by Rufus King
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1943 by Rufus King. Copyright renewed in 1971 by Walter Young. All rights reserved.
Serialized in Redbook as The Case of the Rich Recluse.
*
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidepress.com
CHAPTER I
Sun sliced in with elegance through slatted blinds while New York sweltered far below, and Fanny Mistral, Inc., thought: Of all damn days for ocelots!
She was a tightened woman, like a very smart and newly reupholstered chair, unyielding, exact, and, as with most career women, electric with charm, with a swift awareness of the least happenings in her celebrated world, and frightened stiff of common human warmth.
Fanny lifted an office telephone and said: “Ask Miss Ledrick to come in, please.”
She thought, while waiting, of Ann Ledrick and on the general oddity of how chance could type you for life. Several months ago Fanny had sent for Ann simply because the girl had won an award in the Year Book of American Photography for a stunning shot of a Manx cat: fast pan, 1/100 sec., f:22. She had looked at Ann’s other stuff: more cats, many dogs, that handsome thing of a colt in sun-tipped wheat, then those frustrated eyes of a tiger in the Bronx Zoo. She had hired Ann on the spot.
The bulk of Fanny’s prominent clients owned pets, and there had been no one in the office who had ever touched Ann Ledrick’s work. Victor Lejeune was the nearest, but he remained far better with dowagers whose bosoms he could reduce through his artistry in lighting and with capitalistic giants whom he succeeded in keeping titanic while rendering them less harassed (he did something with a spot which neutralized the suicidal gleam), but with animals his portraits had always registered a reproachful reaction of outraged distaste.
Fanny looked up as Ann Ledrick came in, and for a moment the warmth of a human doubt made her wonder: Is it fair? I don’t quite like this. The ocelots won’t be bad, but there’s the whole unpleasant atmosphere of the job. When you thought what the place must be like even after twenty years. Its atmosphere would not have dissipated from the very fact that Marlow would have kept it alive: brooding in it, steeped in it as he was reputed to have been throughout those two decades. No matter with what luxury and truffled wealth.
Not that there could be any danger in a physical sense, unless you considered the imponderables of a mind so inbred with the companionship of tragedy and hate—hate? Yes, Fanny thought, that would be there too: a hatred against a social structure that for twenty years had turned a deaf ear to Marlow’s lone, pitiable cry and made it impotent. Absurd. Anecdotes concerning a place of that sort were always fantastic. It was the same way with that stupendous ranch in Texas where men were rumored to have entered and never to have been seen again. The tepid warmth cooled, and Fanny was efficiently electric again.
“Sit down, Miss Ledrick.”
“Thank you.”
“You are leaving for Black Tor at three this afternoon from the airport. A Marlow plane will take you. They have their own landing field on the grounds which are, incidentally, four thousand acres in the heart of the Adirondacks. There is a common rumor that entire safaris have perished from starvation while attempting to trek to the house itself. A rumor highly discouraging to uninvited guests, especially as there are no roads. People simply do not drop in.”
“It sounds like the lair of a cult.”
“It isn’t. I am afraid you will be bored stiff with normality. You will be plied with pressed duck and caviar and with trout so fresh that they still look dazed. Champagne will glitter through you, and you will take a lot of pretty pictures of Estelle Marlow’s beloved ocelots. There are three of the brutes, and she obviously adores them because she evacuated them with her from Paris around a year ago. You must tell me, when you get back, how.”
“I will. With details of their reception in Lisbon.”
“Good. Miss Marlow specified when she telephoned that you be sent. Her cousin remembered your shot of the Manx in the Year Book and is still impressed. You know, that’s odd—”
“What is?”
“How did Marlow know you were with us? Certainly not from the Year Book. But then it isn’t, really.”
“Why?”
“People of Marlow’s wealth, Miss Ledrick, just say to their secretary: ‘Get me that girl who did the Manx cat.’ And you’re got. You are expected to stay at Black Tor for a week and perhaps longer.”
