“Every two thousand miles,” Alden told Henry Tozer, “is plenty often for a grease job. Take it from me...”
And the Winter twins threw questions about overhead cams and multiple carburation at Milton, who knew disappointingly little about the marvels of his Lagonda.
It was, Katheren thought, a field day for the avid tourist, but hard going for a person like herself. Besides, a curious uneasiness obsessed her. Her husband was up to something, she couldn’t make out what.
He had a dreamy, speculative look about him; he smoked his pipe incessantly; and he slouched in his chair, often looking over his shoulder towards the door. For Nick Leeds? That young man’s portion of pheasant had been taken back to the kitchens some time ago.
George straightened up and put away his pipe. He had noticed Katheren’s glance.
He made a feeble effort to interest Cicely in the conversation:
“Did you stop off to visit Old Fort Necessity, Mrs.
Smalnick? General Washington fought his first engagement with the French and Indians there.”
“Where was that?”
“A few miles west of Cumberland, on the road to Uniontown, as I remember,” said Woar.
“A chahming spot,” agreed Cicely. “We loved the Old Fort.”
“Which happens to be ten miles east of Uniontown, and nowhere near Cumberland,” snapped Agatha. “Henry’s dragged me all through that country a hundred times.”
“And we didn’t stop there anyhow,” said Milton, settling the matter for all time.
It only served George right, for he knew as well as Katheren how they had detoured Uniontown by way of the road through Greensburg.
What was the matter with him?
And Nick Leeds—what was the matter with him?
He appeared from nowhere, said nothing, dropped in his chair and drained his whisky and soda in two gulps.
The waiter hopefully brought him his food. Mae asked him if anything had gone wrong. Nick ignored her and pushed his plate away.
“My Gahd!” Cicely cried, and suddenly stood up.
“What now?”
“Count for yourself!” she replied, pointing round the table. Nick, Mae, Burnet, Agatha, Milton, Cicely herself, George, Connie, Ray, Katheren, Alden, Boyd and Henry—thirteen. Hardly sufficient reason for Cicely to recoil with horror, though.
Nevertheless, she huddled into her fur and announced, “That, I feah, is the limit! I must be going. Thank our host for me—if he ever shows up! Good night...”
She swept grandly away, but a little hurriedly, as if afraid the contamination might overtake her.
In one sense, it did. Agatha murmured vague excuses and hurried out too. Some five or ten minutes later, Katheren encountered her in the ladies’ room, in close consultation with Cicely, seemingly about Connie’s career. Agatha was urging a tightly wadded handful of money into the other’s palm:
“...For her screen test. Two hundred and fifty, count it and see. Your husband...so much on his mind, he can’t listen to poor me!...Leaving it in your hands, dear Mrs. Smalnick...”
The two hundred fifty and Connie’s future were popped into a handbag, with only the barest sign of reluctance on Cicely’s part. Katheren saw her start for the elevators.
Milton, when Katheren returned to the table, made a point of explaining to her:
“She’s kind of high strung, my wife is, like lots of theater people. They’d just as soon let you point a gun at ‘em and pull the trigger as sit thirteen at a table. Me, I call that baloney—but why argue with a woman?” The party was beginning to disintegrate then; to be accepted as futile and pointless joke, not worth prolonging. Making the most of it, Ray and Connie slipped away to the dance floor. Alden thought it was early, and how about a game of poker? Milton pursed his lips, considering the proposal from all sides.
George, when Katheren went off with Burnet Winter for a last dance, was deep in conspiracy with Nick Leeds. The two had moved to the head of the table, apart from the others, and George had appropriated the host’s chair. Not that she was as superstitious as Cicely, Katheren told herself; but after all, by implication it was the dead man’s place...
When she looked again, both George and Nick had vanished. She saw no more of them that night.
In reply to queries, the headwaiter loftily told them that the bill for the party “had been taken care of.”
Katheren went to bed when Agatha took Connie home. Henry alone stuck it out, presumably waiting for the ghostly host.
