The End of Mr. Garment Read online

  The End of Mr. Garment

  Book Three of the Walter Ghost Mysteries

  Vincent Starrett

  To

  SYLVIA and STIRLING PARKINSON

  in appreciation of much that is

  pleasant to remember

  Note

  All the characters and events of

  this story are fictitious

  Chapter One

  It is an old notion that persons and things closely associated over a long period of time take on one another’s characteristics. They grow to look alike, talk alike, act alike. As, for instance, in a house where there is a parrot, the womenfolk grow to look and talk like parrots. Some wives look enough like their husbands to pass as their mothers. Everybody has noticed this sort of thing, and no doubt there is a great deal in the theory, however unscientific.

  Mr. and Mrs. Howland Kimbark looked exactly alike, it was said, and both looked remarkably like the horses which daily they galloped in the bridle path. Their long, equine faces were familiar sights to spring labourers in the parkway; retouched and sharply outlined in the art room, they were familiar illustrations in the society columns of the newspapers. For the Kimbarks were figures in the city—lean, nasal, spirited, and, as befitted equestrians, splendidly inhuman. Nothing much mattered except the fashionable world’s reaction to the Howland Kimbarks. Anxiety, such was their position in life, had never touched them. As well imagine a pair of monuments concerned about the morrow’s sun or rain.

  Thus, at any rate, the Kimbark legend.

  Yet it was to the Kimbarks, exasperatingly enough, that anxiety at length had come. Midnight had struck and gone in the lake-front dwelling, and still there was no sign of Stephen Garment. He was precisely three hours overdue.

  What had become of the notorious guest of honour?

  It was an embarrassing, almost an international, situation. Since nine the earliest guests had been waiting. At a quarter before ten Anger, Garment’s secretary, had called up to say that the great novelist was just leaving his hotel; that he would be on hand in fifteen minutes. Now it was better than midnight and there had been no further rumour of him. The more hostile guests were frankly cynical.

  These were collected in the library, drinking Kimbark’s whisky and speculating on the mystery. The disappearance of an eminent British novelist was sufficiently unusual to interest the most blasé of them.

  Mollock, the writer of mystery tales, grinned satirically. He was returning to his home, in New York, in the morning—a pleasant thought—and the immediate episode did not particularly agitate him.

  “It was a trick, of course,” he observed. “A trick to get me here—and, of course, Mr. Dromgoole!” He bowed humorously to the heavy-set man in the red chair—a local writer of repute.

  “You flatter me,” retorted Dromgoole, with sarcastic emphasis; “yet, seriously, it would not surprise me if you were right.” He added: “In New York, I suppose, you get rather tired of this sort of thing. Teas, receptions, banquets, and what-not, eh? Spring seems to be the season of the year. One can’t pick up a newspaper without reading that still more of the British are coming.”

  Mollock agreed. “We need another Paul Revere,” he said. “Oh, I suppose the fellow will get here shortly now, and possibly tarry for a few minutes. He’d hardly dare to let us down entirely. His manager wouldn’t let him. He probably had a couple of other stops to make, and somebody has detained him. Not that it would make any difference if some of your gangsters were to bump him off! His best work is several years behind him.”

  “His best work,” said Curly Pope sententiously, “was his first. He has never equalled it.”

  He knew nothing whatever about it, literarily speaking; but it seemed a good thing to say. Yachts were Pope’s specialty. Nobody could fool him about yachts.

  “Precisely,” agreed the New Yorker; “but it has been equalled and surpassed by others, so nothing is lost. You have noticed, of course, the most surprising phenomenon in contemporary British letters? All the young English novelists write alike. Any one of them might have written the books of all the others. It is as if they had all graduated from the same correspondence school of fiction. They emerge from college, return to the old township, and jot down a workmanlike chronicle of the lewd and simple villagers; principally, I gather, for American consumption. Well, well, I wish it were as simple as all that over here!”

  He laughed mischievously over the unfair picture he had created, and shuddered pleasantly over the stiff shot of bootleg Bourbon with which he had followed the laugh.

