Cherry Ames Boxed Set 17-20

by Helen Wells

  CHAPTER IX

  The Doll-Clothes Shop

  THE SPECIAL TELEPHONE AT POLICE HEADQUARTERS rang exactly at two. Mary Jean Kerr answered. The shopwoman said, “Very well, miss. You may come and talk to me this afternoon—provided you tell me right now the name of your friend who gave you this number.”

  Inspector Forbes, listening in, muttered that her boss undoubtedly had instructed her to say this. He nodded at the policewoman, who said, “My friend’s name is Meg Greene.” They all held their breaths, but the shopwoman—the go-between—seemed to accept the name. The inspector signaled the policewoman to ask when to come. Cherry, also listening in, heard the raspy voice answer:

  “My name is Mrs. Kirby, I keep a doll-clothes and needlework shop.” The shopwoman gave an address a few streets behind Princes Street, the main thoroughfare. “Will you—will you be bringing someone with you?”

  The young policewoman managed to sound convincing. “Why, no, Mrs. Kirby.”

  “Ah! Come right away. I shall be waiting for you.” The shopwoman hung up.

  Inspector Forbes commented that there were two possibilities. Either Meg Greene was not with the gang, or if she was, they were expecting a message from someone else. “They’re trying to outthink us.” He turned to Cherry. He explained that there might be someone in or near the shop whom Cherry could identify—possibly one of the three criminals.

  “Miss Ames,” the inspector asked, “could you ‘happen in’ there and pretend you are shopping while our Miss Kerr is there?”

  “Yes, Mr. Forbes,” Cherry said. She thought of Martha Logan’s interest in detective stories. Through the tall window Cherry saw that the rain had changed into no more than a mist or fog. “May I bring Mrs. Logan shopping with me?” she asked.

  “Yes, so much the better—if she can join you quickly,” the inspector said. “I want you to give Sergeant Kerr a few minutes alone first with the shopkeeper. Let her leave ahead of you so you don’t appear to be together.”

  “I understand,” Cherry said. “And after Mrs. Logan and I leave the shop, what shall we do?”

  “Whatever you wish. If we need you further, we will get in touch with you at your hotel,” the inspector said. “Thank you, Miss Ames.” He hesitated. “We are working on your report about Archibald Hazard, but we have nothing yet.”

  Cherry used a police telephone to call Martha. The inspector gave her a few instructions. He advised that they meet at a big woolens store a block away from the doll-clothes shop, then walk to the shop, so their “happening in” would appear casual and natural.

  Cherry walked alone to the big store. She waited there, just inside the door. Martha Logan arrived by taxi a few minutes later. She asked Cherry in a low voice, “Do I look as excited as I feel?”

  “Yes, you do,” Cherry said with a grin. “Now, we simply are going shopping, with our eyes and ears wide open—” She dropped her voice to a whisper, to brief Mrs. Logan on the situation. “The inspector has men posted inconspicuously near the shop, but we’ve got to be careful, all the same.”

  “And discreet,” Martha Logan said.

  They left the big woolens store and strolled down the block. In the cool, moisture-laden air, everything looked gray and dim; the passers-by and the crowded buses flitted past like ghosts.

  As they crossed the street toward the doll-clothes shop, Cherry saw two men, not together, waiting at a corner. One man was reading a newspaper. The other man was thoughtfully smoking a pipe and gazing into a bookstore window. She recognized both men as detectives she had seen at police headquarters. A little farther away a tall, thin, blind man, wearing a pulled-down hat and dark glasses, very slowly felt his way along with his cane, pausing, moving, pausing.

  “Oh, look at these enchanting doll clothes!” Martha exclaimed, planting herself in front of the shopwindow.

  Cherry forced a smile as she came to look. Inside the rather bare shop she could see Mary Jean Kerr talking with a frowzy woman wearing a sewing apron. They seemed to be arguing. The woman angrily, repeatedly shook her head. Behind her, Cherry heard the faint tap-tap of the blind man’s cane.

  “Let’s go in,” Cherry muttered to Martha.

  The shopwoman paid no attention as the two new customers entered. “Indeed I am not acquainted with any Meg Greene!” she was insisting to the young policewoman. “I’ll thank you to stop talking in riddles, and tell me in a decent way who gave you my telephone number.”

