A LUNCHEON
I went away from there.
Looking about me, I had guessed that pretty much every man in the room
believed that it was Worth Gilbert with whom I had been talking over the
phone. Dykeman's trailers would be right behind me. Yet to the last,
Whipple and his crowd were offering me the return trip end of my ticket
with them; if I would come back and be good, even now, all would be
forgiven. I sized up the situation briefly and took my plunge, shutting
the door after me, glancing across the long room to see that Barbara
Wallace's desk was deserted. Nobody followed me from the room I had just
left. I walked quickly to the outer door.
Little Pete switched on his engine as I leaped into the car. My "Let her
go!" wasn't needed to make him throw in his clutch, and give me a flying
start straight ahead down the broad plank way of the Embarcadero.
Looking back as we hit the belt-line tracks, I saw a small car with two
men in it, shoot out from one of the wide doorways of the plant; but as
we rounded the cliff-like side of Telegraph Hill, my view of them was
cut off. Things had come for me thick and fast. I felt pretty well
balled up. But the girl had used secrecy in appointing this interview;
till I could see further into the thing, it was anyhow a safe bet to
drop them.
"Pete," I said, "lose that car behind us. Only ten minutes to slip them
and land me at Fisherman's Wharf. Show me what-for."
He grinned. Between Montgomery and the bay, north of California Street,
there are many narrow byways, crowded with the heavy traffic of
hucksters and vegetable men, a section devoted to the commission
business. Into its congestion Pete dove with a weasel instinct for
finding the right holes to slip through, the alleys that might be
navigated in safety; in less than the ten minutes I'd specified, we were
free again on Columbus Avenue, pursuit lost, and headed back for the
restaurant on the wharf.
"Boss," Little Pete was hoarse with the excitement he loved, as he laid
the roadster alongside the Little Italy, "was it on the level, what you
fed the lawyer guy? Ain't you wise to where Captain Gilbert is? I've saw
him frequent since you've been gone."
"How many times is 'frequent,' Pete?" I asked. "And when did the last
'frequent' happen?"
"Twice," sulkily. I'd wounded his pride by not taking him seriously; but
he added as I jumped down from the machine. "I druv him up on the hill,
'round the place where you an' him--an' her--went that day."
Pete didn't need to use Barbara Wallace's name. The way he salaamed to
the pronoun was enough; the swath that girl cut evidently reached from
the cradle to the grave, with this monkey grinning at one end, and me
doddering along at the other.
I gave a moment to questioning Pete, found out all he knew, and went
into the restaurant, wondering what under heaven Barbara Wallace would
say to me or ask me.
The Little Italy restaurant is not so bad a place for luncheon. If one
likes any eatables the western seas produce, I heartily recommend it.
Where fish are unloaded from the smacks by the ton, fish are sure to be
in evidence, but they are nice, fresh fish, and look good enough to eat.
And the Little Italy is clean, with white oil-clothed tables and a view
from its broad windows that down-town restaurants would double their
rent to get.
Just now it was full of noisy patrons, foreigners, mostly; people too
busy eating to notice whether I carried my head on my shoulders or under
my arm.
In a far corner, Barbara Wallace's eyes were on me from the minute I
came within her sight. She had ordered clams for two, mostly, I thought,
to defend the privacy of our talk from the interruptions of a waiter,
and I was hardly in my chair before she burst out,
"Where's Worth? Why wasn't he in that office to defend himself against
what they're hinting?"
"I suppose," I said dryly, "because he wasn't given an invitation to
attend. You ought to know why. You work for Dykeman."
"I work for Dykeman?" she repeated after me in a bewildered tone. "I'm
bookkeeper in the Western Cereal Company's employ, if that's what you
mean. You understood so from the first."
"You know I didn't," I reproached her hotly. "Do you think I'd have let
you on the inside of this case if I'd known it was a pipe line direct to
Dykeman?"
And on the instant I spoke there came to me a remembrance of her saying
that Sunday morning as we pulled up before the St. Dunstan that she went
past the place on the street car every day getting to her work at the
Western Cereal Company. Sloppy of me not to have paid better attention;
I knew vaguely that Dykeman was in one of the North Beach mills.
