AN ARREST
It was a thankful if not a joyous Jerry Boyne who crossed the front
pergola of the Vandeman bungalow that evening in the wake of Worth
Gilbert, bound for an informal dinner. The tall, unconscious lad who
stepped ahead of me had been made safe in spite of himself. This weight
off my mind, I felt kindly to the whole world, to the man under whose
dining table we were to stretch our legs, whose embarrassing private
affairs I had uncovered. He'd taken it well--seconding his wife's dinner
invitation, meeting my eye frankly whenever we encountered. My mood was
expansive. When Vandeman himself opened the door to us, explaining that
he was his own butler for the day, I saw him quite other than he had
ever appeared to me.
For one thing, here in his own house--and this was the first time I had
ever been in it--you got the man with his proper background, his
suitable atmosphere. The handsome living room into which he took us,
showed many old pieces of mahogany, and some of the finest oriental
stuff I ever saw; books in cases, sets of standard writers, such as
people of culture bought thirty or forty years ago, some family pictures
about. This was Vandeman; a lot behind such a fellow, after all, if he
did seem rather a lightweight.
Ina joined us, very beautifully dressed. She also showed the ability to
sink unpleasant considerations in the present moment of hospitality. We
lingered a moment chatting, then,
"Shall we go and look at the artists working?" she suggested, and led
the way. We followed out onto a flagged terrace at the rear. A dozen
great muslin strips were tacked over the walls there, and two small
figures, desperate, smudged, wearing the blue overalls Skeet Thornhill
had waved at us, toiled manfully smearing the blossom festival colors on
in lettering and ornamental designs.
"Ina!" Skeet yawped at her sister, "Another dirty, low Irish trick! Get
yourself all dressed up like a sore thumb, and then show us off in this
fix!"
Mutely Barbara revolved on the box she occupied. There was fire in her
soft eyes; her color was high as her glance came to rest on Worth.
"Fong Ling's nearly ready to serve dinner," said Ina calmly. "Stop
fussing, and go wash up."
"Hello, Mr. Boyne." As Skeet passed me, she wiped a paw on a paint rag
and offered it to me without another word. I got a grip and a look that
told me there was no hang-over with her from that scene yesterday in her
mother's sick-room. Vandeman was commenting on his depleted bamboo
clumps.
"Mine suffered worse than yours, Worth. Fong Ling kicked like a bay
steer about our taking so much. He's nursed the stuff for years like a
fond mother. But we had to have it for that effect up around the
orchestra stand."
"Then he's been with you a long time?" I caught at the chance for
information on this chink--information that I'd found it impossible to
get from the chink himself.
"Ever since I came in here. Chinamen, you know--not like Japs. Some
loyalty. You can keep a good one for half a lifetime."
We strolled back to the living room; the girls were there before us,
Skeet picking out bits of plum-blossoms and bunches of cherry bloom from
a great bowl on the mantel, and sticking them in Barbara's dark hair,
wreath fashion.
"Best we could do at a splurge," she greeted us, "was to turn in our
blouses at the neck."
"And what in the world are you doing to Barbara?" Mrs. Vandeman said
sharply. "Let her alone, Skeet. You'll make her look ridiculous."
Skeet stuck out her tongue at her sister, and went calmly on, mumbling
as she worked,
"Hold 'till 'ittle Barbie child. Yook up at pretty mans and hold 'till."
Over the mantel, in front of Barbara as she stood, her back to us all,
hung an oil painting--one of those family groups--same old popper; same
old mommer, and a fat baby in a white dress and blue sash. At that, it
was good enough to show that the man had some resemblance to Vandeman as
he leaned there on the mantel below it, rather encouraging Skeet's
enterprise. From the other side, I could see Barbara's glance go from
man to picture.
"Doesn't it look like Van, Barbie?" Skeet kept up the conversation. "Got
the same ring, and all. But it ain't Van. Him's the tootsie in there
with the blue ribbon round his tummy."
"I say, Skeeter, lay off!" Vandeman looked self-consciously from the
painted ring in the picture to the real ring on his own well kept hand
there on the mantel edge. "People aren't interested in family
histories."
"I am," said Barbara, unexpectedly. As the gong sounded and we all began
to move toward the dining room, they were still on the subject and kept
it up after we were seated.
Fong Ling served us. The bride had Worth on her right, and talked to him
in lowered tones. Barbara, between Vandeman and myself, continued to
show an almost feverish attention to Vandeman. It was plain enough from
where I sat that nothing Ina Vandeman could say gave the lad any less
interest in his plate. But I suppose with a girl, the mere fact of some
other girl being allowed to show intentions counts. Did the flapper get
what was going on, as she looked proudly across at her handiwork, and
demanded of me,
"Say, Mr. Boyne, you saw how Ina tried to do us dirt? And now, honest to
goodness, hasn't Barbie with the plum-blossoms got Ina and her
artificial flowers skun a mile?"
