THE CALICO DOG

IT WAS NOTHING SHORT of an invitation to murder.

“You don’t mean to say,” Susan Dare said in a small voice, “that both of them—both of them are living here?”

Idabelle Lasher—Mrs. Jeremiah Lasher, that is, widow of the patent medicine emperor who died last year (resisting, it is said, his own medicine to the end with the strangest vehemence)—Idabelle Lasher turned large pale blue eyes upon Susan and sighed and said:

“Why, yes. There was nothing else to do. I can’t turn my own boy out into the world.”

Susan took a long breath. “Always assuming,” she said, “that one of them is your own boy.”

“Oh, there’s no doubt about that, Miss Dare,” said Idabelle Lasher simply.

“Let me see,” Susan said, “if I have this straight. Your son Derek was lost twenty years ago. Recently he has returned. Rather, two of him has returned.”

Mrs. Lasher was leaning forward, tears in her large pale eyes. “Miss Dare,” she said, “one of them must be my son. I need him so much.”

Her large blandness, her artificiality, the padded ease and softness of her life dropped away before the earnestness and honesty of that brief statement. She was all at once pathetic—no, it was on a larger scale; she was tragic in her need for her child.

“And besides,” she said suddenly and with an odd naïveté, “besides, there’s all that money. Thirty millions.”

“Thirty—” began Susan and stopped. It was simply not comprehensible. Half a million, yes; even a million. But thirty millions!

“But if you can’t tell yourself which of the two young men is your son, how can I? And with so much money involved—”

“That’s just it,” said Mrs. Lasher, leaning forward earnestly again. “I’m sure that Papa would have wanted me to be perfectly sure. The last thing he said to me was to warn me. ‘Watch out for yourself, Idabelle,’ he said. ‘People will be after your money. Impostors.’ ”

“But I don’t see how I can help you,” Susan repeated firmly.

“You must help me,” said Mrs. Lasher. “Christabel Frame told me about you. She said you wrote mystery stories and were the only woman who could help me, and that you were right here in Chicago.”

Her handkerchief poised, she waited with childlike anxiety to see if the name of Christabel Frame had its expected weight with Susan. But it was not altogether the name of one of her most loved friends that influenced Susan. It was the childlike appeal on the part of this woman.

“How do you feel about the two claimants?” she said. “Do you feel more strongly attracted to one than to the other?”

“That’s just the trouble,” said Idabelle Lasher. “I like them both.”

“Let me have the whole story again, won’t you? Try to tell it quite definitely, just as things occurred.”

Mrs. Lasher put the handkerchief away and sat up briskly.

“Well,” she began. “It was like this: …” Two months ago a young man called Dixon March had called on her; he had not gone to her lawyer, he had come to see her. And he had told her a very straight story.

“You must remember something of the story—oh, but, of course, you couldn’t. You’re far too young. And then, too, we weren’t as rich as we are now, when little Derek disappeared. He was four at the time. And his nursemaid disappeared at the same time, and I always thought, Miss Dare, that it was the nursemaid who stole him.”

“Ransom?” asked Susan.

“No. That was the queer part of it. There never was any attempt to demand ransom. I always felt the nursemaid simply wanted him for herself—she was a very peculiar woman.”

Susan brought her gently back to the present.

“So Dixon March is this claimant’s name?”

“Yes. That’s another thing. It seemed so likely to me that he could remember his name—Derek—and perhaps in saying Derek in his baby way, the people at the orphanage thought it was Dixon he was trying to say, so they called him Dixon. The only trouble is—”

“Yes,” said Susan, as Idabelle Lasher’s blue eyes wavered and became troubled.

“Well, you see, the other young man, the other Derek—well, his name is Duane. You see?”

Susan felt a little dizzy. “Just what is Dixon’s story?”

“He said that he was taken in at an orphanage at the age of six. That he vaguely remembers a woman, dark, with a mole on her chin, which is an exact description of the nursemaid. Of course, we’ve had the orphanage records examined, but there’s nothing conclusive and no way to identify the woman; she died—under the name of Sarah Gant, which wasn’t the nursemaid’s name—and she was very poor. A social worker simply arranged for the child’s entrance into the orphanage.”

“What makes him think he is your son, then?”

“Well, it’s this way. He grew up and made as much as he could of the education they gave him and actually was making a nice thing with a construction company when he got to looking into his—his origins, he said—and an account of the description of our Derek, the dates, the fact that he could discover nothing of the woman, Sarah Gant, previous to her life in Ottawa—”

“Ottawa?”

“Yes. That was where he came from. The other one, Duane, from New Orleans. And the fact that, as Dixon remembered her, she looked very much like the newspaper pictures of the nursemaid, suggested the possibility that he was our lost child.”

“So, on the evidence of corresponding dates and the likeness of the woman who was caring for him before he was taken to the orphanage, comes to you, claiming to be your son. A year after your husband died.”

“Yes, and—well—” Mrs. Lasher flushed pinkly. “There are some things he can remember.”

“Things—such as what?”

“The—the green curtains in the nursery. There were green curtains in the nursery. And a—a calico dog. And—and a few other things. The lawyers say that isn’t conclusive. But I think it’s very important that he remembers the calico dog.”

“You’ve had lawyers looking into his claims.”

“Oh, dear, yes,” said Mrs. Lasher. “Exhaustively.”

“But can’t they trace Sarah Gant?”

“Nothing conclusive, Miss Dare.”

“His physical appearance?” suggested Susan.

“Miss Dare,” said Mrs. Lasher. “My Derek was blond with gray eyes. He had no marks of any kind. His teeth were still his baby teeth. Any fair young man with gray eyes might be my son. And both these men—either of these men might be Derek. I’ve looked long and wearily, searching every feature and every expression for a likeness to my boy. It is equally there—and not there. I feel sure that one of them is my son. I am absolutely sure that he has—has come home.”

“But you don’t know which one?” said Susan softly.

“I don’t know which one,” said Idabelle Lasher. “But one of them is Derek.”

