The Dead Can Tell

by Helen Reilly

  Sara Hazard’s movements were swift. There was no mistaking them or the thing, the object, she removed from the purse and dropped into a capacious pocket of the ermine cape. Light from the lamp glinted on it as it disappeared from sight. It was a small, squat black pistol.

  Sara Hazard had a gun with her, a gun that she was shifting around, a gun that she didn’t want anyone to know about.

  III

  Cristie didn’t know what to do. Margot was her first thought but Margot was in the dining room with Euen’s father and mother. She couldn’t very well interrupt them with a bald announcement that one of the guests had a gun. If only Steven would come. She sat down on a chair in a deserted row in the living room. She was glad to be back where there were lights and laughter and people. The darkness had been terrifying.

  A man hurrying past paused in front of her. It was Johnny. Cristie tried to smile up at him but the presence of that ugly black weapon hidden in the silk-lined pocket of the ermine cape in the bedroom beyond was a weight, a question, dragging her down, putting pallor into her cheeks, stiffness into her vocal cords.

  Johnny didn’t notice her condition. He said, “Seen anything of Sara Hazard, Cristie? I’m looking for her.”

  He didn’t say why. Cristie looked at him dumbly. Why was Johnny so anxious as to Sara’s whereabouts when he had announced his dislike of her only a few hours ago? Cristie felt as though she were treading a slow measure of nightmare with the golden figure of Sara Hazard appearing and disappearing in its coils. She was the object of a peculiar attention on the part of Margot, Johnny, Euen and Kit Blaketon, an attention all the more striking because none of them seemed to care for her. Johnny appeared to sense her unspoken query. He said vaguely that someone wanted Sara Hazard on the phone.

  Cristie told him that Sara was or had been in Margot’s bedroom a few minutes earlier.

  “That’s funny,” Johnny said, “I looked there before.”

  Cristie said coldly, “Mrs. Hazard left here, went out somewhere a while ago. But she’s back.”

  “Sure, Cristie?”

  “Quite sure.” If only she weren’t so sure of what she had seen from the darkness of the terrace.

  Johnny left her without another word. He made for the study and the telephone there. Cristie’s perplexity thickened. Why didn’t Johnny find Sara Hazard and take her to the telephone instead of going back to it himself? She brushed the cobwebby incongruities aside only to have them crop out in another place.

  Sara Hazard wasn’t the only person being sought in that maze of people at Margot’s engagement party. Mary Dodd was hunting for her niece. She looked worried. Cristie heard her inquiring about the lithe red-haired girl with the green eyes. She got out of her chair, went to Miss Dodd and told her about Kit Blaketon’s departure.

  Cristie said, “She left some time ago. She may have returned, though. Can I help?”

  Before Mary Dodd could reply a man joined them. Mary murmured his name. He was Clifford Somers, Assemblyman Clifford Somers, the man Kit Blaketon was engaged to. He was a well-set-up young fellow of twenty-eight or so with a pleasant likable face, a good jaw and straight-forward blue eyes. Cristie knew who he was then. She had heard Margot speak of him.

  Clifford Somers had made a name for himself in politics. He was talked of for bigger things than the Assembly. Part of his success was the result of his own ability, but part of it was due to the influence of his brother Pat.

  Steven and Margot had both talked of Pat Somers. He was one of the most powerful men in New York.

  He never figured in the news but he was one of the real behind-the-scenes big shots. Pat knew everybody and went every place. Cristie had met him. He had been at the penthouse for dinner when she first came.

  Clifford Somers was talking to Mary Dodd. He said, “I hope she’s not sore, Mary. Where is she? It was hard breaking away from the Penobscott Club. I thought the speeches would never end. But I had to sit through it. I’m running this year, you know, and I’ve got to mind my p’s and q’s.”

  His face fell when Mary Dodd told him that Kit wasn’t there. “I hoped she was with you, Cliff. Miss Lansing saw her go out a while ago. Was she alone, Miss Lansing?”

  Cristie hesitated. The Penobscott Club. Queer. That was the place Sara Hazard was calling when Kit Blaketon was listening to her outside the door. Ought she to tell Mary Dodd privately what she had seen and heard? She decided against it. She might be making a mountain out of a molehill and, anyhow, it wasn’t any of her business.

