Lady Afraid

by Lester Dent

  Most’s knee came hard against her leg. She jerked around to him and saw a startling laugh-grimace on his face. Not at once did she understand—then she did, and she tried to match his fake mirth with laughter of her own, and succeeded too well, for the sound that pealed out of her was shocking.

  They sat there grimacing at each other for longer than it could possibly have been. Sarah even rattled the noisemaker. Then the traffic light went back to yellow and finally green, and Most let out the clutch and they moved. But the police car made no effort to pass them.

  Sarah was quite speechless. Nor did Most say anything for a while, and then he muttered, “I wonder if we overdid the joy?”

  The rearview mirror stood tilted and it gave Sarah no sign of the police, only a reflection of a part of Most’s long face.

  “Are they following us?” she asked thinly.

  “It could be. They’re staying behind us, at any rate.”

  She looked at him sharply and saw that he sat relaxed, easy through shoulders and arms where a man usually shows his tensions. No great rigidity was in him.

  He added, “Prowl cars have a habit of driving along behind somebody they think may’ve had a couple of drinks. The idea probably is to scare them into being careful.”

  Sarah stared straight ahead, plain fright in her. “Can’t we turn off on a side street? Maybe they won’t follow. If they do, we’ll know.”

  “Well,” Most said quietly, “I figure that could seem suspicious. We better wait a bit.” He continued to drive casually, and there was no noticeable jerking as his eyes shifted from the street ahead to the rearview mirror. He carries this almost too well, she thought. And she grew aware of doubt, a feeling that here could be a man who might like excitement overly much. She wondered about this. It was something important to know, because it touched directly on Most’s measure of common sense and judgment, qualities in which she had rated him high. The sea had taught her that a man who likes danger is a fool. If Most had this fondness, she wished to be forewarned. Now she watched him closely for this recklessness, but he continued to drive at a modest pace never over thirty miles an hour. And finally he indicated, by a tilting of his head, a building before them and on their side of the street. “The Cascades,” he said. “Arbogast lives there.”

  “Is the police car still—”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think we had better do?” Sarah asked.

  He threw out another of his decisions in that sudden way that had startled her.

  “I’ll park, and we’ll walk in,” he said. “Unless you have another idea.”

  “Yes, yonder is a parking area. Beside the apartment. It’s dark there.”

  They drove into the murky parking area, leaving the station wagon there, then walked together around to the front of the building. They moved under a pastel-yellow canopy to wrought-brass doors. A doorman in a mauve uniform swept the portals open for them. The Cascades was an apartment hotel.

  Striding to the desk, Most told the clerk, “Captain Most to see Mr. Arbogast.” He had not given Sarah’s name, which Sarah felt was wise. And then, while the clerk used the telephone, Most turned back to the doorway and had a look at the street.

  “Mr. Arbogast is in eighteen-twelve,” the clerk advised Sarah. This was their passport to go up.

  Most came back and took Sarah’s arm.

  “The police car went on,” he whispered. He walked beside Sarah toward an elevator. “And parked at the corner, and is standing there!”

  Chapter Ten

  ARBOGAST HIMSELF LET THEM in. Sarah did not know why she had been expecting a servant to do this, but she had. Probably because it was easy to visualize the soft man’s existence padded by servants.

  Sarah’s presence produced quite a reaction.

  “Mrs. Lineyack!” Mr. Arbogast exclaimed, and surprise sent his head back and dropped his mouth open, so that he resembled for the moment a goldfish out of water taking a hard breath.

  “Why… didn’t the desk clerk tell you Mrs. Lineyack was with me?” Most asked with convincing innocence.

  “No, he didn’t.” Arbogast hesitated, then he stepped backward and carried the door with him, adding, “Come in, Sarah. Do. You too, Captain.”

  Mr. Arbogast’s shoes and trousers and shirt were all shades of tans, under a checkered tan seersucker robe. His shoelaces were tied neatly in double bows, his hair lay back sleek from a widow’s peak. He had clearly not dressed this fully since Most’s call from downstairs.

  Having closed the door behind them, Mr. Arbogast stepped past and led the way down two steps into a dropped living room. “This visit is quite a surprise,” he remarked.

