“Rot. Go away. Hope?”
“Yes, sir.”
“About our train to Washington.”
“A private car, sir, will be ready at ten o’clock this evening.”
“It leaves?”
“It leaves later, sir. At an early hour in the morning, from the depot in New Jersey.”
“The door, Hope. I heard a knock.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hope went to the bedroom door, where he got into difficulties, a stubborn little maladjustment of intentions. Bennett in his bath could hear snatches of squabbling.
“Don’t stand mumbling about it! Devil’s own draft through here! What is it? Who is it?”
“A man from the police, sir. He says he knows—”
“Let the police come in. What’s his name?”
“Tussard, sir.”
“Tussard? The devil. I’m bathing, Tussard. Early, aren’t you? If it’s so dashed important, and you don’t mind, you may come in here and tell me about it.” Tussard stood in the bathroom door. He had gone to the expense of buying a clean collar and a new tie, and he had just had himself shaved. His face looked like a fine pinkish-gray ham, on which his flinty beard had been subdued to a mere sandy shadow. This flattered Bennett.
“What, Tussard?”
“Came for a talk.”
“Then talk, my dear chap.”
“Last night I didn’t know who you were.”
“Really? Mind the splashing. By the way, who am I?”
“You know better than I do.”
Bennett sunk his sponge in the water and smiled at the rising bubbles. “I shan’t insist. Sit down, have a drink, have a cigarette or something. I would, like to know what you’re driving at.”
“You’re important to me, and maybe I’m going to be important to you.”
“Am I important?”
“You know what I mean, sir. I’m not good at hints.
You’re connected in a kind of way. You’re tops over there.”
“Am I?”
“I don’t ask you to come out and say so. I know how those things are. You want this business cleared up, don’t you?”
“Very much.”
“All right. My job is to clear it up. I don’t want you to go over my head and get me in trouble, and—well, give me a chance. That’s all.”
“My importance is a myth, Tussard.”
“I’m not asking you to tell me anything.”
“I have no connection with Chelsea Project, the Chelsac Theatre, or Ninth Avenue, or your subway, or anything at all.”
“I understand what you mean.”
“Good. And you offer me the benefit of your police experience in solving this case to my satisfaction, in return for my assurance that I will bring no unnecessary complaints to your superiors.”
“That’s right.”
“Of course, you have to solve the case in any event. My assurance would be in return for nothing.”
“You’ll know what’s going on, if I report to you.”
“True. Ah, true.”
Bennett surged up out of the tub and bound himself in a warm towel.
“I think we understand each other,” continued Bennett, “to a most satisfactory extent. I have no connection with that place, none whatever, we agree. Now, my dear Tussard, did you come up merely to express your trust in me? Or to watch me bathe? Or is there, as I hope, something else? It would be a pity to waste this visit on abstractions. Did you learn anything?”
CHAPTER TEN
“I CAME ACROSS a letter,” said Tussard, “that Mr. Levison found after going through——”
“I know the letter.”
“What do you think of it?”
“Obscure.”
“I went right over to see Suttro.”
“Exactly. And?”
“He said he didn’t send it.”
“Ah!”
“He couldn’t tell me what it was about, or why anybody wanted that meeting, because he didn’t write it. He said he hadn’t any idea of taking his name out of the running, if the Directing Board felt like considering him.”
“Could he throw suspicion on anybody else?”
“He couldn’t figure out what it was all about. He didn’t know why anybody would write it. He said he didn’t have anything to tell Christien or the Executive Committee of the Theatre, and if he did, he would have called them up on the ‘phone to tell them. He thought he was being asked to sit in on the meeting to give advice on something, probably. He said Christien called him up Tuesday morning, but he wasn’t in. His secretary took the message, just saying he was expected at the meeting at eleven that night. Later on he got a written notice to verify it. He really didn’t think much about it. And that’s all he knows.”
“Fairly credible, Tussard.”
“I think so. He would have signed his name, wouldn’t he, if he’d written it himself? And he’d have typed it a lot better, wouldn’t he? He’s an author, he types every day of his life, he’d make a darn good stenographer in fact. He showed me when we were taking samples of the machines in his office.”
