Odor of Violets

by Baynard Kendrick

  After a while, Bunny said, “We’re coming into West Hartford now.”

  “I knew we were passing houses.” Maclain smiled fleetingly, and explained, “Houses beside the road change the exhaust sounds of a car.”

  “That’s interesting,” said Bunny, “but I’m afraid that’s a fact that won’t ever be of much use to me.”

  “A Spaniard might say, ‘Quién sabe?’ ” The Captain snubbed his cigarette in an ash tray beside him, opened his eyes, and leaned slightly forward as though his attention were riveted on some particular noise he wanted to hear.

  Bunny chuckled. “Why should I ever become interested, Captain Maclain, in the noise of the exhaust while passing houses in my car?”

  “It might prove a diversion when you’re driving in and out of town. You could close your eyes and try to locate exactly where you are.”

  “I usually have plenty to occupy my mind.”

  “Most people do,” Maclain agreed. “But one man I happen to know of was able to direct the F. B. I. to the hideout of his kidnapers because he had listened intently to the sound of overhead planes.”

  “I’ve heard that you’re a rather brilliant man,” said Bunny in a quickly serious tone.

  “Thank you.” Maclain reached down and touched Schnucke’s head. “You’re lying on my feet,” he told her. She looked up at him out of one dark eye and moved farther away.

  “Yes,” Bunny continued, “I got the information from Colonel Gray. I’m wondering if there’s a warning back of what you just said—a warning that I might be kidnaped some day.”

  Maclain slowly turned his head toward the president of International Aircraft. The blankness of his eyes gave Bunny a false impression that he was being stared at with an expression akin to naive incredulity.

  “Thaddeus Tredwill’s daughter was kidnaped, Mr. Carter. She’s not nearly as important as you.”

  Bunny’s stocky frame tensed for a moment into immobility. “Great heavens, man! Why would anyone want to kidnap me?”

  “Because you’re in the same boat I am.” Maclain turned away. “You’re carrying around a great deal of dangerous information in your head, Mr. Carter. Information that certain people would like very much to know.”

  “What people?”

  “That’s a question I greatly deplore.” The Captain interlocked his fingers and flexed them gently by bending his hands palms outward. “I rather hoped that you might have the answer for me.”

  “Too many answers,” said Bunny. “The right one’s buried someplace at the bottom of a sea of suspicion. The sooner you can dig it up, the happier I’ll be.”

  “All right,” said Maclain. “It’s my turn to ask a question. I doubt if you’re suspicious of two or three thousand people in International, as a group. Let’s concentrate on a few. Who knows the final details of young Tredwill’s bombing sight?”

  Bunny considered the matter long enough to roll down a window and let in a blast of cold air. When the window was closed again, he said, “That’s easy. Two people. Gilbert Tredwill and me.”

  “The answer’s easy, too,” Maclain told him unhesitatingly. “Information’s been leaking out. If only one other person besides yourself knows that information, that’s the man you’re suspicious of—young Tredwill himself.”

  “I didn’t tell you,” said Bunny—“you wormed it out of me!”

  “What do you think he’s doing, selling out?”

  Again Bunny pondered on a reply. Finally he said, “Damned if I know! He might be tipping off things inadvertently.”

  He swung halfway around in the seat and studied Maclain. The Captain’s face was uncommunicative. “Men talk too much to their wives,” Bunny stated emphatically.

  “They talk too much to everybody.” Maclain shrugged. “Go on.”

  “Well,” said Bunny, “night before last I went to New York to attend a banquet at the Biltmore. Gil was there. He borrowed two thousand dollars from me.” He stopped.

  The Captain said nothing. Instead he touched the cold windowpane beside him and hastily drew his fingers away.

  “I hadn’t intended to go into town,” Bunny went on. “That’s what I meant by the sea of suspicion. It’s getting me. Gil and his wife were in New York. Gil said he was going there to do some Christmas shopping and to attend the banquet. I thought I’d go in too and see.”

