The Dain Curse Page 7

  “I think I see what you’re getting at,” Fitzstephan said slowly. “You think—”

  “Wait—here’s another thing. I talked to Leggett and his wife together a couple of times. Neither of them addressed a word to the other either time, though the woman did a lot of acting to make me think she would have told me something about her daughter’s disappearance if it had not been for him.”

  “Where did you find Gabrielle?”

  “After seeing Ruppert murdered, she beat it to the Haldorns’ with what money she had and her jewelry, turning the jewelry over to Minnie Hershey to raise money on. Minnie bought a couple of pieces for herself—her man had picked himself up a lot of dough in a crap game a night or two before: the police checked that—and sent the man out to peddle the rest. He was picked up in a hock-shop, just on general suspicion.”

  “Gabrielle was leaving home for good?” he asked.

  “You can’t blame her—thinking her father a murderer, and now catching her step-mother in the act. Who’d want to live in a home like that?”

  “And you think Leggett and his wife were on bad terms? That may be: I hadn’t seen much of them lately, and wasn’t intimate enough with them to have been let in on a condition of that sort if it had existed. Do you think he had perhaps learned something—some of the truth about her?”

  “Maybe, but not enough to keep him from taking the fall for her on Ruppert’s murder; and what he had learned wasn’t connected with this recent affair, because the first time I saw him he really believed in the burglary. But then—”

  “Aw, shut up! You’re never satisfied until you’ve got two buts and an if attached to everything. I don’t see any reason for doubting Mrs. Leggett’s story. She told us the whole thing quite gratuitously. Why should we suppose that she’d lie to implicate herself?”

  “You mean in her sister’s murder? She’d been acquitted of that, and I suppose the French system’s like ours in that she couldn’t be tried again for it, no matter what she confessed. She didn’t give anything away, brother.”

  “Always belittling,” he said. “You need more beer to expand your soul.”

  At the Leggett-Ruppert inquests I saw Gabrielle Leggett again, but was not sure that she even recognized me. She was with Madison Andrews, who had been Leggett’s attorney and was now his estate’s executor. Eric Collinson was there, but, peculiarly, apparently not with Gabrielle. He gave me nods and nothing else.

  The newspapers got hold of what Mrs. Leggett had said happened in Paris in 1913, and made a couple-day fuss over it. The recovery of Halstead and Beauchamp’s diamonds let the Continental Detective Agency out: we wrote Discontinued at the bottom of the Leggett record. I went up in the mountains to snoop around for a gold-mine-owner who thought his employees were gypping him.

  I expected to be in the mountains for at least a month: inside jobs of that sort take time. On the evening of my tenth day there I had a long-distance call from the Old Man, my boss.

  “I’m sending Foley up to relieve you,” he said. “Don’t wait for him. Catch tonight’s train back. The Leggett matter is active again.”

  PART

  2

  THE

  TEMPLE

  9

  TAD’S BLIND MAN

  Madison Andrews was a tall gaunt man of sixty with ragged white hair, eyebrows, and mustache that exaggerated the ruddiness of his bony hard-muscled face. He wore his clothes loose, chewed tobacco, and had twice in the past ten years been publicly named co-respondent in divorce suits.

  “I dare say young Collinson has babbled all sorts of nonsense to you,” he said. “He seems to think I’m in my second childhood, as good as told me so.”

  “I haven’t seen him,” I said. “I’ve only been back in town a couple of hours, long enough to go to the office and then come here.”

  “Well,” he said, “he is her fiancé, but I am responsible for her, and I preferred following Doctor Riese’s counsel. He is her physician. He said that letting her go to the Temple for a short stay would do more to restore her to mental health than anything else we could do. I couldn’t disregard his advice. The Haldorns may be, probably are, charlatans, but Joseph Haldorn is certainly the only person to whom Gabrielle has willingly talked, and in whose company she has seemed at peace, since her parents’ deaths. Doctor Riese said that to cross her in her desire to go to the Temple would be to send her mind deeper into its illness. Could I snap my fingers at his opinion because young Collinson didn’t like it?”