"Fifty-fifty, Barbara," I conceded. "I should have known--made it my
business to learn. And Dykeman has questioned you--"
"He has not!" indignantly. "I don't suppose he knows Worth and I are
acquainted." I could have smiled at that. There were detectives' reports
in Dykeman's desk that recorded date, hour and duration of every meeting
this girl had had with Worth and with myself. Besides, Cummings knew. It
must have been through Cummings that she learned what was about to take
place in Dykeman's private office. What had she told Cummings?
I was ready to blurt out the question, when she fumbled in her bag with
little, shaking hands, drew out and passed to me unopened the envelope
addressed to Worth, with my detailed report of the Skeels chase.
"I did my best to deliver it," she steadied her voice as she spoke. "He
wasn't at the Palace. He wasn't at Santa Ysobel. He didn't communicate
with me here."
My edifice of suspicion of Barbara Wallace crumbled. Cummings had not
learned through her that I was unsuccessful in the south; nor had she
spilled a word to him that she shouldn't, or they'd have had the dope on
where Worth had found that suitcase, and thrown it at me quick.
"Barbara," I said, "will you accept my apologies?"
"Oh, yes," she smiled vaguely. "I don't know what you're apologizing
for, but it doesn't matter. I hoped you would bring me news of Worth--of
where he is."
"When did you see him last?"
"On the day of the funeral. I hardly got to speak to him."
Little Pete's news was slightly later. He'd taken Worth up to the Gold
Nugget and dropped him there. Thursday, Worth was at the Nugget for more
than an hour. On both occasions, Pete was told to slip the trailers, and
did. That meant that Worth was working on the Clayte case--or thought he
was. I told her of this.
"Yes--Oh, yes," she repeated listlessly. "But where is he now? And awful
things--things like this meeting--coming up."
"What besides this meeting?"
"At Santa Ysobel."
"What? Things that have happened since the boy's gone? You couldn't get
much idea of the lay of the land when you were down there Wednesday,
could you?"
"Oh, but I could--I did," earnestly. "Of course it was a large funeral;
it seemed to me I saw everybody I'd ever known. At a time like that,
nothing would be said openly, but the drift was all in one direction.
They couldn't understand Worth, and so nearly every one who spoke of
him, picked at him, trying to understand him. Mrs. Thornhill's cook was
already telling that Worth had quarreled with his father and demanded
money. I shouldn't wonder if by now Santa Ysobel's set the exact hour of
the quarrel."
"Me for down there as quick as I can," I muttered, and Barbara, facing
me sympathetically, offered,
"I've a letter from Skeet Thornhill," she groped in her bag again,
mumbling as women do when they're hunting for a thing, "It came this
morning.... Mrs. Thornhill's no better--worse, I judge.... Oh, here it
is," and she pulled out a couple of closely scribbled sheets. "The child
writes a wild hand," she apologized, as she passed these over.
The flapper dashed into her letter with a sort of incoherent squeal. The
carnival ball was only four days off. Everybody was already dead on his,
her or its feet. The decorations they'd planned were enough to kill a
horse--let alone getting up costumes. "As usual, everything seems to be
going to the devil here," she went on; "Got a cannery girl elected
festival queen this time. Ina's furious, of course. Moms had a letter
from her that singed the envelope; but I sort of enjoy seeing the
cannery district break in. They've got the money these days."
Nothing here to my purpose. Barbara reached forward and turned the sheet
for me, and I saw Worth Gilbert's name half way down it.
"Doctor Bowman is an old hell-cat, and I hate him." Skeet made her
points with a fine simplicity. "Since mother's sick, he comes here every
day, though what he does but sit and shoot off his mouth and get her all
worked up is more than I can see. Yesterday I was in the room when he
was there, and he got to talking about Worth--the meanest, lowest-down,
hinting talk you ever heard! Said Worth got a lot of money when his
father died, and I flared up and said what of it? Did he think Mr.
Gilbert ought to have left it to him? That hit him, because he and Mr.
Gilbert used to be good friends, and he and Worth aren't. I sassed him,
and he got so mad that just as he was leaving, he hollered at me that I
better ask Worth Gilbert where he was at the hour his father was shot.
Now, what do you know about that? That man is spreading stories. A
doctor can set them going. He's making his messy old calls on people all
day, and they, poor fish-hounds, believe everything he says. Though
mother didn't. After he was gone, she just lay there in her bed and said
over and over that it was a lie, a foolish, dangerous lie! Poor mumsie,
she's so nervous that when the grocer's truck had a blow-out down in the
drive, she nearly went into hysterics--cried and carried on, something
about it's being 'the shot.' I suppose she meant the one when Mr.
