The Crooked Lane Page 2

  “I don’t know. For a year at least, I think, but it all depends on how certain things with which I am experimenting turn out.” He hesitated for a moment and then added with a sudden impish sparkle in the dark gray eyes, “Your admirable officials here may decide that they do not care for me as a playmate. In which case I must certainly look for greener pastures!”

  Tess Stuart leaned forward, her own face lit with an answering sparkle.

  “But, K, what on earth is all this nonsense about the police? Cara and Freddy—and now you—I’m probably being excessively slow-witted, but I honestly don’t get the point.”

  “Oh, there is no nonsense whatever, I assure you. I am in all good truth a member of the Viennese police force, which has been gracious enough to grant me a year of absence in order that I may conduct these experiments.”

  “But, K—no, it’s no use; I simply can’t believe it. Do you wear kid gloves and a helmet and bang people over the head if they won’t stop when you whistle at them?”

  Karl Sheridan met this vivid impression of police morals and manners with a grin of pure delight.

  “No, no—I am neither so fortunate nor so powerful. Where do you get your ideas of the force, my dear Tess? Back numbers of Punch? It makes me feel more insignificant than ever. My stepfather never told me that I was entitled to a whistle.”

  “Are you a captain or something?” she inquired suspiciously.

  “Not by ten years or so of work hard enough to break your back and your heart! I am among the humblest of the Applikanten, I assure you. It is only fair to state, however, that there are perhaps certain differences between the exigencies of the Austrian police system and your own undoubtedly admirable one. We are more—shall we say?—specialists.”

  “Specialists in what?”

  “Crime,” said the young man from Vienna gravely. “It is, quite frankly, our hobby. For me, I confess, it is more. For me, it is my passion.”

  She repeated “Crime!” in a strange little voice as though it were a foreign word that she was pronouncing for the first time. After a moment she said slowly:

  “You mean murder?”

  “Do I now, I wonder? Why is it that with this world full of counterfeiters and burglars and blackmailers and swindlers and bigamists, it is of murder that one always thinks when that little word ‘crime’ is spoken? Murder.… You see, Tess, that that is not really a fair test for us; it strains our resources of detection until often they break, because there we are not dealing with rational minds using rational methods to evade the law; there we are dealing with the dreadful handiwork of amateurs—dreamers and lunatics, savages and romanticists, optimists and egotists—so deafened and blinded by their desperate need that the law is no longer even a word to them. It is a miracle, I think, each time we run one down.”

  His dark face turned away from her for a moment, tense and strained, as though he heard far off the sound of horns and the baying of hounds. Tess Stuart said quietly with a small, enigmatic smile:

  “Still, I’m inclined to believe that when you said crime was a passion to you, you meant murder.”

  “God forgive us both,” said Karl Sheridan, his dark young face relaxing into its singularly gracious and charming smile. “I fear that you are right.”

  “Do you know,” she said, still smiling down faintly at the ring that was the color of blood, “I believe that I’d have made rather a good—criminal; or rather a good detective, if it comes to that. What are the qualifications of a good detective, K?”

  “What are yours?”

  “Let me think. I don’t lose my head; I see everything that’s in front of me; and I have enough imagination to put myself in the other fellow’s boots. Wouldn’t that make a good detective?”

  “Not even a good criminal, I am afraid. Imagination—ah, now, there has been the death of many a good criminal—and of many a good detective, too. If you can put yourself into that other fellow’s boots, how can you bring yourself to slip a noose about his throat and throttle him until his face turns black? Still less, if you are a detective, how will you bear to slip that halter about another human being’s neck, so that he may hang by that neck until dead—no matter how richly he may merit death?”

  “Yes.… Yes, I see. Imagination doesn’t sound very useful.”

  “And you will see, too, that if you keep your head, it is never quite possible either to commit or detect a crime. You must not for one moment count costs, nor risks, nor victory, nor defeat. You must lose your head a little to win your game. Not too much, but a little.”

  “Yes. I can see that, too.”

