The velvet hand

by Helen Reilly

  William was excited and upset. Usually careful with his clothes, he took off his hat and topcoat, threw them helter-skelter on the window seat and stalked into the living room with Kit, exclaiming, “It’s lucky I called Aunt Miriam. She told me about Libby, that Libby had disappeared, so I jumped on the train. . .”

  “Why?” Philip snapped.

  That brought William to a halt. “Why?” He flushed and fumbled with his tie. “Because—because I thought I might be able to help.”

  Philip eyed him. “Can you?”

  William couldn’t. He had never met or heard of Tony Wilder. When he made his usual visit on the preceding week-end Libby had been the same as she always was. He looked as though he were going to cry. It was understandable enough; Libby was kind to him. The trouble with Libby, Kit thought, folding herself around pain, was that she was kind to everyone. The room, the house, were astonishingly empty without her.

  Kit got up, her throat tight. Nobody but Miriam had had anything to eat. “I’m going to make some sandwiches,” she said, and went into the kitchen. There was no shortage of food; Miriam saw to that. There were crackers from England and jars of caviar and imported cheeses, the remains of a turkey and half a Smithfield ham. She was slicing the turkey when Hugo walked in.

  Propping himself against a counter he watched the thin velvety slices peel off. “You’re quite a carver.” He took a piece, bit into it. There was a mocking light in his eyes. “How’s George?”

  Kit softened a pat of butter. “In excellent health, thanks.”

  “Are you going to marry him?”

  Her head jerked up. His effrontery was appalling. She gave him a cold stare. “Nice of you to be interested, Hugo. When we decide you’ll be one of the first to know. Pour some milk, will you? William likes milk. It’s on the top shelf.” She waved toward the icebox.

  “Let William get his own milk.” Hugo’s manner changed. “Look Kit, Libby’s got to be found.” He was grimly emphatic.

  “Found?” Kit raised her brows. “She said we’d be hearing from her soon.” She faced Hugo directly. “What do you know about Tony Wilder that makes you dislike him so much?”

  Hugo didn’t answer at once. He stared at the floor. It seemed to her that he hesitated. Then he said, “Nothing. But I think you ought to make certain that the man who left that cigarette upstairs in Libby’s room was Wilder.”

  Why was he so insistent about it—and how could she make sure? Kit picked up the tray and they returned to the living room. Sunk bonelessly in a chair, Philip looked exhausted. Libby’s defection was hitting him hard—and yet why call it that? She had a right to her own life. She had probably figured that if she did it this way it would be better in the long run. If only she would get in touch with them. . .

  William didn’t help matters any. Falhng hungrily on the sandwiches as though he had never tasted food before, he said, “Libby’s been gone since last night. Maybe you ought to go to the police.”

  Philip sat up, glaring. Kit said, “Don’t be foolish, William. We can’t go after Libby with police cars and sirens and radar. We’ve got her to think of as well as ourselves.”

  William shook his head. “Maybe I’m being unduly pessimistic, maybe I take too suspicious a view, but—this fellow Wilder could be—well, not the sort you’d want in the family. Maybe you could stop them before it’s too late.” It was almost as though he relished the idea of trouble, disaster, for the Havens. Philip swung on him threateningly. “Maybe I’m right in thinking that you’re feasting —and not only on turkey and milk, my lad. Now that you’re here I presume that you’re going to stay the night, but my niece and Mr. Cavanaugh and I would like a little privacy, so when you’ve quite finished your meal. . .”

  For some unknown reason Kit found herself watching William nervously, but he showed no resentment. He finished his milk, folded his napkin and got up. “Good night, Catherine. Thanks for feeding a hungry man. I know it’s always a nuisance but at a time like this . . He turned to Philip. “Good night, Mr. Haven.” He bowed from the waist in his best clerkly manner. Whether premeditated or not, his exaggerated courtesy had a flavor of insult about it. "You must be worn out, sir. It’s hard enough on we young ones. . .”

  “Us,” Philip said with dangerous amiability. “Us young ones. Good night, William.”

  The rest of the evening was a long stretch of waiting for Libby’s voice on the phone, for a telegram. There was nothing. The phone rang half a dozen times but it was never Libby. Hugo left at twelve. Philip went to bed at two, putting down the book he was pretending to read. “She won’t call now, she’d be afraid of waking us.”

