CLEANSING FIRES
Wednesday evening I pulled into a different Santa Ysobel: lanterns
strung across between the buildings, bunting and branches of bloom
everywhere, streets alive with people milling around, and cars piled
high with decorative material, crowded with the decorators. The carnival
of blossoms was only three days ahead.
At Bill Capehart's garage they told me Barbara was out somewhere with
the crowd; and a few minutes later on Main Street, I met her in a Ford
truck. Skeet Thornhill was at the wheel, adding to the general risk of
life and limb on Santa Ysobel streets, carrying a half a dozen or more
other young things tucked away behind. Both girls shouted at me; they
were going somewhere for something and would see me later.
Getting down toward the Gilbert place, just beyond the corner, I flushed
from the shadows of the pepper trees a bird I knew to be one of
Dykeman's operatives. Watching his carefully careless progress on past
the Gilbert lawn, then the Vandeman grounds, my eye was led to a pair
who approached across the green from the direction of the bungalow. No
mistaking the woman; even at this distance, height and the clean sweep
of her walk, told me that this was the bride, Ina Vandeman. And the man
strolling beside her--had he come with her from the house, or joined
her on the cross-cut path?--could that be Worth Gilbert?
I sat in the roadster and gaped. The evening light--behind them, and dim
enough at best--made their countenances fairly indistinguishable. At the
gap in the hedge, they paused, and Mrs. Vandeman reached out, broke off
a flower to fasten in his buttonhole, looking up into his face, talking
quickly. Old stuff--but always good reliable old stuff. Then Worth saw
me and hailed, "Hello, Jerry!" But he did not come to me, and I swung
out of the machine to the sidewalk.
I heard the sobbing of the Ford truck; it went by, missing my
runningboard by an inch, stopped at Vandeman's gate and Skeet discharged
her cargo of clamor to stream across the sidewalk and up toward the
bungalow. I saw Barbara, in the midst of the moving figures, suddenly
stop, knew she had seen the two over there, and crossed to her, with a
cheerful,
"He's here all right."
"Oh, yes," not looking toward the gap in the hedge, or at me. "He came
on the same train with--with them."
Then some one from the porch yowled reproachfully for her to fetch those
banners _pronto_, and with a little catching of breath, she ran on up
the walk.
I turned back. Worth and Ina had moved on. Bronson Vandeman, well
groomed, dressed as though he had just come in off the golf links, his
English shoes and loud patterned stockings differentiating him from the
crude outdoor man of the Coast, had joined them on the Gilbert lawn; his
genial greeting to me let his bride get by with a mere bow, turning at
once back to her house by the front walk. But rather to my annoyance,
Vandeman came bounding up the steps after us. I judged Worth must have
invited him.
Chung carried my suitcase upstairs, and lingered a minute in my room.
I'll swear it wasn't merely to get the tip for which he thanked me, but
with the idea of showing me in some recondite, Oriental fashion that he
was glad I'd come. This interested me. The people who were glad to have
me in Santa Ysobel at this time belonged on the clean side of my ledger.
Then I went downstairs to find Vandeman still in the living room,
sprawled at ease beside the window, looking round with a display of his
fine teeth, reaching a hand to pull in the chair Worth set for me.
"Well, Jerry," that young man prompted, indicating by a careless gesture
the smokers' tray on the table beside me, "there is time before dinner
for the tale of your exploits. How's my friend Steve?"
I began to select a cigar, and said shortly,
"It's all in reports waiting for you at my office."
"Yes." Worth ignored my irritation. "Tell it. What'd you do down south?"
"Just back from the south yourself, aren't you?" I countered.
"Sure," airily. "But I wasn't there to butt in on your game. Did you
find that Skeels was Clayte?"
I merely looked over the flame of my match at that small-town society
man, smiling back at me with a show of polite interest.
"Go on," Worth interpreted. "Vandeman knows all about it. I tried to
sell him a few shares of stock in the suitcase, so he'll take an
interest in the game; but he's too much the tight-wad to buy."
"Oh, no," deprecated Vandeman. "Just no gambler; hate to take a chance."
He ran his fingers through his hair, tossing it up with a gesture I had
noticed when he came back from the dance at Tait's.
"All right--apology accepted," Worth nodded. "Anyway, you didn't. Well,
Jerry?"
Vandeman waited a moment with natural curiosity, then, as I still said
nothing, giving my attention to my smoke, moved reluctantly to rise,
saying,
"That means I'd better chase along and let you two talk business."
"No. Sit tight," from Worth.
