by Q. Patrick
“I’m perfectly ready to help,” said the secretary calmly. “But I don’t know anyone in Winton.”
“But I’m hoping you do. We’re going to a certain house. If you see anyone there whose face is familiar, I want you to do something melodramatic like—” he glanced at her hands, clasped tightly around her pocketbook—“I want you to drop that bag.”
Madeleine’s level gaze met his. “If I recognize anyone,” she said bluntly, “they’ll probably recognize me.”
“Extremely logical, Miss Price. You can be very cooperative when you feel like it.”
After a moment’s reflection, Timothy shouted to the driver to go to the nearest department store. There he took Madeleine’s arm affectionately and, pushing through the swing door, hurried her to a counter smartly decked with piles of perfume bottles, soap and cosmetics.
“Good morning,” he said, beaming sentimentally at the salesgirl. “I want you to meet my fiancée.”
He indicated Miss Price who looked rather startled and then scowled.
“You see,” he went on to explain, “the poor girl’s had a very sheltered upbringing. She comes from an extremely religious family and you know how some people are about cosmetics—Jezebel and all that.” His eyes traveled sorrowfully across Madeleine’s unpowdered face. “Now that she has promised to be my wife, we both feel she should be fixed up a bit.”
The girl surveyed Madeleine with the impersonal intensity of an expert.
“That type of complexion would take a Rachel powder and just a suspicion of burnt orange rouge. For the lips, perhaps—geranium.”
“Geranium!” echoed Timothy gravely. “I can see you’re an artist. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to touch her up a bit yourself. I have another purchase to make.”
Leaving Madeleine submitting grudgingly to a lipstick, he strolled to the millinery department. Within a few minutes he was back again, twirling in his hand a small, extremely unbusinesslike red hat.
“This is a repression I have to get out of my system,” he murmured.
Solemnly he removed the “soup-plate” from Madeleine’s head and handed it to the salesgirl.
“Perhaps you’d dispose of that appropriately.”
The cosmetic operations had been completed. Timothy paid the check and drew Madeleine to a nearby mirror where, with ominous docility, she allowed him to supervise the arrangement of the red hat on her thick dark hair.
“There,” he exclaimed, pointing at the strikingly transformed reflection, “aren’t you ashamed to have been hiding all that light under a soup-plate?”
Madeleine was gazing uncertainly at her own image. “What are you doing this for?”
“At your suggestion, I decided to disguise you.” Timothy shrugged. “I didn’t realize you’d been disguising yourself all these years. A smart hat and rouge—that’s all you needed to be a very attractive girl.”
Madeleine swung round to face him, her eyes angrily bright against the heightened color of her cheeks.
“Why must you go on doing, saying these things? It’s—it’s not kind. You’re just trying to make a fool of me. You know I’m not pretty.”
“I never said you were pretty. I said you were attractive.”
Madeleine glanced doubtfully back at the mirror and then turned to him, a sudden smile on her lips.
“You—you really mean that?”
“I’m the most honest of men.” Timothy took her arm and moved toward the door of the store. “I only wish I could find a shirt and tie combination that’d do the same thing for me.”
The taxi was waiting. It took them through the city out to a very opulent suburban community. Finally it swung up a long drive toward a vast neo-gothic mansion, encrusted with towers and cupolas. Timothy winced as he saw it.
“Do you know to what we are indebted for this majestic edifice, Miss Price? Bone—a fortune in bone.”
Telling the taxi to wait, he led Madeleine to a heavily columned porch.
“What exactly are we doing here?” asked Madeleine.
“Following a hunch.”
“Am I expected to do anything?”
“Nothing, Miss Price, except to drop your bag at the crucial moment.”
The door was opened by a butler who, without wearing it, gave the impression of livery.
“Is Mr. Hobart in?” asked Timothy blandly.
“I think Mr. Hobart is down at the stables.” The butler gazed at Timothy’s shirt suspiciously. “You wish to speak to him?”
“Yes.”
“What name, please?”
Timothy smiled apologetically at Madeleine. “I’m a writer on the staff of Actual Life Romances. And this is our—Miss Potts.”
