Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 278
Then he heard the cry. It was a baby’s importunate yell to be tended to, and at first Nocka imagined that the long-awaited heir had at last arrived next door. The little fellow was feeling rather fine, and he felt glad that the anxious parents had finally been blessed. Complacently he went on to enumerate the possibilities of the whereabouts of his boss.
The baby cried again. There’s really very little to consider deeply about a baby’s cry unless it comes late at night and keeps one awake, or unless one is the father of the infant and has to walk the floor with it. Nokashima, however, pricked up his ears sharply the second time he heard this particular baby cry. It was not the tone exactly that electrified his small Oriental being: it was what the baby said. Nocka was standing fairly near the water from which the cry seemed to emanate; he could not have been mistaken.
“Goddamn it, you dopey Jap,” said the high falsetto, speaking, however, in crisp, careful enunciation, “come here this minute and drag me out of this pool before I shrivel up to nothing. Quick, I tell you — I’m on my way!”
Nokashima had seen a lot of queer things in his life, but now he was dumbfounded. Horror rendered him speechless. He dreaded to turn his eyes to the pool because of the sight which he was sure would greet him. And it did.
For there, struggling and breasting the surface as best it could, was a babe of perhaps one year old, greatly impeded by long trousers, a dress shirt, and a tuxedo coat.
“Well,” said the mind of Rex Pebble through the voice of the babe-in- arms, “don’t stand there all night. That is, unless you want to lose the best boss you ever had. I’ll be subtracted to zero if you don’t hurry. I think I must be down to about one year now. Only a year left to go, and I’m going backward fast.”
The startled house man recovered sufficiently to rush to his employer’s rescue. With tender care he reached down and lifted the squirming form from the water. Nokashima felt an almost fatherly pride as he cupped the infant in his arms. Life had its compensations. He had never dreamed that he would hold Rex Pebble in this fashion. The quaint fellow began to croon what he imagined was a lullaby as he started toward the house, rocking his impromptu cradle back and forth to the melody. It wasn’t hard for Nokashima to rock, not in his condition.
“Stop that!” remarked the baby harshly. “Don’t you think it’s bad enough to have to endure this final mortification, without being sung to? Get me a brandy-and-soda, and make it snappy!”
Seldom had Nokashima heard such commands from the sweet mouth of a new- born. Seldom, either, had he observed so ludicrous a costume as Rex Pebble wore, the long trousers drooping and dripping far beyond the tender pink toes they concealed.
With a curious mixture of feelings and a very unsteady walk, the little yellow man crossed the lawn with his new charge to the home of Rex Pebble’s mistress.
14. OF HUMAN BADINAGE
WHEN SUE PEBBLE, accompanied by that lush garden piece, Baggage, emerged freshly trim and twenty from the wonder-working waters, she made straight for Spray Summers’ home with the evil intent of lifting a new gown to take the place of the one which she carried, dripping, on her arm. Sue was attired solely in step-ins, and a sweet sight she was, too. The garment fitted her appealing form like a pair of mittens, showing off its lovely contours to the best and most dangerous advantage, depending upon the point of view.
“Here,” directed Baggage, “we’ll just slip in the bar and have a little snifter to celebrate before we go on upstairs.”
At first Sue was reluctant to enter the kitchen-bar, not because the men of the house were collected there, but because, before she took another step, she had a vain desire to observe her new build in a full-length mirror. The idea of a highball, none the less, overcame her pulsing vanity, and Sue went into the room with Baggage.
Kippie, Major Jaffey, and Hal sat in the kitchen, steeping themselves in the beneficent fumes of alcohol. Kippie had had quite a few. Robbed of the brandy bottle which Nokashima had carried out into the garden, he had laid siege to the cellar and from it taken a choice array of old Irish whiskies. Kippie knew the secret of Spray Summers’ cellar, which was that, because of Sue Pebble’s scruples, Rex did most of his really professional drinking away from home. Kippie was so-high with his Irish whiskies-and-waters, and was holding forth with great gusto on the vices and virtues of blondes versus brunettes when Sue and Baggage entered.
