The End of Mr. Garment Read online

  “Then you did!”

  Kimbark looked across at her for a moment, almost with amusement. “I think I shall say nothing further about it, if you don’t mind.”

  “Howland,” she said desperately, “you believe me, don’t you? That I didn’t—that there wasn’t anything between Mr. Garment and me?”

  He bowed from the hips, across his saddle. “At least,” he replied, with mocking courtesy, “I don’t intend to murder you, my dear. And your analysis of our situation has brought out a number of disquieting points. Cicotte and this damned Mollock animal were hovering over the same spots, last night. You’re quite right. I could have done it— and perhaps I did. In the circumstances—and to protect your fair name—it might be as well if we were to accept the timely invitation given us by Curly Pope.”

  He touched spurs to his animal and at the same instant struck his wife’s mount a sharp blow upon the haunches with his whip. Both horses bounded forward and broke into a gallop. The dirt flew from beneath their pounding hoofs. But in a few minutes Nidia Kimbark drew rein to say, “I want to go home.”

  “Very well,” he agreed; and they turned their horses’ heads toward the boulevard and the increasing stream of autos.

  Clattering up the Kimbark drive, they disturbed a prowling figure on the lawn—the figure of an immaculate young man in grey, who at the moment of their advent seemed to be peering into the shrubbery at the side of the house that looked toward the library windows. The apparition turned a pleased and expectant face to them as they rode up, disclosing the features of Dunstan Mollock.

  The mystery writer spoke warmly, welcoming the returning riders to their own home. “Glad to see you,” he said. “I got tired of sitting in the library, waiting, and decided to test out some of my theories. Footprints, you know, and all that sort of rot. Perhaps the weapon, eh?”

  Nidia Kimbark looked apprehensive, but Kimbark only frowned slightly and asked: “What have you found?”

  “Nothing,” admitted Mollock cheerfully. “Nothing, that is, but an empty pint, which I suspect was chucked from the window last night during the orgy.” He clinked his stick with a pleasant sound against the glass flask and flicked some specks of foliage from his trousers. “Anger’s waiting inside,” he added. “Beneath his dignity, I suppose, to play detective. I rather like it.”

  “Anger!” cried Kimbark, and his wife uttered a tiny scream of dismay. “Why under the sun didn’t you say so before, Mr. Mollock?” she reproved. “I’ll go in at once.”

  She dropped from her saddle and almost fled toward the nearest steps, cutting, on the whole, thought Dunstan Mollock, as he watched her flying legs, a very attractive picture in her trousers and her boots. Kimbark too watched her for an instant, with a frown that had deepened.

  “Damn that groom!” he swore, glancing around. “Oh, there you are, Clybourn! Take these horses, will you? Shall we go in, Mr. Mollock? What do you suppose Anger has on his mind?” he continued pleasantly, as they strolled toward the house. “For that matter, what’s on your own? This is an unlooked-for pleasure. I don’t suppose you came here just to turn up my shrubs with your stick.”

  “I didn’t,” agreed Mollock. “I came with Anger—not without Anger, I might say, if you’ll stand for the pun. That’s an odd and delightful name, I always think. I knew a fellow named Hate, once, but he spelled it differently. I think Anger’s just being polite. We bunked together at the Van Peters’, last night, and this morning we got word about the inquest. Cicotte called up, and we said we’d get into touch with you and Mrs. Kimbark— although I don’t suppose it will be necessary for Mrs. Kimbark to appear. They want you.”

  “Nice of you both,” said Kimbark. “And the theory that you were testing out in the shrubbery?” He laughed and softened the hard glitter in his eyes.

  “Whose was it—mine or Cicotte’s?” questioned Mollock. “Anyway, somebody suggested, last night—in the library—during our confab—that the murderer might have been waiting around here for Garment to arrive. In which case, you see—?”

  “Quite,” said Kimbark. “To tell the truth, I had planned to have a look myself.”

  “I thought Cicotte would be on hand with the same idea,” continued Mollock. “If he had showed up, you and I and Anger might have made a foursome of it.”

