don’t think I had anything to do with Sharpe’s death or with—” Allan stopped abruptly and then said, “I must have a lawyer before I say anything.”
“Curtis, let me get you upstairs.” Esther’s voice was low and rich with feeling as she moved forward to take the place Allan had deserted.
But Payne still blocked the way. “One question, Curtis: Why is that cat in this house tonight?”
Curtis shrugged.
“Does it matter now?” Esther was contemptuous.
“I can tell you how the cat got here,” said Payne. “I brought him in myself, secretly, this morning, so he would be in the house all day, before we met this evening. But why did I do that?”
Again Curtis shrugged.
“Aren’t you going to answer me in words, Curtis? Are you afraid to speak, with that cat and Amy Corbett both in the same room?”
“Don’t say a word!” It was more like a sob than a cry from Esther.
Curtis touched her arm. “My dear, what’s the use? They know. They’re going to prove it. Let’s get this over with.” He turned toward Amy, his eyes so sad and shamed she could scarcely meet them. “Well, Amy? Is this the voice of the man you overheard talking over an open telephone line?”
The deep, hoarse tones, so unlike Curtis’s normal voice, died away. Amy nodded. “Yes.” She couldn’t say more. There were tears in her own eyes.
“Oh, my dear... my dear—” Esther pushed her cocktail glass into Curtis’s hand, then she put her arms around him, her head against his shoulder.
Curtis gently disengaged himself. He drained the cocktail before he turned to Payne: “Why did you do this to us?”
“Because you and Esther killed my best friend, Charley Maitland, in order to marry each other, and you were planning to kill me, when you saw I suspected it.
“The cat, whose cry Amy heard over the open telephone line two days ago, was a stray kitten that wandered in here and that Esther forced her maid to give away afterward. That cat was what made your voice unrecognizably hoarse when Amy heard it over the telephone. For you have a respiratory allergy to the dander of cats. It must have developed when you were on the West Coast during the war, for no one here knew about it.
“When I telephoned Charley Maitland’s house the night he died, yours was the strange voice that answered the telephone. Your voice was rasping then, so that I couldn’t identify it afterward — a rasping caused temporarily by the Persian cats Charley Maitland bred. You didn’t want anyone to know you were in Maitland’s house the night he died. So you did everything you could to conceal your allergy and its symptoms.
“When you came East again, your doctor, Allan, discovered the cause of your allergy. He helped you conceal it by avoiding the cause and suppressing the symptoms as quickly as he could when avoidance wasn’t possible. But your anxiety about it made him suspicious, and he discovered enough of the truth to be able to blackmail you.
“You were late when you reached Mrs. Corbett’s house that first evening because you had already killed Sharpe in Allan’s stable. When you came out on the terrace you were careful to say to Esther in Amy’s hearing, ‘Where have you been all afternoon? I thought you were going to meet me at the club for a swim.’ You wanted Amy to think you and Esther had not been together since lunchtime. When, later, you pleaded with Amy to forget the whole thing and make peace with Esther, you were pleading for yourself as well as for Esther.
“The fact that you really liked Amy and didn’t want to injure her made it all the worse for you. It was not Amy you were trying to kill when she left Allan’s house last night. It was I, Matt Payne, the one person from Esther’s past whose very existence was a perpetual threat to Esther and yourself. Maitland’s friend, who, once he heard your hoarse, allergic voice again, would know that you were with Esther and Maitland when Maitland died.
“Esther had told you I was following Amy to Allan’s. When you saw Allan leave the house you assumed Amy had gone already. But there was still a light in the waiting-room. You thought it was I, prying into Allan’s records for evidence of blackmail. You caused a short circuit with outside wires to bring me outdoors. When you saw the tall figure in a mannish trench coat through the misty darkness, you were sure it was I, not Amy, so you attacked.”
Payne looked at his watch. “I didn’t expect the allergic symptoms to develop quite so soon. Murchison was to have been on hand. As it is, we can expect him here at any moment.”
“You’re too late!” Esther’s brilliant eyes defied him mockingly, then softened as she turned back to Curtis. “Forgive me, dear.”
Curtis smiled. “Did you think I didn’t know what you had put in that cocktail? Thank you, Esther!” He cherished her face against his cheek and, at last, Amy saw Curtis as he really was — a star-crossed lover, doomed and desperate, Paolo to Esther’s Francesca...
Afterward Payne came to see Amy at her apartment in New York.
“Charley Maitland wouldn’t divorce Esther,” said Payne. “Hence that misleading phrase: ‘Didn’t seem like adultery when it was you and I.’ They talked of running away together without divorce, but that takes money. Esther had no money of her own. The war had brought Curtis near bankruptcy, since he was a silk importer. When they realized that Maitland’s life insurance would pull Curtis out of his financial hole, while Maitland’s death would make it possible for them to marry, the situation became intolerable to them, and three years ago, while Curtis was still in the Army, they killed Maitland.”
“And did Curtis kill that Siamese cat?” prompted Amy.
“He had to keep the cat at a good distance or his voice would become hoarse again. He couldn’t risk that, for he didn’t know how soon he might meet you afterward. It was too dark and foggy to see shape, but he could see movement. He threw his old army knife at a movement so close to the ground it had to be animal rather than human. Luckily for you.”
“Why luckily for me?”
“He thought you were I. Why do you suppose he had the knife?”
Amy shuddered. “Not Allan. Not Peter. But Curtis. The one I trusted.”
“You first met Curtis when you were twelve years old and he was about thirty. How could a girl that age realize what a mature man is really like under the civilized shell?”
“And now?”
Payne shrugged. “There won’t be any trial. Allan is pleading guilty to an accessory charge. Curtis and Esther died in each other’s arms after Murchison reached the house.”
Amy’s voice quavered:
Payne laid a hand on hers. “What about having dinner with me tonight?”
To her own amazement, she said, “Yes.”
Roy Vickers
The Yellow Jumper
The execution of Ruth Watlington sent a shudder through respectable, middle-class Britain. If she had in some way repudiated her upbringing, by becoming a crook or a drug-addict, or a “bad woman,” it would have been more comfortable all around. As it was, her exposure created the suspicion that the impulse to murder is likely to seize almost anybody who has enough animal courage to see it through. It was not even a
This is in no sense a love chronicle; but we must for a moment concern ourselves with the romantic vaporings of poor Herbert Cudden, the mathematical master at Hemel Abbey, a girls’ boarding school in Devonshire. At eight-thirty on May 2, 1934, a week before the summer term opened, he was alone in the empty schoolhouse putting the finishing touches to his syllabus. His thoughts kept sliding to a young, modern-languages mistress, Rita Steevens, who had come, fresh from the University, two terms ago.
An under-vitalized man, he had been astonished at his own boldness in proposing marriage to her, still more astonished when she accepted. Incidentally, he had been very grateful to his friend and colleague, Ruth Watlington, for inviting Rita to share her cottage.
Daydreaming of this young woman, he visualized her in the dress in which he had last seen her. Now, if he had simply remembered that she had looked delightful in whatever she was wearing, it would have been better for his own peace of mind in later years. He was not the kind of man who understands women’s dress. Nevertheless, he happened to visualize Rita in what women call a pinafore dress, though he did not know the term. He visualized a pale green, sleeveless dress with a sleeved underbodice of yellow — the dress that was eventually produced at the trial after the police had, as it were, walked clean over it without seeing anything in it but the bloodstains.
So much for the dress. As for the moonlight — the full moon, which on that day rose at six thirty-seven in the afternoon, was already tinging the dusk when Cudden crossed the campus and dropped the syllabus in the letter box of the headmistress’s house.
Skirting a playing-field, he crossed a spuriously antique bridge over the Brynn, a sizeable trout stream of an average depth of a dozen inches, with many a deep pool which made it dangerous to children, though the swift current would generally carry them to safety. Feeling his thirty-six years as nothing, he very nearly vaulted the stile giving on to the wood — part of the school estate — that ran down the side of the hill to the village of Hemel, where most of the teaching staff were accommodated.
He was wearing a mackintosh. A man of many small anxieties, he nearly always carried a mackintosh. Presently he turned off the track, to Drunkard’s Leap — a pool in the Brynn some ten feet in breadth and some forty feet deep. When Rita was half-an-hour overdue he lit a cigarette. When the cigarette was finished he was not impatient. He sat down on an old bench like a park seat.
As he did so the centre plank fell out.
“Funny! The screws must have rotted out of the bracket.” He ran his hand along the bench, noticed, without interest, that the bracket itself was no longer in position. Rita was later than usual.
The stream, tumbling over rocks into the pool, threw up a spray, and for the first time he saw a rainbow of moonlight. He must remember to point it out to Rita. Below the rainbow, the moon shimmered on the turbulent surface of the pool, so that the pool itself seemed to be made of liquid moonlight.
So he described it to the Coroner — liquid moonlight. Then, he said, a light cloud crossed the moon so that the rainbow and the shimmer faded out. Instead, a diffused glow enabled him to see beneath the surface of the pool. And a few feet beneath the surface of the pool, below the current, he saw Rita Steevens.
For some seconds, he supposed, he gazed at the staring eyes, at the hair lightly swaying, as if stirred by a sluggish breeze. Then the cloud passed, and he could again see nothing but the shimmering surface of the pool.
He shaded his eyes, lurched to and fro, trying to escape from the angle of light. He grabbed the loose beam of the bench, intending to bridge the rocks of the waterfall to get a new angle, but he stumbled, cutting his hand on a splinter of the beam, which splashed into the pool and was carried away.
He related that he shouted at himself as if he were some one else. “Pull yourself together, man! You were dazzled by the moonlight, and you’ve had an hallucination. You were thinking of Rita, and beginning to fear she had met with an accident, and you visualized your fear. How could she be sort of standing up under the water like that?”
He half-believed it. The other half sent him scurrying from the pool down the track to the village. “Check up at the cottage anyway,” he muttered. “Better not mention the hallucination — make people laugh. It’s partly that damned syllabus. Anxiety complex!”
Fortunate that Ruth Watlington’s cottage was so near! At the end of the track through the wood, he did not vault the stile; he took it slowly, regaining his breath, coming to terms with his panic. A hundred yards of scrub, then the. cottage, built at right angles to the lane that wound its way to the village. Slowly across the scrub.
Already he could discern the wicket gate of the cottage garden. And there — a dozen feet away — were the yellow sleeves, the pale green dress, grey-white in the moonlight. He bounded forward. As he snatched her in his arms his nostrils were filled with the scent he had never perceived on any other woman — the scent of gardenia.
“Oh, my darling — thank God — had a ghastly hallucination! Thought I saw you standing up drowned — in Drunkard’s Leap.” Her head was resting on his shoulder. The scent of gardenia spurred him — he could have vaulted innumerable stiles. “Speak, Rita, darling!”
“But I’m
He swung her round so that she faced the moon.
“It must be this dress,” she said. “Rita wore it once and didn’t like it, so I took it off her hands.”
He gaped at her, his senses in a vacuum in which his one clear impression was the scent of gardenia, almost as sharp as when, but a moment ago, her head had lain on his shoulder.
“I thought the hallucination, or whatever it is, was about me, and you seemed hysterical, or I wouldn’t have—”
“Then perhaps it wasn’t hallucination!” he gasped. “Where is Rita?”
“By now she’s at Lynmouth, where she is spending the night with her cousin, Fred Calder, and his wife. They’ve got a bungalow there. Mr. Calder rang up before Rita came in. She had just time to catch the eight-fifty bus. She asked me to phone you, which I did. Effie Cumber — one of the kitchen-maids, in case you don’t know — took the message. I told her you’d be in your classroom. But, I’m afraid I forgot till about nine.”
“I left a little before nine. Then Rita never went near Drunkard’s Leap!” He laughed at his own fear, though it wasn’t a wholesome laugh. “Yet — it was horrible! I can’t believe it wasn’t real.”
“Well, come in first and tell me all about it. I’ve got a bottle of brandy for emergencies. I think you have been overworking on that syllabus... Oh, you’ve cut your hand — it’s bleeding. I’ll try and bind it up for you, though I’m very bad at anything to do with blood.”
“It’s nothing. Must have cut it when I fell down.”
He followed her into the sitting-room of the cottage, stopping in the hall to hang up his mackintosh.
As is known, he stayed there for about an hour, leaving before eleven, slightly fuddled with brandy. Ruth’s purpose was to delay investigation. No police system, however scientific, could be expected to solve the riddle of why she should want to create the delay. The pool was obviously useless as a permanent hiding place. Once she had made her getaway, as she had, it would not have mattered to her if the police had found the body a few minutes later.
Nor did anybody attribute any special importance to Herbert Cudden’s assertion that, in mistaking Ruth for Rita, he was misled not only by Rita’s dress, but also by Rita’s perfume. Yet Ruth Watlington was convicted — thanks to Detective Inspector Rason of the Department of Dead Ends — for no other reason than that she had put on the dead girl’s dress and worn her perfume.
After a stiff brandy, Herbert gave Ruth details of the now supposed hallucination.
“But the pool is forty feet deep!” objected Ruth. “If there had been a body under the surface it would have been at the bottom, and you couldn’t have seen it without a strong searchlight.”
“I know. But one does not think of things like that at the time.”
He told her about it all over again, and then, his fear banished, they talked about Rita in general, an absorbing topic to both. This conversation has been grossly misunderstood by the commentators, who said that it revealed Ruth as an hysteric titillating her own terror by talking about the woman she had just murdered. Her showing him her scrapbook of babies’ photographs was stigmatized as the height of hypocrisy — alternatively as indicating a depth of morbid cruelty which would almost justify a plea of insanity.
Whereas the truth is that if Ruth had been a hypocrite she would never have committed the murder. “The schoolmarm who beat Scotland Yard” would have had, short shrift if the police had been able to grasp that, though she was capable of murder, she was not capable of insincerity, cruelty, or greed.
At the time of the murder, Ruth was thirty-seven; would have been physically mistakable for thirty if she had not affected a certain dowdiness of dress. She was trim and springy, athletic without a touch of thickness. A truth about herself that she did not know was that the right touch here and there would have converted her into a more than ordinarily attractive woman. When she was sixteen, a boy of her own age had kissed her at a party, to her own satisfaction. Three days later she overheard the boy laughing about it to another boy. There was a loutish reference to her own over-estimation of her charms.
The incident distressed her sufficiently for her to confide in her young stepmother, for whom, in defiance of tradition, she entertained a warm affection. It did not occur to her that Corinne Watlington, who was only seven years older, might be sexually jealous.
“Men are rather beastly, you know,” explained Corinne Watlington. “They lure you on with flattery and then laugh at you. It’s as well to be on guard, or you may find yourself humiliated where you least expect it.”
Ruth did not want to be humiliated, so she went on guard — so effectively that the young men of her generation dubbed her a prude and a cod fish, and left her out — which made her manner more brusque than ever.
Following Corinne’s advice, Ruth concentrated on a career. She won a scholarship to Oxford, generously resigning the bursary, as her mother had left her some two hundred pounds a year. She represented the University in lacrosse, tennis, and fencing. She took honors in history and literature, doing so well that she was invited to read for a Fellowship, but declined, as she wished to teach the young. She was appointed to Mardean, which was then considered the leading school for girls.
When she was twenty-seven she found herself thinking too intensively about one of the classical masters. In her emotion there was no echo of the boys at the parties. Indeed, she hardly thought directly of the man himself. She thought of herself in a house, just large enough, with a very green lawn on which very young children — hers — were playing. Somewhere in the background, giving substance and security to the dream, was the classical master.
Ruth resigned her appointment. She went to Paris; not being analytical, she did not know why she spent six months as a volunteer worker in a creche. But the babies here were vaguely unsatisfactory, and she started the new school year at Hemel Abbey, a praiseworthy but indistinguished replica of Mardean on a less ambitious scale.
Here began that rare association with Herbert Cudden which baffled the romantically minded commentators. From the first she was able to talk to Herbert without any artificial coldness. From a different angle he found something of the same restfulness in her, for he had always been self-conscious with other women. Ruth, obviously, would never expect him to make love to her. There sprang up, hardly a deep friendship — rather an intimate palliness utterly intouched by romance.
In her first year she bought Wood Cottage. A few weeks after she had settled in she cut the first of the baby pictures from a magazine. In six months, when she had cut another dozen, she began to paste them into a scrapbook. During the years that followed the number of pictures grew. There was nothing secret about it. She would snap village babies with her Kodak, explaining that she was fond of pictures of babies, though they were so difficult to take. All the same, she never showed the scrapbook to anybody until she showed it to Herbert on the night of the murder.
Herbert used the cottage almost as a club. He came at routine times, always to lunch on Wednesdays and Sundays. She allowed him to pay half the cost of the food and a few pence over in part payment of the village woman who prepared it. Thus nearly nine years slipped by before Rita Steevens came and changed Ruth’s perspective.
One evening, when the pupils were away for the halfterm weekend, Ruth met Herbert and Rita together, and was astonished by the look she surprised in Herbert’s eyes. For a second she had seen him young, vigorous, commanding — definitely among “the men” — in Corinne’s sense of the word. An hour later he came to the cottage and told her, as a great secret, that he had fallen in love with Rita. Ruth expressed sincere delight. A new, inner life was opened to her. At first Rita was cold, almost suspicious. She accepted Ruth’s offer to share the cottage with indifference, bargaining shrewdly over her share of the expenses.
By the end of the term she had fielded and was accepting Ruth as mentor and general benefactor.
Ruth was determined — one might say fiercely determined — that life should give to Rita what it had denied to Ruth. She positively groomed those two for each other, and without a single black thought of malice. In her dream life, Ruth had already elected herself an honorary auntie.
A little before six on the night of the murder, while Rita was visiting in the village, Calder had rung to ask Rita to catch the eight-fifty bus — the last — and spend the night at Lynmouth. As the bungalow had no telephone, Calder would meet the bus on the chance of Rita coming. Ruth said she would deliver the message if Rita returned in time.
But when Rita came in, shortly after seven, Ruth did not deliver the message. It was the only occasion on which she treated Rita improperly — her selfish motive being that, living by deputy in Rita, she wanted Rita to meet Herbert as arranged. Also, she had just completed her plans for the wedding present, and wanted to tell Rita, and enjoy her surprise.
“You aren’t meeting Herbert until nine,” she said some time later. “Let’s go and sit up at the pool. It’s such a lovely night, and I’ve heaps to talk about. I’ll disappear before Herbert comes.”
“Righto! This skirt is a bit floppy about the hips. D’you think my suede belt would go with it?”
“It would be just right. I hoped you would wear it.”
Ruth, herself dowdy, had become the arbiter of dress. Ruth had designed the pinafore dress of pale green with the underbodice of yellow and had it made by a London-trained woman living in semi-retirement as the village dressmaker. Ruth added: “What do you think of my new jumper?”
“That yellow would clash horribly with the yellow of my pinafore frock,” said Rita. “And the collar looks stuffy. You’re better at dressing me than yourself. I wonder why. Ruth — why is it?”
“I suppose because I wish I had been like you when I was your age.”
Rita felt resentful without knowing why as they set out together, reaching Drunkard’s Leap before eight.
“Mind darling, you’ll tear your frock!” There was light enough for Ruth to notice that the iron bracket of the bench had worked loose. “The screws have rusted away. They ought to have been painted. I’ll tell Miss Harboro.” Ruth tugged the bracket and it came clean away, a flat iron bar three feet long with a right angle turn of three inches. She leaned it against the bench so that the estate handyman would see it. They sat down, and Ruth turned the conversation in the direction of her wedding present.
“You and Herbert — your heads are in the clouds, as they ought to be. You haven’t thought, for instance, where you’re going to live, have you?”
“Oh, Herbert’s looking round for something. He likes that sort of thing. And if he can’t find anything, there are lots of furnished rooms in the village.”
Though it was barely dusk, the full moon shimmered on the surface of the pool. It was a lovely spot, thought Ruth, for Herbert and Rita to meet.
“Furnished rooms are all right when you are single — awful when you’re married.” Ruth paused, enjoying her moment. “You’re going to have Wood Cottage.”
“But — d’you mean you’re leaving Hemel and want to get rid of it?”
“No, dear, I don’t mean that. I mean I want you to have it. I shall take Mrs. Cumber’s two rooms, and you needn’t worry about me. I shall be quite comfortable.”
Rita was not worrying about Ruth’s comfort. She was feeling that, notwithstanding innumerable small benefits, there was rather too much Ruth in her life. Again came that undefined resentment that had welled up during their dress-talk.
“But, Ruth — of course, it’s awfully kind of you to offer to sell it to us, as I know you like it, but I doubt whether Herbert could afford—”
“Darling, there’s nothing to afford I It’s my little wedding present. I was in Barnstaple this morning, and fixed the title deeds and the rest of it with a solicitor. It’s all settled bar formalities. You can talk it over with Herbert tonight.”
“I simply don’t know what to say!” Rita’s voice was sulky. “Ruth, dear, don’t you see it’s impossible! You’re only a little bit better off than we are, and — it’s accepting too much.”
What did it matter how much she gave them. Their life was hers. Her life would be fulfilled in the lives that were to come.
“Darling, it’s not a matter of giving a present that costs a lot of money. It’s a matter of sharing happiness. You know what a lot you and Herbert mean to me. And we’ve got to look ahead. In a year’s time there may not be only the two of you to consider.”
For a moment Rita was fogged.
“Do you mean we might have a baby?”
“Of course I do!” Ruth laughed happily. Rita laughed too, but a different kind of laugh.
“But I shan’t be having any babies.”
“One shouldn’t say that — it might turn out to be true.” It was no more than a mild reproof. Then sudden fear clutched at Ruth. “Rita, there’s nothing wrong with you physically, that way, is there?”
“Certainly not!” The girl bridled. “But there’s no need to have all that bother if you don’t want to — and I don’t want to. I’m not the type. And I loathe babies anyway — yells and mess and bother!”
Ruth had the sensation that her body had taken control of her mind. She heard her own voice from outside herself and thought it sounded scrawny and venomous.
“Is it fair to Herbert — to rob your marriage of all meaning?”
“Oh, be your age, Ruth! That belongs in a tuppenny novelette. And I find it a rather disgusting topic, if you don’t mind.”
One may say that the twentieth-century Ruth Watlington looked on while that part of her that was a thousand ages older than history obeyed a law of its own. Without her conscious volition, her muscles stiffened and she stood up. In her arms and thighs was an odd vibration, as if the corpuscles of her blood were colliding.
She heard the iron bracket whistle through the air — then heard a thud, and another. After a timeless period she felt herself going back into her body, understanding that an iris shutter in her brain had contracted until she had been able to see only one thing — that babies were a rather disgusting topic.
The iris was expanding a little. In the reflected moonlight she could see that the bench was glistening with blood. Rita had fallen from the bench and was lying, still.
“I seem to have killed Rita!” She giggled vacuously. “I wonder what Herbert will say!” Her iris expanded a little more. She became vaguely aware of an urgency of time. She looked at her wrist watch, but had to try again and again before she could concentrate enough to read that it was half-past eight. Then it was easy to remember that Herbert would be there at nine.
“I’d better put Rita in the pool. When Herbert comes to the cottage I can break it to him gently. But dead bodies float, don’t they? Oh well, we’ll manage something just for an hour or so!” The iron bracket was ready to her hand.
There was blood at the angle of the bracket. She shuddered with a purely physical revulsion, wiped the bracket on the grass. She worked the short end of the bracket under the suede belt, then rolled the body into the pool near the waterfall. In spite of her care, there was a smear of blood on her left hand. Struggling against nausea she washed it off. The moonlight did not reveal that there was also a smear of blood on the sleeve of her yellow jumper.
In the walk back to the cottage something approaching normality returned, and she realized what she had done. She had no thought of concealment, once she had told Herbert. She would then tell the police that she had killed Rita, but she would not tell them why, and they could not make her.
As she crossed the scrub to the cottage she heard the church clock chiming nine. Perhaps Herbert had finished his work. She hurried into the cottage and rang the school. A kitchenmaid answered. “Will you please go to Mr. Cudden’s classroom, and tell him that Miss Steevens is sorry that she cannot keep her appointment.”
She turned on the reading lamp. Again came nausea as she saw a smear of blood on the sleeve of her yellow jumper — a smear half the size of the palm of her hand. She whipped off the jumper. She took it to her room, dropped it in the laundry basket, and put it out of her mind.
She had no moral shrinking from what she had done. She even felt a certain exultation, tinged with an unease which had nothing to do with fear of the hangman. She took it for granted that her own life was, in effect, at an end, and this gave her an immense freedom.
She went into Rita’s room. It held a faint fragrance of unknown flowers. Spread on the bed was the light green dress and the yellow bodice.
“Oh, I wish I had been Rita!”
She took off all her clothes, put on Rita’s. Last, the yellow bodice and the light green dress. Then a spot of Rita’s scent on her hair and the merest dab behind the ears.
“I do look nice! What a pity! It’s only waste. I wonder what was wrong with me?”
Downstairs and into the air. Her life’s history floated before her. Rita’s clothes helped her to review her past from the angle of a young woman who had no fear that men would lure her on with flattery and then laugh at her. She was actually thinking of the classical master when Herbert’s arms closed round her. For a moment she let her head rest on his shoulder, then realized that he had mistaken her for Rita.
The need for personal explanation shattered the mood in which she had wanted to break the news to him. Besides, she saw now that it would save him so little that she was entitled to think of herself. Tomorrow, when they found the body, life for her would end. Tonight she would enjoy an hour of his soothing friendliness for the last time.
When she had made him believe the hallucination theory, she indulged in the child’s game of make-believe — “Let’s pretend” — that things were as yesterday, and that she had not murdered Rita. She nearly told him about her gift of the cottage, but it would have meant discussion, and she wanted to ask him a question. As the minutes passed the question became more and more important to her. The answer, if it were the right one, would help her to face the gallows with a calm mind.
“Have another brandy.”
“Just a little one, and then I must hop off. Another thing Rita wants to do when we’re married—”
She shirked putting the question to him directly. She produced her scrapbook to help her approach. The whole of the first page was taken by one ebullient baby who had advertized a milk food. Herbert grinned and turned the pages. “Ah, I used to know one just like that — same expression and everything! And when they look like that, they grab your nose if you get too close. This is a jolly book. Why have you never shown it to me before?”
“Herbert, are you and Rita going to have babies?”
“I don’t see why we shouldn’t. I’ve got a bit in the stocking, and so has she.”
“Oh, I am glad!” There was a turbulence in her that he must have sensed.
“And I’m glad you’re glad. Ruth, dear, you can scream for the village policeman if you like, but I’m going to kiss you.”
When he kissed her, Ruth knew what it was that had been wrong with her. She also knew that to talk of robbing a man of fatherhood did not belong in a tuppenny novelette.
“I’m only thirty-seven; there’s still time,” she told herself when he had gone. Murder could never be justified, and she would never so deceive herself. But a form of atonement for having taken life seemed to be open to her.
On the following morning, at about seven-fifteen, Herbert Cudden’s landlady took his shoes out of doors with a view to cleaning them. It was, in a sense, unfortunate for Scotland Yard that Police-Sergeant Tottle happened to amble by on his bicycle.
“Good morning, Mr. Tottle. Your George’s garden is a credit to the family.
She held up the shoes. The rim of the sole and the back of one heel was caked with dried blood.
“Don’t you touch ’em until I’ve seen ’em,” barked the sergeant.
“Don’t be silly! I was only joking — it can’t be
The sergeant took the shoes and examined them.
“Take me up to his room,” he ordered.
When he had succeeded in waking Herbert Cudden, the latter’s reactions were, from the police point of view, ideal.
“Oh, my God!” It was almost like a woman’s scream. “I shall go mad.” He leaped out of bed, thrust Wellingtons over his pyjamas. “You’d better come with me, Sergeant. Give me those shoes.”
“Here, what’s it all about, Mr. Cudden?”
“Oh, shut up, please! I must see Miss Watlington at once, or I tell you I shall go mad. Hang on to the shoes if you like, but come with me.”
Ruth was startled into wakefulness by hearing her name called while Herbert and the sergeant were still fifty yards from the cottage. She was in her dressing gown and at the doorway almost as soon as they were.
“That hallucination!” Herbert was out of breath. “Blood on my shoes — show them to her. Look! It wasn’t hallucination, Ruth. Rita was murdered on the bank and thrown in. We must drag Drunkard’s Leap.”
“Will one of you please explain—”
“Oh, all right then! I’ll tell you.”
It was Herbert who poured out the tale of the previous evening’s experiences, of his discussion with Ruth, and the reasons for their joint conclusion that he had suffered an hallucination.
“Then as I understand it, after what you’d seen, or what you only thought you’d seen, you came to this cottage, and — is this your mackintosh by any chance?”
The mackintosh was hanging on a peg in the hall. The sergeant pulled it out fanwise. The whole of the seat and part of the back were covered with congealed blood.
“How did that blood get there? On your mackintosh and on your shoes?”
“It must be
“And what’s the matter with your hand that you’ve got that bandage?”
“Oh, hell to these footling questions! Sergeant, for heaven’s sake,
The sergeant had never handled murder. This was unlike any he had read about. For one thing, the suspect was directing the investigation!
While Tottle, at Ruth’s suggestion, was ringing the Lynmouth police to find out whether Rita had spent the night at Calder’s bungalow, Ruth went upstairs to dress.
On a hanger on the door was the yellow underbodice. She put it in her wardrobe. Over a chair hung the pale green sleeveless dress. As she picked it up, she caught her breath. At the back, a little above the waistline, was a distinct blood stain. For a moment she had a sense of eerieness, as if blood would meet her everywhere. Then she remembered.
“That was done when Herbert put his arm round me before I bound up his hand.”
She dropped the dress into the laundry basket — on top of the bloodstained yellow jumper. She looked down at them, trying to assess their danger to herself. Then she shrugged her shoulders, and went on dressing. She had an almost superstitious belief that if destiny intended her to atone for her crime it would protect her from the police.
By ten they had found the body in Drunkard’s Leap, its position explained by the fact that the iron bracket had jammed between two outcrops of rock some eight feet below the surface. By mid-day the county police were in the village in force. Detailed statements were taken from Cudden and Ruth, covering everything, even including Ruth’s visit to her solicitor to arrange for the conveyance of the cottage to Herbert Cudden and his wife. The police took away for microscopic analysis Herbert’s mackintosh and shoes and Ruth’s yellow jumper and the pale green sleeveless dress. The analysis revealed that the blood on Herbert’s garments had been exposed to the air for at least half an hour before it had adhered — which bore out his statements about the times of his movements.
Analysis of the skirt and jumper showed that the blood was newly shed when it had adhered — which bore out the joint statement that Herbert mistook Ruth, outside the cottage, for Rita and pawed her, after he had cut his hand by the pool.
The Coroner’s jury would have censured Herbert for his over-readiness to believe he had experienced an hallucination had not Ruth generously insisted that the blame, if any, should be wholly hers. The Court returned a verdict of murder against person or persons unknown.
The school term opened in a somewhat strained atmosphere. True that only three of the hundred and fifty pupils were withdrawn on account of the scandal. But there was an unhealthy interest in the events. The headmistress explained that poor Miss Steevens had been killed by a madman who did not know what he was doing — a theory that was helped by a Press attempt to link the case up with a maniac murder in the North of England.
Ruth let the backwash of the murder splash round her without giving it her attention. Scotland Yard rented all available rooms in the village inn. As there were apparently no clues they used the dragnet, checking the movements of every man within twenty miles and every automobile that could have been used. They would apply to Ruth now and again, mainly for information about the dead girl’s habits.
In three weeks they packed up, leaving a pall of suspicion over the whole countryside. In due course the mackintosh and the shoes, the pale green sleeveless dress and the yellow jumper, minutely documented, were sent to the Department of Dead Ends.
Herbert’s visits to the cottage became more frequent. At first he would sit in silence, assured of her sympathy. In time Ruth loosened his tongue and let him talk himself out of his melancholy.
The strong forces in her nature which had produced the brainstorm at Drunkard’s Leap were now contracted upon the purpose with which she had successfully drugged her conscience. Herbert Cudden was overwhelmed by those forces at the moment of her choosing — which was as soon as the summer term ended.
Again we are not concerned with the detail of the methods by which that formidable will induced a transference to Ruth of the emotion which Herbert had felt for Rita. It suffices to say that it happened according to her plan. They could write to the headmistress after the ceremony, she said, but they need not announce their marriage until the autumn term. As they particularly wished to avoid newspaper publicity they would be married by registrar in the East End of London.
This can hardly be called a tactical blunder on Ruth’s part because, as far as the police were concerned, she had exercised no tactics. She did not know that a great many persons who wish to marry more or less in secret, particularly bigamists, regularly hit on that same idea. So the East End registrars invariably supply the police with a list of those applicants who obviously do not belong to the neighborhood.
They each took a “suitcase address” and applied for a seven-day license. Detective-Inspector Rason received the notice on the second day.
“Oh! So it was a triangle after all!” he exclaimed without logical justification. “And now they’re getting married on the quiet. That probably means that they cooked up all the hallucination stuff together. Anything they said may have been true or may not.”
He took out the yellow jumper, the pale green sleeveless dress, and the mackintosh, which, with the iron bracket, was the only real evidence he had. In the garments there was no smell of gardenia.
“But Herbert said the dress Ruth was wearing was Rita’s dress and that it smelt of gardenia. Well, it doesn’t! Perhaps the scent has worn off in three months. Better put a query to the Chemical Department.”
He had difficulty in finding the proper form, still more difficulty in filling it out. So instead, he sought out his twenty-year-old niece.
“When you put scent on your dress, my dear, how long does the dress go on smelling of it?”
“Oh, uncle! You never put any on your dress. It isn’t good for the dress and the scent goes stale and your best friends won’t tell you. You put it on your hair and behind your ears.”
So if there had been a smell of gardenia it meant
Presently his thought crystallized. “If Ruth was really wearing Rita’s dress and Rita’s scent, Herbert is telling the truth. If not — not! Wonder how far we can check up on the dress itself.”
He searched jumper and dress for a trademark and found none. “Then the dress must have been homemade. Or perhaps the village dressmaker.”
Deciding to take a long shot he was in Hemel the following afternoon.
“Yes, I made that for the poor girl,” said Miss Amstey. “It was a present from Miss Watlington. She designed it and the yellow underbodice to wear with it, and I must say it looked very well.”
Journey from London for nothing, thought Rason. Out of mere politeness he asked: “And you made this jumper, too, to go with it?”
“No, I didn’t! That’s a cheap line — came out of a shop. Besides, it wasn’t poor Rita’s. It was Miss Watlington’s. I saw her wearing it the very day of the murder. And I must say I thought it frightful. Apart from its being made of cotton and the underbodice made of silk.”
“Then this jumper and this dress don’t go together — they belonged to different women? But you could wear the one with the other if you wanted to, couldn’t you?”
“Well, you
That left Rason with the now simple riddle of the bloodstains. The two garments worn together would produce a ridiculous effect. Yet there were bloodstains, deemed to have been made by Cudden’s hand, at the same time on both. And Herbert had identified both dress and jumper at the inquest.
Rason took it all down and got Miss Amstey to sign it.
Ruth decided that they could without impropriety arrive at the registrar’s in the same taxi carrying the suitcases that had established the legality of their address. In outward appearance she had changed. The talent for dress she had formerly exercised for another was now successfully applied to herself. In the hall of the registrar’s office, Rason accosted Herbert and introduced himself.
“I am sorry, Mr. Cudden, but I must ask you both to accompany me to headquarters. A serious discrepancy has been discovered in the evidence you gave in the coroner’s court.”
They were taken to the Chief Superintendent’s room. Three others were with him. Ruth was invited to sit.
Herbert was reminded of his evidence regarding the dress. Then the pale green sleeveless dress was handed to him.
“Is that the dress?”
“To the best of my belief — yes.” He turned it. “Yes — there’s the bloodstain.”
The yellow jumper was passed to him. After a similar examination he again answered.
“Yes.”
“Miss Watlington, do you agree that these two garments, formerly belonging to the deceased, were worn by you that night?”
“Yes,” said Ruth, though she could guess what had happened and knew that there could be but little hope.
The Chief Superintendent spoke next.
“You will both be detained on suspicion of being concerned in the murder of Rita Steevens.”
“No!” snapped Ruth. “Mr. Cudden has told the truth throughout He knows nothing about women’s clothes except their color. The color of that jumper was near enough for him to think it was the same. They were passed to him separately at the inquest”
“Ruth, I can’t follow this!” protested Herbert
“Miss Watlington is making a gallant attempt to get you out of your present difficulty,” said the Chief. “But I’m afraid it will be futile.”
“It will not be futile,” said Ruth. “Will you all remain just as you are, please, and let me go behind the Chief Superintendent’s chair. And can I have that dress?”
Behind the superintendent’s chair she whipped off her fashionable walking suit. Then she put on the jumper and the pale green sleeveless dress, struggling against her nausea.
Then, looking as ridiculous as Miss Amstey had prophesied, she stood where all could see her. The officials were awed into silence.
“Herbert, you have only to answer me naturally to clear up the whole absurd mistake. Was I, or was I not, dressed like this that night?”
“No, of course not. Your neck was bare. And you looked properly dressed. That thing doesn’t fit.”
Ruth turned to the Chief and his colleagues.
“You see, he is obviously innocent.” She added, almost casually: “I am not.”
Stanley Ellin
Death on Christmas Eve
As a child I had been vastly impressed by the Boerum house. It was fairly new then, and glossy; a gigantic pile of Victorian rickrack, fretwork, and stained glass flung together in such chaotic profusion that it was hard to encompass in one glance. Standing before it this early Christmas Eve, however, I could find no echo of that youthful impression. The gloss was long since gone; woodwork, glass, metal, all were merged to a dreary gray, and the shades behind the windows were drawn completely so that the house seemed to present a dozen blindly staring eyes to the passerby.
When I rapped my stick sharply on the door, Celia opened it.
“There is a doorbell right at hand,” she said. She was still wearing the long outmoded and badly wrinkled black dress she must have dragged from her mother’s trunk, and she looked, more than ever, the image of old Katrin in her later years: the scrawny body, the tightly compressed lips, the colorless hair drawn back hard enough to pull every wrinkle out of her forehead. She reminded me of a steel trap ready to snap down on anyone who touched her incautiously.
