They were all a little hysterical, I think, although the fact that Uncle Alger had gone down to the wine cellar and broached a few bottles of sweet muscatel wine might have had something to do with it.
Mabel Cameron was crying happily. “I want you all to come to the wedding!” she was saying. “Every one of you…. He’s awfully nice, Edward is. And we’ve waited so long, so very long…. We had to wait, be—cause Edward has a mother and sister to support. But—now I—I mean we—can buy out a garage on a good location, a really good location where there’s lots of through traffic….”
Uncle Alger and Eustace were engaged in a loud and friendly quarrel as to the make of car that was to be purchased for Eustace. “All right, you don’t have to go to West Point if you don’t want to go to West Point,” Uncle Alger told his son. “But you mark my words, when Fascism comes to this country it’s the army officers who are going to give the orders! If you want to get your education driving hell-bent around Los Angeles after the girls, that’s your own funeral.”
“I want a Rolls or a Bentley,” Eustace repeated doggedly. “I don’t care where you send me to school, Dad, if you get me a hot enough car.”
The Waldrons were off by themselves at the end of the table, a certain air of grim satisfaction hovering over them. Yet they did not announce their plans. I would have been willing to hazard a guess that they included a bright future for the talented Sidney.
It was perhaps Aunt Evelyn who was gayest of all. Acting upon a sudden impulse she rose to her feet, rushed up the stairs, and at once reappeared with her jewel case in her hands.
“I want you all to see!” she cried excitedly. And then, when all eyes were on her, she took a tiny key from a ribbon around her neck and unlocked the box.
We moved forward curiously, and saw that it was empty. No, not quite empty, for there was a sheaf of perhaps twenty or thirty pawn tickets in the bottom.
“Tickets for every piece of jewelry I ever owned!” Aunt Evelyn caroled. “And there’s still time to redeem them! I’ll have them back! They’ll be mine again!” Aunt Evelyn smiled, an expression on her face which suggested the cat who has just found the trick to opening a canary cage. “Won’t Santa Barbara blow wide open this season!”
Dorothy, standing beside me, breathed one word—“Pigs!” and ran up the stairs toward her room. I knew how she must be taking this. It was the rainbow’s end for the others—dreams come true, with a regular income as long as they lived. She was thinking of Mildred, and of how that strange, dark-haired child with the frightened voice would have rejoiced… if she had not been dead.
“She’s wrong, though,” I told Todd. “They’re not pigs. Money—even this comparatively small amount of money—means happiness to every one of them. It would to us—at least to me—if it were not for the tragedy of Mildred. A lot of lives are cramped and spoiled for lack of money—so were these, like Mabel’s.”
He nodded, but I saw that Todd’s mind was far away. Then he looked at me, drew me back away from the dining-room door. “Alan,” he demanded, “what do you remember about Gilbert?”
“Only that he was an objectionable child, with pimples,” I said. “Of his later years I can tell you little, except that I once heard that he had a job in Chicago jerking soda.”
Todd nodded thoughtfully. “You wouldn’t think him an athlete?”
I shook my head.
“That’s that,” Todd decided. “It’s a cinch he couldn’t do a broad jump of more than, say, twelve feet?”
“What?”
“That’s the best I can do,” Todd confessed. “And I’m in fairly good condition.”
I stared at him, wondering if his mind was going. Then suddenly it came to me.
“Kosy Kottage!”
He nodded. “But there’s a good fifteen feet between the edge of the bank and the edge of that island,” he said. “We know that nobody walked across, because there are no tracks in the mud. We know that nobody jumped across, because it’s about three feet too far. And as for wings…”
“Anyway, Gilbert is dead!” I reminded him. “Don’t go swallowing camels and straining at gnats, or whatever it is.”
“There are two or three camels to be swallowed,” Todd said. “Or to go through the eye of a needle, or something.” He waved his hand, that lean and beautiful hand. “What I mean is—somewhere in this investigation you and I have gone off the track. Taken a wooden nickel—fallen for a tar baby, if you remember your Uncle Remus. Someone—the murderer—has led us down the garden path.”