  “But I have told you, Mrs. Kirby,” said Mary Jean Kerr, with a show of anxiety. In her hat, coat, and gloves, carrying a parcel, she looked like any young housewife. “Meg Greene gave me your number.”

  “When?” the slovenly woman demanded. “And where was this Meg Greene?”

  The policewoman answered, “She gave me your number day before yesterday”—that was the day of the Carewe art theft, Cherry remembered—“and she was telephoning me from the north of England. Ah, Mrs. Kirby! I don’t dare say more than that! Please believe me.”

  The shopwoman fidgeted with her apron. “There’s been a mix-up somehow, that’s all I can believe, miss. I tell you, I’ve never heard of your friend, never.”

  The policewoman said pleadingly, “You may not know her, as you say, but she knows you—or knows of you. Will you just listen to the message?”

  The shopwoman peered at her. “A message for who? Not for me, surely.” The policewoman kept quiet. “Well? Well? Who’s the message for?”

  Cherry and Martha Logan pretended to be busy examining some doll sweaters on the counter. Out of the corner of her eye, Cherry noticed the blind man slowly passing before the shop.

  “The message,” said the policewoman, “is to call the number I gave you, at any hour of the day or night.”

  The shopwoman gave a contemptuous snort. “You may forget about such a message, miss. If there is trouble a-brewing, I want no part in it! Now excuse me, I must attend to these two ladies.”

  The woman bustled over to them. At Martha’s request, she pulled out a box of doll dresses. She was still grumpy, not very obliging. Cherry noticed the selection was meager. The woman must have a hard time earning a living here—unless she kept the shop merely as a front. Martha Logan admired the fine handwork and bought several items.

  Meanwhile, the policewoman had left. Her visit had yielded no information at all, Cherry realized. As soon as the shopwoman had wrapped their purchases, Cherry and Martha left, too. It was raining lightly again.

  Coming out of the shop, Cherry all but bumped into the blind man. He was standing uncertainly on the sidewalk, as if waiting for someone.

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” Cherry said. He grunted and gropingly moved a few steps away, so tall and thin he seemed to be on stilts. Didn’t he remind her of someone? She could not see his face very well under his pulled-down hat. She had an impression chiefly of dark glasses and a mustache.

  “Where will we find a taxi?” Martha was saying. Cherry did not answer. She had an uneasy feeling that the blind man was watching them. How fantastic! A blind man couldn’t watch them. Yet the back of her neck prickled in terror—at sensing a hostile pair of eyes in back of her. Cherry stiffened.

  “Let’s walk to the corner,” Martha suggested. She took Cherry’s arm, and felt her tenseness. “Why, what’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know,” Cherry whispered. “Keep walking.”

  They walked away from where the blind man stood. Cherry forced herself to wait while a minute or two went by. Then she took one long look over her shoulder.

  The blind man had taken off his dark glasses and was wiping the rain off them. But that’s what a sighted person would do! Cherry tried to see his eyes—in the misty light and under his hat, it was hard to be sure—but she thought his eyes appeared normal. Yes, they were normal; as a nurse she recognized that much! How rapidly he was blinking, though—

  Suddenly Cherry recognized him. Rodney Ryder blinked like that—and was grotesquely tall and thin. He hadn’t worn a mustache the last time s
he had seen him, but she remembered his face. The mustache could be a false one.

  He saw her. Cherry turned her head away but not fast enough—he had noticed her watching him! Like a shot he strode off in the opposite direction, in long, determined strides, putting on the dark glasses as he went.

  Cherry started toward the near corner, to tell the two detectives of her discovery. They were already coming rapidly up the long block, watching the blind man. The detective approaching nearest to Cherry acknowledged her only with a sharp glance.

  “That blind man”—she called out—“he’s not blind!”

  “Yes, we saw that, miss,” the detective called back. “Look! He’s getting away—”

  “He’s Rodney Ryder!” Cherry shouted. Turning again, she saw Ryder running, already halfway up the next block. Cherry broke into a run and went after Ryder. So did the detectives, still nearly half a block behind her. Martha, waiting bewildered in the rain, was left behind. As Cherry ran past the shop, she had a blurred impression of the shopwoman alone at the window, her face drawn with fear.