I said, “I am aware that the doorbell has been disconnected, Celia,” and walked past her into the hallway. Without turning my head, I knew that she was glaring at me; then she sniffed once, hard and dry, and flung the door shut. Instantly we were in a murky dimness that made the smell of dry rot about me stick in my throat. I fumbled for the wall switch, but Celia said sharply, “No! This is not the time for lights.”
I turned to the white blur of her face which was all I could see of her. “Celia, spare me the dramatics.”
“There has been a death in this house. You know that.”
“I have good reason to,” I said, “but your performance now does not impress me.”
“She was my own brother’s wife. She was very dear to me.”
I took a step toward her in the murk and rested my stick on her shoulder. “Celia,” I said, “as your family’s lawyer, let me give you a word of advice. The inquest is over and done with, and you’ve been cleared. But nobody believed a word of your precious sentiments then, and nobody ever will. Keep that in mind, Celia.”
She jerked away so sharply that the stick almost fell from my hand. “Is that what you have come to tell me?” she said.
I said, “I came because I knew your brother would want to see me today. And if you don’t mind my saying so, I suggest that you keep to yourself while I talk to him. I don’t want any scenes.”
“Then keep away from him yourself!” she cried. “He was at the inquest. He saw them clear my name. In a little while he will forget the evil he thinks of me. Keep away from him so that he can forget.”
She was at her infuriating worst, and to break the spell I started up the dark stairway, one hand warily on the balustrade. But I heard her follow eagerly behind, and in some eerie way it seemed as if she were not addressing me, but answering the groaning of the stairs under our feet.
“When he comes to me,” she said, “I will forgive him. At first I was not sure, but now I know. I prayed for guidance, and I was told that life is too short for hatred. So when he comes to me I will forgive him.”
I reached the head of the stairway and almost went sprawling. I swore in annoyance as I righted myself. “If you’re not going to use lights, Celia, you should, at least, keep the way clear. Why don’t you get that stuff out of here?”
“Ah,” she said; “those are all poor Jessie’s belongings. It hurts Charlie so to see anything of hers, I knew this would be the best thing to do — to throw all her things out.”
Then a note of alarm entered her voice. “But you won’t tell Charlie, will you? You won’t tell him?” she said, and kept repeating it on a higher and higher note as I moved away from her, so that when I entered Charlie’s room and closed the door behind me it almost sounded as if I had left a bat chittering behind me.
As in the rest of the house, the shades in Charlie’s room were drawn to their full length. But a single bulb in the chandelier overhead dazzled me momentarily, and I had to look twice before I saw Charlie sprawled out on his bed with an arm flung over his eyes. Then he slowly came to his feet and peered at me.
“Well,” he said at last, nodding toward the door, “she didn’t give you any light to come up, did she?”
“No,” I said, “but I know the way.”
“She’s like a mole,” he said. “Gets around better in the dark than I do in the light. She’d rather have it that way too. Otherwise she might look into a mirror and be scared of what she sees there.”
“Yes,” I said, “she seems to be taking it very hard.”
He laughed short and sharp as a sea-lion barking. “That’s because she’s still got the fear in her. All you get out of her now is how she loved Jessie, and how sorry she is. Maybe she figures if she says it enough, people might get to believe it. But give her a little time and she’ll be the same old Celia again.”
I dropped my hat and stick on the bed and laid my overcoat beside them. Then I drew out a cigar and waited until he fumbled for a match and helped me to a light. His hand shook so violently that he had hard going for a moment and muttered angrily at himself. Then I slowly exhaled a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling, and waited.
Charlie was Celia’s junior by five years, but seeing him then it struck me that he looked a dozen years older. His hair was the same pale blond, almost colorless so that it was hard to tell if it was graying or not. But his cheeks wore a fine, silvery stubble, and there were huge blue-black pouches under his eyes. And where Celia was braced against a rigid and uncompromising backbone, Charlie sagged, standing or sitting, as if he were on the verge of falling forward. He stared at me and tugged uncertainly at the limp mustache that dropped past the corners of his mouth.
“You know what I wanted to see you about, don’t you?” he said.
“I can imagine,” I said, “but I’d rather have you tell me.”
“I’ll put it to you straight,” he said. “It’s Celia. I want to see her get what’s coming to her. Not jail. I want the law to take her and kill her, and I want to be there to watch it.”
A large ash dropped to the floor, and I ground it carefully into the rug with my foot. I said, “You were at the inquest, Charlie; you saw what happened. Celia’s cleared, and unless additional evidence can be produced, she stays cleared.”
“Evidence! My God, what more evidence does anyone need! They were arguing hammer and tongs at the top of the stairs. Celia just grabbed Jessie and threw her down to the bottom and killed her. That’s murder, isn’t it? Just the same as if she used a gun or poison or whatever she would have used if the stairs weren’t handy?”
I sat down wearily in the old leatherbound armchair there, and studied the new ash that was forming on my cigar. “Let me show it to you from the legal angle,” I said, and the monotone of my voice must have made it sound like a well memorized formula. “First, there were no witnesses.”
“I heard Jessie scream and I heard her fall,” he said doggedly, “and when I ran out and found her there, I heard Celia slam her door shut right then. She pushed Jessie and then scuttered like a rat to be out of the way.”
“But you didn’t
He slowly shook his head.
“You don’t believe that,” he said. “You don’t really believe that. Because if you do, you can get out now and never come near me again.”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe; I’m showing you the legal aspects of the case. What about motivation? What did Celia have to gain from Jessie’s death? Certainly there’s no money or property involved; she’s as financially independent as you are.” Charlie sat down on the edge of his bed and leaned toward me with his hands resting on his knees. “No,” he whispered, “there’s no money or property in it.”
I spread my arms helplessly. “You see?”
“But you know what it is,” he said; “it’s me. First, it was the old lady with her heart trouble any time I tried to call my soul my own. Then when she died and I thought I was free, it was Celia. From the time I got up in the morning until I went to bed at night, it was Celia every step of the way. She never had a husband or a baby — but she had me!”
I said quietly, “She’s your sister, Charlie. She loves you,” and he laughed that unpleasant, short laugh.
“She loves me like ivy loves a tree. When I think back now, I still can’t see how she did it, but she would just look at me a certain way and all the strength would go out of me. And it was like that until I met Jessie... I remember the day I brought Jessie home, and told Celia we were married. She swallowed it, but that look was in her eyes the same as it must have been when she pushed Jessie down those stairs.”
I said, “But you admitted at the inquest that you never saw her threaten Jessie or do anything to hurt her.”
“Of course I never
“I don’t think it surprised anyone who knows Celia,” I said, “but you can’t make a case out of that.”
He beat his fist against his knee and rocked from side to side. “What can I do?” he said. “That’s what I need you for — to tell me what to do. All my life I never got around to doing anything because of her. That’s what she’s banking on now — that I won’t do anything, and that she’ll get away with it. Then after a while, things’ll settle down, and we’ll be right back where we started from.”
I said, “Charlie, you’re getting yourself all worked up to no end.”
He stood up and stared at the door, and then at me. “But I can do something,” he whispered. “Do you know what?”
He waited with the bright expectancy of one who has asked a clever riddle that he knows will stump the listener. I stood up facing him, and shook my head slowly. “No,” I said; “whatever you’re thinking, put it out of your mind.”
“Don’t mix me up,” he said. “You know you can get away with murder if you’re as smart as Celia. Don’t you think I’m as smart as Celia?”
I caught his shoulders tightly. “For God’s sake, Charlie,” I said, “don’t start talking like that.”
He pulled out of my hands and went staggering back against the wall. His eyes were bright, and his teeth showed behind his drawn lips. “What should I do?” he cried. “Forget everything now that Jessie is dead and buried? Sit here until Celia gets tired of being afraid of me and kills me too?”
My years and girth had betrayed me in that little tussle with him, and I found myself short of dignity and breath. “I’ll tell you one thing,” I said. “You haven’t been out of this house since the inquest It’s about time you got out, if only to walk the streets and look around you.”
“And have everybody laugh at me as I go!”
“Try it,” I said, “and see. Al Sharp said that some of your friends would be at his bar and grill tonight, and he’d like to see you there. That’s my advice — for whatever it’s worth.”
“It’s not worth anything,” said Celia. The door had been opened, and she stood there rigid, her eyes narrowed against the light in the room. Charlie turned toward her, his jaw muscles knotting and unknotting.
“Celia,” he said, “I told you never to come into this room!”
Her face remained impassive. “I’m not
He took a menacing step toward her. “Did you have your ear at that door long enough to hear everything I said? Or should I repeat it for you?”
“I heard an ungodly and filthy thing,” she said quietly; “an invitation to drink and roister while this house is in mourning. I think I have every right to object to that.”
He looked at her incredulously and had to struggle for words. “Celia,” he said, “tell me you don’t mean that! Only the blackest hypocrite alive or someone insane could say what you’ve just said, and mean it.”
That struck a spark in her. “Insane!” she cried. “
“He is as sane as you, Celia,” I said heavily.
“Then he should know that one doesn’t drink in saloons at a time like this. How could you ask him to do it?”
She flung the question at me with such an air of malicious triumph that I completely forgot myself. “If you weren’t preparing to throw out Jessie’s belongings, Celia, I would take that question seriously!”
It was a reckless thing to say, and I had instant cause to regret it. Before I could move, Charlie was past me and had Celia’s arms pinned in a paralyzing grip.
“Did you dare go into her room?” he raged, shaking her savagely. “Tell me!” and then, getting an immediate answer from the panic in her face, he dropped her arms as if they were red hot, and stood there sagging with his head bowed.
Celia reached out a placating hand toward him. “Charlie,” she whimpered, “don’t you see? Having her things around bothers you. I only wanted to help you.”
“Where are her things?”
“By the stairs, Charlie. Everything is there.”
He started down the hallway, and with the sound of his uncertain footsteps moving away I could feel my heartbeat slowing down to its normal tempo. Celia turned to look at me, and there was such a raging hatred in her face that I knew only a desperate need to get out of that house at once. I took my things from the bed and started past her, but she barred the door.
“Do you see what you’ve done?” she whispered hoarsely. “Now I will have to pack them all over again. It tires me, but I will have to pack them all over again — just because of you.”
“That is entirely up to you, Celia,” I said coldly.
“You,” she said. “You old fool. It should have been you along with her when I—”
I dropped my stick sharply on her shoulder and could feel her wince under it. “As your lawyer, Celia,” I said, “I advise you to exercise your tongue only during your sleep, when you can’t be held accountable for what you say.”
She said no more, but I made sure she stayed safely in front of me until I was out in the street again...
From the Boerum house to Al Sharp’s Bar and Grill was only a few minutes’ walk, and I made it in good time, grateful for the sting of the clear winter air in my face. Al was alone behind the bar, busily polishing glasses, and when he saw me enter he greeted me cheerfully. “Merry Christmas, counsellor,” he said.
“Same to you,” I said, and watched him place a comfortable-looking bottle and a pair of glasses on the bar.
“You’re regular as the seasons, counsellor,” said Al, pouring out two stiff ones. “I was expecting you along right about now.”
We drank to each other and Al leaned confidingly on the bar. “Just come from there?”
“Yes,” I said.
“See Charlie?”
“And Celia,” I said.
“Well,” said Al, “that’s nothing exceptional. I’ve seen her too when she comes by to do some shopping. Runs along with her head down and that black shawl over it like she was being chased by something. I guess she is at that.”
“I guess she is,” I said.
“But Charlie, he’s the one. Never see him around at all. Did you tell him I’d like to see him some time?”
“Yes,” I said. “I told him.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. Celia said it was wrong for him to come here while he was in mourning.”
Al whistled softly and expressively, and twirled a forefinger at his forehead. “Tell me,” he said, “do you think it’s safe for them to be alone together like they are? I mean, the way things stand, and the way Charlie feels, there could be another case of trouble there.”
“It looked like it for a while tonight,” I said. “But it blew over.”
“Until next time,” said Al.
“I’ll be there,” I said.
Al looked at me and shook his head. “Nothing changes in that house,” he said. “Nothing at all. That’s why you can figure out all the answers in advance. That’s how I knew you’d be standing here right about now talking to me about it.”
I could still smell the dry rot of the house in my nostrils, and I knew it would take days before I could get it out of my clothes.
“This is one day I’d like to cut out of the calendar permanently,” I said.
“And leave them alone to their troubles. It would serve them right.”
“They’re not alone,” I said. “Jessie is with them. Jessie will always be with them until that house and everything in it is gone.”
Al frowned. “It’s the queerest thing that ever happened in this town, all right. The house all black, her running through the streets like something hunted, him lying there in that room with only the walls to look at, for — when was it Jessie took that fall, counsellor?”
By shifting my eyes a little I could see in the mirror behind Al the reflection of my own face: ruddy, deep jowled, a little incredulous.
“Twenty years ago,” I heard myself saying. “Just twenty years ago tonight.”
John van Druten
The Cat’s-Eye
The trouble was that he could no longer disentangle what he remembered from what he had been told and what he had read. For he had, quite naturally, read every word that he could find on the subject, ever since they first told him about it when he was fourteen. And there had been a good deal published on it; not only books on famous crimes, which almost always had a chapter on the Cawthra case, but there had been a play and two novels based on it, and a movie based on one of the novels. Jim had read or seen them all.
It was only natural, then, that after all this time his memory and his reading should have become fused, and that he should no longer know which details came from which. The cat’s-eye brooch; he knew that he remembered that, because of his childhood fear of it; but Mrs. Pamphlett, and Auntie Lilian’s lace bedspread — did he really remember them? He thought he did, but he had read about them so often now, that he could no longer really be sure. It was twenty-seven years ago, and on the other side of the world, and he had been only seven at the time.
But at least Mrs. Pamphlett and the bedspread had existed, whereas there were other things that he thought he remembered, which he could not find in the accounts. Albert, for instance. There was no mention of him anywhere; yet he was sure that he remembered him. How did he fit into the story?
There was nobody to tell him, nobody he could ask. Everyone who could have known was dead, or else four thousand miles away. Except her, Auntie Vi-Vi, and nobody knew where she was. She had disappeared entirely after the trial; he had read in some book that she had gone to America; he supposed she would have changed her name. In any case, she was lost, and it was she alone who could have told him about these things for certain.
There had been an afternoon, for example, when he was on his way home from school, and he had run into her with Albert in the street, and she had walked back with him to the house, and asked him not to say anything about it, not to mention seeing Albert, not to anyone, especially his father. She had given him sixpence as a reward for his silence, and he had had quite a time deciding what to spend it on, for he had never had so much money in one lump before. That must have happened, surely? He couldn’t have imagined a thing like that.
Here in Chicago in 1939, it was hard to believe that any of it had happened. Kilburn, the drab northwestern suburb of London, in 1912, seemed an improbable place in itself. Had he really lived in it, and gone to school in Salisbury Road, and bought Liquorice Allsorts at the sweetshop at the corner? What connection was there between that small boy and the married young insurance broker with thinning hair at thirty four, who lived in a small house in Evanston? None that he could see, except continuity, and that was the odd part of it.
He had been born in the United States, and his mother died in giving birth to him. When he was three, his father took him to England. He thought that he remembered the trip, but he was not sure. Perhaps it was the journey back that he was thinking of. In London, Auntie Lilian became his stepmother. He remembered her, or thought he did, as a tall, languid woman, with huge dreary eyes and untidy masses of black hair that seemed too heavy for her. She was given to invalidism and to lying on sofas, dressed in a tea gown, making lace; there seemed to be yards and yards of it, in his memory.
They lived in a semi-detached house, with dark, sooty evergreens in the front garden, in a long road of exactly similar dwellings. The house, in the photographs he had since seen of it in reports of the case, looked smaller than he remembered it. In the gate was his father’s brass plate, announcing: FREDERICK C. CAWTHRA, TEACHER OF MUSIC.
At the back of the house was an oblong piece of garden of which Mr. Cawthra was very fond. Jim used to potter with him on summer evenings when he did his gardening; digging plantains out of the patch of grass they called the lawn; fetching the trowel and the watering pot from the tool shed, trying to make himself useful.
Apart from those evenings, he seemed to spend most of his time in the kitchen, getting in the way of Annie, the general servant, or being regaled by her with stories of crime or illness; she had a large family which included a consumptive sister and an epileptic brother, and she loved to talk about them. The kitchen was in the basement, and there was always strong, sweet tea and cold bread-pudding.
Upstairs, the house was dark, summer and winter, for Auntie Lilian could not bear the sunlight and kept the shades drawn; from the back room came the sound of the piano, and the pupils practicing
Mr. Cawthra was a little man with a pointed beard and twinkling eyes. He was mild and jolly, and when he took Jim for walks they always had fun together. At first they used to go alone; later, Auntie Vi-Vi joined them. That was Jim’s own name for her. Her real name was Violet Delcey. According to the books, his father met her in 1911, and she came to live with them the next year. She was a cashier in the local department store, called the Bon Marché, and came to Mr. Cawthra for music lessons. She had a sweet mezzo-soprano voice, and Jim thought her singing of the Flower Song from
Here again, he was not sure what he remembered and what he had read. The books described her as a quiet, modest, gentle-spoken girl, with Titian hair; one of them, more flowery than the rest, said that she had the pale, grave face of a Madonna. Jim thought that he remembered a tip-tilted nose, which gave her face a saucy look. According to the story, she became his father’s mistress, and Auntie Lilian made scenes of violent jealousy, weeping and threatening to kill herself. Jim could almost swear now that he had heard her do so. According to the story, too, Violet Delcey felt her position very keenly and tried to break off the relationship and leave the house. Mr. Cawthra’s evidence was that they ceased to be lovers, but that he begged her to stay on because she was so good with the child.
Good with him? Had she been, Jim wondered? It seemed, as he looked back, that they were always having secrets — secrets from his father and Auntie Lilian; that they used to call at houses when they went for walks alone, and have tea with servants in the kitchen, and that sometimes there were young men present, and a lot of giggling went on; and then on the way home, Auntie Vi-Vi would take him to a tea-shop for a threepenny ice, and tell him not to say anything at home about where they had been. And there was Albert, too. Albert was a sailor.
But on the other hand he could remember her reading aloud to him from the storybooks, sitting in the big armchair while he balanced on her lap, her arm around his waist, her red hair tickling his face; and when he had earache she used to come and sit on his bed, and bring him salt-bags and sing to him until the pain left him and he went to sleep.
She wore a brooch, which she told him was a cat’s-eye, and this frightened him because he thought of the stone as being a real eye, extracted from a cat’s head and in some way petrified. Even her reassurances, when he confessed to this after a nightmare, failed to remove his fear of the brooch completely; it remained a sinister thing in his memory, even now. He could not recall her wearing any other ornament, and saw her always in his mind as very neatly dressed, in a white blouse and plain gray skirt, and a patent-leather belt at her waist. This was the Violet Delcey of recorded fact; how did the Auntie Vi-Vi of his memory square with her?
In the summer of 1912 Auntie Lilian was taken ill... ill enough to have to stay in bed, this time. It was a hot summer, and Aunt Bet and Uncle Harvey were visiting them from America. They were relatives of Jim’s own mother, childless, and they took to him at once. They stayed in a boarding-house just down the road, because the only spare room at home was the one in which Violet Delcey slept, and she was needed there to nurse and look after Auntie Lilian. Jim spent his days with them, and presently moved over to the boardinghouse altogether, because the house was upset with illness and he was in the way. After Jim had been with them a little while, Aunt Bet asked him how he would like to go back to America with them.
“We planned to adopt you almost as soon as we saw you,” she told him, when she was giving him the whole history some years afterwards. “You were so like poor Gertrude, and such an unhappy-looking little boy. It wasn’t any fit household for a child to be brought up in. We could see that, the minute we arrived, even though your Aunt Lilian was sick in bed, and Violet Delcey was taking care of her and keeping out of everybody’s way. But I caught a couple of looks between her and your father that told me all I needed to know, so we spoke to him about it — about taking you back with us, I mean — and he didn’t make any objection. Of course, at that time, we hadn’t the least idea what was going to happen.”
After a couple of weeks in London, his uncle and aunt went on a trip to Scotland, where Uncle Harvey’s family had come from, two generations back. Jim went with them, and it was while they were away that Auntie Lilian died. They hurried back to London. Jim thought he could remember the funeral, and being given seed-cake to eat, and Auntie Vi-Vi wearing black, with a large black hat that had a big pearl hatpin in it.
At any rate, it was two weeks later, so Aunt Bet told him, that they sailed for America, and after that there was the house in Rockford, Illinois, and school, and new playfellows; a new life and new interests. Everything was different. He missed his father sometimes, and when he asked for him, Aunt Bet said, “You’re our boy now,” and took him into the kitchen, where she gave him something to eat. One day she told him that his father was dead. He was surprised, and worked himself up into crying a little in bed that night. Then he forgot him.
It was when he was fourteen that Aunt Bet told him the whole story. Uncle Harvey had died two years before, and she herself was ill at the time. She must have known or guessed that she had not long to live. She sent for him to come to her room, on a sweltering summer afternoon and, sitting up in the double bed, pushing the streaks of her gray hair off her damp, red forehead, she told him as kindly as she could the facts of the Cawthra case.
“It’s a dreadful thing I’ve got to tell you, Jim, and I’ve dreaded having to do it, ever since you came to live with us. But if I don’t tell you, somebody else will, and not in a nice way, either.”
He sat on his chair by her bedside, and fidgeted. He wanted to be out with the other boys, and not in here listening to her.
“Come up on the bed, Jim,” she said, “and give me your hand.”
He seated himself on the high bed, and put his hand unwillingly into hers, which was moist and work-scarred.
“It’s about your father,” she said, “and I don’t know how to tell you now any better than I’d have done in the beginning, even though I’ve had seven years to think about it. Your father was hanged, Jim; he was hanged for murdering your Aunt Lilian; and that’s all there is to it. And you’d better know it from me than from gossiping busybodies later on.”
Father; Auntie Lilian; it was so long now since he had thought of them. Their names brought back another life: the dark house with the drawn shades, and the sound of the piano from the back room.
“It all happened that summer we were over there and brought you back with us. It’s all dead and forgotten, and I hope you’ll never think about it, any more than you can help or will have to. Uncle Harvey and I made you our own son from that time on, and gave you our name, for your poor mother’s sake, and it hasn’t anything to do with you, except that it did happen, and he was your father, God forgive him.”
She was sparing with the details, telling him only that it was poison — some kind of weed-killer, she said. Jim, with a memory of the summer evenings when they used to spray the stunted rosebushes to destroy the green-fly, could not escape a childish picture of his father turning the syringe on Auntie Lilian, or forcing her to drink from the bucket into which the syringe was dipped.
“Why did he do it?” he asked. “Why did he want to kill her?”
“It was on account of that girl. Violet Delcey. He wanted to marry her.”
Jim, who was by then beginning to be acquainted with the facts of sex, wondered whether his aunt was using a euphemism out of regard for his supposed innocence. He blushed; this part of the story affected him more than any other.
After that, Aunt Bet refused to talk about it. He knew enough, she said. When she went to the hospital to have her operation the next year, she told Jim that if anything happened to her he would find the press clippings about his father in an envelope in a secret drawer in the bureau.
“You can read them or not, as you want,” she said. “Your Uncle and I kept them for when you were old enough to know about it all.”
Nothing did happen to her then except to return from the hospital and linger another year in pain. But Jim read the clippings all the same. She had hardly left the house before he did so, kneeling on one of the green plush chairs in the living room, with the faded sheets of newspaper spread on the table cover before him. He read them greedily and guiltily, as though they were a dirty book.
For weeks he was terrified — terrified at the memory of the little house, and of his picture of his father stealing out to the toolshed that he so clearly remembered, getting the weed-killer from the shelf, and mixing it with Aunt Lilian’s medicine, carrying it up the narrow stairs to her room. Worse were the descriptions of Auntie Lilian’s symptoms, the exhumation, and the post-mortem examination. They were appalling, but they fascinated him, and he gloated over the details in his room at night...
Now, it was all a talc so old and so familiar that it was like a book that he had read too many times. The story of the murder was simple enough. Auntie Lilian was taken ill in July, 1912. The doctor attended her, and diagnosed gastritis. He prescribed medicine, and within a couple of weeks she was better. It was during those weeks that Violet Delcey nursed her. When she was out of danger, Violet went on a holiday.
This, Jim figured, must have been about the time that he himself was in Scotland with his aunt and uncle. Mr. Cawthra and his wife were alone in the house with Annie. Auntie Lilian was up again, and spending her time on the sofa, taking a tonic that the doctor had ordered her three times a day. Mr. Cawthra used to pour it out for her. Suddenly, she had a relapse; the former symptoms returned, and in three days she was dead. The doctor gave a death certificate, and the funeral took place at Kensal Green, Violet Delcey returning from her holiday specially for it. It was clear she had nothing to do with the murder.
Two weeks after the funeral (which must, Jim reckoned, have been just after he himself left for America), she returned to the house to live, chaperoned now only by Annie. Auntie Lilian’s friends were scandalized, and one of them, a Mrs. Pamphlett, paid a visit to the house to question Annie about what was going on. Finding Violet Delcey absent, she went on a tour of inspection and discovered that the girl had moved into the best bedroom, and that Mr. Cawthra was sleeping in the little room that she had occupied.
This, thought Mrs. Pamphlett, was outrageous, but what was worse was that across the bed, the marriage bed in which her poor friend had breathed her last, and in which her supplanter was now sleeping, was a lace bedspread that Auntie Lilian had finished making just before she died and had promised to Mrs. Pamphlett. She had a further conference with Annie, who had taken a dislike to Violet Delcey since she became mistress of the house. Encouraged, Annie now voiced dark suspicions; other friends joined in, and an exhumation order was applied for. Arsenic was found in large quantities in the body, and the police paid a visit to the house. They found the weedkiller in the tool shed, but they did not find Mr. Cawthra and Violet Delcey. They had fled.
They were discovered ten days later in Boulogne, living as father and daughter in a tiny
These were brief in the extreme. Mr. Cawthra persisted in his plea of guilty, all hope and interest seeming to have deserted him. “I did it,” he said in his statement to the police, “and even if I hadn’t, now that she knows I’ve been accused of it, there couldn’t be any possibility of happiness for us. She’s all I care about in life.” The rest of the statement was concerned with establishing her innocence. It was the only thought he had left. Her trial as an accessory followed his by a couple of days, and she was acquitted without witnesses being called. Three weeks later he was hanged at Pentonville.
It was Mr. Cawthra’s single-mindedness and his solicitude for her that appealed to the public imagination, turning him almost into a hero and a martyr, and giving to what would otherwise have been a sordid and commonplace story of wife-poisoning an enduring quality of tragedy and romance. It was this angle, too, that attracted the dramatist and the novelists who fictionized it; all three told the same essential story, with the same central characters: the nagging, fretful, or shrewish wife; the mild, agreeable little husband who murdered her from motives of respectability, so that he could marry the other woman whom he loved with a tenderness and an intensity that flooded the drab suburban background like a radiance; and the girl herself, meek, shrinking, and refined, inspiring by her gentleness and her devotion a depth of passion that she could never have dreamed of, dragged by it into the tragic whirlpool of the flight and the trial.
The story and its interpretation were so familiar to Jim now that, like the public at large, he accepted them without question. All that bothered him was the puzzle of how to resolve the inconsistency of the two figures — the Violet Delcey of fact and fiction, and the gay, mysterious Auntie Vi-Vi of his recollections. He would have liked to be able to assure himself that those recollections were untrustworthy; in his heart, he knew that they were not.
But in any case, it was all so long ago. So much had happened since then, to him as well as to the world. He was married to a wife who knew nothing of the case or his connection with it; he had a house, and a job, and the future to worry about; what did the dead remote past matter? It mattered only to the playwrights and the novelists, and to the compilers of books on criminology; to himself, it was hardly more, now, than would have been a mystery story he had read in his childhood and left without reaching the solution, in a volume long since lost and out of print.
And then one afternoon he saw her. It was in a department store in St. Louis, which he was visiting on business. She was standing at a counter a few feet away from him, and at the first glance he was certain that it was she. She had aged, changed, and filled out, and her Titian hair had faded to a pale ginger, but the tilt of her nose, the discontented, down-drawn line of her mouth, and the flat, level setting of her eyes in her face took him back suddenly across the years to his little room in the house in Kilburn, where she used to come and sit on his narrow bed and sing to him.
The next moment, doubt assailed him. Was it really she? How could he be sure? He could not possibly remember, after all this time. He stared at her, and his doubt grew. He was crazy to think of it; it was ridiculous to suppose that he would know her any more. And then, as he was about to abandon the idea, she turned towards him, and he saw that she was wearing a cat’s-eye brooch, the brooch that frightened him in childhood.
Jim felt as though his heart had stopped for a moment; then it began to beat violently, choking him in his throat. She had passed him by, now, and was making for the street. In a moment she would be lost to him. He hurried after her, leaving his order uncompleted at the counter. As he went, he tried to think how he should greet her. If he said: “Aren’t you Violet Delcey?” she would be certain to deny it.
He came abreast with her at the entrance to the store, and, as she was about to pass him, he said casually — as casually as he could for the excitement that was throttling him: “Hello, Auntie Vi-Vi!”
She started violently, and looked around to see who had spoken. He was smiling at her, with a nerve twitching uncontrollably at the corner of his mouth.
“Were you speaking to me?” she asked.
The moment she spoke, he knew her voice, English, and pseudo-refined, with impure vowel sounds. He had not heard a voice like that for years.
“Yes. Don’t you remember me?” he said.
She looked at him for a moment and then dropped her eyes, assuming the indignation of a woman who is being accosted.
“No, I don’t,” she answered, and started to move on.
He caught at her arm.
“It’s Jim — Jim Cawthra,” he said, speaking the name he had not borne for nearly thirty years.
And now she turned to him again, her eyes widening, and her mouth falling open in surprise.
“Jim!” she breathed in amazement. “Not little Jim?”
“That’s me,” he said.
He could see that she was trembling as she tried to laugh and to treat the situation as a social coincidence.
“Well!” she said, but her voice was shaking, too.
“Can’t we go somewhere and talk?” he asked, urgently. “I want to talk to you.”
They went to a place near the store, choosing it because it was dark and empty, and seated themselves in a far corner. Violet Delcey ordered a banana split. She had put on a good deal of weight in the years; she was plump now, and matronly, and her face had lost the delicate contours that he remembered. It was the face of a resentful, self-indulgent woman.
“How did you recognize me?” she asked. “You were only a little boy when I last saw you. I’ve changed, too. How did you know me?”
“By that.” He pointed to the brooch.
She squinted down at it.
“Oh, that!” she said. “Well, fancy your remembering that!”
“It used to scare me, don’t you remember? I used to think it was a real cat’s eye.”
“Did you?” she said. “How silly! I don’t know why I still wear it. It isn’t very pretty. Habit, I suppose. It’s sort of silly, too, seeing it was that that really gave the show away before.”
She gave a little laugh, and he stared at her. This could not be Violet Delcey speaking. But it could be Auntie Vi-Vi; he remembered that laugh: it recalled to him the afternoons in other people’s kitchens and the giggling conversations with the servants.
“Do you live here in St. Louis?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’m not telling,” she said. “I’m not telling you anything about me now.”
“I wouldn’t give you away.”
“Well, that’s as may be,” she said, and the phrase struck him as odd and old-fashioned. “But I’m not taking any chances. What I was, or used to be, is all over, and no one knows about it. I wouldn’t have come here with you now, except that — well, you’re different. You were only a kid, and it’s nice to get a chance to talk about old times, just for once.”
“Do you think about it — much?” he asked. It was something he had long wondered about.
Again she shook her head.
“Not really,” she said. “No. Now and then, of course, I suppose you can’t help it, but it doesn’t do you any good.”
She took a spoonful of whipped cream. He could not think of what to ask her, what to say next. What did he want to know? “Was it awful?” That was really what he wanted to say, but it sounded such a silly question. Besides, what could she answer? Yes or no — neither would take him any further. He wanted to know what it had meant to her — what it felt like to have lived through all that she had lived through and to have come out on the other side, as she had done; but he could think of no way of putting the question so that she would understand it.
“Will you tell me about it?” he asked, at length. It was the best he could do.
“What? What do you want to know?”
He could not say. He thrust for a question of fact, rather than of point of view.
“Did you ever suspect what he had done? He never
“No, of course he didn’t. He didn’t want me to know. That was the whole point. He knew I wouldn’t have anything to do with him if I did.”
“But when you were looking after her — the first time she was sick? He’d already started then, hadn’t he?”
“Oh, that was only to make her ill enough to have the doctor in. For the sake of the death certificate the next time, you know. At least, that’s how I figured it out afterwards. I suppose there was weedkiller in the medicine he used to pour out and give me to take up to her. But he always used to pour it out himself, and never let me do it. Just so that I couldn’t be mixed up in it, I expect. He was always very thoughtful of me.”
“Did you love him?” The questions were beginning to come of their own accord now.
Violet Delcey stared at him.
“Love him?” she repeated, incredulously. “How could I have loved him? He was old enough to be my father. But he was always respectful to me. And kind. You wouldn’t believe how kind he was. Of course, he was crazy about me.”
“But you
She looked offended. “Mistress? I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
There was no point in pursuing that.
“When you went away together — when you ran away — what did you think?” he asked. “He didn’t tell you then what was wrong?”
“No. Of course, I knew there was trouble. I caught that Mrs. What’s-her-name in the kitchen one day, talking to the skivvy. That girl had always hated me, and taken Mrs. Cawthra’s side against me, and I guessed that she’d been saying things, so it wasn’t any surprise to me when Freddie came and said there was a lot of gossip going on, and that it would be a good idea if we were to go away for a while till it had blown over. He said we could get married on the Continent. We were
“What... what do you mean?” Jim stammered.
“Well, wouldn’t
“And what did
“Oh, he cried,” she said, lightly. “Said he couldn’t live without me, and if I’d only give him a little time, he’d seen if he couldn’t do something about a divorce, or something. So I said I’d give him three months, and after that I’d have to give Mr. Joplin his answer.”
“Mr. Joplin?”
“Yes, don’t you remember Joplin’s, the paper shop? Old Joplin had been after me for ages.”
A forgotten cupboard opened in Jim’s memory. He saw a tall, stooping figure with thin streaks of hair plastered on a shiny scalp, steel-rimmed spectacles, and a prominent Adam’s apple, giving him the pink, paper “Books for the Bairns” in exchange for his weekly penny. Old Joplin; he hadn’t thought of him for years.
“Were you going to marry
“Well, I might have. He had a nice little business, and he was crazy about me, and I wasn’t getting any younger. That’s what I told Freddie, and he saw my point.”
“When was that?”
“Oh, about a month before she was taken queer.”
It was odd to hear the old expressions again.
“It wasn’t till we were in France that I really began to put two and two together, but by that time there wasn’t anything I could do. Of course, I knew there was nothing against me, but it did look bad. I was scared to death of the trial, because you never know how they can twist things, those lawyers, but
She looked at her watch.
“Here, I’ve got to go,” she said.
“Not yet,” Jim pleaded.
“I must.” She began gathering up her things.
“Tell me just one thing more,” he asked.
“What?”
“Who was Albert?” That memory had to be cleared up.
She looked at him blankly.
“Albert?” she repeated. “I don’t remember any Albert.”
“He was a sailor.”
Recognition came into her face.
“Oh, Albert,” she said, laughing. “Fancy you remembering him. Yes. Albert — what
“Who was he?”
“He was a friend of mine. He treated me very badly, Albert did. That was the time I first started going to Freddie for singing lessons. I was having trouble with Albert, and I remember one day when I had a headache, it all sort of got too much for me, and I began crying, and Freddie tried to comfort me. That’s how it all started, really. I mean, he sort of asked me questions, and I told him all about it, and that’s what really started him getting keen on me, I think. Funny, I’d forgotten all about Albert.”
“But you went on seeing him. I remember meeting you with him, and your telling me not to say anything about it at home.”
“Well, I didn’t want to upset Freddie, when he was being so kind to me,” she said. “I was supposed to have been all through with Albert, and I didn’t want to worry Freddie, knowing that I wasn’t. I remember wondering whether I’d hear from Albert when the trouble came, but of course I didn’t. He was a bad lot, really, but he was very good-looking, and he had a way with him. I wonder what’s become of him.”
A thought seemed to strike her suddenly, and she smiled, looking down at the cat’s-eye brooch.
“What is it?” Jim asked. “Have you thought of something?”
“I’ve just remembered,” she said. “It was Albert gave me this brooch. Funny, my forgetting that!”
She fingered the brooch, and then unpinned it, taking it out and looking at it as though she had not seen it for a long time. It was a meager little thing, Jim thought; queer that it should have seemed sinister to him all these years.
“Yes,” she said, as she replaced it. “He said it was good luck, or something. Well, I dare say it has been. I’ve been lucky. Did I tell you I was married, by the way?”
“No,” said Jim.
“Oh, yes, I’ve been married nearly twenty years,” she said. “He really does very well. We’re getting one of the new Plymouths next month. I haven’t done badly for myself. There is just one drawback, though, to no one knowing who I am.”
“What’s that?” Jim Cawthra asked.
“Well,” she said, a smug and almost coy look coming into her face. “You see, they don’t know, and looking at me now, no one would believe that I was once good enough for a man to commit a murder and get himself hung for me. But,” she sighed philosophically, “I suppose you can’t have everything.”
Rufus King
Ride With the Wind
The house was old, and Madam Tuffman was old too. Her title fell under the curious and stilted reaching for correctness which her circle in the community considered so important, perhaps, because they were not quite sure of themselves. As it was, she was a widow, and her son Ernest had married a Bertha Wollodon, who had become Mrs. Tuffman; and Mrs. Tuffman had been dowagered into Madam.
This amused her considerably, and her alive dark eyes would become more lively still at its use, because she would remember the days that were not (to her) so very far ago, when she and her pioneer contemporaries were so active with the processes of rearing and feeding and living that straining after social minutiae was scoffed at.
She had had two daughters and four sons; and all of them were dead except Ernest, who was the one black sheep of the lot: a charming and lowering example of the truism that the good die young.
