Her hand was warm on his arm. He couldn’t tell which was trembling, her arm or his hand, as he guided her out and down the stairs. She still walked like a doll, her eyes wide open, fixed straight ahead of her. At the bottom of the stairs she turned toward the dining-room.
“Wait a minute, Janey,” he said. “I’ll get your wrap. We’re not going to eat, we’re going to see Swede Carlson. He’s waiting out in his car. He’s got something he wants to ask you.”
“Oh.” She stopped abruptly and stood there, her back to him, while he went over to the cloakroom and got her black velvet coat. He didn’t see her eyes screwed up tight like the little Dane’s when she was determined not to cry, or hear what she was saying to herself.
“Stupid,
stupid—
I knew it was silly. I thought it was
me.
I thought for just a minute it was me he wanted. Not Connie. I thought that was why he pushed them back. I thought it was me he wanted.”
He was there with her coat, putting it around her shoulders. When he took her arm again it was as wooden as her walk. She moved it before he could really get hold of it, reached forward and pulled the door open for herself. “Where is he?” She ran outside. “I see him.”
Swede Carlson’s stationary figure down by the car under the willow tree looked blurred and enormous and black. It focused into shape and solidity as she ran up the drive, stumbling a little until she bunched her long skirt up in her hands and ran as fast as she could.
Carlson opened the rear door for her. “Sorry to drag you out like this, Janey. Get in, will you? We want to talk to you a minute.”
She slipped across the seat as close to the window as she could and settled there in a small dark huddle, the only thing visible the heart-shaped blur of her white face. She edged deeper into the corner as Gus got in beside her. Carlson got in, closed the door, and leaned over the back of the seat.
“Janey, will you think carefully about this? What did you take away from the Maynards’ party last night?”
He had intended to make some mild crack about Gus’s mucked-up face, but he forgot that, seeing her come tearing along leaving Gus behind. It was still in his mind, so that for an instant he missed the small involuntary gasp she gave when he asked her what she’d taken. Or almost missed it. He sharpened his gaze, trying to make her out in the dark corner. He could hear her holding her breath and see the white blob of her fist clutching the seat, holding tightly to it. A red warning light flashed on in his mind. Something here he wasn’t prepared for. This was the way Connie Maynard had reacted over there in her basement playroom. That he had planned. This he had stumbled onto. Maybe the two were tied together? He moved into a more comfortable position and changed his approach.
“I been thinkin’ things over, Janey,” he said easily. “I got it figured this way. You must ’a taken somethin’—”
“What if I did?”
She sat bolt-upright out of her huddle.
“It’s nobody’s business but mine. And I threw them away. I didn’t take them. I was going to, but I didn’t. I threw them down the bathroom drain this morning. I was going to— I was going to kill myself, last night. But I changed my mind. I’m—I’m not going to kill myself. Not for anybody! I don’t care anymore!”
Swede Carlson’s thick hand planted itself quickly in the dark on Gus Blake’s knee. “Hold it. Hold it there,” it said. It felt violent protest give way to obedience and shuddering horror. Gus Blake relaxed. He sank back against the seat.
Poor devil,
Swede Carlson thought.
Poor devils, both of them.
But there was no time now.
“Why, of course you’re not goin’ to kill yourself, Janey,” he said as she stopped to catch her breath. “What was it you took?”
“Some sleeping-pills. From Mrs. Maynard’s drawer. When I was leaving. Mrs. Maynard wouldn’t mind my—”
“She’d ’a minded an awful lot if you’d taken ’em, Janey.”
Carlson thought fast. This was it. Connie knew. She must have seen her take them, she’d let it ride till she got out there in the dark and started thinking about it. But he didn’t want to ask either Gus or Janey where Connie Maynard was when they’d started home. He’d leave that for Miss Maynard to tell. The murdering little— And that explained the way she blew hot and cold—hot on some reason for getting Gus back to the Blake house, cold on the attempted burglary.
“Listen, Janey,” he said. “Let’s forget that, right now. And you think, hard. Hear? There must have been somethin’ else you took. You think what you took there with you, and what else you had when you came away. Wasn’t there somethin’?”