  Most, in a tone that stated the fact rather than apologized for it, said, “It’s sort of late for a call, at that.”

  “Oh, I do not mind. I wasn’t asleep.” Arbogast’s plump hand gestured. “Won’t you sit down? Make yourselves at home.”

  Taking a chair gingerly, Sarah was thinking of the police car downstairs, feeling toward its presence as toward a sword hanging over her composure. Most had not forgotten it either. He strode to one of the windows, nudged a space between the venetian-blind slats, and looked through it at the street below. Sarah, the breath standing still in her lungs, waited for him to say whether the police car was still there. But he did not turn, did not speak; and finally she forced her attention to Mr. Arbogast’s apartment.

  The apartment was quiet, rich, done in browns offset by subdued yellows and toned with walnuts and antique oak. The decorator must have been very good, and the occupant had since been careful not to add a clutter that would detract from an effect. Sarah remembered what Most had said: The chairs would be overstuffed. They were.

  Most had laid three fingers on edge between the venetian-blind slats to make an opening through which to watch, and at last he withdrew them and turned.

  “Still present,” he told Sarah soberly.

  Mr. Arbogast’s eyebrows went up; they formed an inquisitive arch for a moment, then resumed placid level above his mild eyes. He bowed to Sarah. “Will you excuse me a moment, my dear?” He went into another room that seemed to be peach and blue and was back shortly, smiling, and now he was the full gentleman, for he wore his coat.

  “Something to drink?”

  Sarah shook her head. Most said, “No, thanks.” And then Sarah said gravely, “I came to see you about that telephone call, Mr. Arbogast.”

  “Yes, I imagined you had,” Mr. Arbogast said, and inclined his head, which since he was so chubby meant inclining most of his upper body. “Yes, I said to myself: ‘Sarah is upset about that strange telephone call.’ And I don’t blame you. I’m most puzzled myself…. Sarah, you say you phoned me yesterday afternoon?”

  “Oh, I did! I telephoned you a little after two o’clock. I asked you to vouch for the character of an attorney named Calvin Brandeis Brill.”

  Mr. Arbogast looked confused and said, “That is substantially the statement you made earlier tonight.”

  “Why not? It’s true.”

  “Indeed? And do you remember my reply earlier?”

  “You said I did not call,” Sarah stated bitterly.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Lineyack. I don’t wish to be rude. Let me phrase the answer another way—oh, incidentally, I don’t believe I did make the flat statement that you did not call—I believe I said I did not speak with you on the telephone this afternoon…. But let me rephrase the reply: You are mistaken about having spoken to me…. How’s that?”

  Sarah shook her head. “But I did make the call. I’m fairly well acquainted with your voice. I felt sure—” She frowned now. Acquainted with Arbogast’s voice? She was. But she recalled that this afternoon she had noticed a difference about the voice which at the time she had attributed to a mechanical inadequacy in the telephone…. “It never entered my head I could be mistaken,” she added.

  “This is an odd thing,” Mr. Arbogast said thoughtfully. “I do not know what to think of it. I really
do not…. Could it be that someone in my office tricked you?”

  “I hardly thought—Oh, I don’t know. I’m so mixed up…. But the person who spoke to me mentioned Vameric and the canceling of the trial sailing because of weather.”

  “Indeed!… Still, everyone in my office knows about my wonderful new yacht you designed for me, Sarah. And it’s a large office—dozens of people. Clerks, stenographers, agency auditors, agency accountants and examiners. It may have been one of them. My voice is not a difficult one to imitate…. But good lord! Why do such a thing?”

  Upset now, Mr. Arbogast went to a table on which stood a cut-glass decanter and glasses. He asked, “Do you mind?” and poured himself a drink. He was soberly concerned when he lifted the glass. “Really, Sarah, I’d love nothing better than to accommodate you. If it’s important, and if it would help, I might tell a small fib and say you did call. How about that? Would a little fib help? Is it so important?

  “It’s vital!” Sarah gasped.

  His jaw fell foolishly.

