A Graveyard to Let

9

It was a ticklish and frantic moment.

H.M., who evidently wanted at once to examine the shears and yet to pursue this matter of plastic surgery, compromised by dropping the shears under the table where nobody could see them. Byles motioned to O'Casey, who stalked out.

"Jean, you fool!" said Bob. "They know who all the plastic surgeons are. They've only got to find the right one, and..."

"Will you excuse me for a moment?" murmured Byles, and went softly out of the room.

"He's heading for the telephone," said Bob, "to start the ball rolling already. Well, there you are."

"Just a minute, son," interposed the heavy, quiet voice of H.M.

Instantly Jean and Bob turned to the Old Man for help. Despite his murderous scowl, young people turned to him instinctively because they recognized a kindred spirit. For instance, he could quite see the reason why his ten-year-old

grandson must shoot Sir Esme Forthergill in the seat of the pants with an air gun.

Jean, her yellow hair hanging forward in utter despair, looked up quickly.

"You haven't given anything away, my wench," H.M. told her firmly, and with a gleam of real illumination in his face. "In fact, if s better like this."

"Better?"

Uh-huh. I've already got a dare with our foxy friend; honestly, he means well but his job comes first. I'd make a little side bet of ten soakers that your old man will never go near a plastic surgeon, and that the coppers won't learn anything if he's already done it. But don't tell Byles that! Let 'em round up all the skin grafters they can find."

"But it is true, isn't it," Jean whispered fiercely, "that a plastic surgeon can change a face out of all recognition?"

"No, my wench. Not in the way you mean. What they can do is..." H.M. stopped, as though inspiration were beating him like a mallet

"Don't worry, Jean," Crystal said gently. "We know your devotion, because you've been Dad's favourite child. It's even possible to understand, though that's harder, Bob's sudden devotion to him."

"He's my father," Bob explained simply. "And now they're saying he's a crook!"

"We-ell!" Crystal smiled tolerantly. Cy had never noticed how light blue Jean's eyes were compared with the very dark blue eyes of Crystal, who glanced up at him in a way that angrily disturbed him still more.

"Listen to me, dear," Crystal went on to Jean, with genuine sympathy in her voice. "Nobody in his senses could ever believe Dad is an embezzler. But, if he had got away with a hundred thousand I could almost admire him for it"

"You like high play, don't you?" Cy asked.

"All kinds of it," said Crystal, looking straight at him again. She turned back to Jean.

"This woman of his, I believe, is a bubble dancer or a fan dancer. She's young. She's attractive. Now don't clench your fists, Jean. And you, Bob, don't squirm with embarrassment every time the fan dancer is mentioned.

"The fact is," Crystal went on, "that men of a certain age—like Dad—sometimes go completely off the rails and do things that to outsiders seem foolish. They aren't foolish, if you only understand. For heaven's sake let Dad have his fling! This woman..."

The quiet easy voice of Byles spoke from the doorway.

"I think, if you don't mind," he said, "we'd better have this woman's name."

The carpets in this house were too think. Jean hammered her fists on the table. She and Bob regarded each other bleakly.

Byles went over and again sat opposite H.M. The fox and Foxy Grandpa faced each other.

"I wish you wouldn't touch this, Gil," H.M. said in a weary voice. "It won't help you. But if you've got to have the information, you'd better get it from me."

"Yes?" prompted Byle, getting out a very tiny notebook.

"The gal's name is Irene Stanley."

Jean regarded H.M. with loathing, ad though he had turned traitor^ Byles caught that glance, and was satisfied.

"Her address," continued H.M. "is 161 East 161st street,"

"Telephone number?" asked Byles, without looking up.

"It's Motthaven 9-5098."

H.M.'s glare was just in time to stop Jean, who apparently knew this was a flat lie and had almost betrayed it. Cy Norton also suspected a trick, since this was the telephone number in the Bronx to which H.M. had put through a long call last night.

"Her real name," growled H.M., "in case you're interested, ain't Irene Stanley. It's Flossie Peters. But you call her Irene Stanley, or else."

"Occupa— Oh, sorry!" smiled Byles, and put away his notebook. "Believe me," he added to the others, "it is better we know these things."

That was the point at which Howard Betterton, quiet but impatient and annoyed, appeared at the door. Two voices rang out simultaneously.

