“I have my ticket,” Susan told me, as if that settled everything.
“But just why are you leaving?” I asked.
“I don’t care to discuss the matter,” Susan said. “When I learned this morning that an arrest had been made, I decided I might as well leave. I’d been planning to make this trip all along, but of course Mr. McPhail wouldn’t let any of us leave town before.”
“The trouble is,” Chris explained to me, “if she goes, she won’t come back. She’s leaving father.”
“It’s the only right thing to do,” Susan said.
I felt this was a little out of my province and wished Chris hadn’t called me in. After all, if Mrs. Gardner had decided to leave her husband, there wasn’t anything I could do to stop her.
“You see,” Susan went on, discussing it after all, “I’ve felt right along that I wasn’t the type of woman for Owen. Oh, I’ve made him a good wife, and I think I’ve made a good mother to Chris, but a man like Owen needs much more in life than I could ever give him. Miss Drake is so lovely and I’m sure she’s very charming and interesting company—”
So she knew about Carla. That was sad, but still not my affair. But it was passionately Chris’s affair. She broke into what Susan was saying.
“I’ll bet she’s a nitwit! I’ll bet father would be sick of her in two days if he actually had to live with her. Susan, you can’t go without giving him a chance to speak for himself!”
Susan shook her head with gentle stubbornness and the hands of the station clock moved closer to train time.
Chris threw me a reproachful look for not helping and plunged into a new argument.
“Wait a while anyway, Susan. Don’t leave right now while all this about Monty is still in the air. I’m so lonely and frightened. I need you, Susan.”
Susan patted her hand. “You can come down and visit me in a week or so, if you like. I’d love that and it would be good for you to get away.”
“No!” Chris cried. “Oh, I couldn’t leave. I—I’m afraid. Susan, that’s why you mustn’t go. I don’t think they’ve caught the person who killed Monty. I don’t think it’s over yet.”
Susan and I both looked at her.
“Tony’s not the one! Oh, I’m sure he’s not the one. That’s why we all have to move so carefully. We’re not safe yet. If you leave town at this time, Susan, it might look bad for you, bad for the rest of us.”
“I’m afraid I don’t see—” Susan began, but Chris stopped her at once.
“Wait a few days longer, please. I think it would be better for all of us to go to Sondo’s gathering tonight.”
So Sondo hadn’t been letting any grass grow under her feet.
“Even father’s agreed to go to that party,” Chris said. “He was furious about it, but he’s going. And if you leave town—”
Some of Susan’s hard-won resolution was crumbling. She looked anxiously at me.
“What do you think, Miss Wynn? This party sounds like a stupid, dangerous thing.”
“It does to me, too,” I agreed. “But Sondo’s not stupid by any means. She has some purpose back of all this, I think. And if McPhail has arrested the wrong person, it might be better for all of us to see Sondo through. Something awfully queer is going on at Cunningham’s.”
I told them about the picture, though I left out the attack on me; about the phonograph being smashed the night before out at Universal Arts, and of my own part in that affair.
Susan listened intently and put one arm about the shivering Chris.
“All right,” she said, “I’ll put off my trip for a week or so. But then I’m leaving. I’m not angry or bitter. I think I’ve always felt I couldn’t hold Owen. And now that he’s found someone else, I don’t want to stand in his way. You see—” she turned directly to me, “you see, I love him.”
There wasn’t anything to say or do in the face of that simple statement. My respect for Susan and my dislike for Carla increased.
Chris leaned over and kissed her cheek. “You go home now, Susan, and be a good little mother. Father’s going to pick you up tonight. He told me he would. But I’m going with Linell, if she’ll let me.”
We took Susan to the elevated station and then stopped in a drugstore for a quick lunch before I went back to the store.
We were both quiet. Chris’s thoughts were her own and I was lost in uneasy speculation. For one thing, it was strange that Chris should be so positive that Tony hadn’t murdered Monty. And for another, I was wondering if there had been anything beneath Susan’s sudden determination to leave town. I liked Chris and I was beginning to be quite fond of Susan, but just the same . . .
When we headed for Cunningham’s, Chris said she’d go along with me.
“I’ve something to do at the store.” There was such determination in her voice that I glanced at her in surprise.
“Just what are you up to?” I asked.
Chris strode along beside me with her blond hair blowing in the wind, and her square young shoulders thrust back.
“I’m going to see Carla Drake,” she announced in a voice that made people turn to look.
I had to skip to keep up with her, though there’s nothing short about my legs. For the first time, I felt ineffectual around Chris. Her sudden resolve was surprising and disconcerting.
“Listen,” I said, tugging at her elbows, “you can’t go barging into Cunningham’s to throw accusations at Carla. It isn’t done. It won’t get you anywhere.”
“It’s going to be done!”
I felt as if a mild summer breeze had turned into a cyclone right under my nose and I wished Bill was around to handle the situation. He had a way with women. I had to admit that.
“What about your father?” I asked as we flew through Cunningham’s revolving doors. “He’ll be wild if he finds out about this. He’ll—”
Chris paid no attention. She went ahead of me down the main aisle with a stride that parted the crowd and made people get out of our way.
