The Dain Curse Read online

  “Mayn’t I go with you?”

  I shook my head, saying: “I’ve got work to do, and you’re supposed to be resting.”

  She said, “Oh,” and reached for her coffee. I turned to the door. “The rest of the morphine.” She spoke over the edge of her cup. “You’ve put it in a safe place, where nobody will find it?”

  “Yeah,” I said, grinning at her, patting my coat-pocket.

  In Quesada I spent half an hour talking to Rolly and reading the San Francisco papers. They were beginning to poke at Andrews with hints and questions that stopped just short of libel. That was so much to the good. The deputy sheriff hadn’t anything to tell me.

  I went over to the county seat. Vernon was in court. Twenty minutes of the sheriff’s conversation didn’t add anything to my education. I called up the agency and talked to the Old Man. He said Hubert Collinson, our client, had expressed some surprise at our continuing the operation, having supposed that Whidden’s death had cleared up the mystery of his son’s murder.

  “Tell him it didn’t,” I said. “Eric’s murder was tied up with Gabrielle’s troubles, and we can’t get to the bottom of one except through the other. It’ll probably take another week. Collinson’s all right,” I assured the Old Man. “He’ll stand for it when it’s explained to him.”

  The Old Man said, “I certainly hope so,” rather coldly, not enthusiastic over having five operatives at work on a job that the supposed client might not want to pay for.

  I drove up to San Francisco, had dinner at the St. Germain, stopped at my rooms to collect another suit and a bagful of clean shirts and the like, and got back to the house in the cove a little after midnight. MacMan came out of the darkness while I was tucking the car—we were still using Fitzstephan’s—under the shed. He said nothing had happened in my absence. We went into the house together. Mickey was in the kitchen, yawning and mixing himself a drink before relieving MacMan on sentry duty.

  “Mrs. Collinson gone to bed?” I asked.

  “Her light’s still on. She’s been in her room all day.”

  MacMan and I had a drink with Mickey and then went upstairs. I knocked at the girl’s door.

  “Who is it?” she asked. I told her. She said: “Yes?”

  “No breakfast in the morning.”

  “Really?” Then, as if it were something she had almost forgotten: “Oh, I’ve decided not to put you to all the trouble of curing me.” She opened the door and stood in the opening, smiling too pleasantly at me, a finger holding her place in a book. “Did you have a nice ride?”

  “All right,” I said, taking the rest of the morphine from my pocket and holding it out to her. “There’s no use of my carrying this around.”

  She didn’t take it. She laughed in my face and said:

  “You are a brute, aren’t you?”

  “Well, it’s your cure, not mine.” I put the stuff back in my pocket. “If you—” I broke off to listen. A board had creaked down the hall. Now there was a soft sound, as of a bare foot dragging across the floor.

  “That’s Mary watching over me,” Gabrielle whispered gaily. “She made a bed in the attic and refused to go home. She doesn’t think I’m safe with you and your friends. She warned me against you, said you were—what was it?—oh, yes—wolves. Are you?”

  “Practically. Don’t forget—no breakfast in the morning.”

  The following afternoon I gave her the first dose of Vic Dallas’s mixture, and three more at two-hour intervals. She spent that day in her room. That was Saturday.

  On Sunday she had ten grains of morphine and was in high spirits all day, considering herself as good as cured already.

  On Monday she had the remainder of Vic’s concoction, and the day was pretty much like Saturday. Mickey Linehan returned from the county seat with the news that Fitzstephan was conscious, but too weak and too bandaged to have talked if the doctors had let him; that Andrews had been to San Mateo to see Aaronia Haldorn again; and that she had been to the hospital to see Fink, but had been refused permission by the sheriffs office.

  Tuesday was a more exciting day.

  Gabrielle was up and dressed when I carried her orange-juice breakfast in. She was bright-eyed, restless, talkative, and laughed easily and often until I mentioned—off-hand—that she was to have no more morphine.

