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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 pa.s.sivity.
And the committee went wild. Their own masks came off on the run. I saw c.u.mmings" 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 pa.s.s me--not if you was own cousin to G.o.d 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 s.p.a.ce 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, c.u.mmings 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. c.u.mmings, at my side, drew in a breath, with,
"Why--d.a.m.n 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 n.o.ble 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?"