The Scarlet Letters (4 page)

“All I was trying to say,” said Nikki, “was: When do I start?”

Ellery kissed her soberly. “Get into a cab and go right over there.”

That was a Tuesday. By Friday evening Dirk Lawrence's new secretary was able to report that all was well. In fact, said Nikki, all was so well that she was beginning to wonder if Martha hadn't exaggerated.

“I went over there on Tuesday and Dirk was snoring his head off, catching up on his sleep. So Martha helped me bring some things over from my apartment, and we fixed up the dressing room for me. By that time Dirk had had a shower and changed into clean clothes, and the three of us had a nice objective talk about work and domestic arrangements, and then Martha kissed him and left us in his study, where he works, and we got going.

“He's a dynamo, Ellery. The whole thing seems to have given him a shot in the arm. He had a folder full of notes and we went through them the rest of Tuesday and all day Wednesday, reorganizing his material, discarding a lot of it, making notes of new ideas–I'm really quite impressed. It's going to be a sensational book if it's ever finished. By Wednesday night I was so fagged Martha put her foot down and we knocked off at a reasonable hour. But I didn't let myself fall asleep until I heard Dirk snoring.

“Then yesterday morning we went at it again, and this is the first chance I've had to call. Dirk and Martha are in the tub having a high old time splashing each other, and the three of us are going out to dinner.”

“You've seen no sign of anything, Nikki?”

“Not a ripple. He's really thrown himself into this, Ellery. He's trying hard. Martha has her fingers crossed, but she's beginning to look happy again. Oh, I hope this works out.”

“Try to arrange a foursome for dinner tomorrow night.”

On Saturday night they went to a penthouse restaurant on 59th Street, overlooking Central Park. Dirk ordered breast of guinea hen under glass and French champagne; he was in high spirits. Martha was radiant.

It was Dirk who brought up the subject of the novel. “It's going great,” he said. “I never realized before what a difference a skilled literary secretary makes. This must be a real sacrifice for you, Ellery. I can't thank you enough.”

“Dedicate the book to me,” said Ellery solemnly.

“How about to me?” demanded Nikki.

There was much laughter at their table, in a rather soprano key. Ellery watched Dirk with care. He did not like what he saw, and when they separated in the Lawrence lobby he managed to whisper to Nikki, “Watch out for squalls.”

Dirk insisted on working all day Sunday, and on Monday morning, in a new hat and with a light step, Martha left for the theater “to find out,” as she grimaced to Nikki, “how much money we lost last week.” The Alex Conn play was tapering off after a fairish run, and Martha was looking around for a fall production.

The squall threatened that very morning.

Dirk's exhilaration left the apartment with Martha. His dictation floundered and sank. Nikki tried desperately to resuscitate him. Years of working for a writer had taught her a whole manual of first-aid tricks. She finally gave up.

“You couldn't expect to keep this pace indefinitely, Dirk,” she said matter-of-factly. “Let's knock off and take a walk by the river for an hour. I walk Ellery regularly, like a dog.”

But Dirk's only response was a mutter as he turned to his portable bar. “I'll be all right. What I need is a drink.”

At noon Martha phoned and Nikki felt a great fear. Dirk's mood was unrelieved black by now, and the slow turn of his head as Nikki said, “It's Martha, Dirk,” seemed to her to be moved by something lethal.

“Where are you?” Dirk growled.

“At the theater, darling. How are things going?”

“What are you doing?”

“Going over the treasurer's report. Dirk, I think we ought to close–What's the matter?”

“Matter? Nothing. When are you coming home?”

“Right now, darling, if you want me to.”

“I don't want you to do anything. You have your work–”

“I'm on my way,” said Martha.

With Martha's return, Dirk's mood melted. He dictated at high speed for the rest of the day.

Tuesday was a repetition of Monday.

On Wednesday the inevitable happened. Martha could not come home at the psychological moment. She was tied up at the theater in a tangle of conferences preparatory to closing the play. And this time Dirk's mood froze hard. By the time Martha got back to the apartment he was drunk–so drunk the two women had to help him to bed.