“What did you make of the machines?”
“None of them match that letter. I stopped in at a typewriter store. The letter must have been done on a portable called the Duplex, and that company’s been out of business twelve years. If you ask me, the letter’s a lousy fake.”
“Perhaps it is. But why?”
“I don’t know. It’s too damn bad that Christien’s so sick. I’d like to ask him a few questions, believe me.” “So you shall, Tussard. I think it will make time pass more quickly for you, if you look forward to the treat. Do you suppose Christien wrote the letter to himself, perhaps?”
“I just wondered, Mr. Bennett, if he ever got that letter.”
“Oh?”
“The secretary, Miss Bannerman, opens his mail and weeds out all the ads and stuff. She doesn’t read every letter. She opens maybe as many as fifty, and weeds out the ads and junk. She doesn’t remember any letter from Suttro on Tuesday, but she says there may have been one, though. In other words, she doesn’t know. There’s nothing to say that Christien called his meeting because of that letter, is there?”
“No.”
“Why couldn’t somebody have slipped the letter in his desk today, then?”
“But why?”
“To cover up the real reason for the meeting, and to start a fuss with Suttro.”
“Inference: Mr. Levison contrived the letter and its discovery.”
“I didn’t say that, Mr. Bennett.”
“However, you thought it, my dear Tussard. We’ll have tea. Do you take tea? Of course. Tea, Hope.”
2.
Geoffrey Bennett swept his quilted gown about him and lashed it fast at the middle. There had been swift and steady sartorial progress, from the Roman Senator in the Bath, through Bennett’s bedroom and the business of trousers, shoes and such, to the final march upon the sitting room and tea. Stripped of the quilted gown and fitted into his tails, Bennett would be ready now for dinner.
“Sit down, Tussard,” said Bennett. “The corpse has been giving you trouble, eh?”
“That reminds me, I got to do something. Telephone?”
“On the table.”
Tussard talked into it briefly, in monotone. He sighed, put it down, went back to his place on a green sofa.
“I got to let them know where I am,” he said, and picked up a petit four, which he popped negligently into his mouth. “Um.” (He swallowed it whole, presumably.) “The dead guy went to Boston a year ago. Conductor on the train remembered him. We sent out a description, you know.”
“Not very interesting, Boston a year ago,” said Bennett. “Laundry, that sort of thing? Even a recluse must have his linen washed, I should think.”
“That’ll come. Probably the washerwoman hasn’t read the papers yet.”
“Go on. Have some tea?”
“I will have a cup, if you don’t mind. Excuse me. That’ll be me.�
�
The telephone was ringing. Bennett winced and poured, while Tussard mumbled into distance.
“Lutz, the watchman,” he said when he sat down again, “never showed up. He’s in uniform, you know, and he ought to have been spotted by now.”
“Too bad.”
“Hasn’t been home. Lives with his daughter and his son-in-law. Son-in-law, he’s on the Force. Never went out, only with the young people to a movie once in a while. Didn’t drink. Didn’t have any friends. Put his money in a savings account. Seems like a nice, clean, straight old man.”
Tussard drank his tea down scalding hot, and refused more. “No, that’s all. Just one cup of tea, I can stand it once in a while. As far as the Chelsac Theatre goes, Mr. Bennett, we searched that place inch by inch today. I can promise you, we’d have found a pin or a button or a match-box if it was lost. Even if Lutz was dead and stuck in a corner or a closet somewhere, we’d have found him. We had a man from the architects’ school go with us.”
“Have some toast?”
“Spoil my supper if I do.”
“During your search, Tussard, you looked for the stolen announcement, I presume?”
“You don’t have to bring that up against me, Mr. Bennett. That’s gone for good. We all make mistakes, I guess.”
“How very true. Is Mr. Christien still guilty?”
Tussard took a piece of toast, spoiled supper or no spoiled supper. When he had swallowed it, he said with faintly perceptible overtones of apology in his voice, “Well, you can’t forget facts, can you, Mr. Bennett? I got nothing against Christien. But I’d be crazy if I just said goodbye, glad to’ve met you, and let him go. I ask you. Wouldn’t I?”
