The Crooked Lane

by Frances Noyes Hart

  “Soap? But why on earth—”

  “I can assure you,” said the young man grimly, “that there are moments when in spite of the aid of rubber gloves and discretion, a cake of soap and a towel are imperative necessities. And sometimes the murderer has forgotten to provide them.”

  “Twenty.… What’s twenty-one?”

  “A pair of scissors. Four test tubes to contain samples of fluid. A flask of brandy. A package of cigarettes. Matches. The last three items, which you may imagine as more appropriate to a picnic basket, are, I assure you, more cherished than our revolvers. Every good detective is, naturally, equipped with a nerve of steel, a will of iron, and heart of gold—but I have known times when four swallows of brandy and three puffs of a cigarette have kept nausea and hysteria more successfully at bay than the memory of Sherlock Holmes’s excellent morale.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I can see that, too. Herr Gross and Master Thorndyke strike me as a highly resourceful pair, and I’m sure that you’re a great credit to them.… Does that empty our bag?”

  “As bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.”

  “And all that you need to get your man is locked up in a few inches of black leather that you can carry in your hand?”

  “Oh, but on the contrary! All that I need to get my man is locked up in even fewer inches here.” He struck his knuckles lightly against his forehead, with a smile that was neither gay nor reassuring. “The black bag is simply an extremely primitive instrument for gathering together a few poor broken little straws that will show in what way a very small wind is blowing. Straws that may tell us what that man did for his pleasure—what were his habits—what his occupation. If we are lucky we may get a fairly good portrait of that man, then all we have left to do is to find the original of the portrait.”

  “You mean cigarette ashes, and buttons, and little scraps of cloth under fingernails?”

  This time his laugh was gay enough to please the most exacting.

  “Tess, you are most wonderful! No, I am no disciple of what that good Scotland Yard calls the dominant clue. The dominant clue for me is the motive—and then again the motive—and then, after that, the motive. Let these clues tell me what manner of man this was, and I can tell you perhaps why he did it. If I can tell you why he did it, then even more possibly I can tell you who he is. Or she, if it comes to that.”

  “Yes,” said Tess thoughtfully, “I can see that it might come to that, of course. Then the little black bag isn’t really important at all?”

  “Oh, it is important enough!” he said indifferently. “But now I will make a bargain with you. The next time that you come across a really good murder, I will agree to leave the little black bag at home and still find you the murderer—if you let me have just one party.”

  “A party? What kind of a party?”

  “A party where there will be plenty of little cold cocktails and plenty of big cold whiskies and sodas. Plenty of cigarettes and frocks with frills on them and torch songs and moonlight. A good party, with all the very dearest friends of the late lamented corpse present and accounted for.”

  “Now I know that I’m stupid,” she murmured tranquilly. “You mean that one’s nearest and dearest are addicted to murder?”

  “Not quite. Though murder undoubtedly implies a certain degree of—intimacy. No, what I mean is that if the party starts early enough and lasts late enough, and there is a moon sufficiently bright and torch songs sufficiently low, I will only have to sit quite quiet, with a glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other, while they tell me who the murderer is. I do not say that they will know that they are telling me, but assuredly, assuredly, before the cock crows, I will know his name. I will admit that I have never been asked to such a party.… What is it that smells so sweet, Charity de Tessaincourt Stuart?”

  “Honeysuckle—here, right under my hand. Doesn’t it grow in Austria?”

  “I don’t know. I know it never had so magical a smell—but perhaps that was because it never flowered beneath your hand. Will you dance with me now?”

  She brought her eyes back from the stars, smiling a little and shaking the honey-colored head.

  “You don’t mind? Shall I tell you what I’d really like to do?”

  “Tell me.”

  “I’d like to have you take me home. It’s after twelve, isn’t it?”

  “Close to one.”

  His voice was pleasantly courteous and detached as ever, but from his eyes a small boy stared at her, reproachful and rebuffed, and she smiled back.

  “Then Fay’s probably still up—she’s the most dreadful little night owl—and if she hasn’t hung out the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign, we’ll raid the night nursery for some cold chicken and drinks, and all settle down to a really serious discussion of roller skates and snowballs.”

