The public appearance of Fergus O’Breen is an act—such a good act, to be sure, that even his closest friend on the Los Angeles police force has never quite seen through it—and even the best of acts must have its let-downs. And because of one of those let-downs, the twenty-five-year-old Stanhope case was solved in a manner which Lucas Quincy had never counted on.
It began, on the afternoon of Quincy’s visit to the O’Breen office, at Metropolis Pictures’ gala party in honor of the remake of Pearls of Desire. You remember the original picture, of course (Paradox, before the colossal merger with Metropolis), with Valentino as the Spanish nobleman who had sunk to working confidence games in Paris, Theodore Roberts as the gruffly upright American financier who frustrated his schemes, and Stella Paris as the financier’s daughter who contrived to save at once the Spaniard from prison, her father from ruin, and herself from a fate worse than death. You doubtless have no such clear memories of this remake, recent though it was.
It had seemed a bright idea to start with. If Pearls of Desire had grossed a million in 1922, why shouldn’t it do the same in 1940? People haven’t really changed. A good story is a good story, the producer observed as he set the first of five teams of writers to work at devising a new story. Beyond a little trouble with the Hays office about the title, everything looked beautiful at the time of this party; and the occasion was as festive as though Metropolis were sponsoring a combined remake of Shoulder Arms and The Birth of a Nation.
Fergus usually stayed carefully away from his sister’s publicity shindigs. But she had promised that this would be especially good, and he felt that he owed a certain sentimental tribute to Pearls of Desire, which had been the great emotional experience of his eleventh year. Besides, that morning’s interview still bothered him.
It was patently absurd. A prominent man slinking about incognito like a spy in a Hitchcock picture and demanding the instant solution of an ancient problem, a solution at once impossible and pointless. But absurd though the situation was, it remained oddly menacing. Lucas Quincy’s great financial success was not based on indulging himself in the impossible and fruitless. If Quincy wanted a task done, that task meant gain to Quincy and in all likelihood terrible loss to someone else.
It’s the not knowing what you’re getting into, Fergus thought. There’s the respect that makes calamity. And you lose either way. You’re cautious like a good little boy, and you’re out a nice fat fee. You take a chance on a probably shady client, and you wind up without your license. Neatly gored on this bicorn dilemma, he felt one of his rare moods of intense depression sneaking up on him. A party should help, even a publicity party.
It didn’t.
Usually at such parties there was nothing but shop-talk—irrelevant and largely unintelligible chitchat, mere background noise no more distracting than a crowd of extras muttering Rhubarb! But today even shoptalk faded away and there was nothing but war.
“We’re in this already only we don’t know it. You just wait another year and we’ll be in officially and but up to our necks.”
“He’ll have to run for a third term. If we change horses now, we’ll lose all our world influence.”
“As long as the Maginot Line holds, the world’s safe. And thank God he can’t break through that; it’s a proven military impossibility.”
“The foreign market’s shot to hell, and that’s where the profit’s always come from. What we’ve got to do …”
There was even a portable radio off in a corner, announcing that “Rumors of troop concentrations on the borders of the Netherlands are discounted by observers in neutral capitals, but tension grows hourly as …”
Fergus had three straight ryes in quick succession and decided to get the hell out of there. This was no party for his mood. The longer he stuck around, the blacker he’d feel.
And then he saw the woman in the corner.
She wore a plain cotton housedress, and she must have weighed two hundred pounds. But it was two hundred pounds of quiet and dignified comfort. Her hair was gray, but the face beneath it was youngish and pretty, with a very little deftly unobtrusive makeup. There was a tolerant but tired smile on her lips. She did not look like a guest at a Metropolis party. In fact, she did not look like Hollywood at all. It was as though some ordinary middleclass housewife had accidentally wandered in on her way to the market.
She looked as out of place as Fergus felt, and a capricious impulse drew him to her side. “Hello,” he said. “Could I get you anything?”
She looked up, and as their eyes met they seemed to exchange complete sets of opinions on the party, the war, and Hollywood. The exchange was satisfactory. “You could get me the largest beer they have,” she said. “Then come and talk.”
