The Million-Dollar Suitcase

The double doors had swung closed behind us; the hallman there who held the knob, now reinforced by a uniformed policeman. The servants' way, at the further end was shut; men in plain clothes set their backs against it. And last, Big Bill himself in overalls, a touch of blunt blue realism, came fogging along the side-wall to swing into place the great wooden bar that secured the entire group of glass doors which gave on the porch. Barbara would have seen all these arrangements while I was getting ready for my first glance, but I prompted her nervously with a low-toned, "All set, girl," and then as she still didn't speak, "Bill's got every door guarded."

She nodded. The length of the room away, in the end gallery, was the cannery girl queen and her guard. Even at that distance, I recognized Eddie Hughes, in his pink-and-white Beef Eater togs, a gilded wooden spear in his hand, a flower tassel bobbing beside that long, drab, knobby countenance of his. There he was, the man I'd jailed for Thomas Gilbert's murder. Below on the dancing floor, were the two, Cummings and Bowman, who had put Worth behind the bars for the same crime. At my side was the pale, silent girl who declared that Clayte was the murderer.

Whispered tuning and trying of instruments up here; flutter and rush about down on the dancing floor; and Barbara, that clenched left hand of hers still pressed in hard against her side, facing what problem?

Crash! Boom! We were so close the music fairly deafened us, as, with a multiplied undernote of moving feet, the march began. On came those people toward us, wave behind wave of color and magnificence, dotted with little black ovals of masks pierced by gleaming eye-holes. I could sense Barbara reading the room as it bore down on her, and reading it clearly, getting whatever it was she had come there for. Myself, I was overwhelmed, drowned in the size and sweep of everything, struggling along, whispering to her when I spotted Jim Edwards in his friar's robe, noticed that the Roman soldier who must be Cummings, and Bowman, the Spaniard, squired the Thornhill twins in their geisha girl dresses; the crimson poppies of a Lady of Dreams looked odd against Laura Bowman's coppery hair.

At the head of the procession as they swung around, leading it with splendid dignity, came a pair who might have been Emperor and Empress of China – the Vandemans. To go on with affairs as if nothing had happened – though Worth Gilbert was in jail – had been the laid-down policy of both Vandeman and his wife. I'd thought it reasonable then; foolish to get hot at it now. The great, shining, rhythmically moving line deployed, interwove, and opened out again until at last the floor was almost evenly occupied with the many-colored mass. I looked at Barbara; the awful intensity with which she read her room hurt me. It had nothing to do with that flirt of a glance she always gave a printed page, that mere toss of attention she was apt to offer a problem. The child was in anguish, whether merely the ache of sorrow, or actual bodily pain; I saw how rigidly that small fist still pressed against the knitted wool of her sweater, how her lip was drawn in and bitten. Her physical weakness contrasted strangely with the clean cut decision, the absolute certainty of her mental power. She raised her face and looked straight up into mine.

"Have the music stopped."

I leaned over and down toward the orchestra leader to catch his eye, holding toward him the badge. His glance caught it, and I told him what we wanted. He nodded. For an instant the music flooded on, then at a sharp rap of the baton, broke off in mid-motion, as though some great singing thing had caught its breath. And all the swaying life and color on the floor stopped as suddenly. Barbara had picked the moment that brought Ina Vandeman and her husband squarely facing us. After the first instant's bewilderment, Vandeman and his floor managers couldn't fail to realize that they were being held up by an outsider; with Barbara in full sight up here by the orchestra, they must know who was doing it. I wondered not to have Vandeman in my hair already; but he and his consort stood in dignified silence; it was his committee who came after me, a Mephistopheles, a troubadour, an Indian brave, a Hercules with his club, swarming up the step, wanting to know if I was the man responsible, why the devil I had done it, who the devil I thought I was, anyhow. Others were close behind.

"Edwards," I called to the brown friar, "can you keep these fellows off me for a minute?"

Still not a word from Barbara. Nothing from Vandeman. Less than nothing: I watched in astonishment how the gorgeous leader stopped dumb, while those next him backed into the couple behind, side stepping, so that the whole line yawed, swayed, and began to fall into disorder.

"Cummings," as I glimpsed the lawyer's chain mail and purple feather, "Keep them all in place if you can. All."

In the instant, from behind my shoulder Barbara spoke.

"Have that man – take off his mask."

