Staircase 4

by Helen Reilly

  John rose to his feet. His movement distracted her. He went round the end of the sofa and crossed violet broadloom, fast and noiselessly. Gabrielle looked into the mirror again and then over her shoulder. There had been no slightest sound, but long before John reached the study door it was tight in its frame.

  He opened the door, looked out, closed it, and came back to the hearth. He threw an arm along the mantel and looked down at Gabrielle. His eyes were brilliant between half-drawn lids. Lines etched themselves from mouth corners to nose.

  “Who was it?” Gabrielle asked on a breathless note, and thought of Tony Van Ness’s effort to keep her from coming in here with John, of Joanna Middleton’s cold glance, of the general air of watchfulness in the living-room.

  John deflated her tenseness. His face had smoothed out. “What?… Oh, one of the maids, I think. But we can’t talk here. Other people will be barging in. What are you doing when you leave? Any date?”

  A date—how amusing! Such things existed in another world from which she was far removed. She said no.

  John Muir said, “What about Blake Evans? He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he? He was here for dinner tonight, was talking about you.”

  Blake Evans, with whom she had gone to school, who had squired Susan around—Gabrielle laughed. “Yes, Blake’s a friend of mine, an old friend. I went to high school with him. He’s going to marry Mark’s niece, Claire Middleton, I think—and hope. He’s nice, and Claire’s a lamb—in spite of her mother. No, I’m not going anyplace. When I leave here I’m going straight home.”

  “Good,” John said. “I’ll come over to your apartment later on, as soon as I can get away, and we can talk there in peace. This woman who was in the car with the round man may be important.” He moved toward Gabrielle, took her hands, drew her to her feet, dropped her hands, and stood back and looked at her thoughtfully. “You know, if I were you I’d keep this woman who was in the car with your round man to myself for the moment.”

  Again Gabrielle’s nerves edged. Was it possible that here, at Alice and Tyrell’s, someone had deliberately tried to eavesdrop on what she had to say to John Muir? Of course it was possible, physically anyhow. The hall outside had a powder room at one end, angled round a turn at the other. Someone could easily have slipped out into the hall from the living-room. But why do such a thing? She hadn’t attempted to conceal knowledge. On the contrary she had bombarded everyone who would listen with what she knew.

  John was waiting for her assent. His face was closed, uncommunicative. She said, “All right. I won’t say anything to anyone,” and they left Tyrell’s study and went back into the living-room.

  Voices, laughter, raised glasses, the room was still full of people. Tony Van Ness had gone, home, Gabrielle hoped, thinking apprehensively of Drake’s check in his pocket. Joanna Middleton and Claire were going. Tyrell was saying good-by to them in the foyer, but there were half a dozen new arrivals. Brenda Holmes was among them.

  Brenda, in whispering gray-green taffeta that left her lovely shoulders bare, stood beside the piano talking to Phil Bond, one white elbow propped on the darkly shining wood. Brenda was as beautiful as ever. She was, Gabrielle thought back, thirty—no, thirty-one—but time seemed to pass over her without leaving a mark on her ivory skin, the lovely oval of her face, the gleaming fair hair fastened tight to her head and gathered into a knot at the nape of her neck. Brenda’s one bad feature was her forehead. It was high and convex. She never permitted it to be seen in public, covered it with a soft fringe that effectively brought out the sea blue of her large eyes.

  Odd that Brenda Holmes had never married, Gabrielle reflected, when it was what she had been trained for from infancy. Perhaps she had set her sights too high. Gabrielle neither liked nor disliked Brenda, she was curious about her. Part of the curiosity was due to the fact that among their friends Brenda’s name had often been linked with John Muir’s.

  John caught sight of her. He left Gabrielle rather unceremoniously, with a murmured: “See you later, then,” and crossed the room. Accepting a drink from a maid circulating with a fresh tray, Gabrielle watched them meet. A welcoming smile from Brenda, a widening of the large blue eyes; she and John Muir moved away together in the direction of the dining-room.

