To Love and to Honour

by Emilie Loring

  “What do you people think you’re doing?” Harding twisted his arms and Joe released his hands. He nervously adjusted the collar of his blue shirt and settled the striped tie. “Someone’s been kidding you. I was tipped off a conspiracy was brewing to drag in Cinderella Clinton’s name as accessory to a smuggling enterprise, that she had received and hidden stolen goods. I came in secretly to get the bag out of the way before she could be accused.”

  “Secretly. Sakes’ alive, ’twas you, Hal Harding, who phoned me to go look at Cindy’s clothes, picked up on the ledges, and your boat with her sandals, so’s you could get into this house, said I’d better get my brother to go along. Most broke my heart tryin’ to make me think she was gone, you —”

  Ken Stewart caught Sarah Ann Parker’s arm and forcibly drew her back from what threatened to be assault and battery.

  “You found the things I told you you’d find, didn’t you?” The contemptuous demand brought a nod and broken “Yes” in reply.

  “You acknowledge that’s true. The facts had been phoned me.” Harding touched the bulky gray-white bag on the floor with the toe of his shoe. “Here are the stolen jewels. If you don’t believe they are jewels, open the bag. To substantiate the fact that Cinderella Clinton hid them —”

  “You heel! You rat —”

  “Leave him lay, Colonel. We’ve got plenty to jail him.”

  The voice checked Ken Stewart’s forward lunge. Cindy brushed her hand across her eyes, shook her head as if to clear them. It couldn’t be the man Simpkins leaning nonchalantly against the side of the doorway with his right hand thrust into the pocket of his brown tweed coat. It was. She looked down at the soft hat clutched in her right hand, the hat she had pulled away from Hal’s face; the hat with the tilted brim she had been so sure had been worn by the shadow who had vanished from the hall the afternoon she had met the bracelet man at Ella Crane’s shop. Memory broadcast Sary’s voice:

  “Hal Harding came through the garden looking for you, just as I was leavin’. When I told him I expected you any minute he said he’d hang round till you come.”

  Was it possible he had hidden the jewels that afternoon? Had been in the house when Sary returned, had slipped out without being seen? But he had declared only a few hours ago that he had not worn a hat this summer. A red herring drawn across his trail? It was unbelievable, not only that he would be dishonest, but that he with a large inherited fortune would need money from such a source. Why didn’t someone speak? Was the man in the doorway a black magician whose spell had turned each person in the room to stone? Hal Harding’s eyes looked like nothing so much as huge light blue glassies bulging from their sockets.

  “Simpkins,” he cleared his hoarse voice. “Simpkins, have you been fooling me? I’ll get you for this.”

  The man in the door way straightened from his nonchalant lounge and entered the room, his right hand still in his coat pocket.

  “Your mistake. Take it easy. There’s a car waiting outside. Come along and tell your story. You’ll find your gal confederate, Rena Foster — the newsgirl at the masquerade — waiting to tell hers.”

  “Now you’ve made your mistake — Simpkins. I go nowhere till I have a lawyer —”

  “Counselor Armstrong was your lawyer in your divorce cases, wasn’t he? He’ll be waiting for you.”

  “Let him come here. I’m not going —”

  “Joe!”

  The authoritative voice rocked Cindy’s conviction that she was awake and not dreaming. The man who had taken command of the situation couldn’t be the tough whose picture she had snapped; he was — the features were the same, but —

  “Come along quietly, Mr. Harding,” the voice of the man she had thought of as Simpkins broke in on her confused reflections. “Bad enough to bring this trouble into Miss Clinton’s house — look at this mess of broken china — we don’t want to add to that unpleasantness by knocking you out.”

  He was going quietly. Cindy laid her hand on his arm.

  “Hal. Hal, I — I don’t believe you stole those jewels,” she affirmed brokenly.

  “Thanks, sugar. That must be the reason you ran away from the playhouse this afternoon, you trusted me.” His voice was brittle with repression. “Let’s get going. Quick.”

  As he and “Joe” left the room the man called Simpkins stopped beside Cinderella.

