Chiffon Scarf (19 page)

“But you knew it was yours, didn’t you? You knew you would be questioned? You knew—”

“I simply didn’t think of removing it. I did recognize it, of course. I even wondered how it had got there—vaguely, not caring much. The whole thing was so—so horrible; I couldn’t think. It didn’t occur to me that anybody could possibly suspect me on account of it—I don’t think anyone does. And even if it had made me think I would be suspected, I’m not sure I would have taken it away. It seems to me the best thing to do was exactly what I did—touch nothing, leave the scarf where it was and call for help.”

“But you did touch something,” said Jim with a kind of groan. “And of all things you might, have touched, the revolver was the most dangerous. Oh well—I suppose you’d better tell Sloane the truth; he’ll find the fingerprints are yours, that’s inevitable. The only thing you can do is admit and try to explain it. But if you only—”

“Good morning, Miss Shore,” said a suave voice near them. It was Pace, panting a little from his walk in the sun, his olive face glistening, his little eyes squinting until they were smiling slits. He had a handkerchief in his hand and he was wiping his fat neck above his collar, and somewhere he had come upon a scarlet geranium and picked it and thrust it in the lapel of his white linen coat. It looked inexpressibly jaunty and garishly out of place on that day of horror, with the thing that had walked in the stillness of the night before still at large, still unchecked, still undiscovered.

“You wanted me, Mr. Cady. One of the—what do you call them, cowboys—told me you had inquired for me.”

“Yes, Major Pace. Mr. Sloane wants to see you.”

Pace’s small, dark eyes blinked with that lizardlike swiftness.

“I suppose,” he said in an unperturbed and good-natured way, “that your detective friend wants to question me. Well, it will be short and I’m afraid not very helpful to him. I know absolutely nothing about this affair except that I wish I had not been involved in it. My business here in America is delicate. I look to you, Mr. Cady, and to Mr. Carreaux to help keep any undesirable publicity about me and the purpose of my visit from the papers. Indeed, I think it would be as well for your factory if you do so. While your agreement to sell me the thing I wish to buy is, of course, perfectly aboveboard, and within your rights, still I’m given to understand there is a well-defined public distrust of foreign—shall I say—buyers? Isn’t that true, Mr. Cady?”

“Perhaps.”

“But nevertheless—although I realize you are not exactly sympathetic to my errand—” He shrugged as if, after all, it was only a question of differing taste between gentlemen and need not be explored. “Nevertheless I hope I may have your assistance in the matter I mentioned.”

“Good God, Major Pace,” said Jim explosively. “We will do everything possible to keep as much of the thing as we can from the newspapers. Some of it will inevitably get in; it will have to. But for our own sakes we’ll do everything possible to keep the thing quiet.”

Pace blinked again, several times, rapidly. He continued to smile.

“Good. Good. It ought to be easy here—it’s as if we were at the very ends of the world. Of course, you understand, Mr. Cady, that it’s necessary for me to conclude my mission at the earliest possible moment and return to—return. Now then—where is your detective friend?”

It was, however, just then that there was another interruption and an unexpected one. For the pilot, Ludovic Strevsky, came rapidly along the porch. He was bareheaded, his thick, curly hair looking too vigorous to be neatly and smoothly combed; he was a powerful man, striding along with strength and enormous vitality in every motion; he had a soldier’s wide square shoulders and slim waist and only his thick, bull neck gave him a look of something not quite civilized, not quite disciplined, as if he were answerable only to himself. There was as always a touch of cruelty in his tilted Slavic eyes and the curve of his lips: He said:

“Jim, Wait a minute—”

Jim had already paused to look. “What is it?” he said sharply as if prophetic of trouble.

“It’s the plane,” said Strevsky. He came to a halt beside Jim. He was excited; the pulse in his bare, thick neck was beating hard. “Wilson—the fellow they sent along for steward—has disappeared. Nobody knows where he went or why. I saw him last night—this morning, rather, about two. He went off to his room and I supposed to sleep. But he’s gone—”

“Wilson! But he—Good God, that kid could have had nothing to do with Creda”

The pilot shrugged.

“He is a queer sort, dreamy. Maybe he’s scared. Anyway he’s left and Sloane wants him found.”

“What about the plane?”

