A WEDDING PARTY
I looked at my watch; quarter of ten; a little ahead of my appointment.
I ordered a telephone extension brought to this corner table I had
reserved at Tait's and got in touch with my office; then with the
knowledge that any new kink in the case would be reported immediately to
me, I relaxed to watch the early supper crowd arrive: Women in picture
hats and bare or half-bare shoulders with rich wraps slipping off them;
hum of voices; the clatter of silver and china; waiters beginning to
wake up and dart about settling new arrivals. And I wondered idly what
sort of party would come to sit around one long table across from me
specially decorated with pale tinted flowers.
There was a sense of warmth and comfort at my heart. I am a lonely man;
the people I take to seem to have a way of passing on in the stream of
life--or death--leaving me with a few well-thumbed volumes on a shelf in
my rooms for consolation. Walt Whitman, Montaigne, The Bard, two or
three other lesser poets, and you've the friends that have stayed by me
for thirty years. And so, having met up with Worth Gilbert when he was a
youngster, at the time his mother was living in San Francisco to get a
residence for her divorce proceedings, having loved the boy and got I am
sure some measure of affection in return, it seemed almost too much to
ask of fate that he should come back into my days, plunge into such a
proposition as this bank robbery, right at my elbow as it were, and
make himself my employer--my boss.
I was a subordinate in the agency in those old times when he and I used
to chin about the business, and his idea (I always discussed it gravely
and respectfully with him) was to grow up and go into partnership with
me. Well, we were partners now.
Past ten, nearly five minutes. Where was he? What up to? Would he miss
his appointment? No, I caught a glimpse of him at the door getting rid
of hat and overcoat, pausing a moment with tall bent head to banter
Rose, the little Chinese girl who usually drifted from table to table
with cigars and cigarettes. Then he was coming down the room.
A man who takes his own path in life, and will walk it though hell bar
the way, never explaining, never extenuating, never excusing his
course--something seems to emanate from such a chap that draws all eyes
after him in a public place in a look between fear and desire. Sitting
there in Tait's, my view of Worth cut off now by a waiter with a
high-carried tray, again by people passing to tables for whom he halted,
I had a good chance to see the turning of eyeballs that followed him,
the furtive glances that snatched at him, or fondled him, or would have
probed him; the admiration of the women, the envy of the men, curiously
alike in that it was sometimes veiled and half wistful, sometimes very
open. Drifters--you see so many of the sort in a restaurant--why
wouldn't they hanker after the strength and ruthlessness of a man like
Worth? And the poor prunes, how little they knew him! As my friend Walt
would say, he wasn't out after any of the old, smooth prizes they cared
for. And win or lose he would still be a victor, for all he and his
sort demand is freedom, and the joy of the game. So he came on to me.
I noticed, a little startled, as he slumped into his chair with a grunt
of greeting, that his cheek was somehow gaunt and pale under the tan;
the blue fire of his eyes only smoldered, and I pulled back his chair
with,
"You look as if you hadn't had any dinner."
"I haven't." He gave a man-size order for food and turned back from it
to listen to me. "I'll be nearer human when I get some grub under my
belt."
My report of what had been done on the case since we separated was
interrupted by the arrival of our orders, and Worth sailed into a thick,
juicy steak while I was still explaining details. The orchestra whanged
and blared and jazzed away; the people at the other tables noticed us or
busied themselves noisily with affairs of their own; Worth sat and
enjoyed his meal with the air of a man feeding at a solitary country
tavern. When he had finished--and he took his time about it--the worn,
punished look was gone from his face; his eye was bright, his tone
nonchalant, as he lighted a cigarette, remarking,
"I've had one more good dinner. Food's a thing you can depend on; it
doesn't rake up your entire past record from the time you squirmed into
this world, and tell you what a fool you've always been."
I turned that over in my mind. Did it mean that he'd seen his father and
got a calling down? I wanted to know--and was afraid to ask. The fact is
I was beginning to wake up to a good many things about my young boss. I
was intensely interested in his reactions on people. So far, I'd seen
him with strangers. I wished that I might have a chance to observe him
among intimates. Old Richardson who founded our agency (and would never
knowingly have left me at the head of it, though he did take me in as
partner, finally) used to say that the main trouble with me was I
studied people instead of cases. Richardson held that all men are equal
before the detective, and must be regarded only as queer shaped pieces
to be fitted together so as to make out a case. Richardson would have
gone as coolly about easing the salt of the earth into the chink labeled
"murder" or "embezzlement," as though neither had been human. With me
the personal equation always looms big, and of course he was quite right
in saying that it's likely to get you all gummed up.
