CHAPTER XVI
A LUNCHEON
I went away from there.
Looking about me, I had guessed that pretty much every man in the room believed that it was Worth Gilbert with whom I had been talking over the phone. Dykeman's trailers would be right behind me. Yet to the last, Whipple and his crowd were offering me the return trip end of my ticket with them; if I would come back and be good, even now, all would be forgiven. I sized up the situation briefly and took my plunge, shutting the door after me, glancing across the long room to see that Barbara Wallace's desk was deserted. Nobody followed me from the room I had just left. I walked quickly to the outer door.
Little Pete switched on his engine as I leaped into the car. My "Let her go!" wasn't needed to make him throw in his clutch, and give me a flying start straight ahead down the broad plank way of the Embarcadero. Looking back as we hit the belt-line tracks, I saw a small car with two men in it, shoot out from one of the wide doorways of the plant; but as we rounded the cliff-like side of Telegraph Hill, my view of them was cut off. Things had come for me thick and fast. I felt pretty well balled up. But the girl had used secrecy in appointing this interview; till I could see further into the thing, it was anyhow a safe bet to drop them.
"Pete," I said, "lose that car behind us. Only ten minutes to slip them and land me at Fisherman's Wharf. Show me what-for."
He grinned. Between Montgomery and the bay, north of California Street, there are many narrow byways, crowded with the heavy traffic of hucksters and vegetable men, a section devoted to the commission business. Into its congestion Pete dove with a weasel instinct for finding the right holes to slip through, the alleys that might be navigated in safety; in less than the ten minutes I'd specified, we were free again on Columbus Avenue, pursuit lost, and headed back for the restaurant on the wharf.
"Boss," Little Pete was hoarse with the excitement he loved, as he laid the roadster alongside the Little Italy, "was it on the level, what you fed the lawyer guy? Ain't you wise to where Captain Gilbert is? I've saw him frequent since you've been gone."
"How many times is 'frequent,' Pete?" I asked. "And when did the last 'frequent' happen?"
"Twice," sulkily. I'd wounded his pride by not taking him seriously; but he added as I jumped down from the machine. "I druv him up on the hill, 'round the place where you an' him – an' her – went that day."
Pete didn't need to use Barbara Wallace's name. The way he salaamed to the pronoun was enough; the swath that girl cut evidently reached from the cradle to the grave, with this monkey grinning at one end, and me doddering along at the other.
I gave a moment to questioning Pete, found out all he knew, and went into the restaurant, wondering what under heaven Barbara Wallace would say to me or ask me.
The Little Italy restaurant is not so bad a place for luncheon. If one likes any eatables the western seas produce, I heartily recommend it. Where fish are unloaded from the smacks by the ton, fish are sure to be in evidence, but they are nice, fresh fish, and look good enough to eat. And the Little Italy is clean, with white oil-clothed tables and a view from its broad windows that down-town restaurants would double their rent to get.
Just now it was full of noisy patrons, foreigners, mostly; people too busy eating to notice whether I carried my head on my shoulders or under my arm.
In a far corner, Barbara Wallace's eyes were on me from the minute I came within her sight. She had ordered clams for two, mostly, I thought, to defend the privacy of our talk from the interruptions of a waiter, and I was hardly in my chair before she burst out,
"Where's Worth? Why wasn't he in that office to defend himself against what they're hinting?"
"I suppose," I said dryly, "because he wasn't given an invitation to attend. You ought to know why. You work for Dykeman."
"I work for Dykeman?" she repeated after me in a bewildered tone. "I'm bookkeeper in the Western Cereal Company's employ, if that's what you mean. You understood so from the first."
"You know I didn't," I reproached her hotly. "Do you think I'd have let you on the inside of this case if I'd known it was a pipe line direct to Dykeman?"
And on the instant I spoke there came to me a remembrance of her saying that Sunday morning as we pulled up before the St. Dunstan that she went past the place on the street car every day getting to her work at the Western Cereal Company. Sloppy of me not to have paid better attention; I knew vaguely that Dykeman was in one of the North Beach mills.
"Fifty-fifty, Barbara," I conceded. "I should have known – made it my business to learn. And Dykeman has questioned you – "
"He has not!" indignantly. "I don't suppose he knows Worth and I are acquainted." I could have smiled at that. There were detectives' reports in Dykeman's desk that recorded date, hour and duration of every meeting this girl had had with Worth and with myself. Besides, Cummings knew. It must have been through Cummings that she learned what was about to take place in Dykeman's private office. What had she told Cummings?
