It all happened in seconds, and it was seconds more before Wayne's dazed comprehension told him this was no naive adolescent hungering for her first lesson in sex. This was a mature and lustful woman, crazed with desire and with waiting in the night for a man to come to her. She was moaning queerly now, gasping obscene phrases, struggling with all her strength to pull him off his feet so they would go to the floor together.
From an indulgent determination to fight off Letty's youthful advances, Wayne's mood swiftly changed to one of answering passion. He had no time to question who she was or why she waited here in Letty's place. He was confronted in the darkness with a woman whose ardor aroused his own and his arms tightened about her and he staggered forward two steps to the dim outline of a couch against the wall.
She squirmed beneath him as they fell, the fingers of one hand twined savagely in his hair.
When at last she sank back, limp and exhausted, Wayne lifted himself on both elbows to stare down at the white oval of her face beneath his.
It was Mrs. Hendrixon. Letty's mother. Her eyes were Closed and her lips parted to let her spent breath in and out.
Morgan Wayne closed his eyes and counted to ten slowly. He had expected anything but this. Some sex-starved housemaid, perhaps, or an older contemporary of Letty's who had somehow arranged to pinch-hit for her in this midnight adventure.
But the woman who had assaulted him so savagely was Mrs. Julius Hendrixon.
Wayne rolled over on his side and fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette. He was a fool to be surprised, he told himself moodily. There had been warning enough in those vagrant glances he had caught from her earlier in the evening. And Letty herself had hinted something of this to him.
He snapped his lighter and put flame to his cigarette, and she opened her eyes to smile dreamily up at him. She was almost beautiful in her blissful state of contentment. Her features were softened, her eyes moist and warm, her nostrils wide at the base and quivering under his eyes. She asked huskily, “Could I have a cigarette, please?”
Wayne got out a cigarette and inserted it between her parted lips. Her eyelids came down as he thumbed his lighter again. She drew smoke deep into her lungs and murmured, “Thanks.”
“For the cigarette?”
“For everything. You're... what I knew you'd be.”
“You're not,” he told her bluntly.
The burning tip of her cigarette flared as she sucked in smoke again. Her lips were smiling. “Disappointed that I'm not Letty?”
“God, no! Just trying to believe you are you.”
She yawned and stretched sinuously. “Am I really better than she?”
The question came eagerly, with no maternal overtones whatever.
“I never experimented with Letty,” Wayne told her shortly. “Frankly, I like my women a few years above the age of consent.”
She said thoughtfully, “I wonder if Letty still is a virgin.”
“Not if she's been able to find any man to give her what she wants.”
She laughed without constraint. “She's always been that way.” She stretched voluptuously again. “How did she come to pick on you, darling?”
“Because I wear pants. What does she think about your substituting for her?”
“Heavens, she doesn't know anything about it. Poor lamb, she's peacefully asleep. She'll beso disappointed when she wakens tomorrow.”
“Do you mean she just dropped off to sleep after talking to me on the phone?” demanded Wayne incredulously, his male vanity touched.
“After drinking a glass of warm milk I thoughtfully provided, with six sleeping tablets dissolved in it.” She stubbed her cigarette out against the wall beside her and reached for him with avid fingers. “We're wasting time talking about Letty.”
This time it was not so tempestuous, but actually more violent in the end. Wayne understood the sort of woman she was and the sort of thing she had to have. He was not loath to oblige her. There is a deep-rooted instinct in every virile male that responds savagely to such desires in a woman. She was weak with exhaustion when they lighted second cigarettes.
Morgan Wayne lay beside her in the darkness and muttered, “It's like questioning a gift of the gods, but I still can't understand why the wife of a man like Julius Hendrixon is lying out here with me.”
“Julius?” There was scorn and loathing in her voice. “He's about as much good to a woman as a hatrack.”
“That hulk of man?” Wayne was honestly surprised. “He looks like the sort who could keep a harem happy.”