  “Yes, that’s probably it.” His mildness wrung Kit’s heart. She stayed up until four trying Daisy Ballentine at halfhour intervals, went soddenly to sleep, woke at seven-thirty, and five minutes later got Daisy.

  Daisy was unbelieving and irate at anyone’s rousing her at such an hour. Her startled pettishness had a refreshing flesh-and-blood aspect, then the Parasol mask went on, pale and wrinkled probably, but functioning.

  “Wilder, Wilder . . . Not that wonderful beast who almost knocked me down—but you were there. My bruises I” She sounded pleased. “You want his address? My dear, I don’t know. Let me see . . . From what bar did I pluck him —or was it a bar? Incidentally, I’m on the wagon now, carrots and pineapple juice. You can imagine how divine I feel—and am almost looking. By the way, Parasol’s thinking of asking to have you sent to Paris to do the fall collections. But we can talk about that later, when you’re in your new job. George is a love to have snared it for you. You’re taking a little vacation in the country, I suppose? . . . What? You’re anxious to locate Tony Wilder? I tell you— call a very ugly hag in her late forties who dyes herself thirty and fancies the boys. Name, Eleanor Oaks. She was talking about Tony the other day and she’ll have traced him to his lair if anyone can. She’s in the book. And good night, lamb. I’m going back to sleep.”

  Eleanor Oaks answered the phone with melting friendliness, but when Kit turned out to be feminine, she said, “Go away and come back later,” in a hard, sleepy mutter.

  Kit said hurriedly, “It’s about Tony Wilder I’m calling,” listened to the crisp rustle of sheets as Eleanor Oaks sat up and paid attention, and went on. “Have you got his address, Miss Oaks? Daisy Ballentine referred me to you. It’s frightfully important and Daisy said,” she injected admiration into her voice, “that you could put me on to him if anyone could.”

  “What do you want to see Tony about?”

  Better not tell her that Tony Wilder was not—at least at the moment—any longer available. If they were right. “A business thing,” she said riskily. “It’s about a contract. If I could get hold of him for ten minutes. . .”

  Eleanor Oaks gave a harsh laugh. “If I could take a look at you I’d have a better idea how little or how much you could accomplish in ten minutes.” But unwittingly Kit appeared to have hit the nail on the head, the word contract seemed to have snared her. She said grudgingly, “All right, the address is. .

  Kit caught the eight-thirty. Her uncle was still asleep but she left a note for him with the maid telling him where she was going. There was no sign of William; he had evidently taken an earlier train. Miriam wouldn’t appear until at least ten. The day was gray, sullen. Spring had turned backwards. Rain was falling when she got into a cab outside Grand Central. The traffic was heavy. Lights were on in office buildings and shop windows on Fifth Avenue. Forty-second, Thirty-fourth, Fourteenth, Washington

  Arch loomed through the murk. Kit sat braced and erect in a corner of the taxi, her dark head high, not seeing the passing city, thinking of Daisy Ballentine’s soiled early-morning voice, of Eleanor Oaks’s brassy malice. Were women like these to be Libby’s friends and associates? The very thought of it was nauseating. A turn right at the Square, then left and down two blocks. The cab stopped. Kit paid the driver and got out.

  The exterior of No. 14 Kelleston Street told her nothing. It wa
s halfway between two worlds, neither shabbily smart nor frankly a tenement, a thin slab of yellow brick without shutters or ironwork. Kit mounted the steps and examined the names on the bells in the vestibule. It was the usual New York conglomeration, Brown, Sebrisky, Erskine, Evans, Goldberg, Wilder. She rang Wilder’s bell. There was no answering click.

  Kit had asked herself earlier what she would do if she were to find Tony Wilder alone in his apartment drinking coffee. Suddenly and intensely she wanted him to be there and not somewhere, anywhere, with Libby, wanted it to be someone else with her, someone young and fresh and suitable. The front door opened and a woman came out. Kit brushed quickly past the woman and entered a long narrow hall lighted by a single dim bulb in the ceiling.

  Tony Wilder might be asleep; he looked like a night-blooming orchid. His apartment was on the second floor. She went up a narrow staircase covered with grimy carpeting, pressed his bell. Someone was playing a piano somewhere. There was no other sound, and there was no answer. Wait a minute, she hadn’t heard the bell ring.

