The Smiling Tiger

by Lenore Glen Offord

  “No, no, Georgine—this Repeater is impenetrably disguised, I’d make him a middle-aged man in the story. The mysterious cult, of course, stays in.”

  “I’m sure nobody could connect the fiction with the reality,” said Georgine dryly. “But sticking to reality for a minute, you’ve also got a Maniac-Sane-on-the-Surface, only she isn’t—she’s as goofy as they come—and two mutually adoring sisters one of whom is being pestered by the victim.”

  “And,” said Todd, “the remotest set of motives anyone ever heard of.” He whacked his mouth-organ viciously against the palm of his hand. “I don’t believe any of ’em myself, and how am I going to get a reader to swallow ’em? Hartlein wasn’t a real obstacle or danger to anyone, so far as I can see. He wasn’t actually a backslider from the Beyond-Truth himself, and there didn’t seem much danger of his actually corrupting any of the true believers. He’d already told his suspicions about the other deaths, and murder couldn’t be proved in any of those cases. Why did he have to die?”

  “The Board of Health eliminated him,” said Georgine, getting up to terminate the discussion, “as a carrier of the common cold. There were a couple of days there when I could have bumped him off myself!”

  ***

  It was on Saturday of that week that she received what amounted to a Royal Command. The very voice over the telephone struck terror to her heart, although it was as beautiful as she remembered it and held no more than a faint tone of amusement.

  “Mrs. McKinnon,” said Chloe Majendie, “I believe you are the Mrs. Wyeth who called on me for an interview?”

  “Yes, I am,” said Georgine in a subdued tone. “I hope you’ll let me apologize for that, Mrs. Majendie, I—my husband really is a writer, you know, and there were, uh, various reasons why it seemed best at the time not to give my own name.”

  “Yes. It’s about those reasons that I wanted to talk to you. Could you find it convenient to come and see me, perhaps this afternoon?”

  “Today—Saturday? We—we had promised my young daughter we’d take her to the City, and—”

  “Possibly you could come early, bringing her, and go on from here,” said Mrs. Majendie inexorably. “You see, Mrs. McKinnon, I have had some conversation with the police, but I am not sure about the basis of their suspicions. I think you know, and I think perhaps you owe it to me to pass it on.”

  “I—I think perhaps we do.”

  “You see,” the lovely voice continued, “I understand about your husband’s profession. He might find it useful to have some first-hand impressions.”

  Georgine hung up somewhat dazed, after making arrangements for the afternoon. She had not contemplated refusing, but if she had, there was that offer of a deal—of course, one didn’t know quite what kind of a deal it was, Beyond-Truth or the McCoy.

  “But maybe,” she said hopefully to Todd that afternoon, “the cosmic kind will make you just as good a plot.”

  Todd said it was possible. He had expressed a preference for leaving their car outside the Johnsons’ garage and climbing the zigzag path along the cliff. He now paused beside the Majendie greenhouse, as he had paused at nearly every turn in the path, looking downward at the studio cottage, some new angle of whose surroundings became visible at each level. He said softly, “Miss Godfrey of the green fingers presumably spends much of her time in here, or working on those handsome borders along the path. Makes a nice view for her.”

  “And the girls are well aware of that,” Georgine murmured in return. “It would feel awful, to know that you couldn’t move without—” She broke off as Barby came toiling up behind them, mute and resigned at the postponement of her excursion. “It won’t take long, darling, truly it won’t,” said Barby’s mother, in an uneasy state of feeling apologetic toward almost everyone. “And there isn’t much more of the climb.”

  They were almost at the top when a faint growl sounded from the shrubbery above, and a streak of fawn and white described a curve through the air and landed on the path in front of them. She recognized the sound and the coloration: it was a Siamese cat, then, that she had heard and seen on her first visit to Cuckoo Canyon. It faced them for a moment with an expressionless gleam of blue eyes in a black face, and then bounded away toward the upper level. The McKinnons, following, arrived at the rear of the lovely garden.

  At its far side was visible a strange grayish hill, which on second glance turned out to be the mistress of the house, clad in a long tweed skirt and bent double to inspect a rock plant. Todd’s eyes crinkled, and in a tone audible to Georgine alone he muttered, “High-o the derriére, the farmer in the dell.”

