by Helen Wells
Cherry recognized with a start that a nurse in white uniform making frequent visits to the antiques department might indeed look odd.
“Never mind, thanks, Miss Lamb,” Cherry said hastily, and retreated to her own domain.
On Wednesday, and for the balance of the week, Cherry would be on the early shift. It was shortly after store opening that Mr. Dance strolled over to the open door of the medical department and said:
“Good morning, Miss Ames. I understand you were looking for me?”
His smile was as bland as ever, and he looked exceedingly sleek and well this morning.
“Why—ah—yes, I was, Mr. Dance.” Cherry was taken by surprise. She said the first innocuous thing that came into her head. “I was wondering if you had heard from Mrs. Julian?”
“Now why do you ask that?” His smile was indulgent, but his eyes did not smile. “Oh, no need to tell me. You’re concerned about her health, I know, and it’s very good indeed of you.”
Mr. Dance chatted on, saying naturally Mrs. Julian was keeping in touch with him, she was well, she had bought a very interesting old melodeon, the department missed her.
“He talks a lot but tells nothing,” Cherry observed to herself.
“I’m glad to hear good news of Mrs. Julian,” she said aloud.
“You’ve heard the unfortunate news about her music box? Poor lady, I haven’t had the heart to tell her yet. I can’t tell you how much I regret its being misplaced. How badly I feel.”
“Perhaps it will turn up safely.”
Dance shrugged. “One hopes so.” Then, his regrets expressed, he grew cheerful again. “It isn’t really so bad for Mrs. Julian, you know. She’ll receive insurance compensation payment for it.”
Cherry was thinking. Willard Dance would have to pay the insurance company for the highboy, but he also was liable to repay the full value of the music box. He certainly seemed unworried, even blithe, at the prospect of having to pay the insurance company another several hundred dollars in case the music box did not turn up. He didn’t mention it, either.
“So you see, Miss Ames, you mustn’t concern yourself too much about Mrs. Julian. It isn’t necessary or even wise of you.”
“I only meant that she’d feel distressed to learn—Why, what do you mean, ‘not wise,’ Mr. Dance?”
He said gently, “I feel sure your loyalty to Anna Julian is as complete as mine. If it weren’t, I would never mention anything so prejudicial. However, entre nous, Miss Ames, don’t you see how unfortunately, in another respect, this incident works out for her?”
“No, I don’t. She isn’t even here!”
“Ah, exactly, that’s the point. Mrs. Julian goes out of town, then I discover her music box is missing, then she collects a nice fat insurance payment for it.” He made a wry, amused face. “I’m sure the insurance compensation at the item’s full value will bring her more money than what we could sell the music box for. That is, assuming we could sell it for her. Now, then, do you think that looks well for her?”
Cherry’s mind was reeling. “Do you mean to hint, Mr. Dance, that Mrs. Julian deliberately took the music box herself?”
He drew a long breath and looked at her sadly. “That’s precisely what some of the investigators are thinking. They entertain a suspicion, and it hurts me to speak so bluntly of our friend.”
“But that’s ridiculous!” Cherry exclaimed.
“Is it? She is already suspect in the theft of the Ming vase. She was present and had the key on the afternoon of the guest speakers. May I remind you that was the last afternoon anyone remembers seeing the music box. Of course I can’t say how deeply I regret—”
“But on that afternoon it could just as well have been—” Cherry stopped short.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Ames?”
Dance was eying her. Cherry decided to keep quiet. She was so angry she wanted to blurt out that Mr. Otto, too, had handled the music box that afternoon and could have taken it. Or Dance himself could have quietly slipped it out of the department, with no one the wiser. But a sense of caution warned her to hold her tongue. After all, she might be dealing with dangerous men. Better not let Dance guess what she was thinking and planning to do.
For a plan was already crystallizing, as Mr. Dance made a few more bland remarks and returned to his gallery across the corridor.
Cherry could scarcely wait for a chance to visit Woodacres and get inside the house. She had better act fast; she had better make an opportunity. A good thing she was on the early shift for the next few days.