Her house was a roomy and authentic specimen of the clapboard-and-fretwork blight and had originally possessed extensive grounds, the largest portion of which had since been absorbed by the Laurel Falls Country Club, and appropriately greened and hazarded into links. It retained, however, several acres of this hilled and valleyed section of Ohio, and you could have a charming view of the town itself, and segmentary glimpses of the Onega River, from either of its frightening turrets.
Its furnishings had not advanced with the day. Its lighting fixtures were still amazed to find their pipes wired to terminals which flowered into the black magic of incandescent bulbs, and as an offshoot from the parlor, it possessed that extinct adjunct to the wooden Indian, a cozy corner.
Slight twinges in her joints had made Madam Tuffman feel — she had said — that she was getting on. They had started shortly under a year ago, and she had instigated a series of monthly professional calls on the part of Dr. Colin Starr: a comfort she could well afford, for Edgar, her late husband, had left her enormously rich, from a knack on his part in the manufacture of box-toed shoes. Colin’s father had been Madam Tuffman’s physician until his death, following which she had called upon Colin during the rare moments when she had not felt quite well.
When the dangerous turn of events forced him to look back over his files, Starr later remembered his first visit for this specific ailment of Madam Tuff man very clearly. She had received him in dark bombazine in her private upstairs living-room, which was freighted with shadow-boxed landscapes and tufted plush.
The afternoon had been a Wednesday, the 11th of September, and leaves were tending toward their first dark flush of autumn. Madam Tuffman had thought of Starr as a vigorous breath of the outdoor air as he crossed the stuffy room toward the large bay window where she sat; and she had caught his electric vitality as he joined her. She experienced, too, a tonic quality just from his bodily strength and homely features, and she regretted the necessity of withdrawing her fragile fingers from his comforting hand.
She said, “It’s nothing but twinges, Doctor,” and gestured tentatively toward several anatomical locations.
Starr smiled at her reassuringly and talked nonessentials while he took her blood-pressure and listened to her heart and gravely requested permission to examine her tongue.
All was as it should be for a woman of her age, which he knew to be seventy-four. He thought: “I wonder why she really sent for me, what she really wants?” He discussed her diet, or rather her total lack of any, and suggested that she cut down a little on wine: a dry Tokay she was partial to, having found its use less deleterious than water. She accepted the suggestion reservedly. He wrote out an innocuous prescription for the tweaks and began the courteous preliminaries of taking his leave; but he did not stand up, because he suddenly caught a sense of anxiety on her part for him to stay.
She said: “Have I told you that Ernest is home?”
“I had heard.”
“Then you know that he got married while in Hawaii? I like her: Bertha. She’s a little thing. Not anemic, but, well, not robust. She was born in Honolulu. Her parents were English, and ranched either pineapples or sugar.”
Madam Tuffman’s lively eyes grew veiled. She grimaced faintly and made a small deprecatory gesture; then she said: “My presence at the wedding was entirely by cable. I expected something exotic. I suppose you always do in connection with places like Hawaii. Not at all the sort of girl that Bertha really is. I prepared.”
“Prepared?”
“For the homecoming.” Madam Tuffman leaned forward and said: “I wanted to keep him here. To keep both of them here. I tried to arrange their room as a bridge, as a link.”
“Between the Islands and Ohio?”
“Yes, Doctor. After Edgar made his money, we did a little looting of Europe. That was a long time ago, before the turn of the century. It was a magpie rather than a grand tour. The attic is still cluttered with cases that have never been opened. I remembered certain things, and thought that they would fit.”
“For the room?”
“Yes. There were some good lacquer pieces, an excellent China rug, all very vivid in vermillions and heady tones. Then there was the paper for contrast.”
“Wallpaper?”
“A hand-blocked, lush design done by an artist in London’s Soho. I think he was mad. Both of them — Edgar to buy it, and the artist to make it in the first place. The design is a plethora of fantastic huge leaves of the most vivid green. I remember that the color glowed from a single candle lighted in the studio. The artist was especially proud of the fact that he had mixed the pigments himself.” Madam Tuffman grimaced again, adding: “So we unpacked the rolls from their case and put it up.”
“It was not a — success?”
She stared at Starr for a thoughtful moment.
“I don’t know. Bertha was very kind. She professed to be delighted. Well — I suppose it will require a certain amount of time for her to get acclimated. They’ve only been here a few weeks.”
“Then they have decided to stay?”
“I think yes. I hope yes. But I still find it somewhat unbelievable in Ernest, this sudden urge toward nesting. He resembles his Great-uncle Stuart. Both of them ran away from home at the age of sixteen. Stuart rolled on straight through his seventies, eventually dying of exhaustion at the Hotel Bruschini in Tamave, Madagascar. Well, Ernest is only thirty, and still — well, here he is.”
“Perhaps because he is married?”
“Yes, Madam Tuffman said, there might be an answer there. Great-uncle Stuart had shied at altars like a sensitive colt. But marriage, just as marriage, scarcely seemed ponderable enough as an anchor for such a rolling-stone as Ernest. She knew Ernest so very well. She loved him so much, perhaps because he was her youngest and, for his sins, the only one of her children who was left. She supposed that with time she would grow to love Bertha a good deal too. Her lively dark eyes fixed Starr sharply, and she said: ‘I feel no jealousy, Doctor. It isn’t that.’ ”
“I’m sure it isn’t, Mrs. Tuffman.”
“And it isn’t that Bertha doesn’t want to love me. I think she does. I think she is uncertain about something — about happiness. Will you meet her before you go?”
“I should like to very much.”
Madam Tuffman stood up.
“We will join them in the cellar.”
And Madam Tuffman explained, as they walked down waxed walnut stairs carpeted with an imperishable Turkey red, that Ernest was currently absorbed with photography, and was planning to open a studio in Laurel Falls and make it his life work.
Ernest had had, she went on, so many life works, starting as a boy with raising squabs, birds which had gradually been consumed by the family circle in ratio as his interest in the pursuit had waned. Chemistry, magic, portrait-painting, a bewildering and swift succession of interests that had culminated in a passion for the sea at sixteen, when he had run away and had shipped out of Boston on an Atlantic Fruit Company freighter for the West Indies. He had seemed to tire of his enthusiasms so quickly, which was why Madam Tuffman didn’t know about this one.
The darkroom occupied a portion of the large cellar usually reserved as a storage place for winter vegetables. Pale lemon light through a safety filter left it vague, as things are vague when you open your eyes while swimming under the sea. The faces of both of them were washed with the tint lightly, both bending over a tray. Starr had never met either, and Ernest Tuffman’s good looks and magnificent build registered immediately, distracting his attention from Bertha, whom Ernest’s appearance and the safety filter rendered wraithlike and ethereally obscure.
It was a strange meeting, strange beyond even its setting, and brief. Ernest was glad to be home, very satisfied at settling down with a wife, with a background, with a mother, and with an ancestral estate, at last. Starr sensed that all this gladness was implied by Ernest, rather than being baldly stated, as if it were a wish rather than a reality: a generally benign condition of affairs which Ernest hoped, very much, would come true.
In contrast, Bertha seemed impelled by a peculiar eagerness, a directness, to impress Starr and (through him) Madam Tuffman and Ernest as well. She was emphatic that she did not miss Hawaii at all, that this absolute uprooting of her life — her years couldn’t, Starr decided, have been more than twenty — and a subsequent transplanting several thousands of miles away with a continent and a vast space of Pacific Ocean in between, was entirely to her liking.
She touched with earnest graciousness on the link: the room which Madam Tuffman had so considerately arranged with its bright lacquers and hand-blocked wallpaper leaves so lush in their vivid green. The thoughtfulness of it. The consoling accuracy of its effect. A home away from home. To awake every morning and lie there absorbing that brilliant emerald paradise. Had Doctor Starr heard that an artist in London had conceived it ages ago? Doctor Starr had.
She was, too, insistently enchanted with Laurel Falls; shortly, she said, Ernest would renew his boyhood ties and they would get around a little socially, and would start to entertain, as Ernest’s mother wished them to. Then she showed Starr a print, lifting it from the fixing-bath, of a portrait which Ernest had taken, Starr reflectively observed, on an eight-by-ten sheet, of an eye, a wen, an ear.
Ernest said brusquely, “Our gardener,” and Starr said, “Remarkable,” and Bertha said brightly, “It settles so, don’t you think, on the things that are really important?”
Madam Tuffman said nothing except (in reply to Starr) goodbye.
A month later Madam Tuffman phoned again. She told Starr’s secretary, Miss Wadsworth, that the tweak seemed still to be there and she would appreciate it if Dr. Starr would call. On his way to this second visit Starr still considered that a mild arthritic or rheumatic condition might be setting in, but when he heard again a listing of the twinges and their obscure locations, he dismissed the probability from his thoughts. He wanted, as was his custom, to be perfectly frank and tell Madam Tuffman that she was wasting both her money and his time, but the strength of some deep emotion which lay beneath the liveliness of her dark eyes prevented him.
So he suggested that she give his former prescription a further chance, being uncomfortably aware that she appreciated its pathetic innocuity but was grateful for its value as an excuse (yes, he thought, that was it) to bring him into the house. He realized later that it was then, at that moment, when a tacit understanding sprang up between them that the twinges would remain, and that he would dose Madam Tuffman with the most shameless simples whenever she wanted him to come.
She said after this arrangement was so psychically settled upon: “You will think me a doting parent, Doctor. Unfortunately, I am. A man once read the bumps on Ernest’s head when he was a child, and said that there was nothing that Ernest couldn’t do. Sort of a Carlylean possession of a fixed capacity which could be turned with equal success into any channel Ernest might choose. The latest proof seems to be golf. Ernest never played before, but he has practically lived on the links during the past month — he and Bertha.”
“And photography? The studio in town?”
“Oh, that! At least we can store winter apples and potatoes in the cellar again. It seems that Ernest is already much better at the game than Bertha, who has golfed for years in Honolulu.”
“Evidently a natural talent. I wish I possessed it.”
“In fact, Ernest is almost as good as that Mabel Hoplin divorcée; and she, I understand, approaches being professional. I continue to refer to golf.”
“They play together?”
Madam Tuffman looked vague.
“Bertha tells me so.” Her eyes were once more penetratingly lively. “Bertha wanted him to. It seems that the change in climate has made her tire easily.”
“That’s a comforting thing about climates. You can attribute any ailment whatever to them.”
“So I have found.” Madam Tuffman fingered an inconsequential handkerchief deeply bordered with Brussels lace. “Are you by any chance golfing at the club this afternoon, Doctor?”
He said, after a moment: “Yes, Mrs. Tuffman. I am.”
Starr did some telephoning after he left, and managed to arrange a foursome for five o’clock. He reached the clubhouse shortly before four. He found Bertha Tuffman seated on its glass-enclosed southern veranda reading a book for which she had made a plain paper dust-cover. He suggested cocktails or tea.
“Tea, if you don’t mind, Doctor.” Starr gave the order to a waiter, and Bertha said: “I simply don’t drink. It’s a habit that’s missing in me constitutionally... I do like your course here.”
“Have you finished for the day?”
“I found nine holes enough.” Her voice stayed charmingly bright. “I’m continually expecting Ernest to divorce me for a dynamo. He’s indefatigable.”
Starr equably shook out the climatic change between Honolulu and Ohio, and Bertha gratefully agreed that her lessening spryness was, of course, due to that. Shortly, on almost any tomorrow, she would be feeling herself again. Not that she was ill. Her laughter at this absurdity was gay and clear. She would concede brief moments of nostalgia, moments when she would lie on the rattan
Bertha said, again, that she wanted to live. Leaving the statement, this time, quite flat. Then she stood up abruptly and said, while her smile grew set and strained, that she would be right back.
Starr sat and observed through glass panes the eighteenth hole, toward which Ernest Tuffman and Mabel Hoplin (the
Miss Sweetloss said, huskily: “Why the dust-cover, Doctor? Brushing up on some extracurricular techniques with the knife?”
Starr broke loose from his abstraction and stood up. He saw that Miss Sweetloss had opened the book which Bertha had been reading. He recognized the work as one of the better anthologies on famous real-life murders. He managed to smile back at Miss Sweetloss as he took the book from her hand.
“Just a busman’s holiday, Miss Sweetloss — among the cyanides and the more scarlet fields of human behavior...”
The successive visits did not, at the time, seem significant. Starr missed meeting Bertha or Ernest during all of them, as both were involved in a full swing of social activities. Over and above their fictional base of twinges, a
Madam Tuffman pointedly made something special of the fact, as if she wanted Starr to realize that it was not an ordinary love in just an affectionate or a biological sense, but that it had a devotional flavor, like a half-portion of the more notable examples such as
But then, you never could tell about Ernest. Madam Tuffman had never been able to and she doubted whether anyone else ever could, even a wife. He lowered so, like thunder, and then could be gentle as a zephyr-ean coo from a dove. She supposed it was the trouble with having loose dynamite in his veins instead of blood The lamb!
Golf, of course, had long been discarded as an accomplished fact, and Mabel Hoplin had as cavalierly been discarded with it. The latest flame on the horizon was a sloop. Something in the nature of Jack London’s
It was a midsummer visit which definitely served as an overture to the affair’s desperate end.
Madam Tuffman believed that Bertha was going to have a child. She intended to bring Bertha to Starr’s office on the following day, for his opinion. From her own exhaustive fund of personal experience Madam Tuffman was satisfied with the symptoms, which included, among other trivia, moody fits of a temperamental melancholy. Bertha had increasingly kept to her room, the complimentary papering of which Madam Tuffman now considered a mistake, for it seemed to be getting on Bertha’s nerves. She had overheard Bertha muttering fiercely to herself: “The leaves
Oddest, she thought, was Bertha’s fixity of diet (again the temperamental quirk) which leaned almost exclusively toward eggs, boiled, and served at the table in their shells. These Bertha ate with bread; and as for liquids, the girl drank nothing at all during meals, but would refresh herself afterward (Madam Tuffman had determined this from observation) with plain water from a tap.
Finally, when not involved with one of her fits of melancholia, Bertha would swing to an extreme of hectic gayety, or would disclose her devotion for Ernest with depths that were embarrassingly uncomfortable both for Ernest and for Madam Tuffman. As for what a baby would do — well, what would it do? Would it bind Ernest to his wife, to his home? To any sort of normal regularity? Or would it gall as a second chain?
Starr did, on this occasion, meet Bertha. She was standing on the porch as he left the house, with her attractive small face very clear in the light of a declining sun. He was shocked at her appearance. It had a subtly unhealthy look which was significant to his practiced eye. Bertha brightened as she saw him.
“It’s good to see you again, Doctor.”
“Thank you. I’ve missed you, too.”
“We’ve been involved. In full swing. I know now what the tail of a comet must feel like.”
“I’m told that a sloop is the very latest.”
“It was — but always, Doctor, something new; now it is dancing. Ernest never danced in Honolulu.”
“What changed his mind?”
“The ties of his youth changed it for him, I suspect. All blondes.”
Bertha brightly ran through a brief roster, all of whom Starr knew, and all of whom were definitely blondes. She shook her russet hair and said: “It has made me thoughtful on the subject of peroxide.”
“Too permanent, I’d say. I’d favor a wig. Remember that you’re dealing with a highly changeable substance.”
“Yes, I do remember, Doctor.”
“You’re coming to my office tomorrow?”
He had rarely, he reflected, seen such a swift, evanescent flash of fear.
“Ernest’s mother knows about the baby, Doctor?”
“She suspects. Does Ernest?”
“No. And please — I shall ask his mother to say nothing, and let me ask it of you, Doctor — to say nothing to him.”
“Of course.”
“Thank you, Doctor...”
Starr assured Bertha gravely as to the baby, while he thought: “There is a horror in this that strikes more deeply than I can see. I think she knows. That is the truly damnable part about it — I think she knows.” He felt Madam Tuffman’s lively old eyes turned on him watchfully from her armchair beside a window in the office. They were as deliberate in their fixity as Bertha’s eyes were evasive.
He said to Bertha: “Concerning your diet—”
“Yes, Doctor?”
“I understand you lean somewhat exclusively toward eggs?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
He studied her averted face for a while.
“Served, I believe, in their shells?”
“A habit of childhood, Doctor.”
“You eat just eggs?”
“No — plain bread — no butter, Doctor.”
Starr smiled at Madam Tuffman and said: “You have kept your house so much in period that I suppose even the butter is still molded with wooden presses into individual pats?”
Madam Tuffman’s eyes grew impersonal.
“Rosettes, a clover, and one rather rare one, Doctor, of a little cow.”
Starr turned again to Bertha.
“How long have you been restricting yourself to this diet?”
“I think since I’ve known about the baby.”
Madam Tuffman said sharply: “No, longer — much longer.”
“Perhaps. Yes, Doctor, for a while longer.”
“Hasn’t the monotony of it affected your appetite?”
“I’m never really hungry.”
(Faint fever, lassitude, small appetite, a failure of the general health, a slight wasting of the body — it could be any one of a number of known diseases, any of the impressionable eccentricities precedent on having a child. And still he knew, and she knew — Starr felt it imperative to talk with her alone. It was well within the bounds of reason that his intuition should be entirely wrong, although he did not believe so for a minute. There
“I’m going to suggest that you go to the hospital for observation, Mrs. Tuffman.”
“But Doctor — I mean, surely it won’t be for many months?”
“No, but I am dissatisfied with your general condition.”
Bertha looked at Starr suddenly with a strange hostility.
“I think that I prefer not to. You mustn’t think me rude. I think I would prefer to stay at home, Doctor.”
He observed her thoughtfully for quite a while.
“Naturally, the decision rests with you.”
Her hostility faded slowly. Relief took its place. Then fright...
Starr’s chance came later in the afternoon of the same day. The Bucklands were giving a garden party for their dahlias, or rather Nina Buckland was (Jock thought them an overblown bore), and the occasion was one of the town’s inescapable yearly events.
The garden was charming and filled with dahlias and people. Starr found Bertha in a distant corner, sitting alone in a yew niche on a marble bench beneath the perpetual smirk of a cast bronze faun.
He said: “I’m glad I found you.”
For an instant he thought that she was going to leave him; but her smile came shortly, more artificial than he had ever noticed it to be, and she said: “Sit down, Doctor.”
“Thank you. I’ve just left Ernest looking speculatively at the dahlias. Do you suppose they’ll supplant the dancing as his newest life’s work?”
“Possibly. Although I’m afraid they’re not instantaneous enough.”
“Results must spring full-blown?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“You’re twenty years old, Mrs. Tuffman. I’m forty-three. That gives me the edge on you, not only as a physician, for I can exert the paternal touch. I do it rather well.”
“I’m sure you do.”
Starr could feel her hardening against him swiftly, and hostility again setting in beneath her pleasant outer manner.
“There is this about life, Mrs. Tuffman: We so frequently defeat our own ends by the very methods which we use to attain them. You cannot be a constant mirror, and remain yourself. And men tire rapidly of their own reflections.”
“Echoes at last become hollow?”
“Yes. We’re putting it in fancy language, but I know that you know what I mean. I’d like to be frank. I am your physician. I want to help you.”
Bertha’s voice grew older:
“It is true that I have tried to be all things to Ernest, in the way that he is all things to himself. There are some things you cannot cage. Birds and wild beasts, yes, if you wish. Bars will hold them. But not Ernest. He’s the wind. You must ride with the wind, Doctor.” She reached her hand out suddenly, and he was surprised at its strength as she closed it over his. “Ride for as long as, and wherever, it may blow. I’ve no longer any foothold on the ground. From the moment when Ernest asked me to be his wife, I’ve had none. I want none, Doctor. Believe that, please — I want none.”
Starr found himself up against as complete a frustration here, as earlier in his office. The ripe old wisdom of Madam Tuffman recurred to him, and he thought how clearly she had cut to the matter’s root when she had remarked that Bertha’s love for Ernest had surpassed all affectionate or mere biological bounds, and that it was swamped in devotional seas of the more notably classical sorts.
He could understand this very well, under a fabled twist of a mouse being courted and wedded by a handsome lion: a state of affairs that was bound to upset not only the mouse’s head but her entire emotional fabric too. She would try every song in her meager repertory to make last, for a little longer, that strange initial enchantment, while living in the most desperate sort of fear that her melodies would be recognized in their true categories as mouselike squeaks.
He said absently: “It is not always good to love so much.”
“I don’t care.”
“I know you don’t. You can’t help it.”
“I’ll never try to hold him.”
“You have a good deal of wisdom, Mrs. Tuffman.”
“And you have a lot of understanding, Doctor. I couldn’t be more commonplace, for anyone like Ernest, and still he chose me. He chose me literally, Doctor, from all the world.” She thought this over broodingly for a moment, and then she said: “I suppose the Islands helped.”
“The general setting? Romance? No, I think he must have known plenty of that. I imagine he’s pretty well dulled to pale moons and the scents of strange flowers.”
She said fiercely: “Sometimes I lie up there in that travesty and wonder.”
“Travesty?”
“Our room. Its walls mock me. Every vivid painted leaf on them seems to cry out: ‘But for me, but for me, you never would have got him.’ There
“Plenty of them. They’re easily got rid of.”
“I’ve torn at it. Torn at that wallpaper with my fingernails — and then found myself doing it, and stopped doing it!”
He said to her earnestly: “Will you grant me permission to give you a more complete examination than I did today? I sha’n’t suggest hospitalization again, believe me. Just in my office.”
Bertha’s voice, after a frightened second, was explosive in its sharpness:
It was impossible to efface her from his thoughts. Starr drove more slowly, then more slowly still. He felt compelled to return to her and have it out. To use force, if need be, if there were no end in persuasion. He turned the car back toward the Bucklands’. He saw the roadster leaving their entrance gates as he neared them. He recognized Bertha in the driving-seat, alone.
She did not go in the direction of the Tuffman estate, but headed north along the highway with a speed which Starr clocked at seventy. Seven miles out of town, she forked toward the right onto a country road which led to the river. Starr decreased his distance and forked too. A half mile of abominable ruts through a copse of white oak opened suddenly on a clearing, at the farther edge of which a dilapidated inn sat on weary haunches by the river-bank. Bertha’s roadster was parked near the door.
Starr was dimly aware of having heard of the place: a late-at-night rendezvous of somewhat indifferent character. He thought that someone had once told him that you could go there and they didn’t bother you, about names, about who was with you, about anything at all like that. Also (it was coming back) a small public dining-room was rarely used. More intimate rooms-for-two were, among other things, a solace for the inn’s general inaccessibility.
It was intensely quiet; and curtained windows stared across the clearing at Starr blankly. The rendezvous (if it were a rendezvous) was the last thing in the world which he had expected. Still, there was no other car, and Bertha had been alone. More than anything else, this circumstance added a note to the case which absorbed him, and frightened him too. From the speed with which Bertha had driven here, Starr expected another car momentarily, with that other member without whom no rendezvous can be complete.
Fifteen minutes passed, but no other car came. The hush continued with only the faint sound of the river and the whispered stirring of restless insects. Starr crossed the clearing on foot and opened the inn’s front door. An empty foyer of the dreariest nature faced him, with shut doors to right and left, and a steep narrow stairway leading to the floor above. He opened doors, and found an empty dining-room, and a taproom where a moth-eaten deer’s head above the bar alone suggested life.
He went up the narrow stairs. Doors lined either side of a hall, all closed but the farthest on the left, which stood ajar. He walked to it.
Bertha, seated at a table, was eating steak. Almost with the ferocity of a starving animal, she was lifting it from the plate to her mouth: large pieces of the red meat. No bread, no vegetables, nothing else at all on the table, except a pitcher of rich milk.
Starr’s throat constricted harshly as he watched her, and as he thought: “She’s stuffing herself, alone in this dismal place, believing herself loveless, loving so much, in the face of a death at the hands of the one whom she loves, or of his mother — far from home, savoring nothing, just filling her stomach up in order to be with him for a little longer.”
Starr stood it for a moment, that wolf-like, desperately urgent quality in the way she ate, then he entered the room.
“All this is ended, Mrs. Tuffman.”
Her reaction was instinctive, clouded by the depths into which she had fallen.
“I must get back before he misses me.”
“Mrs. Tuffman! We are going back together. Ernest will come with us.”
Bertha saw him now, and said fiercely: “Why do you persecute me? Why won’t you leave me alone?”
“Come with me, please.”
Bertha stood up, and her frailness seemed to stiffen into steel, strengthening her into a replica in miniature of the magnificent animal who had married her.
“Doctor Starr, if you say anything about having found me here, I shall call you a liar.”
“You are making this very difficult.”
“You know the character of this place, Doctor. If you voice your conclusions to anyone —
Starr went to her and placed his hands upon her shoulders, feeling their stiffness, the faint shivering trembles that ran through them.
“You have fought enough. Your rendezvous here was with food. Steak is no antidote for poison.”
The word was out. Stark between them. Stripped of further conjecture or evasions. Bertha’s strength had a bubble quality about its swift collapse, and she was limp. Starr could scarcely hear her as she said: “Doctor — what shall I do—”
He still held her, warming her coldness, her sudden utter indifference to anything left in living. A cough was coughed discreetly behind them in the doorway; and a voice, surprisingly soft when you realized the hulk that it came from, said: “Excuse
Starr smiled down at her and said: “I can promise you again, Mrs. Tuffman, that all this is ended. We must return at once to the house. There is a certain thing which I must know.”
Bertha refused to smile back.
“No matter which one it is, no matter if it’s Ernest’s mother, Doctor, I don’t want to live.”
“That decision is no longer in your hands.”
He refused to let Bertha drive alone; he left his car parked at the inn and got into her roadster, taking the wheel. He wanted to say to Bertha definitely, to say it now: “Here is what I think. Here is this damnable thought that has always been in the back of my mind, and which has just crystallized into a possible fact. Let me tell you of a waiting murderer, who slept, and who waited for your coming to wake up.” But he dared not — not until he was sure. For always, in the back of his head, was Madam Tuffman’s dictum: “You never could tell about Ernest.”
There remained, because of this dictum, a grimness to Starr’s thoughts, and he drove in silence to the Bucklands’, where Nina Buckland told him that Ernest had left. With one of the (dancing) blondes. Nina’s friendly eyes showed plainly that she thought it a trifle queer: Bertha’s solitary departure, Ernest’s not so solitary departure, then Bertha’s return with Starr. But she smiled socially, and swam back among her guests and dahlias.
They found Ernest waiting with Madam Tuffman in the full nightmare of her parlor. Early dinner guests were imminent, and Madam Tuffman was in wine velvet, complete with bosom and train, while a broad diamond choker concealed the valleys of her throat. She rose and held out a hand.
“So good of you to bring her back, Doctor.” Her lively dark eyes turned upon Bertha. “We were worried, dear.”
Ernest said heavily: “Better dress, Bertha. You knew we were dining early.”
Bertha looked at Starr, and he said: “Yes, do. I have some things to discuss with Ernest and his mother.” He watched her leave the room; then he said to Madam Tuffman: “May I use the telephone, please?”
“Certainly, Doctor.”
He left them in their curious silence and went into the hall. He called his office.
He said to his secretary, Miss Wadsworth, that if she didn’t mind, he would like to return to the Middle Ages, or at least to some points somewhat back. Would she gather some hydrogen sulphide T.S., some litmus — yes, litmus — and the small charcoal grill that was used for steak? Would she embark at once with them in a taxi and hurry to the Tuffmans’? He wanted to make an immediate if primeval test, without the use of tubes and retorts. For what? For a mixture of arsenite and acetate of copper... Yes.
He rejoined Madam Tuffman and her son in the parlor, and they sat on satin and gilt beneath the unshaded bulbs of a vast ormulu chandelier. He said without preamble: “Mr. Tuffman, your wife is suffering from chronic poisoning. I believe its nature to be arsenite and acetate of copper. Her condition is serious, but not necessarily fatal. We are in time.”
For a moment Ernest looked stunned, and then he said savagely: “Are you suggesting an attempt at murder, Doctor? The murder of my wife?”
“Yes, Mr. Tuffman. That’s right.”
Madam Tuffman broke suddenly: “I have known it all along! It has been my horror — all these months. But I would not believe it. Even against my common sense, I kept telling myself it could not be true. There are but the three of us — my son, and Bertha, and me. I would say again and again that Bertha would not take her own life, because by doing so she would also be taking the life of her child. I knew it was no doing of mine. I would not, I do not, believe that it is Ernest. Doctor, the murderer
“The murderer is here, Mrs. Tuffman.”
“Mother—”
“No, Ernest, you must let me finish. For the past year this has been on my heart like a stone. I love you, but I do not know you. Bertha loves you, but she does not know you. Whatever I have gone through, she has gone through more. She is young. I am too old to know about her sort of love any longer — the infinite variety of its sacrifices. I understand none other than my feeling for you.”
“Mother—”
“Wait, Ernest. Bertha has kept silent. She has suffered this poison to bring her slowly closer to death with every day. She has refused to be examined by Doctor Starr, in dread that the finger would be pointed to you, whom she loves; or to me, whom you love. She has been prepared to face death all these terrible months, Ernest, if you wanted it that way.”
“That’s a lie!” Ernest blazed with rage. “I love her. I love her more than anything.”
Starr said quietly: “I must ask your patience until Miss Wadsworth gets here. She is bringing certain things.”
Minutes passed, while Starr, with oblique pointers, prepared Madam Tuffman and her son with documented precedents for his belief. Bertha’s case, he said, was not unique, although today it was so rare as to offer no other existent probable parallel. He touched first upon the idiosyncrasy of certain people to certain poisons, their allergy to them: many men could stand a medicinal dose of a given poison which would prove dangerous, if not fatal, to anyone who was allergic to it.
In Bertha’s case, Starr believed the idiosyncrasy to be strong. The mixture of arsenite and acetate of copper had, if his thoughts were correct, been administered to her in the form of dust, and also as an arseniureted hydrogen gas which had been emitted into the air. He spoke of a Dr. G. Kirchgasser, of Coblenz, who had collected twenty-one cases of such poisoning, some of which had proven fatal. Dr. Kirchgasser’s paper on the subject was still on record. Dr. Kirchgasser had stressed the fact that his cases were all of people who were allergic to the poison. Many others had lived and come under its influence in similar conditions, and had not been affected at all.
Miss Wadsworth arrived, laden, and Starr suggested that they all go upstairs. He rapped on the door of Bertha’s and Ernest’s room, and asked whether they might come in.
The colors of the room struck him like a blow. They alone seemed to make any sound in the deathlike stillness. With a penknife he scraped a strip of vivid green from a hand-blocked leaf of the lurid wallpaper. He immersed a piece in a glass of water. He lit charcoal. He touched litmus into the glass and considered the reaction faintly acid. Some drops of hydrogen sulphide T.S. turned the solution a pale yellow. The vapor from a piece of the paper thrown on the burning charcoal suggested an odor of garlic.
He said to Madam Tuffman: “Your artist in London’s Soho had the misfortune, or ignorance, to select one of the most poisonous pigments of his day. The commercial variety of this particular pigment was known to have contained fifty-nine per cent of arsenic, and I believe that in his own mixing the artist must have used even a more lavish hand. As I have said, the known cases of chronic poisoning at that period from wallpaper of this type were noted. These particular rolls were kept through the years in your attic, cased, so its lethal properties remained intact until the rolls were opened, put up, and its poison disseminated in the form of a fine dust and a gas.”
Bertha was suddenly radiant, with a whole world that was hers again. “Then the murderer, Doctor—”
“Exactly. From now on, you have nothing to fear, because the source has been traced: The murderer is
Margery Allingham
They Never Get Caught
“Millie dear, this does explain itself, doesn’t it? Henry.” Mr. Henry Brownrigg signed his name on the back of the little blue bill with a flourish. Then he set the scrap of paper carefully in the exact centre of the imperfectly scoured developing bath, and leaving the offending utensil on the kitchen table for his wife to find when she came in, he stalked back to the shop, feeling that he had administered the rebuke surely and at the same time gracefully.
In fifteen years Mr. Brownrigg felt that he had mastered the art of teaching his wife her job. Not that he had taught her. That, Mr. Brownrigg felt, with a woman of Millie’s staggering obtuseness, was past praying for. But now, after long practice, he could deliver the snub or administer the punishing word in a way which would penetrate her placid dullness.
Within half an hour after she had returned from shopping and before lunch was set upon the table, he knew the bath would be back in the darkroom, bright and pristine as when it was new, and nothing more would be said about it. Millie would be a little more ineffectually anxious to please at lunch, perhaps, but that was all.
Mr. Brownrigg passed behind the counter and flicked a speck of dust off the dummy cartons of face-cream. It was twelve twenty-five and a half. In four and a half minutes Phyllis Bell would leave her office further down the High Street, and in seven and a half minutes she would come in through that narrow, sunlit doorway to the cool, drug-scented shop.
On that patch of floor where the sunlight lay blue and yellow, since it had found its way in through the enormous glass vases in the window which were the emblem of his trade, she would stand and look at him, her blue eyes limpid and her small mouth pursed and adorable.
The chemist took up one of the ebony-backed hand mirrors exposed on the counter for sale and glanced at himself in it. He was not altogether a prepossessing person. Never a tall man at forty-two his wide, stocky figure showed a definite tendency to become fleshy, but there was strength and virility in his thick shoulders, while his clean-shaven face and broad neck were short and bull-like and his lips were full.
Phyllis liked his eyes. They held her, she said, and most of the other young women who bought their cosmetics at the corner shop and chatted with Mr. Brownrigg across the counter might have been inclined to agree with her.
Over-dark, round, hot eyes had Mr. Brownrigg; not at all the sort of eyes for a little, plump, middle-aged chemist with a placid wife like Millie.
But Mr. Brownrigg did not contemplate his own eyes. He smoothed his hair, wiped his lips, and then, realizing that Phyllis was almost due, he disappeared behind the dispensing desk. It was as well, he always thought, not to appear too eager.
He was watching the door, though, when she came in. He saw the flicker of her green skirt as she hesitated on the step and saw her half-eager, half-apprehensive expression as she glanced towards the counter.
He was glad she had not come in when a customer was there. Phyllis was different from any of the others whose little histories stretched back through the past fourteen years. When Phyllis was in the shop Mr. Brownrigg found he was liable to make mistakes, liable to drop things and fluff the change.
He came out from his obscurity eager in spite of himself, and drew the little golden-haired girl sharply towards him over that part of the counter which was lowest and which he purposely kept uncluttered.
He kissed her and the sudden hungry force of the movement betrayed him utterly. He heard her quick intake of breath before she released herself and stepped back.
“You... you shouldn’t,” she said, nervously tugging her hat back into position.
She was barely twenty, small and young-looking for her years, with yellow hair and a pleasant, quiet style. Her blue eyes were frightened and a little disgusted now, as though she found herself caught up in an emotion which her instincts considered not quite nice.
Henry Brownrigg recognized the expression. He had seen it before in other eyes, but whereas on past occasions he had been able to be tolerantly amused and therefore comforting and glibly reassuring, in Phyllis it irritated and almost frightened him.
“Why not?” he demanded sharply, too sharply he knew immediately, and the blood rushed into his face.
Phyllis took a deep breath.
“I came to tell you,” she said jerkily, like a child saying its piece, “I’ve been thinking things over. I can’t go on with all this. You’re married. I want to be married some day. I... I shan’t come in again.”
“You haven’t been talking to someone?” he demanded, suddenly cold.
“About you? Good heavens, no!”
Her vehemence was convincing, and because of that he shut his mind to its uncomplimentary inference and experienced only relief.
“You love me,” said Henry Brownrigg. “I love you and you love me. You know that.”
He spoke without intentional histrionics, but adopted a curious monotone which, some actors have discovered, is one of the most convincing methods of conveying deep sincerity.
Phyllis nodded miserably and then seemed oddly embarrassed. Wistfully her eyes wandered to the sunlit street and back again.
“Good-bye,” she said huskily and fled.
He saw her speeding past the window, almost running.
For some time Henry Brownrigg remained looking down at the patch of blue sunlight where she had stood. Finally he raised his eyes and smiled with conscious wryness. She would come back. Tomorrow, or in a week, or in ten days perhaps, she would come back. But the obstacle, the insurmountable obstacle would arise again, in time it would defeat him and he would lose her.
Phyllis was different from the others. He would lose her.
Unless that obstacle were removed.
Henry Brownrigg frowned.
There were other considerations too.
The old, mottled ledger told those only too clearly.
If the obstacle were removed it would automatically wipe away those difficulties also, for was there not the insurance and that small income Millie’s father had left so securely tied, as though the old man had divined his daughter would grow up to be such a fool?
Mr. Brownrigg’s eyes rested upon the little drawer under the counter marked: “Prescriptions: private.” It was locked and not even young Perry, his errand boy and general assistant, who poked his nose into most things, guessed that under the pile of slips within was a packet of letters scrawled in Phyllis’s childish hand.
He turned away abruptly. His breath was hard to draw and he was trembling.
The time had come.
Some months previously Henry Brownrigg had decided that he must become a widower before the end of the year, but the interview of the morning had convinced him that he must hurry.
At this moment Millie, her face still pink with shame at the recollection of the affair of the ill-washed bath, put her head round the inner door.
“Lunch is on the table, Henry,” she said, and added with that stupidity which had annoyed him ever since it had ceased to please him by making him feel superior: “Well, you do look serious. Oh, Henry, you haven’t made a mistake and given somebody a wrong bottle?”
“No, my dear Millie,” said her husband, surveying her coldly and speaking with heavy sarcasm. “That is the peculiar sort of idiot mistake I have yet to make. I haven’t reached my wife’s level yet.”
And as he followed her uncomplaining figure to the little room behind the shop a word echoed rhythmically in the back of his mind and kept time with the beating of his heart. “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!”
“Henry, dear,” said Millie Brownrigg, turning a troubled face towards her husband, “why Doctor Crupiner? He’s so expensive and so old.”
She was standing in front of the dressing table in the big front bedroom above the shop, brushing her brown, grey-streaked hair before she plaited it and coiled it round her head.
Henry Brownrigg, lying awake in his bed on the far side of the room, did not answer her.
Millie went on talking. She was used to Henry’s silence. Henry was so clever. Most of his time was spent in thought.
