The Crooked Lane

by Frances Noyes Hart

  “No,” she said desolately, touching the orchids that she still held tightly clasped as though in their faded, defiant luxuriance she found comfort. “Not tonight. Not ever, probably.… You see, this was the last party we were going to.”

  “But Dr. Byrd has an assistant, surely? Yes, I remember that Tess Stuart told me that only yesterday she was speaking to him. Could he not take over Byrd’s duties long enough for him to come here and get you?”

  “He hasn’t an assistant now,” she said. “Not that he’d leave Jerry, even if he had. But he fired him this morning—that was what I was trying to tell you about when the call came. It was the assistant who was doing all the dope-running; he actually did sell it right out to us—and he got us so that we’d have pulled the teeth straight out of our heads to pay for it. That’s why Jack and I had the quarrel last week—he knew there was a leak out there, and he knew that I knew where it came from, but I wouldn’t tell him. You can’t break a promise, even to a devil out of hell, can you?”

  “No,” he said. “A promise is not a good thing to break, even to a devil out of hell.”

  “That’s what I thought. But he found out from Jerry Saturday night—while he was delirious, you know—and so of course he fired him out on his ear the next day.” She stopped, checking the trembling of her lips, and then went on steadily: “He was a nasty, freckle-faced little devil called McCarty that Jack ran across when he was drinking himself into the gutter. Jack thought he’d saved his soul alive, because he knew that he’d cut out drinking, and he trusted him absolutely; it just didn’t enter his head that he was substituting cocaine for cocktails, and double-crossing him every day and every night of his rotten life.… Oh, well, never mind—that’s over and done with, thank the Lord. We straightened everything out Saturday night before Jack even guessed who it was. He understood perfectly well that I couldn’t break my promise, once I managed to get hold of him and explain things. Everything’s all right with us now—everything’s going to be all right with us always.”

  She stretched out a small, sturdy hand, and even though she was smiling, for a moment the fingers clung desperately to his.

  “This is good-night, then, and probably good-bye—and thanks a lot—for everything.”

  “There is, you promise, nothing that I can do for you?”

  “No, nothing, honestly. I’m just on my way to get my coat from the dressing room, and then I’m heading for Stillhaven. Kippy Todd’s lending me his roadster, to get home, and that’s where I belong till all this mess gets straightened out, and we can call it a day, and pull out for Labrador.”

  “You are sure that I would not be of any use if I went with you as far as Stillhaven to make quite certain that you are safe?”

  “I’m safe,” she told him, and suddenly he knew as well as she did that she was probably safer than he would ever be in all his life. “And I’m awfully glad—I’m awfully glad to have met you. That sounds a silly, hick sort of thing to say—but you must know that I’m a silly, hick sort of a person, don’t you? … Good-night—and lots and lots of luck.”

  “Good-night, then,” he said, “and all the good luck that I am sure that the gods have in store for you. As for Dr. Byrd, I do not have to wish him any at all. It seems to me that he already has as much as one man deserves in a single lifetime.”

  He stood for a moment watching the slight, sturdy figure moving unswervingly forward through the group about the dining-room table, and then with a slight lift of his shoulders and a tightening of his lips, he turned his own face towards the center door. Mallory—he must find Mallory. Freddy Parrish had seen him headed towards the house, and once inside it he could at least collect some information as to where to look for him next.…

  The great center hall that the door led into was waxed pine paneling from floor to ceiling; in the far end a game of ping-pong that was about as subdued as the French Revolution at its height was going full tilt, and in the Venetian drawing room to the right a dozen or so improbably attractive-looking people were moving sideways and forwards in exquisite, dignified swoops to invisible music that at its best suggested Castile, and at its worst Africa.… In a small room even farther to the right, eight people with bouquets of cards in their hands sat around two tables and spoke through their teeth with vicious precision, their eyes lambent with revolt at each triumphant crescendo of the music. Sheridan, his eyes fixed speculatively on the staircase that swung its graceful evolutions three flights upwards, scowled faintly, and for the first time since he was a freshman in college, thrust his fists deep in his pockets.… Well, then—what next?