I was ready to blurt out the question, when she fumbled in her bag with little, shaking hands, drew out and passed to me unopened the envelope addressed to Worth, with my detailed report of the Skeels chase.
"I did my best to deliver it," she steadied her voice as she spoke. "He wasn't at the Palace. He wasn't at Santa Ysobel. He didn't communicate with me here."
My edifice of suspicion of Barbara Wallace crumbled. Cummings had not learned through her that I was unsuccessful in the south; nor had she spilled a word to him that she shouldn't, or they'd have had the dope on where Worth had found that suitcase, and thrown it at me quick.
"Barbara," I said, "will you accept my apologies?"
"Oh, yes," she smiled vaguely. "I don't know what you're apologizing for, but it doesn't matter. I hoped you would bring me news of Worth – of where he is."
"When did you see him last?"
"On the day of the funeral. I hardly got to speak to him."
Little Pete's news was slightly later. He'd taken Worth up to the Gold Nugget and dropped him there. Thursday, Worth was at the Nugget for more than an hour. On both occasions, Pete was told to slip the trailers, and did. That meant that Worth was working on the Clayte case – or thought he was. I told her of this.
"Yes – Oh, yes," she repeated listlessly. "But where is he now? And awful things – things like this meeting – coming up."
"What besides this meeting?"
"At Santa Ysobel."
"What? Things that have happened since the boy's gone? You couldn't get much idea of the lay of the land when you were down there Wednesday, could you?"
"Oh, but I could – I did," earnestly. "Of course it was a large funeral; it seemed to me I saw everybody I'd ever known. At a time like that, nothing would be said openly, but the drift was all in one direction. They couldn't understand Worth, and so nearly every one who spoke of him, picked at him, trying to understand him. Mrs. Thornhill's cook was already telling that Worth had quarreled with his father and demanded money. I shouldn't wonder if by now Santa Ysobel's set the exact hour of the quarrel."
"Me for down there as quick as I can," I muttered, and Barbara, facing me sympathetically, offered,
"I've a letter from Skeet Thornhill," she groped in her bag again, mumbling as women do when they're hunting for a thing, "It came this morning… Mrs. Thornhill's no better – worse, I judge… Oh, here it is," and she pulled out a couple of closely scribbled sheets. "The child writes a wild hand," she apologized, as she passed these over.
The flapper dashed into her letter with a sort of incoherent squeal. The carnival ball was only four days off. Everybody was already dead on his, her or its feet. The decorations they'd planned were enough to kill a horse – let alone getting up costumes. "As usual, everything seems to be going to the devil here," she went on; "Got a cannery girl elected festival queen this time. Ina's furious, of course. Moms had a letter from her that singed the envelope; but I sort of enjoy seeing the cannery district break in. They've got the money these days."
Nothing here to my purpose. Barbara reached forward and turned the sheet for me, and I saw Worth Gilbert's name half way down it.
"Doctor Bowman is an old hell-cat, and I hate him." Skeet made her points with a fine simplicity. "Since mother's sick, he comes here every day, though what he does but sit and shoot off his mouth and get her all worked up is more than I can see. Yesterday I was in the room when he was there, and he got to talking about Worth – the meanest, lowest-down, hinting talk you ever heard! Said Worth got a lot of money when his father died, and I flared up and said what of it? Did he think Mr. Gilbert ought to have left it to him? That hit him, because he and Mr. Gilbert used to be good friends, and he and Worth aren't. I sassed him, and he got so mad that just as he was leaving, he hollered at me that I better ask Worth Gilbert where he was at the hour his father was shot. Now, what do you know about that? That man is spreading stories. A doctor can set them going. He's making his messy old calls on people all day, and they, poor fish-hounds, believe everything he says. Though mother didn't. After he was gone, she just lay there in her bed and said over and over that it was a lie, a foolish, dangerous lie! Poor mumsie, she's so nervous that when the grocer's truck had a blow-out down in the drive, she nearly went into hysterics – cried and carried on, something about it's being 'the shot.' I suppose she meant the one when Mr. Gilbert killed himself. Wasn't that queer? Any loud noise of the sort sets her off that way. She lies and listens, and listens and mutters to herself. It scares me." She closed with, "Please don't break your promise to be here through this infernal Bloss. Fes."
