HOLLYWOOD, like the Land of Oz, possesses a quaint and fluty flavor: it is the place where tin Christmas trees suddenly sprout around lamp-posts in December under a ninety-degree sun, where restaurants take the shape of lighthouses and hats, ladies on Saturday nights stroll the boulevards in trousers and mink coats leading baby leopards on a leash, where morning newspapers cost five cents and evening newspapers two, and people wait in queues for unexhausting hours to witness other people pressing their hands into juicy cement. A trivial happening in Hollywood, therefore, is hugely less trivial than if the identical event occurs in Cincinnati or Jersey City, and an important one incalculably more important.
So when Ohippi Bubble burst, even people who were not stockholders devoured the Los Angeles dispatches, and overnight “Ohippi” became as familiar a catchword as “quintuplets” and “the nine old men.” This is not to belittle the event itself. In collapsing Ohippi paradoxically stood on its own feet as a major calamity. And while the issue was not fought in the courts, owing to little Attorney Anatole Ruhig’s foresight, a veritable battle-royal raged in print and on the streets. A wonderfully martial time it was, with Solly Spaeth’s lanky son firing long-range bursts from the editorial offices of the Los Angeles Independent and unhappy stockholders alternately howling and scowling at the iron gate of Sans Souci, behind which Solly sat imperturbably counting up his millions.
It was really the Eastern diagnostician’s fault, for Solly would never have settled in California had the doctor not recommended its climate, its golf, and its sunbaths. Imagine Solomon Spaeth being content to do nothing but squint along the mountain-range of his belly as he lolled in the sun! It was fated that Solly should begin restlessly ruminating his capital, which was lying as idly as he in various impregnable but unexciting banks. So Solly rose, covered his nakedness, looked hopefully about, and found Rhys Jardin and little Anatole Ruhig. And it was from their happy fusion that the celebrated and subsequently notorious Ohippi Hydro-Electric Development emerged. (Solly met Winni Moon at the same time, but his interest in Winni was esthetic rather than commercial, so that is a different part of the story. Solly was never a man to neglect the arts. Winni became his protégée, and it is fascinating to recall that her career dated from that sensitive juxtaposition of souls.)
The organization and development of Ohippi Hydro-Electric took genius in those days, when heavy industry was prostrate and premonitory rumblings of holding-company legislation were audible in Washington; but Solly had genius. Nevertheless, he could not have succeeded without Rhys Jardin, who played the rôle of industrial angel with superb technique. Rhys, that sterling yachtsman, golfer, gymnast, and collector of objets de sport, was indispensable to Solly for entirely different reasons: he possessed the necessary supplemental capital, he carried the magic Jardin name, and he knew nothing whatever about big business.
When Ohippi moved from the financial pages into the offices of the Homicide Detail of the Los Angeles Central Detective Bureau the case, already precious, became a managing editor’s dream; and Fitzgerald went slightly mad. Fitz had been a classmate of Rhys Jardin’s (Harvard ’08) and he was also technically Walter Spaeth’s employer. But the setup was so alluring—the floods, Winni Moon and her scented chimpanzee, that provocative little detail of the molasses, the old Italian rapier, the scores of thousands of potential murderers—that Fitz shut his eyes to the ethical questions involved and let fly with both presses.
Of course, every newspaperman in Los Angeles became wall-eyed with civic pride and professional joy, and the items that flooded the papers dealt with everything from Winni’s dainty bathing habits to an old still-picture of Pink, bow in hand, as Chief Yellow Pony, from that forgotten epic of the plains, Red Indian. They even dug out of the morgue a photograph of Rhys Jardin winning the 1928 Southern California amateur golf championship.
One feature writer, running out of material, fell back upon statistics. He pointed out that, as usual, nearly every one in the case came from anywhere but Hollywood. Rhys Jardin was originally a Virginian, the Jardins having been one of the few first families of that great commonwealth with traditional riches as well as rich traditions. Solly Spaeth had been spawned in New York. Walter Spaeth—who as a result of his father’s migratory instincts might have been born on mountain, plain, or sea—happened to see his first sunbeam in a Chicago hospital, where his mother saw her last. Winni Moon had been christened Freda Möndegarde in a cold little Swedish church in the South Dakota wheatfields. (Her unavoidable destination had been Hollywood, since she was blonde and swivel-hipped, had been the star of her high-school dramatic society, had once waited on table in an eatery run by a Greek named Nick, and had then won a State-fair beauty contest, sharing honors with the prize milch-cow.) Anatole Ruhig had been born in Vienna, an error he quickly rectified; he passed the bar in Kansas City and was drawn to Hollywood by magnetic attraction, like an iron filing. Pink came from Flatbush, Brooklyn.
The reporter even included Fitzgerald, to that gentleman’s wrath. Fitz, it seemed, was a Boston Irishman with a weakness for truth and whisky who had been called to California by chronic sinusitis and the plight of Tom Mooney. And so it went. Mr. Ellery Queen, himself a native of West Eighty-seventh Street, Manhattan, amused himself once, during the darker hours of the puzzle, by studying these interesting but futile data.
The only indigenous Californian involved in the case was Rhys Jardin’s unpredictable daughter, Valerie.
“I didn’t think,” said Walter Spaeth the first time he met her, which was at a private polo game in Beverly Hills, “that any one’s actually born here, Miss Jardin.”
“Is that the smallest talk you have?” sighed Val, peeling an orange.
“But why Hollywood?” insisted Walter, eying her up and down. He wondered how the felt bowler stuck on the side of her head managed to defy the law of gravity, but that great problem was soon forgotten in a consideration of her mouth.
“I wasn’t consulted,” said Miss Jardin with annoyance. “Go away, you’re spoiling the—” She began to dance. “Good boy, pop! At it, Pink!” she screamed, waving the orange. “Watch that roan!” Presumably Pink did so, for out of the mêlée shot two horsemen, the ball preceding them in a beautiful arc. “That’s the end of that,” said Miss Jardin with satisfaction. “Oh, are you still here, Mr. Spaeth?”
The first horseman, a youngish fellow with longish legs clamped about a brownish pony, thundered up the field smacking the ball toward the goal with dismaying accuracy. Between him and his pursuers raced another youngish fellow with freckles, red hair, and preposterously broad shoulders. The ball bounced between the goal-posts, the first rider brought up his mallet in salute, and his red-haired guard completed the amenities by grinning and putting his thumb to his nose. Then they cantered back to mid-field.
“Oh, I see,” said Walter. “The first one is pop, and the second is Pink.”
“A detective,” said Val, looking interested. “However did you know?”
“Red hair—Pink—they seem to go together. Besides, I don’t get the feeling that your father would thumb his nose. Who’s Pink?”
“Why?”
“Your boy-friend?”
“So that’s the way the wind’s blowing,” remarked Miss Jardin shrewdly, sinking her small teeth into the orange. “Three minutes, and the man’s poking his nose into my private affairs! You’ll be proposing next.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Walter stuffily. “If I’m boring you—”
“Aren’t you the one!” smiled Val. “Come here, little boy.” Walter wavered. Women of the modern school worried him. The only female he had ever known closely was Miss Titus, an aged English lady who had tutored him and tucked him into bed until he was old enough to go to Andover; and Miss Titus until her departure for a better world had deplored every feminist fad which passed her by, from smoking and knee-length skirts to suffrage and birth control.
Walter looked Miss Jardin up and down again and decided he would like to learn about women from her. He settled himself on the rail. “Your father is terribly young-looking, isn’t he?”
“Isn’t it disgusting? It’s the vitamins and the exercise. Pop’s a sports fiend. That’s where Pink comes in—just,” said Valerie dryly, “to relieve your mind, Mr. Spaeth. Pink’s a phenomenon—can play and teach any game ever invented, and besides he’s a dietitian. Vegetarian, of course.”
“Very sensible,” said Walter earnestly. “Are you one?”
“Heavens, no. I’m carnivorous. Are you?”
“It’s a debased taste, but I’ll admit I do like to sink a fang into a filet mignon.”
“Swell! Then you may take me to dinner tonight.”
“Well—say—that would be fine,” mumbled Walter, quite unconscious of how the magic had been done. He wondered with desperation how this delectable conversation might be prolonged. “Uh—he does look like your brother. I mean, as your brother might look if you had—”
“I’m taken for pop’s sister already,” said Val tragically.
“Go on,” said Walter, examining Val all over. “You’re the young connubial type.”
“Mr. Spaeth, you’re positively clairvoyant! I sew the meanest seam, and I’ve always been marked A in bedmaking.”
“I didn’t mean exactly that.” She did have the most remarkable figure, Walter thought.
Valerie eyed him sharply. “What’s the matter? Am I coming out anywhere?”
“There’s something wrong with the movie scouts!”
“Isn’t it the truth? Just like the Yankees letting Hank Greenberg go to the Tigers—a Bronx boy, too.”
“You’d photograph well,” said Walter, edging closer. “I mean—you’ve a nose like Myrna Loy’s, and your eyes and mouth remind me of—”
“Mr. Spaeth,” murmured Val.
