Fury in the Family

I.

I was tired, hot, cramped. I’d been punching the coupé over the flat, broiled Louisiana countryside all the way up from New Orleans. The scenery had been a succession of pine and dead cotton fields, sun-baked villages, an occasional weathered house or filling station. Once or twice the road had wandered through dank, green swampland.

Now, in the distance, standing black against the sky on its steel stilts, I could see the huge water-tank that marked Maceton. I’d be glad enough to get to Maceton and out again. I was here for a good reason: money.

At noon that day, I had jostled through the New Orleans crowds and entered the Plantation Building on Canal Street. I’d barged in Ansel Mace’s office without letting the receptionist stop me. I’d got the maple door of Ansel Mace’s private office open, the brunette receptionist tugging at my sleeve and telling me what awful fates befell people who slammed in on the revered presence of Ansel Mace that way.

“You again,” Mace said. “You might as well save your breath, Miss Carson.” Miss Carson snorted, gave me a look. I tweaked her chin, closed the door behind her.

Ansel Mace had risen. The huge windows, framing part of the New Orleans skyline behind him, made a good background. The Mace name was a powerful, honored one, despite Ansel Mace’s apparent efforts to ruin it completely. He was tall, gaunt. Riotous living hadn’t yet turned his sharp-chiseled face flaccid.

“The mail man breezed right by my office,” I told him. “Didn’t so much as look in — much less leave me a letter with a Mace Brokerage Company return.”

Mace reseated himself. Before he had a chance to open his anger-tightened mouth I said, “Fields’ are sore. They want their dough — or that bracelet. You’ve told us you gave it to a dancer at the Kit Kat Klub over in the Quarter, that she left town, that you’re trying to find her. All right, I’ve been trying to find her, too. But Fields’ — and I — are tired of stalling. You seem to think the Mace name will make us wait indefinitely. Three hundred dollars. Please.”

He almost snapped a pencil in his fingers. “I’ve told you, Martin...”

“That I’d get a check today.” I put my knuckles on his desk. “Listen, this is costing me. Fields’, along with several other firms, gives me a yearly retainer for just such stuff as this. If nothing pops up, I get my dough for being lazy. But now and then I lose money worrying with a petty deal. This is one of those times.”

I stood straight, pushed my hands down in my pockets. “Now, I’m telling you straight goods, Mace. I either get that money, or I’m adopting you, and you won’t like it. It’s not up to me to chase around hunting that Kit Kat dame any longer. You’ll find me camping in your living-room tonight, at your breakfast-table tomorrow morning. I’ll dog your every movement, and if you try yelling copper, we’ll tell them the whole deal of a guy giving away bracelets he hasn’t paid for. You...”

He glowered; then, surprisingly, laughed. “I believe you mean that!”

“I do,” I assured him. “Have some nice wines for dinner tonight.”

Still laughing — and I wasn’t sure how forced it was — he said, “I see how you work. Your yearly clients pay a flat retainer. The less time consumed on anything for them, the less the cost to you. Why didn’t you explain that before, Martin? I was hoping to get the bracelet itself, to return to Fields’. But I’d decided to mark it up, finally, as one more payment on my education with women. So I really intended to send you a check today. It merely slipped my mind, that’s all.”

He pulled a checkbook from his desk drawer. It might have made some guys feel foolish or even regretful, but I wasn’t built that way. Throwing a few words in his teeth was getting the matter concluded, wasn’t it?

Then he was looking at me keenly. He pushed the checkbook aside, and after a minute said, “Why didn’t I think of you before, Martin? Listen, how’d you like to pick up a few dollars along with finishing that Fields’ bracelet business?”

“That’s what I keep a license for,” I told him, somewhat warily.

“You might have heard of my father, old Theron Mace,” he said. “Made a fortune in oil in Oklahoma when he was young, came back to the old family homestead, built a big house, and bribed the people of Maceton with a hospital to change the name of the place for him. Now, in his Maceton home, the old man is sick, dying. Had a stroke a few months ago. Before his illness, he met a dame in Mobile. I hear she’s showed up at the family manse.

“Frankly, the old boy has never approved of some of my escapades, but I never believed he’d cut me off completely. However, just a couple hours ago I had a phone call from old Theron’s doctor, Cole Delanard. Doctor Delanard knew me when he was practicing here in New Orleans. He tells me that old Theron is sinking fast and certain parties are around him like parasites. I want you to go up there, get the lowdown on the whole situation, act as my agent for my best interests. The minute you get back, I’ll give you a check for five hundred. Give Fields’ their dough and keep what’s left. The trip shouldn’t keep you over one night, but if it does. I’ll agree to kick in your regular fee.”

I mulled it over. I didn’t see a thing to scare me off. After all, old Theron was Ansel Mace’s father. I nodded in agreement. “Five hundred, the minute I get back. If you try to stall me then, Mace, I’ll take this place apart and haul you into court.”

He said he hadn’t been trying to stall any of the time, poured me a drink, told me how to get to Maceton, and forked over twenty bucks for expenses. Over the drink, he told me to call him at his country place, which was just outside New Orleans, the minute I had seen his father and to see the old man the very first thing.

Even if Ansel Mace hadn’t told me exactly how to find the place, I’d have known the Mace house. Ten minutes after running the gauntlet of Maceton’s half-dozen red lights I saw the house. Set on the only prominent rise of land for miles around, it was a colonial mansion of whitewashed brick, its Doric columns two stories high, big enough for a junior college. And the grounds would have made a good campus. Surrounded by a high stone wall covered with ivy, a green velvet lawn was visible through the open wrought-iron gate. Here and there were clusters of shrubs, flower beds, stately poplars.

