The yellow violet, p.8
The Yellow Violet, page 8
“Do tell me about Señorita Ravel,” I wormed.
He frowned, moving his shoulders.
“I’m curious,” I said. “I know she will have a wonderful success. I read the newspaper story, but what is her real story, Mr. Waggoner?”
“Call me Erik, darling.”
I calculated the advantages from the detecting angle, and said, “Erik.”
He loosened up right away.
“There’s nothing much to tell. The story in the papers is her story. She was a nice Spanish girl whose family was ruined by the revolution. Before that she went to a convent school, never spoke to a boy alone in her life except her brothers or cousins, and so on. The stuff she does is sort of traditional Spanish stuff, she learned it at school, the way one of our nice girls would learn music or ballet dancing, I mean just to fill in her time—but when all of her family was wiped out by the revolution, except her mother, they made their way via Barcelona and Marseilles to Buenos Aires and there she supported herself and the old girl by working in second-rate music-halls—pretty nasty for that kind of girl—but I happened to come along and discovered her, and here she is,—via Rio, Havana, and Mexico City. When she gets to New York the story ends with a big splash of success. There you are.”
“How long since you discovered her?”
“Almost two years.”
“Have you stuck around all that time?”
“God, no! I’ve just forked out the dough and flown down now and then. Commuted. I like South America.”
“Was it your idea to make the yellow violet a sort of trademark for her?”
Waggoner beamed.
“A sweet idea, what? And all mine own, darling.”
“She speaks marvelous English.”
“Oh, she speaks everything. All those foreign languages simply trickle off her tongue. Listen, darling—”
I smiled so brightly it hurt. “It’s just like reading the movie magazines while getting your hair set,” I said. “I mean, there she was, and there you happened to go, and here she is. I mean here you both are. Tell me more.”
“There isn’t any more,” Waggoner said. He was getting impatient.
“Oh, yes there is,” I said. I went arch. “She’s in love with you, isn’t she?”
His glance thickened. “What makes you think that?”
“I’ve got eyes. It’s written in her face when you’re together.”
“She’s a damn fool!” he said. He ground out his cigarette. “I told her tonight that she had to go to the hotel and go to bed … that I couldn’t stand her fawning over me any longer.” His face took on a slick patent look. “Forget it!” he said, leaning towards me. He forgot me on a moment. “Women!” he groaned.
Then he smiled the honeyed smile again and said, “Listen, darling, your boy-friend’s standing you up, so come on. We’re wasting time.”
Lulu Murphy came breezing in. Her navy raincoat was wet from the fog. Her face looked bright and hard.
“Hello, Miss Holly!” she called. She saw Waggoner and stopped, a few steps inside the lobby.
I stood up. Waggoner did not rise. His face got suddenly very bored.
There were a lot of things to find out from Waggoner. Was he a German, or wasn’t he? Was he an American in name only, one of those so greedy that he thought only of himself in times like these even? What did he know about that special yellow violet … the one left in Dickens’ office? Where did Ravel fit into the picture, if at all? … I hoped not at all! … What was this and this, and that and that?
But even if he had been a gold mine of information I had had enough of him for one evening.
Lulu had tactfully marched over beside the elevators.
“Good night, Mr. Waggoner,” I said.
“But—,” he stammered, rising.
“It’s business,” I said.
He could understand that. He was almost respectful as he put out a large, naked-looking, soft hand and pressed mine. “Perhaps tomorrow—”
“Perhaps,” I said, shamelessly, and went to join Lulu. “We’d better go upstairs,” I said.
“What do you think of that large pink specimen?” I asked, when we were in my room and the door closed. Lulu said she had hardly noticed him. “Patrick doesn’t seem suspicious of him, Miss Murphy. But I am.”
We were standing in the center of my room, under the ceiling light.
Lulu said, “I suppose it is not for me to say but sometimes I think Mr. Abbott isn’t suspicious enough of people. He says suspicions clutter the intellect.”
“Suspicions and prejudice,” I said. She nodded. “I guess I’m no judge of Waggoner because I dislike his type,” I said. “Where’s Pat?”
