The Scarlet Letters (13 page)

“Yes, I insist.”

“Then you'll have to indulge me. One of those things–you know our gracious country living. That was the wife of a friend of mine. They're up the road at some house party or other, and Keith's fighting drunk. For some reason I'm the only one who can handle him. I'll run him over to his place in Noroton, put him to bed, and be back here in thirty or forty minutes. That is, if you want to wait.”

“I want to wait.”

Harrison shrugged. He left quickly.

A moment later Ellery heard the Cadillac swivel about and swish up the road.

House party … wife of a friend … Ellery got up to wander about the room.

It was a clumsy lie. Harrison would hardly have asked for a house number on his own road. Besides, the houses on these shore roads had no numbers. That had been Martha. Harrison had phoned her during the day at the theater–she was working her cast overtime to prepare for a scheduled Bridgeport tryout in August–to tell her of the appointment for tonight. Martha had been frightened. So frightened she had risked a call while he was here.

Van, I've got to talk to you
…

“Well, I'll tell you, darling, I can't very well just now. I'm not alone.”

He's there, isn't he?
…

“Yes, the appointment I mentioned.”

He's going to pump you, Van. We'd better discuss first what you should say. Get to another phone …

“But my sweet–”

Van, you've got to! I'm scared to death. I know you–you'll start to bait him. You'll treat it as if it were a big scene in a play …

“Take it easy, darling. There's nothing to worry about–”

There's a lot to worry about! Van, he'll get suspicious if we keep this up. Get to a phone and call me back
…

“But I can't very well–”

Of course you can. Make up some story. A friend up the road in trouble or something. Call me back!
…

“All right. It'll take me about ten minutes. What's the number?”

That was how it must have gone, what Martha probably said. And the ten minutes was the time it would take Harrison to drive into the business district of Darien to a public phone booth.

So much for Keith, the fighting drunk.

Ellery looked around.

And as he looked around, it came to him in a leap what an incredible opportunity had been handed him by Martha's call.

He was alone in Harrison's house, and he had at least a half-hour.

There were three bedrooms upstairs. Two were guest rooms–beds made up, windows latched, closets empty.

The third was the master bedroom.

Harrison's room took Ellery back to old Hollywood. Here, spread royally, was the great Van Harrison in his heyday. The bed was an immense circular piece with satin sheets and a monogrammed spread that alone must have cost several hundred dollars. The rug was long-haired and black, sewn together from the hides of a great number of unclassifiable animals. The entire ceiling was mirrored. The walls, done in white leather, were covered with photographs of beautiful women, all–from the inscriptions–devoted slaves of the actor. Many were nude. Uninhibited sculptures occupied niches here and there. One recessed shelf was filled with pornographic books.

An oval picture window eight feet across overlooked the terrace and the slough, and before this window stood a striking kneehole desk of ebony. On the polished surface, looking rather forlorn in its magnificent surroundings, there was a portable typewriter.

Ellery went around the desk and sat down in the white leather chair behind it.

There was some typewriter paper on the desk, and he slipped a sheet into the carriage. He typed:
Mrs. Dirk Lawrence
, and Martha's address.

They came out red.

The ribbon was the black-and-red type. Ellery looked for the lever that controlled the ribbon-shift. All he found was a raw stub, and this he could not budge.

The black upper half of the ribbon was frayed and worn; the ink had been pounded out of it.

He made a face. There was no significance to Harrison's red typing after all. The color-shift lever had jammed and in trying to move it Harrison had snapped it off. He had simply neglected to have it repaired. Having worn away the ink of the black half of the ribbon, he had inverted the ribbon and used the red half …

No, there was no significance to the little scarlet letters produced by Harrison's typewriter, and yet it was not without a meaning. A “satire of circumstance,” Thomas Hardy would have called it. Life was full of such curious tricks, and it took a poet to appreciate them.

Ellery was no poet. Neither, he fancied, was Dirk.

He took from his breast pocket the manila envelope of the Froehm Air-Conditioner Company in which Harrison had enclosed his first message to Martha; Ellery had brought it along with some vague notion that it might prove useful in his tilt with Harrison.

The address on the envelope and the words Ellery had just typed on Harrison's machine were identical in every distinguishable feature.

He tucked the envelope back in his pocket, together with the sample he had written.

And he began to go through the drawers of the desk.