Rather doubtfully, the butler ushered them into a pretentiously built but simply furnished lounge.
“A moment, please, I’ll …”
He broke off as a lithe, suntanned young man in riding breeches swung into the room.
“Oh, Mr. Hobart, sir, this gentleman says he’s from some magazine.”
“Actual Life Romances,” added Timothy with mild insistence. “Miss Potts and I are eager to give your romance to the world, Mr. Hobart. Take notes, Miss Potts.”
Madeleine produced a small memorandum pad and started to scribble.
Hobart had nodded the butler away and was moving toward them, flicking lazily at his thigh with a riding-crop. His brown eyes were faintly curious.
“And what can you or Miss Potts or the world find particularly romantic about me?”
There was a short moment of silence. Then, with rather noisy clumsiness, Madeleine dropped handbag and memorandum pad.
As Timothy bent to retrieve them, he read the two words on the pad:
“John Smith.”
So his hunch had been right. He had tracked down Mrs. Van Heuten’s first visitor.
He also noticed that the secretary’s pocketbook had sprung open, revealing the finger of a small gray glove and the corner of a white cotton handkerchief. He pushed them inside, snapped the clasp and returned it to Madeleine whose cheeks had surprisingly flushed crimson.
Susan Hobart’s husband had been watching this performance with sardonic amusement. Now his eyes were fixed appraisingly on Madeleine. His lips curved in a smile which revealed very white teeth.
New hat, new complexion, new job—and new name. You’re a fast worker, Miss Potts.” He tossed away the riding crop and thrust his hands in his pockets. “Too bad you have such a memorable face.”
“I suppose,” remarked Madeleine bluntly, “you don’t meet a gargoyle every day, Mr. Smith.”
“A gargoyle! So you heard me say that. But you weren’t wearing a hat then.” Hobart turned insolently to Timothy. “Can you see any reason,” he murmured, gazing at the slight abrasions on his suntanned knuckle, “why I shouldn’t at least attempt to throw you and Miss Potts out of my house?”
“I can’t answer for Miss Potts,” said Timothy. “Personally, I’d be all for a scrap. But, although I have no jurisdiction in Ohio, it might be just as well to go easy with the New York police.”
“The police?” echoed Hobart. “And why should the New York police hide itself behind Actual Life Romances?”
“Because the police only wanted to visit Mr. Hobart provided he was also John Smith.”
“I may be unduly curious, but I’d very much like to know how you trailed the sinister Mr. Smith to his lair.”
“That,” confessed Timothy, “was rather a bow at a venture. I happened to be present when you telephoned to your wife at the Princess Walonska’s last night. Being brazen enough to eavesdrop, I noticed that you had nothing very important to say to her and yet you mentioned you’d already called once before at six. I put the problem to a friend of mine who suggested that you’d either called out of husbandly affection or because of a guilty conscience. Cynically I plumped for the guilty conscience. Then I discovered the New York plane arrived at Winton just before six. I firmly but gently put two and two together.”
“Fairly smart,” drawled Hobart. “But before I make any confessions, I’d like to be sure you are a policeman. The deduction and the physique seem okay, but I’m worried about the shirt.”
Timothy displayed his badge. John Hobart glanced at it indifferently and leaned his muscular back against the mantelpiece.
“All right. I suppose you want a short biography for the criminal files. Name John Hobart, age thirty, born in Texas, moved around the world, played polo on a lot of other people’s ponies, hit the American team last year, married a few months ago to one of the nicest little wives in the country. And now, although you caught me playing hooky today, the hard-working sales-manager of Stuckey’s Bone Product Company.” He smiled. “Maybe I do qualify for Actual Life Romances, after all.”
“Possibly,” said Timothy. “But I’m rather more interested in what you were doing in Mrs. Van Heuten’s office the afternoon she was killed.”
“That’s easy enough, and far less romantic.” John Hobart gestured at Madeleine with a cigarette case and then lit a cigarette himself. “I didn’t murder the unfortunate Clara. I’m afraid you’ll have to get that into your head before we start.”
