CHAPTER 16

“—That surprises you, doctor?”

For a long two minutes, Jonas Smith M.D. said nothing at all. He sat in a virtual state of suspended animation, staring stupidly across his desk, trying mechanically to make up his mind whether what he thought he had heard Sergeant Digges say was what Sergeant Digges had in fact said.

What he thought he had heard him say was that the body he had seen in the Milnors’ cottage out at Ardundel Creek was the body of Franklin Grymes. That was so completely cockeyed he must have made some mistake. But Sergeant Digges was sitting there, looking at him with a kind of triumphant glaze over his alert hard-bitten countenance. There seemed to be no doubt he had said it, and moreover that he meant it.

“I thought maybe it would surprise you,” Sergeant Digges said quietly.

“Surprise me?”

The word was understatement to a comic degree. Jonas laughed mirthlessly.

“It really does, Sergeant. In fact it surprises the hell out of me—so much I don’t believe a word of it. It… it can’t be true, that’s all. Are you… sure about it?”

Sergeant Digges nodded.

“Fingerprints don’t lie, doctor. They’re the one witness we ever get that doesn’t—consciously or unconsciously, it doesn’t matter. They’re the only one I’d ever trust absolutely.”

He sat there, looking steadily at Jonas across the desk. “Well, doctor?”

“Don’t say well to me, for God’s sake.”

Jonas tried again to stagger out of the bewildered daze it had left him in.

“Don’t ask me—tell me. It just doesn’t make any sense that I can see. You really mean it wasn’t Gordon Darcy Grymes that was out at the Milnors’? It was his brother Franklin. And it’s Gordon, not Franklin, who’s up in Baltimore right now?”

If he stated it himself, he was thinking, perhaps he could get it straightened out.

“That’s it, doctor. That’s exactly what I’m telling you. I thought maybe you’d be able to help me figure it out, you seem to be on such good terms with the widow and the fiancée, or the fiancée and the widow… one or the other. I thought maybe you might know which is which, and what various people are up to, and why.”

Jonas shook his head, silently, and kept on shaking it.

“You’re sure, doctor?”

“Absolutely.”

Jonas took a deep breath. “Look, Sergeant. I tell you again I don’t know any of these people. This just doesn’t make any sense that I can see.”

“It doesn’t to me either—not right now. But it will.”

Sergeant Digges reached for his hat and got to his feet.

“I’m going to take your word for it—for the time being, that is.”

He put his hat on the back of his head and moved toward the door.

“I don’t know where you fit in, in all this, doctor. Up until I got these telegrams, I figured it was plain sailing. I was going to come here and put all the cards down. You could take it or leave it—quit all this stalling around or go to jail. I’m not say-saying that isn’t where you’ll wind up tomorrow morning. But right now I’ve got this on my mind, and until I get it off I’m not bothering with you any more.”

Jonas nodded. “I know. All you’re going to do is dog my tracks. Don’t try to fool me, Sergeant. But be a little more careful, will you? I get nervous at night. I don’t like people prowling around my back yard listening to my conversations. Next time come in and join us, will you? Miss Van Holt was here as a friend, not a patient. Nothing private or confidential. See what I mean?”

Sergeant Digges looked at him for a moment. He smiled faintly.

“Okay, doc. I’ll remember that. I guess I must be slipping.”

He put his hand on the door knob.

“One other thing,” he said deliberately. “I’m not joking, doctor.”

Jonas got to his feet. He had no doubt of it.

“What is it, Sergeant?” he asked soberly.

“What I’ve just told you about the Grymes brothers is strictly in the lodge. I want you to understand that. I thought I wasn’t going to tell you. Then I decided I’d like to give you a break, if it happened you were getting tangled up with the wrong people… just to let you know there’s no hard feelings as far as I’m personally concerned. If I don’t hang you I might need you myself if I got real sick some night. Right now, I’m telling you to keep your trap shut. You understand?”

“I understand. You needn’t worry.”

“Okay. And that goes for all your lady friends whatsoever. Get it?”

“I get it,” Jonas said.

“All right. Now get along wherever it was you were going. But stick around Annapolis, doc. I might want to see you later. So long.”

“So long, Sergeant.”

