The Million-Dollar Suitcase - Alice MacGowan (guided reading books TXT) 📗

business. I intend to know what it is."

"Queer," I repeated his word. "If the lawyers and the detectives get to running down all the queer things—that don't concern them a little bit—the world won't have any more peace."

"All right, if you say it doesn't concern you," Cummings threw me overboard with relief I thought. "It does concern me. When I couldn't get—him"—a jerk of the head indicated that the pronoun stood for Worth—"at the Palace, found he'd been out all day and left no word at the desk when he expected to be in, I took my telegram to Knapp, and then to Whipple. They were flabbergasted."

"The bank crowd," I said. "Now why did you run to them? On account of Worth's engagement with them to-morrow morning? Wasn't that exceeding your orders? You saw that he intends to meet it, in spite of this."

"Why not because of this?" Cummings demanded sharply. "He's in better shape to meet it now his father's dead. He's the only heir. That's the first thing Knapp and Whipple spoke of—and I saw them separately."

"Can that stuff. What do you think you're hinting at?"

"Something queer," he repeated his phrase. "Wake up, Boyne. Knapp and Whipple both saw Thomas Gilbert a little before noon yesterday. He was in the bank for the final transfer of the Hanford interests. They'd as soon have thought of my committing suicide that night—or you doing it. They swear there was nothing in his manner or bearing to suggest such a state of mind, and everything in the business he was engaged on to suggest that he expected to live out his days like any man."

I thought very little of this; it is common in cases of suicide for family, friends or business associates to talk in exactly this way, to believe it, and yet for the deep-seated moving cause to be easily discovered by an unprejudiced outsider. I said as much to Cummings. And while I spoke, we could hear a murmur of young voices from the inner room.

"Damn it all," the lawyer's irritation spurted out suddenly, "With a cub like that for a son, I'd say the reason wasn't far to seek. Better keep your eye peeled round that young man, Boyne."

"I will," I agreed, and he took his departure. I turned back into the private room.

"Worth"—I put it quietly—"what say I go to Santa Ysobel with you? You could bring me back Monday morning."

He agreed at once, silently, but thankfully I thought.

Barbara, listening, proposed half timidly to go with us, staying the night at the Thornhill place, being brought back before work time Monday, and was accepted simply. So it came that when we had a blow-out as the crown of a dozen other petty disasters which had delayed our progress toward Santa Ysobel, and found our spare tire flat, Barbara jumped down beside Worth where he stood dragging out the pump, and stopped him, suggesting that we save time by running the last few miles on the rim and getting fixed up at Capehart's garage. He climbed in without a word, and drove on toward where Santa Ysobel lies at the head of its broad valley, surrounded by the apricot, peach and prune orchards that are its wealth.

We came into the fringes of the town in the obscurity of approaching night; a thick tulle fog had blown down on the north wind. The little foot-hill city was all drowned in it; tree-tops, roofs, the gable ends of houses, the illuminated dial of the town clock on the city hall, sticking up from the blur like things seen in a dream. As we headed for a garage with the name Capehart on it, we heard, soft, muffled, seven strokes from the tower.

"Getting in late," Worth said absently. "Bill still keeps the old place?"

"Yes. Just the same," Barbara said. "He married our Sarah, you know—was that before you went away? Of course not," and added for my enlightenment, "Sarah Gibbs was father's housekeeper for years. She brought me up."

We drove into the big, dimly lighted building; there came to us from its corner office what might have been described as a wide man, not especially imposing in breadth, but with a sort of loose-jointed effectiveness to his movements, and a pair of roving, yellowish-hazel eyes in his broad, good-humored face, mighty observing I'd say, in spite of the lazy roll of his glance.

"Been stepping on tacks, Mister?" he hailed, having looked at the tires before he took stock of the human freight.

"Hello, Bill," Worth was singing out. "Give me another machine—or get our spare filled and on—whichever's quickest. I want to make it to the house as soon as I can."

"Lord, boy!" The wide man began wiping a big paw before offering it. "I'm glad to see you."

They shook hands. Worth repeated his request, but the garage man was already unbuckling the spare, going to the work with a brisk efficiency that contradicted his appearance.

Barbara sitting quietly beside me, we heard them talking at the back of the machine, as the jack quickly lifted us and Worth went to it with Capehart to unbolt the rim; a low-toned steady stream from the wide man, punctuated now and then by a word from Worth.

"Yeh," Capehart grunted, prying off the tire. "Heard it m'self 'bout noon—or a little after. Yeh, Ward's Undertaking Parlors."

"Undertaking parlors!" Worth echoed. Capehart, hammering on the spare, agreed.

"Nobody in town that knowed what to do about it; so the coroner took a-holt, I guess, and kinda fixed it to suit hisself. Did you phone ahead to see how things was out to the house?"

"Tried to," Worth said. "The operator couldn't raise it."