  Cherry looked up the street where Ryder—now a distant figure nearly two blocks away—was reaching a cross street crowded with traffic. Cherry redoubled her speed. In back of her she heard one detective’s pounding footsteps. Apparently the other detective was going to arrest or question the shopwoman. Up ahead Ryder swung aboard the open platform of a bus passing on the cross street. The double-decker bus stopped for a traffic light, and stood there.

  Cherry ran that last block for all she was worth. Thank goodness the traffic light stayed red for a long time! She made it to the cross street, and without thinking, hopped on the same bus just as it started to move.

  She stood on the open platform, panting, and looked back for the detective. Maybe she shouldn’t be on this bus with Ryder. She could still jump off—It might be wiser to follow Ryder in a taxi—more discreet—but she couldn’t see any empty taxis. The main thing was not to lose track of Ryder. The detective came running to the corner and Cherry waved to him. He saw her and nodded, and ran uselessly after the moving bus. Then he gave up and looked around for a taxi.

  “Whew! I’m glad the detective saw me,” Cherry thought. “I don’t much like following Ryder on my own. I wonder if Ryder noticed me get on this bus.”

  Such a crowd was packed into the big bus, sitting and standing, that there was a chance Ryder had not seen her get on, and did not see her now. Cherry could not locate him inside the lower deck of the bus. Cautiously she climbed halfway up to the top deck, and saw Ryder’s head and shoulders rising above those of the other passengers. Cherry came back down to the bus platform. The conductor asked for her fare.

  “Yes—just a moment—” Cherry paid, then looked back for the detective. She spotted him in a taxi following the bus. Good!

  For the next ten or fifteen minutes Cherry stood inside on the lower deck, half hidden in the crowd. The bus drove into residential streets. Cherry kept watching the bus stairs for Ryder to come down and get off. Occasionally she glanced toward the traffic, looking for the detective’s taxi—yes, it was still following the bus. She’d better watch those stairs! Once the bus got snarled in a traffic jam. It started to move again, and after that the crowd began to thin. Tensely she watched the stairs. …

  Then she saw Ryder. He bolted down the steps, his hat pulled low over his face, and jumped off the bus before it came to a full stop. Cherry squirmed past the other passengers as fast as she could, calling to the conductor, “Out, please! Out!”

  CHAPTER X

  End of a Bad Actor

  BY THE TIME CHERRY GOT ONTO THE STREET, RYDER WAS well ahead of her. Had he seen her? He didn’t look back, if that was any encouragement. Was he leading her on a false trail? … “We’ll soon find out,” Cherry thought.

  Ryder turned down a shabby, cheerless street. Rows of brick houses, all alike, reared up from empty sidewalks. In some of the windows were signs reading: BED AND BREAKFAST. Cherry rapidly turned down the same street, glancing at a corner street sign: Weir Street.

  Ryder was hurrying, a dim, solitary figure in the rain. Cherry followed half a block behind, and saw him enter a house. She counted the houses and figured that the street number of the one he had entered was 26. When she reached the house, she saw that the window blinds were drawn. No one else was in sight. Cherry’s wristwatch read four o’clock, too early for people to be coming home from work, too wet for strollers. She stared at the door.

  “Do I dare go in? I didn’t see Ryder use a key, so I guess the door’s unlocked. Unless he locked it after him from inside.”

  Her first impulse was to go in immediately. But she paused to think. She looked back for the detective. No sign of him or a taxi. It would be foolhardy, even dangerous, to go in alone. … Maybe Hazard was there too. She hoped so. … But then it would be even more dangerous.

  “Yet I must not lose them,” she argued with herself. “Maybe there’s a telephone in the entrance hall. If no one’s around I could slip in, call the police, and slip out again quickly. Then I’ll watch for the detective in the taxi. He should be here any second. … I’ve got to take the chance,” she decided.

  Cherry knocked on the door, ready to run if she had to. No one answered. Her hands trembled as she tried the door. It opened, and she peered cautiously into the dark hallway. Leaving the door open, she stepped inside, blinking in the sudden dark.

  The door swung closed. Cherry turned in confusion. A hand, hard and heavy, clamped over her mouth. She was jerked backward and held in an iron grip. Ryder, unseen, said quietly into her ear, “If you make a sound, I’ll strangle you. I’ll not have the neighbors hear you.”

