“What I don’t understand, Hap—what I don’t understand, Ray—”
“By all means,” Mr. Chadwick said amiably, “call me Happy if it makes you feel happier. Any lawyer known as Happy is so rare a bird that the public should be encouraged to call him that. What don’t you understand, Bart?”
“Frankly, your interest in Leo Shepley. You didn’t know him very well, did you?”
“I knew him scarcely at all, though of course I’d met him. No, Bart. It’s my eldest son, who is also my law-partner.”
“How’s Lance concerned in this? Was Leo a great friend of his?”
“No, no! When the firm became Chadwick & Chadwick, some eighteen months ago, Lance married a delightful girl from Asheville, North Carolina. His proud father bought the bride and groom a house in the Bayou St. John area. The next house along is Sunnington Hall, old Madam Laird’s property, though that’s on the opposite side of the road from Lance’s. The next house beyond Sunnington Hall is the Villa de Jarnac, on the same side as my son’s. Sure you won’t change your mind and join us, Bart?”
“I can’t, thanks just the same. Excuse me: you’re not explaining anything.”
“I shall try to be clear,” said Mr. Chadwick, fastening the fingers of both hands on the lapels of his evening coat. “Last night, in the vicinity of ten o’clock or thereabouts, my son had occasion to look out a front window.
“Around Lance’s property there’s a rather high wall. Not all the houses have a high wall; some, indeed, have no wall…”
“Hell’s bells, Happy, you’re not giving evidence in court! There’s no need to be so damn precise. What’s this about?”
“In the road just outside Lance’s gate, partly visible by the light of a street-lamp, stood a red sports car. He could see only the right front wheel and part of the hood. It was pointed north, the direction it afterwards took.
“Lance had no reason to think it belonged to Leo Shepley, whom he knew only slightly. But the late Leo’s car is or was a famous one. He thought it must have broken down, as we all know they so often do, and wondered if he ought to offer help. Lance went to find his wife and ask her advice. By the time Shirley returned with him to the window, the car had gone.
“It’s hardly important, of course,” sang Mr. Chadwick, teetering up on his toes as though for a better view of those before him, “and I told Lance I saw no reason for him to inform the police. Let the police do their own work; that’s what they’re paid for!
“But it is a curious point, isn’t it? The car of our late football player either stops or breaks down just outside my son’s gate. Shortly afterwards, whatever Leo Shepley may have had in mind, he engages gear and goes bucketing on to the Villa de Jarnac and to death. Yes, it is curious.”
Bart Perkins tipped a hand to his forehead.
“Sorry I can’t stop for the philosophizing; I must be off.” And he disappeared beyond a pillar.
“I must be off, too.” Raymond P. Chadwick made grimaces of impatience. “Miss Matthews! Mr. Blake! My dear young people, if I can’t persuade you to accompany me and crack a bottle…! No? Matthews, Matthews! Now where have I heard that name before? Well, at least my intentions were of the best. Sir and madam, goodnight!”
Whereupon he went away, not undignified despite a certain pompousness.
Jim, ruffled of mind and shirt-front but in the highest realm of exaltation, swung back to his companion. It was not difficult to recapture the mood of a few moments ago; he had only to look at Jill and see what was reflected in her eyes.
“Shall we have that brandy now?”
“No, please! If we have brandy after all the wine…And we don’t need it, do we?”
“Agreed, Jill; there’s something else a good deal more powerful. Would you yell blue murder if I grabbed you again?”
“Did I yell blue murder when you grabbed me the first time?”
“No, but…”
“In London, you know, they’d say it was shocking we didn’t choose some dark corner under the stairs, but carried on in public like ’arry and Liz. Even Connie has never carried on in public. And yet I don’t care! Nobody noticed us; nobody so much as batted an eyelash. Even when those two men interrupted, I wasn’t as petrified with embarrassment as I should have been. I provoked it, you know; I deliberately provoked it! After all my good resolutions…”
“All your good resolutions?”
“Or what I thought were good resolutions! About that drawing-room…”
“Yes?”
