The Million-Dollar Suitcase. MacGowan Alice
had one more good dinner. Food's a thing you can depend on; it doesn't rake up your entire past record from the time you squirmed into this world, and tell you what a fool you've always been."
I turned that over in my mind. Did it mean that he'd seen his father and got a calling down? I wanted to know – and was afraid to ask. The fact is I was beginning to wake up to a good many things about my young boss. I was intensely interested in his reactions on people. So far, I'd seen him with strangers. I wished that I might have a chance to observe him among intimates. Old Richardson who founded our agency (and would never knowingly have left me at the head of it, though he did take me in as partner, finally) used to say that the main trouble with me was I studied people instead of cases. Richardson held that all men are equal before the detective, and must be regarded only as queer shaped pieces to be fitted together so as to make out a case. Richardson would have gone as coolly about easing the salt of the earth into the chink labeled "murder" or "embezzlement," as though neither had been human. With me the personal equation always looms big, and of course he was quite right in saying that it's likely to get you all gummed up.
The telephone on the table before me rang. It was Roberts, my secretary, with the word that Foster had lifted the watch from Ocean View, the little town at the neck of the peninsula, where bay and ocean narrow the passageway to one thoroughfare, over which every machine must pass that goes by land from San Francisco. With two operatives, he had been on guard there since three o'clock of the afternoon, holding up blond men in cars, asking questions, taking notes and numbers. Now he reported it was a useless waste of time.
"Order him in," I instructed Roberts.
A far-too-fat entertainer out on the floor was writhing in the pangs of an Hawaiian dance. It took the attention of the crowd. I watched the face of my companion for a moment, then,
"Worth," I said a bit nervously – after all, I nearly had to know – "is your father going to come through?"
"Eh?" He looked at me startled, then put it aside negligently. "Oh, the money? No. I'll leave that up to Cummings." A brief pause. "We'll get a wiggle on us and dig up the suitcase." He lifted his tumbler, stared at it, then unseeingly out across the room, and his lip twitched in a half smile. "I'm sure glad I bought it."
Looking at him, I had no reason to doubt his word. His enjoyment of the situation seemed to grow with every detail I brought up.
It was near eleven when the party came in to take the long, flower-trimmed table. Worth's back was to the room; I saw them over his shoulder, in the lead a tall blonde, very smartly dressed, but not in evening clothes; in severe, exclusive street wear. The man with her, good looking, almost her own type, had that possessive air which seems somehow unmistakable – and there was a look about the half dozen companions after them, as they settled themselves in a great flurry of scraping chairs, that made me murmur with a grin,
"Bet that's a wedding party."
Worth gave them one quick glance, then came round to me with a smile.
"You win. Married at Santa Ysobel this afternoon. Local society event. Whole place standing on its hind legs, taking notice."
So he had been down to the little town to see his father after all. And he wasn't going to talk about it. Oh, well.
"Friends of yours?" I asked perfunctorily, and he gave me a queer look out of the corners of those wicked eyes, repeating in an enjoying drawl.
"Friends? Oh, hardly that. The girl I was to have married, and Bronson Vandeman – the man she has married."
I had wanted to get a more intimate line on the kid – it seemed that here was a chance with a vengeance!
"The rest of the bunch?" I suggested. He took a leisurely survey, and gave them three words:
"Family and accomplices."
"Santa Ysobel people, too, then. Folks you know well?"
"Used to."
"The lady changed her mind while you were across?" I risked the query.
"While I was shedding my blood for my country." He nodded. "Gave me the butt while the Huns were using the bayonet on me."
In the careless jeer, as much at himself as at her, no hint what his present feeling might be toward the fashion plate young female across there. With some fellows, in such a situation, I should have looked for a disposition to duck the encounter; let his old sweetheart's wedding party leave without seeing him; with others I should have discounted a dramatic moment when he would court the meeting. It was impossible to suppose either thing of Worth Gilbert; plain that he simply sat there because he sat there, and would make no move toward the other table unless something in that direction interested him – pleasantly or unpleasantly – which at present nothing seemed to do.
So we smoked, Worth indifferent, I giving all the attention to the people over there: bride and groom; a couple of fair haired girls so like the bride that I guessed them to be sisters; a freckled, impudent looking little flapper I wasn't so sure of; two older men, and an older woman. Then a shifting of figures gave me sight of a face that I hadn't seen before, and I drew in my breath with a whistle.
"Whew! Who's the dark girl? She's a beauty!"
"Dark girl?" Worth had interest enough to lean into the place where I got my view; after he did so he remained to stare. I sat and grinned while he muttered,
"Can't be… I believe it is!"
Something to make him sit up and take notice now. I didn't wonder at his fixed study of the young creature. Not so dressed up as the others – I think she wore what ladies call an evening blouse with a street suit; a brunette, but of a tinting so delicate that she fairly sparkled, she took the shine off those blonde girls. Her small beautifully formed, uncovered head had the living jet of the crow's wing; her great eyes, long-lashed and sumptuously set, showed ebon irises almost obliterating the white. Dark, shining, she was a night with stars, that girl.
"Funny thing," Worth spoke, moving his head to keep in line with that face. "How could she grow up to be like this – a child that wasn't allowed any childhood? Lord, she never even had a doll!"
"Some doll herself now," I smiled.
"Yeh," he assented absently, "she's good looking – but where did she learn to dress like that – and play the game?"
"Where they all learn it." I enjoyed very much seeing him interested. "From her mother, and her sisters, or the other girls."
"Not." He was positive. "Her mother died when she was a baby. Her father wouldn't let her be with other children – treated her like one of the instruments in his laboratory; trained her in her high chair; problems in concentration dumped down into its tray, punishment if she made a failure; God knows what kind of a reward if she succeeded; maybe no more than her bowl of bread and milk. That's the kind of a deal she got when she was a kid. And will you look at her now!"
If he kept up his open staring at the girl, it would be only a matter of time when the wedding party discovered him. I leaned back in my chair to watch, while Worth, full of his subject, spilled over in words.
"Never played with anybody in her life – but me," he said unexpectedly. "They lived next house but one to us; the professor had the rest of the Santa Ysobel youngsters terrorized, backed off the boards; but I wasn't a steady resident of the burg. I came and went, and when I came, it was playtime for the little girl."
"What was her father? Crank on education?"
"Psychology," Worth said briefly. "International reputation. But he ought to have been hung for the way he brought Bobs up. Listen to this, Jerry. I got off the train one time at Santa Ysobel – can't remember just when, but the kid over there was all shanks and eyes – 'bout ten or eleven, I'd say. Her father had her down at the station doing a stunt for a bunch of professors. That was his notion of a nice, normal development for a small child. There she sat poked up cross-legged on a baggage truck. He'd trained her to sit in that self balanced position so she could make her mind blank without going to sleep. A freight train was hitting a twenty mile clip past the station, and she was adding the numbers on the sides of the box cars, in her mind. It kept those professors on the jump to get the figures