I didn't wonder that young Mrs. Vandeman saved me the necessity of
answering, by taking her up.
"Skeet, you're too outrageous!"
There she sat, quite a beauty in a very superior fashion; and Worth at
her side, was having his attention called to this dark young creature
across the table, whose wonderful still fire, the white blossoms
crowning her hair, might well have made even a lovelier than Ina
Vandeman look insipid. And Worth did take his time admiring her; I saw
that; but all he found to say was,
"Bobs, I suppose Jerry's told you that he's treed Clayte at Tiajuana?"
"No," said Barbara, "he hasn't said a word. But I'm just as much
surprised at Clayte's being caught as I was at Skeels escaping capture."
"Say that over and say it slow," Vandeman was good natured. "Or rather,
put it in plain American, so we all can understand."
"Mr. Boyne knows what I mean." Barbara gave me a faint smile. "Mr. Boyne
and I add up Skeels and Clayte, and get a different result. That's all."
"Bobs doesn't think that Skeels is Clayte, caught or uncaught," Worth
said briefly and went on eating his dinner. Apparently he didn't give a
hang which way the fact turned out to be.
"Why don't you?" Vandeman gave passing attention. She shook her head and
put it.
"Skeels, at liberty, was quite possibly Clayte; Skeels captured cannot
be Clayte. Mr. Boyne, do you call that a paradox?"
"No--an unkind slam at a poor old man's ability in his profession. I
started out to find a gang; but Clayte and Skeels are so exactly one,
mentally, morally and physically, that I don't see why we should seek
further."
"Back up, Jerry," Worth tossed it over at me. "Let Barbara"--he didn't
often use the girl's full name that way--"give you a description of
Clayte before you're so sure."
"How could I?" The girl's tone was defensive. "I never saw him."
"I want you," Worth paid no attention to her objections, "to describe
the man you thought you were asking for that day at the Gold Nugget,
when Jerry butted in, and your ideas got lost in the excitement about
Skeels. Deduce the description, I mean."
"Deduce it?" Barbara spoke stiffly, incredulously, her glance going from
Worth to the well-gowned, well-groomed woman beside him. I remembered
her moment of rebellion yesterday evening on the lawn, when she said so
bitterly that if he asked it again, she'd do it again, as she finished,
"Deduce--here?"
"Here and now." Worth's laconic answer sent the blood of healthy anger
into her face, made her eyes shine. And it brought from Ina Vandeman a
petulant,
"Oh, Worth, please don't turn my dinner table into a side-show."
"Ina, dear." Vandeman raised his eyes at her, then quite the cordial
host urging a guest to display talent, "They say you're wonderful at
that sort of thing, and I've never seen it."
Barbara was mad for fair.
"Oh, very well," she spoke pointedly to Vandeman, and left Worth out of
it. "If you think you'd really enjoy seeing me make a side-show of Ina's
dinner table--"
She stopped and waited. Vandeman played up to the situation as he saw
it, with one of his ready smiles. Worth threw no life-line. Ina didn't
think it worth while to apologize for her rudeness. Skeet was openly in
a twitter of anticipation. There was nothing for me to do. A little
commotion of skirts told us that she was drawing up her feet to sit
cross-legged in her chair.
"She's going to! Oh, golly!" Skeet chortled. "Haven't seen Bobsy do one
of those stunts since I was a che-ild!"
Arms down, hands clasped, eyes growing bigger, face paling into snow, we
watched her. To all but Vandeman, this was a more or less familiar
performance. They took it rather as a matter of course. It was the
Chinaman, coming in with the coffee tray, who seemed most strangely
affected by it. He stopped where he was in the doorway, rigid, staring
at our girl, though with a changeful light in his eye that seemed to me
to shift between an unreasonable admiration and an unreasonable fear.
Orientals are superstitious; but what could the fellow be afraid of in
the beautiful young thing, Buddha posed, blossoms in her hair? The girl
had gone into her stunt with a sort of angry energy. He seemed to clutch
himself to stillness for the brief time that it held. Only in the moment
that she relaxed, and we knew that Barbara had concentrated, Barbara was
Barbara again, did he move quietly forward, a decent, competent servant,
stepping around the table, placing our cups.
"Just two facts to go on," she said coldly. "My results will be pretty
general."
"Nothing to go on in the way of a description of Clayte," I tried to
help her out. "I'd call that one we had of him as near nothing as it
well could be."
"Yes, the nothingness of it was one of my facts," she said, and stopped.
"Let's hear what you did get, Bobs," Worth prompted; and Skeet giggled,
half under her breath,
"Speech! Speech!"