  Just behind his elbow he heard the smallest and the most breathless of voices.

  “Oh—oh, it’s Tess’s Mr. Sheridan, isn’t it? I am so glad you came! Have you met everyone you want to? If you’ll just stand perfectly still where you are for a minute, I’ll promise to be straight back and see that you do.”

  He wheeled, the scowl disappearing as he looked straight down into the deep pansy-colored eyes and the velvety, heart-shaped face that made Joan Lindsay one of the most alluring creatures in either North or South America.

  “You are very kind, but the only people that I can think of especially wanting to meet at present are my host and hostess, thanks. Later on, perhaps, when you are not so busy making all of your guests comfortable and happy, I may be lucky enough to snatch a few minutes—”

  She murmured delightedly in that same soft, breathless voice that made her most casual remark seem a shared secret:

  “Oh, do let’s snatch them now! Do you mind babies—quite grown-up ones, that have lovely straight legs and round little heads with curls all over them? I’ve got to run up for a second and make sure that they’re all right—and if you’re as nice as you sound, I might let you look at them for a minute. I’ll make you look at them, anyway. Isn’t it awful? I simply adore showing them off, even when they’re asleep.”

  She dimpled at him shamelessly, already halfway up to the first landing, the cloudy blue net of her trailing skirts billowing about her, and Sheridan, following meekly, thought how Fragonard or Greuze, that eternal sentimentalist, would have loved to paint her, with her fringed lashes and round white shoulders—and the knot of violets in the deep, heart-shaped opening of her airy gown.

  “And these infants who are clever enough already to have straight legs and curly hair—how old are they?”

  “Wait till I count—I never can remember!” She paused, laughing up at him, on the threshold of the door at the head of the stairs, ticking off the years on her fingers. “Toby’s six and Tabby’s four—absolutely the most important and hideous psychological age there is—you can ask any old pedagogue. Only he wouldn’t know how really hideous it was, because he probably hasn’t heard that I let their adored Nanny go yesterday, and that I’m the girl behind the gun from now on! Look, this is my study; do you mind waiting here for a moment while I creep into the next room and ruffle up their curls and pinch their cheeks so they’ll look all blooming and devastating?”

  For a second after she pushed the door open they stood in darkness, and then in a glow of lights as soft as candles the little room bloomed fragrant and gracious as a nosegay of lilies of the valley, all green glazed chintz and satin-wood that any museum in the world might have coveted.… But it was not its eighteenth-century perfection that held the proud owner riveted with one hand still on the switch.

  “Oh, the little demon!” The whisper was barely above her breath, but there was no doubting its outraged vehemence. “Oh, will you kindly look at that—and after I tucked him in, and gave him a peppermint, and made him swear that he wouldn’t budge until seven o’clock tomorrow! Every single one of his crayons and pencils all over the floor, and all those pages from out of my engagement book—he must have heard someone coming and dropped everything. I’ll wager he made that crib in two leaps. Look, Mr. Sheridan—five green cats with purple tails—”

  But Mr. Sheridan was already looking—and it was not at the
five green cats with purple tails, nor even at the small, exquisite figure on her knees, sweeping up the scattered pages and crayons with a vehemence already tinged with reluctant pride. Mr. Sheridan was looking at a pencil that had already rolled almost to the door—a yellow pencil with a fat black lead—a pencil whose gilded lettering he could see quite clearly from where he stood. And even while he looked he, too, was on his knees.

  “He is a real draughtsman, then, this Toby? Here, at any rate, is a formidable equipment for an artist of no more than six! Hardmuth’s artists’ pencil, number six.… Rembrandt could not have asked for more—and probably had less.”

  “Oh, that yellow pencil?” She bestowed on it the most cursory of glances, still intent on her task of garnering the scattered leaves. “It must be one of poor Jerry’s; he was out here just before he went all to pieces—and he and Toby were having a magnificent time drawing rabbits that stood on their heads and horses that looked exactly like cockroaches. Jerry adored him; he brought him a pad of perfectly beautiful drawing paper and a whole box of those pencils.… D’you think I ought to wake the little monster up and spank him?”

