Punch With Care

by Phoebe Atwood Taylor

  Asey nodded. “I was hopin’,” he said, “to wangle him out of the car, an’ under it. Then—wa-el, he was goin’ to be an awful greasy boy if I hadn’t spotted Cummings’s lighter in his hand!”

  “And what” Jennie inquired crisply, “do you intend to do about it? Wait all night while he gets away with it and your best car? That nasty thing, if he hadn’t left early when the project was over at our house, I’d have slapped his nasty face! Get after him, Asey—don’t you think he’ll lead you to Cummings? How would he have that lighter if he hadn’t taken it from the doc? Don’t you mean to follow him?”

  “Uh-huh, but at ten miles an hour, I can afford to let him get a mite of a start. He’s only to the traffic lights, see?” he pointed. “An’ they just went red on him. Huh, I wonder how Gerty ever fell for him! An’ why didn’t he know that was my car? I wonder—”

  “What d’you want me to do?” Jennie asked as he got into his old roadster.

  “S’pose you go along home,” Asey said, “so I can call you there if I need you. Now I’ll see where Sonny Boy’s goin’, an’ what he’s up to. An’ how he came by that lighter of the doc’s—if I have to throttle it out of him!”

  “Throttle him anyway,” Jennie said. “He needs it—and do remember the railroad station!”

  Asey swung out on the highway just as the traffic lights changed to green, and the chrome-plated roadster ahead started its slow, tortuous crawl over toward Pochet Point.

  It was, he decided, the most leisurely chase in which he had ever participated. Most of the time he found himself stopping entirely in order to keep out of sight of the car ahead.

  When they finally arrived at the point, Sonny Boy elected to turn off on a lane leading not to the Douglass’s house, but toward the shore.

  “The old boat house road, huh?” Asey murmured. “An’ a very short lane, as I remember it. I guess I’ll just stop right here an’ listen to where you go—”

  He waited until the sound of the other motor stopped, and then he parked in a clump of bushes at the side of the road, and started off on foot.

  His new roadster, he found, had been left directly in front of a boat house—but it wasn’t the rickety, tumbledown old building which he remembered from the past. This was a new model, sturdy and well-built, and well-kept in what seemed to be the Douglass tradition.

  No windows anywhere, a heavy door—you really couldn’t ask for a better place to put someone, Asey thought to himself!

  Sonny Boy was staring at the padlock on the door, fingering it uncertainly, as if he weren’t sure whether to unlock it or not.

  “Oh, make up your mind!” Asey muttered impatiently under his breath. “Make up your mind! Give me something to pin you down on! If only I just had something to hitch up you, an’ the doc, an’ this place—oh, wouldn’t I tie your ears into knots! Wouldn’t I wrap your teeth—”

  Something dangling from the branch of a pine tree near the boat house door glinted for a moment in a final burst of light from the setting sun.

  Asey stared at it in fascination.

  The only thing in the world which that dangling object resembled was a stethoscope!

  Cummings’s stethoscope?

  “Who else’s, for Pete’s sakes!”

  Asey smiled, and stepped noiselessly out from the cover of the pines.

  Five minutes later, he had finished binding and gagging Sonny Boy, and was unlocking the padlock of the boat house door with the key which he had taken from the fellow’s pocket.

  “Cummings!” he called out. “Cummings!”

  Stepping inside, he peered around the dim interior and bellowed the doctor’s name again.

  A figure rose from a couch in the far corner.

  “Ah!” Cummings said acidly. “Ah, Dr. Livingston, I presume?”

  8

  “Doc, ARE YOU OKAY?” Asey hurried over to the couch.

  “Why, I’m fine, my dear Livingston! Fine! Bully!”

  While Asey guessed that Cummings’s hearty irony had been very well rehearsed, he also conceded that there’d been plenty of spare time for him to rehearse in!

  “Probably haven’t had such a fine rest in years,” Cummings went on. “Little stuffy, of course—someone left a few dead fish in here last fall, and nature took its course with ’em. Little dull. Little dark. No good books to read and no light to read ’em by if I’d had ’em. But I’m simply delighted that there’s no chance of your catching cold—you have no idea how I’ve worried about your catching cold!”

