“What has happened? Why are you waiting up for me, Seth?”
“Have you seen Cindy Clinton? Oh, it’s you, Colonel. I was glad the Damon alias cracked tonight. It had its dangers. When you told me of it the first time you came to my office I didn’t believe you could get by for a day. Cinderella was too excited when the deeds to the oil property were signed to notice that the signature, ‘Kenniston Stewart’ under hers was not followed by ‘Bill Damon, Attorney in fact.’”
“You were an enormous help in the deception, Counselor. I couldn’t have carried on without you. Why are you asking about Cindy? What's happened?”
“I don’t know that anything has happened.” Seth Armstrong inflated and deflated his cheeks. “Five minutes ago Sarah Ann Parker telephoned that Cinderella had told her she would be home soon after midnight. She hadn’t come. ‘So many awful things in the papers,’ she whimpered. She tried to contact you at the Inn, Colonel, but the desk reported you didn’t answer the ring.”
“I’ll beat it to The Castle. I’ll take your roadster, Ally.”
“I’m sure you will find her safe —” The rest of the sentence dwindled in the distance as the car shot out of the drive.
Why did one always imagine the worst in a crisis? The wheels kept pace with his thoughts. The speedometer needle went to sixty, crept up to seventy miles an hour. The roadster hurtled past lightless houses. Gardens colorless but sweetly fragrant in the dusk of early morning.
Past a beach ghostly white under the starlight, murmurous with the swish of the tide. The harbor lights. The Castle.
Sarah Ann Parker was at the open door in a dark blue robe, when he stopped the roadster with a suddenness that plowed up pebbles in the drive. He sprang out and dashed up the steps.
“Have you brought her?” Her face was yellow-white under the porch light.
“No. Come into the house, Sary.” Arm under hers he guided her through the hall into the old kitchen.
“Sit in the wing chair. Now, pull yourself together. Why are you so terrified?” He glanced at the banjo clock. “It is not quite three. That isn’t late for a masquerade.” It is late, infernally late, he thought, but why add to the woman’s fear?
“Cindy said she’d be home soon after midnight,” Sarah Ann Parker sat on the edge of the big chair and wrung her bony hands. “She stood on the threshold of her room laughing, you know the way her dimples prick through, an’ said:
“‘Something tells me I am about to spring a colossal sensation. The next time you see me, Sary Ann, I bet I will have made front-page headlines.’
“I’m scared. I’ve been thinkin’ she may have meant she was elopin’ with Hal Harding. I’ve been kinder suspicious she liked him more than she let on an’ he has a persuasive way. Perhaps she’s married him.”
Could it be? The possibility stopped his heartbeat. If Sarah were to be believed, Cindy had been cruelly hurt by the indifference of Ken Stewart. She had been shocked tonight by the brutal surprise of his presence. She wouldn’t, she couldn’t marry Harding. Hadn’t she scorched him with contempt in the ballroom? Not more than she scorched you later, memory reminded. Tom Slade had followed her almost immediately, she wouldn’t have had time to see Harding.
The reminder sent blood coursing through his veins again. Slade loved her too much to connive at a clandestine marriage. Which reasoning was good as far as it went, but didn’t answer the question, “Where is she?”
“There’s the phone.” Sarah Ann Parker started to her feet. “It’s probably her tellin’ us —” big tears rolled down her cheeks. “You take it, will you, Colonel Da — Stewart? If I try to speak I’ll cry.”
He was already lifting the receiver, tense with dread of what he might hear.
“Yes. This is The Castle. The county hospital?”
“Has she, is she —”
He shook off the clutch on his arm.
“Please, Sarah. Wait till I get the message.” He spoke into the phone.
“Put him on. Kenniston Stewart speaking for Miss Parker. Slade? Where the devil are you? Is Cindy with you? What? Speak louder. You can’t. O.K. Put on your nurse.”
“Mr. Slade is trying to tell you —” A woman's voice — He could feel the color drain from his face, his blood turned to ice as he listened for what seemed years.