“My mother’s,” finished Walter. “I have her picture. I mean—how did they ever miss you?”
“Well, it’s like this,” said Valerie. “They’ve camped on my tail for years, but I’ve always turned ’em down.”
“Why?”
“I’d never succeed in the movies,” said Val in a hollow voice.
“That’s nonsense!” said Walter warmly. “I’ll bet you can even act.”
“Shucks. But you see—I was born right here in Hollywood; that’s one strike on me. Then I hate sables and flat heels. And I’m not a homesy girl sick of it all. So don’t you see how hopeless it is?”
“You must think I’m a fool,” growled Walter, whose large ears had been growing redder and redder.
“Oh, darling, forgive me,” said Val contritely. “But you are wide open for a left hook. Finally there’s kissing. Look!” She seized him, squeezed him with passion, and kissed him fiercely on the lips. “There, you see?” she sighed, biting into the orange again. “That’s how it is with me.” Walter smiled a flabby smile at the polo fiends around them and wiped the lipstick off his mouth. “What I mean to say,” continued Val, “was that in the movies you’ve got to go through all the motions of passion, but when it comes right down to it they just peck at each other. When I kiss, I kiss.”
Walter slid off the rail. “How do you spend your time?” he asked abruptly.
“Having fun,” mumbled Val.
“I knew there’d be something wrong with you. You never got those hands over a wash-tub!”
“Oh, God,” groaned Valerie, “a reformer.” She popped the last segment into her mouth. “Listen, my lean and hungry friend. Pop and I, we live and let live. We happen to have some money, and we’re trying to spend it as fast as we can before it’s taken away from us.”
“You’re the kind of people,” said Walter bitterly, “who cause revolutions.”
Val stared, then burst into laughter. “Mr. Spaeth, I do believe I’ve misjudged you. That’s the cleverest line! Isn’t the next step a suggestion that we stage a private sit-down strike in the nearest park?”
“So that’s what you meant by having fun!”
Valerie gasped. “Why, I’ll slap your sassy face!”
“The trouble with you people,” snapped Walter, “is that you’re economic royalists, the pack of you.”
“You just heard somebody say that!” flared Valerie. “Where do you come off lecturing me? I’ve heard about you and your father. You’re just as fat leeches as we are, feeding on the body politic!”
“Oh, no,” grinned Walter. “I don’t care what you call yourself or my old man, but I work for a living.”
“Yes, you do,” sneered Val. “What’s your racket?”
“Drawing. I’m a newspaper cartoonist.”
“There’s work for a man. Yes, sir! See tomorrow’s funny section for the latest adventures of Little Billy.”
“Is that so?” yelled Walter.
“Mr. Spaeth, your repartee simply floors me!”
“I draw political cartoons,” yelled Walter, “for the Los Angeles Independent!”
“Communist!”
“Oh, my God,” said Walter, waving his long arms, and he stamped furiously away.
Valerie smiled with satisfaction. He was a very young man, and he did look like Gary Cooper. She examined her mouth in her hand-mirror and decided she must see Mr. Walter Spaeth again very soon. “And tonight’s date,” she shouted after him, “is definitely off. But DEFINITELY!”
THERE were other nights, however, and other meetings; and it was not long before Mr. Walter Spaeth despairingly concluded that Miss Valerie Jardin had been set upon earth for the express purpose of making his life unbearable. Considering Miss Jardin in toto, it was a pleasant curse; that was what made it so vexatious. So Walter wrestled with his conscience daily and nightly—Walter was an extremely spiritual young man—and he even plunged into Hollywood night life for a time with a variety of those beautiful females with whom Hollywood crawls. But it all came out the same in the end—there was something about the idle, flippant, annoying Miss Jardin to which he was hopelessly allergic. So he crept back and accepted every electric moment Miss Jardin deigned to bestow, thrashing feebly in his exquisite misery like a flea-ridden hound being scratched by his mistress.
Being totally blind to the subtleties of feminine conduct, Walter did not perceive that Miss Jardin was also going through a trying experience. But Rhys Jardin, physically a father, had had to develop the sixth sense of a mother in such matters. “Your golf is off six strokes,” he said sternly one morning as Pink mauled and pounded him on the rubbing table in the gymnasium, “and I found a wet handkerchief on the terrace last night. What’s the matter, young lady?”
Val viciously punched the bag. “Nothing’s the matter!”
“Filberts,” jeered Pink, slapping his employer. “You had another fight with that wacky twerp last night.”
“Silence, Pink,” said her father. “Can’t a man have a private conversation with his own daughter?”
“If that punk calls you a ‘parasite’ again, Val,” growled Pink, digging his knuckles into Jardin’s abdomen, “I’ll knock his teeth out. What’s a parasite?”
“Pink, you were listening!” cried Val indignantly. “This is one heck of a household, that’s all I can say!”
“Can I help it if you talk loud?”
Val glared at him and plucked a pair of Indian clubs from the rack in the wall-closet.
“Now, Pink,” said Rhys, “I won’t have eavesdropping. … What else did Walter call her?”
“A lot more fancy names, and then she starts to bawl, so he hauls off and kisses her one.”
“Pink,” snarled Val, swishing the clubs, “you’re an absolute louse.”
“And what did my puss do?” asked Rhys comfortably. “A little more on the pectorals, Pink.”
“She give him the chorus girl’s salute—like she meant it, too. I mean, that was a kiss.”
“Very interesting,” said Val’s father, closing an eye.
Val flung one of the Indian clubs in the general direction of the rubbing table, and Pink calmly ducked and went on kneading his employer’s brown flesh. The club cracked against the far brick wall. Val sat down on the floor and wailed: “I might as well entertain my friends in the Hollywood Bowl!”
“Nice boy,” said her father. “Nice lad, Walter.”
“He’s an oomph!” snapped Val, jumping up. “He and his ‘social consciousness’! He makes me sick.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Pink, massaging. “There’s something in it. The little guy don’t get much of the breaks.”
“Pink, you keep out of this!”
“See what I mean?” complained Pink. “This master and man stuff. I should keep out of it. Why? Because I’m a wage slave. Turn over, Rhys.”
His employer docilely turned over and Pink set about trying to crack his spine. “You don’t have to see the boy, Val—ouch!”
“I should think,” said Val in a frigid voice, “that I’m old enough to solve my own problems—without interference.” And she flounced off.
And Walter was a problem. Sometimes he romped like a child, and at other times he positively snorted gloom. One moment he was trying to break her back in a movie kiss, and the next he was calling her names. And all because she wasn’t interested in labor movements and didn’t know a Left Wing from a Right, except in fried chicken! It was all very confusing, because of late Val had had practically to sit on her hands; they had developed a sort of incorporeal itch. Either they wanted to muss his unruly black hair and stroke his lips and run over his sandpaper cheeks—he always seemed to need a shave—or they yearned to hit him on the point of his dear longish nose.
The situation was complicated by the fact that Solomon Spaeth and her father had gone into business together. Rhys Jardin in business, after all these splendid idle years! Val could not decide whether she disliked rubicund Solly more for his oozy self than for what he was doing to her father. There were tedious conferences with lawyers, especially a wet-faced little one by the name of Ruhig—arguments and contracts and negotiations and things. Why, Rhys neglected his yachting, golf, and polo for three whole weeks—he barely had time for his Swedish exercises under Pink’s drill-sergeant direction! But that wasn’t the worst of it. It was what happened at Sans Souci after the contracts were signed.
Sans Souci dated from the careless, golden days. It occupied half a dozen acres high in the Hollywood hills and was designed for exclusiveness, with a ten-foot fence of stout peeled-willow stakes all round to keep out hucksters and trailer tourists, and a secondary paling of giant royal palms to make their envious mouths water. Inside there were four dwellings of tile, stucco, plaster, and tinted glass which were supposed to be authentic Spanish and were not. The development was shaped like a saucer, with the four houses spacing the rim and all the rear terraces looking down upon the communal depression in the center, where the democratic architect had laid out a single immense swimming pool surrounded by rock gardens.
Rhys Jardin had bought one of the houses because the realtor was an old acquaintance in need—an empty gesture, for the bank foreclosed promptly after the depression began and the realtor shot his brains out by way of his mouth. Valerie thought the place ghastly, but their dingy expensive shack at Malibu and their bungalow-villa on the Santa Monica Palisades always seethed with people, so Sans Souci’s promise of privacy attracted her.
The second house was occupied by a male star with a passion for Dandie Dinmonts, whose barking made life a continuous agony until their owner suddenly married an English peeress who carried him and his beasts off to dazzle the British cinema public, leaving the house happily unoccupied except for brief annual visits.
The third house was tenanted for a time by a foreign motion picture director who promptly had an attack of delirium tremens at the edge of the pool; so that worked out beautifully, because he was whisked off to a sanitarium and never returned.
The fourth house had never been occupied at all. That is, until Solly Spaeth bought it from the bank “to be nearer my associate,” as he beamingly told Valerie, “your worthy and charming father.” And when the insufferable Solly moved in, Walter moved in, too.
