Alibi for Isabel: And Other Stories

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  “Now listen, everybody,” he said. “We are going to reproduce as nearly as possible real raid conditions. Our job as you know is to see that the district is blacked out, to help the police, to avoid panic and get people under cover. We have permission to turn off the street lights in our sector, so have your screwdrivers ready.” There was laughter at that. “There will be an ‘incident’ on Cross Street. Report it here, and for God’s sake don’t let anybody get hurt. The people have been notified, so there will be no panic. And—I guess that’s all.”

  The telephone rang. The crowd stiffened. The senior warden lifted the receiver.

  “Air raid headquarters,” he said. “Post 2.” He listened, and suddenly became human. “Okay,” he said, and hung up.

  “All right,” he said. “On your way, everybody. I’m staying here.”

  They pounded on, and as Kelly and Halliday reached the corner they heard the wailing of the fire engine a block or two away, and behind them both house and street lights began to go out. Halliday had some trouble with the first lamps on the waterfront, and Kelly helped him. When they straightened up, Kelly’s eyes were on the apartment house overhead.

  “Can you beat it?” he said. “Look at those windows!”

  Halliday looked up, and a surge of fury shook his whole body. Laura had not closed the curtains after all.

  “That’s my apartment,” he said thickly. “I’ll go back and telephone. Carry on with the lamps, will you?”

  It was more than a block back to the post. Up the dark street apparently the “incident” was already occurring. Somebody had set off a Fourth of July bomb, and a red flare was burning. From an empty house black smoke was pouring, and in the glare two men with a stretcher were running along the pavement. But Halliday hardly noticed. He was consumed with anger when he reached the post. He shoved aside the senior warden, who was watching from the doorway, and shot to the telephone. It was some time before Laura answered. He could see her, looking annoyed, laying down her cards, moving languidly across the room.

  “Wouldn’t you know it?” she would be saying. “Right in the middle of a hand.”

  He was almost inarticulate when he finally heard her voice, sharp and irritated.

  “Hello. Mrs. Halliday speaking.”

  “What the hell are you doing with the lights on?” he shouted.

  “Don’t you talk to me like that. I just forgot them.”

  “Forget them thirty seconds more and the police will be after you,” he said grimly, and hung up.

  The waterfront was dark when he got back. Kelly had put out the street lamps, and the long line of docks was black. Only the riding lights of the ship hung over the faint slate-gray of the river. He looked up, to see that Laura had finally closed the curtains, and he drew a long breath of relief.

  But there was no sign of Kelly. He had gone on, probably. Well, the thing was done; was going off well, apparently, except for Laura! He started to light a cigarette, remembered, and put his case back in his pocket. He listened for the sound of footsteps; Kelly in the next block. There was no such sound, however, and as his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he walked in that direction. It was some time before he realized that Kelly was not there. Was not anywhere, in fact. He had turned off four lamps, Halliday’s two and his own, and then he had disappeared.

  Halliday crossed the empty street. Perhaps he had seen a light on one of the piers and had gone to notify the watchman. He stood still, listening. The siren had ceased for some time, and the only sound now was the lapping of the water as a sharp wind blew it against the pilings. There was an open shed here, and he felt his way into it cautiously.

  “Kelly!” he said. “Where are you?”

  There was no answer. His uneasiness increased. Suppose he had gone into the shed, underestimated his distance and fallen into the water? He moved on, feeling his way, unwilling to turn on his flashlight until the staccato sounds of the engine would indicate the end of the blackout. And he was almost at the end of the shed when he felt a body against his feet.

  It was Kelly, face down on the boards. At first Halliday thought he was dead. He got down beside him and felt for his wrist. His pulse was slow, but it was undeniably beating; and as if the flashlight had roused him Kelly moved. But he was still far away. Halliday, kneeling beside him, was conscious of a cold anger. Because Laura had ignored the blackout Kelly had been alone, and because he had been alone—

  “Kelly!” he said desperately. “Kelly! Can you hear me?”

