“That’s all.”
“Well. Thank you. And don’t worry about that silly message, Vivian dear. There’s surely nothing to be frightened of. Just don’t mention it to anyone, that’s all. It sounds so silly. Good night, dear.”
“Good night, Pen.”
Vivian stared at the board for almost a minute before she jerked out the plug. She hesitated, too, before dropping the pink slips into the box on top of the switchboard, where they would be picked up for filing. She considered destroying the message about the white-haired boy, but decided against it. For anyone really intent on finding out, it would be easy enough to discover who had taken any given message at a given time over a given number—even if Penelope said nothing. And the lack of pink slips would only pile up complications.
No, there was nothing to do but face the fact that she had been neatly, if inadvertently, placed on the spot. There was nothing to do but wait. There was nobody to turn to in the meantime. Unless—
At 2 a. m. Vivian went off duty, leaving a single operator for the solo trick during the quiet hours. She took a little longer than usual to make sure her hat was adjusted to the proper angle, her nose was powdered to the exact degree of velouté, her fur scarf wound tight beneath her small, pointed chin. She was about to exercise her feminine prerogative and change her mind.
As she left the apartment building, she lowered her head against the fine, cold drizzle that sifted down through the night, and started toward Broadway. The muted roar that was the song of the city had become a whisper in the darkness, and the distant cry of a taxi horn was a live, personal sound directed at her. The quiet of the early-morning hours always affected her like that—the small, distinct sounds seemed to belong to her. That was why her heart began to beat faster when she heard footsteps behind her.
She did not dare look around. She did not even turn her head, and was only vaguely aware, out of the corner of her eye, that a man had come out of a doorway across the street and was walking obliquely across the wet pavement toward her. There was no reason to be alarmed, she told herself. She was used to going home alone at odd hours of the night, and knew how to rid herself of annoying Lotharios. It was just the events of the evening, the strange warning call to Pen, had set her nerves on edge. She was foolish, she knew, but she couldn’t help it. She was frightened.
She hurried her steps. The man was close behind her now. She could hear his firm, heavy tread beating a bass obbligato to the light patter of her hurrying, clicking heels. She thought she could even hear his breath. There was no chance of reaching the lighted safety of Broadway before he caught up with her. He was almost abreast of her now.
She slowed her step to let him pass. He did not pass. He seized her arm. She turned on him fiercely. Then she relapsed into a limp, relieved laughter.
“Barney!” she exclaimed. “You scared me pink.”
II
BREATHLESSLY SHE TURNED toward Barney. He took her other arm and scanned her face by the glow of the street light. “You’re jumpy,” Barney said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Vivian answered. Nothing did seem wrong now that she felt the comfortable grip of his big hands on her arms, and saw the bulk of his powerful, big-boned frame towering above her. Barney’s shoulders were more appropriate to an ex-All-American turned football coach, than to a young professor of biochemistry with degrees from the Sorbonne and Columbia. There was nothing academic about him unless it was his shaggy, honest manner, and the earnestness of his warm, good-natured brown eyes. Vivian was smiling up at him with parted lips, but she knew that her eyes were not smiling and she could tell from his quizzical expression that he saw the troubled shadows there.
“You did startle me,” Vivian explained. “Even at this hour, nobody ever accosts me on the street.”
“Shame on them,” Barney said.
“Besides, I certainly didn’t expect to see you. I thought we said good-by forever this morning.”
“We did. This is something different, Viv.”
“What—what’s happened?”
“It’s your cousin Tony,” Barney said.
Vivian felt her knees go weak. Of course, it would be Tony Grove. He was probably mixed up in the phone call that his sister said was just a joke. He had always been mixed up in something just a little unsavory, even before he was thrown out of college because he couldn’t explain a shortage in the athletic funds. And it was scarcely six months since he had been paroled from Sing Sing for embezzling twenty thousand dollars from the Wall Street brokerage house that once employed him.
“What’s Tony done now?” the girl asked.