  I said: “No.”

  “I have no illusions concerning the cult,” he went on defending himself. “It is probably as full of quackery as any other. But we are not concerned with its religious aspect. We’re interested in it as therapeutics, as a cure for Gabrielle’s mind. Even if the character of its membership were not such that I could count with certainty on Gabrielle’s safety, I should still have been tempted to let her go. Her recovery is, as I see it, the thing with which we should be most concerned, and nothing else should be allowed to interfere with that.”

  He was worried. I nodded and kept quiet, waiting to learn what was worrying him. I got it little by little as he went on talking around in circles.

  On Doctor Riese’s advice and over Collinson’s protests he had let Gabrielle Leggett go to the Temple of the Holy Grail to stay awhile. She had wanted to go, no less prominently respectable a person than Mrs. Livingston Rodman was staying there at the time, the Haldorns had been Edgar Leggett’s friends: Andrews let her go. That had been six days ago. She had taken the mulatto, Minnie Hershey, with her as maid. Doctor Riese had gone to see her each day. On four days he had found her improved. On the fifth day her condition had alarmed him. Her mind was more completely dazed than it had ever been, and she had the symptoms of one who had been subjected to some sort of shock. He couldn’t get anything out of her. He couldn’t get anything out of Minnie. He couldn’t get anything out of the Haldorns. He had no way of learning what had happened, or if anything had happened.

  Eric Collinson had held Riese up for daily reports on Gabrielle. Riese told him the truth about his last visit. Collinson hit the ceiling. He wanted the girl taken away from the Temple immediately: the Haldorns were preparing to murder her, according to his notion. He and Andrews had a swell row. Andrews thought that the girl had simply suffered a relapse from which she would most speedily recover if left where she wished to stay. Riese was inclined to agree with Andrews. Collinson didn’t. He threatened to create a stink if they didn’t yank her away pronto.

  That worried Andrews. It wouldn’t look so good for him, the hard-headed lawyer, letting his ward go to such a place, if anything happened to her. On the other hand, he said he really believed it was for her benefit to stay there. And he didn’t want anything to happen to her. He finally reached a compromise with Collinson. Gabrielle should be allowed to remain in the Temple for a few more days at least, but somebody should be put in there to keep an eye on her, and to see that the Haldorns weren’t playing any tricks on her.

  Riese had suggested me: my luck in hitting on the manner of Leggett’s death had impressed him. Collinson had objected that my brutality was largely responsible for Gabrielle’s present condition, but he had finally given in. I already knew Gabrielle and her history, and I hadn’t made such a total mess of that first job: my efficiency offset my brutality, or words to that effect. So Andrews had phoned the Old Man, offered him a high enough rate to justify pulling me off another job, and there I was.

  “The Haldorns know you are coming,” Andrews wound up. “It doesn’t matter what they think about it. I simply told them that Doctor Riese and I had decided that, until Gabrielle’s mind became more settled, it would be best to have a competent man on hand in case of emergency, as much perhaps to safeguard others as her. There is no need of my giving you instructions. It is simply a matter of taking every precaution.”

  “Does Miss Leggett know I’m coming?”

  “No, and I don’t think we need say anything to h
er about it. You’ll make your watch over her as unobtrusive as possible, of course, and I doubt that she will, in her present state of mind, pay enough attention to your presence to resent it. If she does—well, we’ll see.”

  Andrews gave me a note to Aaronia Haldorn.

  An hour and a half later I was sitting opposite her in the Temple reception room while she read it. She put it aside and offered me long Russian cigarettes in a white jade box. I apologized for sticking to my Fatimas, and worked the lighter on the smoking stand she pushed out between us. When our cigarettes were burning, she said:

  “We shall try to make you as comfortable as possible. We are neither barbarians nor fanatics. I explain this because so many people are surprised to find us neither. This is a temple, but none of us supposes that happiness, comfort, or any of the ordinary matters of civilized living, will desecrate it. You are not one of us. Perhaps—I hope—you will become one of us. However—do not squirm—you won’t, I assure you, be annoyed. You may attend our services or not, as you choose, and you may come and go as you wish. You will show us, I am sure, the same consideration we show you, and I am equally sure that you will not interfere in any way with anything you may see—no matter how peculiar you may think it—so long as it does not promise to affect your—patient.”

