The Golden Goose

15

Princess O’Shea’s intention was to slip out of the house undetected by various O’Shea eyes and ears. To this end she waited until Aunt Lallie went up to her room to suckle her grievance against a world that permitted a rich brother’s only sister to be disinherited before ever she was an heir; and Peet was off somewhere, which took care of Brady, too. Prin’s big worry was Twig, whose whereabouts was a mystery. However, she decided to take a chance. She let herself softly out onto the front porch and discovered that she would never have made a successful gambler. For there, lurking in a crouch behind a basket chair, was Twig.

“Yeep!” said Prin, jumping back.

“No one can say you don’t have a positive reaction to me,” he said. “Where are you going?”

“Wherever you’re not.”

“Let me go with you?”

“I’d sooner go with the Devil.”

“You needn’t act snooty just because you’re rich.”

“May I pass, please?”

“You’ll wish yet that you’d treated me better,” said Twig darkly. “Don’t forget that you’re the one who’s profited by Uncle Slater’s murder, besides being the only one in the family who had access to what murdered him. Tell me something, dear cousin — confidentially, of course. Did you have much trouble swiping that stuff? I can’t imagine Orville Free keeping orderly records. He’ll probably have to cover up the shortage to hide his own sloppiness. Or have you given old Orv some quid for his quo?”

Prin looked at him. In that instant she had a sense of release so strongly light that she felt as if she might levitate at will and float away.

“I’m so glad you said that, Twig,” Prin said. “Because I’ve been wondering what to do about you when things are all settled, and now I know. I’m going to throw you out of my house, Twig, that’s what I’m going to do. Your freeloading days are about over. I know I’ll have nightmares about you, but I can always wake up from a nightmare. Everyone who stays under my roof will work and contribute something to the household, but I wouldn’t let you stay thirty seconds longer than it’s physically possible for you to get out if you could pay me a million dollars a minute.”

She was rather glad, too, to get away from the vicinity of Twig at that moment, because his expression, never reassuring, was positively Martian.

She set her course for Grantlund Street, for she was going to see Coley again. He had to be in this time, because while it was one of his working nights it was still afternoon and he was not due at the taproom for some time yet. So she turned into the walk at 2267 and entered the house without ringing or knocking and went directly upstairs. And there, just locking the door of Coley’s apartment, apparently about to go out, was little Winston Whitfield.

He gave a guilty start when he looked up and saw Prin standing there.

“Hello,” said Prin.

“Go away, please,” said Winston. “I’m not to talk to you.”

“You’re not?” said Prin. “Who issued that decree, Winnie?”

“Coley.”

“Coley? You must have misunderstood him.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t,” said Winnie, beginning to get excited.

“But why?”

“Because you get on my nerves, Coley says.”

“I get on your nerves! Well, I like that. Wait till I lay my hands on that joker.” Then, being female, Prin asked curiously, “Do I get on your nerves, Winnie?”

Winston Whitfield’s excitement increased. “No,” he said. “Oh, no. Though you do make me feel kind of wiggly inside. Like one of my snakes.”

“So there. You see?” said Prin, feeling vindicated. “And, talking about your snakes, I’m really not afraid of them. I mean — well, I’m sure I could get used to them.”

“You could?” Winnie was entirely won back now; he was regarding her like a worshipful beagle. “I believe you. I like you much better than other girls. Could you like me, too? I suppose you couldn’t.”

“Why, Winnie, what an awful thing to say. Of course I like you.”

“Then can I come live with you and Coley?” Winnie asked eagerly.

“Well,” said Prin, not quite so warmly, “we’ll see.”

“Thank you, thank you! Wait till I tell Coley.”

“Where is Coley? Isn’t he in?”

“No.”

“Will he be back soon?”

“He didn’t say.”

“I think I’ll wait for him.”

“All right,” said Winnie. “Here, let me unlock the door — I was just on my way out—”

“Never mind, Winnie,” said Prin quickly. “I can wait here in the hall.”

“My snakes, eh?” asked Winnie with sorrow.

“No, no, Winnie. I just... prefer it.”

“All right,” said Winnie, shaking his head. “You’ll have to excuse me now. I’ve got to be going.”

“Will you be gone long?”