One was Betterton's. "It's about time I had that little talk with the District Attorney."

The other was Byles's. "Now, H.M.! Bring out those pruning shears, and tell us what the big clue is!"

Again dead silence. Even Betterton, who had opened his mouth for more impatient speech, closed it and hurried towards the table. On everyone there—except H.M.—the mystification about those shears had been frantic sandpaper to the curiosity.

H.M.'s stogy had burnt down, and he dropped it into an ash tray.

"All right," he said, reaching under the table. "Since I've got less than twenty-four hours (oh, burn me!) until I can get off to Washington, I'm going to show you every bit of evidence there is. I'm going to show you everything I see—if you can interpret it. I'm goin' to be straight."

Now in any matter concerning mystery, as Chief Inspector Masters could have testified, H.M. was about as straight as the average corkscrew. But then, for some reason, he seemed to take pleasure in misleading only Chief Inspector Masters. Cy wondered whether he would keep his word to Byles.

"This morning," continued H.M., "Manning was supposed to be trimmin' the south hedge. Stuffy, the houseman, said he was. Manning himself said he was, when he turned up at the pool about a quarter-past nine, and flourished the shears in my face."

"Well?"

H.M. scowled at an ash tray.

"When he turned up with the shears," H.M. went on, "they were just as you saw 'em a little later. Sharp, clean, polished at the edges, and bone dry. Take a look at 'em now."

And he dropped the pruning shears, blades half open, on the table.

The blades of the shears were wet. Tiny green particles of box hedge adhered to the blades and many were stuck at the handle joining. H.M. pointed to them.

"Y'see," he explained, "a thunderstorm began last night before eight o'clock, and it poured with rain for half the night. When I went out with Cy Norton, there were still pools of water on the lawn in the morning. Got it?"

"Then Manning," said Byles, "couldn't possibly have been trimming the hedge at any time this morning!"

"That's right, Gil."

"He told a lie. Is it important?"

"Oh, my son! He told an unnecessary lie. If he's concentrated on his disappearing act, why does he do all that hocus-pocus and flourish a big pair of shears—unless the shears are in some way vital to his trick? Find the answer to that, and you've interpreted our biggest clue so far."

"But what the devil does it mean?"

"I said I was going to show you the evidence, son," H.M. returned woodenly. "I didn't say I was goin' to interpret it"

Howard Betterton, brushing back the thin black skeins of hair across his skull, spoke impatiently.

"Mr. Byles! You promised to give me ten minutes, and I've got to be in my office this afternoon. I think—in the study over there, perhaps?"

"Yes," agreed Byles, consulting his watch. He was furious with H.M., though he did not show it "And our British friend must come with us, though he's inclined to be helpful."

Jean unobtrusively dug Bob in the ribs.

"As head of the family..." Bob began with dignity, and got to his feet

Betterton smiled at him.

"Certainly, my boyl By all means!" agreed the stocky little lawyer, patting the tall Bob on the shoulder.

"Now understand, Mr. Byles!" the stocky little man went on. "I don't defend my client's—er— ethical principles. But, if he's done what he has done, there are reasons which will hold up in court. Are you ready, Sir Henry?"

H.M. got up in his bathing suit, picking up his beach robe and plucking another stogy out of his pocket

"I'm ready," he said to Byles. "But I want something understood too. If I solve your ruddy case, I'm not goin' to yammer to the press until I do solve it. Not a word from me!"

"But I thought you liked talking to the papers!"

"Sure I do. When I've got something to tell 'em. And when I give 'em a story, Gil, the front page sizzles like a fryin' pan in hell." He looked with a kind of evil pleading at Cy. "Will you handle it, son? It's your job."

"But they'll be after you?’ Cy said. "What am I going to tell 'em?"

"Tell 'em I'm drunk," said the great man simply. "Anything you like. Only for the love of Esau keep 'em off me until I've got some kind of clear notion in my onion! Will you do that?"

Cy nodded despondently. The double doors opened, disclosing another book-lined room with brown leather chairs and a chess table. When Byles shut them again, they did not quite close-as double doors seldom will.

Now only Cy, Jean, and Crystal were left at the refectory table. He could feel a storm coming.

"Cy." Jean spoke very softly. "You think Dad's pretty low, don't you?"

He didn't want to hurt her, and he resolved not to hurt her.

