Serena laughed with very evident sincerity.
“No, Jeff. That’s not funny, agreed; you can’t seem to see what is funny. It’s your whole verbose tirade, which would be a bore and a nuisance if it weren’t so completely ludicrous.” Then her mockery rang. “Delicate situation, is it? Delicate situation, indeed! We’d better tell him, Dave.”
“But—!”
“We’d better tell him, I say, or he’ll only hear from Ira and draw the wrong conclusions. It’s not delicate; it’s not important; it’s nothing at all.”
“That part of it, you mean?” asked Dave.
“That part of it, of course. As technically head of the house now, you’d better tell him yourself. Then two of his hideous perplexities, my supposed clumsiness of speech and the awful date May 1st, will both be resolved at once. Speak up. King David of Israel! Indulge your habitual loquacity, for once with my blessing.”
Dave seemed to brace himself.
“All right; I was being funny about Sabatini! But, if Serena did refer to anybody called Merriman,” he looked at Jeff, “she didn’t mean the Seton Merriman who wrote Barlasch of the Guard. She meant Earl G. Merriman of St. Louis, Missouri. He may be a barbarian of sorts, but he’s made us a very fair offer and we’ve promised him our decision by May 1st. You see, Jeff, we’re probably selling Delys Hall.”
4
WHEN JEFF WENT down to breakfast at shortly past nine on Tuesday morning, few questions had been answered and few attitudes made clear.
It had been two A.M. before he left Serena and Dave sitting moodily in the letter’s room, a thick restraint on them both. Nor were tempers improved by thrashing round and round in the same old circle.
“No, really, now!” Serena had said, with a shivering kind of airiness. “I can see what you must be thinking, Jeff, but you’re wrong. There’s no financial difficulty, truly there’s not! Father may have made one or two small investments that weren’t wise, but the bulk of the estate remains untouched. We can still be supported in the style to which we’re accustomed; Dave needn’t find a job and I won’t have to take in washing.”
“All the same,” protested Jeff, “to sell Delys Hall …”
“Of course we’re selling, my poor romantic idiot! I’m bored and fed up with the place; I’ve been bored and fed up for a long time. It’s so phony, so essentially bogus—!”
Here Dave had intervened.
“The Hall has its disadvantages; I agree we ought to sell. But what’s phony or bogus?”
“Dressing the place up with a lot of period furniture? Pretending we’re feudal lords of the manor with centuries of history behind us?”
Dave brooded.
“There’s been a great joke,” he reminded her, “about the nouveau riche countryman of ours, real or imaginary, who imported a fourteenth-century castle for his Idaho estate. But I’ve always felt a sneaking kind of sympathy for the fellow, who must have been very much like Earl George Merriman. Anyway, it’s not the same thing.”
“No, Dave?”
“No, Serena. As Jeff and I have both remarked, the Hall looks old and is old; it’s never seemed out of place where it is, as a feudal castle would seem in Idaho or anywhere else. Those three and a half centuries of history (more than three and a half!) aren’t a joke or a myth; they’re real. Don’t look so damn superior, little sister! You’re the one who—”
Dave stopped suddenly, as though he had almost made a slip, and turned towards Jeff.
“But this is just arguing in a vacuum, old son! Does it make any difference whether or not we sell the place?”
“It does to the question under consideration. You may be selling the Hall; you may be selling anything. Regardless of that, where’s the delicate situation or the matter of great importance?”
“There isn’t any,” Serena told him. “It’s only Ira Rutledge’s lawyer talk, you know.”
“It’s Dave’s talk too, don’t forget. Whatever you sell or don’t sell, how can it possibly affect me and one other person outside the family?”
“More lawyer talk, I daresay.” Serena drew herself up. “If there should turn out to be a little something behind it, no doubt you’ll have your curiosity satisfied at the proper time. I wouldn’t tell you even if I knew; you’re too horribly impatient for your own good.”
And so, presently, Jeff had left them.