She turned suddenly and walked heavily to a window. Her pale green gown of soft crêpe that trailed behind her, its hem touching a priceless thin rug that ought to have been in a museum. Behind her, against the gray wall, hung a small Mauve, exquisite. Twenty-one stories below, traffic flowed unceasingly along Lake Shore Drive.

“One of them must be an impostor,” Idabelle Lasher was saying presently in a choked voice.

“Is Dixon certain he is your son?”

“He says only that he thinks so. But since Duane has come, too, he is more—more positive—”

“Duane, of course.” The rivalry of the two young men must be rather terrible. Susan had a fleeting glimpse again of what it might mean: one of them certainly an impostor, both imposters, perhaps, struggling over Idabelle Lasher’s affections and her fortune. The thought opened, really, quite appalling and horrid vistas.

“What is Duane’s story?” asked Susan.

“That’s what makes it so queer, Miss Dare. Duane’s story—is—well, it is exactly the same.”

Susan stared at her wide green back, cushiony and bulgy in spite of the finest corseting that money could obtain.

“You don’t mean exactly the same!” she cried.

“Exactly,” the woman turned and faced her. “Exactly the same, Miss Dare, except for the names and places. The name of the woman in Duane’s case was Mary Miller, the orphanage was in New Orleans, he was going to art school here in Chicago when—when, he says, just as Dixon said—he began to be more and more interested in his parentage and began investigating. And he, too, remembers things, little things from his babyhood and our house that only Derek could remember.”

“Wait, Mrs. Lasher,” said Susan, grasping at something firm. “Any servant, any of your friends, would know these details also.”

Mrs. Lasher’s pale, big eyes became more prominent.

“You mean, of course, a conspiracy. The lawyers have talked nothing else. But, Miss Dare, they authenticated everything possible to authenticate in both statements. I know what has happened to the few servants we had—all, that is, except the nursemaid. And we don’t have many close friends, Miss Dare. Not since there was so much money. And none of them—none of them would do this.”

“But both young men can’t be Derek,” said Susan desperately. She clutched at common sense again and said: “How soon after your husband’s death did Dixon arrive?”

“Ten months.”

“And Duane?”

“Three months after Dixon.”

“And they are both living here with you now?”

“Yes.” She nodded toward the end of the long room. “They are in the library now.”

“Together?” said Susan irresistibly.

“Yes, of course,” said Mrs. Lasher. “Playing cribbage.”

“I suppose you and your lawyers have tried every possible test?”

“Everything, Miss Dare.”

“You have no fingerprints of the baby?”

“No. That was before fingerprints were so important. We tried blood tests, of course. But they are of the same type.”

“Resemblances to you or your husband?”

“You’ll see for yourself at dinner tonight, Miss Dare. You will help me?”

Susan sighed. “Yes,” she said.

The bedroom to which Mrs. Lasher herself took Susan was done in the French manner with much taffeta, inlaid satinwood, and lace cushions. It was very large and overwhelmingly magnificent, and gilt mirrors reflected Susan’s small brown figure in unending vistas.

Susan dismissed the maid, thanked fate that the only dinner gown she had brought was a new and handsome one, and felt very awed and faintly dissolute in a great, sunken, black marble pool that she wouldn’t have dared call a tub. After all, reflected Susan, finding that she could actually swim a stroke or two, thirty millions was thirty millions.

She got into a white chiffon dress with silver and green at the waist, and was stooping in a froth of white flounces to secure the straps of her flat-heeled silver sandals when Mrs. Lasher knocked.

“It’s Derek’s baby things,” she said in a whisper and with a glance over her fat white shoulder. “Let’s move a little farther from the door.”

They sat down on a cushioned chaise-longue and between them, incongruous against the suave cream satin, Idabelle Lasher spread out certain small objects, touching them lingeringly.

“His little suit—he looked so sweet in yellow. Some pictures. A pink plush teddy bear. His little nursery-school reports—he was already in nursery school, Miss Dare—pre-kindergarten, you know. It was in an experimental stage then, and so interesting. And the calico dog, Miss Dare.”

She stopped there, and Susan looked at the faded, flabby calico dog held so tenderly in those fat diamonded hands. She felt suddenly a wave of cold anger toward the man who was not Derek and who must know that he was not Derek. She took the pictures eagerly.

But they were only pictures. One at about two, made by a photographer; a round baby face without features that were at all distinctive. Two or three pictures of a little boy playing, squinting against the sun.

“Has anyone else seen these things?”

“You mean either of the two boys—either Dixon or Duane? No, Miss Dare.”

“Has anyone at all seen them? Servants? Friends?”

Idabelle’s blue eyes became vague and clouded.

“Long ago, perhaps,” she said. “Oh, many, many years ago. But they’ve been in the safe in my bedroom for years. Before that in a locked closet.”

“How long have they been in the safe?”

“Since we bought this apartment. Ten—no, twelve years.”

“And no one—there’s never been anything like an attempted robbery of that safe?”

“Never. No, Miss Dare. There’s no possible way for either Dixon or Duane to know of the contents of this box except from memory.”

“And Dixon remembers the calico dog?”

“Yes.” The prominent blue eyes wavered again, and Mrs. Lasher rose and walked toward the door. She paused then and looked at Susan again.

“And Duane remembers the teddy bear and described it to me,” she said definitely and went away.

There was a touch of comedy about it, and, like all comedy, it overlay tragedy.

Left to herself, Susan studied the pictures again thoughtfully. The nursery-school reports, written out in beautiful “vertical” handwriting. Music: A good ear. Memory: Very good. Adaptability: Very good. Sociability: Inclined to shyness. Rhythm: Poor (advise skipping games at home). Conduct: (this varied; with at least once a suggestive blank and once a somewhat terse remark to the effect that there had been considerable disturbance during the half hours devoted to naps and a strong suggestion that Derek was at the bottom of it). Susan smiled there and began to like baby Derek. And it was just then that she found the first indication of an identifying trait. And that was after the heading, Games. One report said: Quick. Another said: Mentally quick but does not coordinate muscles well. And a third said, definitely pinning the thing down: Tendency to use left hand which we are endeavoring to correct.

