Departure Delayed, page 14
“I’d like to know about your travels.”
“Oh, Aunt Edna’s traveled everywhere,” Carol interrupted quickly. “She’s been all over the world and home again.” “I’d like to know about a special trip. When you were out in the Orient. In Shanghai, to be precise.”
“Shanghai?” Edna echoed. “Yes. I remember well. It was years ago. Twelve or fourteen years. Maybe longer. I can’t be sure now. I really can’t.”
“You knew a lot of people out there?”
“I went with the American crowd, mostly. And Britishers. Alone, of course. Most of the time I traveled alone. But I knew people wherever I went.”
“You know any of our officials? In the Orient, that is?” “What you’re really asking is, did I know Captain Curtis? Why not say what you mean, young man? Because I did know him. He was in Shanghai some of that time. Everyone knew him, naturally. I assure you it was quite casual. Between us were only casual, social pleasantries.”
Carol’s lips curved. “You don’t really think, Johnny—” “How do I know what to think about this thing?” I asked her. “I’m trying to reach out, trying to learn.”
Edna, looking at me, said, “He really does want to learn, doesn’t he?”
That fluffy air had vanished from her manner. The gray eyes that looked at me had a curious intensity.
Beneath that air I believed she was sincere. It wasn’t all society and glamour. Those questions she’d asked earlier about my home, about me—she’d wanted the answers, wanted to find out what I was like.
Carol had a cigarette in her hand. I struck the match for her. Accidentally, my hand brushed against hers.
The touch was electric. Sitting close to her—looking at her— had its effect on me. I couldn't deny it or run from it. I couldn't be sure whether she realized it or not.
I couldn't be sure either what she was really like. All of it could be a performance. Her story about not knowing what I was involved in during those weeks. The story about meeting me while she was one of the hostesses at a servicemen's dance. Edna's admission that she had known Curtis. Her easy way of telling me, as though that were the most natural thing in the world. Edna who traveled. She's been all over the world, and back again.
I couldn't be sure. But I knew the game Spike had dreamed up wouldn't work. If either Carol or Edna knew more than they pretended, there wasn't any way I could trick them into the truth.
Looking at Carol, it didn't seem to matter. I could understand how Johnny Wilson fell in love with her.
There was still the one link between her and that other world. One contact with Michaels, with Evie. It was that insane phrase he had used. And his telling us to ask Carol, that she would know.
I told her about the note I'd found in the room and that line about the Queen of the May. I told her about our going up to see Michaels and his standing in the center of the room, tossing those irrational words at us.
"We can't figure it," I said. "Michaels told us you would know. He told us—"
"He said I'd know? But how?”
"Did you ever see him—talk with him?"
"No. I didn't. But I know that phrase, Johnny. I—I heard it before. It was from Evie. She told me. Told me that time she called me up, when she was trying to find you. When she said you were in some sort of danger.”
"But how did she tell you? What did she say?”
“It—it didn’t sound terribly important, Johnny. I mean the phrase didn't. She just used it."
“It was some kind of code?”
“I don’t think so. Though, maybe it was—in a way. She used it sort of offhand. I gathered it was her own expression. Her way of describing anybody who—anybody who was important.”
“How do you mean—important? I wasn’t—”
“Not important, exactly. She said the others—some others— were frightened of you. They were going to hurt you. She wanted to warn you.”
Carol seemed to be searching for words. I said, “Try to remember exactly what she told you, Carol. You’ve got to remember.”
“She said to tell you you were right about the Queen of the May. I said that sounded crazy and she said you’d understand. That was a phrase she used. That it meant they were gunning for you. That’s what she told me.”
Just a phrase she used. Probably the whole crowd used that phrase. A deadly little joke.
“That night at the bar—did you tell me about her using that expression?”
“Yes, of course. The words themselves—crazy as they sounded—weren’t the important thing. You were in danger, Johnny. They were trying to kill you. Whatever I thought about you I had to warn you.”
