THE LADY DETECTIVE
ANY friend of Mr. Richard’s was welcome to “Red Jacket,” Mrs. Wells
assured Jawn; and no questions asked; one could never tell when Phœbe
Norris was joking and when she was serious; Phœbe Norris herself
was never quite certain. When Mrs. Wells remonstrated mildly at her
too inquisitive questions on Jawn’s past, Phœbe puzzled Mrs. Wells
still further by remarking, “But I must act up to me part of lady
detective, mustn’t I? It’s a movie play we’re in. The man with the box
is concealed somewhere about, I’m sure. We’ll see the whole thing some
evening at Cornwall’s Theatre, I’ll warrant ye!”
“All the world’s a movie,” agreed Jawn, “and men and women merely----”
“Merely fillum,” Phœbe shot in her interruption. “Some bein’
hair-breadth horrors and some, like you, Jawn, bein’ just ‘comics.’”
“Wait!” cried Jawn, striking an attitude.
“He’s got a limerick in him!” shouted Phœbe. “Hush!”
Mrs. Wells was disturbed. “He’s got a what?” she asked.
“Limerick!” cried Phœbe; “it’s kind of fit!”
“Shan’t I get a glass of water?” Mrs. Wells rose timorously.
Phœbe’s laughter pealed again. “No!” she said. “Would you quench the
fire of divine doggerel?”
Jawn minded them not at all. His eye was fixed on distance and his hand
waved gently and his lips moved.
Mrs. Wells was not quite assured of the humour of the lines, but
she found herself laughing with the others at the droll face of the
reciter. He seemed a pleasant sort of man, although his laugh was
rather startling. But he was a friend of Richard’s; that was enough to
assure her; so he was invited to become a guest at “Red Jacket.”
It was a relief to know that he had not called on business connected
with the estate. Since the return from Europe Mrs. Wells had found it
impossible to focus her mind upon the financial end of her household
affairs. Never before had she realized how complicated everything was.
Not that she had ever conceived her task to be easy; but she had always
been able heretofore to summon her will to the problem, and like an
almost impossible puzzle, the answer had come out eventually. One had
only to persist, she always told herself. If interest on mortgages was
due and the bank balance was needed to pay off the vineyard helpers,
there was always a new loan on this or that stock; and if the bills for
last year’s grape baskets or this year’s spraying and willow-wiring
became too accumulative, one could hypothecate the wine stock or sell
a parcel of orchard land or--many things that a resourceful business
woman could think of.
Naturally her bookkeeping had assumed an Egyptian character; a private
sign here and there, a subtraction indicated without a balance being
drawn, a borrowing from this page not paid over to the other page--in
short, a system that amounted to a code understood solely by Mrs.
Wells. And not always to Mrs. Wells was the code instantly clear.
There were days when she puzzled over the meaning of this or that
entry; and sometimes surprising cheques were received on accounts which
she had scored off as settled, and even more surprising bills were
presented whose existence had faded from her memory. Concentration
had always opened a way of at least temporary escape; but the mental
lassitude which had seized her since her return from abroad had
made concentration impossible. Even the thought of the figures was
terrifying.
There had been strange visitors several times during the previous eight
or ten years, men representing corporations with which she had had
dealings on matters of mortgages and loans. They had been very pleasant
fellows, just like Jawn, only not so boisterous and self-assured;
and always she had needed her strength to meet all their exacting
requirements. When certain recent polite letters had assured her that
it was about time for one to appear, then it was that she had decided
to surrender unconditionally and let her healthy grown-up daughter do
the worrying.
When the luncheon-gong sounded Phœbe prepared to stay on without
question. George Alexander always looked about him before he set the
places, and the presence of Phœbe before a meal always meant a place
for her. Besides, she announced that Jawn had to be watched.
Mr. Richard’s non-appearance had been explained by Phœbe.
“I was talkin’ nice and pretty to him,” she said, “askin’ him if he
thought we’d ever have rain, and all of a sudden he gets displeased and
wouldn’t speak to me at all--just sulked, he did.”
“That’s--uh--that’s Richard all right,” said Jawn. “He’s the champion
sulker in New York city. I’ve known him to sit for six evenings in a
row and never give anybody the gift of a word.”