He slept well, if he slept for little more than six hours. In a morning of bright sun on the water outside, he shaved, showered, and dressed at leisure. He was headed for breakfast when he remembered leaving his wrist-watch on a shelf beside the shower-stall in the little bathroom. But he need not go back for the watch now; he could always get it after breakfast. And Jeff noted something else at the same time.
He had gone indoors again on the cabin deck, entering the forward cabin lounge on his way to the Plantation Room below, when he became conscious of a stocky, middle-aged, bald-headed man seated alone near the purser’s office on the one-whistle side.
Jeff’s eye passed on incuriously. He had reached the grand staircase, a sweep of brass-bound mahogany treads between curving mahogany banister-rails, and had taken one step down when something made him glance across the lounge. The middle-aged man, who wore a heavy moustache more suited to some past generation than to the clean-shaven present, had stood up and was looking in Jeff’s direction with a concentration of interest as obvious as inexplicable. Finding himself observed, he instantly sat down again and became busy at lighting a cigar. Jeff hastened on down to the Plantation Room.
Though most passengers had finished breakfast and gone, some few still lingered amid a light murmur of talk. At his own table Jeff found Serena Hobart and Charles Saylor sitting over the last of their coffee. At another table for four across the room, also alone, Kate Keith and Dave Hobart seemed to be conferring.
Serena did not look as though she had slept well; last night’s shadow still haunted her. But she greeted the newcomer with much of her customary aplomb.
“Dave’s found a place for himself, as you see. Dave usually does, even if it’s the wrong place. Sit down, Jeff. I must run along in a moment, but Chuck here wants a word with you. You’ll use discretion about what you tell him, I hope?”
“With your example in mind, Serena, I could hardly do anything else.”
As he finished ordering bacon, eggs, toast, and coffee, Jeff saw Serena’s gaze move past his shoulder towards the stairs. Briefly he craned round.
The heavily moustached man of the lounge, cigar still unlighted between the fingers of his left hand, stood on the steps and surveyed the other side of the dining-room. After a moment’s further inspection, he turned and tramped upstairs.
“That character with the moustache, Serena …”
“Yes?”
“As I passed him on my way down, for some reason or other he had his eye on me.”
“You’re not the only one, you know. When he was having breakfast not long ago, he very much had his eye on me. I may have imagined it, but I don’t think so.”
“Any idea who he is?”
“No, none at all. But I can easily find out. And now I must run. A’voir, good people! See you later!”
Away she went, trim in a gray tailored suit, the alligator-skin handbag under her arm.
Large, friendly Mr. Saylor did not speak until Jeff had finished eating, though he seemed to hover as though awaiting opportunity. At length he offered his companion a cigarette, took one himself, and lit both.
“There, that’s better! Serena’s right, you know. I do want a word with you; I wanted one yesterday. But it seemed kind of crude to remind you at once. And, anyway, I promised Serena I wouldn’t. The fact is, you see … do you mind if I call you Jeff?”
“No, not at all.”
“The fact is, you see, I’m a writer too. Magazine articles, mostly: that kind of thing. Not a bad deal, either, since I’ve been lucky enough to make the big slicks.”
“Magazine articles, you say? Are you on an a
ssignment now?”
The other’s strong sense of drama kindled at once.
“Stately homes of our own country!” he proclaimed. “Why go abroad for history and legend, when we’ve got ’em right here at home? ‘On the left bank of the Mississippi, not far from picturesque New Orleans …’”
“Delys Hall, naturally?”
“Delys Hall, naturally, among others. You can do most of the research at any good public library, without needing to bother people very much. But I’m going to feature Delys Hall. So much has been written about the place, not only in New Orleans, that I was pretty well informed before I decided to go down the river and soak up atmosphere. On Sunday evening, when I met Serena at the Netherland Plaza Hotel in Cincinnati, and learned who she is …”
“We were all at the Netherland Plaza, it seems. How has Serena taken your questioning so far?”
