by Jerry eBooks
She had tried to forget. He was being kind to keep her and she wanted to like him. But it was useless. The very sight of her put fever in his cheeks. The end had come that Sunday morning when he had grabbed at her and she had picked up a book end and hit him with it. After that hysteria—packing and running.
Somehow she had got to New York. When she had collapsed in Sheridan Square a girl with round cheeks and strawberry hair had picked her up and said:
“Look, kid, my name’s Sherry Moore and I was just going to go across the street to have a cup of coffee . . .” Dorothy sat very still with her hands folded in her lap, thinking of this, and suddenly the train was pulling out of a station marked “Larchmont,” and Clifton was saying:
“Next stop is ours.”
“Is it?” she said. “So soon?”
*****
RHEA DAVIS had managed to calm herself during the three-hour conference with her lawyer, but now that the attorney was gone she felt the old rising hysteria which she had first experienced last night. She sat propped up in the bed, and her doctor was at her side. She felt as though her tongue was wooden, and from the feeling that ached through her body she knew that it was physically impossible for her to stand.
This both infuriated and frightened her. She looked at the doctor who was an immense, gray-haired man, easily ten years older than herself, and robust. Suddenly she resented this.
“How long must this go on?” she said. He looked up slowly. “If it is indigestion,” he said tonelessly, “or if it was a slight reaction of your heart, even a slight case of poisoning—”
“Don’t you know?”
“There is no way of being sure. You say you feel an ache through your body. Perhaps you were overly tired.”
“Or it could be hardening of the arteries,” Rhea Davis said bitterly.
“It could be,” he said.
“But it isn’t!”
“No,” he said, “it isn’t. You should be able to get up this afternoon.” He didn’t know what was the matter with her! He was guessing.
“Get me a New York specialist,” she said.
“But my dear Mrs. Davis, there is nothing seriously wrong with you.”
“Do as I say!” she demanded.
He moved to the telephone and she was still, catching for her breath because she had raised her voice to him and the excitement upset her. She was in the midst of this turmoil when Grant came loping into the room.
“I say, old girl, the house is beginning to fill with people. Don’t you think we should put them off for a few days? I mean, considering the circumstances—”
“What circumstances?”
“Oh, come, Mater. You aren’t well.” She stared at and through him. “How many guests have arrived?”
He counted them on his fingers. “Mike Wiggam makes one, Sam Tulley, two, and there is a quaint-looking young couple. A Mr. Clifton Dell and a Miss Dorothy Noel.”
“Where are the others?”
“Others?” Grant echoed. “You mean, there’s more coming?”
“I invited at least five others,” Rhea Davis said. “Never mind. Bring those who are here up to see me.”
A little confused, Grant took his leave, and Rhea Davis sat waiting for the guests. She had a sudden desire to see a lot of people. It was perhaps part of her fear.
Dorothy Noel and Clifton Dell came in first and she greeted them effusively, as though they were old friends. Mike Wiggam came in then, lean and gaunt, wearing an unpressed gray tweed suit, and said, “Hello, Rhea,” and following him was Sam Tulley, fat, roly-poly, dry-washing his hands.
“Rhea, my dear, don’t tell me you are sick.”
She told him that she was, then proceeded almost mechanically with banal conversation. She was thinking that it was like Sam Tulley to come in drywashing his chubby little hands and looking at her with his rubbery little black eyes. Sam Tulley could be depended on for a triteness that made you want to scream.
“And a cool dip in the morning,” Sam was saying. “Ah, how I like a cool dip in the morning.”
Sam, she thought, was himself a little pot-bellied cliche, with the cigar in his mouth, the gold tooth, the shiny blue suit, tiny diamond cuff links and pearl tie pin. She had met him sometime during the past ten years, first when he had been ignorant enough to bring her a play he wanted to back and asking if she would honor him by taking the lead, just as though she were accustomed to playing in the shows written by unknown authors and backed by shoestring producers.
