by Don Wilcox
“Not so fast, Archie. Tell me about them again—slowly. You may skip Hetty. She’s the camera girl with the snappy brown eye—the one who went with you the night you spied on Drake and the doctor. And you may skip Cornelia. I discovered her adoration for me and my checkbook in two minutes. But she has a good business head. This contract she dragged out of me is proving a good investment. Next—Genevieve.”
“Genevieve and I still aren’t speaking,” said Archie. “I’m not high-toned enough for her. Maybe it’s because she’s a platinum—or it might be that she has ancestors.”
“Yes, I’ve heard about her.”
“Heard about her? She wastes a smile on you every time she passes you.”
“Do I—er—return the courtesy?” This was too much for Archie. If Hamilton Craig was so absent-minded that Genevieve’s expensive smiles failed to penetrate, he’d better remain a bachelor, and let the uncle’s fortune go to charity.
“To finish calling the roll, there’s Grace, Linda Lee, and Patsy. Grace never has much to say except when she’s checking up on the rights and wrongs of something. She has such a busy conscience that I feel guilty every time I see her. But she says she’ll work as long as you don’t profiteer on your tenants or tell any white lies in your sales talks. She’s very strict. You can see it in those cold green eyes.”
“Yes, very strict but very attractive. Next—Linda Lee.”
“She’s the Southern gal that chatters on and on like a meadowlark without a care in the world . . . And Patsy . . . she’s the red-head that carries chips on each shoulder. She’d rather fight than eat. Nothing’s happened so far that hasn’t made her mildly furious. She got sore waiting for her pay, but she was a helluva lot sorer when she got it. I figured you’d fire her the first time she angered a customer.”
“I suppose I should—”
“But the customers seem to fall for her, in spite of belligerence. Her record is still tops.”
“Remarkable.”
“That’s exactly what you said when you told all this to me yesterday. Look here, Mr. Craig. Can it be that Dr.
Silverhead has done something to you so that you have two sets of memories—one for this downtown studio, and the other for the office out at the mansion?” Archie meant this question to be taken as facetious, even though it was a joke born of exasperation. But Craig caught his breath, his eyes blinked defensively, and he made no answer. He was blushing.
“Heck, I—I didn’t mean anything serious, Mr. Craig,” Archie stammered, hastening to cover over this mysterious sensitive something that he had crashed into. “I know you’re a very busy man. I’ll be helping you every way I can.”
“I’m depending upon you. In fact,” Craig concluded in a confidential tone, “I’m going ahead with the arrangements for the wedding.”
“And the lucky girl is—?”
“One of the six Craigettes,” Craig said with a chuckle that helped him recover from his recent embarrassment. “It’s much too early to settle on the final details.”
Now Archie sat in the barroom just off Southwest Boulevard munching a corned-beef sandwich. This slightly dank beer joint was as a rule one place where Archie could be alone with his thoughts. A sour-looking stranger with the deep circles around his eyes was growing drowsy over a drink. The bartender was lost in a newspaper. The juke-box was thumping away with heavy rhythm and a minimum of melody.
This place would soon be gone, Archie reflected. The little lobby and the dilapidated apartments that filled this west wing of the old hospital building were due for an overhauling, and Craig was the architect with the magic touch.
Archie couldn’t see who the two men were who occupied the end booth; much less could he catch any of their low-spoken conversation audible between juke-box records. But he caught sight of a stubby brown hand tapping a monocle on the table-top. It was a gesture that sent chills racing through Archie’s spine.
“Change, please,” Archie said, abruptly, forgetting to finish his sandwich.
He walked down to the end of the block, crossed the street, loafed along the windows, all the while keeping a sharp eye on the beer joint.
No one came or went.
“I’m in no hurry,” Archie said to himself. “I’ll stick around till the convention’s over.”
He killed half an hour walking up and down the street and finally sauntered into a lonesome hamburger den. Here he had a good view across the street and down a quarter of a block.