The telephone rang. “Excuse me,” said Tussard. He listened. The message that trickled into his ear made him snicker, and burst into little puffs of sarcastic laughter. Tussard laughed almost never, it seemed; and gaiety did striking violence to his face. It was sober when he put the instrument down, but it remained slightly sarcastic.
“You got a detective this morning,” said Tussard, stating the simple fact.
“Yes. Not a very good one, I thought.”
“He passed out about half past one this afternoon in a saloon up on Eighth Avenue. Couple of newspaper boys put him in a Turkish Bath to sleep it off. He’s just waking up. He’s trying to get some dope on the case from one of my men, so he can tell you about it.”
“Ah!”
“I’m sorry you didn’t feel like coming to me before you got tangled up with a mug like that. He’s stringing you along, sir.”
Bennett raised his eyebrows above the far rim of his tea cup.
“I’m on my way,” said Tussard. “I got a lot to do these days. It’s none of my business, if you want to keep him. He’ll soak you all the trade’ll stand, and he’ll sell you out if he gets the chance, and he won’t tell you anything worth knowing, and he’ll be tight for a week now he’s got a job. He doesn’t get many. But it’s your own affair, sir.”
“Ah?”
“You might ask him about the tailor. There’s two Plenderbys in the business. We got the wrong one first. We got a lead to a man in Pelham, a man with a wooden leg. Alive and kiting. Mapes doesn’t know that’s all washed out, and he’ll sell you second-hand gossip he picked up from the reporter.”
“And the real Plenderby?”
“The real one made the clothes, but he doesn’t know any name or address. Our cripple used to come at nights for fittings, and he hasn’t got any new clothes for three years. He used to come in a taxi, and sometimes he had another man with him, but I’m not expecting much out of that line. Too far back.”
Bennett had risen from his place on the sofa, and he stood looking out the window at the warm, hazy afternoon.
“So long, sir. See you when you come back from Washington.”
Tussard opened the door. Bennett did not turn. Tussard paused, repeated his adieu.
“Oh, and Tussard!” The giant back remained motionless and uncommunicative, and smoke from Bennett’s pipe tumbled above his head. Tussard waited.
“Yes, sir?”
“I’m much obliged to you, Tussard. Much. That’s all.”
Tussard departed.
3.
The dismissal of Mapes was quick, clean and surgical, like the removal of a diseased appendix. The only pity was, the operation failed.
The private detective blew in on a gust of self-assurance scented with whisky and sweetish peppermint. His reddish little eyes were wary. He seemed to be saying, “Here’s an earful for you! Smart! You’re sure to think I’m smart! But not one to show off! Oh, you get your money’s worth with Mapes!” And from beneath this assertiveness, he seemed to be watching like a small, vindictive and treacherous animal.
He sat down on Bennett’s sofa, and, bringing out some folded sheets of paper, shuffled them impressively. Bennett stood at the window, inscrutable, and folded and unfolded his long white fingers in the sash of his dressing gown.
“I’m going to have all this typed out for you so you can read it,” said Mapes in a hearty voice. “Get it to you tomorrow. I’m just giving it to you verbal now. A verbal report. So you don’t have to wait. How’s that? All right?” Bennett nodded.
“Well, I went to the morgue first and got after the dead man’s clothes, and the suit and shirt were made by a tailor. Plenderby. Now at first this Plenderby didn’t want to tell me anything, but after a while he admitted he did make clothes for a cripple. I said, ‘How about it, do you want to get mixed up in a murder?’ and I argued that way, see? till he came across with the name and address. L. C. Stimsbury, Stone Well Road, Pelham. Now this took me all morning, and I knew you wanted me to go up and see about Lutz the watchman, so I didn’t go out to Pelham. Saved that for tomorrow.”
“Very proper,” said Bennett. “You did say, didn’t you, that you visited this Plenderby yourself?”
“Yes, I went to see him myself. That’s right.”
“This morning?”
“That’s right, this morning.”
“At what time?”
Mapes looked baffled, then admitted he thought it might have been a little after ten.
