“Ah. To your advantage, I hope?”
“Yes. Oh, yes,” she said vaguely, and drank some gin. This heartened her. “No,” she said. “I’ll tell you. They’ve attached my bank account. Some mistake, it must be. I was working it out—and just when you knocked I was three thousand and seventy dollars in the red—and that can’t be right, can it? No. Ann usually does the books for me. She’s too bright.”
“Ah?”
“And she’s leaving me now.”
Bennett gave up the letter from Ann. He had to do it, and he braced his spirit against the consequences. A long silence followed. Only the sound of Aunt Emma’s cigarette, burning out of balance and falling to the floor, interrupted the peace. Bennett rescued the cigarette.
After a time, Aunt Emma threw the letter weakly in the direction of the waste basket, and held out for Bennett to look at, an enclosure, a check. Bennett saw that it had been drawn by Anthony Suttro, to Emma Whittacker, for the amount of five thousand dollars. Bennett made a sound of polite interest, and returned it to her. She tore it in bits, and dropped the bits in an ash tray. Then she wept convulsively. Bennett went to the window and looked down on the Fifth Avenue buses creeping in the wet.
“Rain,” said Aunt Emma, sadly and unexpectedly, over his shoulder, “is Nature’s blessing on the lovely growing things.”
Tea arrived, and they took it gratefully. It put right much of the hysterical unpleasantness.
“I got some of those nice sticky cinnamon buns from Cushman’s, and now I can’t find them,” said Aunt Emma. “So it’s all over. Nothing I can do for her any more. She’s gone away. Poor Hobey Raymonds.”
“Quite.”
“I don’t know how I’m ever going to tell him, Mr. Bennett.”
Dusk fell. Aunt Emma made no move to light the lamps. They sat in partial darkness. Gruffly and monosyllabically, Bennett offered a dry kind of consolation. They still sat talking over their tea when a loud knock came at the door. A huge man stood outside. The huge man laughed loudly, and lurched into the room, and said confidentially, “I’m the boy friend who didn’t make the grade.”
“Oh, Hobey!” said Aunt Emma, and shut the door quickly.
Raymonds crossed the room, and leaned unsteadily against the wall. He had no hat. His stained and shapeless clothes were dripping, as if he had been walking for hours in the rain. His shoes made a liquid squashing sound on the floor. He seized several petit fours from a plate, and crammed them into his mouth.
Suddenly Aunt Emma cried, “Hobey, you’re hurt!” She put her fingers gently to a thin smear of blood on his forehead. Then she went to the bathroom for cloths.
The left side of the boy’s jaw had begun to swell and grow purple.
“Doesn’t hurt at all,” said Hobey, returning to the cakes. “How do you know I don’t like it? Anyhow, I’m very sober now, and Mr. Bennett won’t go away mad.” Bennett poured himself another cup of tea. Aunt Emma came back, washed the smear of blood and dried it, and murmured benevolently, “You’re bad, Hobey, and I’m really angry at you this time.”
“I came to tea,” said Hobey. “I didn’t know you had company.”
“Just look at your clothes!”
“I couldn’t help it. There was a fellow with me who wanted to come, and he changed his mind. I didn’t think you’d like having me bring a cop to tea.”
“You fought with a policeman?”
“I wouldn’ call it a fight. More a loss of interest.”
“Hobey, are you crazy?”
“I sure am, Auntie.”
He subsided in a chair and munched a sandwich, while Aunt Emma grew increasingly alarmed. “But what will they do to you, Hobey? The police will find you here. They won’t let you do such things.”
“Let’s wait and see, shall we?”
“How did you get in the hotel?”
“I’m quality folks. The distinguished New Haven manner. Make Mr. Bennett stop looking at me, because he’s breaking my heart. I’m not drunk. Eyes may be a bit screwy, but the head’s straight as a bowling alley. Figure of speech. Ever listen to a bowling alley? That’s what I sound like inside. Are there any more gâteaux, my sweet? I ought to do something about my eyes. Make artificial holly berries out of them. Now, please, somebody else talk for a while.”