  The little boy looking out from the dark eyes cried elatedly, “The night nursery? The ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign? Now, Tess, what in heaven’s name is that?”

  “It’s a perfectly beautiful little red-and-black sign that Fay stole from a hotel in Bangor. And if either of us has a visitor that she feels would benefit from uninterrupted privacy, she hangs it on the outside doorknob of the night nursery. That’s our fourth-floor sitting room; we have an apartment all to ourselves made over from the ones that used to belong to us when we were babies. Fay’s bedroom is the day nursery, mine is the governess’s room, and the night nursery is the sitting room in between. We have our own kitchenette, and we couldn’t possibly feel more magnificently independent! Dad had it remodeled last year because we both gave up smoking and drinking for six months.”

  “Most exemplary of babies!” he murmured. “And most fortunate of nurseries.… Do you frequently avail yourself of the monopoly established by the black-and-red sign?”

  “I try not to abuse it, thank you,” she informed him sedately; and then laughed suddenly, the surprised and enchanted laughter that had been the War Baby’s heritage. “Oh, darling, don’t look so solemn! If Fay hasn’t staked out a claim on it, I’ll hang it out tonight for our own especial benefit. Now will you come?”

  Darling. Of course, she called everyone darling. It didn’t mean anything, then. No, then it meant everything. Darling.… He could still hear the deep, gay young voice murmuring it when she kissed Cara Temple good-night; it rang in his ears above the boom of the carriage caller, chanting his pompous “Miss Stuart’s car. Miss Stuart’s ca-ar-r!”; he could hear it, caressing and mocking, while she sat wrapped in snow and silence in the far corner of the car, fingers linked about the little flowering bag from which rose so heady and innocent a fragrance. Darling—darling—clear and soft and amused above the click of the latchkey in the lock; above the tap of the silver heels across the black and white marble blocks of the cool, empty hall; above the reassuring purr of the tiny crystal elevator as it carried them up to the nurseries where once upon a time the golden Stuart babies had dreamed in swiss hung cribs. Darling.…

  The landing of the fourth floor was dark, but under the central door of the three that faced them a golden pencil had drawn a line of light.

  “There, she’s still up—what did I tell you?”

  She turned on the light switch triumphantly and was halfway to the door before she stopped, lifting a warning hand.

  “Oh, devil take that child—the sign’s out! Of all the inhospitable little demons I … I’m so frightfully sorry, K. No one knows how greedy I was feeling about chicken bones and apple sauce and roller skates.” She held out her hands to him with a rueful smile, all friendliness and charm. “Never mind; come tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll dangle the wretched little sign from the doorknob for hours on end.”

  He released her hands, slowly.

  “You were not, I think, one half so greedy as I.… Will you say it once again?”

  “Say what?”

  She paused, one hand on the handle of the door to the left, the friendly laughter still lighting her eyes, and he thought that he had never seen a coronete
d head—no, nor yet a crowned one—held so proudly and so lightly as this small shining one that belonged to a senator’s tall young daughter.

  “Say ‘Don’t look so solemn, darling.’ I feel, I assure you, very solemn indeed.”

  This time the smile broke into laughter, hushed instantly to wide-eyed and decorous silence.

  “K, are you flirting with me? Are you? How perfectly beautiful!” She lifted the finger with the ruby to her lips, in a gesture so swift that he could not be sure whether it were a signal for silence or a blown kiss, whispered “Don’t look so solemn, darling!”—and was gone.

  On the doorstep, he stood gazing vaguely up and down the silent street, wondering how in the world you went about getting a taxi at this hour of the night—and abandoning the idea with a contented shrug. It was far too pretty a night to waste on taxis, and a good brisk stroll was clearly indicated. It proved to be an agreeable but dangerous pastime; during the twenty minutes that he occupied in traversing the mile between the hotel and the Stuart mansion, he received the fervid and highly articulate assurance of at least one public cab driver and two private citizens that he had thrice escaped death by an entirely undeserved hair’s breadth, and it was idle to pretend that he had not tried his key in three doors before he realized that he was on the wrong floor of the hotel.

  This, however, was undoubtedly his room. There in the corner stood the highly professional-looking table with the new chemical microscope that was his special pride, polarizer and compensator neatly adjusted, and that new crystal solution invitingly at hand. He leaned forward, pulling the slide towards him.

