Odor of Violets Page 7

  Dazedly, he walked from room to room of the apartment searching for an answer. It came after a time—logical and most unpleasant, but the only possible reason he could think of for Babs to leave and take her clothes away.

  Resolutely, he picked up the phone in the living room and put in a Hartford call. He was faced with something which only Norma could handle, something overwhelming which must be broken to his father with a woman’s diplomacy.

  He was shaking when the distant ringing of the phone bell finally stopped and he realized the call was through.

  “Norma?” he said.

  “Yes. Who is it?” Her familiar voice sounded strained, distant and faraway.

  “It’s Stacy. Something terrible’s happened, Norma. I don’t know what to do. Babs has eloped with a man. She’s gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “I don’t know. She took all her things and left no word. It’s terrible, Norma. I don’t know how to tell you—she’s eloped with Paul Gerente!”

  CHAPTER VIII

  UTTER EXHAUSTION swept over Norma in an enervating wave as she ended her conversation with Stacy and hung up the phone. A night light burned dimly in the hall, lending an air of cavernous vacancy to The Crags. Norma went into the living room, swept Cheli’s manuscript aside, and eased herself down into the comfort of the big armchair.

  The embers of the fire had long since died. Half a log, blackened and grim, lay across the andirons. By the feeble light, shining in from the hall, she could see the gray film of ashes under the log. Not a vestige of pink remained which by careful tending might be nursed to a warming glow.

  Her love for Paul Gerente had died that way, and now Paul was gone. He had burned brightly too, for a time, warming the hearts of the public. It seemed unbelievable that her love for him could have been so routine. Living, he would have said, “Ashes? Really, Norma, my dear! Why not the last fading sparks of a falling rocket—the last fizzing drops swallowed from a glass of dry champagne? Ashes are so hackneyed. My memory deserves something better than an aphorismic cliché!”

  It was almost a pity that he could never know how much his violent death had upset her. His capacity for enjoyment was great. What immeasurable pleasure he would have gained from the knowledge that his lifeless body had disrupted Norma’s secure and peaceful existence; that, dead, he was stamped ineradicably on her mind at the end of a single day.

  Stacy’s excited call to tell her that Babs had eloped with Paul Gerente had come as a paralyzing shock. For a moment it brought back the uncertainty which had plagued her earlier, revived the thought that the dead man might not have been Paul. She tried to recall the details of Stacy’s story. All she could remember was that Babs had left and taken all her things from the Ritters’—summarily run away.

  Analyzing things more carefully, Norma realized that she was jumping at false hopes again. Stacy had known that Barbara was going out with Paul Gerente. He had no inkling that Gerente had been killed. He knew that Babs was meeting Paul surreptitiously. With Babs gone, Stacy’s boyish mind had seized on an elopement as the only logical explanation of his sister’s secret departure. That much was easy to see.

  Norma set out on another mental labyrinth which conceded the fact that she had seen Paul Gerente’s body. Then Babs had seen it, too, for Babs was there. Beyond that point lay nothing but conjecture—frightful conjecture. Why had Babs run away? Babs was poised, self-assured, and proud of her family’s influence. She was the type who calmly smiled defiance at the police when they arrested her for speeding, conscious that Thaddeus Tredwill’s fortune stood back of her.

  Norma shook her head in defeated bewilderment. She had told Stacy nothing over the phone, except to hurry home. She was glad of it now. In the morning she could talk to him, tell him to say nothing about Babs’s visit to Paul, try to explain it to him in some plausible way. She was certain of one thing—Babs Tredwill had not turned herself into a fugitive from the law just because she had blundered in onto Paul Gerente’s body on the floor.

  Chill had crept into The Crags. It clung about Norma’s slim ankles like an invisible fluid rising slowly about the chair. When she stood up the weight of her fur coat dragged at her soggily, reminding her that she still had it on. Fighting an inclination to relax in the chair again and sleep until morning, she stood for a few seconds brushing at a damp spot on the coat with the tips of her fingers. The thought of her own bed finally proved incentive enough to take her back into the hall.

