Punch With Care

by Phoebe Atwood Taylor

  Ahead of them, the beam of Layne’s little flashlight was focussed on the trussed-up figure on the ground.

  “Jack?” she said uncertainly. “Jack!”

  Asey suddenly found himself grinning from ear to ear.

  “Jack Briggs!” Her voice was suddenly sharp. “What happened to you!”

  While Asey gave himself a certain amount of credit for having wondered once or twice about the fellow, he had never felt more pleased to discover that he’d guessed wrong. He should have put more faith in Gerty’s judgment, he thought. He should have known at once that this couldn’t have been her colonel, even though the nickname had seemed so apt and appropriate.

  “I thought you said he was Si in—” Cummings began hoarsely.

  Asey shushed him.

  “Oh!” Layne said irritably. “Oh, damn! Of all times for you—”

  Turning suddenly, she climbed into the roadster and swung her light over the dashboard.

  “Trying to find headlights!” the irrepressible Cummings announced in a whisper. “Silly, silly girl! She couldn’t find ’em without a guide book in that monstrosity of a car! Couldn’t—”

  He broke off as Asey stepped forward and snapped on his own light.

  “All right!” he said briskly. “Hold it! What’s going on here? What’s the idea?”

  Layne gave a little start, and stared into the darkness for a second before she turned her light back at Asey.

  “What is going on here?” she retorted evenly and without apparent fear, but Asey noticed that the light wavered in her hand. “What are you doing here? This is private property! Who are you?”

  “I’m Asey Mayo. Dr. Cummings,” he spoke the doctor’s name very distinctly, “who is this girl, d’you know?” In an undertone, he added, “Yes, you do, an’ to your great surprise!”

  “Why, it’s Layne Douglass!” Cummings sounded sincerely bewildered. “I must say this is a surprise, Layne! You are probably the last person we ever expected to find—merciful heavens, what’s that?” A note of real horror crept into the doctor’s voice. “Who’s that bound up there, by the steps?”

  “It’s Jack Briggs—and I don’t—I can’t imagine—I don’t know what’s happened, doctor!” Her bewilderment, Asey thought, was not just genuine-sounding, but genuine all the way through. Unlike the doctor, with his fluent improvisation, she was hesitant and stumbling—and she was just a little frightened, too! “Whatever are you doing here?”

  “We’ve had a lot of trouble today with people stealin’ whole beds of quohaugs an’ clams, Miss Douglass,” Asey said smoothly before Cummings had a chance to speak. “An’ since I happened to be home, they asked if I’d take a hand helpin’ to find the thieves. Doc an’ I are special deputies—only they ran out of badges before they got to him! We’re keepin’ an eye on the shore, because we don’t think all the crowd’s got out of town yet—incidentally,” he added, “one of ’em—or some body—pinched my car. That’s it you’re sittin’ in, you know!”

  Layne got out quickly, as if the roadster were red-hot, and burning her.

  “An’ I guess that whoever took it,” Asey went on, “must have taken your friend here, too—you know this young man?”

  “Of course! He’s one of the Larrabee College project! Would you two help me untie him, please? There’s been some frightful mistake, really! Jack wouldn’t steal quohaugs! He must have run into some of the men you’re after, and been overpowered!”

  “Poor chap!” Cummings said solicitously, as he walked over and looked down at Briggs. “Hold the lights, Layne—come on, Asey, let’s get him free!”

  With his gag and bonds removed, Jack sat up, looked into the flashlights, and blinked.

  Then he looked up at Asey and blinked even harder. “This is Dr. Cummings, Jack,” Layne said. “And Asey Mayo. You know, the detective—”

  “Didn’t I,” Jack seemed to find difficulty in swallowing, “didn’t I—uh—weren’t you up town at the garage a while ago?”

  “Garage?” Asey said politely. “What garage?”

  “Well,” Jack hesitated, “well, maybe I’m wrong, but you look a lot like a man at the gas station near the traffic lights!”

  “Oh, he means your Cousin Josh, Asey!” Cummings said brightly. “There is a certain resemblance—same height, same coloring, same general build! Feel all right, do you, Briggs?” he hurried on. “No ill effects?”

