He sloshed an enormous sponge about, and deplored American plumbing as too dainty for his heroic tastes. In England bath tubs were tubs, not basins, and taps ran decent streams of water, not effeminate trickles. Hope was making soft sounds with the Wednesday razor and a strop.
“Mapes?” said Bennett, thoughtfully dipping the detective’s business card up and down in an island of suds. “Mapes! My word, a name! Where is he?”
“In the sitting room, sir.”
“Yes, of course. Dare say he won’t mind waiting. By the way, Hope, what are the arrangements for the next few days?”
As simple man grows to the glory of being a Personage, he loses a measure of control over his life. Bennett, it must be explained, had to travel in America with a retinue which included, besides Hope, two precious secretaries whose viscera (Bennett’s fancy, this) consisted of parchment and blotting paper, nourished by veins full of waterproof ink, for all the humanity to be found in them; one attaché, named Podham-Jones, from the Legation; and one sturdy fellow, Chas. D. Bauer, contributed by the United States Department of Justice. Some or all of these were occasionally being left about or lost like rubbers in dry weather. All of them, however, knew a great deal more about those things Bennett was expected to do from day to day, than Bennett knew himself. That was the reason for Bennett’s thoughtfulness as he dipped Mapes’s card in the bath water.
Hope said, “Washington tomorrow, sir. I believe you will take the train tonight. You are to open the British Water-Color Loan Exhibition at the Balthurst Galleries there. Tea with the President, sir. Dinner at the Embassy, and a reception—”
“Oh, very well. I shan’t evade that very easily. Thursday in Washington, then. Friday?”
“The planting of a tree, sir. In the gardens on the roof of De Lancey College, at Chelsea Building. Symbolic of the flourishing trade relations between America and Britain, I was told, sir.”
“Good God, Hope!”
“Assisted by the Mayor, and undergraduates of the Stuyvesant School of International Economics, and a chorus of mixed voices, and a guard of honor chosen from the cadets of St. Charles’s School. Then lunch, sir.”
“We might wangle out of that, as the grandson puts it, might we not? I mean, a tree can be planted quite as suitably on another day, don’t you think? Or by some other person, better qualified? Arboriculture. Absolutely too much for me.”
“I’m afraid not, sir. There seems to be grave fear in certain quarters about the tree—and it’s a very rare sort of plum, I’m given to understand—may die if not planted soon, sir.”
“Very well. May I be at my own disposition on Saturday, do you think?”
“I believe the Embassy expects you to go to the Western States to visit an Exposition. I’m not quite sure, sir. It might have been Idaho they said, or California, or Texas.”
“No. Definitely no. My regrets, with obstinacy. Give me that towel, like a good fellow. Then telephone to the East End Hospital and ask about Freddy Christien. If the Embassy becomes heated about this Saturday nonsense, you may tell them all to go to the devil. Dry my back. Now you may ask this Mapes person to come into my bedroom and talk to me while I’m being shaved.”
The old gentleman fastened a black quilted robe about his body, went into the bedroom, lowered himself into a chair which at once seemed a bit small for so big a man, and settled himself with a lean cheek turned up for Hope’s lathering fingers to work upon.
Mr. Mapes burst in cheerfully and enterprisingly enough. He was habitually brisk, and gave off a bad smell of cigars, stuffy spice, and beer. He was of the kind of New Yorker whose ears are sharper than the wits. He seemed slightly confounded to discover he couldn’t shake Bennett’s hand, which happened to be tucked under a towel at the moment. He had to be satisfied with a kind of flapping salute.
“Yes, sir, at your service. I came right over. Seeing as you’re paying for my time, I got to give you your money’s worth.”
Bennett said, “Sit down.”
Mapes sat. He looked slightly like an effigy made out of watermelons, in his green suit stretching too tightly over a plumpish body. His face would have passed, too, for a small carved pumpkin. To help the illusion, the smell of tobacco suggested decaying vegetable matter. In his manner, Mapes combined equal parts of hearty cheer and grim efficiency, both noticeably insincere, assumed for effect, and probably part of a formula learned by heart and intended to impress. Something about the Mapes smile, so fixed and attentive, gave the man away. He didn’t really listen to what was said. He pretended earnestly to listen, according to formula, but (Bennett felt) really turned his mind to adding up tentative sums in an account Bennett would be asked to settle.