There was the rub. Walter moved in. The creature was so inconsistent. He didn’t have to live there. In fact, he had been living alone in a furnished room in Los Angeles until his father took the Sans Souci estate. The Spaeths didn’t get along—small wonder, considering Walter’s ideas! But suddenly it was peaches and cream between them—for a whole week, anyway—with Solly bestowing his oleaginous benediction and Walter accepting it glumly and moving right in, drawing board, economic theories, and all. And there he was, only yards away at any given hour of the day or night, making life miserable… preaching, criticizing her charge accounts and décolletage and the cut of her bathing suits, fighting with his father like an alley cat, drawing inflammatory cartoons for the Independent under the unpleasant nom de guerre of WASP, heatedly lecturing Rhys Jardin for his newly assumed “utilities overlordship,” whatever that meant, scowling at poor Pink and insulting Tommy and Dwight and Joey and all the other nice boys who kept hopefully bouncing back to Sans Souci… until she was so angry she almost didn’t want to return his kisses—when he kissed her, which wasn’t often; and then only, as he hatefully expressed it, “in a moment of animal weakness.”
And when Winni Moon came to live at the Spaeth house as Solly’s “protégée,” with her beastly beribboned chimp and a rawboned Swedish chaperon who was supposed to be her aunt—you would have thought a self-respecting moralist would move out then. But no, Walter hung on; and Valerie even suspected the impossible Winni of having designs on her benefactor’s son, from certain signs invisible to the Spaeths but quite clear to the unprejudiced female eye.
Sometimes, in the sacred privacy of her own rooms, Valerie would confide in little Roxie, her Chinese maid. “Do you know what?” she would say furiously.
“Yisss,” Roxie would say, combing out Val’s hair.
“It’s fantastic. I’m in love with the beast, damn him!”
Walter leaned on his horn until Frank, the day man, unlocked the gate. The crowd in the road was silent with a rather unpleasant silence. Five State troopers stood beside their motorcycles before Sans Souci, looking unhappy. One little man with the aura of a tradesman leaned glassy-eyed on the shaft of a homemade sign which said: “Pity The small Invester.” The crowd was composed of tradespeople, white-collar workers, laborers, small-business men. That, thought Walter grimly, accounted for the inactivity of the troopers; these solid citizens weren’t the usual agitating mob. Walter wondered how many of the five troopers had also lost money in Ohippi.
Driving through the gate and hearing Frank quickly clang it shut, Walter felt a little sick. These people knew him by now, and the name he bore. He did not blame them for glaring at him. He would not have blamed them if they had tossed the troopers aside and broken down the fence. He ran his six-cylinder coupé around to the Jardin house. More than a dozen cars were parked in the Jardin drive—sporty cars of the same breed as their owners, Walter thought bitterly. Valerie must be fiddling again—while Rome burned.
He found her in the front gardens radiantly holding off all the sad young men and their ladies with one hand and offering them delicatessen with the other. At first Walter blinked, for it seemed as though Val was plucking salami and sausages from the rose bushes; and he had never heard of bologna sandwiches and one-drink cocktail bottles growing on palm boles before. But then he saw that the refreshments had been artfully tied to the arboreal landscape.
“Oh, it’s Walter,” said Val, the radiance dimming. Then she stuck out her chin. “Walter Spaeth, if you mention one word about the starving coal-miners I’ll scream!”
“Look out,” giggled a young lady, “here’s Amos again.”
“Wasn’t he the prophet who flapped his arms so much?”
“Goodbye, Val,” said Tommy. “I’ll see you in the first tumbril.”
“Val,” said Walter, “I want to talk to you.”
“Why not?” said Val sweetly, and excused herself. She maintained the sweet smile only until they were behind a cluster of palms. “Walter, don’t you dare spoil my party. It’s a brand-new idea, and I’ve got Tess and Nora and Wanda simply tearing their permanents—” She looked a little more closely at his face. “Walter, what’s the matter?”
Walter flung himself on the grass and kicked the nearest palm. “Plenty, my feminine Nero.”
“Tell me!”
“Bottom’s dropped out. Hell’s loose. River topped the levees last night—out of control. The whole Ohio Valley and part of the Mississippi Valley are under water. So there, may they rest in peace, go the Ohippi plants.”
Valerie felt a sudden chill. It didn’t seem fair that the floods in a place half a continent away should creep into her garden and spoil everything. She leaned against the palm. “How bad is it?” she asked in a croupy little voice.
“The plants are a total loss.”
“First the stock-market drop, and now— Poor pop.” Val took off her floppy sunhat and began to punch it. Walter squinted up at her. It was going to be tough on the kid, at that. Well, maybe it would do her good. All this criminal nonsense—
“It’s your father’s fault!” cried Val, hurling the hat at him.
“Ain’t it the truth?” said Walter.
Val bit her lip. “I’m sorry, darling. I know how much you hate what he stands for.” She sank down and laid her head on his chest. “Oh, Walter, what are we going to do?”
“Hey, you’re wetting my tie,” said Walter. He kissed her curls gently.
Val jumped up, dried her eyes, and ran away. Walter heard her call out in a marvelously bright voice: “Court’s adjourned, people!” and a chorus of groans.
Just then it began to drizzle, with that dreary persistence only the California clouds can achieve during the rainy season. It’s like a movie, thought Walter gloomily, or a novel by Thomas Hardy. He got to his feet and followed her.
They found Rhys Jardin patrolling the flags of his terrace at the rear of the house. Pink, in sweat-shirt and sneakers, was staring at his employer with troubled eyes.
“Oh, there you are,” said her father. He immediately sat down in the porch swing. “Come here, puss. The rain’s spoiled your party, hasn’t it?”
“Oh, pop!” said Val, and she ran to him and put her arms about his neck. The rain pattered on the awning.
“Well, Walter,” smiled Rhys, “as a prophet you’re pretty good. But not even you foresaw the floods.”
Walter sat down. Pink heaved out of his deck-chair and went to the iron table and poured himself a drink of water. Then he said: “Nuts!” and sat down again.
“Is anything left?” asked Val quietly.
“Don’t look so tragic, Val!”
“Is there?”
“Well, now that you ask,” smiled Rhys, “not a thing. Our negotiable assets are cleaned out.”
“Then why did you let me run this party today?” she cried. “All that money going to waste!”
“I never thought I’d live to see the day,” said Pink lightly, “when Val Jardin would start squeezing the buffalo.”
“Do we have to give up the Malibu place, the house in Santa Monica?” asked Val with difficulty.
“Now don’t worry, puss—”
“This—this house, too?”
“You never liked it, anyway.”
Val cradled her father’s head in her arms. “Darling, you’ll have to give up your yachting and golf clubs and things and go to work. How will you like that?”
The big man made a face. “We can realize a lot of money from the real estate and the furnishings—”
“And we’ll get rid of Mrs. Thomson and the housemaids and Roxie—”
“No, Val!”
“Yes. And of course Pink will have to go—”
“Nuts,” said Pink again.
Val became quiet and sat back in the swing, sucking her lower lip. After a while Walter said uncomfortably: “I know my anti-holding-company cartoons didn’t help Ohippi, Mr. Jardin. But you understand—Newspapermen can’t—”
Jardin laughed. “If I listened to your advice rather than your father’s we’d all be a lot better off.”
“The lousy part of it is,” grunted Pink, “that your old man could still save Ohippi. Only he won’t. There ought to be a law!”
“What do you mean?” asked Walter slowly.
Pink waved his arms. “Well, he cleaned up, didn’t he? Why shouldn’t he—”
“My father cleaned up?”
“Keep quiet, Pink,” said Rhys.
“Just a moment. I’ve a right to know!”
“It’s not important any more, Walter,” said Rhys mildly. “Forget it.”
“Forget your grandmother!” yelled Pink. “Go on, tell him about that cat-fight you had with Spaeth this morning!”
Jardin shrugged. “You know, your father and I were equal partners. Whenever he arranged to form a new holding company—he created seven before the government stepped in—the corporation would retain control of the common stock and put the remaining forty-nine percent on the market. The preferred stock we held back, splitting share and share alike.”
“Yes?” said Walter.
“Pop. Don’t,” said Val, looking at Walter’s face.
“Go on, Mr. Jardin.”
“Knowing nothing about these things, I trusted your father and Ruhig completely. Ruhig advised me to hold on to my preferred—it did seem wise, because the basic Ohippi plants were perfectly sound. Secretly, however, through agents, your father sold his preferred as the companies were created. And now, with all the stockholders caught, he’s sitting back there with a fortune.”
“I see,” said Walter; he was pale. “And he led me to believe—”
“With the dough he’s made,” raved Pink, “he could rebuild those power plants and put ’em on their feet again. We got some rights, ain’t we? We—”
“You lost money, too?”
Rhys Jardin winced. “I’m afraid I sucked in a lot of my friends—in my early innocence.”
“Excuse me,” said Walter, and he rose and went down the terrace steps into the rain.
“Walter!” cried Val, flying after him. “Please!”
“You go on back,” said Walter, without stopping.