  She said aloud, “Yes, Miss Blaketon was alone, but she had her coat with her.”

  Mary Dodd said hopefully, “She may have run over to the Turners for a few minutes, Cliff. They live near here. She’ll probably turn up. She wouldn’t go for good without letting me know. Where’s Pat, Cliff? I thought he was coming tonight.”

  Cliff Somers’ eyes were roaming the crowd absently. “Pat? No, Pat couldn’t make it. He meant to, but he had to go to Albany to have a talk with the Governor and he won’t be back until tomorrow.” Mary Dodd and the young Assemblyman moved toward the supper room. The party was at its peak. It was a decided success, but then it would be with Margot running it. In spite of her temporary absence, Sara Hazard was very much in evidence. She seemed to be everywhere. She was very gay. Other people besides Cristie watched her that night.

  Sara chatted with Margot, rumbaed with Euen Firth, had champagne with Johnny. Toward twelve o’clock she did a solo with Gorkin, the dancer. The rest of the room was darkened and a spotlight played over them. Sara’s black sheathed figure with its small golden head swayed and twisted in perfect time with the musical comedy star’s.

  Watching from the sidelines, Cristie kept telling herself that it wasn’t really very late, not much after midnight. There was plenty of time. Steven would be there soon. And then she saw him.

  It was as the applause broke out and the lights flashed on again that Steven arrived. The width of the room and sixty or seventy people separated him from Cristie. She had only a glimpse of him beyond the door into the hall, wide shouldered, lean, dark head high. The glimpse was too swift to tell her anything as she started across the floor.

  It wasn’t until more than half an hour later that they found themselves alone together on the terrace. The night was warm with a soft wind. There were no stars. It was very dark. The millions of electric bulbs in the city spread out at their feet and the illuminated windows of the penthouse supplied light enough. Cristie knew what Steven was going to tell her before he spoke, had somehow, she realized dully, known it all along. Sara wasn’t going to give him a divorce.

  Steven stood beside and a little behind Cristie. He was rigid as though part of him were somewhere else. He didn’t attempt to touch her. He stared straight in front of him into blackness as he said in a hard cold voice, a voice without cadences, without inflection, “She won’t do it, Cristie. Sara won’t give me a divorce. She won’t let me go.”

  Cristie took it standing up, gripping the railing with her hands. She looked down at them. Her fingers were curled around the iron spikes. There was no sensation in them. The nail of her left forefinger had broken. The broken piece was folded back on the nail itself. That was all, her hands gripping emptiness. The city below had vanished. The only thing she was conscious of was her own pain and Steven’s. It was over, their brief delusion of happiness, of joy, of fulfillment and completion.

  She tried to speak, finally succeeded. She said slowly, “It wasn’t in the cards, Steven. It wasn’t meant to be that way. It was too good to be true.” She groped for stability, acceptance. Steven was married. His wife refused to release him. The choice had to be Sara’s. Acceptance wouldn’t come. Instead, flame swept through her, a burning. She clenched her teeth under the drive of a dreadful blind resentment, against herself and Steven for their initial blunder, the way they had wrecked their lives at the start, against Sara Hazard’s clinging and the way the cards were stacked. She wanted to fight, to protest, to hurl defiance at
the woman with the narrow white face and the sleek golden head who held Steven in escrow, retarding and defeating him and making his existence meaningless, empty, a vacuum.

  She wasn’t aware that she spoke until she heard her own voice with its forlorn attempt at steadiness.

  “What did she say, Steve?”

  Steven said in that same harsh monotone, “I put it up to her as soon as I left you this afternoon. I offered her practically everything. She refused. She laughed. She told me not only that she wouldn’t give me a divorce, but that she was going to South America with me.”

  Cristie’s grip on the iron railing tightened. “And you, Steven? Are you going through with it? Are you going away?”

  “Yes.”

