The Ghosts' High Noon

by John Dickson Carr

  This flight of eloquence was interrupted by the porter, a stout, smiling, elderly character whom Leo addressed as Uncle Mose. Promising to bring what was required, the porter withdrew. Leo rummaged in a valise under the couch and produced a quart bottle of Old Kentucky.

  “Now get this!” he continued impressively, holding the bottle aloft like the Statue of Liberty’s torch. “I’m a responsible citizen now, as anybody at home can tell you. I take an interest in good government. I’m not cockeyed drunk every night. Any nice girl is safe from me, and I haven’t even visited a—never mind; it’s been too hot for that anyway! In New York, on this last occasion, my most extreme dissipation was to see a couple of shows: Billie Burke in The Mind-the-Paint Girl and John Barrymore in The Affairs of Anatol. Jill my wench, our friend Jim is on his way to New Orleans after an important story for Harper’s Weekly. Don’t you think we ought to hear about the assignment?”

  “Anything you like,” agreed Jill, who had sat down on the couch. “Speaking of shows, though, I’d much rather hear about The Count of Monte Carlo.”

  “What do you mean, speaking of shows?” demanded Leo. “What have shows got to do with Jim’s book?”

  “Those characters!” Jill seemed to be dreaming. “Count Dimitri, the Russian nobleman with the villa at Monaco, who’s supposed to be working for Germany in the Kaiser’s secret service, but turns out to be a British agent at the end! And the heroine, Marcia Allison!” She appealed to Jim. “Is it true they’re doing it as a play in London?”

  “Yes; it’s been in the works since the first of the year. A friend of mine at the Savage Club adapted it for the stage, and Sir George Alexander will put it on at the St. James’s as soon as they’ve finished casting, with Alexander himself playing Count Dimitri. They wanted to get Constance Lambert for Marcia Allison, but in February she went off to Italy and it’s got to be somebody else.”

  “Did you ever meet Constance Lambert, Jim?”

  “Yes, more than once. I did a personality story on her for Harper’s Weekly.”

  “Speaking of Harper’s Weekly—” Leo began.

  “There’s just one more question,” pleaded Jill, “I’d dearly love to ask, if I may. I read somewhere that at least some of the characters in that book were or are real people. Is that true, too?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “But what?”

  Again the porter interrupted, this time bearing a tray with three glasses, a siphon of soda-water, and a bowl of cracked ice.

  The train-wheels had acquired steady rhythm; a long blast of the whistle was torn behind them. While Jim sat down beside Jill, Leo carried Bourbon and mixers into the drawing-room’s little lavatory, returning in short order with three drinks on the tray, to which he had added an ashtray from the dining-car.

  “First stop Lynchburg, Virginia,” he proclaimed, handing out glasses, putting the tray on the couch at Jim’s left hand, and sitting down on the made-up berth opposite. “But that’s at past three in the morning; we’ll be sound asleep long before then.

  “Now listen, Jim!” he went on, as they all ceremoniously touched glasses and drank. “It’s a damn good yarn you wrote and nobody’s more pleased than I am you rang the bell so hard. But we’re not supposed to take it seriously, are we?”

  “Take what seriously?”

  “All this secret-service business! Cloak and dagger stuff: all the big nations spying on each other, possibly to end in a major European war?”

  “Don’t you read the papers, Leo? There’s war in the Balkans already.”

  “There’s always war in the Balkans. That means nothing by itself. I can’t visualize Ruritania or Graustark as a real trouble-spot, though it just may happen sooner or later if the Prussian warlords decide on der Tag.

  “No, Jim; we’ve gotten away from the point! What’s this story you’re after? Whom does it concern, for instance?”

  “It concerns a partial namesake of mine, one James Claiborne Blake of New Orleans. Unlike some persons I could mention,” and Jim carefully kept his eye away from Jill, “I’m going to be absolutely frank and tell you everything. I’ve got to tell you everything, Leo, if I ask you to back me up! Well, then…”

  Neither of the other two commented. But he could almost feel the pressure of silence as he recounted the events of that day, from Colonel Harvey’s office to the session with Charley Emerson, not excluding the lurker in the shadows outside.

