Put on the Armour of Light (18 page)

I
t
was a relief to Charles that it was Maggie who opened the door. The smile died on her face when she saw his swollen jaw.

“Charles! What happened?”

“Shhsh. I'm all right.” He covered her mouth, moved her and himself into the hallway and shut the door.

“I'm all right.” He took his hand away. “Where is everyone?”

She placed her hand on his face. “Father's still at the college and Aunt Jessie is at her knitting circle. Oh, it looks sore.”

He placed his own hand over hers for just a moment, then pulled her hand gently away. “Good. No one else home. As for this —” pointing at the livid bruise and swelling on his jaw. “The story — for now — is that I fell off the scaffolding at the church.”

“But that's not what really happened?”

“No. Look, there may be some rumours — ugly ones, I warn you. But they're not true, I swear.”

“Tell me. Come and sit down.”

“No. It might be best if we moved out to the verandah where people can see us.” When they got to the verandah, he settled on the step below hers with some difficulty and tilted his hat so that his face wouldn't be so visible from the street. “Try to look as if I'm telling you about the ice cream social.”

“Are fisticuffs now part of the fun at the ice cream social?”

“No jokes. Hurts my face.”

She made cooing sympathy noises that threatened to undo him. Until this moment he had been able to keep a lid on the caustic anger and humiliation over what Martland had done to him. Now all he wanted was to crush her in his arms and take refuge in the sweet comfort she offered. That could not happen so, under cover of fumbling with his handkerchief and wiping his brow, he mounted a struggle to compose himself.

Then he told her everything: about the fraud, about the race, about Trevor not turning up to meet him that morning, about the run-in with Martland. He had to swallow a few times before he spit out the part about Agnes, the thing that Martland had said.

“Promise you won't go anywhere near him again. Promise!”

“I can't —”

“And Trevor …”

Everything in that sharp intake of breath told him that there were fearful images in her mind.

“Where is he?”

“I don't know,” he said. “I hoped you might. Has he talked to you since the race last night? Did he mention anything about going on a fishing holiday?”

“No. Nothing. I was expecting him to be at the prize giving but he wasn't there. And then he wasn't here when I got home, either.”

“I think he left before the prize giving to shake Eklund off his trail. Then he must have gone to Jessup's apartment.”

“Jessup?”

“Yes. He told Jessup he needed a lawyer and that Jessup was to meet us at Dingwall's this morning and go with us to the police station.”

“But if his father committed the crime, why would Trevor need a lawyer?”

“Trevor is an officer in the company so he may be implicated, I suppose. But he wouldn't tell Jessup any of the particulars. It was all very odd. Jessup told me another funny thing.”

“What?”

“Trevor said that Jessup was to make sure I got that old driving coat. He was apparently very insistent that I should have that coat.”

“That's a strange thing to be arranging when his whole world is crumbling about his ears.”

“That's what I thought, too.” Charles furrowed his brow and absently ran his hand over his misshapen jaw. Their eyes met.

“Charles?”

“I'm going to get that coat.”

“I'm coming with you.”

She was ready to insist on the point but he only looked at her for an instant and said, “Then hurry.”

She ran in to scrawl a note to her aunt to tell her not to wait supper for her. When she reappeared she was dressed in her second best hat, a cream coloured straw boater with a trailing blue ribbon, and a paisley-patterned cotton shawl in case the evening should turn cool.

It didn't take them long to walk through the late afternoon light to the Macpherson Stables. The stable hand recognized Charles from two nights before and accepted his story readily enough about having dropped something in Daisy's stall. Charles and Maggie walked down the centre aisle of the stables, trying to adjust their eyes to the lower light. When they got to the stall, Maggie ran her hand down Daisy's nose and produced some sugar cubes from her bag. Charles looked the coat over as it hung from its pegs, and stood back.

“All right. What is it about this coat?” He began to search through the pockets.

“Anything there?”