“That covers it.” The voice went on. “Mr. Slade is hazy and feverish from shock. Slight concussion. No bones broken. He keeps muttering, ‘Tell him to find her. Black limousine. Heading for Portland. Tell him I picked up her red slipper.’ He keeps muttering, ‘Cinderella’s slipper.’ I guess he must have heard Walt Disney has made a movie of that fairy story.”
“Thank you, nurse. I’ll report to the hospital the moment I find her.”
He cradled the receiver, laid his hand on Sarah Ann’s shoulder as he answered the question in her anguished eyes.
“Tom Slade followed Cindy when she left us. He remembered that her coats were in the stage dressing room, went for them for fear she would be cold. He was sure she would find his car and wait for him. When he reached the drive a big black limousine pulled out from a line of parked cars and shot away. Something about the take-off didn’t look good to him and he ran to the space it had left, and saw — a red satin slipper.”
“Stop an’ get your breath, Bill — Ken Stewart. I got hold of myself now. What happened next?”
“He followed the black limousine in his convertible. He was making sixty an hour with the racing car just ahead, when he heard a loud explosion. A tire, he thought, and the next he knew he was in a hospital trying desperately to make the nurses understand that he knew what he was saying, that he must get in touch with you.”
“That’s all he could tell about Cindy?”
“Yes. The nurse said that after he told her the story to pass on to me, he drifted into sleep he had fought off until he could tell what happened.”
“Now, what do we do? We must do something.”
He held his own agonizing anxiety in check to reassure her.
“I’m going after that black limousine, Sary. I’ll phone the nearest police headquarters. First I must pick up an automatic —”
“A pistol? You don’t have to go anywhere. Joe has one an’ —
“Joe! Good Lord, I’d forgotten him. Rout him out. quick.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CINDY had pulled herself to her knees. The triumphant glare in the policeman’s eyes held her there. The insigne on his sleeve was that of a sergeant.
“Hey, see what I’ve found, fellas. Come here.”
His shout brought several men from out the shadows to converge in the space in front of the limousine. He focused his flashlight again and addressed the group staring as if hypnotized at the girl framed by the open door of the car.
“Cheerio. Don’t be downhearted. The guy we were after made his getaway. Headquarters told us he had a dame working with him and lookee, it’s her. Get an eyeful of those pearls.” He reached into the car and caught her arm.
“Come out.”
She shook off his hand.
“Certainly I will come out, but without your assistance.” She drew the dark blue rug over her shoulders and stepped to the ground with her slippered foot, followed by the other covered only by a sheer red stocking. Chin up she looked from one face to the other. Her eyes came back to the man who had broadcast the news of his find.
“What’s it all about? I was in the back of the limousine —”
“Hiding, weren’t you?”
“Stop interrupting me. I was in the back seat of the parked limousine when a clown slid into the front seat and —”
“Don’t waste time lettin’ the dame tell the story of her life,” interrupted an authoritative voice from the background. “Bring her to headquarters, Sarge, then she can tell the chief all the fairy tales she wants.”
“Yes, Captain.” The sergeant who had so cockily proclaimed his find touched his cap respectfully before he seized Cindy’s arm.
“Come along, you.”
She administered a stinging slap on his cheek.
“Let me go. I shall not come-along-you — till I have spoken to your boss and told him who I am.” Brave and ringing words, my proud beauty, but ten to one they land you in the hoosegow, she warned herself.
The sound of a starting car set her heart thumping. Had the “Captain,” who supposedly had intelligence or he wouldn't be a captain, left her at the mercy of these men peering out of the shadows? They resembled nothing so much as a lot of movie gangsters. Her impulsive attack on the sergeant had been a mistake. The smothered guffaws from the onlookers hadn’t helped her case.
“He’s gone. You can’t tell him. He’ll be headin’ a reception committee for you at headquarters. Come along, now.”
