There is always love (20 page)

' "I must have the jitters, if an owl hoot can set my teeth chattering," he told himself. "Evidently scared the party inside too. The light's gone out. Who's there? It's up to me to find out." He squared his shoulders:

"Get going, fella. Make it snappy or they may get you first."

XXII

HE CAUTIOUSLY opened the door. Listened. Had someone moved? It might be a mouse scuttling across the floor. He switched on the light. A window cushion on the floor. An automobile rug in a heap beside it. A bag. Had Annie been about to treat the wounded man when she heard footsteps? Where had the two gone? Not out the entrance door. They would have run into him. A clatter 1 The closet! He drew a revolver.

"Hands up!" He growled to disguise his voice. Yanked open the door. Skid Grant faced him. Skid, with his arm tight about Linda Boiune.

There was a split second of stunned silence. Then Grant's shout of laughter, the memory of his ridiculous, melodramatic approach, the sight of Lmda encircled by that arm, sent a surge of fury through Greg's veins.

"What's so darn funny. Skid? It wouldn't have been a joke if my gun had gone off, would it? What are you doing here, Lindy? Didn't I tell you to keep out of this mess?"

"Just when did I consent to take orders from you?" she demanded as she stepped from the closet.

"Cut it! Cut it! Stop fighting, you two," Skid Grant commanded. "Gosh, I never saw anything so funny as your face, Greg, when you opened that door." The attempt to check another guffaw choked him. He coughed and strangled.

"Quiet cuss when you're sleuthing, aren't you, Skidmore? You have a police siren beaten at its own game for noise. What are you doing here?"

"Shadowing Senor Pedro Lorillo."

"Lorillo! Here? In The Castle grounds? You said he'd gone to Brazil."

"That's what I thought. Listen, my child, and you shall hear of the evening ride—this is where I desert the classic. I went to the garage in town to get my roadster when in 114

sneaks the smooth Brazilian. Could hardly believe my eyes. I slipped out of sight but not of hearing.

" 1 want to hire a two-seater,' says he to the boss. I'm going into the country. Put in plenty of rugs. It's likely to be cold before morning.' All this minus his Spanish accent.

" 'Country,' thinks Mrs. Grant's little boy, and then somehow the word linked up with what you told me had happened at The Castle. Why had he given out that he had gone to Brazil when he hadn't? It was a crazy hunch but I followed it—and Lorillo's car. Lost it—the car, not the hunch—as we entered the village which we pass through before we reach The Castle. Sure that he was making a strategic detour, I came on. Parked on a dark side of the road outside the gates and stole into the grounds. Remembered the game house and came here. No footprints or tire tracks to provide a clue. If a person or persons had left the place it must have been before the snow stopped. I skulked around the outside. There were slits of light beneath the shades. Made a lot of noise tramping up the steps and into this big room."

"What did you find?"

"The seat and the rug on the floor as you see them now. Heard footsteps approaching on horseback—"

"Skip it. Tell this straight."

"All right, all right. Something tells me you don't appreciate the light touch, my boy. Where was I?"

"Seat and rug on the floor and footsteps approaching on horseback," Linda prompted. She swallowed a nervous giggle as Greg glared at her.

"I doused the light pronto and crept under the rug. Sez I to myself, 'X marks the spot where the body was found. Someone's coming for it. This is my chance to find out who.' "

"Who was it?" Greg demanded.

" 'Lovely Lindy,' herself. Now may I tell my story?"

Quickly she told why she had promised to meet Annie at the tall pine and of what had followed.

"Why didn't you tell me all this before you went upstairs?" Greg Merton's face was colorless. "Didn't you know that you were being dragged into a criminal net?"

"I had a suspicion that all was not sweetness and light but I gave Annie the benefit of the doubt until I was sure. What do we do now?"

"Go back to the house, quick. Skid, we'll put you up for the night."

"Thanks. I'll pick up Lorillo's trail in the morning. I am more than ever convinced he's mixed up in this. Never did believe he hailed from Brazil—'where the orchids come

from.' If it was his scout whom Madam Steele winged you'll all be able to sleep easy for some time to come. They won't try it again until they think this episode has been forgotten. Let's push off."