  “And that’s all?” cried Jill, exhaling what might have been a breath of relief. “That’s absolutely all?”

  “That’s all, but it’s enough. I can’t tell you who trailed me from the Congressional Apartments to Union Station, if in fact there was somebody trailing me and I didn’t imagine it. The one person who won’t fit in anywhere is your obedient servant.

  “Still, there they all are: Clay Blake, Yvonne Brissard, the various Lairds, and a politician named Raymond P. Chadwick. It seems generally agreed, Leo, that your friend Clay’s affair with the notorious Yvonne won’t do him any harm at all…”

  “No, of course it won’t do him any harm!”

  “But you may have heard something yourself, especially since you’ve decided to become a good citizen. Is there a conspiracy, or isn’t there? Who’s behind it? And, if they’re not using Yvonne Brissard, who or what are they using?”

  Jim and Jill smoked cigarettes, the ashtray on the floor between couch and berth. Leo, after lighting a diminutive cigar, had let it go out. At some point in Jim’s narrative he had sat up straight, his face heavy and lowering. The blinds were drawn on both windows behind him. Leo craned round, raising one blind to stare out at the dark countryside sweeping past under a yellow harvest moon. Abruptly he swung back, with that same heavy, lowering look, and surged to his feet like a boxer answering the bell.

  “I wonder if it could be? Jesus Christ Almighty,” he roared, “I wonder if it could be?”

  “You wonder if what could be?”

  “Clay wouldn’t be mixed up with Flossie Yates. I don’t think he’s ever met Flossie Yates, though he must have heard her name. That’s not important, is it? If you ask me, Jim, Clay’s a much less decisive character than he seems to be. And I know, because deep down inside me I’m not very decisive myself. Merely being innocent wouldn’t matter if they decided to…”

  “Leo, will you kindly explain what you’re talking about?”

  “I’m talking about a game, Jim, that’s been tried once or twice before. Somebody may be trying it now. It’s almost foolproof; it never fails. And it’s just about the wickedest game you ever heard of!”

  Quick, sharp, and peremptory, there was a knock at the door.

  Tension had grown in that drawing-room as the long story unfolded. Leo jumped at the sound of the knock. But he did not falter. He set down his glass on the floor and dropped the miniature cigar into the ashtray. Then, as though facing death or doom, he stalked to the door and threw it open.

  There was nobody outside. The dark aisle between the tiers of berths stretched away empty to the faint glow from the little passage at the far end, by which they could see the white coat and glistening white eyeballs of the porter standing there.

  Leo plunged along the aisle, checking a shout. He remembered to keep his voice down as he accosted the porter. The car swayed slightly; the wheels clicked; Jim in the doorway could hear only a muttered rumble of question and answer. Then Leo raced back.

  “I’ve known Uncle Mose for years! He swears nobody ran in that direction, or ducked into one of the berths either. Whoever knocked at the door must have gone—”

  Leo stabbed a finger in the other direction, at the companion dimly lighted alley past drawing-room A. It was Jim who took up the chase, striding along the alley almost at a run, past a green-curtained doorway of aspect far more sedate than that to the men’s washroom. At the glass-paneled door to the double vestibule between this car and car fifteen ahead, for the second time that night he encountered the train’s conductor, who was making cryptic
markings in a little black book.

  “Excuse me, Conductor: did you see somebody come this way about a minute and a half ago?”

  The conductor, a man of immense dignity, squared his shoulders.

  “I saw nobody, my good sir. There was nobody to see.”

  “He knocked at that drawing-room door and then made himself scarce in a hurry. If you’re on your way through the train…”

  “I am not on my way through the train. I have been through the train twice.”

  “But you keep on the move, don’t you? You might have missed him.”

  The conductor drew out a large gold watch.

  “I did not miss him, sir. It is now 11:59. I have been in this same position since approximately 11:54. When I tell you nobody passed this way until you did, you may take it as strict and absolute truth.”