Somehow Michaels had found out about that phone call Evie had made to Carol. He told the others. They realized Evie wasn’t playing their game. She’d fallen for me.
That was why Evie had wanted to run away—to get away from them.
I asked Carol about the baggage check. Why hadn't she turned it over to McCormick when he came to talk with her after my arrest?
She seemed puzzled. She hadn’t actually known the check was there. Those few shirts and things had been in a bureau drawer. She hadn’t even thought of them until the afternoon I showed up. The baggage stub had just been lying there under the shirts. She hadn’t thought it was important.
“Was it anything special, Johnny?”
“Just more personal belongings. I wondered.”
I didn’t want to think she was lying. I didn’t want to believe she was part of the business. I wanted to believe she was what she seemed.
Carol said, “Death—threats—all this. Aunt Edna’s right. You never would have dreamed—”
“It’s what comes from not knowing about people,” Edna said. “You recall, Carol, I said you ought to know more about him and—”
“There must have been some pleasant moments,” I told Carol. “Some of it—”
“Some of it was rather nice, Johnny. Evenings we had together. There was the nightwalking through the park—it was frosty then.”
Frost. The chill of autumn. Walking arm in arm. “It sounds like a good deal,” I said. “I wish—”
I stopped. I wished I could remember those things. I wished they were actually a part of my life. I said, “It’s stupid—being jealous of yourself.”
The curved eyebrows lifted. “Jealous of yourself?”
“I suppose, of Johnny Wilson. I envy him. Because he had-”
“You’re being perfectly stupid.” Aunt Edna lost her poise for an instant. “Wilson was something you dreamed up. He was an impersonation.”
They still clung to the idea I had played that role, that it hadn’t been real. But in her tone, and the way Carol looked at me, I knew they weren’t sure.
There was music. A string orchestra off somewhere playing an old-fashioned waltz. Edna was studying her face in the mirror of her compact. Carol leaned back in her chair. She was lost in her own thoughts. Yet she knew I was watching her.
Carol said, “And that girl Evie? Have you seen her again?”
She didn’t know. I hadn’t told her. The story hadn’t been in the papers; McCormick had held it up. I’d told her about seeing Michaels, but I hadn’t mentioned our going back into that house the second time.
I said, “Carol, Evie’s dead.”
She looked at me blankly. I poured out the story, as much as I could tell her. Edna set down her compact and her hands trembled so she spilled powder on the table.
Carol listened. She didn’t speak. I told her about the postmortem. “It was morphine poisoning,” I said. “She didn’t suffer. She went to sleep. Then—after that last injection— she-”
I tried to make my voice calm, objective, as I told the facts.
“Evie!” Carol said. “She was the one who tried to help you. She sent you that warning, through me. She didn’t care what happened to her. It was only—”
She stopped. The red lips trembled. Her eyes held accusation. Her hands were at her cheeks. She turned her head so I couldn’t see her face.
She was weeping. I could hear choked sobbing above the melody of that string ensemble.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The game hadn’t worked.
I told Spike about it that night, over dinner in a Second Avenue lunchroom.
“She was telling the truth,” I said. “I don’t know how I know but I do. She can’t be lying. And she’s too smart, Spike, to fall into any booby trap.”
“Too smart is right. I figured she’d be wise.”
He made me give him the full picture of the interview. Once or twice he stopped me to ask about Carol’s or Edna’s reaction at some special moment.
“They were wise,” he said when I finished. “Wise from the start. Even at that you got a few juicy items from them.”
“In what they said?”
“Sure. For one—we got the answer to that Queen of the May rumpus.”
From the facts I got from Carol, with what we knew, he pieced it together. “You heard Evie use that phrase, maybe over the phone, talking to somebody else. Or maybe accidentally she used it in a conversation with you. You forced her to tell you what it meant.
“She learns later you’re in danger. She can’t locate you. She calls Carol, tells her to warn you. But Evie knows she’s talked too much. When you come back, she tries to get you to leave town with her.”
