Tate’s answer to this was lost.
“All right, so I’m what you say,” continued Phyllis. “I’m practically anything you choose to call me. But, just to get confessional, why? Because three years ago a little fat man went hunting San Quentin quail, and I was the quail. My Aunt Emma used to sing a song about the bird with the broken pinion never flying so high again. Well, I was broken and he did the flying. So I’m out to get whatever I can however I can. I’ll emote as well as any of the frozen-faced floozies that drip glycerin in front of your cameras—and I can do anything else that they can do, too.”
There was a long and significant pause, and then the great director of epics and super-epics spoke with a new note in his voice. Unfortunately his choice of vocabulary was such that Miss Withers was quite at a loss to comprehend his meaning.
“Then it’s in the bag, baby,” he was saying. “You know, you’ve got a lot of what it takes. I like little girls with nerve, and I can do a lot for you as long as we’re friends—”
Phyllis laughed, a little hysterically. “A Hollywood engagement, huh? Why not?” A white, unhealthy hand moved across the silken leg, and Miss Withers’s eyebrows lifted another inch. But Phyllis La Fond was rising.
“Have I got to pay the price right here in public?” she bantered.
“Later, then,” said Ralph O. Tate confidently. They were coming toward the stair, and Miss Withers drew hastily back out of sight. She had heard all, or almost all, that she had wanted to hear. But she had an odd feeling of letdown. It was not because she had played the ignoble role of eavesdropper. The end justified the means, she considered. But tonight she had seen or rather heard a new Phyllis—a hard, designing, blackmailing Phyllis. And Miss Withers had almost grown to like the girl.
Well, for that matter she had been rather fond of two of the three murderers she had been privileged to know in the past. She had learned to her cost that the descendants of Cain wear no mark upon their brows.
Phyllis and the director were coming up the staircase, so Miss Withers was forced to make a hasty retreat up to the ballroom again. She lost herself amid the throng, coming out at the other end of the room and going immediately to the cool loggia. The stars were somehow dimmer and the moonlight more diffused. A white bank of fog was drifting in from the sea.
“And I’m simply a sentimental old woman,” Hildegarde Withers told herself. “After forty years of this grubby old world I ought to realize that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” Her intellectual honesty made her pause and smile at herself. “Of course, they do wonderful things with rayon—”
She shook her head and straightened her hat. “It’s way past my bedtime,” she reminded herself. “I’ve seen and heard enough for one night.”
But Miss Hildegarde Withers was far from seeing and hearing all that the fates held in store for her this night. As she made her way back toward the staircase, again she chanced to run, not into Phyllis and Tate, who had disappeared, but into the ubiquitous T. Girard Tompkins, paunch, elk’s tooth, and all.
At that moment he was surrounded by newlyweds. With either arm he gripped a Deving—Kay on his left and Marvin on his right.
“Hurray!” he shouted, as Miss Withers hove into view. “Look who’s here! These kids were just sitting around mooning—and it took little Tommy to bring them out to make whoopee-eee!”
Kay Deving smiled faintly. Tompkins continued: “Imagine sitting around a hotel bedroom on their wedding night! Imagine it!”
Miss Withers imagined it, without difficulty. Tompkins turned to the redhaired girl on his left. “Mrs. Deving—they’re playing m’ favorite tune. May I have th’ honor?”
Kay looked at her young husband. “If Marvin—”
Marvin looked at Kay. “Well, if Kay—”
Miss Withers stepped into the breach. “I think they ought to dance the first one together,” she said. “Really, Mr. Tompkins!”
Miss Withers was to treasure for some time the memory of the grateful look that flashed from the fiery brown eyes of Kay Deving. As Tompkins loosened his grip, the young couple danced off together—slick dark hair against red curls.
“They dance as if they were one person,” Miss Withers observed aloud. “As if they’d been dancing together all their lives.”
“This’s m’ favorite tune,” insisted Tompkins. As Miss Withers’s support was denied him, he leaned against the doorway. “Swee’ Rosie O’Grady—”
The orchestra was, at the moment, rendering its interpretation of that classic of yesterday “How Many Times,” but Miss Withers did not pause to enlighten him. At the farther door she caught a glimpse of a gentleman in blue coat and flannel slacks, who was signaling to her.
