Of course Alex was doing the right thing in asking Angela out. The sooner they got the mystery cleaned up, the sooner they could concentrate on their own work. Whatever had happened to her own work, by the way? She had almost forgotten the driving ambition that had been her one ruling passion only a month ago. Could she have changed so much in so short a time? Or was it simply that she had begun to find a truer set of values for life?
Nevertheless, she had to bite her tongue and pretend not to notice when Alex proffered his invitation to the astonished but willing Angela.
Jack Banks could not have picked a better moment to ask her for a date.
“Hey, doll,” he rushed up to her. “I’ve been looking for you. The folks just called a while ago. They’re in town, and they want us to join them for dinner.”
“Oh, fun,” she replied sweetly, watching Alex out of the corner of her eye. “I’d love to.”
“Great,” Jack beamed. “Go get all dolled up, gorgeous. I want the old man to see what a gorgeous doll you are.”
“If I’m all that gorgeous, I shouldn’t think it would matter what I wore,” she laughed.
But of course no girl worthy of the name is going to miss a chance to wear her smartest frock; and Corin Johansen was every inch a girl. When she came downstairs half an hour later in a brocade coat over a black crepe sheath with a froufrou of lace swishing about her knees and her magnificent auburn hair piled high on her head, everybody in the parlor, except Angela, gasped with delight.
“Corin, you look absolute heaven,” squealed the twins in unison.
Corin returned a bland smile. Did Angela have to know that her pearls were carefully chosen imitations, that her dainty silk clutch bag had cost just two dollars, or that the matching pumps had been a lucky find at a cancellation store? If the model envied her exquisitely fitted dress or her luxurious evening coat, let her learn to sew. Corin drew on her gloves with a flourish and tipped Alex a secret wink as Jack swept her triumphantly out the door.
Chapter 18
Jack’s parents were not what Corin had expected them to be. Instead of the haughty, dignified matron she had pictured, Mrs. Banks was an overdressed, gushing woman who showered her with compliments and watched with a shrewd eye to see how she was taking them.
The banker’s wife obviously adored her only son. She regaled Corin with endless stories of the cute tricks Jack had played as a child, his prowess in sports at the several private schools he had attended, his popularity with the girls back home. But never once did she mention what Corin would have considered a solid achievement.
“Of course,” she remarked at intervals, “he’ll always be mummy’s little boy to me.”
How true, Corin thought wearily. Poor Jack! What chance did he have to grow up with a mother like this?
The father was harder to figure out, though no less tiresome. He was a red-faced, hearty-looking man who paid his young guest even more frequent, more enthusiastic, and probably more sincere compliments than his wife did. But he also kept a careful eye on her to gauge the effect of his efforts. He pressed her to take a cocktail she did not want and insisted on ordering all the most expensive items on the menu for her. But he quarreled with the waiter over the bill and left a tip which the girl blushed to see, considering the amount of extra service he had demanded. Moreover, he seemed proud of his own meanness.
“Nobody puts anything over on me.”
That, apparently, was Mr. Banks’s whole philosophy of life. His idea of having something put over on him seemed almost exclusively to involve being cheated out of money. He told Corin a great many dull tales about his own cleverness in getting the better of other people in business deals. Corin listened politely; privately she decided Mr. Banks was even more of a horror than his wife.
His attitude toward Jack puzzled her. Like Mrs. Banks, he seemed eager to show off their son to her in a favorable light. “You’d think Jack was a horse they wanted me to buy,” she thought.
Yet the man could not resist constant sharp remarks and sly digs at his son, which he tried to pass off as good-natured teasing. In spite of all his laughter and backslapping, it was clear that he resented his wife’s adoration of Jack.
“If it weren’t for me, she’d spoil him rotten. Give him the moon, if he asked for it. But I put my foot down. Don’t I, boy?” He brought his hand down with a thump on Jack’s shoulder.