"It's not that, Jean. I've known him for years and I always felt like cheering everything he said. He seemed to represent good manners, culture, a decent reserve: everything that's traditional and that I hold in reverence. Even this Browningesque devotion to—never mind.

"I don't care about the money. I don't care about the fan dancer. But it seems to me (I'm sorry!) he's not an ordinary poor-devil embezzler. He carefully gathered together and smashed, with a kind of glee, everything he pretended to represent."

Cy knew he had gone too far. He tried, physically tried, to stop the rush of words. When Jean looked at him, it was as though the colour had gone out of her eyes.

"You beast!" she said. "You insufferable beast¹"

And now there was silence in the hot library of second-hand books, except for a faint mumble of voices in the adjoining study.

Crystal was now sitting at one end of the long table, leaning back, her beach robe open, her back to the two eastern windows. Cy, wishing to God he could recall what he had said to Jean, blundered over and automatically sat down at right angles to Crystal.

There was a long silence.

"Tell me," said Crystal in her soft voice. "Why are you so unhappy in life?"

"Unhappy?" He raised his head. "Damn it, I'm not unhappy!"

"Oh, I know," said Crystal. Her fingers, with the scarlet nails, tapped on the table. "You think this is my usual approach with men. Ask almost anybody if he's unhappy, and he'll say no but think yes. Well, I mean what I say. I'll show you."

Cy did not reply.

"Of whom," asked Crystal, "does Jean remind you so much?"

Cy started up, eyes wide open, with a crash against the table which shook its whole length. A pencil was about to roll off, and Crystal caught it deftly without looking at him.

Trust a woman, he thought bitterly, to see straight through the bandages and mufflings and blue spectacles we wear, like a new version of the Invisible Man! This girl, twenty-four years old, and—no, not flighty, you couldn't call her that-had read him as though he were as transparent as Huntington Davis.

Trying to appear casual, Cy sat down again.

"What makes you think Jean reminds me of somebody?" he asked.

Crystal's dark blue eyes, under the wings of brown hair, were not coquettish and not provocative; they were sombre.

"Last night, when I first met you," said Crystal, "I thought you were nice-looking and had," she grimaced, "possibilities. Later..."

"Later?"

"You were watching Jean all the time. It wasn't what they'd call a predatory look. It was, 'Jean's like her, and yet she's not like her; Jean's less vivid, less...' Oh, I don't know!" Crystal paused. "Who does Jean remind you of?"

Cy moistened his lips.

"My wife," he said. "She's dead."

Again there was a long silence.

"I'm sorry," said Crystal. "I didn't mean to hurt"

"Not at all. It doesn't matter." (But it did matter. It was like the stab of a physical pain.)

"Let's change the subject, shall we?" Crystal suggested brightly. "Where did you get that scar down your side? I—I noticed it at the pool. Did you get it in the war?"

"Not exactly. In an air raid."

"Oh? Were you in many air raids?"

"Most of them, like millions of other people. My wife was killed in one."

Again silence. Crystal sat rigid. Cy himself sought desperately to change the subject, but his eyes strayed towards what could be seen of Crystal's bathing suit

"How," he asked desperately, "does your skin stay so white if you do much swimming? Both you and Jean are fair-complexioned, but even Jean has a very slight tan."

"Oh, that's artificial." Crystal laughed, breathing quickly. "If s suntan lotion Jean gets from the druggist And (didn't you notice?) she always grabs a robe as soon as she's been in the water for more than a minute or two. I solve the problem by never getting into the sun."

"Or never doing much swimming either?"

"That's right. If s too strenuous. I..."

Both their nerves were on edge. From the adjoining room there was a crash, followed by a faint rattling and rolling noise. Both Cy and Crystal started when they heard it, followed by Byles's voice:

"Do you have to be so clumsy? Why upset the chess table?"

"Burn me. I didn't do it," retorted the voice of H.M. "This young feller here..."

"Sorry, sorry!" Bob's tones were hoarse. "But Mr. Byles said..."

Someone in the study moved towards the double doors and, with a wrench, snapped them shut. The noise seemed to affect Crystal so that she spoke rapidly, in a low tone, and could not seem to stop.

"Jean," she said, "told me a lot about you last night. We sat up until all hours. Weren't you awfully sick when you lost your job?"

Cy laughed, rather too loudly.