I decided I’d better go along to pick up pieces and nurse the wounded, so I got out of the elevator with her on fourth. Fortunately, Owen Gardner wasn’t anywhere in sight. Chris might have much of her wayward mother in her, she might be young and spoiled and helpless in a lot of ways, but evidently there was a strong streak of Gardner in her, too, and I didn’t like to think what might come of a clash with her father when she was in a mood like this.
“Where’s the Drake woman?” she demanded of the startled Miss Babcock.
The buyer began her usual line of opposition to anything she didn’t understand, but Chris brushed her off like a speck of dust and I followed in her wake.
Carla was back in one of the dressing rooms, changing her clothes. In fact, when Chris and I burst in on her she was dressed in black chiffon panties and a bra. And I must say, she looked just as stunning without her clothes as she did with them, which is more than can be said for most women.
Our appearance must have been surprising, but Carla gave us one of her usual dreamy-eyed glances and took a gray frock from a hanger, preparatory to dropping it over her head.
Chris, having gone berserk, did a good job of it. She snatched the frock out of Carla’s hands and threw it at me.
“I want to talk to you!” she cried. “I want to—”
Carla regarded her sadly, but without self-consciousness. “Don’t wrinkle the frock,” she said to me. “It just came in from the press shop.”
“Never mind the frock!” Chris went on. “I want you to keep away from my father! I won’t have you breaking up my home and making my mother unhappy. Women like you aren’t any good. You can’t get a husband of your own, so you go around picking on other women’s husbands. But you’re not going to take my father away. If you ever so much as look at him again, I’ll take you apart.”
Having shot her bolt, Chris c
ollapsed on a stool in the corner and burst wildly into tears. It was all pretty juvenile and hysterical and uncomfortable. I must say Carla took it well.
When she reached for the gray frock and slipped it over her head, it seemed immediately to mold itself to her body. She smoothed a few silver strands of hair that had been ruffled and pulled a zipper up the side of the frock, all without a word to Chris.
Then she went over to where Chris sat huddled on the stool and put the lightest of hands on her bent head.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Truly, I’m so very sorry. I know how much pain you’ve had. I understand pain. But in the end perhaps it will all come right.”
Chris jerked up her head, her eyes stormy and rebellious. “Don’t you touch me! You—you—”
“There are many words,” Carla said. “But they would be ugly on lips like yours. And not so very true.”
Chris had spent her fine anger. She was a little girl again, desperately hurt, and at a loss before this poised and lovely woman. Still she must try, slapping out like a child at the thing that hurt her.
“You’ll be at Sondo’s party tonight! And—and father will be there too, and Susan. If you so much as—”
“Hush,” Carla said. “You needn’t worry about tonight. Tonight I am going to Sondo’s with a very charming young man named Bill Thorne, and if it will make you happier I won’t speak to your father at all. Now if you’ll excuse me—a customer is waiting to see this frock.”
She was out of the dressing room before either of us could speak. I’d meant to ask her exactly what time of the day it had been when she had gone down to the jewelry counter to exchange that pin she’d bought. But somehow she’d eluded me, as well as Chris, and we looked at each other with expressions that admitted we were vanquished.
“I don’t understand her,” Chris quavered. “She just doesn’t act the way a woman like that ought to act. She wasn’t a bit ashamed. She wasn’t even angry.”
“Perhaps she hasn’t any reason to be ashamed,” I said. “Well, now that the storm is over I’ll get back to work.”
We left the dressing room together and as we crossed the floor, I had a glimpse of a graceful wraith in gray, moving before a middle-aged woman who would later be disappointed because that frock declined to make her look like Carla.
The model was a downright menace, I thought unhappily. What chance would a girl with only moderately good looks have against something like that in the eyes of Bill Thorne? I hadn’t thought seriously about meaning anything to Bill until that moment. Not consciously, anyway. I didn’t like men much any more. After Monty, I was a badly disillusioned woman. I certainly didn’t want to get my emotions tangled up over somebody new.
Chris was talking persistently and finally broke through my daze.
“So you will help me, won’t you? I’m sure the janitor will let us in. And now that the police won’t be watching the place—”
“What place?” I asked. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“My goodness!” Chris said. “Weren’t you even listening? Monty’s apartment, of course. I want to go out there tonight. Before we go to Sondo’s. Linell, I just have to set my mind at rest. Maybe there’s nothing. But if there is, I want to find it before the police let Tony go and start all over again.”
“Oh, all right,” I agreed. “I suppose it’s perfectly legal for a wife to go into her husband’s apartment. I certainly can’t see any harm in it.”
Chris gave my arm a little squeeze of gratitude. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. I’d never dare get into all these things alone. I’ll meet you downstairs at closing time.”
I left her, feeling exasperated. It seemed to me that I’d spent half my time lately flying around after Chris like the tail of a kite.
13
Chris had the little roadster Owen had given her the year before and it didn’t take us long to reach the apartment building where Monty had lived. There was no police guard on duty and as the janitor recognized Chris, we had no difficulty getting into the apartment.