  “Of course not,” I promised.

  She smiled, as if to thank me, rubbed her cigarette’s end in the ash tray, and stood up, saying: “I’ll show you your room.”

  Not a word had been said by either of us about my previous visit.

  Carrying my hat and gladstone bag, I followed her to the elevator. We got out at the fifth floor.

  “That is Miss Leggett’s room,” Aaronia Haldorn said, indicating the door that Collinson and I had taken turns knocking a couple of weeks before. “And this is yours.” She opened the door that faced Gabrielle’s across the corridor.

  My room was a duplicate of hers, except that it was without a dressing-room. My door, like hers, had no lock.

  “Where does her maid sleep?” I asked.

  “In one of the servants’ rooms on the top floor. Doctor Riese is with Miss Leggett now, I think. I’ll tell him you have arrived.”

  I thanked her. She went out of my room, closing the door.

  Fifteen minutes later Doctor Riese knocked and came in.

  “I am glad you are here,” he said, shaking hands. He had a crisp, precise way of turning out his words, sometimes emphasizing them by gesturing with the black-ribboned glasses in his hand. I never saw the glasses on his nose. “We shan’t need your professional skill, I trust, but I am glad you are here.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked in what was meant for a tone that invited confidences.

  He looked sharply at me, tapped his glasses on his left thumb-nail, and said:

  “What is wrong is, so far as I know, altogether in my sphere. I know of nothing else wrong.” He shook my hand again. “You’ll find your part quite boring, I hope.”

  “But yours isn’t?” I suggested.

  He stopped turning away towards the door, frowned, tapped his glasses with his thumb-nail again, and said:

  “No, it is not.” He hesitated, as if deciding whether to say something more, decided not to, and moved to the door.

  “I’ve a right to know what you honestly think about it,” I said.

  He looked sharply at me again. “I don’t know what I honestly think about it.” A pause. “I am not satisfied.” He didn’t look satisfied. “I’ll be in again this evening.”

  He went out and shut the door. Half a minute later he opened the door, said, “Miss Leggett is extremely ill,” shut the door again and went away.

  I grumbled, “This is going to be a lot of fun,” to myself, sat down at a window and smoked a cigarette.

  A maid in black and white knocked on the door and asked me what I wanted for luncheon. She was a hearty pink and plump blonde somewhere in the middle twenties, with blue eyes that looked curiously at me and had jokes in them. I took a shot of Scotch from the bottle in my bag, ate the luncheon the maid presently returned with, and spent the afternoon in my room.

  By keeping my ears open I managed to catch Minnie as she came out of her mistress’s room at a little after four. The mulatto’s eyes jerked wide when she saw me standing in my doorway.

  “Come in,” I said. “Didn’t Doctor Riese tell you I was here?”

  “No, sir. Are—are you—? You’re not wanting anything with Miss Gabrielle?”

  “Just looking out for her, seeing that nothing happens to her. And if you’ll keep me wised up, let me know what she says and does, and what others say and do, you’ll be helping me, and helping her; because then I won’t have to bother her.”

  The mulatto said, “Yes, yes,” readily enough, but, as far as I could learn from her brown face, my cooperative idea wasn’t getting across any too well.

  “How is she this afternoon?” I asked.

  “She’s right cheerful this afternoon, sir. She like this place.”

  “How’d she spend the afternoon?”

  “She—I don’t know, sir. She just kind of spent it—quiet like.”

  Not much news there. I said:

  “Doctor Riese thinks she’ll be better off not knowing I’m here, so you needn’t say anything to her about me.”

  “No, sir, I sure won’t,” she promised, but it sounded more polite than sincere.

  In the early evening Aaronia Haldorn came in and invited me down to dinner. The dining-room was paneled and furnished in dark walnut. There were ten of us at the table.