  “Ever, you mean?” Her face and voice were panicky. “No, you don’t mean that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But I’ll die.” Tears filled her eyes, ran down her small white face, and she wrung her hands. It was childishly pathetic. I had to remind myself that tears were one of the symptoms of morphine withdrawal. “You know that’s not the way. I don’t expect as much as usual. I know I’ll get less and less each day. But you can’t stop it like this. You’re joking. That would kill me.” She cried some more at the thought of being killed.

  I made myself laugh as if I were sympathetic but amused.

  “Nonsense,” I said cheerfully. “The chief trouble you’re going to have is in being too alive. A couple of days of that, and you’ll be all set.”

  She bit her lips, finally managed a smile, holding out both hands to me.

  “I’m going to believe you,” she said. “I do believe you. I’m going to believe you no matter what you say.”

  Her hands were clammy. I squeezed them and said:

  “That’ll be swell. Now back to bed. I’ll look in every now and then, and if you want anything in between, sing out.”

  “You’re not going off today?”

  “No,” I promised.

  She stood the gaff pretty well all afternoon. Of course, there wasn’t much heartiness in the way she laughed at herself between attacks when the sneezing and yawning hit her, but the thing was that she tried to laugh.

  Madison Andrews came between five and half-past. Having seen him drive in, I met him on the porch. The ruddiness of his face had been washed out to a weak orange.

  “Good evening,” he said politely. “I wish to see Mrs. Collinson.”

  “I’ll deliver any message to her,” I offered.

  He pulled his white eyebrows down and some of his normal ruddiness came back.

  “I wish to see her.” It was a command.

  “She doesn’t wish to see you. Is there any message?”

  All of his ruddiness was back now. His eyes were hot. I was standing between him and the door. He couldn’t go in while I stood there. For a moment he seemed about to push me out of the way. That didn’t worry me: he was carrying a handicap of twenty pounds and twenty years.

  He pulled his jaw into his neck and spoke in the voice of authority:

  “Mrs. Collinson must return to San Francisco with me. She cannot stay here. This is a preposterous arrangement.”

  “She’s not going to San Francisco,” I said. “If necessary, the district attorney can hold her here as a material witness. Try upsetting that with any of your court orders, and we’ll give you something else to worry about. I’m telling you this so you’ll know how we stand. We’ll prove that she might be in danger from you. How do we know you haven’t played marbles with the estate? How do we know you don’t mean to take advantage of her present upset condition to shield yourself from trouble over the estate? Why, man, you might even be planning to send her to an insane-asylum so the estate will stay under your control.”

  He was sick behind his eyes, though the rest of him stood up well enough under this broadside. When he had got his breath and had swallowed, he demanded:

  “Does Gabrielle believe this?” His face was magenta.

  “Who said anybody believed it?” I was trying to be bland. “I’m just telling you what we’ll go into court with. You’re a lawyer. You know there’s not necessarily any connection between what’s true and what you go into court with—or into the newspapers.”

  The sickness spread from behind his eyes, pushing the color from his face, the stiffness from his bones; but he held himself tall and he found a level voice.

  “Y
ou may tell Mrs. Collinson,” he said, “that I shall return my letters testamentary to the court this week, with an accounting of the estate, and a request that I be relieved.”

  “That’ll be swell,” I said, but I felt sorry for the old boy shuffling down to his car, climbing slowly into it.

  I didn’t tell Gabrielle he had been there.

  She was whining a little now between her yawning and sneezing, and her eyes were running water. Face, body, and hands were damp with sweat. She couldn’t eat. I kept her full of orange juice. Noises and odors—no matter how faint, how pleasant—were becoming painful to her, and she twitched and jerked continually in her bed.

  “Will it get much worse than this?” she asked.

  “Not much. There’ll be nothing you can’t stand.”

  Mickey Linehan was waiting for me when I got downstairs.