At last Bennett said, “Do you know who I am?” Mapes heaved in his chair with pride. “Yes, I think I do, sir. I ought to say, your lordship, maybe. You see, I make it my business to——”
“Ah? Who told you?”
“I keep my ears open. If I’m going to be any use to you, I got to know what’s going on. I keep track of the talk that goes around town while—”
“Talk. Quite. Do you know what I engaged you to do? Has there been talk about that?”
“Well, I suppose it must be in connection with the Chelsea Project business, if what I heard is——”
“Ah. Talk again.”
“Yes, your lordship.”
Mapes was ill-at-ease. He was used to handling clients, and not to being handled by them. Bennett’s voice could turn softly sweet, soothing, disarming, and very cold. “The razor drags this morning, Hope. You, Mr. Mapes, have been grievously misled. Dare say you intended to please me. Too bad. I wonder if you can understand? I wish not to be known as Lord Broghville. Shall I say the formality is inconvenient, undesirable, and plain damned annoying to me under the present circumstances? I am Bennett, Geoffrey Bennett, Mr. Geoffrey Bennett. You will remember to use that name in the future, I’m sure. Not only in my presence, but where you gather your harvests of information. Good.” The sweetness soured, became a sharp bark. “Now, Mapes, I want to know what you heard about this Chelsea affair.”
Mapes squirmed. He thought it wise to dampen the cheery, friendly note and play up the brisk efficiency.
“I got no opinion myself. I want you to know that. Lots of clients get a little mad at me when I’m being honest and telling them what’s good for them only what they don’t want to hear. Now the general low-down seems to be that this Mr. Christien was probably paying blackmail to the guy he killed, and maybe also to the watchman who disappeared. That’s why he killed the guy. And that’s why the watchman blew, not wanting to get himself caught in the jam.”
“Blackmail. How devilish ingenious. Blackmail for what?”
“I don’t know. Blackmail’s got to be secret, or it’s not blackmail, is it? Only just take an ordinary case for example. It happens every day. A man in business stays up in the office late, and maybe a girl he knows drops up to see him, and the watchman going around happens to take a look in at the door, say—and there you got the material for a blackmail job. If it’s a big business man, and he’s got a wife that means something, you got blackmail that may run into lots of money. Take this case, for instance. If the watchman had something on Mr. Christien, and I’m just putting it with an ‘if,’ and the watchman turned it over to this cripple to work for him, maybe by mail, and the price got too stiff, and they put on the heat a little, you might get murder. It’s an old story, sir.”
“But improbable.”
“If you say it’s improbable in this case, it’s improbable with me, Mr. Bennett.”
This statement rang as hollow as an empty beer keg. Bennett said,.”Mr. Christien is my respected friend. The vices Mr. Christien may choose to cultivate include neither secret lechery nor cowardice. Blackmail is the most preposterous explanation I can imagine. Perhaps I should be grateful to you, for telling me what I suppose must be the crudest form of the case the police are forming. However, if you abandon your mind to such stuff, you
will be useless to me. Even otherwise, I seriously doubt—but no matter. We shan’t discuss it further. These are your orders.”
“Orders? Yes, sir.”
“Go to the morgue. The dead man’s clothes will be there, I presume, since they must identify them. Get the shirtmaker’s name. The tailor’s name, I know, is Plenderby. Plenderby and Co. Very possibly Plenderby does shirts, too. Tailors are frightfully enterprising. But you must find out. Go to the tailor and shirtmaker, then; find out the man’s name and as much about him as you can. You may find something in the shoes. The hat is from Brooks. You understand? Never mind what the police have done. You may do their work over again. It’s important that your evidence should be independent. That it may be exactly the same as police evidence doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then telephone Mr. Holcomb, assistant to Mr. Box-worth, at the Chelsac Theatre. Ask him to tell you the address of the watchman named Lutz, who disappeared. Find out as much as you can about the circumstances of Lutz.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That will do. Bring your report to me this evening, at six o’clock. Be as unostentatious as possible. I want the newspapers particularly to know nothing about you or your commission. And I want you to say nothing to anybody about me. Do you understand what I want you to do? Good. Now go away.”