“So?” I said expectantly.
“So I’m going to backtrack,” Todd told me. “I’m going to try to find just where it was that you and I got off the trail. Go on to bed. I’m going to lock myself in the library and think this thing out over a pipe.”
It must have been a long pipe, and a deep one, for Todd did not come up to bed that night. I wakened as the first pale light of dawn entered the window, having forgotten to draw the shade. Nervous and apprehensive, I hastily dressed.
It was after six. I tiptoed down the hall, down the stairs. There was a light under the library door. “Todd!” I called.
A new Todd Cameron opened that door—as different as one man can possibly be from himself. In spite of his night’s vigil Todd was crisp, tense, on his toes. His eyes were bright, his voice steady. The room was blue-gray with tobacco smoke, and the ash trays brimmed with dottle.
“Tell me, for God’s sake!” was the first thing I said.
But Todd only smiled.
“You arrived in the nick of time,” he said. “I was just going up to waken you. Alan, have you got a gun ?”
I stared at him. “Why, yes! But it’s just a .22 on a .38 frame. I’ve carried it for years—ever since I was held up in my car.”
“But it wasn’t in the car when it burned?”
I admitted that. “There didn’t seem any use in admitting that I’ve kept it in the room,” I confessed.
“Get it!” Todd said. We went upstairs, and I produced the little gun from its resting place amid my clean shirts. Todd took it, flicked open the cylinder, and nodded.
“Come on!” he said.
He led the way down the hall. Then he paused. “I’ve read a lot about the operations of what the movies and the criminal world call ‘G-men,’” he said, with a faint smile. “They believe in making raids at the zero hour—just at dawn, when the suspect is off guard, relaxed, likely to break. It’s an idea, eh?”
He went on, then paused suddenly outside the door of the room shared by Ely Waldron and his wife.
“But, Todd,” I protested, “they can’t be—I mean—”
“I have everything straight,” Todd said slowly. “But there’s one detail to iron out.” He knocked heavily on the door. Then he tried the knob. It was, of course, locked.
“Open up!” Todd called.
There were sounds inside the room, and then the pad of bare feet on the floor. The door opened, and Ely Waldron stood facing us, in an old-fashioned nightshirt.
Todd pushed past him, and I followed. Fay sat up in bed, clutching the covers around her. She burbled unintelligible things indicative of anger, surprise…
“What’s happened?” Ely was gasping.
“Nothing, yet,” Todd said. “But everything is going to happen, and suddenly. The lid is blowing off, my dear cousins.”
“The idea of bursting in here…” Fay began.
Todd, his hand in his pocket where I knew he held the gun, moved closer to her. “Will you answer a couple of questions?” he demanded. “For me—instead of for the police?”
Fay said that she had never heard of such a thing, and demanded that Ely throw us both out. Ely sat on the edge of the bed and shivered.
“What about the Sevenoaks Sanitarium?” demanded Todd.
Fay Waldron blanched but did not answer.
I fell into the spirit of the thing. “Yes,” I said, “and what were you and Ely talking about when you said something like ‘It
’s too late to stop now,’ and ‘If it’s got to be done it’s got to be done!’ Then I heard you say, ‘This is no time to be sentimental, I’ve been planning this for years!’”
Ely Waldron cleared his throat nervously. Fay stared at us, as if she had never seen us before.
“What,” said Todd quickly, “do you intend to do with your share of the income from the trust fund? Why did you need it so desperately?”
There was a long, long silence.
Then Fay Waldron looked at her husband. “Get the picture, Ely.” He went over to the bureau, took down the picture of the boy that had been shown to us several days before.
“Look at it!” demanded Fay. We looked.
“Well?” she asked.
I shook my head. “What…?”
“Can’t you see?” she said wearily. “I thought everyone could see. I thought you were all being kind by not mentioning it. He’s the most talented child, and he’s smart as a whip, but—”
She choked, and went on: “But Sidney, you see, was born deaf and dumb.”
