The three-dollar manicure was a distinct success. So was the hair-do. The three young Carstairs stared rapturously at Mother all through dinner. If Bill Smith could resist that!
“Estelle really did beautifully,” Mother said, in answer to their compliments. “Especially on my nails. I never knew her to take such pains with them before.” She waved them at Dinah and April. “Do you like the color? I never had it before, but she talked me into it.”
April and Dinah nodded vigorously. They did indeed like the color. April and Estelle had picked it out. A soft luscious rose-pink.
“And I thought,” Mother went on, “since I’m taking a little vacation—suppose we three go into town for dinner tomorrow night, and take in a show?”
April and Dinah looked at each other. Was this the time to break the news that Bill Smith was coming to dinner, Dinah’s eyes asked. April shook her head slightly. Dinah’s eyes said, well, do something.
“Oh, Mother,” April said, “that would be super. But—oh golly—look, you’re usually so busy. And it’s so much fun to have an evening at home. Just us four. Honest, I’d a whole lot rather do that, instead.”
“I would too,” Dinah said vehemently.
Archie chimed in with, “Doggone right!”
“Really?” Marian Carstairs said. The three young Carstairs nodded vigorously. “You blessed kids! All right, home it is. And I’ll get a special dinner, to celebrate. What shall it be—steak?”
“I know what I’d rather have,” April said. “One of those wonderful old-fashioned meat loafs. With that thick gravy.”
“And lemon pie,” Dinah said, “with just gobs and gobs of meringue.”
“And biscuits,” Archie said.
Marian Carstairs shook her head and sighed. “My children! I offer them dinner at the Derby, and seats at the best show in town. They want to stay home and play parchesi. I offer them steak, and they settle for meat loaf.”
Dinah giggled. April said, “That’s because we know what’s good!”
“And—” Archie said.
April kicked him, quick, under the table before he could add, “—and what Bill Smith will like.”
“And what?” Mother said.
“And we love you,” Archie finished, with a triumphant smile at his sisters.
“And I’ll do the dishes tonight,” Mother said.
“Not with that manicure,” April told her firmly. “You sit in the parlor and make like a lady and read up on child psychology.”
“You want to know how to raise us properly,” Dinah added.
“Sure,” Archie said. “Hey, y’know what? Hey, Mother, y’know what?”
April tried to catch his eye, but he was looking the other way. And he was clear around on the other side of the table, so that she couldn’t kick him. She rose and began hastily picking up the unused silverware.
“Y’know what Bill Smith said about you?”
Mother looked interested and said, “No. What?”
By that time April had reached Archie. She stuck a warning finger into his back just below his left shoulder blade and said hastily, “Bill Smith said you were a fine, brilliant woman. As if we didn’t know it already. Archie, take out the plates.”
“Try and make me,” Archie said, insulted. He wriggled away.
April grabbed for his hair with her free hand. He tickled her in the ribs, and the silverware dropped to the floor with a loud clatter. Dinah ran around the table to separate them, tripped over Archie’s foot, and the three of them sprawled on the floor.
“Just because you’re bigger’n me!” Archie yelled.
“Archie, you fiend!” April howled. “My new hair-do!”
“Children!” Mother said loudly.
Dinah had hold of Archie by that time, Mother made a dive for April, slipped on a small scatter rug, and sat down hard on the floor. Then the doorbell rang.
There was a sudden and deadly silence. The four Carstairs looked up, aghast. The night was warm, and the front door had been left open during dinner. Bill Smith stood framed in the doorway. There were two men standing out on the front porch.
“I hope we’re not disturbing you,” Bill Smith said.
Dinah was the first to recover herself. “Not at all,” she said politely. She jumped up, helped Mother to her feet, and began patting Mother’s back hair into place.
“We always do exercises after dinner,” April said serenely. “Good for the digestion.”
“Do come in and have coffee,” Dinah said. “Archie, bring in the coffee tray.” She gave him a warning pinch, and he fled.
One of the two men who came into the room with Bill Smith was the quiet man in gray who’d been there the night before. The other was a stranger. Or was he a stranger? There was something uncannily familiar about him. “I just thought you’d like to know,” Bill Smith said, “that your smart daughter Dinah caught a spy.” But he was grinning as he said it. The other two men were grinning, too.
Marian gasped, her eyes wide. “That’s not a spy! That’s Pat Donovan! Pat!” She ran across the floor, hands outstretched.
