The Crooked Lane

by Frances Noyes Hart

  But she, thought K, sitting there so serenely in the lovely ordered room bathed like an aquarium in the pale green light that filtered through the Venetian blinds, looked as cool as the ice tinkling in the tall amber glasses on the tray before her—as cool as an Irish trout pool at dawn. He held out the silver box, his tired eyes sweeping approvingly down the flowing length of snowy muslin girdled just below her breast with an old silver clasp set in moonstones that matched her eyes.

  “You make it difficult to believe that it is not everywhere in the world as cool and pleasant as here,” he said, taking the glass from her with the grave, courteous smile that was so peculiarly his own. “But I have not yet been long enough away from the infernos of those streets of yours to quite forget them!”

  “For me? Oh K, the lovely things!” In her hands the starry berries looked as though they had come home. She brushed them slowly along the velvet sweep of her cheek before she thrust them through the silver clasp. “And you’ve been working hard, poor darling?”

  “Quite hard—yes. And with you to help me a little, and this oasis of peace where I can stop a few minutes to catch my breath, I will work harder yet, I promise. Do you know, the last time that I held anything one half so cool and green and frosty in my hands was the last spring that I was at Harvard—how long ago was that? Six years? Six thousand? Well, at any rate, I motored down to North Carolina with a classmate for Easter, and his father brought out some truly imperial bourbon, that he had kept buried in a little keg in the cellar, and made me a drink that looked almost precisely like this, and that had about it a fragrance that made all the perfumes of Arabia seem a trifle musty.”

  “Now you’re making me feel that I’m a very delinquent hostess,” murmured the lady of snow and amber, tranquilly helping herself to one of the minute sandwiches. “But this will make you cooler than the mint julep, truly—and even if I wanted to give you one that would make the gentleman’s from North Carolina seem like a bad dream, I’m afraid that I couldn’t do it. To the best of my knowledge, there isn’t a drop of anything stronger than orange-pekoe tea in the house.”

  “You amaze me,” replied Sheridan agreeably. “All that impressive array of last night is gone, then? Is it permitted to inquire to what destination?”

  “Oh, it’s permitted to inquire!” Tess Stuart assured him. “But it’s rather a waste of time, isn’t it? Because you know just as well as I, don’t you, K? And while I’m susceptible enough to regard this devious conversation as a highly agreeable way of spending a spring afternoon, I still have to frown on it a little as one of the most hideous wastes of time known to man, woman, or child.… You know perfectly well that I gave them to Byrd, and that he took them straight over to Bill and Abby Stirling’s. And the first question that you wanted to ask me was as to what in Hades Jack Byrd was doing here to get it, when I’d just told you that I detested him—or wasn’t it?”

  “Oh, it was—it was, indeed. Since when have you added mind-reading to your accomplishments, Tess? It simplifies matters enormously, of course, but also it complicates them just a little. How, for example, can I ask you questions, if you already anticipate them? But since you have already asked this one, suppose that you tell me just exactly what it was this too curly-headed doctor was doing here, since you so heartily detested him?”

  “Since I’ve asked you to help me, I can’t very well indulge in resentment at your being a little bit impertinent about it, can I?” inquired Tess Stuart levelly, her eyes mitigating the asperity of her remark with a small, fleeting smile. “Byrd was here because I asked him to come, of course. I’d been trying to get hold of him several times the afternoon after—after Fay was killed—I told you that, didn’t I?”

  “You told me that you tried to reach Jerry Hardy at Dr. Byrd’s sanitarium,” amended Sheridan, quite as levelly, but without the mitigation of even a fleeting smile.

  “Oh, well, naturally, when I couldn’t reach Jerry, I tried to get Jack Byrd.” The ice clicked a trifle impatiently in Tess’s glass. “I was frightfully anxious that Fay’s death shouldn’t reach Jerry as more of a shock than was absolutely necessary. I still am. I thought that I made all that perfectly clear last night.”

  “Oh, all that,” he assured her, the slate-gray eyes by no means properly penitent. “Perfectly, entirely clear. But I did not know that it was that of which we were speaking.”

