Halfway House (22 page)

Ellery slipped into his coat and fingered the satin lapels lovingly. “The idea,” he remarked, “is largely exploratory.”

“Ha, ha.”

“No, really. Does a man good to get out into society once in a while. Gives you the temporary illusion of special privilege. I’ve been balancing it off with side-trips down to the East Side. Wonderful what a contrast there is.”

“What,” asked the Inspector grumpily, “are you exploring?”

Ellery began to whistle again. Djuna, their boy-of-all-work, clattered into the bedroom. “Again?” he shrilled with disapproval. Ellery nodded, and Inspector Queen threw his hands up. “I guess you got a girl,” said Djuna blackly. “Here’s somethin’.”

“Something?”

“Package. Just came. Messenger. All dolled up like a general.” The boy threw something large and grand on the bed and sniffed.

“See what it is, imp.”

Djuna ripped away the wrappings, disclosing a chaste can, a flattish box, and a note on crested stationery. “You order tobacco from a guy by the name of Pierre?” he demanded.

“Pierre? Pierre? Oh, Lord—the incomparable Miss Zachary! That,” grinned Ellery, seizing the note, “is what comes of hobnobbing with riches, dad.”

The note said, “My dear Mr. Queen: Pray forgive the delay. My blend is made of foreign tobaccoes, and recent labor troubles in Europe held up the last shipment. I trust you will find the tobacco satisfactory and to your taste. Please accept the enclosed box of paper match-packets with my compliments. I have taken the liberty of having your name inscribed on each one, my usual custom. Should you find the tobacco too strong or too mild, we shall be glad in the future to make the required adjustment of blend. I remain, Yours Respectfully.”

“Good old Pierre,” said Ellery, tossing the note aside. “Put the stuff away in the family humidor, Djun’. Well, boys, I’m off.”

“You’re telling me,” said the Inspector glumly. He looked positively anxious as Ellery adjusted his hat to a nicety, tucked a stick under his arm, and departed whistling.

“This,” said Andrea in a severe tone later that evening, “is not the sort of thing I have come to expect from you, Ellery Queen. It’s deadly after all those lovely dives you’ve been taking me to.”

Ellery glanced around the quiet and elegant club in the night-sky above Radio City. “Well, I don’t want to be precipitate, darling. These problems of social education require delicacy of handling. Too consistent a diet of bread and water…”

“Pish! Let’s dance.”

They danced in exquisite silence. Andrea gave herself up to the music with a fluid acquiescence of body that made dancing with her a physical pleasure. She floated in Ellery’s arms, so light and responsive that he might have been dancing alone. But he was very conscious of the aroma of her hair, and he remembered with a guilty feeling the expression on Bill Angell’s face the night she had stood so close to him outside the Trenton shack.

“I like dancing with you,” she said lightly as the music stopped.

“Discretion,” sighed Ellery, “warns me to thank you and let it go at that.” He thought her glance was a little startled. Then she laughed and they strolled back to their table.

“Hello, you two,” said Grosvenor Finch. He was grinning at them. Beside him stood Senator Frueh, as stiff as his pudgy little figure could contrive, and openly disapproving. Both men were in evening clothes. Finch seemed embarrassed.

“Ah, we have company,” said Ellery. He held out Andrea’s chair and she sat down. “Waiter, chairs. Sit down, gentlemen, sit down. I trust you haven’t had too bothersome a chase this evening?”

“Ducky,” said Andrea coldly, “what does this mean?”

Finch looked sheepish; he sat down and ran his hand over his gray hair. Senator Frueh, toying with his soft and beautiful beard, hesitated; then he sat down, too, angrily. He glared at Ellery.

Ellery lit a cigaret. “Come, come, Finch; you look like an overgrown country boy caught in Farmer Jones’s apples. Relax.”

“Ducky!” Andrea stamped her foot. “I was speaking to you.”

“Well,” muttered the big man, rubbing his chin, “it’s this way, Andrea. Your mother…”

“I thought so!”

“But, Andrea, what could I do? And then Simon here, blast him, sided with Jessica. It’s rather a difficult position—”

“Not at all,” said Ellery amiably. “We can take it, Andrea and I. What is it you suspect, gentlemen—a bomb in my right pocket and a copy of
The Daily Worker
in my left? Or is it simply that you consider me an immoral influence on a growing child?”

“Let me handle this, Mr. Queen,” said Andrea through her small, white teeth. “Now, Ducky, let me get this straight. Mother sent you two skulking after me tonight?”

The Senator’s fat fingers flew about in an outraged way among the hairs of his beard. “Andrea! You’re insulting. Skulking!”