  The train rounded a curve at such speed that Jim seized at the railing past the little windows on his right. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw Leo Shepley at the other end of the alley. Jill herself hovered just behind Jim. She nodded towards the green-curtained doorway, and her voice was not steady when she spoke.

  “There’s nobody in the ladies’ either,” she said. “There’s nobody anywhere. Merciful powers, are we on a haunted train?”

  5

  WHEN AFTERWARDS JIM THOUGHT back to the events of the ensuing thirty-two hours, between a few minutes before midnight on Monday and arrival in New Orleans at a few minutes before eight on Wednesday morning, he recalled them only as fragmentary scenes whose true meaning he never saw until step by step he saw everything.

  Monday night’s ructions had not ceased when the clock hands stood vertical. A bitter argument with Leo, which lasted until nearly one in the morning, was succeeded by a last argument with Jill. When Leo turned them out of drawing-room A, saying that as a reformed character he was damn well going to get some sleep, Jim led her gently to drawing-room B.

  At that drugged and drowsy hour, with a dead world moving past outside, he thought he sensed in her a mood of wavering, even pliancy, which her eyes seemed to confirm. But Jill remained adamant.

  “For the last time,” she said, “I most certainly will not steal this drawing-room and turn you out of it!”

  “You’re not stealing anything. And you’ll be much more comfortable here.”

  “What about you?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “It is the point! Really, Jim! The very idea!”

  “What’s the matter, Jill? You sound as though I were trying to insult you.”

  “I know you’re not trying to insult me, and I’m grateful. But you will do the most ridiculous things!”

  “What’s so ridiculous about it?”

  “When that mysterious man in Washington followed you from your friend’s flat to the railway station, you told your driver to pull up short and deliberately jumped down in front of the other car. You might have been killed!”

  “I ran no risk whatever of being killed. The other car was a good fifty or sixty feet away. And even in this country, Jill, we’re not so fond of violence that somebody who’s following you will wallop into you with a ton of car just to prove you haven’t eluded him.”

  “Now you’re cross with me; please don’t be cross with me! There’s a reason, you know,” she gave him a glance from under lowered eyelids, “why I c-can’t and mustn’t deprive you of your compartment. I mustn’t even stay here any longer. You could hit me over the head with something, I daresay. But even you can’t be fond enough of violence for mat. Let’s not argue any further, Jim. Good night.”

  The door closed after her. And that had been that.

  Despite his forebodings of wakeful hours, he was so tired that he slept heavily. It was almost nine o’clock on a warmish, murky Tuesday morning, and the train had pulled in to stop at Salisbury, North Carolina, when the porter’s insistent tapping roused him at last.

  Jim shaved and dressed in haste. The body of the sleeping-car had resumed a normal daylight appearance, lines of green-upholstered seats facing each other down its length. Jill was nowhere in sight.

  He pushed through to the dining-car, meeting a number of other passengers returning from it. Almost everybody had breakfasted. By herself at a table in the near-deserted dining-car, Jill sat with bacon and eggs before her and a newspaper on the adjacent chair.

  Jill wore another severe tailored costume without looking at all severe in it. But she did not seem to be eating much. She started involuntarily as he loomed up beside the table and sat down facing her across it. Her first words took him aback.

  “Not fond of violence, did you say?”

  “I was only trying to say good morning, Jill. How are you?”

  “I’m p-perfectly fit, thanks. But you might look at this newspaper.” She took it up. “A boy on the platform was selling them when we stopped at Salisbury twenty minutes ago. I didn’t really want the wretched paper; I only went out for a breath of fresh air. Then I saw the headlines. One of your presidential candidates, Mr. Roosevelt…”

  Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, it seemed, had been on his way to make a speech in Milwaukee when some lunatic fired a bullet into his chest. The redoubtable Teddy, disdaining this, had insisted on making the scheduled speech before he would allow any doctor to attend him.

  “He’s not badly hurt, fortunately,” Jill continued, as her companion glanced through the story. “They’ve taken him to a hospital in Chicago, and he’ll be campaigning again in a day or two. I said I was perfectly fit, and I am. However, what with everything else that’s been happening, I’m afraid I’m a little…a little…”

  “Of course you are, Jill; that business last night must have given you a very bad time. I’m sorry if I was inconsiderate.”