In the flat middle drawer above his knees he found a revolver.

It was an old Harrington & Richardson, a .22 Special with a six-inch barrel, chambered for nine shots. The blued-finish arm was a discontinued model; it had not been manufactured, Ellery knew, for over a dozen years. But this piece had been well-preserved; it was oiled and clean.

Ellery broke it open. The chambers were all occupied by their deadly tenants, high-speed .22 Long Rifle cartridges.

He was not happy. It was a disagreeable discovery that Van Harrison also owned a shooting iron, although not exactly a surprise. Men who made love to other men's wives would understandably feel the need of a more emphatic protector than a wide eye or an earnest tongue. It was true that great differences existed between a .45 automatic, such as Dirk's weapon, and a .22 revolver, such as Harrison's, but these might be considered to disappear, for all practical purposes, within the confines of the average hotel bedroom.

Ellery replaced the weapon in the drawer as he had found it.

The two upper drawers of the three at the right side of the desk turned up nothing of importance. But in the rear compartment of the bottom drawer he found a sheaf of letters, without envelopes, held together by a thick rubber band.

The handwriting looked familiar. Ellery extracted the topmost letter and turned to the end.

It was signed,
Martha.

He began to read it:

Tuesday, 1
A.M
.

My dearest–I know it's a silly time to be writing a letter–and in the bathroom, too!–and I suppose in my position I shouldn't be writing at all. But darling, I guess I never learned how to be a lady except in unimportant things.

Every woman wants to feel that she's important to a man for herself, not for what she can give him or do for him. You've made me feel that I'm important to you in that way. I think that's the main reason–and I say this knowing no woman ever should–that I can bring myself to tell you, over and over, how madly in love with you I am. I never thought it would happen to me this way. Or at all. Because I've been hurt so terribly many times

That was the end of the first page. Ellery turned the page and read some more; and then he stopped in the middle of a sentence and went through the other letters quickly. They were all the same–a day, an hour, a salutation of endearment, an outpouring of passion and hurt and loneliness. And all the time he was reading, Ellery saw between him and the closely written pages the dent in Harrison's hat and the lipstick mark under his ear. And suddenly he rebound the letters with the rubber band and replaced them at the back of the drawer and shut the drawer violently.

He got up, moved the chair back to where he had found it, and went to the other end of Harrison's bedroom. Two big doors stood side by side, and he opened them. They were closets. One contained nothing but men's clothes–an immense wardrobe of custom-tailored suits and coats, running the fashion gamut from country casuals and sportswear to tails and–Ellery gaped–a black cape lined with red silk. The other wardrobe was filled with women's clothes.

Ellery recognized at least two summer dresses of Martha's and a blue suede sports coat of a distinctive shade which he had seen Martha wear on several occasions. He remembered Nikki's remarking once, with the awe of the budgeted working girl, that Martha had bought the coat at Jay Thorpe. He looked at the label of the blue coat: it said Jay Thorpe.

On the shelf lay several handbags, one with a solid gold monogram:
MGL.

He noticed a white garment on the floor of the closet, evidently tumbled from a hanger. He stooped. It was a nylon novelty slip with the name
Martha
embroidered above the hem.

Before he left the bedroom, on an impulse he did not stop to probe, Ellery searched Harrison's bureau and the drawers of his makeup table, a heroic affair in ebony and white leather, with a triple mirror. He found them–a set of toupees, and two corsets.

Harrison came in rubbing his hands. “It's turned brisk out tonight. I should have laid a fire.”

“How is your friend's husband?” asked Ellery.

“Blotto. I just heaved him onto his bed and departed. Was I too long? – Here, you haven't touched your drink. I'll get some more ice.”

“Not for me, thanks,” said Ellery. “And, if you don't mind, I'd like to say what I have to say and get out of here.”

“Fire when ready,” said the actor. He squatted at the fireplace, crumpling paper and fishing for kindling in a leather scuttle.

“Those may be prophetic words, Harrison.”

“What?” Harrison's head twisted, astonished.

“Dirk Lawrence has an Army .45 automatic, and he's recently taken to practicing with it. I might add that he has several medals for marksmanship in his bureau drawer.”

The actor tossed a length of firewood on the kindling and put a match to the paper. The fire flared up. He rose and turned around.

He was grinning.

“You find that amusing?” said Ellery.