“Marian!” the smiling brown-eyed man said. He grasped her hands and said, “You’re getting to be a terrible dope in your old age. Imagine not recognizing me, all these weeks!”
Bill Smith broke it up by introducing the gray-clad man from the FBI. By that time Marian looked a little dazed. She stared from one to the other.
“Mother,” April said earnestly. “He is a spy. Dinah caught him.”
“Nonsense,” Marian said vaguely.
“I did too,” Dinah said. “Only he told me he was Peter Desmond and I believed him. But I knew he couldn’t be Peter Desmond after I remembered it was cold and foggy that day, because that’s how we happened to hear the shots.”
“And he paints water,” Archie piped up. “He paints water with oils. April said so.” He put the coffee tray down on the table.
“And if he isn’t Peter Desmond,” April said frantically, “who is Armand von Hoehne?”
The man in gray laughed and said, “Your children are saner than you think, Mrs. Carstairs.”
“They sound saner than I feel,” Marian Carstairs said. She sat down and began pouring coffee automatically. “I do wish somebody would tell me what’s going on.” She added, “I never would have believed Pat Donovan could have fooled me with those fake whiskers.”
“They weren’t false,” Pat Donovan said in a hurt voice. “I grew them.”
Dinah had been bewildered. Now she suspected she was being kidded, and she began to get mad. She stood silently watching and listening. Getting mad, with Dinah, was a slow process, but a thorough one.
“You do know this man, Mrs. Carstairs?” the man in gray said.
“Of course I know him. He worked for a newspaper in Chicago at the same time I worked for another newspaper in Chicago. That was years ago. He was best man at my wedding. And I saw him in Paris, and Madrid, and Berlin, and Shanghai. It’s been years, now, since I saw him, but I’d have known him anywhere.”
“Without the whiskers,” Pat Donovan added.
“You might have told me who you were,” Marian said, “instead of letting me try to talk French to you, and discuss those awful paintings.”
“They weren’t so awful,” Pat Donovan said. “At least, not as awful as your French.”
By now, Dinah was really mad. She rose and said, “My mother speaks good French. And you, Mr. Donovan, or Desmond, or Desgranges, or Von Hoehne, or whoever you are, you’re a liar!”
“Dinah!” Marian said.
“Hey, Dinah,” Archie said. “Y’know what? Y’know what?”
“Shut up,” Dinah said to Archie. She glared at Pat Donovan and said, “First you lie to me, and then you criticize my mother’s French.”
“Y’know what?” Archie yelped. “Dinah, you listen to me. He couldn’t be Peter Desmond. Y’know why? Account of Peter Desmond is a guy in the Gazette comics. He speaks forty-’leven languages and he can disguise himself any ol’ time he wants to.”
Dinah remembered. “I read the Gazette too,” she said coldly. She was good and mad at herself now, too. Falling for a story like that!
“Dinah,” Pat Donovan said. “I’ll explain it all to you—”
Just in time a line from one of Mother’s books came to her. She stood up very straight and said, “I am not interested in your explanations, Mr. Whatever-your-name-is. I have more important matters to attend to.” She turned on her heel, strode into the dining room, and began picking up the dishes.
“Oh, Dinah,” Marian said. She started after her.
April pulled her down on the sofa. “Remember what the book on child psychology said. Wait till she’s through being mad and then reason with her.” She added, “That always works with Archie and me.”
Marian sighed, and sat down. She knew, from long experience, that April was right. “Well, Pat,” she said, “just explain to me.”
Dinah marched back and forth from the dining room to the kitchen, carrying dirty dishes and telling herself that she was not going to listen to what was being said in the dining room. She didn’t even care. It was impossible, though, not to overhear fragments of conversation. She began carrying off the dishes one at a time.
“—met this Von Hoehne in Paris—”
She put away the salt and pepper cellars.
“—thought there might be a good story—”
She took off the napkins.
“—not much trouble to grow a beard—”
She shook out the tablecloth and replaced it.
“—and this Mrs. Sanford—”
By that time there was no further excuse for being in the dining room. She went out in the kitchen, filled the dishpan with soap and water, and considered running away from home. She’d gotten as far as the silverware when April came out in the kitchen.
“Dinah, he’s not a spy, he’s a reporter. He writes books. About spies.”
“Wipe the glasses,” Dinah said.