Cindy glanced at her watch. Almost three o’clock. Sary expected her home soon after midnight. By this time she would begin to be anxious — she would phone someone, perhaps Bill Damon at the Inn — she didn’t know he was Ken Stewart — or Tom Slade — Tom? He must have started looking for her — perhaps he had followed the speeding limousine in his convertible — perhaps the crash she had heard behind —
“Coming? Or will we have to carry you?” a rough voice demanded.
“You won’t have to carry me. You may be surprised, but I’m coming. Listen, my cocky one. You have another surprise in store that will wipe that gloating grin off your face. Out of my way.” I didn’t know you had such defiance in you, gal, she told herself and flinched as her stockinged foot bore down heavily on a jagged fragment of rock.
Guarded by four men — only four — she had thought it was a gang — she limped her way toward a police cruising car. Its headlights shot long yellow rays that were lost in the haze of distance. Spooky effect. She remembered the day in the patio when she had declared to Bill Damon — he was Bill Damon then — “The moment I am free I shall live daringly.” Looked as if what she had intended for a joke were coming true.
Would he care if he knew she was caught in this mess? What difference did it make if he did or not? He was out of her life completely. In an effort to expunge him from her thoughts she looked up at the sky.
“I wonder which of those stars is broadcasting four-meter radio waves, Officer? I forgot, scientists declare that the stellar broadcasting stations that produce the waves are probably stars with surfaces too dim to be seen. Astronomy is a fascinating study, haven’t you found it so?”
“Kiddin’ me, aren’t you? You know what you get for resisting arrest and assaulting a policeman?” Apparently the slap rankled. “You won’t be so chatty when you reach headquarters.”
“Your mistake, Sergeant. You will be surprised how much I will have to say. I hope you are not too fond of your job, that you have unemployment insurance. You may have to look for something else by which to bring home the bacon.”
It was three-thirty by the huge clock on the wall above a long desk with five chairs behind it, when she entered police headquarters. A heavy white-haired man, occupying the center seat, curtly ordered her to sit on a bench facing it.
So this is what a police court is like, really, she thought. The movies I’ve seen didn’t make it sordid or smelly enough. A male derelict, head down, shabby, pitiably thin, was being admonished and dismissed. His place was taken by a boy, who answered questions in a scared whisper before he was led away and a door clanged behind him.
“Me next,” a woman with disheveled tamished-gilt hair beside Cindy proclaimed shrilly. Her eyes were bleary, her make-up had been applied with a prodigal hand; her gay blue and red print dress glittered with cheap jewelry; she reeked of liquor.
“What you here for, dearie? In that red skirt, you looks if you’d been picked up at a gipsy camp.”
Before Cindy could think of an answer to the hoarse whisper she rose and switched toward the desk.
“Here’s your old friend, Judge,” she said with such ingratiating humor that the man she addressed quickly covered a broadening grin with a red, hairy hand. It seemed as if the clock ticked away hours before the woman followed the boy. She turned, winked, and waved a friendly hand to the room at large before she made her unsteady exit
“Next.”
Did that mean her? Cindy looked around. It must. She was the only person present beside the policeman who had brought her here. The man at the desk leaned forward as if puzzled by her fantastic costume, as if trying to decide in which criminal pigeonhole she belonged. The dark plush robe trailed from her shoulders as she stepped forward. I must remember to return this to the owner, she thought irrelevantly.
“What’s the charge?” the presiding official demanded.
“I’m interested to hear that myself, sir,” Cindy answered defiantly unmindful of the fact that the question had not been addressed to her.
“Silence, Miss, till you’re spoken to.” The policeman beside her added the nudge of an elbow to the gruff reminder of his superior. “Go ahead, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir. We got a teletype that a black seven-passenger limousine, deluxe model, stolen from an Inn, was racing this way, had just missed bein’ smashed by the early freight from Boston, that a Town and Country convertible, that’s what they call them new models that look like a station wagon —”
“I know. You don’t have to explain models to me. Go on, Sergeant.”
“Which they think was chasin’ the limousine, busted a tire and crashed.”
