Man Sinister

Chapter V

Lucy read in my silence my refusal to rehash the past. I was more interested by far in knowing what had brought her calling here at ten o’clock at night.

“Very well” — she shrugged — “we shan’t waste words. Bryanne has met someone else, a South Carolinian. His family is in textiles.”

“What will it be for you, Lucy?” I asked. “A cotton baron?”

“You don’t believe me?”

“In the existence of a scion of textiles, yes. In the fact that you’re arranging things your own way for Bryanne, yes. In your other implication, that she has fallen in love with this gentleman of the looms, no.”

“Would it be so strange for a girl to fall in love twice?”

I kept my hands jammed deep in my pockets to conceal their shaking. I hoped the edge of confidence was there that I tried to keep in my voice when I said, “You didn’t drive all the way up from Greensboro to tell me these things. You want something. What is it?”

“I really came at Father’s insistence,” she said arrogantly. “To bring you this.”

She opened her bag, handed me an envelope. It was heavy. I opened it. It was filled with crisp new money.

“There’s five thousand dollars of it,” Lucy said. “There will be five thousand more when you have gone to an easy divorce state and cut yourself loose from us for good. After all, it’s only the legal gesture. For practical purposes you haven’t been Bryanne’s husband for some time.”

I tossed the money back in her lap. Color leaped to her cheeks. “We shan’t be pushed too far, Steve! We shall bargain only a little. Don’t name too high a price!”

“Good night, Lucy.”

“Steve! Don’t you dare leave this room until you have given me an answer!” She leaped to her feet. “What is your price?”

“The Quavely money is the most important thing in the world to you. For that reason, you can’t understand how it could be otherwise with anybody else. You can’t pay my price, Lucy. That price would be the understanding on your part that I married Bryanne despite the fact that she was a Quavely, not because of it.”

Her face flamed. She controlled her temper with an effort.

“Why must you be so unreasonable?” she demanded. “Would twenty thousand add a grain to your common sense?”

“My common sense tells me that you’re doing this without Bryanne’s knowledge,” I accused flatly. “If she loved this guy with his spindles and shuttles she’d do her own divorcing. On the other hand, should I divorce her, the way would be clear for her to fall into your trap.”

“You—” Lucy muttered hoarsely. “You’re impossible! Thirty thousand, then, and that’s as high as we’ll go. I’m stopping at a local hotel, the Bradley. I’ll stop by tomorrow morning to take you to the airport.”

I watched her go. I felt tired and old, as if she had piled thirty years on my shoulders. My mind was shot through with memories of the way it had been.

Mr. and Mrs. Steve Martin. Residence, Atlanta, Ga. Occupations, heavy equipment salesman and housewife. Reason for big celebration, husband’s promotion to district manager. A few drinks, but not enough to back up the claim of the Quavelys. A spot of ice in the highway and the wheel of the car was suddenly lax and powerless in my hands. She’d been laughing at something I’d said when the skid started. Then she’d screamed and the sound had been muffled in the crash.

A long time later I’d clawed my way out of the wreckage. She was pinned beneath the car. She turned her head. I was filled with abject horror; she was still conscious.

“Steve,” she’d said, “there isn’t any feeling in my legs.”

The closing in of the irresistible wall as I exhausted one financial source after another until no more were left. She still needed specialists, care beyond my reach. The Quavely money was her only hope. I’d told myself I should feet grateful when Papa Quavely and Lucy had offered their bargain. I was, for Bryanne’s sake.

But making that bargain in no wise indicated that I was prepared to bargain again, on the terms Lucy had handed me tonight. I hoped she would enjoy the scenery during her stay here.

I allowed myself to feed on my anger as I walked up Northland into the business district. I found a cheap walk-up hotel. I had come out of my binge with nearly twenty dollars left, plus a watch I could pawn tomorrow morning. Any kind of job would do until I could manage the proper appearance for the right kind of employer. There was still the Atlanta sales office of the firm turning out big shovels, ditch diggers, and bulldozers. Perhaps it would be wise to return to the point where evil had begun and turn it into good.

Lucy, I accept the challenge.

After I had breakfast the next morning, I returned to the hotel. Two men in the dusty lobby left their lumpy chairs and started up the stairs behind me. I reached the third floor corridor, stopped at my room, slipped the key in the lock.

The two men came down the hallway and stopped, one on either side of me. The man on my left reached in his inner pocket, took out a small leather case, opened it, showing me a small, gold badge.