April picked up the dishtowel. Archie burst into the kitchen and said, “Hey, Dinah! Y’know what?”
“Carry out the wastepaper,” Dinah said.
April and Archie tended to their chores in silence. Dinah went on washing dishes and putting away pots and pans. April glanced at her. It was going to be a long, cold day before Dinah asked any questions about Pat Donovan.
Archie came back and banged down the wastebasket. “He paints water!” Archie said. He added a rude noise.
“Archie,” Dinah said coldly, “put away the pots and pans. And, April, there’s lint in that last glass you wiped.”
April and Archie exchanged glances and winks. April rewiped the glass and Archie began putting away the pots and pans.
“You know, Archie,” April said, “I bet his book is going to be a best seller. Maybe it’ll even be in the movies.”
“Yeah,” Archie said enthusiastically. “All about how he chased spies all over Europe pretending he worked for a newspaper.”
“And how he really did get to know this Armand von Hoehne. Gee! I’d begun to think there wasn’t really any such person.”
Dinah said nothing.
“It was pretty smart,” Archie said, “then letting this—this what’s-his-name—”
“Donovan,” Dinah said, “and don’t talk so fast.”
April and Archie exchanged another wink and said, “Why, Dinah, We didn’t know you were listening.”
“I’m not,” Dinah said. “And don’t make so much noise.”
There was a little silence, and then Archie said, “Well, anyway, it was pretty smart, that’s all I gotta say.”
“Funny,” April said, “what a lot of the story he told Dinah was true. About him knowing all those different languages, and stuff. And how he grew a beard and tried to act like Armand von Hoehne pretending to be somebody else, and always keeping his sleeves rolled down so’s nobody’d notice he didn’t have a scar on his left arm, and fixing it so this dope in New York would write letters to Mrs. Sanford making it look as if he really was Armand von Hoehne pretending to be somebody else, and—”
“Wait-a-minute!” Dinah said, dropping the dishrag. “Did he do that?”
April and Archie stared at her innocently and said, in unison, “Do what?”
By the time they’d gone through the bread-and-butter-make-a-wish ceremony, Dinah had forgotten all about being mad. “Did he fix it so those letters—”
“Oh, that,” April said. “Sure. They figured if there were any spies, and if the spies thought he was Mr. von Hoehne, the spies would get in touch with him. All he had to do was grow a beard and paint pictures and be bait.”
“Paint water,” Archie said. “And—and—and—and Mrs. Sanford, they knew she was acquainted with a lot of questioning people—”
“Questionable,” April said.
“Oh, a’right. Anyway, they figured she’d be as li’ble to know spies as anybody.”
Dinah drew a long breath and said, “Is all this on the level?”
“Dinah!” April said. “You don’t think we’d kid you!”
That was the wrong thing to say. Dinah glared at her, wrung out the dishcloth, hung it up, and said, “I’m not interested.” She banged the dishpan into the undersink compartment and marched to the door. There she paused. “Well, why did he run away like he did? And did he actually catch any spies?”
“Sure,” Archie said. “That’s what we’re trying to tell you, only you ain’t interested, because you’re—”
April kicked Archie and said, “They broke up a reg’lar spy ring, honest. Because you put the FBI on his trail and so he had to beat it, fast. And they—the spies, I mean—were gonna arrange his getaway, but he purposely led the FBI to where they were. And Mrs. Sanford really didn’t have anything to do with it, that was just something he tried and it didn’t work.”
She paused for breath and said, “And it can’t go in the newspapers yet and we have to keep it a secret, but he’s going to write a book about all the diff’rent stuff he’s done. And he says you deserve all the credit because you were so smart and caught him and that’s why he had to run away and everything.”
“Me!” Dinah said. Her cheeks turned pink.
“Yeah, you,” Archie said excitedly. “He said—he said—he said—”
April went on hastily, “He said the police or the FBI oughta have you working for them, account of you’d make a wonderful detective and you’re a wonder at questioning suspects. So there!”
“My sister!” Archie said, with pride.
“Gosh,” Dinah said, her cheeks scarlet now. “I didn’t do anything!”
“He said you were awful smart not to fall for that Peter Desmond story, but to call up the FBI right away,” Archie said.
“Well,” Dinah said slowly, “it wasn’t exactly that—” She glanced toward the door. “I wonder what they’re talking about now!”
The three young Carstairs stole through the dining room and paused at the foot of the stairs, hidden in the shadows.