It was a silent trio which tramped back through the snow. Linda was wondering what had happened to Annie and her Cline. Greg was seething with impatience to get her safely into the house before he told Skid of the injured man in the cottage.

"Come into the kitchen and I'll make hot chocolate,'* Linda whispered as they entered the hall at The Castle.

Greg shook his head. Put a finger to his Ups to ensure sUence. Placed his hands on her shoulders. Steered her gently but steadily toward the stairs. For an instant she resisted, then ran up and disappeared into the upper hall.

"That's that. She's safe." The words were more a long-drawn breath of relief than a sound. "We'll drop our coats here, Skid. I've got something to tell you before we go out again. Gumshoe into the library."

They stopped halfway across the room. Madam Steele sat erect in her usual chair. She must have replenished the fire for scarlet flames leaped and licked up the great chimney, threw grotesque, dancing shadows over the amethyst satin of her tightly belted housecoat. She impatiently tapped ringless fingers on the chair arm and frowned at the two astonished men.

"What's going on?" Her keen eyes raked first the face of her nephew and then that of the man beside him. "Do you think I'm an imbecile that I don't know that there's been a lot of running in and out of the house tonight? What's it all about?"

Greg faced her from before the fire. As if to render moral support in this crisis, Grant stood beside him.

"It's about that would-be burglar you took a shot at. Duchess." Greg told the story, from Annie's talk with Linda to the climax in the game house, leaving out only the part Buff had played in it. That was too important a link to be made known at present.

"Hmp! Why didn't you go directly to the wounded man in the cottage? Who gave you the information, Gregory?"

"I can't tell you. I didn't go because I had a hunch that the information was a ruse to keep me from the game house."

"And what are you doing here, Skidmore Grant?"

"I was in this neighborhood. Madam Steele. Ran into Greg and he insisted that I should spend the night here. If I am intruding—"

"Of course you're not intruding. Don't be silly. What 116

are you going to do next, Gregory? Isn't it thrilling?" Her dark eyes snapped with excitement. Her voice was eager.

"Break a record getting to that cottage. Skid has a plan. He has the immortal Sherlock beaten at his own game as a detective. Upstairs you go, Duchess." He caught her hand and drew her to her feet. "We ought to get started."

"I'll wait here till you come back."

"Nix." He slipped his arm under hers and led her, still protesting, toward the hall. "I don't stir from this house again till you are in your room.'*

"Very well. Very well." She stopped at the foot of the stairs. "I'll go if you will promise to report to me when you come back."

"I promise—if there is anything to report, Duchess."

"Here's hoping I'll be as peppy as she is when I'm old," Grant confided in a low tone as she mounted the stairs.

"A woman with a spirit like hers isn't old. She hasn't a wrinkle in her face, perhaps you've noticed." A door closed. "Come on. We'll take your roadster, Skid. Mine's at the garage. Why advertise the fact that I'm going out at this time of night?"

As the car sped toward the village in a world of moonlit magic, Greg told of his suspicion of Buff, to the accompaniment of the scrunch of tires on snow.

"What do you make of my hunch. Skid?"

"He's been with her thirty years? You're screwy."

"Perhaps, but if you had seen and heard him you might not be so sure. If we find the wounded guy at the cottage I'll believe the old boy is on the level."

"If—" Grant repeated skeptically. He stopped the roadster in a purple pool of shadow. "Look at the directions again. We're at a crossroads."

There were no lights in the story-and-a-half cottage when they reached it. It stood quite by itself in the midst of fields. The snow in the path to the front door was untrodden.

"It's emptyl" Grant whispered. "I believe you are right about Buff."

The uncurtained windows of the house stared at them with blind eyes. They walked cautiously to the back which looked as if plated with silver where the moonlight struck the glass panes. A light snow didn't quite conceal tire tracks, which led through an opening where part of a fence had been removed, then stretched across a field. They were mere dark shadows but they told a story.

"The getaway must have been made while it was still snowing, between ten and eleven," Greg whispered. "But the snow on the porch has been trodden flat. Let's go in."

The unlatched door opened at a touch. Greg flashed the

light from his electric torch about the small kitchen. No furniture. No sign of occupation except—Grant's eyes followed his pointing finger. Drop by slow drop, water dripped from the old-fashioned pump.