  “See whether he was attending the banquet or not?” queried Maclain.

  “Well, more or less,” Bunny admitted hesitantly. “I had a talk with Colonel Gray. He assigned a man to watch Gil’s wife at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.”

  “Oh, it’s the wife you’re suspicious of now!” The Captain pushed back his hat, singled out a lock of hair over his forehead, and tugged at it thoughtfully.

  “She didn’t go out all evening.” Bunny spoke almost morosely. “I came back on a late train and Al met me at the station with the car. Norma Tredwill came out just as we were about to drive away.”

  “She came back on the same train,” Maclain broke in, “and asked you to say nothing about her being away.”

  “How did you know—” Bunny began.

  “She told me the whole story,” Maclain continued. “Even what she asked you to say.”

  “About playing bridge with Bea and me?”

  “All of it.” The Captain straightened up in his seat. “I think we can dismiss Norma Tredwill—rescue her from your sea of suspicion, as it were. But this loan you made to Gilbert Tredwill still interests me. What was it for?”

  “Christmas presents,” said Bunny. “I’m not worried about the money—he’ll give that back to me—but I am worried about finding a financial soft spot in my best designing engineer. As a matter of fact, it rather frightens me. He’s spending too much money on that wife of his, or she’s spending too much for him.”

  He impulsively placed a hand on Maclain’s arm. “I’m beginning to wonder if she’s doing it purposely.”

  “If she is,” said Maclain, “she seems to have missed her mark. I take it that you think Gilbert may have accepted some handsome offer to sell his country down the river because his foreign-born wife has him out on the limb of a financial tree.”

  “Doesn’t it seem possible to you?”

  “Possible,” said Maclain, “but highly improbable. Such transactions, Mr. Carter, are cash-and-carry to a high degree. The cash price of Gilbert Tredwill’s bombing sight must be a million dollars or more. I doubt if he’d sell that information on somebody’s promise to pay. Then we have to assume that if young Mr. Tredwill’s a traitor he’s a wealthy man today. Yet night before last he borrowed two thousand dollars from you. I’m afraid that clears him, Mr. Carter. I’ve talked with him a lot, and he doesn’t seem quite that subtle to me.”

  2

  Louis Madoc, assistant foreman of construction, was watching a workman lay tile in a difficult corner of the new addition when Bunny Carter’s Lincoln swung through the gates of the iron fence guarding International Aircraft from the state highway. It was not in the nature of Louis Madoc to miss much that went on about him. Workmen under him stuck diligently to their tasks, conscious that Louis had an ingrained instinct for loafers, and that he handled them ruthlessly. It was risky to idle on the job even when Louis was apparently far away. Too many men, stopping for a friendly chat with a fellow worker, had heard Madoc’s smooth voice behind them saying—“Draw your time, fellow, and rest at home. There’s a thousand men waiting to help build this new plant. I’ll find workers that don’t gab if I have to hire a new crew every day.”

  The assistant foreman moved about the vast addition with birdlike quiet and quickness. He was much like a great bird, anyway. Neck and nose predominated, and his eyes were piercing and glittery, with wrinkled lids which had a trick of starting to close and checking themselves part way.

  Engrossed in watching the workmen, Louis Madoc missed the arrival of Bunny’s car. The big limousine pulled up behind him unexpectedly. Madoc’s head swiveled, filling his lean neck with w
rinkles as Bunny stepped from the car.

  “How are things coming?” asked Bunny. “I’m glad to see you’re back to work after the storm.”

  “Good, Mr. Carter.” Louis Madoc’s glance at the Lincoln was timed to the fineness of a hair. It was more a movement of the eyes than a look—an erratic jump of the flat black pupils to the left, a muscular reaction that brought them back into focus to rest on Bunny’s cherubic face again. “The work’s progressing fine. I hired thirty more men immediately after the storm.”

  “That’s the stuff,” said Bunny. “While this addition’s under construction, we’re losing money every minute.”