“No!”
“This is my business. Go back.”
“Just the same,” said Val breathlessly, “I’m coming.”
She clung to his arm all the way around the pool and up the rocky slope to the Spaeth house.
Val remained nervously on the Spaeth terrace. “Walter, please don’t do anything that—” But it was half a whisper, and Walter was already stalking through the glass doors into his father’s study.
Mr. Solomon Spaeth sat at his oval desk, the picture of baronial gravity, shaking his head a little at the rapid-fire questions of a crowd of newspapermen. His reading glasses rested on the middle of his fat nose, and with his paunch and thin gray hair and sober air he did not remotely resemble the devil and worse that the stockholders at the gate were calling him.
“Gentlemen, please,” he protested.
“But how about the flood story, Mr. Spaeth?”
“Are you going on?”
“Where’s that statement you promised?”
“I’ll give you just this.” Solly picked up a paper and fussed with it. The reporters grew quiet. Solly put the paper down. “Owing to the catastrophe in the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys,” he said gravely, “our field men report the complete ruin of our equipment. That hydro-electric machinery would cost millions to replace, gentlemen. I’m afraid we shall have to abandon the plants.”
There was a shocked silence. Then a man exclaimed: “But that means a loss of a hundred cents on the dollar to every investor in Ohippi securities!”
Solly spread his hands. “It’s a great misfortune, gentlemen. But surely we can’t be held responsible for the floods? Floods are an act of God.”
The reporters did not even notice Walter in their scramble for the door. Walter stood still near the terrace doors. His lips were twisted a little. … His father rubbed his right jowl thoughtfully for a moment, and then began to read the afternoon papers.
Winni Moon was drifting about the study with a vague, pleased smile, touching things here and there; a small fire crackled in the grate; and Jo-Jo, Winni’s chimpanzee, was whirling on her pink haunches near the hearth like a dervish, chattering crossly. Jo-Jo whirled incessantly, for she despised the smell of herself, although she was prinkled with a scent that set Solly back fifty dollars an ounce.
On the terrace, watching, Val tingled with hostility. The Moon worm was wearing the boldest creation in burgundy crêpe, with shirrings at the wrists that “dramatize your every gesture, madame”—Val knew the line so well—and her thick wheat-colored hair was done up in a convoluted braid, like a figure eight lying on its side on top of her head. Hostess gown. Hostess! Protégée! Val’s fingers curled for something to pluck and rend.
“Oh,” cried Winni, “here’s Walter!” And she pounced. Her clinging act, thought Val bitterly. True, Walter was fending her off with one arm, but that was probably because he knew Val was watching.
“Wally dear, isn’t it awful? The floods, and all those people in the woad. You’d think it was the storming of the Castille, at the very weast! I’ve simply begged Solly—your father—to make the police dwive them away—”
Walter shouted: “Lay off me!”
“Why, Walter!”
Solly took off his glasses. After a moment he said: “Get out, Winni.”
Winni smiled at once. “Of course, daddy. You two men must have—” She clapped her hands prettily. “Jo-Jo!”
Oh, you—thing! thought Val, seeing it all from the terrace through the glass doors.
The unhappy beast leaped to Winni’s shoulder and she went out with it, her hips swaying from side to side under the clinging stuff as if they were set in gimbals. She turned, smiled again, and carefully closed the study door.
Thing! THING!
Walter strode forward and faced his father across the marbled leather top of the desk. “Let’s get down to cases,” said Walter. “You’re a crook.”
Solomon Spaeth half-rose from his chair; then, blinking, he sat back. “You can’t talk to me that way!”
“You’re still a crook.”
Solly’s complexion deepened. “Ask the United States Attorney! There’s nothing illegal about my operations.”
“Oh, I’m sure of that,” said Walter, “with Ruhig to handle it. But that doesn’t make you any the less a crook.”
“If you call me that once more—” began his father balefully. Then he smiled. “Pshaw, you’re excited, Walter. I forgive you. Have a drink?”
“I don’t want your forgiveness!” roared Walter.
Walter, Walter, thought Val desperately.
“Before the floods our cash position was sound. It was just the government—Congress undermined the confidence of the public—”
“Look,” said Walter. “How much money have you made out of the sales of your preferred stock since you began creating holding companies around Ohippi?”
“A few dollars, Walter,” said Solly soothingly. “But so could Jardin, only he says he hung on to his stock.”
“You got that rat Ruhig to advise him to hold on!”
“Who says so? Who says so?” spluttered Solly. “Prove that. Let him prove—”
“You weren’t satisfied with swindling the investing public, you had to doublecross your partner, too!”
“If Jardin says I doublecrossed him, he’s a liar!”
Val gritted her teeth. You oily rascal! she thought. If only you weren’t Walter’s father…
“Jardin’s broke, and you know it!” shouted Walter.
A strange smile fattened Solly’s features. “Is that so? Really? Did Jardin tell you that?”
Valerie felt her heart skip a beat. And there was almost a dazed look on Walter’s face. What did the man mean? Was it possible that—
“The fact remains,” muttered Walter, “you’ve made millions while your stockholders have been wiped out.”
Spaeth shrugged. “They could have sold at peak, too.”
“And now you’re abandoning the plants!”
“They’re useless.”
“You could put them back on their feet!”
“Rubbish,” said Solly shortly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You could put those millions back where they belong—in the plants. You could get Ohippi operating again at a profit when the floods recede!”
Spaeth pounded the desk, swallowing. “Since the Securities Act of 1934 the government is liquidating holding-company structures—”
“And a damned good thing, too!”
“The turn would have come soon, anyway, even without the floods. There’s just no point in reinvesting; there’s not enough money to be made. You don’t know what’s happening in this country!”
“You made those filthy millions out of Jardin and the public,” growled Walter, “and it’s your moral responsibility to save their investments.”
“You’re a fool,” said Solly curtly. “Come back and talk when you’ve got some sense in your head.” And he put on his glasses and picked up a paper.
Valerie, watching Walter’s face, peering around the terrace wall, felt panic. If only she dared go inside—take Walter away before he—
Walter leaned across his father’s desk and gently took the paper away and tossed it into the fireplace. Solly sat very still. “You listen to me,” said Walter. “I’ll overlook your crookedness, the way you took Jardin, your lie to me about how hard you were hit. But you’re going to do one thing.”
Solly whispered: “Walter, don’t get me excited.”
“You’re going to save those plants.”
“No!”
“It’s my hard luck to own your name,” said Walter thickly, “so I’ve got to take the stink out of it. You’ve ruined the father of the woman I’m going to marry, and you’re going to make it up to both of them, do you hear?”
“What’s that?” screamed Solly, bouncing out of his chair. “Marry? The Jardin girl?”
“You heard me!”
Val went over to the top step of the terrace and sat down limply in the rain. She felt like crying and laughing at the same time. The darling, darling idiot—proposing like that…
“Oh, no, you’re not,” panted Solly, shaking his finger in Walter’s face. “Oh, no, you’re not!”
Tell him, Walter, thought Val, hugging her knees ecstatically. Tell the old boa-constrictor!
“You’re damned right I’m not!” shouted Walter. “Not after what you’ve done to her! What do you think I am?”
Val sat open-mouthed. Surprise! Oh, God, you second-hand Don Quixote. She might have known. He’d never do anything the sane and normal way. Val felt like crawling off the terrace into the rock garden and taking refuge under a stone.
In the study there was a curious silence as Solomon Spaeth scurried around his desk again and opened a drawer. He flung a handful of newspaper clippings on the desk. “Ever since the stocks began to fall,” yelled Solly, “you’ve been drawing these filthy cartoons in that Red rag you work for. Oh, I’ve been saving ’em! You’ve drawn me as—”
“Not you—the stinking system you stand for!”
“A rat, a vulture, a wolf, a shark, an octopus!”
“If the shoe pinches—”
Solly hurled the clippings into the fire. “I’ve given you your way too much! I let you pick your own vocation, childish as it is, let you brand me publicly as a damned menagerie. … I warn you, Walter! If you don’t stop this nonsense right now—”
Walter said in a strained voice: “Put that money back into the plants.”
“If you don’t forget this ridiculous idea of marrying a pauper—”
“Next week East Lynne”
“You’ll marry money!”
“Now you’re thinking in terms of dynasties. Have you got the royal sow picked out yet, your Majesty?”
“By God, Walter,” shrieked Solly, “if—you—don’t—!” He stopped. Their eyes locked. Val held her breath. Solly snatched the telephone and shouted a number. Walter waited grimly. “Ruhig! Give me Ruhig, you fool!” Spaeth glared at his son. “I’ll show you. I’ve had a bellyful of— Ruhig?… No, no, stop babbling! Ruhig, you come right over here with a couple of witnesses. … For what? To draw up a new will, that’s for what!” He hung up, panting, and adjusted his glasses with shaking fingers.
“I suppose,” laughed Walter, “you think you’ve dealt me the mortal blow.”
“You’ll never get your hands on my money, damn you!”
