“I’ll do the best I can, George.”
“Good girl.”
“But I’d like to know what it’s all about.”
He gave her a suddenly quizzical, impish look. “Asking my professional opinion? You, Katheren? I thought detectives weren’t considered nice people.” She said, “Oh, go to blazes!”
Eighteen
NEVERTHELESS, she did what he asked.
It was a cheerless dinner, Mexican dishes, chicken tacos, tortillas, and such, which Mae regarded sniffily and George ate at top speed.
Mae professed to believe that Nick’s quarrel with Ruth had been a simple case of true love not running smoothly. Katheren kept her own ghostly conviction to herself, since it was all womanly instinct and no logic; since, moreover, she didn’t quite believe in the ghost of Rex Shanley herself; but the day was to come when she would be proved nearer right than Mae. Nearer right than her husband, too, though he, of course, never let her find that out.
At any rate, George excused himself:
“Must make a long distance call to New York. It may take me hours.”
Mae said, “And I must get back to Ruth. I don’t feel right about leaving her alone, even if she is sleeping.” Then Katheren interceded with, “You didn’t hear what the doctor said?”
“What?”
“People upset her. She ought to have time to get over this by herself.”
“I guess he knows his business but—I’m always afraid of what she may do to herself. You know, dear, people get depressed, they think there isn’t anything left to live for, and you’ve got one of those things on your hands.”
“I don’t see any reason for worrying.”
“Well, I do. If only Alden hadn’t given her that gun of his to protect herself! I told him then, I said, Alden, you get the silliest ideas! What can that poor girl do with a gun, of all things! The next time my back’s turned, though, he gives it to her. At least, I saw the empty holster in his suitcase. Katheren, do you suppose we’ll ever understand what goes on in men’s minds?”
“I doubt it,” said Katheren, with feeling.
Automatic or no automatic, Mae ordered ice-cream and another cup of coffee.
By that time, George was upstairs, talking to Ruth, and there was nothing Katheren could do but hope he wouldn’t drive the woman too far.
2
Mae had arranged Ruth in a chair with pillows and a quilt about her. She regarded Woar doubtfully, suspicious of that disarming smile. The dinner on a tray beside her hadn’t been tasted.
He lit his pipe and sat on the edge of the bed. She kept a determined, almost belligerent silence.
“After all,” he said quietly, “the worst is over. You confessed the truth to Nick Leeds. He’s gone. Or wasn’t it the truth? No matter, it must all come out now. You see that, don’t you?”
She shrugged. She pressed her lips firmly together.
“Um. Well, I don’t seem to be getting anywhere, do I? Too bad. I could be of help to you if I knew your secret. I might be able to help you avoid the nasty consequences. Care to think that over for a moment?”
She thought, and said, “What consequences? I haven’t done anything.”
“That isn’t quite true. Rex Shanley wouldn’t be dead if you hadn’t done something. Right?”
Obviously right. She winced and lowered her eyes.
“I’m not going to tell you anything,” she said firmly. “I’m not going to talk to you at all. I’m not very clever, Mr. Brendan. I only know enough to keep my mouth shut tight. That’s the safest thing I can do. So you see, it isn’t any use.”
She folded her hands with finality in her lap.
Woar nodded approval and said, “Let me finish my pipe, then. Merely point to the door when you want me to go. I’ll understand.”
He composed himself on the foot of the bed, smoked lazily and looked at her as if he had a lot to think about.
Quarter of an hour passed.
She lay back in her chair, with her face turned away from the light. Her fingers began to move nervously, tracing a seam in the quilt, and this was what Woar had been waiting for.
He dumped the ashes from his pipe into the cuff of his gray flannel trousers and stood up:
“So you’re afraid of me,” he said. “You killed Rex Shanley to defraud an insurance company, killed Cicely to keep her mouth shut, and you’re afraid I know too much too. What a stale dreary piece of business! I’m sorry for Nick. Men seldom love women as he loves you—and that filthy secret to carry about for the rest of his life is a handsome reward, isn’t it?”