Jill was leaning closer, though she had become pink in the face and would not look at him.
“I wouldn’t accept it, Jim, because—well, because I knew what would happen if I did. Just what happened a few minutes ago. Only more than that, much more than that, through the night and into the next day! But my silly, stupid, idiotic conscience was all over me because I wanted it to happen and kept wishing for it. Oh, Jim…!”
This was irresistible. Public place or no, he caught her for a chaotic, fairly intimate interval during which the orchestra encouraged with a tune neither of them noticed or even heard.
“You know, Jill,” he said presently, “there’s plenty of time before us to remedy the oversight.”
“There is, isn’t there? Now release me, please. I will sit up straight and be dignified for the time being. Jim, that brandy you’ve offered so many times. I don’t need it and don’t really want it, but I’ll join you for one if you insist. Yes, as you say, there’s plenty of time before us. There’s the rest of tonight, for instance.”
“Tonight, Jill?”
“Yes, tonight! What’s the matter with you? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’ve just remembered—”
“What have you remembered?” Quick intuition kindled suspicion in her eyes. “You’re planning something, aren’t you?”
“What would I be planning?”
“It’s to do with that police officer, isn’t it? And it’s the wrong kind of insanity that scares me so much?”
“I can’t think what you’re talking about, Jill.”
“You can think what I’m talking about! I had hoped, for a little while at least, we could keep away from death and murder. But we can’t. Mr. Perkins wanted to talk about it. Mr. Chadwick insisted on talking about it. Look! There’s Mr. Trowbridge now, headed straight for this table. And I’ll bet you he…”
She did not finish.
Zack Trowbridge, who had removed his hat but not surrendered it to the cloakroom, sauntered towards them with an air of heavy-footed ease which did not quite mask underlying apprehension. Jill was at him in a moment.
“Just tell me, Mr. Police Officer, if I’m not right in my bet. You have come to interrupt us, haven’t you?”
Lieutenant Trowbridge became powerfully avuncular.
“Interrupt you, miss? Well…now!” He smiled. “I’m sorry, I’m real sorry, but I guess that’s about right. I’ve come to take you along with me.”
19
“TAKE ME ALONG WITH you?” Jill echoed. “Good heavens, are you arresting me for something?”
“Arresting you? No, miss, no; anything but that! Just the reverse, as you might say. I’ve got authority from the Police Commissioner himself to take you home in a cab; the city’ll pay for it. Then I must come back to town on a little business.”
“Why can’t Jim drive me home, as we’d already arranged?”
“Well, miss, it’s kind of a delicate matter. There may be a little trouble, you see; not much, but a little. We want you well out of range if brickbats start flyin’ or anything. Franz Josef thought…Mr. Blake thought…”
“Jim planned the whole thing, didn’t he?”
Zack rallied valiantly.
“If he did, miss, I’d say it was pretty considerate of him. He’s got you a good deal on his mind; not that I blame him. Still! There’s many a girl I know would feel pleased and flattered to be taken care of, not miffed and put out because a man thought enough of her t
o keep her out of danger.”
Jim stood up and added to this.
“Jill, for God’s sake! An old friend of mine was killed, wickedly and quite needlessly, to appease the vanity of a near-lunatic. With anything except the very worst luck, Leo’s murderer will be under lock and key inside an hour or so. Are you going to fly into a temper because there’s some element of risk attached?”
But he did not know his Jill, who had also risen.
“Oh, no,” she said. “Since I’ve been running from you for the past four days, I mustn’t complain if I get a little of my own medicine. Whatever you’re doing, I don’t like it. But then the impetuousness I don’t like is all part of the impetuousness I like so very much; it’s your character. I must take you as you are, not try to turn you into somebody else.
“And I’m quite content to take you as you are. Do this if you must; do anything you must! I won’t nag or interfere; I won’t even try. I only pray, my dear, you’ll be there to touch me again when it’s all over!”
She extended her hand, which Jim carried to his lips. Then he turned to Lieutenant Trowbridge.
“Let’s be sure we’ve got this straight. What’s our story, again?”
