The Clue of the Judas Tree

by Zenith Brown

  THE CLUE OF THE JUDAS TREE

  ZENITH BROWN

  Writing as Leslie Ford

  Table of Contents

  THE CLUE OF THE JUDAS TREE

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 1933 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.

  Copyright renewed © 1961 by Zenith Brown.

  *

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was just noon when I came out of Mr. McCrae’s office and bumped smack into Fate in one of its better disguises. He was tall and large and blond, and awfully good-looking, with gray eyes and a gravely humorous mouth. I know the last two points because he picked up my bag and smiled at me and said, “So sorry!” as if it wasn’t entirely my fault. At least, that’s what I thought until I looked up at him and saw the amused smile of a man ever so sure of himself and the effect he’d have on a woman if she just looked at him even once.

  I suppose that’s why I was a little disconcerted when I found him, two hours later, sitting across the aisle from me on the Congressional Limited I’d just caught as it pulled out of the Pennsylvania Station. He was looking at me with an amused quizzical twinkle in his eyes. I smiled, and he got up promptly and came over.

  “You’re going to Baltimore, I believe,” he said.

  “How did you know?”

  “McCrae told me,” he said. “May I sit here? I’m going there too.”

  “Really?”

  I was a little pleased, but also a little alarmed. It was like having the Prince of Wales drop in for lunch when you’d planned on making peace with your diet for having dined at Pierre’s the night before. But it was all settled, and the porter moved over his very swagger well-used luggage, with first-class steamer labels torn off except for just enough so you could see they had been red and white, and not blue. He settled himself—composing his long legs encased in misty-colored Irish tweed, and his feet in heavy pebbled English shoes, around my bags wasn’t as simple as you’d think—and smiled at me, as much as to say all this was a lot of trouble but it was worth it, sitting next to me.

  It took me a long time to find out that this very special way of his was part of his stock in trade, and that all women fell for it just as I was doing—the older the harder; and that it was all just a game with him. Except, of course, that he lived by it, and so I suppose it was really business and not pleasure. But that’s being rather unfair. He had little or nothing to gain by being charming to me, unless he just liked to keep his hand in, as it were.

  “I know all about you, you see,” he said with a smile. “Your name’s Louise Cather, you’re a journalist, you’re going to Ivy Hill, Chesapeake Bay estate of Duncan Trent, and you’re going to write his autobiography. It will be entitled ‘Life and What It has Meant to Me, by Duncan Trent, millionaire shipbuilder and capitalist extraordinary.’ Right?”

  “Quite,” I said. “How did you know? Don’t tell me you’re something overwhelming in fortune tellers?”

  “No, it’s quite simple. I won’t add ‘Watson’—that’s been overdone. McCrae told me you were coming on this train. Shall I tell you what he told me?”

  “That all depends,” I said.

  “Oh, it was very complimentary. He said you had red hair, yellow-green eyes, and were one of the few intelligent women he knew who was really good-looking. As a matter of fact, I think he said beautiful—at least he should have. Then I knew all the rest because I came from Ivy Hill myself last week, and they were all talking about it. Trent has neglected everything trying to remember boyhood pranks to entertain your readers.”

  “That’s bad,” I said. “I’d rather he’d just be natural about it.”

  “How could he? Every self-made man feels he’s got a lot to tell the rest of us so we’ll get along and be millionaires too. Then it’s rather flattering to have a ghost while you’re still alive. Most of us have to wait till we’re dead.”

  “I’m afraid he won’t find me a very good ghost,” I said. Usually you have to leave out the things people like the best about themselves, and they generally feel, when you’ve got through, that they could have done it much better if they’d had the time.

  A sudden idea struck me.

  “You’re not Mr. Trent yourself, by the way, are you?”

  He laughed, and when he did he threw back his fine blond head and really laughed.

  “Lord, no!” he said. “I’m Victor Paul Sartoris, doctor of medicine and what not. Mrs. Trent is a patient of mine.”