  “The spick’s got herself a chive,” he said pleasantly.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. It’s the one I’ve been using to shuck lemons to take the stink out of that bargain-counter gin you bought—or did you just borrow it, the owner knowing you’d return it because nobody could drink it? It’s a paring knife—four or five inches of stainless steel blade—so you won’t get rust-marks on your undershirt when she sticks it in your back. I couldn’t find it, and asked her about it, and she didn’t look at me like I was a well-poisoner when she said she didn’t know anything about it, and that’s the first time she never looked at me that way, so I knew she had it.”

  “Smart of you,” I said. “Well, keep an eye on her. She don’t like us much.”

  “I’m to do that?” Mickey grinned. “My idea would be for everybody to look out for himself, seeing that you’re the lad she dog-eyes most, and it’s most likely you that’ll get whittled on. What’d you ever do to her? You haven’t been dumb enough to fool with a Mex lady’s affections, have you?”

  I didn’t think he was funny, though he may have been.

  Aaronia Haldorn arrived just before dark, in a Lincoln limousine driven by a Negro who turned the siren loose when he brought the car into the drive. I was in Gabrielle’s room when the thing howled. She all but jumped out of bed, utterly terrorized by what must have been an ungodly racket to her too sensitive ears.

  “What was it? What was it?” she kept crying between rattling teeth, her body shaking the bed.

  “Sh-h-h,” I soothed her. I was acquiring a pretty fair bedside manner. “Just an automobile horn. Visitors. I’ll go down and head them off.”

  “You won’t let anybody see me?” she begged.

  “No. Be a good girl till I get back.”

  Aaronia Haldorn was standing beside the limousine talking to MacMan when I came out. In the dim light, her face was a dusky oval mask between black hat and black fur coat—but her luminous eyes were real enough.

  “How do you do?” she said, holding out a hand. Her voice was a thing to make warm waves run up your back. “I’m glad for Mrs. Collinson’s sake that you’re here. She and I have had excellent proof of your protective ability, both owing our lives to it.”

  That was all right, but it had been said before. I made a gesture that was supposed to indicate modest distaste for the subject, and beat her to the first tap with:

  “I’m sorry she can’t see you. She isn’t well.”

  “Oh, but I should so like to see her, if only for a moment. Don’t you think it might be good for her?”

  I said I was sorry. She seemed to accept that as final, though she said: “I came all the way from the city to see her.”

  I tried that opening with:

  “Didn’t Mr. Andrews tell you … ?” letting it ravel out.

  She didn’t say whether he had. She turned and began walking slowly across the grass. There was nothing for me to do but walk along beside her. Full darkness was only a few minutes away. Presently, when we had gone thirty or forty feet from the car, she said:

  “Mr. Andrews thinks you suspect him.”

  “He’s right.”

  “Of what do you suspect him?”

  “Juggling the estate. Mind, I don’t know, but I do suspect him.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” I said; “and not of anything else.”

  “Oh, I should suppose that was quite enough.”

  “It’s enough for me. I didn’t think it was enough for you.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  I didn’t like the ground I was on with this woman. I was afraid of her. I piled up what facts I had, put some guesses on them, and took a jump from the top of the heap into space:

  “When you got out of prison, you sent for Andrews, pumped him for all he knew, and then, when you learned he was playing with the girl’s pennies, you saw what looked to you like a chance to confuse things by throwing suspicion on him. The old boy’s woman-crazy: he’d be duck-soup for a woman like you. I don’t know what you’re planning to do with him, but you’ve got him started, and have got the papers started after him. I take it you gave them the tip-off on his high financing? It’s no good, Mrs. Haldorn. Chuck it. It won’t work. You can stir him up, all right, and make him do something criminal, get him into a swell jam: he’s desperate enough now that he’s being poked at. But whatever he does now won’t hide what somebody else did in the past. He’s promised to get the estate in order and hand it over. Let him alone. It won’t work.”

  She didn’t say anything while we took another dozen steps. A path came under our feet. I said:

  “This is the path that runs up the cliff, the one Eric Collinson was pushed from. Did you know him?”