During the ten years she had known him, he had prospered with two hits, and had had eight failures. The failures, however, always lost money for Sam Tulley’s angels, so that he was never burned. Her reason for inviting him here was that she had known he was the one producer out of all those in New York who would have nothing better to do than to sponge on somebody for the summer.
She turned her attention to Mike Wiggam. Mike was different. She had more feeling for him. Back in the days when she was first beginning to realize that forty was too old for an ingenue, Mike Wiggam had come along with just the right play, the first he had ever written, and the last. The play and she were both a hit. It had been new success, being a hit as a character woman. She had asked Mike Wiggam to do another play. He had become her press agent instead.
His hair had turned gray, though his long, sallow face still maintained a look of youth. Yet he must be fifty, she told herself. A pity that after twelve years of handling her press she had flown into a rage and fired him. Since then, these last eight years, he had rapidly gone to seed. He no longer drank, and it might have been better if he did. If he drank and died. Rhea Davis had invited him because she felt sorry for him.
Grant and Betty came in, so that the party was complete. Clifton Dell and Dorothy Noel were shy, and Rhea Davis was amused because they probably thought they were among celebrities. Sam Tulley did most of the talking.
“Nothing like summer sunshine and birds singing in the trees, I always say.” Mike Wiggam said: “And beer.”
“Ah, yes, beer,” said Sam. “Grant and I stood at the corner bar yesterday drinking it until we thought we’d bust. Didn’t we, old man?”
“Rath-are,” chirped Grant.
Betty came to the bedside. “Mother, aren’t all these people just a little too much for you?”
Rhea Davis nodded wearily. “I’m afraid so. Have Frances show them to their rooms.”
She had the doctor help her lie down the moment the last person had gone. Her feet and her legs seemed to be tied up in knots of pain that made her want to scream. Her stomach and chest ached. The doctor put his hand on her forehead, then he put a thermometer in her mouth. He returned to the telephone, spoke rather urgently. Rhea Davis’ fingers curled in, then straightened. The doctor crossed the room. “Well?” she demanded. “Well?”
“You’ve had a turn for the worse,” he said. “I shouldn’t have permitted you company.”
“Am I going to die?”
There; it was out, what she had been afraid to say, afraid to think.
“No,” he said, “I don’t think so.”
She let the breath wheeze out of her lungs. “No,” she thought, “I can’t die. I’m not going to die. There are plays I want to do yet. There are performances through which I must yet live. There are things in the world still new to me. Sixty is so young to die. I must not die. I must live. I must—”
She sank into a coma . . .
When she awakened the lids of her eyes burned and the pupils were bloodshot so that she saw everything through a reddish haze. There was no pain now; only numbness. She was drugged.
She saw the doctor, the big, grayhaired one, and she saw other men. She did not at first know who they were, then vaguely she remembered having asked for other doctors.
It was night. There were stars in the sky. The house was still. Once she saw Betty’s stupid face, and Grant’s, but when she tried to speak to them they were gone and another doctor was looking at her. She struggled to raise
herself on the bed, but her body was limp and useless. She was trying to scream, but her voice came out in a hoarse whisper.
“I’ve been murdered!” she said.
She closed her eyes and died.
*****
DOROTHY NOEL awakened at ten in the morning and stretched lazily so that she might give full appreciation to the cool comfort of the big bed. She lay there, listening to the song of what sounded like a thousand birds outside her window, and wondering what her surprised stomach would do when it got a real breakfast, instead of coffee and doughnuts. She ran her fingers through her hair, and stretched again, and then she heard someone in the room and sat bolt upright.
It was Frances, with a glass of orange juice. Frances’ pretty face was pale, but her hair glistened like strands of bronze hit by the sunshine.
“ ’Morning,” she said. “Hear the news?”
“News?” said Dorothy.
“Mrs. Davis.”
“Yes?”
“She died.”
Dorothy sat there for a moment too stunned to speak.