“Poor Nikki,” Martha said. The old dead calm had settled over her. “I don't know why you should have to go through all this. It's hopeless.”

“It's not hopeless!” Nikki said hysterically. “Not so long as I can get him so drunk he passes out. I'm not going to give up, Martha, I'm
not!”

She managed to struggle through the rest of the week.

On Sunday Martha and Dirk drove up to Connecticut for dinner with Dirk's publisher, and Nikki felt as if she had been released from a psychopathic ward.

“I don't know what's the matter with him,” she told Ellery as they wandered down lower Fifth Avenue towards Washington Square Park in the quiet sun. “He's like two people of opposite temperaments in one body. He'll be way up one minute and in the blackest depths the next. He'll race along dictating really good stuff for fifteen minutes, then all of a sudden he peters out, nothing comes, and he sinks into a kind of witless sluggishness, as if he were doped. Sometimes he's enthusiastic and naive, like a little boy, and in the next breath he's as bitter and disillusioned as a sick old man. I thought you were hard to live with, Ellery, but compared with Dirk you're Little Merry Sunshine.”

“I care for this less and less,” mumbled Ellery. “How about you pulling out?”

“I can't quit on Martha now, Ellery. And I do have one consolation–I'm not married to him.”

Ellery was awakened by his bedside telephone at two o'clock that morning. It was Nikki, and her voice was a quivery whisper. “They got in from Greenwich just after midnight. They were having a terrible fight, Ellery. It seems some other guest–a Book-of-the-Month Club author–was too attentive to Martha, and Dirk got tight and took a poke at him. He's back at the old stand.”

“It's hardly credible, but did Martha give him any cause?”

“Martha swears to me she was barely civil to the man. After all, it was in Dirk's publisher's house, and the other man was a guest there, too. He
was
being terribly gallant–acting like the hero of his book, Martha said–but she thought he was making a jackass of himself.”

“Where is Dirk now?”

“In bed, asleep. He smashed that gorgeous Wedgwood teapot of Martha's as his exit. If I hadn't ducked, it would have conked me. Martha and I are doubling up in the dressing room tonight. I gave her a pill and finally got her to sleep.” Nikki sounded very low.

“Give it up, Nik. You've done your level best. Martha's going to have to work it out for herself.”

“No,” said Nikki, and he could almost see her chin, “not yet.”

The next few days taxed even Nikki's capacity for friendship. She reported that Dirk had stopped work altogether. Nikki would spend an hour or two reading back to him what he had previously got down on paper, trying to “autointoxicate” him, as she put it, into the will to continue. But he would barely pay attention, prowling about the study as if it were a corner of the forest, making frequent stops at the bar, jumping every time the phone rang. Finally he would jam his hat on and stalk from the apartment, to be seen no more until the early hours of the following morning, when Martha would have to undress him and clean him up and haul him into bed with what assistance Nikki could decently provide.

And then the quarrels began again, on the old theme. Martha was seeing too much of her treasurer. Or she had left the apartment half an hour earlier than usual; who was the man? Or–”I stopped into the theater at four-thirty this afternoon and you weren't there. What cocktail bar were you playing footsie in?”

“Martha tries not to lose her temper,” said Nikki to Ellery over the phone, “but he keeps needling her until she answers back, and then there's a row. If it were me, I'd break the typewriter over his head. Ellery, I'm afraid I can't give this much more than another day or so–I'll start climbing walls. Would you take one slightly used secretary back tomorrow?”

But tomorrow never came. Nikki failed to appear at the Queen apartment all of the next day. Ellery called the Lawrence apartment several times; there was no answer.

Nikki did not phone until one o'clock the following morning.

She kept her voice low. “I haven't had a minute, Ellery–”

“What's happened, Nikki? I've been worried.”

“Yesterday morning–it
was
yesterday, wasn't it? I find myself losing track of time–Martha and I had a long talk. I told her I had every intention of staying as long as I could be of the slightest use, but unless Dirk went back to his novel my position would become impossible. It's a small apartment and when they start fighting I scurry from one hole to another, trying to make myself vanish. I think Martha expected it. She didn't ask me to stay, just kissed me and said that whatever I decided she'd understand, and then she left on some appointment or other without even saying goodbye to Dirk.