  Maybe it was out of order. She knocked. No answer. Irritated, she tried the knob. To her surprise it turned in her hand. The door wasn’t locked. She stared at it hesitantly. Wilder might have gone out to get a paper, or breakfast. She opened the door and closed it behind her.

  She was in a smallish oblong hall half of which was a kitchenette. A cater-comered archway led into a living room. The room was empty. It was sparsely furnished with a divan covered with a brown spread, two decrepit armchairs, a straight chair, a three-way lamp and some small tables. A single window, looking on another court and the back of houses and a collection of fire escapes, let gray light in. Rain streamed down the clouded panes.

  Kit looked around. The place had a deserted, unlived-in air. The ash trays were clean. If Tony Wilder smoked king-sized cigarettes, it would be proof of a sort. There was a door at the far end of the room, probably the bedroom door. There might be cigarettes in there. Again Kit hesitated. She felt nervous and hideously uncomfortable.

  Shoulders braced, she put out a hand, turned the knob, and pushed the door slowly away from in front of her, expecting every instant to be challenged. A slit of window that let in scarcely any hght at all, a dingy curtain, a single bed, a piece of floor, a strip of carpeting. No voice spoke. Kit threw the door wider, and caught her breath.

  IV

  There was a man in the room. He was standing at the open drawer of a bureau against the inner wall.

  They stared at each other, Kit a narrow figure in black, the single string of pearls at her throat glimmering below a white face, the man in an arrested attitude, one hand on the drawer, the other in his pocket.

  The man was Hugo.

  They came to life simultaneously. “Kitl” Hugo shut the drawer and advanced on her. “It’s so damned dark in here. . . . I thought you were Wilder.”

  “And I thought you were.”

  “Did I scare you?”

  “You did.”

  They left the bedroom. Kit was too unnerved to coordinate a number of random impressions, except that Hugo had been surprised and not pleased to see her. In the living room he said, “I got this address half an hour ago from your harp-playing female. It didn’t occur to me that I knew her until after I got back to town. I thought I’d better check and see if Wilder was here. He isn’t.”

  The superintendent who had let Hugo in said that Wilder had been gone since Monday, that he left Monday afternoon carrying a suitcase with practically everything he had in the world in it. He smoked king-size cigarettes. He had no car but he had the use of one belonging to some woman; she had driven up in it often. It was a yellow convertible with a black top. For the rest there was nothing except that he was being vigorously haunted by bill collectors.

  Kit moistened dry lips. Monday afternoon, and Libby had gone Monday night . . . There was no longer much doubt. What was going to happen to Libby married to such a man? The memory of his handsome sneering face filled Kit with loathing. She didn’t know why, she simply knew that it was so as she moved leadenly towards the door.

  It was a relief to get into the gloomy street, under the lowering sky. The air was at least fresh. It was twenty-five minutes past ten. There was a chance that Libby might have been heard from. A drug store on the comer sprayed colored lights, Kit went in, found a booth and got Philip. There was no word.

  Hanging up she leaned hard against the wall of the little cubicle. Wilder or no Wilder it simply wasn’t possible that Libby would treat them like this. Something must have happened to her, it must. She might have been in an accident, might be dead and lying in a morgue in a strange city. . . . Kit walked sightlessly out of the booth and bumped into a counter.

  “Anything?” Hugo asked. She shook her head, her fingers wrenching at her bag. He put a hand over them.

  “Hold it, Kit—and give the poor girl a chance. There’s some perfectly good explanation.”

  Kit said, “Eleanor Oaks. Eleanor Oaks may know something. She may have some information about Wilder’s background, his people, where he would be likely to go.”

  “Okay, we can try it.” Hugo hailed a cab at the comer, got in with her and gave the driver Eleanor Oaks’s address. Back through the Arch again. Wet pavements, cars, trucks, lights, buildings, people, umbrellas and the slanting rain. How one’s demands dwindled. If only now they could be assured that Libby was all right, that she was physically safe, and not dead somewhere . . . Around the bulk of Grand Central, down the ramp in darkness and out into the light; Hugo said that from her description Eleanor Oaks seemed like a late riser.

  “Maybe she’s not up yet.”

