There is No Return (6 page)

He shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “If Mrs Canby gets a kick out of the old charlatan’s bag of tricks, where’s the harm? From all I’ve been able to hear, it’s little else she gets out of life.”

He was merely voicing what I had said to Ella only a few moments before, but I had no intention of chiming in with his sentiments.

“They ought to be in jail, the two of them!” I cried indignantly.

“Befuddling a poor grief-stricken creature! Deliberately preying upon her sorrow and credulity!”

Chet Keith looked at me curiously. “Maybe that is why Thomas Canby has sent for the sheriff.”

“The sheriff!”

“I have it from the girl at the switchboard.”

I remembered then that I had seen him chucking the pert young woman at the desk under the chin. He must have remembered that I had witnessed that encounter, for he grinned at me.

“In my trade it never pays to neglect any possible source of information,” he said airily. “The lady’s name is Maurine Smith. Wouldn’t it be? And she tells me that not half an hour ago Thomas Canby got in touch with the forces of law and order, which in this godforsaken hole happen to be the lord High Sheriff.”

“He intends to have the professor and his assistant arrested!”

“On the other hand,” said Chet Keith softly, “perhaps Mr Thomas Canby was more impressed than he cared to let on with the cold chisel which I produced as Exhibit A.”

I caught my breath. “He also believes it was an attempt upon his life!”

“He distinctly derided such a possibility,” murmured Chet Keith, “but me thought the gentleman didst protest too much.”

Behind me the wind gave a prolonged and agonized shriek, and I shivered and glanced over my shoulder.

“I don’t envy the sheriff his trip up the mountain in this storm,” I said.

Chet Keith grinned mirthlessly. “According to my informant, the sheriff would have pled off, but Thomas Canby was obdurate. He seemed to think the matter was not one that would be the better for being slept upon.”

“I don’t like it,” I muttered.

The flippant smile vanished from Chet Keith’s sardonic face as if it had been sponged off. “Neither do I,” he said gravely.

And then Ella descended upon us. She glanced curiously at my companion and plainly expected me to present him, but I moved away, and Ella, looking injured, trailed along.

“Who is that young man?” she inquired before we were entirely out of earshot. “He is handsome enough for a movie star.”

“And conceited enough to imagine that every woman he sees thinks so,” I remarked tartly.

In the rather wavy mirror behind the desk I saw Chet Keith grin as if he enjoyed my comment, which had not been my intention.

“The séance starts in ten minutes,” murmured Ella. “We might as well go on into the parlour and pick out our seats.”

I frowned. Ella has a genius for managing people, and there is nothing I dislike more than being pulled about like a puppet on a string. It was sheer perversity which made me refuse to yield to her suggestion.

“Go ahead, if you like, and pick out seats,” I said coldly. “I’m going to run up to my room for a minute.”

“Have it your own way as usual,” said Ella and walked over to a small, fluffy-looking woman with iron-grey hair and small black eyes like a Pekingese’s.

The rain had made my arthritis worse and as I toiled up those steep stairs I cursed myself for an obstinate old fool. The long corridor on the second floor was dimly lit, and my footsteps echoed when I walked down it. Not half the rooms which opened off to either side were occupied at any time, and at this hour I seemed to have the upper storey of the inn to myself except for the howl of the wind and the steady and melancholy swish of the rain.

I had the most unreasonable disinclination to close the door of my room behind me, but on turning on the light I found nothing to account for the state of nerves in which I seemed to be. There was no bat clinging to the wall and nothing had been disturbed during my absence. Nevertheless I had no desire to linger and, catching up my crocheted throw to put about my throat because the dampness was beginning to start that bronchial tickle which is so annoying, I turned to the door again. I had my hand upon the knob, in fact, when I heard the voice on the other side of the partition.

“I can’t go through with it! I won’t!” it cried.

It was a woman’s voice and quite desperate. The man sounded desperate, too, and very tremulous.

“You’ve got to,” he said.

“You don’t know how awful it is!” she wailed.

“It’s too late to think of that now,” he insisted.

