“Mr. Wilmot,” Jerry North said, in Pam’s ear, “is a first grade bastard.”
Pam said, “The poor things,” and moved out of Jerry’s arms toward them, but after she had taken a step Jerry held her. “It’ll only make it worse,” Jerry said. Perhaps he was right, she thought, and let herself be stopped.
The man in boy’s clothing managed to laugh, then. He managed to say, “Guess the joke’s on us, Mr. Wilmot,” in a tolerably controlled voice. “You took us in, all right.”
Wilmot laughed again at this, and slapped Baker on the shoulder. “That a boy,” Wilmot said. “Get yourselves something to drink. Get Frank to fix you up.”
The woman shook her grotesque head at first, but Baker’s arm tightened on her shoulders. He bent and whispered to her and after a time she nodded. She went, then, apparently knowing her way, to a corridor at the end of the room—a corridor, Pam had by then discovered, which led to bathrooms. Baker stood for a moment watching her, and then Pam did cross the few feet to him—moved to him impulsively and got at first a blank look and then a slow, rueful smile.
“I think it was mean,” Pam North said.
“Well,” Baker said. “It’s Mr. Wilmot. He told us it was a costume party, of course. Told us what to wear.” He smiled again. “We both work for him, you see,” he told her. “It’s—” He stopped. Frank had appeared with a drink. Baker thanked the comic butler, took the glass with some apparent suspicion, sipped from it, started to put it down and looked at it again. “Oh,” he said. “One of those.” He sipped, his eyes on the far end of the room. Anger hardened his face again.
Jerry came up, wearing the expression of a man who thinks it time to go home, and began, “Don’t you think, Pam—” and stopped because Pam touched his arm. Miss Evitts came out of the distant corridor and toward them up the long room. She wore the witch’s dress still, but conical cap, gray hair, hooked nose were gone. Baker’s face changed; anger went out of it and a kind of warm pleasure came into it and, as she approached them, Miss Evitts smiled too. It was a gentle smile; it was also, Pam North thought, a hurt smile.
She could be hurt, Pam thought—she could easily be hurt. There was gentleness in her face and sensitivity. Her hair, with the wig gone, was brown—a kind of gentle brown, Pam thought. Her eyes seemed very large. She flushed when she was introduced to the Norths. Her slender hands were busy with the stuff of the shapeless black dress. She was Martha Evitts. She was Mr. Wilmot’s secretary. “He told us to wear—these things.” She was not beautiful; perhaps she was not even pretty. She must, Pam thought, be in her quite late twenties; she might, at a guess, be two or three years older than Baker, who looked at her and seemed to see a beauty others did not see.
They’re sweet, Pam thought, and Mr. Wilmot is all Jerry called him. In her own mind, which she did not pretend was especially innocent, Pam North thought of several adjectives which Jerry might have used to qualify a noun.
But at the same time, she qualified her earlier opinion of Byron Wilmot. She had thought him merely—well, underdone; thought him merely the doughy enlargement of a small boy who, on some long ago April Fool’s Day, had persuaded other small boys to nibble at caramels made of laundry soap. But it appeared he was more formidable than that, and more possessed of malice. If Martha Evitts was in any danger of forgetting that she was a few years older than the man who so unguardedly loved her, Mr. Wilmot would see that the danger was lessened. She was aged crone; Baker was rompered child. It makes me a little sick, Pam thought, and turned to Jerry and said, “I think maybe we’d better be—”
But then a woman cried out. It was not this time the recorded scream from the phonograph in the foyer. It was at once less agonizing and more real. The pretty, dark girl in the white dress stood in the center of the dance floor, and pointed toward a french door leading to the terrace and said a long “Oh-h-h-h!” as if she were scared out of her pretty wits.
Beyond the door there was a man. His hat was pulled down to hide his face. He held an automatic in his right hand. The gun was a black finger, pointing death.
II
Wednesday, 11:46 P.M. to Thursday, 2:40 A.M.