“No—you’re wrong.”
“Do you still want me to believe in a tuppenny mysterious doom dogging your heels? Rot! Do you think I’ll melt before those heartrending eyes of yours, and keep quiet as Nick is doing? That’s likely! No, my dear Ruth, this is the end. We’ve protected you and cherished you like a lot of addlepates. It’s time the Beardsleys and the Tozers knew the truth.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell them?” and she asked the question in a listless voice while she puttered with pillow and quilt.
“Can’t very well do otherwise.”
“I’m not going to let you,” she said, in the same tone, but with a quick movement of her hands. She had taken Beardsley’s automatic from the side of the chair, where it had been pushed down beneath the cushion.
She pointed it at Woar.
“Ah,” said Woar. “Firearms.”
“I’m not going to let you out of here to tell anybody,” she told him in her soft, husky voice. It was no longer unsteady. “I’m not afraid to shoot, either.”
“I believe you.”
“You shouldn’t come into a woman’s room. They won’t do anything to me if I shoot you. They won’t blame me at all.”
“Quite so.”
He stood very quietly, extremely careful not to make a move that might be misinterpreted.
“Why did you have to stick your nose into this trouble?” she asked plaintively. “You only make it worse. You find out things and get them all wrong, just as I was afraid.”
“Always glad to be put right, I assure you.”
She was pleading with him to believe her now.
“I didn’t know about the insurance. I didn’t know what was going to happen when we started out from New York. I didn’t understand. Do you think I would have stood for a murder, two murders? Do you think I’m that crazy? I just didn’t know what it all meant till it happened.”
“You could have said so then.”
“Didn’t I try to at Migler’s? I wanted so much to warn you people. Didn’t I try to tell you, but you had to change your clothes? And Nick, but he was out of his cabin? And even Alden Beardsley? Then it happened, and it was too late to tell anybody. All I did since then, I couldn’t help. I asked Nick to go away and forget me, and he wouldn’t listen. I had to let him be nice to me. I couldn’t open my mouth for fear—”
Fear was the word. It shut her mouth again. She stopped pleading instantly, retreated into her habitual silence, the terrified silence of one who suspects the walls of listening, and the doors and the windows of betraying her.
“Fear of what?”
“No use asking,” she said sullenly. “If I tell, I’ll get what Cicely got. If I don’t get what she got, I’ll be just as bad off with a murder rap hanging over me. And even then, there’s a better reason. Maybe I still have a chance of fixing this up my own way, so nobody else suffers. There’s been enough suffering now.”
“You love him, don’t you?”
“Love him? Me? Wait a minute, who do you mean?”
“Nick.”
“He’s the first real, fine, honest man I ever met. I don’t know what’s the matter with me, I—I shouldn’t let myself talk to you.”
“Point of honor, is it?”
She looked searchingly, hopefully, into Woar’s eyes, as if she would be very glad to see that he understood.
She was, as he had noticed before, a
singularly beautiful and appealing woman. However, she continued to aim the automatic directly into his stomach.
“This,” he said with an unbalanced smile, “isn’t the time to question a woman’s ethics. I accept the point of honor. I respect it. I shan’t ask you to tell me any more. I believe you love Nick: I believe you’d marry him if you could. I believe you didn’t murder Rex Shanley, and if you don’t make a horrible mistake with your right index finger, I shall probably be able to prove it. It’s not as impossible as you think. Mrs. Shanley, I suggest you trust me and my not too inadequate sense of discretion. What do you say?”
She didn’t say, but Woar took the chance.
He stepped forward confidently with his hand outstretched for the automatic.
3
During the rest of the night, Hazlitt Woar had time to realize what he had let himself in for.
He had promised a bedeviled young woman that he would find the murderer of Rex Shanley and bring him to justice, without any clear idea how to bring it off. Whether he had promised this under the influence of a pair of especially thrilling eyes or in the excitement of discovering the ultimate twist in what he had lately called a dreary piece of business, he could never quite decide.