“Oh, stop it, Simon,” said Finch, flushing. “You know that’s virtually what it amounted to. Didn’t care for the idea myself. But from what your mother tells me, Andrea—”

“And what,” said Andrea dangerously, “has my mother told you?”

His hand described a vague arc. “Well… Slumming and things. Queen’s been taking you to what she considers—ah—improper places. She doesn’t like it.”

“Poor Mr. Rockefeller,” said Ellery with a sad shake of his head as he glanced about the room. “I’m sure he’d be mortified by the epithet, Finch.”

“Oh, not this place.” Finch was growing redder. “Damn it all, I told Jessica… I mean, this is perfectly all right, of course, but those other places—”

“By the way, Andrea,” drawled Ellery, “I almost took you down to the Rand School this evening. Think of the time you’d have had then, gentlemen. Those proletarian intellectuals are a hard lot.”

“You think you’re funny,” growled Senator Frueh. “Look here, Queen, why the devil don’t you let Andrea alone?”

“Why the devil,” said Ellery pleasantly, “don’t you mind your own business?”

Finch was ruddy to the roots of his gray hair now. “Blessed if we don’t deserve that, Queen,” he said with a wry grin. “Oh, come on, Simon; it was a rum idea in the first place.”

The lawyer’s beard trembled over the white cloth like a waterfall suddenly arrested in its course. “Queen’s no fool. If Andrea is—”

“That,” said Andrea, “is just about the last straw!”

“Be quiet, Andrea. We can talk plainly to this man. Queen, what are you after?”

Ellery blew smoke; but his eyes were bright with mockery. “What is any man after? A little home in the country, a garden, kiddies—”

“Stop clowning. You don’t fool me for a moment, Queen. You’re still nosing around that Wilson case, aren’t you?”

“Is that an interrogatory question or a rhetorical one?”

“You know what it is!”

“Well,” murmured Ellery, “it’s really none of your affair; but since you’re kind enough to ask—yes. And what has that to do with you?”

“Simon,” said Finch uneasily.

“Don’t be a jellyfish, Grosvenor. Just this. As friends of Andrea’s—”

“No friends of mine,” said Andrea in a frigid tone. But her palms were stroking the cloth and she was pale.

“—we know that it isn’t mere desire for her company that’s made you hound her this way ever since that woman was convicted up in Trenton. Now what the devil is it you want?”

“Peace,” sighed Ellery, “and a complete abruption of intercourse as far as you and I are concerned. Is that fair enough?”

“Why are you hanging around Andrea? What is it you suspect her of?”

“I think,” said Andrea grimly, “that this has gone quite far enough. You forget yourself, Senator Frueh. As for you, Ducky, I’m surprised that you would permit yourself to be… But I suppose it’s Mother again. She always could twist you around her little finger.”

“Andrea,” said the tall man miserably.

“No! And you forget, Senator, that I’m a grown woman with presumably a mind of my own. No one takes me out by force, I assure you. If I’ve chosen to spend my time with Mr. Queen that’s my business, not yours. I know what I’m doing; or if I don’t,” she added with a faint and bitter smile, “I’ll find out soon enough. Now will you please—both of you—go away and let us alone?”

“Of course, Andrea, if that’s the way you feel about it,” said the fat man, bouncing out of his chair. “I’m merely discharging my duty to your family. After this—”

Ellery rose and waited politely. No one said anything. So he murmured, “I thought your rôle was legalistic, Senator. Have you turned detective, too? If so, let me welcome you into the ranks.”

“Buffoon!” snarled Senator Frueh, tugging at his beard. “You watch your step.” He flounced off.

“I’m sorry, Andy,” said Finch, taking her hand.

“It’s not really your fault, Ducky.” She smiled at him, but withdrew her hand. He sighed, nodded to Ellery, and followed his stout companion.

“I suppose,” said Ellery, not sitting down, “you’d rather go home, Andrea? The evening must be spoiled for you.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s just begun. Shall we dance?”

Ellery let out the Duesenberg. It roared with steadily mounting violence, as if it were an ancient lion and he had tweaked its tail. It fled down the concrete road as if all the devils in hell were after it. “Whee!” squealed Andrea, holding on to her hat. “How are your reflexes, mister? I’m still young, and life is sweet.”

“I am,” Ellery assured her as he pawed around precariously for a cigaret, “a veritable tower of strength.”

“Here, stop that!” she screamed, sticking her own into his mouth. “This chariot may steer by itself, but I’d rather not chance… Not,” she said suddenly, “that I’d care.”