  “Believe it or not, Miss Clinton, I was about crazy when they told me you were in that limousine I put on the act with. It was my car, by the way. I started to tell you at the playhouse this afternoon, but you ran away before I had a chance.” He ran his hand under the collar of his beige shirt as if it were choking him. “When I think of what might have happened —”

  “That didn’t.” Stewart’s hand rested lightly on his shoulder as if he liked him.

  “Thanks, Colonel. Sorry to take you away from her — here,” he grinned, a likable grin, as he made the correction, “but you cracked this case, you’ve got to come. There’s a lady waiting for you.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll be along in a minute.” Ken Stewart turned to Cinderella. “This does it. I told you it would finish in a burst of speed.” She caught his sleeve.

  “Give me a minute. Have you known all this time that the person to whom I referred as ‘the man with the tilted hat,’ was an agent working on the smuggling case?”

  “Remember the evening I stepped into the old kitchen via the window?” She nodded.

  “Remember I told you then that I had seen the lights of a parked car near The Castle? It was the man whom Harding called Simpkins waiting to contact me to tell me he was working on the case. I must go. We have a date tomorrow evening, Cinderella. I won’t have a moment free until then. She hasn’t had dinner, Sary. Make her eat something. Good night.”

  Sarah Ann Parker’s eyes followed him as he left the room, came back to the collection of articles on the floor which had preceded Harding’s catapult from the secret staircase.

  “So, that’s where your tennis cups were exhibited, Cindy? And Hal thought I laid the trap. Perhaps you wouldn’t have done it if you’d known who you’d catch.” She sniffed. “Look at your great-grandmother’s beautiful Canova plates, scattered and most of ’em broken. If only I’d thought quick enough to pull open the cupboard. I hope you think your idea was worth it.”

  “Like the Northwest Mountie, I got my man. Sary, I can’t believe that Hal —” her voice broke.

  “There, there, child, put him out of your mind. Sakes alive, what you got on? So much excitement I hadn’t noticed them blue slacks and white shirt before. They hang on you like a size forty-five on a size thirty-eight scarecrow. Where’d you pick ’em up?”

  Cindy told her, gave a thumbnail sketch of her adventures. Sary’s eyes threatened to pop from her head. She concluded:

  “I’m going up now to shed these borrowed clothes. We’ll have them cleaned and pressed and return them to the owner. I wonder where she’ll be?”

  “We’ll know soon enough. Come to the kitchen after you’ve changed. Colonel Stewart told me to get you something to eat. Wouldn’t you know he’d think of that? Didn’t you tell me that when he was a boy he was always bringing home lost kittens and dogs to care for?”

  “I happen to be neither a lost kitten nor a dog, Miss Parker.”

  “Want to know somethin’? I’ll bet he doesn’t think you are. There’s half a cold chicken in the icebox and the makings of a fresh peach shortcake. Hurry down. I’m starvin’ myself.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  THE FIRST DAY of September. What would the month bring, Cindy wondered. Already it had added autumn tang to the air, had brought deeper, more vivid color to the flower border in the patio: the strong yellows and reds of calendulas and zinnias; a rosy cloud of feathery chrysanthemums, flanked by snowy white, which in turn snuggled against a deep rose-colored variety; monkshood and tall blue asters; enormous dahlias, pink, yellow, crimson by the majestic score; a bronzed grackle instead of a robin bathing in the shallows of the p
ool.

  All this and heartache too, she thought as she looked at Tom Slade in citified gray flannels sitting across the glass table laden with silver and china. When Sarah had reported the telephone message that he was coming, she had declared that the poor boy needed hot tea since he was just out of hospital. He hadn’t cared much for it. He glanced up from the silver spoon he had been tapping against a saucer.

  “Sure you mean it, lovely?”

  “Tom, Tom, dear, I — I wish I didn’t. I honestly wish I could say I loved you enough to marry you. I do love you, but not that way.”

  He leaned forward eagerly.

  “If you love me at all, how do you know you wouldn’t go all out for me if we were married?”

  She shook her head.

  “I married once without any kind of love — if one can call a ceremony not performed by a clergyman or an accredited officer of the law marriage. I won’t marry again until I — I feel that I’ll die if the man I love doesn’t love me.” How could she have let herself go like that? Her voice had shaken.