“The fuel line is cut. Wait—let me tell you! I went out to tune her up. I was going up to see if I could spot Wilson; country like this is awful hard to hide in—unless he followed the ditch down there—what they call the arroyo—”

“Alone?”

“Sure I was alone. But one of these cowboys was going up with me, him and a gun. Sloane, I guess, was afraid I’d just leave once I got the plane up. Anyway, the fuel line’s cut. Like the other.”

“You’re sure? But of course you’re sure! No use asking who did it?”

Strevsky shook his head. “The point is, Jim, now we can’t leave this God damned place. Nobody.”

There was a brief silence and Strevsky said again: “That Wilson’s a queer kid. He’d know enough about a plane to know you can’t move with the fuel line cut—at least,” his curved upper lip twitched upward suddenly, “at least not far. It wasn’t mended this time. I looked. The other time—”

“We’ll see Sloane. All right, Major Pace; he’s waiting for you inside.” Jim turned toward the door and Pace, who had listened in complete silence, followed. At the doorway Jim seemed to remember Eden and looked at her and said: “Better come along, Eden.”

He said it distantly, as impersonally as he would have spoken to a stranger.

And in the most curious but definite way his manner reiterated the other thing he had said. “Averill was right—we were both mistaken—I’m sorry.” It even added a kind of postscript as if he’d added; “Well, it’s all over now. We can go on from here. The other is in the past—”

He held the door for her and she brushed so near she could have touched him; could have put her hand on his arm—could have laid her head against his shoulder as she had done so short a time ago.

But that was in the past. Love in the past? Over and done with?

Better—much better—:not to think. And not to feel.

Besides there were things that had to be done.

She put up her head and walked into the lounge where Averill waited for her. As she entered Averill looked at her; it was a long look, steady and again smiling. This time the smile was one of open triumph. Averill rose with a neat, catlike motion and walked softly to meet Jim. She put her hand on his arm and smiled again, but demurely, at him.

S
LOANE WAS IN THE
lounge, too. Seated at a long table in the center of the room with a sheaf of papers in his hand and a very large pair of horn-rimmed glasses perched on his thin, high-bridged brown nose. Two tall vases of flowers, one formerly placed at each end of the long table, had been removed that morning and it gave the table a bare and oddly official look.

Noel was standing before the fireplace, smoking, watching Sloane, watching Averill, watching the approach of the others with intent blue eyes; Noel’s habitual look of the adventurer, the dashing gallant, was that morning a little blurred as if he found adventure seen at close hand less exhilarating than he would have expected.

“P. H.,” said Jim at once, “Strevsky just found that the plane has been damaged; the fuel line is cut. We can’t possibly take it up.”

Averill’s hand tightened and her small face instantly became intent and businesslike.

“Cut?” she cried. “But that’s what you say happened to the plane that crashed! But that—” She broke off, stared at Jim and cried intently: “Who did it?”

“I don’t know. Strevsky found it just now and came to tell me.”

Noel started forward excitedly and P. H. pulled his horn-rimmed glasses down over the bridge of his nose so he could look at Jim over them and said:

“When was it done?”

Jim turned to Strevsky, who lifted his shoulders and eyebrows and said he didn’t know.

“It could have been done yesterday or during the night or even early this morning. I think Wilson did it before he left—so we couldn’t take the plane up to search for him.”

“I see,” said P. H. slowly. “Jim—Miss Blaine is right; that’s what was done to the other plane, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Except this time it hasn’t been mended, which is just lucky—”

“The way it was the other time,” volunteered Strevsky. “As soon as the engine heated up the wax melted and then the gasoline leaked and immediately caught on fire. This way the break was clean and the engine just didn’t start; gasoline had already leaked. I can show you—”

Wax, thought Eden suddenly. He had talked of wax before. What kind of wax? There had been sealing wax—red, hard sealing wax—missing from the table in the St. Louis house. Could that possibly have sufficed to mend, with intentional, fatal brevity, the break in the fuel line? She didn’t know whether or not it would be possible but decided swiftly to tell Sloane of the missing wax.

“I know,” P. H. Sloane was saying in a way that suggested he did know. “When did you last look at the plane?”

Strevsky hesitated and his narrow, tilted eyes became a little wider.

