Up a Winding Stair

by Dixon, H. Vernor

  “I know. It doesn’t work. I took a six down south, played in the club tournament, with a lot of nice little side bets, and parred the damned course three times in a row.” The three men, knowing what was coming, burst into laughter. Clark said, “Sure, you know. Some of the old boys protested my handicap and looked at me after that like I’d been stealing the gold out of their teeth. I could have done the same today and maybe parred the course — sometimes I do, you know — and all of you would have been suspicious of me. That right?”

  Jepley nodded. “Yes, that’s right. God, I can’t stand a man who tries to chisel on his handicap for the sake of a few bucks.”

  “Sure. That’s it. So I go down for a three and get my ears pinned back. But don’t get feeling sorry for me, gentlemen. I’ll take all of you to the cleaners one of these days.”

  Ranson, who had come in with a beautiful par, smiled with more than a little smugness as he sipped at his drink. Clark watched him from the corners of his eyes and chuckled inwardly. Ranson was going to be a perfect setup, the kind who would never know what happened to him.

  A bellboy called his name, and Clark followed him out of the room and to the lobby desk. There was a cable for him from Mrs. Nyland in Paris: “Hope you are enjoying house let me know care American Express if anything needed regards.” There was also a package, which he ripped open. He found an eight-by-ten photograph of himself. It was a very bad likeness, slightly blurred and just faintly out of focus. He frowned at it a moment, then remembered, and read the brief accompanying note: “Sorry this does not really do you justice, but if you are patient will try again sometime. Most sincerely, Faye Hicks.”

  He returned to the bar and learned that Tugwell and Jepley had had to leave. He showed the photograph to Ranson, who snickered quietly while studying it. “God,” he said, handing it back, “that woman!”

  “You know her?”

  “Do I know her! My sister likes her, for some reason or other, so every time Faye comes down from the city she has to call on Ione and I get out of the house. Hibbard, I feel sorry for him, I guess, but that Faye just rubs me wrong. Do you know her very well?”

  “I don’t know her at all. I just saw her for a few minutes the night she took this picture. Perfect strangers.”

  “That doesn’t stop her.” He leaned closer and said confidentially, “She’s on the make, that one. She hates Hibbard, but that isn’t all of it. I have a hunch alcohol has made him impotent. Anyway, she chases around. Better watch out,” he laughed. “She may have her eyes on you.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Hell, forget it. I was kidding, at least where you’re concerned.” He finished his drink and asked, “How about running over to the Beach Club with me? We can have a quick one there, then I have to take off.”

  “O.K.”

  The Beach Club, at rock-studded Stillwater ’Cove, was about a half mile from the Lodge. There were a few people at the bar, but it was a warm, sunny afternoon, so most of the guests were either swimming or lounging about the pool. Practically no one ever swam in the icy waters of the ocean, especially Beach Club members.

  Clark picked up a ginger ale and a highball at the bar and followed Ranson outside to the edge of the pool. A young woman in the water lifted her arm, waved, and called, “Ricki, darling.” She came out of the pool and walked toward them and Clark’s eyes focused on her alone and the rest of the world dissolved in a mist and she was walking endlessly toward him with all the feline grace of a jungle animal. He caught his breath sharply and felt moisture on the palms of his hands and his pulse was throbbing at his temples. No woman had ever before affected him so quickly and he knew, even then, that no one else ever would.

  She pulled a bathing cap from her head as she walked and shook her hair loose. It tumbled about her shoulders in a long page-boy cut, blue-black, glossy, with a natural sheen that caught and held the rays of the sun. She had Ranson’s coloring, a deep olive complexion, long curling lashes, wide eyes so darkly brown they appeared to be coal black, a pointed chin, and a mouth that was at once sensuous and arrogant. She was wearing but the briefest halter and skimpy, tight white trunks. Her bosom was high and firm, her arms and legs were long and slim, and her waist was so narrow that it made her rounded hips appear more generous than they really were. She walked as if she were floating, yet there was also about her the animal quality of flesh and blood and sleekly smooth skin. Clark approved thoroughly.