“On board the _Victoria_ he was that way, too,” Jerry corroborated.
“I never noticed it,” said Mrs. Wells.
“I mean all day on the way from Genoa to Naples,” Jerry hastened to
explain.
“Why, child,” Mrs. Wells remembered, “you did not meet him until the
Captain introduced you at Naples!”
“Ha! ha!” cried Phœbe, “more conspiracies for the movie man! Before
she met him she had met him all day long, and when he talked to her he
didn’t say a word! Doesn’t that strike you as about the time to have
another fit, Jawn? It ought to begin:
‘There was a young lady from Naples----’”
“Wait!” Jawn raised a warning finger.
“Wait yourself!” retorted Phœbe, raising a finger, too. “‘There
was a young lady from Naples----’ faples, saples, daples, raples,
japles--ding it! There ain’t no more rhymes for Naples!”
Jawn was not disturbed, although the evident intention was to clip his
budding limerick. When she had quite finished he nodded his head and
gave her a limerick with a sufficiency of proper rhymes for “Naples.”
Jerry was not pressed for explanation of her statement concerning
the habits of Richard before she had met him. Jawn’s limericks drew
attention away from her, and as the luncheon progressed Phœbe noted
the far-off approach of the cat-boat with its yacht in tow. From
the dining-room the Lake was in full view. And Jerry remembered her
telephone communication with Fagner, and explained the purpose of the
new yacht. But before luncheon was over Jerry managed to get Jawn to
herself.
“Why do you confuse us by taking a strange name?” she asked. “You are
really Professor John Galloway, aren’t you?”
“It’s all the style!” he told her. “Your Mr. Richard took a fancy
name and he gave me the idea. What’s wrong with John De Lancey? I’m
enjoying it. Already I feel like an aristocrat. Your Richard writes me
that the new name has made a complete change in his personality. As a
psychologist that interests me, so I’m trying it out. I hope to get a
new personality, too; you don’t know how tired I am of the old one.”
She had spent the morning upstairs in a fruitless endeavour to get some
sense out of the tangle of domestic accounts. There were some worrisome
entries in the books, and naturally she was not in the spirit to
comprehend Jawn’s humour to the full.
“I fear it will do harm if mother discovers we are all hoaxing her,”
she told him.
“She’ll enjoy it,” he insisted. The mother was laughing immoderately at
some witticism from Phœbe Norris. “Trust me to clear everything up when
the time comes. I’ll study out some special limericks for the occasion.
Anyone can see that she is a born lover of limericks. But tell me, how
did Mr. Richard become Mr. Richard?”
She explained the beginnings of the incognito and let him understand
that she was sorry the innocent lark had developed so far.
“Of course you know who he really is,” he said.
“No.”
“What?” he cried, and was about to explain, but she stopped him.
“Richard must make his own explanations,” she declared. “It would seem
like probing; and he is our guest, you know.”
She tried to get him to talk about Walter, but he was very frank in
saying that that was Richard’s case.
“But he asked you to come here solely to consult you about Walter.”
It might be, Jawn agreed; but he was on a vacation. It was all
guess-work anyway, he assured her; and any man’s guess was as good as
another’s. When Richard got going on a thing he could be guaranteed to
put genius into it.
The young lady before him appealed more to his interest; and he was
not slow in indicating as much. He quoted what he could remember of
Richard’s letter to prove that it was Jerry and not Walter that had
induced him to come to “Red Jacket.” There was enough chaffing in his
tone to cover up the bluntness of his statements, but there was no
doubt as to his meaning.
There are many ways to meet this sort of gallantry. Some women affect
indifference and grow stupidly reserved--they are the ones hit
hardest!--and some simper and pretend that they do not understand; but
a wiser group admit everything and bring the game right out in the
open, where it quickly perishes for lack of pursuit.
“That was quite right of Richard,” Jerry returned. “Naturally he
would recommend me first, but at that time, you know, he had not seen
Phœbe Norris.” She explained Phœbe’s widowhood and enlarged upon
her qualities. “Phœbe will just suit you,” she concluded, and her
good-humoured tone turned all Jawn’s blarneying back on him and made
Jerry herself more reserved and unapproachable than ever.
