I thought it over.
"That"s the whole thing, can"t you see?" she asked. "Schuyler was after something, but he couldn"t get it without promising to marry her. He wanted to have his cake and eat it too. I mean he didn"t have any intention of giving up his wife"s money, but he wanted Lucille. So he told her he was going to divorce his wife and marry her. He was just sharp enough, and she was just dumb enough, and he pulled it." Her eyes came up as far as my mouth, but no higher. "And that couldn"t go on forever, could it? When it came to a showdown, and Schuyler had to admit that he"d been playing her for all he could get-" she shrugged- "well?"
"You didn"t care much for Lucille, did you?"
"I loathed her."
"And Schuyler?"
She took a deep breath. "I-I guess I was in love with him once. But no more. After Lucille had been there a couple of months, he called me in and fired me. Just like that. He didn"t even give me a reason-because there was was no reason. He didn"t need two girls, and so he just kicked me out on the street. Why, it was all I could do to get him to write a few references for me. And no reason. He didn"t need two girls, and so he just kicked me out on the street. Why, it was all I could do to get him to write a few references for me. And that that after I"d been there all those years ... " after I"d been there all those years ... "
I nodded. "A tough break, Miss Webb."
"When will you arrest him?"
"We"ll talk to him again."
"But isn"t it plain enough? What more could you possibly want?"
"We"ll talk to him," I said again. I got out my notebook and took down Miss Webb"s address and phone number.
"I see I"ve wasted my time," she said.
"Not at all," I said, making it friendly. "I"m very grateful to you. As I said, we"ll-" But she had turned quickly and was walking off down Sixth Avenue. Once she hesitated a moment, as if she might turn back, but then she went on again, walking even more rapidly than before.
I went into a drug store and called the Twentieth Precinct. Paul Brader told me that Vince Donnelly hadn"t opened his mouth, except to demand a lawyer. Paul had been able, through other sources, to establish that he was the same Vince Donnelly who had gone around with Lucille Taylor, but that was all. We had nothing at all on Donnelly, and unless we came up with something within the next few hours we"d have to let him go.
"I got a feeling about this guy," Paul said. "I think we"re on our way."
"Yeah? Why so?"
"I just sort of hunch it, that"s all."
"Well, keep at him. I"m going to check out a couple things with Schuyler, and then I"ll be over to help you."
He laughed. "Schuyler-or the girl?"
"Schuyler."
"Okay. See you later."
I hung up, located the after-business-hours number of the Lormer Jewelry Shop in the directory, and finally got through to Mr. Lormer himself. He lived in a hotel on Lexington Avenue, and asked me to come up. From him I learned that the diamond engagement ring, while large, had been of the lowest quality he carried. I asked if Schuyler had brought a young woman to the shop for a fitting, and Mr. Lormer said no. Schuyler had asked that the engagement ring be made up in the same size as a small intaglio he wore on the little finger of his left hand. And then-very reluctantly-Mr. Lormer told me that Schuyler had returned the ring yesterday morning. He had not wanted a cash refund, but had applied the refund value of the ring against two jewelled wrist watches, to be delivered to his two daughters.
I took Mr. Lormer to his shop, impounded the ring, signed a receipt for it, and took him back home. Then I drove to Seventy-second Street and got a positive identification of the ring from Lucille, Taylor"s aunt and uncle.
I located Schuyler"s home address in the directory, picked up Paul Brader at the Twentieth, and we drove downtown toward Schuyler"s apartment house.
In his office, Schuyler had been as cool as they come. Standing in the doorway of his apartment, with his wife and daughters just behind him, he was something else again. We had counted on surprise and the presence of his family to unnerve him, and we weren"t disappointed. He had divided his life into two parts, and we had suddenly brought the parts together. He stared first at Paul and then at me, moistening his lips.
I had the engagement ring in the palm of my hand, and now I opened my fingers slowly and let him see it.
"What is it, dear?" his wife asked, and one of the girls moved a little closer, her eyes questioning me.
"I-I can"t talk here," Schuyler said, in what he probably thought was a whisper. "My G.o.d, I-"
"Get your coat," I said.
He nodded rapidly. "Yes, yes-of course."
We rode down in the self-service elevator, phoned in a release for Vince Donnelly, and crossed the street to the RMP car. Paul got behind the wheel and I got into the back seat with Schuyler. Paul eased the car out into the heavy Lexington Avenue traffic.
