The Purple Bird Mystery (15 page)

To her utter amazement, the boys shook their heads. Jimmy said tensely, “Grandma, what did you talk about?”

“Just small talk,” said Grandma, smiling. “Mostly about the things all grandmothers talk about—their children and grandchildren.”

“You mean about me and Pop? You were talking about us?”

“Certainly, why not? Mr. Martin seemed very interested.”

Jimmy was about to say something else when the sounds of a car driving into the turnaround reached them through the open windows. A moment later, the front doorbell rang. “Go see who’s at the door, Jimmy,” Grandma said. She turned to put the chocolate cake away, still puzzled by the boys’ lack of interest in it.

Djuna was conscious of mild annoyance that somebody had come along to interrupt just when he was about to ask Grandma the questions he had written down. He listened for the sound of Jimmy’s voice at the front door, deciding that he would wait to ask his questions until Jimmy returned. He couldn’t hear anything, however. The swinging door at the kitchen end of the passage had swung shut; it effectively muffled sounds from the front of the house. Several minutes passed. Finally Grandma, who was listening, too, called, “Who is it, Jimmy?”

There was no answer. Grandma said, “I’ll go see. It’s probably for me, anyway. Be right back, Djuna.”

She bustled down the kitchen passage toward the front hall. The swinging door whispered shut behind her. Djuna sat down on a kitchen stool and fumbled in his shirt pocket for the written list of questions he had prepared at the library. Once he knew the answers to those questions, he felt sure he would be able to explain to Cannonball and Socker what lay behind all the suspicious actions of Mr. Swift, Mr. Martin, and Joe Morelli. He’d be able to tell them why Jimmy’s antique chest was the object of so much interest. And how to unlock the secret of the inscription on the chest drawers.

He drew out his list of questions and studied it for a moment. There were six questions altogether:

What was Mr. Douglas’s step-great-grandmother’s name?

What was the nickname of Mr. Douglas’s grandfather?

What did Mr. Douglas’s grandfather die of?

How was the King’s Talisman worn?

What kind of golfer was the Prince of Wales?

Could golf be like badminton?

All at once, with his head bent over his list, Djuna became aware of how silent the house was. Unnaturally silent. Save for the ticking of the kitchen clock on the wall above the refrigerator, no faintest sound of movement or life was audible inside the house, even though Djuna knew that both Jimmy and Grandma were in the front hall. He found himself thinking that, in spite of the fact that the swinging door muffled most sounds, there should have been some sounds of humanity—the creaking of floor boards yielding to Grandma’s weight, if nothing else; the distant murmur of voices, perhaps; the faint clip-clop of footsteps.
Something
.

But there wasn’t. The silence of the grave enveloped the Douglas house. Djuna shivered and slipped off the kitchen stool. He went to the swinging door and pushed it open a little way.

“Jimmy?” he called.

No answer.

“Grandma?”

No answer.

Well, he thought, maybe they’re outside on the terrace, talking to whoever rang the bell. He walked as softly as he could down the passage toward the front hall. He could see the front door standing open now, but neither Jimmy nor Grandma was visible.

His steps slowed as his uneasiness grew. “Jimmy!” he called once more, his voice trembling a little. “Where are you? Grandma!” He stopped and listened with his hand on the banister of the stairway. Neither Jimmy nor his grandmother gave any sign of having heard his hail. Then Djuna relaxed. They’ve probably gone out to the car to say goodbye to their guest, whoever it was, he thought with relief. They don’t answer because they can’t hear me.

He was hurrying across the hall to the door when his progress was arrested so suddenly and rudely that he never afterward was able to think of Jimmy’s front hall without a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He had to pass the open archway into the living room to reach the front door. He was concentrating on the door; he paid no attention to the living room as he sped past. That was his mistake. For he had taken no more than a step past the living room archway when a sinewy forearm snaked about his neck from behind, drew painfully tight against his throat, and dragged him, thrashing and kicking in panic, into the living room. For a moment, as he fought the forearm on his windpipe, Djuna was unaware of anything except his pain. His head whirled. His throat felt crushed. His breath was stuck in his throat…. Then his attacker exchanged che choking hold for a hand across his mouth, flung him wheezing and gasping into a chair, and held him helpless while two other hands materialized to bind him to the chair with clothesline. That done, a cloth of some sort was tied tightly across his mouth, and he was allowed to look around him.