“I’ve heard all sorts of odd things about Doctor Crupiner,” she remarked. “They say he’s so old he forgets. Why shouldn’t we go to Mother’s man? She swears by him.”
“Unfortunately for your mother she has your intelligence, without a man to look after her, poor woman,” said Henry Brownrigg.
Millie made no comment.
“Crupiner,” continued Henry Brownrigg, “may not be much good as a general practitioner, but there is one subject on which he is a master. I want him to see you. I want to get you well, old dear.”
Millie’s gentle, expressionless face flushed and her blue eyes looked moist and foolish in the mirror. Henry could see her reflection in the glass and he turned away. There were moments when, by her obvious gratitude for a kind word from him, Millie made him feel a certain distaste for his project. He wished to God she would go away and leave him his last few moments in bed to think of Phyllis in peace.
“You know, Henry,” said Mrs. Brownrigg suddenly, “I don’t feel ill. Those things you’re giving me are doing me good, I’m sure. I don’t feel nearly so tired at the end of the day now. Can’t you treat me yourself?”
The man in the bed stiffened. Any compunction he may have felt vanished and he became wary.
“Of course they’re doing you good,” he said with the satisfaction of knowing that he was telling the truth up to a point, or at least of knowing that he was doing nothing reprehensible — yet.
“I don’t believe in patent medicine as a rule, but Fender’s pills are good. They’re a well-known formula, and they certainly do pick one up. But I just want to make sure that you’re organically sound. I don’t like you getting breathless when you hurry, and the color of your lips isn’t good.”
Plump, foolish Millie looked in the mirror and nervously ran her forefinger over her mouth.
Like many women of her age she had lost much of her color, and there certainly was a faint, very faint, blue streak round the edge of her lips.
The chemist was heavily reassuring.
“Nothing to worry about, I’m sure, but I think we’ll go down and see Crupiner this evening,” he said, and added adroitly: “We want to be on the safe side, don’t we?”
Millie nodded, her mouth trembling.
“Yes, dear,” she said, and paused, adding afterwards in that insufferable way of hers: “I suppose so.”
When she had gone downstairs to attend to breakfast Henry Brownrigg rose with his own last phrase still on his lips. He repeated it thoughtfully.
“The safe side.” That was right. The safe side. No ghastly hash of it for Henry Brownrigg.
Only fools made a hash of things. Only fools got caught. This was almost too easy. Millie was so simple-minded, so utterly unsuspecting.
By the end of the day Mr. Brownrigg was nervy. The boy Perry had reported, innocently enough, that he had seen young Hill in his new car going down Acacia Road at something over sixty, and had added casually that he had had the Bell girl with him. The youngest one. Phyllis. Did Mr. Brownrigg remember her? She was rather pretty.
For a moment Henry Brownrigg was in terror lest the boy had discovered his secret and was wounding him maliciously. But having convinced himself that this was not so, the fact and the sting remained.
Young Hill was handsome and a bachelor. Phyllis was young and impressionable. The chemist imagined them pulling up in some shady copse outside the town, holding hands, perhaps even kissing, and the heart which could remain steady while Millie’s stupid eyes met his anxiously as she spoke of her illness turned over painfully in Henry Brownrigg’s side at the thought of that embrace.
“Hurry.” The word formed itself again in the back of his mind. Hurry... hurry.
Millie was breathless when they arrived at Doctor Crupiner’s old-fashioned house. Henry had been self-absorbed and had walked very fast.
Doctor Crupiner saw them immediately. He was a vast, dusty old man. Privately Millie thought she would like to take a good stiff broom to him, and the picture the idea conjured in her mind was so ridiculous that she giggled nervously and Henry had to shake his head at her warningly.
She flushed painfully, and the old, stupid expression settled down over her face again.
Henry explained her symptoms to the doctor and Millie looked surprised and gratified at the anxiety he betrayed. Henry had evidently noticed her little wearinesses much more often than she had supposed.
When he had finished his recital of her small ills, none of them alarming in themselves but piling up in total to a rather terrifying sum of evidence, Doctor Crupiner turned his eyes, which were small and greasy, with red veins in their whites, on to Millie, and his old lips, which were mottled like Henry’s ledger, moved for a fraction of a second before his voice came, wheezy and sepulchral.
“Well, madam,” he said, “your husband here seems worried about you. Let’s have a look at you.”
Millie trembled. She was getting breathless again from sheer apprehension. Once or twice lately it had occurred to her that the Fender’s pills made her feel breathless, even while they bucked her up in other ways, but she had not liked to mention this to Henry.
Doctor Crupiner came close to her, breathing heavily through his nose in an effort of concentration. He thrust a stubby, unsteady finger into her eye-socket, dragging down the skin so that he could peer short-sightedly at her eyeball. He thumped her half-heartedly on the back and felt the palms of her hands.
Mr. Brownrigg, who watched all this somewhat meaningless ritual, his round eyes thoughtful and uneasy, suddenly took the doctor to one side, and the two men had a muttered conversation at the far end of the room.
Millie could not help overhearing some of it, because Doctor Crupiner was deaf these days and Henry was anxious to make himself understood.
“Twenty years ago,” she heard. “Very sudden.” And then, after a pause, the awful word “hereditary.”
Millie’s trembling fit increased in intensity and her broad, stupid face looked frightened. They were talking about her poor papa. He had died very suddenly of heart disease.
Her own heart jumped painfully. So that was why Henry seemed so anxious.
Doctor Crupiner came back to her. She had to undo her dress and Doctor Crupiner listened to her heart with an ancient stethoscope. Millie already trembling, began to breathe with difficulty as her alarm became unbearable.
At last the old man finished with her. He stared at her unwinkingly for some seconds and finally turned to Henry, and together they went back to the far end of the room.
Millie strained her ears and heard the old man’s rumbling voice.
“A certain irregularity. Nothing very alarming. Bring her to see me again.”
Then there was a question from Henry which she could not catch, but afterwards, as the doctor seemed to be fumbling in his mind for a reply, the chemist remarked in an ordinary tone: “I’ve been giving her Fender’s pills.”
“Fender’s pills?” Doctor Crupiner echoed the words with relief. “Excellent. Excellent. You chemists like patent medicines, I know, and I don’t want to encourage you, but that’s a well-known formula and will save you mixing up my prescription. Carry on with those for a while. Very good things; I often recommend them. Take them in moderation, of course.”
“Oh, of course,” said Henry. “But do you think I’m doing right, Doctor?”
Millie looked pleased and startled at the earnestness of Henry’s tone.
“Oh, without doubt, Mr. Brownrigg, without doubt.” Doctor Crupiner repeated the words again as he came back to Millie. “There, Mrs. Brownrigg,” he said with spurious jollity, “you take care of yourself and do what your husband says. Come to see me again in a week or so and you’ll be as right as ninepence. Off you go. Oh, but Mrs. Brownrigg, no shocks, mind. No excitements. No little upsets. And don’t overtire yourself.”
He shook hands perfunctorily, and while Henry was helping Millie to collect her things with a solicitude quite unusual in him, the old man took down a large, dusty book from the shelves.
Just before they left he peered at Henry over his spectacles.
“Those Fender’s pills are quite a good idea,” he remarked in a tone quite different from his professional rumble. “Just the things. They contain a small percentage of
One of Mr. Brownrigg’s least attractive habits was his method of. spending Saturday nights.
At half-past seven the patient but silently disapproving Millie would clear away the remains of the final meal of the day and place one glass and an unopened bottle of whisky and a siphon of soda on the green serge tablecloth.
This done, she would retire to the kitchen, wash up, and complete the week’s ironing. She usually left this job until then, because it was a longish business, with frequent pauses for minor repairs to Henry’s shirts and her own underclothing, and she knew she had plenty of undisturbed time on her hands.
She had, in fact, until midnight. When the kitchen clock wheezed twelve Millie folded her ironing board and turned up the iron on the stove to cool.
Then she went into the living-room and took away the glass and the empty bottle, so that the daily help should not see them in the morning. She also picked up the papers and straightened the room.
Finally, when the gas fire had been extinguished, she attended to Henry.
A fortnight and three days after her first visit to Doctor Crupiner — the doctor, at Henry’s suggestion, had increased her dose of Fender’s pills from three to five a day — she went through her Saturday ritual as usual.
For a man engaged in Mr. Brownrigg’s particular program to get hopelessly and incapably drunk once, much less once a week, might well have been suicidal lunacy.
One small glass of whisky reduced him to taciturnity. Twelve large glasses of whisky, or one bottle, made of him a limp, silent sack of humanity, incapable of movement or speech, but, quite remarkably, not a senseless creature.
It might well have occurred to Millie to wonder why her husband should choose to transform himself into a Thérèse Raquin paralytic once every week in his life, but in spite of her awful stupidity she was a tolerant woman and honestly believed that men were odd, privileged creatures who took delight in strange perversions. So she humored him and kept his weakness secret even from her mother.
Oddly enough, Henry Brownrigg enjoyed his periodical orgy. He did not drink during the week, and his Saturday experience was at once an adventure and a habit. At the outset of his present project he had thought of foregoing it until his plan was completed, but he realized the absolute necessity of adhering rigidly to his normal course of life, so that there could be no hook, however small, on which the garment of suspicion could catch and take hold.
On this particular evening Millie quite exhausted herself getting him upstairs and into bed. She was so tired when it was all over that she sat on the edge of her couch and breathed hard, quite unable to pull herself together sufficiently to undress.
So exhausted was she that she forgot to take the two Fender’s pills that Henry had left on the dressing table for her, and once in bed she could not persuade herself to get out again for them.
In the morning Henry found them still in the little box. He listened to her startled explanations in silence and then, as she added apology to apology, suddenly became himself again.
“Dear Millie,” he said in the old exasperated tone she knew so well, “Isn’t it enough for me to do all I can to get you well without you hampering me at every turn?”
Millie bent low over the stove and, as if he felt she might be hiding sudden tears, his manner became more conciliatory.
“Don’t you like them?” he inquired softly. “Don’t you like the taste of them? Perhaps they’re too big? Look here, old dear, I’ll put them up in an easier form. You shall have them in jelly cases. Leave it to me. There, there, don’t worry. But you must take your medicine, you know.”
He patted her plump shoulder awkwardly and hurried upstairs to dress.
Millie became thoughtful. Henry was clearly very worried about her indeed, or he would never be so nice about her silly mistake.
Young Bill Perry, Brownrigg’s errand-boy assistant, was at the awkward stage, if indeed he would ever grow out of it.
He was scrawny, red-headed, with a tendency to acne, and great raw, scarlet wrists. Mr. Brownrigg he loathed as only the young can loathe the possessor of a sarcastic tongue, but Millie he liked, and his pale eyes twinkled kindly when she spoke to him.
Young Perry did not think Millie was half so daft as the Old Man made her out to be on a good number of occasions.
If only because she was kind to him, young Perry was interested in the state of Millie’s health.
On the Monday night young Perry saw Mr. Brownrigg putting up the contents of the Fender’s pills in jelly cases and he inquired about them.
Mr. Brownrigg was unusually communicative. He told young Perry in strict confidence that Mrs. Brownrigg was far from well and that Doctor Crupiner was worried about her.
Mr. Brownrigg also intimated that he and Doctor Crupiner were, as professional men, agreed that if complete freedom from care and Fender’s pills could not save Mrs. Brownrigg, nothing could.
“Do you mean she might die?” said young Perry, aghast. “Suddenly, I mean, sir?”
He was sorry as soon as he had spoken, because Mr. Brownrigg’s hand trembled so much that he dropped one of the jelly cases and young Perry realized that the Old Man was really wild about the Old Girl after all, and that his bullyragging her was all a sham to hide his feelings.
At that moment young Perry’s sentimental, impressionable heart went out to Mr. Brownrigg, and he generously forgave him for his observation that young Perry was patently cut out for the diplomatic service, since his tact and delicacy were so great.
The stores arrived. Bill Perry unpacked the two big cases; the smaller case he opened, but left the unpacking to his employer.
Mr. Brownrigg finished his pill-making, although he was keeping the boy waiting, rinsed his hands and got down to work with his usual deliberation.
There were not a great many packages in the case and young Perry, who had taken a peep at the mottled ledger some time before, thought he knew why. The Old Man was riding close to the edge. Bills and receipts had to be juggled very carefully these days.
The boy read the invoice from the wholesalers’, and Mr. Brownrigg put the drugs away.
Bill Perry knew he read badly and was only trying to be helpful when he indicated the parcel, but Mr. Brownrigg shot a truly terrifying glance in his direction as he literally snatched up the package and carried it off to the drug cabinet.
Young Perry was dismayed. He was late and he wanted to go. In his panic he floundered on, making matters worse.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “I was only trying to help. I thought you might be — er — thinking of something else and got a bit muddled.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Brownrigg slowly, fixing him with those hot, round eyes in a way which was oddly disturbing. “And of what should I be thinking when I am doing my work, boy?”
“Of... of Mrs. Brownrigg, sir,” stammered the wretched Perry helplessly.
Henry Brownrigg froze. The blood congealed in his face and his eyes seemed to sink into his head.
Young Perry, who realized he had said the wrong thing, and who had a natural delicacy which revolted at prying into another’s sorrow, mistook his employer’s symptoms for acute embarrassment.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I was really trying to help. I’m a bit — er — windy myself, sir. Mrs. Brownrigg’s been very kind to me. I’m sorry she’s so ill.”
A great sigh escaped Henry Brownrigg.
“That’s all right, my boy,” he said, with a gentleness his assistant had never before heard in his tone. “I’m a bit rattled myself, too. You can go now. I’ll see to these few things.”
Young Perry sped off, happy to be free on such a sunny evening, but also a little awe-stricken by the revelation of this tragedy of married love.
Phyllis hurried down Coe’s Lane, which was a short cut between her own road and Priory Avenue. It was a narrow, paper-baggy little thoroughfare, with a dusty hedge on one side and a high tarred fence on the other.
On this occasion Coe’s Lane appeared to be deserted, but when Phyllis reached the stunted may-tree halfway down the hedge a figure stepped out and came to meet her.
The girl stopped abruptly in the middle of the path. Her cheeks were patched with pink and white and she caught her breath sharply as though afraid of herself.
Henry Brownrigg himself was unprepared for the savagery of the sudden pain in his breast when he saw her, and the writhing, vicious, mindless passion which checked his breathing and made his eyelids feel sticky and his mouth dry, frightened him a little.
They were alone in the lane and he kissed her, putting into his hunched shoulders and greedy lips all the insufferable, senseless longing of the past eighteen days.
When he released her she was crying.
“Go away,” she said and her tone was husky and imploring. “Oh, go away — please, please!”
After the kiss Henry Brownrigg was human again and no longer the fiend-possessed soul in torment he had been while waiting in the lane. Now he could behave normally, for a time at least.
“All right,” he said, and added so lightly that she was deceived, “going out with Peter Hill again this afternoon?”
The girl’s lips trembled and her eyes were pleading.
“I’m trying to get free,” she said. “Don’t you see I’m trying to get free from you? It’s not easy.”
Henry Brownrigg stared at her inquisitively for a full minute. Then he laughed shortly and explosively and strode away back down the lane.
Henry Brownrigg went home. He walked very fast, his round eyes introspective but his step light and purposeful. His thoughts were pleasant. So Phyllis was there when he wanted her, there for the taking when the obstacle was once removed. That had been his only doubt. Now he was certain of it. The practical part of his project alone remained.
Small, relatively unimportant things like the new story the mottled ledger would have to tell when the insurance money was in the bank and Millie’s small income was realized and reinvested crowded into his mind, but he brushed them aside impatiently. This afternoon he must be grimly practical. There was delicate work to do.
When he reached home Millie had gone over to her mother’s.
It was also early-closing day and young Perry was far away, bowling for the St. Anne’s parish cricket club.
Mr. Brownrigg went round the house carefully and made sure that all the doors were locked. The shop shutters were up too, and he knew from careful observation that they permitted no light from within to escape.
He removed his jacket and donned his working overalls, switched on the lights, locked the door between the shop and the living-room, and set to work.
He knew exactly what he had to do. Millie had been taking five Fender’s pills regularly now for eight days. Each pill contained 1/16 gr.
He took out the bottle of
He worked feverishly as his thoughts raced on. He knew the dose. All that had been worked out months before when the idea had first occurred to him, and he had gone over this part of the proceedings again and again in his mind so that there could be no mistake.
Nine drachms of the tincture had killed a patient with no
He prepared his burner and the evaporator. It took a long time. Although he was so practised, his hands were unsteady and clumsy, and the irritant fumes got into his eyes.
Suddenly he discovered that it was nearly four o’clock. He was panic-stricken. Only two hours and Millie would come back, and there was a lot to be done.
As the burner did its work his mind moved rapidly.
Henry Brownrigg’s face split into the semblance of a smile. Old Crupiner was no Tardieu. Crupiner would not advise a P.M. if he could possibly avoid it. He’d give the certificate all right; his mind was prepared for it. Probably he wouldn’t even come and look at the body.
A shattering peal on the back door startled him so much that he nearly upset his paraphernalia. For a moment he stood breathing wildly, like a trapped animal, but he pulled himself together in the end, and, changing into his coat, went down to answer the summons.
He locked the shop door behind him, smoothed his hair, and opened the back door, confident that he looked normal, even ordinary.
But the small boy with the evening paper did not wait for his Saturday’s sixpence but rushed away after a single glance at Mr. Brownrigg’s face. He was a timid twelve-year-old, however, who often imagined things, and his employer, an older boy, cuffed him for the story and made a mental note to call for the money himself on the Monday night.
The effect of the incident on Henry Brownrigg was considerable. He went back to his work like a man in a nightmare, and for the rest of the proceedings he kept his mind resolutely on the physical task.
At last it was done.
He turned out the burner, scoured the. evaporator, measured the toxic dose carefully, adding to it considerably to be on the safe side. After all, one could hardly overdo it; that was the charm of this stuff.
Then he effectively disposed of the residue and felt much better.
He had locked the door and changed his coat again before he noticed the awful thing. A layer of fine dust on the top of one of the bottles first attracted his attention. He removed it with fastidious care. He hated a frowzy shop.
He had replaced his handkerchief before he saw the showcase ledge and the first glimmering of the dreadful truth percolated his startled mind.
From the ledge his eyes travelled to the counter-top, to the dummy cartons, to the bottles and jars, to the window shutters, to the very floor.
Great drops appeared on Henry Brownrigg’s forehead. There was not an inch of surface in the whole shop that was innocent of the thinnest, faintest coat of yellowish dust.
Henry Brownrigg stood very still.
Gradually his brain, cool at the bidding of the instinct of self-preservation, began to work again. Delay. That was the all-important note. Millie must not take the capsule tonight as he had planned. Not tonight, nor tomorrow. Millie must not die until every trace of that yellow dust had been driven from the shop.
Swiftly he rearranged his plan. Tonight he must behave as usual and tomorrow, when Millie went to church, he must clear off the worst of the stuff before young Perry noticed anything.
Then on Monday he would make an excuse and have the vacuum-cleaning people in. They came with a great machine and put pipes in through the window. He had often said he would have it done.
They worked quickly; so on Tuesday...
Meanwhile, normality. That was the main thing. He must do nothing to alarm Millie or excite her curiosity.
It did not occur to him that there would be a grim irony in getting Millie to help him dust the shop that evening. But he dismissed the idea. They’d never do it thoroughly in the time.
He washed in the kitchen and went back into the hall. A step on the stairs above him brought a scream to his throat which he only just succeeded in stifling.
It was Millie. She had come in the back way without him hearing her, heaven knew how long before.
“I’ve borrowed a curtain from Mother for your bedroom door, Henry,” she said mildly. “You won’t be troubled by the draft up there any more. It’s such a good thick one. I’ve just been fixing it up.”
Henry Brownrigg made a noise which might have meant anything. His nerves had gone to pieces.
Her next remark was reassuring, however; so reassuring that he almost laughed aloud.
“Oh, Henry,” she said, “you only gave me four of those pills today, dear. You won’t forget the other, will you?”
“Cold ham from the cooked meat shop, cold tinned peas, potato salad and Worcester sauce. What a cook I’ve married, my dear Millie.”
Henry Brownrigg derived a vicious pleasure from the clumsy sarcasm, and when Millie’s pale face became wooden he was gratified.
As he sat at the small table and looked at her he was aware of a curious phenomenon. The woman stood out from the rest of the room’s contents as though she alone was in relief. He saw every line of her features, every fold of her dark cotton foulard dress, as though they were drawn with a thick black pencil.
Millie was silent. Even her usual flow of banality had dried up, and he was glad of it.
He found himself regarding her dispassionately, as though she had been a stranger. He did not hate her, he decided. On the contrary, he was prepared to believe that she was quite an estimable, practicable person in her own limited fashion. But she was in the way.
This plump, fatuous creature, not even different in her very obtuseness from many of the other matrons in the town, had committed the crowning impudence of getting in the way of Henry Brownrigg. She, this ridiculous, lowly woman, actually stood between Henry Brownrigg and the inmost desires of his heart.
It was an insight into the state of the chemist’s mind that at that moment nothing impressed him so forcibly as her remarkable audacity.
Monday, he thought. Monday, and possibly Tuesday, and then...
Millie cleared away.
Mr. Brownrigg drank his first glass of whisky and soda with a relish he did not often experience. For him the pleasure of his Saturday night libations lay in the odd sensation he experienced when really drunk.
When Henry Brownrigg was a sack of limp, uninviting humanity to his wife and the rest of the world, to himself he was a quiet, all-powerful ghost, seated, comfortable and protected, in the shell of his body, able to see and comprehend everything, but too mighty and too important to direct any of the drivelling little matters which made up his immediate world.
On these occasions Henry Brownrigg tasted godhead.
The evening began like all the others, and by the time there was but an inch of amber elixir in the square bottle, Millie and the dust in the shop and Doctor Crupiner had become in his mind as ants and ant burdens, while he towered above them, a colossus in mind and power.
When the final inch had dwindled to a yellow stain in the bottom of the white glass bottle Mr. Brownrigg sat very still. In a few minutes now he would attain the peak of that ascendancy over his fellow-mortals when the body, so important to them, was for him literally nothing; not even a dull encumbrance, not even a nerveless covering but a nothingless, an unimportant, unnoticed element.
When Millie came in at last a pin could have been thrust deep into Mr. Brownrigg’s flesh and he would not have noticed it.
It was when he was in bed, his useless body clad in clean pajamas, that he noticed that Millie was not behaving quite as usual. She had folded his clothes neatly on the chair at the end of the bed when he saw her peering at something intently.
He followed her eyes and saw for the first time the new curtain. It certainly was a fine affair, a great, thick, heavy plush thing that looked as though it would stop any draft.
He remembered clearly losing his temper with Millie in front of young Perry one day, and, searching in his mind for a suitable excuse, had invented this draft beneath his bedroom door. And there wasn’t one, his ghost remembered; that was the beauty of it. The door fitted tightly in the jamb. But it gave Millie something to worry about.
Millie went out of the room without extinguishing the lights. He tried to call out to her and only then realized the disadvantages of being a disembodied spirit. He could not speak, of course.
He was lying puzzled at this obvious flaw in his omnipotence when he heard her go downstairs instead of crossing into her room. He was suddenly furious and would have risen, had it been possible. But in the midst of his anger he remembered something amusing and lay still, inwardly convulsed with secret laughter.
Soon Millie would be dead. Dead — dead — dead!
Millie would be stupid no longer. Millie would appall him by her awful mindlessness no more. Millie would be dead.
She came up again and stepped softly into the room.
The alcohol was beginning to take its full effect now and he could not move his head. Soon oblivion would come and he would leave his body and rush off into the exciting darkness.
He saw only Millie’s head and shoulders when she came into his line of vision. He was annoyed. She still had those thick black lines round her, and there was an absorbed expression upon her face which he remembered seeing before when she was engrossed in some particularly difficult household task.
She switched out the light and then went over to the far window. He was interested now, and saw her pull up the blinds.
Then to his astonishment he heard the crackle of paper; not an ordinary crackle, but something familiar, something he had heard hundreds of times.
He placed it suddenly. Sticky paper. His own reel of sticky paper from the shop.
He was so cross with her for touching it that for some moments he did not wonder what she was doing with it, and it was not until he saw her silhouetted against the second row of panes that he guessed. She was sticking up the window cracks.
His ghost laughed again. The draft! Silly, stupid Millie trying to stop the draft.
She pulled down the blinds and turned on the light again. Her face was mild and expressionless as ever, her blue eyes vacant and foolish.
He saw her go to the dressingtable, still moving briskly, as she always did when working about the house.
Once again the phenomenon he had noticed at the evening meal became startlingly apparent. He saw her hand and its contents, positively glowing because of its black outline, thrown up in high relief against the white tablecover.
Millie was putting two pieces of paper there: one white with a deckle edge, one blue and familiar.
Henry Brownrigg’s ghost yammered in its prison. His body ceased to be negligible: it became a coffin, a sealed, leaden coffin suffocating him in its senseless shell. He fought to free himself, to stir that mighty weight, to move.
The white paper with the deckle edge was a letter from Phyllis out of the drawer in the shop, and the blue paper — he remembered it now — the blue paper he had left in the dirty developing bath.
He re-read his own pencilled words as clearly as if his eye had become possessed of telescopic sight:
And then his name, signed with a flourish. He had been so pleased with himself when he had written it.
He fought wildly. The coffin was made of glass now, thick, heavy glass which would not respond to his greatest effort.
Millie was hesitating. She had picked up Phyllis’s letter. Now she was reading it again.
He saw her frown and tear the paper into shreds, thrusting the pieces into the pocket of her cardigan.
Henry Brownrigg understood. Millie was sorry for Phyllis. For all her obtuseness she had guessed at some of the girl’s piteous infatuation and had decided to keep her out of it.
What then? Henry Brownrigg writhed inside his inanimate body.
Millie was back at the table now. She was putting something else there. What was it? Oh, what was it?
The ledger! He saw it plainly, the old mottled ledger, whose story was plain for any fool coroner to read and misunderstand.
Millie had turned away now. He hardly noticed her pause before the fireplace. She did not stoop. Her felt-shod slipper flipped the gas-tap over.
Then she passed out of the door, extinguishing the light as she went. He heard the rustle of the thick curtain as she drew the door close. There was an infinitesimal pause and then the key turned in the lock.
She had behaved throughout the whole proceeding as though she had been getting dinner or tidying the spare room.
In his prison Henry Brownrigg’s impotent ghost listened. There was a hissing from the far end of the room.
In the attic, although he could not possibly hear it, he knew the meter ticked every two or three seconds.
Henry Brownrigg saw in a vision the scene in the morning. Every room in the house had the same key, so Millie would have no difficulty in explaining that on awakening she had noticed the smell of gas and, on finding her husband’s door locked, had opened it with her own key.
The ghost stirred in its shell. Once again the earth and earthly incidents looked small and negligible. The oblivion was coming, the darkness was waiting; only now it was no longer exciting darkness.
The shell moved. He felt it writhe and choke. It was fighting — fighting — fighting.
The darkness drew him. He was no longer conscious of the shell now. It had been beaten. It had given up the fight.
The streak of light beneath the blind where the street lamp shone was fading. Fading. Now it was gone.
As Henry Brownrigg’s ghost crept out into the cold a whisper came to it, ghastly in its conviction:
“They never get caught, that kind. They’re too dull, too practical, too unimaginative. They never get caught.”
Louis Golding
Pale Blue Nightgown
Mr. Dofferty was tall and thin and had big hands and feet. The small boys called him “Lampy,” which was an abbreviation of “Lamppost.” He hated the small boys calling him “Lampy,” not only because he was sensitive about his appearance, but because he hated small boys. He would rather have taken the top form in a refined girls’ school and would have got on very well there. He could have talked about Swinburne with the girls, and about his foreign travels. “Was there ever really a Dolores, Mr. Dofferty?” “Do the young warriors in Kashmir still go out to battle with roses behind their ears?” He would have been very happy in such a place.
But it had not worked out that way. He was getting on in years by the time he got his teacher’s certificate, and he could not pick and choose. He became a pupil-teacher at a boys’ school in Doomington. They were common boys. In the course of time he became headmaster.
He knew that he deserved better things. He let it be known that he had traveled about the East quite a lot in his young days; and it was true, for he had been the son of a noncommissioned officer out in India. Later, he was employed on a tea plantation in Ceylon. When that failed, he came to England to take up teaching.
He was very proud of having traveled in the East. His “sanctum,” as he called it, was cluttered with eastern curios. There were prayer-wheels and fly-whisks, curtains and cushions, elephants carved in ebony, ashtrays and pen-trays of Benares ware, a Malay kris he used as a paper-knife, a soapstone Buddha he used as a paperweight. It was not very suitable furniture for a headmaster’s room in a poor boys’ school in Doomington, but it put people in their place. It put him in his place, too. He was a traveler, an empire-builder.
He did not feel so sure of himself when he went out into the playground. He would have preferred to stay in his sanctum, but he had a feeling that the small boys took to talking and laughing about him when they got together. He would stand for a long time, quite still, behind the windows of one of the classrooms, and then, all of a sudden, he was a few inches behind you. For a person with such large feet, he moved very quickly and quietly over the gravel.
The schoolday came to an end at half-past four. It was bad enough when the boys collected in the play-intervals between lessons, but when the last lesson was over, there was absolutely no excuse for them to be hanging about, whispering, and pointing with their thumbs over their shoulders. On the day in Mr. Dofferty’s history with which this tale is concerned, there was an unusually large troop of boys assembled near the wood-work room, at the bottom end of the playground. Mr. Dofferty happened to be at the top end of the playground. He observed that only one of the boys was talking, a small, pale boy named Albert Hewitt. The rest were listening. At least, they were listening in the intervals of laughing. The narrative with which Albert Hewitt was regaling them seemed to entertain them mightily, though Albert himself seemed not at all amused. On the contrary, his spotty little face seemed paler than usual; his eyes seemed to stand quite a way out of his head.
Mr. Dofferty did not like Albert Hewitt; he thought him a soapy, sneaky sort of boy. He had had occasion more than once to take him into his sanctum and use the cane on him. What was the boy doing, holding forth at this time of day, when well-behaved boys should be making tracks for home, with their heads filled with the night’s homework? What and who was there to talk about that was so frightfully funny?
Of course; Mr. Dofferty could swear to it... “Lampy,” and once again, “Lampy.” It was a long way from the bottom end to the top end of the playground, but Mr. Dofferty had extraordinarily acute hearing. “Lampy” again, and a roar of laughter. The boy was talking about his headmaster; he was making jokes about his headmaster. Mr. Dofferty’s lips set thin and hard.
Mr. Dofferty made a sort of sideways movement on a segment of a wide circle towards the group of boys. He looked a bit like a huntsman keeping to windward of his quarry. The maneuver was successful. He had come up to within a few yards of them, always in the rear of Albert Hewitt, before the boys became aware of him. Then, suddenly, the boys caught sight of him: all but Albert Hewitt. One moment later they had scuttled away, like a warren-full of rabbits shocked into a hedge by a footstep. A hand came down heavily on Albert Hewitt’s shoulder.
“You were talking about me, I think,” said Mr. Dofferty. His voice was gentle.
Albert Hewitt’s body quivered under the great hand. He did not dare to turn round.
“No, sir, Mr. Dofferty, I wasn’t,” said the small boy.
“You were referring to me by another name,” pointed out Mr. Dofferty.
“No, sir, Mr. Dofferty, I wasn’t,” the small boy said again. His voice was hardly more than a whisper.
Mr. Dofferty removed his hand from Albert Hewitt’s shoulder.
“Perhaps you’ll turn round, Albert,” he suggested.
Albert turned round. He did not dare to look up into Mr. Dofferty’s face, cold and remote. The thin thighs of the headmaster seemed to soar into space, like trees. The playground was appallingly empty, but for himself and the soft voice that came down from so high.
“I would like you to look into my face,” requested Mr. Dofferty, “Will you?”
The small boy did as he was told.
Mr. Dofferty continued. “Excellent, Albert. Now, I feel quite certain you won’t lie to me. You
“Yes, sir,” whispered the small boy. His lips started quivering. He found it as difficult not to lower his eyes from Mr. Dofferty’s eyes as it had been difficult a moment ago to raise them.
“Now, now.” Mr. Dofferty wagged his finger almost playfully. “Don’t make an exhibition of yourself. No harm will come to you, so long as you’re a good boy and speak up. What was it you were saying to those boys, Albert? Come, come, Albert, what was it?”
The boy said not a word. He stared up into Mr. Dofferty’s eyes, as if he had neither ears nor tongue.
“What are you staring at me like that for?” barked Mr. Dofferty. “Is there anything wrong with me?”
The boy’s head sagged suddenly towards his chest.
“Well, Albert!” The headmaster’s voice had become gentle as a dove’s again. “Are you going to tell me what it was you were saying about me?”
“I wasn’t saying nothing,” Albert said. His lower lip projected a little.
“Obstinate, eh?” said Mr. Dofferty, quite gaily now. “You know, Albert,” he almost wheedled, “it will be a lot better for you if you tell me what you were saying.”
“I wasn’t saying nothing,” Albert repeated.
“I see,” Mr. Dofferty said shortly. He raised his eyes to roof-level and joined his hands behind his back. He seemed to be communing with himself. Then he spoke again. His tone was very matter-of-fact. “If you go on disobeying me, I’ll take you into the sanctum and thrash you. Do you hear?”
“Yes, sir,” the boy mumbled.
“Very well, then. Are you going to tell me what you were saying?”
“No, sir.”
“I’ll take you into the sanctum and thrash you within an inch of your life. Are you going to tell me?” Again silence. “Are you going to tell me?” Mr. Dofferty reached down and got his fingers round the boy’s arm.
With a quick involuntary gesture the boy wrenched his arm free.
“It was only a dream!” he cried. “Let me go home!”
“Oh, it was only a dream?” said Mr. Dofferty, easily. “Why didn’t you say so before, you silly boy?” His heart felt curiously lighter. He took his watch out of his waistcoat pocket. “You’re right!” he exclaimed. “It’s time we were both going home!”
“Oh, thank you, thank you very much, sir!” cried Albert. “Good afternoon, Mr. Dofferty.” The boy was already scampering off.
“Oh, by the way!” the headmaster called after him.
The boy turned. “Yes, sir?” he asked fearfully.
Mr. Dofferty did not say anything for a moment or two. He realized, in fact, he had nothing to say. He was merely aware that he did not like the boy going off like that, as if he had not used the forbidden nickname, as if he were innocent as the shorn lamb. Then he found his lips uttering a question concerning which his mind had no curiosity at all. For, after all, what interest was it to Mr. Dofferty, headmaster, Mr. Dofferty, world-traveler, what dream a snivelling, little elementary schoolboy might dream?
“What did you dream about, Albert?”
The boy’s jaw fell. The faint flush of color that had come up into his face went out completely.
“Nothing,” he muttered.
“Nonsense!” said Mr. Dofferty. “You were dreaming about me, weren’t you?”
Then, suddenly, Mr. Dofferty remembered how amused all the small boys had been while Albert Hewitt had been holding forth. He had been telling them his dream, of course, a dream about their headmaster. Mr. Dofferty blushed. It was in the last degree undignified for a person in his position to insist on ferreting out a small boy’s dream, whatever the dream was about. But he could not bear the way the boy was lying to him. If the boy would only own up simply and honestly, they could go home, both of them.
“Well, are you going to say something?” asked Mr. Dofferty.
The boy was as silent as a lump of wood.
Mr. Dofferty, suddenly, lost patience. “Very well, then. You will please come along with me.”
He strode forward towards the big door in the middle of the building. The boy hesitated for one moment. He looked round wildly. It was impossible to get away from those long legs.
The sanctum was a room on the right-hand side of the main corridor. Mr. Dofferty took out his bunch of keys and unlocked the door.
“This way,” he said frigidly.
The boy followed. He knew the way well enough. There was a faint smell in the air which turned his stomach, as it had been turned once or twice before. Mr. Dofferty burned joss-sticks, now and again, when his nostalgia for the East got him badly.
The headmaster went over to the table in the middle of the room and carefully removed two or three of his oriental knick-knacks — the soapstone Buddha he used as a paperweight, the ivory-handled Malay kris he used as a paper-knife, the heavy, brass, Chinese seal. He sat down in the space thus cleared and reached casually along the table for his cane.
“Stand here,” he ordered the boy. The boy came and stood beside him. “What was your dream about?”
The boy stood obdurate.
“You’re not going to tell me?” Mr. Dofferty roared. “So, you’re not going to tell me?” He lifted the cane high in air, ready to strike.
“I’ll tell you!” the boy shouted suddenly. “Please, sir, I’ll tell you!”
Mr. Dofferty’s face was a white as a tablecloth, his lips were almost as white. “Very well, then! Go on!”
“I... I... dreamed—” the boy whimpered — “I... I dreamed... that I—” Then he looked up beseechingly. “I
“I think you can,” said the other.
The boy swallowed hard. “I dreamed in my dream, sir, you was wearing — you was wearing—”
“Go on!”
“You was wearing a long nightgown, sir. It was a silk one, sir, pale blue silk. And... and—” Again the words stuck in the boy’s throat.
Mr. Dofferty was not aware of the boy’s discomfort. He was aware only of his own. He knew he had never felt so ridiculous in all his life before.
“Go on!” he said thickly. “Anything more?”
“Yes, sir!” blubbered the boy. “You was wearing a wreath of daisies round your head!”
“I see,” whispered Mr. Dofferty.
But he did not mean that he himself saw. He meant that the small boys saw, the small boys who had laughed uproariously when Albert had told them his dream. He saw with their eyes his own unspeakable grotesqueness — pale blue nightgown and wreath of daisies.
Why didn’t the small boy get to hell out of it? What was the blob of dirt hanging about for? He must take himself in hand. He must not let the boy realize how naked he had left him, shivering in the whistling blackness, with only a pale blue nightgown round his skinny body, a wreath of daisies for headgear.
“Is that all?” he asked, with a deadly attempt at casualness.
Then the boy gave tongue, with a voice so shrill and terrible that it seemed to pierce the ear-drums.
“That’s all!” he screamed. “I tell you that’s all. I didn’t dream nothing more! Nothing at all!”