He was disappointed. Shanley may have been there in spirit, but he never manifested himself. The wake was a puzzling frost.
4
Not for the first time in his erratic career, Hazlitt was stumped. He could blame nobody but himself. He did, savagely.
Again Ruth Shanley had disappeared.
By process of elimination, he reduced the problem to this:
No solitary female of her description had registered for a room in either the Missouri or Kansas sides of the city. Excepting on two very improbable trains, no person like her had departed that night.
She had walked out of the Hotel Phillips with suitcase in hand, refused a taxi, and vanished at twenty minutes to seven. It was a chilly autumn evening, too chilly for comfort in the parks. She had almost no money.
“She couldn’t have run away,” he told Nick Leeds. “She knew it was useless. I’m sure of it.”
It was after eleven then. Woar’s pipe left a trail of white puffs through the soft, cold river mist that began to seep through the streets. Nick lurched along at his side with his hands in his pockets and a look of desperation on his face.
“We got to find her.”
“Granted.”
“We’ve tried about everything.”
“Not quite. Sorry to say this, but we’ve still the hospitals and the jails.”
It wasn’t in either of these grim institutions that they first came upon a trace of her, though. It was in a north side police station, the third in which Woar made inquiries at great risk to his personal freedom.
The desk sergeant, with one ear to the telephone, the other open to Woar’s requests, suddenly skewered Woar with a stare. For an instant, George thought his criminal profile had been identified.
“I got an attempted suicide here,” the sergeant offered, “if you want that.”
“Young woman?”
“Young and pretty. Might be the one you’re after. Locked herself in a hotel room on Bellerophon Street.” It was illogical and the direst of last resorts, but Woar said, “We’ll look at her.”
“You go four blocks over,” and the sergeant showed the way on a city map. “Walk fast, and you ought to be there as quick as the prowl car.”
Nick could say nothing. He kept rubbing his face between white, trembling hands. He let Woar lead the way.
Hotel Bellerophon, Rooms Seventy-Five Cents to Two Dollars, smelled of mist and smoke and misery. A pallid, sullen clerk who spoke in whispers told them, “She’s groaning and moaning up there. Left the light burning and got something heavy against the door. She’ll make two for me this year, and I hate ‘em!”
The policemen accepted Woar and Nick, permitted them upstairs with them. Nick helped with a shoulder in forcing the door. A chair had been wedged under the knob.
In the pale glare of a ceiling light, on a cheap iron bed in a room built about the time of the Civil War, Ruth lay huddled under a dirty quilt. Her brilliant coppery hair poured over her face and hid it. Nick leaned above her, gently brushed the locks into place with his fingers.
“She’s all right,” he tried to make the policeman believe. “She’s asleep. Aren’t you, Ruth?”
She moaned, and put out a hand to ward Nick off. She opened her eyes drowsily for a moment, gazed blankly up at the faces about her, then lay still again.
“Leave her alone,” one of the policemen told Nick, but without expecting to be obeyed. Nick sat on the bed beside her and tucked the quilt about her. She was only half dre
ssed. She looked like a sick child, with ink and smudges of dirt on her pale skin.
Woar seemed to be the only one who felt the need to hurry. Where ink had been spilled on the floor, he touched his finger to see if it was dry. He looked about the room, and pointed to a small pill bottle on the bare table. It was half empty.
“Phenobarbital, I think. She’s been taking it for a sedative. Hot coffee, and a doctor!”
One policeman stayed with Nick and the woman while the other went downstairs to the desk to telephone. Woar accompanied him. Their shoes clattered on the zinc-covered stairs, the echoes racketed behind them.
“That her husband?”
“Intended.”
“All broke up, ain’t he? Don’t blame him. What’s the matter with her, crazy?”
“No.”
“Ink on her hand, and dirt all over her. Looks crazy to me. No suicide note that I could see.”
If there had been one, Woar would have been immeasurably surprised. He said nothing about that, however; or that the smudges had been bruise marks, evidence of a hideous beating.