“It won’t be over quite as soon as you said, but it ought to be pretty fast when it starts.”
“Our story, Lieutenant?”
“Our story is that Mr. Clay Blake’s car has been laid up for repairs. Somebody drove him to the villa for dinner tonight. It’s been arranged that you’re to drive out there and pick him up for return to town, reaching the villa at round about midnight, more or less.”
“Then it really is to be the ghosts’ high noon?” Jill asked. “That wasn’t a sneer or a would-be clever remark; it’s just what jumped into my head!”
Lieutenant Trowbridge was intent.
“Call it the ghosts’ something-or-other; call it anything you want to call it. The point is, Franz Josef, you needn’t leave here until near enough to half-past eleven. Let’s see: it’s now a quarter after ten. That’ll give me plenty of time to take this young lady out to her sister’s and be back at City Hall easy before you leave the Cave. Ready, miss?”
“Yes, I’m ready,” Jill assented. “I won’t ask you to be careful, Jim, because I know you can’t be careful. And now, as the cooperative criminal says in England, I’ll go quietly.”
Lieutenant Trowbridge ushered her away towards the elevator, but left her standing by a stalactite-stalagmite pillar while he returned for a final brief word with Jim.
“Sit down, Franz Josef,” he said. “I’m going to give you something under the table so’s the whole room won’t see.”
What he handed Jim was a Smith & Wesson .32 revolver, fully loaded.
“Stick that in your hip pocket,” the lieutenant advised. “It’s a light one, maybe, but the best I could borrow at short notice. Know how to use it?”
“Yes, I know how to use it. But I hope I don’t have to use it.”
“Sure; we both hope that. All the same! I’m pretty sure our quarry’s swallowed the bait, so we’d both better be ready. No horses and carriage in this; it’ll be a car or nothing. Just go through with your part of it; leave the rest to me. That’s all we can do for now.”
This time the detective did depart; Jill waved from beside the pillar, and they both left.
How Jim spent the next hour he would afterwards have found hard to describe. Actually, he did little but sit at his table, smoke, and listen. He considered ordering brandy; but, since he needed a clear head, decided against it. He told himself he was not nervous or jumpy, and knew he told himself a lie.
At eleven o’clock they brought on the first entertainer. A woman in Spanish costume did a Spanish dance with much heel-click and rattle of castanets. Two specialty dancers, both man and woman in evening dress, followed with a number to the strains of La Paloma. The floor was being cleared for some pièce de résistance when Jim saw by his watch that it was twenty minutes past eleven. He called for the bill, paid it, and took his departure.
He had left his car in University Place, at the other side of the hotel from Baronne Street. The doorman helped him kindle the lights, and cranked up for him when Jim donned goggles and dust-coat to mount behind the steering-wheel.
He drove the same course as the night before: Canal Street, Rampart Street, then the turn by the Old Basin Canal.
This Old Basin Canal, which he had scarcely observed on Wednesday, was no mere landmark or site of what had once been a canal. You could see dark water gleaming beside the road, under a slight haze and the yellow moon. Oyster luggers and fishing boats still plied there, someone had told him.
The engine boomed sweetly; the clutch was giving no trouble. But three times, before he had passed any place that even remotely could be called suburban, he believed another car must be following.
“Well, here we are,” he thought. “In for a penny, in for a pound! Will the attempt be made while I’m still in a built-up area?”
And then, on each occasion, the imaginary pursuer fell back or turned off.
“No,” his thoughts ran on, “it must wait for a more remote spot, a lonely spot! Fast or slow, now? Should my pace be fast or slow?”
Something in between, no doubt. He mustn’t seem to be running, but he mustn’t dawdle either. And what, actually, would be done when the time came? That was what he couldn’t tell.
He had transferred the revolver to the right-hand pocket of his dust-coat. Carrying a gun, was he? Grotesque! But the enemy had very much been carrying a gun, or Leo Shepley would still be alive.
Something like open country, now, at last!
Unconsciously Jim put on speed; the Chadwick responded to a touch. But the mist had thickened, too; he mustn’t go bucketing blindly through it.