  Georgine tried to stifle a laugh, which refused to die. In vain she bit her tongue, dug fingernails into her palm and rapidly envisioned Barby laid waste by incurable disease; she had to advance toward her hostess crimson-faced and with tears in her eyes. In one way, it was awkward; in another, fortunate, for she had lost her uncomfortable awe of the old lady.

  Mrs. Majendie came erect at the sound of their approach. “It was good of you to come,” she remarked, stripping the glove and extending a big hand. “This is Mr. McKinnon, who is not a detective.”

  “I’m glad to have that se’led early,” Todd said.

  “And this is our daughter Barby,” said Georgine, at last in control of her voice.

  Chloe Majendie stood looking down at the blonde head, the freckled nose and the City-going outfit; her youthful eyes were grave and considering. Then she smiled and offered her hand to Barby in turn. “So you’re at the Valley Ranch School,” she remarked, “and doing very well, I hear. I’m glad they brought you along, Barby.”

  Barby looked up at her seriously, and something happened to her plain little face that was like the turning on of an inner high-powered bulb. —Indeed! thought her mother, watching— she’s taken one of her fancies to the old lady. That may make things easier, because I honestly don’t see how anyone could resist Barby when she looks like that—

  “We’ll go into the house, if you don’t mind,” said Chloe, leading the way into the redwood porch. “It’s windy in the garden. You look rather warm after that climb, Mrs. McKinnon, you don’t want to catch cold.” Georgine followed, aware that her state of confusion had not gone unnoticed. Chloe Majendie had the air of a Mother Superior of long experience, who missed nothing.

  The door opened directly into the living-room, but the folds of a huge screen cut off draughts and the immediate view. The McKinnons rounded the screen and stopped, Todd impassive and courteous, Georgine involuntarily blinking.

  She had never before seen a room which so unobtrusively, from its every bit of furnishing, its every fiber, exhaled the presence of money. There had been no attempt to coordinate style or period of decoration, but there was no object that was not beautiful, and not one inharmonious note. Georgine, moving forward across a huge and magnificent Persian rug, noted isolated objects as if in a dream: something that she thought must be a black-hawthorn vase, a massive radio-phonograph of a make that sold for a minimum of fifteen hundred dollars, and a silver bowl of such purity of line that it might have been made by Paul Revere. There was a great window across the west side of the room, which in clear weather would show a glorious sweep of view. Today there was little to see but clouds, but the window was framed in heavy folds of drapery, hand-woven and shot with faint threads of metal. —And I’ll bet Dorothy Liebes made those with her own hands, said Georgine to herself.

  Among these objects Chloe Majendie, in her broad tweed suit and the uncompromising hat which she did not remove, might have looked out of place and did not. She sat down in a petit-point armchair of beautifully muted colors, and the room became subordinate to her. She said, “Barby, in that little room to your left you’ll find some books that I think you’ll enjoy,” and Barby, still radiant, melted away without a moment’s hesitation.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “I SHOULD LIKE TO tell you my side of the story first, said the old lady, going straight to the point. She looked f
rom one to another of the McKinnons; Georgine saw that Todd was returning her look with even more than his usual concentration, almost as if he were trying to remember something.

  “Young Mr. Hartlein,” Mrs. Majendie resumed, “has had a peculiar idea of me throughout the past two years. He evidently believed that I had great influence over my nieces, so much so that they were afraid to cross my will or deny any of my principles. When there was that unfortunate affair with Cass, a year or so ago, he came storming up here to see me, convinced that if I’d only release her, as he put it, he could get her back. I told him, of course, that I had nothing to say about my niece’s affairs of the heart, and of course he didn’t believe me.” She folded the big hands in her lap, and again her glance went from Georgine to Todd. “Cass and Ryn have had young men around them since they started high school—poor Bell, too. It didn’t seem to matter sometimes—” she smiled slightly, “which of the girls had which men; young David Shere, for example, was in love with Bell first; she chose Sidney Grant and he transferred his attentions to Ryn; and now, from all I hear, he’s courting Cass. Now, there’s a man who might possibly have been good for any one of them, but as luck would have it, the ones they’ve chosen so far haven’t—in my view—had much to recommend them. Sidney—” she shook her head, “in the eyes of the world was a rich young man with a good deal of personal charm. In truth, I think, he was nothing at all: a hollow man who had to fill himself with alcohol before he, himself, felt any semblance of being. When I mourned for Sibella,” said Mrs. Majendie, her gaze traveling far past her listeners, “I could not be very sorry for her death at the beginning of the path she had chosen; I was sad because she had chosen that path. But I would not have forbidden her choice, I didn’t forbid it, and I couldn’t have influenced Cass if she’d asked me about her own marriage.”