  Eleanor Oaks was up. Her apartment overlooking Park Avenue was sixteen stories in the air. The rugs and upholstery, the drapery and furniture, shared Miss Oaks’s own appearance of having been expensive and slowly succumbing to time and wear. She was a tall woman, handsome in a hard, horsy fashion.

  She answered the bell herself in a gold-colored velvet robe with ermine lapels. She weighed Hugo in a split second, found him not wanting, and favored Kit with a neutral and disinterested stare. “Come in, Mr. Cavanaugh.” They went in.

  Breakfast—tomato juice cloudy with what might be raw egg, and a pot of coffee—was laid on a round table in front of the Manhattan skyline. Miss Oaks motioned them to a pink panne velvet sofa heaped with gold and silver cushions. “Sit down. Coffee?” Her voice was hoarse, but much better tempered than it had been on the telephone earlier. Her eyes went over Hugo again as though he were on sale and she was considering the price, over his face, the width of his shoulders, his pleasingly shaped hands lighting a cigarette for her. They accepted the coffee. Four or five centuries ago there would have been an evil potion in mine, Kit thought.

  Deprived of more direct means of disposing of a possible rival, Miss Oaks ignored Kit completely and concentrated on The Man. Dye and make-up worked together, probably with the assistance of steam baths and grim dieting and hearty Swedish pounding and slapping, to put a veil over the half-century or so she had been living. Fatigue peered through at the beholder in the texture of her voice and the slump of flesh under her eyes and below her pointed chin.

  Hugo was apologizing for their intrusion. “Awfully sorry to break in without notice, but we’re on the hunt for a friend of ours, and if we can get hold of Wilder. .

  “Oh, you know Tony? A wonderful boy.”

  “Not well, as a matter of fact, but. . .”

  “Well, neither do I, not really intimately.”

  “Does anyone? But from the way he speaks of you, Miss Oaks. . .”

  “Darling, whoever you are, I’d be glad to co-operate.” A gulp of tomato juice and raw egg, and a wide smile.

  Kit sat looking through the window at the rain-swept city and listened to the interchange, to Hugo’s skillful and delicate advance. It was like a ritual dance of some sort.

  How clever he was. How subtle. How exactly he struck the right note. Casually interested in Tony Wilder, casually
interested in Miss Oaks.

  It was taking too much time. Her patience snapped. She faced around and broke the conversation in two. She said, “Actually, Miss Oaks, we’re more than interested in Mr. Wilder. We think my cousin has eloped with him.”

  Her voice was high, roughened. Hugo turned one look on her. Eleanor Oaks upset the coffee pot all over the golden velvet of her robe, swore, and began mopping. “Wait a minute, I’ll have to take this thing off, it’s ruined. I’ll be back.” Walking out of the room she left the door partly open behind her.

  Hugo didn’t look at Kit and he didn’t say anything. His silence said a lot.

  Eleanor Oaks made a lightning change, came back in crimson brocade. “Now. Where were we?” The telephone hardness had returned. Her mouth was bitter. “Tony’s eloped with a cousin? How romantic . . . But I don’t see how I can help. I wish I could tell you more, but I know so little. My only contact with him is over martinis at all these cocktail parties one goes to. Other than that I’m an utter blank about him; except that he lives somewhere in the Village.”

  Kit started to say, “But you gave me his address,” and didn’t. Eleanor Oaks was talking at rather than to them, was looking past them. She said, “Oh, there you are, Sweetie,” to someone beyond the couch. “These people,” she waved a hand, “are making inquiries about Tony Wilder.”

  A man who had come into the room strolled forward. The bell hadn’t rung and either he had been very silent with the door or he was elsewhere in the apartment. He was youngish, with an age range of anywhere from thirty to forty, tall, and whipcord taut. His face was that of an ascetic, flesh closely welded to the bones, deep eye sockets, hollow temples, but he didn’t look like an ascetic. His skin was pallid, as though he lived under artificial light and his eyes were bits of glossy gray stone. Yellow hair was brushed smoothly over a long head.

  Unidentified to them other than as “Sweetie,” the man studied Kit and Hugo, hands in his pockets. “Wilder? . . . Wilder.” The softness of his voice was a shock; you expected it to come out edged. “Who the hell is Wilder, Eleanor?”