“Died?” she repeated.
“She was murdered,” Frances went on quietly.
Dorothy said: “You must be crazy!”
“Honest!” said Frances. “Was I ever scared when I found out! The house has been in an uproar ever since last night. They had a coroner here. He said it was murder. He was going to have an autopsy.”
“I can’t believe it! Autopsy! Why, just yesterday she was—”
“It sure is a shame,” Frances said.
Dorothy nodded dumbly.
“There’s detectives here, too,” Frances continued.
“Of course,” Dorothy was staring straight ahead of her.
Frances was looking out the window. “First time I ever saw Johnny West.”
“Johnny West?”
Frances turned. “Yeah. You’ve heard of him, haven’t you? Young guy. Boy wonder of the cops. And is he ever good-looking! He belongs to Mamaroneck, but he’s got a reputation all over Westchester.”
“Yes,” Dorothy said. “Yes, of course.”
Frances left the room.
Dorothy could not believe the incredible news. When she at last got up she was trembling. She searched nervously for her shoes and, not finding them, remembered that she had put them in the closet the night before. She went to the closet to get them. Her shoes were there, but there was another pair here also—low-heeled walking shoes, a style usually worn by older women. Dorothy remembered that they had not been here the night before.
She dressed and paced around the room. She lit a cigarette and moved toward the French door. Her room was on the second floor and there was a small balcony out from it which ran completely around the house.
She finished her cigarette and clicked it out onto the driveway. Turning, she left the room and walked down the hall. Passing Rhea Davis’ room she felt a chill.
The stairway to the first floor was a long one, and before descending she looked over from the balcony to see if anyone below was moving about. She saw only the butler.
She came down and he showed her into the screen-enclosed breakfast room. Clifton and the two men she had met yesterday were already eating. They looked up, smiling politely, but said nothing.
DOROTHY sat down. When Frances came in, Dorothy said:
“I’m afraid I can’t eat.”
“Don’t be a fool,” said Clifton.
“What do you mean?”
“We didn’t ask to come out here. We didn’t ask for this mess. And now we can’t leave. Not until somebody has been arrested. We must mark time like fools when in New York we might be doing something.”
“You mean we can’t go back to town today?”
Clifton laughed bitterly.
Sam Tulley picked up a napkin in his fat hand and wiped his mouth.
“Now that’s no way to talk. Good old Rhea only wanted to help you. You wouldn’t let her down, would you?”
“Let her down?” snapped Clifton. “She’s dead. How can we let her down?”
“Well—ah—I mean,” said Sam Tulley, “after a fashion of speaking.”
Mike Wiggam’s gaunt face was without expression. His black eyes were dull and hard.
“And you’ll have the magnificent opportunity to see Westchester’s own child prodigy perform his police gymnastics. Think of that! To be frontpaged with Detective Johnny West, the Dick Tracy of Westchester County.” His husky voice was wet with sarcasm.
Dorothy said: “Are we all the guests who came?”
“That’s right,” Clifton replied. “When we’re through we’ll get a vaudeville booking as the four fools from Manhattan.”
IV
FRANCES brought soft boiled eggs. Dorothy ate them, but she was a little horrified. No one came near them and when breakfast was over they were left to roam the house. Uniformed police guarded the grounds so that there could be no possible escape. Time hung heavily on Dorothy’s hands and she went once to the kitchen and talked to the heavy, Irish Mrs. O’Malley, the cook. Frances was there, and the butler came in. He was Mrs. O’Malley’s husband, a tall, thin man, with a bleak English face, a large nose. These, and Roy, the chauffeur, were the regular servants. The ones that had been hired to handle the guests had been sent away.
During the afternoon Dorothy tried to read, but could not. She heard much talk about Johnny West and gathered that he was somewhat of a sensation as a detective because he was so young, but it was not until after supper that she saw him.