A little, shaking white hand pointed at the leader.

"Mr. Vandeman," I said. "That's an order. It'll have to be done."

The words froze everything. Hardly a sound or movement in the great crowded room, except the little rustle as some one tried to see better. And there, all eyes on him, Bronson Vandeman stood with his arms at his sides, mute as a fish. Ina fumbled nervously at the cord of her own mask, calling to me in a fierce undertone,

"What do you mean, Mr. Boyne, bringing that girl here to spoil things. This is spite-work."

"Off – take his mask off! Do it yourself!" Barbara's voice was clear and steady.

I made three big jumps of the space between us and the leading couple. Vandeman's committee-men obstructed me, the excited yip going amongst them.

"Vandeman – Bronse – Vannie – Who let this fool in here? – Do we throw him out?"

Then they took the words from Edwards; the tune changed to grumblings of, "What's the matter with Van? Why doesn't he settle it one way or another, and be done?"

Why didn't he? I had but a breath of time to wonder at that, as I shoved a way through. Darn him, like a graven image there, the only mute, immovable thing in that turmoil! I began to feel sore.

"You heard what she said?" I took no trouble now to be civil. "She wants your mask off."

No flicker of response from the man, but the Empress of China dragged down her mask, crying,

"Heard what she said? What she wants?" Over the shoulders of the crowd she gave Barbara Wallace a venomous look, then came at me.

A little too late. My hand had shot out and snatched the mask from the face of China's monarch. A moment I glared, the bit of black stuff in my grasp, at the alien countenance I had uncovered. Crowding and craning of the others to see. Jabbering, exclaiming all around us.

"Corking make-up; looks like a sure-enough Chinaman."

"No make-up at all. The real thing."

"What's the big idea?"

"Why did he unmask, then?"

"Didn't want to. They made him."

And last, but loudest, repeated time and again, with wonder, with distaste, with rising anger,

"The Vandeman's Chinese cook!"

For with the ripping away of that black oval, I had looked into the slant, inscrutable eyes of Fong Ling. Hemmed in by the crowd, he could but face me; he did so with a kind of unhuman passivity.

And the committee went wild. Their own masks came off on the run. I saw Cummings' face, Bowman's; Eddie Hughes slid from the balcony stair and bucked the crowd, pushing through to the seat of war. The grand march had become a jostling, gabbling chaos.

Barbara, up there, above it all, knew what she was about. I had utter confidence in her. But she was plainly holding back for a further development, her eyes on the entrances; and what the devil was my next move?

Ina Vandeman wheeled where she stood and faced the room, both hands thrown up, laughing.

"It was meant to be a joke – a great, big foolish joke!" her high treble rang out. "Bron's here somewhere. Wait. He'll tell you better than I could. At a masquerade – people do – they do foolish things… They – "

"Is Bronse Vandeman here?" I questioned Fong Ling. The Chinaman's stiff lips moved for the first time, in his formal, precise English.

"Yes, sir. Mr. Vandeman will explain." He crossed his hands and resigned the matter to his employer. And I demanded of Ina Vandeman, "You tell us your husband's present – in this room? Now?" and when her answer was drowned in the noise, I roared,

"Vandeman! Bronson Vandeman! You're wanted here!"

No answer. Edwards took up the call after me; the committee yelled the name in all keys and variations. In the middle of our squawking, a minor disturbance broke out across by the porch entrance, where Big Bill Capehart stood. As I looked, he turned over his post to Eddie Hughes, who came abreast of him at the moment, and started, scuffling and struggling toward us, with a captive.

"I had my orders!" his big voice boomed out. "Pinch any one that tried to get in. Y'don't pass me – not if you was own cousin to God A'mighty!"

On they came through the crowd, all mixed up; blue overalls, and a flapping costume whose rich, many-colored silk embroideries, flashed like jewels. A space widened about us for them. The big garage man spun his catch to the center of it, so that he faced the room, his back to the orchestra.

"Wanted in, did ya? Now yer in, what about it?"

What about it, indeed? In Bill's prisoner, as he stood there twitching ineffectually against that obstinate hold, breathing loud, shakily settling his clothes, we had, robe for robe, cap for cap, a duplicate Emperor of China!

And the next moment, this figure took off its mask and showed the face of Bronson Vandeman.

Dead silence all about us; Capehart loosened his grip, abashed but still truculent.