The young man only grinned. “That’s right, Dad.” He seemed a trifle afraid of his father, yet somehow conscious of having the upper hand with him.
Mr. Banks could not be quite so firm as he thought he was, the girl decided. How did Jack get all that stuff in his room? Unless Mrs. Banks bought presents for her little boy and hid the fact from her husband.
She hoped that she and Jack could escape after dinner. However, when Mr. Banks finished his wrangle with the waiter, he steered them back into the hotel’s cocktail lounge. There he ordered liqueurs and settled back in a leather arm chair, puffing comfortably on a cigar.
“He looks,” thought his unwilling guest, “as though he’s ready to talk business now.”
And that was just about what he did. After a few minutes’ conversation, she realized that Mr. Banks was adroitly sounding her out as to her background and position. He had evidently got the impression from Jack that she came from a wealthy family.
Too late, she realized that her little joke with the impressionable boy had backfired. It had seemed so funny to kid Jack along; but now it was just horribly embarrassing. There was nothing she could do but keep it up. At least, the folks would get a kick out of hearing how she got a rise out of a rich banker.
“I expect,” Mr. Banks was saying a shade too casually between puffs on his cigar, “there are plenty of opportunities for bright young men in your father’s business.”
“Yes,” she replied. “Dad’s always complaining that he can’t get the right kind of help.”
She could hear her father’s slow, deep voice now. “Ay yust can’t teach them fallers to cut a hedge straight.”
It was still funny, in a way. “Yes,” she went on, “there’s plenty of opportunity for a man who’s willing to work hard.”
“Let’s see, now,” Mr. Banks studied the tip of his cigar, “I seem to know that name, Johansen. Is he in steel bearings?”
“No.” said Corin with a perfectly straight face, “I guess you’d say he’s in real estate.”
In fact, he had probably been in some rich banker’s real estate right up to his knees that very day, planting tulip bulbs.
“Real estate.” Jack’s father beamed. “Now, there’s the greatest money-making field in America today. I’ve often told Jack an ambitious young man couldn’t do better than go into real estate. Haven’t I, son?”
“You sure have, Dad.” Jack was either going along with the gag or taking it dead seriously. With considerable shock, Corin realized that he was trying hard to look like a budding executive.
Then it dawned on her what this evening was really intended to accomplish. Her allowing him to think she was wealthy had misled Jack into thinking she was a good catch. He had presented her to his parents not simply as an interesting new acquaintance, but as a prospective daughter-in-law. And Mr. Banks was now trying to find out whether her father was in a position to take his expensive son off his own hands.
She ought to be furious, she supposed; but she was only amused. It was so like Jack. He had simply made up a charming fairy tale and told it to his parents without even checking to find out whether there was a word of truth in it. He had not bothered to find out whether Corin had any special feeling for him. He had simply decided to marry her and relied on his charm and his parents’ influence to close the deal.
Poor Jack! She could just see him reporting to work for his new father-in-law in one of those many elegantly tailored suits of his. “Yah,” Papa would tell him. “You bane going to take up real estate. Yust one shovelful at a time.”
In about two more seconds, she was goi
ng to laugh in their faces. She’d have to hide behind her handkerchief and make believe she was sneezing. Where on earth had her handbag got to? She looked down—and froze.
Mrs. Banks’s right hand was resting lightly on the arm of her chair. On her third finger was the diamond ring which Corin had last seen inside the handle of Rosie Garside’s rolling pin.
Icy chills ran down her spine; but the girl forced herself to keep her voice steady. “That’s a lovely ring you’re wearing.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you like it,” smiled the older woman archly, “for a very special reason. There’s a fascinating story about this ring, Corin, dear. My mother had two great-aunts who were twins, and they both married extremely wealthy men. When they became engaged, they insisted that their prospective bridegrooms give them identical engagement rings. This is one of them. The rings were handed down through the family until finally I was the only girl left and they both came to me. They’re really too big to wear together, with all my other rings, so I wear one and keep the other put away in our wall safe at home. I’ve told Jack that when he becomes engaged, he can give it to his bride-to-be. It’s just lying there, waiting for the right girl to come along. Isn’t it, sonny?” she simpered.
