by P. N. Elrod
“How did the sanatorium come to give you my name?” she asked.
It was Escott’s show, so I gave him the nod. He explained about our search for Maureen and that he had at least located her mother as having been a patient at Kingsburg. Since Gaylen Dumont was no longer in residence and since he had excellent references, the administrator there had every confidence in Escott’s professional discretion. The doctor in charge had no qualms in giving out the name listed as Gaylen’s next of kin.
“Yes, I’m sure he’s got every confidence in you, Mr. Escott, but his lapse in releasing such information is nonetheless deplorable; hardly what I would have expected from a doctor.”
“I agree, but the circumstances of this situation are most unusual. Believe me, we have no wish to impose upon you any longer than necessary.” He was being utterly sincere. No doubt he found her just as grating as I did, but was better at hiding it.
Her frown softened a little, but not by much. “Well, at least they did call and tell me about your visit, though I think they should have first asked my permission before giving out my name to just anyone walking in.”
“Quite so,” he agreed, all sympathy.
She sighed, affecting a slightly world-weary exasperation at life in general and said, “All right, now that you’re here, what do you want?”
“As I said, we are trying to trace Maureen Dumont. We thought—”
“First of all, I am not related to the Dumonts, and second, I have no idea where Maureen is. I haven’t heard from her in years.”
“How many years? And how did your name come to be—”
“July or August, 1931,” she stated. “It was a little over five years ago. We were neighbors at the same apartment building back then and lived next door to each other. She asked if I’d mind taking deliveries and phone messages for her during the day if I happened to be at home. She worked at night, she said, and hated having her sleep disturbed. She said she had to follow a very strict schedule because of her health and get so many hours of sleep or become ill. She was quite serious about it, as I never saw her during the day, but her other hours were very irregular. She wasn’t one of those women, at least, or I wouldn’t have had anything to do with her. I don’t know what she did, but she was a quiet neighbor, and that counts for a lot with me.”
“What about the last time you heard from her?” I asked.
“I’m coming to that. When the crash came, it upset everything for me, and I had to move. I kept the same phone number, though, and so we kept the same message arrangement as before. I expect she got someone else to take her packages. As for the sanatorium, she’d asked if she could put my name down along with her own for next of kin. The idea was that if anything should happen to her mother and they called during the day, I could pass the call on to Maureen in the evening. It seemed a reasonable precaution, so I didn’t mind. The only call for her was when her mother escaped. I immediately tried to call Maureen; it seemed enough of an emergency to justify waking her up, but I couldn’t get hold of her till evening.”
Escott nodded, soaking up every syllable. “Can you tell us her exact words?”
“No, not after all this time, but she was very upset. I thought she’d go right to pieces then and there. I asked if I could help in some way, but she said she had to think first and hung up. About three hours later, she called and left a number where she could be reached if they had any more news of her mother. She sounded a lot calmer by then, and made a point of saying I was not to give the number out to anyone. The old lady was quite dangerous and violent despite her years, and Maureen wanted to take no chances on being found by her. It’s a terrible shame that she was so terrified of her own parent, but that being the situation, I promised.”
“Would you object to giving the number to us?”
“What makes you think I still have it, Mr. Escott?” Her lips thinned a bit into a kind of smile.
“You have me there, Miss Sedlock,” he admitted, responding with a warm one of his own.
She must have been trying to flirt with him. She liked his reaction. She went to a small phone table, picked up a flat address book, and brought it back to her chair. She flipped through the pages until she came to the Ds, and read off a number penciled in next to the neat ink lettering listing Maureen’s name and former address. Escott carefully copied it down.
“That’s a Long Island exchange,” I said. “What was she doing out there? Did she say?”
“No, I don’t think so, presumably she was getting help. It was a very short call, we didn’t want to tie up my line in case the asylum had to get through to me.”
“So she didn’t give this number to the asylum?”
“Obviously not,” she sniffed, “or she wouldn’t have bothered giving it to me. Besides, Mr. Escott would have gotten it from them during his visit there.”
Escott acknowledged her deduction and returned her out-of-practice smile with another of his own. She responded with a near-wiggle. “Did the asylum ever call you?”
“The next day, but nothing had changed.”
“Did you try the Long Island number?”
“Of course I did. Some man answered, I asked for Maureen, but his manner was very off-putting, as though he were surprised. He asked how I’d gotten his number and I told him, then he wanted to know who I was, but I only gave him my first name and asked for Maureen again. He said she had left and wanted to know who I was, but I said Maureen would know and hung up.”
“You have a very clear recollection of that conversation,” said Escott.
“Yes, I do, don’t I?” She considered it a moment. “I think it was because he was so insistent. It made me uneasy. I never called back.”
“Uneasy?”
“Silly, isn’t it? After all, he was only a voice on the phone; an ordinary voice, except for his accent.”
“What kind of accent?”
“Almost like yours, but not quite.”
“An English accent?”
“Not quite.”
