The Ghosts' High Noon

by John Dickson Carr

  “What were the cases, Mr. Blake? Let me see if I remember them.”

  “Yes, speak up!” urged Bart Perkins. “I don’t agree with Alec about putting the soft pedal on murder and adultery. You’ve got to give the customers what they want, or bang goes your advertising and where are you? But at least we’ve kept out of the red so far, and who am I to argue all day with the boss? What’s the first case you’re going to cite?”

  Jim arranged facts in his mind.

  “The first case is the murder of Kate Townsend, a monstrously fat and violent Basin Street brothel-owner, in 1883. Her fancy man, one Treville Sykes, stabbed her to death with a sheath-knife and a pair of pruning-shears after she had attacked him first. The jury acquitted Sykes, who tried to collect her estate and failed.”

  Tension was gathering in the office above Camp Street and Lafayette Square. Bart Perkins turned the copy-pencil in both hands; Alec Laird had allowed his coffee to grow cold.

  “In 1883,” said Perkins, “I was fledgling city editor of the Oil City Derrick. But I remember that one, because everybody in the country heard about it. Second case?”

  “The second case, though less bloody, is no less sordid, its protagonists being Dr. Etienne Deschamps and his Juliette in 1889.

  “Dr. Deschamps, a fifty-five-year-old French dentist, settled in New Orleans after political trouble at home. But he never practised dentistry here; he set up as a physician and tried all kinds of quackery, including ‘magnetic’ cures that entailed the use of chloroform. Being attracted to a laborer’s daughter named Juliette Deitsh, he made the girl his mistress and added various trimmings that need not detain us. On one occasion he gave her too much chloroform and killed her, then signally failed to kill himself with stab-wounds. After two trials, as well as several legal delays and stays of execution, they finally hanged him in 1892.

  “What made it so sensational is the fact that Juliette Deitsh, though she seems to have entered heartily into the affair and had all the essential attributes of a woman, was only thirteen years old.”

  Bart Perkins’s big hands broke the yellow pencil in two pieces, which he flung into the wastebasket beside the desk as he rose to his feet.

  “I don’t remember Juliette and the doctor,” he said. “By 1892 I’d been shifted to Philadelphia, but I missed the story even if it appeared in any paper there. Now excuse me, will you? I must go along and comfort Mary Rikert before she gets any worse.”

  And he stamped out, not quite slamming the glass-panelled door.

  To Jim Blake had come a great shock of illumination, for the first step that would lead to truth. But Jim tried not to betray this. He also rose, taking his hat from the desk.

  “I had better say goodbye, too. It’s a pleasure to have met you, Mr. Laird; many thanks for the help you’ve given.”

  “To the best of my recollection,” said Alec Laird, thawing a little, “I have given you no help at all. But it was only because you asked for nothing specific. If at any time I can help you, either now or in the future, pray command me.”

  “I may take advantage of that offer sooner than you think.”

  “As regards…?”

  “No, not as regards Clay Blake; the prospective interview seems straightforward enough. It’s a purely personal matter, which you may consider infernal nerve on my part. I am anxious to find a certain young lady, who has mysterious ways and a mysterious employer, and disappeared from Terminal Station of her own free will. With the resources of the Sentinel behind me, my quest should not be too difficult.”

  “If you will tell me…?”

  “Not now, Mr. Laird; not today either, I fear. I shall be fully occupied for the rest of the day, probably during the evening too. I will get in touch with you tomorrow, if I may take the liberty of doing so. Goodbye again, sir; I have received more help in this office than would appear on the surface.”

  A sense of achievement or near-achievement warmed Jim’s heart as he left the office, went down in the elevator, and emerged from the building into the street. But his thoughts did not revolve round Alec Laird or Bart Perkins. Instead he saw before him a mental image of Leo Shepley, whom he silently addressed.

  “Truth remains truth, Leo,” he said, “even when we fall slap into the well by accident. Now what sex pursuit is neither abnormal nor unnatural, at least in the way I meant, and yet would wreck a candidate for Congress if too many people heard of it? You don’t need to tell me, Leo; I think I know.”

