The Ghosts' High Noon

by John Dickson Carr

  By the time he took the elevator downstairs, it was almost ten by the clock in the lobby. Buying a map of New Orleans at the cigar counter, he sat down to study it amid marble and red plush. Presently, he folded up the map, put it in his pocket, and went out through the revolving door into St. Charles Avenue.

  From what he could recall of one visit here fourteen years ago, his memories were only of pastel-colored houses with courtyards in the Vieux Carré beyond Canal Street, of a luxurious brothel in Storyville, and of one other thing.

  At least the telephone book had told him where to find the Sentinel: Camp Street. In 1898, as a prospective newspaperman in the best style of Richard Harding Davis, he had already marked that name. Camp Street, roughly parallel with St. Charles Avenue on the side towards the river, contained more than one newspaper office. And he was almost sure he remembered…

  A changing gray sky held opalescent lights. Leo had been right about traffic, from what he could see now. Though brisk enough along the immensity of Canal Street towards Jim’s left, and even here on less spacious St. Charles Avenue, it was not the frustrating tangle of New York. You even noted a few cars amid horse-drawn cabs and wagons, and heard horns honk against streetcar bells.

  Jim turned to his right. A short walk west brought him to Lafayette Square, with the white pillars of City Hall looming up on the right and, in the middle, a leafy little park where idlers lounged on benches.

  He crossed the street. When he had gone through the park in Lafayette Square—which seemed to contain a statue or bust of almost every picturesque historical figure except Lafayette himself—Jim stopped in realization. Yes, he had remembered! Facing him from Camp Street was the six-story building of rough-hewn stone which housed the Sentinel.

  Great tact would be needed now. His approach to the paper’s acting owner must be both diplomatic and wary, or he would find Clay Blake’s friends leagued against the intruder to refuse any information at all.

  Pondering tactics, he went into a rather gloomy entrance-lobby, with three elevators on the right and, it seemed, the bustle of business offices behind opaque-glass windows towards the left.

  Along with three or four others, including a little woman conspicuous for jaw-set, Jim entered the middle elevator and said, “Top floor, please,” to the youth in buttons who operated it.

  A solitary electric bulb illumined the cage as it rose. The determined-looking little woman got off at the city-room floor, from which Jim could hear typewriters clacking, two telephones ringing in unison, and an insistent shout of “Boy!” There was nobody but himself and the operator by the time they reached the top.

  He had small reason to hesitate, though. A line of doors with ground-glass panels, no lettering on any of the panels, faced him from the wall opposite the elevators in a broad corridor paved with tile. But well towards Jim’s left, at the front of the building, was a single door with the chaste black legend, Alexander Laird.

  This opened into a reception room with a skylight, heavily decorated after the fashion of the eighteen-eighties: it might have been a reception room at Harper’s. Mr. Laird and Private appeared on the ground-glass panel of another door opposite, clearly leading to an office overlooking Camp Street. At a desk in the middle of the room, behind the glow of the desk’s lamp, sat a brisk, poised young lady with a small watch pinned to the bosom of her shirtwaist.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I wonder if I may see Mr. Laird? My name is Blake; here is my card. And you might send in this other card, which is from Colonel Harvey at Harper’s in New York.”

  Neglecting to ask whether he had an appointment, the goddess smiled at him instead.

  “We’ll not be needing any cards, I’m thinking.” She picked up a telephone, spoke briefly to it, and was answered. “Go right on in, Mr. Blake. You’re expected.”

  The office beyond was modern enough. It still held traces of that elder Alec Laird who had occupied the room for so long, including half a wall of framed testimonials and photographs inscribed to him by the great or the near-great. But the past was almost gone.

  The younger Alec Laird, a lean, wiry, middle-sized man of forty, with dark hair smoothly brushed and a collar high even for this year of high collars, rose from a massive desk bearing several telephones, and advanced to shake hands. If his saturnine face did in fact suggest some Puritan elder of no very advanced views, it could not have been called an unsympathetic face. His manner, too, was less formal than the visitor had anticipated.