The first thing his frightened eyes rested upon was Grandma, her gray hair disheveled and her face very pale, confined to a chair on his left exactly as he was—arms and legs bound with clothesline, mouth sealed with a cloth gag. Her eyes sent him desperate messages to which he could only respond by nodding with an encouragement he was far from feeling.

Seeing Grandma trussed up like a chicken in a roasting pan, Djuna knew what had happened to Jimmy even before a smothered groan on his right drew his attention to his friend, also bound to a chair and gagged.

How, Djuna thought with disgust, could he and Jimmy have been so stupid as to have left the front door wide open when they had gone into the kitchen? Especially after their experience with the burglar earlier? It was quite evident what had happened. Whoever had captured them had merely rung the doorbell, stepped into the living room until Jimmy came to answer, and pounced upon him. Then came Grandma’s turn when
she
came from the kitchen. And finally, his turn. His face lost some of its pallor in a flush of self-blame. Poor Grandma! Poor Jimmy! Miss Annie was right. He brought nothing but trouble to himself and his friends, he thought forlornly.

While these thoughts jumped around in his head like drops of grease on a hot skillet, Djuna was vainly trying to see who had captured them. Mr. Martin? Mr. Swift? There must be at least two of them, because he had seen three arms. This simple deduction, in his highly emotional state, amused Djuna so much that he snickered feebly through his gag. He immediately felt ashamed of himself when he saw Jimmy’s dark eyes turn his way reproachfully.

As if in answer to his unspoken question, his captors suddenly appeared from behind his chair and calmly sat down on the sofa facing them. Djuna was not surprised when the dark glasses and stooped figure of Mr. Swift swam into his field of view; he was positively alarmed when it proved to be Joe Morelli whose tanned forearm had nearly choked him.

He had no time to think of Joe Morelli, however. His mind sprang back to the situation in which he found himself. He had to do something to free Grandma and Jimmy; he had to think of a plan. But it was hard to think with that Mr. Anthony Swift sitting there, so smug and crookedly smiling; he must have been the one who had callously struck Champ over the head with a two-by-four. He was dangerous—he might well hurt Jimmy and Grandma. And me, too, Djuna thought. We must give him whatever he wants
—anything
he wants, whether it’s Jimmy’s chest, or information, or anything else.

This resolve was strengthened considerably by the sight of what Mr. Swift now brought casually out of his pocket: a large black pistol with a bulky mechanism screwed onto its barrel. A gun with a silencer! Djuna was certain that was what it was, although he had never seen one before. He felt his stomach muscles tighten as the evil-looking muzzle was waved in his direction by Mr. Swift’s small, well-manicured hand. But the gun did not remain aimed at him for long. It passed on and slowly centered on Grandma. There it held steady, its metal eye looking straight at Grandma’s head.

Joe Morelli spoke first. “Listen, Swift,” he said in an unhappy voice, “I didn’t hire on for this rough stuff. Kids and old ladies—you told me….”

Without raising his voice, Mr. Swift said, “Kindly be quiet, Morelli. I know what I’m doing. This is the only possible way to get it now. And Grandma here is just the one to tell us what we want to know.” He turned his tinted lenses toward Grandma and waved the gun. “Aren’t you, Grandma?”

Grandma could only shake her head and mumble through her gag.

Swift laughed. “Oh, you can’t talk, Grandma,” he said. “Well, we’ll soon fix that.” He reached with his free hand toward her, smiling a very unpleasant smile.

“Wait a minute,” Joe Morelli pleaded. “Don’t hurt anybody, now! It’s bad enough getting mixed up in a caper like this without having to take a rap for aggravated assault, or—or worse….”

Swift said viciously from the corner of his mouth, “I told you to
shut up.”
Morelli sat back on the sofa; he kept watching Swift anxiously.

Swift jerked Grandma’s gag loose and waved the gun again. “Don’t get any ideas,” he warned her. “If you yell, it will be the last time you do. Understood?”

Grandma nodded, licking her dry lips. It was a moment before she could get out any words. Then she said with surprising vigor, “What do you want of us, you horrible creature?”

“You’re going to talk.”

“Depends on what you want to know,” said Grandma with spirit.

“First question: Is that old chest upstairs in the boy’s room the one your husband inherited?”

“Yes.”

“From James Douglas? In Malaya?”