Tendency to use left hand. An inborn tendency, cropping out again and again all through life. In those days, of course, it had been rigidly corrected—thereby inducing all manner of ills, according to more recent trends of education. But was it ever altogether conquered?

Presently Susan put the things in the box again and went to Mrs. Lasher’s room. And Susan had the somewhat dubious satisfaction of watching Mrs. Lasher open a delicate ivory panel which disclosed a very utilitarian steel safe set in the wall behind it and place the box securely in the safe.

“Did you find anything that will be of help?” asked Mrs. Lasher, closing the panel.

“I don’t know,” said Susan. “I’m afraid there’s nothing very certain. Do Dixon and Duane know why I am here?”

“No,” said Mrs. Lasher, revealing unexpected cunning. “I told them you were a dear friend of Christabel’s. And that you were very much interested in their—my—our situation. We talk it over, you know, very frankly, Miss Dare. The boys are as anxious as I am to discover the truth of it.”

Again, thought Susan feeling baffled, as the true Derek would be. She followed Mrs. Lasher toward the drawing room again, prepared heartily to dislike both men.

But the man sipping a cocktail in the doorway of the library was much too old to be either Dixon or Duane.

“Major Briggs,” said Mrs. Lasher. “Christabel’s friend, Susan, Tom.” She turned to Susan. “Major Tom Briggs is our closest friend. He was like a brother to my husband, and has been to me.”

“Never a brother,” said Major Briggs with an air of gallantry. “Say, rather, an admirer. So this is Christabel’s little friend.” He put down his cocktail glass and bowed and took Susan’s hand only a fraction too tenderly.

Then Mrs. Lasher drifted across the room where Susan was aware of two pairs of black shoulders rising to greet her, and Major Briggs said beamingly:

“How happy we are to have you with us, my dear. I suppose Idabelle has told you of our—our problem.”

He was about Susan’s height; white-haired, rather puffy under the eyes, and a bit too pink, with hands that were inclined to shake. He adjusted his gold-rimmed eyeglasses, then let them drop the length of their black ribbon and said:

“What do you think of it, my dear?”

“I don’t know,” said Susan. “What do you think?”

“Well, my dear, it’s a bit difficult, you know. When Idabelle herself doesn’t know. When the most rigid—yes, the most rigid and searching investigation on the part of highly trained and experienced investigators has failed to discover—ah—the identity of the lost heir, how may my own poor powers avail!” He finished his cocktail, gulped, and said blandly: “But it’s Duane.”

“What—” said Susan.

“I said, it’s Duane. He is the heir. Anybody could see it with half an eye. Spittin’ image of his dad. Here they come ,now.”

They were alike and yet not alike at all. Both were rather tall, slender, and well made. Both had medium-brown hair. Both had grayish-blue eyes. Neither was particularly handsome. Neither was exactly unhandsome. Their features were not at all alike in bone structure, yet neither had features that were in any way distinctive. Their description on a passport would not have varied by a single word. Actually they were altogether unlike each other.

With the salad Major Briggs roused to point out a portrait that hung on the opposite wall.

“Jeremiah Lasher,” he said, waving a pink hand in that direction. He glanced meaningly at Susan and added: “Do you see any resemblance, Miss Susan? I mean between my old friend and one of these lads here.”

One of the lads—it was Dixon—wriggled perceptibly, but Duane smiled.

“We are not at all embarrassed, Miss Susan,” he said pleasantly. “We are both quite accustomed to this sort of scrutiny.” He laughed lightly, and Idabelle smiled, and Dixon said:

“Does Miss Dare know about this?”

“Oh, yes,” said Idabelle, turning as quickly and attentively to him as she had turned to Duane. “There’s no secret about it.”

“No,” said Dixon somewhat crisply. “There’s certainly no secret about it.”

There was, however, no further mention of the problem of identity during the rest of the evening. Indeed, it was a very calm and slightly dull evening except for the affair of Major Briggs and the draft.

That happened just after dinner. Susan and Mrs. Lasher were sitting over coffee in the drawing room, and the three men were presumably lingering in the dining room.

It had been altogether quiet in the drawing room, yet there had not been audible even the distant murmur of the men’s voices. Thus the queer, choked shout that arose in the dining room came as a definite shock to the two women.

It all happened in an instant. They hadn’t themselves time to move or inquire before Duane appeared in the doorway. He was laughing but looked pale.

“It’s all right,” he said. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Duane,” said Idabelle Lasher gaspingly. “What—”

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said swiftly. “It’s nothing.” He turned to look down the hall at someone approaching and added: “Here he is, safe and sound.”

He stood aside, and Major Briggs appeared in the doorway. He looked so shocked and purple that both women moved hurriedly forward, and Idabelle Lasher said: “Here—on the divan. Ring for brandy, Duane. Lie down here, Major.”

“Oh, no—no,” said Major Briggs stertorously. “No. I’m quite all right.”

Duane, however, supported him to the divan, and Dixon appeared in the doorway.

“What happened?” he said.

Major Briggs waved his hands feebly. Duane said:

“The Major nearly went out the window.”

“O-h-h-h—”—it was Idabelle in a thin, long scream.

“Oh, it’s all right,” said Major Briggs shakenly. “I caught hold of the curtain. By God, I’m glad you had heavy curtain rods at that window, Idabelle.”

She was fussing around him, her hands shaking, her face ghastly under its make-up.

“But how could you—” she was saying jerkily—“what on earth—how could it have happened—”

“It’s the draft,” said the Major irascibly. “The confounded draft on my neck. I got up to close the window and—I nearly went out!”

“But how could you—” began Idabelle again.

“I don’t know how it happened,” said the Major. “Just all at once—” A look of perplexity came slowly over his face. “Queer,” said Major Briggs suddenly, “I suppose it was the draft. But it was exactly as if—” He stopped, and Idabelle cried:

“As if what?”

“As if someone had pushed me,” said the Major.