  “I am quite sure that you can, Tess. Why else have you eyes so clear and wide? And to be a good detective, one must see, not what lies before those eyes, but what lies behind them. Sometimes a long, long way behind—days and months and years. Because what lies before your eyes will tell you only what this man has done; what lies behind will tell you why he did it. And if you know that, then already your hand is on that man’s shoulder.”

  “I’m afraid you were flattering me about my eyes. I feel hopelessly mixed up. Are you trying to tell me that in crime—in murder—it’s the motive that counts, more than the means or the opportunity?”

  “More than them both together, surely. No, I was not flattering you.”

  She said slowly,

  “You make it all sound rather fascinating—and rather terrifying.… What is this mysterious experiment that you’re making here?”

  “It is not mysterious in the slightest. I am detailed to work here with your Division of Investigation, where I am installing some new equipment in their already excellent laboratories.”

  “Equipment? But what for?”

  “For the purpose of scientific crime detection. It contains many of the important new devices that we in Vienna are using—in connection with photography, physics, chemistry, and half a hundred other things almost as important. I am to be placed tentatively in charge.”

  “Oh, K!” The silver-gray eyes were wide with reproachful regret. “Then you aren’t really a policeman at all—not even a detective—just a chemist or a biologist or some other kind of a scientist. I do think that’s a most awful come-down. I’ll probably hear next that you belong to the Cosmos Club and are lecturing before the National Geographic Society.”

  Karl Sheridan laughed outright at the undisguised disappointment of his former admirer.

  “I plead guilty to the chemistry charge, my poor Tess, but I am still, I swear, a detective—a true, an honest-to-God detective, and not such a bad one at that.”

  “I mistrust you. You’re probably the dinner-jackety kind that collects Persian ceramics and incunabula and words over four syllables. I’ve met a lot of you lately, and what I’ve been simply praying for was somebody who wore shabby tweed, and said a few short, gruff words through his teeth when he wasn’t using brass knuckles and a blackjack. It’s not a bit of good pretending that I’m not heart-scalded.”

  “Some day,” promised Sheridan, looking young and elated, “I will straighten out some of your truly extraordinary ideas as to the duties and privileges of the professional detective. And while I am doing it, I shall produce my little black bag as Exhibit A in the case of Karl Sheridan versus The Wholly Unfounded Suspicions of Charity de Tessaincourt Stuart.”

  “What kind of a black bag?”

  “Oh, quite a small one. It is my humble substitute for the blackjack. You shall judge whether it is an efficient one.”

  “Produce it now.”

  “Indeed no. This has been enough of me—and too much. The black bag I shall hold as a hostage of your interest. How have we gone so far afield? You were asking me whether I was to be here long, and I have taken all this time to say I hope so—now.”

  “You’re staying with Cara?”

  “No, no; I love her far too well for that! I am the worst of house guests; I need badly some small place that I can call my own to stretch in. In a day or so I shall set about finding it. Now f
or you, please—Washington is still your home?”

  “Oh, not still—again!” She shook her head absently at the hovering butler with the champagne. “I was off on a South Seas cruise for most of last year, and Dad’s been circling the civilized and uncivilized globe for ages, and we’ve tagged along after him when we haven’t been standing boarding schools and convents on their heads! Funny places for children, some of them—Chile and Puerto Rico and Peking—and then he was governor for two terms—and three years in Geneva. Commissions are his pet hobby, though; he’s in the Senate now, but he’s managed to creep off on one to the Canal Zone.”

  “When you said ‘we’ a moment ago, was that other disturber of convents the quite tiny little one who trotted along behind you in the park and tried to roll a hoop far bigger than herself?”

  “Fay? Oh, yes—she’s certainly done her bit when it comes to convents!”

  “She had eyes that flew everywhere like blue butterflies, and fluffs of hair pale as primroses—she is not here tonight? No, I am quite sure that I would know her.”

  “No, she’s not here. She’s been down at Warrenton on a house party; Kippy Todd and she are motoring back tonight after dinner. You’d know her, I think—she still has hair like primroses and eyes like butterflies, and is tinier than almost anyone in the world.”