“Two hamburgers and two coffees, pal,” he said. “My friend will be here shortly.”
While the man had his back turned, frying hamburgers, Archie got out his little leather book and chose a card with care. He flipped it into the air.
“I’ve ordered for you, Hetty.” Archie had opened and closed the door so the hamburger man wouldn’t be too surprised over the new arrival. A girl as pretty as Hetty, dressed in a bright Oriental costume—the official uniform of the Craigettes—was sure to make any man look twice.
“Pray, what are we doing here?” Hetty asked in a guarded tone.
“Keeping our eyes open for trouble,” Archie whispered. “Gosh, you must have swell sleeping. You look fresh like the daisies. What do you dream when you’re packed away in my notebook?”
“Dream? I’ve forgotten what the word means,” said Hetty. “It’s the blankest sensation you can imagine—like some sort of long-lost rest that you’ve been craving all your life.”
“You’ll have to tell me more when there’s time. For Craig’s sake we’ve got to find out how to get you girls over these magic processes. But we’ll talk about that later. Just now—” Archie made certain that only Hetty could hear him—“it’s that tavern door . . . I’m sure Marcus M. Drake is putting the screws on a new prospect.”
Hetty’s sharp brown eyes were full of questioning.
“Archie, I’ve missed out on almost everything since that one dreadful night. Did you and Mr. Craig ever get the police on the job?”
“No. Not exactly. But Craig says the police know about Dr. Silverhead. They think he’s eccentric but harmless.”
“Archie, in this camera I have a photograph that would convict—” Hetty broke off sharply, for the hamburger man had been distracted from his radio. She resumed her whispering. “Why, Archie? Why hasn’t Craig set the law on those boys. . . Well?”
“I can’t answer that, Hetty.”
The girl’s eyes grew hot with suspicion. “Archie, I don’t want to be jumping at conclusions. But it looks to me as if our boss is mixed up in a murder racket.”
“No—you’re mistaken.”
“Then tell me why he doesn’t get busy and clean it out, Archie.” She was clutching his hand, searching his eyes intently. “Please, Archie, if you’ve any answer tell me. I couldn’t bear to think that you might be in on it too.”
Archie’s heart beat fast. Her words somehow took his breath away—as if it mattered so much to her that he kept in the clear. At once he was feeling the burden of this trouble as never before. This trap was closing in, slowly but surely, and his good friend Hamilton
Craig was caught in it,
“Maybe it isn’t what we think,” Archie suggested, making a foolish attempt to be optimistic. “Maybe the doctor’s experiments would be no more serious than—say, for example—transforming people so they can be carried as cards in a book.”
“I suppose you consider that an honorable experiment.”
“Well, to tell the truth,” said Archie, “I’m a little surprised that there hasn’t been any complaint on the part of you girls. You seem to be enjoying yourselves.”
“We seem to be—for two or three good reasons,” said Hetty, a note of bitterness in her tone. “Some of us girls are dead certain there’ll be a pot of gold at the foot of this rainbow for one of us, if we can hold on until Hamilton Craig makes his choice.
“For my part that’s so much foolishness. But if I were going to drag someone like you or Dr. Silverhead or Hamilton Craig into t
he criminal courts for involving me in a magic trick that keeps me out of social circulation half the time, do you think I’d go around forewarning you? No. So there may be a second reason that we girls seem to be complacent. Think it over and weep.”
“I’ll just think it over,” said Archie. “Any more reasons?”
“The third one is real, no question about it. There is a satisfaction—a peace beyond that of any sleep—that comes whenever we transform into our inanimate selves.” Hetty drew a deep breath. “The wonder is that we’re so willing to come back to normal life whenever you call us.”
Archie attended these words as if they were messages from another world—a glimpse of some weird realm of life that he would never know.
As a result of these ponderings he felt a strange throb of admiration and respect when he looked across the street to see Dr. Silverhead trudging along. It was an emotion he didn’t intend, being utterly opposed to the judgments that were guiding his actions. But there it was, and it was an honest admission that yonder crack-brained scientist must have seen his way into some remarkable miracles.
