The Woman in Black, page 5
I pointed down the terrace. “I saw the——”
I stopped short. There was an anguished cry from inside the drawing room that choked off quickly in a strangled sob. “—Enoch!”
“Oh, my God!” Seymour exclaimed.
I was appalled to hear myself give a sort of hysterical laugh. After the fantastic business of the woman in black, to hear him say “Oh, my God!” that way made everything seem completely cockeyed. It was exactly as if he’d said, “What is it now—is everybody going crazy?” And he just stood there. I don’t suppose it was more than a fraction of a moment, but it was long enough to make him seem like a blind man, confused and bewildered. Then he dashed for the window, and I followed him.
I’m sure we both expected to see Mr. Stubblefield stretched out dead as a dodo on the drawing-room floor. But he wasn’t; he was standing there very much alive. I suppose that’s why neither of us saw for a moment what had really happened. Then I heard Ellery Seymour draw his breath in sharply. That’s when I saw her. It was Susan Kent, standing in the library doorway, her face ghastly white. By her, and with his right hand holding hers motionless, was the blond young man I’d seen behind Mr. Stubblefield the moment before I deserted the woman in black.
The horrible thing was what Susan Kent had in her hand—a small automatic revolver, iridescent blue and purple and in savage contrast to her dead-white fingers clutching it.
The blond young man took it easily out of her hand.
“She was right here behind the door, Chief. It was aimed right at your back.”
He spoke coolly, with an odd mixture of determination and embarrassment. “I don’t want to make any trouble, sir. This was the business.”
Susan Kent straightened up, her face still very white.
“No—it’s not true! I wasn’t going to . . . I just had it in my hand. I found it, on the floor—I just picked it up!”
She looked desperately around at us. “—Dorothy! Make them believe me . . . you’ve got to believe me! Oh, where’s Bill? Where’s my husband!”
She leaned against the door frame, sobbing.
I went unobtrusively over and sat down on a sofa. My knees weren’t very steady. In fact, they were appallingly unsteady. The whole thing was so shockingly unbelievable. She couldn’t possibly have been such a fool, so frantic, as to try that way to get out of the jam she was in. It couldn’t make sense.
I don’t know how Milton Minor got there. I didn’t see him come around the room. I was only aware of his sitting down beside me. He had a highball glass in his hand. As he put it down on the floor a little slopped over the side. He took his handkerchief out and wiped off his hand.
He leaned over toward me and spoke under his breath, hardly moving his lips.
“The boy’s dead right. I saw her. Across the hall from the bar. She picked it up all right, but it was in the middle of the floor. Where’d Bill go? I think we’d better get hold of him—quick.”
6
It’s hard to describe the breaking up of a general paralysis of the sort, especially when most of my own mind was still in the grip of it. Cynic and time-server as he might be, Milton Minor wasn’t a liar. He wouldn’t have said he saw Susan Kent pick up the gun, and aim it, unless he’d seen her do it. Standing at the bar there, he could have seen her very simply. The convincing evidence to me, however, was the shock that had obliterated all previous effects of the shaker of Manhattans. And he wasn’t drinking now. He reached down and put his highball farther under the sofa where nobody would kick it over. Then he sat quietly watching. When I started to get up he took hold of my skirt and drew me back.
“Let’s keep out of this, Grace. You couldn’t do anything.”
I guess he was right. Dorothy Hallet and Theodore had gone over to Susan, and Dorothy took her to the sofa by the fireplace and made her sit down. Dorothy seemed outwardly as calm as ever, but I thought it was taking considerable effort. She’s usually extremely articulate, and so far she’d hardly said a word.
In fact the only person who’d said much was Mrs. Enoch B. Stubblefield, and she was babbling hysterically . . . something about a Madame Tigane, and a dark-haired woman under an acceleration of evil. It came as a distinct shock to see how firmly she believed, apparently, in her professional seeress, whose potential correctness seemed to take precedence just then over the fact that her husband was alive and whole. And I must say that her husband was taking it with an iron calm. He wasn’t looking very genial, but he wasn’t mopping his forehead, the way his Chief Assistant Executive Ellery B. Seymour was doing, nor was he as nervous as his young man in the doorway was.