  She paused before them, stood on her toes to touch a cheek to Ranson’s, and pouted. “You’re late and I’m bored. What took you so long?”

  Ranson shrugged. “Not very late. We were just talking at the Lodge after the game.” She turned then, slowly, to smile at Clark and Ranson said, “My sister, Clark. Ione, Mr. Clark Holt. A new neighbor, honey. Clark recently took over the Nyland house for a year.”

  “Oh?” She placed a hand lightly in Clark’s and tilted her head slightly to one side to study him. “The neighborhood is improving. Are you married, Mr. Holt?”

  He was so conscious of the touch of her hand and the blood pounding in his veins that he had difficulty saying, “No, I’m not.”

  “How nice. Then I’ll have a whole year to work you over.” She withdrew her hand and smiled up at her brother. “You’re really sweet today, Ricki. I like your friend.”

  He laughed and asked indulgently, “Want me to wrap him up as a gift?”

  “I’ll do my own wrapping, darling.”

  “I thought you’d like him.”

  “Oh, I do. But we really must run. You know how Mother is if I’m late to one of her little binges.”

  She turned away to a bench chair by the pool, patted herself with a large towel, then slipped into a large terry-cloth robe and open wooden sandals. She knotted the robe about her slim waist as she rejoined the men, her eyes at no time having left their steady appraisal of Clark. He, meanwhile, had regained something of his composure.

  “I do hope,” she said, “that we’ll be seeing more of you, Mr. Holt.”

  “You will,” he promised.

  “Yes,” she smiled. “I know. Come along, Ricki.”

  She looked back at him once just before they disappeared through the exit, warm, challenging lights in her dark eyes. She laughed and waved and was gone.

  Clark drove home and found Joey poring over some papers in the library. Joey glanced at him with a broad, lopsided grin. “How’d it go, kid?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Was you workin’ the old slice?”

  Clark dropped into a deep leather chair and nodded. “Yeah. They always fall for it, don’t they?”

  “Well, sure. Reason is most people have trouble with a slice. No one could figure out you do it deliberate.”

  “It’s funny, though. You’d think they’d notice that the kind of slice I fake is really under control at all times.”

  Joey grunted and laughed. “Don’t credit ’em with so many brains. So it went O.K.”

  “Sure. Ricki — that’s Ranson’s nickname — probably figures I’m his pigeon. I’ll play around with him for a week or two and convince him that it might be possible for me to accidentally par the course, but that it isn’t probable. Then when I’m ready to take him he’ll go for the pitch. So how much do I lose to him before and how much do I go for on the big one?”

  Joey took a loose-leaf binder out of the desk, opened it, and studied all the figures and data he had been able to collect on Richard Ranson. He smacked his lips, squinted off into space, then said, “I’d say lose a couple centuries to him now and then. Don’t go over a grand. When you figure he’s ripe, set him up for five on a side and five for game and take him for the whole fifteen grand.”

  “You think he’ll go for that much?”

  Joey patted the binder with a pudgy thumb. “I got all the dope, kid. He don’t bet no fifteen grand every day of the week, but he’s been known to go for the heavy sugar if he figures the odds favor him ten to one. Matter of fact, I think he’l
l even go for it a second time. Kinda conceited, ain’t he?”

  “He doesn’t hate himself.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I met his sister today.”

  Joey squinted at him. “Uh-huh. I seen her around. A real queen.”

  “What about the family?”

  Joey sighed. “Well, there’s him and the sister and the old lady. Papa died six, seven years ago and left ’em roll-in’ in the green stuff. The boy got his slice when he was twenty-five. The queen gets hers when she’s the same age.” He frowned, looked into the binder, and said, “Five more years to go. That don’t help none now, huh?”

  Clark frowned, bit his lip, and got up to pace the floor. God, he wondered, why did it always have to come down to money? Always and inevitably it had to be the money that decided everything. But that was the only way out. The only possible way.