“I waited for Dirk to crawl out of bed. It never occurred to me that he was already up and had heard Martha leave. When I got tired of waiting and couldn't find him in the bedroom, I looked in the study and there he was, all dressed, doing something, with his back to me. I was about to deliver my ultimatum, when he turned around and I saw what he was doing.”

“What?”

“Cleaning a gun.”

Ellery was quiet. Then he said, “What kind of gun?”

“It was a big heavy-looking automatic. It looked a foot long to me. I asked him–laughingly, you understand–what he thought he was doing, and he said something about its being his old Army pistol–”

“A forty-five.”

“–and he was cleaning and oiling it, he said, because he'd just got an idea for another detective story and its main plot point had something to do with shooting an automatic from various distances, and a lot of other doubletalk I frankly didn't pay much attention to, I was so petrified. I asked him what about the novel we'd been working on, and he said he was going to drop that for a while and follow this mystery idea of his through–he wasn't sure, he said, if it could be done … whatever ‘it' was. Then he crammed the gun in his pocket–he was wearing an old hunting jacket–and got up and started to leave.”

“Poor kid,” murmured Ellery.

“You can imagine the thoughts that went through my mind. I could hardly walk out on Martha if Dirk was starting to tote a gun around. Of course, I didn't believe his story about a new mystery idea for a second. I said, ‘Where are you going?' and he mumbled something about some friend of his extending the courtesies of a gun club the friend belongs to up in Westchester, and he was going to drive up for some target practice in line with his ‘idea'. I thought that was a wild one, too, and more to test him than anything else I asked if I hadn't better go along–to take notes, in case he felt like ‘developing' his idea during the day. To my surprise, he said that was a good idea; and–to digest it–we just got in from northern Westchester, where Dirk shot holes in targets at various distances the whole horrible day.”

“How was he tonight?”

“Fine. Practically cheerful. Martha was waiting up for us when we got in. He kissed her, asked how her day had been, we all had a nightcap, they went to bed as if nothing had happened, and here I am–and I ask you, Mr. Anthony: Where am I?”

“Did he give you any dictation today on this alleged mystery idea?”

“Yes, notes on a plot. Interesting ones, too. What's my ethical position? After all, you're competitors.”

“Did he–or you–tell Martha anything about the day's activities?”

“He did. She went pale, but I don't think he noticed. I managed to talk to her for a couple of minutes in the bathroom before she went to bed. She confirmed the fact that it's his old Army pistol. He hasn't touched it for years, Martha said. She's frightened, Ellery.”

“I'd be, too. How good a shot is he?”

“I thought he was Deadeye Dick, but he said he's rusty and his ‘tests' weren't ‘conclusive' and wouldn't be till he got back his old marksmanship. It seems he was a crack shot in the Army. We're going out to the gun club again tomorrow.”

Ellery was silent. Then he said, “Just how determined are you on staying, Nikki?”

“Ellery, how can I leave now? Anyway, maybe it's just what he says. Maybe that's all it is.”

“Yes.” There was another silence. “If you feel you've got to stick it out, Nikki,” he said at last, “don't let him out of your sight. Force him along this new mystery line, whether he wants to follow it up or not. Maybe you can channelize this gun thing off harmlessly. And call me every chance you get.”

Ellery was still walking the floor of his study when Inspector Queen turned his alarm off.

“You up at six A.M.?” yawned the Inspector. Then he inhaled. “The millennium! You've already made the coffee.”

“Dad.”

“What?”

“Do me a favor this morning. Check up on a pistol permit.”

“Whose?”

“Dirk Lawrence.”

“That fellow?” The Inspector glanced sharply at Ellery, but Ellery's face told nothing. “I'll call you from downtown.” The Inspector waited, but Ellery said not another word, and the old gentleman left.

Ellery was awakened by his father's call.

“He has one.”