“But, Cherry,” said Aunt Kathy that evening, “I don’t see how you’ll ever gain entrance to the Otto Galleries. If Mr. Otto recognizes you as the store nurse—”
“You just said you’ll help me, Aunt Kathy. Won’t you?”
Gwen said crossly, “I think you’re both about to do something you may be sorry for. I’m surprised at you, Aunt Kathy.”
“Now, Gwen, I’m old enough to know what I’m doing. I am fascinated by this provoking situation, and what’s more, I feel as responsible for Cherry as I do for you. You are both guests in my house, under my chaperonage.”
Gwen grumbled but said only that she, at least, wanted no part of the escapade. She wandered off into another room with a magazine.
“Well, Cherry, I understand that invitation read By Appointment. And it was sent only to certain persons, not to everyone.”
“An invitation was sent to Mrs. McIntosh, who’s Betty Lane’s employer.” Cherry set aside the Christmas gifts for her family which she had shopped for early, and all of them were wrapped. “Mmm. Do you suppose you could pretend to be Mrs. McIntosh? No, that isn’t ethical,” she corrected herself. “Well, then, could you and I be acquaintances of Mrs. McIntosh, through whom you’d heard of the Otto Galleries? Acquaintances of Betty Lane’s, too.”
“That’s stretching the truth,” Aunt Kathy said hesitantly, “but I don’t believe it would give any injury or offense to Mrs. McIntosh, which is what I’m concerned about. Very well, Cherry, suppose I presented myself at Otto Galleries as an acquaintance of Mrs. McIntosh?”
“They’d let you in. And I’d come in with you, with my eyes and ears wide open.”
“I’m beginning to see. But we’d need an appointment.”
“If you’re willing,” Cherry said, “you could telephone for an appointment tomorrow morning. Ask for sometime late in the afternoon, either tomorrow or Friday.”
She added that the late hours of the afternoon, five to seven, often were the busiest in Mr. Dance’s gallery, for instance, when businessmen with the means to buy art objects came in with their wives. That was probably true of many or most galleries during the Christmas season.
“Late tomorrow or Friday afternoon,” Aunt Kathy repeated. “I’ll do it.”
They decided Kathy Martin had better not give her own name. As for the remote chance that Otto might note and trace the license plates on Aunt Kathy’s car, that was a chance they would have to take.
On Thursday, Cherry reported to work at nine A.M., took no lunch hour but worked right through, and thus was able to leave the store at four P.M. By hurrying, she just caught a Long Island train, an express. It was a little before five when she ran up the driveway to the Martin’s house.
Aunt Kathy was ready, wearing a hat for a change, and waiting in her car.
“Do I look presentable?” Cherry panted. “Did you get an appointment all right?”
“Everything’s fine. Get in, Cherry. It will take us half an hour to get over there, so we’d better start.”
In the waning daylight of a December afternoon, North Road looked bare, and the trees as gaunt as black skeletons. Woodacres, when they reached it, seemed to have shrunk in daylight. The house was fairly large, run-down; only a trace of a driveway remained. Once this must have been an imposing estate. The house stood in the midst of wooded grounds and undergrowth made parking difficult.
“Now don’t forget, you’re Mrs. Hunt, and I’m yo
ur niece. I won’t give my name at all unless I have to.”
The two climbed the broad steps to the front door, and Cherry rang the bell. After a moment’s wait, a woman opened the door.
Cherry had to restrain herself from clutching at Aunt Kathy’s arm. This was the tall, stout, ungainly woman of the train who had marked the newspaper! Luckily, Aunt Kathy was talking smoothly, and the woman answered, “Yes, we were expecting you, Mrs. Hunt. I am Mrs. Otto. So nice of Mrs. McIntosh and her Miss Lane to tell you about our gallery.”
So the woman was Mrs. Otto! Cherry followed blindly after the two women into a display room. Why hadn’t she realized that Otto, big, lumbering, bulky, and this big woman—both middle-aged, both in the same severe, drab sort of clothes—were two of a kind?
“Is there something special you are interested in, Mrs. Hunt?”
“Why, yes, I’m looking for old clocks,” Aunt Kathy said as prearranged, “and I’m very much interested in finding a good, small inlaid table, too.”