"No," he answered. "That’s the first time you've been wrong. If you mean money," and now he was speaking truth, "I have a private income. It'll keep my comfortably if I never do another stroke of newspaper work."

"You're not actually happy here in America, are you?"

"Crystal, don't talk nonsense! Of course I am!"

"You may think you are. You may have convinced yourself of that. But in your heart it's not true."

"Look here!"

"You want Europe, and especially England, as England was before the war. But those old days have gone forever. You know that, you hate it, and it's poisoning your life."

Crystal spoke steadily, breathing quickly, yet in a passion of words.

"You want a life of graciousness, and dignity, and a 'decent reserve.' Oh, don't deny it! I heard what you said to Jean awhile ago. That's why you've liked Dad, ever since you've know him. And you hate him now, because he's broken the pattern. As for your wife..."

"Crystal, for God's sake!"

"You're trying to cherish her memory, in the Browningesque way. And you can't do it; nobody can. But you hate Dad because—he couldn't"

Cy got up from the table.

He walked to one of the eastern windows, his back to Crystal, and stared out The broad lawns gleamed at noonday. There were several persons round, or in, the empty swimming pool. Beyond the pool were the rhododendron bushes; then, parallel with them, the bathing cabins; beyond these, the high green trees of the woods. Cy saw none of this; it was only a blur.

He took out a pack of cigarettes, lighted one with shaky hands, and returned to the table.

Crystal, no longer the posed hostess, all her affected sophistication gone, was huddled in the chair like a girl about to cry’

"You know," Cy said, "your ability to read minds..."

"Your mind, that's all. Don't you see?"

"... is uncanny and if s enough to scare anyone."

"You think I'm spoiled and selfish," said Crystal, looking up. "Well! Maybe I am. I never thought about it much. But one thing Dad said about me really shocked me, because it wasnt true!"

"Need we go into it, Crystal?" "Yes! We've got to talk this out!" "Why?"

"You know why as well as I do."

He did know. He was falling for Crystal Manning. When he looked down into the dark blue eyes, her physical presence again seemed to merge with and become a part of him, as though she were actually in his arms. What they both might have said then, or perhaps even have done, will never be known—because their idyll cracked to bits before the outside world.

Into the library walked two motorcycle policemen, Officer O'Casey following close on the footsteps of Officer Ferris. Officer Ferris, he of the alert eye and the wish for action, spoke in a voice of deep respect

"The old gent with the big bay window," he informed Cy, "said I'd probably find this in the pool. And I did."

Across the palm of his hand he held a sodden piece of newspaper, several times folded, but only about an inch wide by seven inches long. Seeking a place where the wet paper would not harm the table, Officer Ferris carefully placed it along one of the handles of the shears.

Then he stood back, as though about to salute.

"What a detective!" said Officer Ferris, with still more respect.

"I'm telling you, Slats!" said Officer O'Casey, with an air of nervousness yet determination. "I'm not even sore at him any longer. I'm not going to say anything, mind; I don't want 'em to think I'm nuts. But he's not human!"

"Aw, quit it!" snapped Officer Ferris. "Being a smart cop is one thing. But being..."

Officer O'Casey addressed Cy. "Can we see him, sir?"

While Crystal turned her head away and pretended not to be there, Cy had to drag himself back into a world of reality where policemen really existed.

"See him? Whom do you want to see?"

"The gent with the big bay window."

"He's in conference." Cy brushed a hand across his forehead to clear his mind. "I'm afraid he can't be disturbed. Do you want to give him a message?"

Officer O'Casey, pondering, did not even seem to hear the question.

"He magicked the turnstiles," said O'Casey. "Then he magicked the swimming pool. Now he's magicked the electric chair."

'The... what!"

In Cy's mind was a recollection from some time ago. Standing beside the pool, when Crystal made her appearance, he had looked back over the terrace and seen a grotesque parody of a chair. At the time Cy had believed it was only his imagination which likened it to...

Cy hurried to the right-hand window, and peered out with his cheek pressed to the screen towards the southern side of the rear terrace.

"I didn't notice it when I went to trim the hedges and came back," Officer O'Casey was saying. "Because I was sore, see, and I didn't notice anything. But look at it now!"

On the serene sunlit terrace, with metal headpiece and electrodes dominating what was there, some humorist had placed a life-sized replica of the electric chair.