The Million-Dollar Suitcase, Alice MacGowan [free ebooks romance novels .TXT] 📗

splurge," she greeted us, "was to turn in our blouses at the neck."

"And what in the world are you doing to Barbara?" Mrs. Vandeman said sharply. "Let her alone, Skeet. You'll make her look ridiculous."

Skeet stuck out her tongue at her sister, and went calmly on, mumbling as she worked,

"Hold 'till 'ittle Barbie child. Yook up at pretty mans and hold 'till."

Over the mantel, in front of Barbara as she stood, her back to us all, hung an oil painting—one of those family groups—same old popper; same old mommer, and a fat baby in a white dress and blue sash. At that, it was good enough to show that the man had some resemblance to Vandeman as he leaned there on the mantel below it, rather encouraging Skeet's enterprise. From the other side, I could see Barbara's glance go from man to picture.

"Doesn't it look like Van, Barbie?" Skeet kept up the conversation. "Got the same ring, and all. But it ain't Van. Him's the tootsie in there with the blue ribbon round his tummy."

"I say, Skeeter, lay off!" Vandeman looked self-consciously from the painted ring in the picture to the real ring on his own well kept hand there on the mantel edge. "People aren't interested in family histories."

"I am," said Barbara, unexpectedly. As the gong sounded and we all began to move toward the dining room, they were still on the subject and kept it up after we were seated.

Fong Ling served us. The bride had Worth on her right, and talked to him in lowered tones. Barbara, between Vandeman and myself, continued to show an almost feverish attention to Vandeman. It was plain enough from where I sat that nothing Ina Vandeman could say gave the lad any less interest in his plate. But I suppose with a girl, the mere fact of some other girl being allowed to show intentions counts. Did the flapper get what was going on, as she looked proudly across at her handiwork, and demanded of me,

"Say, Mr. Boyne, you saw how Ina tried to do us dirt? And now, honest to goodness, hasn't Barbie with the plum-blossoms got Ina and her artificial flowers skun a mile?"

I didn't wonder that young Mrs. Vandeman saved me the necessity of answering, by taking her up.

"Skeet, you're too outrageous!"

There she sat, quite a beauty in a very superior fashion; and Worth at her side, was having his attention called to this dark young creature across the table, whose wonderful still fire, the white blossoms crowning her hair, might well have made even a lovelier than Ina Vandeman look insipid. And Worth did take his time admiring her; I saw that; but all he found to say was,

"Bobs, I suppose Jerry's told you that he's treed Clayte at Tiajuana?"

"No," said Barbara, "he hasn't said a word. But I'm just as much surprised at Clayte's being caught as I was at Skeels escaping capture."

"Say that over and say it slow," Vandeman was good natured. "Or rather, put it in plain American, so we all can understand."

"Mr. Boyne knows what I mean." Barbara gave me a faint smile. "Mr. Boyne and I add up Skeels and Clayte, and get a different result. That's all."

"Bobs doesn't think that Skeels is Clayte, caught or uncaught," Worth said briefly and went on eating his dinner. Apparently he didn't give a hang which way the fact turned out to be.

"Why don't you?" Vandeman gave passing attention. She shook her head and put it.

"Skeels, at liberty, was quite possibly Clayte; Skeels captured cannot be Clayte. Mr. Boyne, do you call that a paradox?"

"No—an unkind slam at a poor old man's ability in his profession. I started out to find a gang; but Clayte and Skeels are so exactly one, mentally, morally and physically, that I don't see why we should seek further."

"Back up, Jerry," Worth tossed it over at me. "Let Barbara"—he didn't often use the girl's full name that way—"give you a description of Clayte before you're so sure."

"How could I?" The girl's tone was defensive. "I never saw him."

"I want you," Worth paid no attention to her objections, "to describe the man you thought you were asking for that day at the Gold Nugget, when Jerry butted in, and your ideas got lost in the excitement about Skeels. Deduce the description, I mean."

"Deduce it?" Barbara spoke stiffly, incredulously, her glance going from Worth to the well-gowned, well-groomed woman beside him. I remembered her moment of rebellion yesterday evening on the lawn, when she said so bitterly that if he asked it again, she'd do it again, as she finished, "Deduce—here?"

"Here and now." Worth's laconic answer sent the blood of healthy anger into her face, made her eyes shine. And it brought from Ina Vandeman a petulant,

"Oh, Worth, please don't turn my dinner table into a side-show."

"Ina, dear." Vandeman raised his eyes at her, then quite the cordial host urging a guest to display talent, "They say you're wonderful at that sort of thing, and I've never seen it."

Barbara was mad for fair.

"Oh, very well," she spoke pointedly to Vandeman, and left Worth out of it. "If you think you'd really enjoy seeing me make a side-show of Ina's dinner table—"

She stopped and waited. Vandeman played up to the situation as he saw it, with one of his ready smiles. Worth threw no life-line. Ina didn't think it worth while to apologize for her rudeness. Skeet was openly in a twitter of anticipation. There was nothing for me to do. A little commotion of skirts told us that she was drawing up her feet to sit cross-legged in her chair.

"She's going to! Oh, golly!" Skeet chortled. "Haven't seen Bobsy do one of those stunts since I was a che-ild!"