  “But you call her Fay? That was not what you called her then; I have a better memory for names than you, it seems. Then, surely, her name was Faith?”

  “If you have a mother called Hope who is optimistic enough to call her daughters Faith and Charity,” she told him, “the daughters have to find the best way out they can.… Mine was just a makeshift, but Fay’s suits her perfectly.”

  “Better than Faith, you find?” he asked laughing.

  Her eyes flashed up to his with a look as startled, as outraged and astonished as though he had struck her. After a second they withdrew; he saw only the gold-tipped wings of her lashes as she answered lightly:

  “Let’s say that you can’t improve on perfection, shall we? Of course you can’t be expected to know how absolutely right ‘Fay’ is for her until you see her.”

  Now what—what in God’s name had sent that strange lightning through her eyes? Fay—Faith.… He put it aside, matching his tone scrupulously to hers.

  “You make it difficult to wait.… Now then, will you be my good Samaritan? Since I was so stupid as to be late, nine of these thirteen most ornamental people about this most ornamental table are complete strangers to me, and one a very new acquaintance. You could help me not to be quite so great a dunce later if you would tell me just a little who some of them are?”

  “Am I the new acquaintance?”

  “You? You should know better, you who are an old, old friend. No, it is the truly ineffable lady on my left, who has hair like carrots dipped in lava, and a voice like a battle cry. I did not dream her?”

  Tess Stuart cast an apprehensive glance in the direction of the lady on the left, who was indulging in the series of Valkyrie cries that constituted small talk for her, aimed at an obviously diverted gentleman across the table.

  “Freddy?” Her voice dropped even lower to the discreetest of murmurs. “No, no—you’re not resourceful enough to do that, even if you have spent four years learning how to be a policeman. No human being could invent Freddy, even in a dream.”

  “She assured me that she was called Lady Parrish. That, also, is no dream? It struck me—gratefully, I may say—that she somewhat lacks ‘that repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.’”

  “Oh, Freddy’s certainly not depressingly Anglo-Saxon; she comes from San Francisco, and a good many other points north, south, east, and west.”

  “Hey, when do I get another shot at this cop?” demanded the terrible Freddy in a voice that evoked a pair of guilty starts from the absorbed conversationalists. “Merciful Moses, you’ve had him all through guinea hen and chestnut purée—and now they’re whisking away the aspic and in about half a split second Cara’s going to be showing off those damned Crêpes Suzettes that I always fall for in half-dozen lots. Give him back, you pig in the manger! I finished everything I had to say to Raoul two years ago last Christmas.”

  “In five minutes, darling.” Tess Stuart’s voice was a perfect blend of cajolery and inflexibility. “I’m doing the grand tour of the table for him—all about who’s who, and why—and you must admit that it would be fairly hard on him and everyone else if he got his first impression of Washington’s prides and joys from you! They’d undoubtedly be his last impressions, too; you’d have him shaking our dust off his heels before they brought in the finger bowls. Raoul, just rivet her attention a little firmly, will you?”

  Raoul Chevalier uttered a truly sepulchral sigh.

  “Tess, my dear darleeng, why you do not ask me to do some little, simple thing like move a mountain? Freddy, turn this way your too beautiful head and I will tell you what the great Papa Anatole say to the chambermaid who—”

  “You mean I’ll tell you,” replied Freddy firmly. “Good Lord, I’ve told it to you three times this spring, and I’ll bet you five thousand francs, on or off the gold standard, that you haven’t got it straight yet.… There, Tess Stuart, what did I tell you? Three blooming, burning chafing dishes of the little devils, looking cozy as kittens in hell.” She cast a baleful glare at the majestic procession of advancing servitors, bearing the funeral pyre of the doomed Crêpes, and groaned lustily. “Well, I’ll go this far, seeing as how you’re the only nice gal in town. If you’ll let me tell the boy detective about Abby Stirling, I’ll keep this doggone dinner party sitting at the table until I’ve downed five Crêpes Suzettes, one at a time, Indian file. Then he’s mine. Is it a bargain?”

