Lady Afraid

by Lester Dent

  “Were you the only dinner guest?”

  “No. There was one other. But is it important?”

  “Who?”

  “A man named Driscoll, Louis Driscoll.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “I believe,” said Arbogast, “that Driscoll is quite a figure, a truck-line tycoon. He lives on a houseboat, a sumptuous one, which is tied up now not far from the Lineyack home.”

  “Would this Louis Driscoll have any connection with Sarah’s difficulties?”

  “I’d say,” said Arbogast firmly, “that such an idea would be preposterous.”

  “Was Louis Driscoll a dinner guest tonight for any reason you can think of?”

  “He is merely a friend of Mr. Lineyack, like myself.”

  “And all evening,” said Most pleasantly, “since you were at the Lineyacks’, you knew Sarah had taken her son.”

  Mr. Arbogast jumped, frowned; presently he put on a smile that was sparse. “Captain, you don’t intend to act like an assistant district attorney, I trust…. But your answer is: Yes, qualified…. I did know the boy had disappeared. It was pretty awful, too. There was tremendous excitement at the Lineyack home…. But my answer is qualified in this way: I didn’t know Sarah took the child. How could I?”

  “Didn’t you hear about the notes Sarah left explaining she was taking her son and why?”

  “I was not told of them, no.”

  “The police were called immediately? They see the notes?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “They bother you any?”

  “Not after they learned my identity,” Mr. Arbogast said. “They permitted me to leave at once.” Mr. Arbogast was now cool toward Most, cold but still smiling.

  Most was not much bothered by the disapproval. He drew the pipe from his teeth but immediately stuck it back again without speaking. Both his eyes and his mouth became narrower, and abruptly he dropped the questioning. He went to the window again and stood there with sober interest, scowling down into the street.

  Mr. Arbogast came to Sarah, laid a hand on Sarah’s arm, and the hand was gentle and warm, a big kitten’s paw. “Sarah, I’m so sorry about the little boy. Is there anything I can do?”

  To be offered sympathy, Sarah thought, can sometimes be like having quicksand slid under your feet. The clear fact was that she was beginning to wonder how much of this she could stand. Already she found need to control herself consciously; it was as if her body were a sailing craft that was getting a knockdown of gale; the excess had to be spilled, but so carefully.

  She asked, “Alice Mildred… how did she take it?” Paul had always called his mother Alice Mildred, so it came naturally for Sarah to so speak of her.

  “Mrs. Lineyack?… Sarah, I don’t think they should have told her. I really do not.”

  Sarah, sitting in the chair, remembering the mother of the man she had married, saw again Alice Mildred’s spooklike aloofness and incalculable inwardness.

  “If she was upset, I’m sure no one would know it.”

  “I’m afraid,” said Mr. Arbogast soberly, “that the affair may be—well, too much for her.”

  Sarah lifted shocked eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “Alice Mildred has not been well, Sarah. Not well at all.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know.” Now Sarah sat stiffly, a hand pressed to a cheek that was too cool and slightly numb. She said tightly, “I had no idea Alice Mildred has been ill. I wouldn’t know, naturally. They haven’t let me in the house. Is it something serious?”

  “Mr. Lineyack seems to feel so.”

  “What is wrong, do you know?”

  Placing a hand on her arm, Mr. Arbogast smiled wryly. “Sarah, I’m probably not as close a friend of the Lineyacks as you imagine. Truthfully, I can’t tell you much except that Mrs. Lineyack’s difficulty is a neurosis—as you might guess. And it has been developing for some time. She came here to Miami from the summer home in Maine early in the fall. Since you know the Lineyacks, you will recognize that as quite a departure. They invariably spend autumn at the New York apartment, never coming to Miami before Christmas. But Alice Mildred has been here since October, and when Mr. Lineyack came down in December he instantly put her under treatment by a psychiatrist. He was alarmed by her condition. I have gathered also that she hasn’t been responding well to treatment.”

  “Then she’s really in poor condition?”

  “Alice Mildred has changed, Sarah. You did not see her tonight, I take it?”