The man on the terrace, although he must have heard the cry, did not move. But there was no lack of movement in the big room. Movement was convulsive, jumbled together. Pam found herself in Jerry’s hands, swirling as she was jerked behind him; Baker reached Martha Evitts and pulled her down to the floor; the gray-haired woman, at one moment dignified (and apparently a little sleepy) was the next on the floor, too, clutching at a chair, trying to pull it as a shield between her and the french door. A man shouted and began to run, dragging a woman with him and—
It was all very confused, Pam thought, looking around Jerry. It was as if someone had suddenly poured hot water on an ant hill.
The lights, except for two lamps at the far end of the room, went out, but the music continued playing Cole Porter’s “Little Rhumba Numbah.” In the semi-darkness, Jerry was brushed by someone hurrying and the Norths staggered momentarily.
The man on the terrace was only a shadow now, but he did not seem to have moved.
Wilmot went past them, running, and he held a revolver in each hand and then he was yelling, “Get down, everybody. Get down.”
But those who were not already down, merely looked at him, as if they did not understand what he was saying. People were not behaving very well, Pam thought, and spilled what remained in her highball glass on Jerry’s trouser leg. Jerry jumped and said, “For God’s sake, Pam, I—”
But now Mr. Wilmot, who had not got down himself, was in the center of the area set off for dancing—was a large, but unmistakable shadow there, holding a weapon in either hand. He turned from side to side, looking for something—for someone. Then he reached out, but not toward the man nearest him, and thrust one of the guns toward the man he selected.
“Here!” he said. “Take it, Artie. Got to get him before—” He made a gesture with the gun, toward the terrace.
Arthur Monteath seemed to hesitate. Then he took the gun. Wilmot said something to him which Pam could not hear, and then gestured violently toward his right. Monteath said, “I think it’s—” and did not finish, but went in the direction Wilmot had indicated, holding the gun ready.
“Sit tight!” Wilmot shouted. “Everybody sit tight! We’ll get him!”
“But Jerry,” Pam said, “it’s all so—”
“Yes,” Jerry said, his voice low, an odd note in it. “I don’t get it either.”
The shadow beyond the french door was no longer visible. The man had run for it, of course. He had got away, of course. This was all farce, this was the unbelievable burlesque chase of an early movie, this was Keystone Cops.
Wilmot was running—although it was more of a trot than a run—toward a french door at his left.
“Going to get him between them,” Jerry said. “I suppose that’s what they’re up to.”
“He won’t be there,” Pam said. “Don’t they know he won’t be there? And anyway, if he’s between them and everybody has a gun—don’t they know anything?”
The music stopped. In the silence, there was the sound of a door opening toward one end of the room. That would be Arthur Monteath. A moment later, another door opened, toward the opposite end of the room. That would be Wilmot, encircling.
“Jerry!” Pam said. “They’re crazy! They—”
“There he goes!” Wilmot shouted from the terrace. “Get him, Artie! Stop, you, or I’ll—”
There was a shot, then. It seemed loud enough to be in the room. Through the glass there was a flash, reddish in the semi-darkness. Almost simultaneously, there was a second report and a second instantaneous flash and then Wilmot shouted again—shouted, “Stop, I tell you! You can’t—”
There was the sound of at least one man running and then the sound stopped. There was a moment of silence and then Wilmot spoke again. He did not shout; the excitement had gone out of his voice, and something else had taken its pl
ace. But he spoke loudly. They could hear him through the glass.
“My God, Artie,” Wilmot said. “You’ve killed the guy!”
Then the lights came on. Through the glass of the french doors the light flooded onto the terrace.
Wilmot was standing, his revolver lowered, over a figure lying on the terrace tiles. And, slowly, Monteath walked toward them, another revolver dangling in his hand.
Those in the room surged toward the terrace doors, then, jostled toward them. Wilmot looked up, as someone wrenched open the doors nearest him.
“All we wanted to do—” he began, and then Monteath spoke. He did not speak loudly; his voice was low and hard, but it carried.
“You said they were blank loads, Wilmot,” Monteath said. “You said—”
Wilmot sat back on his heels and looked up at Monteath. Wilmot did not say anything. He reached down to the figure on the floor and then, for the first time, Pam North realized the figure was masked. Slowly, deliberately, Wilmot pulled off the mask.
