The Red Carnelian

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  When I reached fourth I found that the buyer for better dresses was taking life the hard way, as usual. It wasn’t easy to turn an idea which she considered divinely inspired into something slightly less antique, but I’d had plenty of practice and set about it almost automatically.

  I began by planting the flame colored hat and the screens in her consciousness, and then gradually circling until she came out dramatically with them as her own idea. That would annoy Tony considerably, but would give us our way and at least keep peace.

  As I was about to leave, Miss Babcock put a sympathetic hand on my arm.

  “I want you to know, my dear, how sorry we all are about what happened. So unfortunate. So bad for the store. Have they, have they found out yet who—”

  “No,” I said curtly. “Nobody knows.”

  Miss Babcock looked disappointed and reluctant to allow me to escape.

  “How would you like to see one of the numbers we’re going to present in the style show?” she asked. “The model who is to wear it is back there trying it on. Miss Drake is so stunning, don’t you think? So unusual?”

  I’d been anything but vitally interested until I heard Carla’s name. The woman had crossed my path so often lately that I was beginning to have a fatalistic feeling about her.

  Miss Babcock led me to one of the dressing rooms. A fitter knelt on the floor, while Carla turned slowly before the triple mirrors.

  Beautiful gowns and beautiful models were nothing particularly new in my life, but I caught my breath in tribute.

  The dinner gown Carla wore was as modern as tomorrow, but it’s ancestry went back to the classicism of old Greece. It was white and straight in line, flowing, full, yet clinging to the lovely curves of her body with revealing simplicity. It was banded at the neck and wrists in gold and a golden girdle circled her waist.

  If you discounted the silvery hair, falling in beauty to her shoulders, if you missed the tragic wisdom of her eyes, she might have been as young as Juliet.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said. “You’re beautiful, Carla.”

  Her eyes flooded unexpectedly with tears. “Thank you, Miss Wynn. But it is the dress.” She lifted the white folds in her slender hands and turned before the mirror.

  I had never seen a motion so graceful, so lovely. Then something like dismay came into her eyes and she stilled the swirling of the skirt. I had a queer feeling that she felt she had made some disclosure. The fitter picked up the hem again and I followed Miss Babcock back to the department.

  “Where did you find her?” I asked.

  The buyer shrugged. “She came from New York. I understand she lost her husband some time ago. She’s a good model, but the other girls don’t seem to care for her much. There’s something peculiar about her.”

  I left the department thoughtfully. So Carla Drake had “lost” her husband, whatever that meant. And on the day Michael Montgomery died, he had stood talking to her in an eighth floor corridor, so intent that his hands had rested on her shoulders. At the time I had thought that the gesture was one of affection. But now I wondered.

  When I reached the middle aisle, I saw that my signal was on in the light box between the elevators. I stepped to a house phone and learned that I was wanted at once in my office.

  Though such a summons was familiar enough, I couldn’t suppress the sense of alarm that swept through me. I went upstairs at once and found McPhail waiting for me. Keith, working at his desk, did not look up, but even his ears looked frightened. My uneasiness increased as I sat down opposite the detective.

  His greeting was curt and he went at once to the point. He wanted to know exactly what had happened that morning and I gave him the story in full, conscious all the while of Keith listening.

  McPhail prodded me with sharp questions about the identity of my assailant and about that bit of stone from the ring. But I could tell him nothing that would help. I had done no more than glance at the fragment before I put it in my pocket, and I’d had no glimpse at all of whoever it was I’d surprised in my office.

  I told him about the queer business of the picture which had been torn from my wall and the substitute pasted up in its place, but that made as little sense to him as it did to me, if he believed the story at all.

  “Now then,” he said, with a cold, unwavering look, “suppose you come clean about what happened in that window yesterday.”

  So it had come. Somehow he knew about my finding Monty and running away. I longed for Bill’s sane presence more than I’d longed for anything in my life. But there was no Bill. I had to get through this on my own.