“Mr. Bennett will think you’re awful,” said Aunt Emma, sotto voce.
Hobey winced. “No doubt. Sorry about Washington, sir.”
“Not at all.”
“It’s a very nice party, Aunt Emma, and I’m awfully sorry I came and made it all go to hell like this. Maybe I’d better go away.”
The telephone rang. The police were coming up for Hobey.
“I might as well wait, then,” said Hobey.
Bennett stood up. “Painful for Miss Crofts,” he said. “You might have known.”
“I might have known a lot of things,” said Hobey.
The arrest was brief, and reasonably polite. Two bulky and businesslike men appeared. One entered the room, the other remained at the door.
“This Raymonds? All right, Raymonds. Come along. Is this monkey going to get tough again, or-”
“I’m going to be a gentleman of the old school all the time I’m in jail,” said Raymonds. “Goodbye. Nice to have been had.”
“Maybe he ought to know he knocked about a hundred dollars’ worth of bridge-work loose, and the guy’s in the hospital. Maybe he’d like the guy to take a poke at him when he’s on his feet again—”
“Shut up,” said the officer at the door.
“Oh, I don’t know what to do,” said Aunt Emma, clenching her hands. “Everything seems to have gone wrong now...”
The door closed quietly after Raymonds.
Bennett said what little he could to comfort her, and then went quietly, too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
AND GEOFFREY BENNETT, full of explicit forebodings and bitterness and all but disillusion, washed his hands of the affair of the Crooked Man. Only because he was too old and too cynical to feel disillusion was he spared that emotion.
The last moments before Bennett’s departure had little to do with the final, hopeless calamity of the case, but they were hectic on their own account, and even a little ridiculous. Hope had reached the summit of his humiliation. Sadly and impatiently, with sidewise glances of recurrent alarm, he paced up and down the lobby of the Plaza while Bauer put in two corroborating telephone calls. Bennett found the two men waiting for him when he came down.
“Sorry, sir,” said Hope fearfully. “I thought it best to warn you at once, sir. I—I was afraid the telephone—”
“Speak up!”
“The police want you, sir.”
“What?”
“They’re at our hotel, sir. I felt you should know at once. If you return, you’ll encounter them.”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
“I’m very sorry, sir. Mr. Bauer can explain...”
Bauer explained quite simply that the process-server had gone to the police. He had sworn out a complaint against Bennett.
“They wish to arrest me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Nonsense. But on the other hand, perhaps I ought to surrender myself. Dare say it can be put right quickly. Hope, put through a call to the Embassy—”
“But then we won’t be permitted to sail, sir.”
“What? Oh. Yes. Ah. By the way, what’s your opinion, Bauer?”
Bauer thought twice, and at last admitted, “If I were you, sir, I’d slip on board your ship, and sit quiet and see nobody till she sails. Just as if you didn’t know anything about this trouble. Things won’t be any better for your going into court.”
“How did you learn of this, Hope?”
“A policeman came for you, sir.”
“Really? Then we shall go aboard at once.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Luggage?”
“It’s been sent to the ship, sir.”
“Good. Come qu
ickly, then. No, damn it, wait! That chap’s been arrested for assaulting a policeman. Raymonds, I mean. Can he be got out?”
Bauer thought it could be done, either by a bail bond, or by the payment of his fine and a bit of damages. “How much?”
“I should think five hundred would cover it.”
Bennett opened his notecase, removed five hundred-dollar notes, and thrust them at Bauer.
A little incredulous, Bauer asked, “You want me to do this?”
“Precisely.”
“But why the hell—”
“At once, if you please! And tell him to keep his head, and stop with Aunt Emma. Do you understand? She will have urgent need for him, if I’m not sadly mistaken. Now go. Take a taxi, and meet us at the boat.
Then your responsibility, at least as for as I’m concerned, will be permanently relieved.”
At last Bennett, like an absconding company promoter, crossed the city to the River, and embarked with great precautions. Rain, darkness and an odorous fog hid him. Bauer gave his charge over to the discreet authorities on the liner, and departed. Bennett was left alone in his cabin, behind locked doors. Two sharp stewards had been posted to keep unauthorized persons away.