He could see her shaking her head. “No, there wasn’t! There wasn’t anything else!” she said passionately. “I didn’t have anything with me. All I had was my bag and my handkerchief and my lipstick and compact and two quarters. That’s all I took with me. And that’s all I brought home except—except the pills, and—and the thirty-two dollars and fifty cents I won on the jackpot. I know that was all, because I put the bag on the hall table and took out the money and the pills. I threw the pills on the floor, and my bag dropped—”
She stopped, turning her head first to the right and then to the left.
“But—there was something else.”
She stared through the dark at Carlson.
“There was the lucky piece. It fell out on the floor when I knocked my bag off the table. The lucky piece that came out of the slot machine.”
Carlson’s hand was still gripping Gus’s knee. He moved it slowly up and let it rest on the back of the seat. “What lucky piece, Janey?”
“I don’t know. It was just a lucky piece somebody had put in the machine by mistake, I guess. It came out with all the rest of the quarters. Jim Ferguson picked it up. It was gold. You know, gilded—gold-washed, I guess you call it. He—he made some joke about it and put it in my bag. That’s all. I don’t know who it belongs to.”
Swede Carlson controlled his breathing and vocal apparatus deliberately. “Where is it now, Janey?” he asked.
“In my bag.” She felt down in the seat beside her. “At least it was there. I haven’t taken it out.” She moved her slim hips and felt down on the other side of her by the window. “Oh—I didn’t bring my bag. I must have— when I got up, back there, I must have left it, or it dropped on the floor. That’s what I must have done. It was in my lap when Buck came and said—said Gus wanted me.”
Carlson reached for the door handle. He let it go and turned again on the front seat.
“You two go back now,” he said quietly. “You get your bag, Janey. If you can do it, don’t let anybody see you’re interested in it at all, hear? If it’s there, I want it and I want it quick. You bring it out, Gus.”
“And if it’s not there?”
“If it’s not there,” Swede Carlson said quietly, “I’ll be mighty goddam interested—but I won’t be surprised. It’s gettin’ to be somebody else’s turn to be surprised.”
“And you two go in there
actin’ like you’re speakin’, whether you are or not. I don’t want this gummed up, now.” Swede Carlson spoke brusquely and meant it when Janey pulled away from Gus trying to help her out of the car and started off ahead of him.
She stopped and waited, not wooden but taut and very much alive. He took her arm again.
“Janey—please! For God’s sake, Janey—”
She wrenched away. “Stop it!” she said hotly. “I’ve told you I don’t care anything about any of you anymore. You or Connie or anybody else. And you might just as well hear the rest of it. I’ve spent all the money we ever had. I threw it all away—the whole thousand dollars. I blew it in on the slot machines. It’s all gone. There’s three dollars and forty-two cents left in the bank. Fergie told me so this afternoon. So leave me alone, do you hear me? You can go back to Connie. You’re always leaving me to go with Orvie, so you can go with Connie and I’ll just go with Orvie! I guess he’ll still be willing to marry me and if he isn’t I’ll find somebody else.”
They were almost at the end of the asphalt drive of the clubhouse walk. Janey went ahead of him onto the brick. “Hello, Fergie,” she said sweetly. “You’re not going home this early, are you?”
Gus came miserably on behind her. “Shoving off, Fergie?”
“Yes,” Jim Ferguson said. He held the door open for Janey. “Martha’s staying, but I’m going along. I’m going duck-shooting with my son in the morning, so I thought I’d better turn in early. I wouldn’t want him to see me miss too many. And Martha won’t let me take any dog hair along when I’ve got a gun and the kids. So long, you two.”
Gus looked after him as he closed the door. Wretched as he was, he still knew a lot of words when he heard them. So Fergie was going duck-shooting. Ordinarily, he’d have said so and shut up. But everybody was wacky tonight. Even John Maynard. He was over at the cloakroom getting his overcoat and hat. Uncle Nelly was with him. They weren’t what you would call vocal. Uncle Nelly had had too much to drink and John Maynard not enough.
“Sorry about your accident, Gus,” Maynard said briefly. “I want to talk to you on Monday.”
“Okay,” Gus said. He added to himself,
And if I’m fired I’ve already quit.
He followed Janey up the companion way. She stopped halfway along and waited for him, her blue eyes looking through him, not at him, just the way they had in the pantry that morning, when he’d first learned Janey was not all sweet and warm and putty in anybody’s hands.