Todd looked at me, and I at him. “The doctors say that there’s a chance, one chance in ten, that a very expensive brain operation will make him speak,” the woman went on in an even conversational tone.
There was nothing we could answer to that. “Now you know,” said Fay. “Don’t think there’s anything I’d stop at to help my son. Because there isn’t. I’d murder everybody in this house if it would save him. I give thanks on my knees that Joel Cameron died and made it possible to arrange for an operation for Sidney at Sevenoaks.”
“But we didn’t set that fire,” Ely Waldron put in.
“No,” said Fay. She drew herself up in the bed. “And now,” she said evenly, “will you two busybodies oblige me by getting the hell out of here?”
There was in her voice all the emphasis which comes when a person usually not addicted to profanity breaks loose. We got out of there.
“A blank!” I told Todd when we were in the hall.
He looked at me. “No, Alan. Not a blank at all. We’ve simply filled in the blanks. We’ve answered some questions that had to be answered.”
“And that leaves?”
Todd smiled. “I’m afraid it leaves a dentist up at Laguna Beach—a dentist who’s waiting to answer a few more questions.”
“What questions?” I insisted. “After all, Todd, you might play fair with me.”
He nodded. “My first question will be to ask Dr Garvey why he has his pretty secretary send out statements on the twenty-seventh of the month instead of the first. From that point on it will be simply a matter of inspiration.” Todd looked at his strap watch. “Seven o’clock,” he said. “How early can one decently telephone a man, Alan?”
I suggested eight o’clock as the deadline. Todd nodded. “Very well,” he said. “In the meantime, we both missed dinner last night. How about raiding the larder and making some coffee?”
Which we did, although in the middle of things fat Pia came up the stairs and made the air sulphurous with profanity. “Damlousy!” she accused us, with variations and improvements. Oviedo finally quieted her, apologizing to us. “Pia very tired cleaning up kitchen every morning. Too many people in this house, too much steal from icebox. Every night same thing.”
“Poor Mildred,” Todd said softly. “The most pathetic thing in the whole case is that kid’s sneaking down to get something to eat because she wanted to impress everyone with her birdlike appetite at dinner.” He pushed aside his coffee.
“It’s nearly eight,” I said. “But why telephone that dentist? Why not pop in on him?”
Todd shook his head. “A little mental suggestion, my boy. Let him sweat for a few minutes, wondering why we’re coming over. Then he’ll answer questions.”
We got through via long distance to the home of Dr Leonard Garvey at Laguna. It was Todd who spoke, his voice quiet and somehow heavy with potentialities.
“We’d like a few words with you, Doctor,” he said. “Sorry to get you up at this hour, but with the funeral today there isn’t time to waste. After they once put the pieces of Uncle Joel into the vault it will take a court order to get them out.”
Todd hung up the phone. There was surprise in his face and in his voice. “The chap seems delighted to hear from us,” he said. “Told me to come right over!”
“Maybe he suspects the same thing that you suspect!” I suggested. Todd nodded gravely.
“Let’s go!” he said. “No matter if we miss the obsequies.” He led the way outdoors to the roadster. We went down the hill, past the eucalyptus, and turned right onto the coast highway.
“If you insist on being so secretive,” I told Todd, “you might at least warn me as to your purpose in borrowing my revolver. Was it for the Waldrons or for this dentist?”
“Perhaps it was for neither one,” Todd said, and bent all his attention upon his driving.
The miles rolled steadily past, a gray-green ocean ever on our left and a changeless line of rolling brown hills on the right. The road wound and twisted….
Todd seemed sure of himself. “What do you know that I don’t?” I demanded.
He shook his head. “Nothing at all,” he said. “I’m gambling, that’s all. Playing a hunch—drawing to an inside straight.” A chaparral cock dashed across the road, and Todd twisted the wheel, bringing the car cleverly back straight again after it had passed.
“After we talk to this dentist,” he said, “you’ll know as much as I’m guessing right now.”
