Unexpected Night (16 page)

“Well, you're off duty for an hour, Hoskins.”

“I feel like stayin' right here and havin' a nap.”

“Do that. You'll need it. If you can manage it, I want you here till late to-night. After about 11:30 I'll take on myself, if necessary.”

“I can stay right along, if you want me to.”

“Good. We don't want Mrs. Barclay wandering in and trying to make Miss Cowden swallow that pick-me-up. Let's see what young Mr. Barclay has to say to his cousin Alma.”

“I done right to copy it, didn't I?”

“That remains to be seen. If it's a private note of affectionate condolence, you did wrong. Very wrong.” Gamadge went over to the north window of Room 22, and unfolded the paper. Hoskins watched him keenly. He read:

Thanks for the handout, but it's quite unnecessary, so far as I am concerned. Giving away money won't do you a bit of good. I want to see you, and you might as well make up your mind to it. Future proceedings depend entirely on you. It's in your hands.

Gamadge looked up at Hoskins, looked down at the note, and looked at Hoskins again. Then he said:

“You'll keep this to yourself.”

“I certainly will. Ain't I the law?”

“That's the way to talk. I'm going down, now, to arrange a getaway for Mrs. Cowden and her niece. When Peabody comes up, co-operate with him.”

“What's against the women goin' out for a walk?”

“Everything. They're supposed to be in seclusion. We don't want snapshots of them in the papers: ‘Bereaved family play golf shortly after finding of body.' Who else has rooms on this floor, do you know?”

“Old lady and her daughter, Number 11, and Dr. and Mrs. Baines, 2 and 4, end of the corridor. More comin' in to-night from Canada and points south.”

Mitchell, accompanied by a weedy individual in a pepper-and-salt suit who carried a briefcase, came to the door.

“We'll be obliged for your fingerprints,” he said, “just in case you left any in 17.”

The weedy individual got out his ink and pads, while Mitchell went and removed the seal from the door of 17. After being printed, Gamadge washed his hands in the bathroom of 22, and then hurried downstairs. He retired with Peabody to the alcove beside the coat closet.

“This is a delicate mission,” he said. “Did Mrs. Cowden and Miss Cowden bring their golf clubs with them?”

“Yes, sir. They're in the closet.”

“I want you to get a Number Five iron out of each of their bags.”

“Some ladies don't have matched clubs, Mr. Gamadge.”

“Mashie, then. Any sort of mashie. Watch your chance, and take them unobtrusively out by the back door, and around to the foot of the fire escape. Hide them under a bush or something. Then go up and knock at Room 21. Wait—post Hoskins down the hall, at the head of the stairs. Don't let the women come out of their rooms until the coast is clear. When they do come out, see them down the fire escape and give them their clubs.”

Peabody nodded.

“Mrs. Cowden's been here before; she knows the back way to the tenth hole. I'll meet them on the tee.”

Peabody asked no questions, but walked silently to the coat closet, and opened the door of it. Gamadge went out of the hotel by the back door, crossed the veranda, and descended to the square of short, rough grass that separated the Ocean House from the drive and the golf course. He turned right, and climbed a knoll to the golf club. This was a small building, which contained a lobby and locker rooms above, and the caddie master's precincts below. A shed, politely called the caddie house, seemed to be untenanted.

He went to his locker, got out his clubs, and then sought the caddie master. This official produced a very small caddie with sun-bleached hair under a ragged straw hat, and overalls rolled to his knees. He gazed timidly but hopefully at Gamadge, who murmured, “Oh, damn.”

“Sorry, Mr. Gamadge, but he's the only one left.” The caddie master also surveyed his underling without enthusiasm. “There's a match at Oakport—first of the season.”

“Doesn't matter, only I have two ladies along, and we'll be held up, what with a threesome and lost balls.”

“Good gosh, Mr. Gamadge, who's going to carry
their
clubs?”