“Poor Uncle Nelly,” she said. She let her hand rest lightly in Gus’s crooked arm. “It
is
ulcers. He told me. They’re all popped again and he feels dreadful. He’s quit playing the slot machines, too. Hello! Hello, there!” She smiled at some people Gus didn’t know, coming out of the bar. “Do come back to Smithville, won’t you? I hope you have a good trip.”
At the door of the bar she turned and looked into the mirror. “Oh, wait a minute, will you, Gus? Or why don’t you get a drink while I powder my nose? My bag’s over there.”
She went on into the room. “Hello, Janey! Hi, there, Janey!” It started all over again—Janey back once more from a year in the bush. She smiled at everybody and went over to her table. Orvie Rogers was still there waiting. Orvie and Connie. Martha Ferguson and Dorsey Syms were at the slot machines again.
“Did I leave my bag here? I need my lipstick.”
“I don’t see it,” Orvie said.
“Where’s Gus?”
“He’s getting a drink, Connie. I guess he needs one. He’ll be over in a second. Why don’t you wait for him? He’s in a foul mood.”
Orvie was looking for the bag. Gus saw him search around on the seat and dive under the table. He came up with it in one hand, brushing it off with the other.
“Somebody’s walked all over it, Janey.” He handed it to her. “I guess you dropped it.”
“No wonder,” Connie Maynard said. “Gus barging in—”
Janey turned away. “I’ll be right back, Orvie. Order me something, will you?”
She went past Gus at the bar and across the hall to the powder room. He saw her close the door, and moved out with his-drink to meet her. People were coming in and out. He could go over and look at the pictures of last June’s races on the wall opposite the powder-room door without being too obvious about it. And almost at once she was there by his elbow again. He looked down at her. She shook her head. A roar came out of the bar as someone got a jack pot. She raised herself on tiptoes as she slid something wrapped in white cleansing tissue into his pocket.
“It’s gone.”
She spoke quickly under the covering racket from the bar.
“Give that to Swede. It’s my compact. It’s got powder on it and he must have touched it, fishing around. He couldn’t have had gloves on tonight. Be careful of it.”
She pointed to the picture on the wall. “That’s a lovely thing. Just look at Orvie’s boat. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
She smiled at some people coming up the stairs. “And I think you ought to change that dressing, Gus. It looks awful. There’s a kit in the cloakroom. Do you want Connie to come down and help you? She’s had first-aid, before the war. Or during it, which was it? The last war, I mean.”
She smiled at him and joined some of her friends heading back to the bar. “No, thanks, I’ve got a drink waiting for me.”
He stood staring stupidly at the picture of Orvie’s sailing craft. Compact—fingerprints— That was fast thinking in the clutch. He’d never have thought of it. How had Janey got so smart all of a sudden? Or had Janey always been smart while one Gus Blake was always being dumb?
It was still in his mind when he came back up from giving the compact to Swede Carlson—still there, and heavily underlined. Swede hadn’t been surprised that Janey had used her head. He’d also taken time out to do the underlining by telling about the footprint in the back yard that Janey had found and the kid had planted grass seed on top of—that Gus Blake had, in fact, told the kid to plant it on, though he was already too cut down to size to tell Carlson that and Janey evidently hadn’t. And Swede Carlson was in a hurry, too. The lucky piece could have been Wernitz’s. Janey’s father might know. The little gambler could have told his only friend, on one of those long moonlit nights. Lieutenant Williams of the city police was on his way to the Rogers plant, Carlson was following. Two birds with one missing lucky piece.
Gus ordered his second milk punch. The first had helped. He didn’t feel as groggy as he had. The milk was as useful on his empty stomach as the fine battening bourbon that laced it. And two would be plenty; he had to keep his wits about him till Swede got back. He looked about. The only people left there who’d been at the Maynards’ were Orvie and Dorsey over at the table with Connie and Janey, except Al Reed, who’d won the jack pot and was breaking his neck to put it all back again. But he’d come up the stairs when Gus and Janey came back from Swede’s car, before Janey retrieved her bag. He tried to remember who else had been in the room when he took Janey out the first time. The only people he could think of were the ones at the table with her now. There could have been others in the reading-room across the hall, or somebody at the slot machines. It would have to be somebody who could have seen Janey go out without her bag and who could move over to the table and join the rest of them on perfectly casual terms. And while any of the Maynards’ friends could do that, this had to be one of a particular group of the Maynards’ friends.