“—I’m just telling you what I saw, Chief.”
“That’s all right, Kramer,” Mr. Stubblefield said. “You’ve done your job. Just relax and go get yourself a drink. We’ll handle this ourselves.”
“Ex-Marine, Pacific,” Milton Minor said, under his breath. “Tough baby—E. B.’s bodyguard.”
“Why didn’t he do something about the lady in black?” I asked.
“He was checking on her when he spotted our Susie. I wish she’d buck up and not look so damned guilty. Take a gander at Seymour, will you?”
He got up abruptly then and headed back to the bar. Kramer had followed his chief’s orders and was disappearing that way. I took the gander at Ellery Seymour. He was pacing up and down in front of the fireplace. He seemed shockingly upset. I suppose, with reason—from the little I knew, and he knew a great deal more, he must have wondered why it was the Number One man of the new industrial age, and not himself, Number Two, that she’d apparently decided to obliterate. It ought to be extremely unnerving. I didn’t blame him in the least. Mr. Stubblefield apparently did, for he shouted at him suddenly.
“Get off your feet, Seymour! Sit down, will you? Nobody’s trying to shoot you.”
Seymour sat, abruptly. It was at the nearest place, a sofa like the one Barbara and Dorothy were on, across the fire-place. As he sat down, Freddie Mollinson sitting there moved over, dissociating himself, I supposed, as far as possible. Freddie’s eyes were bulging bright. He reminded me of a twitching squirrel avidly gathering acorns for his winter’s fare. Freddie was already dining out on the story of the year. He was also having a perfect field day of revenge. “She should have taken them to a saloon on Wisconsin Avenue—at least nobody would have tried to murder him . . .” I could hear it already.
“—Why were you trying to shoot my husband?” Mrs. Stubblefield leaned forward. Why I’d thought she was colorless I couldn’t imagine. She was an extremely determined little woman.
“Oh, I wasn’t—I really wasn’t!”
Susan Kent was still trembling. She was as gray-green as her dress, and circles were coming out under her eyes. “I want Bill—can’t somebody find him for me?”
Theodore Hallet had just come out of the library and was moving aimlessly around. “He’s not at home,” he said. “I’ll go call his office.” He started back, apparently glad to have something to do.
Dorothy glanced at him. “Call the laboratory, Theodore.”
“There’s no reason to disturb him,” Mr. Stubblefield said. He was, I thought, rather suddenly as bland as sweet butter. He went over and sat down beside Susan, took her hand and patted it.
“Come now, little lady,” he said kindly. He was smiling, and geniality itself . . . the Platonic Form of all the thousand particulars ever printed of him. “If I believed Joe Kramer, I’d have an armored car to go to the bathroom in. You’re a high-class young lady, and I’m going to take your word for it. I’m a good judge of people. I’ve never been wrong yet. I’ve built up a fair-sized little business on that very factor, and nobody’s ever fooled me to date.”
It seemed to me that Mr. Stubblefield ought to be tapping on wood, tapping like mad. It had the effect of stiffening Susan’s backbone a little. She let go Dorothy’s hand and sat there, her eyes down.
“It wouldn’t have surprised me if Bertha Taylor had done it,” Mr. Stubblefield said. “You get used to having kindness repaid in counterfeit coin, but we may have to do something about her, if she’s going around with a gun in her pocket. But that’s another matter. Right now we’re going to forget about all this. Dorothy’ll give us a drink and something to eat, and we’ll all feel better. So come along. One of the ladies will take you up and wash your face and everything’ll be as right as rain.”
He patted her shoulder and got up. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to have a word with Mr. Seymour. Can we have the library, Dorothy?”
“Certainly.”
He was already on his way, Seymour following. They closed the door.
Dorothy turned to me. “Will you go up with Susan, Grace? I’ve got to see what’s happening in the kitchen.”
She started for the door.
“Won’t the rest of you just relax and have a drink, or something? Freddie, you might show Mrs. Stubblefield the view from the balcony. Hurry, Susan, will you, dear?”
