Lady Afraid

by Lester Dent

  “Good grief! I never in a thousand years—”

  But Alice Mildred seemed to feel it was logical for Mr. Arbogast to be sneakingly dishonest.

  “Why so surprised, Sarah? With all those rascals who got into government bureaus during the war confusion, what’s unusual about one more thief? The people didn’t elect them, you know. Oh, Mr. Arbogast is a crook, all right…. Here’s the story, Sarah. Nearly two years ago, when Ivan refinanced his business with an RFC loan, he had to pay Mr. Arbogast a bribe. A good-sized one—fifty thousand dollars. I knew about it at the time, of course. Ivan, when he’s having trouble, likes to rave to me about it. So I knew.”

  “Oh lord!” Sarah exclaimed, clapping a hand to her forehead. “Mr. Arbogast—I’m so surprised. That fat little man, with his dependent ways. Like—like a leech!” This last, bursting out, was a stroke of pure enlightened understanding.

  “Wait until you hear the rest, Sarah,” Alice Mildred said with grim relish. “Recently—Ivan had a chance to sell his truck interests to Mr. Driscoll. But before he could deal, Ivan had to get the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to release their mortgage on that part of the business. Mr. Arbogast, under the RFC setup, has to okay such a release. Mr. Arbogast demanded another fifty thousand dollars for doing so.”

  Sarah, staring at the old lady, suddenly grew chilled.

  “And that,” continued Alice Mildred, “was where I stepped in. I told them all flatly Ivan was going to be honest. I was going to tell Washington about Mr. Arbogast’s crookedness.”

  “You didn’t! You—Oh, now I suddenly see who—”

  Alice Mildred nodded angrily. “And I will, too. I’ll tell Washington. Just as soon as Dr. Danneberg says I can travel, I’m going to Senator Garling—I know the senator fairly well—and make sure that Mr. Arbogast’s chicanery becomes known.”

  Sarah demanded sickly, “Did Mr. Arbogast know you intended to do that?”

  “Certainly. If he didn’t, he’s a fool. I told him. I told Ivan, as well.” Alice Mildred smiled a fierce grimace. “Ivan was upset. He was—he raised hell. But I was adamant.”

  “Oh lord! Then Mr. Arbogast is the one who hired Brill, and he—he killed Brill too!” Sarah said with appropriate horror.

  “Of course he did,” said the old lady. “I’ve decided he’s the one. I suspected him, so tonight I went to ask Mr. Driscoll if the deal for the trucks was pending. He told your Captain Most that it was. So then I knew that Mr. Arbogast was keeping the deal warm and was trying to drive me insane, and Ivan would have to put me in a sanitarium, and nobody would pay attention to the ravings of a demented old lady. And the deal could go through and Mr. Arbogast would get his squeeze money.”

  This was devastating. Sarah was shaken. She moved her hands about vaguely, unable to find what to do with them—she had the same trouble with her thoughts.

  Finally she gasped, “Gracious, Mother Lineyack! Did Dr. Danneberg have any notion what he’d stirred up by practicing mental therapy on you? I’ll bet it would have floored him.”

  “Oh no. I didn’t tell Doctor,” the old lady said slyly. “I told no one but Ivan and Mr. Arbogast.”

  Now Sarah had a fantastically horrible thought: What if Mr. Arbogast, the murderer, came there?…

  And Mr. Arbogast did come. Mr. Arbogast came right then. It was ghastly timing, something that just couldn’t happen. Feet landed on the cabin top. Thump! Softly—because Mr. Arbogast was a soft little beast.

  Sarah’s head wrenched back; her eyes grew terribly large, lips torn widely apart, so that the breath that entered and left her lungs was a coolness on her teeth. Lida Dunlap and her two henchmen had fled because they were afraid the murderer would come there. Sarah began to withdraw from the stateroom door, moving each foot to the rear with quite a conscious effort. Moving, in a rigidly suspended way, toward she didn’t know what.

  In a moment chubby little Mr. Arbogast was peering into the cabin.

  “Why! Who—” exclaimed Mr. Arbogast. “Why!… My goodness!”

  Sarah stood poised. The fingertips of her left hand were against her throat low and in front. It was a weird time to remember an unconnected fact, but she had heard somewhere that it is next to impossible to take your own pulse with your left hand. Yet she could feel her own pulse throbbing in her neck.

