The Philadelphia Murder Story (6 page)

Travis nodded. “And Sam wouldn’t. That leaves Elsie. She’d take it if she thought there was anything in it and got the chance. She’d think it was her duty. But why should she think there was anything in it? And I wasn’t paying any attention to either of them.” He looked at Monk. “I think,” he said coolly, “that if we could get that letter—whatever it is—we’d have Kane just where we want him. There’s something about it—He offered, just now, to turn over his manuscript and give back any other papers he’s got, if he gets that letter, unopened, before he leaves for New York tomorrow. If he doesn’t—” He picked up the poker and stirred the fire.

“If he doesn’t, what?” Laurel asked.

“He’s going to keep a dinner date, he says, with the head of the bar association. The district attorney will be there.”

A coal dropped out of the fire and clattered noisily on the brick hearth, and at the same moment the bell pealed loudly out in the hall. Monk Whitney was watching Laurel intently. She was standing taut and motionless, her whole bearing a dead giveaway that Myron’s hardly veiled threat had meaning to her that it did not have to him or Travis.

Travis went over to the switch and pressed the button. The front door opened.

“Travis?” A full deep voice I hadn’t heard before came up the stairway. Laurel took a deep breath and looked urgently at Monk. I saw his jaw tense as he turned and stood looking down into the fire. I thought he was more disturbed than he had been at any time before.

Travis had gone out into the hall.

“Come on up, sir,” he was saying, and I could hear a muffled pattern of more than one pair of feet on the carpeted stairs. “Oh, hello, Sam.”

There was a good deal less cordiality in his greeting then than when he’d spoken first. Sam Phelps, I thought, in spite of how much Myron Kane thought he could write a check for, was certainly not what one might call a universal favorite. It was Judge Whitney, however, not Sam, that I was interested in, and when he came up into the room, I could see why Laurel Frazier thought about him as she did. He was large and robust, with thick white hair and shaggy, grizzled eyebrows over a pair of very wise blue eyes. His face was broad, shaped like his son’s, but filled out and mature. It was strong as iron, full of repose and understanding.

“This is Mrs. Latham, judge,” Travis said. He followed him in, leaving Sam Phelps to bring up the rear.

Judge Whitney took my hand in a warm, friendly grasp. “How do you do, Mrs. Latham? I dined with your friend Colonel Primrose this evening. He said you’re staying with my sister Abigail. I hope that isn’t going to keep me from having the pleasure of seeing you.” The twinkle in his eye disappeared as he turned. “You’ve met my daughter’s husband, Mr. Phelps, I believe?”

Sam Phelps and I murmured something at each other. Judge Whitney went over to the fireplace.

“I’ve come after the letter that Mrs. Latham brought to Myron Kane,” he said calmly.

“We were just talking about it, sir,” Travis said.

“I presumed as much. Which of you has it?”

Monk moved over by me. “Better hand it out, Sambo,” he said.

Sam Phelps’ polished dome flushed. “You’re just trying to annoy me, Monk,” he said angrily. “The first I knew of it was when Kane called me from here an hour ago. I reported it to the judge at once. I’m not in a position to—”

“I don’t doubt you have the best intentions in the world— one or all of you,” Judge Whitney said. It was almost as if he had been concentrating on Something Else, too, and was unaware his son-in-law was speaking. “Let me say you are badly advised. It’s of the utmost importance that that letter be returned to Myron Kane—and immediately.”

He stopped as if waiting for someone to hand it over. When no one moved or spoke, he settled back in his chair.

“I appreciate your motive in all this,” he said patiently. “I don’t appreciate the attitude you all seem to take that I must be protected, against myself or against Kane.” A faint smile flickered for an instant in his eyes. “I can only tell you that this letter will make matters infinitely worse. It will do irreparable harm, and no good whatsoever. It won’t get the manuscript for you, because it’s already in. Kane delivered it to the
Post
some time ago.”

There was a suspended silence in the room when he stopped. No one looked at Travis, who’d been so sure the letter was all that was needed to stop Myron Kane’s article from ever going to the
Post or
to get back the document Laurel had given him in the judge’s file.

“I may also say that blackmail, in any form, is never justifiable,” Judge Whitney said quietly. “That letter belongs to Kane. It was taken by some one of you at my sister’s house this evening.”

He turned to his son. “Have you got it, Monk?”