  His voice changed, thickened. He put his hand on her shoulder fumblingly. She shivered, didn’t move as he continued, “There’s nothing else to do. I’ve got to get away, Cristie. If I stay in New York and you’re here—I wouldn’t be able to stand it. No. Unless...” Every instinct within Cristie cried out to her to complete that sentence, to throw Sara aside, treat her as though she didn’t exist, fling her out of the way. The temptation was there, an almost overwhelming temptation. She couldn’t do it. Something deep, elemental, held her back.

  “No,” she whispered. “No, Steve.”

  Steven’s hand fell from her shoulder. He said quietly, “Then this is goodbye.”

  Goodbye! The night rocketed into a thousand pieces. Cristie was alone in the middle of a spinning darkness. Anguish shook her, immense, unbearable. She tried to call out. Her throat was sealed.

  Steven’s voice came to her dimly, from a long distance off. He was saying, “If it’s got to be, Cristie, let it be fast.” He went on talking. There was something about a ship, a ship that sailed on Monday. Monday—and this was Saturday. All that Cristie knew was that Steven mustn’t leave her like this. He mustn’t! She wrenched herself clear of chaos, turned.

  Steven was no longer there. He was crossing the terrace with quick strides. He went through the glass doors. Had he misinterpreted her silence? She had to see him again, if only for a moment, to tell him the truth, tell him she loved him and would always love him, no matter what happened or how much distance separated them.

  She started after him. The hall was crowded. She collided with people. They kept getting in her way. She was forced to a halt near the entrance to the dining room. Steven was standing less than twenty feet away. He was talking to someone. Who was it? Oh, Mary Dodd and Johnny. Johnny left them. Steven looked dreadful. Mary Dodd’s face wore a frown of concern. He went on talking to her. Mary Dodd looked frightened. She laid a hand on his arm, interrupting him. Steven shook her hand off. He swung, strode round a bank of azaleas and went into the living room.

  Was he looking for his wife? At the thought of them together, weakness swam up around Cristie. She leaned against the door frame.

  Then she saw Steven again. He was going into Margot’s bedroom. He was only there for a moment, came out with his hat in his hand. Had he left his hat in Margot’s room? Most of the men had put their things in the study. Cristie’s heart took a queer little sideways slip.

  When she reached the spot where she had last seen him, Steven was gone. The fear was there in her then, vague, formless, unacknowledged. It steadied into deadly close-pressing certainty when she paused beside the chair in the recess beyond the bed on the far side of Margot’s room and lifted Sara Hazard’s cape of summer ermine. Again and again she sent her fingers exploring. She shook out the snowy folds. She looked on the seat of the chair, under the chair, on the gray felting, all around.

  Steven had been in the room. He had no business there. Sara Hazard had dropped a gun into the pocket of her cape earlier that night. The gun was gone. And so was Steven.

  IV

  It was a little after one when Steven Hazard left the St. Vrain penthouse. It was almost a quarter of two before Cristie went to the telephone.

  She made herself face facts coldly. The square black automatic that Sara Hazard had parked in her cape was no longer there. Steven was gone and Steven was in a dangerous frame of mind. His coolness, his detachment, his judgment had been scattered to the four winds by the events of the afternoon and evening. Anything might happen now. Anything. Cristie had to do something. The time for inaction was past. She had to locate Steven, get the pistol away from him and make him listen to reason.

  Violence wasn’t an answer to anything. The idea of it, and of what it would mean, was unthinkable. In spite of the dark shadow hanging over her, her clarity had returned. She saw things again in focus, objectively. She knew there was only one course to pursue.

  Give Steven time to get home, if he was going home, and try there first. Don’t think any further than that yet, one step at a time. It would take him anywhere from ten to twenty minutes to get to the apartment in Franklin Place. As long as Sara Hazard was in the penthouse there was no real cause for worry.

  When she reached her bedroom the telephone was in use. A large dark masterful woman was talking endlessly to someone named Mabel about a baby’s bottle and a two o’clock feeding. It was just before two when Cristie slipped into the place the large dark woman had vacated after closing the door behind her. Cristie looked around, then took the receiver off the hook.

  She dialed the number of Steven’s Franklin Place apartment. A voice answered. It wasn’t Steven. It was the Hazard maid, Eva Prentice. Cristie said, “Is Mr. Hazard there? Has he arrived yet?” And the maid answered, “No, Mr. Hazard isn’t here. Who is this calling? Is there any message?”