Maybe it was the talk, maybe it was the beer on top of the rye, maybe, and most likely, it was simply the woman herself; but from whatever cause, Fergus felt the black mood lifting. They talked about football and boogie-woogie and black magic and Edward Bellamy and food, and never once about the war or the State of the Industry or even Pearls of Desire.
And at last Fergus said, “I’m having a good time, but I’d be having a better if it wasn’t under the auspices of Metropolis. How’s about clearing out of here and really settling down to cases? Of beer, for instance.”
The fat woman said, “We’d better collect Janet. She’s a stranger in town and I don’t dare let her too far off the leash. I have to present her in good condition at a silver wedding party tomorrow.”
“Your parents’?” Fergus asked gracefully and the woman said he wasn’t Irish for nothing and if he’d get some more beer she’d go look for Janet and he did and she did and when he came back there was Janet and, he admitted, well worth looking for.
Though the leash, he thought, was not necessary. Not that she wasn’t attractive. Janet was tall and not quite too slender; her hair was a light brown, almost blond, and her eyes were a darker tone of brown, with gold flecks. She certainly would not go unmolested; but she gave a disconcerting impression of being damned well able to take care of herself. She wore a well-tailored suit and made you think that women’s tailoring had been invented because of her.
Fergus liked her. Besides the concentrated glamor of promising young actresses in the room (from where they stood he could see a Second Gaynor, two Second Pickfords, a Second Stella Paris, and a handful of Second Harlows), she seemed exactly what she was—a charming, capable, and very real white collar girl.
“Miss Brainard,” the fat woman said, “may I present Mr.—Ah, beer! Thank you. And what is your name?”
“O’Breen. Fergus O’Breen, at your devoted service.”
The woman hesitated and tried not to stare at him. “She knows Maureen,” Fergus thought grimly, “and she’s heard about me and my Sinister Profession.” The idea seemed to bother her for a moment. Then her face cleared and she completed the introduction.
Janet Brainard smiled and shook hands firmly. The grip was efficient, but the hand was smooth and well-shaped. “Stella tells me you’re carrying us off,” she said. “Just Sabines, that’s what we are. Not that I mind.”
Fergus waved at the room. “Don’t mind being torn away from Glamor—capital G and all?”
“I’ll try to hide my tears.” Her voice was low and pleasing. “Where are we going?”
“Where the Sabine twineth,” said Fergus unashamedly. “Only look: While we’re asking people’s right names …?” He cocked an inquisitive eyebrow at the large woman.
“Oh dear,” she said. “After five marriages that’s a question that always brings you up short. The last was … Yes. It was Rollo Devlin.”
“Only the name you might know best,” said Janet, “is Stella Paris.”
Fergus stood stockstill a moment. Then he lifted his beerglass to his lips and slowly drained it. When the last drop was down, he paused and carefully articulated, “Stella Paris?”
“Or would you remember?” Janet pantomimed stroking a long white beard.
&nb
sp; “Stella Paris,” Fergus repeated reverently. “And you sit here lone and lorn in a corner while everybody celebrates the remake of your greatest opus.”
Miss Paris finished her beer. “Why not? When talkies came … Sit down, children. This is a long story, and it has a profound moral.
“When talkies came, they said to me, ‘Miss Paris, your voice stinks.’ Oh, they said it a trifle more politely, you understand, but I got the idea. And I looked at myself in the mirror and I saw that a dozen years is a long time to play ingenues. And I looked at my bank balance, and I found it good.
“So I retired. Boom, like that. The columnists said I had vanished. They built it up into quite something, and every so often they’d demand, ‘Where is Stella Paris?’ And all the time I was right here in Hollywood. But I never saw the right people or went to the right places. Rollo wanted to; but when he saw I was in earnest he went off to England and the last I heard of him was when he got the divorce in Paris. So I just went on living in a little bungalow and let my weight pile up and was comfortable. And I still am. Hollywood’s a very nice town if you’re not part of it.”