“Yes. But why—?”

“I’ll ask the questions!” There was a snarl in Swift’s voice. “Where’s the Talisman?”

The Talisman! Djuna felt a thrill run along his spine. So his wild theory had proved right! He signaled Jimmy with his eyes, but Jimmy was watching his grandmother.

Grandma said, “The
King’s
Talisman?”

“What other Talisman would I mean when I’m talking to a Douglas?” Swift brought the silencer-gun up with a jerk that sent a pang of fear through Djuna. He remembered Mr. Swift’s sudden fury when Champ had gone for his briefcase. Mr. Swift was short-tempered. And in this situation….

“I don’t know where the King’s Talisman is,” Grandma said. “Nobody does. At least, no Douglas. I never even saw it. And neither did my husband. It disappeared in Malaya in his grandfather’s time.”

“I know it disappeared in Malaya, Grandma,”

Swift sneered. “That’s why I want to know where it is now.”

“But I don’t know.” Grandma’s cheeks were flushed with anger. “And if I did, I wouldn’t tell the likes of you!”

Swift jabbed his pistol barrel at Grandma’s knee. The edge of the silencer touched her kneecap. “Let’s keep this polite and civil, Grandma,” Swift said in a flat, inhuman way.

Joe Morelli started from the sofa. “No rough stuff! You promised, Swift!”

“This old woman is too smart for her own good,” Swift replied. “She gets gay with me, she’s going to get hurt. Just as you’ll get hurt, Morelli, if you don’t do as you’re told.”

Morelli sank back once more, but he threw Grandma an appealing look.

Djuna felt mildly sorry for Morelli, caught up in violence he had obviously not expected.

He threw a furtive glance at the electric clock on the wall beside the living-room window. It was now almost five-thirty. Why, he asked himself fiercely, doesn’t Jimmy’s father come home from the Club? Surely his meeting must be over by now! And why didn’t I ask Socker and Cannonball to come
here
instead of to Miss Annie’s house? Why? Why? And why, if it comes to that, didn’t I keep my nose—and Champ’s—out of Mr. Swift’s suitcase and briefcase?

Djuna glanced at Jimmy and saw that his friend had begun to strain at the ropes which tied him to his chair. Djuna pulled at his own bindings; Mr. Swift paid no attention. He was speaking again to Grandma. “If you don’t know where the Talisman is, then tell me about the inscription burned on the bottom of the chest drawers. And be quick about it.”

“Inscription?” Grandma was clearly at a loss. “I never knew there was one. You can shoot me right now, but it’s true.”

Even Mr. Swift believed her; she could not have put such conviction into her denial unless it had been the truth. “Then tell me this,” he said in a hard voice, “and this one you’d better know, Grandma, for your sake. What is there in this house, or what
was
there in the Douglas family history, that’s been known as ‘the purple bird’?”

Jackpot! Djuna thought. He knows everything except the most important thing of all, and even Grandma doesn’t know that. So she can’t tell him. And why doesn’t Mr. Douglas come home? If only I could do something….

In a wondering tone, Grandma repeated Swift’s words. “The purple bird? That’s even sillier than your question about an inscription. I never heard
any
reference to a purple bird, Mr. Swift, as long as I’ve been a member of the Douglas family. And that’s as true as I’m sitting here all tied up like a mummy!”

“A grandmummy,” Swift corrected, smiling thinly at his own joke. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to assist your memory at little.” He rose from the sofa to Morelli’s whispered protest. “You
must
know what the purple bird is, and where it is. Because your husband had to have known all about it. You can’t tell me that in all the years of your marriage he never mentioned it to you once, or to your son, in connection with the King’s Talisman.”

“But he never did.” Grandma watched Swift raise his gun. She must have thought that he was going to shoot her, because she closed her eyes.

But Djuna had decided that it was high time to create a diversion. He wiggled frantically in his chair, tilted it back on its rear legs, and managed to tip it over. It landed with a crash on the carpet with him in it. At the same time, he gargled something through his gag. He was patently trying to tell Mr. Swift that
he
had something to contribute that might prove interesting.

Swift’s razor-sharp glance at the tumbled chair and the boy brought him the message at once. “Set the kid up again, Joe,” he ordered Morelli. “And take off his gag.” Not for an instant did Swift allow his attention to be distracted. Morelli righted Djuna and stripped off his gag.