The three men, lifting their eyes through a haze, stared at the newcomers. Sue Pebble, clad in step-ins, showed not the slightest embarrassment. Temporarily Sue had lost sight of the magic of her transformation.
“Which one of you men would like to lend a girl a drink?” demanded Baggage. “You seem to be pretty well stocked.”
“Both inside and outside,” admitted the handsome young Kippie, “but not too much so to know a pretty girl when we see one, eh, fellows?” The Major and Hal murmured hearty approval.
“Well, I like that,” remarked Baggage, since all eyes seemed to center on the charming Mrs. Pebble. “No accounting for tastes. However, you may pass that bottle around, and we’ll toast your good taste.” Baggage was a generous-hearted girl.
There was a general clinking of glasses.
From Sue’s arm hung the dripping clothes which she had just taken off.
“Have you been immersed in a lake or something, madam?” asked the Major, by way of opening a conversation.
“I’ll say I have,” smiled back Sue, “and what an immersion it was, old son.”
“Major Lynnhaven Jaffey, at your service, madam.” This with a dignified bow.
“I’ll be calling on you, probably,” said Sue.
“I’m usually in bed by eleven,” returned the Major, misunderstanding.
“You’re one up on me, Uncle Jaffey,” said Mrs. Pebble, “but you do look like an exceptionally decent sort.”
At the moment Hal, the fireman, who out of the entire household had probably made the steadiest, least spectacular alcoholic progress throughout the evening, broke in, gazing at Sue earnestly.
“Say, lady,” inquired Hal, “is this guy really your uncle?”
“No, I have no uncle,” Sue replied. “I did have, but he’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“Quite.”
“Your uncle is quite dead, lady?”
“He should be. He was a fine fellow.”
“You seem to take his passing rather calmly.” Hal shook his head sorrowfully.
“He didn’t pass. He was murdered.” Sue looked intently at Hal.
“Don’t look at me like that, lady. I didn’t murder your uncle. Did I?” asked the anxious Hal.
“How could you murder my uncle?” calculated the lovely Mrs. Pebble, drinking.
“Offhand I can think of five different ways to murder people. I’ve been considering them for years,” said Hal.
Kippie, through his bewildered point of view, had been trying to make something of this hit-and-run conversation. Apparently there was nothing to be made, only a vague doubt assailed him. He glanced sharply at the wet garments hanging on Sue’s arm. Surely somewhere he had seen those clothes before. There was something very familiar about them which he couldn’t quite place.
“Speaking of murder,” Kippie tried a shot in the dark, “where did you get those clothes?”
“They’re my clothes,” returned Sue defensively. “I bought them — that is, my husband bought them for me.”
“Who are you, anyway?”
“You ought to know who I am.”
“Maybe I ought to, but I don’t, and that’s what’s worrying me. You’re pretty, I like you, I could be very fond of you, but I don’t know you.” Kippie shook his head sadly.
“Maybe I know somebody you know,” said Sue Pebble teasingly. “Maybe I know an aunt of yours or something.”
So that was it! A small charge of recognition went off in young Kippie’s head. The woman had his aunt Sue’s clothes. A murderess! She had done away with his aunt and taken her clothes.
“That’s right,” Kippie agreed cautiously, “maybe I might have an aunt or something. By the way, when did you see my aunt last?”
“Oh,” responded Mrs. Pebble coyly, “I haven’t really seen her since I put on these step-ins.”
Aha — check! flashed through Kippie’s mind.
“How was she?” asked the woman’s nephew shrewdly. “I had a hard time with her, but I finally got her to agree to do as I said.”
“What did you say?”
“I told her it was time she passed on.”
The foul, heartless cruelty of it! Kippie thrilled to the scent of violent death. He almost whistled for Mr. Henry, the bloodhound, then considered how much more a hero he would be if the whole discovery of the deed devolved upon himself.
“Didn’t you care for my aunt?” asked Kippie craftily. “Why did you tell her it was time she passed on?”