  Her handbag and the paper-wrapped galoshes were on a small table where she had placed them when she answered the phone. She picked them up and put them down again. The night light and her tautened nerves were jesting with her. Both her gloves had been on top of the galoshes when she went into the living room. Now only one of them was there. The other one lay at the end of a big Oriental rug, halfway across the hall.

  Norma picked it up, retrieved her handbag and parcel, and stood uncomprehendingly looking from the front door to the stairway. “I’d better get to bed,” she told herself firmly. “I’m walking in my sleep. I dropped that glove way over toward the dining-room door, and I don’t remember being there.”

  Not until she was in her room did she begin to wonder if one of the servants hadn’t heard the phone and come downstairs. Christmas was near. Bella, the housemaid, was nosy. She might have tried to peek in a parcel if she saw one in the hall. The conclusion of Norma’s talk with Stacy had probably frightened her away.

  “There’s no use questioning her,” Norma thought. “She won’t admit it even if it’s true.”

  Once in bed, Norma found that all of her bones were aching. Wide-eyed, she lay listening to the whine of the storm, wondering if she were coming down with an attack of the flu. She finally surrendered entirely to her wakefulness, and laid it unreasonably to Babs’s galoshes. She had slipped them under her bed, still in their paper wrapping. Sleep might come if she got up again and put them away.

  By the pink-shaded glow of a table lamp, she put on slippers and a warm woolen bathrobe. The package was loosely tied and opened easily. Norma put the brown paper and string in a wastebasket beside her small desk and, acting with a furtiveness which wasn’t quite clear to her, filled the top of the wastebasket with white tissue paper taken from a drawer.

  The guest room, occupied by Cheli Scott, was near by, but Norma had no fear of disturbing her guest. Cheli slept soundly, and Norma’s soft padded slippers fell noiselessly against the thickness of the carpet in the hall.

  Holding the galoshes pressed against her breast with both hands, she stopped outside of Babs’s closed door. Sheepishly, she admitted her oversight. Certain from Stacy’s call that Babs had fled, she had neglected to look in the most obvious place where Babs might be—the girl’s own room. Under the drive of panic, Babs might easily have taken her things from the Ritters’ and caught an earlier train home.

  Norma guardedly opened the door and went in. The lulling hum of an electric clock was the only sound. Uninterrupted by any breath or movement of a sleeping occupant, the steady whir of the timepiece attested to the vacancy of the room.

  She switched on the lights and looked about her. The room was in perfect order, undisturbed from its cleaning during the day. Its perfection and beauty reflected Babs. The girl had something of the same sleek comfort about her, the same exquisite warmth. Norma felt doubly depressed. Babs, like her boudoir, was a product of much money, and the products of much money were often fragile and in need of loving care. Like the shimmering satin coverlet on the bed, Babs belonged at home. It was doubtful that she could ever survive the racking ordeal of a fear-impelled flight through a winter storm.

  Norma closed her mind against a thousand questions. Had the child any money? Would she seek the doubtful safety of friends in another city? If she hadn’t struck down Paul Gerente, why had she gone? If she had killed him in a struggle, where in the name of heaven could she go?

  An automatic light clicked on in the closet as Norma opened the door. A color
ful line of dresses on hangers crowded the interior. On the shelf, a row of hats on separate holders vied with each other in an exotic display. Metal shoe racks fastened to the inside of the closet door held twenty pairs or more.

  Norma decided against the shoe racks. The fur tops of the overshoes stood out too conspicuously among the dainty slippers. She pushed some of the dresses aside and placed the galoshes on the closet floor. The dresses swung back over them again, hiding them from view. With a feeling of lightness, as though she had rid herself of some dragging encumbrance, she shut the closet, put out the lights, and started back to her room.

  Halfway down the hall she paused and wrapped her bathrobe closer about her. The wind whipped up outside in a sudden strong noisy flurry. Far downstairs, probably from the basement, came the slam of a door.