  8

  THE CAR PROVIDED BY Stu Guilfoyle of Guilfoyle’s Garage was a fifty-horsepower 1910 Chadwick, dark blue in color, with two well-padded seats in front and one well-padded seat at the back. Though it lacked both windshield and top—there were no doors either—the Chadwick seemed in excellent shape from polished brass headlamps to rear license-plates in the current Louisiana colors of black numbers on a white ground, and exuded an aura of power before you so much as touched steering-wheel or gear-lever on the right-hand side.

  Stu Guilfoyle himself, an amiable young man in grease-stained overalls, had stressed such qualities.

  “She’s my own car, Mr. Blake. I won’t be needin’ her just right away; I got a Simplex, too. Even so, word of honor, I wouldn’t rent this baby to anybody ’cept as a favor to Mr. Shepley. When this-yere model first come out, they called her the speediest stock car in the world…”

  “I’m not much of a speed merchant, you know.”

  “No harm havin’ speed, is there, case you need it? Just wait till you hear the exhaust boom through them side-ports in the hood! Now it’s a pretty steep price I’m chargin’ you, I know…”

  “That’s all right. Will you take a check?”

  “Sure I’ll take a check; I know it’s good.”

  “While your assistant showed me around, you mean, you got through on the phone to Leo and asked him?”

  “No; wasn’t any need. I’d ’a’ done that, sure, if I’d never heard of you. But he’s mentioned you more’n once; I read in the paper you wrote a book everybody’s readin’; and you showed me identification, so there’s no doubt you’re you. All right! Allowin’ it is a steep price…”

  “Here’s the deposit you wanted. Enough?”

  “That’ll do fine, sir. Allowin’ it is a steep price, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll throw in a dust-coat and a pair o’ goggles—two pairs o’ goggles, case there’s a passenger—and stick a couple extra cans o’ gas in the back. Which way you headed?”

  “Esplanade Avenue.”

  “Then you’re headed right. That’s on this side o’ Canal Street, in the French quarter. Go straight along Chartres Street and past Jackson Square, which is the one with the statue in the middle and the Cathedral on your left. Six blocks t’other side Jackson Square, turn left or right. You’ll be on Esplanade: good long street, runs from the river to City Park. Anything else I can tell you?”

  “Where do I leave the car at night, if I should happen to be late?”

  “Better bring her back here; you’re close enough, at the St. Charles. I live upstairs, is all; just punch the bell any hour. There she is, Mr. Blake; if you don’t fergit what I told you about handlin’ her, you'll be all right.”

  And so, at shortly past four that afternoon, Jim Blake drove east on Chartres Street towards his rendezvous.

  Here were house-fronts of the sort he remembered: dingily pastel-colored gray or blue or orange, some with a gallery of iron lacework across the floor above the street, many so invaded by commerce that their picturesqueness had grown blurred. But, if few traffic problems had seemed to exist on the far or uptown side of Canal Street, the Vieux Carré’s chessboard of narrow lanes made smooth or swift progress impossible. Any slowly moving vehicle ahead could hold you to a dawdler’s pace until the vehicle turned off somewhere.

  Jim had put on the goggles but discarded the dust-coat, which he threw into the back. The car was not awkward to drive if you remembered its slightly tricky clutch. As he bumped along behind a carriage full of si
ghtseers, just avoiding the stall that would necessitate getting down to crank up again, he reviewed in his mind the few incidents since he left the newspaper office that morning.

  It had been well past noon when he reached the hotel. Going at once to his room, he had sat down at the telephone and asked for Main 0101.

  The line was busy. Ten or fifteen minutes later the voice which answered, presumably that of a Negro maid, informed him that Miss Florence was at lunch; would he call again after lunch? At his third try, fumingly postponed until one-thirty, he got through without intervention.

  “Miss Florence Yates?”

  “Speaking.”