  “Huh?”

  “What happened, Kelly? Who hit you?”

  Kelly tried to sit up, but fell back against Halliday’s arm.

  “I don’t know,” he said dully. “Somebody—”

  He lapsed again. Halliday got up. He did not know what to do. He could not leave him there to get help. Whoever had done this might come back, might even then be watching him. He got out a handkerchief and made a rough bandage. The bleeding had stopped. But the blackout was over before Kelly became fully conscious. Then he raised up on his elbow and was violently sick.

  “The dirty devil,” he said feebly.

  “Who was it? Did you see him?”

  “Fellow getting into a rowboat.” He lay back and groaned. “I spoke to him, and he came up the ladder. I didn’t see the gun until he was right on me.”

  Halliday looked out over the water, now reflecting the lights of many windows. Why would a man with a rowboat try to kill Kelly? It was queer. It was more than that. Then suddenly, in this new illumination, he saw the rowboat itself. It was under the stern of the ship out in the river. It was hardly more than a shadow, but it was there. And as he looked it began to move downstream, as if it had been pushed out into the current and allowed to drift. He looked at Kelly, slowly getting to his feet.

  “There’s a boat out there,” he said. “Only I can’t see anyone in it. Can you get up?”

  He got Kelly to his feet. He staggered, but he managed to stand erect. Halliday steadied him.

  “That’s the boat,” he said thickly. “And what the hell do you mean it’s empty? He’s in it, lying down, maybe with a tarp over him. The murdering devil,” he added bitterly.

  “He may have been one of the crew, late and getting aboard.”

  “So he tries to kill me!”

  “All right. What?”

  “How do I know? Time bomb on the rudder maybe. Something dirty, anyhow.” He stiffened. “What did I tell you? He’s there. Can’t you see him? He’s done his job. Now he’s getting away with it.”

  There was a man in the boat now. He was sitting up, rowing furiously downstream, and all at once something was happening to Halliday. It had happened the time he got the medal and the machine gun bullet in his leg. He felt cool and angry and incredibly strong. Adrenalin, probably. He was pouring out adrenalin, only of course he didn’t call it that.

  “No, by God,” he said. “He’s not getting away with it. I’ll get him if I have to follow him to hell to do it.” He looked at Kelly, white and drawn. “Look here, can you get back to the post?”

  “I can damn well try.”

  “All right. Call the river police. Get the other police too. I’ll be down along the bank somewhere. He’ll have to pull in sooner or later.”

  The boat was well down the stream by now, and out on the water the ship had come to life. It was still dark, but he could see the dim figures of men moving about, and hear the clank and rattle of the chains as the anchors lifted out of the river mud. And he had been right. The man was heading toward the shore, but not sharply. The tide was too strong for that.

  He took his automatic out of its holster and put it in the pocket of his trench coat. Then he was out on the street and running. But he knew his first despair then. The street was empty, and along the river side stretched block after block of piers, closed and locked. He could not even see the water. He was in a dead world, blank and empty. But the boat would have to come in somewhere. The man in it would have to land.

&nb
sp; He kept on running. The automatic banged against his side, and his bad leg began to weaken. He was gasping for breath, too. But he pounded on, the blood roaring in his ears, sweat pouring down his forehead and into his eyes.

  Then he saw it, an open slip; the railway wharf, with a dozen freight cars on it.

  The man in the boat had seen it too. He was rowing toward it, coming stealthily as though his oars were muffled; and when he reached it only the faint grating of wood against piling showed that he was there at all. He did not wait to tie the boat. Apparently he gave it a shove and let it go, for it drifted along, bumping until the current caught it. And so cautiously did he climb the ladder that he was on the wharf before Halliday saw him.

  He was a big man, and he did not even trouble to look back at the ship, now slowly moving down the river. He came on, and he even stopped in the shadow of a freight car to light a cigarette. Afterwards, looking back, Halliday thought that this casual gesture was what had steadied him. He was no longer gasping. His leg had ceased to hurt. He was entirely calm as he stepped forward and threw his flashlight on the brutal face.