Bennett smoked his pipe, and read a mystery story, and brooded. Eventually, the ship’s whistle rumbled, the engines vibrated faintly, and the ship itself moved out into the open darkness of the bay...
2.
For five grim preceding nights, Louis Holcomb had worked late. The five days, too, had been out of joint. On Sunday evening, therefore; at ten minutes to eleven; he was chewing his fifth aspirin tablet in his tiny office opening on the rear of the theatre itself, and pressing his temples to relieve a thundering headache. Everything that happened seemed jerky and unreal through the ragged fog of his weariness.
He had reached out a hand towards the telephone. He had intended without thinking to call Mr. Boxworth, his superior. He had no superior, however. Unless he appealed all the way up to Mr. Lowes Levison—and as his hand touched it, the telephone rang.
“Hello. Holcomb talking.”
“Yes, sir. Backstage just reported that the watchman Lutz was seen again. Stage door talking, sir. I sent them two police in.”
“You sent—yes, O.K. Nobody leaves the building, understand? Has Mr. Levison been told? Then call him. When was it?”
“Wasn’t half a minute ago.”
“Notify Police Headquarters, a man named Tussard, as soon as you tell Mr. Levison. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
He hung up. He stepped out of his office, snapped his fingers to bring two ushers to his side, and sent them to watch the doors connecting backstage with the audience. The steps he took were prearranged, and precise. The apparition, whatever it was, had been bottled.
Holcomb himself strode down the ramp towards back-stage. He looked over the audience, huge and placid, watching the last showing of the picture. They would know nothing. Backstage, at the control board, the employee who had given the alarm sat calmly waiting at his post.
“I could just make him out, Mr. Holcomb. He moved around kind of funny, and then when he saw I saw him, he ducked away.”
“Has the stage been covered?”
“Sure, they’ve been over this ground already and they’re on their way up. He must have gone up. Couldn’t get downstairs anywhere. I called stage door the first second I set eyes on him, so—”
“All right. Sure it was Lutz?”
“Looked like him. Uniform coat and hat. That’s all I could see.”
Holcomb looked into the depths of the vast stage, eerie in an unstable, liquid light from the picture screen. Abruptly the metallic voice of the emergency communication system interrupted him, and filled the air with sound. It was Levison, asking for Holcomb. Holcomb took up the telephone, dialed Levison’s office, and explained the direction of the search.
Levison said, “Good. Take the south side, will you?
I’ve got a man looking after them on the north. Can’t get away.”
“O.K. I’ll keep in touch.”
Holcomb climbed the stairs. He passed one policeman, then another, then an usher, guarding against the quarry doubling back. He caught up with the searchers.
There were passages, and room upon room, dressmakers’ rooms, wardrobe rooms, audition rooms, offices, rehearsal rooms...The emergency speaking system talked on. The words beat dully in the pounding of Holcomb’s headache. Of course, the guy they were hunting could hear them, too. He’d know what they were doing. But that didn’t seem to matter.
He put another aspirin in his mouth, and went down to take a look at the audience. Calm, unaware, they were beginning to drift out. Arrangements had been made for them to be watched carefully, in case their quarry tried to sneak his way out among them.
He learned that Tussard had arrived. What crazy business this was, anyhow! At quarter past eleven, he was asked to call Levison. Levison’s voice, sharp and strange, said they’d found her. Her? The telephone went dead. Holcomb stopped to smooth his hair thoughtfully and catch his breath. Then he went to dismiss the searchers, most of whom could go. He would want a few to inspect the remainder of the building, as a precaution.
He asked, “Who’d they find?”
One of the squad said, “Don’t know, sir.”
“Where are they?”
“Mr. Levison’s office, sir.”
“All right. We’ll start there. You come along with me.”