“They're just walking around with mashies. What's your name, Caddie?…Norman? Come along. Wait a minute, though.”

He pitched a niblick and two or three other irons out of his bag, the caddie master catching them as they fell. Norman slung the residue over his shoulder with a professional air, and waited, excitement mixed with apprehension in his eyes.

“Tenth tee,” said Gamadge, “if you know where that is. I bet this is your first day out.”

“Yes, but my brothers are caddies. I been around with them.”

“All right, let's go.”

Norman gamboling ahead, they followed the edge of the eighteenth fairway, crossed a bushy path, and skirted high shrubbery. Norman rushed along a plank walk that bridged the long, swampy rough; and Gamadge, climbing the tee, got three balls from the pocket of his bag.

Mrs. Cowden and her niece arrived as he fitted a wooden peg into the sandy soil. They both wore golf shoes. Mrs. Cowden carried a shining steel club, while Miss Cowden, detached and sombre, switched at the tall grasses with an ancient wooden mashie.

“Good for you,” said Gamadge. “How was the getaway?”

“Perfectly managed. That charming little Peabody did it all as if he were managing an escape from the Bastille.”

“Will you drive? I know you could use my clubs.” He glanced with admiration at her long, well-muscled arms.

“Not yet, thanks. Perhaps I will try a shot, later on. I must steady down, first. Now, I should only drive into the swamp.”

Gamadge violently waved Norman out of the middle distance, and drove. They walked up the deserted fairway, Miss Cowden slightly in the rear; she took an occasional chip shot, obviously not caring whether she hit the ball or not, while her aunt, hardly pausing in her long stride, sent her ball ahead in long, clean drives, and at last placed it faultlessly on the green.

“You don't need much steadying,” Gamadge told her. “Here, take my putter.”

Mrs. Cowden sank her ball in one. They went on to the next tee, Alma lingering behind with the tittering Norman, whose manners deteriorated as his self-possession grew. He looked on, vastly amused, while she knocked the ball aimlessly about the green.

“Alma plays pretty well, when she cares to be serious about it,” said Mrs. Cowden. “Her clubs are shocking, of course; some old wooden ones of mine. Amberley was going to give her a new set for her birthday.”

“If all her other ones have a warp in them like that mashie of hers, she'll end by being the best trick golfer in this part of the country.”

“I'll tell you why I carry the good clubs, Mr. Gamadge—why I have carried them until now. After this, of course, Alma will have the best—of everything.”

“That's good.”

“I have not been able to provide the best for us both. Where golf is concerned, I have to play with women who play for money; and, other things being equal, steel clubs win. That is the sordid truth.”

“Nothing sordid about it.”

“You think not? Try counting the pennies for a few years, at your age, and see whether it isn't sordid.”

“Your niece wouldn't allow you to count pennies, if she could help it; would she, Mrs. Cowden?”

“I don't think she would. Nor would Amberley have allowed it, if he had had an eye for pennies himself. He never thought of them.”

Alma joined them on the next tee, and they played four holes without incident, except such as was supplied by Norman. He tripped and fell flat on his face, Gamadge's clubs spilling out of the bag on top of him; he had to have a nail removed from his shoe by Gamadge; he handed people brassies instead of drivers, and niblicks when they asked for putters; he stood in the middle of the greens to slap at mosquitoes, and took long drinks at all the fountains.

“This is a sporting shot,” said Gamadge, as they climbed to the fifteenth tee. “You do it with an iron. Now, watch the balls, Norman,” he begged. Norman galloped down to the green, and Gamadge chose a Number Four iron for Mrs. Cowden.

The fifteenth hole was a menace to players who sliced or hooked their drives. It was bounded on three sides by dense pinewoods; those on the right consisting of a thick belt which divided the fifteenth fairway from the sixteenth. The tee was very high, dipping sharply to a hollow behind, and overhanging a long, stony rough in front. Beyond the rough was a short, steep hill, and then a grassy slope to the green.