  Joseph Haldorn was tall, built like a statue, and wore a black silk robe. His hair was thick, long, white, and glossy. His thick beard, trimmed round, was white and glossy. Aaronia Haldorn introduced me to him, calling him “Joseph,” as if he had no last name. All the others addressed him in the same way. He gave me a white even-toothed smile and a warm strong hand. His face, healthily pink, was without line or wrinkle. It was a tranquil face, especially the clear brown eyes, somehow making you feel at peace with the world. The same soothing quality was in his baritone voice.

  He said: “We are happy to have you here.”

  The words were merely polite, meaningless, yet, as he said them, I actually believed that for some reason he was happy. Now I understood Gabrielle Leggett’s desire to come to this place. I said that I, too, was happy to be there, and while I was saying it I actually thought I was.

  Besides Joseph and his wife and their son at the table there was Mrs. Rodman, a tall frail woman with transparent skin, faded eyes, and a voice that never rose above a murmur; a man named Fleming, who was young, dark, very thin, and wore a dark mustache and the detached air of one busy with his own thoughts; Major Jeffries, a well-tailored, carefully mannered man, stout and bald and sallow; his wife, a pleasant sort of person in spite of a kittenishness thirty years too young for her; a Miss Hillen, sharp of chin and voice, with an intensely eager manner; and Mrs. Pavlov, who was quite young, had a high-cheek-boned dark face, and avoided everybody’s eyes.

  The food, served by two Filipino boys, was good. There was not much conversation and none of it was religious. It wasn’t so bad.

  After dinner I returned to my room. I listened at Gabrielle Leggett’s door for a few minutes, but heard nothing. In my room I fidgeted and smoked and waited for Doctor Riese to show up as he had promised. He didn’t show up. I supposed that one of the emergencies that are regular parts of doctors’ lives had kept him elsewhere, but his not coming made me irritable. Nobody went in or out of Gabrielle’s room. I tiptoed over to listen at her door a couple of times. Once I heard nothing. Once I heard faint meaningless rustling sounds.

  At a little after ten o’clock I heard some of the inmates going past my door, probably on their way to their rooms for the night.

  At five minutes past eleven I heard Gabrielle’s door open. I opened mine. Minnie Hershey was going down the corridor toward the rear of the building. I was tempted to call her, but didn’t. My l
ast attempt to get anything out of her had been a flop, and I wasn’t feeling tactful enough now to stand much chance of having better luck.

  By this time I had given up hopes of seeing Riese before the following day.

  I switched off my lights, left my door open, and sat there in the dark, looking at the girl’s door and cursing the world. I thought of Tad’s blind man in a dark room hunting for a black hat that wasn’t there, and knew how he felt.

  At a little before midnight Minnie Hershey, in hat and coat as if she had just come in from the street, returned to Gabrielle’s room. She didn’t seem to see me. I stood up silently and tried to peep past her when she opened the door, but didn’t have any luck.

  Minnie remained there until nearly one o’clock, and when she came out she closed the door very softly, walking tiptoe. That was an unnecessary precaution on the thick carpet. Because it was unnecessary it made me nervous. I went to my door and called in a low voice:

  “Minnie.”

  Maybe she didn’t hear me. She went on tiptoeing down the corridor. That increased my jumpiness. I went after her quickly and stopped her by catching one of her wiry wrists.

  Her Indian face was expressionless.

  “How is she?” I asked.

  “Miss Gabrielle’s all right, sir. You just leave her alone,” she mumbled.

  “She’s not all right. What’s she doing now?”

  “She’s sleeping.”

  “Coked?”

  She raised angry maroon eyes and let them drop again, saying nothing.

  “She sent you out to get dope?” I demanded, tightening my grip on her wrist.

  “She sent me out to get some—some medicine—yes, sir.”

  “And took some and went to sleep?”

  “Y-yes, sir.”

  “We’ll go back and take a look at her,” I said.

  The mulatto tried to jerk her wrist free. I held it. She said: