THE COUNTRY CLUB BALL
The ballroom of the country club at Santa Ysobel is big and finely
proportioned. I don't know if anything of the sort could have registered
with me at the moment, but I remembered afterward my impression of the
great hall fairly walled and roofed with fruit blossoms, and the
gorgeousness of hundreds of costumes. The mere presence of potential
funds raises the importance of an event. The prune kings and apricot
barons down there, with their wives and daughters in real brocades,
satins and velvets, with genuine jewels flashing over them, represented
so much in the way of substantial wealth that it seemed to steady the
whole fantastic scene.
Barbara and I entered on the level of the slightly raised orchestra
stand and only half a dozen paces from it. Nobody noticed us much; we
came in right on the turn of things--floor managers darting around,
orchestra with bows poised and horns at lips, the whole glittering
company of maskers being made ready to weave their "Figure of Eight"
across the dancing floor. My poor girl dragged on my arm; her small feet
scuffed; I lifted her along, wishing I might pick her up and carry her
as Bill had done. I made for an unoccupied musicians' bench; but once
there, she only leaned against it, not letting go her hold on me, and
stood to take in every detail of the confused, moving scene.
The double doors had swung closed behind us; the hallman there who held
the knob, now reinforced by a uniformed policeman. The servants' way, at
the further end was shut; men in plain clothes set their backs against
it. And last, Big Bill himself in overalls, a touch of blunt blue
realism, came fogging along the side-wall to swing into place the great
wooden bar that secured the entire group of glass doors which gave on
the porch. Barbara would have seen all these arrangements while I was
getting ready for my first glance, but I prompted her nervously with a
low-toned, "All set, girl," and then as she still didn't speak, "Bill's
got every door guarded."
She nodded. The length of the room away, in the end gallery, was the
cannery girl queen and her guard. Even at that distance, I recognized
Eddie Hughes, in his pink-and-white Beef Eater togs, a gilded wooden
spear in his hand, a flower tassel bobbing beside that long, drab,
knobby countenance of his. There he was, the man I'd jailed for Thomas
Gilbert's murder. Below on the dancing floor, were the two, Cummings and
Bowman, who had put Worth behind the bars for the same crime. At my side
was the pale, silent girl who declared that Clayte was the murderer.
Whispered tuning and trying of instruments up here; flutter and rush
about down on the dancing floor; and Barbara, that clenched left hand of
hers still pressed in hard against her side, facing what problem?
Crash! Boom! We were so close the music fairly deafened us, as, with a
multiplied undernote of moving feet, the march began. On came those
people toward us, wave behind wave of color and magnificence, dotted
with little black ovals of masks pierced by gleaming eye-holes. I could
sense Barbara reading the room as it bore down on her, and reading it
clearly, getting whatever it was she had come there for. Myself, I was
overwhelmed, drowned in the size and sweep of everything, struggling
along, whispering to her when I spotted Jim Edwards in his friar's robe,
noticed that the Roman soldier who must be Cummings, and Bowman, the
Spaniard, squired the Thornhill twins in their geisha girl dresses; the
crimson poppies of a Lady of Dreams looked odd against Laura Bowman's
coppery hair.
At the head of the procession as they swung around, leading it with
splendid dignity, came a pair who might have been Emperor and Empress of
China--the Vandemans. To go on with affairs as if nothing had
happened--though Worth Gilbert was in jail--had been the laid-down
policy of both Vandeman and his wife. I'd thought it reasonable then;
foolish to get hot at it now. The great, shining, rhythmically moving
line deployed, interwove, and opened out again until at last the floor
was almost evenly occupied with the many-colored mass. I looked at
Barbara; the awful intensity with which she read her room hurt me. It
had nothing to do with that flirt of a glance she always gave a printed
page, that mere toss of attention she was apt to offer a problem. The
child was in anguish, whether merely the ache of sorrow, or actual
bodily pain; I saw how rigidly that small fist still pressed against the
knitted wool of her sweater, how her lip was drawn in and bitten. Her
physical weakness contrasted strangely with the clean cut decision, the
absolute certainty of her mental power. She raised her face and looked
straight up into mine.
"Have the music stopped."