  “Well, whether you know it or not, it is.… K, you do make me feel so revoltingly rude, and I don’t think it’s all my fault, honestly. I’m generally the most polite lady under the sun or stars. But I start out with you feeling grateful and affectionate and comrade-at-arms, and in about five minutes you reduce me to mentally crouching about like the smallest and worst of the conspirators in the clutch of the Inquisition. Generally it’s Dion Mallory that starts you off, but now apparently anyone will do as a whipping boy. Do you want me to stand in the corner with my face to the wall while I tell you about why, how, and when Jack Byrd was here last night, or can I sit here and finish my tea if I cross my heart and swear to tell you every last mortal thing about the whole hateful performance?”

  This time the smile flickered, candidly amused, for all the faint, controlled bitterness beyond its edge.

  “My poor Tess, believe me, I am on my knees in contrition. You see, you are so unfortunate as to be dealing with a luckless devil who every now and then loses what wits he has and forgets that he is a detective and remembers that he is a man—and a few minutes later forgets that he is a man and remembers that he is a detective. I cannot imagine which manifestation is the more detestable! I can only bow my head in shame and implore you to continue to sit exactly where you are and tell me about our mutual enemy, Dr. Byrd. If there is a corner going begging, God knows that it is I who should inhabit it!”

  Tess, the long white hands light and sure as usual about their friendly task, replenished his glass forgivingly, adorned it with another tuft of mint, and leaned back against the cushions, relaxed and gracious.

  “I must say that I like you best in the rôle of a culprit—it’s extremely becoming! What happened exactly is that Jack Byrd called up a few minutes after you left for the Stirlings’, and said that he’d just arrived from Stillhaven and found a note from me waiting at his apartment. They’d all been having a terrible time with poor Jerry, and there were several things that he wanted to tell me that he couldn’t explain over the telephone, but that if he could only see me for ten minutes he could make everything perfectly clear. So of course I told him that he could come over then; especially as there was something that I wanted particularly to ask him.”

  “Of course,” he repeated mechanically. “And am I supposed to know what it was that you so particularly wished to ask him?”

  “Naturally. It was because of you that I asked it. I’d given him my word, you see, not to tell where I got the hyoscine for Fay. I think that he was afraid that it might stir up an investigation of his hospital, if the information fell into the wrong hands. But I promised that I’d explain that it was only because I begged him for it that he ever let us have it at all, and that I had to clear up the way it had come into our—into my possession. He really was awfully nice about it, K. He said to go straight ahead—not to mind him.”

  “So you rewarded him by turning over the wine cellar.”

  “Oh,” she cried, the soft violence of her voice shaking her for a moment from head to foot, “those hateful, loathsome bottles—I never wanted to see them again as long as I lived! He had an empty suitcase with him, and he told me that he was going over to the club to get some stuff—that Bill Stirling had called him at the apartment, just as he was leaving, to say that they only had three or four bottles of whiskey and that about a hundred extra people had turned up, and he needed some more. And so of course I told Byrd that I’d bless him forever if he’d get all that vile stuff that Fay had been collecting out of the house—and he packed it into his suitcase, and telephoned Abby that he was on his way, and bowed himself out of
the house, bag and baggage.… And that was that, K.”

  “As you say,” assented Sheridan evenly. “That was that. You must find me extremely amusing, Tess. Dr. Byrd would find me amusing, too, I am sure.… What was it that he told you about Hardy?”

  “Just what Dion said he told you this morning—about his being lost out on the road somewhere, and that he was mortally ill. But, K, do you know what it was that he kept raving about all that time before he got away out of the window—all the time after they found him and brought him back?”

  “No, Tess.”

  “He kept calling out, ‘Fay, don’t touch it—Fay, put it down, darling. Some of you fools stop her, can’t you? Stop her—stop her—stop her! For God’s sake, don’t let her take it!” The lovely voice, shaken with some of the despairing horror of that cry, was abruptly silent; but when she spoke again, though it was quite steady, the horror still echoed behind it. “K, do you believe in mental telepathy and—and that kind of thing?”

