All for the Love of a Lady

by Zenith Brown

  “Really?” I said. “Where did you find him?”

  I was pretty excited, though I’d rather it had been Sondauer-Skagerlund.

  “He phoned in from New York this morning,” Colonel Primrose said. He smiled a little at the look on my face. “He saw about it—he says—in the papers, and he’s flying down with Sondauer. I imagine he wants to see me even worse than Bigges wants to see him. And his name isn’t Austin. It’s Armistead. He’s a member of the New York law firm of Ryan, Armistead and Meggs.”

  “What is the point of all this pseudonymity?” I asked.

  Just then I spotted Mr. Armistead-Austin whipping in the door. His impeccability looked very frayed around the edges. In fact, Mr. Armistead had obviously had an extremely uncomfortable few hours and was making no attempt to disguise it. He even seemed glad I was there, to give him some kind of authentication, as he’d never met Colonel Primrose. Particularly, as he added, as nobody with any sense would believe his story, or what he’d been through since the arrival of his firm’s fabulous client.

  “My God, this man Sondauer’s crazy as a bedbug,” he said, with a passion I wouldn’t have suspected he was capable of. “I tell you. He’s like a half-witted child, with his practical jokes when he’s not doing business. And when he is, My God, he makes your hair curl the other way. And this game of hide and seek. I told him this morning we can play it if that’s what he wants to do, but I’m damned if we’re going to be mixed up in a murder case just to amuse him.”

  We’d gone into the crowded lounge to the table Colonel Primrose had reserved, in the corner under the potted palms.

  “And that business of the kitten,” Mr. Armistead said. “He says he didn’t send it, but of course he sent it. He told me he’d once got Durbin cornered in a deal by having a plank put up under the windows with some liver on it and a few cats to jump up and get it. It had Durbin in such a state he didn’t know what he was doing. When he told me about it he laughed till I thought he’d break a blood vessel. Durbin was deathly afraid of them. If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Durbin getting hurt last night Sondauer would have been as delighted as a child.”

  “It isn’t just black cats, then?” I asked.

  Colonel Primrose glanced at me rather oddly, I thought.

  “All cats,” Mr. Armistead said. “Sondauer says that’s why he never goes out of the house if he can help it. It’s a . . . a pychotic state. But when Durbin started thrashing that stick around it looked like homicidal mania to me. And he certainly wasn’t in a state to do business afterwards. Sondauer had him there. But he didn’t kill him.”

  “You’re sure about that?” Colonel Primrose asked politely.

  “My God, man!”

  Mr. Armistead stared at him.

  “Of course I’m sure of it. I was there all the time. That’s what I’m here to tell you. The man’s got a screw loose, but he’s gentle as a lamb when there’s no money involved. That was the whole trouble.”

  “Suppose you tell me about it,” Colonel Primrose said equably. “Shall we order first? A martini, or a daiquiri?”

  “Just a plain double rye for me,” Mr. Armistead said. “And just plain water on the side.”

  Colonel Primrose smiled. It was a medicinal and not a social measure Mr. Armistead was taking, I supposed.

  While the waiter took our order I glanced around the dimly lighted room. The tables were crowded together and all full. The harassed waiters, too few of them and some of them new to the job, were doing their best, and if it hadn’t been that their best wasn’t very fast I’m not sure I would have seen Molly and Duleep Singh at all. Not that they were in a hurry to be served—it was the table next to them. They were sitting side by side on a white leather seat against the wall, completely absorbed in their conversation, oblivious, apparently, to waiters and guests alike.

  Oblivious also to the fact that Cass, Randy and two other Army officers were at a round table toward the center of the room. Whether Cass saw them or not I couldn’t tell. His back was toward us, and if I hadn’t seen Randy get up to speak to an older woman who stopped a moment at their table, I wouldn’t have known they were there at all. But Randy had seen Molly and Duleep Singh. Every time I glanced up he was looking at them. His face was stormy and when the others laughed about something he didn’t join in. The two sets of them—Molly and Duleep, and Randy and Cass—made a curious visual obbligato to Mr. Austin-Armistead’s solo recital at our table in the corner.

  “It was after you left, Mrs. Latham,” he said.