The face was thin and white and for a moment Pam thought that the man who lay there was the thin, white youth Wilmot had called his nephew. But, in almost the same instant, she realized that she was wrong. The man on the terrace floor had red hair. Through one eyebrow ran a narrow scar. It wasn’t Clyde Parsons—it wasn’t anybody she had seen before.
Arthur Monteath looked down for a long moment at the face of the man he had shot. Then he looked, with a strange concentration, at the face of Wilmot, who was looking up at him. And then two strange things happened, or Pam thought they did.
She could not be sure that Wilmot, just perceptibly, nodded to Monteath. But of the next thing, she could be sure—they could all be sure.
Wilmot teetered back on his heels, caught himself with his hands, sat on the floor. And then Byron Wilmot laughed. Byron Wilmot roared with merriment.
It was shocking for only a moment. Then it was obvious. What was on the floor was only the replica of a man. The red on the shirt came from one of Wilmot’s ingenious devices. The—
“Ho, ho, HO!” Wilmot laughed. “Ha-ha, ha-ha, WHOAH!”
Someone in the group who looked down at him laughed. But it was nervous laughter. Another tried to laugh, and then another. Wilmot laughed on.
Arthur Monteath did not laugh at all. He stood, rather rigid, and looked down at Wilmot and Wilmot, red of face, leaned back on his hands and laughed up at him. He seemed, Pam thought, to laugh for Monteath.
It lasted only a moment. Wilmot got to his feet then, and his laughter died away. After a moment he reached down and took the mannequin by the coat collar and dragged it into the room.
In the room, except for the face, it was merely a clothing dummy. But even in the light, the face was surprising. It was not a face well-shaped and meaningless, the conventional mask of a face. It was individualized—a thin face, with slightly twisted lips. The wig which crowned the mannequin—and was now somewhat askew—was a wig of red hair, unnaturally smooth, to be sure, but losing by that nothing of its incongruity. Clothing dummies just don’t have red hair, Pamela North thought. Why would anybody go to the trouble?
“Lifelike, ain’t he?” Wilmot said. He turned to Monteath, who had come into the doorway and stood looking down at the plastic face. “Hell, Artie,” Wilmot said. “Sure they were blanks. Think I want you banging away in my direction?” Monteath said nothing. “Hell, man,” Wilmot said, “you can take a joke, can’t you?”
Monteath spoke then, after a further pause.
“Why yes, Wilmot,” he said. “I can take a joke.” He paused and looked again at the mannequin’s face. “You did a very convincing job,” he said.
“Well,” Wilmot said, “so did you, old man. So did you.” He paused. “Know what I mean?” he said, making the meaningless phrase more meaningless with a chuckle. Monteath did not chuckle in return; he did not speak. He merely nodded.
The murder of the dummy was the climax of the evening. Mr. Wilmot did, to be sure, explain it all—how the dummy had been rigged to wires and so made movable, how Frank had been primed to turn off the lights at the appropriate moment, how Wilmot had had the blank-loaded revolvers ready to hand; how he had fired first, hoping that Monteath, thinking the man between had fired at them, would himself fire by reflex, knowing he would not kill.
“Had to get a man who would do something,” Wilmot explained. “That’s good old Artie.”
If good old Artie appreciated this compliment, his face did not reveal it. Good old Artie laid down the gun, moved farther into the big living room, away from Wilmot, from the prostrate dummy.
Mr. Wilmot explained it all, being evidently pleased with all of it. He was listened to with politeness, rather than with avidity, and when he had finished, or nearly finished, his guests began to make the discovery that it was growing late. A fine party, a wonderful party. But tomorrow—no, today—was a working day. The blond girl and her Tommy were the first actually to leave, although there was nothing about either to suggest there were alarm clocks in their lives. Thereafter, there was a general collection of wraps, a series of congregations in the foyer—and not all Wilmot’s jovial assertion that it was early yet, not all his proffer of newer tricks and more elaborate treats could stay the departing guests.
But Pam and Jerry North, although they had been among the first to think of leaving, were not among the first to leave. Jerry had, at what should have been a final moment, managed to get himself entrapped in conversation (with the gray-haired woman who had dropped so quickly behind a chair and who seemed to have been startled into complete wakefulness) and even after Pam had retrieved her stole (quite enough wrap for the rigors of the elevator) he had still not fully edged away.