  “He’s probably sold on your earlier idea—that the murderer was in the cab when it arrived at Van Peters’.”

  “No,” said Mollock, “I think not. It was a grand idea, but a bit far-fetched. Too melodramatic. In a book—yes! Cicotte liked it, all right. You saw the way he dashed out of the room, last night, after that driver. But Spessifer said it wasn’t so. The lights were working fine, he said; and Cicotte apparently believed him. I saw Spessifer after the interview, for a minute, and he had the attenuated look of a young taxi driver who had been pulled through a keyhole. But he stuck to his story.”

  Kimbark offered a silver case, and they paused on the threshold to light their cigarettes.

  “And what does Cicotte think now?” asked Kimbark, with interest.

  “I think he thinks someone was waiting for Garment—here. That’s why I thought he might turn up this morning.”

  “He said nothing about it when he spoke to you on the telephone, though?”

  “No. Anger talked with him and said he’d pass the word along to you, and that was that. Oh, he probably isn’t coming. But it would be fun to see him in action. I have a high opinion of that adipose sleuth.”

  In the living room, lost in that great chamber of horrors, they came upon Harold Anger. He was alone.

  “Hello,” said Kimbark, at once as a greeting and an exclamation, “where’s Nidia?”

  The young Englishman smiled. “She looked in for a moment to say good-morning, then went away to change her clothes.”

  “I’ve changed them,” corroborated Mrs. Kimbark, entering the room. She looked a bit thrown together, but she was smiling happily. “Did I shake hands with you, Mr. Anger? I’m sure I was rude to Mr. Mollock.”

  Mollock, however, thought otherwise. He protested gallantly.

  “You forgot your whip, though,” said Anger, pointing it out to her. “You tossed it onto the table there, as you came in. Of course you know that I’m frightfully sorry about all this. What a horrible thing to have had happen! Horrible for everybody concerned. And what a ghastly night it must have been for you, Mrs. Kimbark.”

  She smiled again, but without emotion. “We are all bearing up remarkably, at any rate! Not that we aren’t sorry. It was the shock of it that upset us. Who do they think did it, Mr. Anger?”

  He answered her with a shrug. “The inquest is set for this afternoon,” he said, “but I am told it will be continued. For a time, anyway. In the end —who can say? Between ourselves, Mr. Garment must have offended many persons in his time. Whoever is guilty planned the crime with diabolical cleverness. Possibly he will never be discovered.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” said Mollock.

  “I’m not even certain that I want him to be,” continued Anger, with an appearance of frankness. “What might it not reveal about Mr. Garment?”

  Kimbark nodded with conviction. “There’s that to be considered,” he agreed. “If, after the public has read his books, there’s anything left to reveal,” he cynically added.

  “You’ve read them?” asked Anger, faintly ironic.

  “I know what they’re about. Mrs. Kimbark has read them. By George,” he exploded, with something between a snarl and a laugh, “we caught Betty reading one, in bed, last night!”

  “Betty?” Anger was interested; while Mollock lay back in his chair and roared.

  “You didn’t take it away from her!” cried the novelist reproachfully.

  Mrs. Kimbark’s little laugh was touched with embarrassment. “Well, no,” she said, “but we thought her a trifle young for such books.”

  “Methuselah would be,” agreed Mollock; “but I fancy,” he chuckled, “that our younger generation would s
candalize the old gentleman on several counts. Don’t ever worry about Betty. She’s a brick.”

  “Dear heart,” said Mrs. Kimbark, “I think she worries about us.”

  Anger reached for his hat and stick, which were across a chair. “Well,” he began, rising to his feet, “I suppose we’d better— By Jove, Mollock! Did we deliver our message?”

  “I delivered it to Mr. Kimbark. Inquest at two o’clock. Don’t come if you’d rather not, Mrs. Kimbark. You’re not really needed, and Cicotte didn’t specifically mention you, I understand. I’ll say you’re not feeling well, if you like.”

  She wrinkled her brow and contrived to look a decade older. “I’ll see,” she said. “I may decide to go, after all. Thank you both enormously for coming over. It was kind of you when you might just as well have telephoned.”