The passage outside the executive offices had fallen entirely into the hands of the police. Holcomb could rouse no great interest in this official activity, this triumphant coming and going on the outer hinge. He made his way through it, to the door of the secretary’s office, where Lowes Levison stood scowling, with his arms folded, looking both hurt and angry. Tussard, holding the watchman’s coat and hat in his thick hands, was triumphant at Levison’s elbow. Beyond them, and momentarily visible in Levison’s office when somebody came out through the intervening door, sat Ann Crofts, between two policemen. Her appearance startled Holcomb, shocked him. He had only a glimpse of her, and the door was shut. Her face was white, hard, tense; her lips were pressed in a thin line. She seemed dazed.
Levison at that moment made a move as if to go into his own office, but Tussard blocked his way. “Oh, no you don’t,” he said gruffly. “You’re not running this show.”
Levison’s face darkened angrily. Putting on a thin assumption of bantering, he drawled, “I’d like to see you bum in hell, Tussard,” and flung into Christien’s office, banging the door after him. The bang made Holcomb wince.
Chalky and mask-like, Tussard’s face nevertheless looked pleased. He said to Holcomb, “It’s all over now.”
“Yes. What’s all over?”
“There she is. We caught her hiding in there. We found this stuff right in her hands.” ‘This stuff’ was the watchman’s tunic and cap. “She tried to bluff it out, but it didn’t work.”
“She’s the man you were looking for?”
“She’s the man.”
“Did she say so?”
“She will.”
Holcomb’s eyes ached. He rubbed them. Everything and everybody, Tussard and the policemen and the familiar offices and furniture, seemed a little garish and unconvincing. He heard himself saying, “Somebody’s crazy. I heard she got married this morning and went to Chicago.”
“I had a man on the train with her. She didn’t know it.”
“How did she get here?”
“She got off the train at Harmon. So did her husband. They came back to town, but not together.”
“I must be crazy. I’ll be damned.”
“She came back here to put on her act again, with the idea she’d have an alibi because she was supposed to be on the train. She didn’t know we saw her get off. Well, she put on her act once too often, and she got caught That’s the way it goes, Mr. Holcomb. If she’d put it over, you’d have said to yourself, well, it can’t be Ann Crofts or her h
usband, because they’re in Chicago, so it must be somebody else. That was the whole idea, only it didn’t go over.”
“Maybe you’re right,” said Holcomb. “Only a woman with that coat and hat on, wouldn’t fool me. Her skirts or her shape would give her away. Or maybe I’m crazy.”
“Maybe so. She tied a handkerchief over her bee. She kept where it was dark. Nobody saw anything but the uniform part of it. Think it over.”
Holcomb fished out a cigarette, lighted it, and yawned deeply. “Where’s her husband? Where’s Anthony Suttro?” he asked.
“Haven’t found him yet. I think he must have got it out of her on the train, what a bad one she was, and turned right back for New York. He’ll turn up soon.”
“She could have found a better place to hide than in Levison’s room.”
“Anyhow, that’s where we found her.”
“And she killed the cripple, and Lutz, and old John Boxworth?”
“Sure she did.”
“Why?”
“They had something on her. I can’t tell you about the details. Just say to yourself, she wanted to marry Suttro for his money, and she didn’t want to let anything stand in her way.”
“Is she strong enough for a job like that?”
“She’s plenty strong. A pretty healthy kid.”
“It’s all washed up, then? Everything’s settled?”
“I’m satisfied, and so is the District Attorney. Anybody who don’t agree can always write letters about it to the newspapers.”
Holcomb rubbed his eyes again. The police case, he realized, was fixed and settled, permanently and unalterably. Discrepancies could not be pampered, but merely forced to fit. It was done. The solid flesh of Percy Tussard personified the system. Aspirin or the cigarette had upset Holcomb’s stomach, made his mouth taste sour.
“I got to go on and give the rest of the place a look,” said Holcomb. “Then I’m going home to get some sleep. I won’t be here early tomorrow, so if there’s anything you want, let’s hear about it now.”
“No, I won’t want you. I’ll be here a while longer, maybe half an hour, so let’s have a word from you if you find anything.”
“Sure, I’ll let you know.”
There was a Crooked Man Page 23