Virgin's Holiday

by Halliday, Brett;

  “Why yes.” Vergie appeared mildly surprised. She tried to remember whether she had told Mrs. Tucker she owned a book store in Random. She supposed she must have, for Tuck seemed to know about it.

  “I suppose you’re just glancing through it,” Nip suggested. “It must be thrilling.”

  “It is,” Vergie admitted.

  “Could we borrow it when you’ve finished?” Tuck asked.

  “Gee, we’d get a kick out of reading your copy.”

  “Of course.” Vergie’s prim, spinsterish soul was immensely flattered by the interest of these young girls. They treated her as an equal. Almost as a superior. Vergie was accustomed to meet with a vague disdain from the younger generation. Surprisingly, she found that she was eager to know them better.

  “That’s swell of you,” Nip told her.

  “Well,” Tuck said, “I expect we’d better run on. We don’t want to bother you.”

  “That’s all right,” Vergie said. “It’s been pleasant to get acquainted.”

  “We’ll run along,” Nip said. Both of the girls were eager to escape where they could discuss the wonderful event among themselves.

  “Good night,” they called to her as they edged out of the door.

  “Come on,” Tuck said. She ran down the hall to her room, and they closed the door.

  “Now what do you think?” Nip said.

  “Gosh! Isn’t it thrilling? Did you see her squirm when we were talking about her books? I almost passed out.”

  “Didn’t she look swell in that negligee? It must have cost a hundred dollars.”

  “And real lace on her nightie! She’s exactly what I thought she’d be. But gosh, you should have seen her this evening at dinner!”

  “That just shows how clever she is,” Nip said. “She wants to stay incognito so she can write her book in peace.”

  “She said she was just going to stay a month. Can she write a book in a month?”

  “Of course not,” Nip said. “Didn’t you notice what she said about writing down impressions? She probably just gets the characters and plot and atmosphere. Then goes back to New York to do the writing, most likely.”

  “Did you notice the initials on her trunk and bags? V. W.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s why she took the name of Vergie Whidby, I suppose. So it would fit the initials.”

  “And did you see the gorgeous clothes she had hidden away back in the closet behind those funny ones?” Tuck asked. “Gosh, I bet she’s a knockout when she dresses up and really steps out.”

  “What are we going to do?” Nip asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, now that we know for sure who she is. Should we keep it a secret?”

  “I don’t know,” Tuck said. “Do you think we should?”

  “I don’t think we ought to tell everybody,” Nip said. “It would be kind of a dirty trick after she’s gone to so much pains to disguise herself.”

  “Do you think she suspects?”

  “Suspects what?”

  “That we know who she is,” Tuck said. “I wonder if we were too obvious. Complimenting her books and all.”

  “I don’t think she does,” Nip said. “And I don’t think we ought to tell anybody that we can’t trust to keep it a secret. Do you?”

  “No,” Tuck agreed. “We’ll have fun keeping it a secret. Just whisper it to two or three that we can really trust.”

  “Gee! Isn’t it wonderful?” Nip sighed.

  The two of them sat there together far into the night, discussing the amazing good fortune that had come to them, and making plans for the coming month.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SUSPENSE

  “Bet you can’t guess what,” Nip greeted her father at the breakfast table the next morning.

  “No, I’m afraid I can’t guess what,” Mr. Nipperson admitted, smiling at Nip. He was a tall, sparse man. Iron-gray hair was brushed back neatly from an intellectual forehead. Dark eyes twinkled beneath heavy brows and belied the severity of his features.

  “You’d never guess in a thousand years,” she told him.

  “It must be something very nice to bring that starry gleam to your eyes,” he told her. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”

  “Do you remember that book that mother raved so about when she caught me reading it? About six months ago?”

  “I recall the occasion quite clearly,” her father assured her. “I felt the reverberations from the incident for weeks afterward. I believe that was the book which your mother was positive could not do less than send you out on the streets to practice the art of harlotry. Was it not?”

  “That’s the one,” Nip laughed. “Elixir of Sin.”