“No. No!” Cindy’s broken protest followed a vision of Tom Slade, unconscious, perhaps dying by the side of the road.
“Silence! Go on, Sergeant."
“They told us they suspected the guy who was running away with the limousine was the brains of a gang which had stolen eight cars along this shore the last month, that they had thrown out roadblocks. We started after him in a cruiser.”
“And lost him. Were you sitting on your hands?”
“No, sir.” The sergeant’s voice registered resentment at his superior’s sarcasm. “When the limousine crashed into a roadblock he made his getaway. I don’t know how he done it unless with mirrors, but,” he cast a venomous glance at the girl beside him, “we got this dame hiding all wrapped up in a rug on the floor in back.”
The dignitary behind the desk leaned forward. Cindy faced his scowling appraisal unflinchingly.
“What had the girl to do with the thief?”
“We were alerted he had a dame working with him. We figured she was the finger girl who located the unlocked limousine for him to snitch.”
There was a sudden influx of men armed with notebooks and cameras. They looked as if they had been routed out to answer a hurry-up call and hadn’t waited to shave or brush their hair. Only three? At first she had thought there were a dozen. Reporters I Had they been notified by phone of her arrest? Her heart went into a nose dive. She remembered her laughing boast to Sary:
“Something tells me I am about to spring a colossal sensation. The next time you see me I bet I will have made front-page headlines.” I’ve made them, plus, she thought.
The man at the desk nodded to the group by the door before he commanded:
“Tell your story.”
Cindy flinched at the report of the first flash bulb, held herself tense as three more followed.
“I refuse to answer, Captain — for fear what I say may tend to incriminate me.” It was certainly educational to be a confirmed newspaper reader, she thought as the phrase, which had been used again and again by witnesses at the trial of a man alleged to have conspired to make United States defense secrets available to a foreign power, surged to the top of her mind. “I shall not talk until I can be represented by counsel.”
“You’d better talk if you know what is good for you.”
“That threat is a mistake, Chief.”
Cindy’s mind whirled and steadied. Bill Damon’s voice. She must think of him by his right name — Ken Stewart in a well-worn aviator’s greatcoat was standing beside her. The relief. The unbelievable relief. This t
ime her knees had turned to water, not jelly. She caught at his sleeve to steady herself. He stood frigid as a deep-freeze and about as responsive to the clutch of her hand on his arm.
“Who are you to come into this police court and tell me what I can do?”
“Take a look at this, sir.”
He stepped forward and laid an open billfold on the desk. Bulbs flashed. The light revealed shadows like smudges on his face; haggard lines between nose and lips; little white patches in his dark hair at the temples, as if someone with floury fingers had brushed it back. He must have looked like this when fighting.
The official studied the identification offered. His scowl changed to incredible surprise.
“Goramighty, it was you, Col —” He stopped at the command of a raised hand. His face burned red. He cleared his throat. “Sorry. I take it you’re a friend of this — this young lady. Will you advise her to tell how she come to be picked up in that stolen limousine?’’
Stewart slipped the billfold into his pocket and stepped back from the desk.
“Go ahead, Miss Clinton,” he said formally.
For a moment she thought her voice had dried in her contracted throat. There was not a sound in the room save the loud ticking of the clock. It must be old-fashioned, she thought irrelevantly, modem clocks are electrified, they don’t tick.
“Take your time,” Ken Stewart encouraged.
She told of the Bal Masqué, of running along the Inn drive in search of a friend’s convertible; of being coatless and cold; of thinking she might find a rug in the black limousine beside which she was standing to put over her shoulders until her friend arrived.
“Why didn’t you find your friend’s car?”
“There were three in the drive like his, and he had told me his was locked.”
She told of the clown’s stealthy entrance into the limousine; her recognition of him; her attempt to escape as the car swooped into the drive.
“You are sure he was the man who cut in on your dances at the masquerade?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you recognize him if you say his picture?”
To Love and to Honour Page 18