  “It’s a pleasure to be here, Mr. Laird,” Jim said.

  “It’s a pleasure to welcome you, sir. Colonel Harvey telephoned from New York on Monday afternoon and said you would be in New Orleans today. I’ve never had the good fortune to meet Colonel Harvey face to face, but we’ve all heard of him.

  “Be seated, I beg,” Alec Laird went on, indicating a leather chair beside his desk and himself sitting down. “Only a few years ago, Mr. Blake, these long-distance telephone calls would have been considered a miracle. Today we accept them almost for commonplaces, as we accept motor-cars and flying machines and wireless telegraphy. Which reminds me: you are a much-sought-after man this morning. Leo Shepley has been phoning in search of you.”

  “Leo’s already phoned?”

  “Not five minutes before you arrived. When he failed to reach you at the St. Charles—you had gone out, they said—he insisted you must be with me because it had been your intention to call between nine-thirty and ten. I could only assure him I hadn’t seen you.”

  “Did he leave a message?”

  “No message, sir. But he seemed much exercised about something, as Leo so often is, and said he would try again later.”

  Alec Laird put his fingertips together and inspected them.

  “Now, Mr. Blake. For some time, I believe, you were London correspondent of the Banner. And you have written a successful book. I myself, I greatly fear, read nothing published after 1890; let it stand the test of time, and then we shall see. But you have the highest reputation for integrity. I understand from Colonel Harvey you want to do a personality story on our own Mr. Blake, of whom we all think so well hereabouts?”

  “That, sir,” Jim matched his formal style of address, “is my whole purpose in being here. May I count on your cooperation, if I should need it?”

  “You may count on it to the fullest extent. And yet there may be difficulties not of my making. For one thing, can you find Clay? You may just have missed him.”

  “Just have missed him?”

  “Over last weekend, it would appear, there was a conference of various Democratic candidates for office at the Astor Hotel in New York.”

  “I remember seeing some item about it in the paper. He attended that conference, did he?”

  “So I am informed, at least. Clay may or may not have returned. Of course, I can always ring him and arrange for you to meet him if he has returned.”

  “Many thanks for the offer, but Leo Shepley’s arranging it. Leo probably phoned to tell me.”

  “Well, no doubt that’s best. Leo is a much closer friend than I am. But there is one other thing, Mr. Blake, which—”

  One of Alec Laird’s telephones rang. He unhooked the receiver with a certain slight impatience.

  “Yes, Miss Donnelly?”

  Jim could clearly hear the voice on the wire.

  “Will you see Mrs. Laird, sir? And Mr. Peter Laird?”

  “What’s my wife doing here at this hour of the morning?” Then the acting owner hesitated. “But you said Peter Laird, didn’t you? Are you referring, Miss Donnelly, to my esteemed aunt and her son?”

  “Yes, sir. I told them you were engaged, but Mrs. Laird…”

  “Yes, the lady does tend to be impatient. Better show them in.” Alec Laird looked at Jim as he replaced the receiver. “Not a word of your errand here, please, until—”

  Once more he stopped short as Miss Donnelly, the receptionist, held open the door of the outer office.

  The woman who swe
pt in, wearing modish clothes and a large hat, did not seem either very old or very overpowering. Forthright and vigorous she undoubtedly was: handsome, well preserved both of face and figure, with coolly appraising brown eyes under ridged gray hair. But the handsome features lacked much play of expression, which may have accounted for so uncharitable a nickname as Madam Ironface.

  “Since I was in town for a little shopping,” she began, “I thought—”

  And it was her turn to stop short, hand raised as though encountering an obstacle.

  Alec Laird murmured brief, hasty introductions, presenting Jim merely as “this gentleman from Harper’s Weekly” both to Mathilde de Jarnac Laird and to the lumpish young man who had followed her in.

  Jim had a momentary impression, illusory, that he had met Peter Laird before. Burly, thick-bodied Peter, dark of hair like Cousin Alec, hardly seemed to have shed his puppy-fat even in the late twenties. He combined an apologetic manner with a rather sullen eye.