  “No. No, I did not see her. The only ones I saw were Ivan Lineyack, some of the servants, and you,” Sarah said, and then her throat tightened and she added, “Jonnie also, of course.”

  “You would hardly know Alice Mildred, Sarah.”

  “I wish I had known!” Sarah said miserably. “I suppose I would not have done what I did. I would not, not even as much as I wanted Jonnie, have taken him.”

  Mr. Arbogast made sympathetic cluckings and peered at her anxiously. Reassured that she wasn’t going to break, which was more reassurance than Sarah had, he returned to his chair and sat down. He ran a hand across his hair without disturbing its neatness. “This is a dilemma,” he complained.

  Captain Most took his pipe from his teeth and knocked the bowl out with hard impatient blows on his palm. He wheeled from the window, crossed to a bronze ash tray, and dropped the dottle into it. His eyes went then to Arbogast and stayed on the man while he drew out a handkerchief and cleaned with quick strokes the palm that had contained the dottle.

  “Should Sarah go to the police?” he asked Arbogast. “She has asked me. You are a lawyer. You should know more about it.”

  Arbogast lifted eyes that were quickly unfriendly. “Captain, that is an exasperating question.”

  “Is it?”

  “It places me in an awkward position. No attorney, no reputable attorney, wishes to be stood in the light of advocating anything other than full co-operation with the police authorities, who represent the arm of the law.”

  “Should she surrender?”

  “No—that is, I… Captain, I refuse to answer.”

  “Then you think Sarah should keep away from the police as long as she can?”

  “I shall not say so!”

  Most’s face was expressionless. “You haven’t said so.”

  Now a telephone began ringing, its bell in the room with them, making a startling clamor. Sarah was startled by it, her limbs jerked, her breathing momentarily was halted. Mr. Arbogast was almost as affected—his right hand went to his heart. Then Mr. Arbogast sprang to his feet and whipped open the door of a small cabinet and plucked a telephone from this concealment. “Yes… speaking.” His round face slowly blanched. “Why, I—yes, of course. But I—well, the truth is, I have guests. I had best come down to the lobby. Will that be satisfactory?… All right, I shall be down at once.” He replaced the telephone slowly, staring at the floor, then at Sarah and Captain Most. He moistened his lips by rolling them inward and outward.

  “The police are downstairs!” he said in a voice that had gone up the register. “They wish to ask me questions.”

  Chapter Eleven

  AFTER ARBOGAST HAD HURRIED, anxious of eye, from the apartment, Sarah was quite conscious of receiving Most’s concerned attention. There must be a great deal of plain fright on her face, she decided.

  “Are you thinking that we should scram out of here?” Most asked thoughtfully.

  Sarah shook her head, and it took an effort like moving a cannon ball on her shoulders. “No, I don’t care to do that,” she said. “I imagine the police would consider flight an iron-bound evidence of guilt…. It’s the sort of thing a criminal would do, isn’t it?”

  Most’s head bent approvingly. “Good. You can think straight in a pinch,” he said.

  And then he moved back to the window and spaded his fingers between the blind slats again, and his breath escaped in surprise.

  “Police car’s gone from the corner,” he told her.
/>   Sarah flew to the window. As he had said, there was no prowl car in sight.

  “They came back, parked in front of this building,” she said wildly. “And they’re asking Mr. Arbogast about us!”

  Most did not reply, but he did not care for this sort of tension, because he showed his unease by performing a totally unnecessary act. He stepped to the side of the window and explored behind the drapes for the venetian-blind lift cord and hauled the blind to the top, locking it there after experimenting with the cord until he found how it secured. Then he pocketed his hands and stood waiting, tight and watchful, thinking of the police.

  There was moonlight. Sarah made herself notice that there was moonlight, and then she scanned the sky for the state of the weather. Everyone who sailed read the weather. Weather was extravagantly important to anyone in sail. There was probably no way in which a whim of nature could touch a human being with more cataclysmic violence than by using wind upon a tiny craft at sail on a sea endless to the horizons.