She made her reply too careful.
“Well, he hadn’t been at the office. That drugstore is open most of the night and he hadn’t been in there, either.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. The night man on the elevators hadn’t seen him. Mr. Abbott wouldn’t walk up nine floors, Miss Holly, and I could tell he hadn’t been in the office itself. I left after he did tonight and saw that everything was tidy. There weren’t any ashes in the ashtrays or even on the floor just now. Also I think he would have taken his gun.” Lulu patted her large worn black calf bag. “I’ve got it here.” I looked inquisitive. “I think I may need it,” she said.
“Would he have any other gun?”
“He’s got one at his hotel. Maybe he went there. Can we phone?”
I called Patrick’s hotel. He hadn’t been in since three o’clock, the clerk said. He wouldn’t be back till Monday. He’d gone off to get married.
Lulu said, “I don’t think he’s got a gun with him, then.”
I said disconsolately, “That’s another piece of information that will interest the desk downstairs, I suppose. I mean our trying to find him.”
“Isn’t that boy part Japanese?” Lulu asked.
“Heavens!” I said. I sat down on the bed and took off my hat. “What can we do?” I urged her.
Lulu stood in the middle of the room, brisk-looking and efficient. “Well, you can go to bed and get some rest and—” I shook my head violently, so she said, “Anyway, we won’t worry. Worry gets you down. Next, we’ll get hold of a detective named Everett who sometimes helps us out and take him with us. I tried to call him from the office but his wife said he was out though expected back any minute. Then—”
“We’ll go and find Patrick Abbott!”
“Oh, dear, no. He wouldn’t like that, Miss Holly. And anyhow, how could we? We wouldn’t know where to look.”
My spirits sagged badly. I hated having her know how terrified I was. I lit a cigarette.
“It’s Miss Terrill I’m worried about,” Lulu said. She started towards the phone. “I’ve got to find Everett.”
“We’ve got to, you mean.”
“Come along if you wish, Miss Holly. It’s a bad night, though, and—”
“I can’t sit here! Listen, I wouldn’t phone from here, Miss Murphy. I like that boy, for some reason, but it might be just because he has nice manners and is over-worked. It is the manager, Scott, that I dislike. But Soong was the one who told Pat you’d phoned from his office. Whoever phoned would guess that Pat would go to the office right away … even if he only phoned and got no answer he’d be worried and dash right down to check up and—”
“He ought to have called me at home,” Lulu said. I frowned. “Now, don’t you worry about him, dearie. He’s okay.”
“All right,” I said. “What’s wrong with Molly Terrill?”
“That’s what I want to know. My phone rang. Three different times in twenty minutes, just one ring each time. But there was no one on the line. First I thought it was a mistake. Then I thought perhaps Miss Terrill was trying to call me. I called her. No answer. I tried several times. I had the operator check the line and she said the phone was disconnected and would be looked into tomorrow. Heavenly day! I mean, we can’t wait till tomorrow.”
“Maybe Patrick went there?”
“Maybe. I dashed here hoping to meet him … also your saying he’d gone to the office … sort of … never mind … let’s go!”
“How about Everett?”
“I’ll call him from the drugstore. You’d better get into something old and warm, Miss Holly. I’ll meet you downstairs.”
“Wait!” I didn’t want Lulu to get out of sight. “I won’t be two minutes. Really.”
Out came my old brown tweeds, the felt hat, the sensible oxfords. I locked my bracelet in my dressing-case.
Lulu was examining the pistol, standing under the chandelier and twirling it like an expert.
“That thing’s terrible,” I said.
She laughed.
“You’re afraid of guns and I’m scared to death of anything green,” she said. “People are really funny.”
XII
Waggoner was not in the lobby.
We walked to the corner drugstore. I thought the fog was thinning. Lulu said no, it was spotty.
She went into a telephone booth and came out soon and said that Miss Terrill still didn’t answer, and that Jim Everett hadn’t got home yet. “I told his wife we’d stop by on our way to Topaz Street and if he’s home take him with us. Just as well to have a man along … though what a laugh he’ll have on me if this is a goose chase.”