Mapes went away.
Hope snipped with the scissors at the edges of Bennett’s white hair, and frowned gravely. He murmured, “Too bad, sir.”
Bennett clucked his tongue against his lips. “Yes. Alas. How unpleasant it is to be reminded that one’s fellow-creatures stink. Very nasty. Yattering fat fool. And incompetent.”
“May I suggest, sir, that there ought to be better detectives in New York?”
“There are, of course. However, I can’t waste days discovering them by a system of trial and error. However, we shall see.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I dare say I shall be my own detective in the end. And not for the first time, either. Breakfast? Good. Do stop pottering with my hair, Hope, and telephone that hospital.”
3.
Bennett liked mornings to unfold in neo-classic calm, and the breakfast of kidneys and bacon might have restored this state, if the post office and the telephone company had been willing to cooperate. As he sat to table, Bennett drove off one of the blotting-paper secretaries, who had begun the sorting of his letters and cable messages.
There was an advertisement:
“Dear Sir or Madam,
“You can pay less for better honey. Rockland County Apple Blossom Honey, direct from farm to you...
and so on. The secretary had opened it, and allowed it to remain, perhaps because some words, difficult to puzzle out, had been scrawled in childish feminine writing across a lower corner.
They said, I thought it would be nice—it had to be nice or nift, and nift meant nothing to Bennett—in case you wanted to take some back to your own country with you. Resp’ly, E. W. Then fishing up the envelope, Bennett found it had been addressed after a false start (laboriously inked over) to The Right Hon. The Earl of Broghville. The writing, he supposed, was Emma Whit-tacker’s own. It suited her. The letter had been posted at the Chelsea post office either very early that morning, or immediately after she had left the theatre last night.
Meanwhile, the telephone had been ringing, and Hope had been scuttling back and forth among the pieces of furniture. With the advertisement crying for consideration on the one hand, and Hope’s capers on the other, and the kidneys getting cold into the bargain, it was becoming a horrible breakfast. The telephone rang again almost before Hope could put it down after hanging up on a previous call. Bennett sighed, gave up, and went off to the bedroom to dress.
Hardly into his shirt, Bennett saw Hope at the door. “What is it? Good God! What is it?”
“Very sorry, sir. I wanted to say that I got through to the hospital, sir, and Mr. Christien remains unconscious. His condition is grave.”
“Too bad. Good. He has the grace to be consistent, if no one else has. May I ask why the telephone requires you to seize it and say ‘no’ into it every minute or two?
Or do I intrude upon one of your affairs of sentiment?”
“Very sorry, sir. Newspapers they are, sir, asking for an appointment to see you. Seven newspapers in fifteen minutes, sir. Not including two persons who disconnected.”
The telephone was at it again. Bennett said, “There. You might keep count, if you like. Think how interesting the grand number will be to your nieces and nephews in Norwich.”
Hope remained in longer conversation this time. He returned a little breathless to get Bennett’s hat, stick and gloves for him.
“Who, pray?”
“A Mr. Tussard, sir. A Mr. Percy Tussard, asking to speak to you, sir. He will call this evening, and hopes you will find it convenient to see him.”
“Tell them to stop these calls below, if you wish. By what name did he ask for me?”
“Lord Broghville, sir.”
“Very quick, these people. Last night I was the merest Bennett, and rudely searched by a policeman looking for stolen property. You might speculate upon it, Hope. I shan’t be here till tea, perhaps not then. Damn, that telephone again!”
Bennett thrust the Whittacker advertisement in his pocket and stalked out.