They tiptoed through two rooms where the wallpaper hung in moldy strips, creaked up the stairs. No trace of anything living, not even a mouse. The drip, drip, drip of water sounded like a ghostly rap, rap, rap, through the silent house. On the porch again they looked at the almost undistinguishable tire tracks.

"This is where we stop for the present, or are you game to follow those tracks in the roadster, Skid?" Greg's voice sounded in his own ears like a shout, the air was so clear.

"Sure, I'm game. We'll keep at this mystery till we bust it wide open. Come on."

He drove across a bimipy field. Came to a road well worn by traffic.

*'Where do we go from here?"

"Hold everything!" Greg jumped out, flashed his torch on the snow. "They entered from the direction of The Castle. Did their best to obliterate their trail. Missed one betraying curve. The tracks going in the other direction are lost in the highway. No use following them. Our best bet is to find out where the car came from."

'That makes sense to me. I still have a hunch that I'll find Senor Pedro Lorillo mixed in this somewhere."

They sped along the highway. It was darker now. The moon slid down behind tall pines. Before its light vanished they saw a broad ribbon of white turning left into a heavy growth of trees.

"Look, Skid! A road! I bet we've got something there.*'

On his knees Greg felt for ruts. He was right. A car had passed this way. He waved to Grant. Beckoned. Swung to the running board as the roadster turned in between the trees. The road was so narrow that the car brushed pine branches which by way of retaliation spatted soft snow in their faces.

"Dark as Hades," Grant whispered. A discordant shriek like a soul in torment rose, dwindled, died away. "There's that fiendish yeU again. What is it?"

"Screech owl. The thing set my hair on end when I heard it before. It makes the sinister setting of this mystery-busting job just one hundred per cent perfect."

They had run five miles when Greg exclaimed:

"I'U be darned! Do you see what I see. Skid?"

"If you're seeing something that looks like a prehistoric monster crouched to spring, I am. It's the game house."

"They must have picked up the guy Cline here before the snow stopped. This clears the butler of complicity. I'm pro-118

Bufif, now. The tip the garage man gave him was straight goods."

"But why in thunder should he give it to him? Why should the garage man squeal, Greg?"

"We'll get at that when we get at Annie. Better park the roadster here and foot it to the house."

As they silently opened the front door and slid into the hall, Linda, in Imperial Chinese-yeliow lounge coat and vermilion-satin trousers, streaked down the stairs like a flame.

"She's gone!" she whispered.

"Who's gone?" Greg demanded.

She caught his arm and Grant's. Drew the two men close.

"Annie. Bag and baggage."

XXIII

LINDA entered Ruth's living room to find it in the state of colored paper, brilliant ribbons and glittering tinsel which immediately precedes Christmas. There were packages already tied and labeled for the post, others swathed in gay wrappings; there were books and handkerchiefs, bags and scarfs on a table awaiting their turn. Ruth Brewster stopped snipping at a sheet of red paper.

"Lindyl As I'm alive. I'd given up expecting you. Thought you had hurried back to The Castle because of the snow. Ring for Libby. I told her not to bring the tea tray till I had reached the place where if I tied another ribbon I would have a nervous breakdown. I'm there."

Linda rang the bell and crossed to the window. The skyline beyond the Park was like a bespangled panorama where lighted holes pierced towers and pinnacles, where geometrical silhouettes gave shape and substance to what otherwise might seem a mythical, snowy fairyland.

"Each time I return to it, this city seems more wonderful, Ruth. If it hadn't been for your suggestion, 'There is only one common-sense move when you don't like your life. Do something about it,' I might stOl be working for Sim Cove and hating it. I did something and I'm everlastingly grateful to you for the push. I'd love to tie some of the packages."

She pulled a chair to the laden table and cut a sheet of silver paper to fit a book. Ruth paused in the act of looping red-satin ribbon into a flamboyant bow.

"It's a ticklish thing to give advice. Sometimes I wish you were still in the town and the house in which your grandfather was born."

"Wish 1 hadn't come to New York? You can't mean it. My

mental horizon has had a coast-to-coast extension. At home I was smugly aware that we were First Family; here I'm nobody unless I make good. In Keith Sanders' office I came up against hard, modern, complex problems. They shredded my heart to ribbons but the experience has made me more helpful, I hope."