I sent Keith to the office and walked slowly to the elevators with Bill.
“What’s it all about?” I asked. “Why would anybody want to go clear out to Universal Arts to smash up a phonograph?”
“I can only guess,” Bill said. “Did you hear the other one while it was on the blink? How did it sound?”
I tried to remember. “There was a sort of tinny vibration.”
“As if something might have dropped down into the sound box?”
“Why, yes,” I said. “It could easily have been that. But I still don’t see—”
“Suppose the thing that dropped into it was an object of importance to the person who murdered Montgomery. Suppose the murderer had a good idea that object had fallen into the phonograph while it was in the window. Wouldn’t he be willing to go to any lengths to recover it? Even to coming out to my place and smashing up the machine to find it?”
Chills went up and down my spine. If all this was true, then there was a connection between the murder and Universal Arts. The phonograph made a link. And I knew that in the frightening moment the night before, when I’d become aware of the shadow crouching among those white things of plaster, I’d again been within arm’s reach of the murderer.
Bill read my face. “You’re all right now. Don’t start falling apart at this late date.”
I made an effort to ignore my wobbling knees and attend to the confusion of my thoughts. “But why should Sondo—?”
“She probably figured the thing out herself and wanted a chance to find what was in the phonograph. So she sent off the wrong one with Keith and kept the other until she had time to investigate. Not being in a hurry, she could do it more tidily. Since the machine’s all right now, the chances are she found what she was looking for. All clear?”
I shook my head. “If she had any real evidence, why is she throwing this party? Why doesn’t she take the whole thing to McPhail?”
“It suits Sondo’s peculiar temperament to go about it in her own way. Besides, the evidence, whatever it is, may not be conclusive.”
A suddenly brilliant idea struck me. “Bill! All we have to do is figure out how many people knew the phonograph was out of order and that it was going to Universal.”
“Good enough,” Bill said. “Start figuring.”
“First of all we can put you down,” I told him. “Though I must admit you’d probably take the thing apart with something more delicate than a crowbar, or whatever was used. And you couldn’t have been in two places at once. I mean in your office and biding in the workshop too.”
“Thanks for small favors,” he said. “I wish I could vouch as well for you. But you certainly knew about the affair. You could even have been breaking up the phonograph while I was working. And you could easily have staged that whole episode of the prowler.”
“I think I’ll go back to the office,” I said haughtily.
He caught my arm and his eyes were laughing. “Wait a minute, Miss Flighty. Let’s do some serious checking.”
It wasn’t as easy as it looked at first glance. When Tony had brought the phonograph in to play it, there had been Sondo, Carla, Helena, Tony and myself in the room. Carla and Helena left before Tony suggested that Keith take the machine out to Universal. To all appearances, only Sondo, Tony, Keith, Bill and I knew about that. But—and here was the thing that made our checking hopeless—anyone speaking in an ordinary voice could be heard in the corridors or several rooms away.
Anyone at all could have lingered outside Sondo’s workroom and heard what was going on. In that case, we’d have to include Owen Gardner, who’d been up there being fingerprinted. Even Chris and Susan had been in the store that day, and it would have been possible, though not likely, for them to have been within hearing distance.
“A lot of help you are,” Bill said. “We’re right where we started. But maybe Sondo will get somewhere tonight. Which reminds me that I’d better get downstairs and date up the lovely Carla.”
“Without an introduction?” I asked. “Who do you think you are?”
“You underestimate my charms,” he told me, with that idiotic grin on his face. “I’ll let you know how I come out.”
I sniffed something about not being interested and went toward the office with my chin in the air.
“Mrs. Montgomery’s been trying to get you,” Keith said when I walked in. “She’s going to call back. She sounds excited again. Say, what was all that about the phonograph anyway?”
I had no intention of getting into a long wrangle of speculation with Keith, so I shook my head and gave him some letters to type. The phone rang and it was Chris.
“Hello,” I said. “I know—you’ve got to see me.”
