Catch-As-Catch-Can

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “No, Dee.…”

  “Can’t we just go?” Dee begged. “I can’t stand this telephoning!”

  “All right.” Andy sounded tense and yet calm. “We can try trailing her. It’s possible. The pink suit and that hair.”

  Lorraine, the maid, piped up. “Miss Dee, what must I do?”

  “Stay here, Lorraine,” Dee told her. “You stay by the telephone. Dr. Stirling might call. We’ll try to keep in touch, too. Don’t worry too much, Lorraine. We’re going to find her.”

  “Oh, Miss Dee, I hope so.”

  “Stirling is moving heaven and earth.” Andy said. “The police may pick her up before we even.…”

  “Come on! Come on!” Dee cried and the door rattled.

  Clive heard the rush of their feet, the slam of the door, the roar of the car. Well, they knew the kid had run away and they were after her, all right. He wondered numbly if the cab that waited just around the corner of Jonas’ property was going to stand out like a sore thumb in that neighborhood.

  But then he heard Lorraine bat at the pantry door and this was his chance, of course, to sneak upstairs where the money was.

  In Laila’s room he crept to the dressing table. His sensations were guilty and disagreeable. He opened the right top drawer and the sight of the bills washed his guilt away in a flood of resentment. Money lying around! Mixed in with beads and boxes, stockings and brassieres!

  There was eight hundred dollars in bills. Clive rolled it neatly together and put it in his pocket. His lips were tight with anger. He looked around, a little glassy-eyed with his sense of outrage. He opened a closet. There was a long thin-wool blue coat. He took it quietly off the hanger. There was a floppy hat, made of dark red felt, a kind of tam-o’-shanter. He took it off the pretty little hat stand on the shelf. He hesitated and then he picked up a shining little black handbag.

  The top of his mind was full of virtue. He would give value for value received. Promised to get Laila to Pearl Dean, and so he would. No one would stop her because she wore a coral-pink suit and her hair down. She was pretty conspicuous in that bright garment with the long black hair. Clive already had a feeling that it might be just as well if he got her to Pearl’s (and earned the money) and no one knew he’d had anything to do with it. He thought, if he asked her, Laila wouldn’t mention him. She would be so grateful.

  He crept to the top of the stairs and reconnoitered. All was still. He started down, then pulled his foot back because he heard the voices, and he stood, poised, uneasy, and dismayed.

  “Guess it was crazy to think she might be up in our room,” Sidney was saying. “But that was one place I didn’t look, so I hadda. So they went, eh?”

  Lorraine was softly sobbing.

  “Why don’t you wait until there’s something to cry about?” said Sidney in tones of rough comfort. “They’ll find her, all right.”

  Lorraine said, “Poor Mrs. Vaughn, though. Poor Mrs. Vaughn.”

  “It really made her sick, eh?”

  “It poisoned her, Sid. She’s going to die.”

  “Who said? The doctor?” Sidney bristled against the thought of death.

  Lorraine’s sobs grew wilder.

  “Just darn lucky you didn’t get none,” Sid said, roughly tender. “Listen, if Miss Laila got the same poison, how come she feels so spry she can run away?”

  “Because Mrs. Vaughn ate it yesterday and Laila ate it today … this morning.”

  “You mean it don’t affect you for a while?”

  “For hours, Sid. For sixteen hours, anyhow, and maybe longer.”

  “Sixteen hours! What d’you mean?”

  “All I know is, that’s what they said. They said if they can give her some kind of serum or something before sixteen hours go by, then she’ll be perfectly all right. But if she gets sick of it, like Mrs. Vaughn did, then it’s too late.”

  Sidney said bluntly, “Too late?”

  “For the serum or whatever it is.”

  “D’you mean she’ll die?” asked Sidney, awe-struck.

  “She’ll die,” wailed his wife. “And she’s too young. For her it’s different She shouldn’t die, Sid, and everything in front of her … oh.…”

  “Listen,” he said, “save it. They’ll get ahold of her. Where’s she going to go? Sixteen hours is a lot of hours. Come on, make some coffee, why don’t we?”

