The Crooked Lane

by Frances Noyes Hart

  “Miss Stuart? Tess, this is K—K Sheridan.… Would it be possible for me to see you this afternoon sometime? Tonight will not do, I am afraid, because there are some things that it is vitally important for me to know before the Lindsays’ party.… Four would do admirably—yes.… No—no, I am still very greatly in the dark, but I think that you can hold a candle for me if you will answer two—no, three—questions.… On the contrary, it is I who am in your debt—forever, I am afraid.… Till four, then, and thank you.”

  The click that the telephone made as he hung it back was echoed by a lusty peal on the doorbell below, and Sheridan, slamming the door to, catching up hat, gloves, the yellow paper with its names and figures, and the recalcitrant marker and its inhospitable home, took the steps between the second floor and the presumptive taxi at a swinging gallop that landed him well through the front door before the scandalized Timothy was halfway to it.… If things turned out at the airport as he hoped they might, the young man from Vienna was in for a busy day.

  He gave the address of the airport without so much as a glance at the freckle-faced youth who was to guide him there, placed the malachite marker and Mallory’s telegram with its hoarded names and numbers carefully in his wallet, and more carefully still shook the contents of the leather box onto the seat of the taxi. The markers divided neatly into two little piles, one considerably larger than the other; Sheridan bent over them, counting them as slowly, as carefully, as though a man’s life hung on the sum that he reached.… Thirty lapis lazuli; twenty malachite; fifty markers. He checked them again—rechecked—and returned them carefully to the leather case lined with velvet.… Fifty-one backgammon markers, counting the exile in the wallet.… Well, any way that you looked at it, fifty-one was a curious number for a set of counters—and if you looked at it one way—

  Sheridan, apparently, did not care to look at it at all. He slipped the case into his pocket, leaned back in the taxi, and closed his eyes with something approaching determination. For the remaining minutes that lay between him and the bridge to Arlington he looked a good ten years older than the twenty-eight that were his rightful heritage.

  Halfway over the bridge that swung its gracious arches across the Potomac, linking the white columns that soared where Lincoln sat now in triumph, simple and weary for all his majesty, to those other white columns, soaring where once Lee had sat, weary, simple, and majestic in defeat, Sheridan opened his eyes and noted without marked enthusiasm that the Washington that he had returned to was incomparably more beautiful than the one he had left. The noble sweep of trees, the noble curves of spacious roadways … there was a sudden clutter of low buildings somewhat less than noble, a sharp grinding of brakes, and the amiable drawl of the freckle-faced youth at the wheel, assuring him of the somewhat obvious fact that he had reached his destination.

  “Will you wait, perhaps, for five minutes—ten?” Sheridan’s voice was once more eager and persuasive. “Not longer, I am sure, and after that there are several other places that I must go.”

  Accepting the smiling nod of his driver with a flashing smile of his own, he pushed the nearest door open and stepped quickly across the threshold.

  The room was a private office, obviously; it was quite empty, save for some scattered chairs and filing cabinets, and two enormous desks at one of which sat a sandy-haired young man with a face as alert and engaging as a thoroughbred terrier. He glanced up swiftly as the door clicked to behind Sheridan.

  “Anything I can do for you, sir?”

  Karl Sheridan, taking in the room at a glance, advanced, a few steps, doubtfully.

  “Nothing save accept my apologies, I fear! I am looking for some information about planes in and out of Baltimore—but this, apparently, is not the place that I should have come to?”

  The youngster at the desk pushed back the pile of maps that he was consulting and rose helpfully to his feet.

  “Tickets or time-tables? The main office is right through—”

  “No—no, neither tickets nor time-tables. Maps—and a little highly unofficial information.” His eyes rested hopefully on the impressive stack on the desk. “Perhaps I have not come to the wrong place, after all?”

