All for the Love of a Lady

by Zenith Brown

  “Good evening, my dear.” He wouldn’t say I wasn’t late, because I was—six minutes by the clock in the corner. “Will you have a cocktail? A client sent me a case of champagne. It needs the bitters as disguise—otherwise I shouldn’t desecrate it.”

  He raised his glass.

  “It’s a pleasure to have our friends with us this evening.”

  I’d already nodded to Colonel Primrose and, a little to my surprise, Swami Duleep Singh, who were standing together near the fireplace. Above them was the portrait of the Blodgetts’ daughter, done the year she came out by a painter who’d caught her extraordinary vivid quality unmarred by the then mode. Her brilliant hair was done up sort of Romney-flamboyant, and she wore a simple square-necked white frock, as if the artist had wanted to avoid the styles of those fabulous pre-’29 days ever becoming comical and detracting from the eternal loveliness of his subject.

  When I’d thought the strain of Corinne’s day was still visible on her face, I’d forgot the strain of my last few moments, and its probable effect on mine. I had, that is, until I saw Colonel Primrose’s black eyes sharpen and the smile of his face become static for an instant as he looked at me . . . the cobbler sticking to his last, in season and out. I dare say there was effort behind the smile in my childlike eyes too, just then, as I realized I’d arrived breathless and still fairly goggle-eyed.

  “This dear child was practically running, Horace,” Corinne said. “You don’t realize, my dear, that while the street car company is gracious enough to let you ride a whole week for a dollar and a quarter, they can’t have equipment precisely where you want it the minute you want it.”

  “Yes, my dear,” Horace said with domestic amiability. He smiled dryly at me and filled my glass again.

  “I should think, Colonel, wouldn’t you, that even Horace would have to relax a few of his rules, in deference to the larger effort? I sometimes think his dear mother must have swaddled him in a strait jacket. Are you so determinedly punctual in your country, Mr. Singh? Perhaps you can explain to my husband some time about nirvana.”

  “It is mañana you mean, my dear,” Horace said.

  “Well, whatever it is,” Corinne said. “It’s something you ought really to learn, Horace.”

  He shook his head. “It’s my experience that if you put off doing things, and don’t do them punctually, the chance to do them well passes. You’re likely to bungle, and be caught in the mesh of circumstance. You’ve seen that in your country, Mr. Singh? And you in your business . . . or is it profession, John?”

  He looked at Colonel Primrose.

  “Yes. I think I could give you instances, military and private.”

  The man announced dinner.

  “It’s certainly true of pork chops, I’ll have to admit,” Corinne said, putting down her glass and getting up. “I would have had fried chicken, but Horace said the last chickens we’ve had tasted like sea gulls. Though I’ve never seen why sea gulls shouldn’t be very good to eat. They’re very pretty when they fly.”

  I’ve always known that Colonel Primrose has X-ray eyes, but perhaps he’s a swami too. Both he and Duleep Singh were apparently equally aware that there was a dark man in my immediate past. It was so much in their glances every time I met them that at the advent of the squash I decided I’d relieve their minds.

  “I had the most extraordinary experience on the way here,” I said. “It was why I was late, Horace. I stopped to take Courtney her cigarette case. Somebody had sent Mr. Durbin a black kitten. It seems he doesn’t like black cats or kittens. He was considerably unstrung.”

  “Well, that’s very silly,” Corinne said. “I don’t possibly see how a black cat can be regarded as bad luck. Horace, you must eat your squash. Do you, Colonel Primrose?”

  He was looking at me thoughtfully.

  “Cats interest me very much,” he said. “I’ve heard of people who were really deathly afraid of them. Let’s see . . . it’s called aelurophobia. A morbid or pathological fear of cats. There’s a kindred obsession known as galeanthropy, the mental delusion that one has actually become a cat. I’ve never run into that myself.”

  “The other is fairly common,” Horace Blodgett said, “in non-pathological forms. Shakespeare has something about it. ‘Some men there are love not a gaping pig, some that are mad if they behold a cat.’ I’ve only known one person in my life who had it to a marked degree. That was——”

  “That was a long time ago and in another country, Horace,” Corinne said.