“Only I won’t go.”
“Right. Next day they try that ambush. You get wounded. The shock of it shakes your mind back. She can’t turn to you any more. But she’s still scared. She wants to get out of it. She needs money, help. So she turns to Michaels. He’s in a spot too. A dopester—slave to a drug, to the people who can give him the drug.”
“Which is how Michaels knew Evie went to Carol. Evie told him the whole story.”
“Only Michaels didn’t keep it to himself. He went to the others. They realized the blonde was yapping. They couldn’t trust her. She knew too much and she was falling for you.” That was why Evie died. She’d been to see me several times, even after I’d recovered my memory. They didn’t know how much she talked. They couldn’t afford to take chances.
I said, “It doesn’t go anywhere. It’s another one of those dead ends you were talking about. We’re still groping, fumbling.”
“Don’t overlook Edna.”
“She’s not in it. You couldn’t find anything.”
“But she did know Curtis. She knew him. Doesn’t that strike you as rather extraordinary?”
“Could be. The way she explained it, that doesn’t mean anything. They just happened to be in Shanghai at the same time. They move in the same set. She said it was just casual.” “Maybe, Roy. I think she’s lying. I think we’ve got to start digging to find out just what Edna was doing in the Orient. Just whom she did and didn’t know. And why.” He considered briefly. “There’s a guy in town Aunt Edna may have forgotten. Richard Farr. He worked for Curtis in China. Knows a lot about what went on in those days. He may be able to throw some interesting light on the Eatons.”
I went to see Farr myself.
Farr hated me. Hated me because he was certain I’d killed his friend. Hated me with blind rage.
Yet he was the one man I could turn to with this problem. He would know about Edna. He would know about the past, that blank part of the record, the prewar years in Asia.
He was staying at a hotel on Twenty-fourth Street, off Fifth Avenue. I went down there in a bus. All the way down on the bus I kept trying to map out what I would say.
Questions kept coming into my thoughts. If he had known about her in Shanghai, why hadn’t he recognized the name here? Or had he recognized the name?
I wasn’t even sure he’d see me. When I got to the hotel, I sent up my name, told them to say it was urgent. The clerk informed me I could go up.
He was alone in the hotel room.
He stood up when I came in. He was wearing a blue dressing robe. The color seemed to make the yellowish tinge in his skin stand out. His face was as hard and bitter as when I had seen him last.
“What do you want, Marshall?”
It was more than a question. State your business and leave. We don’t wish to soil our hands more than we have to.
“I came to ask your help.”
“You want me to help you?”
“You’re the only one who can at this moment.”
He made a grunting sound of disgust. “There’s nothing I can do for you. Nothing I can or would.”
“You can hear me out, can’t you? You can find out what I’ve got to say?”
“Hear you out?” His lips twisted. “So that’s what I’m supposed to do. Listen to the whimperings of—”
“I’m not trying to whimper. You don’t have to do anything. You just—”
His shoulders sagged. There was a resignation in the way his hands hung at his sides.
“I suppose—I must.” Some of the harshness was gone. “Sit down. That chair by the bed. Go on—go on and talk. I doubt if there is a thing I can do for you. But we—we give the devil his hour.”
I didn't know exactly where to begin. I wanted to get the whole picture over to him.
I said, “There are others in it, Mr. Farr. Even if you're right about me, don't you realize there must be others in it?” “Others? Yes. I think there's a gang of you at work here in the States.”
“That's what I want to talk about. You know about Evie’s death? About the old man?”
“I have been kept informed of developments.”
“I'm—I'm somehow tied up with them, Mr. Farr. I admit that. But you see—I don't know how.”
It caught his interest. I saw a flicker of light in his eyes. It was seeping into his thoughts, the chance that the gang had actually roped me in during those blank weeks.
He said, so quietly I could hardly hear, “Get on with it!” “The day Curtis was killed—it was the same day I was released from the hospital. It's perfectly clear I went to see Captain Curtis that day.”