“I don’t know. He’s in a jam, but I can’t make out what it is. He came up to my place while I was packing tonight and told an incredible yarn about being framed by parties unknown for some mysterious crime as yet uncommitted. Somebody stole the license plates off his car, he says, and he’s afraid they’ll be used in some crooked job and that the police will come right to him because he’s got a record.”
“But what did he want with you, Barney?”
“He wanted an alibi. He wanted me to be ready to swear that I’d been with him since six this evening, in case he was accused of anything. I wouldn’t, of course. He didn’t come to see me until nearly ten o’clock. I don’t know what he’d been doing between six and ten. He could have committed murder, arson, mayhem, and highway robbery in that time.”
“I hope you threw him out.”
“I did. With great gusto. But he came back, shaking like a case of malaria. Just as he reached the street door a truck went by and backfired twice. At least it sounded like a truck to me. It must have sounded different to Tony, because he ducked back in and tried to get me to let him stay the night. I wish I knew what kind of a mess he’s in now, but he sticks to his story that he doesn’t know.”
“Why bother with him, Barney?”
“Because I’m afraid he’s involved you. Did you ever leave a suitcase at Penelope Dunne’s?”
“Yes,” Vivian replied. “Last time I came back from Academia, Aunt Helena gave me a lot of preserves and things to bring to Pen. I put them all in the same case and I left it with Pen.”
“Did you ask Tony to bring it to you tonight?”
“Not tonight, particularly. I told him to bring it over when he thought of it. But that’s months ago.”
“Tony says he was taking it to you tonight and somebody stole it out of his car at the same time they stole his license plates. He thinks maybe it’s going to be used for a plant of some kind. Could it be traced back to you?”
“I suppose it could. It’s a very lovely piece of airplane luggage. I think it came from Mark Cross. Pen gave it to me last time I went home.”
“Your initials on it?”
“Yes.”
Barney groaned. “I was afraid of that. Come on, then, and we’ll talk to Tony. I’ve got him parked in a chop suey joint down the street.”
They walked in silence until they turned into Broadway. The benches on the subway gratings, where the neighborhood women sat on hot nights like summer resorters waiting for an open-air concert, were forlorn and empty in the rain, but there was light and life on Broadway despite the hour and the weather. The street had a peculiar regional character in the low Hundreds, almost a provincial feeling that had no relation to the Broadway of the Forties. Its color here was variegated, because it was a composite market place for Riverside Drive, and Main Street for the fire-escape and six-children tenements of the low-rent strip eastward to the Park. It was a fringe both of the Columbia campus, and of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine—a fringe incongruously lined with neon signs, stool joints, owl cafeterias, and lighted delicatessen windows stacked with cheeses, sausages, smoked fish, and exotic loaves of bread.
Barney guided the girl into a restaurant which promised according to the enameled letters remaining on the window: CHIN SE ND AM RICAN ISHES. On their way to the rear they passed two Western Union messengers, a group of slee
py male students, two predatory-looking blondes who were not sleepy, a table of Germans noisily discussing Einstein and Johann Strauss.
Tony Grove was sitting far in the rear, with his back against the wall. He did not have the usual Mediterranean pigmentation or fullness of features that went with the name of Tony. On the contrary, there was a Teutonic blondness about him, a blue-eyed handsomeness that might have been wholesome were it not for the sharpness of the nose, the thinness of the lips, and a vague furtiveness in the movements of his hands and shoulders, a restlessness in his pale eyes. He preferred to be called Anthony—which is why Vivian said, “Hello, Tony. Congratulations. Barney says you’re back to normal.”
“Hi, Red.” Tony glared sullenly over a glass of beer that had gone flat. He was a self-consciously well-dressed young man, obviously pleased with the brilliant batik design of his silk scarf, the flashy cut of his topcoat, and the startling shade of gray of the roll-brimmed hat which he did not bother to remove. “Your boy friend’s letting you down,” he continued, as Vivian and Barney took chairs. “Did he tell you?”