  Perhaps because Jill on the train had not quite called Miss Yates an old bawd, he had expected her to be fat and elderly. Though you couldn’t judge by telephone, she hardly sounded either. The voice was cultured, poised, and far from unattractive, a light contralto.

  “Miss Yates, my name is Blake. May I explain at once that I am not related to the candidate for Congress? I live in New York, and seldom have the opportunity of visiting here. But I believe we have a mutual friend in Leo Shepley.”

  “It gratifies me to think so, Mr. Blake. Leo’s name is a passport to my door and even to my affections. Did he ask you to ring up?”

  “He said your niece was visiting you, or would shortly be visiting you, and described the young lady in such glowing terms that I wondered if I might beg the favor of being presented to her.”

  “Which niece, please? The dark-haired one or the fair-haired one?”

  “Both of them, I understand, are talented and charming.”

  “I like to think so, Mr. Blake. Indeed, I do think so. Are you by any chance free to take tea with me this afternoon, sir?”

  “Entirely free, madam. If I were to be invited…”

  “Consider yourself most cordially invited. The address…”

  “I have the address, thank you.”

  “It is rather far up the Esplanade, on the left-hand side as you go north. Shall we say, then, between four and four-thirty? I look forward to making your acquaintance.”

  “And I look forward to it immensely.”

  Well, that had been that. Jim had a late lunch in the hotel dining-room downstairs, sat for some time in the lobby studying his map of New Orleans, and went in search of Stu Guilfoyle at Guilfoyle’s Garage.

  Shortly after four o’clock, then, found him jolting along Chartres Street behind a sightseers’ carriage, which he passed at Jackson Square.

  There sat bronze General Jackson on his bronze war-horse, raising a fore-and-aft hat. To the north towered the bulk of St. Louis Cathedral, flanked by the Cabildo and the Presbytere. Jim pressed on as well as he could, always impeded by vehicles or pedestrians until he reached the Esplanade and made a broad left-hand turn at its far side.

  Though the sky had been threatening rain all day, none had yet fallen. Houses of spaciousness and dignity—some set back from the road and built in what guidebooks called Greek Revival style—lined a spacious avenue bowered with trees. It seemed to Jim that he had driven for some distance, encountering comparatively light traffic in either direction, before he could pick up any number near the one he wanted. Presently, he swung across the road, to pull up before a house which must be as gracious as any in the district.

  It was of brick faced with yellow stucco against damp. Though not particularly large, of two rather squat floors, it showed the Greek Revival influence in four slender white pillars as well as the French-Spanish influence in the wrought-iron balustrade of the gallery between the floors. The window-shutters were painted black. Set behind a hedge, its portico shaded by myrtles, it had an aspect grave and melancholy rather than any aspect the initiated visitor might expect.

  Jim hesitated for a moment before he mounted the steps to the portico and tugged the brass bell-pull beside the door. A Negro maid in cap and apron, after asking his name, admitted him to a well-proportioned hall, panelled with shiny white wood and floored with squares of black and white marble. Accepting his hat with well-mannered aplomb, she led him to white double doors on the right.

  “Mr. Blake, madam.”

  The woman in the dove-gray tea-gown, who rose from her chair behind a tea-urn near the fireplace, seemed neither old nor quite middle-aged. Fairly tall, with a free stride when she moved, she had an air of sophisticated camaraderie which lacked any suggestion of the knowing or the arch. She would have been very pretty but for a certain haggard look about her eyes. The eyes were dark, like her hair, which glistened with blue-black sheen under the light of small bulbs in a crystal chandelier switched on against that dark day. The setting, a drawing-room of Sheraton furniture and green wall panels picked out at the edges with gilt, formed a suitable background for her personality.

  “Do sit down and be comfortable,” she said, giving him her hand. “I serve tea in the English way: very strong, and with milk. But of course you may have lemon, if you prefer.”

  “I’ve grown so used to strong tea with milk that it would hardly seem the same article with lemon. Just as you serve it, please.”

  Florence Yates (even in his mind it was hard to call her Flossie) prepared a cup and handed it over when Jim refused sugar.