  It was a good three quarters of an hour later that he halted by the dressing table, peeling the cuff links abstractedly from his shirt and balancing them in his hand with as much gravity as though they were dangling on the scales of justice itself. There were ways of saying “Darling,” surely. Ways in which it meant nothing at all—ways in which it meant everything. “Hurry back—I’ll miss you so, darling.” … Well, that was the kind of thing anyone might say to a pet uncle—or a favorite feminine bridge player as she boarded the Île de France—or to someone that needed such indulgent kindness because of the disagreeable task that lay ahead.

  “Don’t look so solemn, darling!” Now that was different, distinctly. “Darling, don’t look so—” The extremely solemn-looking young man glanced up swiftly from the diamond-and-platinum disks in his hand, caught the owlish absorption of the mirrored countenance, and yielded to an abrupt and astounded bark of diversion. Was it humanly possible that this—this callow, moon-eyed dreamer, standing there in a trance of Schwärmerei and maunderings of the most revolting description, was actually and indisputably the not undistinguished Mr. Sheridan, shrewd analyst, relentless scientist, diverted cosmopolite? And reduced to this amazing state of disintegration by what? By a pair of eyes, clear and cool as rain water? By a deep and distant sound of laughter? By a white finger lifted to gay and reckless lips? By a small, proud head, shining too palely for amber, too deeply for honey? Oh, come, come, my good Karl! He flung a sardonic smile at the dark young face in the mirror, tossed the links onto the table, and turning on his heel, moved towards the window with elaborate leisureliness. Why in the name of the gods of wind and air did some anonymous and diligent hotel demon spend his entire time creeping about closing windows that had been left carefully opened? The room was hot and stuffy as a badly aired bandbox, and yet just outside that dark noncommittal square of glass there were stars shining, and a little breeze still murmuring to itself of the green leaves in the park, and—He halted, riveted, one hand on the sash, his incredulous eyes staring back at him from the glass that the night beyond had turned into a dim mirror.… The telephone.… Just behind him the telephone was ringing, strident, urgent, and imperious, as though its energy would shake its small frame apart.

  He went towards it slowly, the incredulity still darkening his eyes.

  A voice, small, strange, and very far away, said:

  “Mr. Sheridan?”

  “Yes. This is Mr. Sheridan.”

  The voice spoke again, barely above a whisper:

  “It’s Tess, K. It’s Tess Stuart. Could you come to the house?”

  He asked blankly, his eyes on the blandly impersonal face of the clock above the door, pointing its neat black fingers at twenty-five past two:

  “To the house? But when, Tess?”

  “Now. Quickly, please. Don’t ring. I’ll leave the door on the latch.”

  For a moment he stood perfectly still, feeling a small, cold wind rising about him; feeling a small, cold hand closing about his wrist, fragile and relentless, pulling him towards something distant and dark. With a violent effort he shook it off, bending his head to the black disk with a laugh that sounded strange even, to himself.

  “But naturally, I will be delighted! Ten minutes should get me there in a taxi, should it not? I gather that the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign is down, and that I am once more to meet the small Fay, and share that famous cold chicken? Oh, excellent!”

  The far-away voice said, suddenly and appallingly distinct:

  “No. No. The sign is still there. Dismiss the taxi a block or so before you get here and use the stairs instead of the elevator, please. I’ll be waiting outside the night nursery.”

  The night nursery? He could feel the invisible fingers, icy and clinging, tightening about his heart.

  “Very well. In ten minutes, then. I will use the stairs.”

  There was a second’s clicking and whirring on the line from the vast and indignant deity that presides over the crowded highways of the air; then once more the voice reached him:

  “Thank you. Hurry, please.… And will you bring the black bag?”

  Steadying himself with one hand against the table, he said in a tone void of any expression whatever:

  “Forgive me, but there was a disturbance on the wire: I am not quite sure that I understood. You said that you wanted the black bag?”

  “Yes. I said hurry—hurry, please.” The voice wavered, failed, rallied to a terrible clearness. “I said—I said to be sure to bring the black bag.”