Harrison poured himself a refill from the warm contents of the pitcher. Then he stretched out comfortably in a great leather chair.

“You know, of course, Queen, that what I ought to do is take you by the scruff of the neck and toss you into Long Island Sound. Who do you think you are, Anthony Comstock? What business is it of yours whose wife I take for a hayride? Martha's over twenty-one, and I certainly am. We know just what we're doing. And I'll tell you a little secret, Queen–we like it.”

“Is that the line Martha told you to take with me over the phone just now?”

Harrison blinked. Then he laughed and tossed his drink down.

“I doubt it. I doubt that Martha likes it, Harrison. The Lawrence-apartment part of it, anyway. You're typical of the successful tom-about-town–love 'em and leave them the labor pains. But you're asking for a pain of your own. How well do you know Dirk Lawrence?”

“I don't know him at all.”

“Martha's certainly told you about him.”

“His jealous streak? They're all that way, old fellow. I'd be myself if I were married. In fact, I was that way when I was married. All four times. That's why I'm not married any more. Let the other gent wear the horns.” Harrison reached over and upended the pitcher over his glass. A few drops slid down, and he frowned.

“Harrison, you're not dealing with the average husband. Dirk's a moody customer. Hopped up one minute and in the dumps the next. Manic-depressive. And he's been through the war. He's killed men in cold blood. How hard would it be for a man like that to kill with his blood heated up?” Ellery rose. “You don't interest me at all, Harrison, except as a case history. I don't care a hoot whether you live or die. I do care about Martha and, incidentally, Dirk. You're playing with TNT. If Dirk gets wind of this filthy business, you won't have the time to think up a bad exit line. They'll have to put you together for the morticians like a jigsaw puzzle. Dirk's a mean man.”

“You scare the hell out of me,” said Harrison. He tossed off the dregs in his glass. “Look, my friend. I'm no more anxious to get a bullet through my loins than the next man. I am very, very careful about Mr. Harrison's health. Mrs. Lawrence and I will not be bosom companions forever. You know how these things are … By the way, don't waste your time repeating that to Martha. She won't believe you. Where was I? … Oh, yes. At the first sign of danger, Queen, I assure you I'll run like a hare. That may leave Martha holding a rather voluminous bag, but after all, those are the chances we girls take, aren't they? Meanwhile, it's fun. Can you find your way to the door?”

He caught Harrison at the side of the jaw with a right cross that knocked the actor's chair over backwards and landed him on the hearth of his fireplace.

But as Ellery drove away, he felt no righteous flush. Of even small victory. He had achieved exactly as much as a man can with his bare hands.

It was not enough.

He never should have come without a deadly weapon.

L· M· N·

Ellery did not bother to follow Martha to her rendezvous with Van Harrison at Lewisohn Stadium or at Macy's–two dates which came only two days apart. They could only prove an alphabetical variation of the same dreary theme.

Dirk made different music.

Dirk was growing difficult again, restless and morose. His progress stuttered, at times stopped altogether. He began once more to notice Martha's comings and goings, watching her with the telltale quirk of his dark mouth, his glances black and wary. Twice he followed her. The first time Nikki was caught unawares and trailed him frantically herself; but that time it turned out that Martha was merely going to a rehearsal, as she had said, and Dirk returned looking foolish. The second occasion found Nikki prepared with a prearranged standby signal to Ellery. She kept him informed by phone calls along the way, and he caught up within a half-hour to take up the chase. On this occasion, too, Martha's destination was pure; but the incident made both Ellery and Nikki jumpy, and after that they lived from hour to hour.

“Where the devil is Fields?” This was Ellery's cry during that time, and he became mentally hoarse repeating it.

Fields returned from Florida on the morning Nikki phoned Ellery that the
N
message had come.

“Which one is that?” asked Nikki. “I've forgotten.”

“Madison Square Garden.”

“But that's
M–”

“New Madison Square Garden, a purism exclusive with the guidebooks. Haven't you looked at her copy?”

“I don't dare go near it.”

“When's it for, tomorrow night?”

“No, tonight. It's the first time he's set the date for the night of the same day the letter arrived.”

“Then he wants to see the heavyweight championship fight,” said Ellery. “What's her alibi this time?”

“She hasn't made one up yet. I hope I can keep Dirk home! What if he should decide he'd like to see the fight, too?”