  Miss Donnelly set out chairs for the newcomers before retiring to the outer office. Mrs. Sam Laird and her son disregarded the chairs, Peter perching on the edge of his cousin’s desk.

  “Yes, Aunt Mathilde?” Alec looked her up and down. “What can I do for you today?”

  He very slightly accented “today.” The lady raised her eyebrows.

  “It’s Wednesday, you know,” she reminded him. “We just wanted to make sure both you and Sylvia will be with us for dinner tonight. Your father and mother always dined with us on Wednesdays while your mother was alive, and your father would still be there every week if he had the strength to. Don’t be so restless, Peter!”

  “I don’t get much chance to be anything else, do I?” the young man complained. “If you’d just let a fellow alone for five minutes of the day—!”

  “We know, Peter; we know. Never mind. The high and mighty Mr. Alexander Laird has not seen fit to answer my question. I was asking him…”

  “At the moment,” Alec said, “I see no reason why we can’t have dinner with you tonight. I’ll verify it with my wife, of course. But the high and mighty Mr. Laird, Aunt Mathilde, is a very busy man. He—”

  Another telephone on the desk rang shrilly and went on ringing. Alec Laird eyed it.

  “That’s an outside line, and a private one. The call can’t be intercepted by Miss Donnelly out there; it doesn’t even go through the switchboard downstairs. But I think I know who’s calling.”

  Standing on the far side of his desk, he caught up the phone.

  “So it’s you again, is it?…No, of course I’m not annoyed; why should I be?…Yes, he’s here now…Yes, by all means speak to him…You’re not up to any of your games, are you?…You’d better not be…For you,” he added, handing the instrument across to Jim.

  Jim’s hello met with almost exactly the greeting he expected.

  “Now listen, you old horse-thief!” said Leo Shepley. “Since I’ve finally tracked you down at last, give me your best attention. The first part of what I’ve got to tell you isn’t private; at least, it’s not entirely private. What I’m trying to say, Jim, is that Clay’s very much upset and doesn’t feel up to meeting people at the moment. Would you mind very much if we postponed the interview until tonight or tomorrow morning?”

  “No, of course I don’t mind!”

  “What we’ve got to conceal is the reason why he’s upset. And the next part of the low-down is private. It’s so very damn private that…Listen, Jim. Is there anybody there with you now? Anybody besides Alec himself, I mean? Just answer yes or no.”

  “Yes.”

  “Those phones in the owner’s lair have so clear a tone that sometimes you can be overheard speaking from a yard away, unless the person you’re speaking to jams the receiver against his ear. But I think I see a way to make this as private as a confessional box. Let me speak to Alec again for a moment, will you?”

  A frown had gathered between Alec Laird’s brows as he took over.

  “In the study, you say?…No, there’s nobody there now…Yes; it can be managed quite easily if you insist it’s so very important?…In fact, I should prefer it that way. Hold on.”

  He set down the telephone without hanging up its receiver, and turned to Jim.

  “Now, sir: will you come this way, please?”

  The office had one other door besides the one to the reception room. This second door, in the wall at right angles to the wall of the reception-room entrance, was of solid oak, with a porcelain knob. Clearly it led to some room at the north-eastern angle of the Sentinel Building.

  Alec Laird opened the door, ushered his guest in, and stood aside as though exhibiting a museum. And so he was.

  Like the office, it had two windows overlooking Camp Street from six floors up. Its decor, though similar to the eighteen-eighties style of the reception room, seemed more stay-at-home and intimate.

  Glass-fronted bookcases of dropsical aspect had been ranged against flowered wallpaper. There was an old leather couch between the windows. Against the wall opposite the door, beside what resembled another doorway covered by a folding steel grating, a rolltop desk stood swept and open behind its wooden swivel-chair. There was a telephone on the desk, with a green-shaded drop-lamp hanging above.

  Alec Laird indicated everything.