The eyes glared. The jaw was so rigid that the words came through with the effect of ventriloquy.
For the first time in the encounter Mr. Dofferty’s intellectual interest was aroused. He forgot his anger with the boy and his shame of himself. He was conscious only of an exceeding curiosity. What more was it the boy had dreamed, the terror of which made him a gibbering idiot?
What on earth could it be?
“Listen, Albert,” he said coaxingly. “Don’t be frightened. I know you dreamed something more. I’d like to know what it was. Won’t you tell me?”
“Nothing more! I didn’t dream nothing more!” The boy stamped his feet.
“I assure you, you’re going to tell me!” Mr. Dofferty said. “You might as well tell me now, as later.”
He was not going to have the struggle start all over again. He was feeling completely worn out. He got down from the table. The cane had fallen to the floor. He reached down and lifted it. He swished it through the air. “Won’t you tell me, Albert?” he asked once again.
The boy said nothing.
Then the man’s patience snapped. The cane went hissing into the air and came screaming down again. He did not know where it landed, on the boy’s hands, body, or face.
The boy did not know, either. He knew nothing more excepting that the whole world was a blackness with a great wind roaring in it. Then, at last, the wind ceased roaring and there was light in the world again. He became aware that he was in the sanctum of Mr. Dofferty, his headmaster. He became aware of Mr. Dofferty’s body extended interminably between his own legs and the legs of the table. The Malay kris that Mr. Dofferty used as a paper-knife stuck out from between his ribs.
The boy leaned forward, pointing towards the ivory handle, where the blood gushed above the blade.
“That’s what I dreamed!” his lips went. “That’s what I dreamed!”
George Harmon Coxe
Invited Witness
“Speak your piece, Charlie, and quit stallin’.” Jack Wolfe leaned back in his chair and rolled a cigarette.
“I know what you want. I read that Sob Sister story in
Wolfe stuck the finished cigarette in one corner of his mouth, lighted it, and turned to face me.
For a moment or so I studied that thin, gray-eyed face with its pointed chin and almost lipless mouth. Then I could feel the flush that swept over my face. I dropped my eyes and picked at the brim of my dark hat.
I wasn’t prepared for a direct attack. I had hoped to get around to the subject in a more diplomatic manner. Now he had me where I couldn’t sidestep — not and get away with it.
“Something like that,” I mumbled. “This Varelli was a family man and—”
“Yeah. He was. Had a wife and two kids. He drove a Packard and they were starving. All they got was a monthly beating. And Varelli had only killed two men. The last one was a bank messenger — was shot four times. Four times, Charlie, and the kid never had a gun. Think it over. I suppose it would have been better if I’d let Varelli make it three. But then I wouldn’t be here to give you your story, would I, Charlie?”
Wolfe’s voice was bantering but there was no smile on his face.
I didn’t answer right away, couldn’t think of anything to say. Jack Wolfe was Special Investigator for the District Attorney and he had the reputation of getting things done. He had all kinds of authority to back him up. He was practically independent as an operative, responsible only to the D.A. Yet he could call on the police if he needed help.
This Varelli had been a rat, a murderer — anyone could tell you that. And Wolfe had done a good job in knocking him off. But he had, nevertheless, the unsavory reputation of a killer. Most people left the “e” off his name — labeled him The Wolf, and public sentiment was against him.
And when this dame down at
“Well,” he said. “What about it?”
“Don’t get me wrong,” I replied. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t’ve plugged Varelli. All I know is that you’re quicker’n hell on the draw. The witnesses who saw it said you both yanked out your guns at the same time, but that you fired an instant before he did.”
Wolfe laughed. “I’m quick on the draw — but we both drew at the same time. Then I can’t be so quick, eh?”
“Well—” I stammered. “I don’t know, I wasn’t here. That’s what I heard.”
Wolfe sat upright with a jerky movement, tossed the cigarette away and pulled his coat sleeve up. Rolling up his shirt sleeve above the elbow, he showed me his arm. A yellowish scar showed on one side of the muscle, a larger scar on the other side.
“There’s one,” he snapped. “I got another one in my side. I didn’t get ’em in Europe either. I got ’em right here in Boston. And I got both of ’em because I drew first — and didn’t shoot.”
He rolled down his sleeve. “Quick on the draw! That’s a lot of bunk. It’s got nothin’ to do with it. There’s plenty of guys in the grave that drew first.”
“Well, then,” I pressed, “what’s the answer?”
“The answer’s a state of mind.” He waited a moment for his words to sink in. “When you go after a man you’ve got to know whether he’s gonna shoot or not. And if he is going to shoot, you’ve got to be first — if you want to live.
“I’ve seen a cop with his gun drawn stop a guy who still had his rod in his pocket. Yet the cop was the one that got plugged. Why? Because he didn’t think the other guy would shoot — while the guy himself knew he would.
“After this second nick I got, I made up my mind I wanted to live a while. Understand, I don’t draw unless I have to. But when I draw on a killer now, I figure on shootin’.
“This Varelli thug is an example. He was a killer. I knew it, everybody knew it. I went in after him. Neither of us had a gun in our hand. When he went for his, I knew he meant business.”
Wolfe pulled out the makings and started another cigarette.
“Doesn’t make a very good story, does it, Charlie?”
“Well—” I hedged, “I guess it does, but I never thought of it that way before.”
“Then let it lay. I’ll give you a ring in a couple days — if I’m lucky. If you want, I’ll let you see for yourself.”
Wolfe kept his word and three days later I got the call. It was in the evening and I was down at his office about nine o’clock.
He was sitting indolently in his chair, one of his half-consumed, smoke-stained cigarettes in the corner of his mouth. It was a funny habit, that rolling his own. It must’ve been a hangover from his army days. I never saw him smoke anything else.
I waited for him to speak. I didn’t know just what he was going to do or what he had in mind. He’d said he was going to let me see for myself. And without knowing how or why, there was a definite tingle to my skin and the palms of my hands were damp.
“All set, Charlie?” he said, finally.
“Sure. What’re we gonna do?”
“We’re goin’ after Shulz.”
I whistled and made no attempt to disguise my feelings. Shulz was the one they had been looking for on the baby killings. The fellow had a record a mile long but with surprisingly few convictions. He’d been up for murder twice and both times he had beaten the rap. And two weeks ago, in gunning out a rival, he had killed a little girl and crippled a boy.
I hadn’t said anything to the chief about Wolfe’s offer, but now I thought I’d better phone in. To tell the truth, I wasn’t so sure I was coming back.
“Is it all right to call in and tell ’em what I’m on?” I asked. “I’d like to have ’em get all the stuff out of the files and the morgue, so they’ll be ready for it. Will it break by eleven?”
Wolfe looked at me with that poker face of his and his lips barely moved.
“It’ll break by eleven. But I don’t think you’d better call in. You may change your mind about it before you get through. And — we might not be successful.”
I knew what he meant by that last, so I sat back and watched him open the drawer of his desk and take out a long-barreled, light automatic. I was plenty surprised and I guess I showed it when I spoke.
“You’re not going after Shulz with that, are you? Looks like a .22.”
“It is.” Wolfe fondled the gun, slipped out the clip. “And this isn’t always what I use, Charlie.”
He put the clip back in the .22, pulled back the slide to throw a bullet in the chamber, and laid it on the desk. Then taking a larger gun — a revolver — from the drawer, he inspected this also.
“This is the old stand-by. A .38 special. But sometimes I have use for the .22. It all depends on the job and what I’ve got to do.”
He slipped this in his shoulder holster and picked up the .22 again.
“It’s a funny thing, Charlie. They’ve got me down for a killer. A hardboiled murderer. Well, I’ve been on this job five years and I’ve killed just three men in that time — including Varelli. Not so many, is it, when you think of what I’ve been up against.”
“But,” I sputtered. “It seems like—”
“Nope.” Wolfe interrupted and forestalled the thought I was about to express. “I’ve shot plenty, Charlie. That’s what you’re thinking of. I’ve shot plenty — wounded ’em enough so we could take ’em. But that doesn’t make such a good story, does it?”
I kept still and he continued. “That’s what the .22 is for. With the .38 I can generally put a quick shot in a three-inch circle at ordinary range. With the .22 I can make that a one-inch circle. It’s almost as good as a rifle, Charlie. And sometimes it comes in handy.”
Wolfe stood up and slipped the .22 in his coat pocket. “I guess we’re set. And just remember, this is no picnic. You know Shulz’s reputation. If he should get me, it might be sort of tough on you. I’ll try to take care of you, but it’s not too late to back out and I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”
I looked at the sharp-featured face, sized up the slim, wiry build. There was competence in every line of him.
“It’s O.K. with me,” I said.
We left the taxi at Columbus Avenue. “How do you know you’ll find him?” I asked.
“I’ll find him. That’s what stoolies are for. He won’t be in when we get there but we’ll stick around till he comes.
“The house is almost down to the next block. I’ll go down alone. You watch me. See where I go. Then follow me in about five minutes. I’ll wait down in the hall for you.”
Five minutes later I followed Wolfe down the depressing canyon of three and four storied, dirty brick apartment houses. There was a sordid atmosphere of decay about the neighborhood that quickened my footsteps. I was glad when I reached the house into which Wolfe had turned.
The door was unlocked and Wolfe was waiting inside.
I followed him up two flights of narrow, dimly lighted stairs and down a corridor to an entrance on the left. He tried the knob, then fished out a ring of keys. An instant later he pushed open the door and stepped inside. I followed and stood out of the way until he had closed the door.
The place seemed pitch black. And as I waited there in the darkness for him to speak, I was conscious that I was holding my breath, that the blood was thumping at my eardrums. It seemed as though we stood there for five minutes before he said:
“Just stand there a minute.”
He snapped on a flashlight. A handkerchief was over the lens and the diffused light which came from the bulb cast an eerie glow over the room. I could see that it was garishly furnished, could make out a davenport, a table, some chairs.
Then the light went out. I could hear Wolfe fumbling with something in the room, heard him grunt.
“It won’t be long now,” he said. “I guess the best place for you to stand is right in that doorway. If things don’t work out, you can beat it back there to the kitchen. Now we’d better keep still.”
He snapped on the light again until I took up my station in the hall doorway, then he switched it off again. But I wanted to ask one more question and I did.
“How come you’re after this guy alone? You know he’s goin’ to be here. Why not let the cops in on it?”
“Yeah. That’s just it. If they knew about it, there’d be fifty cops around this place. They’d be so thick Shulz couldn’t miss. This way is safer. Now shut up.”
I don’t know how much later it was, probably not more than ten minutes, when I heard the footsteps in the outside corridor. And if I was nervous before, I was tensed all over now. Maybe I was scared; I know I wasn’t happy about it. I wished then that I’d found out if there was a back door.
Then a key clicked in the lock and I tried to put my thoughts together. Would Wolfe shoot Shulz down in the doorway? Would he give him a chance?
I watched the door swing slowly open. A narrow strip of yellow from the lighted hall crept across the floor, picked out the pattern in the rug, played tricks with the table and chair in its path. I glanced quickly toward the wall opposite the door to see if Wolfe could be seen. I couldn’t pick him out.
Then I watched the tall, thick-set figure, silhouetted in the doorway; saw him step into the room and raise one hand along the wall.
A switch clicked. Nothing happened. I stiffened as the fellow by the door spat out a curse. That was what Wolfe had been fumbling with. He had unscrewed the light bulbs.
Then a conical beam of light shot out from a point directly opposite the door. Wolfe’s flashlight. I couldn’t see what was behind it. I shrank back in my doorway and looked at Shulz.
For a second or two he stood there as though transfixed. His fleshy, heavily jowled face looked ghastly white in the artificial light. His eyes seemed to recede under the puffy lids and a tongue licked out to wet his lips.
“Stick ’em up, Shulz!” Wolfe barked the command. Then it happened.
This was what I had come to see and here it was. My eyes were glued on that puffy face of Shulz. I saw it coming, that thing Wolfe had spoken about, that action of the brain that meant death.
His hand darted inside his coat and I knew what to expect when the gun came out. I wanted to yell at Wolfe, wanted him to shoot while he had time.
Shulz’s automatic whipped into view and the instant it was free of his clothing a streak of flame stabbed the darkness and a roar shattered the quiet of the room.
The time between the first shot and the second couldn’t have been more than a watch tick. But it was long enough for a weakness of fear to sweep over me with the realization that Wolfe must have been hit. But the conical sweep of the flashlight still held steady.
Then the second shot roared and by that time I couldn’t have run if I’d wanted to. Then two jets of flame shot out from a spot about four feet from the flashlight. Two sharp, distinct cracks sounded, like a person slapping a mosquito on his hand.
Shulz’s face twitched. His mouth dropped open and the automatic slid from a hand that showed red on the back. One knee sagged and he braced himself on the other leg to keep from falling.
Wolfe, the .22 in his right fist, stepped into the flashlight’s rays, reached up and turned one of the light bulbs. The resulting glow showed the flashlight resting on the back of an overstuffed chair. Wolfe moved over to Shulz, who hadn’t said a word, and picked up the fallen automatic.
Backing toward a wall phone he said, “Now you see where the .22 comes in, Charlie. The one in the forearm crippled his gun hand, the one in the knee makes him stick around. I didn’t have to kill this guy because, for once, we got a case he can’t beat.”
He reached up for the receiver. “Of course, this may not give you the story you want. This wasn’t a regular shooting contest. I tricked him with the flash, turned it on and stepped to one side. Maybe that don’t count. But maybe you can see what would’ve happened to some conscientious cop standing there with a flashlight — maybe you can see how a real killer works.
“And if this ain’t just what you want, Charlie, let it lay. There may be a time when I can take you out with a .38 instead of the .22.”
Charlotte Armstrong
All the Way Home
I’d dreamed, so many times, how I would save the man I loved. In a dozen wild plots all would depend on me, my nerve, and my wits. And I’d dreamed how I’d win.
But what happened wasn’t like my dreams at all — nothing like them.
I work in Madame Elise’s
I’d combed out my four o’clock patron, that Wednesday, and was deep in the back of the narrow place when this woman came in. Madame Elise came out of a booth and stalked, in her stiff-legged way, down the middle aisle. I turned my head. I saw the woman’s face.
The first thing I thought was,
I couldn’t walk out. I couldn’t run away. I couldn’t go home sick. It was just like a trap — I couldn’t get out.
And if this woman recognized me when she saw my face, then Tom’s life and my life would be ruined.
I went into the lavatory. I was standing there, looking through the window bars, when Joan put her head in. “Elise is hollering. Mrs. Smith. Shampoo and set. She’s yours, dear.”
“Mine? In the blue coat?”
“New, isn’t she?”
“I guess so,” I said. I took my hands off the bars. Joan couldn’t take her instead of me. Nobody could. Any attempt I made to get out of this would only call attention to me.
That woman wasn’t any Mrs. Smith. She was Mrs. Maybee. What I’d have to do, to save the man I loved, was just what I always do, day after day — shampoo and set a woman’s hair. There was one chance. If I could master my own body, my hands and my voice, my breath and the pump of my heart, she might not realize who I was.
When Tom first got into trouble, I dreamed hard about helping him in some miraculous way. But help finally came out of the blue. They stumbled over the man who
Of course, they let Tom go, at once. We were married the next day. What our friends and families back east said of us, now, was just that we had gone “out west” and were “doing well.”
Tom had a pretty good job, here in L.A., as a salesman, and I was working for Elise, and we were buying our little stucco house that was falling apart nearly as fast as we could nail and plaster it back together. Still, I knew we weren’t really doing so well. Tom had been completely cleared and he was supposed to be perfectly free. But he wasn’t free — not yet.
He was bitter. Oh, that was an awful thing to go through — being accused of a crime you had not committed, and being convicted, in spite of all you or your friends could do, and only saved in the end almost whimsically. It shook you, all right. And yet — you mustn’t throw good time after bad. So I dreamed. But all I could do, actually, was stand by, and hope that the days or the years would wash out the bitterness.
Tom was fanatically careful about everything we did. He feared and mistrusted the law, the police, the courts — any part of them. For instance, he drove the car with a tense correctness that hurt us both. But I was the same. I could no more go through a red light than I could kill somebody. We were living like guilty people.
Once I thought that if we could find some doctor who understood these things and go to him... But when I said something like that, one Sunday morning, Tom reacted as if I had hit him.
“How could it be inside of
“Yes, Tom, yes. I know it.”
“Don’t talk as if there’s something wrong with
“I only want us to be — well, easier in mind. Possibly we ought to remember that they did finally get it straightened out. They
“When they let me go, Ellen,” he said drearily, “this was their attitude. A kind of hard stare, they gave me. Not as if they were looking at an innocent man, but just at a lucky man. ‘Looks like we’ve got to let you go this time, Harkness. O.K., brother, but watch your step.’ ”
“Tom, who had that attitude?”
“All of them,” he said. “All of them.” His big fist went up and down, striking his thigh, and I tried to stop it with my two hands.
“All right, then. Let’s sue them! For false arrest or something!”
“Not me,” he said, with that wary, sharp look I had grown to hate. “I don’t get mixed up with Them again.”
I couldn’t argue with him. I wasn’t wise enough. I said, “Skip it. We’d be dumb to drag it up again. We’d better get going on those cupboards.”
Tom’s a good-looking blond beast with brown eyes. He said, “Pig...”
“What?”
“Little pig, that cries,
“I love you, you big mutt,” I said. “Hand me the paint brush. All right, then,” I snuffled.
Oh, I dreamed up crazy plots, about me rescued from deadly peril by a flock of gallant cops. They were just dreams. All I could do was go along, loving him, and time went along, too, and got in a few good licks — until one Friday night.
We’d gone about twelve miles from home to catch a movie we’d miss and on the way back we got lost. We knew we were going in the right direction, but we didn’t know exactly where we were. So we were creeping along one of those open roads, through a section that hadn’t been built up much. It was pretty dark. There was a tall eucalyptus hedge on our right. We were both squinting for the street sign at the next intersection, when the right front wheel struck something like a soft lump in the road. The car lurched over it.
Tom’s reflexes were quick. We stopped, straddling what I hoped was a sack of some soft stuff. I opened my door and put my foot down. It touched something. I fell out, scrambling. My hand groped in the dark and touched warm skin.
“He shouldn’t have been lying in the road,” I said, and my voice sounded funny to my own ears. “The thing to do is find a doctor.” I got up and my knee cracked. I heard it so clearly — I heard everything, magnified a million times. The car idling, Tom’s breath. I could tell Tom’s muscles screamed to drive like fury away. But I said, “House — back of the hedge. I’ll go. I’ll phone.”
I went up a graveled drive. I don’t know how I knew, but I did know that somewhere inside this dark house there was a light. Everything was so vivid. I could feel each pebble turn under my shoe. I knew, in the dark, each brick of the steps to the door. There was a button to push and I pushed it. I knew there were ears in the house to hear the bell.
I could see through the glass pane when a door opened and let light into a hall. A woman in a housecoat appeared at the far end, put her hand to a switch, and a bulb came on in the ceiling, just inside the door. She walked toward me. I could hear every fall of her foot. She rattled chains. The door opened about five inches, and she put her face near the gap.
The ceiling light was harsh and it came straight down on her face. I could see her hand on the edge of the door. I could see the pink petunias of the print she was wearing. I could hear a clock. I could smell the house-smell. I knew what she’d had for dinner and what she’d been doing when I rang.
I said, “Do you know a doctor? There’s a man hurt in the road. May I use your phone?”
“Hurt?” she said. Her hand was going toward the chain that kept the door from opening any farther, but it seemed to move so slowly.
I said, “Oh, hurry!” Then an arm went around my waist, snatching me almost off my feet. I screamed. For a terrible moment I didn’t even know who it was. He put his hand over my face and shut off the noise I was making. He said in my ear, “Come away!” I heard the woman yelp, the door slam.
Then I knew it was Tom who was making me run down the drive. He dragged me around the car and stuffed me in under the wheel, over to my own side. Then I saw the other car — its big cat eyes, hunting the driveway of a dark house ahead of us. The beams swerved off the road and then jerked back, as if the big eyes had caught sight of us and wanted to look again.
Tom yanked our car into gear and got out of there. We tore past the neighbor’s stopped car. We flew down the dark road, screamed around the next intersection. We nosed into traffic. We settled into line. Tom’s face was wet with sweat, trying to drive as if we were two people coming home from the movies.
He didn’t say a word until we were almost home. Then he said, “Ellen, I’m sorry...”
“He was dead, Tom?”
“Ellen, we hit a corpse. The man had been shot in the head. He was dead before we ever...”
He took his right hand off the wheel and I saw something on his first two fingers. I thought it was blood, but then I saw that it was a purple-red. “What’s that, Tom!”
“I don’t know.” He rubbed the stain. It seemed dry.
We were at home, finally, and we could talk. Tom said the minute I’d left him, he’d taken the flashlight and turned it on the man. Our wheel had gone over his legs. Tom got out and tried for the pulse, but he couldn’t be sure. He said he’d had a lot of vague mixed-up thoughts — better not try to move him, better wait for a doctor. Then he wondered about identity. He’d wiggled his hand under the body to get into the right hip pocket, to see if he could find a name and address. But there was no wallet. Instead, there was a broken bottle, wrapped in paper, leaking this purple stuff. Tom had pulled his hand out, sniffed at the stain. An odor he couldn’t describe — it was gone now. The light had fallen on a wallet lying in the road. Tom said it looked as if it were bleeding that purple stuff.
If the man was drunk, had somebody come along and robbed him while he was helpless? Tom said his mind creaked around to the realization that maybe robbery explained everything. Then he’d looked at the face and head, and he’d seen where the bullet went, and he knew it was murder.
I didn’t blame him. How could I blame him? A man has no business lying on a dark road. We hadn’t broken any laws, any laws at all. The man was dead. There wasn’t anything we could do. We didn’t know a single thing that could help explain what had happened to him. Why should we have stayed? To answer questions with the innocent truth until our faces reddened and our tongues began to stammer. “Harkness, eh? In trouble once before, weren’t you, Harkness? Grand larceny, eh? Just happened along, you say? Well, we know how these things go. So whatja do with the gun? Whatja do with the money?”
They wouldn’t believe what we’d say. That’s what Tom thought.
We pretended to each other that we slept that night. There wasn’t anything in the morning papers, but it was there, that night.
The woman had called the police right away. The neighbor, a man named Keefer, had caught an impression of a man forcing a woman into a car, and, of course, he had seen us run away. He did
Afterwards, she told them that her husband was in the habit of bringing large sums of money home from his store on Friday nights. He was always late and he had to walk from the bus. Somebody might have known this. That dark spot under the tall hedge was ideal for a hold-up.
And there I was right in the middle of the news!
It was the bizarre note that lifted the whole story out of the ordinary hit-and-rob class. Mrs. Maybee told how I’d been snatched from her doorstep by a sinister figure and dragged away, screaming. The neighbor, Mr. Keefer, had actually witnessed my kidnaping. So the papers feared for my safety.
It was ridiculous. It was also terrifying.
I didn’t think Mrs. Maybee gave the police a dangerous description of myself. Honey-blonde means whatever kind of honey you have in mind; my eyes are more green than blue, and I am an inch and a half shorter than she guessed. Of course, I wouldn’t wear my tan suit or my coral blouse ever again. And at the shop we experiment a lot. So I cut my hair in bangs.
There was one thing the papers didn’t mention. That broken bottle of purple-red stuff in the dead man’s pocket. “They’re setting a trap,” Tom said, grimly. The stain was gone from his fingers now — he’d spent half the night getting it off.
“If that stuff was all over the wallet,” I said, “maybe it’s on the money. Maybe they hope to trace the stolen money.”
We were in for it. We were hiding something now, and we’d have to go on hiding it, and the more we did to cover ourselves up the worse it grew and the guiltier we felt. Tom took all the tires off the car and put on some very old ones. He took the shoes we’d worn that night and destroyed them. It made me sick. What scared him most was that he might have left his fingerprints. He thought that if they did have his prints, they would have them identified by Monday.
In the middle of the night, Sunday night, I woke and he was sitting up in bed. He said to the ceiling shadows when I stirred, “I’ll never go through that again. Ellen
Oh, God, I was frightened!
But Monday came and went. All day nobody bothered us. All evening nobody came. I dreamed of purple money. Tuesday went by. Time was working on it.
But Wednesday... Wednesday, the one person in this world who had seen my face walked into Madame Elise’s Salon to get her hair done.
And I couldn’t get out. I was trapped.
I thought, she won’t know me again. It was such a brief moment. I’m not dressed as I was that night. People in any kind of uniform always look different I’ve got flat heels on. I look even shorter. And I’ve got bangs now.
That I’d seen her face only as long as she’d seen mine and knew
You don’t think out all the details. You just know when it’s danger...
I started to walk towards the third booth where I knew Elise would put Mrs. Smith. There were two Ellens walking in my skin. The frightened one, the real one, was lying low, watching, planning, scheming, hoping; then there was a second Ellen, a false and ordinary one, and
I knew the worst moment would come when I entered the booth and she, facing the glass, saw me behind her. I spoke before I could be seen. “Mrs. Smith? Just a shampoo, Ma’am? Or re-styling?” I stepped in and put my hands on her hair. Sure enough, her glance snapped to her own image.
Sometimes they hardly see you, these women. They come to be beautified, so they tend to look at themselves.
I whipped the covering cloth around her and pinned it around her neck quickly. I slipped out her few bobby-pins. I began to brush and manipulate. My hands were trained, and every bit of their skill was in them now. “You have nice high cheekbones,” I said, “and your skin is good. A little more severe around the temples might be stunning.”
“I’m getting old and gray,” she said.
“That isn’t so. I think an oil shampoo and a tiny rinse will bring out all those reddish lights.”
Her eyes had a little tinge of satisfaction. It was true, what I said. I couldn’t lay all this on with a shovel — it has to be just true enough. She must have been about thirty. Her hands were well-kept, unblemished, not hard-worked housewifely hands at all. Of course she was a bit dowdy. Her clothes weren’t expensive and they weren’t doing anything for her. There was something stiff about her.
I said, “Shall we go back now?” and led the way to the washing booth.
Oh, she’d
As I turned the water on, a feeling, beginning in the stomach, rippled up like a chill, and into my mind came all that depended on this. I worked with my head bent outside her range of vision, and with my arm crossed over her face. I lathered and scrubbed.
I made myself think about her. Funny she made an appointment under a phony name. No, it wasn’t either. She wouldn’t want to be stared at. She came to a strange, new place because she didn’t want to be criticized, either. She just wanted her hair done.
I went back to the supply room and mixed her tint. I could hear Madame Elise shouting to somebody under a dryer, and Joan’s voice in the last booth. When I went back, Mrs. Maybee had her eyes closed. I brushed and scrubbed the color in. And then I had to rinse her for the last time. Now I’d have to put her curls in. There isn’t so much for a woman to look at, while her hair goes into pin curls. Her own image isn’t very attractive.
I toweled her head lightly, tilted the chair, and we paraded back to Booth Three. Her eyes looked sleepy. I met them in the glass... and I smiled. “Shall I try drawing it back at the sides and curling it high?”
Her eyes flew to the mirror. “Not — today,” she said a little lamely.
“Not in the mood?” I said lightly. I felt that thing, like a chill, again. Oh, no, not today. How stupid of me! If there were two Ellens, there were also two women in the chair. Mrs. Smith and the widow Maybee. “Madame Elise is very clever with a henna pack,” I said. “With those red lights in your dark hair, I think it would be very successful. Did you ever think of having your hair brightened?”
“What woman hasn’t,” she said, with her awkward laugh. “Oh, I may... some day.”
“But not today,” I laughed. She was going to look at me now! I’d overplayed my little joke! I reached for a jar on the shelf. “This is with Madame’s compliments,” I told her. “Won’t you try it and tell us whether you like it?”
She read the label. “Hand cream? It’s something a little bit different,” I lied. That kept her busy for a while. She massaged cream on her hands while I worked like lightning.
I’d thought of something! Tom was calling for me at half-past five! But it didn’t matter — she’d never seen him.
She said, “This seems rather nice. Nice fragrance.” We discussed the hand cream, languidly. Sometimes a woman talks about herself and her kids and her troubles. Sometimes she gets curious about you.
When she was getting bored, I put her handbag near her. “You must keep the whole jar.” She was pleased, and she fussed around in her bag a while. I finished the front and sides, and was starting on the back.
“You’re very quick,” she said.
My heart jumped and I commanded it, shouting
Then she was all pinned. I felt the stirring of jubilation. I beat
Then I felt Elise breathing down my neck. I’d been quicker than normal, so of course she had to snoop and see if I’d been cutting corners or something. She brushed past me. “Are you comfortable, Mrs. Smith?” She pretended to adjust the hood of the dryer. “Did Ellen take care of you nicely?”
“Very nicely,” said Mrs. Maybee.
I let the curtain fall between me and her smile. The worst was over. When she was dry, I’d take the clips out and comb her hair. But if she hadn’t recognized me yet, she wasn’t going to. I’d got through it and lived. And it was all right. I went into the lavatory and nearly vomited.
I met Madame Elise, outside the door. “Ellen,” she said briskly, “Mrs. Smith will have a manicure.”
My heart felt like a leaf falling in sick spirals. “Couldn’t — one of the girls please — give Mrs. Smith — a manicure?”
“No one is free,” she said sharply. “Is anything wrong, Ellen?”
I stared at her and felt my skin move in a smile, and why it did I do not know. “My head aches,” I murmured. “But I’ll try, of course.”
“You’ll be all right,” she said, not very sympathetically. “Then you can go home.”
I thought,
In the end I just went, numbly. I thought, she will or she won’t, and so be it. She smiled at me. “My nails are really terrible.”
I said, as I always do, “We’ll soon fix that.” When I had everything arranged, I sat down on my little stool. I switched the lamp on, began.
It hit me in the nerves of my hands. They began to shake. I had to let hers go. I looked up and saw a flicker cross her face. I grabbed the edge of the table. I felt as if I were going all to pieces, but I wasn’t. I was coming together — the two of me.
I said, “Don’t you know who I am, Mrs. Maybee?”
And it felt good — it was a delicious relief to be all in one piece again.
She bent forward as if she’d duck her head out from under the dryer.
“Wait,” I said. “Wait, Mrs. Maybee... please.”
“
“Yes. Yes, I’m the one. You’re Mrs. Maybee, and I’m the mystery girl. I’m caught,” I said. “All you have to do is scream. The police are looking for me. But please listen—”
She caught her lip in her teeth and settled back a little.
“Maybe you’re a merciful woman,” I babbled. “Not like Elise. If she had only let me go home quietly, this wouldn’t have happened.
“Kinder?”
“We don’t know anything. We can’t help. We had nothing to do with your husband’s death. The newspapers are silly. It wasn’t any killer who took me away. It was only my husband, Mrs. Maybee. How can I make you understand?”
“What is there to understand?”
“We can’t get mixed up with the police. There are reasons.”
“Oh?” she said.
“He was lying in the road and we thought at first we’d hit him with our car. Oh, don’t you see! We couldn’t do any good. But if you tell who I am, now, it won’t help find who killed your husband. It’ll only ruin
“But... why?” Her eyes shifted.
“All right. I’ll tell you. Once, back east, they arrested my husband for something he didn’t do. He was cleared. But he can’t stand... he couldn’t stand it again!”
She moistened her lips.
“Nobody in the world,” I said, “knows about me except you, Mrs. Maybee. Won’t you be merciful?”
“You... certainly...” she said, with long spaces between her words... “scared... me...”
“I’m sorry. We’re sorry. I’ll bring Tom to talk to you. We’ll do anything, Mrs. Maybee. But don’t make us go through all that again!”
She lifted her hands nervously and put them back on the table. “Suppose you fix my nails and let me get out of here,” she snapped.
My head sagged forward. Curtain rings rattled. Madame Elise swiveled her hips around me and the table. She pushed the hood of the dryer up, away from Mrs. Maybee’s head. She turned it off. Mrs. Maybee, looking past me, winced around the eyes. The cop moved up beside me. “You Mrs. Maybee?” he said, just checking.
He was a young cop, a handsome kid. His eyes on me were cool and intelligent. His gun was resting, neat and flat, on his slim hip. “We’ll wait a little minute,” he said. “Somebody will be along who knows about this.” He was neither ruffled nor bored. The four of us were motionless in that tiny pink cubicle. Outside, in the shop, there was whispering.
I sat on my stool, my left arm on the table. I could see my watch. In twenty minutes, maybe sooner, Tom would drive up to the door. There must be a police car...
Mrs. Maybee said, “Can’t I get out of here, please?”
“In a minute, Ma’am.”
Her hand started toward her head. One white cotton pad was slipping over her eye. Madame Elise bent and did things. With the fluffs of cotton gone and the net off, Mrs. Maybee didn’t look quite so ridiculous.
I watched my watch.
When we heard the street door open, Madame Elise sailed out of the booth like a hostess going to greet a guest. The cop shifted his weight.
Mrs. Maybee licked her lips. “I’m sorry,” she said to me, feebly.
The cop said, in a curious voice, “Pardon me, Miss. But didn’t you know you were shouting at the top of your lungs? You could be heard all over the place.”
“Of course,” I said. “
His eyes changed. Then he said, respectfully, “Sergeant Davis. This is Mrs. Maybee.”
“We’ve met,” the man we’d been waiting for said quietly behind me.
I looked up at him. “Then you’ll know!” I gasped. My watch said the twenty minutes were more than half gone, and now there would be two police cars, maybe a crowd...
I took a big breath. “Ask Mrs. Maybee where she got that purple-red stuff under the right middle fingernail. Please, sir, ask her
He got it at once. He didn’t have to be told one word more. There was that bottle, broken when the man fell down. The man fell down when he was shot. So
The purple stain said —
This detective — he was in plainclothes — picked up her right hand.
“You know what it is?” I said. We had to hurry. I didn’t
“Yeah,” he said. “A special woodstain. He had it mixed downtown the same day. He had a hobby. How about it, Mrs. Maybee?”
“I...” She didn’t say more than that single sound.
Sergeant Davis looked thoughtfully at me. “So she was out there and found him before you and your husband did?”
“And didn’t notify us,” the young cop said.
“Sergeant,” I said, “there’s one thing more. When I rang her bell, I knew what she had just been doing. I knew the smell, absolutely, certainly.
“So she was out there,” he said, “after he died. And she didn’t tell us. Instead, she went back in the house and covered up her nails with some paint. Your idea is that she had a little something to do with that shooting?”
“Don’t you think so?”
He frowned. “So she shoots her husband. And she sits down...” He touched a bottle of polish on my table. “I’ve heard it takes a pretty steady hand to put that stuff on your own nails.”
“It does,” I said. “But she
“Uh-huh,” he said.
Then we heard the street door open again. There were hard, quick footsteps. High, nervous, but very angry, Tom’s voice demanded, “Where is my wife? Ellen, what are they doing to you?”
Now I knew what Tom would do — now and from now on. “They’re listening to me,” I called. “P-pig,” I blubbered, with his hand in mine, “help me explain it to them...”
It was a strange thing that out of all the people in the world she asked
She’d walked right into a trap.
It wasn’t a very new plot on her part. There was a boy friend, hidden in her life. He’d done the actual shooting. I suppose she had to be out there, supervising, and helping make it look like a robbery. They never would have tried to spend that purple money. There was much more — in the insurance.
All this came out after a while. That day, when Sergeant Davis talked quietly with Tom and me, he didn’t exactly scold us. But he made us understand what a nuisance we’d been, and how we’d wasted his time. For, of course, we’d have to be explained. When he heard how Tom had been mixed up in that old trouble, he said soberly, “Rough deal, Harkness.” But then he laughed a little. “You kids don’t want to be so sure you know what the other guy is going to think. It isn’t easy, you know, to admit you were dead wrong. Believe me, if they had you and let you out, back there, I’d
I babbled all the way home. But Tom said, “Why the pitch about mercy, Ellen?”
“I was scared she’d take her hand to Canada or somewhere. I was scared she’d cut the finger off and throw it in the garbage. I was so shocked — with hope — once I took her old polish off and saw the purple stain. I knew somebody else had to see it, somebody who’d know, somebody like Sergeant Davis.”
“Nice guy,” said Tom, very offhand.
I swallowed. “And I knew Elise could hear me. She’d yell for the police. In the meantime I had to talk about
“She ought to have called the cops,” Tom said, nodding, and that was when I finally began to bawl... all the way home.
Ellery Queen
The Lonely Bride
Certain things should come together: for example, one shoe and another or one love bird and another. So when Ellery observed on the fourth finger of his beautiful young petitioner’s left hand a circlet of entwined golden roses which had not yet lost the bright dew of the jeweler’s garden, he grasped at once the missing complement: a groom, probably young and almost certainly a fool or a rascal. Only folly or worse explained a newlywed husband who left such a bloom untended.
Her name was Shelley, she confessed in the Queen apartment, she was a New Yorker from Evanston, a model by profession, and the fellow having seen her laminated in four colors on a magazine cover had pursued her with such wolfish purpose that she found herself one day in the City Clerk’s office being made Mrs. Jimmy Browne. For their honeymoon they had cruised the world, madly rich in love, and lesser goods, too, for young Mr. Browne seemed bottomlessly supplied with the vulgar commodity by which lovers satisfy their appetites for giving, and he was insatiable. On their return to New York three days before, he had set her up in a princely furnished suite at L’Aiglon Towers, excused himself “for a few hours on a little business matter,” kissed her passionately, and she had not seen or heard from him since. It then occurred to Mrs. James Browne, a little tardily, that she knew nothing whatsoever about her dark, tall, handsome spouse. Accordingly, she had hunted through his things and found in his bureau drawer, rolled up in a pair of cashmere hose, two specimens of United States folding money bearing the rare portrait of Salmon P. Chase — apparently Mr. Browne’s golden umbrellas against a rainy day. Mrs. Browne’s $20,000 question was: Who, why, and where was her husband?
Ellery gloomily excused himself and went into his study to telephone one or two ruffians of his acquaintance. On his return he said sadly: “As I suspected. Mrs. Browne, your husband is a professional gambler known to the fraternity as The Boy Wonder. The two ten-thousand-dollar bills are undoubtedly his emergency poke — he shot the rest of his roll on your courtship and honeymoon — and he has been closeted since Tuesday in a hotel room off Times Square frantically trying to replenish the exchequer at the expense of a gent known as Big T. I’m afraid love has forced Jimmy to go out of his class. Big T is large time and he played poker when Jimmy was playing tag.”