  II

  Party for a Friend

  She was waiting for him just outside the door of the night nursery, one hand on either side of its dark frame, as though it were a fortress held against assault—but for all that she stood straight and tall as a silver arrow she seemed to him suddenly piteously young and defenseless. Perhaps it was the heavy white satin dressing gown, cut as simply and severely as a little boy’s; perhaps it was the eyes, pupils widened until they looked dark and lonely in the small white face; perhaps it was the hair, loosed now from its wonted shining order into feathery lightness. He took a step towards her and saw that it was none of these. The lipstick with its defiant challenge of lacquer-red sophistication was gone, and he saw for the first time the pure loveliness of her mouth, heartbreakingly young. She dropped one hand to the handle of the door as he came towards her, but otherwise she did not move—only stood staring at him with those lost eyes. After a long moment she said in a voice colorless as her face:

  “It’s Fay. She’s in there.… She’s dead.”

  He was at her side in a second, swift as compassion itself.

  “Oh, my dear! How horrible—how horrible for you. She was ill, then, as you feared?”

  “No, not ill; that is, not really ill.” Her eyes strayed from his for a moment, as though they were seeking something that was not there, that was far away. “There’s a note on the little table beside the sofa that says that she’s through—that she did it because I wasn’t here.… Don’t you think that was a rather dreadful thing to say?”

  “Very dreadful, and not true, not true, believe me.”

  “It might have been true,” said Tess Stuart, and she lifted one hand to her head, pushing back the cloud of honey-colored hair as though the weight of it were unbearable. “We’d had a quarrel, you see, before she went to Warrenton; rather a bad quarrel. And then yesterd
ay evening she called up to say that she was coming back, and she wanted me to get her an invitation for the dance tonight. And I wouldn’t.”

  “Why would you not, my poor little Tess?”

  “Because I thought she was drunk,” said the girl, her lovely voice shaping the ugly word with a dreadful distinctness. “Because I knew that she would be by the time that she got there. She always is, lately. When she isn’t worse.”

  “Worse?”

  She turned away from him that frozen and piteous mask, but not before he saw it contract fiercely.

  “Never mind. What does it matter now? Never mind.… Anyway, she said if I didn’t get an invitation for her she’d come without one. And I said if she did that, I’d cable Dad that he’d have to come back—that I simply couldn’t keep it up alone any longer.… She’s afraid of Dad.… I could hear her crying at the other end of the wire, and after a minute she said all right, that she’d come home anyway; she was sick of her party, and Kippy Todd had said he’d drive her up right after dinner. She was crying dreadfully, but I was sick of her parties, too, and I hung up.… I wish that I hadn’t hung up.”

  “Tess, you must listen to me; you must believe me. It was not because you hung up the telephone that this thing happened here tonight. Never, never so long as you live believe that. It is not for such reasons that people kill themselves. Look at me—you believe that I am telling you the truth?”

  She said, something strange in those clear, lonely eyes:

  “Oh, yes, I believe you, K.… You don’t know why, but I believe you.”

  She lifted her hand slowly from the door, and he saw, swinging careless and impudent, the gaudy little black-and-scarlet sign with its imperious legend, “Do Not Disturb.” Do not disturb.… His eyes darkened intently. Someone, obviously, had disobeyed that order.

  “Tess, how did you find out what had happened to Fay?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I don’t sleep very well, ever—not even when things are quite quiet and peaceful, and today things haven’t been what you’d call exactly peaceful or quiet.… And I’d left my book in the sitting room.… After I’d undressed and got into bed I lay there with my light out for almost an hour; I could still see the strip of light from the sitting room shining under my door, but there wasn’t a sound—not the smallest laugh or stir or whisper. That wasn’t natural; you can hear quite clearly if anyone moves or speaks in there—not what they say, but the voice, even if it’s only a whisper. I thought that maybe she’d gone off to bed without remembering to turn out the lights and take the sign down—or maybe that she’d just gone to sleep where she was.… She does sometimes when—when she’s had too much to drink. And suddenly I began to get really restless, and I did so want the book. There wasn’t a thing to read in my room—doesn’t it give you an awfully empty feeling when there isn’t anything to read? And then there was the telephone, too; it’s in there, and if she’d really taken it off the hook—and she does, any time she thinks it’s going to bother her—no one could possibly reach us, and Dion had promised that he’d telephone or telegraph when he got to New York.”