  Next a handkerchief or a scarf was pulled tight across her mouth, so that she could only whimper. Where were the people who lived in the house? Where was the detective?

  Her eyes, growing accustomed to the dark, saw Ryder’s free hand reach out and bolt the door. He forced her to the staircase and started dragging her up. Cherry pulled back and kicked against the staircase railing to make noise.

  “That’ll do you no good, my girl,” said Ryder. “There’s no one here except a friend of mine, on the top floor. The respectable couple who rented us their spare room, as a favor to their friend Mrs. Kirby, haven’t any other tenants. Just us two ‘deserving schoolmasters.’” Ryder snickered. “And they themselves don’t come home from work until well after six. So up the stairs with you, now! You thought in Stratford I was a silly fool, didn’t you?”

  Cherry glared at Ryder. He laughed in her face, and pulled her along up the stairs.

  The stairs were narrow and steep. Cherry counted as they climbed: three flights to the top landing. Ryder still held her arm tightly as he knocked on the one door up here.

  “I say, Archie! Open up! I’ve brought a guest,” Ryder said.

  Archibald Hazard unlocked and opened the door. He was in shirtsleeves and slippers. A sour smile spread over his face as he saw Cherry, and heard Ryder’s brief account of how she had rashly followed him.

  “I made quite a haul, what?” young Ryder said. “Two detectives spotted me.”

  “Detectives?” Hazard said. “Then get in here quickly.”

  “Oh, no one’s coming,” Ryder said offhandedly. “We shed one man near the shop. The other chap, in a taxi, got caught in traffic about ten or fifteen minutes ago. Meanwhile, my bus moved on.”

  Cherry’s eyes flew wide open. She had not seen the detective get stuck in traffic. “I was too intent on watching for Ryder to notice,” Cherry thought. “So the detective isn’t coming—he can’t, he doesn’t even know where I got off the bus! I’m here alone in this house with Hazard and Ryder—and no one knows where I am!”

  “For once you used your brain,” Hazard said to Ryder, “when you let the girl in the house. Bring her in and we’ll tie her up,” Hazard ordered. He did not bother to speak to Cherry. “Now if we could get the Logan woman out of our way, too—”

  Cherry balked, but Ryder
shoved her into the room. She saw it was hopeless to resist—better to save her strength, in case she could find some way to escape later. Hazard locked the door.

  The room smelled of stale coffee. It held a bed, a cot, two wooden kitchen chairs, an old bureau, and a shabby table with food, paper bags, and a revolver on it. Cherry looked around for a way out, but the only other door, standing open, led into a clothes closet. And the high dormer windows, recessed under the roof, would hardly be seen from the street. She was trapped.

  Ryder pushed her onto a chair, finally letting go of her arm. Cherry rubbed her bruised arm. Then in one quick movement she tugged at the gag. Hazard slapped her hard across the face. For a moment she felt dizzy and blinded. When her vision cleared, she saw Hazard was holding the revolver.

  “If you insist on being a nuisance, Miss Ames,” he said in his usual courteous, pompous way, “you will force me to take drastic action. May I suggest that, if you wish to go on living, you stop acting like a fool. You’ve already been too smart for your own good, haven’t you? Rod, haven’t you found that rope yet?”

  “Righto, here it is.” Ryder came out of the closet, carrying a length of rope and a knife.

  “Tie her hands behind her back,” Hazard ordered. “Next, tie her ankles. Then tie her to the chair. Sit still, Miss Ames—or must I slap you again? Get on with it, Rod.”

  Cherry felt hot tears sliding down her cheeks. She was nearly as angry at her folly and helplessness as she was terrified. What did Hazard intend to do with her? At least he put the gun back on the table. … She cringed with fear as the ropes bit into her. With her eyes she followed Hazard, limping around the room, and silently implored him to let her go.

  Hazard addressed her with sarcastic formality. “I hope you will enjoy your stay here, Miss Ames. We have a job to do, and immediately afterward we’re getting out of Scotland. You will remain in this room, tied and gagged, as our guest. I’ve already asked our landlords, the Martins, not to come upstairs here until Saturday, when Mrs. Martin can clean. Our rent is paid in advance to Saturday, so they have no reason to come up here. I doubt that the Martins will be able to hear any noise you might be able to make, since they occupy the ground-floor rooms.”