Saylor looked uncomfortable.
“She hasn’t been very cooperative, I admit. But then she hasn’t warned me off either.”
“If you can’t get answers from a member of the family, what sort of answers do you expect to get from me?”
“None at all! Nothing, that is, you yourself wouldn’t be allowed to publish if you got permission. So help me God,” swore the large young man, with an air of virtue beyond corruption, “I won’t even ask to go inside the infernal place, if she doesn’t want me to! Listen, Jeff,” he continued, crushing out a cigarette he had only just lighted, and immediately lighting another, “I’ve never got anybody sore by one word I’ve ever written, and I’m proud of the record.”
“Well, that’s something.”
“You bet it is! What really interests me, and would interest any number of readers, is this tale of a secret room, or a secret hiding place of some kind. There’s only one man in America who’s a real authority on architectural tricks like that; if the worst comes to the worst, which I hope it won’t, I can always write to him.
“Then, again, there’s the story of a mysterious death seventeen years ago. Some visitor named Peters or Peterson was carrying a load of silverware up the stairs when he fell and broke his neck. Quite a business, eh?”
Sudden alarm rang at the back of Jeff’s mind.
“Where did you pick up that story?”
“Oh, not in the newspaper files; there’s no confirmation about the load of silver. However, a friend of mine—he’s an old man now, but he used to live in New Orleans—gave me the real dope. He said it was just one of those things always known to anybody really in the know, but not published or talked about. Jeff, what imaginative treatment could do with a killer force on a haunted staircase … !”
Jeff rapped the table with his knuckles.
“Now just a moment, Mr. Thoroughgoing Researcher! Though I’m not very familiar with magazines or their requirements, are you sure you know what you’re doing? Suppose you prepared your account of the mysterious death, adding every grisly detail you could dig out or dream up, would any responsible editor publish such a tale when you couldn’t substantiate the most important part?”
Sandy-haired Chuck Saylor regarded him in horror.
“You don’t think I intend to write about it, do you?”
“Isn’t that the idea?”
“No, it is not the idea. Sweet, suffering Moses, never in this world! Serena’s father died only a few months ago. She didn’t take it much to heart, as you may have noticed. But that’s got nothing to do with the price of eggs. Am I such a heel that I’d risk upsetting the girl by talking about anybody’s mysterious death, though it wasn’t a death in the family and occurred as far back as 1910?”
“Thanks. That’s better.”
“Whereas,” argued Mr. Saylor, concentrating his energies, “the business about a secret room is very different. Serena’s grandfather was an old crook, a pirate on the Spanish Main or something; I must be sure of my facts. If he did have such a thing built at Delys Hall, or found one there when he took the place apart, I want to know what’s what. The report of a secret room has never been any secret at all, has it?”
“No very deep secret, at least. You won’t make yourself widely popular if you describe Commodore Hobart as an old crook, but …”
“Don’t let it worry you, Jeff. I won’t describe the old bastard as anything that could be offensive. And I can show legitimate interest in the secret room, hideyhole, or whatever it is. Much the same story, only more elaborate and with trimmings, has been told for centuries about Glamis Castle in Scotland.”
Jeff rose to a point of order.
“Not Glam-is, if you don’t mind. The name is pronounced Glams, in one syllable to rhyme with psalms.”
The other uttered a wail of agony.
“These damn British pronunciations!” he cried, groping as though dazed. “They just won’t say any name the way it’s spelled!”
“Don’t we do exactly the same thing? Judged by spelling alone, how would any erudite foreigner pronounce Connecticut or Arkansas?”
“We do it occasionally, I admit. They do it all the damn time, and get sore if you claim it’s nuts. Cholmondoley is Chumley, Cavendish is Candish …”
“Not Candish, again if you don’t mind. They said Candish in Thackeray’s time; we have Thackeray’s testimony they did. In London today, if you asked the way to Cavendish Square and called it Candish, they’d either correct you or ask which square you meant.”