Charles enumerated the items as he put them into her hands. “Three tooth picks … a pair of collar studs … a handkerchief … stub end of a pencil … candy wrapper … and a golf tee.”

“Are there any inside pockets?”

“Yes. Wait. Here's something.”

“A key?”

“That's funny. It looks like — Ah!” He waved it in front of her eyes. “Come on. We have to get there before they close.”

They took the streetcar on Broadway for more speed and arrived at the door of the YMCA building just as the janitor was turning the key in the lock. They rapped on the door and called to him but he looked dubiously at Charles and began walking away.

Maggie rapped frantically. “Sir? Sir, please! Just a moment.”

The janitor returned and squinted at her. She smiled winningly. He unlocked the door.

“Thank you! Thank you so much. My brother here was just refereeing the junior boy's lacrosse match, as you can see. No. He can't talk, poor man, but there is some liniment in his locker, if he could just go in and fetch it? Oh, thank you. That's very kind of you.”

Charles tipped his hat to the janitor and disappeared into the locker room while Maggie entertained the janitor with the highlights of the lacrosse match. After a short while Charles reappeared, took Maggie's arm, tipped his hat again to the janitor and steered her out the door.

“Was it there?”

Charles answered by patting a bulge in his jacket.

“What now?”

He looked furtively up and down the street. “I need to put it somewhere less obvious. Put on your shawl.”

“What? Oh, I see.” She untied her shawl from the handle of her handbag and made a great swirling to-do about putting it around her shoulders. Under cover of this manoeuvre, Charles took the package and stuffed it down the back of his trousers.

“We're really quite good at this,” she said. “Maybe we should become professional footpads.”

“Yes, and why not? If Martland has his way I'll be out of a job anyway. Now, if I'm right, Trevor wouldn't have left me the key if he didn't intend me to read the contents. Where can we go that's quiet, where we won't be noticed?”

Maggie thought and looked around. “What about the chemistry laboratory?” She looked at her watch. “It'll be quiet. The afternoon classes are over and the evening classes don't start till seven.”

The building housing the university laboratories was a short walk away. The chemistry laboratory was deserted and the assembled apparatus burped and dripped without an audience. Charles installed himself at Maggie's section of the bench while she stood at the open door surveying the hallway in case someone should come in their direction. If that happened, Charles was to dump the contents of the package into the drawer under the bench and pretend to be mesmerized by Maggie's explanation of her current experiment. But luck was with them and Charles had a stretch of over twenty minutes to sift through what looked like a wide assortment of papers. Maggie grew restless after ten.

“Well?”

“In a minute. I'll tell you in a minute.”

After ten more agonizing minutes passed. “Well?”

“Right.” He gave one last look at a sheet of onion-skin paper and started stuffing the material back in its envelope. “There are records of investments from several New York brokerage houses. Copies of telegrams with buy and sell orders. Also invoices from suppliers related to the hotel project. And an account book. The invoices are posted to the accounts in the book and there's a section for the investments, too. What we've got here, I think, is a separate set of accounts from the regular Martland and Asseltine books.”

“So you think Trevor was right?”

“I'm no accountant, but that's the way it looks to me. Now we have to decide what to do next.”

Maggie decided that such decisions should not be made on an empty stomach. They chose a small café run by a German family tucked away on a short street near the market. As they settled in at a table with a rough linen tablecloth, Charles kept an eye on the door of the café while Maggie bantered away in German with the waiter, who seemed quite charmed at these halting attempts and went off to give their orders to the cook.

Maggie took off her hat and sat with it on her lap, spearing it with her hat pins while she talked.

“I think I'd better take the papers to the police after supper,” Charles said.

“I suppose so. They'll have to believe you now that we have proof. But what about Trevor? We have to look for him. We can't just leave it to the police.”

“We'll work out a plan. And we'll find him.” He tried to sound reassuring.