The pattern was falling into place for Cherry. If the newspaper markings were a code—Dance had said he’d told Otto repeatedly not to telephone him, especially at the store—then Mrs. Otto had been serving as messenger and go-between. “So that’s why I saw her commuting between Long Island and the city—and why I saw her in the store!”
But these thoughts were brushed away as Cherry heard, very faintly, the tinkle of a music box. The same plaintive minuet! It seemed to come from an adjoining room, and it sounded muffled as if something, a coat or rug, had been thrown over the music box.
“Oh, what have I walked into! And where is Mr. Otto? Why isn’t he here in the display room?”
The women discussed a clock, and Cherry listened to the melody of the music box. Knowing the tune pretty well by this time, she recognized that the disc, which ran for about seven minutes, was playing its last repeat chorus and was nearly at its end. Someone must have started the music-box mechanism in motion just as she and Aunt Kathy were driving up to the house, and it could not be stopped.
The melody was ending. The faint tinkle stopped.
“Mrs. Otto,” Cherry said, trying not to let her voice tremble, “what a pretty little music box tune that was! It sounded like”—she must not say Mrs. Julian’s—“like one of those old German music boxes, made around the end of the eighteenth century. It must be a lovely one.”
“Yes, it is lovely but you are mistaken, my dear young lady, about its type. It is a French music box, made about 1850.”
Did she imagine that the woman’s high-colored face grew still more flushed? Cherry did not dare meet Aunt Kathy’s eyes.
“Well, French or German,” Cherry said, forcing a smile, “I’d love to see it.”
“Oh, I’m afraid not. It’s one that a customer requested, and we are holding it for him. So I really do not have the right to show it for sale, you see?”
“I only want to admire it, Mrs. Otto—”
Aunt Kathy broke in quickly, almost warningly. “Now dear, Mrs. Otto is right. Don’t coax. There are enough beautiful things in this room for you to admire.”
“Yes! Yes, indeed,” said Mrs. Otto. “Won’t you and your niece come look at this clock? Hand-carved, and it chimes—perhaps I can make it sound the hour for you. I am sorry, Mrs. Hunt, that we do not have very many things to show you this afternoon, but the Otto Galleries at Woodacres is a new venture for us.”
“Do you have another display room?” Aunt Kathy asked, quite naturally. Cherry could have hugged her.
“Just this one room, Mrs. Hunt, so far. It was our living room. These old houses are large, but the layouts are badly planned. We hope to put in better lighting; this chandelier does not do justice to the paintings. Did you see these small ones?”
The woman tried hard to sell them a group of miniature paintings. She insisted that the visitors take them in their hands to examine them closely. Cherry set down her purse and gloves on a table; the paintings, tiny, enchanting, Watteau-like landscapes, were marvels of painting skill when seen at close range.
But why did the music box remain silent? Where was Mr. Otto? What person or persons were behind the closed door? Or was no one in there? Mrs. Otto herself might have played the music box for her own pleasure.
“The miniatures are perfect beauties,” Aunt Kathy was saying to Mrs. Otto, “but before making such an extravagant purchase, I should like to think it over and perhaps talk it over with my husband.”
“Yes, naturally, but you must not say ‘extravagant.’ You will enjoy them many years.”
“Well, we appreciate your letting us see them, and your other beautiful things. Come, dear,” she said to Cherry. “We’ve taken quite enough of Mrs. Otto’s time.”
Cherry, too, was eager to get out of this house. But Mrs. Otto, escorting them to the door, was in no hurry.
“Why don’t I hold the miniatures for you for a few days? It would be a shame for you to decide you want them, and then find they have been sold.”
From the recesses of the house—from behind that closed door?—Cherry distinctly heard the click of a telephone being dialed.
“—considerate of you, Mrs. Otto, but I don’t want to rob you of a sale. Suppose I decide within a day or two, and telephone you?”
Yes, it was a telephone being dialed, but no sound of anyone speaking yet. Sometimes a call to the city took a few minutes to be put through.
“Good-by then, Mrs. Otto,” said Aunt Kathy, “and thank you.”