  “That’s the answer.” He rose and as she stood up, placed his fingers under her chin and raised it till he could look into her eyes. “I doubt if you have to die, lovely. Don’t drop those spectacular lashes. You can’t hide your heart from me. Don’t you think I love you enough to want you to be happy?” He reached for a glass of water.

  “Funny, since that spill my voice gets roughed up easily. I’m starting over the road early tomorrow for home and work, plenty of work. The government agent who beat it with the black limousine has had my convertible repaired and has paid the hospital bill. Fair enough.”

  “That doesn’t compensate for your suffering. Tom, do you think you ought to make the trip now? Wait until you get your strength back.”

  “What do you mean, my strength back? Not insinuating that that little accident has made a sissy of me, laid me up permanently, are you?”

  “Don’t beat me, Thomas.” Her laugh was shaky.

  “Then watch your step, woman. Want to know somethin'? Jupiter, but I’m going to miss Sary — there is a rumor that the Fane girl has a husband in the army.”

  “I suspected it the night of the Armstrongs’ dinner when the Missing Persons announcer told of the Captain who was trying to find his wife. She turned ghastly and almost upset her coffee cup.”

  “They say — correction, Ella Crane says — she is going back to him now that it looks as if Hal Harding would be removed from circulation for a time. She has been on his trail.”

  “Then you have heard about Hal, Tom?”

  “Sure. I was at the hearing this morning while testimony was being presented pro and con.”

  “Why, why did he do it? He didn’t need the money.”

  “That’s the catch, he did. Divorcing two wives because each time you’ve seen a gal you like better is expensive business. The smuggling gang has been snitching jewels and priceless objets d’art abroad, selling the loot here and sending cash back to finance the overthrow of a certain government. It got a whopping percentage. He kept out that bag of jewels to finance himself. That’s where he stumbled.”

  “How could he get so out of character with his background and his life? It’s tragic.”

  “Leaving out the crime of dishonesty, how could a man of his intelligence — that’s what gets me — have been so stupid as to tie up with an enterprise like that? It was like touching pitch — if he tried to get rid of it old debbil blackmail was at his shoulder — he had the choice of two evils, paying through the nose the rest of his life, or being caught. Something tells me that Kenniston Stewart would rather not have it, but the credit of breaking this case will go to him. It seems that before he came to this town he had started to investigate Harding’s past and present —”

  “Before he came here? How could he have heard of him?”

  “Ask him. I’m off. I won’t say good-by, lovely. Just, I’ll be seeing you.”

  She sank into her seat at the table, eyes on the house door which had closed softly behind him. His voice had broken on the last word. Why did love have to hurt? Why, why couldn’t she have loved him instead of a man who didn’t love her?

  “Peter, Peter, had a wife and couldn’t keep her.” Hal Harding’s rasping voice shot to th top of her mind. “Didn’t want to keep her,” if Hal but knew it, she corrected. “There’s a lady waiting for you, Colonel,” the man Simpkins had reminded. Of course, it was Ally Barclay. Was Sary right? Did he want to marry her?

  “Cindy,” Sarah Ann Parker’s voice was followed by the slam of the door behind her. She looked down at the table. “Sakes alive, you two didn’t eat any of my mushroom canapés, and Mr. Slade used to gobble them by the dozen. What happened?”

  “He pretends he’s in the pink, but I think he’s still feeling the effects of the accident.”

  “I guess you’re right. Perhaps there’s some other trouble mixed in with it. He told me he was startin’ for home tomorrow at daybreak, handed me a ten-dollar bill an’ said, ‘Sary, credit that to all the soda lemonades you’ve mixed and the brownies you’ve baked for me.’ Nice boy, I felt kinder sorry for him.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes.

  “Sarah Ann Parker, stop it, or you’ll have me crying.” She helped place cups and plates on the tray. “Why the bandaged finger? What happened to it?”

  “Darius came in early this morning with a red squirrel dangling from his jaws. I got the poor thing away from him an’ then it sunk its sharp teeth into my finger. O-o-ooch, it hurt. Those little things fight back fierce, when caught.”

  “If the creature had had a sense of poetic justice it would have bitten Darius instead of you. It might have taught that black cat a lesson. You said you intended to drop in at Ella Crane’s, I suppose you have all the details of the Rockledge activities at your tongue’s end.”