  Distraught to a point where she was tempted to disbelieve that she had even made a phone call, Sarah wheeled on Most. “Shouldn’t I tell Mr. Arbogast the whole story? Isn’t that the thing to do now?”

  Captain Most gave the window a glance of sour thoughtfulness. His pipe came into his hands, and when he spoke, which was after a few moments, he gave less aid than she wanted. “It may be better for you to make the decision,” he said.

  She thought: He does not like Arbogast. That was what his reluctance meant. It seemed to her that Most was making overmuch of his trivial disapproval of a mere landlubber.

  “I see no reasons why not!” she said.

  Most did not miss her disapproval, and he said a bit sharply, “There could be one good reason.” And to show her what the reason might be, he turned to Mr. Arbogast, asked, “Are you Lineyack’s attorney?”

  Mr. Arbogast betrayed surprise. “Lineyack? You mean Ivan Spellman Lineyack?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, I’m not so fortunate. I believe that Mr. Lineyack retains the legal firm of Alward, Arnold, and Ames.”

  “But you know the Lineyacks?”

  “Certainly. For a number of years.”

  “Business relationship?”

  “Social and business,” Arbogast said freely. “There was only one business deal, as a matter of fact—much the same sort of thing through which I happened to meet your friend Mr. Collins, of Collins Yard. About a year and a half ago Mr. Lineyack enlarged his business interests considerably through the medium of a Reconstruction Finance Corporation loan which was handled by my office. But we were social acquaintances before and have been since.”

  Most was now testing the bit of his pipe for tightness. He told Sarah quietly, “Mr. Arbogast’s sympathies may lie with the Lineyacks.”

  Sarah felt a fool. She had misjudged Most’s reluctance to confide in Mr. Arbogast. Most had not, as she thought, been swayed by small dislike of a non-sail man. He’d had a logical point.

  Now Mr. Arbogast gave them both a puzzled glance.

  “You two,” he said, “sound like conspirators. As for my sympathies—if Sarah needs them, they’re hers, I assure you so. From the bottom of my heart, my sympathies are Sarah’s.”

  Sarah decided to tell him. She was so desperately involved anyway. How could her position be worsened?

  “It’s a long story,” she said to Mr. Arbogast, and she began it with her marriage to Paul Lineyack against the opposition of Paul’s parents. Talking rapidly, she sank in a chair, made her hands tight. She was, she discovered, having no trouble finding words; the problem was not to use too many too fast. Hysteria was a coiled spring behind each word…. Paul’s death, the taking of their son by the Lineyacks, the refusal to let her visit the child, and then the night when Lida Dunlap, Mr. Arbogast’s office receptionist, introduced her to Brill, who cunningly produced his plan to recover the boy. And how that plan had gone till now….

  “Incredible!” Arbogast cried. He seemed to swell with questions. But he restrained them and gasped, “Go on, Sarah. What happened?”

  “I’m hunting my child,” she said grimly.

  “Good God!” Arbogast was standing with the round calves of his legs against a chair, and his knees bent suddenly and he sat down. “Sarah, you—it’s unbelievable that you could be so—so—”

  “So a fool?” Sarah said.

  “No, no! So persecuted! But what reasons—what conceivable reasons—did this Brill give to lead you to believe such a fantastic thing was legal?”

  “Brill said that the Maine statutes say the consent of parent is required except in case of insanity or intemperance. He said that the intent of the law is that there shall be no cutting off of parental relationship without consent, and that adoption is of statutory origin and the statutes must be strictly complied with.”

  “But, my dear, the law offers recourse!” Arbogast exclaimed. “The portals of justice are always open! This man Brill, if he’s an attorney at all, should have merely filed petition with the juvenile division of circuit court covering the matter.”

  “But Brill said,” Sarah explained, “that the circumstance of two years elapsing might be against me, so that the court could feel I had not really wanted my son. He said that if I took Jonnie—desperately, the way I took him—it would go a long way to establish intense mother love in the emotional eye, if not the legal, of the court. He said that my taking Jonnie wasn’t the usual way, but that the court would be influenced by the fact that I did it on a lawyer’s advice, and I wouldn’t be considered—well—a little cracked because I took my son that way.”

