by Otto Penzler
“Legendary is right,” assented the deputy, snapping his jaws shut. “None of us ever saw her. We knew her only by her works. When we came a cropper we’d say ‘That’s Sophie.’ When something particularly slick was turned, Sophie again! We used to say that Sophie signed her serious work, like any other artist. Well, finally,” said Parr, thrusting his hands into his pockets and stretching luxuriously, “we filed Sophie away as ‘unfinished business.’ ”
He fixed his fierce little eyes on Armiston and waited. Oliver too waited.
“Sophie has turned up,” said Parr softly.
“In bracelets?” ejaculated Armiston.
“Not yet. But soon!”
“A squeal?”
“Certainly! What else? Haven’t I been telling you?”
“But who—who squealed?”
Parr assumed a hurt look.
“ ‘Who?’ ” he replied. “How the devil do I know? What the devil do I care? An anonymous letter,” he grunted. “They drop on my desk like the gentle dew from heaven. If they stopped coming I’d be out of a job. As it is,” he added, with a queer smile, “I am assigning myself, in my old age, to the Sophie Lang case. Do you get the humour of that, Oliver? But this time she is more than a rumour. Sophie is”—he paused for effect—“Sophie is Mrs. Huntington.”
“The widow—the insurance widow?”
Parr nodded slowly, his eyes gleaming.
Armiston eased himself back in his chair and said disgustedly: “You don’t believe that, Parr?”
“I am certain of it.”
“I’ve been meeting her around for several years, among the very best people. She’s—she’s eminently respectable,” protested Oliver.
“Sophie would be,” said Parr, chuckling.
Armiston found Parr’s complacency irritating.
“Is there anything definite to suggest Sophie?” he demanded.
“There is that quarter of a million dollars,” chuckled Parr.
“Forget your feet, Parr,” said Oliver sarcastically. Then suddenly, with sudden inspiration: “Has she signed it? You say, she does, or did.”
“There isn’t a flaw in her case,” said Parr. “That’s her usual signature. Limpid. She has beaten the insurance company twice, your sheltered little widow. They put the burden of proof on her. It wasn’t any burden—for Sophie!” He guffawed. “She hasn’t got the boodle yet—they are marking time for another appeal. They will only get themselves disliked, for picking on a poor helpless female. Helpless female is good!” and Parr fairly shook with mirth.
“Have you looked her up?” demanded Armiston.
“Naturally. Everybody has looked her up. Clean slate! Too clean! That’s Sophie. Sophie doesn’t react to the ordinary methods,” the deputy said. “That’s why I have come to you. I thought maybe you would like to undertake a little psychic research.”
Lowering his voice instinctively with a cautious look around for eavesdroppers, the deputy explained how he had been prying into the sanctified privacy of the insurance widow during the past week—with no results. Except for the one negative fact that the pathetic widow had avoided leaving the imprints of her pink finger-tips on his carefully prepared instruments, the record was blank. Parr volunteered the further information that he had just entered a new line of business—window cleaning. One of his best operatives was weekly polishing Number 142. Then there was the red-headed mechanic, and—unknown to the latter—two casual loafers haunting the block. Sophie’s time was pretty well accounted for.
“What’s her line, Parr?” asked Armiston when Parr finished.
“Anything. Sophie isn’t squeamish,” said Parr. He added with a vacant stare: “I’ve got a paper-weight in my museum collection with some human hair on it—and some finger-marks. I have always thought I would like to see Sophie’s finger-prints.”
He arose and began buttoning his coat, looking down on Armiston, smiling.
“There are a certain number of obvious things I might point out to you,” he said. “But I won’t. They might obstruct the psychic machinery.” He had his little laugh.
There was a full silence. The fire crackled on the hearth, the grandfather clock at the head of the room was emphasizing the passage of time, with dull sedate thuds. Suddenly, as if to recall the two men, it began to intone the hour. Towards the end of its count of noon, a little gilt magpie of a clock on the mantel woke up and joined in briskly. The deputy looked at his watch; and from his watch to Armiston, whom he regarded with a pleased smile. Oliver was brushing his white lock with contemplative fingers. Helping himself to a fresh cigar, the deputy took his departure.
III
“Does anyone follow, William?”
