by Craig Rice
Dinah set it on a kitchen chair and stared at it. “April, why on earth—”
“Hey,” Archie said. “Hey. Y’know what? I’m a detecative.”
“You’re practically Dick Tracy,” April said, staring at the picture. “Dinah, I wonder—”
“Listen,” Archie yelped. “Hey. Hey, listen. This is important!”
“We are listening,” Dinah said. “And start with how this got here.”
“He brought it here,” Archie said. “The guy who paints water. He gave it to me and said it was for you, so I put it on the back porch. Then he got in a car and drove away. Towards downtown. So I thought if you ’n’ April could search a house, me’n Admiral could search a house, even if we did have to bust one of the back windows to get in.”
“You searched Mr. Desgranges house?” April said.
“Sure,” Archie said. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
April put down her sandwich. “What did you find?”
“Nothing,” Archie said excitedly. “Nothing ’cept the furniture, and that belonged to the house because Goony’s sister’s husband’s aunt lived there once and it was the same furniture.”
Dinah and April stared at each other, and then Dinah said, “Archie, you mean he took away all his own stuff?”
“Yeah,” Archie said. “That’s the whole thing. Kin I have a coke?”
April raced to get one, opened it for him, and said, “Go on.”
“That’s all,” Archie said. “He took away all his stuff like his clothes and his pictures and his books and his razor and everything. I guess he must of had ’em in the car.” He stuck a straw in the coke bottle and added, “Looks like he moved away.”
“Yes,” April said. “It looks like he has.”
“Oh, April,” Dinah said. “Maybe we ought to call Bill Smith quick and tell him it’s too late.”
April sighed. “Let’s not bother. Any minute now, he’ll find out for himself!”
Chapter Twenty-One
“It certainly is worth two dollars,” April said. “That three-dollar manicure at Howard’s is a hundred times better-looking than the one-dollar manicure Mother always gets. And Bill Smith is coming to dinner tomorrow night, and you know how important beautiful hands are. I wonder what color nail polish he likes.”
“But, April,” Dinah said. “How are you going to talk Mother into a three-dollar manicure?”
April stopped in the middle of combing her hair and said, “Stupe! I’m going to duck into Howard’s during noon period—it’s only six blocks, and I can make it if I run, and skip lunch—and fix it up with the girl who always does Mother’s manicures. I’ll just give her the two dollars and tell her not to say anything about it to Mother, but to give Mother the three-dollar manicure. And Mother won’t even notice it.”
“Oh,” Dinah said. She went on making her bed. Suddenly she paused. “But. We haven’t got two dollars. And we don’t get our allowance till Saturday.”
“I’ve got forty cents left out of the buck,” April said.
“I’ve got—” Dinah pawed through her purse and the pockets of all the clothes she’d worn lately—“thirty-two cents.”
“That makes seventy-two,” April said thoughtfully. “And Archie ought to put up a third. How much is a third of two dollars?”
“Sixty something—sixty-six and two thirds. April, hurry up and make your bed. We’ll miss the school bus.”
“Say, sixty-four,” April said. “Sixty-four and seventy-two is—wait a minute—a dollar thirty-six. We’ll borrow the rest from Archie.”
“If he’ll lend it,” Dinah said. “And if he’ll agree to contributing sixty-four cents of his own money.”
“Well, ask him,” April said.
“No. It’s your idea. You ask him.”
“You’re the oldest. You ought to ask him.” April paused, and said, “Tell you what. If I ask him, will you make my bed while I’m doing it?”
“Oh, all right,” Dinah said. “After last night he’s probably still too excited to argue much.”
Last night had been exciting. There had been cars going up and down the street. Archie, dispatched to do a little reconnoitering, came back and reported a thorough search of the house Pierre Desgranges had occupied. “Fingerprints ’n’ everything,” he said.