  “Ah yes,” Mr. Nipperson sighed. “Your mother burned it before I was half through,” he murmured. “I explained I felt it my duty to see just what sort of atrociously salacious filth you were reading, but she had felt it her duty to read it first, so I was not allowed to be contaminated. An exceedingly interesting work,” he went on meditatively. “As I recollect, the heroine, Sonia Sidonie, was about to initiate the Spanish Grandee into the ritual of American eroticism when your mother snatched the book from me and consigned it to the flames.”

  “Valerie Ware wrote it,” Nip said.

  “Ah yes.” Mr. Nipperson sipped his coffee. “The name is not unfamiliar,” he said.

  “I’ll say it isn’t. I bet she’s the best-known writer in the United States today.”

  “No doubt,” Mr. Nipperson said drily, “if that volume was a fair sample of her wares.”

  “She’s here, dad!” Nip whispered the words.

  “What?” He looked about as though expecting to see Valerie Ware emerge from beneath the dining table.

  “I didn’t mean that literally,” she laughed. “She’s here in St. Augustine. Gathering material for a new book.”

  “Indeed?” Mr. Nipperson appeared to be interested. “Has she approached you for assistance?” he asked dubiously.

  “Not yet, dad. Maybe she will after she knows me better. She’s rooming at Mrs. Tuckers,” she explained. “Masquerading as an old maid frump. She calls herself Vergie Whidby, and she wears dark glasses and everything.”

  “You’re certain you’ve made no mistake in her identity?”

  “Not a chance,” Nip assured him. “Tuck and I checked up every angle. It’s Valerie Ware in person all right.” She went on to detail with considerable gusto the clues she and Tuck had unearthed.

  She spent quite a little time describing Vergie as she had appeared to them in her negligee, painting her loveliness and charm in seductive phrases.

  Mr. Nipperson was impressed: “It sounds credible,” he admitted. “You say she had an advance copy of a book published after the … ah … Elixir of Sin?”

  “Yeah. Shameless Sinner,” Nip said with twinkling eyes. “She promised to let us read it as soon as she finished looking it over. She’d evidently just gotten it.”

  “Ah. I think it would be policy for me to glance through it first and see if it is fit matter for your young eyes,” Mr. Nipperson told her sternly.

  “You old humbug,” she laughed. “Your mouth’s watering for a chance to read it. Of course you can … if you’ll promise not to tell mother.”

  “My dear!” Mr. Nipperson looked at her with pained surprise. “How can you doubt me?”

  “I was fooling.” Nip laughed.

  “I think I should extract a promise from you,” he said. “Don’t breathe a word of this to any ears from which a hint might reach your mother. I recall a matter of some years back,” he went on slowly, “when your mother discovered in our midst a couple dwelling together in sinful bliss without benefit of clergy. I am still dismayed as I recall your mother’s unrelenting pursuit of the unoffensive couple until they were hounded from the city and the atmosphere made pure again.” He shook his head sadly. “They went to California,” he said, “and their railroad tickets cost me exactly the amount I had saved to buy your mother a
new piano. We had the old one tuned.”

  “You delicious hypocrite,” Nip said.

  “I must go to the office now,” he said, arising and then pausing to press a kiss upon his daughter’s hair. “Mind you, not a word to anyone who may carry tales to your mother,” he warned.

  “Don’t worry,” Nip called after him. “Mum’s the word.” He was quite the swellest dad in the world, she reflected as she turned back to her neglected breakfast. She chuckled again as she envisioned him secretly buying railroad tickets for the couple whom her mother’s intolerant convictions had driven from the city. That was exactly like him.

  Mr. Nipperson permitted himself the gaiety of a whistled air as he strode beyond earshot of the house. His mind was very active, studying and analyzing the amazing bit of information Nip had given him.

  It was in this manner peculiar to his profession that Mr. Nipperson digested the information Nip had given him. He smiled upon all whom he met, and spoke heartily to acquaintances as he walked rapidly to his office, but his thoughts were busied with a possible use to be made of the scoop.

  It would be grand to break it as a news story, he thought enviously, but he discarded that angle at once. He received many confidences because he had not betrayed one for thirty years. Obviously, the authoress wished to remain in seclusion, and he was honor bound not to use his daughter’s information in any way that might defeat Miss Ware’s aims.