“Why, how did you guess?” she asked, and the innocent surprise in her voice pricked my conscience.
“I’ll meet you,” I assured her contritely, “but I can’t take another minute off till lunch.”
“Any time before twelve-forty is all right,” she said. “That’s when the train leaves.”
“What train?”
“Why, the one Susan wants to take,” she said, as if I should have known. “That’s why I want you to meet me. So we can stop her. She simply mustn’t go, Linell.”
This was getting too complicated for the telephone. “I’ll see you at twelve,” I told her. “Wherever you say.”
She mentioned the waiting room of one of the big stations and hung up. I sat for a few minutes with my hand on the phone. Now what went on?
It rang again promptly and this time it was Bill. His whistle was vulgar, but expressive.
“The lady exceeds her reputation,” he announced smugly. “I’m taking her to supper tonight and then over to Sondo’s.”
“Do you think she’ll be safe?” I asked sweetly.
“Oh, I’m the type women trust,” he said. “It’s my youth and innocence that appeals.”
I wished him luck and hung up. Bill’s kidding was something to keep the two of us sane and postpone as long as possible the inevitably approaching time when all that was frightful would crowd closely about us and laughter would die on our lips.
For the rest of that morning I managed to free my mind of questions and suspicions. The pressure of work on my desk was increasing and I had to get out from under to some extent.
I can’t say that the copy I wrote during those days was brilliant, but I am amazed now that I could respond to necessity and accomplish anything. I did manage, however, and when I left the office to go to meet Chris, my conscience was a little clearer as far as my job was concerned.
I found Chris on one of the big benches in the station waiting room, with Susan beside her. Chris was talking animatedly, waving her hands, evidently pleading. Susan sat listening to her—plump, dowdy, silent, and very, very stubborn. Heaven preserve me from the stubbornness of a woman who is ordinarily gentle and yielding!
“Oh, Linell!” Chris wailed the moment I joined them. “You’ve got to talk to her. She’s going off to Florida and she simply mustn’t.”
“I have my ticket,” Susan told me, as if that settled everything.
“But just why are you leaving?” I asked.
“I don’t care to discuss the matter,” Susan said. “When I learned this morning that an arrest had been made, I decided I might as well leave. I’d been planning to make this trip all along, but of course Mr. McPhail wouldn’t let any of us leave town before.”
“The trouble is,” Chris explained to me, “if she goes, she won’t come back. She’s leaving father.”
“It’s the only right thing to do,” Susan said.
I felt this was a little out of my province and wished Chris hadn’t called me in. After all, if Mrs. Gardner had decided to leave her husband, there wasn’t anything I could do to stop her.
“You see,” Susan went on, discussing it after all, “I’ve felt right along that I wasn’t the type of woman for Owen. Oh, I’ve made him a good wife, and I think I’ve made a good mother to Chris, but a man like Owen needs much more in life than I could ever give him. Miss Drake is so lovely and I’m sure she’s very charming and interesting company—”
So she knew about Carla. That was sad, but still not my affair. But it was passionately Chris’s affair. She broke into what Susan was saying.
“I’ll bet she’s a nitwit! I’ll bet father would be sick of her in two days if he actually had to live with her. Susan, you can’t go without giving him a chance to speak for himself!”
Susan shook her head with gentle stubbornness and the hands of the station clock moved closer to train time.
Chris threw me a reproachful look for not helping and plunged into a new argument.
“Wait a while anyway, Susan. Don’t leave right now while all this about Monty is still in the air. I’m so lonely and frightened. I need you, Susan.”
Susan patted her hand. “You can come down and visit me in a week or so, if you like. I’d love that and it would be good for you to get away.”
“No!” Chris cried. “Oh, I couldn’t leave. I—I’m afraid. Susan, that’s why you mustn’t go. I don’t think they’ve caught the person who killed Monty. I don’t think it’s over yet.”
Susan and I both looked at her.
“Tony’s not the one! Oh, I’m sure he’s not the one. That’s why we all have to move so carefully. We’re not safe yet. If you leave town at this time, Susan, it might look bad for you, bad for the rest of us.”