At this point Ellery made a mental note to find out more about Evanston; because all that Shelley said was, “Then I’d better get back. Jimmy will be needing that twenty thousand and he won’t find it in his socks because I hid it in the apartment in a safer place. Thanks, Mr. Queen. I’ll take care of this myself.”
And she would have done so, Ellery felt sure, had not a coal-truck driver ruled otherwise. As Ellery handed Shelley Browne into a taxi the truck careened to avoid a pedestrian and crashed into the cab. The truck driver blubbered, the cab driver raged, and the cover girl lay in a broken heap on the taxi floor. The ambulance doctor said it was concussion and possible internal injuries; he looked grim. Ellery felt a sudden gripe of responsibility; he knew Big T. So he stooped over her and he said, distinctly, “I’ll follow through, Shelley. Just tell me where you hid Jimmy’s nest-egg.” Shelley whispered back, “In a book,” and then her
Later that day Jimmy Browne stumbled from his wife’s room at Floral Hospital into Ellery’s embrace.
“They won’t know for hours, Queen.” He was haggard, blackly boyish. “She’s still unconscious.”
“And it’s 3:07,” mused Ellery. Jimmy had dropped twenty-seven Gs to Big T, he had had with him only seven Gs in cash, and Big T had politely requested the balance by 6 P.M. “We’d better start looking for those two ten-thousand-dollar bills.”
“Queen, she’s going to die.”
“Not necessarily, but you’re a sure thing. Big T lives by the code, and you know the sub-paragraph on welshers. Come on.”
As they trotted down the hospital corridor Jimmy promised, “Queen, if Shelley and I pull out of this I swear I’ll quit the racket for good. I won’t even play Bingo. So help me, I’ll get a job! Where did Shelley say she hid that dough?”
“In a hook.”
“Book?” Jimmy stopped. “In
“That’s what she told me.”
“Why, we just took the joint. There isn’t a book in it!”
To deteriorate matters, they reached the doorway of the Browne suite at L’Aiglon Towers to find Cookie Napoli’s back wedged into it. Cookie Napoli was the size and shape of a Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade balloon and his affection for sweetmeats and mayhem was legend in Manhattan’s sinks.
“What’s the matter, Moby Dick?” snarled Jimmy. “Doesn’t Big T trust me?”
“Believe it or not,” said Cookie, probing among his massive molars for a fragment of fig newton, “I’m just waitin’ for a payoff.”
“3:29,” muttered Mr. Queen; and he followed The Boy Wonder and Big T’s emissary into an apartment all squares and curves and violent pastels, furnished with pieces of vast rhomboidal furniture and elegantly bespattered with art, from Picasso-and Archipenko-type abstractions to a grand piano of steel tubing.
But of literature no sign. Ellery scowled at the bookshelves. He had visualized a young wife defending herself against mental torture during those three husbandless days by buying stacks of murder mysteries or such, but apparently Shelley had not escaped by this route. The shelves were mighty and might have borne the world’s weight of printed wisdom, but they were merely crammed with souvenirs. In the lunacy of their honeymoon Jimmy had lavished on his cover girl all the wealth of the tourist Indies and beyond — bazaar brassware, a teakwood Sacred Cow, a carnelian camel from Djibouti, Chinese old-men ivories, a jade Buddha, a Tibetan prayer-wheel, a Grecian urn, a Tyrolean bride in metal bas-relief attached to the back of a felt-bottomed marble base, a plaster miniature of the Colosseum, a china shepherd and shepherdess from Dresden...
“Don’t bother with that stuff,” cried Jimmy, crawling around inside the amphitheatre of the imitation Italian fireplace. “She said a book.”
“I know what she said,” mumbled Ellery; but while Cookie devoured half a dozen ladyfingers he examined each
Afterward, Ellery looked thoughtful. He removed his jacket.
At 4:06 the eminent sleuth raised a dusty nose to announce: “There is positively no book in this apartment, not so much as a memo or telephone book. And there are no ten-thousand-dollar bills, either. Still, Shelley said...” And he threw himself on the sofa and closed his eyes...
“No change yet,” said Jimmy Browne hollowly, dropping the telephone. Cookie reached into his bulging pocket and Jimmy blanched. But the flipper came out clutching a bag of coconut macaroons.
At 4:31 Ellery raised his head from the angular couch on which he labored. “I’ve decided,” he said, “that something is missing in this room.”
“Sure, twenty grand.
At 4:53 the telephone screamed. Cookie almost dropped a Nabisco. It was the hospital. Mrs. Browne was still unconscious, but the prognosis was suddenly good. She would live. Jimmy promised again. “But what good will a dead husband do her? Queen, I was leveling — I’ll look for that job.” Wildly he eyed the door. “Just find my dough!”
“Big T’s dough, I believe,” said Cookie courteously, and when his hand emerged this time it grasped an inedible roscoe, which he began to examine with earnestness.
And then, at 5:13, Ellery sprang from his bed of pain. “I was right!”
“About what?”
“There is something missing in this room, Jimmy. Now I know where Shelley hid those bills!”
Challenge to the Reader:
“Jimmy,” said Ellery, “certain things are inseparable. Shoes, for instance. Lovebirds.” He took
Jimmy stared. “Say. There
Ellery hefted the little lady again and then he hurled her, straight and true, at Cookie Napoli, who was thoughtfully edging toward the door. The Tyrolean bride caught Big T’s trigger-man on the chin; Cookie landed on the floor, Jimmy landed on Cookie, and Ellery landed on the roscoe. “When we found Cookie outside your door we assumed he was waiting. Actually, he was leaving. But he had to brazen it out... Ah, a sack of fudge squares, and what’s this in his other pocket? The missing bridegroom. Felt’s loose, metal bas-relief is hollow, and I believe — yes — you’ll find your ten-thousand-dollar bills inside. Cookie heard us coming and pocketed the works for future reference.”
“But she said... Shelley said—” Mr. Browne spluttered as he tore at the shell of the metal bridegroom “—Shelley said she hid it in a book.”
“Bas-relief — meaning a flat back — attached to a marble base with a felt bottom — and they come in pairs. Poor Shelley passed out before she could finish her sentence. What your wife meant to say,” said Mr. Queen, grasping the roscoe more firmly as Cookie stirred, “was ‘In a book
W. Somerset Maugham
The Happy Couple
I don’t know that I very much liked London. He was a member of a club I belonged to, and I had often sat next to him at lunch. He was a judge at the Old Bailey, and it was through him I was able to get a privileged seat in court when there was an interesting trial that I wanted to attend. He was an imposing figure on the bench in his great full-bottomed wig, his red robes and his ermine tippet; and with his long, white face, thin lips and pale blue eyes, a somewhat terrifying one. He was just, but harsh; and sometimes it made me uncomfortable to hear the bitter scolding he gave a convicted prisoner whom he was about to sentence to death or a long term of imprisonment. But his acid humor at the lunch table and his willingness to discuss the cases he had tried made him sufficiently good company for me to disregard the slight malaise I felt in his presence. I asked him once whether he did not feel a certain uneasiness of mind after he had sent a man to the gallows. He smiled as he sipped his glass of port.
“Not at all. The man’s had a fair trial; I’ve summed up as fairly as I could, and the jury has found him guilty. When I condemn him to death, I sentence him to a punishment he richly deserves; and when the court rises, I put the case out of my head. Nobody but a sentimental fool would do anything else.”
I knew he liked to talk to me, but I never thought he looked upon me as anything but a club acquaintance, so I was not a little surprised when one day I received a telegram from him saying that he was spending his vacation on the Riviera, and would like to stay with me for two or three days on his way to Italy. I wired that I should be glad to see him. But it was with a certain trepidation that I met him at the station.
On the day of his arrival, to help me out, I asked Miss Gray, a neighbor and an old friend of mine, to dinner. She was of mature age, but charming, and she had a flow of lively conversation which I knew nothing could discourage. I gave them a very good dinner, and though I had no port to offer the Judge, I was able to provide him with a good bottle of Montrachet and an even better bottle of Mouton Rothschild. He enjoyed them both; and I was glad of that, because when I had offered him a cocktail, he had refused with earnest indignation.
“I have never understood,” he said, “how people presumably civilized can indulge in a habit that is not only barbarous but disgusting.”
I may state that this did not deter Miss Gray and me from having a couple of dry martinis, though it was with impatience and distaste that he watched us drink them.
But the dinner was a success. The good wine and Miss Gray’s sprightly chatter combined to give Landon a geniality I had never before seen in him. It was plain to me that notwithstanding his austere appearance he liked feminine society; and Miss Gray in a becoming dress, with her neat head only just touched with gray and her delicate features, her sparkling eyes, was still alluring. After dinner the Judge, with some old brandy still further to mellow him, let himself go, and for a couple of hours held us entranced while he told us of celebrated trials in which he had been concerned. I was not surprised therefore that when Miss Gray asked us to lunch with her next day, Landon, even before I could answer, accepted with alacrity.
“A very nice woman,” he said when she had left us. “And a head on her shoulders. She must have been very pretty as a girl. She’s not bad now. Why. isn’t she married?”
“She always says nobody asked her.”
“Stuff and nonsense! Women ought to marry. Too many of these women about who want their independence. I have no patience with them.”
Miss Gray lived in a little house facing the sea at St. Jean, which is a couple of miles from my own house at Cap Ferrat. We drove down next day at one and were shown into her living room.
“I have a surprise for you,” she said to me, as we shook hands. “The Craigs are coming.”
“You’ve got to know them at last.”
“Well, I thought it was too absurd that we should live next door to one another, and bathe from the same beach every day and not speak. So I forced myself on them, and they’ve promised to come to lunch today. I wanted you to meet them, to see what you make of them.”
She turned to Landon. “I hope you don’t mind.”
But he was on his best behavior.
“I’m sure I shall be delighted to meet any friends of yours, Miss Gray,” he said.
“But they’re not friends of mine. I’ve seen a lot of them, but I never spoke to them till yesterday. It’ll be a treat for them to meet an author and a celebrated judge.”
I had heard a good deal of the Craigs from Miss Gray during the previous three weeks. They had taken the cottage next to hers, and at first she feared they would be a nuisance. She liked her own company and did not want to be bothered with the trivialities of social intercourse. But she very quickly discovered that the Craigs were as plainly disinclined to strike up an acquaintance with her as she with them. Though in that little place they could not but meet two or three times a day, the Craigs never by so much as a glance gave an indication that they had ever seen her before. Miss Gray told me she thought it very tactful of them to make no attempt to intrude upon her privacy, but I had an idea that she was not affronted, a little puzzled rather that they apparently wanted to know her as little as she wanted to know them. I had guessed some time before that she would not be able to resist making the first advance. On one occasion, while we were walking, we passed them, and I was able to have a good look at them. Craig was a handsome man, with a red, honest face, a gray moustache and thick strong gray hair. He held himself well, and there was a bluff heartiness of manner about him that suggested a broker who had retired on a handsome fortune. His wife was a woman hard of visage, tall and of masculine appearance, with dull, fair hair, too elaborately dressed, a large nose, a large mouth and a weather-beaten skin. She was not only plain but grim. Her clothes, pretty, flimsy and graceful, sat oddly upon her, for they would better have suited a girl of eighteen, and Mrs. Craig was certainly forty. Miss Gray told me they were well cut and expensive. I thought he looked commonplace and she looked disagreeable, and I thought Miss Gray was lucky that they were so obviously disposed to keep themselves to themselves.
“There’s something rather charming about them,” she told me.
“What?”
“They love one another. And they adore the baby.”
For they had a child that was not more than a year old; and from this Miss Gray concluded that they had not long been married. She liked to watch them with their baby. A nurse took it out every morning in a pram, but before this, father and mother spent an ecstatic quarter of an hour teaching it to walk. They stood a few yards apart and urged the child to flounder from one to the other; and each time it tumbled into the parental arms, it was lifted up and rapturously embraced. And when finally it was tucked up in the smart pram, they hung over it with charming baby talk and watched it out of sight as though they couldn’t bear to let it go.
Miss Gray used often to see them walking up and down the lawn of their garden arm in arm; they did not talk, as though they were so happy to be together that conversation was unnecessary; and it warmed her heart to observe the affection which that dour, unsympathetic woman had so obviously for her tall, handsome husband. It was a pretty sight to see Mrs. Craig brush an invisible speck of dust off his coat, and Miss Gray was convinced that she purposely made holes in his socks in order to have the pleasure of darning them. And it looked as though he loved her as much as she loved him. Every now and then he would give her a glance, and she would look up at him and smile, and he gave her cheek a little pat. Because they were no longer young, their mutual devotion was peculiarly touching.
I never knew why Miss Gray had never married; I felt as certain as the Judge that she had had plenty of chances; and I asked myself, when she talked to me about the Craigs, whether the sight of this matrimonial felicity didn’t give her a slight pang. I suppose complete happiness is very rare in this world, but these two people seemed to enjoy it, and it may be that Miss Gray was so strangely interested in them only because she could not quite suppress the feeling in her heart that by remaining single she had missed something.
Because she didn’t know what their first names were, she called them Edwin and Angelina. She made up a story about them. She told it to me one day; and when I ridiculed it, she was quite short with me. This, as far as I can remember, is how it went: They had fallen in love with one another years before — perhaps twenty years — when Angelina, a young girl then, had the fresh grace of her teens and Edwin was a brave youth setting out joyously on the journey of life. And since the gods, who are said to look upon young love with kindliness, nevertheless do not bother their heads with practical matters, neither Edwin nor Angelina had a penny to bless himself with. It was impossible for them to marry, but they had courage, hope and confidence. Edwin made up his mind to go out to South America or Malaya or where you like, make his fortune and return to marry the girl who had patiently waited for him. It couldn’t take more than two or three years, five at the utmost; and what is that, when you’re twenty and the whole of life is before you? Meanwhile of course Angelina would live with her widowed mother.
But things didn’t pan out according to schedule. Edwin found it more difficult than he had expected to make a fortune; in fact, he found it hard to earn enough money to keep body and soul together, and only Angelina’s love and her tender letters gave him the heart to continue the struggle. At the end of five years he was not much better off than when he started. Angelina would willingly have joined him and shared his poverty, but it was impossible for her to leave her mother, bedridden as she was, poor thing, and there was nothing for them to do but have patience. And so the years passed slowly, and Edwin’s hair grew gray, and Angelina became grim and haggard. Hers was the harder lot, for she could do nothing but wait. The cruel glass showed such charms as she had possessed slip away from her one by one; and at last she discovered that youth, with a mocking laugh and a pirouette, had left her for good. Her sweetness turned sour from long tending of a querulous invalid; her mind was narrowed by the society of the small town in which she lived. Her friends married and had children, but she remained a prisoner to duty.
She wondered if Edwin still loved her. She wondered if he would ever come back. She often despaired. Ten years went by, and fifteen, and twenty. Then Edwin wrote to say that his affairs were settled, he had made enough money for them to live upon in comfort, and if she were still willing to marry him, he would return at once. By a merciful interposition of providence, Angelina’s mother chose that very moment to abandon a world in which she had made herself a thorough nuisance. But when after so long a separation they met, Angelina saw with dismay that Edwin was as young as ever. It’s true his hair was gray, but it infinitely became him. He had always been good-looking, but now he was a very handsome man in the flower of his age. She felt as old as the hills. She was conscious of her narrowness, her terrible provincialism, compared with the breadth he had acquired by his long sojourn in foreign countries. He was gay and breezy as of old, but her spirit was crushed. The bitterness of life had warped her soul. It seemed monstrous to bind that alert and active man to her by a promise twenty years old, and she offered him his release. He went deathly pale.
“Don’t you care for me any more?”
And she realized on a sudden — oh, the rapture, oh, the relief! — that to him too she was just the same as she had ever been. He had thought of her always as she was; her portrait had been, as it were, stamped on his heart, so that now, when the real woman stood before him, she was, to him, still eighteen.
So they were married.
“I don’t believe a word of it,” I said when Miss Gray had brought her story to its happy ending.
“I insist on your believing it,” she said. “I’m convinced it’s true, and I haven’t the smallest doubt that they’ll live happily together to a ripe old age.” Then she made a remark that I thought rather shrewd. “Their love is founded on an illusion, perhaps; but since it has to them all the appearance of reality, what does it matter?”
While I have told you this idyllic story of Miss Gray’s invention, the three of us, our hostess, Landon and myself, waited for the Craigs to come.
“Have you ever noticed that if people live next door to you, they’re invariably late?” Miss Gray asked the Judge.
“No, I haven’t,” he answered acidly. “I’m always punctual myself, and I expect other people to be punctual.”
“I suppose it’s no good offering you a cocktail?”
“None whatever, madam.”
“But I have some sherry that they tell me isn’t bad.”
The Judge took the bottle out of her hands and looked at the label. A faint smile broke on his thin lips.
“This is a civilized drink, Miss Gray. With your permission I will help myself. I never knew a woman yet who knew how to pour out a glass of wine. One should hold a woman by the waist, but a bottle by the neck.”
While he was sipping the old sherry with every sign of satisfaction, Miss Gray glanced out of the window.
“Oh, that’s why the Craigs are late. They were waiting for the baby to come back.”
I followed her eyes and saw that the nurse had just pushed the pram past Miss Gray’s house on her way home. Craig took the baby out of the pram and lifted it high in the air. The baby, trying to tug at his moustache, crowed gleefully. Mrs. Craig stood by watching, and the smile on her face made her harsh features almost pleasant. The window was open, and we heard her speak
“Come along, darling,” she said, “we’re late.”
He put the baby back in the pram, and they came up to the door of Miss Gray’s house and rang the bell. The maid showed them in. They shook hands with Miss Gray, and because I was standing near, she introduced me to them. Then she turned to the Judge.
“And this is Sir Edward Landon — Mr. and Mrs. Craig.”
One would have expected the Judge to move forward with an outstretched hand, but he remained stock-still. He put his eyeglass up to his eye, that eyeglass that I had on more than one occasion seen him use with devastating effect in court, and stared at the newcomers.
“Gosh, what a dirty customer,” I said to myself.
He let the glass drop from his eye. “How do you do,” he said. “Am I mistaken in thinking that we’ve met before?”
The question turned my eyes to the Craigs. They stood side by side close to one another, as though they had drawn together for mutual protection. They did not speak. Mrs. Craig looked terrified. Craig’s red face was darkened by a purple flush, and his eyes appeared almost to start out of his head.
“I don’t think so,” he said in a rich, deep voice. “Of course I’ve heard of you, Sir Edward.”
“More people know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows,” said he.
Miss Gray meanwhile had been giving the cocktail shaker a shake, and now she handed cocktails to her two guests. She had noticed nothing. I didn’t know what it all meant; in fact, I wasn’t sure it meant anything. The incident, if incident there was, passed so quickly that I was half inclined to think that I had read into the strangers’ momentary embarrassment on being introduced to a celebrated man something for which there was no foundation. I set about making myself pleasant. I asked them how they liked the Riviera and if they were comfortable in their house. Miss Gray joined in, and we chatted, as one does with strangers, of commonplace things. They talked easily and pleasantly. Mrs. Craig said how much they enjoyed the bathing and complained of the difficulty of getting fish at the seaside. I was aware that the Judge did not join in the conversation, but looked down at his feet as though he were unconscious of the company.
Lunch was announced. We went into the dining room. We were only five, and it was a small round table, so the conversation could not be anything but general. I must confess that it was carried on chiefly by Miss Gray and myself. The Judge was silent, but he often was, for he was a moody creature, and I paid no attention. I noticed that he ate the omelette with good appetite, and when it was passed round again took a second helping. The Craigs struck me as a little shy, but that didn’t surprise me, and as the second course was produced they began to talk more freely. It didn’t strike me that they were very amusing people; they didn’t seem interested in very much besides their baby, the vagaries of the two Italian maids they had, and an occasional flutter at Monte Carlo; and I couldn’t help thinking that Miss Gray had erred in making their acquaintance. Then suddenly something happened: Craig rose abruptly from his chair and fell headlong to the floor. We jumped up. Mrs. Craig threw herself down, over her husband, and took his head in her hands.
“It’s all right, George,” she cried in an agonized tone. “It’s all right!”
“Put his head down,” I said. “He’s only fainted.”
I felt his pulse and could feel nothing. I said he had fainted, but I wasn’t sure it wasn’t a stroke. He was the sort of heavy, plethoric man who might easily have one. Miss Gray dipped her napkin into water and dabbed his for-head. Mrs. Craig seemed distraught. Then I noticed that Landon had remained quietly sitting in his chair.
“If he’s fainted, you’re not helping him to recover by crowding round him,” he said acidly.
Mrs. Craig turned her head and gave him a look of bitter hatred.
“I’ll ring up the doctor,” said Miss Gray.
“No, I don’t think that’s necessary,” I said. “He’s coming to.”
I could feel his pulse growing stronger, and in a minute or two he opened his eyes. He gasped when he realized what had happened, and tried to struggle to his feet.
“Don’t move,” I said. “Lie still a little longer.”
I got him to drink a glass of brandy, and the color came back to his face.
“I feel all right now,” he said.
“We’ll get you into the next room, and you can lie on the sofa for a bit.”
“No, I’d sooner go home. It’s only a step.”
He got up from the floor.
“Yes, let’s go back,” said Mrs. Craig. She turned to Miss Gray. “I’m so sorry; he’s never done anything like this before.”
They were determined to go, and I thought myself it was the best thing for them to do.
“Put him to bed and keep him there, and he’ll be as right as rain tomorrow.”
Mrs. Craig took one of his arms and I took the other; Miss Gray opened the door, and though still a bit shaky, he was able to walk. When we arrived at the Craigs’ home, I offered to go and help to undress him; but they would neither of them hear of it. I went back to Miss Gray’s and found them at dessert.
“I wonder why he fainted,” Miss Gray was saying. “All the windows are open, and it’s not particularly hot today.”
“I wonder,” said the Judge.
I noticed that his thin pale face bore an expression of some complacency. We had our coffee; and then, since the Judge and I were going to play golf, we got into the car and drove up the hill to my house.
“How did Miss Gray get to know those people?” Landon asked me. “They struck me as rather second-rate. I shouldn’t have thought they were very much her mark.”
“You know women. She likes her privacy, and when they settled in next door, she was quite decided that she wouldn’t have anything to do with them; but when she discovered that they didn’t want to have anything to do with her, she couldn’t rest till she’d made their acquaintance.”
I told him the story she had invented about her neighbors. He listened with an expressionless face.
“I’m afraid your friend Miss Gray is a sentimental donkey, my dear fellow,” he said when I had come to an end. “I tell you, women ought to marry. She’d soon have had all that nonsense knocked out of her if she’d had a half dozen brats.”
“What do you know about the Craigs?” I asked.
He gave me a frigid glance.
“I? Why should I know anything about them? I thought they were very ordinary people.”
I wish I knew how to describe the strong impression he gave me, both by the glacial austerity of his look and by the rasping finality of his tone, that he was not prepared to say anything more. We finished the drive in silence.
Landon was well on in his sixties, and he was the kind of golfer who never hits a long ball but is never off the straight, and he was a deadly putter, so, though he gave me strokes, he beat me handsomely. After dinner I took him in to Monte Carlo, where he finished the evening by winning a couple of thousand francs at the roulette table. These successive events put him into a remarkably good humor.
“A very pleasant day,” he said when we parted for the night. “I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.”
I spent the next morning at work, and we did not meet till lunch. We were just finishing when I was called to the telephone.
When I came back, my guest was drinking a second cup of coffee.
“That was Miss Gray,” I said.
“Oh? What had she to say?”
“The Craigs have done a bolt. They disappeared last night. The maids live in the village; and when they came this morning, they found the house empty. They’d skipped — the Craigs, the nurse and the baby — and taken their luggage with them. They left money on the table for the maids’ wages, the rent to the end of their tenancy and the tradesmen’s bills.”
The Judge said nothing. He took a cigar from the box, examined it carefully and then lit it with deliberation.
“What have you got to say about that?” I asked.
“My dear fellow, are you obliged to use these American phrases? Isn’t English good enough for you?”
“Is that an American phrase? It expresses exactly what I mean. You can’t imagine I’m such a fool as not to have noticed that you and the Craigs had met before; and if they’ve vanished into thin air like figments of the imagination, it’s a fairly reasonable conclusion that the circumstances under which you met were not pleasant.”
The Judge gave a little chuckle, and there was a twinkle in his eyes.
“That was a very good brandy you gave me last night,” he said. “It’s against my principles to drink liqueurs after lunch, but it’s a very dull man who allows his principles to enslave him, and for once I think I should enjoy one.”
I sent for the brandy and watched the Judge while he poured himself out a generous measure. He took a sip with obvious satisfaction.
“Do you remember the Wingford murder?” he asked me.
“No.”
“Perhaps you weren’t in England at the time. Pity — you might have come to the trial. You’d have enjoyed it. It caused a lot of excitement; the papers were full of it.
“Miss Wingford was a rich spinster of mature age who lived in the country with a companion. She was a healthy woman for her age; and when she died rather suddenly, her friends were surprised. Her physician, a fellow called Brandon, signed the certificate and she was duly buried. The will was read, and it appeared that she had left everything she had, something between sixty and seventy thousand pounds, to her companion. The relatives were very sore, but there was nothing they could do about it. The will had been drawn up by her lawyer and witnessed by his clerk and Dr. Brandon.
“But Miss Wingford had a maid who had been with her for thirty years and had always understood that she would be remembered in the will; she claimed that Miss Wingford had promised to leave her well provided for, and when she found that she wasn’t even mentioned, she flew into a passion. She told the nephew and the two nieces who had come down for the funeral that she was sure Miss Wingford had been poisoned, and she said that if they didn’t go to the police, she’d go herself. Well, they didn’t do that, but they went to see Dr. Brandon. He laughed. He said that Miss Wingford had had a weak heart and he’d been treating her for years. She died just as he had always expected her to die, peacefully in her sleep; and he advised them not to pay any attention to what the maid said. She had always hated the companion, a Miss Starling, and been jealous of her. Dr. Brandon was highly respected; he had been Miss Wingford’s doctor for a long time, and the two nieces, who’d stayed with her often, knew him well. He was not profiting by the will, and there seemed no reason to doubt his word, so the family thought there was nothing to do but go back to London.
“But the maid went on talking; she talked so much that at last the police, much against their will, I must admit, were obliged to take notice, and an order to exhume the body was made. There was an inquest, and it was found that Miss Wingford had died from an overdose of veronal. The coroner’s jury found that it had been administered by Miss Starling, and she was arrested. A detective was sent down from Scotland Yard, and he got together some unexpected evidence. It appeared that there’d been a good deal of gossip about Miss Starling and Dr. Brandon. They’d been seen a lot together in places in which there was no reason for them to be except that they wanted to be together, and the general impression in the village was that they were only waiting for Miss Wingford to die to get married. That put a very different complexion on the case. To make a long story short, the police got enough evidence in their opinion to justify them in arresting the doctor and charging him and Miss Starling with murder.”
The Judge took another sip.
“The case came up for trial before me. The case for the prosecution was that the accused were madly in love with one another and had done the poor old lady to death so that they could marry on the fortune Miss Starling had wheedled her employer into leaving her. Miss Wingford always had a cup of cocoa when she went to bed, which Miss Starling prepared for her; and the counsel for the prosecution claimed that it was in this that Miss Starling had dissolved the tablets that caused Miss Wingford’s death. The accused elected to give evidence on their own behalf, and they made a miserable showing in the witness box. They lied their heads off. Though witnesses testified they had seen them walking together at night with their arms round one another’s waists, though Brandon’s maid testified she had seen them kissing one another in the doctor’s house, they swore they were no more than friends. And oddly enough, medical evidence proved that Miss Starling was
“Brandon admitted that he had given Miss Wingford a bottle of veronal tablets because she complained of sleeplessness, but declared he had warned her never to take more than one, and then only when absolutely necessary. The defense sought to prove that she had taken the tablets either by accident or because she wanted to commit suicide. That didn’t hold water for a moment. Miss Wingford was a jolly, normal old lady who thoroughly enjoyed life; and her death occurred two days before the expected arrival of an old friend for a week’s visit. She hadn’t complained to the maid of sleeping badly — in fact, her maid had always thought her a very good sleeper. It was impossible to believe that she had accidentally taken a sufficient number of tablets to kill herself. Personally, I had no doubt that it was a put-up job between the doctor and the companion. The motive was obvious and sufficient. I summed up and I hope summed up fairly; but it was my duty to put the facts before the jury, and to my mind the facts were damning. The jury filed out. I don’t suppose you know that when you are sitting on the bench, you somehow get the feeling of the court. You have to be on your guard against it, to be sure it doesn’t influence you. I never had it more strongly than on that day that there wasn’t a soul in court who wasn’t convinced that those two people had committed the crime with which they were charged. I hadn’t the shadow of a doubt that the jury would bring in a verdict of guilty. Juries are incalculable. They were out for three hours, and when they came back I knew at once that I was mistaken. In a murder case when a jury is going to bring in a verdict of guilty they won’t look at the prisoner; they look away. I noticed that three or four of the jurymen glanced at the two prisoners in the dock. They brought in a verdict of not guilty. The real names of Mr. and Mrs. Craig are Dr. and Mrs. Brandon.
“I’m just as certain as I am that I’m sitting here that they committed between them a cruel and heartless murder and richly deserved to be hanged.”
“What do you think made the jury find them not guilty?”
“I’ve asked myself that; and do you know the only explanation I can give? The fact that it was conclusively proved that they had never been lovers. And if you come to think of it, that’s one of the most curious features of the whole case. That woman was prepared to commit murder to get the man she loved, but she wasn’t prepared to have an illicit love affair with him.”
“Human nature is very odd, isn’t it?”
“Very,” said Landon, helping himself to another glass of brandy.
Rex Stout
The Cop Killer
There were several reasons why I had no complaints as I walked along West Thirty-fifth Street that morning, approaching the stoop of Nero Wolfe’s old brownstone house. The day was sunny and sparkling, my new shoes felt fine after the two-mile walk, a complicated infringement case had been polished off for a big client, and I had just deposited a check in five figures to Wolfe’s account in the bank.
Five paces short of the stoop I became aware that two people, a man and a woman, were standing on the sidewalk across the street, staring either at the stoop or at me, or maybe both. That lifted me a notch higher, with the thought that while two rubbernecks might not put us in a class with the White House still it was nothing to sneeze at, until a second glance made me realize that I had seen them before. But where? Instead of turning up the steps I faced them, just as they stepped off the curb and started to me.
“Mr. Goodwin,” the woman said in a sort of gasping whisper that barely reached me.
She was fair-skinned and blue-eyed, young enough, kind of nice-looking and neat in a dark blue assembly-line coat. He was as dark as she was fair, not much bigger than her, with his nose slanting slightly to the left and a full wide mouth. My delay in recognizing him was because I had never seen him with a hat on before. He was the hat-and-coat-and-tie custodian at the barber shop I went to.
“Oh, it’s you, Carl—”
“Can we go in with you?” the woman asked in the same gasping whisper, and then I knew her too. She was also from the barber shop, a manicure. I had never hired her, since I do my own nails, but had seen her around and had heard her called Tina.
I looked down at her smooth white little face with its pointed chin and didn’t care for the expression on it. I glanced at Carl, and he looked even worse.
“What’s the matter?” I guess I was gruff. “Trouble?”
“Please not out here,” Tina pleaded. Her eyes darted left and right and back up at me. “We just got enough brave to go to the door when you came. We were thinking which door, the one down below or up the steps. Please let us in?”
“You told me once,” Carl practically whined, “that people in danger only have to mention your name.”
“Nuts. A pleasantry. I talk too much.” But I was stuck. “Okay, come in and tell me about it.”
I led the way up the steps and let us in with my key. Inside, the first door on the left of the long wide hall was to what we called the front room, not much used, and I opened it, thinking to get it over with in there, but Fritz was there, dusting, so I took them along to the next door and on into the office. After moving a couple of chairs so they would be facing me I sat at my desk and nodded at them impatiently. Tina had looked around swiftly before she sat.
“Such a nice safe room,” she said, “for you and Mr. Wolfe, two such great men.”
“He’s the great one,” I corrected her. “I just caddy. What’s this about danger?”
“We love this country,” Carl said emphatically. All of a sudden he started trembling, first his hands, then his arms and shoulders, then all over. Tina darted to him and grabbed his elbows and shook him, not gently, and said things to him in some language I wasn’t up on. He mumbled back at her and then got more vocal, and after a little the trembling stopped, and she returned to her chair.
“We do love this country,” she declared.
I nodded. “Wait till you see Chillicothe, Ohio, where I was born. Then you will love it. How far west have you been, Tenth Avenue?”
“I don’t think so.” Tina was doubtful. “I think Eighth Avenue. But that’s what we want to do, go west.” She decided it would help to let me have a smile, but it didn’t work too well. “We can’t go east, can we, into the ocean?” She opened her blue leather handbag and, with no fingering or digging, took something from it. “But you see, we don’t know where to go. This Ohio, maybe? I have fifty dollars here.”
“That would get you there,” I allowed.
She shook her head. “Oh, no. The fifty dollars is for you. You know our name — Vardas? You know we are married? So there is no question of morals, we are very high in morals, only all we want is to do our work and live in private, Carl and me, and we think—”
Having heard the clatter of Wolfe’s elevator descending from the plant rooms on the roof, I had known an interruption was coming but had let her proceed. Now she stopped as Wolfe’s steps sounded and he appeared at the door. Carl and Tina both bounced to their feet. Two paces in, after a quick glance at them, Wolfe stopped short and glowered at me.
“I didn’t tell you we had callers,” I said cheerfully, “because I knew you would be down soon. You know Carl, at the barber shop? And Tina, you’ve seen her there too. It’s all right, they’re married. They just dropped in to buy fifty bucks’ worth of—”
Without a word or even a nod, Wolfe turned all of his seventh of a ton and beat it out and toward the door to the kitchen at the rear. The Vardas family stared at the doorway a moment and then turned to me.
“Sit down,” I invited them. “As you said, he’s a great man. He’s sore because I didn’t notify him we had company, and he was expecting to sit there behind his desk” — I waved a hand — “and ring for beer and enjoy himself. He wouldn’t wiggle a finger for fifty dollars. Maybe I won’t either, but let’s see.” I looked at Tina, who was back on the edge of her chair. “You were saying—”
“We don’t want Mr. Wolfe mad at us,” she said in distress.
“Forget it. He’s only mad at me, which is chronic. What do you want to go to Ohio for?”
“Maybe not Ohio.” She tried to smile again. “It’s what I said, we love this country and we want to go more into it — far in. We would like to be in the middle of it. We want you to tell us where to go, to help us—”
“No, no.” I was brusque. “Start from here. Look at you, you’re both scared stiff. What’s the danger Carl mentioned?”
“I don’t think,” she protested, “it makes any difference—”
“That’s no good,” Carl said harshly. His hands started trembling again, but he gripped the sides of his chair seat, and they stopped. His dark eyes fastened on me. “I met Tina,” he said in a low level voice, trying to keep feeling out of it, “three years ago in a concentration camp in Russia. If you want me to I will tell you why it was that they would never have let us get out of there alive, not in one hundred years, but I would rather not talk so much about it. It makes me start to tremble, and I am trying to learn to act and talk of a manner so I can quit trembling.”
I concurred. “Save it for some day after you stop trembling. But you did get out alive?”
“Plainly. We are here.” There was an edge of triumph to the level voice. “I will not tell you about that either. But they think we are dead. Of course Vardas was not our name then, neither of us. We took that name later, when we got married in Istanbul. Then we so managed—”
“You shouldn’t tell any places,” Tina scolded him. “No places at all and no people at all.”
“You are most right,” Carl admitted. He informed me: “It was not Istanbul. Anyway, we went many other places, and at a certain time in a certain way we crossed the ocean. We had tried very hard to come to this country according to your rules, but it was in no way possible. When we did get into New York it was more by an accident— No, I did not say that. I will not say that much. Only I will say we got into New York. For a while it was so difficult, but it has been nearly a year now, since we got the jobs at the barber shop, that life has been so fine and sweet that we are almost healthy again. What we eat! We have even got some money saved! We have got—”
“Fifty dollars,” Tina said hastily.
“Most right,” Carl agreed. “Fifty American dollars. I can say as a fact that we would be healthy and happy beyond our utmost dreams three years ago, except for the danger. The danger is that we did not follow your rules. I will not deny that they are good rules, but for us they were impossible. We cannot expect ourselves to be happy when we don’t know what minute someone may come and ask us how we got here. The minute that just went by, that was all right, no one asked, but here is the next minute. Every day is full of those minutes, so many. We have found a way to learn what would happen, and we know where we would be sent back to. We know exactly what would happen to us.”
I glanced at Tina, but the expression on her face could have made me uncomfortable, so I looked back at Carl. “If I tried to figure a way out I doubt if I would pick on spilling it to a guy named Archie Goodwin just because he came to the barber shop where I worked. He might be crazy about the rules you couldn’t follow, and anyhow there are just as many minutes in Ohio as there are in New York.”
“There is that fifty dollars.” Carl extended his hands, not trembling, toward me.
Tina gestured impatiently. “That’s nothing to you,” she said, letting bitterness into it for the first time; “We know that, it’s nothing. But the danger has come, and we had to have someone tell us where to go. This morning a man came to the barber shop and asked us questions. An official! A policeman!”
“Oh.” I glanced from one to the other. “That’s different. A policeman in uniform?”
“No, in regular clothes, but he showed us a card in a case, New York Police Department. His name was on it, Jacob Wallen.”
“What time this morning?”
“A little after nine o’clock, soon after the shop was open. He talked first with Mr. Fickler, the owner, and Mr. Fickler brought him around behind the partition to my booth, where I do customers when they’re through in the chair or when they only want a manicure, and I was there, getting things together, and he sat down and took out a notebook and asked me questions. Then he—”
“What kind of questions?”
“All about me. My name, where I live, where I came from, how long I’ve been working there, all that kind, and then about last night, where I was and what I was doing last night.”