Mrs. Cowden said: “I remember this horror. A ball lost is a ball really lost.”

Gamadge respectfully offered her his Four iron. She accepted it, and placed her ball on the green. Alma Cowden got a fine long shot with his Number Five, but it struck the side of the green, and bounded off into the underbrush on the left.

“Mark it, mark it,” shouted Gamadge; but Norman had had no slightest idea of marking it; he had been taking his accustomed drink at the fountain. At the sound of Gamadge's voice he looked up guiltily, and then rushed over to the spot indicated by Gamadge, who stood pointing furiously with his iron. He began to scrabble in a hopeless and desultory fashion among the roots and dead leaves, while Gamadge placed his own ball on the green, not far from Mrs. Cowden's.

The three walked down from the tee, Alma well to the left, and leading. Norman scrabbled busily as they approached.

“Wretched boy,” began Gamadge.

“Don't scold him; I think I know—” began Mrs. Cowden, and then the ball came past them. It just missed Alma Cowden's right ear, shot on and downwards, struck the trunk of a tree with the sound and, it almost seemed to them, the velocity of a bullet, and rebounded to Norman's feet.

Norman, not having seen it arrive, greeted its appearance with surprise and pleasure. Obviously hoping that he might be able to palm it off on them as the lost ball, he fell upon it, dug it from among the pine needles, and waved it triumphantly in the air.

Alma Cowden had stood still for a moment, immobilised by shock; afterwards she stared about her, as if vaguely aware that something had happened, she was not quite certain what. The others recovered themselves more quickly.

“Oh, God!” gasped Mrs. Cowden, actually staggering against Gamadge. She seized his arm, and he had to extricate it before he dashed back to the empty tee. Once there, he looked about him. No human being was in sight; long shadows lay across the turf, and the woods were dark and silent. A woodpecker resumed its tapping; somewhere, a crow cawed; and from the neighbouring fairway came the click of a golf ball. Gamadge, for the first time in his life, experienced a sense of the uncanny.

He came back to the green, and found the two women standing beside the drinking fountain, and Norman vigorously pumping water. The contrivance was one of those which shoot a small column vertically upwards, and Alma's face and the front of her blouse were drenched. Her aunt was offering a handkerchief. They were both deadly pale, Alma's pallor having the slight greenish tinge that betrays nausea.

“Did you…did you see anybody?” asked Mrs. Cowden.

“No. Fellow must have ducked, the minute he saw what had happened. He had plenty of time to make off before I got up there.”

“How could it have been an accident? We were in plain sight.”

“You think somebody tried to kill your niece with a golf ball?” Gamadge shook his head. “Won't do. A driver isn't a rifle, or even a catapult.”

“Why did he run away?”

“Well, it's a public course; not all the people who use it are sportsmen, I suppose.”

“Mr. Gamadge.” She glanced behind her, to where Alma sat on a bench, drying her face and neck, while Norman hovered solicitously beside her. “You remember that Australian that used to play with Hagen, years ago?”

“Trick golfer; you mean him?” Gamadge regarded her curiously.

“Yes. He could do anything with a club and a ball. I've seen him—he could do anything. Mr. Gamadge, Arthur Atwood used to play like that. He didn't care for the game, and they said he cheated; but I saw him once—”

“Now, wait a minute.”

“He can't miss, I tell you.”

“But he did miss your niece, Mrs. Cowden; that is, if whoever it was took a shot at her. That's what I'm trying to tell you. He couldn't hope to be sure of it.”

“But he could try.”

“But golf is so chancy. If anything put him off his drive—that woodpecker up there, for instance; anything; or your niece turned her head—”

Young Barclay, a brassie under his arm, came around the trees on the right.

“Hello, there,” he said, languidly.

“Hello,” said Gamadge. “See any other solitary golfer come out of the woods in your vicinity?”