  “I’m sorry, my dear.”

  He turned to Colonel Primrose with a dry chuckle.

  “Why anyone should send Durbin a black kitten. . . . If they’d sent him a black puma it would be understandable.”

  Colonel Primrose smiled without saying anything. It seemed to me he was taking all this rather more seriously than I, certainly, had meant it to be. Otherwise I’d have mentioned Courtney’s getting in the way of the stick. I was carefully avoiding that, however, for a number of reasons, chiefly because I knew she’d want me to.

  “It was an unbelievable performance, really,” I said. “Most people who wish on stars don’t claim it’s serious. But there was no disguise about this. I was just about paralyzed, and Mr. Sondauer-Skagerlund——”

  If I had dropped a polite bombshell deliberately into the middle of the table, the effect could not have been more definite, though actually quite urbane.

  The three men, their forks at varying stages to their mouths, let them rest motionless for a perceptible instant.

  Colonel Primrose said, “Who did you say, Mrs. Latham?”

  “A guest at the Durbins’,” I said. “He’s introduced as Mr. Skagerlund, but Randy Fleming says his name’s Sondauer. Lons Sondauer.”

  Duleep Singh put down his fork and picked up his water glass, but not before he had looked at Horace Blodgett, who in turn looked at Colonel Primrose. When Horace turned to me there was nothing in his voice to indicate that it was a matter of any importance.

  “Was he the only guest?”

  “A Mr. Austin was there.”

  No glances were exchanged, but the effect was the same.

  “Had you met them before, Mrs. Latham?” Colonel Primrose asked.

  “They came to see Cass Crane the night he got back,” I answered. “Randy and I were waiting for Molly.”

  “You’re quite sure—or Fleming was—that the name was Sondauer?”

  “There’s no doubt of it, I imagine. He’d signed Randy’s short snorter bill. And his landlady heard him and Austin talking about Randy.”

  “His landlady?”

  It was the first time Duleep Singh had spoken.

  “Julie Ross,” I said. “They’re staying with her.”

  Horace Blodgett put his napkin on the table and pushed his chair back.

  “My dear, will you excuse us, please?”

  Both Colonel Primrose and Duleep Singh got up at precisely the same moment.

  Corinne said, “Certainly, my dear,” and turned to me as the library door closed. “I don’t know, my dear,” she said. “Either Horace has something definitely in his mind, or he’s going to the most bizarre lengths to avoid eating his yellow vegetables.”

  But it wasn’t the squash. That was apparent when the library door was finally opened again.

  “I think you had better let me look into this,” Horace was saying as Corinne and I went in. “It’s a legal——”

  He stopped and moved the papers on his desk so the man could put down the coffee tray.

  It was curious how they drank their coffee and Duleep Singh had a second cup while Horace and Colonel Primrose went through the elaborate ritual of a teaspoonful of brandy in glasses big enough for goldfish bowls. Time, seemingly of the essence, seemed also to make no difference. I had a feeling, nevertheless, largely the product of my long association with Colonel Primrose, that Lady Macbeth’s ghost was going to materialize in the door and say, “Stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once.�
� And Horace put down his glass and rose.

  “My dear, I am going over to the Durbins’ for a few minutes. Perhaps a rubber of bridge . . .”

  The other men got up, Colonel Primrose glancing at the clock in the corner.

  “I have a little business with Mr. Durbin, at ten o’clock,” he said. “I think I’ll go along too.”

  “I had best come too, as this is largely my problem,” Duleep Singh said. He bowed over Corinne’s hand, bowed to me and moved to the door before either of them. “—It might be wise to call Mr. Crane, at this point?” he asked quietly.

  Horace looked at him thoughtfully for an instant.

  “I think it would.—My dear, will you show Mr. Singh the telephone upstairs? We will wait here.”

  As soon as they were gone he turned to Colonel Primrose.

  “May I ask what your business with Mr. Durbin is? I ask it in the interest of my client.”