“Really? Care about what?”

She slumped down beside him, squinting along the spurting ribbon of road without really seeing it. “Oh, about anything. Well, let’s not get maudlin. Where are we going?”

Ellery waved the cigaret. “Does it matter? The broad highway, a lovely companion of the opposite sex, no traffic to speak of, the sun beaming heroically… I’m happy.”

“Good for you.”

“Why?” he said, glancing at her. “Aren’t you?”

“Oh, of course. Deliriously.” She closed her eyes. Ellery drove peacefully. After a while she opened her eyes and said in a gay voice, “Guess what. I found a gray hair this morning.”

“Curses! So soon? You see, Senator Frueh was right. Did you remove it?”

“Idiot. Of course I did.”

“As if,” he said dryly, “grief could be assuaged by baldness.”

“Now what is that supposed to mean? It’s cryptic.”

“Oh, it’s more than that.
Tusculanarum Disputationum
, in fact. If you’d spent more time learning something than being ‘finished’ at school, you’d know that that’s a pearl tossed off by Senator Cicero. It’s foolish, he remarked, to pluck out one’s hair for sorrow—as if, and so forth.”

“Oh.” She closed her eyes again. “You think I’m unhappy, don’t you?”

“My dear child, who am I to judge? But if you want my opinion, I think you’re going very rapidly to pot.”

She sat up straight with indignation. “I like that! I suppose you don’t realize that I’ve seen more of you in the past few weeks than of anyone else.”

Ellery flicked the Duesenberg around a heat-swollen crevice in the concrete. “If I’ve contributed to your unhappiness, I should be drawn and quartered. I think I know several worthy persons who would assist in the operation. But while I’m not the most cheerful companion in the world, I don’t believe it’s my influence that’s done it to you.”

“Oh, don’t you!” Andrea retorted. “You should have heard what Mother had to say on the subject last night—after I got home and she’d had the eminent Senator’s report.”

“Ah, your mother,” sighed Ellery. “No, I don’t flatter myself that that worthy dowager approves of Inspector Queen’s little boy. Just what is it she suspects me of—designs on your virtue, your bankroll, or what?”

“Don’t be coarse. It’s these little excursions.”

“Not my connection with the tragedy of Ella Amity’s Halfway House?”

“Please,” said Andrea. “Let’s forget that, shall we? No, after you took me to see
Waiting for Lefty
and to that settlement house on Henry Street and the city lodging-house she simply exploded. She thinks you’re poisoning my mind.”

“A not unreasonable suspicion. Has the virus worked?”

“I won’t say it hasn’t. I never realized what misery…” Andrea shivered a little and took her hat off. Her hair, glinting in the sun, began to whip about her head. “She thinks you’re simply the most terrible person in the world. Not that I care what she thinks—about you.”

“Andrea! This is so sudden. When did it happen?”

“Mother,” frowned Andrea, “is a good deal like those dreadful flying people in that Faulkner book you gave me—you know,
Pylon
? What was it the reporter said about them? If you squished ’em, they’d squirt cylinder oil instead of blood?”

“I fail to see the analogy. What liquid would your mother squirt?”

“Old wine—wine with a pedigree, you understand—old wine which has unaccountably and tragically turned to vinegar. Poor Mother! She’s had a bruising life; she doesn’t really know what’s happened to her.”

Ellery chuckled. “Described with remarkable point. Nevertheless, Andrea, that’s an extremely unfilial speech.”

“Mother is—well, Mother. You wouldn’t understand.”

“I think I would. Believe it or not, I had a mother once.”

Andrea did not speak for a long time. “Grandfather,” she said at last in a dreamy voice. “Let’s see, now. Yes, of course. All you’d squeeze out of his poor broken body would be leucocytes. Not a trace of red left in
him.
”

“How about Ducky? You know him better than I do.”

“He should be easy,” said Andrea, sucking the tip of her forefinger. “Ducky, Ducky… Port! No, that’s wine again. Yes! Spirits of camphor. Doesn’t that sound awful?”

“Sickening. Why camphor?”

“Oh, Ducky’s so
right
. I suppose you don’t see what I mean. My mind—such as it is—always associates camphor with stuffy YMCA bedrooms and colds in the head. Don’t ask me why. It must have been poor conditioning as a child.”

“Andrea, I believe you’re tight. Only alcohol would link that bloated plutocrat with the YMCA.”

“Don’t be foul. You know I don’t drink. That’s why mother’s so shocked; I’m the old-fashioned girl on a sudden bender. Now: Tolstoy.”