The telephone on the table before me rang. It was Roberts, my secretary,
with the word that Foster had lifted the watch from Ocean View, the
little town at the neck of the peninsula, where bay and ocean narrow the
passageway to one thoroughfare, over which every machine must pass that
goes by land from San Francisco. With two operatives, he had been on
guard there since three o'clock of the afternoon, holding up blond men
in cars, asking questions, taking notes and numbers. Now he reported it
was a useless waste of time.
"Order him in," I instructed Roberts.
A far-too-fat entertainer out on the floor was writhing in the pangs of
an Hawaiian dance. It took the attention of the crowd. I watched the
face of my companion for a moment, then,
"Worth," I said a bit nervously--after all, I nearly had to know--"is
your father going to come through?"
"Eh?" He looked at me startled, then put it aside negligently. "Oh, the
money? No. I'll leave that up to Cummings." A brief pause. "We'll get a
wiggle on us and dig up the suitcase." He lifted his tumbler, stared at
it, then unseeingly out across the room, and his lip twitched in a half
smile. "I'm sure glad I bought it."
Looking at him, I had no reason to doubt his word. His enjoyment of the
situation seemed to grow with every detail I brought up.
It was near eleven when the party came in to take the long,
flower-trimmed table. Worth's back was to the room; I saw them over his
shoulder, in the lead a tall blonde, very smartly dressed, but not in
evening clothes; in severe, exclusive street wear. The man with her,
good looking, almost her own type, had that possessive air which seems
somehow unmistakable--and there was a look about the half dozen
companions after them, as they settled themselves in a great flurry of
scraping chairs, that made me murmur with a grin,
"Bet that's a wedding party."
Worth gave them one quick glance, then came round to me with a smile.
"You win. Married at Santa Ysobel this afternoon. Local society event.
Whole place standing on its hind legs, taking notice."
So he had been down to the little town to see his father after all. And
he wasn't going to talk about it. Oh, well.
"Friends of yours?" I asked perfunctorily, and he gave me a queer look
out of the corners of those wicked eyes, repeating in an enjoying drawl.
"Friends? Oh, hardly that. The girl I was to have married, and Bronson
Vandeman--the man she has married."
I had wanted to get a more intimate line on the kid--it seemed that here
was a chance with a vengeance!
"The rest of the bunch?" I suggested. He took a leisurely survey, and
gave them three words:
"Family and accomplices."
"Santa Ysobel people, too, then. Folks you know well?"
"Used to."
"The lady changed her mind while you were across?" I risked the query.
"While I was shedding my blood for my country." He nodded. "Gave me the
butt while the Huns were using the bayonet on me."
In the careless jeer, as much at himself as at her, no hint what his
present feeling might be toward the fashion plate young female across
there. With some fellows, in such a situation, I should have looked for
a disposition to duck the encounter; let his old sweetheart's wedding
party leave without seeing him; with others I should have discounted a
dramatic moment when he would court the meeting. It was impossible to
suppose either thing of Worth Gilbert; plain that he simply sat there
because he sat there, and would make no move toward the other table
unless something in that direction interested him--pleasantly or
unpleasantly--which at present nothing seemed to do.
So we smoked, Worth indifferent, I giving all the attention to the
people over there: bride and groom; a couple of fair haired girls so
like the bride that I guessed them to be sisters; a freckled, impudent
looking little flapper I wasn't so sure of; two older men, and an older
woman. Then a shifting of figures gave me sight of a face that I hadn't
seen before, and I drew in my breath with a whistle.
"Whew! Who's the dark girl? She's a beauty!"
"Dark girl?" Worth had interest enough to lean into the place where I
got my view; after he did so he remained to stare. I sat and grinned
while he muttered,
"Can't be.... I believe it is!"
Something to make him sit up and take notice now. I didn't wonder at his
fixed study of the young creature. Not so dressed up as the others--I
think she wore what ladies call an evening blouse with a street suit; a
brunette, but of a tinting so delicate that she fairly sparkled, she
took the shine off those blonde girls. Her small beautifully formed,
uncovered head had the living jet of the crow's wing; her great eyes,
long-lashed and sumptuously set, showed ebon irises almost obliterating
the white. Dark, shining, she was a night with stars, that girl.
"Funny thing," Worth spoke, moving his head to keep in line with that
face. "How could she grow up to be like this--a child that wasn't
allowed any childhood? Lord, she never even had a doll!"
"Some doll herself now," I smiled.
"Yeh," he assented absently, "she's good looking--but where did she
learn to dress like that--and play the game?"
"Where they all learn it." I enjoyed very much seeing him interested.
