The Cases of Susan Dare (21 page)

“Well, my dear, it’s a bit difficult, you know. When Idabelle herself doesn’t know. When the most rigid—yes, the most rigid and searching investigation on the part of highly trained and experienced investigators has failed to discover—ah—the identity of the lost heir, how may my own poor powers avail!” He finished his cocktail, gulped, and said blandly: “But it’s Duane.”

“What—” said Susan.

“I said, it’s Duane. He is the heir. Anybody could see it with half an eye. Spittin’ image of his dad. Here they come ,now.”

They were alike and yet not alike at all. Both were rather tall, slender, and well made. Both had medium-brown hair. Both had grayish-blue eyes. Neither was particularly handsome. Neither was exactly unhandsome. Their features were not at all alike in bone structure, yet neither had features that were in any way distinctive. Their description on a passport would not have varied by a single word. Actually they were altogether unlike each other.

With the salad Major Briggs roused to point out a portrait that hung on the opposite wall.

“Jeremiah Lasher,” he said, waving a pink hand in that direction. He glanced meaningly at Susan and added: “Do you see any resemblance, Miss Susan? I mean between my old friend and one of these lads here.”

One of the lads—it was Dixon—wriggled perceptibly, but Duane smiled.

“We are not at all embarrassed, Miss Susan,” he said pleasantly. “We are both quite accustomed to this sort of scrutiny.” He laughed lightly, and Idabelle smiled, and Dixon said:

“Does Miss Dare know about this?”

“Oh, yes,” said Idabelle, turning as quickly and attentively to him as she had turned to Duane. “There’s no secret about it.”

“No,” said Dixon somewhat crisply. “There’s certainly no secret about it.”

There was, however, no further mention of the problem of identity during the rest of the evening. Indeed, it was a very calm and slightly dull evening except for the affair of Major Briggs and the draft.

That happened just after dinner. Susan and Mrs. Lasher were sitting over coffee in the drawing room, and the three men were presumably lingering in the dining room.

It had been altogether quiet in the drawing room, yet there had not been audible even the distant murmur of the men’s voices. Thus the queer, choked shout that arose in the dining room came as a definite shock to the two women.

It all happened in an instant. They hadn’t themselves time to move or inquire before Duane appeared in the doorway. He was laughing but looked pale.

“It’s all right,” he said. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“
Duane,
” said Idabelle Lasher gaspingly. “
What
—”

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said swiftly. “It’s nothing.” He turned to look down the hall at someone approaching and added: “Here he is, safe and sound.”

He stood aside, and Major Briggs appeared in the doorway. He looked so shocked and purple that both women moved hurriedly forward, and Idabelle Lasher said: “Here—on the divan. Ring for brandy, Duane. Lie down here, Major.”

“Oh, no—no,” said Major Briggs stertorously. “No. I’m quite all right.”

Duane, however, supported him to the divan, and Dixon appeared in the doorway.

“What happened?” he said.

Major Briggs waved his hands feebly. Duane said:

“The Major nearly went out the window.”

“O-h-h-h—”—it was Idabelle in a thin, long scream.

“Oh, it’s all right,” said Major Briggs shakenly. “I caught hold of the curtain. By God, I’m glad you had heavy curtain rods at that window, Idabelle.”

She was fussing around him, her hands shaking, her face ghastly under its make-up.

“But how could you—” she was saying jerkily—“what on earth—how could it have happened—”

“It’s the draft,” said the Major irascibly. “The confounded draft on my neck. I got up to close the window and—I nearly went out!”

“But how could you—” began Idabelle again.

“I don’t know how it happened,” said the Major. “Just all at once—” A look of perplexity came slowly over his face. “Queer,” said Major Briggs suddenly, “I suppose it was the draft. But it was exactly as if—” He stopped, and Idabelle cried:

“As if what?”

“As if someone had pushed me,” said the Major.

Perhaps it was fortunate that the butler arrived just then, and there was the slight diversion of getting the Major to stretch out full length on the divan and sip a restorative.

And somehow in the conversation it emerged that neither Dixon nor Duane had been in the dining room when the thing had happened.

“There’d been a disagreement over—well, it was over inheritance tax,” said Dixon flushing. “Duane had gone to the library to look in an encyclopedia, and I had gone to my room to get the evening paper which had some reference to it. So the Major was alone when it happened. I knew nothing of it until I heard the commotion in here.”