Fergus looked at the nearest Second Harlow. “That’s a story,” he pronounced, “that should be forcibly poured down the shell-like ears of every one of those baby stars. How to Outgrow Glamor Gracefully. Bless you, Miss Paris. And now where to?”
“Canapes,” said Miss Paris, “are all very well. But the afternoon’s getting on, and I’m hungry. Why don’t you drive us home and I’ll cook dinner?”
“With your own fair hands?”
“I know. When I was bigtime I always used to pose for publicity stills—Miss Paris Whipping Up a Cake in Her Adorable Louis XV Kitchen—and I never even knew how to break an egg. But I’ve learned a lot in the past ten years. Want to find out how much?”
“I recommend it,” said Janet.
An angel passed over the hubbubbling crowd, and the radio announced that neutral military observers scoffed at the rumors of parachute troop concentrations since the Finnish war had proved the complete impracticality of such operations.
“Have you got a radio?” Fergus asked.
“With a patented filter,” said Miss Paris. “Nothing comes over it but music and gags.”
“Then in that case—”
And the three strode cheerfully out of Metropolis.
iii
Miss Paris set on the coffee table a whisky bottle, a chilled siphon, and two glasses. “You children stay here and talk,” she commanded. “I can do better in the kitchen without what people quaintly call help.”
Fergus looked around the pleasant and unpretentious little room. “Most stars,” he observed as the kitchen door swung to behind their hostess, “even the ex-est of the ex, would think this a hovel. But you can breathe in it.”
“Stella has sense,” said Janet.
“Straight?” Fergus asked. “Or soda?”
“Soda please.”
Fergus tended bar and expressed his growing admiration of Janet’s cool efficiency in the size of the drink he poured. “Madame?”
“Thank you.” As she took the glass her forefinger bent over its rim and then retreated.
“You’re from the East, Miss Brainard? New York, I imagine.”
“Yes. But don’t tell me you’re one of those people who go around identifying you by your accent, like that radio program?”
“No. It’s the way you took your highball. No barkeep ever serves a swizzlestick in the West, but in New York you always get them. In fact, I think you can divide New Yorkers into two great schools: those who always remove the swizzlestick and let it roll about the bar, and those who always carefully prop it up out of nose-reach with the forefinger.”
“And which are you when you leave your unswizzled West?”
“Same like you. I’m a swizzlepropper.”
“A bond,” Janet observed dryly.
“And what line are you in in New York, if you’ll pardon my ’satiable curiosity?”
“I’m an editor,” she announced proudly.
“Noble! Editing does seem to be a woman’s game nowadays, doesn’t it? And what house are you with?”
Janet took her time with her drink. “Afraid it’s not a house exactly—not if you mean like a real major publishing house. It’s just—forgive this, but I didn’t name the firm—it’s just I. Q. Publications. Maybe you know our puzzle magazine Brain Wave?”
“Do I?” Fergus beamed. “I’m one of your regular customers.”
“How nice. I’m crossword puzzle editor. It’s strange work and hard work, but it pays fair-to-middling and I’ve got ideas for building it up.”
“The crosswords are good,” said Fergus. “Much harder than in most of those magazines. But they aren’t my main interest in your magazine. What’s an unfailing joy are those magnificent crime puzzles of Lester Ferguson’s.”
A shadow passed over the girl’s face. “They’re all right,” she said. “But you do do the crosswords?”
“They’re a help when work’s slow, especially if you do them diagramless. But tell me …” He was watching Janet’s face. That momentary shadow had vanished at once; but people whose faces clouded at the name of a great criminologist stirred the O’Breen curiosity. “Tell me this; it’s a point I’ve always wanted to make to a crossword puzzle editor. Why do you insist so rigidly on having no unkeyed letters?”
“Unkeyed letters,” said Janet in her most formally editorial manner, “were all very well back in the early Plaza Publishing Company days of crosswords, when constructors didn’t know any better. But technique has improved since then. We have talkies now too, and radio. Unkeyed letters are as dated as silent pictures.”