  Her only reaction was to suppress a “Damn!” of annoyance, for she had heard that particular door before. It led from the laundry into the storeroom, and the latch never held. Unless it was locked with the key, its irritating slamming began sooner or later when the wind started to blow. Once begun, the slamming kept up indefinitely.

  She decided to go and lock it herself, rather than call Pierce on the house phone. But at the top of the steps she paused again, recalling with slight uneasiness the incident of her glove in the downstairs hall.

  Stubborn dislike of weakness in herself urged her on. She had made that trip to the basement at night more than once. Certainly she didn’t intend to have her life at The Crags disrupted by the hectic events of a single day. If Bella, the housemaid, had dropped the glove, then Bella might have unlocked the storeroom door as well. Bella was not only nosy, she had a deep-rooted love for jams and jellies. The storeroom contained quite a selection.

  Norma pushed a switch at the stairhead and descended with more assurance when light streamed up from the lower hall. Habit, more than anything else, caused her to fasten the heavy brass safety chain on the double front door—a Tredwill habit which left a final lockup for the last one in. Interrupted by Stacy’s phone call, she had overlooked it before.

  She went through living room and dining room into another hall. There, the lights set high in a dome seemed dim. Great draperies of crimson swept down from the ceiling, held by medieval weapons against the walls. Burnished suits of armor stood on pedestals. Shells of ancient men, they watched her with vacant faces as she passed, saluting her with motionless halberds in their hands.

  At the end of the hall she avoided the entrance to Thad’s miniature theater and took a door to the right which led to the basement stairs. A switch at the top landing lighted a bulb in the laundry below. Norma went on down. The cold of the concrete crept through the soles of her slippers as she crossed the laundry to the storeroom door.

  The door was locked. Hanging on a nail beside it was the old-fashioned key. Yet Bella must have been there, for lingering above the clean soapy smell of the laundry was a trace of violet perfume.

  In the boiler room to the right the oil burner flashed into action with a muffled pop, warning Norma that morning was very near. Out of a darkened passage to the left an icy draft swept through the laundry as though the starting of the heater had drawn it irresistibly toward the flame.

  “Bella.” Norma called the maid’s name softly. Gil’s workshop lay at the end of the darkened passage. Gil had used it since he was a boy of ten. It was forbidden territory to servants and family, but that rush of cold air must have come from the opened workshop door.

  Norma groped her way down the passage, feeling above her for a light cord which she knew was there, but couldn’t see. She found it at last, much farther along than she had expected. The bulb was gone. Ahead of her something creaked raucously. She was certain then that the big whitewashed door which Gil kept padlocked so carefully was swinging free.

  A wall switch was at the left inside the door. Norma reached around the jamb, found the button, and pushed it. Two green-shaded droplights lighted, throwing white radiance down on a drafting table spread with drawings and blueprints, filling the balance of the workshop with an emerald glow.

  Machines and a forge stood at the back of the workshop, crowding the room in a double row. A wooden workbench, littered with tools, ran the full length of another wall. Two model airplanes hung from the ceiling, swaying gently from the opening of the door.

  A huge old walnut wardrobe stood in a far corner behind the forge. It was piled high on top with remnants of a hand printing press, and filled to bursting with a haphazard collection of nails, screws, and type—relics of a print shop Gil had started as a boy. The only place where anyone could be hidden in the workshop was behind that wardrobe in the angle of the wall.

  Norma picked her way carefully between the machines, watching the floor for nails and upended tacks. When she circled the forge and looked up, the greenish light from the emerald shades was flickering on the dull grimed finish of the wardrobe, drawing it closer to her. For the space of one dreadful second she felt that the wardrobe was tottering and about to fall.

  It took another second for her to realize that her terrible thought was true. Then it was far too late. She stood motionless with feebly upraised hands, unable to scream from a throat that was tight and dry. The heavy press toppled and grazed her head. An instant later the lead-filled bulk of the wardrobe had crushed her to the floor.

  CHAPTER IX

  GOOD! COLONEL Gray, the head of our defense plans, believes your ability to get around with your dog invaluable. Even under war conditions, a blind man could pass unquestioned where others might be suspected and stopped immediately. The vulnerable spots mentioned in there are in code. Before I leave would you care to name their locations for me as given you personally by Colonel Gray? I’d like to be sure you know.”