"From her mother, and her sisters, or the other girls."
"Not." He was positive. "Her mother died when she was a baby. Her father
wouldn't let her be with other children--treated her like one of the
instruments in his laboratory; trained her in her high chair; problems
in concentration dumped down into its tray, punishment if she made a
failure; God knows what kind of a reward if she succeeded; maybe no more
than her bowl of bread and milk. That's the kind of a deal she got when
she was a kid. And will you look at her now!"
If he kept up his open staring at the girl, it would be only a matter of
time when the wedding party discovered him. I leaned back in my chair to
watch, while Worth, full of his subject, spilled over in words.
"Never played with anybody in her life--but me," he said unexpectedly.
"They lived next house but one to us; the professor had the rest of the
Santa Ysobel youngsters terrorized, backed off the boards; but I wasn't
a steady resident of the burg. I came and went, and when I came, it was
playtime for the little girl."
"What was her father? Crank on education?"
"Psychology," Worth said briefly. "International reputation. But he
ought to have been hung for the way he brought Bobs up. Listen to this,
Jerry. I got off the train one time at Santa Ysobel--can't remember just
when, but the kid over there was all shanks and eyes--'bout ten or
eleven, I'd say. Her father had her down at the station doing a stunt
for a bunch of professors. That was his notion of a nice, normal
development for a small child. There she sat poked up cross-legged on a
baggage truck. He'd trained her to sit in that self balanced position so
she could make her mind blank without going to sleep. A freight train
was hitting a twenty mile clip past the station, and she was adding the
numbers on the sides of the box cars, in her mind. It kept those
professors on the jump to get the figures down in their notebooks, but
she told them the total as the caboose was passing."
"Some stunt," I agreed. "Freight car numbers run up into the
ten-thousands." Worth didn't hear me, he was still deep in the past.
"Poor little white-faced kid," he muttered. "I dumped my valises, horned
into that bunch, picked her off the truck and carried her away on my
shoulder, while the professor yelled at me, and the other ginks were
tabbing up their additions. And I damned every one of them, to hell and
through it."
"You must have been a popular youth in your home town," I suggested.
"I was," he grinned. "My reason for telling you that story, though, is
that I've got an idea about the girl over there--if she hasn't changed
too much. I think maybe we might--"
He stood up calmly to study her, and his tall figure instantly drew the
attention of everybody in the room. Over at the long table it was the
sharp, roving eye of the snub-nosed flapper that spied him first. I saw
her give the alarm and begin pushing back her chair to bolt right across
and nab him. The sister sitting next stopped her. Judging from the
glimpses I had as the party spoke together and leaned to look, it was
quite a sensation. But apparently by common consent they left whatever
move was to be made to the bride; and to my surprise this move was most
unconventional. She got up with an abrupt gesture and started over to
our table--alone. This, for a girl of her sort, was going some. I
glanced doubtfully at Worth. He shrugged a little.
"Might as well have it over. Her family lives on one side of us, and
Brons Vandeman on the other."
And then the bride was with us. She didn't overdo the thing--much; only
held out her hand with a slightly pleading air as though half afraid it
would be refused. And it was a curious thing to see that pretty,
delicate featured, schooled face of hers naïvely drawn in lines of
emotion--like a bisque doll registering grief.
Gilbert took the hand, shook it, and looked around with the evident
intention of presenting me. I saw by the way the lady gave me her
shoulder, pushing in, speaking low, that she didn't want anything of the
sort, and quietly dropped back. I barely got a side view of Worth's
face, but plainly his calmness was a disappointment to her.
"After these years!" I caught the fringes of what she was saying. "It
seems like a dream. To-night--of all times. But you will come over to
our table--for a minute anyhow? They're just going to--to drink our
health--Oh, Worth!" That last in a sort of impassioned whisper. And all
he answered was,
"If I might bring Mr. Boyne with me, Mrs. Vandeman." At her protesting
expression, he finished, "Or do I call you Ina, still?"
She gave him a second look of reproach, acknowledging my introduction in
that way some women have which assures you they don't intend to know you
in the least the next time. We crossed to the table and met the others.
If anybody had asked my opinion, I should have said it was a mistake to
go. Our advent in that party--or rather Worth Gilbert's advent--was
bound to throw the affair into a sort of consternation. No mistake about
that. The bridegroom at the head of the table seemed the only one able
to keep a grip on the situation. He welcomed Worth as though he wanted
him, took hold of me with a glad hand, and presented me in such rapid
succession to everybody there that I was dizzy. And through it all I had
an eye for Worth as he met and disposed of the effusive welcome of the
younger Thornhill girls. Either of the twins, as I found them to be,
would, I judged, have been more than willing to fill out sister Ina's
unexpired term, and the little snub-nosed one, also a sister it seemed,
plainly adored him as a hero, sexlessly, as they sometimes can at that
age.