“Good-by, and thank you both for coming.” Mrs. Otto opened the door and remarked what a mild evening it was. “I’ll leave the door ajar. A house gets so stuffy with the heat on. Be careful of the steps, ladies.”
Just as she and Aunt Kathy reached their car, Cherry realized she had forgotten her gloves. She murmured to Aunt Kathy that she’d left them on a table in the display room. They were her best French gloves, and a gift from her mother.
“Don’t go back in there, Cherry! Don’t force your luck.”
Cherry hesitated. She wanted her gloves, and she wanted very much to hear that telephone conversation. She still felt unsatisfied with the visit and Mrs. Otto’s explanation of the music box.
“I’ll be quick.”
She left Aunt Kathy and ran noiselessly up the steps, hoping the gathering dusk would hide her. She slipped just inside the door, into the hallway.
Standing there, her heart pounding so hard she felt nearly suffocated, Cherry heard Otto’s voice. It came loud and clear—that door must be open now—and he was obviously speaking to someone on the telephone.
“Listen, I had to call you up. I know you don’t like it—”
A pause. Otto must be listening. Cherry stepped back deeper into the hallway. Mrs. Otto had turned on the ceiling light here and it shone down on her. At least, the display room was empty, for the moment.
“Listen, Dance, I did try to stop it, but you know these old notched-disc mechanisms! Once you set one in motion, it automatically plays its allotted minutes and can’t be stopped without jamming or breaking it.… What? … Don’t be a fool, Dance! We would never find a craftsman who could repair it properly, not in this country.… What? How could I take it upstairs without being seen from the display room?”
Then Otto seemed to explode. Dance must have asked him why he needed to stop the music box from playing.
“Because just when I start to play it for my own pleasure, who drives in but a woman bringing that nosy nurse from the store! … Yes, you hear right! I look through the window to see what customers are coming and I see the nurse. So I run and grab the music box out of the display room. No, I am not mistaken about the Ames girl! … What makes you think she doesn’t know the tune? I muffled it with my coat, but for the full seven minutes it—What? What? … How do I know what she’s up to? You know her better than I do—”
Then apparently Otto listened. But not for long. He exploded again.
“Dance, you are a fool. Of course, I know she is a friend of
Julian’s! … No, Minna didn’t know who the girl was. She knows now.” Otto’s voice was bitter.
“I’d better go,” Cherry thought. “I’d better get out of here while I still can. This is a dangerous place for me.”
Just as she turned toward the door, she saw, out of the corner of her eye, Mrs. Otto walk into the display room.
“Cherry Ames!” Mrs. Otto cried out loudly. “I thought you were gone!”
“My gloves,” Cherry stammered. She darted into the display room and seized them, an excuse no longer mattered, then flew out, down the steps, and almost flung herself into the car. The engine was running.
“Aunt Kathy! We’ve got to get out of here fast!”
They pulled out in seconds and streaked along North Road toward the traffic circle. Cherry turned around several times, but no one was following them.
“Whew! I don’t know what Otto would have done to me. I only know that house isn’t a healthy place for me!”
“I told you to leave well enough alone. What happened?”
Cherry told Aunt Kathy. To her surprise, Aunt Kathy did not scold. In fact, she felt as Cherry did, that those few risky minutes spent in the hallway yielded definitive information.
“Yes,” said Cherry sadly, “but I still haven’t any evidence. I mean, concrete evidence that would stand up in a court of law.”
“You’ve learned what you needed to know,” Aunt Kathy reminded her.
“I don’t underestimate that, and I certainly do thank you for undertaking this visit. But we still need proof.”
“Isn’t the presence of the music box in the Otto Galleries proof enough?”
“It would be if the detectives or police walked in and found it there. But now that Otto and Dance know I’m on to them, what’s to prevent them from removing the music box from Woodacres?”
“Then it would be their word against yours,” said Aunt Kathy. “See here, Cherry. Maybe your friend Tom Reese would know what to do.”
Cherry brightened. “I’ll call him at the store the instant we reach home.”
Fifteen minutes later she had made connections with the Thomas and Parke switchboard. Miss Josephson, Tom’s secretary, answered.