  Arbogast considered this, with his lips pushed outward thoughtfully. “That,” he admitted, “isn’t such bad reasoning, I’ll admit. But it’s unorthodox.”

  “I knew the idea was unusual,” Sarah confessed. “Brill had another point: He said we should let the court see that the Lineyacks were the aggressors, the persecutors. By taking the boy, I would create a situation where the Lineyacks would have to take the initiative. The court would then see the kind of methods they’d been using on me.”

  “Hah! He had psychology there!” But Mr. Arbogast shook his head vehemently. “The psychology may have been for your benefit—just arguments to trick you. Have you thought of that, Sarah?”

  Sarah lowered her head miserably. “I’ve thought of so many things. None make sense.”

  “You poor dear!” Arbogast exclaimed. “Your son, your child—oh, how awful you must feel!”

  The sympathy upset Sarah so that she did not trust herself to speak.

  And then Mr. Arbogast jumped. “Lida Dunlap! My receptionist!” He sprang to his feet, trotted excitedly to the table, and poured himself another drink. “Sarah, are you positive it was Lida you spoke to?” he demanded.

  “Oh yes! I am—I’m certain. It was Lida.”

  “How odd!”

  “But I am sure it was Lida.”

  “Yes! Yes, I’m almost inclined to think—” Arbogast gestured animatedly with his glass of liquor, spilling some on his fingers. “Sarah, I believe your story. I do.” He put down the glass and whipped out a handkerchief. “I must tell you something, Sarah…. Lida Dunlap started her vacation today.”

  “Vacation?”

  He waved the handkerchief excitedly. “That is quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you think?”

  It was more than a coincidence. “Where could I find Lida Dunlap?” Sarah asked.

  “Goodness knows. I have no idea.”

  “But—”

  Arbogast blotted his fingers hurriedly with the handkerchief. “Because Lida’s gone. Gone, Sarah. Lida informed me she was sailing on a small sloop with a girl friend and the girl friend’s husband. They were going to loaf in the Bahama Islands for two weeks. Lida was, she said, leaving last evening, and would be out of touch with civilization for two weeks.”

  Here was fresh evidence of plot, Sarah thought grimly. And she was aware of movement, realizing tha
t Captain Most was going again to stand silently by the window with fingers holding the blind slats apart. This time he returned quickly. He dropped a mouth corner a trifle to show her the police car was still there, then asked some questions himself about Lida Dunlap.

  “Lida Dunlap,” said Most, “may not have told the truth.”

  “That’s possible,” Mr. Arbogast admitted.

  “If she’s in this, and said she was going to sail away from civilization on a sloop, it’s likely she has disappeared by doing something quite different.”

  Arbogast stuffed his handkerchief into a breast pocket. “I don’t know what to think.”

  “When did Lida fix it for her vacation to start today?” Most asked.

  After thinking and counting off on his fingers, the first time Sarah had seen him use that mannerism, Mr. Arbogast said, “Why, it was nearly six weeks ago!” He looked up. “That isn’t very helpful, is it?”

  “Six weeks?”

  “Yes.”

  Most seemed to arrange this fact in his mind, and then he remarked, “So this plot was put on to cook that long ago.”

  Mr. Arbogast’s face was now darkly concerned. “You know, we may be wrong about Lida. She’s been with me nearly four years.” He looked at them helplessly. “Lida… she seemed honest.”

  And Lida has interesting legs, Sarah thought bitterly. Then she said, “Yet you appear to think that Lida took my telephone call when you were out of the office and switched it to someone who imitated your voice.”

  “What other explanation could there be?” Mr. Arbogast cried.

  Captain Most now threw the discussion at another point. He said, “You were at the Lineyacks’ tonight, weren’t you?”

  “Oh, of course,” Mr. Arbogast told him. “I was Mr. Lineyack’s dinner guest…. It was I whom Sarah passed in the upstairs hall. Although I confess I didn’t recognize her. I do vaguely recall passing someone in the hall whom I supposed to be a housemaid. But I wasn’t aware it was Sarah—not until she told me so a few moments ago.”