  She rose easily to her feet, eying the collection of brightly colored pages with a face so gay with rueful amusement that the fate of the delinquent Toby was not very seriously in doubt.

  “No, no—let him sleep.” Sheridan, rising too, stood looking down at the charming head that came barely to his shoulder. “At six, it is so easy to be happy that it is little less than a crime to destroy one second of those blessed minutes, waking or sleeping. We to whom happiness has become somewhat of a task should remember that, surely.… Where shall I put these treasures that I have gathered?”

  Joan Lindsay, her hand already on the nursery door, paused long enough to give him a flying smile.

  “I knew that you were nice! I can’t stand even shaking a finger at them, honestly.… Just stick the things anywhere in that desk, and in two seconds I’ll show you the two best reasons in the world why I can’t possibly be cross with them. Sure you don’t mind waiting?”

  “Quite sure.”

  Very sure indeed, he thought grimly, listening to the cautious click of the door behind her, as he stood with Hardy’s pencil and Toby’s crayons still in his hand, staring down at a square white envelope with three red stamps almost covering it from edge to edge, and the lettering of its address as fastidiously perfect as any mediæval cleric’s:

  Mrs. Allan Lindsay

  Green Gardens

  Lenox

  Maryland

  Fay Stuart’s writing, unforgettable and unforgotten. In the drawer of the desk at home a scrap of paper not so large as the palm of his hand lay covered with it, flanked by a round leather box and a square of black-taped ruby glass.… There was a square of glass, blood red and black-edged, lying there now, not twelve inches away, and he stood staring down at it with the same sense of sickened horror that he had felt once before. He remembered now—he remembered now where he had seen that third one. It had been nineteen years ago, and he had had to stand on his tiptoes to read the message that had stared up at him through it … that hidden and inexorable message that once before had spelled death.… He heard the click of the door behind him, and with Toby’s pencils still in his hand he turned to face it.

  Joan Lindsay, her hand on the door that led to Toby’s and Tabby’s nursery, stood looking for a moment in surprised amusement at the unmoving rigidity of the young man standing by her desk, with the truant’s pencils and crayons still in his hands.

  “Couldn’t you find a place to put those? Oh, just drop them anywhere! You can come in now if you want to—they’re still sound asleep, even though I rolled Tabby over three times and stood Toby straight up on his head. But if you’ll just kindly tell me whether you don’t honestly think that they’re the most absolutely ravishing—”

  She stopped, frowning in delicate incredulity. The young man from Vienna was not even pretending to listen to her. Quite deliberately he had arranged the pencils and crayons neatly on the desk, and now stood staring down at something on it with a degree of concentration that made it obvious even to a fond mother that he had lamentably little time to waste on maternal prattle. Joan Lindsay, who was rather more exigent about pretty manners than the average human being, having such very pretty ones herself, pulled the door of the nursery gently to behind her and crossed the sitting room to confront her singularly graceless guest.

  “Of course,” she remarked with ominous sweetness, “I don’t know of any particular law compelling you to inspect your hostess’s offspring if you don’t care to do it—and if you’ve really found something more interesting on my desk—” She broke off, checking an involuntary movement of one childishly small hand towards the telltale square of ruby glass, lying beside Fay Stuart’s note with its impressive row of red stamps. It was entirely too obvious what Sheridan had found to interest him, and for a moment she stood perfectly still, waiting until her fingers were steadily occupied with arranging the knot of violets over her heart, before she continued in a voice that held just the right ripple of rueful amusement: “Oh, there’s no two ways about it—that pair will simply have to be spanked! Just look what they’ve done to this desk—and I told them that if they left their tricks and toys around here one single time again—”

  Sheridan, picking up the bit of black-taped glass and holding it critically between thumb and finger, raised a pair of dangerously ironic gray eyes to the velvet ones with the absurd lashes.

  “This, then, is one of Toby’s tricks and toys?”

  Joan Lindsay, appraising the exact degree of the level menace through the shield of her lashes, shook her head, as she bestowed on him the most ravishing and mischievous of her large repertoire of smiles.