  The window faced east and the lights of Miami were beyond the silver bay, while nearer there were the lovely islands with their Venice-like canals, yachts anchored out. The yachts were big Diesel jobs, sumptuous, a pure waste of good money in Sarah’s opinion. She barely glanced at the Diesel yachts and cabin cruisers, then gave her attention to the sail craft. Close inshore there was a dredged channel that would take the deep keels of sailing yachts, and a number of them lay to hotel docks or to mooring buoys.

  Here was sail, friendly and close. She watched the ketches, yawls, the Marconi-rigged cutters, the crisp little schooners. Automatically she began picking out vessels she knew. There was enough light for that, because sailing-craft lines meant a great deal to her experienced eye. She was able to spot, in a few moments, three of them on which she had sailed. One was Winifred VI, a staysail-rigged ketch owned by a family named Decker; Sarah had cruised on that one from Portland to the little fishing village of Lubec, in Maine. There was Millie, a cutter, a fine little sea boat, a darling offshore; Sarah had never seen a craft behave so well when hove to. Mr. and Mrs. Wildberg owned Millie. Sarah had skippered Millie in the last St. Petersburg–Havana race, and it had been wonderful.

  Sarah closed her eyes tightly. “I’m—I’m afraid to think of Jonnie!” she gasped.

  Most shook his head. “It might do you good to uncork some emotion.”

  “Do you suppose he’s—” She couldn’t complete the question.

  Most moved his shoulders and said, “A little boy doesn’t have enemies who would harm him.”

  But I do not know that is true, Sarah thought wildly. We know so little. She bowed her head. “He was such a nice little boy. He had grown a lot. Oh, a great deal. He was the most husky little fellow you ever saw.”

  His expression perhaps more unnatural than hers, Most was listening.

  “I think he had my features,” Sarah said softly. “Yes, my eyes. I knew he had my eyes. But when I had last seen him—he had just turned six months old—one could not be certain whether he was to resemble myself or Paul.”

  Most rubbed his jaw, watched her, was silent.

  “I think,” Sarah said slowly, “that the way Jonnie could talk surprised and delighted me the most. He had such a sweet little voice. And his words—why, he spoke them more distinctly than I do my own!… That’s pretty good for only two and a half years old!” she added proudly. “And he wasn’t afraid of me, not a bit. He was the bravest little fellow, and a regular wildcat with his energy. He had a cowboy suit that he liked, and he put it on all by himself.”

  She leaned forward now and her forehead came against the cool glass of the window. I wish I could cry, she thought. But she knew the tears were far away; she felt dry, dehydrated; her voice was more loose, less tied, as she babbled on: “I only had him those few minutes, but it was worth anything the police or Lineyack’s attorneys do to me!… If only I knew he was safe! That’s what’s so horrible—knowing I did have him, and now—”

  Most cleared his throat against feeling. “This isn’t helping you, Mrs. Lineyack,” he said.

  Sarah wheeled, buried her face in Most’s jacket. “My baby boy! Oh, mother of God, my baby. It was worth almost anything, just having him those few minutes. My own child—I hadn’t even seen him for two years—not so much as touched him…. Never felt his soft little legs and hands, all that agony of not being able to touch my child for so long. And then, to lose him so quickly, and not know whether he’s safe or even where he is. Will I ever be forgiven for causing such a thing? But I love him so!” She was sobbing violently now, and through the sobs she said, “He called me ‘Mother.’ Just once! But it was so nice.” And after that there was not much that was coherent, because she was far from being as dry emotionally as she had thought.

  Later, Most brought her a drink, saying, “A touch of firewater won’t hurt you.”

  She nodded gratefully, for tears had chased some of the dark fog. The picture of her predicament seemed clearer, although not as immitigable; fears were still there; drawn with even more jagged clarity perhaps, they seemed less grotesque, which may have been because she faced them in a more relaxed attitude. She took the glass of whisky from Most.

  “You’re good for me,” she said.

  Either he hadn’t expected such a flat statement or her emotional state made it sound quite candid. Most looked startled.

  What he would have said, and he had something at his tongue, was knocked out of mind by the metallic howl of the telephone. The loudest bell, Sarah thought—she had brought a hand up as if to catch her heart—that she had ever heard on a telephone.

  “I’ll answer it,” Most said. “It may be our round friend with the easily imitated voice.”