"Dang it all, Mr. Vandeman, if you didn't want to get mussed up, what made you fight like that?"

"Fight?" Vandeman found his voice. "Who wouldn't? I was late, and you – "

"Bron!" After one desperate glance toward the girl up on the platform, Ina ran to him and put a hand on his arm. "They stopped the march… Your – the – they spoiled our joke. But have them start the music again. You're here now. Let's go on with the march … explain afterward."

"Good business!" Vandeman filled his chest, glanced across at Fong Ling, and gave his social circle a rather poor version of the usual white-toothed smile. "Jokes can wait – especially busted ones. On with the dance; let joy be unrefined!"

Sidelong, I saw the orchestra leader's baton go up. But no music followed. It was at Barbara the baton had pointed, at Barbara that all the crowded company stared. Her little white dress clung to her slender figure. I saw that now she was in the strange Buddha pose. A few flecks of silver paper, still in her black hair, made it sparkle. But it was Barbara's eyes that held us all spellbound. In her colorless face those wonderful openings of black light seemed to look through and beyond us. For an instant there was no stir. Hundreds of faces set toward her, held by the wonder of her. Fong Ling's yellow visage moved for the first time from its immobility with a sort of awe, a dread. And when my gaze came back to her, I noticed that, with the dropping of her hands to join the finger-tips, she had left, where that little, pressing fist had been, a blur of red on the white sweater. Over me it rushed with the force of calamity, she had been wounded when she sank down back there in the crowd. It was a shot – not a giant cracker – we had heard.

"Vandeman," I whirled on him, "You shot this girl. You tried to kill her."

Sensation enough among the others; but I doubt if he even heard me. His gaze had found Barbara; all the bounce, all the jauntiness was out of the man, as he stared with the same haunted fear his eyes had held when she concentrated last night at his own dinner table.

She was concentrating now; could she stand the strain of it, with its weakening of the heart action, its pumping all the blood to the brain? I shouldered my way to her, and knelt beside her, begging,

"Don't, Barbara. Give it up, girl. You can't stand this."

Her hands unclasped. Her eyes grew normal. She relaxed, sighingly. I leaned closer while she whispered to me the last addition in that problem of two and two – the full solution. Armed, I faced Vandeman once more.

Something seemed to be giving way in the man; his lips were almost as pale as his face, and that had been, from the moment he uncovered it, like tallow. He looked withered, smaller; his hair where it had been pressed down by mask and cap, crossed his forehead, flat, smooth, dull brown. I saw, half consciously, that Fong Ling was gone. An accomplice? No matter; the criminal himself was here – Barbara's wonder man. It was to him I spoke.

"Edward Clayte," at the name, Cummings clanked around front to stare. "I hold a warrant for your arrest for the theft of nine hundred and eighty seven thousand dollars from the Van Ness Avenue Savings Bank of San Francisco."

He made a sick effort to square his shoulders; fumbled with his hair to toss it back from its straight-down sleekness, as Clayte, to the pompadoured crest of Vandeman. How often I had seen that gesture, not understanding its significance. Cummings, at my side, drew in a breath, with,

"Why – damn it! – he is Clayte!"

"All right," I let the words go from the corner of my mouth at the lawyer, in the same hushed tones he'd used. "See how you like this next one," and finished, loud enough so all might hear,

"And I charge you, Edward Clayte – Bronson Vandeman – with the murder of Thomas Gilbert."

CHAPTER XXIX

UNMASKED

Disgrace was in the air; the country club had seen its vice president in handcuffs. There was a great gathering up of petticoats and raising of moral umbrellas to keep clear of the dirty splashings. It made me think of a certain social occasion in Israel some thousands of years ago, when Absalom, at his own party, put a raw one over on his brother Amnon, and all the rest of King David's sons looked at each other with jaws sagging, and "every man gat himself up upon his mule and fled." Here, it was limousines; more than one noble chariot – filled with members of the faction who'd helped to rush Vandeman into office over the claims of older members – rolled discredited down the drive.

Yet a ball is the hardest thing in the world to kill; like a lizard, if you break it in two, the head and tail go right on wriggling independently. Also, behind this masked affair at the country club was the business proposition of a lot of blossom festival visitors from all over the state who mustn't be disappointed. By the time I'd finished out in front, getting my prisoner off to the lock-up, sending Eddie Hughes, with Capehart and the other helpers he'd picked up to guard the Vandeman bungalow, handed over to the Santa Ysobel police the matter of finding Fong Ling, and turned back to see how Barbara was getting on, the music sounded once more, the rhythmic movement of many feet.