“It's all on the outside,” she said bitterly. “I thought so, too, five years ago, when I married him. Why else would I marry a boor like that?” she went on angrily. “A nobody with nothing to his name. So little Harriet fell for his uncouth manners and brawny frame. I could have had the pick of hundreds, and I end up with him.” She laughed stridently. “He didn't want me. He wanted my money. Management of the company and power. Durtol Drugs is his real wife. He has no time to spare for me.”
Wayne sucked on his cigarette and let her talk. So she and Julius had been married only five years, and he was actually Letty's stepfather. A man who was greedy for money and for power.
Wayne sighed with deep satisfaction. If he could keep Julius' thwarted wife talking long enough, he might get everything he needed without moving from the couch beside her.
“How's Carson for a bedmate?” he asked casually.
“What makes you think I'd know?” She was instantly on her guard.
Wayne said negligently, “I thought I noticed he had a roving eye tonight. Don't try to pull a prudish act on me,” he went on with a laugh. “You didn't let any grass grow under your feet before undressing for me.”
“You're different.” She reached out in the darkness to take hold of his hand and squeeze it. “But why should I be prudish? Elliot's an old darling, but he'sold. Fifty at least. He had half promised to stay and see me tonight after Julius went to bed, if you must know.”
“And then stood you up?” Wayne asked with amusement.
“He left for the city right after you did, without saying a word. But I'm glad now that he did.”
So that's one, Wayne told himself. One of the four who could easily have got to a telephone to call Hake Derr. He asked disinterestedly, “What did your husband and brother do?”
“Sat around talking a while, I guess. Then John went home and Julius came up and had a couple of drinks in my sitting room.”
“Are you sure he's asleep now? Durtol Drugs may be his mistress,” Wayne went on with a laugh, “but I still don't take him for the sort of man who'd wear a pair of horns without objecting rather strenuously.”
“You needn't worry about him.” She squeezed Wayne's hand comfortingly. “He hadn't got to bed when Elliot phoned him from the city to meet him at once on some mysterious business. Something about Letty's kidnaping this afternoon, I gathered, though he didn't say so outright.”
“When was that?”
“About an hour and a half ago. Just a little before you telephoned Letty. Let's talk about us.” Her voice became languidly amorous. “How are we going to meet in the future? Don't spoil everything by telling me you have an insanely jealous wife whom you love dearly.”
He managed a light laugh. “No wife,” he assured her. “No encumbrances at all. I can't help wondering about your brother,” he went on hurriedly. “Didn't he resent it when you married Julius and brought him in to manage the business that was John's responsibility by direct inheritance?”
“Resent it? Lord, no. John is much happier than I with the arrangement. He has all the time in the world now for his showgirls and gambling, and lots more money to spend on them since Julius took over the reins, and dividends have gone up every year.”
“Are we talking about the same person?” asked Wayne dubiously. “Showgirls and gambling don't sound like John's forte.”
“He's a complete wastrel,” she assured him complacently. “He cultivates that indolent,
gentlemanly air just for effect.” She turned and pressed her mouth against his, pulled him to her again in the darkness, demanding,“Why are we wasting all this time, lover?”
Chapter Eighteen
When Morgan Wayne left the gardener's cottage on the Hendrixon estate, he had the address of John Durtol III and a fervid promise from Mrs. Hendrixon to meet him again any time and any place he selected.
The first item was important to him, but he felt he could get along very well without the second. A woman like Harriet Hendrixon was wonderful for a one-night stand, but she was likely to become dynamite if a man kept on with her. A frustrated woman of her age, with no inhibitions to slow her down, was likely to lose all sense of proportion and throw herself into an affair with no thought whatsoever of any possible consequences.