Jack never batted an eye. “Oh, Mum, girls nowadays don’t want that old-fashioned stuff. They’d rather have a nice three-carat marquise in a modern setting. Wouldn’t they, Corin?”
“I—I don’t know. Excuse me, please.” Right at that moment, all the girl wanted was to run.
Mrs. Banks murmured something about the ladies’ lounge and started to rise; but before she was on her feet, Corin had fled through a side exit.
She flagged a taxi and slammed the door.
“Fenway Building, quickly, please,” she urged, praying that Alex had got tired of Angela and gone back to work. As the cab sped down Ipswich Street, she craned her neck to see if there was a light in the studio window.
Mercifully, it was there, welcome as a friendly beacon to a shipwrecked sailor. Without waiting for the elevator, she stumbled up the metal staircase in her high-heeled silk pumps, burst through the door, and rushed to Alex.
“What’s the matter, kid?” he asked in amazement. “Seen the ghost again?”
“Yes,” she sobbed. “Oh, Alex, I’ve just had dinner with Rosie Garside’s murderer.”
Chapter 19
What heaven it was to be safe in the studio with Alex’s arms around her.
“I’m probably getting paint all over your dress,” he murmured into her hair.
“I don’t care.” She snuggled into the shaggy old gray sweater. “Just don’t let me go.”
“Do you think I’m completely crazy?” He pulled her even closer. “From now on, you stay right here where you belong.”
“I do, don’t I,” she sighed happily. “Isn’t it wonderful to have what you really want most in all the world.”
“Sure is, kid.”
They stood for a long time feeling the exquisite thrill of just being together. At last, Alex released his embrace, picked her up, and sat her on the edge of the battered table. “Now, tell me what happened.”
Corin took a deep breath. “It was wrong, somehow, from the very beginning. Jack’s parents weren’t—I don’t know, they just weren’t nice people. I hadn’t been with them fifteen minutes before I realized that Jack had fallen for that silly joke about my being rich. They were trying to net me, as if I’d been a fish. They kept making sly hints about Jack being such a great catch for a girl. And if you could have heard Mister Banks sounding me out about getting my father to give Jack a job!” She giggled a little at the recollection.
“Then I noticed a diamond ring his mother was wearing. It was exactly like the one I found in the rolling pin. I managed to keep my head enough to make some casual remark about it, and she told me she had an exact duplicate of it in their safe at home. So then I knew Jack must have stolen the other one. From his own mother, Alex!”
For a moment, she buried her face again in the comforting gray sweater. “When I think about it now, it seems that I should have seen through Jack long ago. He’s really just plain dirt mean under that nice-boy act of his. Why, the first time we went out together, he shook sand in an old man’s eyes at the beach and didn’t even say he was sorry.”
“I could have told you he was rotten,” grunted the artist.
“Then why didn’t you?”
“I figured you’d only think I was jealous.”
“Were you?” she teased.
“Darn’ right I was!” He hugged her again. “I picked you for my girl the minute you walked into Madame Despau-Davy’s parlor wearing that artsy-craftsy hand-blocked dress you were so proud of. But then Jack made his big play for you, and I figured what chance did I have against a guy like him? I had nothing to offer you.”
“Except all the things that matter. Oh, Alex, with your talent—”
“And your cooking,” he grinned. “We’ll make a great team, kid.”
“When I think of those crazy ideas I had about being a great designer,” she laughed shakily, “it seems as though it must have been some other Corin Johansen a long time ago. Glamor jobs are fine for girls who’ve got what it takes; but all the career I want is to make you a real home and keep you happy in it.”
Alex lifted the slim fingers and kissed them, one by one. “You’ll always do that, even if we have to live in a tent. Well, come on, kid. We might as well get it over with.”
