“Prostrated? Very well, Miss. But might not a simple headache be more plausible?”
“Go on,” Matt urged. “See him. Greg’s a good guy, and I think you’ve pretty much played hell with him.”
“How?”
“Oh, first all this nunnery business. You’ve no notion how hard that hit him. He wasn’t himself. And if you turn him out now …”
“All right. Bunyan, show Mr. Randall out here.”
“He expressed a desire, Miss, to see you alone.”
Matt rose. “I’ll be in the study. Might as well be looking over some of those papers.”
“No,” said Concha firmly. “You stay here.”
Gregory Randall was obviously surprised to see Matt. His greeting was affable enough; but he had clearly forgotten completely what Matt had tried to force through the penumbra of his hangover on Saturday.
The conventional phrases disposed of, Gregory turned to Concha and took her hand in his. “This has been a very terrible thing,” he said earnestly.
“Yes,” said Concha, and left it at that.
“I know how you must be feeling. For a while I even wondered if I dared to intrude on your sorrow at a time like this; but I felt at least that my place was by your side. A woman needs a shoulder to weep on.” The effect aimed at was that of jocose sympathy.
“I’ve got a shoulder.” Concha freed her hand and gestured toward Matt. “Feel. It’s sopping.”
Gregory gave his friend something close to a glare. “Of course, I am glad that you had someone to—to cheer you up. But after all, no stranger is quite the same as the man one is to marry.”
“I’m afraid,” said Concha, “I wouldn’t know about that.”
“A terrible thing.” Greg reverted to his earlier theme. “Your father was a splendid man, my dear—a great man, if I may say so. His loss leaves a gap that will not be readily filled. Few men knew Wolfe Harrigan, but those of us who did know what his passing means. And above all what it must mean to you—to his family.”
“Please.”
“He was your shelter and your protection,” Gregory went on. “And now you are left exposed to the storms and buffets of the world.”
Concha smiled maliciously. “I could still go into a convent.”
“Good heavens! Do you still entertain that fantastic notion? Even now, when you—”
“No. No, a lot’s happened since Friday. Hasn’t it, Matt?”
“That’s one way of putting it,” said Matt drily.
Gregory was looking at him suspiciously. “Then you have given up the absurd idea of devoting yourself to God?”
“No. It’s just that Sister Ursula has shown me that there’s more than one way of doing that.”
“Sister Ursula? But I thought she—”
“Please. Let’s not talk about it. It’s over and that’s that. Now—Why did you come out here?”
Gregory was completely taken aback. “Why? Why, indeed! What is a man to do when his fiancee is in trouble? What could I do but—”
“Fly to my side?” Concha prompted.
“Fly to your side,” Greg repeated in all seriousness. “Exactly. My place is at your side, my dear, now and forever.”
“I think,” said Matt, “I’d better check over those papers.”
“Must you?” Greg asked hastily. “I don’t like to drive you away, old man.”
“I know. But work is work.” He started toward the window.
Concha put out a restraining hand. “No,” she said softly. “Surely, my dear,” Greg protested, “if Duncan has work to do, we have no right to interfere. Of course, his company would be pleasant, but when the voice of duty calls—”
“He’s been working too hard lately. He should stay.”
“Working? Here?”
“Yes. Mr. Harrigan took me on as an assistant. I tried to tell you all about it Saturday, but I don’t think you were up to listening.”
“No. A frightful headache,” Greg explained to the girl. “Migraine. I have it occasionally. Then,” he resumed, his eyes resting speculatively on Matt, “you were working out here on Sunday?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re—in the thick of things, so to speak?”
There was an overtone of implication which Matt resented, but decided to ignore. “Oh, yes. Hadn’t you heard? The Lieutenant’s swearing out a warrant for my arrest today.”
“Good heavens!” Randall sounded tom between shock and delight. “But in that case, old man—I mean to say, why are you still here? Why haven’t you tried to—”
“Mr. Duncan,” said Concha coolly, “is being sardonic. He thinks it goes well with his scarred face.”