  Before I could form an answer, McPhail shifted the papers on my desk and I saw what lay beneath them, the upper half of a broken golf stick. There were powdery traces on its varnished surface and I knew I’d waited too long.

  Even so, my relief was tremendous. The fingerprints on that stick looked bad for me, but they weren’t as bad as the other. My cheeks cooled and my tenseness relaxed.

  “Oh, that!” I said. “I’d meant to tell you about it. I forgot it entirely until last night. It was there in the window when I went to take care of last minute details. I wondered at the time how it came to be broken, but I didn’t think about it especially, any more than I thought about the stone. I just picked it up and put it in the golf bag to get it out of the way. I meant to ask somebody about it later. And then I forgot.”

  “Very convenient,” McPhail sneered. “A man gets murdered with a golf club and you forget that you had the other half of that club in your hands. Until we find your prints on it and you have to remember.”

  “But I did forget!” I protested. “Everything was so shocking and horrible. It went right out of my mind at the time you were questioning us. But I’d have got around to telling you today if you’d given me time.”

  “You’ve had time enough,” McPhail said. “And here’s something else. The only prints on that book end that was used to knock you down are yours and your office boys.”

  Keith’s head sank a little lower between his shoulders and I had a sudden unpleasant vision of him hiding behind the door and leaping out at me. I dismissed it at once as ridiculous.

  “That’s silly!” I told McPhail. “Keith and I have both handled those book ends many times. You’ll find our prints on the other one too. All it means is that the person who attacked me must have worn gloves.”

  “Maybe,” said McPhail, his mouth grim and straight, his eyes cold with suspicion.

  “Oh, come now!” I cried. “Do you think I picked up that book end and knocked myself out with it? Ask Mr. Hering. He knows how groggy I was. And there’s no getting away from this lump on my head.”

  McPhail would have loved to get away from it. I’m sure that lump and the fact that Hering had vouched for the attack on me, were the only things which kept him from taking me to headquarters as a suspect then and there.

  As it was, I went through a bad twenty minutes or so, while he shot the same questions at me, over and over. But somehow I kept my story straight and suppressed that moment when I’d gone back to the switch box.

  McPhail left at last and I phoned Helena to let her know that I was having dinner with Bill Thorne and wouldn’t be home till later. I told Keith he might as well go pick up the phonograph and take it out to Universal Arts. Certainly, neither of us was good for any work after McPhail’s visit, and the despairing look Keith gave me was the last straw.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I demanded. “You haven’t anything to worry about. McPhail’s not taking your prints on that book end seriously. There’s no possible tie-up you could have with this affair. So stop going around with that I-am-a-leper expression on your face!”

  “It’s that attack on you, Miss Wynn. That’s awful. It’s—”

  “Well, don’t go broadcasting it,” I said. “I don’t want the whole store in here oh-ing and ah-ing
.”

  He shook his head mournfully. “The trouble is you can’t tell where all this is going to end. There’s something pretty awful loose in this store and it’s out of control now. It’s killed once and it’ll kill again. And how can any of us stop it, or get out of its way, when we can’t even see what it is?”

  “The trouble with you,” I said, “is that you read too many detective stories. It’s not an “it,” but a human being. Somebody who had something against Monty. Eventually the police will catch up with the murderer and we’ll know the whole story. But it won’t be anything supernatural.”

  Keith shook his head. “I don’t just read detective stories, Miss Wynn. I’ve read a lot about the psychology and pathology of crime too, and we’re not dealing with anything normal now. There’s nothing more awful than this kind of insanity. Where the person goes right on wearing his ordinary face and ordinary actions and you can’t tell the difference. But inside he’s gone stark raving mad and he’s not going to do things that are normal and sensible. He’s going to do treacherous, crazy things to fool you and blind you. So he can strike again.”