“I’m afraid I don’t see—” Susan began, but Chris stopped her at once.
“Wait a few days longer, please. I think it would be better for all of us to go to Sondo’s gathering tonight.”
So Sondo hadn’t been letting any grass grow under her feet.
“Even father’s agreed to go to that party,” Chris said. “He was furious about it, but he’s going. And if you leave town—”
Some of Susan’s hard-won resolution was crumbling. She looked anxiously at me.
“What do you think, Miss Wynn? This party sounds like a stupid, dangerous thing.”
“It does to me, too,” I agreed. “But Sondo’s not stupid by any means. She has some purpose back of all this, I think. And if McPhail has arrested the wrong person, it might be better for all of us to see Sondo through. Something awfully queer is going on at Cunningham’s.”
I told them about the picture, though I left out the attack on me; about the phonograph being smashed the night before out at Universal Arts, and of my own part in that affair.
Susan listened intently and put one arm about the shivering Chris.
“All right,” she said, “I’ll put off my trip for a week or so. But then I’m leaving. I’m not angry or bitter. I think I’ve always felt I couldn’t hold Owen. And now that he’s found someone else, I don’t want to stand in his way. You see—” she turned directly to me, “you see, I love him.”
There wasn’t anything to say or do in the face of that simple statement. My respect for Susan and my dislike for Carla increased.
Chris leaned over and kissed her cheek. “You go home now, Susan, and be a good little mother. Father’s going to pick you up tonight. He told me he would. But I’m going with Linell, if she’ll let me.”
We took Susan to the elevated station and then stopped in a drugstore for a quick lunch before I went back to the store.
We were both quiet. Chris’s thoughts were her own and I was lost in uneasy speculation. For one thing, it was strange that Chris should be so positive that Tony hadn’t murdered Monty. And for another, I was wondering if there had been anything beneath Susan’s sudden determination to leave town. I liked Chris and I was beginning to be quite fond of Susan, but just the same . . .
When we headed for Cunningham’s, Chris said she’d go along with me.
“I’ve something to do at the store.” There was such determination in her voice that I glanced at her in surprise.
“Just what are you up to?” I asked.
Chris strode along beside me with her blond hair blowing in the wind, and her square young shoulders thrust back.
“I’m going to see Carla Drake,” she announced in a voice that made people turn to look.
I had to skip to keep up with her, though there’s nothing short about my legs. For the first time, I felt ineffectual around Chris. Her sudden resolve was surprising and disconcerting.
“Listen,” I said, tugging at her elbows, “you can’t go barging into Cunningham’s to throw accusations at Carla. It isn’t done. It won’t get you anywhere.”
“It’s going to be done!”
I felt as if a mild summer breeze had turned into a cyclone right under my nose and I wished Bill was around to handle the situation. He had a way with women. I had to admit that.
“What about your father?” I asked as we flew through Cunningham’s revolving doors. “He’ll be wild if he finds out about this. He’ll—”
Chris paid no attention. She went ahead of me down the main aisle with a stride that parted the crowd and made people get out of our way.
I decided I’d better go along to pick up pieces and nurse the wounded, so I got out of the elevator with her on fourth. Fortunately, Owen Gardner wasn’t anywhere in sight. Chris might have much of her wayward mother in her, she might be young and spoiled and helpless in a lot of ways, but evidently there was a strong streak of Gardner in her, too, and I didn’t like to think what might come of a clash with her father when she was in a mood like this.
“Where’s the Drake woman?” she demanded of the startled Miss Babcock.
The buyer began her usual line of opposition to anything she didn’t understand, but Chris brushed her off like a speck of dust and I followed in her wake.
Carla was back in one of the dressing rooms, changing her clothes. In fact, when Chris and I burst in on her she was dressed in black chiffon panties and a bra. And I must say, she looked just as stunning without her clothes as she did with them, which is more than can be said for most women.