  She drew in her breath sharply, with almost a sob in her throat, but her voice was steady, quiet and musical, when she replied:

  “You know I did. Why should you ask?”

  “Detectives like questions they already know the answer to. Why did you come down here, Mrs. Haldorn?”

  “Is that another whose answer you know?”

  “I know you came for one or both of two reasons.”

  “Yes?”

  “First, to learn how close we were to our riddle’s answer. Right?”

  “I’ve my share of curiosity, naturally,” she confessed.

  “I don’t mind making that much of your trip a success. I know the answer.”

  She stopped in the path, facing me, her eyes phosphorescent in the deep twilight. She put a hand on my shoulder: she was taller than I. The other hand was in her coat-pocket. She put her face nearer mine. She spoke very slowly, as if taking great pains to be understood:

  “Tell me truthfully. Don’t pretend. I don’t want to do an unnecessary wrong. Wait, wait—think before you speak—and believe me when I say this isn’t the time for pretending, for lying, for bluffing. Now tell me the truth: do you know the answer?”

  “Yeah.”

  She smiled faintly, taking her hand from my shoulder, saying:

  “Then there’s no use of our fencing.”

  I jumped at her. If she had fired from her pocket she might have plugged me. But she tried to get the gun out. By then I had a hand on her wrist. The bullet went into the ground between our feet. The nails of her free hand put three red ribbons down the side of my face. I tucked my head under her chin, turned my hip to her before her knee came up, brought her body hard against mine with one arm around her, and bent her gun-hand behind her. She dropped the gun as we fell. I was on top. I stayed there until I had found the gun. I was getting up when MacMan arrived.

  “Everything’s eggs in the coffee,” I told him, having trouble with my voice.

  “Have to plug her?” he asked, looking at the woman lying still on the ground.

  “No, she’s all right. See that the chauffeur’s behaving.”

  MacMan went away. The woman sat up, tucked her legs under her, and rubbed her wrist. I said:

  “That’s the second reason for your coming, though I thought you meant it for Mrs. Collinson.”

  She got up, not saying anything. I didn’t help her up, n
ot wanting her to know how shaky I was. I said:

  “Since we’ve gone this far, it won’t do any harm and it might do some good to talk.”

  “I don’t think anything will do any good now.” She set her hat straight. “You say you know. Then lies are worthless, and only lies would help.” She shrugged. “Well, what now?”

  “Nothing now, if you’ll promise to remember that the time for being desperate is past. This kind of thing splits up in three parts—being caught, being convicted, and being punished. Admit it’s too late to do anything about the first, and—well, you know what California courts and prison boards are.”

  She looked curiously at me and asked: “Why do you tell me this?”

  “Because being shot at’s no treat to me, and because when a job’s done I like to get it cleaned up and over with. I’m not interested in trying to convict you for your part in the racket, and it’s a nuisance having you horning in now, trying to muddy things up. Go home and behave.”

  Neither of us said anything more until we had walked back to the limousine. Then she turned, put out her hand to me, and said:

  “I think—I don’t know yet—I think I owe you even more now than before.”

  I didn’t say anything and I didn’t take her hand. Perhaps it was because she was holding her hand out that she asked:

  “May I have my pistol now?”

  “No.”

  “Will you give my best wishes to Mrs. Collinson, and tell her I’m so sorry I couldn’t see her?”

  “Yeah.”

  She said, “Goodbye,” and got into the car; I took off my hat and she rode away.

  22

  CONFESSIONAL

  Mickey Linehan opened the front door for me. He looked at my scratched face and laughed:

  “You do have one hell of a time with your women. Why don’t you ask them instead of trying to take it away from them? It’d save you a lot of skin.” He poked a thumb at the ceiling. “Better go up and negotiate with that one. She’s been raising hell.”

  I went up to Gabrielle’s room. She was sitting in the middle of the wallowed-up bed. Her hands were in her hair, tugging at it. Her soggy face was thirty-five years old. She was making hurt-animal noises in her throat.