As she drew closer, she saw that it was Dr. O’Rourke. “I didn’t know you with your clothes on,” she told him as they met in a secluded byway of the mammoth floor.
“It’s about the only thing you didn’t know, then,” said O’Rourke. “I didn’t expect to find you here. Just looked in, as I usually do, to see what’s going on in our fair village. But I may as well tell you”—the doctor looked all around cautiously—“I may as well tell you that you win.”
“I win what?” Miss Withers wanted to know.
“You win round one. Regarding the corpse, I mean. The body of Forrest, lying over in my infirmary.” O’Rourke lowered his voice, and there was a new note of respect in it. “Chief Britt got a wire from a guy named Piper, who is a big shot in the New York Police. This guy Piper heard about the stiff and is on his way out here. He thinks it’s murder—and tonight the chief ordered me to make an autopsy the first thing in the morning. We’re not sending the body in to Long Beach. If there’s going to be a big fuss, it’ll be right here. And if Forrest died from anything besides heart failure, I’ll know it before lunchtime tomorrow!”
Miss Withers nodded. “This is gratifying, Doctor.”
“Well, keep it under your hat, see? The chief doesn’t like the looks of this guy Barney Kelsey. He wanted those two letters that Forrest had in his pocket, and the chief wouldn’t give ’em to him. Britt thinks maybe Kelsey was mixed up in it, and he’s got a man tailing him.”
“So I noticed,” Miss Withers told him. Dr. O’Rourke saw her face set and her eyes focus on a point over his shoulder.
“Quick, dance with me,” she whispered. The doctor took her somewhat awkwardly in his arms.
“I don’t—”
“You will,” said Hildegarde Withers. “Somebody was listening outside that door.”
O’Rourke made a soundless whistle with his lips. They moved across the floor in an old-fashioned two-step, and Miss Withers was oddly light in his arms. “Dance towards the door now,” she spoke in his ear. “I want to see who it was.”
But to her disappointment the loggia was deserted except for the cheerful, twinkling figure of Captain Thorwald Narveson, who sucked contentedly at his corncob pipe from a perch on the parapet.
“That’s that,” said Miss Withers sadly.
But Dr. O’Rourke held out his arms again. “We may as well finish the dance, ma’am.” And they did.
CHAPTER VIII
“AUTOPSY BEFORE BREAKFAST,” ANNOUNCED T. Girard Tompkins. “Yessir, they’re going to open up this Forrest and find out what made him stop ticking.”
“Is that so?” George inquired absently. Then with some difficulty he freed his lapels from the convivial clutch of Mr. Tompkins and cut across the dance floor to the corner where his partner Tony was doing a little personal promotion with several pajama-clad young ladies.
“Come here a minute,” said George. “I gotta see you alone.”
Tony came, somewhat reluctantly. “Listen,” said George excitedly. “Last-minute news flash. I just heard—”
“Never mind what you heard,” said Tony. “I’m trying to get us invited out to dinner tomorrow night. With this autopsy coming off in the morning, we’re likely to be stuck here all week, and we might as well make hey-hey while the sun
shines.”
“You know about it?” George was blank. “The autopsy, I mean?”
“Who doesn’t?” Tony returned, and went back to his women.
George continued on his way. Then he caught sight of Phyllis and Tate, just completing the dance with a sweeping tango step which brought them almost mouth to mouth and then sent the crimson-clad body of Phyllis in a long whirl, ending with her on one knee before her partner.
Phyllis looked ecstatic and Tate looked bored. “Hey,” called George. “Listen, Mr. Tate, I got news. Did you hear what’s happening? They’re going to have an autopsy on the stiff in the morning!”
Tate was still bored. “So I heard,” he said. “I’d like to see it, but I never get up that early.”
“Shall I call you or nudge you?” Phyllis quoted the ancient smoking-car story, and then as the music picked up again, they danced away.
George looked after them for a moment and then shambled on, with his hands in his pockets. Somehow nobody seemed to be as interested in the news as he himself was. Then he saw a sober blue-garbed figure out on the loggia and made a last try.