"We have the ring, Mr. Schuyler," I said. "We got a positive identification of it. You returned it after after Lucille Taylor had been murdered. We"ll have no trouble taking it from there. Not a bit. We"ll put a dozen men on it. We"ll work around the clock. We"ll get a little here, and a little there-and pretty soon we"ll have you in a box. The smartest thing you can do-the Lucille Taylor had been murdered. We"ll have no trouble taking it from there. Not a bit. We"ll put a dozen men on it. We"ll work around the clock. We"ll get a little here, and a little there-and pretty soon we"ll have you in a box. The smartest thing you can do-the only only thing you can do-is make it a little easier on yourself." I paused. "And make it a little easier on your family." thing you can do-is make it a little easier on yourself." I paused. "And make it a little easier on your family."
"My girls!" Schuyler said. "My G.o.d, my girls!"
"Tell us about the other girl," I said softly. "Tell us about Lucille."
It was a long moment before he could keep his voice steady. "She threatened me," he said at last. "She said she was going to my wife and daughters and tell them about-about us. I knew I could have patched it up with my wife, but-my daughters ... G.o.d, I-"
"You admitted to Lucille that you"d never intended to divorce your wife and marry her?"
He nodded almost imperceptibly. "I had grown a little tired of her. She was pretty, but so-so immature. I told her, and she became enraged. I was surprised. I hadn"t thought she was capable of so much fury. We had walked down Seventy-second Street to the river. We were sitting on one of those benches down there, watching the tugboats. When I told her, she began to curse me. She was almost screaming. I couldn"t see anyone else nearby, but I was afraid someone would hear her. I tried to calm her, but she got almost hysterical. Then she slapped me, and I grabbed her. I-I don"t know just what happened then, but somehow I made her head hit the back of the bench. And then I kept doing it-kept beating her head against the back of the bench." Suddenly he covered his face with his hands and his body slumped. "And then-and then I carried her to the railing across from the bench and threw her into the water."
I watched the neon streaming by. "But not before you stripped that ring off her finger, Schuyler," I said. "You sure as h.e.l.l didn"t forget the ring, did you?"
He didn"t say anything.
As we neared the Harbor Precinct, I could hear a tugboat whistle, somewhere out there on the cold Hudson, a deep, remote blast that was somehow like a mockery.
"G.o.d," Schuyler murmured. "My poor girls, my poor little girls ... "
And don"t forget poor little Lucille Taylor, I thought, while you"re feeling sorry for your victims.
SWAMP SEARCH by HARRY WHITTINGTON
I noticed the blue-gray Caddy on my road, but had no time to watch it twist and bounce the twenty miles through Everglades sawgra.s.s, palmetto and slash pine from the Tamiami trail to my place.
I"d been out all morning in the helicopter hunting for strays and just as I glimpsed the Caddy, I saw one of my Santa Gertrudis heifers caught in a bog. Lose a cow in that ooze, you never see her again. I needed every cow I had, every penny I could earn on my farm. I was in hock, even paying for the "copter on installments.
I engaged the pedals, the wings rotated slowly and I hovered over the bawling cow. The pinch-rig I"d made was an ice-tong affair of steel and leather I let down on my cable.
"Take it easy, baby," I told the cow. "You"re too valuable to lose in that goo."
The cable winched down, I closed the pincher about her belly and started upward. The sucking noise of the ooze and bawling of the cow rose above the revving of my motor.
I let the heifer swing a moment to impress her, then set her down in high gra.s.s, cussed her once for luck, reeled in my line and peeled off toward the house where the Caddy was parked in the yard.
She was sitting in the Caddy looking around when I walked toward her. What she saw was bare sand yard without even a slash pine growing in it, brown frame house of four rooms and porch, coal-oil lamps and outhouse. Rugged, but beautiful to me. It had belonged to my folks. They"d died while I was in a Chinese prison camp. It got so this lonely place was what I"d dreamed of coming back to.
"How"d you get this far off the trail?" I said. "My road is hard to find."
She got out of the car, smiled. Except for her shape she wasn"t terrific; wavy brown hair, deep-set brown eyes and squared chin. "Not as hard to find as your house. I had a ball getting here-the car sc.r.a.ped between the ruts."
"It"s been dry or you"d never have made it."
"I"d have made it." Something about her voice made me look at her again, closer.
Her gaze touched my helicopter, and didn"t move on. She smiled again. "You Jim Norton?"
I nodded and she said, still watching the "copter, "I"m Celia Carmic ... Mrs. Curt Carmic."
Carmic. I stared. The whole state had been alerted in a search for Curt Carmic. He had crashed in his private plane on an Everglades hunting trip. After a week of intensive searching, the Coast Guard had abandoned him as dead.
I invited her up on the porch. "I"m sorry about your husband, Mrs. Carmic."