"Good advice, that last," I said slowly, as I laid the letter on the table, keeping a hand on it. "You'll do that, won't you, Barbara?"
"I had intended to. I was given leave from this afternoon. But – well – I'd thought it over, and almost made up my mind to go back to my desk."
Barbara Wallace uncertain, halting between two courses of action! What did it mean?
"See here, Barbara; this isn't a time for Worth Gilbert's friends to slacken on him."
"I hadn't slackened," she said very low. And left it for me to remember that Worth apparently had.
"Then you're needed at Santa Ysobel," I urged.
"But you're going, aren't you, Mr. Boyne?"
"Yes. As soon as I can get off. That doesn't keep you from being needed. Worth's one of the most efficiently impossible young men I ever tried to handle. Maybe he's not any fuller of shocks than any other live wire, but he sure does manage to plant them where they'll do the most harm. Cummings, Dykeman – and this Dr. Bowman down there; active enemies."
"They can't hurt Worth Gilbert – all of them together!"
"Wait a minute. I'm going to Santa Ysobel to find the murderer of Thomas Gilbert. That means a stirring to the depths of that little town. This underneath-the-surface combustion will get poked into a flame – she's going to burst out, and somebody's going to get burned. We don't want that to be Worth, Barbara."
"No. But what can I do – what influence have I with him – " she was beginning, but I broke in on her.
"Barbara, you and I are going to find the real murderer, before the Cummings-Dykeman bunch discover a way into and out of that bolted study. Those people want to see Worth in jail."
There was a long pause while she faced me, the rich color failing a little in her cheeks.
"I see," speaking slowly, studying each word. "And as long as we didn't find out how to enter and leave the study, we have no way of knowing how hard or how easy it's going to be for them to find it out. We – " her voice still lower – "we can't tell if they already know it or not."
"Yes we can," I leaned forward to say. "The minute they know that – Worth Gilbert will be charged with murder."
I hit hard enough that time to bring blood, but she bled inwardly, sitting there staring at me, quite pale, finally faltering,
"Well – I can't stop to think of his having followed Ina Vandeman south – on her wedding trip – if he needs me – and I can help – I must – " she broke down completely, and I sat there feeling big-footed and blundering at this revelation of what it was that had put that clear, logical mind of hers off the track, left her confused, groping, just a girl, timid, distrustful of her own judgment where her heart was concerned.
"Was that it all the time?" I asked. "Well, take it from me, Worth's done nothing of the sort. He's been playing detective, not chasing off after some other man's bride."
Up came the color to her cheeks, she reached that mite of a hand across to shake on the bargain with,
"I'll go straight down this evening. You'll find me in Santa Ysobel when you come, Mr. Boyne."
"At the Thornhills'?" It might be handy to have her there; but she shook her head, looking a little self-conscious.
"I'm taking that spare room at Sarah Capehart's. Skeet wanted me, and I have an invitation from Laura Bowman; but if – well, seeing that this investigation is going to cover all that neighborhood, I thought I'd rather be with Sarah."
The level-headed little thing! Pete and I had the pleasure of taking her out to her home where she had her packing to attend to. On the way she spoke of an engagement with Cummings for the theater Saturday night.
"And instead, I suppose I shall be at the carnival ball. Shall I tell him that in my note, Mr. Boyne? Is it all right to let him know?"
"It's all right," I assented. "You can bet Cummings is due down there as soon as Worth shows up; and that must be soon, now."
"Yes," Barbara agreed. Her face clouded a little. "You noticed in Skeet's letter that they're expecting Ina to-morrow."
Poor child – she couldn't get away from it. I patted the hand I had taken to say good-by and assured her again,
"Worth Gilbert hasn't been in the south. I wonder at you, Barbara. You're so clear headed about everything else – don't you see that that would be impossible?"
Then I drove back to my office, to find lying on my desk a telegram from the young man, dated at Los Angeles, requesting me to meet him at Santa Ysobel the following evening!
CHAPTER XVII
CLEANSING FIRES
Wednesday evening I pulled into a different Santa Ysobel: lanterns strung across between the buildings, bunting and branches of bloom everywhere, streets alive with people milling around, and cars piled high with decorative material, crowded with the decorators. The carnival of blossoms was only three days ahead.