I leaned over and down toward the orchestra leader to catch his eye,
holding toward him the badge. His glance caught it, and I told him what
we wanted. He nodded. For an instant the music flooded on, then at a
sharp rap of the baton, broke off in mid-motion, as though some great
singing thing had caught its breath. And all the swaying life and color
on the floor stopped as suddenly. Barbara had picked the moment that
brought Ina Vandeman and her husband squarely facing us. After the first
instant's bewilderment, Vandeman and his floor managers couldn't fail to
realize that they were being held up by an outsider; with Barbara in
full sight up here by the orchestra, they must know who was doing it. I
wondered not to have Vandeman in my hair already; but he and his consort
stood in dignified silence; it was his committee who came after me, a
Mephistopheles, a troubadour, an Indian brave, a Hercules with his club,
swarming up the step, wanting to know if I was the man responsible, why
the devil I had done it, who the devil I thought I was, anyhow. Others
were close behind.
"Edwards," I called to the brown friar, "can you keep these fellows off
me for a minute?"
Still not a word from Barbara. Nothing from Vandeman. Less than nothing:
I watched in astonishment how the gorgeous leader stopped dumb, while
those next him backed into the couple behind, side stepping, so that the
whole line yawed, swayed, and began to fall into disorder.
"Cummings," as I glimpsed the lawyer's chain mail and purple feather,
"Keep them all in place if you can. All."
In the instant, from behind my shoulder Barbara spoke.
"Have that man--take off his mask."
A little, shaking white hand pointed at the leader.
"Mr. Vandeman," I said. "That's an order. It'll have to be done."
The words froze everything. Hardly a sound or movement in the great
crowded room, except the little rustle as some one tried to see better.
And there, all eyes on him, Bronson Vandeman stood with his arms at his
sides, mute as a fish. Ina fumbled nervously at the cord of her own
mask, calling to me in a fierce undertone,
"What do you mean, Mr. Boyne, bringing that girl here to spoil things.
This is spite-work."
"Off--take his mask off! Do it yourself!" Barbara's voice was clear and
steady.
I made three big jumps of the space between us and the leading couple.
Vandeman's committee-men obstructed me, the excited yip going amongst
them.
"Vandeman--Bronse--Vannie--Who let this fool in here?--Do we throw him
out?"
Then they took the words from Edwards; the tune changed to grumblings
of, "What's the matter with Van? Why doesn't he settle it one way or
another, and be done?"
Why didn't he? I had but a breath of time to wonder at that, as I shoved
a way through. Darn him, like a graven image there, the only mute,
immovable thing in that turmoil! I began to feel sore.
"You heard what she said?" I took no trouble now to be civil. "She wants
your mask off."
No flicker of response from the man, but the Empress of China dragged
down her mask, crying,
"Heard what she said? What she wants?" Over the shoulders of the crowd
she gave Barbara Wallace a venomous look, then came at me.
A little too late. My hand had shot out and snatched the mask from the
face of China's monarch. A moment I glared, the bit of black stuff in my
grasp, at the alien countenance I had uncovered. Crowding and craning of
the others to see. Jabbering, exclaiming all around us.
"Corking make-up; looks like a sure-enough Chinaman."
"No make-up at all. The real thing."
"What's the big idea?"
"Why did he unmask, then?"
"Didn't want to. They made him."
And last, but loudest, repeated time and again, with wonder, with
distaste, with rising anger,
"The Vandeman's Chinese cook!"
For with the ripping away of that black oval, I had looked into the
slant, inscrutable eyes of Fong Ling. Hemmed in by the crowd, he could
but face me; he did so with a kind of unhuman passivity.
And the committee went wild. Their own masks came off on the run. I saw
Cummings' face, Bowman's; Eddie Hughes slid from the balcony stair and
bucked the crowd, pushing through to the seat of war. The grand march
had become a jostling, gabbling chaos.
Barbara, up there, above it all, knew what she was about. I had utter
confidence in her. But she was plainly holding back for a further
development, her eyes on the entrances; and what the devil was my next
move?
Ina Vandeman wheeled where she stood and faced the room, both hands
thrown up, laughing.
"It was meant to be a joke--a great, big foolish joke!" her high treble
rang out. "Bron's here somewhere. Wait. He'll tell you better than I
could. At a masquerade--people do--they do foolish things.... They--"
"Is Bronse Vandeman here?" I questioned Fong Ling. The Chinaman's stiff
lips moved for the first time, in his formal, precise English.
"Yes, sir. Mr. Vandeman will explain." He crossed his hands and resigned
the matter to his employer. And I demanded of Ina Vandeman, "You tell us
your husband's present--in this room? Now?" and when her answer was
drowned in the noise, I roared,
"Vandeman! Bronson Vandeman! You're wanted here!"
No answer. Edwards took up the call after me; the committee yelled the
name in all keys and variations. In the middle of our squawking, a minor
disturbance broke out across by the porch entrance, where Big Bill
Capehart stood. As I looked, he turned over his post to Eddie Hughes,
who came abreast of him at the moment, and started, scuffling and
struggling toward us, with a captive.
"I had my orders!" his big voice boomed out. "Pinch any one that tried
to get in. Y'don't pass me--not if you was own cousin to God A'mighty!"
On they came through the crowd, all mixed up; blue overalls, and a
flapping costume whose rich, many-colored silk embroideries, flashed
like jewels. A space widened about us for them. The big garage man spun
his catch to the center of it, so that he faced the room, his back to
the orchestra.
"Wanted in, did ya? Now yer in, what about it?"
What about it, indeed? In Bill's prisoner, as he stood there twitching
ineffectually against that obstinate hold, breathing loud, shakily
settling his clothes, we had, robe for robe, cap for cap, a duplicate
Emperor of China!
And the next moment, this figure took off its mask and showed the face
of Bronson Vandeman.
Dead silence all about us; Capehart loosened his grip, abashed but still
truculent.
"Dang it all, Mr. Vandeman, if you didn't want to get mussed up, what
made you fight like that?"
"Fight?" Vandeman found his voice. "Who wouldn't? I was late, and you--"
"Bron!" After one desperate glance toward the girl up on the platform,
Ina ran to him and put a hand on his arm. "They stopped the march....
Your--the--they spoiled our joke. But have them start the music again.
You're here now. Let's go on with the march ... explain afterward."
"Good business!" Vandeman filled his chest, glanced across at Fong Ling,
and gave his social circle a rather poor version of the usual
white-toothed smile. "Jokes can wait--especially busted ones. On with
the dance; let joy be unrefined!"
Sidelong, I saw the orchestra leader's baton go up. But no music
followed. It was at Barbara the baton had pointed, at Barbara that all
the crowded company stared. Her little white dress clung to her slender
figure. I saw that now she was in the strange Buddha pose. A few flecks
of silver paper, still in her black hair, made it sparkle. But it was
Barbara's eyes that held us all spellbound. In her colorless face those
wonderful openings of black light seemed to look through and beyond us.
For an instant there was no stir. Hundreds of faces set toward her, held
by the wonder of her. Fong Ling's yellow visage moved for the first time
from its immobility with a sort of awe, a dread. And when my gaze came
back to her, I noticed that, with the dropping of her hands to join the
finger-tips, she had left, where that little, pressing fist had been, a
blur of red on the white sweater. Over me it rushed with the force of
calamity, she had been wounded when she sank down back there in the
crowd. It was a shot--not a giant cracker--we had heard.
"Vandeman," I whirled on him, "You shot this girl. You tried to kill
her."
Sensation enough among the others; but I doubt if he even heard me. His
gaze had found Barbara; all the bounce, all the jauntiness was out of
the man, as he stared with the same haunted fear his eyes had held when
she concentrated last night at his own dinner table.
She was concentrating now; could she stand the strain of it, with its
weakening of the heart action, its pumping all the blood to the brain? I
shouldered my way to her, and knelt beside her, begging,
"Don't, Barbara. Give it up, girl. You can't stand this."
Her hands unclasped. Her eyes grew normal. She relaxed, sighingly. I
leaned closer while she whispered to me the last addition in that
problem of two and two--the full solution. Armed, I faced Vandeman once
more.
Something seemed to be giving way in the man; his lips were almost as
pale as his face, and that had been, from the moment he uncovered it,
like tallow. He looked withered, smaller; his hair where it had been
pressed down by mask and cap, crossed his forehead, flat, smooth, dull
brown. I saw, half consciously, that Fong Ling was gone. An accomplice?
No matter; the criminal himself was here--Barbara's wonder man. It was
to him I spoke.
"Edward Clayte," at the name, Cummings clanked around front to stare. "I
hold a warrant for your arrest for the theft of nine hundred and eighty
seven thousand dollars from the Van Ness Avenue Savings Bank of San
Francisco."
He made a sick effort to square his shoulders; fumbled with his hair to
toss it back from its straight-down sleekness, as Clayte, to the
pompadoured crest of Vandeman. How often I had seen that gesture, not
understanding its significance. Cummings, at my side, drew in a breath,
with,
"Why--damn it!--he is Clayte!"
"All right," I let the words go from the corner of my mouth at the
lawyer, in the same hushed tones he'd used. "See how you like this next
one," and finished, loud enough so all might hear,
"And I charge you, Edward Clayte--Bronson Vandeman--with the murder of
Thomas Gilbert."