  “Well,” smiled Anger, “there was my apology to make.”

  “For Mr. Garment?”

  “I suppose so. If I’d only gone along with him! I was cowardly, you see. I keep coming back to that, and it isn’t pleasant.”

  “Jolly good thing you didn’t,” asserted Mollock airily. “You might have been murdered too.”

  They said their farewells across the corridor and into the lobby and ultimately tramped away down the steps and down the street. When they had rounded a corner in the near distance, Mollock cocked an eye at Harold Anger.

  “Well?” he inquired briskly. “How about it?”

  Anger shook his head regretfully. “It didn’t come off.”

  “I was afraid it wouldn’t,” said Mollock, also regretfully. “Women don’t act that way. They hang onto their letters to the last ditch. God knows why!” He spoke with the authority of one who knew nothing about it.

  “Some of them act that way,” said Anger. “How easy it would have been,” he continued petulantly, “for her to turn the packet over to me and forget about it.”

  “She’d hardly have forgotten about it,” demurred Mollock, with a grin. “Maybe she didn’t have time. I kept Kimbark talking, there on the lawn, as long as I could. They were both damned anxious to get into the house.”

  “Oh, there was time. She didn’t have to change her clothes. She could have got the letters for me, and hung around the way she was. Why not?”

  “You didn’t suggest it?”

  “I did not! No, if she was to give them up, the act had to be voluntary.”

  “But you know where they are?”

  “I think so—yes, I’m sure enough. They aren’t upstairs. She went up to change; but before she went up she hustled into that little room across from the library—a sort of writing room, I think —and came out smiling. Obviously they’re there, somewhere. She suspected me and had to be sure I hadn’t abstracted them while waiting for her to return.”

  “Funny place to keep them,” commented the story writer.

  “No, you ought to know better than that—writing the things you do. He’d be sure to look in her own room, and through all the books in the library. That is, he would if he suspected she had them. She’s smart enough.”

  “I suppose we can get them,” mused Mollock. “Hire somebody, if necessary, eh? I’d almost like to have a try at burglary myself!”

  Anger laughed; then he became sober. “I like you, Mollock,” he said, “but you do terrify me at times. I’m inclined to let her keep them, as a matter of fact. Damn it, why should I endeavour to protect either her name or Garment’s?”

  “Is that what you’re doing?”

  “What the devil do you think I’m doing?”

  “Playing detective.”

  It occurred to Anger that he was being ragged. “You go to blazes,” he retorted. He pushed over to the curb and adjusted his tie at the window of a parked car. A happy smile crossed his face. His eyes lighted.

  “Look here, Mollock,” he said, “let’s forget it for a while. Who’s the jolly little redhead that lives with the Kimbarks?”

  “What ho!” cried Mollock, who occasionally talked more like an Englishman than his companion. “What redhead?”

  “You didn’t see her—you were on the lawn when it happened. She came pattering down the stairs into the front hall, looking like something out of a fairy tale.”

  “Her name’s Betty,” said Mollock. “She reads naughty books in bed. Did she speak to you?”

  “No, she didn’t—that’s the difficulty. She gave me one startled look, then scurried into the depths of the house. Who do you suppose she thought I was?”

  “God knows,” said Mollock. “One of Cicotte’s men, probably. She’s a niece of Mrs. Kimbark’s—and somewhat of a darling, if I’m any judge.” He laughed. “Funny you didn’t meet her last night.”

  “Betty what?”

  “Waterloo.”

  “Not really!”

  Mollock stopped and laid a hand on his companion’s shoulder. “Anger,” he said, “I’ll return your compliment. I like you—but if you say that now you’re Napoleon, I’ll hit you.”

  “I’ll say this, then: I’d like to see more of that girl—a lot more.” The young secretary was intensely serious. “Napoleon? Not much! I’ve been a Micawber, Mollock, for a long time—waiting for something to turn up, eh?”

  They strolled on again. “It never did?” Mollock was sympathetic.

  “I’d like to think it did this morning. It had that appearance.”