Jawn made a wry face.
“Never!” he whispered, like a stage-aside. “There’s nothing mysterious
and romantic in Phœbe to me. We Irish understand one another too well.
I know every twist in her head, and she’s on to me, every curve of
me. All my charms would be jokes to her; it would be carrying coals
to Newcastle with a vengeance. No! the Irish get along best with
aliens. In Ireland my father was a subservient peat digger; in America
he became instantly an eccentric genius, a man of parts, a West Side
statesman and diplomat. The big-wigs in politics consult him now, and
his sayings are quoted by the newspaper ‘columnists’; in Ireland he
was just like thousands of others. No! Phœbe and I suspect each other
already. The feud is on.”
“She seemed to enjoy your verses.”
“Pure bluff to put me off my guard,” he averred. “We’re like a pair of
beggars knocking at the same gate.”
“How so?”
She was amused at his obvious humour, and interested; proving his
point, he told her, that the alien would love him better than the
native.
“How so?” he repeated. “Well, she was the clever, unusual one before I
came. Isn’t it true? I see it is. Now I’m proving how easy is all that
so-called Irish wit.”
“I’m listenin’, Jawn de Lancey Gallagher,” Phœbe leaned her red head
far over the table. “But don’t tempt me to punish you.”
“Maybe I might,” said he, “if I knew the penalty.”
“Well,” she considered, “fight fair, or I may be tempted to go to
extremes.”
“And what’d that be?”
“Marry you,” she said.
“Mother of John!” he cried. “Not in America, lass! It’s forbid by the
Constitution.”
“How’s that?”
“It’s the law of the land that prohibits cruel and unjust punishments.”
“That’s true,” she recovered quickly, “but for the minute I wasn’t
thinkin’ of myself.”
“Oh! oh!” he cried, acknowledging the hit.
“It _would_ be a kind of slow female suicide, now wouldn’t it, Jerry?”
“That’s not a bad definition of marriage,” commented Jerry
thoughtfully; “at least in the majority of cases that we see about us.”
“What’s a good definition of marriage?” inquired Jawn.
“A kind of slow female suicide.”
“Help! Help!” cried Jawn. “They’re both against me! I’m in the lair of
the professional man-hater. Which leads me to ask a connundrum----”
“Do you think this is a children’s party, Jawn de Lancey McGinnis?”
snapped Phœbe.
“Well, isn’t it?” he stared about him. “Sure we’re all kids here. Look
at Mrs. Wells.” Mrs. Wells was ready to laugh before the connundrum was
even proposed, and that sudden touch sent her off. “And look at that
grey-haired old kid over there!” Black George Alexander, hovering at
the door, broke into African cackles. Jawn’s huge face had the native
comedian power; wherever he turned it laughter sprang, except in one
quarter. Phœbe Norris looked straight at him with face set and cold.
“Go on with your connundrum, man,” she commanded icily.
“Well,” he said, evidently shifting his original plan, “why is Mrs.
Phœbe Norris’ face like--like--like the Tombs of the Pharaohs?”
Phœbe’s face, in turn, became the instigator to mirth. If it had been
stony before, it grew steadily now into a veritable sphinx. Comment and
inquiry could not dislodge her external claim.
“Why?” inquired Mrs. Wells; she was rather fond of connundrums,
intelligent ones like this one, which brought in one’s knowledge of
ancient history. “Why is Phœbe’s face like the Tombs of the Pharaohs?”
“The Lord only knows why,” said John solemnly; “but like the Tombs of
the Pharaohs it is.”
A crinkle came to Phœbe’s eyes, and her mouth quivered.
“I’m not laughin’,” she insisted. “My face slipped.”
“And is there no other answer?” inquired Mrs. Wells.
“His wit has run dry,” Phœbe explained. “He opened the sluice too wide
at first.”
“Oh, yes,” assented Jawn. “Her face is like the Tombs of the Pharaohs
because there’s more wisdom within than the deepest archæologist can
ever translate; because the best part of her is hieroglyphic; because
it’s worth travelling ten thousand miles to see her; because she is
built fit for a king; because no man knows the mystery of her creation,
yet all wonder at the marvel of it; because--do you want any more?”