“I have to have a prescription refilled at the Star Pharmacy.”

“I didn’t know you were sick. You don’t look sick.”

“I’m not. I mean, it’s not the kind of sickness that makes you look sick. I mean, if you take your medicine regularly.”

“Why, Winnie,” said Prin with concern. “That sounds like a chronic condition of some kind. Your heart?”

“My sugar.”

“What?” said Prin.

“I spill sugar. I’m a diabetic. I used to have to take insulin by injection, but now they’ve got some kind of substitute for it you just swallow. It doesn’t work for everybody, but it works for me fine...”

When the street door banged downstairs, Prin sat down on the top step upstairs. She hoped she would not have to wait for Coley long, because she did not think she could bear too long a wait, sitting there with a sick heart looking down into the gloomy depths of the stairwell. So while she waited she thought and thought, and she thought so hard and so deeply that when Coley did come she did not know he was there until she found him staring straight into her eyes from a lower step.

“Oh, Coley,” Prin said.

“Hi, Princess,” Coley said briskly. “What’s up?”

“I have to talk to you,” Prin said. “There’s something I need to get settled in my mind.”

Coley sat down on the top step beside her and put his arm around her.

“Now is the time to settle it,” he said, “if ever.”

“Not right now,” she said, “and not here. You’ve got to come with me somewhere.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t want to go. I must go.”

“Why?”

“Will you come with me, Coley?”

“Of course, but why so mysterious?”

“It’s just that I’ll have to talk about it when we get there, and I’d rather not have to say this particular piece twice.”

“All right, Mystery Girl,” said Coley lightly; but his eyes were serious and puzzled and just a bit wary.

They rose together, his arm still around her.

Outside, they turned toward town, walking along under the tall old trees, drifting through sunshine and shade. It was one of those timeless afternoons filled with the lazy scents and sounds of summer. The kind of afternoon that always made Prin feel like a little girl fresh from her bath, wearing a newly ironed organdy dress and a big bright satin ribbon in her hair. It was strange that she should feel that way, for Prin could not remember ever having owned an organdy dress or a big bright satin ribbon during the childhood Royal O’Shea had made for her — could not really remember ever having been a little girl, for that matter.

She and Coley walked in silence, since they had agreed that nothing was to be said until they got to where they were going. But he took her hand and gripped it, and that was the way they walked to town, and through town to Cibola City Hall.

When Coley saw that they were going into Cibola City Hall, he let go of Prin’s hand. And when they were inside, at the door marked Cibola City Police Department, Coley stopped altogether.

“Why are we coming here?” he demanded.

“To see Lieutenant Grundy.”

“What for?”

“I told you, Coley. There’s something I have to say.”

“This is about your uncle, I take it?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand women at all! Why the sudden switch, Prin? Haven’t I protected your interests to your satisfaction? After all, I was the one who turned the tables on your aunt and that shyster and got back what they tried to steal from you.”

“I know you did, Coley,” said Prin softly, “and I’m grateful, I really am.”

“Then what’s this all about? Don’t you trust me any more?”

“It’s not a question of trust. It’s just that this is something I have to do all by myself, Coley. I’ve thought and thought about it, and my mind is made up. Won’t you please come on?”

“All right,” grumbled Coley. “But I warn you, you’re not going to find Grundy in a very understanding mood. Selwyn Fish just made a monkey out of him, and he knows it.”

“Lieutenant Grundy,” said Prin grimly, “will understand this.”

The desk sergeant showed them into Grundy’s office. The lieutenant, as Coley had predicted, did not seem in an understanding mood. In fact, he was sitting behind his desk wearing the blackest of scowls. For two days, after the district attorney had laughed in his face, he had tried to think of a way to nail Selwyn Fish for the crime Grundy knew he had committed; and he had failed. The district attorney was right. There was no evidence of crime to present to a grand jury. Slater O’Shea had told Coley Collins that he had made a will leaving everything to Princess O’Shea; and Selwyn Fish had produced a genuine will signed by Slater O’Shea, leaving everything to Princess O’Shea. For the existence of the fraudulent will leaving everything to Miss Lallie O’Shea there was only Grundy’s word that Selwyn Fish had told him about it, to which Fish had merely to enter a denial. And that the fraudulent will was now smoke and ashes flushed down a drain even Grundy had had to concede.