  Her eyes came back to Todd. “If she had asked me, I should have had to say that I did not like Hugh Hartlein. He was the opposite of Bell’s husband, there was too much of him as a person; there was no resilience, no compromise in his mind from his own ideas of what was due him or what he should do for others. Or did you gather that impression of him?” she inquired suddenly.

  Todd took a deep breath and nodded. “Very much so, Mrs. Majendie.”

  There was a soft sound behind a door at the end of the room. “Come in if you like, Joan,” said Mrs. Majendie without turning her head, and the door opened to admit Miss Godfrey, her black eyes startled and glittering as she recognized the McKinnons. She darted to a seat with a rattle of beads; following her in a pounce came the Siamese cat, which—as Georgine told herself—seemed constantly appearing and disappearing like the Cheshire one. The cat leaped to the top of a sofa and curled itself there, regarding the visitors unwinkingly.

  “So,” the old lady continued, “when he came here on the evening of his death, to ask me once more if I wouldn’t ‘release’ Cass, there was no way to make an impression on him. He’d come in a peculiar frame of mind, too,” she put in with a sudden chuckle, “rather defeatist—as if he were asking John L. Lewis to dissolve the miners’ union.”

  The McKinnons, attempting to follow this story with grave attention, were surprised into laughter. “I can imagine him,” Todd said, his agate eyes alive and interested.

  “Well, this John L. said no, in the politest manner she could manage. He gave me a good scolding,” said old Chloe, her lips still curved in a smile, “and took a few digs at my husband’s philosophy, and I couldn’t do much to comfort him. Poor young fellow, he was wretched with a cold, and he seemed so dependent on that inhaler, that I was quite concerned for him.”

  “Chloe—when you’re through, there’s something—” Joan Godfrey muttered.

  “It can wait, Joan. He left me,” Mrs. Majendie continued, “in rather a distraught state of mind. He actually forgot the inhaler, it was lying on the end table at his side and I had to call his attention to it.”

  Joan Godfrey gave a sharp squeak and clapped a hand over her mouth. Old Chloe turned a tolerant eye upon her. “Yes, Joan, I know; for some reason you omitted that detail when you talked to the police, and they were surprised when I mentioned it. Of course,” she added to Todd, “every omission of the kind, or any sign of reluctance to have me tell it, makes the detail more important to the police. Isn’t that so, Mr. McKinnon?”

  Todd would not commit himself. “Inspector Nelsing is an experienced officer,” he said smoothly. “I doubt that he—”

  At this moment the Siamese cat took off through the air, without warning, and landed on Georgine’s shoulder with a good heavy thump. “Ow!” said Georgine, in shock and pain.

  “Dian, get down,” the old lady commanded. Dian dug in for the winter, from the way it felt, and gave a baleful growl.

  “Oh, she must like Mrs. McKinnon,” said Joan Godfrey fondly.

  “Get your animal down, Joan, if you please.” Chloe’s voice was crisp, and Miss Godfrey obeyed her with a nervous jump, but none too soon for the struggling victim.

  “I hope she didn’t hurt you, Mrs. McKinnon,” said Chloe in a voice that would have charmed away more serious wounds than Georgine’s slight scratches and dishevelment. Georgine said not at all, and reflected that every time she came to Cuckoo Canyon she set herself up as a kind of target. She brushed her shoulder and felt unobtrusively for her best hat, which had been nearly knocked from its moorings. “Please go on, Mrs. Majendie.”