Perhaps it was fortunate that the butler arrived just then, and there was the slight diversion of getting the Major to stretch out full length on the divan and sip a restorative.

And somehow in the conversation it emerged that neither Dixon nor Duane had been in the dining room when the thing had happened.

“There’d been a disagreement over—well, it was over inheritance tax,” said Dixon flushing. “Duane had gone to the library to look in an encyclopedia, and I had gone to my room to get the evening paper which had some reference to it. So the Major was alone when it happened. I knew nothing of it until I heard the commotion in here.”

“I,” said Duane, watching Dixon, “heard the Major’s shout from the library and hurried across.”

That night, late, after Major Briggs had gone home, and Susan was again alone in the paralyzing magnificence of the French bedroom, she still kept thinking of the window and Major Briggs. And she put up her own window so circumspectly that she didn’t get enough air during the night and woke struggling with a silk-covered eiderdown under the impression that she herself was being thrust out the window.

It was only a nightmare, of course, induced as much as anything by her own hatred of heights. But it gave an impulse to the course she proposed to Mrs. Lasher that very morning.

It was true, of course, that the thing may have been exactly what it appeared to be, and that was, an accident. But if it was not accident, there were only two possibilities.

“Do you mean,” cried Mrs. Lasher incredulously when Susan had finished her brief suggestion, “that I’m to say openly that Duane is my son! But you don’t understand, Miss Dare. I’m not sure. It may be Dixon.”

“I know,” said Susan. “And I may be wrong. But I think it might help if you will announce to—oh, only to Major Briggs and the two men—that you are convinced that it is Duane and are taking steps for legal recognition of the fact.”

“Why? What do you think will happen? How will it help things to do that?”

“I’m not at all sure it will help,” said Susan wearily. “But it’s the only thing I see to do. And I think that you may as well do it right away.”

“Today?” said Mrs. Lasher reluctantly.

“At lunch,” said Susan inexorably. “Telephone to invite Major Briggs now.”

“Oh, very well,” said Idabelle Lasher. “After all, it will please Tom Briggs. He has been urging me to make a decision. He seems certain that it is Duane.”

But Susan, present and watching closely, could detect nothing except that Idabelle Lasher, once she was committed to a course, undertook it with thoroughness. Her fondness for Duane, her kindness to Dixon, her air of relief at having settled so momentous a question, left nothing to be desired. Susan was sure that the men were convinced. There was, to be sure, a shade of triumph in Duane’s demeanor, and he was magnanimous with Dixon—as, indeed, he could well afford to be. Dixon was silent and rather pale and looked as if he had not expected the decision and was a bit stunned by it. Major Briggs was incredulous at first, and then openly jubilant, and toasted all of them.

Indeed, what with toasts and speeches on the part of Major Briggs, the lunch rather prolonged itself, and it was late afternoon before the Major had gone and Susan and Mrs. Lasher met alone for a moment in the library.

Idabelle was flushed and worried.

“Was it all right, Miss Dare?” she asked in a stage whisper.

“Perfectly,” said Susan.

“Then—then do you know—”

“Not yet,” said Susan. “But keep Dixon here.”

“Very well,” said Idabelle.

The rest of the day passed quietly and not, from Susan’s point of view, at all valuably, although Susan tried to prove something about the possible left-handedness of the real Derek. Badminton and several games of billiards resulted only in displaying the more perfectly a consistent right-handedness on the part of both the claimants.

Dressing again for dinner, Susan looked at herself ruefully in the great mirror.

She had never in her life felt so utterly helpless, and the thought of Idabelle Lasher’s faith in her hurt. After all, she ought to have realized her own limits: the problem that Mrs. Lasher had set her was one that would have baffled—that, indeed, had baffled—experts. Who was she, Susan Dare, to attempt its solution?

The course of action she had laid out for Idabelle Lasher had certainly, thus far, had no development beyond heightening an already tense situation. It was quite possible that she was mistaken and that nothing at all would come of it. And if not, what then?

Idabelle Lasher’s pale eyes and anxious, beseeching hands hovered again before Susan, and she jerked her satin slip savagely over her head—thereby pulling loose a shoulder strap and being obliged to ring for the maid who sewed the strap neatly and rearranged Susan’s hair.

“You’ll be going to the party tonight, ma’am?” said the maid in a pleasant Irish accent.

“Party?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am. Didn’t you know? It’s the Charity Ball. At the Dycke Hotel. In the Chandelier Ballroom. A grand, big party, ma’am. Madame is wearing her pearls. Will you bend your head, please, ma’am.”

Susan bent her head and felt her white chiffon being slipped deftly over it. When she emerged she said:

“Is the entire family going?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am. And Major Briggs. There you are, ma’am—and I do say you look beautiful. There’s orchids, ma’am, from Mr. Duane. And gardenias from Mr. Dixon. I believe,” said the maid thoughtfully, “that I could put them all together. That’s what I’m doing for Madame.”

“Very well,” said Susan recklessly. “Put them all together.”

It made a somewhat staggering decoration—staggering, thought Susan, but positively abandoned in luxuriousness. So, too, was the long town car which waited for them promptly at ten when they emerged from the towering apartment house. Susan, leaning back in her seat between Major Briggs and Idabelle Lasher, was always afterward to remember that short ride through crowded, lighted streets to the Dycke Hotel.

No one spoke. Perhaps only Susan was aware (and suddenly realized that she was aware) of the surging desires and needs and feelings that were bottled up together in the tonneau of that long, gliding car. She was aware of it quite suddenly and tinglingly.

Nothing had happened. Nothing, all through that long dinner from which they had just come, had been said that was at all provocative.

Yet all at once Susan was aware of a queer kind of excitement.

She looked at the black shoulders of the two men, Duane and Dixon, riding along beside each other. Dixon sat stiff and straight; his shoulders looked rigid and unmoving. He had taken it rather well, she thought; did he guess Idabelle’s decision was not the true one? Or was he still stunned by it?