  I liked his describing my departure so simply.

  “Durbin cancelled dinner, and Sondauer likes his food. There was a good deal of unpleasantness about Mrs. Durbin’s hands. Durbin and Sondauer had words in some language. It sounded like Chinese to me, and I guess they both know it. They’ve been out there enough. Sondauer was still sore about it—he had tears in his eyes when she went in. He kept saying, That beautiful lady, those beautiful hands!’ He’s sentimental as mush anyway.”

  Mr. Armistead shook his head.

  “I frankly can’t make him out,” he said helplessly. “He’s beyond me. Anyway. We got in the library, and the man brought sandwiches and poured Scotch and sodas. Sondauer said he wouldn’t eat the sandwiches, it was an insult to offer them when he expected to be fed, and he wouldn’t touch the liquor because he wanted to be alive in the morning. That made Durbin sore. He picked up his cane. Sondauer made a dive for it. He’s fat but he can move like a cat if he wants to. He wanted to then, and he wrenched the stick out of Durbin’s hand and snapped it in two like a match. He tossed it down on the desk, and they started snarling that lingo of theirs. All of a sudden Sondauer shoved his chair back and turned to me and said, ‘We’re going.’ I was glad to.”

  Colonel Primrose listened intently, without, however, seeming either surprised or particularly enlightened, as far as I could tell.

  “When was that?” he asked. “It didn’t happen at once when you——”

  “No, no. They talked quite a while first. We left about half-past eight. We got down here, and Sondauer didn’t like the menu.”

  Mr. Armistead looked at us grimly.

  “—So he said we were going to New York to get something to eat . . .”

  He shook his head helplessly again.

  “Just like that. He went out and phoned the maid to bring his briefcase—I had mine—while I got a sandwich. I’m not so choosy when I’m hungry. He met the girl out here on the corner, gave her five ten-dollar bills, he told me, and told her if Durbin or anybody else called to say we’d gone to Brazil. My God, I began to think he really meant to get his supper there. The idea of space isn’t in the man’s mind at all.”

  Colonel Primrose nodded absently. “They weren’t quarrelling just about Mrs. Durbin’s hands, I imagine,” he said. “What——”

  “No, I gathered Durbin was annoyed because Sondauer tried to see this young man Crane,” Mr. Armistead said. “I don’t know how he came in the picture. These people don’t tell you any more than they have to. Durbin apparently thought Sondauer was trying to doublecross him and get some information about a deal that—I gathered—Durbin was planning to do the doublecrossing on.—We’ve represented some of Sondauer’s interests in this country, Colonel, and expedited his people through, and so on. But this is the first time we’ve had to do with the big man himself—or we’d have signed off years ago.”

  “Sondauer didn’t talk about Crane?”

  “He was pretty annoyed at not knowing it was Crane on the plane with him. He learned it from a reporter coming in from the airport. No, he talked chiefly about Durbin. He’s openly delighted Durbin’s out of the way. It clears up a lot of his problems, it seems. But he didn’t put him out of the way, Colonel. Durbin was very much alive when we left.—We got a plane at half-past nine, by a simple method. Sondauer bought two places from a couple of young Marine officers who didn’t happen to be in a hurry, and paid them enough to more than have a time in New York before they went
on.”

  Colonel Primrose was silent for a moment.

  “It would probably interest Sondauer.” he said then, deliberately, “to have Crane make a favorable report to the War Department? For the Monday session, say?”

  Mr. Armistead looked down at the remains of his double rye for some time. He shrugged.

  “Without prejudice, and distinctly off the record, it undoubtedly would interest him . . . a great deal. It wouldn’t interest my firm, Colonel. Just for one thing, I’ve got two sons and a son-in-law in this war, and my partners have boys in it. We don’t want any part of anything that isn’t out in the open. If Mr. Crane is like that, at a time like this . . .”

  He shrugged again.

  “This business of coming down here under assumed names, and taking rooms in a private house, was very distasteful to me. Sondauer said it was a joke, and God knows it was just as funny as his others. It was something I was in before I knew anything about it, and it’s something I’m out of as of this morning at nine o’clock.”