Walter walked over to the glass doors in silence. Val got up, holding her throat. But then he went back, passed his father’s desk, and opened the study door. Winni Moon almost fell into his arms; there was a silly smile on her face. Walter brushed by her without a glance, and she disappeared. Spaeth sat down, breathing heavily through his mouth. Val, on the terrace, felt completely numb.
A few moments later she heard Walter returning. She looked, and saw a valise in one hand and a drawing board in the other. “I’ll call for the rest of my stuff tomorrow,” said Walter coldly. His father did not reply.
“And this isn’t the end of it, either,” continued Walter in the same bleak way. “That money goes back to the people you took it from, do you understand? I don’t know how I’ll do it”—he opened the glass doors—“but by God, I’ll do it.”
Solly Spaeth sat still, only his head bobbing a little. Walter went out onto the terrace. He nudged Val’s soaked shoulders with the edge of the drawing board. “Could you put me up tonight, Val? I can’t start looking for a place until tomorrow.”
Val looped her arms around his neck and clung. “Walter. Darling. Marry me.”
She felt him stiffen. Then he said lightly: “I’d rather live with you in sin.”
“Walter—dearest. I’m mad about you. I don’t care what your father’s done. We’ll manage somehow. Don’t keep hauling the burdens of the world around on your shoulders. Forget what’s happened—”
Walter said in a gay voice: “Come on, let’s run for it. You’ve just about ruined that precious croquignole bob of yours as it is.”
Val’s arms fell. “But, Walter. I asked you to marry me.”
“No, Val,” he said gently.
“But, Walter!”
“Not yet,” said Walter; and there was something in the way he said it that turned the rain down her back to ice-water.
A GREAT flood rushed down upon Sans Souci in the middle of the night, and Walter and Val and Winni Moon and Jo-Jo and Pink and Rhys Jardin clung shivering to the highest gable of the roof in the darkness, hearing the water gurgle hungrily as it rose. Suddenly there was a moon, and the man in it bore the ruddy features of Solomon Spaeth. Then the moon went down into the black waters and was drowned, still leering, and the gray day began to dawn; and Val saw nothing but water, water everywhere, and she felt terribly thirsty, and she awoke with her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth.
A pseudopod of sunlight tried to climb into her bed, but it was too weak; and soon it vanished altogether under the cold swollen clouds of the real day. Val shivered again and crept out of bed, by habit looking around for Roxie. But Roxie was gone—Roxie and Mrs. Thomson the housekeeper and all the rest; and, as in the dream, Val felt that the end of the world had come.
She was sitting helplessly before her dressing table in the bathroom, looking at the eight-ounce crystal bottle of Indiscret, when Rhys knocked, and came in, and said: “What’s the exact moment, puss, that bacon becomes cinders?”
Val jumped up. “Pop! You haven’t been trying to make breakfast? Don’t do another thing. I’ll be down in a jiffy.”
Rhys held her at arm’s length. “I’m glad you’re taking it this way, puss.”
“Will you go downstairs?”
“If Pink goes, we’ll have to get a cook.”
“Don’t need one. I can cook like a fiend.”
“You’re not going to be slave to a stove, Val. We’ll be able to afford it.”
Val sniffed. “Yes, until the money’s eaten up. How did you make out with the real estate?”
He shrugged. “I got a fair price for the Santa Monica and Malibu places, but this one represents a considerable loss.”
“Did that movie man take the yacht?”
“Literally—the pirate!”
Val kissed his brown chin. “Please don’t worry, darling; I’ll show you how to economize! Now get out.”
But when she was alone again Val looked a little ill. To give up all these lovely, precious things was like facing the amputation of an arm. Val thought of the auction sale to come, mobs of curious people trampling over everything, handling their most intimate possessions, and stopped thinking.
She burned the toast and charred the bacon and over-fried the eggs and underboiled the coffee, and Rhys gobbled it all and maintained with a plausibility that almost fooled her that he had never eaten such a delicious breakfast in his life. The only thing that really tasted good was the orange juice, and Pink had prepared that before he left. Walter was right—she was useless! And that made her think of Walter, and thinking of Walter made her lips quiver, and after she pushed Rhys out of the departed Mrs. Thomson’s no longer spotless kitchen Val sat down and wept into the dish-washing machine. It was a sort of requiem, for Val was positive it was the last time they would ever be able to afford such a wonderful thing.
It was even worse later. The auction people turned up and completed the details of the task begun a week before—cataloguing the furniture and art-objects. They ran all over the house like oblivious ants. The telephones rang incessantly—the purchaser of the yacht with a complaint, a multitude of lawyers with questions about this piece of property and that, insistent reporters; Rhys kept dashing from one telephone to another, almost cheerful, followed everywhere by Pink, who looked like a house-dog which has just been kicked.
Valerie was left to her own devices in the midst of this hurly-burly; she had nothing to do but get out of the way of hurrying strangers. A man practically dumped her on the floor retrieving the antique Cape Cod rocker in which her mother had sung her to sleep; Val felt like giving him the one-two Pink had taught her, but the man was away with his loot before she could get her hands on him. She drifted about, fingering the things she had grown up with—the heavy old silver, those precious little vessels made of old porcelain backed with pewter which Rhys had picked up on his honeymoon in Shanghai, the laces and velvets and lamps, the lovely old hunting prints. She fingered the books and stared at the pictures and spent a difficult moment before the grand old piano on which she had learned to play—never very well!—Chopin and Beethoven and Bach.
And Walter, darn him, didn’t even call up once! Val used up two handkerchiefs, artfully, by crying in corners. But whenever her father bustled into view she said something gay about their new furnished apartment at the La Salle which Walter, who had taken rooms there, had recommended. How thrilling it was going to be living there! Yes, agreed Rhys, and different, too. Yes, said Val—that ducky little five-room place—hotel service—built-in radio—even a really fair print or two on the walls. … And all the while little frozen fingers crawled down her back.
She found Pink in the dismantled gymnasium, sweating powerfully over a litter of golf-bags, skis, Indian clubs, and other sporting paraphernalia. “Oh, Pink,” she wailed, “is the La Salle really so awful?”
“It’s all right,” said Pink. “Anything you want, you ask Mibs.”
“Who’s Mibs?”
“Mibs Austin. Girl-friend of mine.”
“Why, Pincus!”
Pink blushed. “She’s the telephone operator there. She’ll take care of you. … Just one of ’em,” he said.
“I’m sure she’s sweet. … After all,” said Val absently, “Walter does live there.”
“And me,” said Pink, wrapping a pair of skis. “I sort of rented me a ’phone booth there, too.”
“Pink, you didn’t!”
“I got to live somewhere, don’t I?”
“You darling!”
“Anyway, who’s going to cook? You can’t. And all Rhys can make is Spanish omelet.”
“But, Pink—”
“Besides, he needs his exercises. You can’t give him his rubdown, either.”
“But, Pink,” said Val, troubled, “you know that now—we weren’t figuring on extra expenses—”
“Who said anything about pay?” growled Pink. “Get out of here, squirt, and let me work.”
“But how are you going to—I mean, have you any plans?”
Pink sighed. “Once I was going to start a health farm and make me some real dough out of these smart guys that run to rubber tires around the middle, but now—”
“Oh, Pink, I’m so sorry about your losing all your money!”
“I got my connections, don’t worry. I can always go back to being an expert in the movies—double for some punk with a pretty pan who don’t know how to hold a club but’s supposed to be champ golfer of the world—that kind of hooey.”
“Pink,” said Val, “do you mind if I kiss you?”
Pink said gruffly: “Keep ’em for Little Boy Blue; he has ’em with cream. Val, scram!” But his nutbrown face reddened.
Val smiled a little mistily. “You’re such a fraud, Pincus darling.” And she kissed him without further opposition.
The auctioneer cleared his throat. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, a few announcements before the sale commences. As you know, this is not a forced sale. So the owner, Mr. Rhys Jardin, has exercised his privilege of making last-minute withdrawals. If you will kindly note these changes in your catalogue…”
Val, sitting beside her father in the front row of chairs, felt him tremble; she did not dare look at his face. She tried to preserve an air of “Who cares?”, but she knew the attempt was a miserable failure.
“… the sixty-foot yacht Valerie has been withdrawn from the auction, having been disposed of in a private sale yesterday. …”
Walter was here—sitting in the rear, the coward! The least he might have done was say hello—or isn’t it a lovely day for an execution—or something like that. But Walter was acting very strangely. He hadn’t even glanced at her before the people took seats, and he was so pale—
“… your number one-two-six, a collection of four hundred and twenty-two assorted sporting prints. Also your number one-five-two, a collection of small arms. Also your number one-five-three, a collection of medieval arrowheads. Due to the great interest in the sporting-print collection, Mr. Jardin wishes me to announce that it has been donated to the Los Angeles public library association.”
There was a little splatter of applause, which quickly died when some one hissed. Val felt like hiding her head. A man’s voice behind them whispered: “I understand he’s given the arrowheads to the Museum.”
“He must be stony broke,” whispered a female voice.
“Yeah? Maybe.”
“What do you mean?”