Or was there something back of that silence? Had she underestimated the force and possible violence of Dixon’s reaction? Susan frowned: it was dangerous enough without that.

They arrived at the hotel. Their sudden emergence from the silence of the car, with its undercurrent of emotion, into brilliant lights and crowds and the gay lilt of an orchestra somewhere, had its customary tonic effect. Even Dixon shook off his air of brooding and, as they finally strolled into the Chandelier Room, and Duane and Mrs. Lasher danced smoothly into the revolving colors, asked Susan to dance.

They left the Major smiling approval and buying cigarettes from a girl in blue pantaloons.

The momentary gayety with which Dixon had asked Susan to dance faded at once. He danced conscientiously but without much spirit and said nothing. Susan glanced up at his face once or twice; his direct, dark blue eyes looked straight ahead, and his face was rather pale and set.

Presently Susan said: “Oh, there’s Idabelle!”

At once Dixon lost step. Susan recovered herself and her small silver sandals rather deftly, and Idabelle, large and pink and jewel-laden, danced past them in Duane’s arms. She smiled at Dixon anxiously and looked, above her pearls, rather worried.

Dixon’s eyebrows were a straight dark line, and he was white around the mouth.

“I’m sorry, Dixon,” said Susan. She tried to catch step with him, for the moment, and added: “Please don’t mind my speaking about it. We are all thinking of it. I do think you behave very well.”

He looked straight over her head, danced several somewhat erratic steps, and said suddenly:

“It was so—unexpected. And you see, I was so sure of it.”

“Why were you so sure?” asked Susan.

He hesitated, then burst out again:

“Because of the dog,” he said savagely, stepping on one of Susan’s silver toes. She removed it with Spartan composure, and he said: “The calico dog, you know. And the green curtains. If I had known there was so much money involved, I don’t think I’d have come to—Idabelle. But then, when I did know, and this other—fellow turned up, why, of course, I felt like sticking it out!”

He paused, and Susan felt his arm tighten around her waist. She looked up, and his face was suddenly chalk white and his eyes blazing.

“Duane!” he said hoarsely. “I hate him. I could kill him with my own hands.”

The next dance was a tango, and Susan danced it with Duane. His eyes were shining, and his face flushed with excitement and gayety.

He was a born dancer, and Susan relaxed in the perfect ease of his steps. He held her very closely, complimented her gracefully, and talked all the time, and for a few moments Susan merely enjoyed the fast swirl of the lovely Argentine dance. Then Idabelle and Dixon went past, and Susan saw again the expression of Dixon’s set white face as he looked at Duane, and Idabelle’s swimming eyes above her pink face and bare pink neck.

The rest of what was probably a perfect dance was lost on Susan, busy about certain concerns of her own which involved some adjusting of the flowers on her shoulder. And the moment the dance was over she slipped away.

White chiffon billowed around her, and her gardenias sent up a warm fragrance as she huddled into a telephone booth. She made sure the flowers were secure and unrevealing upon her shoulder, steadied her breath, and smiled a little tremulously as she dialed a number she very well knew. It was getting to be a habit—calling Jim Byrne, her newspaper friend, when she herself had reached an impasse. But she needed him. Needed him at once.

“Jim—Jim,” she said. “It’s Susan. Listen. Get into a white tie and come as fast as you can to the Dycke Hotel. The Chandelier Room.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Well,” said Susan in a small voice. “I’ve set something going that—that I’m afraid is going to be more than I meant—”

“You’re good at stirring up things, Sue,” he said “What’s the trouble now?”

“Hurry, Jim,” said Susan. “I mean it.” She caught her breath. “I—I’m afraid,” she said.

His voice changed.

“I’ll be right there. Watch for me at the door.” The telephone clicked, and Susan leaned rather weakly against the wall of the telephone booth.

She went back to the Chandelier Room. Idabelle Lasher, pink and worried-looking, and Major Briggs and the two younger men made a little group standing together, talking. She breathed a little sigh of relief. So long as they remained together, and remained in that room surrounded by hundreds of witnesses, it was all right. Surely it was all right. People didn’t murder in cold blood when other people were looking on.

It was Idabelle who remembered her duties as hostess and suggested the fortune teller.

“She’s very good, they say,” said Idabelle. “She’s a professional, not just doing it for a stunt, you know. She’s got a booth in one of the rooms.”

“By all means, my dear,” said Major Briggs at once. “This way?” She put her hand on his arm and, with Duane at her other side, moved away, and Dixon and Susan followed. Susan cast a worried look toward the entrance. But Jim couldn’t possibly get there in less than thirty minutes, and by that time they would have returned.

Dixon said: “Was it the Major that convinced Idabelle that Duane is her son?”

Susan hesitated.

“I don’t know,” she said cautiously, “how strong the Major’s influence has been.”

Her caution was not successful. As they left the ballroom and turned down a corridor, he whirled toward her.

“This thing isn’t over yet,” he said with the sudden savagery that had blazed out in him while they were dancing.

She said nothing, however, for Major Briggs was beckoning jauntily from a doorway.

“Here it is,” he said in a stage whisper as they approached him. “Idabelle has already gone in. And would you believe it, the fortune teller charges twenty dollars a throw!”

The room was small: a dining room, probably, for small parties. Across the end of it a kind of tent had been arranged with many gayly striped curtains.

Possibly due to her fees, the fortune teller did not appear to be very popular; at least, there were no others waiting, and no one came to the door except a bellboy with a tray in his hand who looked them over searchingly, murmured something that sounded very much like Mr. Haymow, and wandered away. Duane sat nonchalantly on the small of his back, smoking. The Major seemed a bit nervous and moved restlessly about. Dixon stood just behind Susan. Odd that she could feel his hatred for the man lolling there in the armchair almost as if it were a palpable, living thing flowing outward in waves. Susan’s sense of danger was growing sharper. But surely it was safe—so long as they were together.

The draperies of the tent moved confusedly and opened, and Idabelle stood there, smiling and beckoning to Susan.

“Come inside, my dear,” she said. “She wants you, too.”