“He told me you lost my suitcase.”
“I didn’t lose it. Somebody stole it out of the car. Somebody stole my license plates—”
“So Barney told me. Kids, probably.”
“Why would kids steal my license plates? It’s somebody that knows me, I tell you. Somebody’s trying to make me the fall guy for something I don’t know anything about. Somebody knows the cops will come right to me because I’ve done time.”
“Why don’t you tell us the whole story?” Vivian said.
Tony lit a cigarette and dropped the match into his beer with a gesture of annoyance. “You give me shooting pains, both of you,” he said, “trying to make a liar out of me, just because I made one little mistake, just because the market went down instead of up—”
“Now, Tony,” Barney broke in. “You forget I’ve known you ever since we used to push over outhouses on Hallowe’en. I’ve watched you get away with murder for nearly twenty years before you finally got your mitts caught in the wringer. I’m probably the only person in the world you can’t lie to and hope to get by with it.”
Tony shrugged. “I thought at least you’d want to do something to keep Vivian in the clear,” he said.
“Why all the fuss, Tony?” Vivian asked. “You act as if you’ve been carrying around a dismembered torso in my suitcase. What is in it?”
“Nothing,” Tony growled.
A waiter arrived, and Vivian ordered scrambled eggs with crisp bacon.
“Make it two,” Barney said. He lapsed into silence, but Vivian could see the muscles working along his jaw as he eyed Tony. Ever since they were a couple of runny-nosed kids in a little Midwestern town, Barney had disliked Anthony Grove, yet he had always been bound to him by a peculiar, perverse sympathy. Barney had once told her that he was annoyed at not being able to feel anything for Tony but pity; that all his life he had been itching to take a good healthy swing at Tony, but had never done so because he couldn’t get rid of the feeling that it would be like hitting a cripple.
“When you leaving for Academia, Barney?” Tony asked.
“Tomorrow.”
“The redhead going with you?”
Barney shook his head. There was a half-smile on his lips as he looked at Vivian. “Viv’s got her career to think about,” he said.
Tony leaned tensely across the porcelain table top. “I’ll go with you,” he said. “I haven’t been home in ages. We can drive in my car.”
“No, Tony. No!” The words escaped Vivian like a cry of alarm. Barney looked at her with quick suspicion.
Tony said, “I was talking to the boy friend, Red. He’s old enough to make up his own mind.”
“You can’t drive him, Tony.” Vivian was doing her anxious best to sound reasonable. “You haven’t any license plates.”
“I can go down to Worth Street in the morning and report the plates are gone. They’ll give me an emergency permit or something.”
Vivian turned pleading eyes on Barney. He had fished a crooked pipe from his pocket and was packing it with his thumb. He carefully swept the crumbs of tobacco from the table before he said, “Give me the keys to your car, Tony.”
Tony Grove reached for his pocket, then changed his mind and planted his elbows on the table. He leaned forward. “What’s the idea?” he demanded.
“I wouldn’t trust you with a lead nickel, Tony,” Barney said, “but I’ll vouch for your car, if that’s all that’s bothering you. I’ll drive it home and leave it standing in front of my place all night where I can see it from the window. If there are no dead bodies in the back seat by morning, and if you can square yourself with the motor vehicle people, maybe I’ll let you drive West with me.”
Tony ground out his cigarette on the table top. He started to say something, but clamped his lips in a thin, hard line instead. He took a paper napkin from the nickeled rack against the wall, tore it into strips with jerky fingers. At last he clinked down the keys in front of Barney.
“Okay,” he said slowly, staring at the keys. “I guess that’s better than nothing. Will you drop me off on the way?”
“Certainly not. You’ve only a few blocks to walk, and I’m not leaving yet. I’ve got to say good-by again to Vivian. We haven’t said good-by since this morning. You know how it is, Tony.”
“Oh, sure,” said Tony, getting up. “Tomorrow, then?”