A uniformed policeman had asked them all to come into the living room, and it was then that she saw him. She was a little disappointed. He was faintly handsome, with brown hair. His eyes were brown, too, and alive with a burning brightness. He had a square jaw, and high cheekbones. He was dressed in a neat black suit, and he didn’t wear his hat in the house as she had been led to believe detectives did.
Betty Davis-Smyth was in the room, and also the four servants. Roy, the chauffeur, stood in a corner, his uniform cap in his hand. Mike Wiggam and Sam Tulley sat down on the divan. Clifton walked over, turned a straight chair around and straddled it. Dorothy stood by the table.
Johnny West glanced at Betty. “Where’s Grant?”
“Oh,” she replied, “there’s a man upstairs, and he’s attending to some of Mother’s effects. He’ll be right down.”
Johnny West rubbed his hands together and looked around at everybody. Presently he began to talk.
“The police coroner tells me that traces of chromium fluoride poisoning were found in heavy quantity throughout Mrs. Rhea Davis’ system. His verdict is murder. My job—briefly—is to examine you people and to determine which of you killed her. I hope you will understand that it is a job, and nothing more. I apologize now for any discomfort I may find it necessary to cause.”
He lit a cigarette and looked around. Dorothy thought he couldn’t be any more than twenty-seven.
“I have been absent all day,” he went on, “because a curious question arose. Mrs. Davis was poisoned day before yesterday—Monday—or late that night. She could either have been poisoned at home before she left for New York, or while she was in New York. We don’t know the manner in which she absorbed it. But the fact that it could have been given to her in New York made it necessary for me to go and see certain people she invited to come here as summer guests. There were five of them in all. Each promised to arrive yesterday; however, none of them did.”
He walked the length of the carpet and turned around.
“I found,” he continued, “that these five people were all young men and women, most of whom worked in experimental theatres. Each had, at some time or other, written Mrs. Davis a letter asking her to come and see them perform. None of them had known her previously. Mrs. Davis’ idea, her lawyer tells me, was to coach all of the young talent here during the summer and to back the most promising of them in a play next season.”
Dorothy glanced at Clifton.
Johnny West put his fi
ngertips together. “Their reason for not coming out here was that on Monday night they received threatening telephone calls telling them to stay away.” He turned to Dorothy. “Did you get such a call?”
She nodded.
“Yeah,” said Clifton. “So did I.”
JOHNNY West nodded. He pinched out his cigarette.
“Mrs. Davis’ idea was unique,” he continued. “Mr. Wiggam, you were to have been the publicity agent for the beginners she chose; Mr. Tulley, you were to have been their producer. She had already chosen the vehicle, a play called ‘Saturday,’ by you, Mr. Dell, and Miss Noel was to have carried her same part in it.”
Clifton said: “And she had to die!” West nodded. “Whatever intentions she might have had are, of course, now void. I am sorry. With the possible exception of Miss Noel, it is necessary to inform you that the rest of you are under suspicion of murder.”
There was silence, then Mike Wiggam said: “Isn’t he cute?”
“Listen, what about me?” said Clifton. “You make Dorothy an exception, but—”
West held up his hand, smiling. He spoke softly. “I’m not yet acquainted with any possible motive you might have had, but the fact is that after leaving your Seventeenth Street Theater Mrs. Davis had one last appointment. Roy drove her to—. . . What was the name of the place, Roy?”
“The Blue Hour Glass on Fifth Avenue,” Roy said.
The sleek driver lit a cigarette, his dark eyes flickering. Betty Smyth moved over near him.
“The Blue Hour Glass,” West continued. “Roy waited outside in the car. Bring anything back to your mind, Mr. Dell?”
“I went to the Blue Hour Glass after I left Dorothy on Monday,” said Clifton. “Sure. I felt high and I was using the last of what dough I had to celebrate.” West nodded. “Roy saw you go in. He didn’t see anyone else he recognized. When Rhea Davis came out she was alone. You were apparently still inside. Did you see her in there?”