"The boys have got it started again," Jim Edwards joined me in the hall, his tone still lowered and odd from the amazement of the thing. "Curious, that business in there yesterday," a nod indicated the little writing room toward which we moved. "Bronse stepping in, brisk and cool, for you to question him; pleasant, ordinary looking chap. Would you say he had it in his head right then to murder you – or Barbara – if you came too hot on his trail?"

"Me?" I echoed sheepishly. "He never paid me that compliment. He wasn't afraid of me. I think Barbara sealed her own fate, so far as he was concerned, when she let Worth pique her into doing a concentrating stunt at Vandeman's dinner table last night. The man saw that nothing she turned that light on could long stay hidden. He must have decided, then, to put her out of the way. As for his wife – well, however much or little she knew, she'd not defend Barbara Wallace."

At that, Edwards gave me a look, but all he said was,

"Cummings has suffered a complete change of heart, it seems. I left him in the telephone booth, just now, calling up Dykeman. He'll certainly keep the wires hot for Worth."

"He'd better," I agreed; and only Edwards's slight, dark smile answered me.

"There's a side entrance here," he explained mildly, as we came to the turn of the hall. "I'll unlock it; and when Barbara's ready to be taken home, we can get her out without every one gaping at her."

He was still at the lock, his back to me, when a door up front slammed, and a Spanish Cavalier came bustling down the corridor, pulling off a mask to show me Bowman's face, announcing,

"I think you want me in there. That girl should have competent medical attention."

"She has that already," I spoke over my shoulder. "And if she hadn't, do you think she'd let you touch her, Bowman? Man, you've got no human feeling. If you had a shred, you'd know that to her it is as true you tried to take Worth's life with your lying testimony as it is that Vandeman murdered Worth's father with a gun."

"Hah!" the doctor panted at me; he was fairly sober, but still a bit thick in the wits. "You people ain't classing me with this crook Vandeman, are you? You can't do that. No – of course – Laura's set you all against me."

Edwards straightened up from the door. With his first look at that fierce, dark face, the doctor began to back off, finally scuttling around the turn into the main hall at what was little less than a run.

They had Barbara sitting in the big Morris chair while they finished adjusting bandages and garments. Our young cub of a doctor, silver buttoned velveteen coat off, sleeves rolled up, hailed us cheerily,

"That bullet went where it could get the most blood for the least harm, I'd say. Have her all right in a jiffy. At that, if it had been a little further to one side – "

And I knew that Edward Clayte's bullet – Bronson Vandeman's – had narrowly missed Barbara's heart.

"This wonderful girl!" the doctor went on with young enthusiasm, as he bandaged and pinned. "Sitting up there, wounded as she was, and forgetting it, she looked to me more than human. Sort of effect as though light came from her."

"I was ashamed of myself back there in the Square, Mr. Boyne," Barbara's voice, good and strong, cut across his panegyric. "Never in my life did I feel like that before. My brain wasn't functioning normally at all. I was confused, full of indecision." She mentioned that state, so painfully familiar to ordinary humanity, as most people would speak of being raving crazy. "It was agonizing," she smiled a little at the others. "Poor Mr. Boyne helping me along – we'd got somehow into a crowd. And I was just a lump of flesh. I hardly knew where we were. Then suddenly came the sound of the shot, the stinging, burning feeling in my side. It knocked my body down; but my mind came clear; I could use it."

"I'll say you could," I smiled. "From then on, Bill Capehart and I were the lumps of flesh that you heaved around without explanation."

"There wasn't time; and I was afraid you'd find out what had happened to me, and wouldn't bring me here," she said simply. "I knew that the one motive for silencing me was the work I'd been doing for Mr. Boyne."

"Sure," I said, light breaking on me. "And every possible suspect in the Gilbert murder case was under this roof – or supposed to be – the grand march would be the show-down as to that. And just then the clock struck! Poor girl!"

"It was a race against time," Barbara agreed. "If we could get here first, hold the door against whoever came flying to get in, we'd have the one who shot me."

"But, Barbara child," Laura Bowman was working at a sweater sleeve on the bandaged side. "You did get here and caught Bronson Vandeman; it had worked out all right. Why did you risk sitting up in that strained pose, wounded as you were, to concentrate?"