“For one thing,” answered Sue Pebble enigmatically, “her batteries needed recharging. Then there were other things wrong with her — her husband, for instance.”
“It seems to me that that’s off the point,” cut in Sue Pebble’s self- appointed cross-examiner, helping himself to another whisky-and-soda and blinking at his aunt through heavy-lidded eyes. “I asked if you had no emotional feeling toward my aunt, no affection for her.”
“But I am on the point,” protested Sue. “I say that the worst thing wrong with her was her husband. He was an old fossil.”
“Was an old fossil?” inquired the young man sharply, wondering dimly when it was he had last seen his uncle. He looked around the room. No Rex Pebble in sight. He tried to find his way back in memory through a tangle of uplifted glasses to the last time he had seen the man. Very darkly, as though from a great distance, he seemed to catch a glimpse of Rex Pebble leaving this room with a bottle of brandy under his arm and some most disturbing ideas in his head — something about an overdraft. That was it! Kippie had brought the news from the office himself. And Rex had gone off into the garden in a distressed state of mind. It was very evident that this beautiful creature in step-ins, who sat beside him gracefully tossing off liquors and enjoying herself, was a first-class criminal character, fit for the line-up.
“If you ask me,” confided Sue Pebble, “I think your uncle was an awful fool to marry that woman in the first place. Imagine being cooped up in a house for twenty years with a person like that.”
The crassness of the woman, talking about the person, or perhaps the two people, with whom she had done away, shocked Kippie to the core of his soul.
“Don’t you think my uncle and my aunt got along well?” asked the young man.
Sue Pebble was enjoying herself to the fullest. To be young again and unrecognized and on her own. Besides, this handsome Kippie was a distressingly accurate replica of her own Rex when she had first married him. Sue smoothed her golden curls with a graceful hand.
“They got on well enough for a couple of old dodos,” she returned, “but I can’t see why you’re so interested in old people and the past.”
“I’m interested in justice,” flashed the young man. “I won’t see innocent people foully murdered and not lift a voice in protest.”
“So you think I’m the murderess, do you? Well, I want you to know that your uncle had just as much to do with killing his wife as I did. Besides, if the truth were known, there’s a brazen challenge who lives around here named Spray Summers, that had as much to do with it as anyone.”
Things were moving entirely too fast for Kippie. He was delighted to uncover one murder, but a widespread net of crime was more than he could comprehend. It smacked too much of mass production.
Kippie’s one-man investigation of the foul deeds which he suspected had been going on outside, on Spray Summers’ lawn, was destined to get away from him. At this moment Spray Summers herself came into the bar. Her dark beauty was contrasted sharply with the blond loveliness of Sue Pebble. The women stared at one another, held rigid by a long bond of fascination. Spray Summers had seen Mrs. Pebble years before, when the woman was Rex Pebble’s lovely young wife, and she could not forget that memory. With a jealous pang she realized that Sue, too, had discovered the secret of the pool. She coolly sized up the appealing girlish figure in the cream-colored pants. What would Rex think? Spray wondered. But Rex Pebble’s nephew was not to be detoured from his criminal exposures. In Spray he sensed an ally.
“This is the murderess of your husband,” he calmly introduced Mrs. Pebble. “I suspect that she may have got rid of the old lady too.”
“I think she did,” commented Spray thoughtfully. “She got rid of the old lady all right, and I distinctly remember hearing her say that she would also tear Rex Pebble limb from limb if he didn’t give her the secret of youth that he had. Why, the poor man’s probably lying all over the garden this very minute in small bits. Let’s go and see.”
“No, wait,” Kippie directed. “We want to hear her whole confession.”
“Well, if you must know, I fell in love with a younger man.”
“What,” said Kippie, greatly surprised, “I don’t see how you could have fallen in love with a younger man. That is, without falling in love with a man who was too young.”