"Yes." She shook her head as though still unable to believe it. She made a wad of her handkerchief. "Curt and I were-very happy, Mr. Norton. He was-well, several years older than I, but he was a vital man, had the world in his hand." Her head tilted. "I don"t say Curt didn"t have enemies. Every strong man does."
Her eyes were moist, her voice sounded full of tears. She told me about Carmic. She glossed over the way he got a discharge from the Marines in 1943, but said that from 1945 he"d had great success, headed two companies making parts for the Korean police action, Carmic Defrosters.
"Curt was due in Washington on the Monday following his trip. They were investigating his war profits. Curt was ill at this injustice, his doctor told him to rest. His idea of rest was a weekend hunting trip in the Everglades. But more than anything, Mr. Norton, he wanted to come back and clear his name." Her chin quivered. "I can"t believe Curt is dead."
I didn"t know what to say. All I wanted down here was peace, and a chance to make a living my way. I"d been in the world she talked about. I"d had it.
"They searched for Curt for a week. I know they were thorough and didn"t find a trace. I can"t give up. Can you understand that, Mr. Norton? I"ve got to find him. That"s why I came to you."
I waited, not knowing why I didn"t want to get mixed up in this thing. She said, "I"ll give you a thousand dollars-and pay all expenses if you"ll help me search for him."
I had plenty of use for a thousand dollars. I couldn"t buy the picture she painted of Curt Carmic. Him I never knew, but I knew his Defrosters and there was a good reason for that Senate inquiry. Still, no man would take to the Everglades even to escape a government investigation.
"How long would you want to search?"
"Until we find him." She paced my porch. "I"ll pay the thousand dollars for anything up to ten days. After that-" she spread her hands, left that unfinished. Tensely she watched me until I nodded. She cried then. She stood rigid and tears ran down her cheeks.
The rest of the day we studied flight plans and maps. She had all the information she could get on the Everglades and the weather.
I tried to shrug off the feeling of wrong that persisted. Any profiteer who"d sell Carmic Defrosters to his country should have been investigated and any woman who"d lived ten years with him should know that. Yet she spoke of him as though he were saintly. I reminded myself it didn"t matter, it was a thousand dollars to me, but the nagging sense of emptiness stayed.
We set up the first flight pattern, figured mileage, weather and gas capacity and set for seven the next morning. When the time was set, Celia Carmic became a different woman.
First she"d been the bereaved wife, then the cold general over map briefing and weather data. At supper she chatted about her life in Washington. She ate delicately-like a she-wolf with a Va.s.sar education. I"d never met anyone like her; I had to smile.
"Why are you laughing at me?"
I fumbled my fork. "I"m not laughing."
She stopped eating, touched her lips with a paper napkin. "How old are you, Jim?"
I remembered the war years, the prison. "I"ll be a hundred next April."
"I"d say twenty-three."
"Say whatever you like."
She looked around. "No girl to share all this?"
I shook my head. "The kind that would share this I wouldn"t want. And the other kind-" I stopped. I suddenly knew the only kind of woman I"d ever wanted. We just looked at each other ... "I can"t afford what I want," I said.
"What would you do to be able to afford her?"
"Anything."
"Sure?"
"Anything at all."
"You might be held to that," she said. "And soon."
About five A.M. I heard something stir in the house and jumped out of bed. Sleep-drugged, I staggered across the room. I reached the guest room door before I remembered Celia was there.
I stopped in the doorway, fully awake, realizing I was in my undershorts; it was too hot to sleep in anything more.
She was fully dressed, white shirt, jodhpurs, gleaming boots. She had a handful of maps and weather data. "Sorry I wakened you, Jim. I couldn"t sleep any more. I"m too anxious to get started."
I mumbled something and backed off. She let her eyes prowl over me and then walked out into the front room leaving me gaping after her. Where was the bereaved wife? Where were those unshed tears?
From that moment there was a sick emptiness in my stomach. But the second the flight started, she was all business.
She sat with the flight pattern mapped on her lap. After I filled all gas tanks at the Lewiston Airport, she watched compa.s.s and mileage indicator until we reached the lines marking our first pattern. Coldly serious, she read that country minutely with field gla.s.ses.
She never took five, never relaxed. This land was huge bolts of scorched brown, ribboned by black strings of water. Heron took flight, I pointed out a wildcat. Nothing down there but silence and heat waves.
We made our circle, reached the end of the flight pattern. She sat back, dropped the binoculars. Red circles encased her eyes. "We know they"re not in there."
"We"ll take the second pattern tomorrow."
She seemed to have lost interest. She was watching me again from the corner of her eyes. I set the "copter down in the yard.
"Think I could learn to handle a windmill, Jim?"
"It"s not easy. But I could teach you."
She looked thoughtful.