  “You weren’t a bit inconsiderate; just the opposite! I’m the one who was so stubborn that…that…”

  “Well, well, well!” boomed another voice. Leo Shepley, freshly groomed if reddish of jowl, drew out a chair and sat down beside Jill.

  “Yes, I’ve heard about Teddy Roosevelt’s mishap; it’s all over the train. You may not agree with everything Teddy says, but you’ve got to admire the old boy’s guts. Gently, brothers and sisters! Not another word, either of you,” Leo went on, though nobody had said a word, “until Jim and I have had at least a bite to eat.”

  While the train sped through a countryside not yet deeply tinged with autumnal colors, each newcomer wrote his order on the pad beside each plate. When ham and eggs had been consumed and coffee poured, Jim offered Jill a cigarette, which she refused.

  “Not in public, please, if you don’t mind.”

  Leo backed her up with powerful gallantry.

  “Your lightest wish, dear lady, shall be our command. I’ll have a coffin nail, though. Next, Jim, about last night…”

  “Lord, Leo, are we back on that same old round of argument?”

  “We never did leave it, did we? Now listen you pestilential Yankee…”

  “Suppose you do the listening, for once in your life!”

  “Well?”

  “Someone with a sense of humor knocked at the drawing-room door and then lit out. Let’s face it, Leo. Unless you do believe in ghosts, which I gather isn’t likely, then one person or the other has done some very tall lying. That story of the porter, for instance…”

  “I tell you, Jim, I’ve known Uncle Mose for years! Clay Blake can vouch for him, too!”

  “It’s not a question of vouching for anyone; it’s a question of fact. If the porter really stood for some minutes where he said he stood—‘jes’ lazin’, lak’—then he had a clear view of the drawing-room door. How was it he didn’t see the person who knocked?”

  “But he did see the person who knocked. Dammit, Jim, we had him on the carpet afterwards and you heard him tell it yourself! The light was very bad, remember. What he saw was only a kind of shadow, like a man in a dark suit with back turned. The joker knocked sharply and then ducked into the alley leading past the
women’s whatnot to the car ahead. All Uncle Mose kept insisting, over and over, was that nobody ran in his direction. And of course the joker didn’t; he ran the other way.”

  “Whereas the conductor, a responsible railroad official if any responsible official exists, will swear on a stack of Bibles nobody went that way either. Which of them is more likely to have been telling the truth?”

  “What if both of ’em were telling the truth?”

  “Leo, how could both have been telling the truth?”

  “How could the unknown watcher have been trailing you in Washington? But somebody did. We’ve just got to find explanations for both problems, that’s all!”

  “I’ve already said I can’t swear I was being trailed. However! For argument’s sake, and just for the moment, let’s assume it’s a fact. With some concentration or even star-gazing, I might just conceivably find an explanation for that particular problem, because it’s merely puzzling. But the problem of the vanishing joker isn’t just puzzling or difficult to solve; unless somebody’s lying, it’s a flat physical impossibility.

  “And so, Leo, we come to the crux of last night’s argument. You keep saying we’ve got to find explanations for this or that. All right. Why the hell won’t you explain?”

  “Come again, old son?”

  A gray cloud of tobacco-smoke had drifted above the table. Jim glanced at Jill, whose face was turned partly away. Then he looked Leo in the eyes.

  “At risk of tedium, I had better repeat that my whole mission on this job is to find certain answers. Is there in fact a plot against Clay Blake? And, if so, how is the dirty work to be managed? If I knew the answer to that one, I should be more than halfway home. You do follow me, don’t you?”

  “Yes, of course. But…!”

  “Last night, just before the appearance or non-appearance of the joker, you were visited with a great inspiration. Amid wild and whirling words, including mention of one Flossie Yates, you more than intimated you had the information I need. When the tumult about the joker had died down a little, and we were back in the drawing-room again, I asked you to explain. You froze; you drew yourself up; you stood on your dignity and refused to say one more word. What made you do that, Leo?”