While yet he shook hands with the girls, and swapped short replies for
long questions, I became conscious of something odd in the air. Plain
enough sailing with the young ladies; all the noise with them echoed the
bride's, "After all these years." They clattered about whether he looked
like his last photograph, and how perfectly delightful it was going to
be to have him back in Santa Ysobel again.
But when it came to the chaperone, a Mrs. Dr. Bowman, things were
different. No longer young, though still beautiful in what I might call
a sort of wasted fashion, with slim wrists and fragile fingers, and a
splendid mass of rich, auburn hair, I had been startled, even looking
across from our table, by the extreme nervous tension of her face. She
looked a neurasthenic; but that was not all; surely her nerves were
almost from under control as she sat there, her rich cloak dropped back
over her chair, the corners caught up again and fumbled in a twisting,
restless hold.
Now, when Worth stood before her appealing eyes, she reached up and
clutched his hand in both of hers, staring at him through quick tears,
saying something in a low, choking tone, something that I couldn't for
the life of me make into the greeting you give even a beloved youngster
you haven't seen for several years.
At the moment, I was myself being presented to the lady's husband, a
typical top-grade, small town medical man, with a fine bedside manner.
His nice, smooth white hands, with which I had watched him feeling the
pulse of his supper as though it had been a wealthy patient, released
mine; those cold eyes of his, that hid a lot of meaning under heavy
lids, came around on his wife. His,
"Laura, control yourself. Where do you think you are?" was like a lash.
It worked perfectly. Of course she would be his patient as well as his
wife. Yet I hated the man for it. To me it seemed like the cut of the
whip that punishes a sensitive, over excited Irish setter for a fault in
the hunting field. Mrs. Bowman quivered, pulled herself together and sat
down, but her gaze followed the boy.
She sat there stilled, but not quieted, under her husband's eye, and
watched Worth's meeting with the other man, whom I heard the boy call
Jim Edwards, and with whom he shook hands, but who met him, as Mrs.
Bowman had, as though there had been something recent between them; not
like people bridging a long gap of absence.
And this man, tall, thin, the power in his features contradicted by a
pair of soft dark eyes, deep-set, looking out at you with an expression
of bafflement, defeat--why did he face Worth with the stare of one
drenched, drowned in woe? It wasn't his wedding. He hadn't done Worth
any dirt in the matter.
And I was wedged in beside the beautiful dark girl, without having been
presented to her, without even having had the luck to hear what name
Worth used when he spoke to her. At last the flurry of our coming
settled down (though I still felt that we were stuck like a sliver into
the wedding party, that the whole thing ached from us) and Dr. Bowman
proposed the health of the happy couple, his bedside manner going over
pretty well, as he informed Vandeman and the rest of us that the
bridegroom was a social leader in Santa Ysobel, and that the hope of its
best people was to place him and his bride at the head of things there,
leading off with the annual Blossom Festival, due in about a fortnight.
Vandeman responded for himself and his bride, appropriately, with what
I'd call a sort of acceptable, fabricated geniality. You could see he
was the kind that takes such things seriously, one who would go to work
to make a success of any social doings he got into, would give what his
set called good parties; and he spoke feelingly of the Blossom Festival,
which was the great annual event of a little town. If by putting his
shoulder to the wheel he could boost that affair into nation-wide fame
and place a garland of rich bloom upon the brow of his fair city, he was
willing to take off his neatly tailored coat, roll up his immaculate
shirtsleeves and go to it.
There was no time for speech making. The girls wanted to dance; bride
and groom were taking the one o'clock train for the south and Coronado.
The orchestra swung into "I'll Say She Does."
"Just time for one." Vandeman guided his bride neatly out between the
chairs, and they moved away. I turned from watching them to find Worth
asking Mrs. Bowman to dance.
"Oh, Worth, _dearest_! I ought to let one of the girls have you, but--"
She looked helplessly up at him; he smiled down into her tense,
suffering face, and paid no attention to her objections. As soon as he
carried her off, Jim Edwards glumly took out that one of the twins I had
at first supposed to be the elder, the remaining Thornhill girls moved
on Dr. Bowman and began nagging him to hunt partners for them.
"Drag something up here," prompted the freckled tomboy, "or I'll make
you dance with me yourself." She grabbed a coat lapel, and started away
with him.