  Colonel Primrose nodded. “There’s still something I want you to do for me,” he said. “We’ll go into it after lunch. You have a room here?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Sondauer?”

  Mr. Armistead nodded. “Under his own name, too,” he said, with a kind of grim satisfaction.

  20

  Molly and Duleep Singh were still there when we got up to go. He was turned toward her on the seat, talking earnestly. She was looking in front of her with a sort of rapt, far away blindness in her eyes, a smile on her lips. If he was talking to her about the flower garden her life was to be, she was certainly seeing it as a radiant and wistful vision, the taste of ripe pomegranate seeds already in her mouth.

  I saw Colonel Primrose glance toward them before he rose, and when he looked at me he smiled faintly and shook his head a little.

  There were four women with enormous straw cartwheels on their heads at the table where Cass and Randy had been sitting. When they’d left I didn’t know, so I’d missed the last look Randy must have shot Molly and the Indian, absorbed in their own conversation under the potted palms. Whether Cass’s not going over to speak to them meant he hadn’t seen them, and Randy hadn’t told him they were there, or whether he. wasn’t interested enough to bother, or whether he was too interested, I didn’t know, and with things as they were I wouldn’t have hazarded a guess. Cass in the last few days had become a complete enigma to me.

  He and Randy were waiting for a taxi when I came out on the street. Colonel Primrose and Mr. Austin-Armistead were inside taking the elevator when I left them, Mr. Armistead with slightly renewed jitters at the idea of an impending interview with Inspector Bigges. I envied them, because coming out into the street was like stepping from the icebox onto a sizzling platter.

  “Hello there, Grace.”

  Cass, looking comparatively cool in a comparatively unrumpled seersucker suit, hailed me from the curb. Randy said hello grumpily. From their faces you would have thought it was his wife who was inside lunching with the fascinating Hindoo, and his head the thundercloud sat upon, ready to burst into a torrential downpour. If Cass had any idea the reverse was true, it wasn’t apparent. His gray eyes were clear and steady, his manner friendly and unperturbed.

  “Can we give you a lift, if and when?” he asked. “Which way you going?”

  “I’m going to Courtney’s,” I said.

  A car pulled up just then and let out more harassed-looking men with bulging briefcases and limp collars than could ever possibly have got in. Cass and Randy stemmed the tide of people waiting to take over, and because nobody else was going above Dupont Circle we had it to ourselves.

  “Tell her for me, will you,” Cass said as we started off, “that Julie Ross says Durbin phoned for Skagerlund, or Sondauer, whoever the hell it was, a few minutes past nine. He wanted her to have him call as soon as he came in. I don’t know what it means, but Julie wanted me to tell her.”

  “It means one thing, anyway,” Randy said shortly. “It means they weren’t there and Durbin was. I don’t see it helps anybody but them . . . and Bigges and the good gray Colonel. She’s sure it was him? She’s such a half-wit.”

  “She knows his voice,” Cass said. “Or says so. He’s called them before. I’d just as soon they were out of it, myself. It would be a bad show if the Board decides to okay Sondauer’s scheme.”

  I felt my heart sink a little. “Are they likely to?” I asked.

  He shrugged.

  “You can’t tell. It depends on the stockpile. We may need his . . . what he’s got bad enough to go along with him. There might be political reasons—or State reasons—for doing it that are out of my bailiwick. It isn’t as simple as it looks.”

  The taxi made a U-turn on Massachusetts Avenue, and drew up in front of the iron gate.

  “You’re not coming in?” I asked.

  Cass hesitated. “Tell her I’ll see her later,” he said. “I’ll be at the office. She’ll know.”

  I got out of the cab.

  “Oh, and look, Grace,” he said. It had started up, and stopped. He leaned out the window, lowering his voice. “Tell her I talked to Blodgett, and no soap. Goodbye.”

  Flowers, still wilted, opened the door. A detective was sprawled in a chair in the library playing the radio. I’ve never seen anyone look quite as bored. His face lighted as I came in, and fell as instantly.

  “I got to take your name, miss,” he said without enthusiasm. “I’m getting tired sitting around here doing nothing.”