I was mad clear through, and disturbed and apprehensive, too. I managed
a brief, dry statement of the outcome in the south. Worth hailed it
with,
"Skeels lurks in the jungle! Life still holds a grain of interest."
"Why the devil couldn't you keep me advised of your movements?" I
demanded.
"Dykeman's hounds," he grinned. "Had them guessing. They'd have picked
me up if I'd gone to your office."
"You could have written or wired. They've picked you up anyway," I
grunted. "One's on the job now. Saw him as I came in."
"Eh? What's that?" cried Vandeman, a man snooping in the shrubbery
outside getting more attention from him than one dodging pursuit three
hundred miles away. "What do you mean, hounds?" and when he had heard
the explanation of Dykeman's trailers, "I call that intolerable!"
"Oh, I don't know." Worth reached over my shoulder for a cigarette.
"Lose 'em whenever I like."
I wasn't so certain. There were men in my employ he couldn't shake.
Perhaps those reports in Dykeman's desk might have offered some
surprises to this cock-sure lad. My exasperation at Worth mounted as I
listened to Vandeman talking.
"Those bank people should do one thing or another," he gave his opinion.
"Just because you got gay with them and handed them their payment in the
suitcase it left in, they've no right to have you watched like a
criminal. In a small town like this, such a thing will ruin a man's
standing."
"If he has any standing," Worth laughed.
"See here," Vandeman's smile was persuasive. "Don't let what I said out
in front embitter you."
"I'll try not to."
"Mr. Boyne"--Vandeman missed the sarcasm--"when I got back to this town
to-day, what do you suppose I found? The story going around that a
quarrel with Worth, over money, drove his father to take his own life."
"That's my business here," I nodded. And when he looked his surprise,
"To stop such stories."
He stared at me, frankly puzzled for a moment, then said,
"Well, of course you know, and I know, that they're scurrilous lies; but
just how will you stop them?"
I had intended my remark to stand as it was; but Worth filled in the
pause after Vandeman's question with,
"Jerry's here to get the truth of my father's murder, Bronse."
"Murder?" The mere naked word seemed to shock Vandeman. His sort clothe
and pad everything--even their speech. "I didn't know any one
entertained the idea your father was murdered. He couldn't have
been--not the way it happened."
"Nevertheless we think he was."
"Oh, but Boyne--start a thing like that, and think of the talk it'll
make! They'll commence at once saying that there was nobody but Worth to
profit by his father's death."
"Don't worry, Mr. Vandeman." He made me hot. "We know where to dig up
the motive for the crime."
"You mean the diaries?" Worth's voice sounded unbelievably from beside
me. "Nothing doing there, Jerry. I've burned them."
I sat and choked down the swears. Yet, looking back on it, I saw plainly
that Jerry Boyne was the man who deserved kicking. I ought never to have
left them with him.
"You read them and burned them?" said Vandeman.
"Burned them without reading," Worth's impatient tones corrected.
"Without reading!" the other echoed, startled. Then, after a long pause,
"Oh--I say--pardon me, but--but ought that to have been done? Surely
not. Worth--if you'd read your father's diaries for the past few
years--I don't believe you'd have a doubt that he committed suicide--not
a doubt."
Worth sat there mute. Myself, I was rather curious as to what Vandeman
would say; I had read much in those diaries. But when it came, it was
the same old line of talk one hears when there's a suicide: Gilbert was
a lonely man; his life hadn't been happy; he cut himself off from people
too much. Vandeman said that of late he believed he was pretty nearly
the only intimate the dead man had. This last gave him an interest in
my eyes. I broke in on his generalities to ask him bluntly why he was so
certain the death was suicide.
"Mr. Gilbert was breaking up; had been for two years or more. Worth's
been away; he's not seen it; but I can tell you, Boyne, his father's
mind was affected."
Worth let that pass, though I could see he wasn't convinced by
Vandeman's sentimentalities, any more than I was. After the man had
gone, I turned on Worth sharply, with,
"Why the devil did you tell that pink-tea proposition about your
dealings with the Van Ness Avenue bank?"
"Safety valve, I guess. I get up too heavy a load of steam, and it's
easy to blow it off to Vandeman. Told him most of it in the smoker,
coming up. You'll talk about anything in a smoker."
"Oh, will you?" I said in exasperation. "And you'll burn anything, I
suppose, that a match'll set fire to?"
"Go easy, Jerry Boyne." His chin dropped to his chest, he sat glowering
out through the window. "Cleansing fires for that sort of garbage," he
said finally. "I burned them on the day of his funeral."