“Shh! Isn’t that him in front of us?”
Val’s hands were tight in her lap. She heard her father expel a long, labored breath. People were such pigs. Vultures! Wheeling over the carrion! Even that Ruhig person had had the unadulterated gall to attend the auction. He was sitting well down front, beaming at all the hostile glances converging on his pudgy cheeks.
“Also withdrawn is number seven-three, a miscellaneous lot of sporting equipment—golf clubs, bags, fencing foils, tennis rackets, et cetera.”
She felt Rhys stir with surprise. “No, pop,” she whispered. “It’s not a mistake.”
“But I included them—”
“I withdrew them. You’re not going to be stripped bare!” He groped for her hand and found it.
“Everything else will be sold on this floor regardless of bid. Everything is in superb condition. The art-objects and antiques have all been expertized and found genuine. Each lot is fully described in your catalogue. …”
Come on. Get started. … It was worse, far worse, than Val had imagined it would be. Oh, Walter, why don’t you move down here and sit by me and hold my hand, too!
“Lot number one,” said the auctioneer in a brisk chant. “Lowestoft china, 1787, with the New York insignia, design female and eagle, two hundred pieces, rare antiquity and historic value, who’ll start it with five thousand dollars? Do I hear five thousand on lot number one? Five thousand?”
“Two thousand,” called out a cadaverous man with the predatory look of a rabid collector.
The auctioneer groaned. “Gentlemen, gentlemen. A crude imitation of these superb antiques brought seven thousand in a private sale only a few years ago—”
“Twenty-five hundred,” said a calm, rather husky voice from the rear.
“Three thousand,” droned the cadaverous man.
“Thirty-five,” said the husky voice.
“Thirty-five! Who says four thousand?”
“Four thousand,” said Mr. Anatole Ruhig.
“Five? Do I hear five?”
“Forty-five hundred,” said the husky voice.
“Forty-five bid! Five, any one? You, sir? Mr. Ruhig? Forty-five once, forty-five twice, forty-five… Sold to the gentleman for forty-five hundred dollars.
Robbery! screamed Val silently. The Lowestoft had come down in the family. It was worth many, many thousands. Robber! She craned with the others to see the husky-voiced thief. He was a spare young man with a close black beard covering his cheeks and chin, and he wore pince-nez glasses. Val after one malevolent look turned her eyes front. Robber!
Lot number two went up; Val heard the rattle of auctioneer’s patter and bids only dimly. Poor Rhys was so rigid. It was horrible having to be here. … When the voices stopped it appeared that the husky one belonging to the bearded young man had again prevailed. The beast—buying poor mother’s b-bedroom suite!
Lot number three—history repeated itself. There were murmurs from the floor, and the auctioneer looked enchanted. Mr. Anatole Ruhig, who seemed to have a passion for antiques, looked definitely unenchanted. Black looks were hurled at the unconquerable bidder. … Far in the rear, Mr. Walter Spaeth sat slumped in a chair, his right hand absently sketching on the back of an envelope the head of the bearded young man, who was sitting in the row before.
Lot number four. Number five. Six. Seven. …
“It’s a frame-up,” said some one loudly. “He doesn’t give any one else a chance!”
“Quiet! Please! Ladies and gentlemen—”
“This isn’t an auction, it’s a monologue!”
Three people rose and went out in a dudgeon. Mr. Anatole Ruhig was by this time regarding the villain of the piece thoughtfully. The cadaverous one rose and left too. Val looked around in a panic; Rhys frowned at the greedy one.
Lot number eight, nine, number ten. …
“I’m going!”
“So am I!”
The bearded young man coughed. “Common courtesy compels me to warn those who still remain that you may as well leave, too, unless you choose to remain as mere spectators.”
“I beg your pardon, sir—” began the auctioneer, who did not like the way things were going.
“I was about to add,” the bearded young man called out to the auctioneer, “that we can all save a lot of wear-and-tear on our vocal cords if we face the fact.”
“The fact?” said the auctioneer in bewilderment, rapping for order.
“The fact that I humbly intend,” continued the young man, getting to his feet and revealing considerable flannel-clad length, “to buy every lot in this auction, regardless of opposition bidding.” And he sat down, smiling pleasantly at his neighbors.
“Who is he?” muttered Rhys Jardin.
“Don’t you know?” whispered Val. “I can’t understand—”
“This is highly irregular,” said the auctioneer, wiping his face.
“In fact,” said the young man hoarsely from his seat, “to save time I’m prepared to offer, Mr. Jardin a lump sum for the entire catalogue!”
The man behind Val jumped up and shouted: “It’s a conspiracy, that’s what it is!”
“I see the whole thing,” cried some one else.
“Sure! It’s a trick of Jardin’s!”
“He’s pulling a bluff!”
“Run a fake auction to make the public think he’s broke, and then plant this man to buy the whole thing back for him!”
“With his own money! My money!”
“Ladies and gentlemen! Please—” began Rhys, rising with a pale face.
“Sit down, you crook!” screeched a fat sweaty lady.
“No, no, he’s nothing of the sort,” protested the young man who had caused all the trouble. But by this time every one was shouting with indignation, and the young man’s voice was lost in the noise.
“You take that back!” screamed Val, diving for the fat lady.
“Officer! Clear the room!” roared the auctioneer.
When order was restored Val scrambled over two chairs getting to the bearded young man. “You worm! Now see what you’ve done!”
“I’ll admit,” he said ruefully, “I didn’t foresee a rising of the masses. … Mr. Jardin, I think? Of course my proposal was seriously intended.”
“Breaking up auctions,” grumbled the auctioneer, scowling; for obviously with such a spirited bidder on the floor he would have realized a greater gross sum and consequently a handsomer commission.
“I decided on impulse, Mr. Jardin, and didn’t have time to make an offer in advance of the sale.”
“Suppose we talk it over,” said Jardin abruptly; and the three men put their heads together. Mr. Anatole Ruhig rose, took his hat and stick, and quietly went away.
The young man was a persuasive bargainer. In five minutes Jardin, completely mystified, had agreed to his offer, the auctioneer sat grumpily down to write out a bill of sale, and the young man dragged a large wallet out of his pocket and laid on the desk such a pile of new thousand-dollar bills that Val felt like yelling “Economic royalist!”
“Just to avoid any embarrassment about checks,” he said in his hoarse voice. “And now, if there’s nothing else, I have a group of vans waiting outside.” And he went out and returned a moment later with a crew of muscular gentlemen in aprons who looked around, spat on their hands, listened to their employer’s whispered instructions, nodded, and went to work without conversation.
“Who is he, anyway?” demanded Pink, glaring at the beard.
“Profiteer,” snapped Valerie. That made her think of Walter, so she drifted over casually to where he still sat.
“Hello.”
“Hello.”
Silence. Then Val said: “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
“Yes,” said Walter.
What could you do with a creature like that? Val snatched the envelope on which he was sketching out of his hands, crumpled it, threw it at him, and flounced away. Walter picked up the envelope and absently pocketed it.
“There you are,” said a bass voice, and Walter looked up.
“Hullo, Fitz. How are you?”
Fitzgerald sat down, wheezing. “Lousy. I thought California would stop these sinus headaches of mine, but I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if they aren’t worse.” Fitz had been in California over ten years and he complained about his sinusitis on the average of a dozen times each day. “Where’s the drawing?”
“Which one?”
“Today’s—yesterday’s—any day’s,” growled Fitz. “What do you think I’m paying you for—your good looks? With all this Ohippi dirt in the air, you go on a bat!”
“I was busy.”
“I haven’t had a cartoon for a week—I’ve had to fill in with old ones. Listen, Walter… Say what’s going on here?”
“As if you didn’t know, you long-eared jackass.”
“I heard outside somebody stampeded the works.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your nose, either.”
Fitz was a bulky Irishman with eyebrows like birds’ nests, imbedded in which were two very glossy and restless eggs. He was also unpredictable. He left Walter like a genie.
“Hullo, Rhys. Say, Rhys, I’m damned sorry about everything. Would have come over sooner, but I thought you’d rather not jaw about it.”
“Good of you.” Jardin looked around; the room was getting bare. “You’re in at the death, anyway,” he said grimly.
“Tough break.” Fitz shot sidewise glances at the bearded young man, who was watching his men calmly. “Who’s the buyer? Hullo, Valerie.”
Just then the young man turned his bearded face toward them, and Fitz’s eyebrows almost met his puffy cheeks.
“Hello, Mr. F-Fitzgerald,” said Val, watching a commode sail by. There was still a deep scratch in one leg where she had kicked it the time Mrs. Thomson had whacked her for printing “Thomson is a turkey” in yellow crayon on the drawer.
But Fitz ignored her. He lumbered over to the bearded young man and said: “Hey, you’re somebody I know.”
“Yes?” said the young man politely, and he moved off.
Fitz followed him. “Name’s Queen, isn’t it? Ellery Queen?”
“Sharp eyes,” said the young man. He moved off again.