  “H-m-m!” said Mollock. After a moment he brightened. “Maybe she’ll attend the inquest. If she does—”

  “You’ll introduce us,” finished Anger dryly. “What an occasion that would be for an introduction! It’s to be in an undertaking parlour, isn’t it?”

  “Handsomest in town,” said Mollock. “With a regular chapel and stained-glass windows.”

  “But she won’t be there,” said Harold Anger. “She isn’t the sort to find inquests attractive.”

  Mollock chuckled. “She reads my books, and likes them,” he asserted boastfully, refuting the other’s notion at a blow. “Here’s a Purple. Shall we take it?”

  They entered the taxicab and proceeded on their way.

  At the same instant Mr. and Mrs. Howland Kimbark, having exhausted a number of minor topics—in intervals of empty silence—faced each other across a little table in the Kimbark living room and realized that there were still words to be said.

  “It was letters, I suppose?” remarked Kimbark, with smiling malice.

  But she failed to understand him. “Letters?”

  “That sent you pelting into the house when you heard that Anger was inside.”

  She gestured angrily. “What under the sun do you suppose Harold Anger is to me?”

  “Is Harold his name? He’s Garment’s secretary, as I understand it. Otherwise, I grant you, probably nothing.”

  She snatched the riding whip from the table, where it lay beneath her hand, and slashed him across the face. But as the red welt sprang out upon his cheek, her own face blanched. Her eyes were frightened, and she sank into a chair to bury her head in her arms upon the table. Her tears were as genuine as the jewels on her fingers; that is, they were genuine.

  Very probably, thought Kimbark, looking down at her through the misty blur that pain had set before his eyes, it was her first real cry in a great many years.

  After a moment he swung on his heel and walked swiftly to the telephone. And after a wait of several more minutes he spoke composedly into the rubber mouthpiece.

  “Curly?…Yep, it’s me!…Listen, you mustard-coloured old son of a doormat! We’re going to take you up on that Caribbean picnic. How soon do you intend to get away?”

  Chapter Four

  Odd things occur upon a night of crime. That is to say, the smaller alarums and excursions that in point of time surround a major criminal event, whether by accident or design, are often of a nature to excite wonder. The question must arise: Which, if any, of these curious enterprises has a bearing upon the central mystery?

  As a rule there is no connection. For the most pa
rt they are outlawed by their very nature, by the improbability of the same criminal being in two places at the same time, or by the personalities of those involved in the minor misdemeanours. A Sicilian track-walker who steals a truckload of cement in a far Western suburb—to instance all three items at a blow—is unlikely at the same time to be committing murder upon an English novelist on a boulevard near the lake. But a law student who breaks a shop window on that boulevard, because a double bed within offends his moral nature, while he may be suspected of drinking, is not so readily acquitted.

  “Obviously,” said Dunstan Mollock, who had read of both outrages in the same morning journals that had chronicled the demise of Stephen Garment, “the law student was near enough to have committed the murder, shortly prior to his less sensational if more noisy achievement with the window.”

  He was theorizing in his best manner for the benefit of his new hosts.

  The Van Peters smiled politely and Anger giggled. Mollock was the best of company, but a little of him—they were beginning to discover— did go a long way.

  “Of course, he had nothing to do with it,” said Van Peter.

  “Nothing in the world,” agreed Mollock joyously. “I merely say that he could have done it. There is nothing inherently improbable in the proposition, philosophically considered. The Sicilian track-walker is out of the picture on all counts. The law student, if we give him a motive—or even if we don’t, since liquor is a powerful enough motive for anything—might be a possibility. A man whose moral nature rebels at double beds might be similarly outraged by a sudden glimpse—under a stop-light, say—of the British novelist who wrote that last volume of Flesh Tints.”

  “Under a stop-light?” echoed Van Peter, a bit dryly, but still smiling. “While William Spessifer conveniently looked the other way? It seems unlikely. Why not give Spessifer a moral nature? He might have recognized his passenger too, you know. Garment’s picture has been in all the papers for some time. But moral nature or no moral nature, the driver is still my choice.”