But she had served him one good turn tonight, Wayne reminded himself wryly as he went down the path to his parked car. She'd got Letty off his neck, and the girl wouldn't have any reason to come around in the future to remind him of his promise.He hadn't broken it, he would point out to Letty. He had kept the tryst, and she was the one who had disappointed him. He grinned as he thought about her waking up in the morning, dopey from the effects of six sleeping pills and wondering what on earth had possessed her to drop off to sleep instead of going out to the cottage to meet him. Give her a few more years, he thought indulgently, and she'd be another nymphomaniac like her mother. Then it might be worth while looking her up again. Another edition of Harriet Hendrixon and half her age would be worth investigating sometime in the future.
Characteristically, Morgan Wayne abruptly wiped all thought of the female members of the Hendrixon clan from his mind as he got in the Hudson and made a U turn back toward the city. It had been difficult to pry very much essential information from Harriet without revealing why he wanted it, but he did have several rather important bits to think about.
Julius' real character, for instance, was becoming increasingly evident. A dominant, masculine sort of man whose sexual drive had been diverted to business. A penniless nobody, Harriet had intimated, until he lured her into marriage by his outward masculinity, and achieved control of Durtol Drugs. An avaricious man, mad for power. That fitted the picture Wayne had been building up in his own mind of the person who was using Hake Derr as a tool to turn the legitimate business of the drug company into illicit channels. Everything began to fit in, once you perceived the man's true character.
In the beginning, it had appeared doubtful whether a father would cold-bloodedly arrange the kidnaping of his own daughter, but that objection was removed once one knew that Letty was actually his stepdaughter. And it was Julius' wife who actually owned the block of stock, Wayne reminded himself. It was quite possible that she couldn't be persuaded to sell in any other way. If it was Julius Hendrixon, he must have felt quite safe and clever in having his own daughter kidnaped to put pressure on his wife. No one would suspect a husband of an atrocious deed like that, and he was right on the inside where he could keep his finger on the pulse of things and warn his confederates of any moves the police were making.
This fitted in, too, with Julius' first reaction to Wayne's warning about the projected kidnaping a month ago. Of course, he would have scoffed at any such idea if he, himself, were planning it. Wayne's first visit must have given him some anxious moments, but Hake Derr would have reassured him. So far as he and Derr had known, Wayne was merely a crackpot who had got hold of a rumor somehow.
It was quite possible, Wayne thought, that Elliot Carson was in on the plan with Hendrixon. The telephone message for Julius to come to the city at midnight seemed to indicate more than an ordinary business connection between the pair. The time of Carson's call coincided roughly with the time that Derr's death had probably been discovered. That could easily account for the hurried conference ordered by the lawyer. From the description Derr's bodyguards could provide, it must have been evident to Carson that Wayne was Derr's killer—that he hadnot reacted properly to the “lay off” warning delivered to him in Lois Elling's bedroom.
John Durtol might know where the two men would be meeting. He probably wouldn't, but the young man might well possess other information that would clinch the case against his brother-in-law. Durtol's bachelor apartment was Wayne's first stop on his way into the city, and he planned to put his suspicions squarely up to Harriet's brother. He wouldn't, he thought with secret amusement, tell John where and under what circumstances he had got his information, for even the most decadent of brothers is apt to be a bit touchy about his sister's honor, but he would'tell him enough to convince John that the interests of the drug firm demanded his full co-operation.
The address Harriet Hendrixon had given him was in one of the new, huge residential apartment developments that had mushroomed recently on the outskirts of the city just off the West Side Highway. With a general idea of the location in mind, Wayne had little trouble locating the Elvira Manor development, but it did take him fifteen minutes and half a dozen inquiries to find the particular wing in which Durtol's apartment was situated.
There was an air of haughty and chaste elegance about the entire setup that depressed Wayne immeasurably as he rode skyward in an elevator large enough to accommodate twenty persons, accompanied only by an operator whose uniform would have put a Peruvian admiral to shame.
There was a wide, vaulted corridor when he got out of the elevator, from which endless side passages darted offin a confusing maze. Wayne plodded doggedly along on an inch-thick carpet, consulting numbers as he went and pausing at various crossroads to study the arrows pointing in four directions and attempt to interpret the symbols in neon lights over each arrow.