“At the least sign of trouble, Nikki, call.”

The columnist phoned two minutes after Ellery hung up.

“Leon!”

“I just flew in from Miami. Do you still want something on Harrison?”

“Hasn't your girl told you how I've hogged your office line?”

“I like it in English.”

“More than ever,” said Ellery, “and twice as fast.”

“Okay.” Fields turned away from his phone; Ellery heard him say something, and a reply in a woman's voice. “Look, what are you doing tonight?”

“Whatever you are.”

“I'm going to the Garden to catch the fight–that's what I flew up for. Do you have a ticket?”

“I was going to try to get one this morning.”

“Forget it. I'm arranging for a couple together near the roof, where those little ringside ears can't reach. I'll send yours over this afternoon.”

“Right.”

“Be there by nine-thirty. We'll have to talk before the main go. I've got to be on the eleven-thirty plane back to Florida.”

“I'll be there.”

Ellery hung up, rubbing the back of his neck. It felt sore but free, the weight having been removed.

He was in his seat a half-hour early, armed with his field glasses.

It took him twenty-eight minutes to locate them. They were seated far above the ring, a little below and to one side of him. Martha was dressed like a mouse again, and she displayed a nervousness to match. Her surveys of the vicinity were quick and secretive; between glances she froze to her seat as if to invoke invisibility. Harrison was enjoying himself. The preliminary in the ring was a slam-bang affair of two heavily muscled middleweights giving their all, and the mayhem seemed to his taste–he jumped to his feet at each mix-up shouting and punching the atmosphere. Martha kept plucking surreptitiously at his coattail, and he kept tearing himself free.

When Leon Fields came up the aisle, Ellery slipped the binoculars into the case and eased the case to the floor between his feet.

“Let's get going on this,” said the columnist, dropping into the empty seat. “I want to catch the big one from ringside. What do you know about Van Harrison?”

Ellery sat still. “Only what's generally known.”

“Know how he lives?”

“I've been to his Darien place. It's shore property, only a few years old, extensive grounds perfectly kept, a Japanese manservant, luxurious furnishings, he runs a new Caddy convertible … I'd say, according to his lights, he lives very well.”

“What on?”

“Well,” said Ellery slowly, “I know he made a fortune on Broadway and in Hollywood when he was riding high, before the days of the big income taxes. He hasn't had a play for years, of course, and the only work he's been doing is an occasional TV or radio job, but I assume that's because an actor prefers death to obscurity. He must be living on the income of his investments.”

“He has no investments,” said Leon Fields.

“Then what kind of income does he have?”

“He has no income.”

“You mean he's living off his capital?”

“He has no capital.” Fields's clownish mouth curved. “He had the last dime of his big dough taken away from him ten years ago when he settled his fourth divorce. Alimony, the races, and his natural inclination to be the world's biggest sucker for every deadbeat who knew how to butter him up left him flatter than that palooka down there's going to be in one minute. When he hit the bottle and left Avery Langston holding the bag in midseason–putting himself behind the blackball–he was already in hock for almost a hundred grand.”

“But he can't be earning much–he hasn't even had a movie bit for years! What's he living on, Leon?”

“You got the wrong preposition, bub,” said Fields, his eyes on the ring. “He's living off. Off women.”

The package
…
the package Martha had slipped him over the table in Chinatown
…

“He's pretty good at it, too,” said the columnist. “In fact, in my book Van Harrison takes the blue ribbon in the Fancy Gig class against the field. And believe me, chum, the competition is something fierce. There are gigs with looks, gigs who can dance, gigs who are soft-soap artists, gigs with real European titles–poetry spielers, art lovers, bedroom athletes–there's a gig for every purpose and a top gig in every class. But Harrison's got something the rest of the boys can only dream about. When a gal's got Harrison, she's got the whole historic tradition of the stage in her arms, from the Greeks on down. What dame who's beginning to bulge around the ankles, or whose husband lieth down in greener pastures, is going to upstage Romeo? Not an imitation, but the real thing? He makes them all co-stars in a private production, with the heavens for scenery, every night a second-act curtain, and no lousy notices afterward. And all it costs them is money. What's money to Juliet?”

As Leon Fields talked, a note of passion crept into his voice and the cords of his neck became visible. He stared down at the distant ring as if to look elsewhere would cause him to lose something vital which he was trying desperately to contain. Ellery was very quiet.