  “Well, if you’re looking for something highly unofficial, you couldn’t have done better if you’d used a divining rod,” remarked the office’s sole occupant with engaging candor. “The boss is out for lunch, and I’m about as official as a drummer boy or a powder monkey. We’re trying out some new stuff—rerouting two of the plane services entirely—so I’m fairly up on maps. What’s the trouble?”

  “A good deal of trouble, that I am afraid that I shall have to ask you to take on faith. You see,” said Sheridan, his dark young face suddenly darker and graver, “it is not mine. All the more reason why I shall be eternally grateful to you if you can help me.”

  “My name’s Trent—Bob Trent,” said the sandy-haired young man. “It begins to look as though I were invented for your particular benefit.… All right—let’s get going. Baltimore, you say?”

  He pulled one of the stray chairs invitingly close to the desk, seated himself in his own, and extracted one of the maps from the pile before him.

  “Some day,” said Karl Sheridan, appropriating both the chair and the map, “I trust that fortune will permit me to show you a very small part of how grateful I am. My name is Sheridan—Karl Sheridan, of the Criminalistic Institute of Vienna, shortly to be attached to the Division of Investigation here. It would be impossible, however, to be more completely detached from either of them than I am in my present capacity. Do I make myself quite clear?”

  “Quite clear enough to gather that I’m to keep my mouth shut,” grinned young Trent amiably. “All right—where do we go from here?”

  “To Baltimore,” replied Sheridan, his finger marking it hopefully on the map. “Trent, how long would it take to reach Baltimore from here by plane?”

  “Depends on the plane. Roughly, anywhere between fifteen and twenty-five minutes. Next?”

  “And is there a regular night service between these two cities?”

  “There is not,” replied Bob Trent promptly. “Neither regular nor irregular. Give me something harder.”

  “With all the pleasure in the world. It is possible, of course, to charter a plane?”

  “Possible, if the depression didn’t hit you too hard. It’s liable to cost you plenty.”

  “Yes, I can quite believe that I Now, then, is there more than one field in Baltimore?”

  “Oh, sure! The regular airport is Logan Field, but there are several smaller ones. They’re marked in circles on the map—see?”

  “Yes. Yes, I see. What I am looking for is one that would be quite near a small place called Torytown, that I have been told is just northwest of Baltimore. Could you be very clever and find me a field like that, Trent?”

  “I wouldn’t have to be in the genius class to help you out on that,” commented his collaborator mildly. “You’ve got your thumb on it. Crawford Field—and there’s Torytown, about a mile and a half away, judging from the scale.… When are we going to start perpetrating all these horrible indiscretions that are going to be our ruin?”

  “That is the way that it looked in my very brightest dream,” murmured Sheridan, gloating luxuriously over the red circle on the map. “Torytown—Crawford Field. Trent, I am very, very sorry that I do not have the Kohinoor diamond. If I had, I should most assuredly present it to you.… Fifteen minutes, you say?”

  “Fifteen minutes in a good fast plane. A Lockheed or a Northrup can make Newark from here with a favoring wind in around an hour. I’m still waiting for the indiscretions.”

  “The first—the last—the only indiscretion that I shall suggest is such a small one that by now I am ashamed of it. Trent, is there any way possible of discovering whether a passenger flying from Baltimore landed here Saturday night between the hours of eleven and twelve—or whether a passenger landed at any field in Baltimore—preferably the admirably situated
Crawford Field—between, say, the hours of twelve and two? And would it be possible to find out what that passenger was wearing and what he looked like?”

  “He, is it?” commented young Trent pensively. “And I was just beginning to get all worked up for a romance. Well, Lord knows I’m not the lad to say that anything’s impossible. But I will say that it’s going to have to be done in rather snatchy bits, as the boss is due back in about ten minutes, and I don’t exactly see myself getting really into my stride while he’s in the room. You might give me a ring around four, if you’re in a tearing hurry to know, and if I’ve collected any valuable information and he isn’t about, I’ll pass it on.”

  “And if he is about?”

  “Well, then, I’ll just say ‘Sorry, sir—what you want is the ticket office’ and give you a ring myself around six. He’s sure to be gone by then. You can write your number on the corner of the calendar here, if that suits you.”