"For Worth. I had to relate this crime to the one for which he'd been arrested. Within the hour, I'd gathered facts that showed me Edward Clayte killed Worth's father. When I brought that man and his crime to stand before me, and Bronson Vandeman and his crime to stand beside it – as I can bring things when I concentrate on them – I found they dove-tailed – the impossible was true – these two were one man." She looked around at the four of us, wondering at her, and finished, "Can't they take me home now, doctor?"

"Sit and rest a few minutes. Have the door open," the young fellow said. And on the instant there came a call for me from the side entrance.

"Mr. Boyne – are you in there? May I speak to you, please?"

It was Skeet Thornhill's voice. I went out into the entry. There, climbing down from the old Ford truck, leaving its engine running, was Skeet herself. Her glance went first to the door I closed behind me.

"Yes," I answered its question. "She's in there." Then, moved by the frank misery of her eyes, "She'll be all right. Very little hurt."

She said something under her breath; I thought it was "Thank God!" looked about the deserted side entrance, seemed to listen to the flooding of music and movement from the ballroom, then lifting to mine a face so pale that its freckles stood out on it, faltered a step closer and studied me.

"They phoned us," scarcely above a whisper. "Mother sent me for the girls and – Ina. Mr. Boyne," a break in her voice, "am I going to be able to take Ina back with me? Or is she – do they – ?"

"Wait," I said. "Here she comes now," as Cummings brought young Mrs. Vandeman toward us. She moved haughtily, head up, a magnificent evening wrap thrown over her costume, and saw her sister without surprise.

"Skeet," she crossed and stood with her back to me, "there's been some trouble here. Keep it from mother if you can. I'm leaving – but we'll get it all fixed up. How did you get here? Can I take you back in the limousine?"

The big, closed car, one of Vandeman's wedding gifts to her, purred slowly up the side drive, circling Skeet's old truck, and stopped a little beyond. Skeet gave it one glance, then reached a twitching hand to catch on the big silken sleeve.

"You can't go to the bungalow, Ina. As I came past, they were placing men around it to – to watch it."

"What!" Ina wheeled on us, looking from one to the other. "Mr. Boyne – Mr. Cummings – who had that done?"

"Does it matter?" I countered. She made me tired.

"Does it matter?" she snapped up my words, "Am I to be treated as if – as though – "

Even Ina Vandeman's effrontery wouldn't carry her to a finish on that. I completed it for her, explicitly,

"Mrs. Vandeman, whether you are detained as an accomplice or merely a material witness, I'm responsible for you. I would have the authority to allow you to go with your sister; but you'll not be permitted to even enter the bungalow."

"It's nearly midnight," she protested. "I have no clothes but this costume. I must go home."

"Oh, come on!" Skeet pleaded. "Don't you see that doesn't do any good, Ina? You can get something at our house to wear."

She gave me a long look, her chin still high, her eyes hard and unreadable. Then, "For the present, I shall go to a hotel." She laid a hand on Skeet's shoulder, but it was only to push her away. "Tell mother," evenly, "that I'll not bring my trouble into her house. Oh – you want Ernestine and Cora? Well, get them and go." And with firm step she walked to her car.

I nodded to Cummings.

"Have one of Dykeman's men pick her up and hang tight," I said, and he smiled back understandingly, with,

"Already done, Boyne. I want to speak to Miss Wallace – if I may. Will you please see for me?"

A moment later, he marched shining and jingling, in through a door that he left open behind him, pulled off his Roman helmet as though it had been a hat, and stood unconsciously fumbling that shoe-brush thing they trim those ancient lids with.

"Barbara," he met the eyes of the girl in the chair unflinchingly, "you told me last night that the only words I ever could speak to you would be in the way of an apology. Will you hear one now? I'm ready to make it. Talk doesn't count much; but I'm going the limit to put Worth Gilbert's release through."

There was a long silence, Barbara looking at him quite unmoved. Behind that steady gaze lay the facts that Worth Gilbert's life and honor had been threatened by this man's course; that she herself was only alive because the bullet of that criminal whom his action unconsciously shielded missed its aim by an inch: Worth's life, her life, their love and all that might mean – and Barbara had eyes you could read – I didn't envy Cummings as he faced her. Finally she said quietly,