“Hey, Captain,” he called. “They’re going to have an autopsy!”
Captain Narveson nodded toward him and then turned back toward the light-sprinkled waterfront. It was evident that the captain had something pressing on his mind.
He caught George’s elbow. “Yust look,” he ordered. His thick brown finger indicated a dark hulk which rose and fell in the moonlight, about halfway between shore and fog. Riding lights shone faintly at the masthead.
“Young faller,” he confided, “there lies my City of Saunders, the neatest little whale-killer ship in the Pacific. Out there waits my son Axel, and he’s all ready to go a-whaling down in Mexican waters. The whales are moving south toward the Antarctic, and Ay have to send word to Axel he’s got to wait another day before we can start. And the whales are going past, big blue whales and hooked finbacks and all—what do you think Ay care about your autopsy?”
“It’s not my autopsy,” protested George. Then he wandered disconsolately out into the night.
Phyllis and the director finished another dance. “Come on over this way,” she pleaded. “The newlyweds are here and I want to say hello.”
“Can’t you say it from here?” Tate wanted to know. But he followed her.
“So you turned out after all?” inquired Phyllis cheerily as they came upon the rapt young couple. “Swell music, isn’t it?”
Young Mr. Deving beamed upon her, and young Mrs. Deving beamed also. His was naturally the warmer beam, but Phyllis was used to that. “Mr. Tompkins wouldn’t take no for an answer,” explained Marvin Deving.
“So we just came over for a little while,” finished Kay, with a flash of her red curls.
“Might as well be gay,” said Phyllis philosophically. “You can make anything into a party if you try hard enough.” She had an idea.
“Suppose we be really informal and trade this dance?” she asked brightly. “I don’t think it’s quite decent of you two kids to be so engrossed in each other.”
Marvin Deving smoothed back his slick hair with a little red pocket comb. His face wore an expression of eagerness.
“Sure, let’s trade—that is if—”
There was a long moment while Tate surveyed Kay from toes to the top of her red head. His glance was as piercing, as penetrating, and as sexless as an X-ray.
“Sure,” he offered, finally.
Phyllis held out her arms to Marvin Deving, but his young wife drew him back protectively.
“I’d just love to dance with Mr. Tate,” she said. “But it’s getting late. We didn’t intend to stay so long, did we, Marvy? We want to get up early in the morning—”
“Oh,” said Phyllis. She dropped her arms. “I suppose you’re going down bright and early to see the autopsy performed on our recent shipmate?”
Kay Deving’s milk-white skin became whiter still.
“You’ve heard about that, haven’t you?” asked Phyllis.
“Oh, yes,” Kay answered. “The poor, poor man! But what makes you think I’d want to see a thing like that, even if they’d let us? It makes me sick even to think of it. Marvy, let’s go home!”
At once the young bride contrived to lean upon her husband’s arm and to drag him away from Phyllis, toward the door.
“I was only being nasty,” confessed Phyllis. “I’m sorry I broke the baby’s heart.”
Ralph O. Tate shrugged his shoulders. “Beautiful and dumb,” was his verdict. “Too bad she’s married. That carrot-top ought to go well in pictures. She’s simple enough for me to make an actress out of, given time.”
“I don’t think she’s so beautiful,” Phyllis told him shortly. She paused and stared after the disappearing couple. “And I don’t think she’s so dumb. She’s found her man and she’s clinging to him like a leech. I think they’re both sweet.”
Tate was whistling “Hearts and Flowers” softly to himself. Then he broke in upon Phyllis’s reverie. “Let’s get back to the hotel.”
But Phyllis didn’t want to go. “I’m for a walk,” she said. “In the moonlight.”
Walks in the moonlight were nothing to Ralph O. Tate. Nothing but picture hokum.
“See you later?” he asked significantly.
“Why not?” agreed Phyllis La Fond.
At that moment Dr. O’Rourke was depositing Miss Withers in front of the St. Lena. “I still think you’re barking up the wrong tree,” he was saying. “But the chief is worried all the same. He’s not even going to wait for the county coroner, but got the order over the telephone. Pleasant as our dances this evening have been, you’ve let me in for a very unpleasant chore tomorrow morning. And the sum total of my discoveries will be nothing.”
