Unexpected Night (20 page)

She said in a violent whisper: “Of age! Of age! I feel as if I had never heard anything but that in all my life. I hate the sound of the words. Can't I sign something, and give the money away now?”

Gamadge, looking at her, hesitated. Then he said: “It might be arranged.”

Her face cleared, “I was afraid I couldn't.”

“Well. All things considered—look here. I can draw up a paper for you, and Hoskins and I can witness it. But, my dear good child, have you really thought it over? A million dollars!”

“I won't touch that money, Mr. Gamadge.”

“Can't you tell me why not?”

“No.”

Gamadge had become very grave. He glanced about the small, narrow room, neatly arranged for the night; at the turned-down bed, the little table beside it with its pink-shaded lamp, the chintz curtains. Then, looking her firmly in the eye, he said: “Your brother died a natural death, you know. Baines says so.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Your people won't like this. Suppose they cut off supplies?”

“I have a little money of my own.”

“You won't sleep on this very serious business matter?”

“I want to get it settled. I can't sleep unless I do.”

“Let's go, then.” Gamadge, after a nervous glance at the communicating door, sat down at her writing table and got out his fountain pen. “Any particular person you want to give it to?” he asked, looking up at her.

“No, I don't know of anybody. I suppose…” She frowned, hesitated, and said again: “No.”

“All right. You just renounce all claim to it, and leave it to be scrambled for. And believe me, there'll be some scrambling.” Gamadge reflected, wrote, reflected again, and wrote hurriedly. “How's this?” he asked finally, and read from the sheet of Ocean House letter paper:

“TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

I, Alma Cowden, hereby renounce all claim to my brother Amberley Cowden's estate, and solemnly declare this to be my irrevocable intention. I clearly understand that this document is legal and binding, and it is signed by me in the presence of two witnesses.”

Alma also looked grave. “It sounds right,” she said judicially. “It's just what I wanted.”

“I'll get Hoskins.”

He slid out of the room, summoned Hoskins with a crooked finger, and pushed him through the doorway of Room 19. He then explained in a whisper that Miss Cowden wanted her signature witnessed.

Hoskins took the paper, read it twice, and looked fishily up at Gamadge. “You crazy?” he asked, in a loud whisper.

“No. Ssh. Sign, Miss Cowden.”

She did so. Gamadge signed, and then handed the pen to Hoskins, who received it automatically, still fixing Gamadge with a glassy stare.

“Go ahead and sign.” Gamadge nudged him sharply.

Hoskins sat down at the table, read the paper again, tugged at the collar of his shirt, and laboriously traced a large “Willard G. Hoskins, Deputy Sheriff,” under Gamadge's signature. He then rose, and allowed himself to be firmly pushed out into the corridor. Gamadge closed the door, and folded the paper. He asked:

“Do you want me to turn this over to that lawyer of yours, when he comes?”

“I suppose so.”

“He'll go up in the air.”

“Perhaps he will, but I always liked Mr. Ormville.”

“Well, we'll hope for the best. Think you can stall him off as easily as you do me, when he starts asking questions?”

“Yes, I do.”

“That's all settled, then. Now, remember: no jitters to-night. Hoskins will be right there till morning. Sleep well.”

“Thank you for everything, Mr. Gamadge. It's funny; I haven't anybody but you.”

“That is accidental, and purely temporary. Good night.”

“Good night.”

He went out, heard the key turn in the lock of her door, and faced Hoskins. The latter seized him, and drew him into Room 22.

“See here,” he demanded sternly. “What you up to? She can't convey any property. She's a minor.”

“She can do anything she wants to. Let the lawyer tear the thing up, if he likes; she'll get a good night's sleep out of it, anyhow.”

He dashed downstairs, and found Mitchell on the veranda, looking out on a dream world. Everything but the nearest trees and bushes had been blotted out by a white wall of fog, through which the light on the driveway showed palely, like a wet moon.

“Careful, now,” begged Mitchell, when they were in Gamadge's car.

“You telling me?” Gamadge slowly manœuvred his way around the sweep and down the drive.

“Of course we'll go by the state road. It'll make us late. Do you think those actors will try to give the show?”

“If I know the profession, they'll give it for just you and me, if they have to.” He drove through the entrance at a snail's pace, turned left, and accelerated. “By the way, Miss Cowden has just signed a paper giving away her property.”

“What property?”

“Her brother's property. Instead of giving away a mere couple of hundred thousand, she is now renouncing the whole estate.”

“She can't do that!”

“She thinks she can.”

“Is she crazy? Who's she giving it to, for goodness' sake?”

“She hasn't the faintest idea. I have the document in my pocket, signed by her and witnessed by myself and—under protest—by Hoskins.”

“Under protest is good. Hoskins knows—”

“We thought we'd like to humour her. Still, illegal as it all is, the paper itself is a rather ticklish bit of explosive to be carrying around. You know I have it. If anything should happen to me, go after it, and hand it to the lawyer, Ormville, to-morrow. He will be surprised.”

“What's going to happen to you, all of a sudden?”

“Anything might, I should think, in this fog. My nerves is fiddlestrings. Hang these lamps, they don't light anything. At this rate, we shall miss at least one Celebrated Play.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

“‘
E
ERIE' IS THE
word for it.” Gamadge hunched his shoulders and peered obstinately at the mist, which pressed against his face like damp cotton. There were no lights but his own, and these showed nothing but a few yards of soft road, and two lines of half-visible trees. “Can this be the pleasant woodland route we followed this morning?”

“It didn't last long, you remember. We'll soon be out of it. Don't forget to turn left at the crossroads.”