At Bill Capehart's garage they told me Barbara was out somewhere with the crowd; and a few minutes later on Main Street, I met her in a Ford truck. Skeet Thornhill was at the wheel, adding to the general risk of life and limb on Santa Ysobel streets, carrying a half a dozen or more other young things tucked away behind. Both girls shouted at me; they were going somewhere for something and would see me later.
Getting down toward the Gilbert place, just beyond the corner, I flushed from the shadows of the pepper trees a bird I knew to be one of Dykeman's operatives. Watching his carefully careless progress on past the Gilbert lawn, then the Vandeman grounds, my eye was led to a pair who approached across the green from the direction of the bungalow. No mistaking the woman; even at this distance, height and the clean sweep of her walk, told me that this was the bride, Ina Vandeman. And the man strolling beside her – had he come with her from the house, or joined her on the cross-cut path? – could that be Worth Gilbert?
I sat in the roadster and gaped. The evening light – behind them, and dim enough at best – made their countenances fairly indistinguishable. At the gap in the hedge, they paused, and Mrs. Vandeman reached out, broke off a flower to fasten in his buttonhole, looking up into his face, talking quickly. Old stuff – but always good reliable old stuff. Then Worth saw me and hailed, "Hello, Jerry!" But he did not come to me, and I swung out of the machine to the sidewalk.
I heard the sobbing of the Ford truck; it went by, missing my runningboard by an inch, stopped at Vandeman's gate and Skeet discharged her cargo of clamor to stream across the sidewalk and up toward the bungalow. I saw Barbara, in the midst of the moving figures, suddenly stop, knew she had seen the two over there, and crossed to her, with a cheerful,
"He's here all right."
"Oh, yes," not looking toward the gap in the hedge, or at me. "He came on the same train with – with them."
Then some one from the porch yowled reproachfully for her to fetch those banners pronto, and with a little catching of breath, she ran on up the walk.
I turned back. Worth and Ina had moved on. Bronson Vandeman, well groomed, dressed as though he had just come in off the golf links, his English shoes and loud patterned stockings differentiating him from the crude outdoor man of the Coast, had joined them on the Gilbert lawn; his genial greeting to me let his bride get by with a mere bow, turning at once back to her house by the front walk. But rather to my annoyance, Vandeman came bounding up the steps after us. I judged Worth must have invited him.
Chung carried my suitcase upstairs, and lingered a minute in my room. I'll swear it wasn't merely to get the tip for which he thanked me, but with the idea of showing me in some recondite, Oriental fashion that he was glad I'd come. This interested me. The people who were glad to have me in Santa Ysobel at this time belonged on the clean side of my ledger. Then I went downstairs to find Vandeman still in the living room, sprawled at ease beside the window, looking round with a display of his fine teeth, reaching a hand to pull in the chair Worth set for me.
"Well, Jerry," that young man prompted, indicating by a careless gesture the smokers' tray on the table beside me, "there is time before dinner for the tale of your exploits. How's my friend Steve?"
I began to select a cigar, and said shortly,
"It's all in reports waiting for you at my office."
"Yes." Worth ignored my irritation. "Tell it. What'd you do down south?"
"Just back from the south yourself, aren't you?" I countered.
"Sure," airily. "But I wasn't there to butt in on your game. Did you find that Skeels was Clayte?"
I merely looked over the flame of my match at that small-town society man, smiling back at me with a show of polite interest.
"Go on," Worth interpreted. "Vandeman knows all about it. I tried to sell him a few shares of stock in the suitcase, so he'll take an interest in the game; but he's too much the tight-wad to buy."
"Oh, no," deprecated Vandeman. "Just no gambler; hate to take a chance." He ran his fingers through his hair, tossing it up with a gesture I had noticed when he came back from the dance at Tait's.
"All right – apology accepted," Worth nodded. "Anyway, you didn't. Well, Jerry?"
Vandeman waited a moment with natural curiosity, then, as I still said nothing, giving my attention to my smoke, moved reluctantly to rise, saying,
"That means I'd better chase along and let you two talk business."
"No. Sit tight," from Worth.
I was mad clear through, and disturbed and apprehensive, too. I managed a brief, dry statement of the outcome in the south. Worth hailed it with,
"Skeels lurks in the jungle! Life still holds a grain of interest."