Not that it made any difference, one way or the other. All the fancy promises in the world couldn’t alter his single-minded purpose to lay hands on his quarry before his quarry landed him in jail. Woar had never before in his life taken so strong a dislike to any murderer.
In spite of Katheren’s pitiably frazzled condition, they set out for Arizona that night. They thought it better not to wait for the usual ceremonious call of the local police wanting the alias George Brendan.
They set out in the Winters’ Model “A.” It had crept into Santa Fe about seven in the evening, crept because its tires had been bulwarked with patent blow-out patches till they consisted of little else. The Winters and particularly Ray Kemp wanted to get on in pursuit of the Tozers. George, buying the expedition two new tubes and casings, had made what the twins called a “deal.”
The weather turned brutally cold. The Ford lacked a top. The party spent hours drawn up at the side of the road, investigating sinister noises in the motor. As far as Katheren was concerned, that leg of the journey beyond Santa Fe was worst of all.
Her husband was in the throes of one of his irritating periodic fits of impatience.
Gradually she got the idea; this was pursuit of some sort. Pursuit of whom, and why, she was much too miserable to inquire.
When they had left La Fonda, George had taken pains to put a flea in Mae’s ear, a hint that even the Beardsleys might not be safe from their friend the informer. Mae had seemed impressed—and long before the Model “A” could struggle as far as Algodones, the Chrysler shot by them in the direction of Albuquerque again. Mae, Alden and Ruth were in it.
Katheren was surprised; she didn’t know the Beardsleys had reasons of their own for avoiding the police.
She did know, however, that the elderly Ford was practically out of the chase, if chase was what it was meant to be. Its motor boiled at thirty. It missed and spat at thirty-five. Forty was the best it could do...
Ahead of them, like bright beads, the components of the Shanley case had strung themselves along the thin thread of highway between New Mexico and California.
Distance was the problem, and time, or the lack of time, the essence of it.
Once again the Ford stopped. Boyd Winter climbed out to fuss with the ignition distributor. Besides, they had to wait to let the boiling subside.
With what George had to do it with, it looked very much as if the problem as stated would prove insoluble.
Nineteen
ALBUQUERQUE. They pulled in at dawn.
The station was the only place open, so they crouched numbly over hot coffee at the counter of the Harvey House lunch room. All except Woar, who was still being brisk and purposeful. He reconnoitered.
When he came back to the warmth of the station restaurant, he found Ray Kemp sound asleep with his rumpled head on his folded arms. He muttered in his sleep and tried to turn over. The twins devoured wheat cakes. Katheren was in a hypnotic trance over a bowl of hot porridge.
Woar didn’t mention the most important fact: that they were four hours behind the last of the cars he was chafing.
Also, they were losing ground fast, at the rate Boyd and Burnet ate wheat cakes. George felt like getting them all back into the car and taking off, regardless; but his wife’s wan face made him relent. The waitress threw him a smile that was a miracle of good will for that early hour, and drew him a cup of scalding coffee.
“Good news,” he said, and slid a telegram under Katheren’s nose:
IMPORTANT YOU AVOID LOS ANGELES. FOREIGN TREATMENT UNNECESSARY. COMPLICATIONS NOT EXPECTED. HOPE TO INFORM YOU MARY’S COMPLETE RECOVERY SAN FRANCISCO TOMORROW. CHEER UP.
GAILLARD
“What’s good about it?” Katheren wanted to know. “I’m not cheering up till Mary doesn’t need the doctor any more.”
Woar used a dirty hand to rub his tired, unshaven face, leaving it arranged in a crooked smile:
“I wonder. Will you ever love me again?”
“Probably not. How far is San Francisco?”
“One thousand, one hundred and a few odd miles.”
“Any more good news?”
“Oh, the usual. More rain, more rivers rising, no buses coming through from the East, even the California Limited a few hours late. Chicago had snow.” She took a deep breath, and said, “Go away, George. You make me very unhappy. I’m going to eat my oatmeal in peace, if it’s the last thing I ever do.”