  “I’m stiff, and I’ve got a cramp in my right leg, and—”

  “What happened to you?” Layne interrupted impatiently.

  Jack started to shrug, and then he winced.

  “Oh, my bowlder! I don’t know what happened—someone just jumped me, that’s all! I was waiting here for you, Layne, as you said to. And just as I was starting to unlock the padlock with that key you gave me—well, that’s all, brother!”

  The fellow, Asey thought to himself, was speaking with far more truth and accuracy than he guessed. There, in a nutshell, was everything which he’d hoped to find out: Jack was meeting Layne, according to her instructions, and he was unlocking the padlock with the key which she’d previously given him!

  That took care of the whole situation—except Layne’s motive for wanting to meet him so surreptitiously. But that, Asey surmised, was probably simple enough. Probably, like Gerty, Layne had felt slightly hemmed in by all the project milling around, and merely had wanted to get Jack to herself.

  “But the people who jumped on you, Jack! They must have come in Mr. Mayo’s car—didn’t you hear them? You must have heard the car!”

  In a small voice, Jack told her that he had come in Mr. Mayo’s car.

  “You did? Jack, where did you get it?” She sounded, Asey thought, like a very cross mother scolding a very naughty child.

  “Outside on the turntable, up at your house!” he retorted a little defiantly. “I thought it belonged to your family, naturally! I certainly shouldn’t have taken it, otherwise!”

  “You shouldn’t have taken it at all!” Layne was obviously furious. “I suppose that Stin—that someone put you up to it! But you should have known better, Jack! What an utterly idiotic thing for you to do! How could you have been so stupid! How—”

  She continued to enlarge on his stupidity to an extent that caused both Cummings and Asey to feel uncomfortable, and that made the latter wonder if his first guess about a romantic rendezvous hadn’t better be summed up as an error.

  “Er—fancy your car being at the Douglass’s, Asey!” Cummings said quickly when she finally paused for breath. “I wonder how it could have got there—let’s see, when did you have it last, anyway?”

  “Someone pinched it this afternoon, up on the main street. I’m sorry this happened to you, Briggs,” Asey said. “Haven’t you any clue at all as to who jumped you? Didn’t you hear voices?”

  The fellow wasn’t deaf, after all! He couldn’t have missed hearing them!

  “Well, yes,” Jack said. “I guess I was knocked out for a few minutes first, but then later I heard the sound of voices inside the boat house. You know. Just the sound. Then after a while, I heard people walk out. I think it was two men.”

  “What did they sound like?” Cummings asked with deep interest.

  “Well—gee—like anyone. Like,” Jack hesitated, and then he came out with what Asey had been expecting, “Well, they—as a matter of fact, they sounded rather like you two!”

  Cummings leaned back against the roadster and laughed and laughed.

  “Ha ha! Must have been quite a crack you took,” he said, “to hear voices that sounded like ours! Ha ha ha! But that’s what Jim Higgins claimed, too, Asey—remember? Said one man talked like a Cape Codder, and one sounded more like a summer person. Well, Briggs, I can only tell you that you’re damned lucky to have come out of this so easily! Higgins was really hurt—I had to take a couple of stitches in his scalp!”

  Jack was confused, and he looked confused.

  “Well, I guess—I guess—” he even sounded more confuse
d than he looked.

  Asey restrained a smile. While Briggs wasn’t convinced by a long shot, he thought, the fellow still wasn’t sure enough to open his mouth and make any accusatory statements.

  “Wa-el, doc,” he said, “we better get along!”

  “Oh, absolutely!” Cummings said. “They’ll be waiting for us. Sorry we—er—broke up your tryst, Layne!”

  “Oh, that doesn’t matter at all!” Layne told him casually, without even noticing Jack’s quick look in her direction. “I almost started to phone you myself a while ago, Mr. Mayo. I’d felt terribly worried about Mrs. Boone—Carolyn Barton Boone, you know—who’s staying at the house, but Louise finally convinced me that I was just being over-anxious.”

  “Say, doc,” Asey prodded him, “isn’t she the one you wanted to meet so badly?”

  “She certainly is!” Cummings said. “By George, I don’t suppose you could arrange a meeting, could you, Layne?”