The next moment I heard the door next to mine open and I peeped out into the corridor. Patrick Oliver passed so close to me, he could have reached out and touched my hand if I had not turned out my light so that he failed to see me. I watched him hurrying down the stairs, stepping very softly as if he did not wish to be heard. I did not realize that I was not alone until Chet Keith spoke to me from the darkness of his own room directly across the hall.

“And what do you make of that, Miss Adams?” he asked, keeping his voice quite low.

I started. “Of what?” I asked crossly, not relishing being trapped in the active role of eavesdropper.

He crossed the hall to my side. “Who’s your neighbour?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know, though there’s a connecting door between us, of all things. There! I’m going to sneeze. I knew I’d catch my death of cold in this draughty barn.”

“Don’t you dare sneeze,” snapped Chet Keith and without a by your leave pushed me back into my room, closing the door behind us to a crack through which it was barely possible to see into the corridor outside.

“Young man, you presume entirely too much,” I said haughtily.

“Just because you have a great deal of what the present generation calls charm, do not think you can wind me around your finger. This is the second time you have unceremoniously walked into my room. I’ll thank you to walk out at once and stay out.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, be still, you old fuss-budget!” exclaimed Mr Chet Keith.

Sheer anger throttled my tongue and at that moment I realized that the door to the next room had again opened and somebody was coming slowly down the hall toward us. The corridor was dimly lit, but we were in complete darkness and we both saw her distinctly, the pointed wan face, the shadowed grey eyes, the coil of pale gold hair knotted on the nape of her slender neck.

“Sheila Kelly!” I whispered. “The professor’s stooge!”

“And young Oliver, Thomas Canby’s nephew!” said Chet Keith.

“The girl told him she couldn’t go through with it, only he said she had to. He said it was too late to back out.”

Chet Keith stared at me and this time it was he who said, “I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”

Under the best of circumstances the parlours at Lebeau Inn are not cosy, consisting of two huge cavernous rooms separated by large folding doors which are seldom closed. A dreary green carpet runs the full length of both rooms, dotted at stated intervals with clumsy sofas and stiff upright chairs upholstered in faded red plush. On this night, with the rain beating a wild tattoo against the tall windows and the wind howling around the top of the mountain like a frustrated hyena, the people gathered in the near corner betrayed a tendency to huddle together like frightened sheep. Even the fire burning dispiritedly in the open fireplace did not mitigate the gloom, and it seemed to me that everybody there had acquired Ella’s habit of glancing uneasily over her shoulder.

Ella herself was sitting with the small woman with the fuzzy iron-grey hair and shoe-button eyes which had already reminded me of a Pekingese dog. Her name, it appeared, was Parrish, Mrs Frances Parrish, although Ella persisted in calling her Fannie, much to the lady’s annoyance. I thought she resented the fact that Ella had saved me a place on her other side. At any rate she continued right on with her conversation as if my arrival had been no interruption. Later I was to learn that nothing short of an earthquake or some other cataclysm of nature could check the flow of Fannie Parrish’s small talk.

“Nothing, positively nothing, except that I have always wanted to see Thomas Canby in the flesh, would have persuaded me to attend another of these awful sessions,” she said with emphasis.

She was the sort of woman who is unable to state anything without emphasis. “But I consider it my duty, absolutely my duty to my poor dear Theo, to forget myself. Nobody can say that I ever neglected my duty to my husband.”

“Fannie is a widow, Adelaide,” interpolated Ella.

“Frances,” amended Mrs Parrish and went right on. “Theo always said I had no head for business but he said he liked me that way. So many men do prefer little butterfly women, don’t you think, Miss Adams?”

I made no reply. I was watching Professor Matthews, who was arranging a circle of chairs radiating from a small round table upon which he had placed a large parlour lamp with a dingy red silk shade.

He, too, kept glancing over his shoulder, and I received the distinct impression that he was merely fidgeting to kill time while awaiting the arrival of Dora Canby and her husband. Sheila Kelly was sitting listlessly in a corner of the room, her gaze fixed upon her thin white hands which were locked in her lap. Lila Atwood and Hogan Brewster were whispering together over the head of her husband, who stared at the floor. Behind him Judy and her brother were engaged in some sort of argument. Jeff Wayne stood a little apart, his brows drawn. At the edge of the room I saw Chet Keith, frowning over a cigarette and watching Sheila Kelly, I would have said, although he took care to seem intent upon his own thoughts. Near us a nervous young mother conversed in low tones with a dyspeptic-looking old gentleman. Apparently no other guests in the hotel intended to attend the séance.