  “I won’t touch food in this house.”

  “No, listen, everything ain’t poisoned. Coffee ain’t food. Come on, I’ll fix it.”

  “I got to stay by the.…”

  “We can hear the phone.”

  At the top of the stairs a figure leaned on the wall and it was motionless. When several minutes had gone by and the silence below continued, the figure stirred. It began to come slowly down.

  It put its feet close to the wall where there would be no creaking.

  It flitted across to the front door.

  It slipped through.

  It plunged silently away.

  CHAPTER 7

  The top of Clive’s mind said crossly, I don’t know what they were talking about. I couldn’t half hear it, anyhow.

  But under this, he was wondering if Laila was running away, like the crazy kid she was, from something that had her scared, because she didn’t understand it.

  The top of his mind answered, Laila didn’t say anything about anything like that to me.

  But deep under, he happened to know a fact or two. He didn’t let the knowledge up too far into his consciousness, but the facts were there. A hot glow like a halo embalmed them. By Jonas’ will, if little Laila died, childless and unmarried, then the fortune split. Share and share alike, it came to her cousins, Dee Allison and Clive Breen.

  Clive was not a thief. He had come and gone, quite secretly, and he had somebody else’s money in his pocket But he was not a thief, of course.

  No more could he ever be a murderer. All he was doing, he was doing the kid a simple favor. He didn’t really know a thing but what she’d told him, which wasn’t much. And you don’t want to believe everything you happen to half overhear.

  He hadn’t really heard, at all.

  No one could ever say that he had.

  What if he’d gone up to Laila’s room and down again only now, while they were drinking the coffee in the kitchen, and there had been no voices in the hall? It might just as easily have happened to work out that way.

  If deep, he was doing arithmetic, he chose not to know it.

  Estelle Fleming put down the phone and stood beside it to make sure it was not going to ring again. When it did not, she patted it with satisfaction.

  Somebody had told her long ago that she was a piquant type. She had a sharp little nose, a sharp little chin, and birdlike mannerisms, much abrupt shifting and tilting of the head. But her eyes weren’t bird-bright any more.

  “Dearest Pearl,” she murmured. People were so imposing, so often selfishly excited about their own affairs. Dearest Pearl would be in, soon, and would need to renew her vitality. She would lie in the light on the sun porch. It was a favorite spot. Estelle quivered to think that Pearl was fond of it.

  Nothing was going to induce so understanding and true a friend as Estelle to delay or prevent the sacred process, so necessary to Pearl’s well-being. “Estelle, your devotion …” Pearl had said so often.

  Sometimes she wished Pearl would stay on with her forever. But Pearl would leave her soon; the spirit would move her on.

  Ah, during the precious days of Pearl’s visit, not one moment of Pearl’s peace would be disturbed. Pearl would need her quiet hour. People never understood.

  Dr. John Stirling, in his office, surrounded by his hive of busy healing, buzzed into the telephone.

  “Now, then,” he said, “I’ve told you the facts. I’m a reputable citizen. Check with the county health office. If you can go after a criminal you can certainly pass the word and pick that girl up. I’m telling you in no uncertain terms that she has got to be in this hospital
by midnight tonight. And I don’t care if you bring her in a Black Maria. Now, what are you going to do about it?”

  “Give me the description, Doctor,” the voice said without excitement.

  “Five foot, two or three. Slender. Long black hair and I mean long. To her waist. Brown eyes. Wearing a pinkish colored suit, no hat.”

  “Caucasian?”

  “Yes, white.”

  “Age?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Any scars, marks?”

  “No. Now listen. She’s somewhere loose in this city. And she’s been poisoned and she doesn’t know it. Now, how soon do you think …?”

  “We can try,” the voice said noncommittally.

  “You sound like you hear a thing like this six days a week,” snapped the doctor.

  “Well, no. We don’t,” the voice said with traces of amusement.

  “Get on it, will you?”

  “We’ll get on it.”

  The doctor hung up and said to his secretary, “Get me a radio station. A big network. Get me all of them, Mary.”