  “Oh. Then you know them quite weJl?,?

  “Quite, I should say.”

  “Then tell me what Mr. Trent’s like.”

  “Ah!” he said. “McCrae told me not to. He said I was to let you rind out for yourself. Not to smudge up any first impressions.”

  Mr. McCrae is the editor of the magazine that was sending me to Ivy Hill to write Mr. Trent’s own story for its two million readers.

  “He’s a great believer in first impressions,” I said.

  “In yours anyway. He said you had astonishing intuitions.”

  “Most of them too astonishing,” I said. I remembered Mr. McCrae’s final injunction, given me just before I bumped into Dr. Sartoris outside the door: “Now for God’s sake, Louise, use your head and don’t send me back a bunch of tripe.”

  “But I can tell you about the rest of them at Ivy Hill,” he went on. He had one eyebrow raised a little, as if he hadn’t much use for any of them.

  “Are they as bad as all that?” I asked.

  “Oh, on the contrary. They’re delightful. At least, most of them are.”

  “How many are there, for heaven’s sake?” I demanded.

  “Well, you begin with Mr. and Mrs. Duncan Trent, self-made millionaire and his wife.”

  “That’s simple.”

  “Not as simple as you’d think,” he returned seriously. “It might be if it weren’t that there’s Agnes Hutton—she’s Mr. Trent’s secretary—and Major Ellicott, who’s a sort of cousin or something.”

  “I take it we don’t approve of Miss Hutton the secretary and Major Ellicott the cousin or something.”

  “Wrong again. I approve of them both. She’s good-looking and clever—almost too clever, I’d say, for her own good. And while Ellicott isn’t especially clever, he’s decorative—rides, swims, shoots, dances, plays fine poker and contract. In short, Miss Gather, he’s an officer and a gentleman, and I predict you’ll fall in love with him before you’ve been at Ivy Hill a week.”

  “That’s something to look forward to, anyway,” I said. “Who else is there?”

  “There’s Perry Bassett. He’s Mrs. Trent’s brother. A sort of mental case, I suppose you’d call him. asthenic, you know. He’s lost two fortunes in the market. Now he’s emotionally worn out, and he grows roses and melons and wears an old brown hat with a hole in the top of it.”

  “I’ll fall in
love with him, I think, instead of Major Elli-cott,” I said.

  He shook his head smilingly.

  “No, because he’s entirely concerned with his gardens. And his niece.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “She’s Cheryl Trent. Age twenty, very lovely, very rich, very charming.”

  Dr. Sartoris spoke lightly; but there was something in his voice when he said that that caused me not to say what was on the tip of my tongue. I thought it was obvious that he was in love with Cheryl Trent. After all—very lovely, very rich, very charming: why not?

  “And there’s Mr. Archer. He’s the family lawyer, guardian of Mr. Trent’s income tax report and all the rest of it. You’ll like him. He’s a rotund, jovial old fellow with a finger in all the Trent and Spur Corporation pies.”

  Somehow, without being able to say just why, I got the definite impression that Dr. Sartoris did not like Mr. Archer.

  “He doesn’t properly live at Ivy Hill,” he went on. “Has a place on a cove a little farther along the bay. But he spends most of his time at the Trents’ place. You’ll see a lot of him. I imagine he’ll act as a sort of censor of what you write. That’s his chief occupation.”

  Again, and again without being able to say why, I felt that there was a pretty strained relationship between the lawyer and the doctor. And I wondered why. I needn’t have bothered, for I found out soon enough as it was.

  We talked after that about one thing and another, until Dr. Sartoris took a paper out of his pocket and offered it to me.

  “I’ve got a magazine, thanks,” I said. I got it out from under my coat and turned to the story I wanted to read.