  “Okay, doc,” Asey said. “I’ll bite. Why would you suspect I’d catch cold?”

  “Got a match? Give me that flap! D’you realize,” he said bitterly, “that I’ve been months without a cigar? No, Asey, if you’d rushed and steamed yourself into a lather just coming after old me, and then caught cold from the lather, why I’d just never have forgiven myself, that’s all! I’m glad you just took your own time and went at it leisurely and slowly, at your own sweet damn convenience!”

  “Now listen, doc!” Asey protested. “You sent me off on a fool errand for fake-faint medicine, an’ when I come back, you’ve disappeared into thin air! How in time could you expect me to know you were here? How could I do any rushin’ an’ steamin’ after you when I didn’t know where you were?”

  There was a little silence in the dim interior of the boat house while the doctor puffed at his cigar.

  “I’m counting to two hundred by tens,” he said at last. “I promised my mother that whenever I felt that tendency coming on me to throw boat houses at people, I’d always pause and count to two hundred—Asey Mayo, I left clues all over the place for you! I littered Pochet Point with clues! Short of erecting large signs with red arrows for you to follow, I’m sure I don’t know what else I could possibly have done to lead you here!”

  “Name three,” Asey said. “Name three clues!”

  “My lighter, for one,” Cummings said promptly. “I left my lighter—the one you gave me—sitting on a freshly cut tree stump, right at the junction of the lanes—on this side. There it stood, my little beacon, flashing madly in the sun, easily visible—can yon think of a brighter way to point out that I went this way? I thought it was a stroke of sheer genius! You couldn’t have missed it, my fine Codfish Sherlock! Nobody in God’s green world could possibly have missed that lighter!”

  “Nobody did,” Asey said gently.

  “Then why didn’t you march straight here when you spotted it? Or did you merely decide that I’d gone to the beach for a brisk swim?”

  “When I spotted it,” Asey said, “it was in the possession of one of the project boys up at Benny’s garage—not what you’d call an easy place to pick this lane junction from! I only happened here because I trailed him.”

  “Well, it worked, didn’t it?” Cummings demanded. “And then, before I came inside here, I hung my stethoscope on the branch of a pine—I must say that when I’m following murderers, I use my wits!”

  “I spotted that stethoscope,” Asey said, “because of divine intervention, an’ nothin’ else. The sun just happened to catch it right—honest, doc, be sensible! How could you expect me to find you from a stethoscope hung up in a tree branch?”

  “I suppose,” Cummings returned as he got up from the couch, “I could have left a paper trail, or dragged an anise bag, or tossed snippets of gingerbread in my wake—well, I’ll break down and admit that to a lesser mind than yours, my clues might possibly—just possibly, mind!—appear slightly on the obscure side. But you got ’em, didn’t you? Now, tell me, how are you getting along with Halbert?”

  “Er—did you phone him, doc?” Asey inquired.

  “The facilities for telephoning anyone from this enchanted grotto,” Cummings said, “are somewhat limited—d’you resent my pointing that out?”

  “Doc, I—”

  “If I’d had a phone,” Cummings ignored his interruption, “I might conceivably have been tempted to phone a lot of people! If I’d had matches, I might even hav
e started a fire to lead people here—now you, no doubt, know exactly how to rub two sticks together and achieve a flame. But I grew up in the pre-Boy Scout era. Fire is beyond me, and I never learned to wigwag, or bang out the Morse code—how could I have called Halbert?” He paused in the middle of the floor. “Good God, man, haven’t you called him? You haven’t?”

  “Doc,” Asey said, “what became of her?”

  “She waited until I walked in here—tiptoed in, rather—and then she slammed the door and locked the padlock. No violence,” Cummings said, “on either side. She was quiet and refined, I was quiet and abashed—I thought she was already in here, you see! Yes, the whole episode was carried out with the utmost decorum. No loose yelling and howling—I know when 7’m stuck in a boat house, and I accept the fact. As to what became of her, I frankly wouldn’t know. She didn’t tell me. In fact, she never uttered a word. The quiet type.”

  “Who?”