Susan hesitated. But, after all, so long as the three men were together, nothing could happen. Dixon gave her a sharp look, and Susan moved across the room. She felt a slight added qualm when she discovered that in an effort probably to add mystery to the fortune teller’s trade, the swathing curtains had been arranged so that one entered a kind of narrow passage among them, which one followed with several turns before arriving at the looped-up curtain which made an entrance to the center of the maze and faced the fortune teller herself.

Susan stifled her uneasiness and sat down on some cushions beside Idabelle. The fortune teller, in Egyptian costume, with French accent and a Sibylline manner began to talk. Beyond the curtains and the drone of her voice Susan could hear little, although once she thought there were voices.

But the thing, when it happened, gave no warning.

There was only, suddenly, a great dull shock of sound that brought Susan taut and upright and left the fortune teller gasping and still and turned Idabelle Lasher’s broad pinkness to a queer pale mauve.

“What was that?” whispered Idabelle in a choked way.

And the fortune teller cried: “It’s a gunshot—out there!”

Susan stumbled and groped through the folds of draperies, trying to find the way through the entangling maze of curtains and out of the tent. Then all at once they were outside the curtains and staring at a figure that lay huddled on the floor, and there were people pouring in the door from the hall, and confusion everywhere.

It was Major Briggs. And he’d been shot and was dead, and there was no revolver anywhere.

Susan felt ill and faint and after one long look backed away to the window. Idabelle was weeping, her faced blotched. Dixon was beside her, and then suddenly someone from the hotel had closed the door into the corridor. And a bellboy’s voice, the one who’d wandered into the room looking for Mr. Haymow, rose shrilly above the tumult.

“Nobody at all,” he was saying. “Nobody came out of the room. I was at the end of the corridor when I heard the shot and this is the only room on this side that’s unlocked and in use tonight. So I ran down here, and I can swear that nobody came out of the room after the shot was fired. Not before I reached it.”

“Was anybody here when you came in? What did you see?” It was the manager, fat, worried, but competently keeping the door behind him closed against further intrusion.

“Just this man on the floor. He was dead already.”

“And nobody in the room?”

“Nobody. Nobody then. But I’d hardly got to him before there was people running into the room. And these three women came out of this tent.”

The manager looked at Idabelle—at Susan.

“He was with you?” he asked Idabelle.

“Oh, yes, yes,” sobbed Idabelle. “It’s Major Briggs.”

The manager started to speak, stopped, began again:

“I’ve sent for the police,” he said. “You folks that were in his party—how many of you are there?”

“Just Miss Dare and me,” sobbed Idabelle. “And—” she singled out Dixon and Duane—“these two men.”

“All right. You folks stay right here, will you? And you, too, miss—” indicating the fortune teller—“and the bellboy. The rest of you will go to a room across the hall. Sorry, but I’ll have to hold you till the police get here.”

It was not well received. There were murmurs of outrage and horrified looks over slender bare backs and the indignant rustle of trailing gowns, but the scattered groups that had pressed into the room did file slowly out again under the firm look of the manager.

The manager closed the door and said briskly:

“Now, if you folks will be good enough to stay right here, it won’t be long till the police arrive.”

“A doctor,” faltered Idabelle. “Can’t we have a doctor?”

The manager looked at the sodden, lifeless body.

“You don’t want a doctor, ma’am,” he said. “What you want is an under—” He stopped abruptly and reverted to his professional suavity. “We’ll do everything in our power to save your feelings, Mrs. Lasher,” he said. “At the same time we would much appreciate your—er—assistance. You see, the Charity Ball being what it is, we’ve got to keep this thing quiet.” He was obviously distressed but still suave and competent. “Now then,” he said, “I’ve got to make some arrangements—if you’ll just stay here.” He put his hand on the door knob and then turned toward them again and said quite definitely, looking at the floor: “It would be just as well if none of you were to try to leave.”

With that he was gone.

The fortune teller sank down into a chair and said, “Good gracious me,” with some emphasis and a Middle-Western accent. The bellboy retired nonchalantly to a corner and stood there, looking very childish in his smart white uniform, but very knowing. And Idabelle Lasher looked at the man at her feet and began to sob again, and Duane tried to comfort her, while Dixon shoved his hands in his pockets and glowered at nothing.

“But I don’t see,” wailed Idabelle, “how it could have happened!” Odd, thought Susan, that she didn’t ask who did it. That would be the natural question. Or why? Why had a man who was—as she had said, like a brother to her—been murdered?

Duane patted Idabelle’s heaving bare shoulders and said something soothing, and Idabelle wrung her hands and cried again: “How could it have happened! We were all together—he was not alone a moment—”

Dixon stirred.

“Oh, yes, he was alone,” he said. “He wanted a drink, and I’d gone to hunt a waiter.”

“And you forget to mention,” said Duane icily, “that I had gone with you.”

“You left this room at the same time, but that’s all I know.”

“I went at the same time you did. I stopped to buy cigarettes, and you vanished. I don’t know where you went, but I didn’t see you again. Not till I came back with the crowd into this room. Came back to find you already here.”

“What do you mean by that?” Dixon’s eyes were blazing in his white face, and his hands were working. “If you are accusing me of murder, say so straight out like a man instead of an insolent little puppy.”

Duane was white, too, but composed.

“All right,” he said. “You know whether you murdered him or not. All I know is when I got back I found him dead and you already here.”

“You—”

“Dixon!” cried Idabelle sharply, her laces swirling as she moved hurriedly between the two men. “Stop this! I won’t have it. There’ll be time enough for questions when the police come. When the police—” She dabbed at her mouth, which was still trembling, and at her chin, and her fingers went on to her throat, groped, closed convulsively, and she screamed: “My pearls!”

“Pearls?” said Dixon staring, and Duane darted forward.

“Pearls—they’re gone!”

The fortune teller had started upward defensively, and the bellboy’s eyes were like two saucers. Susan said:

“They are certainly somewhere in the room, Mrs. Lasher. And the police will find them for you. There’s no need to search for them, now.”