Our appearance must have been surprising, but Carla gave us one of her usual dreamy-eyed glances and took a gray frock from a hanger, preparatory to dropping it over her head.
Chris, having gone berserk, did a good job of it. She snatched the frock out of Carla’s hands and threw it at me.
“I want to talk to you!” she cried. “I want to—”
Carla regarded her sadly, but without self-consciousness. “Don’t wrinkle the frock,” she said to me. “It just came in from the press shop.”
“Never mind the frock!” Chris went on. “I want you to keep away from my father! I won’t have you breaking up my home and making my mother unhappy. Women like you aren’t any good. You can’t get a husband of your own, so you go around picking on other women’s husbands. But you’re not going to take my father away. If you ever so much as look at him again, I’ll take you apart.”
Having shot her bolt, Chris collapsed on a stool in the corner and burst wildly into tears. It was all pretty juvenile and hysterical and uncomfortable. I must say Carla took it well.
When she reached for the gray frock and slipped it over her head, it seemed immediately to mold itself to her body. She smoothed a few silver strands of hair that had been ruffled and pulled a zipper up the side of the frock, all without a word to Chris.
Then she went over to where Chris sat huddled on the stool and put the lightest of hands on her bent head.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Truly, I’m so very sorry. I know how much pain you’ve had. I understand pain. But in the end perhaps it will all come right.”
Chris jerked up her head, her eyes stormy and rebellious. “Don’t you touch me! You—you—”
“There are many words,” Carla said. “But they would be ugly on lips like yours. And not so very true.”
Chris had spent her fine anger. She was a little girl again, desperately hurt, and at a loss before this poised and lovely woman. Still she must try, slapping out like a child at the thing that hurt her.
“You’ll be at Sondo’s party tonight! And—and father will be there too, and Susan. If you so much as—”
“Hush,” Carla said. “You needn’t worry about tonight. Tonight I am going to Sondo’s with a very charming young man named Bill Thorne, and if it will make you happier I won’t speak to your father at all. Now if you’ll excuse me—a customer is waiting to see this frock.”
She was out of the dressing room before either of us could speak. I’d meant to ask her exactly what time of the day it had been when she had gone down to the jewelry counter to exchange that pin she’d bought. But somehow she’d eluded me, as well as Chris, and we looked at each other with expressions that admitted we were vanquished.
“I don’t understand her,” Chris quavered. “She just doesn’t act the way a woman like that ought to act. She wasn’t a bit ashamed. She wasn’t even angry.”
“Perhaps she hasn’t any reason to be ashamed,” I said. “Well, now that the storm is over I’ll get back to work.”
We left the dressing room together and as we crossed the floor, I had a glimpse of a graceful wraith in gray, moving before a middle-aged woman who would later be disappointed because that frock declined to make her look like Carla.
The model was a downright menace, I thought unhappily. What chance would a girl with only moderately good looks have against something like that in the eyes of Bill Thorne? I hadn’t thought seriously about meaning anything to Bill until that moment. Not consciously, anyway. I didn’t like men much any more. After Monty, I was a badly disillusioned woman. I certainly didn’t want to get my emotions tangled up over somebody new.
Chris was talking persistently and finally broke through my daze.
“So you will help me, won’t you? I’m sure the janitor will let us in. And now that the police won’t be watching the place—”
“What place?” I asked. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“My goodness!” Chris said. “Weren’t you even listening? Monty’s apartment, of course. I want to go out there tonight. Before we go to Sondo’s. Linell, I just have to set my mind at rest. Maybe there’s nothing. But if there is, I want to find it before the police let Tony go and start all over again.”
“Oh, all right,” I agreed. “I suppose it’s perfectly legal for a wife to go into her husband’s apartment. I certainly can’t see any harm in it.”
Chris gave my arm a little squeeze of gratitude. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. I’d never dare get into all these things alone. I’ll meet you downstairs at closing time.”
I left her, feeling exasperated. It seemed to me that I’d spent half my time lately flying around after Chris like the tail of a kite.