  Money had been the one great problem all his life. Born on the wrong side of the tracks, of a slatternly mother who had abandoned him shortly after, he had been raised by a father who, though kindly enough toward his child, was totally unequipped to face the realities of making a living. They had traveled from city to city, always looking for that better job, but never able to hold one for long. The constant jumping about, however, had had one beneficial influence on Clark: Every time he entered a new school he was subjected to rigorous examinations so that he could be properly placed in grade. He had therefore been one of the few public-school pupils who really knew his lessons. He skipped grades to finish high school at fifteen, then abandoned his father as his mother had done.

  A slender boy, but tall for his age, he had been caddying since he was eleven and had learned he could make a living at it. When he ran away from home he rode the rods for a year, picking up enough money to keep going at the public golf courses of the different cities. He learned how to evade the police, how to steal golf balls for extra dollars, how to cheat on the fairways and flatter a customer into overtipping and all the devious ways of getting by without working too hard for it. But he also realized that eventually he would wind up like his father and that frightened him. The idea of flying appealed to him, so he decided to make a career of aviation. He worked harder and longer than usual, saved some money, and talked his way into an excellent all-around aerodynamics college in St. Louis. He stayed with it two years and got a commercial certificate, but it was a miserable period for him.

  Flying hours cost heavily and the school was expensive. Virtually all the other students came from well-to-do families and were able to indulge in some leisure after studies. Clark had to work and work hard. He waited on tables in the school cafeteria and also worked as assistant janitor. On week ends he caddied at the country club, the first to arrive at dawn and the last to leave at dark. He had no time for friendships and began to hate the people around him, the people with leisure and money. He stayed with it, however, with grim determination, his shining goal a job on an airline.

  He almost made it. He graduated at the top of his class, scholastically head and shoulders above any other student the school had had in years. The dean himself wrote glowing letters about Clark to executive friends on the airlines. One of them called at the school on graduation day and made an offer. Clark accepted and for a few hours all bitterness was washed out of him and the two-year struggle was reduced to a brief lark and the world was a beautiful place and everyone in it was his friend and there were all those beautiful stewardesses to think about in the future.

  The next morning he received a notice from his draft board.

  It took him a year and a half to get out of the infantry and into the Air Transport Command, where he belonged. He ferried planes of all types, competently and safely, from factories to airfields, and there he remained, at the ATC field in Long Beach, California, for the duration of the war. He never went beyond second lieutenant. He was smart enough to know that pilots would be a dime a dozen after the war and lost all further interest in flying as a career. He became a lone wolf, associated with the other pilots as little as possible, and spent all his spare time working out on the surrounding golf courses. When he was discharged at the end of the war he simply changed his uniform for slacks and sweaters and continued slugging golf balls.

  He thought of it now, of how it had gone, of the one great opportunity missed, and of all the wasted years in ATC. It never entered his mind that airline pilots were no longer a dime a dozen and that he could pick up where he had left off. That would mean hard work again. He was no longer interested or eager, and besides, he now wanted much more money than an airline could pay. He wanted to see it in banks and property in his name and good clothes and cars and mansions and everything else that wealth could buy. He had to have it and as quickly as possible and no matter how he came by it.

  He looked about at his plush surroundings and could almost taste it. Five years? he thought. Too long. So she was beautiful and maybe she could be had, but five years was a long, long time. It had to be sooner than that.

  Joey was talking about something, but Clark had not been listening. He dropped back into the leather chair and said, “Wait a minute. I was thinking of something else. What were you saying?”

  Joey growled, “Ain’t you got ears? I’m talkin’ about Elsie.”

  “The maid?”

  “We got more than one Elsie around this joint? Maybe you got eight more Elsies hid out in the basement. Sure, the maid! When she went into town to do the shopping I went back in her room and looked things over. Know what I found? Newspaper clippin’s. Phoenix, Arizona. Seems liks the Phoenix bulls would like a little word with her. She’s wanted for questionin’ in a jool theft.”

  Clark had not expected anything of that sort and was surprised. “Elsie?”

  “Jees, kid, we’re gettin’ lousy with Elsies. Sure, Elsie! Anyways, I look this stuff over and find she was a housemaid in some classy joint in Arizona. Get this: Her name’s Elsie Washington Lincoln Brown. Ain’t that somethin’? So the babe she works for misses some jools one day and don’t like it none and the next day there ain’t no Elsie Washington Lincoln Brown in Arizona. So the cops would like a little word with her.”