I had no heart for the expedition. The afternoon at the store had been uneventful, but I had a heavy uneasiness hanging over me because of Sondo’s party. Shortly before closing time I ran down to let Helena know I was going with Chris, and I’d found her weighted down with gloom, too. And then there was the matter of Bill and Carla having supper together, and goodness knows what would come of that.
So when the janitor opened the door for us and Chris switched on lights and led the way in, I was in no cheerful, or adventuresome mood.
There is something terribly depressing about going into rooms that have been left by someone who was alive and who expected to return to them, but will now never return.
The apartment was attractively furnished in deep tones of brown and green. Monty had had sophistication and good taste and these were the rooms of a man who had read much and had a diversity of interests.
There was much with which I was familiar. On his desk lay a book I’d given him on Egyptian art at a time when he’d been interested in using that motif in his windows. Above the mantel hung a rather violent painting in tempera that Sondo had done. A brilliant Mexican scene of cactus and blazing sky, with a little pile of bleached bones lying on desert sand in the foreground. I remembered it quite well because it had hung in one of our windows and I’d disliked it then. I hadn’t known Monty had taken it for the place of honor in his own apartment.
Chris stood beside me looking up at the painting. “It’s horrid, isn’t it? All those greens and yellows. I hated it the minute I saw it, but Monty liked it.”
She turned away and looked about the room, shivering, though it wasn’t cold. I knew the strain it must be for her to come back to this place she had shared so briefly and unhappily with Michael Montgomery. There were even a few of her own things scattered about, but unrooted, not belonging.
A pipe lay on the smoking stand and Chris picked it up gently, caressed the bowl with the palm of one hand. My heart ached. She was so young and she had been so badly cheated. By Monty himself, who had not loved her. By life, which had taken Monty away from her. Sondo, too, had been painfully cheated, but how different her reaction.
In Chris there seemed to be nothing of bitterness, nothing of real hatred against the murderer. She had suffered the wild, uncontrolled grief of a child, but she had shown more bitterness against Carla that afternoon than she’d ever displayed toward the unknown murderer. With Sondo it was different. There was no softness there, no time wasted on tears. She was bitter and violent—like her painting. And I was beginning to be more and more apprehensive of the evening ahead of us.
“Perhaps you’d better do what you came to do,” I said.
She seemed reluctant to move, as if she dreaded to find whatever it was she had come for. The memories she had of these rooms—not pleasant ones, certainly—were more acceptable to her than the terrible fact of Monty’s death.
“Have you changed your mind?” I asked. “If you’d rather not go ahead—”
But she seemed to pull herself together. “I must,” she said. “I must know.”
She went directly to Monty’s desk, and pulled out a middle drawer filled with letters and clippings, and dumped the whole batch out on top of the desk. Then with a heavy brass paper knife she went to work prying something loose at the bottom of the drawer.
“The police didn’t find it,” she said thankfully. “This is where Monty told me to look.”
A thin layer of plywood fitted tightly over the real bottom of the drawer. Chris got it out with the paper knife and I leaned over to see.
There wasn’t much there. Two letters and a newspaper clipping. Chris took them out with trembling hands. We sat down on the couch before the empty fireplace and looked over our find.
First the clipping. It was from a New York paper, nearly a year old, and men
tioned the theft of some valuable fur coats during a style show presented by a big Fifth Avenue store.
“Does it mean anything to you?” Chris asked.
“Only that it’s the store Monty came from before he worked for Cunningham’s,” I said.
“But why would he keep anything like that in such a secret place?”
My guess was as good as hers and Chris spread one of the letters on her knee so that we could read it together. It was typewritten and began curtly, without salutation. The signature was merely a typed initial.
Michael:
It is almost weird to find the old set-up again. Though the actors have changed their positions, and even their identities, all the potentialities for danger still exist.
I have promised to do nothing, to betray nothing—though not for your sake. But walk carefully. There is still the ring.
E.
Again Chris and I exchanged looks. Unless she was acting a part, the note had no more meaning for her than it had for me. There was just that one ominous phrase: “There is still the ring.”
I sat up suddenly. “Chris, this must be it! It ties up directly with the murder.”
“But what does it mean?” Chris demanded.
“Somebody’s not telling what he knows,” I pointed out. “This proves how important the ring is.” Then I knew.
“Of course!” I cried in excitement. “It’s the stone of the ring that counts—to someone who was in the window when Monty was murdered. I found one fragment, but the larger part was missing, so it must have been that which dropped into the phonograph and gave it a queer sound. It would have been the stone the murderer was after when he went out to Universal last night and smashed the wrong phonograph. And if that’s true, then—then Sondo has the answer!”
Chris was listening to me, but without open interest. Later, when the secret of the ring was to be placed so strangely in my hands, I was to try again and again to recall the expression of her face, the way she had reacted. At the time, though her lack of interest puzzled me, I thought she had something else on her mind and this was not the clue she sought.
The Red Carnelian Page 13