“—must forgive me for taking you in, Marian. But you were the only person I could use for a—a test case. I felt as long as you didn’t recognize me, I was safe.”
“If I’d known, I’d probably have given you away by accident,” Marian said. “It’s just as well.” She was laughing. Her cheeks were pink. She looked happy.
The quiet man in gray had gone. Pat Donovan sat in the most comfortable chair, sipping a cup of coffee, looking very much at home. Bill Smith sat on the less comfortable chair, holding a cup of coffee that looked cold even from the doorway, his face glum.
“Tell me, Pat,” Marian said, “how is Jake? When’s the last time you saw him?”
“Jake Justus? I saw him in Chicago about a year ago. He’s doing fine. Married a gorgeous blonde girl. Say, will you ever forget the night they had that warehouse fire in Blue Island?”
Marian giggled and said, “Never!”
“And say,” Pat Donovan said, “do you ever hear anything from Alma?”
“She’s married,” Marian said. “Married a man that runs a chain of filling stations in Indiana.”
“I’ll be darned,” Pat Donovan said. “Never will forget the time she got a job as a hotel maid and got an exclusive interview with—”
“Newspaper work must be very interesting,” Bill Smith said stiffly.
“You’ve no idea!” Marian said. “Oh, Pat, remember the time Jim spread that airplane bootlegger story all over the front pages!”
“Forsythe? I sure do! Wonder what’s become of him!”
“He’s running a newspaper up in Michigan,” Marian said. “Doing a marvelous job of it, too. And, Pat—”
“You must meet such interesting people,” Bill Smith said, even more stiffly, putting down his coffee cup.
“That’s not the half of it,” Pat said. “Marian, remember that blonde countess in Havana, that wore a nose ring and led a tame leopard on a leash?”
“I’m sorry,” Bill Smith said, rising, “but it’s late.”
Around the corner, Dinah nudged April. “He’s jealous!” she whispered exultantly.
April nudged Archie. “Run up to your room, fast. And then yell! Loud! And keep yelling!”
“Why?” Archie whispered, halfway up the stairs.
“You saw a ghost,” April hissed at him.
Down in the living room, Marian rose and said, “Oh, Mr. Smith, must you go?”
“I’m afraid I must,” Bill Smith said.
April held her breath.
“But,” Bill Smith said, “I’ll—”
Archie yelled. April relaxed. A split second more, and Bill Smith would have said, “I’ll be here for dinner tomorrow night.”
Dinah took the stairs in one leap, while April ducked behind the banister. “Mother!” Dinah called. “Archie’s seeing a ghost!”
Mother was halfway up the stairs by then. April headed off Bill Smith and Pat Donovan by emerging calm and smiling, and saying, “That Archie!”
“Marian!” Bill Smith called frantically.
“It’s nothing,” Mother’s voice floated down. “Just a nightmare. Good night, Mr. Smith.”
April beamed and said, “Good night. And don’t forget we’re expecting you for dinner tomorrow.” She walked him to the door as she spoke.
“Yes, of course,” Bill Smith said, his eyes toward the stairs. April opened the door for him. “You’re sure everything’s all right upstairs?”
“Oh, sure,” April chirruped. “We see ghosts all the time. Or didn’t we tell you, this house is haunted? Good ni-i-ght!”
She closed the door just as Marian came down the stairs. “Mr. Smith had to go, Mother.”
“I’m so sorry,” Marian said. She smoothed her hair, sat down, and said, “Sometimes I think Archie doesn’t always tell the truth.”
April rounded the corner into the staircase. Dinah and Archie were waiting for her.
“This is all we need,” April whispered happily. “A rival. Now it’s really in the bag.”
“I’ve got to leave in a few minutes,” Pat Donovan was saying.
“Oh. Pat! Look, can’t you come to dinner tomorrow night?”
“That would really do it,” Dinah whispered. “With her new hair-do and manicure, and the meat loaf—”
The three young Carstairs listened hopefully.
“Sorry,” Pat Donovan said. “But I’m catching the midnight plane. Edna and the kids have been parked in Santa Fe for six months, waiting for me to finish this job.”
The three young Carstairs looked at each other and tiptoed upstairs.
“Never mind,” April said consolingly. “Judging from the way Bill Smith looked tonight, with our brains and Mother’s looks I don’t think we need to use jealousy!”