  “That suits me admirably. And, Trent, if it isn’t too much trouble, would you see that that passenger has curly hair, and does not look too ill and exhausted? Good-bye. I’m not forgetting what you are doing for me, believe me.”

  Back in the taxicab, he consulted his watch, settled himself comfortably in the corner, and remarked to the expectant driver:

  “I have been told that Washington is a city remarkable for its beauty. Be so good as to show it to me.”

  “Show it to you?” demanded that amiable youth, startled out of his drawl.

  “Exactly. Show it to me—drive up and down and around it until half-past three o’clock. Do not tell me about it, however; it is my eyes that I desire to use, not my ears.”

  “O.K., General! What goes on at three-thirty?”

  “At three-thirty you will be so kind as to stop at a reputable florist’s, wait ten minutes, and then conduct me to an address on Massachusetts Avenue that I will give you.… You might start by driving me several times around the Capitol, quite slowly.”

  It is to be doubted whether Sheridan properly appreciated the beauties of Washington, though they were conscientiously and thoroughly laid before his eyes, and his eyes were kept conscientiously and unwaveringly on them. He neither stirred nor spoke save once, and that was on his second trip around the cool, green-and-white loveliness of the White House. At that stage he shifted the little leather box from his right-hand pocket to his left-hand pocket, and remarked under his breath in a voice so bitter and despairing that it was just as well that his obliging guide did not hear him:

  “None so blind as those that won’t see …”

  Quite possibly he was speaking of the fountain, performing its exquisite and eternal pantomime of tossing showers of diamonds against a background of emeralds before an audience that did not even know that it was there. And quite possibly he wasn’t.

  At three-thirty exactly he emerged from the taxicab and entered the somewhat rococo portals of the Ann Hathaway Flower Shoppe. He looked singularly unrefreshed, but at the first glimpse of the minute creature perched on a tall stool behind the counter his countenance relaxed.

  “I would like,” he said in a voice too low for the energetic young man at the other end of the counter to catch it, “a few flowers for a lady. Some rather unusual flowers for a rather unusual lady. What would you suggest?”

  “Well, we’ve got some nice, fresh sweet peas,” suggested the small person eagerly. “We could fix them up with some asparagus—the fern, you know—and a little baby’s-breath, and make a big pompon bow of that petal-pink and Nilegreen gauze—”

  “We could not,” said Sheridan with great distinctness. “Not, at any rate, while I have a breath left in my body.… What are those frosty blue berries with the glossy leaves next to that jar of white lilacs, Miss—”

  “Kitchen, Peggy Kitchen, from Manchester, England, if there’s anything else you’d like to know.” The creamy softness of the little round voice and the little round face turned the sauciness to something singularly endearing. “I’m sure I don’t know what you call them, though I call them star berries myself, because of the color. Like star sapphires, as you might say. Shall I use this green ribbon?”

  “You shall not, Miss Kitten—you astound me! Here, what is in this basket?”

  Miss Kitchen inspected the somewhat dingy gilt basket disdainfully.

  “That? Oh, that’s just a lot of tags and bobtails left over from a wedding we did last month. You won’t be finding anything in there, I’m afraid.”

  “Are you? Now I, you see, am quite sure that I will find precisely what I am looking for. Aha!”

  He produced a snowy length of velvet ribbon and two short pins topped with the small, round balls of frosted filigree with a flourish of pure triumph.

  “There—you see that the spirit of prophecy was strong on me. Now if you will just tuck away those appalling swathes of what you call Nile-green and petal-pink silk gauze in the camphor which they have so richly earned—in all truth, I wonder that the excellent Nile has not risen and drowned every rose in Egypt at the mere rumor of such atrocities!—we will wrap the stem of that one admirable spray of lilac and those two sprays of star berries in the dullest bit of silver tinfoil that you possess and knot the ribbon about it, so—and stick pins through it—so—and tuck it away in that agreeable little silver box, and I will promise to do every other single thing myself—except one.”