Corin came down to earth with a bump. “Get what over with?”
“Hadn’t we better get back to the house and tell Leo he can come out from under Will’s bed?”
“Good night! I’d forgotten all about poor Leo.”
Corin hopped down from the table and followed Alex to the door. Her brocade coat was rumpled, her stockings laddered, her white gloves smudged, and her elegant upsweep mostly down; but the look in his eyes as he took her arm told her that she was the loveliest girl in the world.
Riding in a taxi with Alex’s arm around her was delightful; but as they approached their boarding house, Corin was gripped by the same panic that had sent her flying out of the hotel.
“Alex,” she shivered, “what are we going to do?”
“Don’t worry, kid,” he said grimly, “I can take care of that young punk.”
“But what if he uses his gas gun?”
“He won’t get a chance.”
However, Jack would have had every chance. He was waiting, livid with anger, as Corin stepped in the door.
“What’s the idea running out on me like that?” he stormed. “I had everything going great, and now you’ve put me in the soup with the old man.”
Face to face with him, Corin was no longer frightened. She was simply furious, clear through.
“It’s quite simple, Jack,” she replied icily. “I just decided I was through playing games with a crook.”
“A what?” he stared at her blankly.
“I found that other ring of your mother’s,” she explained. “The one she was going to give to some nice girl, the one you stole and hid in Miss Garside’s rolling pin. Is that what you sold to buy me those fancy dinners? I found a ruby necklace and some other things, too. Were they your mother’s, or did you take them from somebody else?”
Jack made a sudden break for the door.
“No, you don’t!” Alex grabbed him, and twisted his arms none too gently behind his back. “You stay right here and tell us how you killed Rosie Garside.”
“I didn’t kill her!”
The debonair playboy had vanished. A ratlike form cringed before them, darting furtive glances right and left, wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue. “I never even touched her! I was—all right, I was trying to get something I’d—something I needed out of the kitchen. I was going to tie her up and blindfold her. I started to sneak up behind her, and that lousy old leopard let out a growl and came for me. I picked up the poker and let him have it. Rosie tried to grab my arm and—and then s
he just keeled over dead at my feet.”
“You killed Selim?”
Madame Despau-Davy had been standing behind them with her four ocelots around her. Now she advanced toward him with a look of concentrated fury on her painted face such as Corin had never seen in her life.
“You killed my Selim?”
“I had to!” The young man cowered away from her. “He was going to attack me!”
“You miserable little coward.” The old woman spat out each world like a venomed dart. For a moment, she seemed about to spring, like an old leopard herself, at Selim’s murderer. Then she stepped back among her spotted cats, her face dead white under its rouge, but composed.
“Go,” she said quietly. “Get out of my house and never let me set eyes on you again. Rosie and Selim are at peace but such a wretch as you never will be. God have mercy on you, John Banks, for I have none.”
“I’ll go! I’ll go right now!”
He squirmed to get away; but Alex held him fast.
“No, you won’t. First, you’re going to tell us a little more about that jewelry. Where did you steal it? What about the brooch you hid in Will’s room?”
“It’s my mother’s! She won’t press charges against me. You won’t be able to pin anything on me. She’ll say she gave me the stuff. She’d give me anything, but the old man won’t let her. It’s all his fault. I have to steal!”
“You’re out of your mind,” said Corin. “Why should you get everything you want, any more than anybody else?”
He looked at her blankly. “Why shouldn’t I? Oh, come on now, gorgeous.” He made a miserable attempt at turning on the familiar wheedling charm. “I’ve been nice to you, haven’t I? Don’t tell me you’re against me, too.”
Her face was like stone. “For all I know, you may have made me an accessory to your crimes. And you almost blinded me and Alex with your gas gun a few nights ago.”
“Oh, say, was that you? I’m awfully sorry, doll, honest.”
“You’ll be a lot sorrier before you’re through,” said Alex savagely. “Corin, go call the police.”
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