  “Just a minute,” he said quietly. “I’d like to talk to you.”

  “What about?”

  “What were you doing at that ship?”

  “What ship? And take that flashlight away. I don’t like it.”

  The tone was ugly. Halliday had his automatic by that time, but he was just too late. Something exploded in his face, and his helmet, strap and all, was jerked from his head. And with the helmet disappeared forever the mild, patient Halliday who had been a law-abiding citizen, according to his lights, who had paid his taxes, nursed a dying business, and endured his wife patiently for years on end. Now he was a cool fighting devil.

  There was no one to see that epic struggle. He never remembered much of it himself. Evidently the man did not want to shoot again, for fear of raising an alarm. He came at Halliday and by sheer force of weight knocked him down and sent his automatic flying. But this new Halliday was up again in a second. Cool does it. Don’t let him throw you in the river. Try for his jaw. Get his wind pipe. He’s soft. He’s big but he’s soft. Hit him in the stomach. Where in God’s name is the gun? It fell near here. If I can’t get it—

  The other man was gasping for breath. Fat, Halliday thought. Too much beer. He himself was feeling fine. He wasn’t going into the river. He was going to lay out this unprintable mess of foreign jelly, and then he was going to kill him.

  It shocked him when he hit the wharf. The man was dodging toward the street, and Halliday was flat on his back. Only he was lying on something. It was his gun, and he fired six shots from it before he saw the man fall. Then he got painfully to his feet.

  He reached home that night at half past twelve. A captain of police had shaken him by the hand. A troopship had been saved. And Kelly, being treated for concussion in a hospital, had given him a grin and a final accolade.

  “Can’t tell about you quiet fellows,” he said, “but I knew you were pretty much of a man, Mr. Halliday.”

  He felt very tired. When he got out of the taxi he was limping badly, and he was carrying a bundle in his arms.

  The elevator boy, after a glance at it, chose to ignore it.

  “Pretty fine show you folks put on tonight,” he said. “Fire engines and ambulances, and just when we thought it was over along came the river police. Guess this town can take care of itself.”

  “Yes,” Halliday said drily. “I guess it can.”

  He took out his key and, unlocking the apartment door, carried the bundle back to his room and put it on the bed. Then still limping he went forward to the living room. The women had gone, and Laura was tucking some bills in her bag and looking complacent.

  “Sorry about the windows, Jim,” she said. “I had just bid a slam. Have a good time?”

  He looked at her, at her new wrist watch, at her carefully manicured hands, at her slightly amused smile, and suddenly he wanted to jar her out of her complacency, to jolt her into a realization that there was a war, and that it was here, at their very doorstep.

  “I had to kill a man tonight,” he said slowly.

  “Really!” said Laura. “What fun!”

  She did not believe him. The war for her was still a make-believe, like the test blackout that night. He got up stiffly and went back to his room. The bundle still lay on the bed. He sat down and rubbed his leg, which still ached damnably. He was bruised all over, too, and one of his knuckles was split wide open. They had put a dressing on it at the hospital, but it still hurt like the devil.

  He took off his helmet and eyed it. The strap was broken, and there was a fresh dent in the steel. He put it on top of his chiffonier. Then he went to the bundle on the bed. It was stirring. A pair of sleepy eyes looked up at him.

  “I sat and sat in the hall,” said a small voice. “But nobody came.”

  “I came, didn’t I?”

  “Did you?”

  “Sure I did.”

  The boy—Kelly’s boy—slept again and Halliday went back to his chair. He knew now what he meant to do. If Kelly wanted to enlist he would keep this child for him. He and Laura. Then when the war was over they would go somewhere out in the country and start again. He would like to grow things. There was always the good green earth, and maybe the boy would spend his vacations with them.

  He felt happier than he had felt for a long time. He yawned, and looked at his watch. Then he heard Laura coming back. He smiled rather grimly as he waited for her.