Susan got up unsteadily and moved in a dazed fog across to the hall door. I must have been the last person in the world she wanted to be alone with just then, but I couldn’t very well refuse to go with her—or she with me. She went up the stairs slowly, holding on to the banisters. Inside Dorothy’s room she walked over to the chaise longue more like an automaton than a girl and sat down, staring in front of her. I couldn’t think of the least objectionable thing to say to break the silence, and decided to skip it.
“If I were you, I’d go do something about my face and hair,” I said. She still looked ghastly. Her hair had escaped the sophisticated upswept arrangement again, and was straggling in curls around her ears and neck.
She got up, still moving like a frail young Lady Macbeth, and went into the bathroom. I powdered my nose, put on some fresh lipstick, and examined the fascinating array of perfume bottles and the battery of cosmetics on Dorothy’s dressing table. Being a one-cream soap-and-water man myself, I’m always entranced by the time, energy and art it must take to use all that truck and still look as Dorothy does, like a freshly rain-washed gardenia. Then I began to have a few twinges of uneasiness. It was intensely quiet behind the mirrored door. When the twinges got disturbingly past the point of my interest in estrogenic night creams, I got up and went over.
“Susan!”
There was no answer. I was a little frightened, not knowing what she might do. I called her again, then opened the door. The bathroom was empty. The connecting door into Dorothy’s sitting room was open, and I went quickly through it. She wasn’t there either. I hurried back through the bathroom to get my bag and run downstairs, and stopped. She was inside the hall door, standing with it closed, her hand still on the knob.
I was so relieved that I was annoyed. It hardly seemed the time to be playing hide-and-go-seek.
She stood there looking at me, her eyes wide open in a set and resentful stare.
“I was going home,” she said steadily. “But I changed my mind. I wanted to tell you I know you’re not what you pretended to be. Your cook just laughed when I told her. It was all a trap, and I was crazy enough to walk into it. But I’ll tell you this, Mrs. Latham—if my husband finds out . . . if either you or Dorothy Hallet tells my husband, I’ll——”
“Oh, stop it, Susan,” I said. “Stop it at once. I wasn’t pretending to be anything and I’m not trying to trap you. And I haven’t any intention of telling anybody what you told me. Particularly not your husband. That’s your job. And quit being a damned fool. It’s stupid to start threatening people. I didn’t ask you to my house. You came yourself.”
“But I came because I thought——”
“I can’t help what you thought. You were hunting an easy out for the mess you’re in, and there’s only one out. I know it isn’t easy, but you’d better take it, quick. Your husband doesn’t look to me like half as big a fool as you must think he is. He looks like an honest and decent guy and a pretty bright one. You might try being the same for a while. Now be quiet. Just go and put some lipstick on and fix your hair. You needn’t have the least fear of my telling anybody anything.”
She stood there breathing quickly, trembling a little, her resentment collapsing long before I’d finished. But she didn’t move from the door. When she spoke her voice had a totally different quality.
“Mrs. Latham.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Mrs. Latham, do you think I was going to shoot Mr. Stubblefield?”
She was looking at me fairly steadily, but not too much so. I went over to the dressing table and picked up my bag.
“I never think,” I said. “I’m not supposed to be good at it.”
“Which means you do think so, doesn’t it? But you don’t really know, do you?”
I thought of a lot of things to say then, but I didn’t say them. I said, “Quit being dramatic, will you, Susan? It’s all right to be a fool, but don’t be theatrical.” I was really irritated by now. She was so blatantly young and so obviously trying to put on an air that might let her out of this new mess that I could have taken her by the nape of the neck and shaken her. “I’d like to go downstairs,” I said.
She flushed a bright red and moved away from the door.
“I’m . . . I didn’t mean to be dramatic,” she said uncertainly. “I’m . . . what I’m trying to say is that . . . maybe you’re right. I don’t really know.”
That was too much.