  The small person behind the counter who so pleasantly resembled a tawny kitten wrinkled her round scrap of a nose and gurgled helpfully.

  “You wouldn’t like me to just pop around to the house with it and poke it under the door?”

  “Thanks, no—any popping that is done with this nosegay, I will do myself. What I most earnestly desire you to do, Miss Kitten—I beg your pardon, but I fear that I did not quite catch that name?—what I implore you to do is for one moment only to slip around that corner of the counter and call this number that I have written here at the top of this bit of paper. The young man with the jaw strong enough for two man-eating tigers is surely capable of holding off the old lady who wants a centerpiece of asparagus fern until you get back, is he not?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he is. And what am I to do when I get the number?”

  “When you get the number you are to ask for a young lady called Miss Wilde, or for her personal maid, and inquire as ingratiatingly as possible what color gown Miss Wilde is going to wear to Mrs. Lindsay’s dinner dance this evening, as a young gentleman had come into the Ann Hathaway Flower Shoppe who was extremely anxious to send some flowers to Miss Wilde, and even more anxious to see that the flowers that he sent harmonized with the frock. You see how simple and plausible the truth sounds, even over the telephone.”

  Miss Kitten, slipping neatly about the end of the long counter, dimpled engagingly.

  “Well, I will say one thing for you! You take a good deal more trouble for your lady friends than most of the young gentlemen do that drop in here. It’s two purple orchids for the shoulder, or three nice gardenias for a corsage, and they’re out of the place as pleased as peacocks.”

  Her fingers were at work on the dial with almost professional ease, and Sheridan turned to a critical and absorbed inspection of the plate-glass cages that stood ranged about the room, proudly exploiting their lovely captives. It was not till the florist’s young lady slipped neatly back, around the end of the long counter that he glanced up. “Well—and did the maid tell you what she was to wear?”

  “She hasn’t got any maid, and her voice sounded as surprised as Punch giving it to Judy, but she’s going to wear a smoke-gray mousseline, with a geranium velvet girdle and scarf, and she says that if we know of any flowers that will go with that, we’re better florists than she’s ever run across.”

  “Well, perhaps we are!” agreed Sheridan amiably. “Those small white orchids hanging there on that spray with their wings flecked with scarlet—what would you say if we twisted their stems with that bit of bronze tinfoil, and sent them on to Miss Wilde?”

&nbs
p; “I’d say you ought to run a florist shop on your own. Shouldn’t you like to put a card in with them?”

  “No; no card, just the name and address that I gave you.” He picked up the silver box and tossed a banknote to the now deeply interested young man. “Does this cover it? No, don’t bother about change. That’s for a nosegay for Miss Kitten—without a card, too! Thanks awfully, both of you.”

  It was exactly four when the freckle-faced young man deposited him at the entrance of the Stuart house and departed, beaming.

  He could hear a clock striking somewhere, far away, as he followed the portly butler docilely to the small, silvered elevator.

  “Miss Stuart is expecting you, sir,” he was informed. “Tea is in the upstairs sitting room.”

  She was sitting on the sofa in front of the old tiled fireplace, the smooth pale amber head bent deep over a book, so intent on its contents that she did not hear his step, and even when he spoke she lifted her head and looked at him strangely for a moment with the wide gray eyes as though his voice came to her from a different world. But in a moment the swift smile reached him, and she held out her hands.

  “K! I’m most awfully glad that you decided to come, family retainers or no family retainers! I never knew how lonely this house was before. It’s amazing how quarrels and bickerings and good violent bitterness brighten up a place, isn’t it? You don’t realize it until they’ve stopped. Dad and Fay and I—” She paused, bit her lip until the faint rose deepened to blood red, and after a long breath said tranquilly, “I have tea all ready for you, iced with lots of fresh green mint, and little cress-and-cucumber sandwiches. It’s frightfully hot, isn’t it? I tried to think of the coolest things in the world.”