  Gabrielle left a few minutes later, over Alice’s protest and quick reversal. “My face is frozen into a permanent grin. I’m dying on my feet. I wish they’d all go. So many bores—we do seem to accumulate them.” She looked tired and out of temper, which was unusual for her at a party. Gabrielle was back in her apartment with the door locked against chance droppers-in before ten. She wanted to be alone when John Muir got there. He had said elevenish.

  It was at exactly five minutes of eleven that the call came. Gabrielle picked up the phone and said, “Yes?” A man’s voice answered. It was a strange voice. She had never heard it before. At the first words Gabrielle stiffened. She leaned back hard against the little chair. The wooden slat cut into her shoulder. She didn’t feel it. She said, her mouth dry, “Yes, yes, I am,” and went on listening avidly.

  At about the same time, in the offices of the Homicide Squad a mile to the south and west, another call was coming in over the long-distance wires. Lieutenant Quigley said, “For you, Todhunter,” and the little detective lifted the instrument on his desk. It was the Inspector at last.

  Inspector McKee was talking from Denver. He said, “I’ve been out all evening, just got your message. What is it?”

  The Scotsman had left Todhunter in charge of a case that wasn’t a case at all but merely the ghost of a suggestion of one. On the night Mark Middleton died, at almost the moment the shot that killed him was fired, McKee’s private telephone had rung. He wasn’t in and Todhunter had answered. When Todhunter picked up the phone there was no one on the line, there was nothing but a click as the instrument on the calling end was replaced.

  McKee knew Mark Middleton well. They had been meeting for years at sports events and around town generally. It was a pleasant acquaintanceship. He had told Middleton once that if he ever needed help to come to him, and had given Middleton his unlisted number.

  In spite of the verdict of suicide, it was Todhunter’s contention that Mark Middleton had called on McKee for help, that the call for help had precipitated his death, and that it was the perpetrator who had replaced the instrument in Middleton’s apartment the evening Middleton was shot. Todhunter based his contention on the fact that the instrument in Mark Middleton’s study had been wiped clean of fingerprints. Middleton had been at home for almost half an hour before he died. He was known to have made at least one telephone call, a call to his lawyer, Philip Bond. Bond wasn’t at home but his wife had answered.

  A telephone call that had never been received wasn’t much to go on where everything else pointed to suicide, but Todhunter’s theory interested the Scotsman and he had given the little detective his head. “Got something?” he asked.

  “Looks kind of like it, Inspector.”

  “The girl?”

  “I don’t believe so,” Todhunter said. “I’m not sure, but I think someone tried to push her under a subway train this afternoon.”

  “What!”

  “Yes,” Todhunter said murmuringly, and went on to explain that he had been in Union Square at around four o’clock on other business when he caught sight of Miss Conant. He had been wanting a word with her anyhow, and he followed her into the subway. But the crowd was heavy and he lost sight of her momentarily. Then, from the ramp above he saw her again, saw… He started to describe the incident in detail.

  McKee didn’t let him finish. Flat and unaccented, his voice burned up the wire along which it traveled. “Better get over to the girl as fast as you can. She may know something. After you’ve seen her, call me back.”

  “Yes, Inspector.” Todhunter replaced the instrument. Seven minutes later he was at the door of Gabrielle’s apartment with his finger on the bell. He was too late. The bell rang on emptily in the empty apartment. Gabr
ielle Conant was not there.

  Chapter Five: Death by invitation?

  “ALL RIGHT, DRIVER, this will do, thanks.”

  The cab pulled up. Gabrielle looked at the meter, paid the man, and got out. The light on a stanchion farther along gave very little illumination. There was a stationer’s on the south side of the street. In front of it a man with a brace of spaniels was talking to a woman with a Sealyham. A few pedestrians, a dingy drugstore, a tall dark office building; beyond it a sign in red neon light above a big plate-glass window said: Jordon’s.

  It was to Jordon’s here that she had been directed to come. There were Jordon’s scattered all over the city, clean, antiseptic restaurants that dispensed short orders and orange juice and coffee. There was an innocuousness about a Jordon’s that made Gabrielle consent to one as a meeting-place. She put her purse under her arm, brushed blowing hair from her forehead, and crossed an uneven stretch of pavement.

