The Scandal - Murder Mysteries Boxed Set. Mary Roberts Rinehart

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      TWO

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      Miss Potter had not located the agent for Monica's Marriage by the time the office closed, and Forsythe felt more and more uneasy as he took a taxi home. It was raining. And he was relieved, in his state of mind, that he had that rarity among well-to-do young New York bachelors, a free evening.

      He lived with his widowed sister, Margery, in an old high-stooped house in the Thirties, the home in which he had been born and which, except for some necessary modernization, was much as it had been built. Margery had refused to change it, or to move to an apartment.

      "I like to eat looking out on the garden," she said, the garden being a euphemism for the small plot back of the basement dining room. "And I really can't see Thomas Carlyle with a sandbox and without his lady friends. It would be sheer cruelty to animals."

      Forsythe always grinned at that. He was confident that due to Thomas Carlyle—so named because of Margery's reading of The French Revolution—the district was swarming with unwanted kittens, and he frequently stated to Margery that quite commonly, coming home late at night, he met stealthy gentlemen, carrying squirming bags and on their way to the East River.

      He was not grinning that night, however. Margery, plump and easygoing, looked at him with a speculative eye as she came down the stairs.

      "Tired?" she asked.

      "Hellish weather," he said, handing his raincoat to a neat maid. "Thank God I'm in tonight. I need a cocktail. How about you?"

      She agreed, and they went back to the big living room at the back of the house. He did not relax, however, while he mixed and shook cocktails at the portable bar. Being a wise woman, Margery simply waited, sipping her drink. She was ten years older than he was, and in a sense she had reared him. So not until he had downed his second cocktail did she speak at all. Then:

      "What's bothering you, Wade?" she asked. "Anything wrong at the office?"

      "No. Not exactly. Just something that happened. I didn't handle it very well. Maybe I'm scared. I don't know."

      She gazed at him. He was not easily scared. In fact, she thought he probably never had been.

      "What's frightened you?" she asked placidly. "Is it the Government? You're always jittery this time of year."

      He hesitated, but having gone so far he went on, grimly.

      "I let a girl leave with a husband who has a lot to gain if he can manage to kill her. If he knows what I think he may know."

      "Wade! You didn't!"

      "Well, what was I to do? Call a car and chase them? Notify the police? So far as I know he hasn't lifted a hand against her as yet."

      Margery stared at him.

      "I don't understand," she said. "Who is she? And why did she come to you?"

      "She wants to make a will. Or she wanted to. I don't even know if she got home today. Maybe he sent the car over the Palisades somewhere."

      "Perhaps that's only her story. Is she pretty, Wade?"

      "How in God's name do I know? She's thin as a rail and she looked desperate. If it was acting it was damn good acting. Besides I knew the man in the war. He was a murderous brute."

      He was about to make himself another cocktail when Margery stopped him.

      "You don't need that," she said sharply. "You need what brains you have if you're really worried. Why not call up, if she has a telephone, and see if she's there?"

      "And have him suspect who it is? He followed her to the office today. Potter got rid of him, but he was suspicious as hell."

      "He wouldn't know about me. What's her name, and where does she live?"

      "I don't know where she lives. She rushed out in a hurry. She's Mrs. Wilfred Collier, and if you remember Bill Blake from my college days, she's his younger sister, Anne. That's why she came to see me."

      "Then she may be in the Social Register. The Blakes used to be, at least until the crash."

      "Better try the telephone book," he said dryly. "I don't imagine Collier rates the Register, or Dun and Bradstreet either. But I'd like to bet the police have his record somewhere. Look here," he added in some alarm as she began to look up the number, "you might get her into trouble."

      "Why?" Margery said practically. "If he answers, I can pretend it was a wrong number. If she does, you'll know she's all right. In the East Fifties, Wilfred Collier. That's it, isn't it? All right, and don't look as if you'd like to choke me. If I didn't know you better I'd say you'd fallen for the girl."

      She dialed deliberately, to have a male voice answer in a loud bellow. "Well, what the hell is it?" it shouted.

      "I'm very sorry," Margery said politely. "I'm afraid I have the wrong number. You are certainly not the gentleman I am calling."

      The immediate reaction was a string of abuse, and she was slightly flushed as she hung up.

      "If that was Wilfred Collier," she said, "I'd hate to meet him in an alley on a dark night, or at any time or place. He's raging about something." Then, seeing her brother's face, "But he can't have done her any real harm, Wade. If he had, wouldn't he be out somewhere, establishing an alibi, or whatever they do?"

      In spite of his state of mind he smiled at this.

      "Nicely reasoned, my dear," he said. "As a matter of fact, he probably doesn't know about the will, or anything else. Just now he's only suspicious and ugly. In a day or two he'll probably have dug up the whole story. Then there may be real trouble."

      He did not elaborate on that. Dinner was announced and, with the neat maid serving, the talk was casual. He was aware, of course, of Margery's burning curiosity, but in these comfortable familiar surroundings some of his own anxiety seemed rather absurd. With the after-dinner coffee Tillie, the maid, was excused, and he sat back looking through the French doors at the wet garden, with its sundial in the center and its still bedraggled March shrubbery.

      "Funny," he said. "I seem to have worked myself into a fit over a girl I saw but once before, and that was ten years ago. I danced with her at a prom, and she remembered it."

      "Why wouldn't she?" Margery said proudly.

      He grinned at her.

      "She was pretty young, and Bill almost broke his neck showing her a good time. Then, before СКАЧАТЬ