  “No, no—that’s one of mine!” She bent forward, drawing him into the circle of her confidence with a beautifully burlesqued stage whisper. “Secret writing, Mr. Sheridan! Whenever we want to get through some very important news in a note that we can turn over to anyone as innocence itself on the surface, we send each other the most beautiful bits of wicked gossip on postage stamps. You know—quill pens, and colored inks, and little tiny slanting letters that particularly bad imps probably use when they send out invitations for their nefarious revels. Did you ever hear of anything so infantile?”

  “Oh, yes,” he assured her. “I have heard of it—at least once.… That first time was at Christmas, more years ago than I care to remember—a real Austrian Christmas, up in the mountains, with snow and stars and candles lighting those great, shining red and green balls that are the fruit of all good Christmas trees. I was not much taller than your Toby who sleeps in that other room—but I can remember well a very tall, straight old gentleman standing beside me with a letter in his hand that someone had just driven up to bring to him in our mountain lodge—and I can still hear the jingle of the sleigh bells about the necks of that messenger’s horses as they waited outside, and smell the good, cold, sweet smell of snow and fir and the night as the wind blew in through the open door. I can remember that tall old gentleman taking down one of the candles from the tree so that he could see better through the square of red glass that he brought from his pocket, and so that I, who was his very favorite great-nephew, could see better too.… There was a red stamp on the letter, just as there is on this one of Fay Stuart’s—only hers has three, has it not? The message on the one that my great-uncle held for me to look at was quite short—only nine of those small, slanting words—but it was quite long enough to make it sure that before the snow had melted a man would die with his back against a wall.… In those days, you see, we shot our spies quickly.”

  Joan Lindsay, her fingers still busy with the diamond clasp that held the violets, found time to sketch him a prettily appropriate shudder.

  “I keep forgetting—once upon a time you were our enemy, weren’t you? What a perfectly ghastly little tale—and how beautifully you told it! … How in the world did you know that that was Fay Stuart�
��s letter? I thought that the poor child was dead before you ever got here.”

  “She died, as a matter of fact, the night that I arrived. But I have seen her writing—it is quite distinctive, should you not say? Now why, I wonder, did she not send it to your business address? And why did she use all those fine red stamps for so small and light a note?”

  He picked up the letter and stood weighing it abstractedly in the palm of one hand, the red glass hovering casually above it, barely a thumb’s breadth away.

  “Will you tell me how in the world you knew that I had an office?” inquired Joan Lindsay, wide-eyed and graciously diverted. “Good heavens, three quarters of the people I know in Washington would swear that I hadn’t brains enough to run a doll house, much less a travel agency, and here come you, the stranger in our midst, knowing all about it!”

  “Oh, not quite all about it, I assure you! And I do not actually know; like the eminent Mr. Holmes, I simply deduce.… I deduce, too, since I am at that entertaining pastime, that Fay Stuart was sending you one of those school-girl bits of very wicked gossip that I was supposed to find so highly diverting. Have you any objection if I try to see whether my hand and eye have lost their cunning since that far-away Austrian Christmas? Let us see now—the writing runs sideways, does it not? ‘Why not ask the hospitable landlady of the Felton Inn at Willmington what distinguished young—’”

  Mrs. Lindsay’s hand flashed out with the dainty savagery of a kitten’s paw—a reckless and dangerous kitten, who did not make the slightest effort to sheath its claws when it was after something that it wanted. The glint of the claws was still in her eyes as she stood contemplating the long red mark on Sheridan’s hand, with Fay Stuart’s note safely crumpled in her own.

  “Oh, but I have any number of objections!” she assured him, in a voice silken sweet enough to have belonged to one of the most talented of the choiring angels. “In the first place, it’s what lawyers call a privileged communication from one of my clients—you’d guessed that, hadn’t you? And in the second place, when Tess Stuart suggested that I ask you to the party tonight, I hadn’t realized that you were going to come in your working clothes. I don’t think that they’re particularly becoming, as a matter of fact. Couldn’t you go away somewhere and change them? Or maybe it would be simpler if you just went away.”