The Ghosts' High Noon

by John Dickson Carr

  Nor had Mrs. Peabody been very helpful to Jim. No, she didn’t know where the little lady had gone. Nobody tole her; it wasn’t none of her business, was it?

  “Did she leave me any message, Mrs. Peabody?”

  “Cain’t call it a message, no, suh! Tole Mist’ Clay she right sorry she leavin’ ’thout sayin’ g’bye, but she got her own troubles, too.”

  If Jim’s theory about her turned out to be correct, Jill could have no troubles of any great weight or complexity. But evidently she thought she had, which may have made all the difference.

  After giving Lieutenant Trowbridge a lift home in the Chadwick, Jim had left the car at Guilfoyle’s Garage and returned to his hotel. Though he had been impelled to ring Clay at once, the latter would hardly welcome being routed out at far past one A.M.; questions about Jill were better left to the brightness of morning.

  Thursday morning did prove reasonably bright, washed in pale sunshine. A man nervous with anticipation finished breakfast by nine o’clock, shaved and bathed in haste, and then attacked by telephone.

  Whatever you heard about the leisurely South, they were up and about betimes. Ringing first Clay’s home and then his office, according to numbers listed in the book, Jim contrived to miss him twice before nine-thirty.

  Some servant at home said Mr. Clay had left for the office long ago. At the office a pleasant-voiced woman, presumably Clay’s secretary, replied that he had been there but gone out again.

  “You’re the other Mr. Blake, sir? Mr. James Blake? Mr. Blake’s anxious to see you, Mr.—he’s very anxious to see you, I know. He’s got two conferences this morning, and a political meeting this afternoon. But he wonders: could you possibly have lunch with him at Philippe’s?…

  “You can? That’s splendid; I’ll put it down! Philippe’s Restaurant, 83 St. Louis Street, one o’clock? Just ask for Mr. Blake’s table—sir.”

  Lunch would do very well; Jim could file his story afterwards. Meanwhile, it would be better still if he could locate Jill before lunch. And there was a way.

  Though the story of tragedy at the Villa de Jarnac could not have broken too late for the morning newspapers, he found no word of it in any paper on sale at the cigar-stand in the lobby. He had thrown aside the papers, and was starting for the Sentinel office when he came face to face with Lieutenant Zack Trowbridge entering from the St. Charles side.

  The lieutenant, in some strange mood between elation and depression, led him to a couple of chairs in the lobby.

  “Well!” he said. “How’s it this morning, Mr. Blake? Got some news for you already.”

  “Anything helpful?”

  “May be; may not be; can’t tell. Mr. Shepley’s parents are both dead, it seems. But there’s an Aunt Harriet, Mrs. Penderel, who keeps house for him.”

  “I know, Lieutenant. It’ll be only decent if I get in touch with her and ask whether there’s something I can do. She may be glad of help with the funeral arrangements.”

  “Can’t be any funeral just yet; other things to clear up first. And I wouldn’t be too quick about tackling the lady. I’ve seen her; she’s pretty cut up. Look, now, Mr. Blake! This ‘Mr. Blake’ business is getting me down; I wish I knew what to call you. I can’t call you Jim; you’re a gentleman, too. I might call you Dimitri, like the secret agent in the book. But that don’t seem right either; it’s too foreign; you’re about as foreign as a plate of ham and eggs.”

  “The ‘Mr. Blake’ business is beginning to get me down, too; it almost threw Clay’s secretary a while ago. If you won’t call me Jim, as I wish you would, there’s a possible if not very satisfactory alternative. Since for some reason you seem to have been so much impressed by The Count of Monte Carlo, you might try Franz.”

  “Franz, eh? It may have to do, though I’m not keen on it. And why Franz? You’re no squarehead either, are you?”

  “No; my own forebears were Scots. Franz von Graz is just a name that occurred to me, no more. What did you learn from Mrs. Penderel?”

  Lieutenant Trowbridge took out his notebook and consulted it briefly.