“I just wished to bring you out, Jawn,” Phœbe apologized. “I didn’t
want the reputation of the race to languish. And thank you for the
compliments. I’m so glad you didn’t say--because it looks so derned
life-like and everybody knows it’s a dead one. But that would be a
mummy, wouldn’t it, and not the Tomb of the Pharaohs?”
“If it had been a mummy,” said Jawn, “I might have said, because in
spite of years of married life she is still so well preserved; or
because----”
“That’s enough,” said Phœbe; “in a minute more you’ll be sayin’
somethin’ you’ll be ashamed of. Don’t forget, Jawn, that the Wells’ are
very refined.”
“I was only going to say----” the light of deviltry was in Jawn’s eyes,
warning enough to this country woman.
“I’m goin’!” she cried, and started from the room. “The boys have
docked, I see, and they’ll be wantin’ food. It’s a word of warnin’ I’m
tellin’ you, Jawn de Lancey Maguire--save all your piggy sayin’s for me
who understands them, and don’t go makin’ me ashamed of you before the
quality.”
She courtesied to Jerry and Mrs. Wells, threw a kiss to Jawn, and
slipped away.
“It’s a sprite she is,” said Jawn, “a red-headed Irish fay.”
“She is a very great joy to us,” said Mrs. Wells deliberately. “And who
would think she was ten years married and a widow! Phœbe hasn’t changed
a mite since she was twenty.”
“She’ll never be old,” said Jawn. “I can hardly keep my eyes off her
hair--it’s so brilliant and fascinating.” He was about to say something
equally complimentary when he caught her shadow at the long front
windows. Mrs. Wells had seen her, too, peeping behind a curtain, and
showed the knowledge in her face. “Fascinating?” he continued, “yes.
And charming? Not a doubt. She’ll be that way when she’s eighty--I’ve
known many of her kind--having all the young boys dancing about
her--unless she takes cold and dies from poking her dainty head in at
draughty windows!”
“Jawn de Lancey O’Rourke,” she poked her dainty head further in,
“you’ll force me to marry you yet in self-defence.”
This time she was really gone. Down the road she walked briskly, a
fine glow on her face. It was such an unusual joy for her to meet a
mind as absurd as her own. What good is a sense of the ridiculous, a
kinship with the Comic Spirit, if folks about you are for ever taking
you seriously? It simply means offence when you had meant none; and
scandal where none was dreamed. The Wells were the right sort, because
they took nothing seriously from Phœbe, which was a good thing in many
ways: it gave Phœbe an outlet for some real heavy matters that weighed
on her soul, and she never need fear too much sympathy. And it gave her
a chance to say the most literal truths about her neighbours, to let
loose her satire on their shortcomings, and never to be suspected of
wisdom.
The Wells, notwithstanding, were hardly more than appreciative
audience; Jawn, now, was a “pardner”--to use the technical term of
comedians. He stirred her mind, provoked it, as none of the others did.
And every ripple of his own she felt akin to. It would be glorious fun
to fight quip with quip; even though he were a rascal.
Of course he was a rascal. The pair of them were. About Richard she
might have had doubts, but about Jawn--never! She knew an Irish villain
when she saw one. He was a rascal, but she was not sure that she would
be against him in the final reckoning. After all, life was a game of
matching wits; and if this Wells Virginia-English strain was stupid
should it not pay the penalty? But that explanation of her partnership
was discarded before she got half-way down the hill. The Irish rascal
was a rascal for high philosophic reasons: it was because he placed
so little value upon the world’s goods that he concerned himself even
less about the matter of precise ownership.--“I am taking your watch,”
he might say kindly, “about which you should not grieve too much; for
consider, when you come to your last dozen breaths, how little value
this watch will have in your eyes, and how quickly you’d give it for
another year of living.”
That’s what made the Irish villain so captivating a character in
picturesque romances. He cracked his little joke at the world; if he
got off with it, he laughed; if he got caught he laughed. The whole
business of having and losing is so trivial when life itself is trivial.