  He scooped the instrument out of its hiding place in the small cabinet. He said “Yes” twice, the first time calmly, the second time astonished. He extended the phone to Sarah. “For you. I was right. It’s him.”

  Sarah said “Yes” herself into the phone, and there came a flood of words in Mr. Arbogast’s voice. “Sarah, this is Mr. Arbogast. Listen closely: You must leave at once. Keep away from the police if you can. And if you do—if you can keep the police from catching you—your son will be returned to you.”

  Sarah cried, “But what—”

  “Don’t interrupt, please,” said Mr. Arbogast’s voice. “At seven o’clock drive past the corner of Fourth and Flagler. Attorney Brill will be there. Pick him up. If you come, if you’ve avoided arrest, the boy will be turned over to you by Brill. Got all this, Sarah?”

  “Oh yes! Only—”

  “Hurry! Get out of my apartment instantly. I can’t say more. Good-by!”

  The line went dead.

  Sarah cried three “Hellos!” into the unresponsive telephone and was standing rigidly, the instrument still gripped in her hands, when the door flung open and Mr. Arbogast came in from the corridor.

  Sarah stared. Mr. Arbogast, whose voice she had heard not twenty seconds before, came into the room. His face was pale, and against the pallor a patch of apple redness stood out over each cheekbone.

  “Mr. Arbogast! You were just—” Sarah shook her head blankly.

  “What’s that?” Mr. Arbogast seemed puzzled.

  “You were speaking to me on the telephone!”

  “When?”

  “Just now. This instant. You had just hung up and—”

  “Now, really, Mrs. Lineyack,” said Mr. Arbogast. “That’s quite preposterous. I don’t carry a wireless telephone around with me, I’m afraid.”

  Captain Most said, “She’s right. I answered the phone. It was—or sounded like—your voice.”

  Mr. Arbogast’s mouth hung open, and thereafter it remained open whenever he was not using it to make words.

  “I didn’t telephone!” he blurted. “Good lord! It must have been the fellow who deceived Mrs. Lineyack yesterday afternoon!”

  “You see anybody hanging around downstairs?” Most demanded. “The caller knew you weren’t up
here.”

  “I saw no one but the building attendants,” Mr. Arbogast confessed.

  “What about the policeman you went down to see?”

  “There was none.”

  “What?”

  Arbogast trotted to a chair and sagged into it. “I couldn’t find anyone. The person who said he was an officer didn’t put in an appearance.”

  “Then there was no officer?” Most demanded.

  “No…. I saw none, anyway. I looked all about. I don’t think I would have missed him. I even went outdoors. There was no police car there.”

  Most, with his eyes opaque and seeking, studied the chubby financial attorney. “Was the voice that said it belonged to a cop at all familiar to you?”

  “No. Oh no!”

  “I’m going to describe two men—Ides and Yellow-shoes,” Most said grimly. He proceeded to do so, repeating with surprising accuracy the word picture that Sarah had given him of the two men. “Do you know them?” he finished.

  “No indeed!” Mr. Arbogast turned an unquiet face to Sarah. “Sarah, I want to help you…. But I don’t think you should stay here. I really don’t. Frankly, I’m becoming afraid!”

  “Oh, of course. I’ll leave now,” Sarah said.

  Mr. Arbogast sprang up excitedly. “No—that is—don’t feel I’m throwing you out. Don’t think that of me, please. It’s just that—well—your little boy isn’t here. And you’d best be hunting him elsewhere…. But I’ll help you. Oh, I will!”

  Contempt overspread Most’s face noticeably, and it was in his tone, undisguised, as he said, “I’m sorry I got you into this, Mr. Arbogast.”

  Mr. Arbogast reacted with surprising anger. He wheeled, scowling. “Captain, may I ask just why you are being so helpful?”

  “Why,” said Most coldly, “I am one of your employees, and naturally interested in your welfare. So when Mrs. Lineyack came to me with this misunderstanding about speaking to you over the telephone, I felt it my duty to function.”

  “Your job is to sail a boat, Captain.”

  “Isn’t it proper that I look out for your welfare, sir?” Most asked, and sarcasm wore a thin veil.