  Courtney looked as if she felt the same way. She was dressed and sitting on a stool in front of the fireplace, going through a lot of old letters piled on a table. She looked bored but fairly calm. Her hands were more elaborately taped and the fingers swollen, but she could still use them.

  “Just badly bruised,” she said. “I can’t hold anything heavy or do anything much, but at least there aren’t any bones broken. They took an X-ray this morning. Lord, I’m fed up with all this. I wish they’d let me out of here. I suppose I could go somewhere where I wouldn’t have to pretend I’m a sorrowing widow for a while. Sit down, angel.”

  She smiled a little. “I’m glad you came.”

  “I just saw Cass,” I said.

  Her face brightened and she looked at me expectantly. I thought it was the most revealing single gesture indicating the status quo that anybody had so far made.

  “He said to tell you . . . there were three things,” I said. “First, Julie talked to Mr. Durbin a few minutes past nine . . . your guests left about half-past eight. Second, Horace says no soap, and third, Cass’ll see you later.”

  Her face was a curiously changing mirror at each one of them. She seemed bewildered at the first, annoyed at the second and not as happy at the third as could be expected, obviously wishing the later were sooner.

  “—Thanks,” she said after a moment. She sat quietly a while.

  “I hoped Mr. Blodgett would take over my affairs for me,” she said then. “Oh, well, he’s too much of an old fogy anyway. But I don’t see that it helps anything to know he phoned Julie then. In fact, it . . . it isn’t possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it isn’t,” she said coolly. “Inspector Bigges was here this morning. Back at the beginning again. They’re sure he was . . . dead by a little after eight at the latest.”

  I stared at her, I suppose open-mouthed.

  She shivered a little.

  “—Rigor had begun to set in by the time they got him to the . . . hospital, or wherever it was. I don’t know about that sort of thing, but Inspector Bigges is positive about it.”

  She looked away. “It’s . . . all pretty horrible.”

  “If you only hadn’t broken up the records,” I said tentatively.

  “I know.” Her voice was unsteady. “If I’d had time to put them on and see. But . . . I didn’t. I couldn’t be sure, and it seemed better not to take a chance. If I’d known he was dead arou
nd eight o’clock . . . But it’s done, and it’s spilt milk. You see, Cass was here after eight.”

  My mind was in pretty much of a whirl, but even then I’d supposed already that that must be it, and was also the reason for Molly Crane’s activity. But it wasn’t the sort of thing I could have said to her in so many words.

  “It was my fault,” she went on, her eyes fixed down into the fireplace. “I was almost out of my mind when I came upstairs. I called him up and he came over. He came in the back way, because . . . well, he didn’t want D. J. to see him—for several reasons. I was in an awful state. My hands hurt like fury and everything had just seemed so gone to hell I couldn’t bear it. He was terribly angry, of course. He wanted to go down and see D. J., and . . . I don’t know . . . I thought he had. And that . . . that’s what had happened. But . . . he was already dead.—I haven’t seen him since Inspector Bigges told me.”

  We sat there in two separate pools of silence for a few moments. She got up, went over to the window and stood looking out for a long time, it seemed to me. She turned back at last.

  “Do you think Molly will give him up without . . . without a lot of . . . trouble?” she asked, with what seemed to me no more than a decent amount of reasonable hesitation.

  “I don’t know, darling,” I said. “What does he think?”

  “We haven’t talked about it. We couldn’t very well with policemen listening at the key holes. They’ve cleared me of actual physical complicity, on account of my hands. Inspector Bigges told me this morning he’d thought I might have . . . done it, but the doctor told him I couldn’t. Which is sweet of all of them. My God, as if I’d murder anybody, no matter how much I might have . . . wanted to. It’s so silly.”

  She came back and sat down again.

  “I don’t know what he’d think if he knew Cass had been in the house.”

  “I’ll bet I do,” I said.

  “Well, so do I.”

  After a long silence she said, “You know, it’s funny. I wanted money, and now I’ve got it. But if the people you like, and respect, like—well, like Horace Blodgett—are going to act as if I didn’t have any right to it, or got it some way I shouldn’t, that’ll leave just the people who think you’re swell just because you’ve got money, no matter where or how. . . . And . . . well, I’d hate that . . . kind of a life.”