  “The beggar has good Bourbon,” testified Dunstan Mollock. “We can’t get it in New York. Scotch—yes! Carboys of it. But good Bourbon seems to be against the law.”

  He bent forward to light the cigarette which for some moments had remained unlighted between the lips of a young woman in brown velvet. Miss Susan Bland. Who wrote plays for children and was said to be the mistress of a noted financier.

  “Nevertheless,” asserted Miss Bland, between puffs, “this Garment mystery is a serious matter, Mr. Mollock. I’ve no particular respect for Nidia Kimbark—nor for Howland, either—but you may depend on it, this business has got them both by the ears. They’re not accustomed to being left in the lurch, and they won’t take it lying down.”

  She looked up quickly as a young girl entered the room. “Betty, darling, what is the latest bulletin about Mr. Garment? Have the Van Peters grabbed him—to have and to hold? I know he has a breakfast engagement there. Oh, I’m sorry! I thought you knew Mr. Mollock.”

  “I know his books,” smiled the girl who had entered. She extended a slim hand. “I’m Betty Waterloo. Really, I’ve read them all, I think. Is it true that you dictate them to three secretaries, in relays?”

  “My God!” cried Mollock. “Do they read that way?”

  “Dictated but not read,” chuckled Dromgoole maliciously, glad of an opportunity to score at the expense of the dapper New Yorker.

  “Miss Waterloo reads them—bless her heart! She has just admitted it,” said Mollock. “The truth is, my dear, I write them with two fingers and two thumbs on a typewriter so old that I am thinking of buying a new one. Don’t be deceived by the libellous reports of my competitors.”

  “Perhaps this is the beginning of another one.” She smiled. “It is curious, isn’t it? There isn't any latest bulletin. There hasn’t been one since the first. That was a little before ten o’clock, and Mr. Garment was just leaving the hotel. Of course he was due here at nine.”

  “Poor Nidia! She must be furious,” said Miss Bland. “What are they saying up front, darling? Can they make head or tail of it?”

  Miss Waterloo shrugged faintly and spread her small hands. She was a tiny person with reddish tints in her hair that made men believe her beautiful, which she was not. “They are anxious,” she admitted. “I think they are afraid something has happened to Mr. Garment. I have no right to speak for them, of course.”

  Dromgoole stirred restlessly in his chair. “Why the devil don’t they notify the police?” he wanted to know.

  “Oh, that’s nonsense,” said Mollock sharply. “Nothing has happened to him—nothing ever does happen to them. I suppose Mr. Kimbark has telephoned the hotel?”

  “I suppose so,” agreed the girl. “In fact I know he has.”

  “With what result, darling?” purred Miss Bland, noting her reluctance.

  “As I say, I have no right to speak for Mr. or Mrs. Kimbark—but I think Uncle Howland was told that Mr. Garment had gone out at ten o’clock and had not returned.”

  “What about Anger? What about his secretary?” demanded Pope irritably.

  “Mr. Anger was not there, either.”

  “Tut, tut,” d
eprecated Mollock. “Don’t cross-examine the child so. Kimbark will make his own report, I suppose, when he wants to. Garment is safe enough, wherever he is.”

  “Thank you,” said the girl. “But, after all, I have no reason to make a mystery of it. We are all wondering. Aunt Nidia is afraid there has been an accident, I think.”

  “Then the police should be notified at once,” grumbled Dromgoole. “I can’t imagine why Kimbark delays.”

  “Because if there has been no accident, and Garment has simply decided to ignore us, notifying the police would be the surest way to call attention to the slight put upon the socially prominent Howland Kimbarks.” The answer came promptly and with a touch of sarcasm from Miss Bland.

  Mollock spoke pacifically. “Anyway,” he observed, “if there has been an accident the police already know about it. That’s their business. One thing is certain: Garment hasn’t been murdered. The critical fraternity is frequently pretty nasty, but it has not yet been educated to murder. For my own part I intend to keep my hair on—and drink good Bourbon whisky as long as Kimbark has a drop.”

  As he spoke, a long, dark face appeared suddenly in the doorway, and the subdued but still strident voice of their host fell like a whip-lash across the conversation.