  Colonel Primrose hesitated for only an instant.

  “I see no reason why I shouldn’t tell you. Inspector Bigges is meeting me there at ten o’clock. Durbin will, in all probability, be put under arrest.”

  Horace Blodgett’s dry tones never seemed to change. “And . . . charged?” he asked.

  “And charged with the killing of Achille, and the attempted murder of Cass Crane,” Colonel Primrose said.

  He turned to me.

  “I’m not sure this particular black kitten wasn’t an evil omen in fact, as well as in superstition,” he said. He hesitated again. “I hope it didn’t cross Courtney’s path?”

  12

  Colonel Primrose turned back to Horace.

  “If Corinne won’t object, I’d like to take Mrs. Latham,” he said. “Courtney might . . . like to have someone there.”

  “Corinne won’t mind,” Horace said.

  In the hall he got Colonel Primrose’s hat from the closet and put Duleep Singh’s on the table.

  “I’d like to get there before those people leave. Singh can follow us.”

  He looked at his watch. “It’s twenty past nine. They’ll probably just be getting up from the table.”

  I shook my head, mentally, as we went down the steps, thinking that on the contrary they’d probably been up a considerable time. The look D. J. Durbin had given his guests and their obvious discomfiture at my mention of their apparently off-the-record visit to Cass Crane’s, plus the affair of the black kitten, didn’t add up in my mind to anything that presaged a pleasant social evening. Even presuming that Courtney had got them through the roast—also presuming, of course, that she really had one—I couldn’t quite see the three gentlemen lingering over port and cigars and telling stories, unless possibly sad stories of the deaths of kings.

  It took us about five minutes to walk there. No one said anything, each occupied with what must have been highly individual cargoes of thought, of varying weights and sources. And it must have taken another five minutes, though it seemed much longer that we stood outside the wrought-iron gate ringing the bell, for Flowers’ reluctant figure to appear in the door. It was really reluctant, too.

  He recognized the three of us simultaneously as he came down the steps.

  “I’m very sorry, Colonel, sir, Mr. Blodgett, sir, and Madam,” he said.

  It was like interviewing a prisoner behind the bars, though which side was which I didn’t know, for Flowers has a profound dignity matching his position and his diction, both of which are genuinely impressive. The sound of his diction especially. If the words he uses don’t always actually mean what he uses them to mean, it’s beside the point, for they convey his meaning perfectly.

  “I’m very regrettable indeed, sir,” he said, “but it’s indispensable. My instructions are to give admission to no one. That’s my instructions, with full signification.”

  He looked at me.

  “It’s the result of my original error. The offence is not personable, sir. I was instructed that if the Old Man himself rung the bell I was to tell him to return to his habitation.”

  I doubt if either Colonel Primrose or Horace Blodgett had ever before in all his life been told he could go to hell with quite so much dignity. And we were still on the wrong side of the iron gate. Colonel Primrose glanced at his watch. In a short time an open sesame would arrive in the form of Inspector Bigges. Until then, I supposed, there wasn’t much to do.

  “Is Mrs. Durbin in, Flowers?” he asked.

  “Madam is in retirement in her room, sir.”

  At that moment, however, madam became visible through the open door, just reaching the bottom of the elaborate curving staircase. I saw she had retired, however; she had on an ivory lace negligee and ivory kid slippers. As I glanced quickly at her hand on the stair rail I saw it was bandaged, and so was the other hanging at her side.

  She came across the hall to the door. As she saw us I thought there was a definite tone of relief in her voice. “—Oh, hello—come in, please.”

  She put her hand out, the mechanism clicked in the gate lock.

  “I beg your pardon, Madam,” Flowers said. “My instructions——”

  “These are my instructions,” Courtney said shortly. “Come in—please. I’m sorry. I’m sure if Mr. Durbin had known . . .”

  She looked at Horace Blodgett and smiled. “I’m sorry your first visit should be . . . obstructed.”