I realized that Fannie Parrish was prattling on. “Theo would want me to be here,” she announced dogmatically, “if only to show Thomas Canby that in spite of his efforts to ruin my husband, Theo left me well provided for.”

Again Ella undertook to enlighten me. “Theo Parrish was one of the many Thomas Canby took for a ride on his way up in the world.”

I suppose no man ever accumulated a great fortune without making enemies. It takes a certain amount of ruthlessness and, from what I had heard, Thomas Canby had never hesitated to wrest the advantage for himself from weaker men.

“No, I’m not the only one who has good reason to feel bitter toward Dora Canby’s husband,” said Fannie Parrish. “Only, as Theo used to say, I can never hold a grudge. After all, if Theo never got to be a great financial power like Thomas Canby, he did have red blood in his veins.”

This somewhat cryptic utterance Ella interpreted for my benefit.

“Fannie contends that Mr Canby isn’t a flesh-and-blood man at all,” she explained. “She says he’s just a money-making machine.”

“No wonder his poor wife walks around in a fog!” exclaimed Mrs Parrish indignantly. “The man’s inhuman!”

There was something extremely cold and calculating about the man who at that moment entered the room. Although Fannie Parrish exasperated me I felt inclined to agree with her that Thomas Canby looked as if he might have ticker tape running through his veins. He had been tall and thin even as a young man. He was almost emaciated now, and the sparse wiry hair which clung to his concave skull was grey. I have never seen a grimmer mouth or more penetrating eyes.

To my surprise Dora Canby had changed very little in twenty years. She still had mousy brown hair, unbecomingly fluffed with a curling iron, and peering, near-sighted blue eyes and a drooping mouth. I have no doubt her clothes were expensive but she looked just as dowdy as she had looked that summer when it was all her husband could do to find the money to keep her and their sick child at the inn. I recall thinking then that the woman looked crushed, as if life was too much for her. Apparently this had grown upon her with the years. Her niece Judy hurried forward to place a chair for her. Her nephew Patrick produced a small footstool for her feet.

Both the professor and Lila Atwood attempted to be useful in getting Dora Canby settled. Only her husband made no fuss over her.

He simply stood there, expressionless, until the to-do subsided.

“You see,” murmured Fannie Parrish, “he has no sympathy to waste upon that poor soul or anybody else.”

“Watch the professor,” Ella whispered to me.

Under Canby’s unwinking gaze Professor Thaddeus Matthews was attempting to do the honours of the occasion and making a clumsy job of it. There was sweat upon his long upper lip and his naturally booming voice betrayed him occasionally by going off into the most disconcerting squeak.

“Did you know the professor tried to call the meeting off?” asked Fannie Parrish.

Considering that she never stopped talking to listen, that woman, as I was to discover, was able to gather an astonishing amount of information.

“But Thomas Canby wouldn’t let him off,” she said. “I don’t imagine he ever let anybody off in his life, do you?”

“Of course he knows it’s a fake,” I muttered, “but I dare say he realizes he will never convince his wife unless he catches the tricksters in the act.”

“You can’t mean you don’t believe in the phenomenon, Miss Adams!” protested Fannie Parrish.

“I am unable to imagine anybody with brains being taken in by such folderol,” I said severely.

Ella shrugged her shoulders. “You will feel different when this is over, Adelaide.”

“Don’t be absurd!” I protested irritably. “As you know perfectly well, Ella Trotter, I investigated this spiritualist racket years ago, when it swept the country. I am familiar with every one of the dodges, from ectoplasm to automatic writing. I venture to say right now I could call out the professor’s paces step by step with out ever having seen him in action.”

“You don’t say!” breathed Fannie Parrish, staring at me with round eyes. “It must be wonderful to be so strong-minded, though as my poor dear Theo used to say, it rather puts men off, don’t you think?”

This last with that complacent condescension with which even the most unhappily married women are accustomed to look upon the spinster. Nothing irritates me more and my voice has a trick of rising along with my temper.