  “I’m sorry, Dromgoole,” it said, “to break into so congenial a group of celebrities; but I’m bound to apologize, I suppose, for our principal attraction. I’m a bit puzzled by his continued absence.”

  “We were just talking about it,” confessed Miss Bland, with diplomatic candour.

  “Everybody is talking about it,” said Kimbark grimly. “There is every reason to suppose that he left the hotel for this house a couple of hours ago. Obviously he has been detained en route. If I were sure nothing serious had occurred I should not be so distressed. In the circumstances,”—he shrugged—“one’s course is not entirely clear.”

  He hesitated, looking appraisingly at Dunstan Mollock, while Miss Bland made sympathetic noises in her throat. His question, when he put it, was entirely frank: “You don’t know anything about the fellow, I suppose? After all, his books are a bit queer.”

  Mollock answered the shrug in kind. “I don’t think he’s an epileptic, if that’s what you mean. If he had been taken ill, on the way, we should have been notified. After all, Anger was with him, wasn’t he?”

  “I don’t know. Presumably he was. They left the hotel together; that’s all I’ve been able to find out.”

  “He’s a careless enough devil, I believe,” said Mollock. “I’ve never met him, but—you know what I mean. Determined to explore every phase of American life. His exploits in New York were slightly notorious. It’s conceivable, I suppose, that his taxi driver knew of a splendid dive—and took him there. At Garment’s request, of course. He’d be sure to talk with the driver—he talks with everybody.”

  “It’s a difficult situation,” admitted Kimbark.

  “It is,” agreed Mollock, unperturbed; “but I fancy the thing to do is precisely nothing. He isn’t the sort of fellow who comes to grief, you know. His nationality seems to serve as a sort of rabbit’s foot.”

  “Poor Nidia!” sighed Miss Bland. “I know how distressed she must be.”

  Her determined pity annoyed Kimbark, who disliked the writer of plays with great heartiness.

  “It is I who am distressed,” he allowed himself to reply sharply. “I’m wondering whether to ignore a calculated rudeness or telephone the police that an accident has occurred.”

  Dromgoole heaved in his chair. “No harm in telephoning,” he said. “It’s exactly what I was suggesting when you came in. I don’t agree with Mr. Mollock that nothing has happened to him.”

  “Oh, he may be drunk somewhere,” acquiesced Mollock, unabashed.

  Betty Waterloo looked troubled. One of her private gods was beginning to reveal his feet of clay.

  “You’re not acting at all like a writer of detective stories, Mr. Mollock,” she said, almost tearfully.

  Understanding her, Mollock was contrite. “My dear child,” he cried, “do you want me to pluck a murderer from my vest pocket? Shall I cross-examine Mr. Kimbark? Let us have the servants in, one at a time. Is it known whether the victim had any enemies? And, above all things, Miss Waterloo, the body must not be moved until after the coroner has seen it!”

  He laughed his mischievous laugh, then sobered as a quaint thought struck through him.

  “Let us suppose the maddest thing that can be supposed,” he continued. “Let us suppose that—in a book, of course—Stephen Garment, one of England’s most celebrated younger novelists, has been murdered in the city of Chicago, while a houseful of guests await his coming in the handsome home of Mr. Howland Kimbark.”

  Kimbark was startled and inclined to be angry, and Dromgoole put up a hand to stop the reckless New Yorker’s further speech. “Really, Mollock!” he protested.

  “Do you know where I should immediately seek the murderer?”

  The grey eyes of Betty Waterloo were wide with horror and delight.

  “Where?” asked Kimbark, in spite of himself.

  “In this house!”

  “What!” cried Kimbark.

  Curly Pope chuckled and poured himself a drink. “I thought the beggar was up to some game,” he said.

  “But why, Mr. Mollock?” gasped Betty Waterloo, with a sort of dreadful joy. “Surely, if he were murdered outside the house—perhaps miles away —and we were all here, wondering why he didn’t come—”

  “Because,” said Mollock, with a grin, “it would be the sensational thing to do. No suspicion could attach to any member of this party, in the reader’s mind, and so my solution would come as a complete surprise. That is the end and object of the competent writer of mystery fiction.”