After dinner Mother had gone back upstairs—“To make a few more notes,” she had said. Pete had arrived and wanted Dinah to go for a ride on his bike. April, surprisingly, had urged Dinah to go while it was still daylight. “Let me do the dishes all alone, for once.” Dinah had been too amazed to resist. And April had just succeeded in shooing Dinah and Pete out the back door when the front doorbell rang and there stood Bill Smith, with a quiet, determined man in a dark-gray suit.
She was able to say truthfully, and thankfully, that Dinah was out. She invited them out to the kitchen and retold Dinah’s story to the quiet man in gray. Somehow the two men found themselves helping with the dishes—Bill Smith washing and the other man wiping—while she told the story. They hadn’t quite finished by the time she had, so she added the detail of the picture that had been presented to Dinah. By the time she went to fetch it, the two men were hanging up the last dishtowel.
“As a painting,” the man in gray had said, “I can’t say much for it. But as an excuse for being out here—yeah. I guess he’s the man, all right.”
“Did you arrest him?” April said.
“No,” Bill Smith said. “He beat it. But we’ll find him.” He turned back to the man in gray. “Funny, the house being broken into.”
April had been tactfully silent. No point in letting Archie be stuck with the price of a new windowpane.
Dinah had returned to find—to her amazement—the dishes done, the kitchen neat, and April listening to the newest Harry James record on the phonograph. Pete had stayed on. He’d wanted to roll up the rug and dance. Then Mag and Joella had dropped in and, five minutes later, Eddie and Willy. Then Archie, Admiral, Goony, and Flashlight had returned from finding Henderson, who’d broken his leash and strayed two blocks from home. Then Inky and Stinky had somehow gotten out on the roof and had to be rescued, and they and Jenkins had had to be fed. And finally Mother had come down the stairs, tired but happy, to announce she had finished her notes and was stopping work for a few days, and how about a lot of food for everybody present.
It had been what seemed like hours later before Dinah could ask April, “Did anything happen while I was out?” and April could answer, very nonchalantly, “Not much. Oh, the FBI was here—”
This was another day. Mother had come down for breakfast and announced her intention of getting not only a hair-do and a manicure, but also a new pair of working slacks. There had been nothing in the paper about the flight of Pierre Desgranges, or Armand von Hoehne, or whatever the hash-e-lul-squared his name really was. Not much, either, about the Sanford murder, save that the police were still searching for Wallace Sanford.
Things were quiet. But, April thought happily, it was the quiet before the big blowup. Tuesday night Bill Smith was coming to dinner, and Mother would have her new hair-do and manicure. Maybe, by that time, the murderer of Mrs. Sanford would have been found. Now, it was just a little matter of talking Archie out of sixty-four cents plus a short-term loan.
She knocked on his door, went in, and said amiably, “I’ll help you make your bed.”
Archie looked at her sourly and said, “If you’re here for what I ’spect you’re here for, you can pick up the room, too. And I get all the empty coke bottles for a month, and you carry down the garbage the rest of the month, and I won’t loan you more’n a dollar, so there.”
April began making the bed, looked at him gravely, and said, “Now, Archie, you love your Mother, don’t you?”
Fifteen minutes later she returned with the money, having given a promise to pay back the loan on allowance day, plus the coke-bottle graft for two weeks, and carrying down the garbage for one week.
School
, that Monday, seemed dull. April received her first “Unsatisfactory” in Junior Drama Class. Dinah had to be spoken to twice for inattention in Domestic Science, and, after Archie had failed nine simple arithmetic problems in a row, his teacher sent him to the school nurse to see if he was coming down with something. It was a thoroughly exasperating and baffling day for a variety of teachers, and an almost unendurably long one for the three young Carstairs.
Finally they met on the school bus. Dinah was sitting with Pete and Joella, both of whom were trying to talk to her at once; April was surrounded by a number of admirers, aged thirteen to fifteen; and Archie was scuffling around on the floor with Flashlight, to the great discomfort of the already harassed bus driver. But Dinah managed to send April a signal that meant, “Did you fix it?” and April sent back a sign, “Oke.”