“I won't, if I see any crossroads.” But as he spoke the air turned fresher, and he felt a hard and greasy surface under his wheels. Lights winked feebly ahead; the mist seemed thinner, out in the open. He put on speed.

After three or four minutes, Mitchell said: “Cars coming behind. I can see them making the curve as they leave the woods. One, two and three.”

“Perhaps it's the rest of Callaghan's audience. I wonder if he'll wait for the gate.”

Mitchell, who was leaning out to look back, said: “The last car's in a hurry. It's passed the next one; and now it's passing the first. No, they won't let him. They're speeding up. Listen to him blow his horn.”

“They can all pass us, so far as I'm concerned, just so long as the idiots don't bump us.”

He made way for a two-seater containing a serious-looking young man without a hat, whose spectacles gleamed wanly as he turned them on Gamadge, and two young women in peasant costume and bright headkerchiefs. The young man shouted: “…Cove?”

“Yes,” shouted Gamadge.

They went on. Mitchell said: “Funny. That car is going to let the last one pass him.”

“Glad of it. I don't like the sound of his horn.”

“Why not? What's the matter with it?”

“Milton says the grey-fly winds a sultry horn. It must sound just like that one. Here comes Number Two.”

Number Two was a family car, loaded to the fenders with father, mother, three children, and a nurse in a bonnet and uniform. Children and nurse (who was large, elderly and Irish) looked happy and expectant; father, who was driving, slowed up beside Gamadge to ask: “Going up to the Cove?”

“We're aimed that way.”

“Look out for the fellow behind. He nearly had us in the ditch.”

“I'll get there first, and give him the whole road.”

They passed, and Gamadge had a glimpse of anguished femininity on the rear seat, controlling hysteria for the sake of its offspring.

“I guess you can't keep summer folks home, specially on a real bad night,” remarked Mitchell. “They got to be out on the routes, running into one another. That last car isn't coming up; perhaps the feller's scared, now. What's a grey-fly?”

“I couldn't tell you. It must have had just such a thin, wailing note as our friend's, back there.”

“Here's the turn for Tucon.”

They went through Tucon from the rear, ran down the main street, swung to the entrance of the lane, and brought up with a jerk against the powerful glare of a torch.

“Hello, Trainor,” said Mitchell.

“Hello, Mr. Mitchell.” The policeman's rubber cape glistened as he came up to the window. “None of those people came off the place since I got here, and if they did, none of 'em came back.”

“What do you mean, ‘if they did'?”

“We wondered if somebody might sneak through the woods; but Jones says no.”

“Jones down there now?”

“Yes, sir. Kid named Lefty Brown is our liaison officer.”

“Don't you let that boy go up and down this lane any more to-night.”

“No, sir. He's made his last trip.”

Officer Trainor turned away, and his torch lighted up the sign that hung from the tree. Its little lantern did no more than spread a confusing gleam over the surrounding cloud of fog. At Gamadge's request, the torch remained pointing upward.

“Well, the murder's out.” Gamadge laughed, as he read:

To-night at 8.45

THE OLD PIER PLAYERS
in
CATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN
THE SHADOW OF THE GLEN
THE QUEEN'S ENEMIES

“Ain't they good plays?” Mitchell also peered up at the sign.

“Oh, very. But that middle one—‘The Shadow Of The Glen'—it has a corpse in it.”

“My Heavens, if I'd been Callaghan, I'd have dropped it; to-night, anyway.”

“Well, poor souls, they had it ready.” Gamadge turned into the lane, a tunnel of quiet darkness. “Besides, it's comedy, you know.”

“Comedy!”

“The corpse isn't really dead; but he might as well be, so far as anything the audience knows to the contrary, until the play's half over. But eventually he comes to life.”

“And that makes it a comedy? I tell you one thing, Mr. Gamadge; perhaps it's because I ain't Irish, but I don't feel any too anxious to see it, myself. Not to-night.”

“I bet anything you like that Atwood plays the corpse; it's a part he could do on his head, as I remember it.”

They came out of the lane among bayberry bushes, and Gamadge drove to the end of a considerable line of cars. The Old Pier, glimmering with lights, looked a mile away. Spots of brightness marked the trailers, and paler gleams the tents. There was not a soul in sight.

“We're late, all right.” Gamadge followed Mitchell down to the shore, nearly treading on his heels when he stopped to stare; and indeed what they saw was fantastic enough to give anyone pause. A group behind one of the farther trailers loomed out of the fog, picked from the embracing murk by pinpoints of light on barbaric headdresses, breastplates and spears.

“They don't seem real,” said Mitchell.

“Glamour,” agreed Gamadge as a figure detached itself from the group, and came forward. “Congratulations, Mrs. Atwood.”

Mitchell could hardly believe his eyes; he saw before him the stately presentment of some noble Ethiopian queen, darkly implacable, jewelled from her high crown to her ankles, remote from the woman he had met that afternoon as was the Cove to-night from the Cove at midday.

“You theatre folks beat all,” he said. “Won't you catch cold, Mrs. Atwood?”

“I'll have to get used to it. What did they find out about Adrienne Lake? Can't you tell me anything? We have our telephone, but Callaghan says they won't give him any satisfaction.”

“They usually don't, until the analysis is all done. I guess it's safe enough to say she died of morphia poisoning.”

“Morphia.” Even Mrs. Atwood's voice seemed to have changed; it had a deeper tone, or so Mitchell thought; and it was echoed a moment later by the sound of a bell; a solitary note, that came to them hollowly through the fog, and died.