  “I’d be delighted to!” Layne smiled for the first time since he’d met her, and Asey decided suddenly that she really was an attractive girl. “You’ll love her, doctor—she’s really a wonderful person! I was worried because she’s been away from the house since noon without letting us know where she was going, but Louise said that Elizabeth Shearing—she’s overseeing the project—said that she was with her. Some business—Jack Briggs, what are you grovelling around on all fours for?”

  “My glasses—they came off when I was hit. You might break down and help me, too!” Jack said. “You know how much the damn things cost!”

  While they all helped him search for the glasses, Cummings unostentatiously retrieved his stethoscope from the pine tree branch, and quietly tucked it into his coat pocket.

  “I got ’em! I found ’em—here they are, over by the step!” Jack said. “Turn your light this way a second, will you, Layne? I want to snap off the sunglasses—okay. Thanks,” he added as an afterthought.

  If those dark lenses hadn’t been clipped on over the regular frame, Asey thought to himself, he never would have made that mistake in identity. Gerty had specifically mentioned Briggs’s poor eyes.

  He prodded the doctor gently and whispered in his ear.

  “More Boone!”

  “Oh!” Cummings said. “Oh. I hope we can make some arrangements for my meeting Mrs. Boone, Layne!”

  “I’m sure that Louise has already phoned Mrs. Cummings about the buffet supper tomorrow,” Layne said, “but you’d have a much better chance to talk with her if there weren’t so many people around, of course. She always has every single minute planned, but I’ll find out if she can’t spare you some time—why, this door padlock is unlocked, Jack. The key’s in it. I simply assumed that they’d broken in, of course! Did they take the key from you?”

  “Yes, I just realized that,” Jack said. “They must have swiped it when I was knocked out, just after they jumped me. Then when they left, they took the cigarette lighter—it was a lighter I’d seen on a tree stump, and thought someone had lost, and picked up. Say, Mr. Mayo, that might be a clue! One man seemed to know I had it, and the other man said it was his—and say, I’ve just remembered another thing! The first man called the other ‘Doc’!”

  “Asey, there’s no question about it in my mind any longer!” Cummings at once rose to the occasion. “I’m sure these fellows we’re after are local people, and they’re trying to throw everyone off the track by pretending that they’re us!”

  “Now that could be!” Asey said. “It could be!”

  “I’m positive of it! You know Higgins said that one man called the other something that sounded like ‘Macy’—Macy and Doc! Get it? Asey and Doc! By George, that’s just what they’re doing! Those scoundrels are pretending to be us!”

  “Huh!” Asey reached out in the darkness and gave the doctor an approving pat on the arm. “I wonder—neither of you happened to see anything unusual goin’ on about the shore here this afternoon, did you, Miss Douglass? This bunch must have been around this way if they left cigarette lighters—”

  “Obviously a signal of some sort!” Cummings interposed. “Obviously!”

  “An’ they knew the lay of the land, so to speak,” Asey went on, “an’ about this boat house here an’ all. Huh! Didn’t you happen to hear any thing they said, Briggs? Like any specific comment?”

  “The way that I was gagged with that handkerchief of mine,” Jack said, “I couldn’t hear too well—but there was something about somebody washing her face, I think—”

  “Code!” Cummings said. “Code, without doubt!”

  “And—oh, yes. Something about—well,” Jack said, “it sounded to me like hot soup!”

  “Soup!” Cummings said. “Soup—that’s dynamite, isn’t it, Asey? Hot soup—humpf! I don’t like this business! I don’t like it!”

  “Neither do I!” Asey said truthfully, and gave the doctor a warning poke. Enough, he thought, was enough! “Are you sure nobody saw anything unusual goin’ on about the shore here this afternoon, Miss Douglass?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it, but I can’t recall seeing anything at all out of the way.” Layne said. “Gerty—one of the girls from the project—and I were on the far beach, where we could see everything, and we were there all afternoon, too, from a little after twelve till long after four. We never saw anything the least bit strange. Or any strangers—I’d have noticed, I’m sure, because I was sketching—where were you, Jack?”

  “Oh, I was all over,” he said. “All over town, I mean. Not around here, or the beach, though. Believe it or not, I did some work. I investigated Public Safety. Fire and Police.”