“Do I see Drake and his guest at the tavern doorway?” Hetty asked.
Across the street the three men had assembled—Drake, Dr. Silverhead, and their tall, well dressed “guest.” Evidently Drake was introducing this newcomer to the doctor, for there was a moment of handshaking. Then the doctor hurried on his way.
In another minute the conference ended, Drake disappeared into the tavern, and the tall stranger strode down the street toward the car line.
Archie wanted to follow him, but he thought better of it. Undoubtedly, Drake’s eyes were following this man to make sure there were no officers on the trail. Archie turned to Hetty.
“Would you know him if you saw him again?”
“I think so,” said Hetty. “Notice how he carries his left shoulder higher than his right, and keeps looking around as if he drought someone was watching him.”
“We’re lucky if someone isn’t watching us,” said Archie. “We had better have another coffee.”
Hetty was looking at him curiously. “I know what you’re planning, Archie. You’re going to keep guard over that conference room again tonight. Aren’t you? . . . Well, I’m going with you. This is my deal as much as yours.”
Archie caught her by the arm and started to draw her toward him.
“No,” said Hetty, drawing away from him. “Don’t you dare put me back in the book!”
Archie’s and Hetty’s watch for the return of the “high-shouldered stranger” extended through the next three days and nights. The man did not return, and they decided he must have rejected Marcus M. Drake’s investment plan. They relaxed their vigilance.
Nevertheless, Archie was on the alert. His habits of watching and listening for signs of danger could not be turned off like electric lights. In his room he had placed his bed near the west window, where he could keep watch over the court, and there he was sleeping on the night of his terrifying dream.
From the strenuous three days past, Archie was dog-tired, and on this night he meant to get a solid night’s sleep. His last comforting thought was that no lights burned in Drake’s conference room.
Soon he was lost in sleep, and then came the dreadful series of nightmares. Weird and fantastic images played through his mind, trying to startle him out of his rest. But through it all he kept resolving not to be disturbed. These phantasmagoric pictures, these shifting shadows, these creeping creatures of the night were but the stuff of dreams.
Nevertheless, one of these scenes cut such a deep path through his troubled mind that he seemed to see it over and over through the rest of the night. At dawn he awoke and stared dizzily into the courtyard. That was where it happened, that moonlight murder that had haunted him all night long.
There were the steps, the circling path, the extending arms of hollyhocks that had brushed them as they passed—those two shadowy figures who had walked to the well.
In the scene before Archie’s eyes, every detail was perfect. He knew the very spot where the two men had stood as they looked over the low wall into the well. The man on this side had been Marcus M. Drake. The other was the tall, high-shouldered stranger. The quick flash of scissor blades had come from Drake’s right hand. From the tall stranger had come the stifled outcry mingled with choking and gurgling.
On the instant, the steel-bladed tool had been tossed aside, and Drake’s arms had hurled the other man headlong into the black well. In Archie’s nightmares the rest had been a series of sounds—the heavy splash that echoed up from the depths, the long stillness, then the slow tread of Drake wending his way back to the arcade. And later, the thin spray of water that played over the walls and the stone railing and the well.
If Archie had been sure this was only a nightmare, he would have told Hetty all about it. But as the details kept coming back to him clearer and clearer, he decided he must keep this dream to himself.
CHAPTER XIII
Enter Whiskey Phil
The leather-upholstered chairs that lined the walls of the oaken reception room were the public’s first sample of the comforts and luxuries of Craig’s Southwest Boulevard Apartments.
In Archie’s opinion those chairs were much too comfortable. They made the room as inviting as a hotel lobby, and many persons with little or no business would be content to while away a couple of hours on the pretext of waiting to see someone. All of which added to the day’s confusion.
This morning Verrazzano was on hand again, inquiring specifically for Cornelia, and angling for an introduction to Genevieve. While he waited he tried to corner a prospective tenant for a perfume sales talk, and Archie had to speak to him.