I turned and laughed into the laughing face of the dark girl. I had no
idea of her name, yet a haunting resemblance, a something somehow
familiar came across to me which I thought for a moment was only the
sweet approachableness of her young femininity.
Bowman had found and collared a partner for Ernestine Thornhill, but
that was as far as it went. The little one forebore her threat of making
him dance with her, came back to her chair and tucked herself in,
snuggling up to the girl beside me, getting hold of a hand and looking
at me across it. She rejoiced, it seems, in the nickname of Skeet, for
by that the other now spoke to her whisperingly, saying it was too bad
about the dance.
"That's nothing," Skeet answered promptly. "I'd a lot rather sit here
and talk to you--and your gentleman friend--" with a large wink for
me--"if you don't mind."
At the humorous, intimate glance which again passed between me and the
dark girl, sudden remembrance came to me, and I ejaculated,
"I know you now!"
"Only now?" smiling.
"You've changed a good deal in seven years," I defended myself.
"And you so very little," she was still smiling, "that I had almost a
mind to come and shake hands with you when Ina went to speak to Worth."
I remembered then that it was Worth's recognition of her which had
brought him to his feet. I told her of it, and the glowing, vivid face
was suddenly all rosy. Skeet regarded the manifestation askance, asking
jealously,
"When did you see Worth last, Barbie? You weren't still living in Santa
Ysobel when he left, were you?"
I sat thinking while the girlish voices talked on. Barbie--the nickname
for Barbara. Barbara Wallace; the name jumped at me from a poster;
that's where I first saw it. It linked itself up with what Worth had
said over there about the forlorn childhood of this beguiling young
charmer. Why hadn't I remembered then? I, too, had my recollections of
Barbara Wallace. About seven years before, I had first seen her, a
slim, dark little thing of twelve or fourteen, very badly dressed in
slinky, too-long skirts that whipped around preposterously thin ankles,
blue-black hair dragged away from a forehead almost too fine, made into
a bundle of some fashion that belonged neither to childhood nor
womanhood, her little, pointed face redeemed by a pair of big black eyes
with a wonderful inner light, the eyes of this girl glowing here at my
left hand.
The father Worth spoke of brusquely as "the professor" was Elman
Wallace, to whom all students of advanced psychology are heavily
indebted. The year I heard him, and saw the girl, his course of lectures
at Stanford University was making quite a stir. I had been one of a
bunch of criminologists, detectives and police chiefs who, during a
state convention were given a demonstration of the little girl's powers,
closing with a sort of rapid pantomime in which I was asked to take
part. A half dozen of us from the audience planned exactly what we were
to do. I rushed into the room through one door, holding my straw hat in
my left hand, and wiping my brow with a handkerchief with the right.
From an opposite door, came two men; one of them fired at me twice with
a revolver held in his left hand. I fell, and the second man--the one
who wasn't armed--ran to me as I staggered, grabbed my hat, and the two
of them went out the door I had entered, while I stumbled through the
one by which they had come in. It lasted all told, not half a minute,
the idea being for those who looked on to write down what had happened.
Those trained criminologists, supposed to have eyes in their heads,
didn't see half that really took place, and saw a-plenty that did not.
Most of 'em would have hung the man who snatched my hat. Only one, I
remember, noticed that I was shot by a left-handed man. Then the little
girl told us what really had occurred, every detail, just as though she
had planned it instead of being merely an observer.
"Pardon me," I broke in on the girls. "Miss Wallace, you don't mean to
say that you really know me again after seeing me once, seven years ago,
in a group of other men at a public performance?"
"Why shouldn't I? You saw me then. You knew me again."
"But you were doing wonderful things. We remember what strikes us as
that did me."
She looked at me with a little fading of that glow her face seemed
always to hold.
"Most memories are like that," she agreed listlessly. "Mine isn't. It
works like a cinema camera; I've only to turn the crank the other way to
be looking at any past record."
"But can you--?" I was beginning, when Skeet stopped me, leaning around
her companion, bristling at me like a snub-nosed terrier.
"If you want to make a hit with Barbie, cut out the reminiscences. She
does loathe being reminded that she was once an infant phenom."
I glanced at my dark eyed girl; she bent her head affirmatively. She
wouldn't have been capable of Skeet's rudeness, but plainly Skeet had
not overstated her real feeling. I had hardly begun an apology when the
dancers rushed back to the table with the information that there was no
more than time to make the Los Angeles train; there was an instant
grasping of wraps, hasty good-bys, and the party began breaking up with
a bang. Worth went out to the sidewalk with them; I sat tight waiting
for him to return, and to my surprise, when he finally did appear,
Barbara Wallace was with him.