  “Between me time Mr. Shepley got home yesterday morning, and the time he left the house just before two o’clock in the afternoon, he made or received four phone calls. Mrs. Penderel’s pretty cut up, as I told you; but she remembers and swears to it. The first call, between half-past nine and a quarter to ten, was from Mr. Clay Blake, just as our friend said it was. At around about eleven, for the second one, Mr. Shepley talked to you at the newspaper office.

  “You see, Franz Josef, I’m not counting any attempted calls that didn’t get through. He’d tried to reach you at the hotel here, and once at the newspaper office, before he did reach you there. The third call, which seems to have caused all the trouble, came at near enough to twelve-thirty.”

  “Seems to have caused all the trouble, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, if you can make any sense of it! Mrs. Penderel was just about to go in and tell him lunch was ready, when she heard the phone ring in the living-room. Mr. Shepley answered it himself, as he answered whenever it rang that morning. When his aunt did go in and say lunch was ready, he was just hanging up the receiver. She couldn’t tell who’d been speaking to him, and he didn’t say. But there’s no doubt it put him into a very peculiar state of mind.”

  “Suicidal? Or what?”

  “More like angry and confused, his aunt thought. He refused food; he said he’d had a sandwich and a glass of milk, and didn’t want lunch anyway. She begged him to eat, as all women do, but it was no go. Then he started tramping through the place from room to room, muttering to himself, like as if he couldn’t decide something. Once he stopped and said out loud: ‘I haven’t any reputation to lose. But, by God, Aunt Harriet, I won’t lose my friends!’”

  “Was that the only comment he made?”

  “The only comment, far as she can remember in her present state of mind. ’Course, she may think of something later. At shortly after one o’clock, when she’d sat down for a bite to eat herself, he phoned Mr. Clay Blake, but didn’t say anything important she could overhear. That’s four calls; there weren’t any more to or from his home. He left the house not long before two. His aunt went out to do some shopping, and didn’t see him afterwards.”

  “Did anything else turn up, Lieutenant?”

  “He did own a gun: a .38 revolver, she thinks. But she hasn’t any idea where he kept it; seemed pretty certain he was carrying no weapons when he went out. And I could hardly ask her to search the house for it, not at a time like that!”

  Returning the notebook to his pocket, Lieutenant Trowbridge stirred restlessly.

  “I’ve got two men tracing Mr. Shepley’s movements for the rest of the day. I’m meeting one of ’em at City Hall in about five minutes, so I’d better mosey along. All right! In return for the information I’ve given you, haven’t you any mite to contribute? I’d better see the aunt again, much as I hate upsetting her. Any question or questions you think I ought to ask her?”

  “Yes, if it can be done tactfully. When did Leo last go abroad, and what place or places did he visit on that occasion?”

  Impatience twitched through the lieutenant.

  “Look, now! These are important questions I’m supposed to be asking, if I’ve got to start upsetting her again! What’s all that got to do with the price of eggs?”

  “It may be more important than it sounds. How does the whole affair look to you this morning, Lieutenant? Still so very suspicious of Clay Blake?”

  “Now listen, Franz Josef!—”

  “If you’ve decided on Franz Josef, which is even easier to say, we’ll leave it at that. But I’d better warn you Clay’s story checks out, insofar as I’ve been able to check it at this juncture. Just before you walked in on us last night, I asked him about Leo’s mood when they talked at a little past one o’clock. Though you may well have heard the answer and know it already, I’ll remind you just the same. Clay said Leo seemed ‘angry’ and ‘confused,’ exactl
y the words of his aunt. Clay also said ‘simmering,’ which you are now.

  “Some unknown voice, it would seem, phoned Leo at half-past twelve and may have threatened him with something. Threats wouldn’t have worked so well with Leo; it may have led to his death. I give you that as a field for speculation at the moment. And now, if you’ll excuse me…?”

  Both of them rose.

  “You leavin’, too, Franz Josef? Any particular errand?”

  “I’ve got a little job of tracing to do. If you need me within the next half hour or so, you can find me at the Sentinel office.”

  They walked west together, Lieutenant Trowbridge turning to the right at City Hall and Jim turning towards the left across Lafayette Square.