“Oh! For a moment I thought you were serious. I suppose I should have known better. But heavens! to think of your having actually been here when it … And to think that I was at Mrs. Upton’s garden party quietly enjoying myself and never realizing—”
“Look,” said Concha. “Yes, I know a lady doesn’t start her speeches so abruptly. Mr. Duncan’s directness is spoiling my convent manners. But look. For the second time, why did you come here? You didn’t leave your beloved office just to say how sorry you were or look into my fair eyes or tell us about Mrs. Upton’s garden party. Why did you come here?”
“I had hoped to explain that,” said Gregory stiffly, “when Duncan went to work on his papers.”
“Which he is not going to do. Now will you tell me?”
“Look,” said Matt. “I really—”
“No! Now, Gregory …?”
“Very well. I came here, Concha, to ask you to fix a day for our wedding.”
Concha laughed. “Come now! It that seemly? Is that suitable to your position? Does a Randall fix the wedding date before even the funeral is held? Or is it thrift, Horatio? I doubt if we’ll have baked meats.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Concha. All I can see is that you are alone in the world now—”
“Surrounded by nothing but an uncle, an aunt, and a brother.”
“And you need a man to rely on. I am asking for the privilege, my dear, of sheltering you.”
“How too exciting!”
“How can you laugh at me like this? I am offering you a home and comfort and security and you—you stand there and laugh at me to my face. Yes, and grin at my friend while you’re doing it! It isn’t right, my dear.”
Gregory Randall was dull. Gregory Randall was pompous and literal and good-looking beyond the tolerance of humanity; but at the moment Matt felt deeply moved by him. This disquieting child was indeed playing hell with him; and it wasn’t a pleasant spectacle to watch.
“Look here, Concha,” Matt tried to interpose.
“You keep out of this, Duncan” Greg snapped. “What are you doing here anyway, I’d like to know. Looking over papers, indeed! A likely story!”
At that moment anything might have happened. There was a petty but nonetheless menacing tension in the air. Matt flexed his right arm in readiness as Gregory glared and shouted.
But then came a booming, “Well, well, well,” and R. Joseph Harrigan was upon them.
“Gregory!” he cried. “Good to see you, my boy!”
With a visible struggle, Gregory brought himself under control. “Good afternoon, sir. Dad asked me to express his sympathy to you.”
“That’s good of him. And good of you to come out here.”
“Not at all, sir. This is a frightful business. I can’t tell you—”
“Let’s not talk about it, my boy.”
“I feel that I should have been here. I know it’s a foolish thought; but I can’t help thinking that if I had only been here instead of at Mrs. Upton’s garden party—”
“Nonsense. Nonsense, Gregory. What could you have done? What could we do, Duncan and I? We saw that villainous fakir—saw him through those windows there—but what could we do? However, I’m afraid Mary would rather talk about something else.”
“I don’t know, Uncle Joe. The
re are even less pleasant topics.”
Joseph frowned, but probed no deeper. “Could you stay for dinner, my boy? I’m sure Ellen would be delighted to have you. There’s something of a family conference tonight; but we know that you wouldn’t be out of place. After all—”
“Gregory has a business engagement for dinner,” said Concha.
Greg stared at her and started to contradict, then changed his mind and glanced at his wristwatch. “Yes, that’s true. I’m glad you reminded me. I’m afraid I’ll have to dash, sir. Good-by, Concha.” He did not speak to Matt.
Joseph gazed after him, rubbing his tonsure-like bald spot. “Something’s the matter with that young man,” he announced. “Are you sure he came out here merely to offer his sympathy?” He bestowed upon Concha a coyly avuncular leer.
“Oh, no,” she smiled. “He came here to tell us about Mrs. Upton’s garden party.”
A sudden misgiving struck Matt. It was barely possible that that might be true.