“Look!” urged an excited investigator, keeping his voice down but speaking with powerful persuasiveness. “Let’s not argue about it, shall we? But Glamis, which I’ll call Glams to please the Old South, opens up a new line of thought. Glams was one of Macbeth’s castles, I seem to remember, though it mayn’t have been the place where they bumped off King Duncan. Still, old Macbeth was a great one for rubbing ’em out and leaving no witnesses. Now if there should be a murder at Delys Hall, or if the killer staircase worked again … !”
“Murder? Who said anything about murder?”
“Not your obedient servant; I haven’t opened my mouth, and I’m not going to. Anyway, that would be news; I don’t deal in news. Again don’t worry; it’s not going to happen, and wouldn’t be very funny if it did. But I was just thinking that—” Suddenly he broke off, listening. “Here! What’s that?”
Jeff also listened.
“If you mean the music or alleged music we hear from outside—Beautiful Ohio—it comes from a famous steamboat institution: the calliope.”
“Steam calliope, eh? Like the one in circuses?”
“Something like that. If you care to go up on deck, you can watch the steam as well as listen. It plays as we approach or leave river towns.”
Saylor pondered for a long moment.
“One Christmas Eve, back in West Philadelphia years ago, some pious souls or would-be humorists hired a circus-wagon calliope to roll through the streets as late as possible, waking everybody up with its deafening version of Silent Night. Where they found a circus-wagon towards the end of December would make a story in itself.
“Yes,” he added, stubbing out his cigarette and getting up, “I figured it must be the calliope. Also, from what Serena was telling me, our first stop will be Louisville. Going ashore?”
“Not this time, I think. You?”
“Yes; I’d like to stretch my legs a little. Well …”
Jeff glanced across the room; both Kate and Dave had gone.
“Well, old sobersides,” prompted Saylor, still hesitating, “will that be all? Any further hints or instructions for my benefit?”
“Only one. When you meet Serena, or her brother either, you might curb that feverish fancy of yours. Don’t tell ’em what you wouldn’t for a moment think of saying, especially about murders and a killer staircase.”
The other ruffled up his sandy hair.
“How many times,” he insisted, “must I tell you to quit worrying? It’s all right. I’m not one to make irresponsible suggestions or misinterpret facts, as must be very plain. And I don’t want troub
le for anybody, least of all for myself. Just trust Uncle Chuck to handle things, which will then be as merry as a marriage-bell. And so,” he concluded, as though making himself radiantly clear, “until Townsend finds that secret room and we all meet together on a peak in Darien, fare ye well with full consciousness of good works!”
Away went Saylor, making faces over his shoulder.
Jeff ordered more coffee. He sipped it slowly, and continued to sip as the Bayou Queen slid to her landing-stage at the left bank, where tall warehouses cut off any immediate view from the Plantation Room windows. An offstage bustle began; thuds, creaks, chain-rattlings attested the activity of the deck crew.
Presently Jeff finished the coffee and nodded to their waiter. Mounting the stairs in his turn, he sought first the open air of the cabin deck on the side away from shore, then the open air of the texas above. Here Kate and Dave Hobart accosted him at once. The latter, wearing a blue blazer, tennis flannels, and the look of one spiritually rumpled, laid a detaining hand on Jeff’s arm.
“Easy, Dave! What’s the matter?”
“We’re being followed, that’s what. Not right now, maybe, but you should have been here a while back.”
“Followed?”
“This tub,” Dave explained, “is two hundred and fifty feet long, two hundred and eighty-five if you count the paddle-wheel. Kate and I thought we’d do ten circuits of the deck as a slight constitutional. And there he was behind us, twenty feet back but keeping up a steady pace …”
“Who was, Dave? What are you talking about?”
“Nobody seems to know who he is. Might be a naval petty officer or an army sergeant in mufti. Might be an old-fashioned bartender, with that moustache. Looks a little like all of ’em.”
Deadly Hall Page 5