“But I don't even know where to begin. How are we going to find him if they took him to Rat Portage?” She fretted at the ribbons on her hat. “I suppose we should start at the last place someone saw him.”

“The station, you mean? Yes. I wish we knew who was with him. I can't think that he went on that train willingly.”

“Wait! Mrs. Morosnick.”

Charles looked around. “Is she here?”

“No, silly. Mrs. Morosnick works nights as a cleaner at the railway station. And she would recognize Trevor because he came to pick me up at the church last month when we were sorting clothes and she teased him. Maybe she can tell us who was with Trevor when he boarded the train.”

“Do you know where she lives?”

“Yes, on Gertie Street next to the dairy.”

“Right, soon as we finish here, I'll take the papers to the police and you can visit Mrs. Morosnick.”

It was all settled and they tucked into their bratwurst and red cabbage with a will. He was glad she was going off on this errand. Martland seemed to be capable of anything and Charles didn't want her to be too closely associated with what he was about to do. He saw Maggie onto the streetcar to Mrs. Morosnick's with strict instructions to stick to well–lit streets where other people were walking. She agreed to meet him at the church at 9:30 p.m. and he would walk her home. Then he set out for the Central Police station.

He wasn't looking forward much to the return visit and so he took the long route in order to think out the best way to present this new information. Would the contents of the manila envelope be enough to overcome the chief's skepticism? While stewing over this he came to the Willow Book Shop. He could never pass by a bookstore without at least looking at the display in the window. Here were the latest in romance novels and a handsome edition of Browning's poems. He was mentally working out whether he could afford the Browning when out of the corner of his eye he noticed that a man in a grey cloth cap some distance behind him had also stopped and was now lighting a cigar. Charles began walking again and so did the man. Glancing over his shoulder, Charles rationalized that it must be just a coincidence, that he was simply feeling skittish. He decided to turn at the next corner just for reassurance.

Grey Cap turned as well and seemed to be closing the distance between them. Charles saw a back alley, turned into it sharply and quickened his pace to a trot. Grey Cap followed. Now absolute, white hot, searing rage banished thoughts of evading capture. Charles broke into a full run and pulled ahead of his pursuer. Then he turned a corner and lunged into a narrow space between buildings. Grey Cap ran by and immediately Charles hurtled off after him propelled by all the venom he had stored up to direct at Frank Martland.
Now how do you like it?
Grey Cap, caught off balance, reached the mouth of the alley and looked around to see a demented clergyman with bared teeth in his grotesque face coming at him like a rocket. He bolted.

Charles chased him toward the next intersection. The small part of his mind not consumed with bloody revenge registered first, the sound of brass instruments, then the tune: “Stand up! Stand up for Jesus.” As he followed Grey Cap around a corner the sound exploded. Grey Cap darted across the street inches in front of the tambourines. Charles tried to follow but was immediately caught up in a confused welter of marching navy serge, tubas, euphoniums and stiff-visored bonnets trimmed with red. A trombone slide grazed his nose and tweaked it on the pull-back, then the bass drum loomed in front of him and he lost sight of Grey Cap entirely.

“Sing with us, brother! You look as if you could use it.”

Someone pressed a hymn sheet into his hand and then what hearing he retained was blown out by the stentorian baritone beside him. He was borne along, unwillingly part of this raucous centipede, until it spit him out on the other side half a block from where he had last seen Grey Cap. As he looked frantically to right and left, someone bumped into him from the back, shoving him forward.

“Sorry! Did you see where he went?” Setter said, gasping for air. “Oh, hang it! No point now. Gone down some rat hole.”

Charles bent forward, winded himself, sucking great lungfuls with his hands on his knees.

“All right, Lauchlan?” Setter was fanning himself with his hat. “Quite the turnaround. When I first saw him he was chasing you.”

“I'd have caught the blasted fellow, too. Except for divine intervention.” He saw Setter's wry smile. “Yes, all right. Lost my temper. But I would at least like to have gotten some information out of him.”