“What part of last night did he ask about? All of it?”
“Yes, from the time the shop closes, half-past six, from then on.”
“Where did you tell him you came from?”
“I said Carl and I are DP’s from Italy. That’s what we had decided to say. We have to say something when people are just curious.”
“I suppose you do. Did he ask to see your papers?”
“No. That will come next.” She set her jaw. “We can’t go back there. We have to leave New York today — right now.”
“Did he question Carl too?”
“Yes, but not right after me. He sent me away, and Mr. Fickler sent Philip to him in the booth, and when Philip came out he sent Carl in, and when Carl came out he sent Jimmie in. Jimmie was still in the booth with him when I went to Carl, up front by the rack, and we knew we had to get out. We waited until Mr. Fickler had gone to the back of the shop for something, and then we just walked out. We went to our room down on the East Side and packed our stuff and started for Grand Central with it, and then we realized we didn’t know anything about where to go and might make some terrible mistake, so there in Grand Central we talked it over. We decided that since the police were after us already it couldn’t be any worse, but we weren’t sure enough about any of the people we have met in New York, so the best thing would be to come to you and pay you to help us. You’re a professional detective, and anyway Carl likes you about the best of all the customers. You only tip him a dime, so it’s not that. I have noticed you myself, the way you look. You look like a man who would break rules too — if you had to.”
I gave her a sharp look, suspicious, but if she was trying to butter me she was very good. All that showed in her blue eyes was the scare that had put them on the run and the hope of me they were hanging on to for dear life. I looked at Carl. The scare was there too, but I couldn’t see the hope.
I was irritated. “Damn it,” I protested, “you bring it here already broke. What did you beat it for? That alone fixes you. He was questioning the others too and he was concentrating on last night. What about last night? What were you doing, breaking some more rules?”
They both started to answer, but she let him take it. He said no, they weren’t. They had gone straight home from work and eaten in their room as usual. Tina had washed some clothes, and Carl had read a book. Around nine they had gone for a walk, and had been back in their room and in bed before ten-thirty.
I was disgusted. “You sure did it up,” I declared. “If you’re clean for last night, why didn’t you stay put? You must have something in your heads or you wouldn’t have stayed alive and got this far. Why didn’t you use it?”
Carl smiled at me. He really did smile, but it didn’t make me want to smile back. “A policeman asking questions,” he said in the level tone he had used before, “has a different effect on different people. If you have a country like this one and you are innocent of crime, all the people of your country are saying it with you when you answer the questions. That is true even when you are away from home — especially when you are away from home. But Tina and I have no country at all. The country we had once, it is no longer a country, it is just a place to wait to die, only if we are sent back there we will not have to wait. Two people alone cannot answer a policeman’s questions anywhere in the world. It takes a whole country to speak to a policeman, and Tina and I — we do not have one.”
“You see,” Tina said. “Here, take it.” She got up and came to me, extending a hand with the money in it. “Take it, Mr. Goodwin! Just tell us where to go, all the little facts that will help us—”
“Or we thought,” Carl suggested, not hopefully, “that you might give us a letter to some friend, in this Ohio perhaps — not that we should expect too much for fifty dollars...”
I looked at them, with my lips pressed together. The morning was shot now anyway, with Wolfe sore and my chores not done. I swiveled to my desk and picked up the phone. Any one of three or four city employees would probably find out for me what kind of errand had taken a dick named Wallen to the Goldenrod Barber Shop, unless it was something very special. But with my finger in the dial hole I hesitated and then replaced the phone. If it was something hot I would be starting PD cars for our address, and Wolfe and I both have a prejudice against cops yanking people out of his office, no matter who they are, unless we ourselves have got them ready for delivery. So I swiveled again. Carl was frowning at me, his head moving from side to side. Tina was standing tense, the money clutched in her fist.
“This is silly,” I said. “If they’re really after you, you’d be throwing your money away on carfare to Ohio or anywhere else. Save it for a lawyer. I’ll have to go up there and see what it’s all about.” I got up, crossed to the soundproof door to the front room, and opened it. “You can wait here. In here, please.”
“We’ll go,” Tina said, back to her gasping whisper again. “We won’t bother you any more. Come, Carl—”
“Skip it,” I said curtly. “If this amounts to anything more than petty larceny you’d be nabbed sure as hell. This is my day for breaking a rule, and I’ll be back soon. Come on, I’ll put you in here, and I advise you to stay put.”
Tina moved. She came and passed through into the front room, and Carl was right behind her. I told them to sit down and relax and not get restless. Then I shut the door, went to the kitchen, where Wolfe was seated at the far end of the long table, drinking beer, and told him, “The check from Pendexter came and has been deposited. That pair of foreigners have got themselves in a mess. I put them in the front room and told them to stay there until I get back.”
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
“A little detective work, not in your class. I won’t be gone long. You can dock me.”
The Goldenrod Barbershop was in the basement of an office building on Lexington Avenue in the upper Thirties. I had been patronizing one of the staff, named Ed, for several years. Formerly, from away back, Wolfe had gone to an artist in a shop on 28th Street, named Fletcher. When Fletcher had retired a couple of years ago Wolfe had switched to Goldenrod, and after experimenting with the staff had settled on Jimmie. His position now, after two years, was that Jimmie was no Fletcher, especially with a shampoo, but that he was some better than tolerable.
Goldenrod, with only six chairs, and usually only four of them manned, and two manicurists, was not fancy, but it was well equipped and clean. Anyhow, it had Ed, who had a razor so sharp and slick you never knew it was on you.
I hadn’t shaved that morning, and as, at noon, I paid the taxi driver, entered the building, and descended the stairs to the basement, my plan of campaign was simple. I would get in Ed’s chair, waiting if necessary, and ask him to give me a once-over, and the rest would be easy.
But it was neither simple nor easy. A medium-sized mob of white-collar workers, buzzing and chattering, was ranged three-deep along the wall of the corridor facing the door of the shop. Others, passing by in both directions, were stopping to try to look in, and a flatfoot, posted in the doorway, was telling them to keep moving.
I swerved aside and halted for a survey through the open door. Joel Fickler, the boss, was at the rack where Carl usually presided, taking a man’s coat to put on a hanger. A man with his hat on was backed up to the cashier’s counter, with his elbows on it, facing the whole shop. Two other men with their hats on were seated near the middle of the row of chairs for waiting customers, one of them next to the little table for magazines. They were discussing something without much enthusiasm. Two of the barbers’ chairs, Ed’s and Tom’s, were occupied. The other two barbers, Jimmie and Philip, were on their stools against the wall. Janet, the other manicurist, was not in sight.
I stepped to the doorway and was going on in. The flatfoot blocked me. “Accident in here. Only customers with appointments allowed in. You got an appointment?”
“Certainly.” I stuck my head through the doorway and yelled, “Ed! How soon?”
The man leaning on the counter straightened up and turned for a look. At sight of me he grunted. “Who whistled for you?”
The presence of my old friend and enemy, Sergeant Purley Stebbins, of Manhattan Homicide, gave the thing an entirely different flavor. Up to then I had just been mildly curious, floating along. Now I snapped to attention. Sergeant Stebbins is not interested in petty larceny. I didn’t care for the possibility of having shown a pair of murderers to chairs in our front room.
Purley scowled at me. “Is this going to turn into one of them Nero Wolfe babies?”
“Not unless you turn it.” I grinned at him. “Whatever it is. I dropped in for a shave, that’s all, and here you boys are, to my surprise.” The flatfoot had given me leeway, and I had crossed the sill. “I’m a regular customer here.” I turned to Fickler, who had trotted over to us: “How long have I been leaving my hair here, Joel?”
None of Fielder’s bones was anywhere near the surface except on his bald head. He was six inches shorter than me, which may have been one reason why I never got a straight look into his narrow black eyes. He had never liked me much since the day he had forgotten to list an appointment with Ed I had made on the phone and I, under provocation, had made a few pointed remarks. Now he looked as if he had been annoyed by something much worse than remarks.
“Over six years, Mr. Goodwin,” he said. “This,” he told Purley, “is the famous detective, Mr. Archie Goodwin. Mr. Nero Wolfe comes here, too.”
Purley snorted. “Famous!”
I shrugged. “Just a nuisance.”
“Yeah. Don’t let it get you down. You just dropped in for a shave?”
“Yes, sir. Write it down and I’ll sign it.”
“Who’s your barber?”
“Ed.”
“That’s Graboff. He’s busy.”
“So I see. I’m not pressed. I’ll chat with you or read a magazine or get a manicure.”
“I don’t feel like chatting.” Purley had not relaxed the scowl. “You know a guy that works here named Carl Vardas? And his wife Tina, a manicurist?”
“I know Carl well enough to pay him a dime for my hat and coat and tie. I can’t say I know Tina, but of course I’ve seen her here. Why?”
“I’m just asking. And to have it on the record in case it’s needed, have you seen Vardas or his wife this morning?”
“Sure, I have.” I stretched my neck to get closer to his ear and whispered, “I put them in our front room and told them to wait, and beat it up here to tell you, and if you’ll step on it—”
“I don’t care for gags,” he growled. “Not right now. They killed a cop, or one of them did. You know how much we like that.”
I did, indeed, and adjusted my face accordingly. “One of yours? Did I know him?”
“No. A dick from the Twentieth Precinct, Jake Wallen.”
“Where and when?”
“This morning, right here. The other side of that partition, in Tina’s manicure booth. Stuck a pair of scissors in his back and got his pump. Apparently, he never made a sound, but them massage things are going here off and on. By the time he was found, the Vardas pair had gone. It took us an hour to find out where they lived, and when we got there they had got their stuff and beat it.”
I grunted sympathetically. “Is it tied up? Prints on the scissors or something?”
“We’ll do all right without prints,” Purley said grimly. “Didn’t I say they lammed?”
“Yes, but,” I objected, not aggressively, “some people can get awful scared at sight of a man with scissors sticking in his back. I wasn’t intimate with Carl, but he didn’t strike me as a man who would stab a cop just on principle. Was Wallen here to take him?”
Purley’s reply was stopped before it got started. Tom had finished with his customer, and the two men with hats on in the row of chairs ranged along the partition were keeping their eyes on the customer as he went to the rack for his tie. Tom, having brushed himself off, had walked to the front and up to us. Usually Tom bounced around like a high-school kid, in spite of his white-haired sixty-some years, but today his feet dragged. Nor did he tell me hello, though he gave me a sort of glance before he spoke to Purley: “It’s my lunchtime, Sergeant. I just go to the cafeteria at the end of the hall.”
Purley called a name that sounded like Joffe, and one of the dicks on a chair by the partition got up and came.
“Yerkes is going to lunch,” Purley told him. “Go along and stay with him.”
They went, with Tom in front. Purley and I moved out of the way as the customer approached to pay his check and Fickler sidled around behind the cash register.
“I thought,” I said politely, “you had settled for Carl and Tina. Why does Tom have to have company at lunch?”
“We haven’t got Carl and Tina.”
“But you soon will have, the way the personnel feels about cop killers. Why pester these innocent barbers? If one of them gets nervous and slices a customer, then what?”
Purley merely snarled.
I stiffened. “Excuse me. I’m not so partial to cop killers, either. It seemed only natural to show some interest. Luckily I can read, so I’ll catch it in the evening paper.”
“Don’t bust a gut.” Purley’s eyes were following the customer as he walked to the door and on out past the flatfoot. “Sure, we’ll get Carl and Tina, but if you don’t mind we’ll just watch these guys’ appetites. You asked what Jake Wallen was here for.”
“I asked if he came to take Carl.”
“Yeah. I think he did, but I can’t prove it yet. Last night around midnight a woman was hit by a car at Eighty-first and Broadway. She was killed. The car kept going. It was found later parked at Ninety-sixth and Broadway, just across from the subway entrance. We haven’t found anyone who saw the driver, either at the scene of the accident or where the car was parked. The car was hot. It had been parked by its owner at eight o’clock on Forty-eighth Street between Ninth and Tenth, and was gone when he went for it at eleven thirty.”
Purley paused to watch a customer enter. The customer got past the flat-foot with Joel Fickler’s help, left things at the rack, and went and got on Jimmie’s chair. Purley returned to me:
“When the car was spotted by a squad car at Ninety-sixth and Broadway, with a dented fender and blood and other items that tagged it, the Twentieth Precinct sent Jake Wallen to it. He was the first one to give it a look. Later, there was a gang from all over, including the laboratory, going over it before they moved it. Wallen was supposed to go home at eight in the morning, when his trick ended, hut he didn’t. He phoned his wife that he had a hot lead on a hit-and-run killer and was going to handle it himself and grab a promotion. Not only that, he phoned the owner of the car, at his home in Yonkers, and asked him if he had any connection with the Goldenrod Barbershop or knew anyone who had, or if he had ever been there. The owner had never heard of it. Of course, we’ve collected all this since we were called here at ten fifteen and found Wallen DOA with scissors in his back.”
I was frowning. “But what gave him the lead to this shop?”
“We’d like to know. It had to be something he found in the car — we don’t know what. The poor fool kept it to himself and came here and got killed.”
“Didn’t he show it or mention it to anyone here?”
“They say not. All he had with him was a newspaper. We’ve got it — today’s
A phone rang. Fickler, by the cash register, looked at Purley, who stepped to the counter where the phone was and answered the call. It was for him. When, after a minute, it seemed to be going on, I moved away, and had gone a few paces when a voice came: “Hello, Mr. Goodwin.”
It was Jimmie, Wolfe’s man, using comb and scissors about his customer’s right ear. He was the youngest of the staff, about my age, and by far the handsomest, with curly lips and white teeth and dancing dark eyes. I told him hello.
“Mr. Wolfe ought to be here,” he said.
Under the circumstances I thought that a little tactless, and was even prepared to tell him so, when Ed called to me from two chairs down: “Fifteen minutes, Mr. Goodwin? All right?”
I told him okay, I would wait, and crossed to one of the chairs over by the partition, next to the table with magazines. I thought it would be fitting to pick up a magazine, but I had already read the one on top, the latest issue of
Though I had been coming there for six years, I didn’t really know those people, in spite of the reputation barbers have as conversationalists. I knew that Fickler, the boss, had once been attacked bodily there in the shop by his ex-wife; that Philip had had two sons killed in World War II; that Tom had once been accused by Fickler of swiping lotions and other supplies and had slapped Fickler’s face; that Ed played the horses and was always in debt; that Jimmie had to be watched or he would take magazines from the shop while they were still current; and that Janet, who had been there only a year, was suspected of having a side line, maybe dope peddling. Aside from such items as those, they were strangers.
Suddenly Janet was there in front of me. She had come from around the end of the partition, and not alone. The man with her was a broad-shouldered husky, gray-haired and gray-eyed, with an unlit cigar slanting up from a corner of his mouth. His eyes swept the whole shop, and since he started at the far right he ended up at me.
He stared. “For Pete’s sake,” he said. “You? Now what?”
I was surprised for a second to see Inspector Cramer himself, head of Manhattan Homicide, there on the job.
“Just waiting for a shave,” I told him. “I’m an old customer here. You can ask Purley.”
Purley came over and verified me, but Cramer, checked with Ed, himself. Then he drew Purley aside and they mumbled back and forth a while, after which Cramer summoned Philip and escorted him around the end of the partition.
Janet seated herself in the chair next to mine. She looked even better in profile than head on, with her nice chin and straight little nose and long, homegrown lashes. I felt a little in debt to her, for the mild pleasure I had got occasionally as I sat in Ed’s chair and glanced at her while she worked on the customer in the next chair.
“I was wondering where you were,” I remarked.
She turned to me. “Did you say something?” she asked.
“Nothing vital. My name’s Goodwin. Call me Archie.”
“I know. You’re a detective. How can I keep them from having my picture in the paper?”
“You can’t, if they’ve already got it. Have they?”
“I think so. I wish I was dead.”
“I don’t.” I made it not loud but emphatic.
“Why should you? I do. My folks in Michigan think I’m acting or modeling. I leave it vague. And here — oh, my heavens!” Her chin worked, but she controlled it.
“Work is work,” I said. “My parents wanted me to be a college president, and I wanted to be a second baseman, and look at me. Anyhow, if your picture gets printed and it’s a good likeness, who knows what will happen?”
“This is my Gethsemane,” she said.
That made me suspicious, naturally. She had mentioned acting. “Come off it,” I advised her. “Think of someone else. Think of the guy that got stabbed — no, he’s out of it — think of his wife. How do you suppose she feels? Or Inspector Cramer, with the job he’s got. What was he asking you just now?”
She didn’t hear me. She said through clamped teeth, “I only wish I had some guts.”
“Why? What would you do?”
“I’d tell all about it.”
“You mean last night? Why not try it out on me and see how it goes? Just keep your voice down and let it flow.”
She didn’t hear a word. Her ears were disconnected. She kept her brown eyes, under the long lashes, straight at me:
“How it happened this morning. How I was going back to my booth after I finished Mr. Levinson in Philip’s chair, and he called me into Tina’s booth, and he seized me, with one hand on my throat so I couldn’t scream, and there was no doubt at all what he intended, so I grabbed the scissors from the shelf and, without realizing what I was doing, plunged them into him with all my strength, and he collapsed onto the chair. That’s what I would do if I really want a successful career. I would have to be arrested and have a trial, and then—”
“Hold it. Your pronouns. Mr. Levinson called you into Tina’s booth?”
“Certainly not. That man that got killed.” She tilted her head back. “See the marks on my throat?”
There was no mark whatever on her smooth, pretty throat.
“Bravo,” I said. “That would get you top billing anywhere.”
“That’s what I was saying.”
“Then go ahead and tell it.”
“I can’t! I simply can’t! It would be so darned vulgar.”
At the moment I could have slapped her lovely young face with pleasure. “I understand your position,” I said, “a girl as sweet and fine and strong as you, but it’s bound to come out in the end, and I want to help. Incidentally, I am not married. I’ll go to Inspector Cramer right now and tell him about it. He’ll want to take photographs of your throat. Do you know any lawyers?”
She shook her head, answering, I thought, my question about lawyers, but no. She didn’t believe in answering questions. “About your being married,” she said, “I hadn’t even thought. I think a girl must get her career established
If Ed hadn’t signaled to me just then, his customer having left the chair, there’s no telling how it would have ended. No words would have been any good, since she was deaf, but surely I might have thought of something. As it was, I didn’t want to keep Ed waiting, so I got up and crossed to his chair and climbed in.
“Just scrape the face,” I told him.
He got a bib on me and tilted me back. “Did you phone?” he asked. “Did that fathead forget again?”
I told him no, that I had been caught midtown with a stubble and an unforeseen errand for which I should be presentable, and added, “You seem to have had some excitement.”
He went to the cabinet for a tube of prefabricated lather, got some on me, started rubbing. “We sure did,” he said with feeling. “Carl — you know Carl — he killed a man in Tina’s booth. Then they both ran. I’m sorry for Tina — she was all right — but Carl— I don’t know.”
I couldn’t articulate with him rubbing. He finished, went to wipe his fingers, and came with the razor. I remarked, “I’d sort of watch it, Ed. It’s a little risky to go blabbing that Carl killed him unless you can prove it.”
“Well, what did he run for?”
“I couldn’t say. But the cops are still poking around here.”
“Sure, they are; they’re after evidence. You gotta have evidence.” Ed pulled the skin tight over the jawbone. “For instance, they ask me did he show me anything or ask me anything about some article from the shop. I say he didn’t. That would be evidence, see?”
“Yes, I get it.” I could only mumble. “What did he ask you?”
“Oh, all about me — name, married or single, you know, insurance men, income tax, they all ask the same things. But when he asked about last night I told him where to get off, but then I thought, why not? And I told him.
“Of course,” he said, “the police have to get it straight, but they can’t expect us to remember everything. When he came in, first he talked with Fickler, maybe five minutes. Then Fickler took him to Tina’s booth and he talked with Tina. After that Fickler sent Philip in, and then Carl and then Jimmie, and then Tom and then me, and then Janet. I think it’s pretty good to remember that.”
I mumbled agreement. He was at the corner of my mouth.
“But I can’t remember everything and they can’t make me. I don’t know how long it was after Janet came back out before Fickler went to Tina’s booth and found him dead. They ask me was it nearer ten minutes or nearer fifteen, but I say I had a customer at the time, we all did but Philip, and I don’t know. They ask me how many of us went behind the partition after Janet came out, to the steamer or the vat or to get the lamp or something, but I say again I had a customer at the time, and I don’t know, except I know I didn’t go because I was trimming Mr. Howell at the time. I was working the top when Fickler yelled and came running out. They can ask Mr. Howell.”
“They probably have,” I said, but to no one, because Ed had gone for a hot towel.
He returned, and used the towel, and got the lilac water. Patting it on, he resumed, “They ask me exact when Carl and Tina went, they ask me that twenty times, but I can’t say and I won’t say. Carl did it, all right, but they can’t prove it by me. They’ve gotta have evidence, but I don’t. Cold towel today?”
“No, I’ll keep the smell.”
He brought a comb and brush. “Can I remember what I don’t know?” he demanded.
“I know I can’t.”
“And I’m no great detective like you.” Ed was a little rough with a brush. “And now I go for lunch but I’ve got to have a cop along. They searched all of us down to the skin, and they even brought a woman to search Janet. They took our fingerprints. I admit they’ve gotta have evidence.” He flipped the bib off. “How was the razor, all right?”
I told him it was fine as usual, stepped down, fished for a quarter, and exchanged it for my check. Purley Stebbins, nearby, was watching both of us. There had been times when I had seen fit to kid Purley at the scene of a murder, but not now. A cop had been killed.
He spoke, not belligerently: “The inspector don’t like your being here.”
“Neither do I,” I declared. “Fortunately, this didn’t happen to be Mr. Wolfe’s day for a haircut; you would never have believed. I’m just a minor coincidence. Nice to see you.”
I went and paid my check to Fickler, got my things on, and departed.
As I emerged into Lexington Avenue there were several things on my mind. The most immediate was this: If Cramer’s suspicion had been aroused enough to spend a man on me, and if I were seen going directly home from the shop, there might be too much curiosity as to why I had chosen to spend six bits for a shave at that time of day. So, instead of taking a taxi, I walked, and when I got to a five-and-ten I used their aisles and exits to make sure I had no tail. That left my mind free for other things the rest of the way home.
One leading question was whether Carl and Tina would still be where I had left them, in the front room. That was what took me up the seven steps of the stoop two at a time, and on in quick. The answer to the question was no. The front room was empty. I strode down the hall to the office, but stopped there because I heard Wolfe’s voice. It was coming from the dining room, and it was saying:
“No, Mr. Vardas, I cannot agree that mountain climbing is merely one manifestation of man’s spiritual aspirations. I think, instead, it is an hysterical paroxysm of his infantile vanity. One of the prime ambitions of a jackass is to bray louder than any other jackass, and man is not...”
I crossed the hall and the dining-room sill. Wolfe was at his end of the table, and Fritz, standing at his elbow, had just removed the lid from a steaming platter. At his left was Tina, and Carl was at his right, my place when there was no company. Wolfe saw me but finished his lecture on mountain climbing before attending to me: “In time, Archie. You like veal and mushrooms.”
Talk about infantile. His not being willing to sit down to his lunch with unfed people in the house was all well enough, but why not send trays in to them? That was easy. He was sore at me and I had called them foreigners.
I stepped to the end of the table and said, “I know you have a paroxysm if I try to bring up business during meals, but eighteen thousand cops would give a month’s pay to get their hands on Carl and Tina, your guests.”
“Indeed.” Wolfe was serving the veal and accessories. “Why?”
“Have you talked with them?”
“No. I merely invited them to lunch.”
“Then don’t until I’ve reported. I ran into Cramer and Stebbins at the barbershop.”
“Confound it.” The serving spoon stopped en route.
“Yeah. It’s quite interesting. But first lunch, of course. I’ll go put the chain bolt on. Please dish me some veal.”
Carl and Tina were speechless.
That lunch was one of Wolfe’s best performances, I admit it. He didn’t know a thing about Carl and Tina except that they were in a jam, he knew that Cramer and Stebbins dealt only with homicide, and he had a strong prejudice against entertaining murderers at his table. His only hope now was his knowledge that I was aware of his prejudice, and even shared it.
He must have been fairly tight inside, but he stayed the polite host clear to the end, with no sign of hurry even with the coffee. Then, however, the tension began to tell. Ordinarily his return to the office after a meal was leisurely and lazy, but this time he went right along, followed by his guests and me. He marched across to his chair behind the desk, got his bulk deposited, and snapped at me, “What have you got us into now?”
I was pulling chairs around so the Vardas family would be facing him, but stopped to give him an eye. “Us?” I inquired.
“Yes.”
“Okay,” I said courteously, “if that’s how it is. I did not invite them to come here, let alone to lunch. They came on their own and I let them in, which is one of my functions. Having started it, I’ll finish it. May I use the front room? I’ll have them out of here in a minute.”
“Pfui.” He was supercilious. “I am now responsible for their presence, since they were my guests at lunch... Sit down, sir. Sit down, Mrs. Vardas.”
Carl and Tina didn’t know what from which. I had to push the chairs up behind their knees. Then I went to my own chair and swiveled to face Wolfe.
“I have a question to ask them,” I told him, “But first you need a couple of facts: They’re in this country without papers. They were in a concentration camp in Russia, and they’re not telling how they got here if they can help it. They could be spies, but I doubt it after hearing them talk. Naturally, they jump a mile if they hear someone say boo, and when a man came to the barbershop this morning and showed a police card and asked who they were and where they came from and what they were doing last night, they scooted the first chance they got. But they didn’t know where to go, so they came here to buy fifty bucks’ worth of advice. I got big-hearted and went to the shop, myself.”
“You went?” Tina gasped.
I turned to them. “Sure, I went. It’s a complicated situation, but I think I can handle it if you two can be kept out of the way. It would be dangerous for you to stay here. I know a safe place up in the Bronx for you to lay low for a few days. You shouldn’t take a chance on a taxi or the subway, so we’ll go around the corner to the garage and get Mr. Wolfe’s car, and you can drive it—”
“Excuse me,” Carl said urgently. “You would drive us up there?”
“No, I’ll be busy. Then I’ll—”
“But I can’t drive a car! I don’t know how!”
“Then your wife will drive.”
“She can’t! She don’t know, either!”
I sprang from my chair and stood over them. “Look,” I said savagely; “save that for the cops. Can’t drive a car? Certainly you can! Everybody can!”
They were looking up at me, Carl bewildered, Tina frowning. “In America, yes,” she said. “But we are not Americans, not yet. We have never had a chance to learn.”
“What’s this?” Wolfe demanded.
I returned to my chair. “That,” I said, “was the question I wanted to ask. It has a bearing, as you’ll soon see.” I regarded Carl and Tina. “If you’re lying about this, not knowing how to drive a car, you won’t be sent back home to die, you’ll die right here. It will be a cinch to find out if you’re lying.”
“Why should we?” Carl demanded. “What is so important in it?”
“Once more,” I insisted, “can you drive a car?”
“No.”
“Can you, Tina?”
“No!”
“Okay.” I turned to Wolfe: “The caller at the barbershop this morning was a precinct dick named Wallen. Fickler took him to Tina’s booth and he questioned Tina first. Then the others had a session with him in the booth, in this order: Philip, Carl, Jimmie, Tom, Ed, and Janet. You may not know that the manicure booths are around behind the long partition. After Janet came out there was a period of ten or fifteen minutes when Wallen was in the booth alone. Then Fickler went to see, and what he saw was Wallen’s body with scissors buried in his back. Someone had stabbed him to death. Since Carl and Tina had lammed—”
Tina’s cry was more of a gasp, a last gasp, an awful sound. With one leap she was out of her chair and at Carl, grasping him and begging wildly, “Carl, no! No, no! Oh, Carl—!”
“Make her stop,” Wolfe snapped.
I had to try, because Wolfe would rather be in a room with a hungry tiger than with a woman out of hand. I went and got a grip on her shoulder, but released it at sight of the expression on Carl’s face as he pushed to his feet against the pressure. It looked as if he could and would handle it. He did.
He eased her back to her chair and down onto it, and turned to me: “That man was killed there in Tina’s booth?”
“Yes.”
Carl smiled as he had once before, and I wished he would stop trying it. “Then of course,” he said, as if he were conceding a point in a tight argument, “this is the end for us. But, please, I must ask you not to blame my wife. Because we have been through many things together she is ready to credit me with many deeds that are far beyond me. She has a big idea of me and I have a big idea of her. But I did not kill that man. I did not touch him.” He frowned. “I don’t understand why you suggested riding in a car to the Bronx. Of course you will give us to the police.”
“Forget the Bronx.” I was frowning back. “Every cop in town has his eye peeled for you. Sit down.”
He went to his chair and sat. “About driving a car,” Wolfe muttered. “Was that flummery?”
“No, sir, that comes next. Last night around midnight a hit-and-run driver in a stolen car killed a woman up on Broadway. The car was found parked at Broadway and Ninety-sixth Street. Wallen, from the Twentieth Precinct, was the first dick to look it over. In it he apparently found something that led him to the Golden rod Barbershop — anyhow, he phoned his wife that he was on a hot one that would lead to glory and a raise, and then he showed up at the shop and called the roll, as described. With the result also as described. Cramer has bought it that the hit-and-run driver found himself cornered and used the scissors, and Cramer — don’t quote me — is not a dope. To qualify as a hit-and-run driver you must meet certain specifications, and one of them is knowing how to drive a car. So the best plan would be for Carl and Tina to go back to the shop and report for duty and for the official quiz, if it wasn’t for two things: First, the fact that they lammed will make it very tough, and, second, even though it is settled that they didn’t kill a cop, their lack of documents will fix them anyhow.”
I waved a hand. “So actually what’s the difference? If they’re sent back where they came from they’re doomed, so they said. Between a doom here and a doom there, that’s all they have to pick from. One interesting angle is that you are harboring fugitives from justice, and I am not. I told Purley they’re here.”
“You what?” Wolfe bellowed.
“What I said. That’s the advantage of having a reputation for gags — you handle your face right. I told him they were here in our front room, and he sailed right over it. So I’m clean, but you’re not. You can’t even just show them out. If you don’t want to call Cramer yourself I could get Purley at the shop and tell him they’re still here, and why hasn’t he sent for them?”
“It might be better,” Tina said, not with hope, “just a little better, if you would let us go, ourselves? No?”
She got no answer. Wolfe was glaring at me. It wasn’t that he needed my description of the situation to realize what a pickle he was in; I have never tried to deny that the interior decorator did a snappier job inside his skull than in mine. What had him boiling was my little stunt of getting it down that neither Carl nor Tina could drive a car. But for that it would still have been possible to let them meet the law and take what they got; now that was out of the question.
“There is,” he said, glaring, “another alternative to consider.”
“Let us just go,” Tina said.
“Pfui.” He moved the glare to her: “You would try to skedaddle, and be caught within an hour.” Back to me: “You have told Mr. Stebbins they are here. We can simply keep them here and await developments. Since Mr. Cramer and Mr. Stebbins are still there at work, they may soon disclose the murderer.”
“Sure, they may,” I agreed, “but I doubt it. They’re just being thorough, they’ve really settled for Carl and Tina, and what they’re looking for is evidence, especially what it was that led Wallen to the barbershop — though I suppose they haven’t much hope of that, since Carl and Tina could have taken it along.”
Wolfe’s eyes went to Carl: “Did you and your wife leave the shop together?”
Carl shook his head. “That might have been noticed, so she went first. When she was gone I waited until they were all busy and Mr. Fickler was walking behind the partition, then I ran upstairs to meet her there.”
“When was that?” I asked. “Who was in Tina’s booth with Wallen?”
“I don’t think anybody was. Janet had come out a while before. She was at Jimmie’s chair with a customer.”
“Good heavens,” I turned my palms up. “You left that place less than a minute, may be only a few seconds, before Fickler found Wallen dead!”
“I don’t know,” Carl wasn’t fazed. “I only know I didn’t touch that man.”
“This,” I told Wolfe, “makes it even nicer. There was a slim chance we could get it that they left sooner.”
“Yes.” He regarded me. “It must be assumed that Wallen was alive when Ed left the booth, since that young woman — what’s her name?”
“Janet.”
“I call few men, and no women, by their first names. What’s her name?”
“Stahl,” Tina said. “Janet Stahl.”
“Thank you... Wallen was presumably alive when Ed left the booth, since Miss Stahl followed him. So Miss Stahl, who saw Wallen last, and Mr. Fickler, who reported him dead — manifestly they had opportunity. What about the others?”
“You must remember,” I told him, “that I had just dropped in for a shave. I had to show the right amount of intellectual curiosity, but I had to be careful not to carry it too far. From what Ed said, I gathered that opportunity is fairly wide open, except he excludes himself. As you know, they all keep darting behind that partition for one thing or another. Ed can’t remember who did and who didn’t, during that ten or fifteen minutes, and it’s a safe bet that the others can’t remember, either. The fact that the cops were interested enough to ask shows that Carl and Tina haven’t got a complete monopoly on it. As Ed remarked, they’ve gotta have evidence, and they’re still looking.”
Wolfe grunted in disgust.
“It also shows,” I went on, “that they haven’t got any real stopper to cork it, like prints from the car or localizing the scissors or anything they found on the corpse. They sure want Carl and Tina, and you know what happens when they get them, but they’re still short on exhibits. If you like your suggestion to keep our guests here until Cramer and Stebbins get their paws on the right guy, it might work fine as a long-term policy, but you’re against the idea of women living here, or even a woman, and after a few months it might get on your nerves.”
“It is no good,” Tina said, back to her gasping whisper again. “Just let us go! I beg you, do that!”
Wolfe ignored her. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and heaved a deep sigh, and from the way his nose began to twitch I knew he was coercing himself into facing the hard fact that he would have to go to work — either that or tell me to call Purley, and that was ruled out of bounds both by his self-respect and his professional vanity.
Wolfe sighed again, opened his eyes, and rasped at Tina, “Except for Mr. Fickler, that man questioned you first. Is that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell me what he said. What he asked. I want every word.”
I thought Tina did pretty well, under the circumstances. She wrinkled her brow and concentrated, and it looked as if Wolfe got it all out of her. But she couldn’t give him what she didn’t have.
He kept after it: “You are certain he showed you no object whatever?”
“Yes, I’m sure he didn’t.”
“He asked about no object, anything, in the shop?”
“No.”
“He took nothing from his pocket?”
“No.”
“The newspaper he had. Didn’t he take that from his pocket?”
“No, like I said, he had it in his hand when he came in the booth.”
“In his hand or under his arm?”
“In his hand. I think... yes, I’m sure.”
“Was it folded up?”
“Well, of course newspapers are folded.”
“Yes, Mrs. Vardas. Just remember the newspaper as you saw it in his hand. I’m making a point of it because there is nothing else to make a point of, and we must have a point if we can find one. Was the newspaper folded up as if he had had it in his pocket?”
“No, it wasn’t.” She was trying hard. “It wasn’t folded that much. Like I said, it was a
“But he didn’t mention it?”
“No.”
“And you noticed nothing unusual about it? I mean the newspaper?”
She shook her head. “It was just a newspaper.”
Wolfe repeated the performance with Carl, and got more of the same. No object produced or mentioned, no hint of any. The only one on exhibit, the newspaper, had been there on the end of the table when Carl, sent by Fickler, had entered and sat, and Wallen had made no reference to it. Carl was more practical than Tina. He didn’t work as hard as she had trying to remember Wallen’s exact words, and I must say I couldn’t blame him.
Wolfe gave up trying to get what they didn’t have. He leaned back, compressed his lips, closed his eyes, and tapped with his forefingers on the ends of his chair arms. Finally he opened his eyes. “Confound it,” he said peevishly, “it’s impossible. Even if I had a move to make I couldn’t make it. If I so much as stir a finger, Mr. Cramer will start yelping and I have no muzzle for him. Any effort to—”
The doorbell rang. During lunch Fritz had been told to leave it to me, so I arose, crossed to the hall, and went front. But not all the way. Four paces short of the door I saw, through the one-way glass panel, the red, rugged face and the heavy, broad shoulders. I wheeled and returned to the office, not dawdling, and told Wolfe, “The man to fix the chair.”
“Indeed.” His head jerked up. “The front room.”
Carl and Tina, warned by our tone and tempo, were on their feet. The bell rang again. I moved, fast, to the door to the front room and pulled it open, telling them, “In here, quick! Step on it!” They obeyed, without a word, as if they had known me and trusted me for years, but what choice did they have? When they had passed through I said, “Relax and keep quiet,” shut the door, glanced at Wolfe and got a nod, went to the front door, opened it, and said morosely, “Hello. What now?”
“It took you long enough,” Inspector Cramer growled, crossing the threshold.
Wolfe can move when he wants to. I have seen him prove it more than once, as he did then. By the time I was back in the office, following Cramer, he had scattered in front of him on his desk a dozen folders of plant germination records for which he had had to go to the filing cabinet. One of the folders was spread open and he was scowling at us above it. He grunted a greeting but not a welcome. Cramer grunted back, moved to the red leather chair, and sat down.
I got myself at my desk. I was wishing I wasn’t involved so I could just enjoy it. If Wolfe succeeded in keeping Cramer’s claws off of the Vardas family, and at the same time kept himself out of jail, I would show my appreciation by not hitting him for a raise for a month.
Fritz entered with a tray, so Wolfe had found time to push a button, too. It was the fixed allotment, three bottles of beer. Wolfe told Fritz to bring another glass, but Cramer said no, thanks.
Suddenly Cramer looked at me and demanded, “Where did you go when you left the barbershop?”
My brows went up. “If you really cared you could have put a tail on me. If you didn’t care enough to put a tail on me you’re just being nosy, and I resent it. Next question.”
“Why not answer that one?”
“Because some of the errands I get sent on are confidential, and I don’t want to start a bad habit.”
Cramer turned abruptly to Wolfe: “You know a police officer was killed this morning there in that shop?”
“Yes.” Wolfe halted a foaming glass on its way to his mouth. “Archie told me a bout it.”
“Maybe he did.”
“Not maybe. He did.”