“Which,” said Fergus, “I likewise prefer. But that’s irrelevant. What I think the trouble is, is that you editors have hold of the wrong end of the stick. Sure, a puzzle with no unkeyed letters is technically more of an achievement to construct; but who cares about that? It’s a lot easier to solve, and it’s for solvers that you publish your magazine.”
“Don’t you want it easy?”
“Why should I? If all you want is easiness, it’s a damned sight easier just not to do puzzles. As long as you want puzzles at all, you want good solid honesttogod bastardly braincrackers. And unkeyed letters, especially if you insist as I do on doing all puzzles diagramless, add no end to the difficulty and to the fun.”
Janet shook her head. “Sorry, O’Breen, but your psychology’s all off. What you say may be true of yourself, but you’re not a typical part of the puzzle public, at least in America. I’ve heard they’re different in England, but the American puzzle fan wants something that looks hard and is easy. He wants to pat himself on the back and say Wasn’t he smart to do that one so quick? And if it’s too hard, he can’t pat himself on the back and he won’t buy the next issue of the magazine. So no unkeyed letters, or the fans raise hell. The hard work belongs to the constructors; they get paid for it.”
“All right. I give up. But then I’m no authority on crosswords. As I said,” he went on, watching her face closely, “it’s the logic-puzzles that I really devour. Curious, isn’t it, that a great criminal scholar like Ferguson should have such a firstrate light puzzle sense as well?”
There was no mistaking it. It was Ferguson’s name that brought the shadow across her face. “And just which classic murder,” he asked lightly, “did the great man accuse you of, Miss Brainard?”
Janet grinned at him. “It is ’satiable, isn’t it?”
“Sorry.”
“Not at all. There is something … O’Breen, if you’re a Ferguson fan you might help explain this. It’s ridiculous and yet … well, it bothers me. I had lunch with Ferguson the other day. You know perhaps what he’s like—seventy-odd and half again as large as Stella, with a roar and a limp.” She hesitated.
“What did he do?” Fergus prompted. “Denounce the waiter for arsenic in the soup?”
“Hardly. But it was curious. We met in a hotel lobb
y, where there’d been a famous shooting once. I forget the details, but it’s one of Ferguson’s pet cases. One shot chipped a marble pillar and you can still see the scar. And when I met him, he was sitting there staring at that pillar and—well, just gloating over it.”
“That’s natural enough. Any man’s a mild maniac on his specialty. Ferguson would gloat over that pillar the way a philatelist might leer at a block of mint Cape triangles.”
“No, but that isn’t it. I mean, that’s merely the build-up. During lunch we were talking about things and I said I was coming out here for my parents’ silver wedding anniversary. That seemed to interest him, and he muttered ‘Brainard …’ and ‘1915 …’ and then he asked me if my mother had had a bridesmaid named Martha Stanhope.”
Fergus hoped that he controlled his features. “And did she?”
“I didn’t know then. You naturally don’t know much about your mother’s wedding attendants. But I asked Stella later and she said Yes, she was maid of honor and this Martha was bridesmaid, only Martha isn’t going to be at the reunion party because she’s dead. Stella seemed worried and as though she wished I hadn’t mentioned it.”
“Of course. If they were girls together, Miss Paris wouldn’t want to be reminded of the empty chair at the reunion. Nothing to bother you in that.”
“It isn’t that. It was Mr. Ferguson. Now I’m not one of those women who simply exude intuition and sensitivity; but this … this did strike me rather forcibly. You see, O’Breen, when he asked me that question he looked at me, and I swear that he gave me exactly the same look he gave that chipped pillar.”
Fergus laughed. “Any man, Miss Brainard, who could bestow the same look on you and on a chipped pillar can be only nominally male.” And he prayed that his own eyes did not display the chipped-pillar gleam that he could feel in them.
For a moment, as she spoke of the criminologist’s gloating appraisal, Janet’s composure had been a trifle shaken; but she had recovered it almost instantly. “I should have known you’d laugh at me,” she said. “I don’t know why I told you anyway.”
The Case of the Solid Key Page 22