“Look, dear,” I said, patiently. “If you’re going to tell me you picked up a gun and aimed it from behind a door that has a wide hinge crack in it, without knowing what you were doing, tell it to somebody else, will you? And first make very sure there isn’t another door open, and somebody wasn’t calmly watching you from across the hall.”
She gave a small but audible gasp. “Somebody watching——”
I started for the door. “That’s what I said, Susan. You’re in a bad spot all around, and you’re putting everybody—Dorothy and Theodore, to say nothing of your husband—in one. I’d start using my head if I were you. Mr. Stubblefield has taken your word for it, and you’d better let it go at that and act as if it’s true whether it is or not. That’s just one woman’s opinion, darling, but it seems to me fairly sound at the moment. Now if you’ll get ready, we’ll go down. The longer we stay up here the worse it looks. I’d hurry if I were you.”
She went quickly into the bathroom, leaving the door open this time.
“That’s better,” I said when she came out. “Now buck up and come along.”
I opened the door. She followed me out, as meek as a frightened kitten. I still had no faintest idea in the world of what she could have thought she was doing, or hoped to gain, by taking a pot shot at Enoch B. Stubblefield.
7
Downstairs things were as smooth as owl’s grease. Even Freddie Mollinson’s nose had descended to a comparatively normal level, and he was chatting very amiably with Mrs. Stubblefield. The only thing I could figure was that she’d produced an ancestor that made her a potential Colonial Dame, or that Freddie was scavenging for some titillating table talk, or a tip on the market.
Mr. Stubblefield and Ellery Seymour were discussing the labor situation with Dorothy and Theodore, that being the specter with hairy claws that lives under Theodore’s bed and behind every door he opens. He was getting Mr. Stubblefield’s assurance that matters were under control.
“I have never had any labor trouble, in any plant I own,” Mr. Stubblefield was saying.
“. . . Unquote,” said Milton Minor. He was waiting inside the door for us to come down.
“My solution has always been——”
Mr. Stubblefield stopped as Dorothy, completely self-possessed again, held out her hand to Susan, smiling, motioning for her to come and join them. He turned, leaving the labor situation where I believe it still is, in mid-air.
“Come along, Susan,” he said. He held out his large hand, pulled her to him and stood with his arm around her shoulders—very paternal, though Mrs. Stubblefield seemed to have some doubts if the brief glance she gave them meant what it looked like. Milton and I found a seat on the other side of the room.
“I tried to check up,” he said, lowering his voice. “I wanted to see if the saloon keeper in there saw her too. I had my back turned to the bar. And I don’t think he did—he was washing glasses. As for me”—he lifted a sardonic left eyebrow—“my lips are sealed. I only regret the little lady’s nerve failed before the crucial test. But that’s life. I’ve seen it happen a thousand times—in another department, of course.”
“Let’s keep it clean, darling,” I said. “And I don’t see——”
At that moment Dorothy stepped out from her small group.
“Shall we go in and have some food?”
She smiled over at Mrs. Stubblefield.
“It’s very informal. I sidetracked the other guests. I thought it was better to keep it just family.”
She smiled again and turned back to Mr. Stubblefield. “There’s just one thing, E. B. I know it’s silly, but I’d be a lot more comfortable if Mr. Kramer put that gun somewhere—up here on the mantel—where we can all see it. I just don’t like guns. I’d be much happier if nobody was carrying one. Unless you don’t feel safe.”
Her smile was the you-know-how-unreasonable-women-are sort of thing, and Mr. Stubblefield responded to it instantly. He was benign.
“Oh certainly, Dorothy. Anything you say.”
Whatever had happened in his brief conference with Ellery Seymour in the library, he was in high good humor, expansive and self-confident.
“Put it up there, my boy.” He looked around at the rest of us, heavily jocular. “Anybody else got a concealed weapon? Come clean, friends.”
Nobody else seemed to have one. Kramer crossed to the fireplace and put the pistol on the mantel, I thought reluctantly. Polite appreciation of the great man’s humor was absent on two other faces. Both Ellery Seymour and Mrs. Stubblefield looked distinctly unhappy. Mrs. Stubblefield, however, was the only one who protested.