Gilbert killed himself. Wasn't that queer? Any loud noise of the sort
sets her off that way. She lies and listens, and listens and mutters to
herself. It scares me." She closed with, "Please don't break your
promise to be here through this infernal Bloss. Fes."
"Good advice, that last," I said slowly, as I laid the letter on the
table, keeping a hand on it. "You'll do that, won't you, Barbara?"
"I had intended to. I was given leave from this afternoon.
But--well--I'd thought it over, and almost made up my mind to go back to
my desk."
Barbara Wallace uncertain, halting between two courses of action! What
did it mean?
"See here, Barbara; this isn't a time for Worth Gilbert's friends to
slacken on him."
"I hadn't slackened," she said very low. And left it for me to remember
that Worth apparently had.
"Then you're needed at Santa Ysobel," I urged.
"But you're going, aren't you, Mr. Boyne?"
"Yes. As soon as I can get off. That doesn't keep you from being needed.
Worth's one of the most efficiently impossible young men I ever tried to
handle. Maybe he's not any fuller of shocks than any other live wire,
but he sure does manage to plant them where they'll do the most harm.
Cummings, Dykeman--and this Dr. Bowman down there; active enemies."
"They can't hurt Worth Gilbert--all of them together!"
"Wait a minute. I'm going to Santa Ysobel to find the murderer of Thomas
Gilbert. That means a stirring to the depths of that little town. This
underneath-the-surface combustion will get poked into a flame--she's
going to burst out, and somebody's going to get burned. We don't want
that to be Worth, Barbara."
"No. But what can I do--what influence have I with him--" she was
beginning, but I broke in on her.
"Barbara, you and I are going to find the real murderer, before the
Cummings-Dykeman bunch discover a way into and out of that bolted study.
Those people want to see Worth in jail."
There was a long pause while she faced me, the rich color failing a
little in her cheeks.
"I see," speaking slowly, studying each word. "And as long as we didn't
find out how to enter and leave the study, we have no way of knowing how
hard or how easy it's going to be for them to find it out. We--" her
voice still lower--"we can't tell if they already know it or not."
"Yes we can," I leaned forward to say. "The minute they know
that--Worth Gilbert will be charged with murder."
I hit hard enough that time to bring blood, but she bled inwardly,
sitting there staring at me, quite pale, finally faltering,
"Well--I can't stop to think of his having followed Ina Vandeman
south--on her wedding trip--if he needs me--and I can help--I must--"
she broke down completely, and I sat there feeling big-footed and
blundering at this revelation of what it was that had put that clear,
logical mind of hers off the track, left her confused, groping, just a
girl, timid, distrustful of her own judgment where her heart was
concerned.
"Was that it all the time?" I asked. "Well, take it from me, Worth's
done nothing of the sort. He's been playing detective, not chasing off
after some other man's bride."
Up came the color to her cheeks, she reached that mite of a hand across
to shake on the bargain with,
"I'll go straight down this evening. You'll find me in Santa Ysobel when
you come, Mr. Boyne."
"At the Thornhills'?" It might be handy to have her there; but she shook
her head, looking a little self-conscious.
"I'm taking that spare room at Sarah Capehart's. Skeet wanted me, and I
have an invitation from Laura Bowman; but if--well, seeing that this
investigation is going to cover all that neighborhood, I thought I'd
rather be with Sarah."
The level-headed little thing! Pete and I had the pleasure of taking her
out to her home where she had her packing to attend to. On the way she
spoke of an engagement with Cummings for the theater Saturday night.
"And instead, I suppose I shall be at the carnival ball. Shall I tell
him that in my note, Mr. Boyne? Is it all right to let him know?"
"It's all right," I assented. "You can bet Cummings is due down there as
soon as Worth shows up; and that must be soon, now."
"Yes," Barbara agreed. Her face clouded a little. "You noticed in
Skeet's letter that they're expecting Ina to-morrow."
Poor child--she couldn't get away from it. I patted the hand I had taken
to say good-by and assured her again,
"Worth Gilbert hasn't been in the south. I wonder at you, Barbara.
You're so clear headed about everything else--don't you see that that
would be impossible?"
Then I drove back to my office, to find lying on my desk a telegram from
the young man, dated at Los Angeles, requesting me to meet him at Santa
Ysobel the following evening!