For a moment Fanny studied Ann critically as a woman and not as a Graflex. It’s all right, Fanny thought. The girl is devilishly attractive-looking if you like the dark Irish type, and she has style. She’d never set loose any glares of anguish among the six best-dressed women, but that’s only because she hasn’t the money to buy the clothes that they can. Certainly she was manner enough, what with Spence and her training in hauling ropes of daisies over the grass at Vassar. Fanny was a little bitter about this. Her own daisy culture had taken place on Grandpa Eulis’ farm in Oshkoton, Iowa.
Fanny said, “How are you off for clothes?”
“Better put it down as adequate. Than which there is little grimmer.”
“All right. Estelle Marlow suggests something warm. She says it gets cold in the mountains. She must be something of a homebody in spite of her ocelots, although I can’t see how.” A touch of earthy humanity once more disturbed Fanny. “Do you know about the Marlows?”
“No. Should I?”
“Not necessarily. It was a long time ago.”
“What was?”
Fanny said sharply, “Nothing. Nothing that could possibly be of the slightest consequence to anyone today. Justin Marlow is a man in his late seventies. Estelle Marlow is his cousin. She must be in her forties and was one of the sights of Paris until the Germans chased her out. It was a common habit for sight-seeing buses to lump her in with the Arc de Triomphe and Gertrude Stein. Her salon was a feeding trough for battered tiaras and dented crowns. I want a blow-by-blow report on her too.”
“What will I need?”
“Your camera, film packs, and flash bulbs. They’ve everything else there, and she wants the works. Your job is to stay until she gets them. Good-by, Miss Ledrick.”
“Good-by.”
Fanny found herself watching the closing door. She also found herself shuddering as she muttered, “And good luck.”
The telephone was ringing when Ann reached her office. She lifted the receiver, and the pleasant voice of Miss Dingley on the switchboard said, “Mr. Forrest is calling from Washington. Just a minute, please, and I’ll put him through.”
For the past month, since he had quit his post as general manager in Fanny Mistral, Inc., and had taken over a government job in Washington, Bill Forrest had telephoned Ann at odd times. Some had been a bit too odd, specifically the four-o’clock-in-the-morning ones when Bill said he had been overcome with impulsive insomnia and that nothing but the sound of her voice could put him to sleep.
“Ann?” his voice said.
“Yes, Bill?”
“I’m in a hurry, so get this straight. I’ve a thousand things to do in nothing flat.”
“So have I. I have to leave in an hour and pose ocelots.”
“Now listen, Ann—Did you say ocelots?”
“Yes.”
“Well, don’t bother me with trifles. Just run up to the zoo and do it.”
“They’re in the Adirondacks.”
“Nonsense. I’m getting two weeks’ leave starting next Friday and will pick you up in that dear little two-by-four you call home at seven.”
“But I won’t be there, Bill. I’ll be in the heart of the Adirondacks, drinking champagne and posing ocelots.”
“Have you gone mad?”
“No, and I’m to
be stuffed with pressed duck, caviar, and dazed trout.”
“You have gone mad. I can’t waste any more time because I’ve got to clear up my job here and become a marine. They told me this morning they’d let me play. I got sick of sitting on my rump in a chair that doesn’t even swivel and have decided to become a hero. So get sane by Friday and I’ll pick you up at seven and marry you. Good-by.”
The receiver at the Washington end of the conversation went bang.
An hour after Ann had left, Miss Dingley at the switchboard said: “Fanny Mistral, Incorporated. Good afternoon.”
“Bill again, Dingley. Put me through to Ann.”
“She left. She was due at the airport about ten minutes ago.”
“Give me Fanny.”
Fanny, who regarded Bill’s facade as something more than photogenic, cordially laced her voice with warmth when she answered.
“Bill darling, how are you?”
“I’m fine, but it’s not the point. Wasn’t it the Marlow woman, the dopey cousin in Paris, who landed here last fall and got the press about her ocelots?”