Taking the proper turnings, keeping to a steady pace, he suddenly realized he had begun to count lamp-posts on the right.
Yes, he was getting closer. Mist or no, you believed you could scent open water from the bayou. It wouldn’t be long now. That house on the right, for instance, set well back behind a stone wall twelve or fifteen feet high…
That must be the home of Lance Chadwick, the politician’s son, outside whose gate the red Raceabout had stopped for a reason not hard to determine. Jim slowed down to get a look at the place as he passed. That was when he knew, beyond any doubt, that some car had begun to follow him, and a big car, too.
All right; and now?
It was what he had expected, what he had come for. Sunnington Hall would be next, on the left; then, soon afterwards, the Villa de Jarnac on the right. If the pursuing car were on his track, he must not turn in at Constance Lambert’s. The proper play would be to go booming on past that villa. For his pursuer must overtake him; must have a chance.
If in fact it were the auto he expected, it should be able to outrun him. Though Stu Guilfoyle might describe his Chadwick as the speediest stock car in the world, that had been two years ago. And a new Cadillac would be bound to pass him in any trial. But at least…
Jim glanced over his shoulder. It was a big Cadillac, coming up fast. Though he could make out little behind a blaze of electric headlamps, he thought its outline looked familiar. And the top was raised. Yes, the Cadillac could overtake him and must be allowed to overtake him. But he’d give ’em one hell of a race first.
What about that mist?
Oh, damn the mist! Jim touched the accelerator; his three-seater sprang forward, and the Cadillac sprang after it. Sunnington Hall flashed past, the Villa de Jarnac soon afterwards, as they roared north towards completely open country.
And the Cadillac was gaining. After holding his lead for the next quarter mile, Jim let it gain. There were no more street-lamps; they plunged through mist only by the light of their own lamps and the moon’s remote eye.
Would the Cadillac try to run him into the ditch? Though this hardly squared with his own analysis, Jim thought someone might have arranged it. And it looked as though the pursuer had suc
h an intent.
Both cars must be doing more than sixty. Despite bouncing, despite jolting, Jim held the wheel rock-steady. Up crept the pursuing car, closer and still more close.
But the Cadillac did not run him into the ditch; it did not even try. Something else happened which all but climaxed that wild ride.
As the Cadillac drew abreast on Jim’s left, he could see the chauffeur at the wheel behind the tall windshield. Then the tonneau of the Cadillac moved level with the Chadwick’s driving-seat. There were two figures in the tonneau. One of them, face masked by goggles, leaned out with some object in his hand.
That Jim’s car had a right-hand drive probably saved his life. He saw the flash and heard the concussion as somebody fired a bullet point-blank at the left side of his head.
Somebody else in the Cadillac yelled, “You’re crazy! You’re completely—!” But the boom of both engines drowned out other words.
On went the Cadillac, though at somewhat reduced speed. Jim did not go on at all. Since it had finally happened, he pulled up and stopped. For that moment, when he jumped down and peered back, the road behind him seemed empty. Then other headlamps appeared and took on clarity. A Ford tourer drew level, its driver a man of youngish middle age with a woman on the seat beside him. The woman was Miss Florence Yates.
Down from the tonneau, as the Ford stopped, jumped Lieutenant Zack Trowbridge. He had a wild look on his face and an Iver-Johnson .45 in his hand.
“You didn’t tell me you were gonna race him!” he said in no mild voice. “If you wanted to race him, or make him race you, how’d you expect Mr. Kestevan’s Ford to keep up? This is Mr. Horace Kestevan, our Assistant D.A. The other ’un you know.” Lieutenant Trowbridge stabbed a finger in the direction taken by the Cadillac, now out of sight. “He took a shot at you, didn’t he?”
“And missed by a wide margin, I’m glad to say.”
“Was it…?”
“I couldn’t be sure. He was wearing goggles.”
“If the Ford couldn’t catch either of you, it damn sure can’t catch him now. And yet we’ve got to catch him! Do you think you could catch him?”
The Ghosts' High Noon Page 24