  Cristie couldn’t see the emotion evoked by the sound of her round young voice, but a little stab of terror went through her when the maid continued smoothly, “Would this be Miss Lansing?” How did the woman know her name? She had never been at the Franklin Place apartment. But Steven might have called her from there after their first meeting. Cristie had an inkling then that the Hazard maid, Eva Prentice, knew about herself and Steven. She wasn’t to realize until later how much the maid knew about everything. She hung up without answering.

  If Steven wasn’t at the Franklin Place apartment, where was he? She pushed the inertia of helplessness from her. She couldn’t go searching all over New York for him; to intercept him was her only chance, to intercept him before he and Sara met again. The point of interception had to be the apartment on Franklin Place.

  It was getting late. Sara Hazard would be returning there in a short while. Steven would go back eventually. She had to get hold of him first. The crowd was beginning to thin, but there were still a lot of people milling around, laughing and talking and drinking and dancing.

  She went back into her bedroom. No time to change now. She slipped into a black velvet evening coat with wide velvet sleeves, tied a black silk scarf over her head. Not the front door, she didn’t want to attract attention. She left the penthouse by way of the side terrace and the service elevator.

  The service entrance debouched on the pavement thirty feet from the front door of the apartment house. Cristie mounted a small flight of steps. Madison lay to the west, Park to the east. The street was dark, deserted. There were no cabs in sight.

  She was about to step out and start toward Park Avenue when she stood still. The doors of the main entrance were opening. A girl laughed, a man answered her. The couple descending the steps strolled away together.

  Although the need for haste had become urgent, Cristie didn’t move. Sara Hazard was descending the steps. Cristie recognized her instantly, her golden head was uncovered, shimmered palely above the long folds of the white ermine cape. Sara Hazard was also looking for a cab and had evidently reached the same decision as Cristie because she turned left, started to walk away.

  She hadn’t gone more than a few yards when she came to an abrupt halt. Cristie stared through the gloom. A man had stepped out of the shadows, a big man in a dark suit with a soft dark hat pulled down over his eyes. He stood directly in Sara Hazard’s path so that she was automatically force
d to a standstill.

  Light from a street lamp shone down on the man’s big shoulders, his rugged brow, on the outline of his jaw and chin. The man was Pat Somers, Assemblyman Clifford Somers’ brother. Cristie was startled and a little bewildered. Cliff Somers had said that his brother Pat was in Albany with the Governor. Why was Pat Somers lurking outside Margot’s penthouse? Because it was quite evident that he had been waiting there, and waiting for a purpose. He started to speak. Cristie couldn’t help hearing him.

  Pat Somers said, “Good evening, Mrs. Hazard. Don’t run away.” The words were even, unaccented. Their import wasn’t.

  Sara Hazard drew her cape tightly around her. Her voice had a nervous quality to it as she exclaimed, “Oh, Mr. Somers! But I thought you were out of town. At least—I don’t know who—I mean, someone said you were. I thought...” She stopped in the middle of a sentence.

  Pat Somers reached out. He took Sara Hazard’s shoulders in a huge tight grip. He said calmly, quietly, every word audible, “No. I’m not out of town. I’m right here. I was at home earlier this evening. I know what went on there. I saw you. Listen, Mrs. Hazard. This is a warning. Keep away from my brother Cliff. Stop your little game. I won’t have it, do you understand, I won’t have it. That’s all. And I don’t play ping-pong.”

  There was something singularly menacing in his trenchant tone. Sara Hazard jerked herself loose from the hands resting on her shoulders. She said vehemently, furiously, her silken ease torn to shreds, “You seem to think you own this town, Pat Somers. Well, you don’t. And you can’t bluff me. I can play tougher games than ping-pong myself.”

  Pat Somers reached out again. This time there was more than warning in his big, wellmanicured fingers. His hands stopped in mid-air. They fell to his side. A man was running down the apartment house steps. His back was toward Cristie. He called, “Oh, there you are, Mrs. Hazard. Gonna take you home. Damn shame pretty woman has to go home alone. Won’t ‘low it.”