“Yes, dear. They had a suite on A Deck while the rest of the cabins were crushed with vertical diplomats.”
“I knew it. I realized it about two minutes ago. And you’ve sent Ann up to Black Tor in the Adirondacks?”
“Yes, darling.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, darling.”
“Well, I’ll be damned!”
Bang.
CHAPTER II
A victoria with a pair of stunning bays was waiting at the Black Tor airfield.
There had been little conversation on the plane beyond a few conventionalities offered by Ann to the pilot, who had struck her as being very old and very tired. She had put him down (correctly) as a contemporary of the Wright brothers.
Also, thoughts of Bill had occupied her. Today was Saturday, and next Friday at seven he would show up and marry her. Just breeze in and whisk her away from her packing-box nest on East Thirty-sixth Street and haul her by her raven tresses off to Elkton, or wherever it was that justices of the peace performed such enduring ceremonies with a snap.
Yes, he would.
She had muttered this phrase about seven times before she caught the pilot glancing at her with something more than polite curiosity.
All right, her muttering mind had run on, Bill has left a good, safe, and important job in Washington and signed up with the Marines. So off to Montezuma, with the next stop Tripoli. While she rounded out the picture by becoming the adored little thing he had left behind. While her snapshot would go with him in a watch. Required equipment. He had probably thought of it while getting measured for his uniforms and had called her up. Something to get starry-eyed over when far, far away. Also when awash with vin rouge. A candle glowing in the window. Leave it to Bill. The Sabine touch.
The trouble with Bill was that there wasn’t anything the trouble with Bill. Even in looks the man hadn’t missed a moth-eaten trick: slim flanks, broad shoulders from whose bulwarks he tapered via a washboard stomach to a lean waist, the current mode in faces which involved a patina of rugged virility to temper the too-handsome look, a voice like a deep and confidential bell. And boy, did he know it! He made her sick.
That was the phrase which had definitely terminated all conversation with the pilot. He heard her say after an hour’s silence, and to his utter bewilderment: “He makes me sick.” Then she had clammed up again, and he had spent the balance of the flight in wondering what he had done and in pondering upon the sad traces of congenital idiocy so prevalent in today’s youth. It was with relief that he helped her down from the cabin and turned her over to a uniformed coachman.
The coachman said, “Your luggage will follow in the wagon, Miss Ledrick.”
“Thank you.”
The drive was magnificent over a graveled roadway with the full majesty of the Adirondacks rising around her, and the air carried an exhilaratingly clear odor of cedar and pine.
She said to the coachman’s strapping back, “I thought that there were no roads.”
He turned an urbane profile.
“There are none in the sense of going anywhere. Just roads like this one for connecting the house with the field and service places. We use planes for supplies or for any contact with the outside world.”
“Even in winter?”
“Yes, Miss Ledrick.”
“But isn’t it like living on Mars?”
“My wife has occasionally pointed that out to me.”
“I can imagine that she would.”
“We have our amusements. There’s a theater for the staff where the latest films are shown, an excellent library, a social hall, but—”
“But no new faces.”
“Never, unless the steward makes a replacement or a change.”
“Replacement?”
“Occasionally one of us dies in service. Most of us are of an age.”
“Oh.”
“Being here is like sailing on a ship for a voyage that has no destination.”
“That’s terribly well put.”
“Thank you. I write for relaxation. A brochure or two on the feral in animals with its parallel among the criminal classes. Just ahead is our first view of Black Tor, Miss Ledrick.”
Swift-deepening twilight made the house macabre with its turrets of stone and dark magnificence that presented, instead of a home, a bastion for defense. Ann thought of it as besieged and expected a moat, but there was none, and the victoria stopped on a flagged courtyard before an oaken entrance door which opened and released warm light.
A butler greeted Ann with courteous ceremony and said, “Good evening, Miss Ledrick. I’ll show you to your rooms. The lift is over here.”
Ann followed him across a marble parquet beneath the entrance hall’s beamed ceiling and into an elevator, where he pressed a button for the third floor.