  But the idea stuck. He was unable to rid himself of the growing conviction that he had hold of something if he could but think of a method of using it. There was an idea, somewhere in the depths of his subconscious mind, coyly eluding him, hovering about on the very fringe of conscious realization.

  It remained with him after he arrived at his office, and at last he rang for Bill Porter to come in to him.

  He leaned back in his swivel chair and lit a cigar thoughtfully as he waited for Bill. It irked him to feel that he had to call for help to develop an idea. Perhaps he was slipping. He had noted many instances of late which seemed to mark a growing propensity to let Bill shoulder the burden.

  He sighed as Bill entered the office. If the fellow weren’t so damnably efficient, he thought wryly, he wouldn’t turn to him with all his problems.

  “Sit down, Porter,” he said. “Have a cigar?”

  “No thanks. I’ll smoke my own.” Bill perched himself on the edge of a chair and produced the inevitable pack of cigarettes. Mr. Nipperson sounded gruff and distraught. Bill carefully pulled one from the pack and wondered what had happened. Had Nip squawked? He didn’t think so. But he wished to the very devil he hadn’t taken her to his house on the party that had developed into a mild orgy. He didn’t have much defense, he reflected, if the old man jumped on him about-it. Maybe he’d better try to change the subject.

  “Do you know Pete Crane?” Bill asked.

  “Crane?” Mr. Nipperson seemed to pounce upon the name. “He works here sometimes, doesn’t he?”

  So that was it? Bill lit his cigarette. The old man was out to hang Pete’s hide on the fence. Bill leaped to his defence.

  “The best reporter this side of the Rockies,” he murmured.

  “Where was he yesterday?” Mr. Nipperson demanded.

  “Sleeping off a drunk,” Bill told him. “I gave him the liquor, and he slept it off at my house,” he added belligerently. His manner asked Mr. Nipperson just what he intended to do about it.

  “I suppose you were asleep, too,” Mr. Nipperson said.

  “Nope,” Bill grinned. “I was able to get about.”

  “And that’s what my force consists of. A reporter that sleeps all day, and a city editor that is able to get about?” Mr. Nipperson employed a tone of biting sarcasm.

  “Yep,” Bill admitted. “Not a lot happening yesterday.”

  “Is that so?” This was the opening Mr. Nipperson had been waiting for. “The biggest news break in years comes off under your nose and you wander about in a daze, saying nothing happened.”

  “Eh? what’s that?”

  “I think you heard me quite plainly,” Mr. Nipperson said.

  “What happened?” Bill asked in bewilderment. “I made the rounds last night and didn’t hear anything.”

  “The rounds of the bars? All the news doesn’t originate in the clip-joints,” Mr. Nipperson pointed.

  “I don’t get you, boss. What is this? A gag?”

  “Exactly that,” Mr. Nipperson said. He felt a great deal better since he had succeeded in placing the blame on Bill’s broad shoulders. “We’re gagged,” he went on. “My daughter whispers the biggest news of the year to me over the breakfast table … and we can’t use it because it came to us in that manner.”

  “Hell!” Bill was distinctly crestfallen. “What’s Nip dug up that passed my eagle eye?”

  “Valerie Ware is vacationing here while she gathers material for a new book.”

  “Valerie Ware?” Bill stared at him in blank amazement. “You mean the Valerie Ware?” he sputtered. “The writer? The one who writes the hot stuff that everybody’s talking about and reading?”

  “That’s the one,” Mr. Nipperson said.

  “What a story!” Bill leaped to his feet. “The most talked-about writer in America. Her name’s a by-word! We’ll have ten thousand people streaming in here after we break the story.”

  “If we break the story,” Mr. Nipperson corrected him.

  “What’s the dope, boss?” Bill asked. “Why can’t we print it? No one’ll know where we got the info.”

  “I promised Nip,” Mr. Nipperson said.

  “Oh!” Bill sank back to the chair, and his shoulder slumped. “What’s she doing? Hiding out?” he asked after a pause.