“I,” said Duane, watching Dixon, “heard the Major’s shout from the library and hurried across.”

That night, late, after Major Briggs had gone home, and Susan was again alone in the paralyzing magnificence of the French bedroom, she still kept thinking of the window and Major Briggs. And she put up her own window so circumspectly that she didn’t get enough air during the night and woke struggling with a silk-covered eiderdown under the impression that she herself was being thrust out the window.

It was only a nightmare, of course, induced as much as anything by her own hatred of heights. But it gave an impulse to the course she proposed to Mrs. Lasher that very morning.

It was true, of course, that the thing may have been exactly what it appeared to be, and that was, an accident. But if it was not accident, there were only two possibilities.

“Do you mean,” cried Mrs. Lasher incredulously when Susan had finished her brief suggestion, “that I’m to say openly that Duane is my son! But you don’t understand, Miss Dare. I’m not sure. It may be Dixon.”

“I know,” said Susan. “And I may be wrong. But I think it might help if you will announce to—oh, only to Major Briggs and the two men—that you are convinced that it is Duane and are taking steps for legal recognition of the fact.”

“Why? What do you think will happen? How will it help things to do that?”

“I’m not at all sure it will help,” said Susan wearily. “But it’s the only thing I see to do. And I think that you may as well do it right away.”

“Today?” said Mrs. Lasher reluctantly.

“At lunch,” said Susan inexorably. “Telephone to invite Major Briggs now.”

“Oh, very well,” said Idabelle Lasher. “After all, it will please Tom Briggs. He has been urging me to make a decision. He seems certain that it is Duane.”

But Susan, present and watching closely, could detect nothing except that Idabelle Lasher, once she was committed to a course, undertook it with thoroughness. Her fondness for Duane, her kindness to Dixon, her air of relief at having settled so momentous a question, left nothing to be desired. Susan was sure that the men were convinced. There was, to be sure, a shade of triumph in Duane’s demeanor, and he was magnanimous with Dixon—as, indeed, he could well afford to be. Dixon was silent and rather pale and looked as if he had not expected the decision and was a bit stunned by it. Major Briggs was incredulous at first, and then openly jubilant, and toasted all of them.

Indeed, what with toasts and speeches on the part of Major Briggs, the lunch rather prolonged itself, and it was late afternoon before the Major had gone and Susan and Mrs. Lasher met alone for a moment in the library.

Idabelle was flushed and worried.

“Was it all right, Miss Dare?” she asked in a stage whisper.

“Perfectly,” said Susan.

“Then—then do you know—”

“Not yet,” said Susan. “But keep Dixon here.”

“Very well,” said Idabelle.

The rest of the day passed quietly and not, from Susan’s point of view, at all valuably, although Susan tried to prove something about the possible left-handedness of the real Derek. Badminton and several games of billiards resulted only in displaying the more perfectly a consistent right-handedness on the part of both the claimants.

Dressing again for dinner, Susan looked at herself ruefully in the great mirror.

She had never in her life felt so utterly helpless, and the thought of Idabelle Lasher’s faith in her hurt. After all, she ought to have realized her own limits: the problem that Mrs. Lasher had set her was one that would have baffled—that, indeed, had baffled—experts. Who was she, Susan Dare, to attempt its solution?

The course of action she had laid out for Idabelle Lasher had certainly, thus far, had no development beyond heightening an already tense situation. It was quite possible that she was mistaken and that nothing at all would come of it. And if not, what then?

Idabelle Lasher’s pale eyes and anxious, beseeching hands hovered again before Susan, and she jerked her satin slip savagely over her head—thereby pulling loose a shoulder strap and being obliged to ring for the maid who sewed the strap neatly and rearranged Susan’s hair.

“You’ll be going to the party tonight, ma’am?” said the maid in a pleasant Irish accent.

“Party?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am. Didn’t you know? It’s the Charity Ball. At the Dycke Hotel. In the Chandelier Ballroom. A grand, big party, ma’am. Madame is wearing her pearls. Will you bend your head, please, ma’am.”

Susan bent her head and felt her white chiffon being slipped deftly over it. When she emerged she said:

“Is the entire family going?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am. And Major Briggs. There you are, ma’am—and I do say you look beautiful. There’s orchids, ma’am, from Mr. Duane. And gardenias from Mr. Dixon. I believe,” said the maid thoughtfully, “that I could put them all together. That’s what I’m doing for Madame.”