  Louis gave a cackling laugh. “We can’t put in much more time than twenty-four hours a day.”

  His mind was working swiftly. His single photographic glance at the Lincoln had printed a picture in his brain. Al Rutgers at the wheel interested him not at all. The thing which had whipped his thoughts into action was the sight of Duncan Maclain’s lean profile glimpsed through the window of the car.

  “Keep at it!” Bunny climbed back into the Lincoln and slammed the door.

  “Who were you talking to just now?” asked Maclain.

  “Madoc.” Bunny was watching the progress of the new buildings as the car rolled on toward the main office door. “He’s in charge of construction on Building Number Four—we’ve had some hard luck there. It’s delayed us a month or more.”

  “That’s too bad,” the Captain sympathized. “That fellow has a curious trick of speech.”

  “Speech?” asked Bunny idly.

  “Pronunciation,” the Captain declared. “He says ‘immed-i-ately.’ I’ve only heard one person with that same habit before.”

  “He’s a good man.”

  “Undoubtedly,” said Maclain.

  The Lincoln pulled up outside the main office door. Bunny said, “We get out here, Captain.” He slid open the glass between the chauffeur’s seat and the back of the limousine. “Al, this is Captain Duncan Maclain. I’ll want you to drive him back to The Crags in an hour or so.”

  “Glad to,” said Rutgers with a grin.

  Bunny gave a jocular laugh and opened the door. “Be sure you get him there. He’s a good-looking devil—and this Lincoln smells like you’d been driving a van load of women around in my car.”

  3

  A policeman halted them at the door, staring at the Captain and his dog inquiringly. Maclain stood slightly to one side, smiling inwardly at the volubility of Bunny’s whispered explanation, which the president of International Aircraft blissfully thought he was pouring into the officer’s ear alone. Even Bunny Carter was stopped at the door of International to explain the presence of a friend.

  A moment later they stepped inside, Maclain doubly guided by Schnucke on his left and the pressure of Bunny’s hand on his arm. They crossed a large lobby which the Captain judged to be a reception room and were stopped at another door. Bunny’s whispered explanation was repeated again. It admitted them into a smaller room where a girl’s friendly voice said, “Good morning, Mr. Carter.”

  Bunny introduced his secretary, Miss Tavestock, to Duncan Maclain. They went through another door.

  “This is my private office, at last.” Bunny conducted the Captain to a chair.

  Maclain’s left hand lightly brushed the flat-top walnut desk in passing. Once seated, he let his fingers rest on the leather arms of the chair and said, “Lie down, Schnucke.” The dog stretched herself out close beside him.

  “They certainly make you comfortable,” he remarked, settling back at ease. “I suppose the importance of your office is indicated by the size of this room. A man could almost get lost in here.”

  A creak of a spring sounded as Bunny sat down in his swivel chair. “I’d be a sorry president if I couldn’t pick the best office in the place for myself.”

  The springs creaked again as he leaned back a trifle too far and straightened up suddenly, bringing both his feet to the floor. “Damn it all, Maclain, you worry me! Who told you this office was big? You touched my desk as you passed by, but how do you know I didn’t walk you clear across the room and set you close to the opposite wall?”

  The Captain’s eyebrows wiggled delightedly. “None are so blind,” he said, “as those who have ears and won’t see.”

  “Don’t be cryptic,” Bunny pleaded. “I honestly mean it—you worry me.”

  “I can judge the size of a room by the sound of my voice,” the Captain explained. “It’s a trick I learned by reading Bragg’s book, The World of Sound. The late blind Justice Fielding and Sir Arthur Pearson both developed it until they could give the dimensions of any room they entered with amazing accuracy. Try it yourself, Mr. Carter. If you practiced it consistently for about twenty years, you’d find that it comes very easily.”

  “I don’t know why Colonel Gray doesn’t hire you as a spy instead of sending you up here to worry me!” Bunny tapped his toes thoughtfully on the heavily carpeted floor. “Ribbentrop would probably take you on a personally conducted tour of the Krupp Works—heaven knows what you’d be able to see.”