"Course not." Capehart was coupling on the air. "Your chink's off every Sunday—has the whole day—and the Devil only could guess where a Chinaman'd go when he ain't working. Eddie Hughes ought to be on the job out there—but would he?"

"Father still kept Eddie?"

"Yeh." The click of the jack and the car was lowering. "Eddie's lasted longer than I looked to see him. Due to be fired any time this past year. Been chasing over 'crost the tracks. Got him a girl there, one of these cannery girls. Well, she's sort of married, I guess, but that don't stop Eddie. 'F I see him, I'll tell him you want him."

They came to the front of the machine; Worth thrust his hand in his pocket. Capehart checked him with,

"Let it go on the bill." Then, as Worth swung into his seat, Barbara bent forward from behind my shoulder, the careless yellowish eyes that saw everything got a fair view of her, and with a sort of subdued crow, "Look who's here!" Capehart took hold of the upright to lean his square form in and say earnestly, "While you're in Santa Ysobel, don't forget that we got a spare room at our house."

"Next time," Barbara raised her voice to top the hum of the engine. "I'm only here for over night, now, and I'm going down to Mrs. Thornhill's."

We were out in the street once more, leaving the cannery district on our right, tucked away to itself across the railroad tracks, running on Main Street to City Hall Square, where we struck into Broad, followed it out past the churches and to that length of it that held the fine homes in their beautiful grounds, getting close at last to where town melts again into orchards. The road between its rows of fernlike pepper trees was a wet gleam before us, all black and silver; the arc lights made big misty blurs without much illumination as we came to the Thornhill place. Worth got down and, though she told him he needn't bother, took her in to the gate. For a minute I waited, getting the bulk of the big frame house back among the trees, with a single light twinkling from an upper story window; then Worth flung into the car and we speeded on, skirting a long frontage of lawns, beautifully kept, pearly with the fog, set off with artfully grouped shrubbery and winding walks. There was no barrier but a low stone coping; the drive to the Gilbert place went in on the side farthest from the Thornhill's. We ran in under a carriage porch. The house was black.

"See if I can raise anybody," said Worth as he jumped to the ground. "Let you in, and then I'll run the roadster around to the garage."

But the house was so tightly locked up that he had finally to break in through a pantry window. I was out in front when he made it, and saw the lights begin to flash up, the porch lamp flooding me with a sudden glare before he threw the door open.

"Cold as a vault in here."

He twisted his broad shoulders in a shudder, and I looked about me. It was a big entrance hall, with a wide stairway. There on the hat tree hung a man's light overcoat, a gray fedora hat; a stick leaned below. When the master of the house went out of it this time, he hadn't needed these. Abruptly Worth turned and led the way into what I knew was the living room, with a big open fireplace in it.

"Make yourself as comfortable as you can, Jerry. I'll get a blaze here in two shakes. I suppose you're hungry as a wolf—I am. This is a hell of a place I've brought you into."

"Forget it," I returned. "I can look after myself. I'm used to rustling. Let me make that fire."

"All right." He gave up his place on the hearth to me, straightened himself and stood a minute, saying, "I'll raid the kitchen. Chung's sure to have plenty of food cooked. He may not be back here before midnight."

"Midnight?" I echoed. "Is that usual?"

"Used to be. Chung's been with father a long time. Good chink. Always given his whole Sunday, and if he was on hand to get Monday's breakfast—no questions."

"Left last night, you think?"

Worth shot me a glance of understanding.

"Sometimes he would—after cleaning up from dinner. But he wouldn't have heard the shot, if that's what you're driving at."

He left me, going out through the hall. My fire burned. I thawed out the kinks the long, chill ride had put in me. Then Worth hailed; I went out and found him with a coffee-pot boiling on the gas range, a loaf and a cold roast set out. He had sand, that boy; in this wretched home-coming, his manner was neither stricken nor defiant. He seemed only a little graver than usual as he waited on me, hunting up stuff in places he knew of to put some variety into our supper.

Where I sat I faced a back window, and my eye was caught by the appearance of a strange light, quite a little distance from the house, apparently in another building, but showing as a vague glow on the fog.

"What's down there?" I asked. Worth answered without taking the trouble to lean forward and look,

"The garage—and the study."

"Huh? The study's separate from the house?" I had been thinking of the suicide as a thing of this dwelling, an affair in some room within its walls. Of course Chung would not hear the shot. "Who's down there?"

"Eddie Hughes has a room off the garage."

"He's in it now."

"How do you know?" he asked quickly.

"There's a light—or there was. It's gone now."

"That wouldn't have been Eddie," Worth said. "His room's on the other side, toward the back street. What you saw was the light from these windows shining on the fog. Makes queer effects sometimes."

I knew that wasn't it, but I didn't argue with him, only remarked,

"I'd like to have a look at that place, Worth, if you don't mind."

CHAPTER X A SHADOW IN THE