  “There isn’t much more,” said the old lady, smiling at her. “I could understand why the police were interested in that last visit, though I couldn’t define for them whether I thought Hartlein was in a suicidal frame of mind when he left. When I learned what killed him, I understood why they’d asked what we used to fumigate our greenhouse.”

  “May I ask what you use?” said Todd.

  “Cyanide, Mr. McKinnon… I was also able to tell them that both Joan and I are fairly handy at jobs with small tools; Joan, indeed, is a good amateur electrician.” Miss Godfrey’s beads rattled; she stood by the door, through which she had just pushed the cat, and looked down at her tightly clasped hands.

  “But I could not understand,” concluded Mrs. Majendie, “what conceivable reason they thought I might have had for wishing that young man’s death. I think you have a clue to that, Mr. McKinnon.”

  Todd drew a long breath. He had got out of his chair a few minutes before to rescue his beleaguered wife, but had been forestalled by Joan; he had gone back and at once sunk into the motionless listening posture with which he had received the rest of Chloe’s story. Now he sat up, at once relaxed and alert, and measured glances with Mrs. Majendie.

  “I think I know, from Hartlein’s point of view if not from Nelsing’s,” he said. “Hugh Hartlein tried to convince himself— and us—that you could guide the Hand of God.”

  Joan Godfrey spoke from the dim end of the room. “It needs no guidance,” she said in a sibilant whisper.

  “Joan,” said the old lady without inflection.

  There was silence. Chloe continued to fix Todd with her penetrating glance; she said slowly, “And on what, do you know, did he base that remarkable idea?”

  “On the history of your religious group. He felt that once a person had joined it, that person was—in for life, on pain of your displeasure. And to a person with that obsession, Mrs. Majendie, any incident could have been twisted to fit the theory. There was the death of Mr. and Mrs. Grant, for example—”

  “Bell’s death?” said Mrs. Majendie, still gazing intently. “How was I supposed to have had any part in that? By the Evil Eye, or by actual tampering with Sidney’s car?”

  “That I can’t say,” Todd replied. “But you can see how he blamed the failure of his marriage on you; not because you advised Cass against him, but because she was afraid she’d die if she went through with it.”

  The old lady’s lips twitched. “That’s utter nonsense, if I ever heard it. You’d see it too if you knew Cass. The child never mentions the Beyond-Truth, and as for
being afraid of me—!” She thought for a moment. “But—yes, that explains it, his hatred of my husband’s philosophy, his idea that it was cruel and barbaric, when as a matter of fact—h’m. Yes, I see.”

  Georgine, listening in fascination, thought—She talks about “my husband’s philosophy” as if the man were more important than the belief. I wonder how much she believes in it, actually—

  “Well. Did Hartlein think I planned to wreak vengeance on all my nieces, Mr. McKinnon?”

  Todd smiled. “He did mention poison.”

  The light of battle began to appear in old Chloe’s eyes. “Ryn, I suppose. The young fool! No wonder nobody dared to explain this to me before.”

  “Well,” said Todd peaceably, “don’t scare me out of explaining it.”

  Mrs. Majendie relaxed and grinned at him. They seemed, Georgine thought, to understand each other very well. “Then tell me the rest. Hmf! If I’m as formidable as all that, no wonder we keep our converts, eh, Joan?” Miss Godfrey made a small scandalized sound. “Any more?”

  “Yes, indeed. There was a list of names, most of ’em obviously faked, though there were one or two I didn’t recognize; obscure story characters, no doubt.”

  “So? Who were they?”

  Todd shrugged. “Your niece Mrs. Grant—somebody called Stella Dubois—”

  Georgine remembered almost automatically the last occasion on which a strange name had been introduced into a conversation with these Beyond-Truthers; her head turned to see how Miss Godfrey was affected by this one.

  Miss Godfrey was gazing at Todd with her squirrel-bright eyes opened to their fullest extent, and her jaw dropping. Then her look darted to Mrs. Majendie.

  “Stella Dubois,” said Chloe after a moment’s pause. The rich overtones of her voice hummed away into a silence that lasted until she chose to speak again. “Yes, Stella is dead. She died many years ago; her child had been stillborn two days before.”

  Once more the silence held. Georgine felt as if ants were walking up her spine, but she could not have moved or spoken.