The sheltered widow smiled almost wistfully as she whispered the inquiry through the speaking-tube.
“The mechanic from across the street, ma’am,” replied William out of the corner of his mouth without moving his lips. The faithful sentry added that the red-headed mechanic was on foot this time. “Now he passes under the red cigar sign.”
“Drive slowly,” commanded the bereaved woman. “Don’t hurry him.”
But the red-headed mechanic, who of course had no suspicion that he was the object of so much thoughtfulness on the part of his widow, straightway began to lag; he discovered an interest in window shopping, particularly in those windows displaying tires of renovated rubber, of which there were many in this neighbourhood. Shortly he seemed to find what he sought, for he entered a shop—and that was the last of him for this time. But that same afternoon when she was about to turn into the avenue—at that misty hour of winter twilight when the street lamps awake with sickly blinks, and gorgeous limousines, whose interiors present charming Rodney groups of women and children, moved hub to hub in opposing tides—she picked him up again in her busybody mirror. Mrs. Huntington’s pair had come to a prancing stop at the avenue corner ready for their cue to join the ceremonial procession, when the red-headed mechanic, exercising another sick car, pulled up behind, his bumper grazing milady’s wheel felloes. In the mirror the cut of his jib fairly screamed his origin and purpose to the experienced eyes of the widow. Police? No doubt of it! Now, abruptly, the avenue stream broke in two at the traffic signal, opening the sluices for the cross current. William whirled his whip, his stylish pair danced on their tender toes and slowly wheeled into their place in the parade. The flutter of the motor sounded behind.
“Careful, William—pocket him!” cautioned the lady.
“He’s gone, ma’am—gone ’cross town,” said the disconsolate William.
Now suddenly Sophie Lang became all alert. Like a wily fox that has been idly scratching fleas waiting for the hunt to come within mouthing distance again, Sophie instinctively gathered her faculties, aware of a pleasing thrill. Figuratively she nosed the air to catch the tell-tale taint; figuratively she cocked an ear for the distant song of the pack. It had been a long wait, this last one, for the bay of the hounds, years of ennui and respectability, shared with a colourless husband. Husbands merely as such did not appeal to Sophie.
“Did you see him pass the ‘office,’ William?”
William had not detected anything.
Undoubtedly the “office”—she had unconsciously dropped into the argot of her craft—had been passed. It was not coincidence that her red-headed mechanic had found an errand to take him in her direction whenever she drove out these last few days; nor had it been coincidence that he lost interest in her before they had gone half a mile through the teeming streets. They were hunting her in relays! Sophie preened herself. This was genuine subtlety on the part of the police. It was her due; her dignity demanded it. She laughed softly, almost the first genuine revelation of amusement she had permitted herself since her widowhood. Instantly she closed her pretty lips over her pretty teeth again. Out of the corners of her long eyes she examined her neighbours in the procession. Among them she knew must be one tied to her heels like a noonday shadow. But the faces she looked into were blankly anonymous.
She tried her bag of tricks one by one; like the wily fox, doubling, back-tracking, side-stepping, taking to earth, to water, to fallen timber. But with no results—except certainty! When finally that afternoon she returned to her domicile by devious ways, her red-headed mechanic was tinkering with still another sick motor at the curb in front of his shop; he did not even raise his eyes when her brougham drove up and drove away.
From that moment Mrs. Amos P. Huntington gradually faded out of the picture. The outer semblance of that quondam widow remained—her clothes, her speech, her aspect of grief; but beneath it all was Sophie. She watched with bead-like eyes. For several days she devoted her talents to catching her red-headed mechanic in the act of passing her bodily to the tender mercies of his relay. But never did she surprise the actual moment. This was finesse. Maybe it was the great Parr himself! She thrilled for an instant on this note. Then she decided on a stroke wholly characteristic.
When William had tucked her in among her moleskins he crossed to the red-headed man and, with that curious condescension upper servants bestow on mere artizans, informed him that his mistress would have speech with him.
“What is your name?” she asked, when the red-headed man stood respectfully, cap in hand, at her carriage door.
“Hanrahan, ma’am—John Hanrahan,” he replied.
“I have had my eyes on you for some time, John, without your suspecting it,” said she kindly. She had her eyes on him at that moment; and as he met them he had the startling impression that he and she understood each other perfectly. The impression was fugitive.