“No, sir,” Monk said. “I have not.”

“Travis?”

“No, sir.”

“Laurel?”

“I didn’t know about it, even, till a few minutes ago, sir.”

He looked at me. I shook my head.

Laurel spoke calmly. “What about Elsie? Has anyone asked her?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sam said sharply. “Of course I haven’t asked her.”

“Why don’t you phone and do it now?”

“She’s not at home; she’s at a meeting. I’m sure she would have told me—”

Judge Whitney rose. “I am disappointed,” he said quietly. “I won’t believe one of you would have deliberately told me a falsehood, from whatever motive, until I’m forced to do so. … Have Elsie phone me as soon as she gets home, Sam.” He turned back at the door. “I beg you, as earnestly as I know how,” he said, “to believe me when I say that whoever has that letter of Myron Kane’s is doing a wantonly cruel and inhuman thing, I feel that very intensely and very personally. I want it returned to me tonight. I’ll wait up for it. Good night to all of you.”

Nobody moved, even to help him on with his coat. He went slowly down the stairs, the door closed behind him.

“You’ve got that letter, Monk,” Sam Phelps said abruptly.

Monk Whitney grinned. “Why don’t you go, Sam?” he asked. “Why don’t you and Elsie take a trip to the Argentine? Why don’t you leave tonight, before we all disgrace you?”

Sam flushed, started to say something, changed his mind, nodded curtly to us and went out.

Laurel looked at Monk. Her face was quite pale. “You have got it, Monk. I don’t see how you can lie to him!”

He was looking at her, one eyebrow raised sardonically, and turned at Travis Elliot’s triumphant exclamation, “Top-lady! That’s the fellow’s name! I knew I’d—”

“Then forget it,” Monk said curtly. He strode over and picked up my coat. “Coming?”

Laurel took a step forward. “Where are you going?”

“That’s my business, Coppertop.”

He was holding my coat out to me.

She looked at him for an instant, turned quickly, picked up the telephone at the end of the library table and spun the dial around swiftly.

“Who are you calling?”

“That’s my business!” Laurel said hotly, “But if you want to know, I’m calling Myron Kane! There’s one way to settle this, and if I have to marry him to get that—”

He was across the room in two swift strides, jerked the telephone out of her hand and slammed it down on the cradle.

“No, you’re not,” he said quietly. “We don’t need a woman to save our necks.”

They stood there facing each other, both of them furious, leaving Travis Elliot and myself practically stupefied. He turned suddenly and came back, stopping at the door.

“If you want to marry Kane, Coppertop, that’s your business… and Trav’s. But don’t pull that martyr stuff on us… Are you ready, Mrs. Latham?”

He slammed the front door shut and struggled into his overcoat.

“Careful of the ice,” he said shortly.

At the bottom of the steps, he stopped, looking at me oddly.

“My God,” he said, with a kind of suppressed groan, “you’d think I gave a damn who she married, wouldn’t you? Well, I don’t. Just so she doesn’t do it thinking she’s Joan of Arc.”

He took my arm and steered me along the slippery sidewalk.

“Look,” he said. “Would you know what happens to manuscripts that go to the
Post?”

We crossed the narrow opening of Manning Street toward the square.

“Well,” I said, “the
Post
—”

“You don’t need to tell me about the
Post.
I know all about that. I used to go on a tour through the plant with a couple of hundred other kids every week. If you stacked one issue, it would be more than twenty-five times as high as the Empire State Building and the paper rolled out would reach more than ten times the distance from New York to Chicago. It takes over two hundred miles of wire to make staples to bind it and forty tons of ink a week and more than seventy presses running twenty-four hours a day to print it. Or that’s what it used to be. I was going to be a printer once myself—like Benjamin Franklin. I even used to know the number of pieces of glass they baked to make that Maxfield Parrish Dream Garden in the lobby. But that’s not what I mean. I mean, what happens to Myron’s manuscript? Who’s got it now? Where is it?”

“All I know is what Mark Childs told me when he did the profile of Colonel Primrose,” I said. “He gave it to Bob Fuoss at lunchtime. Two of the associate editors—I think Jack Alexander was one of them—read it that afternoon, and Ben Hibbs took it home that night. He has to read everything that goes in the magazine. Ben Hibbs probably has this now. They read so fast, people glue pages together to make sure they read it all, they tell me.”