"Why the devil couldn't you keep me advised of your movements?" I demanded.
"Dykeman's hounds," he grinned. "Had them guessing. They'd have picked me up if I'd gone to your office."
"You could have written or wired. They've picked you up anyway," I grunted. "One's on the job now. Saw him as I came in."
"Eh? What's that?" cried Vandeman, a man snooping in the shrubbery outside getting more attention from him than one dodging pursuit three hundred miles away. "What do you mean, hounds?" and when he had heard the explanation of Dykeman's trailers, "I call that intolerable!"
"Oh, I don't know." Worth reached over my shoulder for a cigarette. "Lose 'em whenever I like."
I wasn't so certain. There were men in my employ he couldn't shake. Perhaps those reports in Dykeman's desk might have offered some surprises to this cock-sure lad. My exasperation at Worth mounted as I listened to Vandeman talking.
"Those bank people should do one thing or another," he gave his opinion. "Just because you got gay with them and handed them their payment in the suitcase it left in, they've no right to have you watched like a criminal. In a small town like this, such a thing will ruin a man's standing."
"If he has any standing," Worth laughed.
"See here," Vandeman's smile was persuasive. "Don't let what I said out in front embitter you."
"I'll try not to."
"Mr. Boyne" – Vandeman missed the sarcasm – "when I got back to this town to-day, what do you suppose I found? The story going around that a quarrel with Worth, over money, drove his father to take his own life."
"That's my business here," I nodded. And when he looked his surprise, "To stop such stories."
He stared at me, frankly puzzled for a moment, then said,
"Well, of course you know, and I know, that they're scurrilous lies; but just how will you stop them?"
I had intended my remark to stand as it was; but Worth filled in the pause after Vandeman's question with,
"Jerry's here to get the truth of my father's murder, Bronse."
"Murder?" The mere naked word seemed to shock Vandeman. His sort clothe and pad everything – even their speech. "I didn't know any one entertained the idea your father was murdered. He couldn't have been – not the way it happened."
"Nevertheless we think he was."
"Oh, but Boyne – start a thing like that, and think of the talk it'll make! They'll commence at once saying that there was nobody but Worth to profit by his father's death."
"Don't worry, Mr. Vandeman." He made me hot. "We know where to dig up the motive for the crime."
"You mean the diaries?" Worth's voice sounded unbelievably from beside me. "Nothing doing there, Jerry. I've burned them."
I sat and choked down the swears. Yet, looking back on it, I saw plainly that Jerry Boyne was the man who deserved kicking. I ought never to have left them with him.
"You read them and burned them?" said Vandeman.
"Burned them without reading," Worth's impatient tones corrected.
"Without reading!" the other echoed, startled. Then, after a long pause, "Oh – I say – pardon me, but – but ought that to have been done? Surely not. Worth – if you'd read your father's diaries for the past few years – I don't believe you'd have a doubt that he committed suicide – not a doubt."
Worth sat there mute. Myself, I was rather curious as to what Vandeman would say; I had read much in those diaries. But when it came, it was the same old line of talk one hears when there's a suicide: Gilbert was a lonely man; his life hadn't been happy; he cut himself off from people too much. Vandeman said that of late he believed he was pretty nearly the only intimate the dead man had. This last gave him an interest in my eyes. I broke in on his generalities to ask him bluntly why he was so certain the death was suicide.
"Mr. Gilbert was breaking up; had been for two years or more. Worth's been away; he's not seen it; but I can tell you, Boyne, his father's mind was affected."
Worth let that pass, though I could see he wasn't convinced by Vandeman's sentimentalities, any more than I was. After the man had gone, I turned on Worth sharply, with,
"Why the devil did you tell that pink-tea proposition about your dealings with the Van Ness Avenue bank?"
"Safety valve, I guess. I get up too heavy a load of steam, and it's easy to blow it off to Vandeman. Told him most of it in the smoker, coming up. You'll talk about anything in a smoker."
"Oh, will you?" I said in exasperation. "And you'll burn anything, I suppose, that a match'll set fire to?"
"Go easy, Jerry Boyne." His chin dropped to his chest, he sat glowering out through the window. "Cleansing fires for that sort of garbage," he said finally. "I burned them on the day of his funeral."