“You are to enter my service,” she informed him, with a large air of conferring an inestimable favour; and without awaiting an answer she informed John that he was to go with William to bring home a new car which she named—she was giving up her pair because the pavements were too hard on their feet. William was instructed to take John to the tailor and have him outfitted. All this with a gracious smile while she complimented John on the way he carried himself—John’s particular uprightness was the regulation product of the police gymnasium. The widow spoke in a little thread of a voice, which broke here and there, when she would close her eyes with a sigh. If the red-headed man had been a thousand devils he could not have refused so pathetic a figure. But the element of humour in the transaction was the ultimate appeal.
A few days later Parr himself, held up by one of his own regal traffic cops at a busy corner, had the grim satisfaction of seeing Sophie taking his red-headed mechanic out for an airing. The new car itself was quite as perfect in its way as had been her prancing pair—a town car imported from France, where they do themselves well in such things.
The motor occupied a glistening bandbox up forward. Sophie was enclosed in a gorgeous candybox away aft. The red-headed mechanic was exposed to the world and the weather as the only living thing abroad, perched on a slender capstan of a seat rising out of the bare deck amidships. She was making a Roman holiday of her prize. Parr could not repress a chuckle. It was so like Sophie!
The Dresden china widow—or what remained of her for popular consumption—did not vary her surface routine by a jot. At home and abroad her shuttle-like eyes were always moving slowly back and forth under the screen of her long lashes. Before many days had passed she had isolated her red-headed mechanic’s pack brothers. One was a man with a brown derby who always chewed a cold cigar. The other was a frayed taxi-driver with a moth-eaten beard who had a stand just off the avenue. She never hurried them, never lost them; she nursed them as tenderly as she did her man on the box. They were merely the hounds following blindly. It was the huntsman behind whom she must uncover. She examined bolts, bars, locks, window ledges, painted surfaces for tell-tale marks. In the act of crossing her boudoir she would pause, only her eyes moving, her senses alert and as receptive as if in the very cloister of her retreat she had already half-uncovered the thing that lurked and would strike when the time came. She knew the tricks and pace of her pursuers, and she timed her wits and pace to theirs.
Her telephone she handled with the utmost delicacy—they had tapped that, of course. Whenever she used it, she would set it down softly, then instantly pick it up again and listen, for minutes on end. It was filled with voices, disembodied, inarticulate, and far-off, that swirled and eddied through the ceaseless river of speech. Nothing there—it required exquisite patience. And then one day as she eavesdropped, under her very elbow someone yawned incautiously, groaned lazily, “Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” Sophie showed herself her little white teeth in the mirror that looked down on her eavesdropping. Her nimble mind drew a picture: it would be a big bare room with a lazy man in a blue uniform, with receivers strapped to his ears, seated at a desk. And this police ear grafted to her wire would always be open and attentive.
Once Sophie was rewarded by hearing a door open in that vague room. Again she caught the tread of feet; then the murmur of hushed voices. But it was the ticking of a clock—two of them, in fact—that pleased her most of all. How like a stupid cop, to lie in wait breathless at the mouthpiece of a telephone, with a blatant clock at his elbow. Sophie giggled. While she crouched up wind, watching those who watched her, she savoured the old intoxication of the game rising in her blood. This was réclame! She had had enough of stodgy respectability. After she had executed her last great coup Sophie had solemnly assured herself she would go out to grass for the remainder of her days. She had devoted years to this end. And yet, at the first fillip to the vanity of her legendary aloofness—Sophie, the uncaught!—she was off again.
Meantime our friend Mr. Parr, who had assigned himself, in his mature age, to the Sophie Lang case, was gloomy and bad company. The end of the fourth week found him scowling. There was the daily harvest of squeals falling on his desk. Betrayed crooks, with bracelets on, came home to roost as inevitably as raindrops trickle back to the ocean. But, just as all the rivers flow into the sea and yet the sea is not full, so Parr was conscious of an aching void. He had the uncomfortable sensation of being laughed at.
“The damned thing is frozen—solid!” he muttered, settling himself heavily in his favourite elbow-chair by Armiston’s desk.