“Quite possibly,” said Hildegarde Withers tartly. “But there’s something to be found if you’re capable of finding it. Good-night, Doctor, and good luck.”
Dr. O’Rourke took off his Panama. “I’ll phone you in the morning to report that I was right and that Forrest died from natural causes.”
“Hmph!” snorted Hildegarde Withers and went abruptly into the hotel, past the drowsing desk clerk, and up the stairway. Safe in her room at the head of the stairs, she picked up her antique watch from the bureau and stared at it.
“Quarter of one! And a fine time for a quiet old maid to be getting to sleep!” she scolded herself. But it was to be a later hour than that before she touched her waiting pillow.
She was sitting before her mirror, sending a brush vigorously through her brown tresses in which very little gray as yet revealed itself, and while she counted the strokes her mind was busily exercising itself with such problems as why a bodyguard should take a boat when his endangered ward was aboard a plane, and why Tate was worried about his flask, and why a little dog named Mister Jones had become violently ill aboard the Dragonfly.
“Eighty-seven,” said Miss Withers determinedly. “Eighty-eight, eighty-nine.” It was at that moment that she became aware of a faint noise in the adjoining room. Her brush went on, but she stopped counting.
Everything was still—and then she heard it again. It was a soft, a furtive noise—evidently a noise that no one was meant to hear. But those were the noises for which this canny lady had learned to listen.
She rose to her feet and put down the brush. Then she gathered her flannel bathrobe more closely around her bony frame and went to the hall door.
She stopped short at the sound of voices outside. She could make out the irrepressible Tompkins, singing “Dixie” considerably off key.
Someone hushed him, and he apologized even more loudly. “Tha’s my favorite tune,” he confided.
Miss Withers shook her head. Then she crossed the room to the large window which led onto the balcony and flung it open. The night was thick and misty, and already the moon was hidden. There was no one to see her on the balcony, and she slipped swiftly out. Phyllis’s window was dark, but she rapped sharply
on the open pane.
For a moment there was no answer, and then—“Who is it?”
Miss Withers announced herself and then without further ceremony climbed through into the room. A warm tongue caressed her bare ankles—Mister Jones remembered her. As her eyes became accustomed to the darkness she could make out Phyllis La Fond lying face downward across her bed, still dressed in the crimson gown.
Her shoulders were shaking with the soft, choking sobs that Miss Withers had heard from the next room.
The uninvited guest hesitated for a moment, then produced a fresh handkerchief from the pocket of her flannel robe and offered it.
As Phyllis dabbed at her eyes, Miss Withers went into the bathroom, found a washcloth, and wrung it out under the cold-water faucet.
“Here,” she advised. “Wipe your eyes.”
Phyllis started to sit up and then buried her face in the pillow.
“Come, come,” said Miss Withers. “It isn’t as bad as all that, is it? I’ll go if you want to be alone, but I couldn’t help hearing.”
“S-sorry I’m such a ba-baby,” sobbed the girl into Miss Withers’s handkerchief. “Don’t go—I’ll snap out of it in a minute.”
Miss Withers sat down on the bed. In the darkened room the body of Phyllis looked oddly young and helpless.
“What’s the trouble?” she asked after a while. “Did Mr. Tate turn you down?”
Phyllis shook her head. “Tate! No, it’s nothing to do with him. I stopped crying over his kind years ago. No, it’s—”
“Remember, I’m playing detective, and anything you say will be used against you,” said Hildegarde Withers cheerfully.
“Well, it’s not remorse over killing this mysterious Forrest, either,” said Phyllis. She sat up straight and did something to her tangled blonde hair. “Listen,” she suggested hopefully. “I’m over it now, but I’d like to talk to somebody. Wait while I get into something comfortable, will you?”
Miss Withers waited. As the carillon rang out the hour of one, Phyllis La Fond came out of the bathroom dressed in a black lace negligee and purple mules. In either hand she held a tall glass.
Puzzle of the Pepper Tree Page 8