Susan pushed a chair toward her, and she sank helplessly into it.

“Tom murdered—and now my pearls gone—and I don’t know which is Derek, and I—I don’t know what to do—” Her shoulders heaved, and her face was hidden in her handkerchief, and her corseted fat body collapsed into lines of utter despair.

Susan said deliberately:

“The room will be searched, Mrs. Lasher, every square inch of it—ourselves included. There is nothing,” said Susan with soft emphasis. “Nothing that they will miss.”

Then Dixon stepped forward. His face was set, and there was an ominous flare of light in his eyes.

He put his hand upon Idabelle’s shoulder to force her to look up into his face, and brushed aside Duane, who had moved quickly forward, too, as if his defeated rival had threatened Idabelle.

“Why—why, Dixon,” faltered Idabelle Lasher, “you look so strange. What is it? Don’t, my dear, you are hurting my shoulder—”

Duane cried: “Let her alone. Let her alone.” And then to Idabelle: “Don’t pay any attention to him. He’s out of his mind. He’s—” He clutched at Dixon’s arm, but Dixon turned, gave him one black look, and thrust him away so forcefully that Duane staggered backward against the walls of the tent and clutched at the curtains to save himself from falling.

“Look here,” said Dixon grimly to Idabelle, “what do you mean when you say as you did just now, that you don’t know which is Derek? What do you mean? You must tell me. It isn’t fair. What do you mean?”

His fingers sank into her bulging flesh. She stared upward as if hypnotized, choking. “I meant just that, Dixon. I don’t know yet. I only said I had decided in order to—”

“In order to what?” said Dixon inexorably.

A queer little tingle ran along Susan’s nerves, and she edged toward the door. She must get help. Duane’s eyes were strange and terribly bright. He still clutched the garishly striped curtains behind him. Susan took another silent step and another toward the door without removing her gaze from the tableau, and Idabelle Lasher looked up into Dixon’s face, and her lips moved flabbily, and she said the strangest thing:

“How like your father you are, Derek.”

Susan’s heart got up into her throat and left a very curious empty place in the pit of her stomach. She probably moved a little farther toward the door, but was never sure, for all at once, while mother and son stared revealingly and certainly at each other, Duane’s white face and queer bright eyes vanished.

Susan was going to run. She was going to fling herself out the door and shriek for help. For there was going to be another murder in that room. There was going to be another murder, and she couldn’t stop it, she couldn’t do anything, she couldn’t even scream a warning. Then Duane’s black figure was outlined against the tent again. And he held a revolver in his hand. The fortune teller said: “Oh, my God” and the white streak that had been the bellboy dissolved rapidly behind a chair.

‘Call him your son if you want to,” Duane said in an odd jerky way, addressing Mrs. Lasher and Derek confusedly. “Then your son’s a murderer. He killed Briggs. He hid in the folds of this curtain till—the room was full of people—and then he came out again. He left his revolver there. And here it is. Don’t move. One word or move out of any of you, and I’ll shoot.” He stopped to take a breath. He was smiling a little and panting. “Don’t move,” he said again sharply. “I’m going to hand you over to the police, Mr. Derek. You won’t be so anxious to say he s your son then, perhaps. It’s his revolver. He killed Briggs with it because Briggs favored me. He knew it, and he did it for revenge.”

He was crossing the room with smooth steps; holding the revolver poised threateningly, and his eyes were rapidly shifting from one to another. Susan hadn’t the slightest doubt that the smallest move would bring a revolver shot crashing through someone’s brain. He’s going to escape, she thought, he’s going to escape. I can’t do a thing. And he’s mad with rage. Mad with the terrible excitement of having already killed once.

Duane caught the flicker of Susan’s eyes. He was near her now, so near that he could have touched her. He cried:

“It’s you that’s done this! You that advised her! You were on his side! Well—” He’d reached the door now, and there was nothing they could do. He was gloating openly, the way of escape before him. In an excess of dreadful triumphant excitement, he cried: “I’ll shoot you first—it’s too bad, when you are so pretty. But I’m going to do it.” It’s the certainty, thought Susan numbly; Idabelle is so certain that Derek is the other one that Duane knows it, too. He knows there’s no use in going on with it. And he knew, when I said what I said about the pearls, that I know.

She felt oddly dizzy. Something was moving. Was she going to faint—was she—something was moving, and it was the door behind Duane. It was moving silently, very slowly.

Susan steeled her eyes not to reveal that knowledge. If only Idabelle and Derek would not move—would not see those panels move and betray what they had seen.

Duane laughed.

And Derek moved again, and Idabelle tried to thrust him away from her, and Duane’s revolver jerked and jerked again, and the door pushed Duane suddenly to one side and there was a crash of glass, and voices and flashing movement. Susan knew only that someone had pinioned Duane from behind and was holding his arms close to his side. Duane gasped, his hand writhed and dropped the revolver.

Then somebody at the door dragged Duane away; Susan realized confusedly that there were police there. And Jim Byrne stood at her elbow. He looked unwontedly handsome in white tie and tails, but very angry. He said:

“Go home, Sue. Get out of here.”

It was literally impossible for Susan to speak or move. Jim stared at her as if nobody else was in the room, got out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead with it.

“I’ve aged ten years in the last five minutes,” he said. He glanced around. Saw Major Briggs’s body there on the floor—saw Idabelle Lasher and Derek—saw the fortune teller and the bellboy.

“Is that Mrs. Jeremiah Lasher over there?” he said to Susan.

Mrs. Lasher opened her eyes, looked at him, and closed them again.

Jim looked meditatively at a revolver in his hand, put it in his pocket, and said briskly:

“You can stay for a while, Susan. Until I hear the whole story. Who shot Major Briggs?”

Susan’s lips moved and Derek straightened up and cried:

“Oh, it’s my revolver all right. But I didn’t kill Major Briggs—I don’t expect anyone to believe me, but I didn’t.”

“He didn’t,” said Susan wearily. “Duane killed Major Briggs. He killed him with Derek’s revolver, perhaps, but it was Duane who did the murder.”