  “Oh, did you!” Layne didn’t sound as if she believed him.

  “I did! I talked with the traffic cop and peeked inside the fire station windows!”

  Their respective whereabouts that afternoon, Cummings decided, must have been what Asey had been waiting to find out about, for he suddenly announced with briskness that they had to be on their way.

  “Which car’ll you drive, doc?” he added.

  “Neither!”

  “Neither?” Layne said curiously. “Have you another car here?”

  “Asey has his spare,” Cummings said. “He’s lousy with Porter roadsters, you know. No, Asey, I refuse to drive either of those things! I’m afraid of ’em. That’s final!”

  “Look, doc, you got to!” Asey said. “Only just as far as the Douglass’s—I’m sure they won’t mind our leavin’ one there!”

  “I will not drive either a single inch!” Cummings was adamant.

  “Let one of us,” Layne suggested. “Let me—Jack’s in no condition—”

  “I’m perfectly all right!” Jack protested.

  “But I want to—I’ve always yearned to drive a Porter! After all, it’s the least I can do, after causing you this delay, Mr. Mayo!”

  “But I wouldn’t want to break up your—uh—no, Miss Douglass, don’t you bother!” Asey said. “I’ll send—”

  “Don’t be silly! You’re not breaking up anything! Jack and I were simply going to talk over a problem that we can discuss any time. I’ll drive one of the cars—only,” she paused, “this one here seems a little strange!”

  “Strange!” Cummings said with scorn. “Is that the best adjective you can think of to describe a car that is equipped with a built-in sword-holder? Come along up the road with me, Layne. I’m sure you can manage the old model. Let Asey take this thing himself—oh, better lock that door up, hadn’t you?”

  After Layne snapped the padlock, she and Cummings walked off up the lane.

  As the sound of their footsteps receded, Jack cleared his throat rather noisily.

  “Er—Mr. Mayo.”

  “Uh-huh? Get in.” Asey stepped into the roadster.

  “I guess I was pretty fresh up there at the gas station.”

  “Wa-el,” Asey restrained his impulse to turn his flashlight on the fellow’s face, “you were a bit on the nasty side.”

  “I recognized you
right away,” Jack went on, “only I didn’t want to—I mean, in front of Layne—that is, she thinks I’m stupid enough without my giving her anything more to find fault about—oh, hell, you see what I mean! And I didn’t know this was your car! I really thought it was the Douglass’s! I shouldn’t have taken it anyway—oh, the whole damn trouble was, I was sore!”

  “Oh?” Asey said.

  “I was burned up! Look, I couldn’t say this when Layne was around, because I didn’t want her to know where I’d been. But I had a date over on the beach this afternoon—that is, I thought I did!” he amended with some bitterness. “And I did see something odd over there!”

  “So?” Asey withdrew his finger from the starter button and leaned back against the seat. “An’ what was that?”

  “This man—this fellow that was sneaking around through the pines. From where I was waiting, you see,” Jack went on, “I could see Gerty and Layne, and I felt a little worried about them with him prowling around. Only I couldn’t do anything without giving myself away to Layne, and—well, of course, I could have gone after him easily enough if I’d seen him going after them!”

  “What time was all this?” Asey asked.

  “Well, I was already over there waiting when the girls came, and I stayed there till after they went, and I saw him at least three different times—I couldn’t tell you just exactly when. I never bothered looking at my watch to see.”

  “Huh!” Asey said. “I don’t suppose you could describe him?”

  “I wasn’t near enough to see his face, but he was wearing a darkish suit and a felt hat. He wasn’t anyone from the project—none of us dresses like that,” Jack said, “and he certainly didn’t look like any of the townspeople I’ve seen around.”

  “Think that you could sum up his felt hat as a Homburg?” Asey was thinking back to Eric.

  “I really couldn’t say. Only man I ever knew to wear one of those,” Jack said with a laugh, “is Mrs. Boone’s secretary, Eric Manderson. But he didn’t come down with her. You know,” he sounded a little self-conscious, “if I hadn’t seen that man, and if I weren’t sure that someone was prowling around, I honestly would have thought that you and the doctor were that pair in the boat house! Gee, they certainly sounded like you!”