  Warm air hit her. It smelled of vanilla and cigarette smoke and sizzling ham. There was a counter down the left-hand side of the big oblong interior. Indirect lighting beat back from the white ceiling, the white tiled floor, the white tiled walls. The place was sparsely filled; a few couples were eating and drinking in booths against the walls; three men and a dog were at the near end of the counter, a stout woman in purple in the middle of it. Gabrielle had been told to sit at the counter. She went past the woman in purple, mounted a stool at the far end, and put down her gloves and purse.

  The counterman finished a remark about the Chicago Bears to a heavy man in a gray sweater and drifted toward her, cloth in hand. He gave the white enamel a swipe. Gabrielle said, “A cup of coffee, black, please.” The man drew it, pushed it across to her. She paid him. The cash register rang.

  No one of the three men farther along did more than glance at her; no one got up out of a booth. Gabrielle turned a little on the stool so that she could watch the door. Who was going to come through it and up to her? A man, certainly; it had been a man to whom she had talked over the telephone half an hour earlier. She went laboriously back over the brief conversation, dwelling on every word of it, every intonation. The man had said, “You the party that’s trying to find the man who went to see a Mr. Middleton on the twenty-fifth of last June? Well, I can give you some dope on him, if you want it.” Gabrielle wanted it more than she wanted anything else in the world. The price could be too high. She was by no means blind to the danger she ran. An investigation into murder should be undertaken by the police and not by amateurs. But if the police closed their eyes and refused to do anything—She had said, “I do want information.” The man then told her where to meet him. “And don’t bring anyone with you. I’m not talking to a crowd.” His voice was neither educated nor the reverse. It was without a recognizable accent. He had spoken quickly and in rather a low tone, as though he didn’t want to be overheard. He had added, “I hope there’ll be something in it for me.”

  Gabrielle had no cash beyond a ten-dollar bill, a few singles, and some change. But her checkbook was in her purse. Her balance was still a little over a thousand. It was all she had. If the man she was going to meet demanded more than that she could get the money from Tyrell or from Phil Bond; Phil had told her to come to him if she needed any. It would be Mark’s money, but what better use could she put it to than to track down his murderer?

  The door opened. Cold air swept in in a refreshing shaft. A thin blond man in his forties sauntered in with it. He took a stool three down, ordered a Coke, and began to talk about his arthritis to the counterman. The blond man kept looking at Gabrielle in the mirror. He made no attempt to approach her. He looked at her as the men farther along had looked at her, curiously, evidently wondering what she was doing in a place like that alone at that hour of the night. Gabrielle had changed hastily. She was conscious of hatless head, the ribbon in her hair. She rearranged folds of her polo coat, propped an elbow on the counter, and lit a cigarette. Her cheeks began to burn. She was embarrassed, uneasy. It was almost half-past eleven, and the man on the telephone had said a quarter past. Where was he? Why didn’t he come? She wasn’t afraid. The place was too open, too brightly lighted, for it to be any sort of trap. That was why she had agreed to it as a meeting-place.

  There weren’t too many women, most of the customers were men. She was sorry when the woman in purple got up and went out. That left a blond girl in a booth, a dark girl wearing a scarf at a table near the kitchen, and a heavy gray-haired woman in a battered hat on her way to or from her cleaning chores in a neighboring office building. Someone put a coin in the juke box and the blonde beat time to the music and began to sing in a low voice. Above the coffee urn the minute hand on the electric clock moved in tiny leaps like an insect jumping from stone to stone. The girl in the scarf went. The man with the dog went. Three quiet, well-behaved sailors came in and ordered steaks and French fries and coffee. Gabrielle got another cup of coffee for herself. It was twenty-five minutes of twelve; it was a quarter of. Moisture that was fatigue and nervous excitement and mounting rage stung her eyes.

  On the stroke of midnight, three-quarters of an hour after she had entered Jordon’s, Gabrielle climbed down from her stool. She walked steadily to the door, opened it, and closed it behind her.

  Warmth vanished abruptly and coldness struck at her. The wind was knife-edged. The stationer’s was closed now, so was the drugstore. The man with the spaniels and the woman with the Sealyham were gone; there were no pedestrians in view at all. And no traffic. There was darkness everywhere except for the distant slit of Thirty-Fourth burning redly to the north, and the light in which she stood, thrown out and down through the big plate-glass window at her back.