  She led the way into the drawing room at the left of the wide hallway, glancing at the closed door of the library balancing it on the right. There was something very curious in her expression. I saw Colonel Primrose glance at her bandaged hands, but it was her face that his black eyes were fixed on, with no attempt to conceal either his interest or his concern. It had a substratum of pallor and intensity that all her poise couldn’t have disguised if she’d been trying to. It wasn’t only pain and shock, or chiefly that. It was plain downright cold and bitter fury. Her eyes looked the way dry ice feels when you touch it.

  “Sit down, will you?” she said. “I’m very glad you all came. I was just packing some things to leave.”

  Her voice as she said that was as cool and controlled as I’ve ever heard it. She looked at Horace.

  “You were . . . quite right, Mr. Blodgett. I should have taken your advice in the beginning. You can pay too high a price—even for money.”

  I suppose Horace Blodgett could have been called gentle, for a moment, if you could scrape through the dry leaves of his voice and manner and find what was underneath.

  “I was a little severe, perhaps. A lawyer doesn’t like to see the law made a mockery of. However, Mrs. Durbin, I didn’t come because I feel any less strongly about it now than I did then. I am here entirely on business. I would like to see Mr. Durbin.”

  I don’t know whether Courtney thought I’d told Colonel Primrose and Horace about her earlier visit to me and my late visit to her, and thought their pure chivalry had brought them. She looked a little startled.

  “—I didn’t know you did business with my husband.”

  “My clients do, however.”

  He glanced across the hall at the library door, looking at his watch. His clients, insofar as Duleep Singh represented them, hadn’t appeared. Duleep Singh must have been having a longer chat with Cass Crane than he had planned, I thought, or perhaps Corinne had got him into some esoteric corner and he was too much of a gentleman to cut and run.

  “He’s in the library, with Mr. Skagerlund and Mr. Austin,” Courtney said. “Perhaps you know them?”

  There was a frail desiccated ghost of some curious expression behind Horace’s pince nez before he removed them and slipped them into his pocket.

  “I . . . might,” he said. “At any rate, I shall intrude upon them . . . with your permission.”

  The sound that came from Courtney’s lips could possibly be called the crust of a laugh. It was certainly hollow.

  “For whatever it is worth, Mr. Blodgett, you have my permission—with pleasure. I don’t advise you to do it. The atmosphere is likely to be . . . explosive.
”

  “I will risk it,” Horace said equably.

  He turned to Colonel Primrose.

  “If Singh comes, John, keep him in here, please, until I have a chance to talk things over. I am uniquely interested in Mr. . . . Skagerlund.”

  He looked at me with his dry smile . . . still not believing, I realized, that Randy and I knew what we were talking about. At this stage my own curiosity about Mr. Sondauer-Skagerlund was beyond the point of being unique. It was practically dithering. But Colonel Primrose, with his methodical first-things-first approach, was interested in Courtney. Even when he was nodding assent to Horace he had the tail of his eye fixed on her. It was an involved and complex tail at that. I couldn’t even guess what was going on in his mind behind it.

  We were sitting, he and I, on a summer-muslin covered sofa pulled out at an oblique angle from the ornate fireplace, so that we had a full view of the library door. Horace Blodgett reached it, and put his hand out to the silver knob. Knowing him as a civilized social entity, I expected, naturally, to see him knock, and wait until he was asked either to come in or to stay out. Instead, he calmly opened the door and started in. Or rather, he just started. It was as if some invisible hand had held him there, motionless, on the threshold, for an instant, before he went on in and closed the door quietly behind him.

  I looked at Colonel Primrose with an only half-suppressed smile. Mr. Skagerlund apparently was Mr. Sondauer, then, no matter who Mr. Sondaeur might be, and it was a matter of mild pleasure to me to see Horace Blodgett, who in his career must have had many rabbits pulled out of legal hats at him, being surprised at this one he’d been prepared for in advance. Then it occurred to me suddenly that maybe it was the clean one, as Julie Ross had called the impeccable Mr. Austin, who was the shock. If the one could change his name, there was no reason the other couldn’t.