“I don’t, remember exactly. We worked on her awhile yesterday morning. Then we left her—you said it was safe—”

“It was safe from any of us here at the ranch,” said Sloane crisply. Strevsky blinked and went on:

“I walked out to take a look at her last night; just to see everything was all right. I didn’t look at the engine then—didn’t start her up. The break might have been made already—I couldn’t say.”

“Your brother was killed in the crash when Mr. Blaine was killed—is that right, Strevsky?”

The pilot’s beautiful body stiffened as an animal’s body stiffens when it scents danger. A dull flush rose in his face.

“Yes, Mr. Sloane. Michael.”

“Michael Strevsky,” repeated Sloane softly. “All right, gentlemen, won’t you sit down? My boys will find Wilson if he’s to be found. The plane would have helped.” Without any warning his soft voice changed and became as quick and cutting as a whiplash; his drooping eyelids flashed upward. “
Which of you disabled that plane?
Why did you have to prevent anyone’s leaving? Which of you did it?”

No one spoke. They were all probably a little taken aback by the unexpected unleashing of force which up to then had been somewhat masked by his leisurely, easygoing manner. He waited, eyes still unhooded and as hard and rapacious as an eagle’s. It was curious to see the look on his lean, hard face, in contrast to the grandfatherly and benevolent stance of his horn-rimmed spectacles, still down on his nose.

At last Jim gave a kind of shake to his shoulders as if he were rousing himself and walked across toward P. H. Sloane. He put his hands on the table and leaned over it and said:

“Listen, P. H., whoever cut the fuel line had to know how. I know how—Strevsky would know.”

“But I didn’t do it,” said Strevsky hurriedly.

“Major Pace might know how—”

“I’ll add to Strevsky’s denial,” said Pace instantly and smoothly.

“—and Roy Wilson might know how to do it, but I doubt it.”

“It matters more,” said Sloane, “why it was done than who did it.” In a flash he reverted to his usual easy, leisurely but economic manner. “Sit dawn, Jim. All of you. I’ve got some reports from St. Louis here I want you to hear. I talked confidentially to the police there last night; they got some material together and gave it to me over the telephone early this morning. Will you—” He motioned toward chairs.

Eden thankfully sank down into a great wing chair which was like a shelter. The others hesitated and then, as if persuaded, overcome by Sloane’s suddenly easy manner, sat down, too—in chairs, mainly, near the long table; Jim on the arm of the great divan which faced the fireplace, where Noel still stood and smoked. Dorothy Woolen was in the room, too; so quiet that Eden just then perceived her with rather a shock for she was sitting quite near her, blank and impassive as the wall behind her, strong, bloodless-looking hands clasped in her lap, blonde braid like a coronet above her wide forehead. She would have been a handsome woman, Eden realized swiftly, had a spark of animation lighted that splendidly wooden face. Then she forgot Dorothy. For Sloane had pushed his spectacles up again so as to read and was looking at the sheaf of papers he held in his hands.

And he said : “Eden Shore—”

It pinned Eden’s attention.

“Eden Elizabeth Shore; born June 6, 1912, in Lake Forest, Illinois. Father Charles Shore, died in 1931.” He glanced along several lines and apparently telescoped them. “Palm Beach winters, Lake Forest or Newport summers—m’m’m. Educated abroad and at Miss Snelle’s School (see Averill Blaine).” He stopped, glanced at Averill and then at Eden again and said: “You two became friends at school, then?”

“We—met at school, yes,” said Eden, and Averill added demurely: “We’ve been the best of friends for many years, Mr. Sloane. Since school days.”

“I see,” said Sloane in a voice that struck Eden as being rather dry. “Well—correct up to that point, Miss Shore?”

“Where did you?” began Eden, her own voice a little husky and then checked her question and said: “Quite correct.”

“Good. In 1930 your father lost his money; he died in 1931 and your mother (who was Eden Jane Sothern also of Lake Forest) died shortly after. You went to New York and held—apparently you held a succession of jobs.”

“Yes; yes, that’s true.”

“You kept up your friendship with the Blaines?”

Eden glanced once at Averill and said, “Yes.”

“I see. Saw them whenever they were in New York, I presume?”

“Yes,” said Eden, still a little huskily.

“Came to St. Louis four days ago to be Miss Blaine’s bridesmaid at her wedding?”

The wedding. “Yes,” said Eden stiffly, not daring now to glance at Averill, not daring to look at Jim.