Fitz seized his arm. “Know who bought your stuff, Rhys?” he bellowed. “Ellery Queen, the master-mind!” But the master-mind was gone with a single twist. Fitz thundered after him, leaving a bewildered group behind. As he passed Walter he snapped: “Report to the office, damn you. Queen! Hey!” He caught up with Ellery outside the house. Several of the vans had filled up and were gone; the men were packing the last two.
“Now don’t be unpleasant,” sighed Mr. Queen.
“I’m Fitzgerald of the Independent,” said Fitz briskly, grasping Ellery’s arm like a grappling-iron.
“You’re an ass.”
“What’s that?”
“If I’d wanted my identity known, Mr. Fitzgerald, don’t you think I’d have advertised it myself?”
“So that accounts for the phony brush!”
“Not at all. I broke out in a nasty facial rash a few months ago—probably an allergy—and I couldn’t shave. Now that the rash is gone I’m so pleased with my appearance I’ve kept the beard.”
“With me it’s sinus,” said Fitz. “However, it still smells. How about the voice? Got a rash on your vocal cords?”
“Very simple, my dear Watson. The moment I stepped off the train into your balmy California rains I caught a laryngitis, and I’ve still got it. I should be in bed,” said Ellery bitterly.
“Why aren’t you? What’s the gag? What are you doing in Hollywood? Where’d you get the dough? Are you getting married and furnishing your love-nest?”
“If this is an interview,” said Ellery, “I’m a deaf-mute overcome by complete paralysis.”
“Say, who do you think you are? Managing editors don’t leg it.” Fitz eyed him keenly. “It isn’t if you say so.”
“I say so.”
“Now how about satisfying my layman’s curiosity?”
“It’s no gag. I’m in Hollywood on a writing contract to Magna—God knows I don’t know anything about writing for the screen, but they don’t seem to care, so I don’t either. And no, I’m not being married.”
“Wait a minute! Why are you buying the Jardin stuff?”
Ellery watched the last two vans drive off. He moved out from under the porte-cochère into the drizzle and stepped hastily into his rented car. “Goodbye, Mr. Fitzgerald,” he said amiably, waving. “It’s been nice seeing you.” And he drove off.
The Jardins and Walter and Pink stood in silence in the denuded living-room. “Are the—are the trunks gone?” asked Val at last in a small voice. “And… everything else?”
“Yes, Val.”
“Then I don’t suppose there’s anything—”
“Come on, let’s get going,” growled Pink, “before I bust out crying.”
They marched out of the empty house in a body, close together, like condemned criminals on their way to the wall. Outside Val picked a rose off a bush and absently pulled it to pieces. “Well! Here we go,” said Rhys in a cheery voice. “It’s goodbye to all this. I think we’re going to have a lot of fun, puss.” He put his arm around her.
“All the common people have fun,” said Pink. “Perk up, squirt.”
“I’m all right,” protested Valerie. “Of course, it’s a little strange. …”
“Let’s go,” said Walter in a low voice.
He preceded them down the private drive toward the pillbox at the gate, hands jammed into the pockets of his topcoat. He did not look back at either the Jardin house—or that other. A crowd was waiting in the road beyond the gate, making mob noises; but the noises stopped as the little procession came toward them. Frank, the day man, his empty left sleeve flapping, hurried from the pillbox toward their two cars, which were parked near the gate. It became more and more difficult to keep that steady pace. Val felt a little faint. It was like the French Revolution, with the mob of citoyens waiting greedily for the victims, and the guillotine looming ahead. …
Frank held the door of Jardin’s small sedan open—the only car they had kept. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jardin. I’m awfully sorry,” said Frank. In getting into the sedan Rhys had caught his coat on the door-handle, and the camel’s-hair fabric just below the right pocket ripped away in a triangular flap.
Pink said: “You tore your coat, Rhys,” but Jardin paid no attention, groping blindly for the ignition-key. Valerie crept into the rear seat and slipped far down on her spine; she avoided Walter’s eyes as he closed the door behind her. Pink jumped in beside Jardin.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said Frank again, in a weepy voice.
“Here.” Jardin leaned out and pressed a large bill into the gateman’s hand. “Split it with Walewski, Frank. Goodbye.”
“Thanks, thanks!” Frank scuttled off to the gate.
“Well,” smiled Rhys, starting the car, “what shall it be? A snack at the Troc?”
“It’s too expensive there, pop,” murmured Val.
“How about Al Levy’s? Or the Derby?”
“Better get going,” remarked Pink dryly, “before that mob out there starts yipping for blood.”
Rhys fell silent and shifted. Val looked back. Walter was getting into his coupé, slowly. Then he stopped and stepped back and looked across the lawns toward the Spaeth house. Far away, Solomon Spaeth stood alone, in motion. He was waving and his mouth was open. Apparently he was shouting something, but his voice did not carry. Walter’s lean jaw hardened. Val saw the taut whitening line. He got into his car without a sign that he had seen.
“It’s like the end of a bad dream,” thought Val, shivering. “For all of us.” Then they were pushing slowly through the silent crowd and she sat up straight and tried to look as she fancied Marie Antoinette had once looked in a somewhat similar situation.
AFTER lunch Pink said he had to see a dog about a man and Jardin dropped him at the Magna studio on Melrose. “We may as well face it, Val,” said Rhys when Pink had gone. “We’ll have to go there some time.”
“Why not now?” smiled Val. She felt better, because the sherry had been good and so had the chicken patties. And it was true—they might as well get used to the notion that they were proletarians just as quickly as they could. The only fly in the afternoon’s ointment was Walter; he had left them abruptly, with a gloom that was odd even for him. Val brooded about Walter as Rhys drove up to Santa Monica Boulevard and turned west on the car-tracks. She would definitely have to do something about Walter. Things couldn’t go on this way. It was absurd of him to reject her proposal of marriage—absurd and a little dangerous, considering that last quarrel with his father and the look in his eye.
“Here we are,” said Rhys bravely.
Val sat up. There they were, one square from Hollywood Boulevard’s bedlam—in front of the La Salle.
“Parking,” said Rhys, “is going to be a problem.”
“Yes,” said Val. “Won’t it?”
Rhys finally found a tiny space near a curb, and he parked and they got out and looked at each other and squared their shoulders and entered the hotel. “You must be the Jardins,” said a small blonde girl with a blonde dip over one eye. “Pink ’phoned me about you. I’m Mibs Austin.”
“Hello, Mibs,” said Val, looking around at the lobby.
Miss Austin took the earphones off her head and leaned earnestly across the register. “Now don’t let anything worry you, honey. I just about run this dive. Watch out for Fanny, the woman who’ll clean your apartment; she skips corners. The radio needs a new thingumbob—I’ve told the manager about it. And, Mr. Jardin, the valay here is very high-class.”
“I’m sure we’ll love it,” said Val.
“Oh, and your stuff came, too,” said Miss Austin. “I watched myself. They didn’t break a single thing.”
“Stuff?” echoed Val. “What stuff? Oh, you mean the trunks. Thanks, Mibs; we’re terribly grateful for everything.”
They took the wheezy elevator to the third floor, rear—it was thirty dollars a month cheaper in the rear—leaving Miss Austin behind to stare. Trunks? Who said anything about trunks?
Rhys pushed the key slowly into the lock of 3-C, and slowly opened the door, and Val slowly went in and said: “Oh!”
The pseudo-modern furniture, the noisy drugget, the questionable prints—all, all had vanished. In their places were the things the moving men had carried out of Sans Souci under the mysterious Mr. Queen’s vigilant eye only a few hours earlier. Rhys said: “I’ll be double-damned.” He dropped his coat onto his own sofa and sank into his own leather chair.
Val flew to the telephone. “Mibs! Who brought our furniture here? I mean, how did—”
“Wasn’t it supposed to be? The man said—”
“Mibs! Who?”
“The movers. They just brought the van loads and dumped ’em. We had orders to take out the hotel furniture this morning.”
“Oh,” said Val. “And who was it ordering that?”
“Why, the gentleman in 4-F. What’s his name? That Mr. Spaeth. Oh! Miss Jardin, is that the Spaeth—?”
“Hello,” said Walter from the doorway, and Val dropped the ’phone to find him grinning at her like some friendly mugwump.
“Walter, you fiend,” sobbed Valerie, and she ran into her bedroom and slammed the door.
“Was it you?” asked Rhys.
“It’s all here,” said Walter gruffly. “I mean everything we could cram into five rooms. Here’s the warehouse receipt for the rest, Mr. Jardin.”
“Warehouse receipt?” said Rhys in an odd voice.
“I’ve put the leftovers in storage for you.”
Rhys laughed a little blankly and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m afraid what’s happened today is getting to be a little too much for my primitive brain. And that Queen fellow—who was he?”
Walter dropped his hat and coat on the sofa and sat down to light a cigaret. “Funny thing. He’s just come to the Coast on a movie-writing contract—he’s a writer as well as a detective, you know—and an old school chum of mine in New York told him to look me up. So I asked him to act as my proxy. He did it well, don’t you think?”
“But, Walter, why?” asked Rhys gently.