“Tomorrow—if I’m not in jail for driving a car last seen at a bank robbery.”
“That’s not very funny,” Tony said.
Vivian turned to watch him go out. She saw him stop suddenly halfway through the revolving doors, square himself, and lean back as the moving pane spanked his rear. Through the window she could see the white top of a police car going by. It was a full minute before Tony resumed his interrupted exit.
Vivian reached across the table and took both of Barney’s hands. “He’s scared to death!” she said. “I wish I knew—Barney, you can’t do it. You can’t let him go with you tomorrow.”
“Why not?” Barney squeezed her fingers. “It might be a good idea to get him out of town.”
“Please don’t. Stay away from him. Don’t get mixed up with Tony. Please.”
“You’re mixed up with him yourself,” Barney said.
“That’s different.” Vivian sat up very straight. Her face muscles were taut. “Barney, do you know what I was thinking about when you came up to me tonight?”
“Sure,” said Barney. “You were thinking that love may be grand, but art is grander.”
“Don’t be nasty. I was thinking what a nuisance it was that you lived on the top floor of a walk-up without a telephone and that I was going to be out of breath by the time I got there.”
“You were coming—” Barney swallowed “—to see me?”
“I’m sorry, Barney. I’ve given you the wrong idea. I haven’t changed my mind. I was just coming to warn you—to ask you, that is—Oh, I know it’s none of my business now, but you did call Penelope tonight, didn’t you?”
“Sure,” Barney said. “I called to say good-by and ask if she had any messages for the folks back home. She wasn’t in.”
“It’s still none of my business, but—have you been making love to Pen?”
“Only in public. It’s usual, isn’t it?”
“I know it wouldn’t mean anything to you, but does Pen think you’re in love with her? Or do any of her friends? Do any of them call you her ‘white-haired boy’?”
“Not that I know of. Say, what is this, anyway? I know you’re not jealous of Pen, so why—”
“It’s nothing, Barney. I was just curious. I think I’d like some hot coffee, if I may.”
Barney signaled the waiter. He said, “So you were going to climb four flights of stairs at two in the morning just to ask if I might be Penelope Dunne’s white-haired boy.”
“That’s right.”
“I’ll bet you knew that Tony was coming to
see me.”
“I didn’t. Honestly.”
“Then you know what Tony is up to.”
“Don’t be silly. Of course I don’t.”
“I wish you could see your face when you say that,” Barney said. “You’re scared, Viv, just as scared as Tony. What of?”
“Something I overheard tonight made me think something dreadful might be going to happen,” Vivian said, taking a cigarette from her bag. “But I’m not afraid now. Not if you promise to keep away from Tony and Pen and her crowd. Give me a light, Barney.”
He struck a match. She inhaled deeply, extinguishing the flame with a cloud of smoke.
Barney said, “I had the right hunch when I came after you tonight. You’re hooked in this thing with Tony, whatever it is. But I’m glad you won’t tell me about it because then I might have to stay and take care of you.”
“Why don’t you, darling? I’ll marry you tomorrow.”
Barney shook his head. “Maybe I should have given you more details this morning,” he said. “But you were so prompt and loud with your no that I got out in a hurry. One kick in the teeth is plenty for me. I got a wire from the dean at Academia College this morning. My father hasn’t been well, and the dean wants me to come out and take over his classes for the rest of the semester. I’ve got to go. I haven’t wired the dean yet, but I will tonight.”
“And I’ve got to stay. Pen’s giving a cocktail party next week for Checkerman, the art editor of Swank. She promised to see that I meet more important people in my field.”
“I know,” Barney said wistfully. “You’ll be swamped with commissions immediately.”
“You never did have any confidence in my drawing.”
“All the confidence in the world, Viv. Your pen-and-ink stuff is full of life and humor, and your wash sketches are as good as anything the magazines are printing. But you may not get a break for years, and I need you now.”
“I thought we decided it was a grand idea for married couples to lead independent lives.”
See You at the Morgue Page 2