Baggage, who had been preoccupied with Hal, having a penchant for firemen, interrupted. “Well, say a man about your age,” she hazarded to Kippie. “I understand what she means. I think you’re just about right. I could use you.” Baggage advanced upon the young man; there was meaning in her eyes. But Major Jaffey, interested in the outcome of the inquest, detained her with a hand on her arm. “Won’t you sit here, my dear?” he suggested,offering a knee. Such offers come with disconcerting infrequency in the life of a girl like Baggage. Like a drowning man, in a flash she recalled her years in stone. No one had ever offered her a knee. She sat down abruptly, but her mind was still on young Kippie, so tantalizingly like the Rex Pebble she had watched grow out of magnetic young manhood into distinguished though dapper age.
“It’s a long story,” continued Sue Pebble, “and I shan’t burden you with it here, but, in short, this young chap was my husband’s nephew.”
Kippie whistled between his teeth. Things were moving around in a whirling circle. Kippie took a drink.
“Come clean, my dear,” said Spray Summers icily to her rival as Kippie’s expression grew darker and more bewildered.
“This, Kippie dear, is your charming Aunt Sue. But I still believe she may have murdered her husband for the secret of youth she was raving about.”
“By the way,” said Sue sweetly, ignoring Kippie’s chagrined amazement, “where is that dirty, low-down husband of mine? He’s not in the garden, I assure you. I generally imagine that you have him in tow when he’s missing, my love, but I see that something or somebody else must have got the lock and key tonight. If you’ll pardon me, I think I’ll just go in search of some dry clothes.” Sue Pebble swept from the room, a fuming Spray after her.
“God, this is too much for one fireman to bear! It would take more than a seven-alarm fire to make me feel this bad,” said Hal, dropping his head on his arms.
“Quite more thrilling than any of my adventures have ever been,” murmured Major Jaffey from beneath the lissom weight of Baggage. “One does not know what to expect next.”
“It’s a good thing I’m not a mind-reader, Grandpop,” said Baggage impudently. “I’ve always had the idea that this was the way to start things.” Baggage bounced up and down on the old gentleman’s knee.
“I don’t understand what you mean by things,” remarked the Major, “but the drift of your inference is very bad indeed. You should keep such ideas to yourself.”
“Not after fifteen years on a marble column, I shouldn’t. I have every intention of telling the world exactly what I expect to do. Even if I get disappointed,” added the girl bravely.
“Well, there’s always the danger of trial and error,” the Major told her sagely, “but I should imagine you would bat a fairly high percentage.”
“Take that one,” said Baggage pointing at Kippie. “I think I’ll drag him out into the garden with me. For years I watched his uncle and this Summers woman behave in the most scandalous way in the night on the lawn. This one’s a pretty good imitation of the original. I believe we should get along swell.” The girl slid off Major Jaffey’s lap and approached Kippie with determination.
“Come with me,” she commanded.
“What for?” inquired the befuddled youth.
“That you should ask!” exclaimed the girl.
“It’s better to ask first and get things clearly understood. I may be risking a lot.”
“Don’t be so old-fashioned. Come right out with it. I can’t imagine what your generation is coming to if it gets so inoculated with decency that it has to hedge like that.”
“I don’t want to go,” said Kippie stubbornly.
“Something’s wrong with you, then, or else you’re not Rex Pebble’s nephew. He never said that to anyone.”
“It’s certainly time someone in this family called a halt.”
“I’m not going to lower my womanhood,” stated Baggage, “to stand here all night arguing about a little detail. You come with me or I’ll scream. I’ll scream so bloody loud they’ll hear me at the police station, and then wouldn’t you be ashamed? Imagine what you’d have to tell the officers when they came. Denied a little girl, just feature that — what the coppers would say!”
“I think you’re disgusting — you’re too plain spoken. Can’t you veil a few things?”
“Veil them?” Baggage glanced down at herself with evident astonishment. “I believe in solid cloth and no veils. I’m darned sick and tired of veils. You would be too if you’d caught cold as many nights from draughty wrappings as I have. Yes, sir, I believe in good honest whole cloth, or the human hide. There’s only two ways to tempt, by sleight of hand or by slight of eye.”