“Alone?”
“Sure, I work alone.”
“Plenderby would remember you, no doubt?”
“Now you see, Mr. Bennett,” explained Mapes in haste, pain and consternation, “if I told you I sent up a guy who assists me sometimes, my assistant I call him—only what the hell does it matter who went to see Plenderby? I told you what he said. I don’t see what you’re driving at. Anyhow, Plenderby wouldn’t remember me, because, you see, I had—”
Bennett murmured, “You lie abominably. You may remember, if you cudgel your wits, that I told you to be discreet. I particularly wished neither the police, nor the newspapers, to know what you were doing.”
“I don’t see what you’re driving at, Mr. Bennett, because—”
“How much?”
“But this is a hell of a way to treat—”
“One hundred dollars. Here. Go away.”
Mapes picked up the hundred-dollar note that Bennett had placed on the tea table. He reddened, then, and threw it contemptuously into the cold toast. He picked it up again and put it angrily in his pocket. He complained and explained, grumbled and implored, and mistakenly allowed an increasing note of threat to creep into his voice.
“If this ain’t a hell of a way to do business,” he cried to the crystal chandelier.
“Yes. Go away.”
“All right. It’s all right with me. Only you can’t get away with this, ask anybody if you can. You—”
“I’m not really too old,” said Bennett gently, “to pitch you with infinite pleasure down the nearest stair.”
“All right. Goodbye, Mr. Bennett. When you get in a jam and you wish you had protection, just you remember this. I ain’t kidding, either. Well, I wish you luck, Mr. Bennett.”
The back of the Mapes neck burned with vengeful determination
. He slammed the door loudly after himself. Bennett sighed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IN A FEW MINUTES, the dinner guests would wander in. Bennett happened to be alone in his sitting room. There was a tap on the door, a sly and friendly tap. Bennett opened.
“My dear Bauer! My dear Charles! Permit me to call you Chas?”
“Good evening to you, sir. I brought up the newspapers. I thought you might like to take a look at what’s in them.”
“No. Not before dinner. I say, I want to see you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Must do a bit of prowling this evening. Will you come?”
“It’s my business to keep an eye on you, sir, if that’s what you mean.”
“Quite. But I don’t want to force you into disreputable or dangerous schemes; I must give you over to your Department of Justice undamaged.”
“Don’t worry about me, sir. But I advise you to be—”
“No fear, Bauer. Had dinner?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“Have it, then. A good, stout dinner. I shall want you at ten, perhaps earlier, say quarter to ten. Right?”
“Right, sir.”
Bauer departed.
Aunt Emma came early, and alone. She had, as she instantly explained, a great deal of trouble keeping track of the time, since no two clocks in her troublesome world ever agreed. She wore over her powerful body an evening gown of black chiffon ornamented with fluttering patches of pink stuck to it promiscuously. Nothing could less suit her horsey frame. She wore diamond earrings in her ears, and a tiara in her hair.
“Sherry, or a cocktail?”
“A cocktail,” she said.
“Will Mr. Suttro bring your niece?”
“Yes,” said Aunt Emma. The manner in which she said it implied that Mr. Suttro might impose upon a niece, but not for a moment upon Aunt Emma.
She drank her cocktail, accepted another, drank it, too, and lunged out bravely into her daily battle. The lunge was almost physical. She seemed to have no taste for it; if lack of appetite for sponging can lighten the offense.
“I’m so glad I have a chance to speak to you alone this evening, your lordship. Mr. Bennett, I should say. Ann has been scolding me about your title, Mr. Bennett. Anyhow. I suppose it’s a terrible thing to mention when you’ve been so nice and asked me to dinner, and I really have to make myself do it, but business comes first, and one has to give it its place in this world, don’t I? It just occurred to me this morning that you might be looking for a chance to invest money over here in a young and growing country. It is better not to have all your eggs in one basket, isn’t it? I’ve got three sound, growing concerns under my direction that are simply withering for want of fresh capital. I could do wonders if I had the means to branch out, because I have some splendid ideas. But one does need money to make money, doesn’t one?”
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