“If Mr. Hibbs okays it tonight, what happens?”

“I suppose they might edit it in the morning and send it up to Composition right away,” I said. “If it’s timely. Or it might stay around a while. I don’t know, really. Why?”

“I just wondered. If Elsie and Sam hadn’t chucked their weight about so, I’d go and talk to Hibbs in the morning. As a matter of fact, I guess I’ll just go now.”

“He lives out on the Main Line,” I said. “They say he’s very nice, but he has one curious eccentricity. He goes to bed at night. It’s a grass-root habit that he picked up as a child in Kansas. He’s supposed to be mild, but I believe that’s at nine-thirty in the morning.”

“Okay, Dear Child,” he said imperturbably. “I get it.”

We were cutting across the jog in 19th Street to Mrs. Whitney’s house. The lights were still on in her room, and in the windows in her brother’s house next door. It seemed incredible to think they’d lived so close to each other and yet been so remote for so many years.

“You know,” I said, “I wish somebody would ask me what I think about all this.”

“Okay. What?”

“I think you’re a lot of dopes. Now that I’ve met your father, I don’t believe for one instant that Myron Kane would have the courage to offend him, even if he wanted to. I think everything in that profile is there with your father’s knowledge and consent. At least everything about himself. Myron might take pot shots at you and Elsie and Sam, but that won’t hurt anybody. You know the business about present fears being less than horrible imaginings.”

He didn’t say anything until we’d reached his aunt’s doorway. “It’s funny, you know, Grace,” he said then, “but I never realized till I was out there that I must have been an awful pain in the neck to him. Or how much I—well, I guess worshiped him is what I mean.” He looked at me and grinned suddenly. “I guess it’s a little too much below freezing to make you stand out here and listen to the story of my life,” he said. “What I mean is, if I could save him a half second’s worry—”

“You could give him Myron Kane’s letter,” I said.

His jaw hardened. He stood there silently.

“And look. You don’t seriously think your father ever—I mean, that there’s anything in his life-He seems so—”

I hesitated, and so did he.

“He wasn’t always as judicial as he is now,” he said then. “Well, anyhow, good night. I’ll see you tomorrow. Wait, I’ll let you in; I’ve got a key. I guess I’ll go up and say good night to the old gal. Quiet; she may be asleep.”

The grilled door moved noiselessly and we slipped in onto the thick beige carpet of the dimly lit lower hall. We started up the curving marble staircase. He gripped my arm suddenly, almost throwing me off balance. I caught myself, staring at him. He was standing there, rigid and motionless, his eyes fixed in a kind of incredulous, thunderstruck amazement on the mirrored panel in the wall.

In it was an oblong of light, brilliant in the dim glow of the hall. I could see Abigail Whitney. She was talking to her brother. Judge Whitney stood there, his head bowed a little. The unbelievable thing was that she was standing too. Her face was half turned from us, her back was straight as an arrow, and she moved back and forth, not even a cane in her hand, as able to walk as Monk or I. Her voice was clear as a bell in the silent house, and vibrant with intensity.

“You killed Douglas Elliot, Nathaniel. There’s no use trying to evade it. The document Laurel gave Myron Kane—”

Monk Whitney caught my arm in a tighter hold and drew me out of the focus of the mirror and down the stairs. The blood was beating in my ears; I couldn’t have heard any more, even if anyone had needed to hear more. We got outside. He stood holding the doorknob, letting it slip softly to. Then he leaned unsteadily for a moment against the stone frame, his face quite white. It seemed from ages to infinity before either of us moved, and then we just looked at each other.

“I can’t ask you not to say anything,” he said. The words were twisted and tortured.

“Oh, I won’t,” I whispered. “I promise I won’t, ever.”

He held out his hand and grasped mine. Then he turned and pressed the doorbell. He was gone when the butler came.

I hadn’t even seen him go. He’d gone as quickly and as quietly as if he’d been slipping through some South Pacific jungle.

I went upstairs slowly. It was as quiet as the grave. Mrs. Whitney’s door was open and her lights were on. I could see her lying on the yellow cushions, her bright sharp eyes watching me intently in the mirror.

“Come in, Dear Child,” she called as I passed the door.

I think it was the hardest thing I ever did in my life. I don’t think I’ll ever have anything so hard to do again. I rubbed my face with my hands to get a little color back, steadied my shaking knees and went in.