We went on, as the sun climbed high and bright into the sky. And then suddenly we rounded a curve and saw two men in uniform standing by the side of the road. Near them was a motorcycle and sidecar, and over the edge of the embankment, twisted around a culvert, were scattered bits of white metal.
“Stop!” I cried, and Todd stopped.
One of the officers stepped forward. “Go on!” he ordered. “Nothing here to look at. Don’t block traffic!”
Somewhere in the distance was the diminishing sound of an ambulance siren.
“That smashup isn’t a Rolls—a white Rolls, is it?” I asked.
“It was a Rolls,” corrected the officer. “Nothing left of it now but junk metal. Seems there was a little heap of soft sand drifted across the road, and the driver couldn’t see it. No time to see anything at the speed he was going. Speedometer smashed at ninety. Plenty smell of liquor in the wreck, too—as usual. That makes traffic death number 683 for the year, and a couple of days yet to New Year’s….
“Oh,” said Todd Cameron. “Then the driver was—was killed?”
“Sure,” said the cop. His partner came forward. “They don’t turn over eight times at ninety miles an hour plus and stay alive,” he put in.
Todd Cameron casually lighted a cigarette and offered the pack to the officers.
“You don’t happen to know who it was, do you?” he asked.
“Don’t know his name,” said the first officer. “But they say he was a dentist up at Laguna. Out having fun with his new car, and believe me, some of his suitcases were scattered down the road for half a mile!”
“Suitcases?” Todd repeated blankly.
“Sure,” said the cop. “Even a dentist has a right to take a vacation!”
XV
FROM A PROUD TOWER in the town
Death looks gigantically down….
—EDGAR ALLAN POE
“MISSED AGAIN,” I SAID, rather unnecessarily.
Todd Cameron nodded. “Like the farmer’s son in the story, we almost heard the cowbell.” There was nothing more to do here, and we went back along the ocean, at a somewhat slower pace than we had come.
“I suppose this was an accident, too?” I wondered.
“Of course! Accidents and coincidences. Everybody in this case gets caught in a burning building, or falls out of a window, or smashes up in a car. Where’s the jeweled letter opener and the pearl-handled revolver and the kitten with its claws dipped in cyanide? Murders are sup
posed to have clues, Alan, tangible things that you can wonder about. All we had was a silver bullet and that turned out to be something else.”
Todd’s voice was bitter. For the first time since we had joined forces in an attempt to solve the murder of Uncle Joel, I felt that he was completely and utterly at a loss. Yet he had announced only a little while before that he saw the whole thing.
“What are we going to do now that you can’t ask questions of Garvey?” I asked after a moment. “Or do you want to try Mabel’s ouija board?”
He shook his head wearily.
“It was just a rotten break for us,” I went on, “that Dr Garvey happened to be casualty number 683 this year. But if he hadn’t crashed he’d have been out of our reach by now, anyhow. And when a man drives the way he did—”
Todd took a curve on two wheels. “Sorry, Alan,” he apologized. “I was thinking of something.”
“A motto for our tombstones?” I demanded sourly, hanging on to the door.
Todd shook his head. “No—not that,” he grinned. “If you like I’ll give you one for Uncle Joel’s tombstone, though. How’s this?” He sank lower in his seat, gripping the wheel with one casual hand.
“Here lies the body of Uncle Joel
Who was burned to a crisp one joyous Noel,
To earth we return the blackened pieces,
And to Heaven the thanks of his nephews and nieces!”
I didn’t say anything. “Shock you, Alan?”
“Not at all,” I said, perhaps a little stiffly. “But after all, certain things are—well—”
Todd nodded. “No sense of humor. Now Uncle Joel would have had hysterics over that epitaph. He had a swell sense of humor.”
I opened my mouth to voice my opinion of Uncle Joel’s sense of humor and likewise Todd’s, but my breath was driven back down my throat as my cousin suddenly pressed his weight against the accelerator. We shot forward with a roar.
“The funeral!” he shouted to me above the roar of the motor. “It’s almost eleven o’clock.”
Omit Flowers Page 19