Chapter 11
Dinner was admirable if uneventful. The cook was seemingly as unaffected as Bunyan by all that went on around her. The entire household, in fact, had assumed an excellent façade of imperturbability. The conversation at table was nowise suggestive of a house of death; it consisted solely and normally of the oratorical rotundity of Joseph, the cheap cynicism of Arthur, the quiet and pious comments of Ellen, and a few jangling discords from the unpredictable Concha.
After dinner, R. Joseph clapped Matt jovially on the shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll understand, young man. A little family conclave. We’ll be through in no time.”
Matt nodded his understanding and wandered off. He would have liked to be present at that conclave. There were interesting possibilties to it, particularly if, as he surmised, Joseph was to reveal the will. But he resigned himself to absence, and looked about for company.
He found it in the kitchen, where Officer Rafferty was enjoying a plentiful cold supper and easing its passage with a tall glass of dark and glowing bock.
The officer was evidently in a friendly mood. “Good evening, my lad,” he said expansively. “You’re the one was with the Lieutenant last night, ain’t you?”
“I am,” said Matt. “Just now nobody loves me. Can I sit here with you, or should I go out to the garden and eat worms?”
“Janet!” Rafferty called to the cook. “Another bottle of beer for the gentleman! They set a good table here,” he went on appreciatively. “My sister’s in service out in Beverly Hills, and you’d be surprised how stingy some of these rich folk are about their food.”
Janet was a plump and comely woman with pure white hair but a youngish face. As she set down the beer, she stared at Matt with overt curiosity. “You’re the one that saw him, aren’t you—along with Mr. Joseph?”
“Yes,” Matt admitted. “At least we saw something,”
“You saw him all right. When a man’s a devil it doesn’t matter how many witnesses swear he was somewheres else. And a man’d have to be a devil to kill Mr. Harrigan.”
“I don’t suppose,” Matt ventured, “that you saw anyone strange around here that day?”
“How could I and me with a Sunday dinner to get that nobody ever ate at all and that dear child coming in here to pester me to teach her how to cook?”
“Miss Harrigan was here with you when you heard us pounding on the door?”
“Indeed and she was. ‘What’s that, Janet?’ she said. ‘More’n likely Mr. Arthur playing some fool trick,’ I said. Ah, little do we know …”
“True for you, Janet,” said Rafferty as chorus.
“Did—” Matt hardly knew what he was groping for, but some inner curiosity drove him on. “Did Miss Harrigan talk to you about anything but cooking when she was in here with you?”
Janet wrinkled her brows. “It’s funny you should be asking that. She did indeed, and I’ve been wondering why. It’s like as if she had some notion of death in the air, as you might say.”
“What did she talk about?”
“About her mother. Oh, the questions she asked me—not that I could tell her much.”
“About her mother’s death, you mean?”
“Yes. You see, she was away at the convent then. She never knew, poor lamb, what her mother was like those last weeks—half blind she was, and that put out about it. She was proud, was Mrs. Harrigan—proud the way it takes a Spaniard to be. She couldn’t give up the sight of the world and her strength to get about in it. It hurt her, that it did.”
“How did Mrs. Harrigan die?”
“Now that I don’t rightly know. Her heart, I guess. It was of a Wednesday—my day off, that is. I left in the morning, and she was all right. Moody and sad, but well enough if it wasn’t for her eyes. When I came back that night she was dead, poor thing. Ah, well, she was well out of it. She could never have abided being blind and helpless; it was God’s mercy to take her.”
“True for you,” said Rafferty. “And, Janet—another beer?”
Matt noticed that his cigarette was the focus of the officer’s sharpest attention. It made him nervous.
“You’re the one that caught the Swami, too, ain’t you?” Rafferty asked with somewhat overdone casualness.
“Last Friday, you mean? Yes.”
“They can’t locate him. He’s got away clean. Sergeant Krauter was up to his apartment last night. Couldn’t find hide nor hair of him.” Still he was watching the cigarette.
“Will the Lieutenant be out here tonight? I’ve got some news for him about the Swami.”
“Have you now? But you might like to know that Sergeant Krauter did find something interesting in the apartment.”