When the sergeant announced Princess O’Shea and Coley Collins, Grundy was turning his thoughts to another line of attack. He was convinced that Slater O’Shea had been murdered by the team of Lallie O’Shea and Selwyn Fish; if he could get to Fish through Aunt Lallie... murder was a better rap than fraud and forgery... At that moment Prin and Coley came in, and the lieutenant looked up impatiently.

“Yes?” he said.

“Miss Princess O’Shea,” said Mr. Coley Collins, “has something to tell you, Lieutenant, and since she refused to tell me beforehand what it was, I sincerely wish you would listen to her so that I may satisfy my curiosity.”

Grundy shot a look from Coley to Prin. What he saw on Prin’s pretty face sent all thoughts of Selwyn Fish et al. from his head.

“In that case,” he said, “you two may as well sit down.”

Prin did, folding her hands and holding them rather high, so that for a startled moment Grundy thought she was praying. Coley remained on his feet in an attitude that said he was ready for anything.

“Start talking,” Grundy said to Prin.

“With discretion,” Coley said to Prin.

“No, it’s courage that’s necessary,” said Prin, “and I have only enough to last a little while, so hear me out. What has been occupying my thoughts, of course, is Uncle Slater’s murder and who might be accused of it. Aunt Lallie and that lawyer Fish might be, if it could be proved that they dreamed up the fraudulent will; and I might be, if it could be proved that I knew before Uncle Slater’s murder that I was his sole heir; and Twig might be, because he’s the one I’d like it to be, if it has to be anyone; and Brady might be, on the basis of general lack of character; and even Peet might be, if this were a detective story and you had to have it the least likely person. And that was all there seemed to be in the way of suspects. Until suddenly,” said Prin, “I thought of another one.”

“Who’s that?” asked Coley.

“You,” said Prin.

“Me?” said Coley.

“Him?” said Lieutenant Grundy, staring at Coley as if he had just contrived to crawl out of the woodwork.

“Yes, Lieutenant,” said Prin steadily. “Coley knew I was sole heir even before he met me, because Uncle Slater had told him; and then a couple of weeks later I happened to stop into the taproom and right away he wanted to marry me and after a while I said yes — and that gave Coley a motive... through me.

“When you think about the why,” Prin continued in the deathly stillness, “you can’t help going on to think about the how. The day Uncle Slater died he came home loaded, which meant he had been at a bar; and his favorite bar was the Coronado taproom. And, of course, that synthetic substitute for insulin having a delayed effect of about an hour, as somebody or other said, Uncle Slater could have been given the overdose in a drink at the taproom just before he left for home, instead of in his bedside bourbon bottle. And then I remembered how Coley had insisted on our slipping upstairs for a look at Uncle Slater’s room after I’d found him dead, and the bedroom was dim and I was distracted and Coley could have dropped some of the drug into the bourbon bottle at that time to make it seem as if the murder was an in-the-house crime.

“And then just this afternoon,” Prin went on in the same steady voice, not looking at Coley, who was looking at her with the same sort of horror with which Grundy was looking at him, “I walked over to where Coley lives, and I met his friend Winnie Whitfield, with whom he shares the apartment, and all of a sudden it came out that Winnie was on his way to a drug store to refill a prescription for an insulin substitute, because Winnie says he is a diabetic. And that would seem to give Coley a simple, direct way of getting hold of the drug, because all he had to do was steal some from Winnie’s supply. Now do you see the lines along which I have been thinking?”

“What I see,” said Coley bitterly, “is that you will sure as hell get me electrocuted if you don’t quit talking right now.”

“What I see,” said Lieutenant Grundy in an iron voice, “is a great — white — light.”

“Then, Lieutenant,” said Prin, “you are quite blind. What you think you now see through my eyes you would sooner or later have seen through your own; it is only a question of time; but through my eyes or your own, what you think you see is a big fat coincidence. No, Lieutenant, I can’t let Coley go through the ordeal of arrest and conviction, and maybe the agony of execution, just because of a remarkable accident of circumstances. Coley didn’t murder Uncle Slater.

“I did.”