  “I? I no longer have the faintest idea as to what I believe, I assure you. But is it not quite possible that young Hardy was simply thinking of the drugs that she had been taking, and of the harm that they had done her—that it was only that of which he was raving?”

  Tess said, in a voice that was suddenly colorless:

  “That’s quite possible, of course.… What were the other questions that you wanted to ask me?”

  “Oh, yes, those questions.… It was for them that I came, was it not? Is there any way of finding out whether Kippy Todd came up with her that night?”

  “Any number, I should think. I tried one by simply asking him. He didn’t come up.”

  “But you have only his word for it?”

  “I must convey the impression of being even more ingenuous than I feel,” murmured Tess gently. “No, the butler let Fay in and saw them say good-night. It wasn’t until half an hour later—sometime well after ten—that she rang for him and told him that she wouldn’t need him any longer. Kippy went straight on to the Metropolitan Club, and from ten until quarter-past one was playing bridge.”

  “Did he volunteer all this information?”

  “Not exactly. It more or less came out because I called him up to find out what—what frame of mind Fay was in when she came back that night. He said that she’d been drinking quite a bit, but not half as much as she did sometimes, and that all the way home she seemed quite gay—he simply couldn’t understand what could have happened to make her do it.” She put down the tall, frosty glass and sat staring into it, motionless as a crystal gazer. “I told him that I couldn’t understand it, either.”

  “No. That, Tess, is hard for more than one of us to understand.… Now for my third question. How was it that you learned that Fay was one of X’s—what was the word that you used?—scavengers? Did she tell you herself?”

  “No,” said Tess, “she didn’t tell me. I didn’t know anything about it until Wednesday night. That’s why we had that dreadful fight that I told you about.”

  “Who was it that told you, then, Tess?”

  She sat silent for a moment, wringing her hands together, hard. After a moment she lifted her eyes to him—those strange, clear eyes, candid and fearless, that belonged to the lost War Baby.

  “I suppose that you have the right to know that,” she said slowly. “I suppose that you have the right to know everything—now.… It was Raoul Chevalier.”

  “Raoul Chevalier?” His voice was the blankest of echoes. “The young attaché who sat next to Freddy Parrish at the Temples’? But what in the name of heaven had Fay done to him?”

  “Oh, what she’d done to everyone, K! She and Raoul had managed to get lost for several hours at a moonlight riding picnic that the Lindsays were giving—and Raoul, like the sentimental Latin lunatic he is, wrote her an extremely indiscreet note about it—and the next thing he knew she was holding it over his head, and X’s column was blossoming from one end to the other with perfectly recognizable allusions. Raoul was raging, because he’s really devoted to Andrée, and he came straight to me and told me that he’d sue Fay for blackmail if another word about it appeared in X’s column. It was—it was just about the last straw for me. Knowing that Fay did that, I mean.”

  “Yes. That I can understand. Tess, for the first time since I have seen you, there are little shadows under your eyes. You are tired?”

  “I’m very tired,” she said gravely. “I was going to ask you if you thought that you would need to see me again tonight, K, or if this would do instead? The doctor wants to give me something to make me sleep; I haven’t slept for a long, long time, and he says that he won’t let me go to the funeral tomorrow unless I’ll take a sedative and get some rest. He’s afraid that I might break down—he doesn’t know me very well, you see, even though he’s wise and old and kind, and saw me first when I wasn’t even a minute old. I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t want to hurt anyone, ever again.”

  Sheridan said:

  “I am glad that you will sleep. Tomorrow, when you are rested and all the hard things are behind you, we will take counsel again together. Should I come, perhaps, to the funeral?”

  “Please, no. It’s to be in the morning. After lunch I’ll telephone you, and we can arrange some time in the afternoon or evening. K, do you feel that you’re making any progress? That you’re any closer to knowing who it is?”