He finally arrived at a heavy oak door marked 1482-X and stopped in front of it with a sigh of relief. He put his finger on the bell and didn't bother to take it off. It was past one o'clock in the morning, and if John Durtol III were at home he would certainly be asleep unless occupied in some other manner that would make him just as disinclined to admit a late visitor.
Wayne began to think he wasn't at home after a full sixty seconds had passed without any response to his ringing. He frowned but kept his finger on the button. John was his one chance to contact any of the Durtol group at this hour, and Wayne was in a fever of impatience to keep on moving now that he had finally got started.
After one minute and forty seconds of steady ringing his stubbornness brought results. The knob turned and the heavy door swung inward soundlessly.
In a small foyer lighted from floor lamps in the long living room beyond an archway, a girl confronted him. She was barefooted and wore a short, quilted mandarin robe. Her hair was cut as short as a boy's and she was rubbing her eyes sleepily with both fists and yawning widely. She didn't actually look at Wayne as she murmured, “So you decided to come back, Johnsey?”
Wayne stepped inside, closed the door, and took her firmly by the elbow. She dropped her knuckles from her eyes and blinked up at him in round-faced amazement. She had no make-up on, and looked like a frightened farm girl with her natural healthy coloring and well-fleshed features.
“Who are you?” she asked in some alarm. “Where's Johnsey?”
“I was about to ask you both questions.” Wayne smiled down at her reassuringly.
She shrugged and turned away from him into the large inner room that had a ceiling two floors up and a railed balcony on three sides at the second-floor level. She curled up on a sofa with her bare legs tucked under her and yawned again before saying indifferently, “I'm Marge, and if you know much about John you won't ask me what I'm doing here. That crazy galoot. He gives me a diamond wrist watch from Tiffany's to promise to spend the night and then ducks out before we get started.” The farm-girl look had gone now, but she retained the look of a healthy young animal without a trace of the sophistication Wayne would have thought John Durtol III would require in an overnight guest.
Wayne sat down across the room from her and lit a cigarette and smiled. “He's a nut, all right, i
f he walked out on you.”
She shrugged and looked down at her broad, stubby-fingered hands. “How does he get that way,” she burst out indignantly, “making a girl bring a doctor's affidavit that she's a virgin before he'll sleep with her? What kind of fun can a man get out ofthat? I ask you! All the fellows I ever knew intimate enough to ask tell me the first time isn't ever any good.”
“Did you bring your affidavit?” Wayne chuckled.
“Sure I did. After I had the wrist watch appraised. Mom always told me not to sell out cheap, but I figured no one would ever offer me more than twenty thousand smackers. Don't you think I was right?”
“Right as rain,” Wayne assured her gravely. “Do you know where John went?”
“That's what gets my goddamned nanny goat. That gingham bitch called him, that's what. How do you figure a guy like that?” she demanded wonderingly. “Making me bring along my certificate and then bouncing out before we even get in bed just because he gets a phone call from a floosie that hasn't had one for a cinch since she was ten years old. Hey, that reminds me of a joke,” she went on vivaciously, wrinkling up her nose at Wayne.
“In Sunday school, see, and this class of kids are having a lesson from the Bible about the ten virgins or whatever. So the teacher asks the class do any of them know what a virgin is, and one little girl sticks up her hand quick and gets up and says, 'A virgin is a little girl eleven years old—no, ten years old, I mean. I'm eleven.' D'yuh get the point?” She shook with laughter, shaking her head from side to side. “She was eleven, see? And she knew a virgin was younger thanshe was.”
“I get it,” said Wayne patiently as soon as he could break in. “Do you mean to say by any wild and impossible chance that it was Priscilla Endicott who telephoned John and lured him away from your charms?”
“I dunno what her name is,” she said sullenly. “But I know she sings in a lousy cellar joint on Fifty-second. And Johnsey goes running if she crooks her finger at him. How do you like that from a guy that passes out diamond wrist watches from Tiffany's?”
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