CHAPTER FIVE
THIS SUNNY Wednesday morning, the Executive Offices at the Chelsac Theatre looked like almost anything but the scene of a mysterious murder. Business went on as usual in its crisp routine, based on the ebb and flow of audiences in the theatre and on the necessary weekly change of the entertainment. The new stage show, to begin Friday, was to be an elaborate pageant of the spring season, including a practical rain-storm (with thunder, lightning, and that sort of thing), a chorus of tap-dancers in a London fog, two horses, the Aurora Borealis, and a clever choral arrangement of the Dance of the Hours. If Mr. Christien had not been away, the place would have been entirely normal; as it was, Miss Bannerman typed her letters and answered the telephone as smartly as usual, Mr. Levison and Mr. Boxworth got on with some matter of importance in Mr. Levison’s office, and Louis Holcomb took up the slack by sitting in Mr. Christien’s office where he could be at the convenience of the police, who seemed to have a strong interest in the offices and the terrace, even yet.
Miss Bannerman’s typing and telephoning suffered a little from her dismal compulsion to decide what she would have done if she had stumbled on that corpse in the darkness. Lowes Levison and John Boxworth finished up their important matter a bit sketchily, so that they could have a word about the tragedy that really preoccupied them. But these lapses hardly ruffled the smooth surface of business.
Levison himself, tall, sleek, nervous and dark, sat in angular repose behind the desk in his office. He piled up more cigarette ends than usual in the ash tray before him. John Boxworth, on the other hand, allowed himself to show downright agitation. He paced about the window, from which he could look out on the fateful terrace. His blue eyes were pinkish from lack of sleep, and he rubbed his hands over them.
Levison said, “We don’t know where we are.” Boxworth said, “I ought to shut up and get out of here.”
“There’s something on your mind, isn’t there?”
“The Englishman hired a private detective this morning.”
“That’s news. Why the detective?”
“To clear Christien, I suppose. I told Holcomb to recommend an agency I once had experience with. Not very good. I didn’t know what else to do, before I heard from Christien himself and found out what the company’s attitude was going to be.”
“Was that wise?”
“Why?”
Levison said, “This agency you recommended won’t bother you, will they? I mean, they won’t be inclined to drag you into any of their reports? I thought not. Damned if I ever know, Boxworth, how subtle other people are. But this Englishman may be very smart. He may ask himself, Why does Boxworth
recommend these mugs? And that would look very suspicious, John.”
“I wasn’t thinking of immunity. I didn’t think that for at all.”
“No.”
“And I don’t see it’s anything to worry about, looking suspicious to a stray Englishman who hasn’t any authority.”
“No.”
“Through no fault of our own, we’re all in a bad position. But we’ll live it down if we keep our minds on business.”
“You hope. Wait a minute. Sorry.”
The telephone interrupted, and Levison listened to a message. Putting the instrument down, he said, “Suttro. He’s coming over to talk about the newspapers.” Boxworth supported his weight on Levison’s desk. His cheerful pink face became grave. He said, “I called up Christien’s doctor this morning. He told me Christien might not be conscious for a week, maybe not able to walk again for several months. Who will take over?”
“That’s for the Directing Board to say, John.”
“They might pick you.”
“They might.”
“They might pick Suttro.”
“They might.”
“It would be your big chance, and I don’t think Suttro would turn it down either. But I was thinking, there’s dynamite lying around. If the police decided Christien had nothing to do with last night’s excitement, and began to put the screws on one or the other of you, that one or the other would be out of luck.”
“I thought about that.”
“I wonder if you know why Christien had us meet last night at eleven o’clock, instead of the usual time. What was that all about?”
“I don’t suppose you’d think about it, John, if it hadn’t been for the murder. There’s nothing like a murder for making innocent meetings look suspicious.”
“That’s true. Yes, that’s true. Everything looks queer now. Even that Englishman. It looks as if he’d been right here, waiting for something like this to happen.” Levison smiled, and John Boxworth read the smile as an indication of superior knowledge. He leaned his round body over the desk and thrust his puzzled round face close to Levison’s.
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