Matt took a final puff and crushed out the short stub of his cigarette. “What was that?”
Officer Rafferty sighed relief and disappointment. “He found some cigarettes bent a funny way. I’ve seen a couple around in this house too; but I haven’t seen anybody do it yet. I thought maybe …”
“You mean smoked only about an inch or less and then bent in two?”
“Yes. You know who does that?”
“Sure. Arthur.”
The swing-door to the dining room opened to admit Lieutenant Terence Marshall. “I had an idea I’d find you here, Rafferty,” he said.
Rafferty rose to attention and relapsed into his seat at a gesture from his superior. “A man’s got to eat, Lieutenant.”
“Did I say no?” He pointed at the beer. “Is there more where that came from?”
“Sure. But listen, Lieutenant. Have I got a clew! You know who left them cigarettes in the Swami’s apartment like Krauter said? Arthur Harrigan!”
“And what does that prove?”
“Why, it proves … it proves … Well, hell, Lieutenant, it must prove something.”
“Sure. Now you go back to your post and figure out what.”
Rafferty gulped the last of his bock and retired regretfully.
The Lieutenant sat in moody silence until Matt at last ventured, “Can I offer a clew, or will I get sent out of the room, too?”
Marshall laughed. “Try it and see. I know I’m not being sweetness and light just now; but I don’t what you’d call take to this whole damned set-up. All right, what’s your clew?”
So Matt told him of the voice in the darkness of the hotel room. At the end of the story he pulled the automatic out of his holster (an ingenious improvisation from an old pair of suspenders) and handed it over.
“Same model as the other,” Marshall mused. “Our friend’s consistent. Good thing you moved out here, isn’t it?”
“Why?”
“I won’t have to put a separate guard on you. He’ll try it again, of course. We may get him that way.”
“Do you think he …?”
“Hell, no. That’s obvious on the face of it. He had nothing to do with Harrigan’s murder—his attack on you proves that.”
“Because he tries to shoot me it’s a proof that he didn’t shoot my employer? You’ll pardo
n me, Lieutenant, if I fail to follow these brilliant deductions.”
“Good God, man, an imbecile could see that!—Sorry. A bad temper is not a professional asset.”
“There’s a classic phrase for this state of affairs: ‘The police are baffled.’”
Marshall drained his glass. “It isn’t funny. And since I’ve elevated you to the rank of semi-official Watson, the least you could do is show some respect.”
Matt grinned. “O.K. by me. Tell me all, Master, and I shall listen rapt.”
“No time now. As soon as that family conference is over, I’ve got work to do. Tell you what: tomorrow’s my day off, unless something sudden breaks. If the case goes on at this pace, they can handle routine without me. So come to dinner. You’ll like my wife and you’ll like her cooking and you might even like our kid. Then we can settle down afterwards and thrash this damned thing out.”
“Glad to.”
“Fine. Here’s the address.” He scribbled it down.
Bunyan entered through the swing-door. “Mr. Harrigan asks both of you gentlemen to step into the study.”
The family conclave had apparently not been a peaceful one. Joseph’s ordinarily pink face was bright red. Arthur slouched in a corner, resolutely sulking. Concha was ominously quiet, with the stillness of repressed emotion. Only Ellen seemed serene and normal, if somewhat sniffling.
“Good evening, gentlemen!” Joseph greeted them in his best after-dinner manner (which seemed to require something of an effort at the moment). “Will you find seats for yourselves? Good. We have decided, Lieutenant, that there is no reason why we should delay in communicating to you the terms of my poor brother’s will. In so many homicide cases, as I know from professional experience, a will is of prime importance; and though that importance, as you will see, does not exist here, we appreciate the necessity of your carrying out the usual routine.
“I may add that this reading has been hardly in the nature of a surprise. Wolfe never made any secret of his testamentary dispositions—”
“Oh, yeah?” There was a snarl in Arthur’s voice.
“In principle, that is. Naturally, a few details …”
“I understand,” said Marshall. “Go on.”
Nine Times Nine Page 12