“That fact is well established.”
“My memory went on that same day. I don't know what was the cause. I took on a new identity. I had money in my pocket, money I'd gotten when I was discharged. I took a room. I—what I was doing—or planning to do—I don't know.” “Possibly”—his voice was tinged with sarcasm—“you merely existed from day to day. Doing nothing at all.”
“Possibly that’s right. I did go to one dance. I met a girl named Carol Eaton. We had a whirlwind romance. We eloped. Later—after we got back—this other group found me. They sent that girl Evie after me. Carol and I were apparently fighting all the time. Evie faked a pickup. She went on parties with me. Drinking bouts. She didn't have much trouble, I guess, dragging me out of Carol's world.”
Farr said, “But all of this is only guessing. You don't come to grips with facts.”
“It's leading to what I want to say. That crowd was trying
to destroy me. That much is pretty clear. Somebody—some group—is afraid of what I know or what they think I know.” Farr leaned forward in the chair. His large hands clasped together. “You may have something there. If you were telling the truth, you might—”
“I'm telling the truth. That’s why I’m here. I told you I wanted your help. Not to get me out of anything. Just to—add up the facts.”
“I could be wrong,” he told me. “I could be wrong, Marshall. It isn’t a possibility I entirely overlook.”
“They tried to ambush me,” I said. “I believe the reason they haven’t tried since is they’re certain I’ll be formally charged with his murder.”
“Your story then is that this thing is a frameup?”
“I’ve been delving into it. Looking at it from every angle. Trying to dig out the facts.”
“I know,” he said. “I know also about Lieutenant Yamada’s work on the case. He feels you’re at least morally innocent.” “But there’s something I don’t think you know. Yesterday I had cocktails with Carol Eaton. Also her aunt, Miss Edna Eaton.”
“Is that of special significance?”
“I wonder if you knew Edna Eaton?”
“I haven’t met either of them. I’ve heard, from Lieutenant McCormick, of the family, of your relationship with Carol.” “I didn’t mean that. I wondered if you had heard of Edna Eaton out in the Orient. She was out there too.”
He laughed. “I suppose she was one of the tourists, back before the war?”
“She spent one winter in Shanghai.”
“So did thousands of other Americans, men and women. There was a constant flow of people in the old days. Ships coming in with new arrivals—leaving with old friends. You couldn’t know everyone. Even in my job.”
“Captain Curtis never spoke of her to you?”
“Why do you think he should have?”
“She said she knew him. Not well, she told me. But she did know him during that winter. She mingled in the same set, the British and American social crowd.”
"There were many social crowds, as you put it, in Shanghai. I was in the city occasionally, usually only to make reports to Curtis when he made headquarters there. Why do you think she would be important? The mere fact that she was there hardly seems sufficient to warrant any real interest.” "Not in itself. But that she knew Curtis may be important. Lieutenant Yamada pointed that out when I told him. Spike said it seemed like a lot more than mere coincidence that she should know him and then—”
"And then she returns here and her niece marries a boy and that boy is accused of killing a man she used to know.” "Doesn’t it strike you as—curious?”
He had a half-smile. "You think she had a romance with Captain Curtis? A secret romance? That perhaps he threw her over?”
“Maybe not that melodramatic. I don’t know. I wondered, had you ever heard of her out there? If there was some way to check up, to see if she did know Curtis only casually.”
He seemed amused. "Poor Curtis! The confirmed bachelor. Devoted all his life to his work. If he knew his name were being linked with Edna somebody who spent a winter in Shanghai, he’d throw a fit in his grave.”
He was walking up and down the room. “If there had been any romance, I’d have known of it. He never mentioned her name that I can recall at this time. I’m not saying he didn’t know her. Not questioning her veracity. I wasn’t in Shanghai a great deal myself. I didn’t mingle in the social world. My job wouldn’t allow that.”