“Consider it in my head. Were you a client of the Literary Advice Bureau?”
“Very much so.”
Timothy’s eyes widened. “I suppose you toss off literary fragments between chukkers and selling bone?”
John Hobart’s laugh was a little too easy. “Well, I’m not so much of a writer as I used to be. When I was younger I passed through what is commonly called a phase. I wore long literary hair and actually favored shirts like yours. Then I renounced my genius and turned to sport.”
“I expect it was far more profitable.”
“Never was a very serious writer anyway.” John Hobart strolled to the window and gazed out across the well-kept Stuckey parkland. “A few bad imitations of Kipling, prose and verse. That sort of junk. I took them to Mrs. Van Heuten and she fiddled around with them in her sweet, enthusiastic way. Made them worse—if possible.”
“So you abandoned her and your poetic career because they weren’t getting you anywhere?”
“Precisely. That’s what all the trouble was about.” John Hobart turned from the window and regarded him indolently. “You see, last year, after I’d made the All-American team, I thought it might be a good idea to collect my polo experiences and have someone make a book of them. It was published and quite a success. Clara heard about it and got pained because I hadn’t given her a rake-off on the royalties.”
“Why did she think she was entitled to one?”
“That’s just the point. I failed to see why I should hand money to her just because she’s gushed over my juvenilia at three dollars per thousand words. She didn’t help on the polo book. She wouldn’t have known one end of a pony from the other, anyway. But she gave me some song and dance about my having promised to let her have twenty per cent of my earnings.”
“She said that, did she?” cut in Timothy.
“Why—yes.” John Hobart’s tone was suddenly guarded. “That’s why she called me to New York yesterday. She asked for money again, started getting nasty. I told her my point of view quite emphatically and we ended in a mild exchange of brickbats.” His gaze shifted to Madeleine. “I expect Miss Potts overheard and duly reported it all to you.”
“What’s your book called, by the way?” asked Timothy suddenly.
“Oh—er—Polo Parade.” John Hobart sauntered to a shelf and pulled out a book. “Published by Salter’s. Didn’t put it out under my own name. Used a pseudonym—Trooper.”
Timothy glanced at the book and slipped it under his arm.
“I’m not a lawyer, but if you had made any definite agreement with Mrs. Van Heuten, I’d have thought she was perfectly justified in her claim.”
“There was nothing on paper.” Hobart’s tanned cheeks flushed. “Besides, to be perfectly frank, I didn’t actually write the book myself. I was very busy at the time. I had someone ghost it for me.”
“I see,” said Timothy mildly. “You didn’t write Polo Parade. And it wasn’t published under your name. Your connection with it was rather remote, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, I supplied the professional knowledge, the anecdotes; all that sort of thing.”
“So that’s your story, Mr. Hobart. I can’t help thinking that it’s rather odd for a busy sales manager to have flown to New York just to argue over royalties which you presumably shared with your ghost anyhow.”
“It—it wasn’t so much the money as the principle.”
“And was it part of your principles to travel under an assumed name?”
“You mean John Smith!” Hobart laughed heartily. “I can see you’re not a married man. My wife happened to be in New York at the time and … well, of course I’d have been tickled to see her, but she was staying with the Princess Walonska who, between you and me, is a pain in several places besides the neck. I thought it was wisest to travel incognito, get my business over quickly and save complications.”
“Which was rather complicated of you,” said Timothy. “But I suppose there’s no crime in the haphazard use of aliases. By the way, why is your wife staying with the Princess Walonska?”
“Why?” Hobart shrugged. “Presumably because she was invited and wanted to go.”
Timothy looked at the raw skin on Hobart’s knuckles. “I see your fist hasn’t healed yet from giving Dane Tolfrey that sock on the jaw.”
Hobart started. His mouth dropped half open; then he forced a rather unconvincing smile.
“That, I imagine, is a manifestation of the deductive brain at play. I grazed my knuckles in the stables. And I don’t know any Mr. Tolfrey.”