Jim did not question her statement, but Derek said eagerly:

“How do you know? Can you prove it?”

“I think so,” said Susan. “You see, Duane had a revolver when I danced with him. It was in his pocket. That’s when I phoned for you, Jim. But I was too late.”

“But how—” said Jim.

“Oh, when Duane accused Derek, he actually described the way he himself murdered Major Briggs and concealed himself and the revolver in the folds of the tent until the room was full of people and he could quietly mingle with them as if he had come from the hall. We were all staring at Major Briggs. It was very simple. Duane had got hold of Derek’s revolver and knew it would be traced to Derek and the blame put upon him, since Derek had every reason to wish to revenge himself upon Major Briggs.”

Idabelle had opened her eyes. They looked a bit glassy but were more sensible.

“Why—” she said—“why did Duane kill Major Briggs?”

“I suppose because Major Briggs had backed him. You see,” said Susan gently, “one of the claimants had to be an impostor and a deliberate one. And the attack upon Major Briggs last night suggested either that he knew too much or was a conspirator himself. The exact coinciding of the stories (particularly clever on Major Briggs’s part) and the fact that Duane turned up after Major Briggs had had time to search for someone who would fulfill the requirements necessary to make a claim to being your son, seemed to me an indication of conspiracy; besides, the very nature of the case involved imposture. But there had to be a conspiracy; someone had to tell one of the claimants about the things upon which to base his claim, especially about the memories of the baby things—the calico dog,” said Susan with a little smile, “and the plush teddy bear. It had to be someone who had known you long ago and could have seen those things before you put them away in the safe. Someone who knew all your circumstances.”

“You mean that Major Briggs planned Duane’s claim—planned the whole thing? But why—” Idabelle’s eyes were full of tears again.

“There’s only one possible reason,” said Susan. “He must have needed money very badly, and Duane, coming into thirty millions of dollars, would have been obliged to share his spoils.”

“Then Derek—I mean Dixon—I mean,” said Idabelle confusedly, clutching at Derek, “this one. He really is my son?”

“You know he is,” said Susan. “You realized it yourself when you were under emotional stress and obliged to feel instead of reason about it. However, there’s reason for it, too. He is Derek.”

“He—is—Derek,” said Idabelle catching at Susan’s words. “You are sure?”

“Yes,” said Susan quietly. “He is Derek. You see, I’d forgotten something. Something physical that never changes all through life. That is, a sense of rhythm. Derek has no sense of rhythm and has never had. Duane was a born dancer.”

Idabelle said: “Thank God!” She looked at Susan, looked at Derek, and quite suddenly became herself again. She got up briskly, glanced at Major Briggs’s body, said calmly: “We’ll try to keep some of this quiet. I’ll see that things are done decently—after all, poor old fellow, he did love his comforts. Now, then. Oh, yes, if someone will just see the manager of the hotel about my pearls—”

Susan put a startled hand to her gardenias.

“I’d forgotten your pearls, too. Here they are.” She fumbled a moment among the flowers, detached a string of flowing beauty, and held it toward Idabelle. “I took them from Duane while we were dancing.”

“Duane,” said Idabelle. “But—” She took the pearls and said incredulously: “They are mine!”

“He had taken them while he danced with you. During the next dance you passed me, and I saw that your neck was bare.”

Jim turned to Susan.

“Are you sure about that, Susan?” he said. “I’ve managed to get the outline of the story, you know. And I don’t think the false claimant would have taken such a risk. Not with thirty millions in his pocket, so to speak.”

“Oh, they were for the Major,” said Susan. “At least, I think that was the reason. I don’t know yet, but I think we’ll find that he was pretty hard pressed for cash and had to have some right away. Immediately. Duane probably balked at demanding money of Mrs. Lasher so soon, so the Major suggested the pearls. And Duane was in no position to refuse the Major’s demands. Then, you see, he had no pearls because I took them; he and the Major must have quarreled, and Duane, who had already foreseen that he would be at Major Briggs’s mercy as long as the Major lived, was already prepared for any opportunity to kill him. After he had once got to Idabelle, he no longer needed the Major. He had armed himself with Derek’s revolver after what must have seemed to him a heaven-sent chance to stage an accident had failed. Mrs. Lasher’s decision removed any remaining small value that the Major was to him and made Major Briggs only a menace. But I think he wasn’t sure just what he would do or how—he acceded to the Major’s demand for the pearls because it was at the moment the simplest course. But he was ready and anxious to kill him, and when he knew that the pearls had gone from his pocket he must have guessed that I had taken them. And he decided to get rid of Major Briggs at once, before he could possibly tell anything, for any story the Major chose to tell would have been believed by Mrs. Lasher. Later, when I said that the police would search the room, he knew that I knew. And that I knew the revolver was still here.”

“Is that why you advised me to announce my decision that Duane was my son?” demanded Idabelle Lasher.

Susan shuddered and tried not to look at that black heap across the room.

“No,” she said steadily. “I didn’t dream of—murder. I only thought that it might bring the conspiracy that evidently existed somewhere into the open.”

Jim said: “Here are the police.”

Queer, thought Susan much later, riding along the Drive in Jim’s car, with her white chiffon flounces tucked in carefully, and her green velvet wrap pulled tightly about her throat against the chill night breeze, and the scent of gardenias mingling with the scent of Jim’s cigarette—queer how often her adventures ended like this: driving silently homeward in Jim’s car.

She glanced at the irregular profile behind the wheel and said: “I suppose you know you saved my life tonight.”

His mouth tightened in the little glow from the dashlight. Presently he said:

“How did you know he had the pearls in his pocket?”

“Felt ’em,” said Susan. “And you can’t imagine how terribly easy it was to take them. In all probability a really brilliant career in picking pockets was sacrificed when I was provided with moral scruples.”

The light went to yellow and then red, and Jim stopped. He turned and gave Susan a long look through the dusk, and then slowly took her hand in his own warm fingers for a second or two before the light went to green again.