  “Who? I regret that I don’t know who. I’d even rather hoped,” he added with a touch of wistfulness in his voice, “that you might. Oh, it was Louise Douglass, or that aunt, Mrs. Framingham, or Layne, or some other girl, or some other woman. A female. Not a man. When did it get this dark?” He looked out of the boat house door. “Hm! Fresh air! No wonder I keep recommending it so highly to my patients—there is something tonic about—”

  “Now we’ve had our fun, doc,” Asey said, “what in blazes happened?”

  “Fun? Fun?” For several minutes, Cummings delivered a caustic monologue on Asey’s misconception of the word. “And what’s that?” he broke off suddenly and pointed to the ground. “What’s that lumpish object? Another corpse?”

  “Just the fellow who had your lighter,” Asey explained.

  “Where is it? I never missed anything more!”

  “Probably in one of his pockets—I didn’t wait to find anything but the padlock key. Doc,” Asey followed him down the boat house steps and over to the trussed-up figure, “after I left with Harold Douglass, what happened?”

  “You keeping him tied up indefinitely?” Cummings inquired.

  “At least till I get this story out of you!” Asey returned. “If I let him distract you, I never will—an’ his story can wait!”

  “Ah, here it is!” Cummings extracted his lighter from a pocket of the battle jacket. “Well, Louise went upstairs to wash her face—haven’t a spot of hot soup on you, I suppose? f keep feeling if I could only get my teeth into some nice nourishing soup, my sense of narration would take a definite spurt for the better. You don’t think concisely when hunger gnaws at your vitals. Some nice hot soup—”

  “Come along!” Asey took his arm. “There’s a thermos full of it in the car.”

  “Oh.” To Asey’s pleasure, the doctor for once seemed slightly nonplussed. “Where are you going?”

  “The other roadster’s up the road a piece.”

  “Oh!” Cummings made a swift recovery. “How’d you get ’em both here, use your astral body? Really, Sherlock, if a man can drive two cars at once, I do feel he might spot a stethoscope on a tree—”

  When they reached the roadster, Asey removed the beachwagon’s tire from the seat, slung it into the rear baggage compartment, and then presented Cummings with the thermos bottle of soup.

  After he had made away with a cupful, Cummings condescended to tell what had occurred.

  “Louise went upstairs to wash her face—I never suspected that she was the hysterical type,” Cummings said reflectively, “and I know she’s going to regret every word she poured out to me. ‘Throwing herself on my mercy’ is the only descriptive phrase I can think of that’s suitable to cover the way she acted after you went.”

  “Let down her hair, huh?”

  “And combed it. I was there in the living room, thinking her over, and starting to go to the hall to phone Halbert, as I recall—actually,” Cummings said, “this all seems so ante-bellum! And then I heard a strange noise. I’ve spent most of the afternoon trying to think how to describe that sound to you, Asey, and I can’t. It’s like a certain type of pain that patients helplessly sum up as a funny little pain. They aren’t able to enlarge on it. It’s just a funny little pain. This noise was just a strange noise, that’s all!”

  “Well, was it loud, or soft, or—” Asey began.

  “I’ve run through every sound word that I know,” Cummings interrupted, “and I can’t put my finger on it! Did it ring? No. Was it muffled? Sort of. Did it creak? Some. Hiss? No, definitely not sibilant. Rattly? No! Nor twanging or jangling, or clanking, or whirring, or droning. Not resonant. Not strident. Not a sudden or a violent sound. There was simply a noise, and it was strange! I’ve racked my brains, and I can’t do any better, much as I loathe admitting myself at a loss for words! Anyway, I went out to the Lulu Belle, even though the noise didn’t seem to come from there—and the damned Pullman was empty! That was—hm. Perhaps twenty minutes after you left.”

  “Time enough,” Asey said, “for Stinky to have whipped back in my car, or for Harold Douglass to have hitched a ride—did you hear a car?”

  “I’ve thought later that I did, but I wouldn’t know,” Cummings said honestly, “how much of it is wishful thinking. It would all be so much simpler to understand if there had been a car! And it could have got to the Lulu Belle without coming directly up the driveway. There are several back lanes. No, I couldn’t be sure on the car issue.”

  “Did you happen to look inside the little railroad station?” Asey asked.