  “But how? What possible explanation could there be?”

  “Ah!” said Dunstan Mollock. “That is where my ingenuity would have to function. That is something that would have to be worked out.”

  Dromgoole rose to his feet in simulated disgust. “You’re a fraud, Mollock,” he accused. “Come, Betty, let us leave him to the further perusal of the inspired bottle. Too much Bourbon, Mollock, has been responsible for more than the French Revolution.”

  But Mollock only grinned again cheerfully and shrugged his immaculate shoulders. “On the whole, it has been a very literary evening,” he observed, yawning slightly behind his hand. “But I’m sorry if I annoyed you, Kimbark. The fact is—”

  He stopped speaking. A young man had suddenly appeared beside them and was whispering in the ear of Howland Kimbark, whose eyes had brightened. The host, relieved, laid a forgiving hand on Mollock’s shoulder.

  “It’s all right,” he said, smiling his hard smile. “And apparently Garment is coming, at last. Mrs. Kimbark has just sent Mr. Key to tell us that a car has been observed turning into the drive. I suppose there can be no doubt that it’s our missing Englishman. Your belated countryman, Ronald! But you’ve all met Mr. Key, I think? Ronald Key —Miss Susan Bland, Mr. Dunstan Mollock, Mr. John Lexington Pope.”

  Dromgoole and Betty Waterloo had already left the room.

  “The Mr. Key, I take it?” questioned Mollock, with a smile, his eyes upon the black silk sling in which the young Englishman carried his left arm.

  “That same unfortunate individual,” agreed Key, with a little grimace. “The second plane I’ve cracked up within a month,” he added cheerfully. “I hope it doesn’t become a habit.”

  “Come along, gentlemen, if you please,” said Kimbark. “Let’s see what the beggar has to say for himself.”

  “Cool devil,” commented the mystery writer. “Arriving at—” He consulted his wrist watch. “At one in the morning!”

  His host frowned slightly but made no reply, and together they left the room and strolled toward the front of the house, leaving the library to Miss Bland.

  In the wide living room the main company of guests was twittering and preening. There were more women than men, and t
hey were of all ages. The men, for the most part, had drawn together in a defensive huddle near the fireplace, in which a great log blazed fitfully. The air was measurably blue with the smoke of many cigarettes.

  Miss Birdflight, the sensational actress—like Mollock, a New Yorker, now temporarily resident in Chicago—seized her fellow townsman as he entered.

  “My God, Duns!” she exclaimed theatrically. “Did you ever know a better entrance? It’s publicity, of course. And what d’ye suppose his opening line will be?”

  “Stella,” asserted Dunstan Mollock, “this is an awesome moment. I hope you appreciate the privilege that is shortly to be yours. This man is almost an immortal. What’s more, he’s a bit of a power, just now, in Hollywood.”

  “And you, as usual,” said Miss Birdflight, “are drunk.”

  “Merely garrulous,” demurred Mollock. “A trifle loose and careless, Stella. Miss Bland is finishing the bottle, in the library. I saw her hand steal toward it as I left the room.”

  He knew his own capacity rather accurately, and stated nothing but the truth. It was a fact, however, that he was less sober than he would have been had Bourbon whisky never been invented.

  “I also,” continued Dunstan Mollock, “sometimes smoke and swear.”

  Then a bell rang, somewhere at the back of the house, to announce that someone was at the front. It was a curiously persistent bell. Having begun to ring, it continued with exasperating emphasis and without intermission, as if in some fashion the operating mechanism had caught and jammed. In a little time it had become intolerable, and a uniformed butler was hastening, with twitching features, toward the source of the disturbance. At the proper distance behind hesitated the Kimbarks, perturbed and anxious. More than a little annoyed. Smiling their hard, expectant smiles.

  At the door a colloquy began, prolonged beyond the possibility of a case of error. Voices were raised more loudly than might have been expected. Then Kimbark was striding into the outer hallway as if it were into a pack of dogs.

  “My God!” prayed Miss Birdflight again. “Is everybody malted? Why doesn’t he come in? They say his secretary, Mr. Anger, is the handsomest thing you ever—”