I didn’t see anybody, and since the gate was open. I jackrabbited the dusty coupé’s nose through the gate. That’s about as far as I’d got when the explosion came. I heard a tinkling on the hood of the coupé like miniature hailstones. But it wasn’t thunder and hail. Somebody had fired a shotgun and damn near ruined what was left of the paint job on the front end of the coupé.

After a moment, gun out, I poked my head back up to the level of the window. A garrulous voice said, “Git outta the way of my shots!” And I saw an overalled old man coining along the stone wall. The wall had concealed him from outside.

He carried the shotgun loosely in his gnarled hands. I watched him. As he neared the car, I noted his lean stringiness, his leathery face, his shock of white, wiry hair.

“You oughtta be more careful,” he informed me. “Jumpin’ your car in the drive that way, I didn’t have time to leggo the trigger. An’ you let that pesky rabbit get away. He’s ruined the beans down behind...” He had leaned on the window of the car, saw the gun in ray hand. I said, “You’re right about people being careful.”

He spat on the ground. “Who are you? What do you want?”

I handed him my card. “Ansel Mace sent me up here.”

His lips tightened their wrinkles away. “Allan Martin,” he read the card, “a private detective, huh? Well, I’ll tell you somethin’, feller. I already got a healthy dislike for you — or anybody else that messes with Ansel Mace. If he sent you up here to cheat away part of old Theron’s money...”

“He’s Theron’s son,” I reminded. “Anyway, that’s Ansel’s idea — to see that no cheating b done.”

“Huh! I reckon he’s heard about that woman bein’ here.”

“Yes,” I said.

“You oughtta make a pair, I reckon. Name of Jeannie Dupree, she used to whisper songs in one of them Mobile night clubs. At that, she can shore act, would almost convince you that she’s honest sorry for old Theron and tryin’ to cheer up his last minutes outta the goodness of her heart. Huh!” It was s snort this time. “Well, ray name’s Jeddrath Sloan. I’m the handyman, but if you want anything done around here for you, you’ll have to do it yourself. You and Ansel Mace. Hub!” He stalked off.

If the coupé had been less a crate. I’d have called him back to pay for a paint job; in the hood were a few score shiny little pits where the shot had hit. As it was, I chuckled at the vinegary old guy and drove on toward the house.

I left the car on the edge of the drive. The dying sun cast thick gloomy shadows over the wide veranda. I let the heavy knocker fall on the massive oak door. A moment later a thin, pinch-faced maid answered the booming, dull knock. Along with a few other last-minute instructions, Ansel Mace had given me a note on one of his letterheads stating that this would serve as credential of one Allan Martin, employed by him. The maid handed it back. I told her, “Mr. Mace wanted me to look in on his father, and see Doctor Cole Delanard. Incidentally, Mace told me I might need to stay overnight and I’ve got a toothbrush and extra shirt in the pock-marked coupé there in the drive.”

The maid nodded. “I’ll show you to a room later. Doctor Delanard is upstairs with Mr. Theron Mace. He’s been there all day, sir, as the old master is sinking fast. No one has been allowed in his room, but as you come directly from Mr. Theron’s son...”

“Sure,” I said. Then I went with her down a hallway that could have been hired out for a gilt-party ballroom. The maid indicated the room, and I mounted the wide stairs.

A short, startlingly fat man answered my knock on Theron Mace’s door. He reminded me of one of those dime-store toys that you tip over only to have it bob upright again. “Doctor Delanard?” I asked.

He nodded.

“I’m Allan Martin,” I said. “Ansel Mace sent me up.”

He eased out in the hall, closing the door softly. He squinted at the card I handed him, said, “It was a good idea, Ansel sending you up here. It’ll make me feel a lot better, knowing a detective is on the scene.”

“It’s that bad?”

Delanard raised his pinkish brows. “As old Theron’s will stands, Ansel Mace gets next to nothing. But lying here, ill, Theron has thought about his son. He’s talked of changing his will, favoring Ansel. Certain people would like to see the old man die before he can do that. Old Jeddrath Sloan for one. Jed has given Theron Mace a lifetime of devoted service. He’s been well paid, but feels that Theron owes him something more, a sort of reward, I suppose. And then, Mr. Martin — then there is the girl, Jeannie Dupree.”

“Yes,” I said. “The girl.”

Delanard coughed behind his hand. “I don’t know exactly how Theron’s present will stands, but I do know that it was made in a moment of heated anger at Ansel, his son, giving the greater part of the fortune to the servants, charities, Jeddrath Sloan. And, I think, the girl.”

“I’ll get around to that, Doctor. Right now I’d like to see the old man. It’s been a hard push to drive it here in four hours, and Ansel — since he couldn’t leave New Orleans — asked me to give the old man his best wishes first thing. And see if I could gather what’s in old Theron’s mind.”

Delanard opened the door. “Quietly, please. He’s been sinking rapidly all day. I’m not sure he’ll last the night. I’ll see if he’s asleep.”

Inside the doorway, I shuddered. It was like walking in a tomb. The blinds were drawn, shrouding the room in dense twilight. The old man lay on his back in the four-poster bed, eyes closed, the old-fashioned nightcap covering his head to his ears, the silk comforter pulled to his chin.

Delanard eased back across the room from the bed. “He’s asleep,” he whispered. “As soon as he wakes, I’ll let you know.”

I nodded. “I’d better go back downstairs and see if I can get a clear circuit to New Orleans. Ansel asked me to phone as soon as I arrived.”

I left the room. I started down the stairs in a hurry; but halfway down I stopped. She was standing in the downstairs hallway, looking up at me.

The girl.