  “That was my first gesture,” Cummings told him. “I frankly felt dazed at the turn of events, and I kept assuring myself—I can’t think why, now!—that no one could possibly have moved that body jar! And the station was so near, so handy! But it was empty. Then I thought I saw something—or someone—moving in the woods. Ar d idiotically, as I will now publicly concede, I followed that will-o’-the-wisp—Asey, this place is very close to the house! Did you realize that?”

  “Oh, I don’t think it’s very close,” Asey said. “Near, but not—”

  “It’s very close! Stop and think of the layout,” Cummings said. “I had to before I figured it out. The direct lane to the Douglass’s driveway curves around a lot—hairpins back on itself, almost. This lane is straight. But—from the house over here is actually only a very short walk. It surprised me.”

  “Jennie claimed you wouldn’t have walked very far,” Asey said with a chuckle.

  “I didn’t. Well, in a nutshell, the boat house door was open, and I thought the woman had gone inside. So after draping my stethoscope over that branch, I came in. And there, to coin a phrase, I was. Where did you find her, Asey? Where was she?”

  Asey gravely quoted his own words back at him.

  “I regret that I don’t know. I even rather hoped that you might!”

  “I’m not referring,” Cummings said impatiently, “to that unknown female who so deftly incarcerated me! I mean Carolyn Barton Boone!”

  “So,” Asey said, “do I.”

  “Merciful heavens, man, haven’t you found that body yet? What have you been doing?”’

  Asey told him.

  Cummings shook his head at the conclusion of the recital.

  “It’s macabre!” he said. “It’s too preposterous! Climbing tottering water towers, chatting with ex-Wacs, pumping Louise—and maintaining the while the silly pretense that everything was just dandy! Putting inner tubes in tubs of water! Playing quohaug inspector—oh, Eric must be a first-class dodo to fall for that one! Tieing up Little Arsenic yonder—man alive, do you realize how bizarre it all is? Do you realize that few sane people would believe you? No wonder you haven’t managed to find her body, with all that madness going on!”

  “Wa-el,” Asey said, “I’ve had some success. At least I located you!”

  “Even that’s fantastic, when you think it out!” Cummings retorted. “D’you suppose that fellow just saw my lighter, and took it?”

  “Uh-huh, I suspect so. I suspect he liberated my car in
the same casual way.”

  “So that’s how you happen to have two cars over here! Who is he—oh, from the project, you said. I remember. That all the food you’ve got?” Cummings pawed around in Jennie’s basket. “No more sandwiches? Not even a candy bar?”

  “I noticed an old stale peppermint thing in the glove compartment yesterday,” Asey said, “but I assume no responsibility. It’s been there six months.”

  Cummings fumbled around, found it, and then flashed on his lighter and read the label.

  “ ‘Baby Doll’. Hm. More sustaining than three pieces of raw liver, eight slices of fortified bread, two glasses of milk, or four average servings of spinach. Hm. Ingredients—desiccated cocoanut, corn syrup, soy beans, cotton seed oil, peanut oil, dried skimmed milk powder, dried egg whites, vegetable gums, various imitation flavorings and added vitamins. Sounds simply delicious, doesn’t it?” He bit into it cautiously.

  “What’s it taste like?” Asey inquired interestedly. “Laundry soap and pink mouthwash,” Cummings replied without hesitation. “Asey, Mrs. Boone was alive at twelve o’clock. I pried that out of Louise on the basis of Aunt Della’s cuckoo clock. While she has apparently no sense of time whatsoever, she did remember Mrs. Boone watching the cuckoos—you know, it’s one of those things where all hell breaks loose at noon. And Harold—I think Baby Doll is ruining my new bridgework!”

  Asey advised him to throw the candy away.

  “What I start,” Cummings said, “I finish. And Harold had promised to give her a ride on the railroad. That’s how she got into the Lulu Belle—did he happen to give you any explanation of why they thought she was lost? If he’d got through enough of his railroad routine to have given her a ticket, got her on board, and punched the ticket, he certainly must have known she was there!”

  “Harold skipped very lightly over that,” Asey said. “Something about her leaving for a phone call and not coming back, and his going inside to get her. Why does he hate Mrs. Boone so, d’you know?”