Arms down, hands clasped, eyes growing bigger, face paling into snow, we watched her. To all but Vandeman, this was a more or less familiar performance. They took it rather as a matter of course. It was the Chinaman, coming in with the coffee tray, who seemed most strangely affected by it. He stopped where he was in the doorway, rigid, staring at our girl, though with a changeful light in his eye that seemed to me to shift between an unreasonable admiration and an unreasonable fear. Orientals are superstitious; but what could the fellow be afraid of in the beautiful young thing, Buddha posed, blossoms in her hair? The girl had gone into her stunt with a sort of angry energy. He seemed to clutch himself to stillness for the brief time that it held. Only in the moment that she relaxed, and we knew that Barbara had concentrated, Barbara was Barbara again, did he move quietly forward, a decent, competent servant, stepping around the table, placing our cups.

"Just two facts to go on," she said coldly. "My results will be pretty general."

"Nothing to go on in the way of a description of Clayte," I tried to help her out. "I'd call that one we had of him as near nothing as it well could be."

"Yes, the nothingness of it was one of my facts," she said, and stopped.

"Let's hear what you did get, Bobs," Worth prompted; and Skeet giggled, half under her breath,

"Speech! Speech!"

"At the Gold Nugget—whatever he called himself there—Edward Clayte was ten years younger than he had seemed at the bank; he appeared to weigh a dozen pounds more; threw out his chest, walked with his head up, and therefore would have been estimated quite a bit taller. This personality was an opposite of the other. Bank clerk Clayte was demure, unobtrusive; this man wore loud patterns. The bank clerk was silent; this man talked to every one around him, tilted his hat over one eye, smoked cigars just as those men were doing that day in the lobby; acted like them, was one of them. In the Gold Nugget, Clayte was a very average Gold Nugget guest—don't you see? Commonplace there, just as the other Clayte had been commonplace in a bank or an office."

Her voice ceased. On the silence it left, Worth spoke up quietly.

"Bull's eye as usual, Bobs. Every word you say is true. And at the Gold Nugget, his name was Henry J. Brundage. He had room thirty on the top floor."

Skeet clapped her hands, jumped up and came around the table to kiss Barbara on the ear, and tell her she was the most wonderfullest girl in the world.

"Heh!" I flared at Worth. "Find that all out to-day in San Francisco?"

"No."

"Oh, it was the Brundage clew that took you south?"

"Yep. Left Louie on the job at the hotel while I was away. To-day, I went after Brundage's automobile. Found he'd kept one in a garage on Jackson Street."

"It's gone, of course—and no trace," Barbara murmured.

"Gone since the day of the bank theft," Worth nodded. "He and the money went in it."

"Say," I leaned over toward him, "wouldn't it have saved wear and tear if you'd told me at the first that you knew Skeels couldn't be Clayte?"

"Oh, but, Jerry, you were so sure! And Skeels wasn't possible for a minute—never in his little, piking, tin-horn life!"

I don't believe I had seen Worth so happy since he was a boy, playing detective. I glanced around and pulled myself up; we certainly weren't making ourselves very entertaining for the Vandemans. There they sat, at their own table, like handsome figureheads, smiling politely, pretending a decent interest.

"All this must be a bore to you people," I apologized.

"Not at all—not at all," Vandeman assured us.

"Well then if you don't mind—Worth, I'll go and use Vandeman's phone—put my office wise to these Brundage clews of yours."

Worth nodded. No social scruples were his. I had by no means given up the belief that Skeels in jail at Tiajuana, would still turn out to be one of the gang.

I had just got back to the table from my phoning when the doorbell rang; we saw the big Chinese slip noiselessly through the rear into the hall to answer it, coming back a moment later, announcing in his weighty, correct English,

"Two gentlemen calling—to see Captain Gilbert."

"Ask for me?" Worth came to his feet in surprise. "Who told them I was here?"

"I do not know," the Chinaman spoke unnecessarily as Worth was crossing to the door. "I did not ask them that."

"Use the living room, Worth," Vandeman called after him. "We'll wait here."

With the closing of the door, conversation languished. Even Skeet was quiet and seemed depressed. My ears were straining for any sound from in there. As I sat, hand dropped at my side, I suddenly felt under shelter of the screening tablecloth, cold, nervous fingers slipped into mine. Barbara wasn't looking at me, but I gave her a quick glance as I pressed her gripping small hand encouragingly.

She was turned toward Vandeman. Pale to the lips, her great eyes fixed on the eyes of our host, I saw with wonder how he slowly stirred a spoon about in his emptied coffee cup, and stared back at her with a face almost as colorless as her own. The bride glanced from one to the other of them, and spoke sharply,

"What's the matter with you two? You're not uneasy about Worth's callers, are you?"

"No-no-no—" Vandeman was the first to come out of it, responding to her voice a good deal as if she dashed cold water in his face, his eyes breaking away from Barbara's, his lips parted in a nervous smile. He ran a hand through his hair—an inelegant gesture for him at table—and laughed a little.

"We ought to be in there," Barbara said to me, a curious stress in her voice.

"How funny you talk, Barbie," Skeet quavered. "What do you think's wrong?" And Ina spoke decidedly,

"Worth is one person in the world who can certainly take care of himself, and