  “You might be surprised.” Maclain leaned forward earnestly. “I’ve already learned the approximate dimensions of the buildings you’re putting up, and of the one we’re in now, by driving past them in your car. Would you like me to tell you?”

  “No!” said Bunny emphatically. “You’ll give me a headache if you’re anywhere near right. I’m having enough trouble with espionage now.”

  “I noticed that as we came in,” Maclain remarked drily.

  Bunny slapped the desk top with the flat of his hand. “It would do this country a lot of good if everybody in it had to spend some time around a business that was meat and drink for a spy. One of the directors was howling his head off just the other day about ‘foolish precaution.’ I wish he could have been here this morning to get a demonstration of what even you can see. Not that I mean to be discourteous,” he added quickly.

  “Skip it,” said Maclain.

  Bunny left his chair back of the desk and began to pace the floor. “Things are so stringent here now that visitors to the plant on business aren’t allowed to go to the rest rooms alone for fear of what they may see. The public doesn’t realize that a single glimpse of wings hung up in a drying room can be built up to give an accurate estimate of how many planes we’re turning out a day.”

  “That’s interesting,” said Maclain.

  “It’s maddening,” Bunny assured him, “when you’re trying to keep information quiet that the whole world wants to know. Supposing a trained agent sees finished planes through an open door. He can figure out how much space they’re occupying on the floor. Photographs are taken of the plant as a whole from the outside and measured to scale. Watch is kept on how many hours the plant runs in a week. That information is compared with plants in the agent’s own country and they know almost to a hair what will come out of this plant during the next few months.”

  “And what about your own employees?”

  “They have to keep pretty much to their own departments,” Bunny explained, “but of course information can leak out even there. Naturally we take every precaution we can—it’s vital information like Tredwill’s bombing sight that worries me. That’s why I had him do a lot of his work at home. And now—”

  “Yes, now,” Maclain put in, “information has leaked out even there. Tracings have been made of Tredwill’s plans. When we find out who did that, Mr. Carter, we’ll find out who kidnaped that girl.”

  The Captain paused, crossed his legs, and smoothed his overcoat down. Bunny quit pacing the office and hoisted himself up on his desk.

  For a time, he kicked his heels against the side. Then he asked, “Where do we go from there?”

  “All over the United States.” The Captain’s voice lowered to a note which was grippingly serious and grim. “Catch a spy, Mr. Carter, and you have nothing at all. To break up espionage, you have to catch a skillfully organized band. We’re up against one
now. They have one weak link. If they make tracings, those tracings have to be delivered somewhere, somehow. Tracings aren’t easy things to get out of a house like The Crags by mail. Equally weak is the fact that somehow instructions must be sent to an individual spy.”

  Bunny sucked his upper lip in thoughtfully. “I see.”

  “That’s gratifying.” Maclain put one hand into his inside coat pocket. “Mr. Carter, I want a girl.”

  “A girl?” Bunny repeated incredulously.

  “One who can type,” said Maclain. “She has to have certain qualifications. Foremost among them is that she can keep her mouth shut. She has to have an unbroken record as an American citizen—a record that’s known to you. She must lack curiosity entirely, and not be subject to temptation at the sight of a lot of money.”

  “Miss Tavestock will fill the bill,” Bunny remarked without hesitation. “What do you want her to do?”

  “I want her to copy a letter,” said Maclain. “I want it copied exactly. Each line must be measured with a ruler and spaced to the fraction of an inch, and I want a stencil cut so that I can feel it all the way through the paper.”

  “That’s easy enough. What sort of a letter is it?”

  “It’s a letter from a perfume house,” said Duncan Maclain, “and that’s the hard part about it. If Miss Tavestock gets curious and happens to mention it to her boy friend some night, or to anyone else, she’s apt to wake up some bright morning and find that her head’s been chopped off on the floor!”

  CHAPTER XIX