Jonas stood where he was for several minutes. He heard the Sergeant speak to Martha and Roddy in the front hall. The door closed as he left the house, Martha and Roddy went back to the kitchen. He registered it all automatically in the periphery of his mind, absorbed in trying mentally to arrange everything. He felt a little the way the atomic experts must have felt when they set up their first chain reaction and saw where it had landed them. The shot Jenny Darrell had fired had certainly set one up. Who else the final blast was going to sear was a question that Jonas Smith could ask but not conceivably answer. There were other questions… so many that it was as if all the rats in Christendom had gathered and his mind was precisely where they were staging the big race.

—What were the sweepstakes in the grand switcheroo, Jonas Smith thought… when was it made, and how, and why? Did Jenny think she was out with Gordon Grymes when she was really with Franklin? And above all, where did this leave Miss Philippa Van Holt? It was fantastic. The whole thing was so utterly fantastic that every question he asked himself instead of clearing anything up made it more of a jungle growth of entanglement and utter confusion. He was tangled up, he was confused, he was dizzy in the head. Whatever any of it was, whatever it could possibly mean, the only point of contact he had out of which he felt he ought to be able, somehow, to make a reasonable judgment of some sort was the unhappy scene he’d been present at in Miss Olive’s Papa’s sanctum in the little yellow brick house on St. John’s Street the day before. It was more bewildering now than it had been then. He recalled Philippa’s outburst of venomous animosity before she ran out of the room and up the stairs, and Franklin Grymes’s—or was it Gordon’s—collapse into frenzied despair. But it still didn’t make sense. On the other hand . . .

Jonas straightened his shoulders and shook his head to clear the snarled-up cobwebs out of it. He was getting the blast end of the chain reaction mixed up with the initial step that set it into being. The solid inexorable and irrevocable fact was that a man was dead and Jennifer Darrell had killed him. It didn’t make any difference—except to him—whether his name was Gordon, Franklin or George B. Patapsco. Whatever his name, he was still dead. If the tangent Sergeant Digges was off on led straight into the hornet’s nest it seemed to be leading into, it was only a question of time when it would lead back again. Nothing had changed. Nothing except his own moral position. And that, it was not easy to justify.

He thought about Agatha Reed. It wasn’t right to let anyone who was innocent of murder get caught in the meshes of the kind of publicity net Agatha was already being tripped up with. He looked at his watch. It was thirteen minutes to twelve. Elizabeth would be on her way to see Tom in Bancroft Hall before noon meal formation. He didn’t want to stop her from seeing him, because after all if she could make him tell the Superintendent the truth when he saw him that afternoon, they might take back the book he’d said they had to throw at him. They wouldn’t kick a boy out of the United States Naval Academy for putting his sister’s honor and safety above the rules and regulations. The rules and regulations had not been broken by Midshipman Tom Darrell for the first and only time in the history of the Academy. Plenty of flag officers, if not actually the one Tom would see that afternoon, had frenched out over the wall in their midshipman days without destroying either themselves or the United States Navy.

And now they—Elizabeth, Tom, Jenny, himself—were faced with a serious problem in moral values. No matter which Grymes brother was which or what they had done that the one remaining alive in Baltimore was so frantically anxious to conceal, the unalterable fact was that he had not killed the other one at the Milnors’ cottage. If, in order to prove that, he had to face the ruin he and Agatha so desperately maintained he did, it seemed to Jonas that maybe he’d been right in the beginning, and Jenny had been right in wanting to make a clean breast of the whole thing. The chain reaction Jenny had set up so far killed one man, given another a stroke that miraculously hadn’t killed him or paralyzed him for life. It was on the point of ruining her brother’s career, getting him kicked out of the Service in disgrace two weeks before he graduated. It was ruining the other Grymes, wrecking Agatha Reed’s life; it had made a widow out of Philippa Van Holt. It was a sobering thought to realize how a seventeen-year-old’s inexperience and lack of emotional security could affect so many adult lives.

Including, Jonas reflected, his own. Which brought him back to Elizabeth Darrell. She could tell Tom anything she liked, and he could make his own decision, but there was one thing she had to know. She had to know that he was not in love with Philippa Van Holt. It was the one important thing in Jonas Smith’s life just then, a driving impulse he had to fulfill.

“If I don’t tell her, I’ll go nuts,” he thought. It was stupid, it could wait. Yet he knew very well it could not wait. He had to tell her before she saw Tom. He had to save all of them from that one error at any event—and because he was in love it seemed an error of the most overwhelming magnitude. And if he hurried, he could intercept her.

He did hurry, but he would have hurried more effectively if he had left his car at home.