  “I’ll be damned. I’d never have thought that. So that’s why she doesn’t like going in town and wants to stay on here so badly. I guess she feels safe here.”

  “How about our wallets, though? Are they safe, too?”

  Clark frowned and scratched thoughtfully at his chin, then smiled. “Safer than ever. I’ll let her know we know and she’ll be so scared she’ll work her head off for us.”

  “Yeah. Maybe. You talk to her.”

  “We could fire her.”

  “No, no. She don’t look like no real grifter to me. Seems like kind of a nice gal. Damn good cook, too. You talk to her.”

  “O.K.”

  But Clark was in no mood to talk things over with Elsie when she returned home. He was thinking of Ione Ranson and could not get her out of his mind. Even Elsie reminded him of Ione: black hair, black eyes, high, firm bosom, and the same slim waist. He watched her as she went in and out of the dining room during dinner and paid little attention to Joey’s chatter. Joey had been invited to a card game in Carmel, so took off immediately after the meal. Clark remained at the table, listening to the faint sounds of Elsie in the kitchen, feeling his blood beginning to stir. Hell, he thought, this is no good.

  He went into the library, switched on the radio, and tried to read a magazine. That was no good. He thought of going out somewhere and decided against it. The habit of being alone for so many years was too deeply ingrained to break. He rarely went anywhere unless for a definite purpose. Simply to go out and mingle with other people to kill an evening was beyond him. It was Saturday night, and he thought of the possibility of running into Ione somewhere. But that was no good either. She would have to be with someone. A doll like that never went anywhere alone.

  Elsie came into the library and asked if there was anything he wanted her to do. He watched her standing in t
he doorway, her legs outlined in the light shining through the soft white uniform. He shook his head. “Nothing, Elsie. Take the station wagon and go to a movie, if you want.”

  She almost gave him a friendly smile, but not quite. “No, thank you, Mr. Holt. I think I’ll just go to bed and read.”

  He thought of her in bed, of the smoothness of her satiny skin, and closed his eyes. God, to get her out of the house! “Look,” he said. “You don’t have to go to a movie. Go anywhere you want. Call on some friends.”

  “I got no friends. I think I’ll Just read in bed. Good night, Mr. Holt.”

  No crook, he thought. She couldn’t be. She was too good-looking and too nice a person for that. He opened his eyes and she was gone.

  He got angrily to his feet, snapped off the lights, and went out into the corridor to get as far away from Elsie as possible. He undressed as soon as he reached his bedroom, went through his violent exercises, and took a cold shower. But as soon as he pulled on a robe and sat on the edge of the bed he was thinking of Ione again and seeing her in the brief halter and shorts, and her body darkened slightly and merged into Elsie and the two became one so that they couldn’t be separated in his mind.

  He leaned over the bed and pushed the buzzer in the wall. A few minutes later he heard Elsie coming down the corridor and then she was in the room standing there looking at him seated on the bed. She had thrown on a white flannel robe. Her eyes were large, staring at him, with hate and fear in their depths.

  She searched his eyes for a long time, then slowly nodded her head and whispered shakily, “It’s like I thought. When I saw the papers I knew you’d ring.”

  He growled, “What papers?”

  “They weren’t back the way they should’ve been. You been in my room looking at them. You know about me.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  She continued whispering, desperately, “But it’s not like you think, Mr. Holt. I didn’t steal the bracelet. Al did.”

  “Al?”

  “He was the shofer. He drove their cars. I loved him and he said he was in love with me and one day we’d get married and I believed him. I believed anything he said.” The tears started then and she said, “He told me he was broke and just wanted to borrow the lady’s bracelet to use for security on something and he’d put it back in exactly three days. I didn’t like it, it scared me, but I believed him and the lady was out of town that week end, so I told him the combination of the jewelry safe in the wall and he went in and got the bracelet with all the diamonds ’cause I was too scared to do it for him. I didn’t know he’d been fired the night before and he just went on and skipped town with the bracelet and I never saw him again.”