The sad-eyed man with the concentric circles around his eyes was here again, asking about Grace. As usual he was in a near-stupor from intoxication. Archie had seen him several times at the bar on the west side of the block and by this time knew him to be Philip Parker, better known as Whiskey Phil.
He was an uncle of Grace, the usherette who lived in a realm of such carefully strained morality that she could scarcely breathe without consulting her conscience. He had come several days before to take her home.
But Grace seldom came on duty before noon, and by that time Whiskey Phil was usually too far gone to remember his mission. He whiled away his cynical forenoons and soggy afternoons in Craig’s block, running up a bill and accomplishing nothing.
This morning Grace was called on duty early, owing to the unaccountable absence of Patsy. As a result, she and her uncle clashed for a showdown.
“You ran out on your home, so you did,” Whiskey Phil growled. “I’m supposed to bring you back. Not that I give a damn personally.”
“I have made my decision,” Grace declared. “I can’t endure that low environment any longer.”
“So it’s low, is it? So that’s what you think of your home.”
“It’s low because you’re always there, you and the demon that lives in your heart. That’s why I was glad to come away.”
“But I’m not there, I’m here,” Whiskey Phil mocked. “How can you stand it sticking ’round this dump with demons like me around?”
Archie tried to intercede. In the interests of propriety Mr. Parker should simply state his business and go on his way.
“That’s what I’m doing, ain’t it? Say, where’d I see you before?”
“I work here for Hamilton Craig,” said Archie.
“That’s nothing to be so swelled up about. What kind of a joint does Craig run here? Do you know? Maybe you do and maybe you don’t. If you’d keep your ears open the way I do—ugh, now I know. It was around at the tavern one afternoon. That’s where I saw you. You was spying on Drake and that other guy.”
Grace tried to apologize for her uncle’s blustering. “Please, Uncle, go on away.”
“I’ll go when I’ve found out something; not before. When I go back and your folks ask me all about you, what am I gonna say? How am I gonna convince
’em it took me all these days to get in a word edgewise?”
“Simply tell them the truth,” said Grace coldly. “I was always busy and you were always intoxicated.”
“But when I came here yesterday, and the morning before, and the day before that, asking for you, why didn’t they call you? Where were you?”
The question brought a deep blush to Grace’s cheeks. Her standards of right and wrong wouldn’t let her swerve from complete honesty, but this question was hard to answer. Her uncle followed through doggedly.
“If you’re in your room, why don’t they call you down to see me? Why do they always say they’ll have to locate some guy by the name of Archie Burnette—”
“That’s me,” Archie spoke up, trying to rise to the girl’s defense.
“And I suppose,” said Whiskey Phil cynically, “you’re the housemother of the girls’ dormitory, Mr. Burnette?”
“Uncle, you don’t understand!” Grace cried, growing as red as fire.
“You’re darned right I don’t,” said Whiskey Phil, pushing toward the door of Hamilton Craig’s private office. “But going to. I’ll see the boss.”
“I can assure you,” said Archie, stepping in his path, “that Craig has hired a matron to supervise the living quarters of these usherettes, if that’s what’s bothering you. Under ordinary conditions we expect the girls to live in their rooms.”
“Yeah? There must be a lot of extraordinary conditions around here, all the trouble they’ve had trying to find Grace—”
Archie shot out with a good right fist that struck with a heavy smack on the fellow’s jaw. The bleary eyes rolled and the puffy rings around them shuddered, but Whiskey Phil didn’t go down. He was almost too soggy to feel the blow. It would have taken a freight engine to knock him out.
Nevertheless, he was quite aware that he had been hit, and he changed his mind about walking into Hamilton Craig’s office. He stood gazing respectfully at Archie, and as he spoke he grinned sheepishly.
“That throws a different light on the matter. Don’t ask me to explain it, but I’d swear in court that everything around here is on the up-and-up. And anybody knows there never was a straighter gal than—hey! Where is she?”