“Perhaps from another region there?”
“No . . . I think that it was more American than English, but I couldn’t place it now. I just noticed at the time that it was unusual.”
“And you heard nothing more from Miss Dumont?”
“No, and the asylum called only one more time. They’d notified the local police, of course, but they wanted to talk to Maureen, and by then I didn’t know what had happened to her. I expect they were waiting for her to call them.”
“Didn’t you think it odd?”
“I most certainly did, but what could I do about it? I went by her apartment to see her, but she was gone. The landlord said he thought she’d moved out. She’d left behind most of her clothes and books and other things, so it seemed likely she might return. The landlord wasn’t too concerned. She’d paid her rent, but he was planning to put her things into storage in the basement if she wasn’t back by the end of the month.”
“Did he have any theories?”
“No.”
“And you didn’t contact the police?”
“I thought about it, but didn’t see how they could help. Besides, from what I heard, someone else was looking for her, and he’d have done all that. The landlord said that Maureen’s boyfriend was always pestering him for news of her return.”
I had trouble finding my voice, but just managed. “And you never thought to contact him?”
“Yes, I did, but for all I knew he might have been the unpleasant man on the phone.” She sniffed again. “If she wanted to cut things off with him, that was her business, not mine.”
I had a choice: I could walk out or strangle her.
I walked out.
Escott came down a few minutes later and found me hunched against a street lamp trying to light up a smoke. My hands were shaking so much I couldn’t even fire the damned match. I finally threw it and the cigarette into the gutter.
“That stupid, idiotic bitch!”
Escott listened
patiently while I raved along similar and much more obscene lines for some time until I wound down into coherency again. We walked for several blocks and the movement and damp night air helped to cool down my frustration.
“I am in total agreement with you,” he said in a mild tone, when it was over. “She might have saved you a lot of anguish had she spoken to you then, but we’ve yet to see if her information is of any value.”
“Then let’s find out.”
We went back to our hotel and Escott started out with a phone call. First he checked with the operator to make sure the number was still in service, and then he got an address and name to go with it.
“Emily Francher?” I said, echoing his inquiry. “No, I’ve never heard of her.”
“You don’t sound too certain.”
“I’m not. I don’t think I’ve met her personally, but maybe I saw her name in the paper or heard it on the radio. . . .”
“Perhaps it was an advertisement,” he suggested, his gaze falling on the newspaper he’d bought in the lobby stand when we’d returned. He tilted his head, considering his own thought, and noisily attacked the paper, tearing open the pages in a sudden fit of energy. “There.” His long finger stabbed at a name.
I stared at it awhile. “Naw, it couldn’t be, not the shipping line Franchers, that’s just too big. Maureen never mentioned she knew anyone like that.”
“You’ve also stated she never talked about her past,” he pointed out.
“Well, yeah . . .”
“It may only prove to be a coincidence of names, as it was rather easy to trace the number, but first thing tomorrow I shall check it out thoroughly.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Indeed. The sources I intend to exploit are all closed by now—”
“But we could rent a car and drive out there.”
“I plan to do just that, but only after I find out all I can about this Emily Francher first—and about the man who answered the phone.”
“The one who made little Edith uneasy?”
“The same. Granted, the woman is certainly a touch paranoid as far as men are concerned—”
“You can say that again.”
“—but for her, the form it takes is that of bossiness and a general hostility.”
“I get you. Her normal reaction should have been to tell him off when he got nosy?”
“That or ignore him. But I’m getting ahead of my research. It is Miss Emily Francher I shall concentrate on in the morning.”
I idly flipped the pages of the paper. “Then that’s it for tonight as far as the investigation goes, huh?”
“Regrettably, it would appear so.”
Disadvantages abound with my physical condition, and spending the day locked up in a lightproof trunk is the one that irks me the most. I miss out on a lot of life, and once awake and free, I try to make up for the lost time.
“The last thing I feel like doing now is to sit around in this fancy cage the rest of the evening,” I told him. “What about you?”
“I hadn’t really thought of it. I was going to unpack and perhaps listen to the March of Time, but if you feel restless—”
“Yeah, I’m restless, but it’s no fun trying to cure it alone. I want to find some entertainment.”
“It does sound somewhat more distracting.” He glanced at his watch. “A pity, but it’s past curtain time by now.”
“A play?” I rustled the amusement page around, folding it to the outside. “This is New York, Charles, they’ve got more than plays going on. Here we go, Swingtime is playing at Radio City and a new place just opened called The Paradise—”
“Well . . .”
“Here, this is the one, Folies d ’Amour, three shows a night and dinner thrown in with the jokes and dancing girls.”
He looked a bit shocked as he scanned the details of their ad. “Good heavens. Have you noticed the two-fifty cover charge?”
“You get what you pay for. Besides, this is my idea and my treat. You know as well as I do that I don’t spend any money on food, so how ’bout it? I know I could do with some high kicking.”
He chuckled suddenly. “It sounds most educational.”