  Dee and Andy flew out of the house. Andy piled in behind the wheel. He turned the key and the motor rumbled. Dee slammed the door.

  “Where?”

  “Downhill. There’s nothing the other way.”

  The tires clawed the gravel. The blue convertible snaked around the narrow drive and wrenched to the right.

  Dee clenched her naked hands and bent her whole mind to this hunting.

  These streets wound between expensive houses with extensive grounds. There would be no pedestrians. “Cab!” cried Dee. “What is it doing parked? No fare. I can’t see anyone.”

  Andy braked and backed the car. Dee would have flown out but he leaned across her and barred her in with his arm. “How long you been standing there?” he shouted at the cabdriver.

  The cabby adjusted his hat “About a minute,” he howled back. “Why?”

  “You see anybody walking by?”

  “Nope. Whatsamatter?”

  “Waiting on a fare? Man or woman?”

  “Waiting on a man. Whatsa idea, bud?”

  Andy trod on the gas and the wheels spun. “Can’t stop and tell the whole story every time we ask a question. Not if we want to hurry.”

  “That’s so,” agreed Dee. Peering hard at the walls and the hedges as they tore by she thought that every gate, every door, was at least a possible place for Laila to have slipped through. The magnitude of the search now appalled her. “How do we know we aren’t passing her by?”

  “We don’t know,” Andy said grimly. “But you have to start on probability. You’re wondering whether she went into one of these strange houses? The chances are she wouldn’t.”

  “You mean it may be easier than it looks?”

  “It’s not easy. The possibilities are in the millions. Police department has a better chance when it comes to a search.”

  “We can’t search,” Dee said, “we must track her.”

  “Laila’s most probably on her way to Pearl Dean. We know that.”

  “Yes, I suppose we do know that.” Dee began to will herself to look at the world with Laila’s eyes.

  “Got to try using our heads, Dee, the best we can.” He was cold with resolve.

  “But we aren’t sure where Pearl Dean was going. And Laila just might know her plans.”

  “The first thing Laila would do, most probably, is to skip right down to the boulevard. That’s where there’s transportation, Dee. Now if we could discover, for instance, that she took a bus.…”

  “I don’t think,” said Dee slowly, “that Laila would take a bus.”

  “We can find out.”

  “Remember how little she understands,” said Dee. “What’s worrying me—she might fall in with anybody. Anybody might pick her up.…”

  “Don’t worry. Think.”

  Dee imagined herself to be Laila. “Yes, she would go down to the boulevard.”

  “Somebody will have seen her.” Andy was looking straight ahead. “If I’d had any idea.… If I’d kept my big mouth.…”

  “Let’s not ‘if’ it up,” Dee said. Her own heart was heavy with the weight of “if.” She felt the cold air where her ring had been, the cold breeze blowing. If she had listened up on the hill with any real sympathy. If she had said, “Andy, I understand. I respect what you are trying to do. I will help if I can. I will hurry to break away from this task. I will not be so proud.” But she must not look back. She must try to imagine herself to be Laila, with Laila’s limitations.

  “I think she’d take a cab,” said Dee. “I’m almost sure that’s what she’d do.”

  Up on the hill, behind them, Laila got up off the cab floor. “Thank you,” she said softly.

  “What’s it about?” asked the cabdriver. His eyes were lively with curiosity. “I guess you don’t want to tell me, huh?”

  She laced her fingers in and out. “I didn’t want them to see me,” she said faintly. “So thank you very much.”

  “Don’t thank me. I didn’t tell no lies, Miss.” The driver was a chunky little man with a nut-brown face. His name was Vince Procter. Now he began to fiddle with his intercom. “Waiting on a fare,” he said into it and gave his number. “Seventy-three. Meter’s going.”

  “O.K., seventy-three,” said the spectral voice. Vince saw in his mirror the eyes on this kid with the weird hairdo as they bugged out. This amused him He was curious, but from his experience, he figured this was boy-and-girl stuff, probably. He liked a plot, but he didn’t go for romances. He liked a mystery. He yawned.