  I’d known the boy ever since I’d come to Cunningham’s and I’d always thought him more or less inarticulate and futile. Yet behind his quiet exterior was all this teeming unpleasantness.

  He saw he had startled me and tried to smile. It was a tight, thin smile that was a little frightening.

  “Miss Wynn, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t scare you for anything. Gosh, I like you better than anybody I know. It’s just that—that—well, you better be careful. Don’t you trust anybody. Not anybody at all.”

  With those cheering words, he left in search of the phonograph.

  I went over to the single small window and threw it open. I was chilled to the bone, but I wanted fresh air. Eight stories below trucks rolled in and out of the alley, midget figures of men moved and gestured and spoke with midget voices. All about crowded the walls of stores and buildings, alive with lighted windows like unlidded eyes that watched until the light was quenched.

  The wind from the lake was raw, smoke-laden, grime-laden, its first clean freshness gone the moment it struck these hills of steel and concrete.

  I shut the window and turned back to the office. The blank space on the wall behind my desk challenged and tantalized me. What had a page from a magazine casually pasted up with a hundred other pages to do with the murder of Michael Montgomery?

  If I could remember that picture would I perhaps have the answer?

  10

  The Universal Arts Company was far enough out on West Madison Street to make a tiresome streetcar ride at the rush hour.

  I clung to a strap and lurched with the stopping and starting of a car streamlined in everything but motion. I was thankful that I’d sent Keith on earlier with the phonograph. It wouldn’t have been any fun handling it in a jam like this.

  Universal Arts occupied the fourth floor of an old brick office building and I went up in an ancient, creaky elevator. Bill had talked about moving into new quarters, but as yet the change hadn’t been made.

  I stepped into a tiny hall opposite the receptionist’s vacant desk, and Bill came out of his office to greet me.

  “I’ve a job to finish up,” he said. “Some designs I want to have ready for morning. But we can go out to dinner now. Then, if you don’t mind, you can come back with me afterwards, and when I’m through I’ll drive you home.”

  The plan was agreeable and we went downstairs again in the elevator.

  “The neighborhood’s nothing to brag about when it comes to eating,” Bill said, “but there’s a place around the corner where the meat balls and spaghetti can be recommended.”

  We went to the place around the corner and found ourselves a small table with a slightly spotted, red-checked cloth, and an old-fashioned vinegar-and-oil cruet set.

  The minute we’d ordered, I went into my story, beginning with the attack on me. It was nice to see Bill look so concerned and sympathetic, but he lost no time getting busy on the same angle I’d taken.

  “There were three of us there when you remembered about that stone,” he said. “Chris and Helena and I. And I haven’t told a soul. Do you suppose the others talked?”

  “Helena thinks she didn’t. But Chris told Owen and Susan. Susan came up to see me today and she knew all about it.”

  Bill sighed. “Then it’s probably all over town by now.”

  “I should think you’d be glad,” I said. “It gives you more of an out.”

  He grinned at me a little absently. I could see that my story had shocked him considerably, and somehow I was glad it was I—instead of Chris—who had his concerned interest for a while. I gave him the rest of the story—my tilt with McPhail over the golf stick, the picture torn from the wall, and then I told him things I hadn’t mentioned to anyone else. About seeing Monty and Carla Drake engaged in secret and earnest conversation the morning of the day Monty had died. About the oddness of the moment when I’d happened upon Carla in Owen Gardner’s office, and about seeing them together later in the restaurant when I’d been with Chris. Nor did I forget that Carla had “lost” a husband. And last of all, her connection with that scratch on Helena’s hand.

  Bill couldn’t recall ever having seen Carla, but my description, and the way she seemed to thread herself in and out of the affair intrigued him. “Your lady of the silver hair sounds like trouble to me. I’d like to meet her.”

  “I’ll try to arrange it,” I said. Carla wasn’t the type of woman a girl goes throwing at men she likes.