  Mr. Arbogast’s soft face had the oddest look. The surprise that was on it was like a sickness. Surprise is usually an upflying of eyebrows, a hole with the mouth, a quick start, and then perhaps some posturing. But this was an illness.

  “You—Sarah!” said Mr. Arbogast. “Sarah, I didn’t expect—What on earth are you doing here? What in heaven’s name!”

  “I—I’m surprised too,” Sarah managed to say.

  “Great Scott! Sarah!” cried Mr. Arbogast. “Have you found your son?”

  Sarah couldn’t free her tension. But she got enough of the knots out to begin moving her hands. She withdrew her left hand from her throat. She said, “Yes…. Yes, we found Jonnie.”

  The most ill-looking part of Mr. Arbogast’s face was the little full-lipped mouth that was made for sucking.

  “How wonderful,” he said—a word that was a ghastly travesty on the way he looked.

  “Yes—it was—a great relief.”

  “Is your son unharmed?”

  She nodded. “He’s sleeping.”

  “I—well—Thank God!” said Mr. Arbogast hollowly. And then he all but screamed, “We? You say we! Who is with you? Is that man, Captain Most—”

  From where he stood in the companionway, Mr. Arbogast’s view did not include the stateroom. He had not yet seen the boy, nor had he noticed Alice Mildred.

  “Alice Mildred came with me,” Sarah said weakly.

  “What! The old—”

  “Alice Mildred Lineyack, yes. She could not sleep, and she left Ivan’s house. She was seeking my little boy. I met her, and we searched together, until we found him.”

  Mr. Arbogast placed the palm of a hand against his forehead. He held it there tightly. “I knew Mrs. Lineyack had disappeared from the house, of course,” he muttered. “Ivan told me. He is very worried. Frantic!”

  “You have been to the Lineyack home?”

  Mr. Arbogast spoke glibly. “Oh yes! And a very upset household it is! You see, I also was unable to sleep after you and Captain Most came to see me. I was—frankly, the things you and Most had to say unnerved me greatly. I was in a dilemma. I did not know whether to tell the police about you. And finally I thought of coming to ask Ivan Lineyack what he would prefer that I do.”

  Mr. Arbogast seemed to have his eyes closed behind the hand clamped to his forehead. “Confusion!” he moaned. “So much turmoil! I didn’t do what I planned to do. I didn’t even mention the matter to Ivan. You see, he was so worried about Alice Mildred being gone.” He jerked the hand away. “Oh—such terrible things tonight—Ivan is like a crazy man.”

  “Yes, I see,” Sarah said tensely, and waited for the soft little RFC lawyer to tell his lie—to explain how he had happened to find this boat.

  Mr. Arbogast gave his version with an honest look that sickened her. Eyes widely open now, so widely open that the tobacco tint that overgood living had put in the whites was plainly visible, Mr. Arbogast exclaimed, “Egad! You must be wondering how I found you.”

  “Yes. Yes, I was,” Sarah said hollowly.

  “Why,” said Mr. Arbogast, “it was so simple. It was one of those accidents. You see, I wanted to help out if I could—Ivan was so worried—and so I got in my car and just drove around, looking for Alice Mildred. And I chanced to drive past here and noticed that blue convertible roadster standing parked. Suddenly it dawned on me that it was Louis Driscoll’s car—Louis Driscoll, the truck-line magnate. It is a very distinctive car…”

  Now Mr. Arbogast had had a ghostly accident with his composure. He lost his voice. The words simply stuck in his throat. The silence that this left in the boat was startling; it was not even broken, for nearly a minute, by any
breathing. In the stateroom it was so utterly quiet. The little boy’s sleep was so noiseless that Sarah thought, with sudden horror: Maybe they drugged him! But probably two-and-a-half-year-old boys slept like that, like puppies in a boiler factory.

  “Dug-dug—distinctive car!” Arbogast blurted. His voice had come back. “I—forgot to tell you—Louis Driscoll was at the Lineyack home, and he was upset too. He told me he’d seen you and Most and Alice Mildred. You’d visited him too.” Mr. Arbogast was as pale as a corpse and sweating profusely. His hands began to describe vague movements in front of him, as though they were untangling yarn. “So you see, I knew you were using Driscoll’s car, and when I saw the car I knew I’d better investigate.”

  He peered at her now. How he must be wondering if I believe him, Sarah thought.

  “Sarah—how did you find the child?”

  “A man brought us.” Sarah had answers ready.