She meant it.
The twins finished breakfast and went out to mope over their car. Ray woke with a start and stumbled out after them.
George finished his coffee and smoked a pipe on the deserted station platform. He was worried. He was afraid of Katheren in her present state of mind. He tried to think of something suitable to say to her, and couldn’t.
If only his wife would hold together till the Shanley case could be settled!
2
She didn’t.
She came out of the lunch room a desperate woman, leading Caligula faster than he wanted to go. George thought for a moment she was going to refuse flatly to budge any further.
The Winter twins were at their usual game.
They had raised the Ford’s hood and crammed all except buttocks and legs within. The motor popped and spat. Ray grumpily gave a kick at the projecting quarters:
“Put your toys back in the box, we’re taking off.” The twins showed long faces and wiped off the grease with what had been a towel.
“That’s a likely story,” mused Burnet.
“Warped second gear coming over the hills last night,” said Boyd.
“Not only that,” Burnet added, “but when I said I thought she needed oil, she really needed oil. We just had to put in four quarts. The con rods are loose as ashes. The mains too. I don’t like to mention valves at all.”
“She’s taking an awful beating,” concluded Boyd. “She’s not going to last, that’s all.”
Like mourners burying a dear friend, they fastened down the hood.
Woar looked at his watch. He sighed.
“Will you sell her?”
“The car?”
“Yes.”
“And what happens to us? We can’t just get out and walk the rest of the way.”
“I’ll transport you, valves and con rods permitting.”
“Sure, that’s fair enough,” said Ray.
Burnet looked at Boyd, who asked in a tentative voice, “Could you stand fifty bucks?”
“Right,” said Woar quickly. He impressed twenty-five from Katheren, took twenty-five from his own pocket, and slipped behind the wheel. He meshed gears.
“Let’s go.”
The boys scrambled in on top of the luggage. The Ford shuddered and lurched. From there on, its accelerator went down to the f
loor. The results surprised everyone. They even passed a few cars.
“I have seven dollars, thirty cents and two bent airmail stamps,” Katheren notified her husband above the roar of wind and mechanism. “Can you do better?”
“Four dollars and some silver.”
“Will eleven dollars and this car take us to San Francisco? Don’t bother to answer. I know.”
In the face of the impossible, their new car showed its spirit, seemed to say it would take them to Vancouver if it had to.
They bounded over a thunderous cattle-guard, then settled to a reasonably constant speed of fifty-seven.
3
They made Gallup in three hours.
The Ford made it no further. Hollow clanking came from her guts. The con rod bearings had burned out.
It was nine o’clock. As they turned into the most likely looking garage, the Beardsley Chrysler pulled out. Its serene bulk had the look of a passing ocean liner to castaways on a raft. Woar shouted, “Hoy,” and squawked the horn. Katheren shouted something else and waved her arm. Ray and the Winter twins put their fingers in their mouths and whistled. The row was enough to make most of Gallup turn and stare with some amazement, but not enough to stop the Chrysler on its westward way.
Katheren still believes she caught Alden’s eye cocked at them in the rear-view mirror. She distinctly made out Mae in lively conversation with Ruth in the tonneau. Then they were gone. Maddening.
“Oh, well,” murmured Woar philosophically, and climbed out to look up a mechanic.
“All out,” said Ray. “End of the line, no fooling about it.”
The mechanic was not the cheery, eager, charming kind, but the opposite. His face fell at the sight of the car. He gave ear to the clanking from the crank-case with almost morbid reluctance. He rubbed a melancholy chin and brooded for a few minutes on the horror of it all.
“You ain’t lookin’ to me to fix this heap, are you?”
“Can’t you?”
“Sure, I suppose I can fix anything, if I got to. I suppose you’re in a hurry, too, and you want me to do a cheap job?”
“Right.”
“Well, she’ll take a new shaft, bearings, rods, pistons and valves. Say thirty-five bucks, if not more when I get into her.”
If A Body Page 20