Walter scowled at his smoke. “Well… I know how stiff your neck is. You wouldn’t have accepted money. So to avoid arguments…”
Jardin rose and went to the window and pulled up the Venetian blinds and threw the windows open; the drizzle had stopped and the sun was trying to shine again. Traffic noises roared into the room from the rear street below. He closed the windows at once and turned around, a little shrunken. “It’s wonderfully decent of you, Walter. But I simply can’t accept it. Besides, Val has told me about your father cutting you out of his will.”
“I’ve some money of my own from my mother’s father—plenty more left.”
Rhys smiled sadly. “I’ve deposited the cash, and it’s too late today to draw it out again. But, Walter, the first thing—”
“Forget it.”
“Walter, you make it awfully difficult.”
They eyed each other in silence, at an impasse. Then Val sobbed from the bedroom: “The least you could do, you swine, is come in here and console me!”
Walter rose with a foolish grin. “I think,” murmured Rhys, “I’ll go out for some air.” He picked up his hat and left as Walter went into the bedroom.
A little later the telephone rang and Val ran into the living-room, fussing with her hair, to answer it. All trace of tears had vanished. Walter followed, looking even more foolish, if that was possible, than before. “Yes,” said Val. “Just a moment. It’s for you, Walter. The telephone operator wants to know if you’re up here.”
Walter said: “Hullo,” still looking foolish, then he said nothing at all as he listened to a voice, the foolish look slowly turning grim. Finally he muttered: “I’ll be right over,” and hung up.
“What’s wrong?”
Walter reached for his hat and coat. “My father.”
Valerie went cold. “Don’t go, Walter.”
“I’ve got to settle this thing once and for all.”
She flew to him, clinging. “Please, Walter!”
Walter said gently: “Wait for me. I’ll be back in half an hour and we’ll drive out Wilshire to the beach for dinner.” And he pushed her away and went out.
Val stood still for a long minute. The old half-quenched fears began to burn brightly again. She picked up the coat left on the sofa and took it into the foyer, hardly aware of what she was doing. But as she was hanging the coat in the foyer closet awareness returned. She held the coat up and looked at it more closely. It was Walters! He had taken Rhys’s by mistake—they were both tan camel’s-hair of the same belted style, of a size. And as she turned the coat over in her hands, something fell out of one of the pockets and struck her foot. It was an automatic, very black and shiny.
Val recoiled in instant reflex. But after the first horrible moment she pounced on it and thrust it hastily back into Walter’s coat, unreasonably glad her father was not there to see it. Then she took it out of the pocket and, handling it as if it were a scorpion, carried it into her bedroom and buried it in the deepest bureau drawer, her heart pounding. A gun, Walter. … She was so frightened she sat down on her bed to keep from recognizing the weakness in her knees. Walter had never had a gun. Walter hated guns, as he hated war, and poverty, and injustice. … She rose a little later and began to unpack her trunks, trying not to think.
Rhys returned in ten minutes, smoking a cigar and looking calmer. He called out to Val: “Where’s everybody?”
“Walter’s had a call from his father,” said Val in a muffled voice from the bedroom.
“Oh. … Where do I put my hat?”
“In the foyer closet, silly. And be sure from now on you hang things up. This is going to be a co-operative joint.”
Jardin chuckled, put away his hat, and went into his bedroom to unpack. By 5.30 their clothes were hung and there was nothing left to be done. “I wonder where Walter is,” said Val worriedly.
“He’s only been gone a half-hour.”
Val bit her lip. “He said—Let’s wait in the lobby.”
“It’s raining again,” said Rhys, at the closet. “Val, this isn’t my camel’s-hair.”
“Walter took it by mistake.”
Jardin put on a tweed topcoat and they went downstairs. Val stared at the clock over the desk. It was 5.35. She said nervously: “I’m going to call him.”
“What’s the matter with you, puss?” Jardin sat down near the potted palm and picked up a newspaper; but when he saw his photograph on the front page he put the newspaper down.
“Get me Solomon Spaeth’s residence,” said Val in a low voice. “I think it’s Hillcrest 2411.”
Mibs plugged in. “Hillcrest 2411. … Nice guy, Walter Spaeth. Lovely eyes, Miss Jardin, don’t you think so?… Hello. Is that you, Mr. Spaeth?… This is Mr. Walter Spaeth, isn’t it? I thought I recognized your voice, Mr. Spaeth. Miss Jardin’s calling. … Take it right here, Miss Jardin.”
Val snatched the telephone. “Walter! Is there any trouble? You said—”
Walter’s voice sounded queerly thick in her ear. “Val. I’ve got no time now. Something awful—something awful—”
Val whispered: “Yes, Walter.”
“Wait for me at the La Salle,” said Walter’s funny voice.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” His voice sank. “Val. Please. Don’t mention this call to any one. No one!”
Val whispered again: “Yes, Walter.” She heard the click; it sounded very loud. She hung up and said slowly: “Let’s sit down.”
At 6.30 Val said in a hoarse voice. “I can’t stand it any longer. He told me not to tell—He’s in trouble.”
“Now, puss—” said Rhys uncomfortably.
She whispered: “Something awful. That’s what Walter said. Something awful.”
Her father looked at her with concern. “All right, Val. We’ll go over there.”
He drove up into the hills at fifty miles an hour. Val hung out of the car. Neither said a word. The moment they swung into the road outside the gate of Sans Souci they knew something was wrong. The crowds which had swarmed there for weeks were gone. In their place were the running lights of many large, official-looking cars. It was growing dark. “I told you,” said Val. “Didn’t I tell you? Something—something—”
The gate was opened by a policeman. There was no sign of Walewski, the night gateman, near his pillbox. But there were other policemen. “What’s happened, officer?” demanded Jardin. “I’m Rhys Jardin.”
“Oh, are you? Hold it a minute.” The policeman said something to another policeman, and the second man went into the pillbox; and they heard the twinkle of Walewski’s telephone. Then he came out and jerked his finger. Jardin shifted into first and drove through the gate. The second policeman hopped onto the running-board and stayed there. Val, on the edge of her seat, was conscious of a long howling in her ears, as of winds.
At the Spaeth door they were met by three men, all in plain clothes. The three looked them over coldly. Then one, taller than the rest, with a nose like an arrowhead, said: “Come in, please.”
They were surrounded by the three and marched through the house. On the way they passed Winni Moon, who sat on the lowest step of the stairs which led to the upper floor staring with horror at her long feet while Jo-Jo chattered on her shoulder. Solomon Spaeth’s study was packed with men—men with cameras, men with flash-bulbs, men with tape measures, men with bottles and brushes, men with pencils. The air was thick and blue with smoke. And there was Walter, too. Walter was sitting behind his father’s desk, pushed away, with a large man over him. His face was drawn and pale. And there was a crude bandage wound around his head which would have given him a rakish look if not for the ragged blob of blood which had soaked through from his left temple.
“Walter!” Valerie tried to run to him, but the tall arrow-nosed man put his hand on her arm. Val stopped. She felt really very calm. Everything was so water-clear—the smoke was so blue and the bandage was so red, and Walter’s head moved from side to side so very definitely as he looked at her. From side to side. Like a signal. Or a warning. The room misted over suddenly and Val leaned back against the nearest wall.
“You’re Miss Jardin?” said the tall man abruptly.
“Yes,” said Val. “Of course I am.” Wasn’t that an absurd thing to say?
“My name is Glücke—Inspector, Detective Division.”
“How do you do.” That was even more absurd, but it was the strangest thing. Her brain had no control over her mouth.
“Were you looking for Mr. Walter Spaeth?”
“Inspector,” began Rhys. But the tall man frowned.
“Yes,” said Valerie. “Yes, of course. Why not? We had an appointment for dinner. We looked for Mr. Spaeth in his apartment but he wasn’t there so we thought perhaps he had gone to his father’s house and so we came over—”
“I see,” said Glücke, looking elsewhere with his brilliant eyes. It seemed to Val that Walter nodded the least bit in approval. It was all so queer—everything. She mustn’t lose her head. It would come out soon. Glücke—that was a funny name. Until she found out what…
Jardin said: “That’s right, Inspector. My daughter has told you. … May I ask what’s happened?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Well,” said the tall man dryly, “they don’t send for the Homicide Detail in petit larceny cases.” He stood still. Then he made a sign, a small sign with no question in it, as a man would make it who is accustomed to be instantly obeyed. A group of men crowded together before the ell beside the fireplace separated. A dead man was sitting on the floor in the angle of the ell, one foot doubled under him. A reddish, brownish, ragged stab-wound marred the otherwise immaculate appearance of his dove-gray gabardine jacket. As he sat there in the corner he looked like a small fat boy who has been slapped without warning; there was an expression of pure surprise on his unmoving face. Val yelped and spun about to hide her eyes against her father’s coat.
A reporter with a cigaret cached above his ear shouted into the telephone on the desk: “Benny! For the love of Mike, do I get a rewrite or not? Benny!… Get this. Act of God. … No, you dope, act of God! Solly Spaeth’s just been murdered!”