They finally got together, the three of them, at the bus stop nearest home.
“I fixed up everything,” April reported. “Estelle’s going to give her the three-dollar manicure, and Mrs. Howard herself is going to give her the facial. I explained to them we were going to give her a surprise party tomorrow night. So—”
“It’ll be a surprise, all right,” Dinah said gloomily. “How are we going to explain to her about Bill Smith coming to dinner?”
“You’re s’posed to tell her,” Archie said shrilly. “April asked him.”
April looked at Dinah’s worried face and said, “Never mind. I’ll do the explaining. I’m good at it. Now let’s run down to Luke’s before we go home.”
“There’s still cokes in the icebox,” Dinah said.
“I want a newspaper,” April said.
Dinah and Archie stared at her. “For what?”
“To read,” April said serenely. “So don’t ask me any silly questions and I won’t have to give you any silly answers.” She started down the street toward Luke’s. Dinah and Archie followed.
“Hey,” Archie said. “We got one paper a’ready. This morning.”
“I’ve seen that one,” April said.
“Well, my gosh,” Dinah said. “The evening paper gets delivered around dinnertime.”
“I can’t wait,” April said, in her most maddening voice.
“Oh, boney,” Archie grumbled. “I’m hungry.”
April paused and looked at him. “Listen. If I talk Luke into trusting us for three malts, will you pay for them when you get your allowance?”
“Well—” Archie said. April was the only one of the trio who could talk Luke into extending credit. “Oh, a’right!”
“Fine,” April said. “Then we can read the paper for free while we’re waiting for the malts. That saves us a nickel.”
She went in first and conferred with Luke. Then she motioned to Archie and Dinah to come in. Then she picked up the latest edition of the paper, smiled at Luke, and said, “You don’t mind, do you?” as she spread it out on the counter.
“Help yourself,” Luke said, putting an extra dash of ice cream in the malts.
“It ought to be on page one,” April said.
It was. A picture, and a two-column headline.
KEY WITNESS IN SANFORD
MURDER KIDNAPPED
Dinah said, “Oh!” and April hissed “Shush-u-tut u-pup.”
“Hey,” Archie said. “Le’me see, le’me see, le’me see.”
“Well, look then,” April said crossly, “and don’t bother me, I’m reading.”
Luke served the malts with a flourish and said, “Don’t spill none on that paper or I’ll have to charge you for it.”
The three young Carstairs automatically moved the malts away from the paper, stuck the straws in their mouths, and went on reading.
Polly Walker, who’d found the body of Mrs. Wallace Sanford, had been kidnapped from her Hollywood apartment, the story read.
“Don’t talk here,” April whispered to Dinah and Archie, who nodded solemnly.
According to Miss Walker’s maid, there had been a telephone call to Miss Walker around twelve-fifteen. A female voice, saying that the message was an urgent one. Miss Walker had taken the telephone call and, after completing it, had appeared greatly distressed. She had dressed immediately, and gone out, after telephoning to the hotel garage, to send around her car.
According to the doorman, Miss Walker had come out on the sidewalk. Then a car that had been parked down the street had suddenly swung out and swung in again into the No Parking zone. A masked man with a gun had forced Miss Walker into the car, which had promptly disappeared down the street.
There followed a résumé of the Sanford murder, stressing Polly Walker’s discovery of the body. That was followed by a brief biography of Polly Walker, the finishing-school graduate who’d fought for a bit part on Broadway and risen from it to stardom. The fact that Polly Walker had never had an important part in an important picture didn’t matter to the story. She was involved in a murder case, she’d been kidnapped, and, therefore, she was a star.
April drained off the last of her malt, glanced at the clock over Luke’s counter, and said, “Hey! We gotta beat it home! Quick!” She shoved away her glass and folded up the paper. “Thanks, Luke.” She put the paper back in the rack.
Dinah and Archie finished their malts and followed her out to the street.
“What’s the rush?” Dinah said.
“I’ve got a date,” April said joyously. “We’ve got a date.”