"At the Gold Nugget--whatever he called himself there--Edward Clayte
was ten years younger than he had seemed at the bank; he appeared to
weigh a dozen pounds more; threw out his chest, walked with his head up,
and therefore would have been estimated quite a bit taller. This
personality was an opposite of the other. Bank clerk Clayte was demure,
unobtrusive; this man wore loud patterns. The bank clerk was silent;
this man talked to every one around him, tilted his hat over one eye,
smoked cigars just as those men were doing that day in the lobby; acted
like them, was one of them. In the Gold Nugget, Clayte was a very
average Gold Nugget guest--don't you see? Commonplace there, just as the
other Clayte had been commonplace in a bank or an office."
Her voice ceased. On the silence it left, Worth spoke up quietly.
"Bull's eye as usual, Bobs. Every word you say is true. And at the Gold
Nugget, his name was Henry J. Brundage. He had room thirty on the top
floor."
Skeet clapped her hands, jumped up and came around the table to kiss
Barbara on the ear, and tell her she was the most wonderfullest girl in
the world.
"Heh!" I flared at Worth. "Find that all out to-day in San Francisco?"
"No."
"Oh, it was the Brundage clew that took you south?"
"Yep. Left Louie on the job at the hotel while I was away. To-day, I
went after Brundage's automobile. Found he'd kept one in a garage on
Jackson Street."
"It's gone, of course--and no trace," Barbara murmured.
"Gone since the day of the bank theft," Worth nodded. "He and the money
went in it."
"Say," I leaned over toward him, "wouldn't it have saved wear and tear
if you'd told me at the first that you knew Skeels couldn't be Clayte?"
"Oh, but, Jerry, you were so sure! And Skeels wasn't possible for a
minute--never in his little, piking, tin-horn life!"
I don't believe I had seen Worth so happy since he was a boy, playing
detective. I glanced around and pulled myself up; we certainly weren't
making ourselves very entertaining for the Vandemans. There they sat, at
their own table, like handsome figureheads, smiling politely, pretending
a decent interest.
"All this must be a bore to you people," I apologized.
"Not at all--not at all," Vandeman assured us.
"Well then if you don't mind--Worth, I'll go and use Vandeman's
phone--put my office wise to these Brundage clews of yours."
Worth nodded. No social scruples were his. I had by no means given up
the belief that Skeels in jail at Tiajuana, would still turn out to be
one of the gang.
I had just got back to the table from my phoning when the doorbell rang;
we saw the big Chinese slip noiselessly through the rear into the hall
to answer it, coming back a moment later, announcing in his weighty,
correct English,
"Two gentlemen calling--to see Captain Gilbert."
"Ask for me?" Worth came to his feet in surprise. "Who told them I was
here?"
"I do not know," the Chinaman spoke unnecessarily as Worth was crossing
to the door. "I did not ask them that."
"Use the living room, Worth," Vandeman called after him. "We'll wait
here."
With the closing of the door, conversation languished. Even Skeet was
quiet and seemed depressed. My ears were straining for any sound from in
there. As I sat, hand dropped at my side, I suddenly felt under shelter
of the screening tablecloth, cold, nervous fingers slipped into mine.
Barbara wasn't looking at me, but I gave her a quick glance as I pressed
her gripping small hand encouragingly.
She was turned toward Vandeman. Pale to the lips, her great eyes fixed
on the eyes of our host, I saw with wonder how he slowly stirred a spoon
about in his emptied coffee cup, and stared back at her with a face
almost as colorless as her own. The bride glanced from one to the other
of them, and spoke sharply,
"What's the matter with you two? You're not uneasy about Worth's
callers, are you?"
"No-no-no--" Vandeman was the first to come out of it, responding to her
voice a good deal as if she dashed cold water in his face, his eyes
breaking away from Barbara's, his lips parted in a nervous smile. He ran
a hand through his hair--an inelegant gesture for him at table--and
laughed a little.
"We ought to be in there," Barbara said to me, a curious stress in her
voice.
"How funny you talk, Barbie," Skeet quavered. "What do you think's
wrong?" And Ina spoke decidedly,
"Worth is one person in the world who can certainly take care of
himself, and would rather be let alone."
"If you think there is anything we should do--?" Vandeman began
anxiously, and Skeet took a look around at our faces and fairly wailed,
"What is it? What's the matter? What do you think they're doing to Worth
in there, Barbie?"
"I'd think they were arresting him," Barbara said in a low, choked tone,
"Only they don't know--"
"Arresting him!" I broke in on her, startled, getting halfway to my
feet; then as remembrance came to me, sinking back with, "Certainly not.
The murderer of Thomas Gilbert is already in the county jail. I arrested
Eddie Hughes this morning."
"You arrested--Eddie Hughes!" It was a cry from Barbara. The cold little
hand was jerked from mine. Twisting around in her chair, she stared at
me with a look that made me cold. "Then you've moved those two steel
bolts for Cummings."
I jumped to my feet. On the instant the door opened, and in it stood
Worth, steady enough, but his brown tanned face was strangely bleached.
"Jerry," he spoke briefly. "I want you. The sheriff's come for me."