  Inside the Sentinel Building, activity had not yet even begun to work towards that fever-pitch it would attain later in the day, when nerves grew edgy and the man at the city desk started to yell. But there was a sense, which could never have been mistaken by any old newspaperman, of something being up. It pulsed out of the city room as the elevator carried Jim past. It showed in the face of Bart Perkins, the managing editor, whom Jim, at the top floor, met as Mr. Perkins emerged from one of the glass-panelled doors opposite the elevators.

  Today the managing editor looked just as indefinably untidy, and his big mop of gray-white hair more ruffled than ever.

  “Morning!” he greeted Jim, jerking a thumb towards the door at the end of the corridor. “Here to see His Nibs, I expect?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Yesterday Mr. Laird very kindly offered me some assistance; I mean to take advantage of the offer.”

  “Well, Alec’s there; he’s always in early, and it must be at least ten o’clock now. Speaking of yesterday and especially of last night: that was a shocker of a thing, wasn’t it, to happen to friends of this newspaper?”

  “If you mean Leo Shepley’s death, it was a shocker for everybody. I didn’t see anything about it in the morning papers, though.”

  “My own guess, for what it’s worth, is that they’re waiting to see how it’s handled by the afternoon papers, particularly this one. We can’t kill the story entirely, of course; but Alec will tell you how we’re putting on the soft pedal.”

  Bart Perkins stared at him.

  “And there you were, as I understand it, slap in the middle of everything! Wouldn’t care to write us your impressions, would you? No, I guess you wouldn’t. When you do do your story for Harper’s Weekly, what’ll you say about crimes of violence?”

  “When I do my personality piece on Clay Blake, Mr. Perkins, crimes of violence won’t even be referred to. It’s outside the scope of any story I was meant to get.”

  “Whatever you say, old top, I see what you mean. No muckraking in a clean political campaign, eh? It’s got nothing to do with our man for Congress, has it? Unless, of course, the poor devil gets himself arrested for murder.”

  “Who said anything about arresting Clay for murder?”

  “Nobody, so help me Jinny! Nobody has; nobody will. Just forget I mentioned it, won’t you? Let’s see: didn’t you say you were a great baseball player in your college days?”

  “I said I was an enthusiastic baseball player of little more than tolerable worth.”

  “Well, Clay himself pitched for a championship Princeton team about the turn of the century. You might like to bring that in as a matter of human interest. After all, under the circumstances, you can’t have got much useful material out of him last night?”

  “I got a very fair amount of useful material, even though the circumstances weren’t ideal. And I’m having lunch with him today at a place called Philippe’s, where we can round out the details.”

  “Before lunch today, Mr. Reporter Turned Novelist”—the managing editor fiddled with his necktie—“we’re having another conference about the Shepley case, Alec and Harry Furnival and I. There’s not much more we can thrash over, but new angles are always coming up. Now ran along and beard Alec; I’ve got an idea he’s half expecting you.”

  Miss Ruth Donnelly, brightly at her desk in the reception room, made no difficulty about telephoning her employer in the office beyond. Bidden to the presence at once, Jim found Alec Laird, in the customary high collar and very formal lounge suit, rising from his own desk by way of greeting.

  “I am compelled to deal so much in clichés, sir,” he said as they shook hands, “that I will make only the briefest reference to poor Leo or the deep damnation of his taking-off. Be seated, please.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Laird.”

  “Nor will I trouble you with superfluous questions. How properly to deal with this affair has perplexed us all. Charley Emerson, for instance, almost begged to be assigned to it, but…”

  “Charley Emerson did?”

  “You are acquainted with Charley, I believe.” Alec had sat down, a frown between his brows. “Yes, Charley’s here. He arrived this morning, by the same train you yourself took at an earlier date. Leaving Washington Tuesday night—‘in case I should be needed,’ he said—put him on my doorstep at an early hour Thursday. When he heard a socially prominent New Orleanian had died under mysterious and tragic circumstances at the home of Clay Blake’s dubious inamorata, he was (as the phrase goes) all over me. He volunteered to cover the story without pay and, again to use his own words, ‘just for the hell of it.’”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That I feared it wouldn’t do. Charley was our best police reporter in days gone by. Though sometimes I allowed him more liberty than conscience approved of, more often I had to sit on him when zeal outran discretion. The situation, sir, calls for discretion if it calls for nothing else. And he was too full of cryptic hints nobody could understand.”