In some such ways she defended Jawn, but resolved to watch him,
nevertheless. If for no other reason than to get the joy of the play
of his mind, she would watch him. And it was delightful to see how
easily the good Wells were taken in. Their idea of a swindler was of a
sneaking, Uriah Heepish, Sing-Singish cut-throat. They had not the wit
to conceive of an honest blarneying lad who went straight at his task,
open and above-board.
And what, in the name of pity, had happened to the mistress of the
house? The most imposing creature in Jerusalem township had actually
shrunk into a timid, smiling--it was as if the Red Queen (“Off with his
head!”) had suddenly become the White Queen (“Pat her on the head and
see how pleased she’ll be”). We all know how age creeps on us, but this
time, thought Phœbe, it had pounced! Mrs. Wells had lost her rigidly
erect bearing, her face had given up the fixed effort of concentration,
she was aimlessly drifting. “A little kindness--and putting her hair in
papers--would do wonders with her!” Phœbe laughed at this picture of
the helpless White Queen, but the laugh soon died away. The reality was
not at all comic.
But no one would have guessed that back of Phœbe’s public mirth and
jollity was even a serious observation of the change in Mother Wells.
A fine sense of consideration had kept even the glance of curiosity
out of her eyes. She was not the sort to greet a lady friend with,
“Goodness! Aren’t you getting a little stouter?”
She would not let even her own thoughts dwell too long on her friend’s
misfortune. The villains were summoned again before her. Of course,
Phœbe agreed before she reached “Lombardy,” her cottage, that she would
keep an open mind about these mysterious gentlemen with changeable
names. They might in the end turn out to be respectable. Very well. Her
plan was to stand guard and never be suspected. And the way never to be
suspected is to tell all your plans to the enemy. They won’t believe
you, which is exactly what you want. “I’ll tell them they’re a set of
rascals,” she chuckled, “and that I’m watchin’ every move of them, and
they’ll laugh their heads off and never be disturbed by my little joke.”
Richard and Walter were quite ready for Phœbe’s impromptu luncheon,
which she managed in the quickest possible time and set for them on
her porch. She listened to their story of the lucky arrival of the
yacht, heard its name, _Sago-ye-wat-ha_, and listened to its virtues
extolled, but kept aloof from their enthusiasm.
Walter was the first to notice her silence. “You tol’ me to get it,” he
said; “an’--I got it.”
“Well! well!” said Richard. “Are you at the bottom of this, too?”
Richard had found his voice again.
“I always said if he owned his own boat he could do wonders on this
Lake.”
“You are very keen,” he smiled at her.
“Oh, I know my tables,” she replied cheerily; “and I know a good sailor
when I see one; and I know your fellow-conspirator, Mr. De Lancey.”
Richard looked up from a sandwich, but said nothing.
“I hope you’re not going to go into the sulks again?” she asked.
“There’ll be no fun in houndin’ you to earth and layin’ bare your
nefarious plots if every time I get you in a corner you play deaf and
dumb.”
He laughed good-naturedly. All the kinks were out of his mind now; he
felt vigorous and alert, and knew--he was thankful--that Phœbe had
ceased to depress him into speechlessness. And following consistently
his tried theory, he knew that all was well between them.
“I was rude, wasn’t I?” he admitted. “That’s an infirmity of mine, like
an epileptic fit----”
“Oh, your friend De Lancey has fits, too. You are a pair, all right.”
“I give up,” he said. “De Lancey is no friend of mine. Please explain.”
“You don’t know a John De Lancey?”
“Never heard of him.”
“Well, he’s up at the Big House this minute. You may not know him, but
he knows you. To be sure he got twisted in your name--said it was Mr.
Dick--until Jerry foolishly gave you away. Then he was sure it was
Mr. Richard. He said he had forgotten for the moment what name you had
agreed to travel on. You two had better get together and rehearse.
You’re both bad actors. I’ll give you that much help, although I’m
warnin’ you,” she smiled broadly as she spoke, “that I’m a lady
detective in disguise. So look out!”