  The light in which she stood… Gabrielle started to draw a breath, held it. It came to her then, sharp and clear, out of the darkness of the deserted streets, the murk, the obscurity, the emptiness—the awareness of danger. This was it. This was the plot, the plan. Get her to a certain spot, pin her there, and strike, with a bullet flashing from a car rushing at her out of blackness, or fired from some dark doorway. She tasted the danger, smelled it, felt the bite of it in her bones—and moved, darting, scarcely conscious that she did so, out of the light, out of the prominence, into obscurity off on the left. Her nerves stretched taut. She held herself tightly, lightly, ready to run, to leap back, leap forward, throw herself to one side. The danger was somewhere near, poised and waiting. She was sure of it.

  Wind beat at her. Her eyes stabbed at the surrounding darkness, picking up shades and gradations. Factories, warehouses, closed shops, in the next block an apartment house, rectangled with dim lights high above; no moon or stars. The sound of a shot—a backfire in the street. No one would raise a shade, open a window, or bother to look out. It happened every day, and got three lines in the papers, a man shot down in Brooklyn by an unknown assailant, a woman killed by a bullet on the West Side.

  Gabrielle clenched her hands inside her gloves. She couldn’t stand there indefinitely. She had to move. But which way? She was about a third of the distance along the block between Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh on Ninth Avenue. The street lamp at the corner of Twenty-sixth was a mere glimmer. There were no cabs here. She would have to go east. But if she went toward Twenty-sixth and then across she would have to pass the full glare of Jordon’s window, streaming brilliantly out on the pavement. She turned north, putting one foot in front of the other softly, careful of heel taps. Luckily she had changed into sandals.

  The street was still and hung with shadows, there was a cold scrap of a wind that flung dust in her face. The intensity of the gloom was defeating. Darkness walled it. The distant figure of a man walking hurriedly, shoulders hunched, in the canyon ahead, sparse traffic on Thirty-fourth, a million miles out in front—her eyes were fastened so intently on the safety of Thirty-fourth Street, her ears were so concentrated on the threat of approaching sound aimed at her, that she collided abruptly with a bulky object directly in her path.

  It was a bar
rel. The barrel was at the edge of the curb. The faintest of rosy glows came up from beyond it. The glow was a red lantern. There was construction going on there. Straight ahead of her a boarded tunnel opened up. People went through the tunnel in the daytime, men carrying bricks and mortar to and fro. She wasn’t going through it. The blackness filling it was impenetrable. Go out into the middle of the street.

  Gabrielle started to swivel, didn’t complete her turn.

  An arm came out of the blackness and she was pulled into it with a rough sweeping movement. She threw herself back. Her lips parted. The cry crowding her throat stayed there. A voice spoke. The voice was John Muir’s. He said very low, “Don’t scream.”

  Gabrielle rocked in nightmare. Faint redness from the lantern made John Muir a shadow on shadows. Boarding was rough under her feet. His arm was a vise around her shoulders. There was a smell of damp cement, of upturned earth, of brick dust. She got back the use of her muscles, freed herself. “John! What are you doing here?”

  “Sshh,” he said, “not so loud. Look over there.” He pointed.

  Gabrielle stared through an opening in the planks at the opposite side of the street. She could see nothing but unlighted building fronts, broken by an occasional darker rectangle, a dark gleam of glass.

  John said in her ear, “There’s a man over there in the door of that tailor shop. He trailed you here from your apartment. He was doing sentry duty up and down in front of Jordon’s. When you came out he took cover.”

  “He—followed me?”

  “Yes.” The icy wind whipped Gabrielle’s hair across her forehead. She pushed it back, shrugged deeper into her coat. Could the man across the street be the man who had telephoned to her over an hour ago? He could have called her from the drugstore on the corner of her own street and waited outside her apartment to see if she was going to do as she had been told. But why? Why bring her over here when they could have talked just as easily uptown? Was he the threat, the danger she had felt so insistently, so warningly, the moment she stepped outside Jordon’s? She could come to no decision.