  Captain Duncan Maclain made a noise with his lips and switched off the Ediphone record which was repeating his earlier conversation. With an easy motion, denoting long habit, he took a cigar box from the right-hand desk drawer. He dumped the contents—a hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle—on the desk top and irritably began sorting out the jumbled pile.

  Stretched out luxuriously on the divan, Spud Savage watched his partner’s quick fingers select a piece, trace the design of the cut, and begin their search for its mate.

  “Well, go on with it, Dunc,” he urged. “Did you tell this bird all the vulnerable spots?” A glint of humor lighted his curious yellow eyes.

  “Since you came all the way into New York to protect me,” said Maclain, “I’d appreciate a little help from you. Did you ever hear that fellow’s voice before?”

  Spud yawned. “On that record, he sounds like all the actors we heard in that movie house on the Cape last summer—but for that matter, so do you.”

  “I’ll make a note of what you say.” The Captain found a piece which fitted, and gave a tiny smile. His expressive face could reflect almost any shade of feeling when he so desired. The smile gave him a quizzical look, as though he might be listening to distant laughter. He fitted the two pieces of the puzzle together, and patted them down. “We live in a funny country, Spud,” he began.

  “If you’re going to sit up all night, I suppose I’ll have to listen.” Spud shifted restlessly. He didn’t like the look on the Captain’s face. “What are you driving at? Politics, economics, or keeping us out of the war?”

  “Sabotage and espionage,” said Duncan Maclain. His fingers began to move more surely through the pile—selecting and rejecting; placing certain pieces to one side—pieces which were burned by touch into his memory.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve caught a spy.” Spud lifted his slippered feet and tucked them under the heavy silk of his dressing gown.

  “Sabotage and espionage,” Maclain repeated. “That’s what I’m driving at—that, and the levity of your tone.”

  “Of my tone, Dunc? Why pick on me?”

  “Because, my very dear friend and companion, you unconsciously represent a norm.”

  “For God’s sake don’t get unctuous,�
� Spud said pleadingly. “Did you say ‘norm’ or ‘worm’?”

  “There isn’t much difference, is there?” The Captain wriggled his eyebrows thoughtfully. “You’re intelligent—”

  “Thanks.”

  “Strong and fearless—”

  “Terrific!”

  “Well-educated—”

  “A certificate from Vassar.”

  “Widely traveled, and unusually familiar with the workings of organized crime.”

  “In fact,” Spud admitted shrinkingly, “I’m known to my devoted wife, Rena, as Samuel Savage, the Magnificent Obsession. Why don’t you hire me?”

  The Captain clicked two pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together like castanets. “The Detecto-Dictograph is recording all this,” he said. “The reason I don’t hire you is—you’re dumb!”

  “After that recommendation you just gave me?”

  “Certainly,” said Maclain. “You’re a norm. Like the rest of our nation, you begin to giggle and twist like a coy little girl at the mention of espionage. The United States is probably the best-hated country in the world today—because it’s the best. It has more to lose—and consequently more to guard. Yet you don’t believe in spies!”

  “Now look, Dunc, that’s hardly fair.” Spud sat up hastily. “You worked with me in both London and Paris during the last war. What about that crowd with the house at Leeds? What about—”

  The Captain raised a hand. “There are always spies in England, France, and Germany—and every other country in Europe, too. The American public accepts that as a fact. The magazines and the movies have told them that it’s so. But here?” He shrugged his broad shoulders deprecatingly. “Hell, no! Your average American will swallow the most incredible feats of gangsters—because he’s had them on his neck for years. He overlooks the fact that, compared to a spy, the biggest gangster who ever lived was playing for small dough.”

  “You’re upset, Dunc.” Spud’s voice was quiet with an unusual note of concern. He came to the desk and placed a hand on the Captain’s shoulder. “I had no idea this was so serious, Dunc. What do you want me to do?”