  “Everything as I serve it, I wonder? You know, Mr. Blake, you startled me when you phoned. You honestly did startle me, sir. After all, you gave your real name.”

  Here was a definite challenge. Jim accepted the challenge.

  “I gave my real name, madam,” he said. “May I ask how you know I did?”

  Miss Yates glanced round the room. At the back were double sliding doors, closed. Two heavily curtained windows faced Esplanade Avenue, with a small canvas which resembled a Meissonier duellist, framed but not glass-enclosed, hung on the wall between them. Then Miss Yates looked at her guest.

  “Oh, come, Mr. Blake! Surely you don’t mind if I…”

  “If you phoned Leo Shepley and verified my bona fides? No, madam, I don’t mind in the least. The matter is somewhat more personal and intimate than renting a car.”

  Miss Yates, who herself had been sipping tea, set down her cup on the table which held the tea-urn. The dark eyes regarded him levelly, if with no less sympathy.

  “Shall we stop fencing, sir? You know why you’re here; I know why you’re here. May I remind you again that I have two nieces, about one of whom you were pleased to speak in the most flattering terms? The elder is Sue, the younger is Billie Jean. Have you any questions concerning them, sir?”

  “Yes, madam. I have two questions: one general and one specific. We can make little progress, it’s to be feared, until you are good enough to answer both questions.”

  “Have I not intimated how desirous I am to please? What is any woman’s purpose in life, if not that? In this civilized manner, then, let’s discuss Sue and Billie Jean. The general question first, Mr. Blake. What is your general question?”

  “The question, though general, has some considerable importance. May I ask whether either of the two young ladies is more than thirteen years old?”

  A strange expression did flash across the face which seemed so haggard or ravaged despite its beauty. But Miss Yates’s tone did not change.

  “Yes,” she answered. “Sue is fourteen. Billie Jean, though not much past her twelfth birthday, is exceptionally mature for her years. Both, as you yourself have said, are charming and talented, with great skill at any polite art which may occur to you. Tonight you may meet one, or you may meet both. What is your specific question, Mr. Blake?”

  “I fear, Miss Yates, it will be impossible for me to meet either of them tonight. At risk of seeming unduly to carp, it must be this afternoon or not at all. Now for the specific question. Which of the two young ladies have you determined I shall meet here?”

  Now the woman’s tone did change.

  “Here?” she exclaimed, rising up so suddenly that she jolted the table. “In this house, of all places? Are you mad, sir? Have you completely taken leave of your senses?”r />
  Tall and lithe in the fashionable tea-gown, which had a red rose pinned at the waist, she went at her free stride to the left-hand front window, over a floor of polished hardwood and scatter-rugs. She partly drew back one curtain before letting it fall into place again. Then she turned, vivid against the green-and-gold curtain: head up, shoulders back.

  “You call me Miss Yates, which was my maiden name and the one I am compelled to use. Though it has been many years since the most indulgent friend could call me maiden, I am in fact an old married woman, a respectable woman.”

  Jim, who had also risen and turned towards the middle of the room, stayed there.

  “Just across the street, Mr. Blake, is the home of General Clayton, General Tom Clayton, a noted cavalry commander during the War Between the States. His wife, formerly Margot de Sancerre, was a Creole beauty of ante-bellum days. In their youth, I believe, they were innocently involved in some affair of violence that took place in the Garden District. They are old and frail now, but they are also full of pride. They might represent polite society at its most polite. Whatever may be said or done elsewhere, would I jeopardize my own hard-won position by allowing the slightest irregularity on these premises?”

  “Miss Yates…”

  But there was no stopping her.

  “If you had really wished to meet Sue or Billie Jean, there is a comfortable apartment in Basin Street where either or both could have given you satisfactory evidence of her skill. And yet you never wanted that, did you? You craved my indulgence under false pretenses. And if, as I now suspect, you are here either to preach or to make trouble for me…”

  Her voice went shrilling up. And then the whole scene exploded in nightmare.