“Very well,” said Susan recklessly. “Put them all together.”

It made a somewhat staggering decoration—staggering, thought Susan, but positively abandoned in luxuriousness. So, too, was the long town car which waited for them promptly at ten when they emerged from the towering apartment house. Susan, leaning back in her seat between Major Briggs and Idabelle Lasher, was always afterward to remember that short ride through crowded, lighted streets to the Dycke Hotel.

No one spoke. Perhaps only Susan was aware (and suddenly realized that she was aware) of the surging desires and needs and feelings that were bottled up together in the tonneau of that long, gliding car. She was aware of it quite suddenly and tinglingly.

Nothing had happened. Nothing, all through that long dinner from which they had just come, had been said that was at all provocative.

Yet all at once Susan was aware of a queer kind of excitement.

She looked at the black shoulders of the two men, Duane and Dixon, riding along beside each other. Dixon sat stiff and straight; his shoulders looked rigid and unmoving. He had taken it rather well, she thought; did he guess Idabelle’s decision was not the true one? Or was he still stunned by it?

Or was there something back of that silence? Had she underestimated the force and possible violence of Dixon’s reaction? Susan frowned: it was dangerous enough without that.

They arrived at the hotel. Their sudden emergence from the silence of the car, with its undercurrent of emotion, into brilliant lights and crowds and the gay lilt of an orchestra somewhere, had its customary tonic effect. Even Dixon shook off his air of brooding and, as they finally strolled into the Chandelier Room, and Duane and Mrs. Lasher danced smoothly into the revolving colors, asked Susan to dance.

They left the Major smiling approval and buying cigarettes from a girl in blue pantaloons.

The momentary gayety with which Dixon had asked Susan to dance faded at once. He danced conscientiously but without much spirit and said nothing. Susan glanced up at his face once or twice; his direct, dark blue eyes looked straight ahead, and his face was rather pale and set.

Presently Susan said: “Oh, there’s Idabelle!”

At once Dixon lost step. Susan recovered herself and her small silver sandals rather deftly, and Idabelle, large and pink and jewel-laden, danced past them in Duane’s arms. She smiled at Dixon anxiously and looked, above her pearls, rather worried.

Dixon’s eyebrows were a straight dark line, and he was white around the mouth.

“I’m sorry, Dixon,” said Susan. She tried to catch step with him, for the moment, and added: “Please don’t mind my speaking about it. We are all thinking of it. I do think you behave very well.”

He looked straight over her head, danced several somewhat erratic steps, and said suddenly:

“It was so—unexpected. And you see, I was so sure of it.”

“Why were you so sure?” asked Susan.

He hesitated, then burst out again:

“Because of the dog,” he said savagely, stepping on one of Susan’s silver toes. She removed it with Spartan composure, and he said: “The calico dog, you know. And the green curtains. If I had known there was so much money involved, I don’t think I’d have come to—Idabelle. But then, when I did know, and this other—fellow turned up, why, of course, I felt like sticking it out!”

He paused, and Susan felt his arm tighten around her waist. She looked up, and his face was suddenly chalk white and his eyes blazing.

“Duane!” he said hoarsely. “I hate him. I could kill him with my own hands.”

The next dance was a tango, and Susan danced it with Duane. His eyes were shining, and his face flushed with excitement and gayety.

He was a born dancer, and Susan relaxed in the perfect ease of his steps. He held her very closely, complimented her gracefully, and talked all the time, and for a few moments Susan merely enjoyed the fast swirl of the lovely Argentine dance. Then Idabelle and Dixon went past, and Susan saw again the expression of Dixon’s set white face as he looked at Duane, and Idabelle’s swimming eyes above her pink face and bare pink neck.

The rest of what was probably a perfect dance was lost on Susan, busy about certain concerns of her own which involved some adjusting of the flowers on her shoulder. And the moment the dance was over she slipped away.

White chiffon billowed around her, and her gardenias sent up a warm fragrance as she huddled into a telephone booth. She made sure the flowers were secure and unrevealing upon her shoulder, steadied her breath, and smiled a little tremulously as she dialed a number she very well knew. It was getting to be a habit—calling Jim Byrne, her newspaper friend, when she herself had reached an impasse. But she needed him. Needed him at once.