He waited till the doctor arrived and went upstairs. Then he asked the sullen clerk, “May I see the register?”
It was grudgingly produced. Ruth Shanley’s room, 409, had been signed for in a crude, masculine backhand, and the almost illegible name might have been either Mr. and Mrs. R. Shanley, or Shanker.
“She didn’t come alone?”
“That’s her husband wrote that.”
“When?”
“Around seven.”
“How long did he stay?”
“Half, three-quarters of an hour maybe.”
“Can you describe him? Tall, short, dark, fair?”
The clerk was anything but an observant man. Tall and dark, he thought, then contradicted himself, and ended no great help at all. A bulky yellow coat and a dark felt hat were the most that remained fixed in his mind.
“Well, then—friends? Visitors? Telephone calls?” None.
Woar smoked his pipe and rested his legs on a bumpy plush sofa till the ambulance came to take Ruth away.
“Some possibility of concussion,” the doctor said. “Otherwise, only what you’d expect from a severe mauling. She’ll be in pain when she wakes, of course.”
“Call it suicide?” one of the policemen asked.
“It isn’t likely. The dose of sedative wasn’t strong enough to kill anyone. She would have emptied the bottle. The man who beat her might have forced the drug on her to keep her quiet for a while.”
“Which would make it a case of assault, don’t you think?” said Woar. “The man was her divorced husband. He’s made trouble before. Jealous of Mr. Leeds because he’s about to marry her, and trying as I understand to force her to sign some property deeds—which accounts for the spilled ink. Poor woman! It would be better for everybody if she could be spared appearing in court or bringing a complaint...”
Nick got the point, as Woar hoped he would.
Then the ambulance drove away with Nick and Ruth in it, and the prowl car after it. The doctor finished the coffee that had been brought for Ruth, smoked a cigarette with Woar, and at last took his leave.
“Can I give you a lift anywhere, Mr. Brendan?”
“No, thanks.”
Woar said good night to the clerk. He stepped out into the street, silent and deserted as soon as the tail lamps of the doctor’s car vanished round the corner.
He cleared his lungs of the smell of Hotel Bellerophon, turned south, and sauntered along the brick wall of the building, ornamented with shallow romanesque arches that served as sanctuaries for bits of street rubbish blown by the wind.
In one of these, and tightly wadded into a bundle, he found the yellow coat and the dark felt hat. Each had the label of a second-hand clothing shop stapled
Woar ripped out one of the labels for future reference, and put the bundle where he found it.
He made himself as comfortable as possible in the recess and waited. The dingy peace of Bellerophon Street had been outraged by prowl car and ambulance that night. Not till that had been forgotten for a safe interval would Ruth’s assailant dare show himself. Having drugged her to keep her from escaping, he meant to return to finish his job. Woar could be patient too.
Half an hour passed.
A woman’s heels clicked on the pavement at the end of the street. They paused, walked quickly on again. The woman herself was hid in the mist. She crossed Bellerophon Street on the intersecting road without approaching the pale aura of light about the hotel entrance. The sound died away.
Then Woar heard it again at the other end of the street, and surmised that the lone walker had made a cautious circuit of the block. She was coming towards Woar now, past the arches, on her way to the lighted entrance.
She went by him without turning her head. A strong reek of scent sharpened the air.
She stopped in the light of the door to pull up her stockings and settle her fur jacket about her neck before going in, and Woar chuckled to himself.
Cicely had been sent instead.
Nine
Katheren had preceded the poker party upstairs by two jumps of a fast elevator. To her great surprise, she discovered the Woars were giving it. Somebody had arranged for a folding table, chairs and a tray of drinks in the sitting room. Katheren went through into her own room and locked the door. She did not like the idea at all. At least George might have warned her beforehand.
Was this to be the kind of married life she had let herself in for?