  We’d crossed the Susquehanna and were roaring through Havre de Grace when I glanced up. I hadn’t realized how far South we’d come. It was really spring in Maryland. Across the tilled fields the trees wore a bright aura of young green, and now and then there was a peach tree still in full pink blossom.

  New York seemed a thousand miles away, and for a moment I had the queer empty feeling that I suppose amateur adventurers have when they’ve burned their last bridge, and there’s nothing to do but go ahead. I glanced at Dr. Sartoris. I thought of telling him something of the sort, until I saw he was reading the financial page and was frowning over something or other half-way down the latest quotations from Wall Street.

  Pretty soon the names of Baltimore hotels and shops began to appear on the signboards along the way. Dr. Sartoris put his paper back in his overcoat pocket and got up.

  “We’ll be in shortly,” he said. He reached in his jacket pocket and took out his handkerchief. As he did so the train gave a sudden jolt, and a folded yellow paper that had come along with his handkerchief, and hung for an instant on the edge of his pocket, jerked sharply out and fluttered to the floor at just the instant that he turned and started down the aisle. It came to a stop between our seats, and I reached down to pick it up. Before I realized it, the words

  MICHAEL SPUR RETURNING COME AT

  ONCE URGENT LOVE EMILY TRENT

  caught my eye; and I realized then that in effect I had actually read it. I also found myself thinking that the girl’s name was Cheryl—in which case “Emily” must be Mrs. Trent. But why the “love,” and who was Michael Spur?

  I didn’t know just what to do. Obviously if Dr. Sartoris hadn’t wanted the thing to remain a secret he would have mentioned Michael Spur. But he hadn’t; and he certainly hadn’t indicated that he and Mrs. Trent were on such friendly terms. The porter fortunately took the matter out of my hands. He had come for our baggage, and when he spotted the telegram and bent to pick it up I decided that was my cue to powder my nose and do something with lipstick. I left in the opposite direction.

  When I came back Dr. Sartoris was there, and I couldn’t discover anything in his frank, friendly, though rather amused smile that indicated any concern about his telegram. As a matter of fact, being a journalist gets one in rather bad habits about other people’s affairs. I found myself inordinately curious about this man and Mrs. Trent and the mysterious Michael Spur.

  The train slowed down and stopped, and the porter handed down our bags.

  “There’s Miss Trent now,” Dr. Sartoris said, waving his hat. I looked past him and saw a very lovely girl, smiling and radiant.

  “Hullo!” she cried.

  “This is Miss Gather, Cheryl,” said Dr. Sartoris—rather quickly, I thought.

  Cheryl Trent turned to me. I saw chiefly a pair of wide-set deep blue eyes.

  “Oh!” she said. “How do you do?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  I couldn’t tell at the moment whether Cheryl Trent, blue-eyed, with a mass of shining curls showing under a jaunty little dark blue hat that matched her blue tweed suit with white piqué waistcoat and her blue slippers, resented my being there, or just my being there with Dr. Sartoris. She needn’t have, certainly, because it was perfectly obvious that so far as the handsome blond doctor was concerned, only one woman existed at that moment.

  I followed them up the steps and across the street to the large coffee-colored Cadillac that was being inspected by several red-caps and a couple of taxi-drivers. Dr. Sartoris opened the door.

  “Will you ride in front with me, Miss Gather?” Cheryl Trent asked coolly.

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  She looked a little startled, and Dr. Sartoris intervened promptly.

  “I’ll sit with you, Cheryl,” he said. “Miss Cather’s had enough of me for today—haven’t you?”

  “Quite,” I said.

  Cheryl glanced at him. I couldn’t make out whether the girl was beautiful, but not particularly bright, or what. She seemed rather confused. I wondered a moment if she knew who I was, or thought I was just something Dr. Sartoris had picked up and brought along.

  I got in, and the porter and Dr. Sartoris arranged the bags.

  Cheryl Trent, at the wheel, leaned back.

  “Do you mind putting that parcel up on the seat,” she said. “It’s something of Dad’s and it might break.”