“I’m Washburn, Miss Ledrick. A phone call came through for you this afternoon from a Mr. Forrest in Washington. I explained that your plane would not arrive until now, and he said that he would call you again tonight at eleven.”
“Thank you, Washburn.”
The cage stopped, and Ann followed him along a hallway broken by mullioned windows into a charming living room done in Adam and with a coal fire lazily welcoming on the hearth.
“This door opens into the bedroom,” Washburn said, “and beyond it are the dressing room and bath.”
“Thank you.”
“Cocktails are in an hour on the ground floor in the lounge. Just turn to your left as you leave the lift. Danning will take care of you. She will be here with your luggage. If there’s anything you want in the meanwhile just use the house telephone. Miss Marlow regrets not welcoming you until seven, but this is her hour for feeding the ocelots.”
Washburn smiled, bowed, and left.
So this, Ann thought, was wealth. Great wealth and the key to that kicked-around phrase known as gracious living. And who wouldn’t want it and not be a dope? The thought of her clothes began to appall her. The mouse—that’s what she’d be—in gingham alongside of a woman who had all this and ocelots. Even if she was here only on a job, full social contacts were involved, and Ann remained appalled. It was scarcely a milieu for the simply adequate.
She stood at a window and looked out into the deepening darkness within which firs and pines were sinking and where pressing peaks were flattening into profile against the night sky. She wondered what further outrages Bill had in mind for the telephone call at eleven.
He had probably forgotten to tell her that after he married her next Friday he would divorce her on Saturday. The man was certainly a ball of romance. Just an old-fashioned nosegay fragrant with the tender touch. No, not fragrant. Reeking.
Someone knocked, and Ann said, “Come in.”
A man carried her bags directly into the bedroom and then left. A cheerful-looking middle-aged woman closed the door after he had gone and said, “I’m Danning
, Miss Ledrick. I’ll get your bath ready and then put out your things.”
Ann thanked her and looked again at the scene below, drawn back to it by something that puzzled her. She realized that, more clearly in the thickening dusk, thin luminous circlets were growing visible about the tree trunks which lined such stretches of the roadway to the airfield which she could see.
“Danning, what is that?”
“What, miss?”
“Those phosphorescent circles on the trees?”
“They’re bands of luminous paint, Miss Ledrick. We have to observe the black-outs even here, you know.”
“But aren’t they visible from the air?”
“No, the leaves and branches mask them.”
Danning suddenly stood still in the bedroom doorway while her smile flattened, leaving her lips drawn. Then Ann noticed it too: a thin, high note prolonged into a tremolo suggestive of sharp agony. It sifted faintly through the hall door and struck Ann unpleasantly with an impact of shock.
She said, “The ocelots?”
“Oh no, Miss Ledrick. That’s Mr. Marlow. The music room is just below us, and he always likes to play the organ when it takes him. He plays it very loud.”
“When what takes him?”
“Pain.”
CHAPTER III
Ann inspected herself in panel mirrors as the elevator carried her down. The full-skirted bengaline rag with its leaf-splashed blouse looked pretty good. Monkey trick, if you wish, but in no sense tin cup.
Marlow’s organ playing had stopped, and even before it had stopped the initial soul-in-agony effect had calmed down into a fretful Bach. She hoped the week would not be overlaid with a querulous neuroticism. Danning had been fulsome. Mr. Marlow’s “pain,” she said, was not so much of the body as it was of memory, a dark memory which overshadowed his mind.
There were physiological aspects too: a heart condition, neuritis, and an anemia which during the past couple of months had become pernicious. Ann added all these up together and was confident that when she met Marlow she would come face to face with a palsied wraith.
The lounge, when Ann stood in its doorway, struck her as Hollywood size and splendidly done, in the sense that its furnishings were impressive but were happily lacking in any unlived-in or museum-like rigor mortis. The man who stood up from a chair near the fireplace and walked toward her carried an immediate sense of welcoming friendliness.