  “Oh, it’s two bargains!” Astounding girl, thought K, holding the echo of her swift laughter in his ear, where he could listen to it ring at leisure. Never in this world would he have expected that clear untroubled gayety from the grave and witty young sophisticate at his side. This—why this might have been the War Baby laughing, so fresh, so surprised, so enchanted; the long-lost War Baby, laughing wide-eyed at her very first white rabbit being pulled out of her very first silk hat. “We’ll be sitting here till twelve; Cara will be out of her mind with rage! K, that man straight across the table—”

  “Never mind the man across the table,” Sheridan begged his cicerone. “Let us start once more at the beginning with this all too agreeable-looking young man on your right, who is for the moment fortunately five fathoms deep in conversation with his other neighbor.”

  “That’s Dion Mallory—almost pure Irish, and second secretary at the British embassy! He is rather agreeable-looking, isn’t he?” The low voice was once more armed in lightness.

  “And will you tell me why this kindest of secretaries has left paradise to me all this time while he listens to the little girl with the face of a bad little boy? He is as devoutly attentive as though he were head over heels in love with her—but, do you know, Tess, I think that he is not in love with her at all.”

  “You’re perfectly right, of course; not at all! But how on earth did you know?”

  “It is simply that I saw him looking at you when I first found myself lucky enough to be sitting beside you—and realized that Aunt Cara was a godmother straight out of a fairy tale.”

  “Ah, now you’re making me feel as though Cara should have provided a string orchestra. Things like that really ought to be sung; they’re far too pretty for ordinary table talk.”

  “You were saying something to that young man very wise and important and earnest,” K continued imperturbably. “But I do not believe that he heard you. He was looking down at you, and I do not believe that he heard you at all.”

  “I’m glad that you aren’t always infallible,” she said, staidly, though her eyes danced. “He heard every word; that’s why he’s neglecting me so outrageously. I was asking him to please be very attentive to poor Vicki; it’s rather a bad mix-up, because she and the man on the othe
r side of her haven’t been speaking to each other for a week.”

  “And besides the fact that he is admirable to behold and commendably obedient, what else should I know about this Mr. Mallory?”

  “Oh, for an accurate description of Dion, you must go to someone less prejudiced.” She met his eye, serenely undaunted. “Just at present he’s one of my very best young men, so you can see that my testimony is thoroughly unreliable.”

  “At present?” repeated the policeman from Vienna, with a slight inflection. “And for the future?”

  “Oh, the future!” She put eternity in its place with a light-hearted shrug. “The future belongs to devils and angels, doesn’t it? You mustn’t ask a lucky girl to bother about that. And if you really get me started about Dion, we’ll never get a quarter of an inch further, and there’s Freddy, on her third Crêpe.”

  “Let us most certainly not talk about him,” Sheridan agreed with marked alacrity. “Let us never mention his name again—I feel that already I know far, far too much about this all too admirable young man. As for the others, we will give them ten words apiece. His partner, now, who brags with that poor little impudent face?”

  “Vicki,” said Tess Stuart and was silent for a moment. “Well, she and her mother came here from Detroit a year or so ago; her mother was a divorcee with apparently unlimited millions, and she gave a simply fantastic coming out party for Vicki—an old-fashioned cotillion with flower toques and parasols from Reboux, and enamel vanity cases and gold penknives from Cartier’s; and Paul Whiteman to play fox-trots, and Rudy Vallee to play waltzes, and a ten-piece marimba affair from Havana to play rumbas and tangos. And then last fall she was killed in an automobile smash near Baltimore—and about a week ago it suddenly became perfectly clear that Vicki was going to get a few thousand instead of a few millions.”

  K narrowed appraising eyes at the cropped head, glossy as a horse chestnut, rising above a silver jacket that was tailored as impeccably as any man’s black broadcloth—lingered for a moment over the restless hazel eyes and the nervous tension of the jaw, over the soft young mouth, hard-set as a gangster’s—and returned contentedly to the clear serenity of the girl at his side.