  I picked the parcel up off the floor. It felt like a box of writing paper, and not in the least fragile; but I deposited it carefully on the seat. I’ve often thought since then of that plain brown-paper-wrapped parcel, and its importance—so long unsuspected—in the events that occurred during my short stay at Ivy Hill.

  I looked at Cheryl Trent with some curiosity as we went along. Whatever else she might or might not be able to do, she could certainly manage a motor car. It was little short of miraculous the way she slipped through the traffic on Baltimore’s famous Charles Street—which is more like Bond Street at eleven o’clock in the morning than the leading thoroughfare in a wealthy American city. Again, when she passed a double-tanked oil trunk on a curve at the top of a hill on the Annapolis pike, and missed by about half-an-inch, and without batting a silky eyelash, six Negroes who were apparently rebuilding a Model-T Ford, I decided there was more to her than you’d think.

  She obviously had something to say to Dr. Sartoris, and I was equally obviously in the way. I thought of pretending I was deaf, or something, but I gave it up when my eye happened to catch hers in the oblong mirror over the windshield. For an instant we regarded each other with calm impersonal appraisal. Before she dropped her eyes to the road, which she evidently knew well enough to drive blindfolded, there was something like a smile of acceptance in her face. And then she turned to Dr. Sartoris, who had been talking cheerfully about New York.

  “Mother’s been raising hell since you left,” she said calmly.

  “Really?”

  I thought Dr. Sartoris was a little startled out of his corn-placement charm.

  “Hutton’s been simply poisonous. Mother’ll cut her throat some day. If somebody else doesn’t do it first.”

  “What’s Agnes been doing?” he asked. He didn’t glance back at me and say, “You see?—I told you so”; but he might just as well have.

  “Oh, the usual things. Nothing you can take hold of and go to Dad
and say ‘Agnes Hutton said this to Mother, and you’ve got to fire her.’ It’s nothing like that. You simply can’t say to Dad that Agnes kept calling the yew trees the Jew trees without making him laugh, and then he says it serves Mother right. She’s always getting words wrong, and Agnes never does anything but smile, and then use them the first time there’s anybody around. And the stuff Mother reads and thinks is Literature, and all that. You know how she makes fun of her, openly, all the time. About her having her face lifted, and all that sort of thing.”

  “I know,” said Dr. Sartoris sympathetically.

  “And you can’t blame Mother for hating her, and being half-afraid of her at the same time,” Cheryl went on. “Agnes is awfully clever, and attractive too, and she’s so sweet to Dad it makes me sick at my stomach.”

  The determined sort of ruthless nonchalance in the girl’s manner gradually disappeared.

  “Of course really I don’t give a rap about it. It’s Mother’s own fault. But she oughtn’t to stand for it,”

  You could see that she did give a pretty big rap about it. I thought she was rather sweet, under this mask of not caring about anything.

  “I’ll talk to Agnes,” Dr. Sartoris said gently.

  “I wish you would,” Cheryl said. “If you don’t, somethings going to happen—and it’s mess enough with all this new business hanging over us.”

  Dr. Sartoris half-turned to look at her, slim and nonchalant, flicking cigarette ash out of the window with one small white-gloved hand.

  “What new business?” he asked.

  “Don’t you know?”

  Her voice had sunk, and instead of pretending I was deaf I found myself straining my ears to hear her above the smooth hum of the motor.

  “About Michael Spur?” she went on.

  Dr. Sartoris shook his head—or I thought he did.

  “He’s coming back.”

  Something like awe or dread, or just plain fear, sharpened the edges of her voice, which was normally rather husky and pleasant.

  “When?”

  “We don’t know—that’s the horrible part of it,” she said quickly. “Today, tomorrow—we don’t know. We’re just living in terror of it. Mother’s almost beside herself. Everybody’s on edge. It’s perfectly ghastly.”