“He's been supported like a king by one woman after another for years. He has real social security, Mr. Harrison has. You were right–he doesn't have to work. But you were wrong about why he does it. He does it for the same reason he keeps up his Equity and AFRA dues–to protect his professional standing. His women being able to see him once in a while in a public performance appreciate his private ones more. A champ has to have a fight now and then or he loses his fans … They'll be in the ring any minute now. I better get down to cases.”

Fields looked away from the ring then, and at Ellery. The slender little columnist's eyes had no humanity in them. They were the eyes of a department-store dummy.

“I'm listening,” said Ellery softly.

But Fields seemed unable to get down to cases. He was being driven by a wind of irresistible force and unknown origin. “Don't make the mistake of underrating Harrison,” he said, and suddenly Ellery knew that Fields was not speaking from hearsay. “He shoots for the moon. Money is his object, and he finds it where it is–way up there. You won't believe the women he's had. And he's never been in trouble, never been found out, there isn't another newspaperman in the world knows a damn thing about any of this.”

“Incredible,” murmured Ellery.

“He even makes them like it when he walks out, which is usually when the doughing gets tough or there's danger of fireworks from the mister. A dream-boat who passed through their lives. They always knew it was too good to be true, so what have they got to kick about when he slaps their fannies and says so-long? They've got their memories. I told you he's big-time.
Not one of those women has ever squawked.”

“Then how did you find out, Leon?”

“Do I ask you where you find your plots?” The columnist's thin lip curled. “But I will tell you how come I've never given him the treatment.”

“I've been wondering about that.”

“Yeah. Well, it's like this: If I'd ever printed the name–or even hinted at the identity–of so much as one of those women, he'd have named them all.”

“How do you know?”

“He told me,” said Fields simply. “That makes me a reuben, what? How come Leon Fields takes that kind of horse puff? In fact, why shouldn't Leon Fields print all those juicy names himself? Fair question, and it deserves a fair answer. The answer is this. I was, am, and always will be in love with one of those women, and I'll scrub Harrison's back in that ring down there before I'll let him ruin her life.”

Fields's hand groped and disappeared inside his coat. “Queen, I'm hung up. I could spoil his racket tomorrow morning in one column and incidentally put half a dozen saps on his trail who'd break every bone in his body, starting with his famous profile. But he's got me stymied. I can't talk, I can't hint, I can't even breathe. I've even got a vested interest in protecting him. Not long ago I actually covered up for him so a pal of mine, another newspaper guy, would stop nosing around. All I can do is needle the slob when I see him, and I've even got to be careful about that. That night at Rose's …” His lips compressed, and he was silent.

A roar filled the Garden as the challenger climbed through the ropes.

In a sort of reaction, the columnist's hand came out of his coat with violence, and Ellery saw in it a plain white unmarked envelope.

“This thing has burned a hole in my pocket for a long time. I've reached my limit. I can't take it any more.

“I don't know what you can do with this, Queen, but I'm going to tell you what you can't do with it. You can't let it out of your hands. You can't let anybody read it–anybody. You can't repeat its contents. You can't do a damn thing with it that might wind up in its being printed.”

“That kind of ties me in knots, Leon.”

“That's right,” nodded Fields, “but not as tight as me. That's where there may be a glimmer. I don't say there is. The chances are there isn't.” He still held on to the envelope. “There's just one possibility.”

“What's that?”

“You can try something with this I never could, because you're not me and Harrison hasn't got his knee in your crotch. You can go to these women one by one and see if you can't get one of them to break down, to expose him for the cheap, woman-chiseling he-whore he is. Personally, I don't think you stand a chance. And, what's more, you've got to play this thousand-to-one shot so that I'm kept out of it. It isn't enough for Harrison to get his. He's got to get his and not know where he's getting it from. If the attack comes from one of the women, and he can only trace it back to you, if he can trace it at all, then it's okay.

“If you want this on those conditions, it's yours.”

Ellery put his hand out. Fields looked at him. Then he dropped the envelope into Ellery's hand and rose.

“Don't even phone me,” he said, and he turned to go.

“One question, Leon.”

“Yeah?”

“Have you any idea who's playing Juliet these days?”

There was another, and louder, roar, and in the ring far below the champion made his appearance.

“Are you kidding?” said Leon Fields; and he skipped down the runway.