Walter looked on wisely as they talked. At first he thought he would
tell Phœbe what he knew about assumed names; but decided later that she
would find it out soon enough. It was not his affair. He had his boat,
and he would go off and borrow old sails somewhere and try her out.
But before he went he exacted from Phœbe the approval of his latest
achievement.
“You said to get one,” he repeated, “an’ I got one.”
“Good boy!” she nodded to him cheerily. “I knew you’d do it.”
That was enough to start him off to the tender in great spirits.
Richard came back to the former topic.
“Really, Mrs. Norris----”
“Don’t Mrs. Norris me.”
“Really, Phœbe, I don’t know any De Lancey. What sort of man is he?”
“Well, to begin with he is the happiest liar, outside of your good
self, that I’ve yet met. He’s Irish, and he’s chuck full of limericks
and connund----”
“Jove!” cried Richard. “It’s Jawn!”
“Jawn it is; Jawn De Lancey.”
“It’s Jawn Galloway,” he corrected. “It would be just like him to
imitate me and take another name----”
“Then Mr. Richard is not your name?” she broke in triumphantly.
“No,” he smiled wryly. “But you mustn’t tell Mrs. Wells. Jerry knows.
And so does Walter. You may as well know too. In fact, I thought Jerry
had told you. But think of Jawn Galloway taking on a--did you say De
Lancey? Jack De Lancey! That is comic.”
“Very comic,” she mimicked. “You’re doin’ well. But as I’m goin’ to get
you both in the end you might as well light yourself a cigarette and
confess everything. And I may let you off altogether if you flatter me
a little. I’m very susceptible to kind words. There’s your cue, man.
Now, go on with your tale.”
In a very straightforward manner he told her the whole story from the
accidental meeting with Jerry on board the _Victoria_ at Naples up to
the complication made by Walter’s outbreak.
As the story developed, Phœbe gradually lost her chipper attitude.
There was something terribly convincing about the Walter episode. She
knew all about that threat to do away with himself; it had been made to
her, too, and it had taken all her diplomacy to put a right attitude
in the boy and start him off on his trip with the mother freed from
much of his unnatural antipathy. But secretly she had always believed
that Walter’s threats were idle boasts. The reality frightened her, for
Richard made no attempt either to minimize or magnify the determined
struggle of the boy to end his mixed-up life on the stern of the
steamer.
“Well,” she drew in a deep breath, “you may be featherin’ your nest or
not; all I say is you’ve earned the right to do what you please up at
the Big House. As far as you are concerned, Mr. What-ever-your-name-is,
I resign; but I’ll keep my eye on your Jawn friend a little longer, if
you don’t mind.”
Richard smoked away for a while in great contentment.
“Do you know, Phœbe,” he turned to her chummily, “I really may be
feathering my nest, as you call it; and without ever intending to
perform that delicate operation.”
“I guess you’re old enough to know your way about.” She busied herself
clearing away the lunch dishes.
“Age doesn’t help at that,” he said, “it hinders. The older you grow
the more sure you seem; but you fool yourself.... I’m sure I don’t know
why I do anything.”
“You didn’t come all the way to Penn Yan on a wild-goose chase. Don’t
tell me that.”
“That’s life exactly,” he said, “a wild-goose chase.”
“Humph!” she sniffed significantly. “You can’t fool your grandmother!
Every sensible person in this world is after something, and he knows
mighty well what it is. It’s all moonshine, this not knowin’ why you do
things. Now, own up; it wasn’t an overpowering interest in Walter that
brought you here; now, was it?”
“I don’t believe it was,” he admitted cheerfully.
“And it wasn’t due to the overpowering attractions of Phœbe Norris?”
she persisted in her cross-examination.
“It may have been,” he looked at her calmly.
“What?” she cried. “You’d never heard of me.”
“Well,” he argued, “Adam had never heard of Eve, but God went on
confidently making all the arrangements.”
She mused over the thought.
“I forgot,” she said finally. “I did invite you to lay on a little
flattery. And you did it well. And, by the same token, though I know
it’s a lie, it gives one a mighty pleasin’ sensation.... Go along with
you, man!... Adam and Eve!... Pfut!... It’s a scandalous picture you’re
after puttin’ into my mind!”