A cab pulled into the rank outside while we were in the store. Another was just coming in behind it. We took the first. Lulu gave an address on Ladbrook Street, Everett’s. As we started off I glanced out the back window and saw a man, in silhouette like that one in the brown felt hat, lifting a finger at the other cab.
Our driver turned right and proceeded at a variable speed because of the fog. When it was thick we crept. When it was thin we spurted.
“A good driver,” Lulu said.
Another cab followed us. I watched it through the rear window, out of an eye-corner, and wondered if Lulu noticed. Its lights waxed or waned with the consistency of fog. Now they would be close up. Now they thickened, fell back. They always caught up. The car did not try to pass.
We proceeded in the same direction for several blocks. Then Lulu leaned forward and slid open the window between us and the driver’s seat. The air which swirled in smelled of the wharves, and felt silky and dank.
“You should have turned left at that last street,” Lulu said.
“Okay, lady.”
“Don’t turn back. Take the next turn.”
“Okay.”
She closed the window. For the first time I examined the driver, or rather his heavy black shape. He wore a black slicker with the collar turned up, halfswallowing his cap.
We passed the next cross-street.
Lulu slammed the window open.
“See here, driver, don’t buggyride me. Hear? If you do I’ll call the police.”
“Yes, lady,” he said. “No, lady, I mean.”
He didn’t slow down and he didn’t turn back.
“I go this way because they fixing streets that other way, see,” he, said, then.
“But now you’ll have to go around Telegraph Hill?”
“Yes, lady. But good for the tires, see?” He reached over and stopped the meter. “It costs you no more, see.”
Lulu shut the window again and settled back. She sat stiffly. “You can’t get ahead of an Italian,” she said.
“Is he an Italian?”
“Oh, sure. One of the pigheaded kind, too.”
Three or four minutes later we began to bounce around on a rough pavement, in a very thick cottony fog. Our driver turned on the headlights. “This is the Embarcadero,” Lulu said. We turned left. “Thank goodness,” Lulu said. She relaxed. It was the first time I’d realized she was concerned. “I wasn’t quite sure till he made that left turn just where he might be taking us.”
I glanced back. The other car had also turned left. Its lights made a high ambient patch in the fog. The patch dimmed, brightened, spread out, reached forward suddenly and clamped down on us.
“Do you think we are being followed?”
“Maybe,” Lulu said. “Somebody using our tail-lights as a guide, I guess.”
She was so matter-of-fact I was ashamed of myself.
“I saw a man signal the cab back of ours at the drugstore,” I said. “I recognized the man. He’s the same that’s been following me since shortly after four o’clock, except when Pat was with me.”
“The devils!” Lulu cried.
“Who?”
“They’re all the same ones, dearie. The ones who’ve got that poor boy. No doubt there is nothing they won’t stoop to, to get whatever it is they want.”
“They?”
“There’s a ring of them. A gang. There always is. Cowards! Sneaks! Criminals!”
I said, “But why should one follow me?”
“To bother Mr. Abbott, my dear. Keep him so worried his brain doesn’t work properly. Have you told him?”
“I mentioned it casually. I won’t again, if that’s what you think they want.”
“You’re a brave girl. No one is likely to do you any harm, in my opinion, but I do think you should be careful. Don’t get into any corners, for instance … like this cab would be if I were not along.” The cab turned left again. The pavement smoothed out. “Thank goodness,” Lulu said. She relaxed somewhat against the seat. “I don’t mind telling you that for a moment back there I was kind of perplexed. What should I do if the driver’s a common gangster, I wondered. Well, I decided, if the worst came, I would put Mr. Abbott’s pistol against the back of his raincoat collar and order him to drive us to the nearest police station. Then, I thought, no, I must not do that, because any kind of notice from the police just now would be bad for Mr. Abbott and the case.”
I laughed and said, “I suppose you always think of the case first.”
“Yes, certainly,” Lulu said.