“Hey, hey, hey,” Archie called. “Wai’ for me!”
“I don’t get it,” Dinah panted. “Polly Walker’s been kidnapped. Was it a gang kidnaping? Like, when Bette LeMoe was kidnapped?”
“No,” April said. “This was strictly a one-man job.”
“But,” Dinah said. “April, wait a minute! It couldn’t have been a one-man job.”
“Oh, yes it was,” April said.
They turned into the street on which the Carstairs lived.
“April,” Dinah said, “it was a masked man who forced her into the car. But it was a female voice over the telephone. Evidently giving her some phony message that would lure her out on the street, where she could be kidnapped.”
“The female voice,” April said, almost out of breath, “was mine.”
Dinah gasped. Archie said, “Huh?” But before either of them could speak, April was pointing up the street toward the Carstairs’ driveway that was never used save by the milkman and the grocery wagon. “And there,” April gasped, “is the kidnaper and his victim!”
The three young Carstairs ran like rabbits up the street. Parked in the driveway was a roadster. In it were two people. Cleve Callahan and Polly Walker. And both of them were smiling.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“You two can be bridesmaids,” Cleve said, “But I don’t know what we’ll do with your little brother.”
“Honest?” April said.
He nodded, and Polly Walker blushed.
“Oh,” April said, “Oh—super!” She kissed him on the cheek, and hugged the breath out of Polly Walker. “Archie—my little brother—can be the ring-bearer.”
“I’m not little,” Archie said angrily, “and I won’t. And what is one, anyway?”
“Never mind,” Dinah said. “Would somebody mind telling me what goes on here?”
Polly Walker looked up at her and said, “We’re going to get married.” Her hair was loose and there were tearstains on her face. What little lipstick was left was badly smeared. She looked awful. “Today.”
“You’d better wash your face first,” April said. “And make with the make-up. And do with the hair-do.”
Polly looked at them, laughed, started to cry again, and said, “I’ve been such a fool!”
April looked at Cleve and said, “Well, if you want to marry a fool, that’s your business!”
“It’s your responsibility,” he told her. “You fixed it up. You advised me what to do and helped me carry it out. If I have to divorce her after forty or fifty years—”
Polly Walker looked up and said, “
She—what?”
“She advised me to kidnap you,” he said, “and she called you up this noon and gave you the urgent message that lured you away from the house.”
Polly Walker stared at April and said, “You? Was that your voice?”
“How do you think I get all those A grades in Junior Drama Class?” April said modestly. “And by the way, how did you like my speech?” She struck an attitude and said, “Mees Valker. I haff here zertain documents wheech haff been found een ze Zanford ’ouse. Zey are off no eemportance to me, an’ I weel be deelighted to giff zem to you, eef you weel come to—”
“If Miss Grubee could hear that,” Dinah said critically, “you’d flunk Junior Drama for the next two years. And will somebody please tell me what’s going on?”
Cleve Callahan looked at April and said, “You’d better tell her. She’s your sister.”
April told the whole story, beginning with Rupert van Deusen and ending with the advice she’d given Cleve Callahan.
“And I did kidnap her,” Cleve finished for her, “with April’s help. And we talked everything over, and we haven’t any secrets from each other. And we’re going to drive to the airport and fly to Las Vegas and get married, without, I regret, bridesmaids, because you two would look very sweet in organdy dresses.”
“I’m sure of it,” April said. “Pink for me and blue for Dinah, or vice-reverse, and white broadcloth for Archie.”
“By the way,” Dinah said anxiously, “where is Archie?”
Archie had vanished.
April sighed. “He’s probably gone to call the police and tell them a murder suspect is being flown to Las Vegas. So, Miss Walker, you’d better tell all fast, and then get going.”
“Tell—what?” Polly Walker gasped.
“That was part of the bargain,” Cleve told her. “Remember?”
“A bargain with me,” April said. “I was to help you kidnap her if you’d bring her out here at four o’clock and she’d tell us exactly what had happened.”