  “A man—”

  “A very scared man,” Sarah added. “There were two others here—a man and a woman. They were afraid also. And they went away. They left us here.”

  His tobacco-tinted eyes protruded. “And that—is that all—”

  If I am ever to tell a good lie, let me tell it now, Sarah prayed.

  “That is all,” Sarah said. “They left. They were as terrified as people can become. They fled.”

  Mr. Arbogast sagged. He emptied his lungs of air and refilled them. Whipping a large handkerchief from his pocket, he scoured his face with it. But his face was quite dry; there had been no perspiration on it. He looked ill and feverish, Sarah thought. He was the picture of a tubby little man whose whole attitude toward life was digestive.

  In the west the morning thunderstorm let loose a crash. It was near now, poised overhead. The interior of the boat grew rapidly darker. Sarah could see it, but she knew there would be a roll cloud overhead, the line squall. Soon it would be on them. Already she could hear its hard breathing in the west, over the city, and the breathing was that of a giant.

  Chapter Twenty

  “SARAH,” SAID MR. ARBOGAST, “you must go and phone the police.”

  “Yes, please do that,” Sarah said quickly.

  “I mean,” explained Mr. Arbogast, “that you must go.”

  “No. You go,” Sarah said.

  Mr. Arbogast’s canine eyes examined her strangely. She had been trying to think what it was that often had eyes like Mr. Arbogast’s eyes, and now it came to her that it was something in the animal kingdom; perhaps large curs frequently had such eyes.

  “There are homes near,” said Mr. Arbogast. “There will be someone awake—it’s past daylight. You can ask someone to use the telephone. I’ll stay here…. A man’s protection—the boy needs a man’s protection.”

  “No. Oh no!”

  There was a sound from the stateroom. Alice Mildred had swung herself off the berth where she had been lying. Now the old lady stood in the stateroom door. Both gnarled hands gripped her robe tightly, over her heart. Sarah looked at the ancient face and saw on it a glassy resolution, composed, determined.

  “Sarah,” said Alice Mildred. “Sarah—you must go telephone. You must take Jonnie with you.”

  “No.”

  “Sarah! Do as I say!”

  Sarah’s terror, and it was no small terror, seemed to have its back against a wall, unable to go farther. She said, “No…. No, I can’t leave you alone with him.”

  The old lady accepted this and bent her head. “Then you know that he will kill me if he is alone with me.”

  Mr. Arbogast jumped. His full-blown small lips suddenly grew shiny with moisture. “What?” He struggled with words. “She’s crazy!” he said thickly. “Insane. Mad. She—I don’t understand what she can mean!”

  As if she had not heard him, Alice Mildred said, “I don’t think he would have let you go, Sarah. I think he knew we suspected him. But he might have let you leave, you and the boy. You should have tried…. He has to dispose of us now—perhaps in the same way he did for the man Brill.”

  A stillness seemed to fix itself in Sarah, a suspension, a halt called to all normal functions, not only of the capacity for suspense to grow worse, but even of breathing.

  “You see,” Alice Mildred added heavily, “he understands now that you know he is a crook. He already knew that I was aware of it. But now he also realizes that you know.”

  Mr. Arbogast’s soft arms were hanging straight down before him. He did not look at Sarah, but when he spoke he evidently addressed her. “The old woman is crazy,” he said.

  And now Sarah almost got the feeling that he might be right. Alice Mildred, speaking in a flat dull voice, began saying things that seemed childishly repetitive. Alice Mildred stood there telling Mr. Arbogast that he was a crook and mumbling the details, the endless details, of the man’s chicanery. Repeating, it amounted to, the things she had just told Sarah. But we know this, Sarah thought tensely. We know Mr. Arbogast is the one. And this is going to drive him to another murder. The man can’t stand there and listen to it and keep his own composure.

  Alice Mildred stared at Mr. Arbogast in a not-too-rational way all the time she spoke. She said, “Mr. Arbogast, you have a key position—no one can get an RFC loan in the Miami RFC Loan Agency District if you do not wish. Your position is that of agency attorney, and you can recommend or advise on whether or not the manager should permit a partial release of security. Your veto power has, I suppose, been very profitable. You have become a wealthy man, haven’t you?… You, of course, are not supposed to accept bonuses, fees, or commissions for the purpose of, or in connection with, obtaining loans. It is strictly prohibited. Isn’t that right, Mr. Arbogast?” Alice Mildred’s eyes were strained wide open, and she paused long enough to get a deep breath, then continued—even more irrationally. “Mr. Arbogast, I quote you from Circular No. 13, Section 5D, of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation Act, as amended: ‘… All such loans shall be, in the opinion of the board of directors, of such sound value, or so secured, as reasonably to assure retirement or repayment….’ That is what the law says, isn’t it, Mr. Arbogast? That’s the lever you used to become wealthy, isn’t it?”