  “Sakes alive, Ella is doing a rushing business, everyone in town is droppin’ in. The women feel terribly sorry ’bout Hal Harding — one time or another he had ’em all with their tongues hangin’ out, an’ I guess from all accounts he’s the one to be sorry for, the rest of the gang have been workin’ the racket in other places for a couple of years. I liked him, but I never trusted him. Seems that the tough guy we thought was Rena Foster’s beau was here to help catch the smugglers. Funny, ain’t it, we should have smugglers at Pirate’s Cove again? Seems kind of fitting.”

  “Fitting! Sarah Ann Parker, you have a perverted dramatic sense.”

  “So long’s I’ve got somethin’ dramatic in my make-up, it’s all right with me. One thing came out at the hearin’, Rena Foster confessed that when she came into the kitchen, the day you had that queer sleepin’ spell — she thought we was all away an’ come in with that big basket to pick up the jewels for Hal Harding — she waited till he left by the front way an’ she came in the back door. In court she made sure he didn’t get clear an’ leave her holding the bag.”

  “Then she was working both sides of the street. Helping him against the woman by whom she was employed.”

  “That wouldn’t worry her none. Want to know somethin’, Cindy? Seems I’ve been suspected of spyin’ on the folks at Rockledge, of flashing lights to the yacht and misleading it.”

  “You, Sary? Where and how did you hear that?”

  “I met the man we’d thought was Rena Foster’s beau on the street — he isn’t so tough-lookin’ when he smiles. I guess that face gets him the detective job. No one lookin’ at him would think he was on the side of law an’ order. He stopped me.

  “‘See here, Miss Parker,’ said he. ‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. You were taking a crazy chance when you butted in on the smugglers. I happen to know that one night a couple in a boat tied to The Castle landing was ready to garrote you if you appeared.’ Must have been the night you yanked off my bathrobe, Cindy — then he went on, ‘Did you get the warning I slipped into Miss Clinton’s pocket at the masquerade?’ Kind of exciting, isn’t it?”

  “Exciting? The possibil
ities are hair-raising. Then it was the clown who tucked the note into my pocket? Sarah Ann Parker, was he right? Did you mix into the Rockledge mess?”

  Her grin was half triumph, half admission.

  “Twice I flashed lights that sent the yacht packin’ in a hurry. I was experimentin’. Sakes alive, I suppose I won’t have a chance to mix into anything like that again. Looks like the Devil an’ his works have been cleared from this village. Life will drop back to be just one everlastin’ round of cookin’ — not that I don’t love cookin’ — dishwashing and movies.” She lifted the laden tray.

  “I forgot to tell you, Colonel Stewart phoned. When I told him you and Mr. Slade were talkin’ very serious in the patio, he said not to call you, just tell you he’d be here about eight to take you dancing.’ She stopped at the kitchen door which Cinderella opened for her.

  “Better wear the swishy blue taffeta, Cindy, and the two ninety-eight string of beads. Wonderful buy, wasn’t it? You can fool me some of the time but not every time, Miss Clinton.” The slam of the door behind her registered indignation.

  Two hours later Sarah Ann Parker hovered about the table in the candle-lighted patio.

  “You look awful nice, Cindy. ’Tisn’t the dress I wanted you to wear, but I guess that fluffy net is more suitable for this warm evening than taffeta. Turquoise blue, isn’t it? I’m kinder getting used to the sleeveless top, I like ’em when bare arms are as pretty as yours. The pink rose at the shoulder looks perfect enough to have come right out of the garden. How much shorter the days are getting. Can’t hardly see the chaise longy pushed back in the corner.” She poured coffee clear as dark amber into a porcelain cup.

  “Drink this, child. You haven’t eaten enough dinner to keep a bird alive. I’ve been runnin’ on, tellin’ you how nice you look to cheer you up. Not feelin’ sad and sorry about Hal Harding, are you? He ain’t worth it.”

  “Of course I am sorry about Hal Harding, Sary. I liked him until — lately. It’s tragic to think that a man who had everything, education, money, personal charm, an outstanding war record, a fine family behind him, would make such a mess of his life.”