About the third time she asked herself the question, she noticed a soft tapping sound on the door to the corridor. It was Mae Beardsley:
“Am I disturbing you, dear? The boys are looking for George to start their little game.,,
“They might as well go ahead without him,” said Katheren wearily. “Now I see my husband, now I don’t.”
“It’s all right, isn’t it? The money part, I mean? Alden’s a shark at the game, and I wouldn’t like gambling losses to break up our nice friendship.”
“We’ll hope for the best,” Katheren assured her, and thanked her for the warning. The Woar budget for the rest of the trip had no provision for gambling losses—but that was George’s look-out.
Mae went off to bed. “The boys” filed audibly into the next room. Katheren, listening through the door to the masculine mumble, gathered that the party was made up of Beardsley, Smalnick, the Winter twins and Ray Kemp—who had come only to look on.
Beardsley: “Come on, sit in, Ray. Poker isn’t half as risky as football.”
Smalnick: “Sure, till Brendan comes, sit in.” Beardsley: “We’ll keep the limit down.”
Winter #1: “Penny ante is Ray’s speed.”
Smalnick: “Twenty, fifty, maybe a hundred thousand dollars—that’s how a poker game runs in Hollywood.” Beardsley: “I’ve seen a few of those games myself. Don’t let that scare you out, Ray.”
Kemp: “Who’s scared?”
All: “Now you’re talking, draw up a chair, cut for deal, etc., etc.”
Katheren felt a pang of regret for Ray.
When she had put out the light, opened the window and crept into bed, the pang was still with her. Everything in the world had gone a little askew. This was the way, she told herself, people fell out of love with each other. Women like Cicely, poker parties, broken promises, all the traditional little things.
What had become of that rare soul, George Woar, shy, bitter and lovable? Where was the strange creature who saw so much and said so little, who, and once she had accused him of it, never addressed even himself by his Christian name? Where was he now, that elusive suitor who wrote dry, impersonal letters with postmarks from odd corners of the earth but never an address to which she could reply?
Well, as far as she could make out, he was some-: where having a good time. This was not her idea of marriage at all.
2
She woke again when Woar came home.
The sky had turned an as
hy gray. She felt him kiss her lightly, tickling her with his mustache. She pretended to be asleep. He stood looking down at her a moment, then went into the sitting room, where the poker game still endured. She listened, and a short while later heard the unmistakable step of Cicely mincing down the corridor towards her own room.
It seemed unarguable: the two had been out together.
To hell with him, then!
She drew the shade to keep out the dawn, and tried to return to sleep.
In the sitting room, yawning, George was having the inverse difficulty. It was hard to keep awake.
The time had come to break up. Already the Winters had departed, and Beardsley, who had most of the chips, was telling Ray Kemp, “Let’s cut double or nothing, and quit. That way you get a chance.”
While Milton Smalnick poured himself a straight whisky, Beardsley made his cut, showed the ten of spades.
Ray, haggard with anxiety, fingered the pack indecisively, and finally turned up the four of hearts.
“How much does that make?” he asked.
“Two hundred thirty-two dollars and fifty cents.”
“Cut again?”
“We’ll be at it all day if we don’t stop now.”
“And what if I haven’t got two hundred and thirty bucks?”
“I’ll take your check. Well, if you can’t give me a check, your I.O.U.”
Ray accepted the fountain pen from Beardsley. He wrote slowly on a piece of hotel stationery, I.O.U. the sum of $232.50—Raymond Kemp. Sweat gleamed on his upper lip as he formed the letters. The tips of his fingers, protruding from the bandage he still wore on his hand, turned white.
He threw the note on the table in front of Beardsley. Without a word, he stalked out of the room.
Then Smalnick said, “I lost seven hundred. Seven fifteen, to be exact. Cut you double or nothing too.”
Smalnick lost the cut, imperturbably made out his check for $1,430, and said, “One more quick drink and I’m going to bed.”
He drank and went. Beardsley licked his lips over his stack of winnings. Chips, money and negotiable papers, he raked them all into a heap in the middle of the table and beamed owlishly at them:
If A Body Page 11