We took a cab and got there in time for the last half of the second show and stayed on for the third. Escott enjoyed his late supper and didn’t seem too put out when he had to imbibe drinks enough for two in order to cover for me with the waiter. They had little visible effect on him other than a slight glazing of the eyes, but then he looked the same way when driving his Nash.
Outwardly he seemed more interested in the mechanics of the production than the show itself, and his conversation was limited to comments on the efficiency of the crew involved. It was hard to tell, but I eventually concluded that he was indeed enjoying himself. The glazing disappeared from his eyes at intervals, usually when the girls in their spangled costumes were strutting their stuff to the brassy music.
The wee hours were upon us when the place finally closed down. The air was a humid mixture of exhaust, oil, and hot tires . . . and something else, very faint and distant. In response, there was a familiar and insistent stirring in my belly and throat. I lifted my head to catch the scent again, but it was gone.
“Like the show?” I asked between my efforts to whistle up a cab.
Escott put a lot of thought to the question before coming up with an answer. “Very much. Next time it shall be my turn. I hope that you will then have no objections to seeing a play?”
“None at all. I wanted to see a show like this just to get the taste of Edith Sedlock out of my mind.”
“It was an excellent idea,” he said, enunciating carefully. “I must admit I do prefer a stage production of any kind to a film, though I’ve nothing against film as a medium for entertainment.”
“Your acting background has nothing to do with it, huh?”
“It has everything to do with it, my dear fellow.”
“Why’d you leave it for this business?”
“Why, indeed?” he asked the general air, looking just a shade sad.
“I mean it, Charles. From what I’ve seen, you’re a born actor. Why’d you switch to being a private inves—private agent?”
“Because taking up acting as a profession is a good way to starve to death. The last company I was in folded for lack of funds—that is to say, the manager stranded us. I made it my business to find him. It was my first case.”
“Did you find him?”
“Yes, after a time. I even recovered the money he’d stolen and divided it with the rest of the company. This, of course, after I’d indulged myself and thumped the miscreant a few times so he wouldn’t object to things. It was interesting work, so I decided to go into it.”
“Thumping managers?”
“Finding things; doing things for others.” He waved his hand vaguely.
“Wouldn’t acting be safer, though? I mean, since you took up with me, it’s been—”
He laughed a little. “You’ve obviously never tried staging the battle of Bosworth Field in a barn full of drunken lumberjacks. When King Richard started calling for a horse, they were more than happy to oblige him with one. No, I much prefer to do what I’m doing now, there is a certain exhilaration to this kind of business that I never found on the stage.” He took a deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly.
Perhaps he’d realized he was talking about himself and his attitudes rather than about things he’d done, which was his usual run of conversation. On certain levels, he was a very private man. I pretended not to notice and waved unsuccessfully at another occupied cab.
“I think it is long past my bedtime,” he concluded after a long moment. “If I begin quoting Shakespeare to no good purpose, please bring it to my attention and I shall cease immediately.”
A cab finally pulled up and I got the door for him and shut it. He gave me a questioning look through the window.
“I’ve still got a lot of night left to me. Thought I’d take a walk in the park
.”
He nodded, perhaps guessing the real purpose of my walk. “Right. Then I’ll see you tomorrow evening.”
The cab grumbled away into the night, its exhaust swirling around my ankles. When it had grown small and its lights had merged with dozens of others, I abruptly turned in the opposite direction. I walked quickly, my head raised to catch that tantalizing scent once more.
3
IT was nine long blocks along Seventh to Central Park. I covered it quickly, my mind focused upon what lay ahead. This sort of careless behavior can lead to a mugging or worse, but no one bothered me, not even to bum a cigarette.
There are stockyards of a kind in New York, but nothing that could be fairly compared to the huge landmark in Chicago. Cattle are shipped in by rail each day to be slaughtered, many of them to support the large Jewish population and their kosher requirements. Maureen had taken me there once, but I had no need to travel so far tonight in search of livestock; not as long as Central Park had pony rides and horse-drawn carriages.
I knew more or less where the animals were kept, and in due time my nose led me to some stables. It was the same smell that had caught my attention outside the club, carried to me by some freak of the faint wind. Maybe it was an unpleasant odor to some, to me it meant food. I slipped inside and quietly got acquainted with its half dozen four-legged tenants, picking out a healthy-looking gelding with a calm eye.
Having spent some formative years on a farm, I knew how to talk to horses; I almost didn’t have to soothe him to quiescence. I did so anyway, just to be on the safe side. The animal stood placidly while I opened a vein in his leg and slowly drank my fill.
The hollow, near-cramp in my stomach vanished. The almost-ache in my throat eased to nothing. Most of the time, the symptoms of my hunger were negligible and could be ignored if I were busy, but I was careful never to let it go too far. It wasn’t that I’d lose control and be tempted to drag someone into an alley to feed off them, I just disliked the physical discomfort that resulted from waiting too long.