  Mr. Arbogast stood there blankly. He probably thought, Sarah decided, that Alice Mildred was really unbalanced. But whatever the fat man thought, it did not show on his face. Sarah, not trusting herself to speak—she knew any sound she might make would probably be grotesque—was silent. Actually she hardly dared breathe, because she had a feeling that Mr. Arbogast was in a kind of poised trance and that almost anything might snap it, and then he would surely try to kill them.

  Alice Mildred’s fantastic monologue continued. She was trembling now and—if she was rational—surely talking against her fear of Mr. Arbogast. She said: “Ivan is money-mad, Mr. Arbogast. Ivan wished to sell the truck-line part of his business to Louis Driscoll. It would be very profitable. But the RFC already had a mortgage on everything, and so Ivan could not make this great profit until he got the RFC to agree to release its mortgage on that part of Ivan’s holdings. To permit this, you wanted money, Mr. Arbogast. Much money. Fifty thousand dollars.”

  The line-squall part of the thunderstorm suddenly hit. It laid on hard, making the halliards whack against the masts, then causing the lines to stand in bowed rigidity while the wind played its wailing upon them. There was no rain yet, but the rain was an oncoming threshing roar out on the bay.

  Great peaceful tears were filling Mr. Arbogast’s eyes, like oil in cups.

  The tears mean nothing, Sarah thought. Presently, sometime sooner or later, he will kill us.

  “Ivan,” the old lady said bitterly, “is a purposeful, hard-fisted man. Nothing stands in Ivan’s way. But I told him I was going to Washington with your rascality, Mr. Arbogast. And I mean it. I shall. Perhaps Ivan has not realized I mean it. But you realized, Mr. Arbogast. That is why you arranged to take our little boy. You felt it would destroy the rational part of my mind. Dr. Danneberg had said a shock would do this. Dr.
Danneberg is a nice man, and he did not know what use you would make of this information, Mr. Arbogast.”

  It was raining in on Mr. Arbogast now, but he seemed unaware that his hair and the back of his neck, his shoulders, were getting wet.

  Mr. Arbogast took a step forward. But, oddly, this was not suspenseful; there was no air of culminating menace. Mr. Arbogast was no suspended sword. Mr. Arbogast looked no more than what he was: a fat, greedy, luxury-craving little stomach, a digestive system, skidding horribly down a road of no returning. He didn’t look sinister because he couldn’t. He was only scared; he wanted to keep his freedom, his life, and his sweet comforts.

  Mr. Arbogast, Sarah could imagine now, must have looked much the same to Attorney Brill at Brill’s dying.

  She understood, of course, when Mr. Arbogast had killed Brill. It hadn’t been the police who telephoned Mr. Arbogast to come downstairs when Sarah and Captain Most were present in the RFC attorney’s apartment. It had been Brill. Brill, with the bee in hand, the bee he no doubt put on Mr. Arbogast at once. Sarah could picture Mr. Arbogast hearing that Brill and his confederates had the boy and wished money. Much money, probably. The alternative: They would destroy the whole plan to take Alice Mildred’s sanity from her. In short, destroy Mr. Arbogast. Shatter his life. Fling to pieces the nest he had made for himself.

  Sarah shuddered. Mr. Arbogast would indeed have looked then as he looked now. Soft, dependent, very sick with a world that dared menace his comfort. Mr. Arbogast’s one genius, Sarah supposed, was for making himself comfortable. He would be a man who approached his own needs devoutly, voraciously, with frenzy if need be. In frenzy, he had killed Brill. Then, with Lawyer Brill’s knife blade in Lawyer Brill’s brain, the body had been chucked into the back of Captain Most’s station wagon. Placing the monkey, Mr. Arbogast had doubtless hoped, irremovably upon Most’s back…. Remembering Mr. Arbogast’s agitation when he returned from what he had claimed was an interview with the police, Sarah reasonably knew that this was when Brill had died. And she and Captain Most had ridden in Lawyer Brill’s hearse thereafter.