  “Something like that. She’s here incognito. Disguised as an old maid, Nip says. She’s going under the name of Vergie Whidby, and she’s rooming at Mrs. Tucker’s.”

  “Oh,” Bill said.

  “There you are.” Mr. Nipperson flung out his hands in a gesture of futility.

  “Wait a minute.” Bill’s mind was working at top speed. “I’m beginning to get an angle,” he whispered.

  Mr. Nipperson waited.

  “Who knows about her?” Bill asked.

  “Only Nip and Tuck. Unless they’ve told others.”

  “How did they find out? Tell me all about it,” Bill demanded.

  Mr. Nipperson related the story Nip had told him at the breakfast table while Bill listened.

  “Then they didn’t make any crack to her?” he asked when the story was finished. “She doesn’t know they were on?”

  “I don’t think so,” Mr. Nipperson said. “From Nip’s explanation, I don’t think the Ware woman knows she was recognized.”

  “And she wants to stay incog while she’s here?” Bill went on.

  “That’s the way I understand it,” Mr. Nipperson said.

  “Then,” Bill said slowly, “she wouldn’t know how we had doped out her identity if we went to her this morning?”

  “No. She ouldn’t know,” Mr. Nipperson admitted. “But we can’t use it under the circumstances, Porter.”

  “The devil we can’t,” Bill exclaimed. “I’ve got a plan. How’d you like to print a series of weekly articles on … say … the morals of the younger generation … or … something along that line which she’d do rather racily? Know what I mean?”

  “I know what you mean,” Mr. Nipperson said. Now! The idea was beginning to take form. That was what had been beating at his mind for entrance.

  “Id pay plenty for a series of exclusive stuff from Valerie Ware.” He closed his eyes and envisioned the coup in terms of circulation. This was big! Colossal!

  “Not a chance, though,” he muttered. “If she wanted to go in for anything like that, she’d syndicate it.”

  “Listen.” Bill leaned forward. “How would a series like that be, just signed with her initials? Could we work out a discreet little publicity campaign so every reader would guess who the author was without saying so? Wi
thout using any names?”

  Mr. Nipperson gazed at him thoughtfully. His cigar had gone out, and he chewed the stub ferociously as Bill’s meaning took root in his journalistic mind.

  “I get it,” he whispered. With rising excitement. “I get it. We could run a squib daily in a box on the front page. Cleverly done, it would be a wow.”

  “Sure. A little mystery. Intriguing.” Bill waved his hand jubilantly. “Readers fall for hints and evasions lots quicker than for the truth plainly presented. We could have excitement at a fever heat before the first article next Sunday. Get it? We don’t give her away. See? No one knows, positively, she’s here. We don’t even say, positively, that Valerie Ware’s the author. V. W. Let ’em draw their own conclusions.”

  “But she’d never let us do it,” Mr. Nipperson said.

  “Oh no? I’d like to lay some money on the line that I’m back in an hour with an agreement from her.” Bill leaped to his feet and his eyes blazed with the eager light of the hunter as he follows the spoor.

  “How are you going to do it?” Mr. Nipperson asked.

  “We’ve got the drop on her,” Bill said. “Don’t you get it? Simple as ABC. I drop over casually and introduce myself. Toss about a few hints that we’re on to her, and are going to run the story. As a price for silence, I offer her this other proposition. She’ll jump at it.”

  “No.” Mr. Nipperson shook his head. “Can’t do it, Porter. I simply refuse to violate a confidence.”

  “Hell! We won’t violate any confidence,” Bill exploded. “I don’t tell her where I got my dope. She thinks it’s all on the level. She’ll pick the lesser of two evils. The point of the whole thing is that she doesn’t know we can’t print the story if she refuses. See? She doesn’t know we’re bluffing.”

  “By George!” Mr. Nipperson thumped the desk loudly. “But I don’t believe in coercion or blackmail,” he said.

  “Okay,” Bill said. “I do. You don’t know anything about this. I’ll keep Nip out of it … and I’ll be back with a signed agreement. I’ll get the stenographer to fix one up to take with me. In the meantime … you can be working out the little details of those front page boxes.” Bill waved airily from the doorway and was gone.