  The Portrait

  HENRIETTA STAFFORD SAT AT the head of her long table. Her lawyer, a youngish man, sat at the foot. He knew there was no mistake about that. Wherever Henrietta sat was the head of any table. Not that he called her Henrietta, of course.

  He looked across the flowers at her erect body and composed face. It was a hard face, he thought, hard and proud. He tried to think of her as she might have been forty or more years ago, when as a widow she first put on the black she had worn ever since. But he could not do it. She looked as though at some time in her life she had frozen into the mould he saw.

  She never smiles, he thought. That’s what makes her so alarming.

  It had been an excellent dinner. All her dinners were like that. He wondered idly how she managed it in times like this. He even ventured to comment on it as the meal ended.

  “I see you still have a good cook,” he said. “I don’t often get food like this. Do you have any trouble about rationing?”

  “You will have to ask Mosely about that, Mr. Negley,” she said indifferently. “He does the buying. As for the cook, she is a new one. I pay her a fortune. She should be good.”

  But he did not ask Mosely. The old man was standing behind her chair, waiting to draw it out, and there was a strange expression on his face. Negley thought he looked frightened. The next moment, however, Henrietta was on her feet, sweeping ahead of him into the library, and Negley was longing for the cigarette he never smoked in her presence.

  He knew the library well. It was a handsome room, panelled in dark wood, and over the mantel the portrait in oil of her only son, John. Years ago his senior partner, Forbes, had warned him about the portrait.

  “Don’t speak to her about it,” he had said. “She hasn’t mentioned his name to my knowledge since he went to France in the last war. He never came back, poor fellow.”

  “That’s a long time to cherish a grief.”

  “Grief or remorse. Maybe resentment. I don’t know. He married some girl or other shortly before he sailed. She never forgave him.”

  “Even after he was killed?”

  Mr. Forbes had shrugged.

  “It was too late then. She wouldn’t see the girl, or have anything to do with her.”

  Negley had been curious, but that was all the other man knew. The girl had lived near the camp where John Stafford had trained. “Somewhere in the Middle West,” he said. “Came of pretty ordinary people, I imagine. That was the trouble.”

 
“What happened to her?”

  “She’s dead, I believe. There was a boy. I don’t know what became of him. I tried once to speak to Henrietta about him”—he too called her Henrietta behind her back—“but once was enough. She nearly threw me out of the house.”

  So now he did not glance at the portrait, and whatever had been wrong with Mosely, he was calm enough when he served the coffee. Like everything else it was superlative, and Negley settled down in his chair. So far it had been the usual evening for him. There was nothing to warn him that the woman across from him, looking up at her son’s portrait, was about to explode a small bombshell.

  “Well,” he said, “I gather something has come up, Mrs. Stafford? Is it about your taxes?”

  “Once the government has got its hand in my pocket I dare say it is impossible to get it out,” she said drily. “No. It is not about taxes, Mr. Negley.”

  She stopped there. Mosely had come back for the coffee cups, and once more the old look was on his face. He stopped at the door and half-turned, as though he was about say something. He did not, however. He went out and closed the door. Henrietta was not looking at the portrait now. She was sitting still, her veined hands folded tight in her lap, her full black skirts spread about her, her pearls gleaming in the light.

  “It is not about taxes,” she repeated. “Do you know how old I am, Mr. Negley?” She did not expect an answer. “I am almost seventy, and when a woman has lived as long as that she has no friends. The old ones are dead, and the young ones are not interested.” She hesitated, as though it was an effort to go on. “I sent for you because I need help.”

  Negley was surprised. He sat up and looked at her.

  “Help?” he said. “Of course, Mrs. Stafford. Anything I can do—”

  She had difficulty in going on. She looked up at the portrait, while Negley waited. Then she said abruptly:

  “I have recently learned that my grandson has been killed in the war. He was married shortly before he went abroad. I want to locate his wife.”

  Perhaps he had been underrating her after all, he thought. Well, why shouldn’t she do something for the boy’s wife? She was incredibly rich.