  Clive Breen came sliding around the shrubs on the corner.

  “O.K., driver. Make it the drugstore, corner of Almond and Western.”

  The driver saluted.

  “Laila,” Clive said in her ear nervously, “are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Look,” Clive leaned and said to the driver, “did you know you can take the next right and come out on Vermont? Less traffic that way.”

  The cabdriver didn’t mind traffic, nor did he even agree, but he didn’t mind obliging. So he swung right and Clive sighed and settled back. He had Laila’s handbag and now he put five twenties in it. As he gave it to her, his sensations were those of generosity and thoughtfulness. He said in a low voice, “Now you’re all set, honey.”

  “Oh, Clive,” she said gratefully, “you did get it! You are kind! Is that my coat?”

  He nodded. “Let’s not … uh … talk too loud. Slide into it, honey. Could you stuff all that hair up under this thing? I thought maybe.…”

  She wiggled into the coat that concealed her coral suit. She began to wind her hair into a great cable. She leaned and whispered, “They are looking for me, are they not? I saw them, Clive.”

  He nodded and watched her face. “Yeah, I think they’re looking for you.”

  “Oh, are they worried?” asked Laila. “I didn’t think. I never think.” She looked as if she were going to cry.

  He shrugged. “If you didn’t tell them where you were off to, I guess they’d worry.” He watched her.

  “Oh Clive, after I get to Pearl, then you could tell them where I am? Then they wouldn’t worry any more?”

  His face changed, somehow. He said, soothing, “Why sure, honey. Whatever you say. That’s what I’m here for.”

  Now that her. hair was wound up under the dark-red tarn, her small face looked quite different, as did the shape of her head with her neck bare.

  Andy and Dee were taking too long in the florist’s shop. The florist had seen Laila. He recognized the description immediately, as they could tell. But he wanted to get the straight of it before he would answer any questions. He was a cautious man. He had a weather-beaten suspicious face and it would not open.

  “She’s my cousin,” pleaded Dee, “and she has to be taken to the hospital quickly. Oh please, if you can tell us anything.…”

  She could see he didn’t believe the girl he’d seen was ill. Dee rea
lized that Andy was right. It took forever to explain. Laila didn’t look ill. And the approach was wrong. Even her urgency was having a bad effect. It would have been better to seem casual, easier to get the answers if the answers didn’t seem to matter so much. So she walked away and controlled herself to stand quietly behind the flowers on the glass shelves across the window.

  There were a man and a woman in the shop, puttering over the displays, the woman cooing. But the man was listening, and Dee began to watch him out of the corner of her eye.

  Andy said in a reasonable tone, “We are trying to find out whether she took a bus or a cab or what. And which direction she went. If you happened to notice, it would certainly help a lot.” Andy leaned on the counter and seemed relaxed.

  “I didn’t notice,” said the florist with an air of relief.

  “But you saw her? She got this far?”

  “Saw her, I guess,” the florist said grudgingly. “I don’t think I can help you.”

  Andy glanced skeptically around at all the glass.

  “Listen,” the florist said. “All right. There was a girl with that kind of hair. So how do I know it’s the one you mean. All I can say, she stood out there for a while. Then she went outa my sight. Could have seen a bus pulling in. I didn’t notice.” He made as if to go about his business.

  “You didn’t see a cab pull over?”

  “All I know, it kinda looked like she saw something.” The man was warming up a little. “Started to walk quick. But I didn’t see where she went.”

  By now, Dee was convinced that the male customer had something on his mind. She walked quickly toward him. “You saw her, didn’t you, sir?” The man gaped like a goldfish.

  But the woman, a tightly corseted, highly perfumed, slightly hennaed matron, took his arm suddenly, “My husband and I didn’t see anyone, Miss,” she said coldly, to this slim and spectacularly pretty girl in soft green, whose glorious hair had never been touched up at all.

  The man began to speak unreadable volumes with his eyes. “We’re in a hurry,” the woman said. “Come, Charles. Never mind the flowers.” And the man wrenched his eyes away from Dee’s blue stare.

  Andy swung around.