  He asked, his voice suddenly strange, “What do you think, Tess?” and raised a quick hand before she could answer. “Shall we say, perhaps, that I am closer to knowing who it isn’t? Tonight I will be better able to answer that question—tomorrow, almost surely, better still. Till tomorrow, then, Tess—all sweet dreams.”

  At the corner he glanced at his watch and hailed a passing taxi, giving him the number of the house in Georgetown, with instructions to stop at a news stand on the way. At the stand, he briefly demanded the morning papers—all the morning papers—and the thick sheaf was still under his arm when Timothy opened the small, stately green door with the worn brass knocker.

  “Mr. Dion was in earlier in the afternoon, and he left this latchkey for you in case it might come in handy,” Timothy informed him sedately, eying the collection of papers with an expression of marked disapproval at the size of the headlines. “He said he would see you hisself when he come back between six and seven.… Would you like for me to dispose of those papers for you, sah?”

  “Thanks, no. Is it all right for me to use the upstairs sitting room, Timothy? Then will you be good enough to tell Mr. Mallory that he’ll find me there?”

  In the upstairs sitting room, all cool green chintz and deep bowls of lilacs, Mr. Sheridan subjected the tall secretary desk to a surprisingly thorough examination. The Chippendale one in Mallory’s room below had already passed through an apparently casual and actually exhaustive inspection, as had the long table in his own room, but none of them had yielded the particular quarry that he was after. Sheridan was looking for a pencil—a pencil with a fat, soft black lead sheathed in its trim yellow body, a pencil preferably marked 6B, such as artists use for certain work. He hoped fervently that he would not find it, but when he failed to a somewhat professional scowl briefly adorned his countenance.

  After a moment of digesting this last bit of frustration, he retired to the winged chair in the bow window, and with hardly a glance at the relentless headlines clamoring over and over their tale of Tragic Death of Society Beauty, he plowed steadily ahead through the awkward, flimsy pages with their endless reiteration of the fact that life and death, war and peace, capital and labor are still news. It was halfway through the third paper that he found what he was looking for—no longer even a column—simply the curtest of statements in heavily leaded type that, owing to a severe nervous breakdown on the part of X, that column would be at least temporarily suspended.… He was reading it through for the third time when he heard Mallory’s gay voice on the stairs.

  “Can I come in, old boy? One of the embassy plutocrats just presented me with
a bottle of amontillado that he swears has been seventy years in the cask, and I brought it up to see whether you agreed with him. Shall I bring it in?”

  He stood framed in the doorway, looking far more Irish and engaging than any British secretary had a right to look, the thick little cut-glass tumblers in one hand, the dusty brown bottle carefully cradled in the other.

  Sheridan shoved back the papers and came quickly forward to greet him.

  “Mallory, I had forgotten that any sherry lived so long! What abstemiousness on some admirable character’s part—and what excellent luck for us! See, is this the right table? And shall I hold the glasses while you pour?”

  Far off down some corridor he could hear a telephone ringing and a voice answering, subdued and distant, and then the soft steps hurrying towards them that must be Timothy’s. But the glass into which Mallory was pouring the fine, steady stream of topaz and amber was half filled before the gently hesitant voice reached them from the doorway.

  “For you, Mr. Sheridan, sah. Some gennelman calling from down at the airport; he said you would know who it was.”

  The smooth brown flow of the liquid halted for a moment, and then Mallory put down the bottle very carefully indeed, stretching out his hand for the glass.

  “Here, I’ll manage it. The telephone’s behind that little screen on the table—or would you rather take it in the next room?”

  “Hardly! This will do admirably.… This is Sheridan speaking, Trent. Well, how do we stand?”

  Mallory, having filled the second glass with scrupulous exactitude, stood motionless, watching the dark, eager young face bent over the phone turn to bitter exasperation.

  “Nothing at all from Washington? … Well, but what about the Baltimore end? … Oh, but my dear fellow, that simply knocks everything to pieces.… Can’t you find another field anywhere around those parts? … Well, then, I’ll drop around in the morning and help you explore.… Good-bye; I’m still trying to think up some adequate way to reward you, you know.… This isn’t the end by any means.”