“Are you from in town, sir?” The guard at the Main Gate stopped him politely but firmly. “You’ll have to park outside the Yard.”

With neither a pass nor business that authorized him to enter without one (he did not know then that he was in the distinguished company of the wife of a President of the United States, sightseeing incognito, who had not been allowed in either), Jonas had to back into Maryland Avenue and turn down Hanover Street. It was across from St. John’s, on College Avenue, that he finally found a place to park. As he strode along the uneven brick sidewalks back to Maryland Avenue and the gate, he was too preoccupied to notice the roots of the ancient maples until he stumbled over them, or the two most magnificent of Georgian town houses, Chase and Hammond-Harwood, facing each other in stately quietude across the sunlit street, until a couple of women, guidebook in hand, stopped him with some questions to which he could give only the most common of answers, “Sorry, I’m a stranger here myself,” before he hurried on to the Academy gate.

It was too late by then. He knew it before he passed the guard. The Yard was alive with a thousand young men in blue fatigues and white caps, their books and papers under their arms, streaming in varying degrees of marching order from every direction; enthusiastically converging toward the great pile of Bancroft Hall and food. He cut across in front of the green-copper domed chapel where in the quiet crypt are enshrined all that physically remains of the First Commodore, and hastened down toward Tecumseh Court, already a solid mass of blue and white. There were midshipmen everywhere, streaming up the steps into the great rotunda, or left and right to the nearer entrances to their rooms.

He was much too late. Across the sea of young men he saw her, already down the steps and hurrying along the walk from the court toward the Santee Basin, bare-headed, the sun glistening on her hair, the midshipmen turning to look at her, some of them waving as she waved back and hurried quickly on.

Jonas was half-way to the road to the dock when he saw her car pull out and disappear around the sailboat shelter at the shore end of the great building. He turned back and hurried across the Yard to the Main Gate. It was too late to see her before she saw her brother Tom, but she was probably headed home and he could see her there. How he was going to say what he had to tell her was so far not entirely clear in his mind. To barge in and say “It isn’t Philippa Van Holt I’m in love with you, it’s you,” wasn’t as simple as it had seemed when he’d come out of his daze, sitting at his desk, and dashed out into the reception room. Furthermore, in the emotional state she would undoubtedly be in after seeing Tom in Bancroft Hall it was unlikely she’d be particularly interested in anything he had to say on any subject.

He hurried on, not even stopping to pick up his car. The gate at the Darrells’ side of the court was nearer than his own, and the one she would probably go in, coming up King George Street. As he turned the corner he looked both ways, expecting to see her either already in the drive or close to it. And there was a car in the drive, headed out, however, not in. It was an ancient and dilapidated vehicle, painted red and black, with a raccoon’s tail tied to the radiator cap and both fenders badly in need of repair, and it was coughing, jumping forward and bolting back like an asthmatic and recalcitrant mule. None of which, however, was as startling to Jonas as its occupants.

“—Damn it all, Olive, can you drive or can’t you drive?”

Professor Tinsley Darrell in the front seat, jamming his hat back from where the last buck had jolted it to the back of his head, was purple with rage. Miss Olive Oliphant at the wheel reached down and pulled on the brake. She sat back and folded her white gloved hands.

“Tinsley…” she began. They both saw Jonas. He came up to the window of the car.

“—Dr. Smith, Professor Darrell is just as provoking as he can be.”

Miss Olive’s mild china-blue child’s eyes were a little resentful.

“Damn it all, Smith, she said she’d drive me to the Club. That blasted fool of a Wetherby won’t do it. He’s trying to make me stay in the house so he can clean me at gin rummy. Doctor’s orders! No murderous pill-roller is going to tell me what to do. Can this woman drive or can’t she drive? That’s all I want to know.”

“Tinsley, you’ve got to calm yourself,” Miss Olive said. She turned to Jonas. “I can drive very well, Dr. Smith. Papa always said I drove as well as any young woman he knew. He didn’t approve of young women driving an automobile, but after Innis died and Papa tried to learn himself, he allowed me to learn, and I drove our automobile until we sold it when Papa got too nervous to let me drive him any more. And if Tinsely doesn’t like the way I drive, I think he ought to drive himself. Or get a taxicab. I only agreed to drive him because I thought he’d work himself into another disorder if he stayed at home.”

“Damn it all, Olive, I can’t call a taxi. I gave Elizabeth my word I wouldn’t call one.”

“You gave her your word you’d stay in the house, Tinsley.”