“I’m Captain Hagan,” he said. “This is Lieutenant Conroy. Police Headquarters. You’re Mr. Steven Martin?”

“Yes.”

“May we speak to you?”

“Of course.”

Opening the door, I motioned them into the room. Hagan was a large man, solidly built, with a wide, placid face. He looked as if he would enjoy quiet Sunday drives with his wife and kids. Conroy I judged to be ten years or so younger, about thirty-five. He was as big as Hagan, but on him it was stretched to a horizon six inches higher.

I thought, Watch it, Steve. They’ve found McGinty.

Hagan said, “You’re the foster son of Mr. Joseph Cranford, I believe.”

I waited.

He continued, “You’ve been staying with Mr. Cranford for a time?”

“The past week or so.”

“Before that?”

“I worked in Charleston. South Carolina.”

“What kind of work?”

“In Charleston I operated a bulldozer.”

“Make out pretty good?”

“You know the cost of bulldozing, grading work. I made enough to keep me for the time.”

“Prior to your return here, had you lived in your former home for some time?”

“No, it’s been several years since I lived in Asheville.” This, I thought, was a queer lead up to McGinty. Or maybe they always got some background information with their first questions.

Hagan spoke again in his molasses and corn pone accent. “You’ve been doing some drinking since your return?”

I gave him a quick glance. It seemed he already had tapped some source or other for background information.

“Yes,” I said

“Relations were of the best between Mr. Cranford and you?”

I hesitated. “Would you mind telling me if this line of questioning is relevant to whatever brought you here?”

“I assure you that it is. Will you answer my question?”

“I haven’t seen too much of Mr. Cranford since my return. Only at meal times, now and then in the evenings. And not at those times every day.”

“You’re evading what I asked you, Mr. Martin. Was there any ill feeling between you and Mr. Cranford?”

“A certain measure, I suppose.”

“You’ve argued with him?”

“To a certain degree.”

“And that’s why you left his home last night?”

“Partially. How do you know when I left, or where I came?”

“Your foster brother told us you had packed a bag and left. It doesn’t take long to check the hotels in a town of this size. Now, tell me, Mr. Martin, were you drinking when you returned home yesterday afternoon?”

“No.”

“But you do admit a heated argument with Mr. Joseph Cranford? And you were in a high state of nerves from previous drinking?”

“Both statements are partly correct. Will you tell me what this is all leading up to?”

Conroy spoke for the first time. “A servant girl — Ellen Holecomb — went to Mr. Cranford’s room this morning to call him to breakfast. She knocked on the door. It wasn’t securely latched, and swung open. She found Mr. Cranford on the floor of his room. Dead. Poisoned. Murdered.”

I rode with Conroy back to Northland Avenue. We entered a house heavy with the hush of death. Ellen, with eyes red and swollen from weeping, let us in and closed the front door behind us.

“Has your brother returned?” Hagan asked her gently.

“No, sir.”

Hagan motioned me into the parlor. I entered and saw Harold. He was slumped in a chair, an old, tired man of thirty. In his gaze, as it fell on me, was no warmth, no sign of recognition. But then his eyes spoke an agonized question: Why, Steve? Did you do it?

I put my hand on Harold’s shoulder. What could be said at a time like this? Harold nodded and left the room, in a daze.

“I wish you’d bring me up to date on the details,” I said to Conroy.

He sat down in an overstuffed chair. “Like the captain told you,” he said, “the girl found him. He must have been dead there in his room since before midnight. Unless the autopsy turns up something different, we’re betting that Mr. Cranford was killed with chloral hydrate administered in a drink of whisky. You know anything about poisons?”

“No.”

“Well, alcohol steps up the action of chloral-hydrate. Like hitting somebody over the head with a sledge-hammer. Mild doses of the stuff are used in sleeping capsules. That girl, Ellen, tells us that a doctor gave Mr. Cranford a prescription several weeks ago. Mr. Cranford had the girl get the prescription refilled day before yesterday. We found the bottle, empty, and called the druggist. Chloral hydrate.”

Conroy lit a cigarette and replaced the package in his pocket. He went on then, “Naturally we thought of suicide, but the captain won’t believe that Mr. Canford was the kind of man to take his own life.”

My mind was leap-frogging, trying to make a connection. Harold in flight. McGinty. The nearly worthless painting of a girl waif who’d tried to commit suicide off a New York City dock. The shooting of McGinty. The blank wall I’d encountered there in the bungalow. Now the murder of Papa Joe, the most unreasonable happening of all. I couldn’t imagine how it could possibly be tied in with the rest.