“I’m rather tired of people telling me they don’t know Mr. Tolfrey.” Timothy’s eyes were dangerously calm. “Particularly when I have very definite evidence that they do. You know Mr. Tolfrey well enough to sock him on the jaw.”
“There seems nothing for it but to confess.” Hobart’s smile was rather sardonic. “I know Mr. Tolfrey, but one does not have to know him well to sock him on the jaw. He tried to bum a drink off me—and I lost my temper.”
“I was going to suggest,” said Timothy quietly, “that you socked Mr. Tolfrey and visited Mrs. Van Heuten for the same reason. But I suppose you don’t feel like being that frank with me, do you?”
“Frankly,” drawled Hobart, “I’m rather bored by your attempts to catch me in a trap where I don’t belong.”
Timothy glanced at his watch. “One o’clock. I’m afraid we’ll have to cut short this interesting discussion. Miss Price and I have a busy day ahead of us. I’ll take Polo Parade along with me to read in the plane. If we had time, I would have liked you to sign it for me. I have rather a weakness for the signatures of—er—authors.”
He moved to the door, pausing on the threshold.
“I don’t know much about international polo. But I hope your sporting activities will keep you in this country, at least for a few weeks.”
“In other words, stick around, eh?”
“Of course, I can’t force you, but I’d rather not have to go into a huddle with the local police.”
John Hobart looked rather flustered.
“There’s one little point I’d like to settle before you leave,” he said slowly. “Perhaps alibis are out-of-fashion with the ultra-modern sleuth. But I happen to have a perfect alibi for the time of Mrs. Van Heuten’s murder. The papers say she was killed some time after four. Well, at four fifteen I boarded the Cincinnati plane at the Newark airport. That ought to be easy to check.” He smiled. “I just throw it out in case you’re entertaining any morbid thoughts.”
“Glad you brought that up,” said Timothy equably. “In fact, I’ve already checked with the airway people. And I’m afraid alibis and aliases are bad running mates, Hobart. They have a John Smith listed on the four fifteen plane. But they know nothing about a John Hobart.”
“How academic,” said Hobart wi
th sarcastic respect. “You must be a Harvard man.”
“Only Princeton,” apologized Timothy. “If I’d been a Harvard man I’d probably have introduced the factors of Daylight Saving Time and the actual hour at which the news of Mrs. Van Heuten’s death appeared in the Winton evening papers. But that would be—just a little too academic.”
With a pleasant nod, he was gone.
XIV
During the taxi journey back to the airport, Timothy was quiet and thoughtful. Madeleine Price, on the other hand, seemed unusually eager to talk. The new hat and the make-up had combined to give her an unfamiliar vivacity.
“Well,” she asked, “was it worth a trip to Winton just to get a book on polo to read on the plane going back?”
Timothy glanced up absently. “Mr. Hobart had quite a lot more to offer than Polo Parade. He’s the first of Mrs. Van Heuten’s clients we’ve found that entered into that twenty per cent agreement with her.”
“I doubt if he was a client at all,” said the girl calmly. “In fact, I rather think he was lying to you. If I remember correctly, his name isn’t in the files.”
“It isn’t?” Timothy smiled faintly. “Once again the detective instinct seems to be sprouting, Miss Price.”
“If you think I’m wrong, you can easily check up when we get back to New York.”
“But we’re not going to New York, Miss Price. At least, not immediately.”
Madeleine spun round. “You mean we’re going somewhere else?”
“Exactly.” Timothy’s gray eyes rested intently on her face. “I have discovered that the new airport at Bainesville, Pennsylvania is only twelve miles from Terrabinny.”
The color gradually drained from Madeleine’s cheeks. “You—you’re going to see Louise?”
“Right again. And I’m hoping you’ll be able to surmount the difficulty of those extra twelve miles. We won’t have a great deal of time.”
For a moment Timothy saw anger blazing in the girl’s eyes. Then, with a rather heroic effort, she regained control.
“There’s a friend of Louise’s,” she said jerkily. “He runs the Terrabinny taxi service. George Gruber. I’ll call him from the airport.”