Armiston said nothing. It wasn’t frozen to him. It was merely that the element of time had entered in. This yarn had “written” itself, as he would say professionally. He had merely brushed the tips of his clairvoyant fingers across the oracular keys of his faithful typewriter, and the congealed action which Parr had laid at the feet of his Medicine had straightway come to life, started to move. It had developed the impetus of the inevitable. He had written Finis and locked his typewriter and packed for Lakewood. Then he waited for his friend Parr to call on him.
Leaning back in his chair Oliver idly tinkered with some electrical indicating instrument. The grandfather clock ticked, the fire crackled, and the deputy scowled misanthropically at the fat Buddha in the corner. Silence did not embarrass Oliver. In fact it was his observation that if silence were maintained long enough, the other fellow would say something interesting. Parr seemed tongue-tied. As if tired of waiting for animate things to take the initiative, the needle of the instrument Oliver held in his hand made a spontaneous gesture. It swung over to the middle of a calibrated arc—and stayed there, as if intent on something. Armiston with a yawn set the thing down and presently picked up the telephone. He rested on one elbow watching his friend Parr while he waited.
“Rotten service!” he mumbled after a long wait. Parr nodded gloomily.
“Parr,” said Oliver abruptly, over the top of the telephone, “have you made any effort to find the husband? He is the one that squealed, of course. I suppose the poor devil got tired hiding out.”
The effect of these words, or rather of this act, on the deputy of police was electric. He reached out with one gorilla-like hand and snatched the telephone from Oliver’s grasp. The loose receiver cluttered to the floor, and Parr picked it up and replaced it. He glared at Armiston.
“Was she on there?” he demanded threateningly.
>
“Certainly,” said Oliver easily.
He pointed to the electric needle that still trembled over the middle of the card. That tell-tale needle gave warning every time the receiver was lifted off its hook in Number 142. To the two watchers at that moment, that tremulous needle personified the woman herself, the eavesdropper, probably at that instant cocking her pretty head with the swift movement of a startled doe.
“So you tip her off—under my nose, eh? Eh?” snarled Parr.
The sudden brainstorm that evoked these words gave him a look ape-like in its ferocity. His huge hands clamped themselves on the extinct author’s shoulder. Oliver could almost feel the bones crunch. He gritted his teeth, but continued to watch the spying needle on his desk. It was the needle itself at this juncture that came to the rescue. Abruptly, as if released by an unseen force, it flopped back to zero, nothing, on the calibrated scale. It was as significant as the snap of a dry twig. The lurker was withdrawing, on tiptoe.
For another instant Parr sat there glaring into Oliver’s eyes. Then as if he too were in the grip of some unseen force, the deputy jammed his hat down on his ears, turned up his collar and rushed from the room as if the very devil were prodding him on.
While the Lakewood train was picking its way across the drawbridges that span the estuaries of Newark Bay, the Dresden china widow was rolling over hill and dale through the bleak fawn-colour of the winter landscape to Byam, a little lake among the hills where her stylish hackneys were acquiring a winter coat and new hoofs in drowsy ease. On the spur of the moment this morning she had thought of her beloved horses with a tinge of self-accusation. It was honest John Hanrahan, the red-headed mechanic, who as usual conducted her. Some distance behind, coming into sight now and again as her car topped a rise, followed the man in the brown derby, only for this occasion he had discarded his derby for a cap, thrown away his cold cigar, and acquired a moustache.
Life had become a bed of thorns for the red-headed mechanic. Perched out there in the open where the widow could watch him breathe wasn’t his idea of being a detective; and so little had transpired in these four weeks that he was beginning to have grave doubts of the infallibility of his great Chief. But ahead of him this morning was a taste of paradise. Arriving at the farm, he went over his car, like a good mechanic, while he waited to take the widow back to town. This done, he entered the kitchen to get warm. Settling himself in a gloomy corner by the stove, he waited, sourly meditating on life. There entered a pert little French maid, a round pink person of Chippendale pattern, on high heels, which gave to her walk the tilt of a Gallic poodle. She caught the reflection of herself in a mirror—a pier-glass that had obviously been banished from above—and before the astonished eyes of John, she began to rehearse those very arts of coquetry which he in his ignorance had always supposed to be spontaneous, when exercised on helpless males.