So they, and Jerry’s conversationalist and Arthur Monteath—who had been drawn aside by Wilmot himself, and who had listened rather than talked—and Baker in his romper suit and Martha Evitts in her weeds were on hand for the final act of the evening. The act was brief, and not pleasant.
Clyde Parsons came from some shadow. He came staggering. His too narrow tie was pulled to one side, his too pale face was now almost frighteningly white. He swayed as he stopped in front of his uncle and Monteath, as he—with drunken emphasis, looked Wilmot up and down.
“You’re a bloody old fool,” he said then, and said it loudly. “You can take your lousy money and—”
Wilmot stopped him, or at any rate drowned out his voice.
“You’re drunk, Clyde,” Wilmot said, his voice booming. “Drunk as usual.” He smiled still, but there was no smile in his voice. “Get the hell out of here,” he said. “Frank!”
But there was no need for Frank. Clyde Parsons got himself out of there and his destination, Pam thought as he wavered past her, might well be that indicated. There was hell enough in his thin, pale face. He wavered into the foyer.
He was at the outer door when the gray-haired woman caught up with him, detained him momentarily. She turned back to look at Wilmot, and she said, flatly, “You do things well, don’t you Byron? Nobody does them better, do they?”
And then she went, with Parsons.
“Good night,” Baker said then, and said it abruptly, and Martha Evitts said nothing, and did not look at Wilmot and went with Baker. “Sorry about that,” Wilmot said. “We’ve had a good deal of trouble with Clyde. Nice boy, but he will—”
“It’s been,” Pam North said, “a very interesting party, Mr. Wilmot.” She paused. “So much going on,” she said, and then she went and Jerry after her.
The elevator door closed when they were just in sight of it. The elevator carried downward, presumably, Parsons and the woman with gray hair, Baker in his rompers and Miss Evitts in dusty black.
“Who,” Pam asked, while they waited, “was your talkative friend?”
“Talkative?” Jerry said. “Oh. You didn’t meet her?”
“Anyway,” Pam said. “She didn’t stick. I mean—”
“Yes,” Jerry said. “Well, that was Mrs. Wilmot. The Mr
s. Wilmot who used to be. She divorced Wilmot because he put a snake in her bed.”
“Annoying,” Pam said. “But still.”
“It wasn’t rubber,” Jerry said. “It was—”
“Good heavens!” Pam North said. “A snake snake?” Jerry nodded. “Divorce was too good for him,” Pam said. “It’s coming now.”
It was, by its rumble. There was only the sound to prove its progress; the indicator arrow pointed stubbornly to the fifth floor, as it had for a week or more.
Arthur Monteath joined them while they still waited. He said, “Quite a party.” He looked, Pam North thought, tired, and older than he had looked a few hours before.
“Phew!” Jerry said.
The elevator door opened and they went into the little box.
“Why,” Pam said, when the elevator started down, “don’t you stop in and have a drink? Now, I mean. Unless you don’t like cats, of course.”
“I do like cats,” Monteath said. “But isn’t it rather—”
“Not really,” Pam said. “And how can anybody sleep after—after all that? Can you, Jerry?”
Jerry North thought he might; thought he very easily might. But he did not say this. Monteath hesitated. Then he said, “I’d like to. For only a few minutes, I promise,” thus somewhat surprising both of the Norths.
They stopped. Drinks were suggested, coffee was agreed upon. The cats awoke; they smelled Arthur Monteath, who put a hand close to the floor so that it might be smelled conveniently; who was accepted at once by Sherry, partially accepted by Gin, rejected—but without undue prejudice—by Martini who, when Pam finally sat down (humans wasted more time) occupied Pam’s lap, from that safety to stare at Monteath with the roundest of blue eyes.
Conversation was not active. Monteath was in New York for a few days only, going then to Washington. He would telephone Jerry before he left and arrange an appointment to discuss the ambassador’s book. Where the world went from where it was, no good place, was anybody’s guess. Monteath was abstracted, the major part of his mind clearly elsewhere.
Death Has a Small Voice Page 17