  “How did Charley take it?”

  “Not altogether well. When at length I gave him a firm and rounded no, he was out of here in a flash…”

  “Can anybody go out of here in a flash, Mr. Laird?”

  “The phrase was figurative and ill-chosen; forgive me. What should have been said…”

  “Look here, sir,” Jim protested, “I’m not such a verbal purist as all that! I knew very well what you meant; I’m the one who shouldn’t have butted in. It was just a thought that occurred to me, that’s all.”

  “What should have been said, Mr. Blake, is that he departed in haste, muttering something about taking his wares to the opposition. But you did not come here, of course, to discuss Charley Emerson or his foibles?”

  “No, Mr. Laird. It’s a very different matter, which I mentioned yesterday just before I took my own leave.”

  “Ah, yes. You said, if memory serves, you were anxious to find a certain young lady who has mysterious ways and a mysterious employer, and disappeared from Terminal Station of her own free will.”

  “She turned up again last night. Then she vanished for the second time; she didn’t leave a message or even say goodbye. Being a stranger here, Mr. Laird, I can’t possibly get on her track unless I have more information to work with!”

  Alec Laird fitted his fingertips together, leaned back in the swivel-chair, and for a moment sat lost in thought.

  “If I myself ask questions, sir, pray don’t think me unduly inquisitive or at all suspicious of your motives. If you would not embarrass us in one respect, assuredly you will not embarrass us in your search for the young lady. What is her name, by the way?”

  “Matthews, Gillian Matthews, usually called Jill.”

  “Matthews, Gillian or Jill Matthews. The name is not familiar to me, but perhaps that’s hardly surprising. Does she live in New Orleans?”

  “She seems to work here, at all events.”

  “Have you any information about the employer?”

  “Only his name. Jill’s the secretary of some stock-market manipulator named old Ed Hollister. Or at least I was told so. Leo Shepley, who gave me the information, called him the mystery man of finance and says he moves in such secretive ways nobody can find him. But the resources of a newspaper�
��!”

  Now a change had come over Alec Laird, if not a happy one. Though clearly far from unsympathetic, he seemed for the most part dubious and perturbed.

  “Are you sure you want to pursue this matter, Mr. Blake? Are you entirely sure you want to pursue it?”

  “I intend to pursue it,” Jim roared, “if it’s the only other damn thing I do while I’m here! To find Jill…”

  “And yet,” said the other, “would you be wise in so doing? If you don’t want to embarrass others, you surely can’t want to embarrass yourself? To inquire after old Ed Hollister’s whereabouts, Mr. Blake, would be only a waste of time and an embarrassment, too. May I most earnestly advise you against it?”

  “Since it’s my time, Mr. Laird, why mayn’t I waste it if that’s what I feel like doing? But why should it be a waste of time or an embarrassment either?”

  Alec Laird leaned forward.

  “Because old Ed Hollister does not exist. Leo Shepley invented him for one of Leo’s practical jokes, and the name of the mysterious financier has become something of a joke hereabouts. To inquire where he is or how to find him, sir, would be like asking precise directions for the North Pole in order to find Father Christmas.”

  After a kind of thunderous silence, which could almost be heard reverberating, Alec Laird spoke in an entirely sympathetic voice.

  “This will be a great blow to you, I fear. May I beg, though, that you won’t let it distress you too much? May I beg…?”

  But Jim, exultant, had leaped to his feet.

  “A blow?” he exclaimed. “It’s a blow, yes. It’s a blow slam-bang in the right direction! It knocks the props out from under all the myths; it shows me what I ought to have seen long ago! I’ll take my leave again, Mr. Laird, adding only what I added yesterday: that you can’t realize how much you’ve helped me.”