“Okay.” Cramer cocked his head and watched Wolfe empty the glass and use his handkerchief on his lips. Then he said, “Look. This is what brought me here. I have learned over a stretch of years that when I find you within a mile of a murder, and Goodwin is a part of you, something fancy can be expected. I don’t need to itemize that — your memory is as good as mine... Wait a second; let me finish.
“I don’t say there’s no such thing as a coincidence. I know you’ve been going to that shop for two years, and Goodwin for six years. It wouldn’t be so remarkable if he happened in there this particular day, two hours after a murder, if it wasn’t for certain features. He told Graboff, his barber, that he needed an emergency shave to go to an appointment. Incidentally, it couldn’t have been much of an emergency, since he waited nearly half an hour while Graboff finished with a customer, but I might concede that. The point is that Graboff and Fickler both say that in the six years Goodwin has been going there he had never gone just for a shave. Not once. He goes only for the works: haircut, scalp massage, shampoo,
Wolfe shrugged. “Then you don’t. I’m not responsible for your credulity quotient, Mr. Cramer. Neither is Mr. Goodwin. I don’t see how we can help you.”
“Nobody would believe it,” Cramer said stubbornly, refusing to get riled. “That’s why I’m here. I do believe that Goodwin went to that shop be cause he knew a man had been murdered there.”
“Then you believe wrong,” I told him. “Until I got there I hadn’t tire slightest idea or suspicion that a man had been murdered, there or anywhere else.”
“You have been known to lie, Goodwin.”
“Only within limits, and I know what they are. I will state that in an affidavit. Write it out, and there’s a notary at the corner drugstore. That would be perjury, which I’m allergic to.”
“Your going there had nothing whatever to do with the murder?”
“Put it that way if you prefer it. It did not.”
Wolfe was pouring beer. “How,” he inquired, not belligerently, “was Mr. Goodwin supposed to have learned of the murder? Had you fitted that in?”
“I don’t know.” Cramer gestured impatiently. “I didn’t come here with a diagram. I only know what it means when I’m on a homicide, and suddenly there you are, or Goodwin. And there Goodwin was, two hours after it happened. Frankly, I have no idea where you come in. You work only for big money. That hit-and-run driver could be a man with money, but if so it couldn’t be someone who works in that shop. No one there has the kind of dough that hires Nero Wolfe. So I don’t see how it could be money that pulled you in, and I frankly admit I have no idea what else could. I guess I’ll have a little beer, after all, if you don’t mind. I’m tired.”
Wolfe leaned forward to push the button.
“What was on my mind,” Cramer said, “was two things: First, I did not believe that Goodwin just happened to drop in at the scene of a murder. I admit he’s not quite brazen enough to commit perjury.” He looked at me. “I want that affidavit. Today.”
“You’ll get it,” I assured him.
Fritz entered with another tray, put it down on the little table at Cramer’s elbow, and uncapped the bottle. “Shall I pour, sir?”
“Thanks, I will.” Cramer took the glass in his left hand, tilted it, and poured with his right. Unlike Wolfe, he didn’t care for a lot of foam. “Second,” he said, “I thought that what took Goodwin there might be something you would be ready to tell me about, but he wouldn’t because you’re the boss and he’s a clam unless you say the word. I don’t pretend to have anything to pry it out of you with. You know the law about withholding evidence as well as I do; you ought to, the stunts you’ve pulled—”
“You thought,” Wolfe asked, “that I had sent Archie to the shop on business.”
“Yes. For the reason given.”
“You’re wrong. I didn’t. Since you’re to get an affidavit from Archie, you might as well have one from me too and get it settled. In it I will say that I did not send him to the barbershop, that I did not know he was going there, and that I heard and knew nothing of the murder until he returned and told me.”
“You’ll swear to that?”
“As a favor to you, yes. You’ve wasted your time coming here, and you might as well get a little something out of it.” Wolfe reached for his second bottle. “By the way, I still don’t know why you came. According to Archie, the murderer is known and all you have to do is find him — that man at the clothes rack — uh, Carl. And his wife, you said, Archie?”
“Yes, sir. Tina, one of the manicurists. Purley told me straight they had done it and scooted.”
Wolfe frowned at Cramer. “Then what could you expect to get from me? How could I help?”
“What I said, that’s all,” Cramer insisted doggedly, pouring the rest of his beer. “When I see Goodwin poking around I want to know why.”
“I don’t believe it,” Wolfe said rudely. He turned to me: “Archie, I think you’re responsible for this. I think it was something you did or said What was it?”
“Sure; it’s always me,” I was hurt. “What I did, I got a shave, and Ed had a customer and I had to wait, so I talked with Purley and with Inspector Cramer and then with Janet — Miss Stahl to you — and with Ed while I was in the chair — that is, he talked—”
“What did you say to Mr. Cramer?”
“Practically nothing. Just answered a civil question.”
“What did you say to Mr. Stebbins?”
I thought I knew now where he was headed, and hoped I was right. “Oh, just asked what was going on, and he told me. I’ve told you about it.”
“Not verbatim. What did you say?”
“Nothing at all. Of course, Purley wanted to know what brought me there, and I told him I— Say, wait a minute! Maybe you’re right, at that! He asked me if I had seen Carl or Tina this morning, and I said sure, I had put them here in the front room and told them to wait, and if he would step on—”
“Ha!” Wolfe snorted. “I knew it! Your confounded tongue. So that’s it.” He looked at Cramer. “Why have you waited to pounce?” he asked, trying not to sound too contemptuous, for, after all, Cramer was drinking his beer. “Since Archie has rashly disclosed our little secret, it would be useless for me to try to keep it. That’s what we use the front room for mainly — to keep murderers in. You’re armed, I suppose? Go in and get them Archie, open the door for him.”
I went to the door to the front room and pulled it open, not too wide.
“I’m scared of murderers, myself,” I said courteously, “or I’d be glad to help.”
Cramer had a glass half-full of beer in his hand, and it may well be that that took the trick. Bullheaded as he was, he might have been capable of getting up and walking over for a look into the room, even though our build-up had convinced him it was empty. But the glass of beer complicated it. He would either have to take it with him or reach first to put it down on the little table — or throw it at Wolfe.
“Nuts,” he said, and lifted the glass to drink.
I swung the door to, carelessly, without bothering to see that it latched, and yawned on the way back to my chair.
“At least,” Wolfe said, rubbing it in, “I can’t be jailed for harboring a fugitive — one of your favorite threats. But I really don’t know what you’re after. If it was those two, you’ll get them, of course. What else is there?”
“Nothing but a little more evidence.” Cramer glanced at his wrist-watch. “We’ll get ’em, all right. It don’t pay to kill a cop in this town.” He stood up. “It wouldn’t pay for anyone to hide a cop killer in their front room, either. Thanks for the beer. I’ll be expecting those affidavits, and in case—”
The phone rang. I swiveled and got it. “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”
“Inspector Cramer there?”
I said, yes, hold it. “For you,” I told him, and moved aside. He spoke not more than twenty words altogether, between spells of listening. He dropped the phone onto the cradle and headed for the door.
“Have they found ’em?” I asked his back.
“No.” He didn’t turn. “Someone’s hurt — the Stahl girl.”
I marched after him, thinking the least I could do was cooperate by opening another door for him, but he was there and on out before I caught up, so I about-faced and returned to the office.
Wolfe was standing up, and I wondered why all the exertion, but a glance at the wallclock showed me 3:55, nearly time for his afternoon visit to the plant rooms.
“He said Janet got hurt,” I stated.
Wolfe, finishing his beer, grunted.
“I owe Janet something. Besides, it could mean that Carl and Tina are out of it. I can be there in ten minutes. Why not?”
“No.” He looked at the clock, and moved. “Put those folders back, please.” Halfway to the door, he turned. “Disturb me only if it is unavoidable. And admit no more displaced persons to the house. Two at a time is enough.”
I put the folders away and then went to the front room. Tina, who was lying on the couch, sat up as I entered and saw to her skirt hem. She had nice legs, but my mind was occupied. Carl, on a chair near the foot of the couch, stood up and asked a string of questions with his eyes.
“As you were,” I told them gruffly. I heartily agreed with Wolfe that two was enough. “I hope you didn’t go near the windows.”
“We have learned so long ago to stay away from windows,” Carl said. “But we want to go. We will pay the fifty dollars gladly.”
“You can’t go.” I was emphatic. “That was Inspector Cramer, a very important policeman. We told him you were in here, and so—”
“You told him—” Tina gasped.
“Yes. It’s the Hitler-Stalin technique in reverse. They tell barefaced lies to have them taken for the truth, and we told the barefaced truth to have it taken for a lie. It worked. So now we’re stuck, and you are, too. You stay here. We’ve told the cops you’re in this room, and you’re not going to leave it, at least not until bedtime. I’m locking you in.” I pointed to a door. “That’s a bathroom, and there’s a glass if you want a drink. It has another door into the office, but I’ll lock it. The windows have bars.”
I crossed to the door to the hall and locked it with my master key. I went through to the office, entered the bathroom in the corner, turned the bolt flange on the door to the front room, opened the door an inch, returned to the office, locked that door with my key, and went back to the front room.
“All set,” I told them. “Make yourselves comfortable. If you need anything don’t yell, this room is soundproofed; push this button.” I put my finger on it, under the edge of the table. “I’ll give you the news as soon as there is any.” I was going.
“But this is hanging in the air on a thread,” Carl protested.
“You’re right, it is,” I agreed grimly. “Your only hope is that Mr. Wolfe has now put his foot in it and it’s up to him to get both you and him loose, not to mention me. By the way, there is a small gleam. Inspector Cramer beat it back to the shop because he got a phone call that Janet had been hurt. If she got hurt with scissors with you not there, it may be a real break.”
“Janet?” Tina was distressed. “Was she hurt much?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “and I’m not going to try to find out. We’ll have to sit it out, at least until six o’clock.” I glanced at my wrist. “That’s only an hour and twenty minutes. Then we’ll see if Mr. Wolfe has cooked up a charade. If not, he may at least invite you to dinner. See you later.”
I went to the door to the office, passed through, closed the door, and locked it. There in privacy I took a survey of the Vardas situation. Being smart enough to get it in that neither Carl nor Tina could drive a car was all right as far as it went, but it proved nothing at all about the scissors in Jake Wallen’s back; it merely showed that there are motives and motives. The cops thought Wallen had been killed by a cornered hit-and-run driver, but what did I think? And, even more important, what did Wolfe think? I was still trying to find the answers when the phone rang.
It was Sergeant Purley Stebbins: “Archie?... Purley. I’m at the barbershop. We want you here quick.”
I responded courteously: “I’m busy, but I guess so. If you really want me. Do you care to specify?”
“When you get here. Grab a cab.”
I buzzed Wolfe on the house phone and reported the development. Then I hopped...
The crowd of spectators ganged up in the corridor outside the Goldenrod Barbershop was twice as big as it had been before, and inside the shop there was a fine assortment of cops and dicks to look at. The corridor sported not one flatfoot, but three, keeping people away from the entrance. I told one of them my name and errand and was ordered to wait, and in a minute Purley came and escorted me in.
I darted a glance around. The barber chairs were all empty. Fickler and three of the barbers, Jimmie, Ed, and Philip, were seated along the row of waiting chairs, in their white jackets, each with a dick beside him. Tom was not in view.
Purley had guided me to the corner by the cash register. “How long have you known that Janet Stahl?” he demanded.
I shook my head reproachfully. “Not that way. You said I was needed and I came on the run. If you merely want my biography, call at the office any time during hours.”
Purley’s right shoulder twitched. It was only a reflex of his impulse to sock me, beyond his control and therefore nothing to resent. “Some day,” he said, setting his jaw and then releasing it. “She was found on the floor of her booth, out from a blow on her head. We brought her to and she can talk, but she won’t. She won’t tell us anything. She says she won’t talk to anybody except her friend Archie Goodwin. How long have you known her?”
“I’m touched,” I said with emotion. “The only chat I’ve ever had with her was here today under your eye, but look what it did to her. Is it any wonder my opinion of myself is what it is?”
“Listen, Goodwin; we’re after a murderer.”
“I know you are. I’m all for it.”
“You’ve never seen her outside this shop?”
“No.”
“That can be checked, maybe. Right now we want you to get her to talk. She’s stopped us dead. Come on.” He moved.
I caught his elbow. “Hold it. If she sticks to it that she’ll only talk with me I’ll have to think up questions. I ought to know what happened.”
“Yeah.” Purley wanted no more delay, but obviously I had a point. “There were only three of us left — me here at the front, and Joffe and Sullivan there on chairs. The barbers were all working on customers. Fickler was moving around. I was on the phone half the time.”
“Where was Janet?”
“I’m telling you. Toracco — that’s Philip — finished with a customer, and a new one got in his chair — we were letting regular customers in. The new one wanted a manicure, and Toracco called Janet, but she didn’t come. Fickler was helping the outgoing customer on with his coat. Toracco went behind the partition to get Janet, and there she was on the floor of her booth, cold. She had gone there fifteen minutes before, possibly twenty. I think all of them had gone behind the partition at least once during that time.”
“How bad is she hurt?”
“Not enough for the hospital. Doc let us keep her here. She was hit above the right ear with a bottle taken from the supply shelf against the partition, six feet from the entrance to her booth. The bottle was big and heavy, full of oil. It was there by her on the floor.”
“Prints?”
“For Pete’s sake, start a school. He had a towel in his hand or something. Come on.”
“One second. What did the doctor say when you asked him if she could have been just testing her skull?”
“He said it was possible, but he doubted it. Come and ask her.”
I had never been behind the partition before. The space ran about half the length of the shop. Against the partition were steamers, vats, lamps, and other paraphernalia, and then a series of cupboards and shelves. Across a wide aisle were the manicure booths, four of them, though I had never seen more than two operators in the shop. As we passed the entrance to the first booth in the line, a glance showed me Inspector Cramer seated at a little table across from Tom, the barber with white hair. Cramer saw me and arose. I followed Purley to the third booth, and on in. Then steps behind me and Cramer was there.
It was a big booth, eight by eight, but was now crowded. In addition to us three and the furniture, a city employee was standing in a corner, and, on a row of chairs lined up against the right wall, Janet Stahl was lying on her back, her head resting on a stack of towels. She had moved her eyes, but not her head, to take in us visitors. She looked beautiful.
“Here’s your friend Archie Goodwin,” Purley told her trying to sound sympathetic.
“Hello, there,” I said professionally. “What does this mean?”
The long, home-grown lashes fluttered at me. “You,” she said.
“Yep. Your friend Archie Goodwin.” There was a chair there, the only one she wasn’t using, and I squeezed past Purley and sat, facing her. “How do you feel — terrible?”
“No, I don’t feel at all. I am past feeling.”
I reached for her wrist, got my fingers on the spot, and looked at my watch. In thirty seconds I said, “Your pump isn’t bad. May I inspect your head?”
“If you’re careful.”
“Groan if it hurts.” I used all fingers to part the fine brown hair, and gently but thoroughly investigated the scalp. She closed her eyes and flinched once, but there was no groan. “A lump to write home about,” I announced. “Who did it?”
“Send them away and I’ll tell you.” I turned to the kibitzers. “Get out,” I said sternly. “If I had been here this would never have happened.”
They went without a word. I sat listening to the sound of their retreating footsteps outside in the aisle, then thought I had better provide sound to cover in case they were careless tiptoeing back. They had their choice of posts, just outside the open entrance or in the adjoining booths. The partitions were only six feet high. “It was dastardly,” I said. “He might have killed you. You’re lucky you’ve got a good, strong, thick skull.”
“I started to scream,” she said, “But it was too late.”
“What started you to scream? Seeing him, or hearing him?”
“It was both. I was in the customers’ chair, with my back to the door — and there was a little noise behind me, like a stealthy step, and I looked up and saw him reflected in the partition glass, right behind me, with his arm raised, and I started to scream, but before I could get it out he struck—”
“Wait a minute.” I got up and moved my chair to the outer side of the little table and sat in it. “These details are important. You were like this?”
“That’s it. I was sitting thinking.”
I felt that the opinion I had formed of her previously had not done her justice. The crinkly glass of the partition wall behind her could reflect no object whatever, no matter how the light was. Her contempt for mental processes was absolutely spectacular. I asked, “Did you recognize him?”
“Of course I did. That’s why I wouldn’t speak to them. That’s why I had to see you. It was that big one with the big ears and gold tooth, the one they call Stebbins, or they call him sergeant.”
I wasn’t surprised. I knew the power of her imagination now. “You mean he hit you with the bottle?”
“I can’t say it was him that hit me. I think people should be careful what they accuse other people of. I only know it was him I saw standing behind me with his arm raised, and then something hit me. From that anyone can only draw conclusions, but there are other reasons, too. He was rude to me this morning, asking me questions, and all day he has been looking at me in a rude way, not the way a girl is willing for a man to look at her. And then you can just be logical. Would Ed want to kill me, or Philip or Jimmie or Tom or Mr. Fickler? Why would they? So it must have been him, even if I hadn’t seen him.”
“It does sound logical,” I conceded. “But I’ve known Stebbins for years and have never known him to strike a woman without cause. What did he have against you?”
“I don’t know.” She frowned a little. “That’s one of the first things you must tell me, how to answer things to the reporters. That’s how you’ll earn your ten per cent.”
“My ten per cent of what?”
“Of everything I get. As my manager.” She extended a hand. “Shake on it.”
To avoid a contractual shake without offending, I grasped the back of her hand with my left, turning her palm up, and ran the fingers of my right from her wrist to her fingertips. “It’s a darned good idea,” I said appreciatively, “But we’ll have to postpone it. I’m going through bankruptcy just now and it would be illegal for me to make a contract. Later on—”
“I don’t need you later on. I need you right now.”
“Here I am, you’ve got me, but not under contract yet.” I got emphatic: “If you tell reporters I’m your manager, I’ll give you a lump that will make that one seem as flat as a pool table. If they ask why he hit you, don’t say you don’t know; say it’s a mystery. Now—”
“That’s it!” She was delighted.
“Sure. Tell ’em that. Now we’ve got to consider the cops. Stebbins is a cop, and they won’t want it hung on him. They’ve had one cop killed here today already. They’ll try to tie this up with that. They’ll try to make it that somebody here killed Wallen, and he found out that you knew something about it, so he tried to kill you. They may even think they have some kind of evidence — for instance, something you were heard to say. So we have to be prepared. We have to go back over it. Are you listening?”
“Certainly. What do I say when the reporters ask me if I’m going to go on working here? Couldn’t I say I don’t want to desert Mr. Fickler in a time of trouble?”
It took control to stay in that chair. But at home there were the guests locked in the front room, and some time we had to get rid of them.
“That’s the ticket,” I said warmly. “Say you’ve got to be loyal to Mr. Fickler. Have you ever been interviewed before?”
“No, this will be the first, and I want to start right.”
“Good for you. What they like best of all is to get the jump on the police. If you can tell them something the cops don’t know they’ll love you forever. For instance, the fact that Stebbins crowned you doesn’t prove that he’s the only one involved. He must have an accomplice here in the shop, or why did Wallen come here, in the first place? We’ll call the accomplice X. Now listen:
“Some time today, some time or other after Wallen’s body was found, you saw something or heard something, and X knew you did. He knew it, and he knew that if you told about it — if you told me, for example — it would put him and Stebbins on the spot. Naturally, both of them would want to kill you. It could have been X that tried to, but since you say you saw Stebbins reflected in the glass, we’ll let it go at that for now. Here’s the point:
“If you can remember what it was you saw or heard that scared X, and if you tell the reporters before the cops get wise to it, they’ll be your friends for life. Concentrate. Remember everything you saw and heard here today, and everything you did and said, too.”
She was frowning. “I don’t remember anything that would scare anybody.”
“Not right off the bat, who could?” Her hand was right there and I patted it. “I guess we’d better go over it together, right straight through. That’s the way Nero Wolfe would do it. What time did you get to work this morning?”
“When I always do — a quarter to nine. I’m punctual.”
“Were the others already here?”
“Some were and some weren’t.”
“Who was and who wasn’t?”
“My heavens, I don’t know. I didn’t notice.” She was resentful. “When I came to work I was thinking of something else, so how would I notice?”
I had to be patient. “Okay, we’ll start at another point. You remember when Wallen came in and spoke with Fickler, and went to Tina’s booth and talked with her, and when Tina came out Fickler sent Philip in to him. You remember that?”
She nodded. “I guess so.”
“Guesses won’t get us anywhere. Just recall the situation. There’s Philip, coming around the end of the partition after talking with Wallen. Did you hear him say anything? Did you say anything to him?”
“I don’t think Philip was this X,” she declared. “He is married, with children. I think it was Jimmie Kirk. He tried to make passes at me when I first came, and he drinks — you can ask Ed about that — and he thinks he’s superior. A barber being superior!” She looked pleased. “That’s a good idea about Jimmie being X, because I don’t have to say he really tried to kill me. I’ll try to remember something he said. Would it matter exactly when he said it?”
I had had enough, but a man can’t hit a woman when she’s down, so I ended it without violence.
“Not at all,” I told her, “but I’ve got an idea. I’ll go and see if I can get something out of Jimmie. Meanwhile, I’ll send a reporter in to break the ice with you, from the
“But Mr. Goodwin! I want—”
I was gone. I strode down the aisle and around the end of the partition. There I halted, and it wasn’t long before I was joined by Cramer and Purley. Their faces were expressive. I didn’t have to ask if they had got it all.
“If you shoot her,” I suggested, “send her brain to Johns Hopkins, if you can find it.”
Cramer grunted. “Did she do it herself?”
“I doubt it. It was a pretty solid blow to raise that lump, and you didn’t find her prints on the bottle. Bothering about prints is beneath her. I had to come up for air, but I left you an in. Better pick a strong character to play the role of reporter from the
“Send for Biatti,” Cramer snapped at Purley.
“Yeah,” I agreed, “he can take it. Now I go home?”
“No. She might insist on seeing her manager again.”
“I wouldn’t pass that around,” I warned them. “How would you like a broadcast of her line on Sergeant Stebbins? I’d like to be home for dinner. We’re having fresh pork tenderloin.”
“We would all like to be home for dinner.” Cramer’s look and tone were both sour. They didn’t change when he shifted to Purley: “Is the Vardas pair still all you want?”
“They’re what I want most,” Purley said doggedly. “In spite of her getting it when they weren’t here, but I guess we’ve got to spread out more. You can finish with them here and go home to dinner, and I suppose we’ve got to take ’em all downtown. I still want to be shown that the Stahl girl couldn’t have used that bottle on herself, and I don’t have to be shown that she could have used the scissors on Wallen if she felt like it. Or if she performed with the bottle to have something to tell reporters about, the Vardases are still what I want most. But I admit the other ‘if’ is the biggest one. If someone here conked her, finding out who and why comes first until we get the Vardases.”
Cramer stayed sour: “You haven’t even started.”
“Maybe that’s a little too strong, Inspector. We were on the Vardases, but we didn’t clear out of here; we kept close. Then, when we found the Stahl girl and brought her to, she shut the valve and had to see Goodwin. Even so, I wouldn’t say we haven’t made a start with the others. Ed Graboff plays the horses and owes a bookie nine hundred dollars, and he had to sell his car. Philip Toracco went off the rails in 1945 and spent a year in a booby hatch. Joel Fickler has been seen in public places with Horny Gallagher, and while that don’t prove—”
Cramer cut in to shoot at me, “Is Fickler a racket boy?”
I shook my head. “Sorry. Blank. I’ve never been anything but a customer.”
“If he is we’ll get it.” Purley was riled and didn’t care who knew it. “Jimmie Kirk apparently only goes back three years, and he has expensive habits for a barber. Tom Yerkes did a turn in 1939 for assault — beat up a guy who took his young daughter for a fast weekend — and he is known for having a quick take-off. So I don’t think you can say we haven’t even started.”
“Are all alibis for last night being checked?” Cramer demanded.
“They have been.”
“Do them over, and good. Get it going. Use as many men as you need. And not only alibis — records, too. I want the Vardas pair as much as you do, but if the Stahl girl didn’t use that bottle on herself, I also want someone else. Get Biatti here. Let him have a try at her before you take her down.”
“Yes, sir.”
Purley moved. He went to the phone at the cashier’s counter. I went to the one in the booth at the end of the clothes rack and dialed the number I knew best. Fritz answered, and I asked him to buzz the extension in the plant-rooms, since it was still a few minutes short of six o’clock.
“Where are you?” Wolfe demanded.
“At the barbershop.” I was none too genial, myself. “Janet was sitting in her booth and got hit on the head with a bottle of oil. They have gone through the routine and are still at the starting line. Her condition is no more critical than it was before she got hit. As I told you, she insisted on seeing me, and I have had a long, intimate talk with her. I can’t say I made no progress, because she asked me to be her manager, and I am not giving you notice, quitting at the end of this week. Aside from that I got nowhere. I advise you to tell Fritz to increase the grocery orders until further notice.”
Silence. Then, “Who is there?”
“Everybody. Cramer, Purley, squad men, the staff. The whole party will be moved downtown in an hour or so.”
“Pfui.” Silence. In a moment: “Stay there.” The connection went.
I left the booth. Neither Purley nor Cramer was in sight. I moseyed toward the rear, with the line of empty barber chairs on my left and the row of waiting chairs against the partition on my right. Fickler was there, and three of the barbers — Ed being the missing one now — with dicks in between.
The chair on the left of the magazine table was empty, and I dropped into it. Apparently, no one had felt like reading today, since the same copy of
A flatfoot was blocking the entrance to keep a man fully twice his weight from entering, and was explaining the situation. The man let him finish and then spoke:
“I know, I know.” His eyes came at me over the flatfoot’s shoulder, and he bellowed, “Archie! Where’s Mr. Cramer?”
I got up and made for the door in no haste or jubilation.
“Okay, take it easy. I’ll go see—”
But I didn’t have to go. His bellow had carried within, and Cramer’s voice came from right behind me:
“Well! Dynamite?”
The flatfoot had moved aside, leaving it to the brass, and Wolfe had crossed the sill. “I came to get a haircut,” he stated, and marched past the sergeant and inspector to the rack, took off his hat, coat, vest, and tie, hung them up, crossed to Jimmie’s chair, the second in the line, and got his bulk up onto the seat. In the mirrored wall fronting him he had a panorama of the row of barbers and dicks in his rear, and without turning his head he called, “Jimmie! If you please?”
Jimmie’s dancing dark eyes came to Cramer and Purley, there by me. So did others. Cramer stood scowling at Wolfe. We all held our poses while Cramer slowly lifted his right hand and carefully and thoroughly scratched the side of his nose with his forefinger. That attended to, he decided to sit down. He went to the first chair in the line, turned it to face Wolfe.
“You want a haircut, huh?”
“Yes sir. I need one.”
“Yeah.” Cramer turned his head. “All right, Kirk. Come and cut his hair.”
Jimmie got up and went past the chair to the cabinet for an apron. Everybody stirred, as if a climax had been reached and passed. Purley strode to the third chair in the line, Philip’s, and got on it. That way he and Cramer had Wolfe surrounded, and it seemed only fair for me to be handy, so I detoured around Cramer, pulled Jimmie’s stool to one side, and perched on it.
Jimmie had Wolfe aproned and his scissors were singing above the right ear. Wolfe barred clippers.
“You just dropped in,” Cramer rasped. “Like Goodwin this morning.”
“Certainly not.” Wolfe was curt but not pugnacious. “You summoned Mr. Goodwin. He told me on the phone of his fruitless talk with Miss Stahl, and I thought it well to come.”
Cramer grunted. “Okay, you’re here. And you’re not going to leave until I know why, without any funny business about murderers in your front room.”
“Not as short behind as last time,” Wolfe commanded.
“Yes, sir.” Jimmie had never had as big or attentive an audience, and he was giving a good show.
“Naturally,” Wolfe said tolerantly, “I expected that. You can badger me, if that’s what you’re after, and get nowhere, but I offer a suggestion. Why not work first? Why don’t we see if we can settle this business? Or would you rather harass me than catch a murderer?”
“I’m working now. I want the murderer. What about you?”
“Forget me for the moment. You can hound me any time. I would like to propose certain assumptions about what happened here today. Do you care to hear them?”
“I’ll listen, but don’t drag it out.”
“I won’t. Please don’t waste time challenging the assumptions; I don’t intend to defend them, much less validate them. They are merely a basis of exploration, to be tested. The first is this — that Wallen found something in the car, the car that had killed the woman... No, I don’t like it this way. I want a direct view, not reflections. Jimmie, turn me around, please.”
Jimmie whirled the chair a half-turn, so that Wolfe’s back was to the mirrored wall, also to me, and he was facing those seated in the chairs against the partition.
I spoke up: “Ed isn’t here.”
“I left him in the booth,” Purley rumbled.
“Get him,” Wolfe instructed. “And Miss Stahl, where is she?”
“In her booth lying down.”
“Archie. Bring Miss Stahl.”
He had a nerve picking on me, with an inspector and a sergeant and three dicks there, but I postponed telling him so and went, as Purley went for Ed. In the booth Janet was still on her back on the chairs, her eyes wide open. At sight of me she fired immediately: “You said you were going to send a reporter—”
I raised my voice to stop her: “Listen to me, girlie. You’re getting a break. Nero Wolfe is here with a suggestion and wants your opinion of it. Can you sit up?”
“Certainly I can, but—”
“Take it easy.” I put an arm behind her shoulders. “Are you dizzy?”
“I’m never dizzy,” she said scornfully, and shook me off and went on solo. She wasn’t taking help from a man, and of course I wasn’t her manager yet. She took the chair I had vacated when Wolfe appeared, next to the magazine table. Ed had been brought by Purley, who was back in Philip’s chair, flanking Wolfe. I returned to the stool.
Jimmie had finished above the ears and was doing the back, so Wolfe’s head was tilted forward.
“Your assumptions?” Cramer asked.
“Yes. I was saying, the first is that Wallen found something in the car that led him to this shop. It couldn’t have been something he was told, for there was no one to tell him anything. It was some object. I asked you not to challenge me, but I didn’t mean to exclude contradictions. If there are facts that repudiate this assumption, or any other, I want them.”
“We made that one without any help.”
“And it still holds?”
“Yes.”
“Good. That’s fortunate, since all of my assumptions concern that object. The second is that Wallen had it with him when he came here. I can support that with sound—”
“You don’t need to. We made it and we hold it.”
“Very well. That saves time... Not too short back there, Jimmie.”
“No, sir.”
“The third is that he had the object inside the newspaper he was carrying. This is slenderer, but it must be tested. He had not bought the paper shortly before coming here, for it was an early edition of the
“You know a lot about it,” Cramer growled.
“Do me later,” Wolfe snapped. “I know nothing you don’t know. It is difficult to account for him carrying a stale newspaper in that manner except on the assumption that it was
“Ah,” Cramer said. “Tell us why.”
“No. I shall not support that assumption; I merely make it and submit it to our test. Don’t waste time clawing at me. Since Carl and Tina are not involved, and therefore didn’t take the object away with them, it is still here in the shop. That is the sixth assumption, and it is good only if your surveillance of these people here, all these hours, has been constant and alert. What about it? Could any of them have removed such an object?”
“I want to know,” Cramer demanded, “why you’re excluding Carl and Tina.”
“No. Not now.” Wolfe and Cramer couldn’t see each other because Jimmie was in between, starting on the top. “First we’ll complete this test. We must know whether the object has been removed,
“No,” Purley said.
“How good a no?”
“Good enough for me. No man has stepped outside this shop alone. Something could have been slipped to a customer, but that’s stretching it, and we’ve had them under our eyes.”
“Not, apparently, the one who assaulted Miss Stahl.”
“That was in the shop. Is that a point?”
“I suppose not. Then we assume that the object is still here. The seventh and last assumption is this: that no proper search for such an object has been made. I hasten to add, Mr. Stebbins, that that is not a point, either. You and your men are unquestionably capable of making a proper search, but I assume that you haven’t done so on account of Carl and Tina. Thinking them guilty, naturally you thought they wouldn’t leave an incriminating object behind. Have you searched thoroughly?”
“We’ve looked.”
“Yes. But granting all my assumptions, which of course you don’t, has there been a proper search?”
“No.”
“Then it’s about time. Mr. Fickler!”
Fickler jerked his head up. “Me?”
“You run this place and can help us. However, I address all of you who work here. Put your minds on this. You too, Jimmie.”
Jimmie backed off a step and stood.
“This,” Wolfe said, “could take a few minutes or it could take all night. What we’re after is an object with something on it that identifies it as coming from this shop. Ideally, it should be the name and address or phone number, but we’ll take less if we have to. Since we’re proceeding on my assumptions, we are supposing that it was inside the newspaper as Wallen was carrying it, so it is not a business card or match folder or bottle or comb or brush. It should be flat and of considerable dimensions. Another point: It should be easily recognizable. All of you went to the booth and were questioned by Wallen, but he showed you no such object and mentioned none. Is that correct?”
They nodded and mumbled affirmatives. Ed said, “Yes!”
“Then only the murderer saw it or was told of it. Wallen must for some reason have shown it to him, or asked him about it, and not the rest of you; or its edge may have been protruding from the newspaper, unnoticed by the others; or the murderer may merely have suspected that Wallen had it. In any case, when opportunity offered later for him to dive into the booth and kill Wallen, he got the object. If Mr. Stebbins is right about the surveillance that has been maintained, it is still here in the shop. I put it to you, and especially to you, Mr. Fickler: What and where is it?”
They looked at one another and back at Wolfe. Philip said in his thin tenor, “Maybe it was the newspaper.”
“Possibly. I doubt it... Where is the newspaper, Mr. Cramer?”
“At the laboratory. There’s nothing on it or in it that could have brought Wallen here.”
“What else has been taken from here to the laboratory?”
“Nothing but the scissors and the bottle that was used on Miss Stahl.”
“Then it’s here... All right, Jimmie, finish.”
“It looks to me,” Purley objected in his bass rumble, “like a turkey. Even with your assumptions. Say we find something like what you want, how do we know it’s it? Even if we think it’s it, where does that get us?”
Wolfe was curt: “For one thing, fingerprints.”
“Nuts. If it belongs here, of course it will have their prints.”
“Not
Purley grunted. He didn’t move.
“Go ahead,” Cramer told him. “Phone. Give him what he wants.”
“The search,” Wolfe said, “must be thorough and will take time. First I ask all of you to search your minds. What object is here, belongs here, that meets the specifications as I have described them, Mr. Fickler?”
Fickler shook his head. “I don’t know, unless it’s a towel, and why would he carry a towel like that?”
“He wouldn’t. Anyway, a towel wouldn’t help us any... Philip?”
“No, sir. I don’t know what.”
“Tom?”
Tom just shook his head, gloomily.
“Ed?”
“You’ve got me. Pass.”
“Miss Stahl?”
“I think he might have been keeping the paper because there was something in it he wanted to read. I don’t have time—”
“Yes. We’ll consider that... Jimmie?”
“I don’t know a thing like that in the shop, Mr. Wolfe. Not a thing.”
“Pfui.” Wolfe was disgusted. “Either you have no brains at all, or you’re all in a conspiracy. I’m looking straight at such an object right now.”
From behind I couldn’t see where his gaze was directed, but I didn’t have to. The others could, and I saw them. Eleven pairs of eyes, including Purley’s, who had finished at the phone and rejoined us, were aimed at the magazine table next to Janet’s chair, from eleven different angles. Up to that moment my brain may have been as paralyzed as the others’, but it could still react to a stimulus. I left the stool and stood right behind Wolfe, ready if and when needed.
“You mean the magazines?” Cramer demanded.
“Yes. You subscribe to them, Mr. Fickler? They come through the mail? Then the name and address is on them. For instance, that copy of
“What if he took it from here and had it in his pocket when he stole the car and drove up Broadway? And in the excitement of his misadventure he failed to notice that it had dropped from his pocket and was on the seat of the car? And Wallen found it there, took it, and saw the name and address on it?... You have sent for the equipment and Wallen’s prints, Mr. Stebbins? Then we—”
“Oh! I remember!” Janet cried. She was pointing a finger. “You remember, Jimmie? This morning I was standing here, and you came by with a hot towel, and you had that magazine — the one sticking out of the mailing-wrapper — and you tossed it under there. That’s why you must have been the one to hit me, because I asked if you had been steaming it, and you said—”
Jimmie leaped. I thought his prey was Janet, and in spite of everything I was willing to save her life, but Wolfe and the chair were in my way and cost me a fifth of a second. And it wasn’t Janet he was after; it was the magazine — the copy of
Janet didn’t make a sound. I suppose she was considering what to say to the reporters.
“Confound it,” Wolfe grumbled savagely behind me.
Anyhow, that haircut was done.
As stubborn as Cramer was, he never did learn why Wolfe went to get a haircut that day.
He learned plenty about Jimmie Kirk. Kirk was wanted as a bail jumper, under another name, in Wheeling, West Virginia, on an old charge as a car stealer, with various fancy complications such as slugging a respected citizen who had surprised him in the act. Apparently, he had gone straight in New York for a couple of years and then had hooked up with a car-stealing ring. Unquestionably, he had been fortified with liquids that Monday evening. Driving a stolen car while drunk is a risky operation, especially with a stolen magazine in your pocket...
As for Carl and Tina, I took a strong position on them Tuesday evening in the office.
“You know very well what will happen,” I told Wolfe. “Some day, maybe next week, maybe next year, they’ll be confronted and they’ll be in trouble. Being in trouble, they will come to me, because Carl likes me and because I rescued them—”
Wolfe snorted. “
“Yes, sir. I had already noticed that magazine there several times, and it just happened to catch your eye. Anyhow, I am secretly infatuated with Tina, so I’ll try to help them and will get my finger caught, and you’ll have to butt in again because you can’t get along without me. It will go on like that year after year. Why not try to do something about it now? There are people in Washington you know — for instance, Carpenter. He might be able to help Tina and Carl. It will cost a measly buck for a phone call, and I can get that from the fifty they have earmarked for us. I have Carpenter’s home number, and I might as well get him now.”
No comment.
I put my hand on the phone. “Person to person, huh?”
Wolfe grunted. “I got my naturalization papers twenty-four years ago.”
“I wasn’t discussing you. You’ve caught it from Janet,” I said coldly, and then lifted the phone and dialed.