  Bill’s grin was maddening. “I’m good at arranging things like that myself. Don’t mix in. Tell me about that scratch business again.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t much of anything,” I said, regretting that I’d ever mentioned Carla. “Just that I noticed a queer look on Helena’s face last night when I inquired about her scratched hand. And then today it developed that Carla had scratched her when she was exchanging a pin. It all sounds perfectly innocent and yet there was a moment this morning when Carla and Helena gave each other a look that I’d swear had some special meaning. But I don’t think it has anything to do with the murder. After all, Carla wasn’t anywhere near the window at the time.”

  Bill’s blue eyes had a glint in them. “How do you know?”

  “Why—why, it’s never come out if she was.”

  “Maybe nobody’s thought of it,” Bill said. “Evidently she knew Monty, and she seems pretty chummy with Gardner. Another thing that’s funny is her friendship with Sondo. They don’t sound as though they’d appeal to each other, if you ask me. Linell, do me a favor.”

  “Of course, if I can.”

  “Find out from Helena just what time of the day Carla came down to exchange that pin.”

  “Oh,” I said, “I’m beginning to see.”

  It had been there all the time, of course, quite plainly, but my mind was confused with so many details. At some time yesterday Carla Drake had gone to the jewelry counter to exchange a pin. And Helena had been there all day, except for her lunch hour and the time she’d run up to see me. If that exchange had been made within an hour of closing—!

  “The trouble with this whole thing,” Bill went on, “is that there are too many unconnected threads lying about. Who broke the golf stick? Where did that ring come from Monty was clutching?”

  “And what about the rest of the missing stone?” I put in. “It was only a fragment I found.”

  “Right. Was the other piece lost in the window, or somewhere else, and what has it to do with the murder? And then there’s that picture torn from the wall. Somewhere, somehow, these things are tied together. When we begin to hook them up, perhaps we’ll get somewhere. Not before.”

  We were silent for a while, struggling with all the small mysteries. Then I remembered Keith and the phonograph and asked Bill if he’d brought it out.

>   Bill nodded. “Yes, he came up an hour or so ago. I had him take it straight to the shop, but I haven’t had time to look it over yet. He’s a queer duck, that office boy of yours.”

  “So I’ve discovered,” I said.

  Just thinking about Keith was enough to give me the creeps again and I found myself glancing uneasily about the little dining room. I didn’t like what I saw.

  “Bill,” I said in a low voice, “don’t look now, but there’s a man sitting a couple of tables away. I noticed him shortly after we came in. He pretends he’s interested in the menu, or the wall over our heads, but it’s us he’s watching. I’m sure of it!”

  “My innocent!” Bill’s smile was dry. “Of course he’s watching us. More particularly you, I think. You’re being honored by the police department. As far as I know, I haven’t had anybody tailing me as yet, but after the suspicious company I’m keeping this evening, I’ll expect a like honor tomorrow.”

  “Oh, Bill! But that’s awful. I’d never have come out if I thought—”

  “Don’t be a goop,” he told me. “I wanted you to come out. And if I’m going to be followed, all I ask is to lead ’em as merry a chase as possible. Besides, this makes things safer for you. You’re not likely to be attacked again with the police on guard.”

  That was a thought. But the sense of privacy, of being alone with Bill was gone.

  “Let’s go back to your place,” I said. “They can’t follow us up there.”

  Back at Universal I went over to a blind in Bill’s office and peered down between the slats. Sure enough, our friend of the restaurant was lounging in a doorway across the street, smoking a cigarette. It gave me a queer feeling to realize that I couldn’t take a step from now on without being observed and trailed.

  “I’ve got to get to work,” Bill said. “Maybe you’d like to look around the workshop till I’m through.”

  He pushed open a door, switched on a light or two, and I stepped past him into a huge room.

  I’d never thought much about the shop where our plaster figures originated and it caught me unprepared. There was no picture in my mind to match the reality and I could only stand there in stunned dismay.