  “We call this the study,” he explained. “My father furnished it many years ago, and used it as a retreat until he gave up work on the paper. It’s kept just as it was when he left; I even have the wallpaper renewed before it turns yellow. Most visitors feel compelled to writhe with aesthetic agony; but, if truth must be told, I’m fond of the old place and won’t have it changed.”

  “What’s that door with the grating?”

  “That, sir, is the private elevator. There are some, no doubt, who think a private elevator too high and mighty—as we say in the South, too uppity—for this workaday world. That, believe me, is not the reason. My father had it installed when he found his years catching up to him, and had to remodel extensively for the convenience. It goes down to an alley beside the building.”

  “And the telephone?”

  “An extension of the private line in my office. The line is still open. Try it.”

  Jim sat down in the swivel-chair and addressed himself to carbon.

  “As they say in England, are you there?”

  Leo’s voice boomed back.

  “You bet I am, old son; four ways from the ace! Can you talk now?”

  “In a moment,” said Alec Laird.

  Both he and Jim craned round to look through the open doorway into the office, where Peter sat on the edge of the desk and his mother paced in front of it.

  “Peter!” called Cousin Alec.

  “Yes, Alec?”

  “Be good enough to hang up the receiver of the phone I was using, and don’t touch it afterwards under any circumstances.”

  Peter complied, dropping home the receiver with an audible click.

  “Excuse me for existing, Alec, but what were all you people gabbling about? And who’s being so gabby at the other end?”

  “Nobody who need concern you, young man. Now, Mr. Blake, the inner sanctum is yours. Handle things as you think best.”

  And he went out and closed the door firmly.

  “Still with me, Jim?” inquired Leo. “I gather from all that hoo-ha old Stick-in-the-mud played ball?”

  “I’m in the study, as you suggested.”

  “And it’s agreed, is it, you don’t interview Clay until tonight or tomorrow morning, preferably tomorrow?”

  “It’s more than agreed. Provided I can file a personality story by late Thursday afternoon, that’s all I need.”

  “All you need? In a pig’s eye it’s all you need! Jim, I’ve been having some serious second thoughts about this business.”

  “I had some second thoughts, too, at the hotel this morning. May I ask one question before I state ’em?”

  “We aim to please, brother. Fire away.”

  “You
say my partial namesake is badly upset. Well, what upset him? Is it what you thought it would be?”

  “Yes, damn the luck!”

  “Then there’s proof my second thoughts are right. Leo, it’s no go.”

  “What’s no go?”

  “The projected big story is no go. It would never do. It must be washed out and forgotten.”

  “Jim, are you drunk?”

  “Far from it.”

  The changing sky over New Orleans had become darker gray. Little puffs of breeze stirred past the windows. Jim got a grip on the telephone.

  “I’ve been unpardonably dense,” he went on. “I let myself be so carried away by the situation that certain obvious implications got lost in the rush. Once we decided they couldn’t use Yvonne Brissard against your friend Clay, it had to be something else. I don’t know what sort of story Colonel Harvey thinks I’m after, but I do know what he doesn’t want. If this were the customary tale of some candidate for office with charges against him—shady financial deals, bribery, corrupt politics in general—it would be easy. But it’s not that at all. It’s sex, Leo. It’s not Yvonne Brissard, but it is sex. Sex, the unbreakable taboo!

  “I’ve been commissioned by Harper’s Weekly, not the Police Gazette. In any responsible newspaper I could refer to a sex scandal only obliquely; in a family publication like the Weekly I can’t refer to it at all. And, if I must keep quiet even about a full-blown scandal with charges already established, how much more silent I must be when no scandal has yet developed and no charges have been made!”

  Over the wire came some sound between a grunt and a groan.

  “There’ll be charges soon enough, Jim, unless you and I take action. Clay wants the whole thing hushed up; I want to nail the bastard who’s behind it. You see, that’s the private part of what I’ve got to tell you. Clay’s already been threatened anonymously.”

  “Threatened with what?”

  “Unless he withdraws his name from the ballot and resigns as a candidate for Congress within the next twenty-four hours, pleading ill-health or some such excuse, his family and friends will be informed about what he’s supposed to have done.”