We passed slowly through a thick bank of fog. The other car which had also turned left came in close behind us.
Lulu said, “I hope Everett is home by now. He’s the worst detective we use, but he’s better than nobody.”
The fog thinned suddenly. All at once our driver wheeled to the right. We started moving very fast up a steep slope.
The other car made the turn and sped after us. The lights explored, found us, enveloped us.
Lulu stiffened, but made no comment. In the light on the cab—which dimmed or cleared with the nearness of our pursuer and the thickness of the fog—I saw her open her big black bag. She took out a little flashlight and focussed its pencil of light on the driver’s license card. I recognized the square swarthy features of Angelino Angelo.
Lulu turned off the flash and put it in her left raincoat pocket.
“That’s a pretty name,” she said.
“Isn’t it?”
“I think the man’s out of his mind. This is not the way to Ladbrook Street, and this is no way to drive on a slick pavement. But it would be a waste of time to tell him so.”
I said, “I’ve seen him twice before. Once he picked up Miss Terrill outside the Durward Building. She was scared about him and asked me to ride with her. Then she got out and took another cab. The second time he picked me up at the St. Thomas and took me to the Chelsea.”
“Why was Miss Terrill frightened?”
“Because he’s Italian.”
Lulu laughed her cheery ringing laugh. “That’s no reason. But she’s all upset, poor girl. My opinion is that this man simply doesn’t know his way around very well.”
Nevertheless Lulu opened the bag again. She took out Patrick’s gun, closed the bag, and held the gun in the righthand pocket of her raincoat. She held it slyly, to keep me from knowing she was doing it. I think her level head kept me from feeling frantic. Otherwise I would have felt trapped.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Nothing, till we get to Columbus Avenue. Where there’s people, and maybe a drugstore or restaurant open. Then I’ll tell him to let us out.”
“Are you scared?”
“Not exactly. You?”
“It’s the cab following us that worries me.”
Suddenly the air was clear as a bell. We were above the fog. Stars were shining out of a black sky. Even the dimmed streetlights were brilliant. Houses were darkened, with an occasional window lighted but no more.
We moved now at what seemed a great speed. Then at a street intersection Angelo jammed on his brakes. We skidded expertly around a corner and sped on, alongside a little park. A wind had risen, or perhaps it had been continuous up here. The new green leaves were twisting gaily in the wind.
The other car, taken apparently by surprise, had to stop and back up to make the turn, but in two blocks it was on our heels again.
“I think you’re right,” Lulu said. “That’s the one to worry about. You can’t hardly deal with two at once.”
Suddenly Angelo whirled left again, throwing me against Lulu. I felt the hard outline of the gun. The other car missed that turning too and before it could follow we had turned left again, then right, then again left. We dropped slightly downhill. We were again in the fog.
“We’ve sure got a good driver,” Lulu said.
I laughed, in spite of things. “So they aren’t working together?”
“Apparently not. It would be interesting to know what it’s all about, though. Wouldn’t it!”
“It has to do with Johnny Terrill’s joining the Italian army seven years ago,” I said.
Lulu made a small amused sound. “True. But is this Angelo our our friend, or isn’t he? I think not. I do not like this cat-and-mouse business at all, my dear. As soon as we come to a street with people on it I shall use the gun.” We were moving more slowly now. The fog was white and thick. Lulu said, pricelessly, “There is a fine view from here in good weather.”
“Do you know exactly where we are?” I asked.
“Yes, of course. I wish we would see a policeman. Then I wouldn’t have to wait for a street with people.”
But Angelo didn’t go to any street with people on it. We angled in and out. Lulu decided then that at some time when we were moving slowly it might be the best idea to open both doors at once and jump out, one of us on each side. We quickly agreed on it. But as we leaned forward simultaneously to open the doors and make the jump Angelo pulled to the curb, directly beneath a blurred streetlamp. Lulu was instantly out on her side and I on mine. I was on the sidewalk side. Lulu was in the street. She took out the gun and pointed it at Angelino Angelo.