“That’s a lie. That’s a black lie. I said I wouldn’t call a taxi.”

“Tinsley, you—”

“Look… both of you,” Jonas said. He put his hand through the window and patted Miss Olive’s. “Professor Darrell, you oughtn’t to be out. Miss Olive, you shouldn’t have agreed to take him.”

Professor Darrell’s protruding bloodshot eyes glared at him like an angry horse’s. “Doctor, you mind your business and I’ll mind mine.”

“Dr. Smith, I wouldn’t have agreed to take him except he was going to drive himself or try to walk. And I think it would look very badly for him to collapse on the street, either driving or walking, and have people say he was intoxicated before he got to the Club. Papa always thought it very poor manners for a gentleman to go to his Club under the influence.”

“What in the blue-shirted hell does it matter how he gets there, Olive? Your father, Olive—”

“I’ll thank you to be very careful what you say about my father, Tinsley.”

Miss Olive spoke with gentle spirit.

“Papa never minded a gentleman coming home from his Club slightly overcome. But Papa always felt there was a place for everything.—A place for everything, and everything in its place. It was one of my earliest lessons. And if you’re going to speak unkindly to me, Tinsley, I’m not going to drive you anywhere. I’m going to leave you sitting right here in the road. In fact, that’s just what I intend to do, Tinsley.”

Miss Olive took hold of the door.

“Olive, if you leave me here…” Professor Darrell controlled himself with a dangerous effort. “Olive, I swear to God—”

“Papa never allowed blasphemy, Tinsley.”

Miss Olive opened the door and got out. Her rose-colored lips were pressed firmly together and her fresh clear cheeks delicately flushed.

“Tinsley, I’m not sure you haven’t already been indulging. Good day, gentlemen.”

She took a few steps along the drive, a plump little figure striving to maintain her gentle indignation.

“—Oh, Dr. Smith!” She turned and came back to Jonas, fishing down in her white crocheted bag. “There’s a piece I was reading about urushiol that I cut out for you,” she said brightly. “I thought it would interest you. They’re manufacturing it—synthetically, I believe is the word they use. And some time, doctor, I’d like to come and see you. My insomnia is troubling me again. Perhaps you’ll be able to give me something for it.”

She found the clipping and handed it to Jonas.

“Thank you, Miss Olive,” he said. Hoping she was not planning to take synthetic urushiol for her insomnia, he repressed his amusement, took the clipping and put it carefully in his pocket. “Any time you’d like to come around.”

“Thank you, doctor.” Miss Olive tripped off along the drive toward the street. Jonas turned to Professor Darrell, sitting bolt upright in the front seat of the old car, his stick between his knees, both hands clenched around it.

“Don’t you think you’d better give up, Professor, and go back to the house? It isn’t safe for you to drive, and you’re just working yourself up to another crisis.”

For a moment he thought he’d precipitated it himself. Professor Darrell’s hackles were rising, the blood suffusing his full florid face. Then he let his breath out, like a jet of steam escaping from heavy pressure.

“I’m not going to walk back, damn it, doctor. Get Wetherby. Tell the worthless scoundrel to come here and get me. It’s his car. I wouldn’t touch the thing. I’ll go back.”

Jonas looked at him with a sudden curious small twinge of pity stirring inside him. The Professor was still trying to bluster, but the heart had gone out of it. He looked tired. He was tired.

He managed to glare at Jonas once more. “Damn it all, doctor—I’m not anxious to die.”

“Why don’t I drive you back?”

Jonas got in the car and started it up with only a few shuddering spits and jerks. They went around the drive to the front door of the Blanton-Darrell House and came to a stop. Professor Darrell got out.

“Thank you, sir,” he said. He waited until Jonas got out, and shook hands with him formally and with impressive gravity before he went up the steps and into the house. Jonas stood for a moment, listening.

“—Wetherby! Get that junk heap out of the front yard! Do you hear what I say? And where is my granddaughter?”

It was what Jonas wanted to know too.

“I’ll get it right away, Professor, sir.” Wetherby’s gentle voice came from just inside the door. “You jus’ rest yourself. Miss Elizabeth ain’ comin’ home jus’ yet. She lunchin’ with some of her friends some place. She be home after you take a short rest.”

“Damn it, Wetherby, I’m—”

Jonas went along the path to the wing. What a pair, he thought… what a place. If anyone had asked him then why he had come to Annapolis, Maryland, all he could have done was shake his head and say, “You tell me.”