The Scandal - Murder Mysteries Boxed Set. Mary Roberts Rinehart
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 they went overseas, he brought this Collier to see her, and when he came back—Bill didn't—she married him. He was a bad egg, but there was no one to tell her. Now she has a boy, and you can imagine how things are when she's sent the kid to an aunt in Connecticut."
"She must have money, or why a will? The Blakes didn't leave anything."
He lit a cigarette before he answered. Just how much to tell Margery was a question. But she had a hard core of common sense and in the end he told her the story. Not too much, for fear of alarming her. He left out Fred Collier in France, merely saying he had known him there, but at the mention of the radio program Margery sat up.
"I often hear it," she said. "It's really good, Wade. And it's been going on forever. She must have made pots of money. Is that what the will is about?"
"I told you she has a child. She wants the money in trust for him. Collier's not to touch it. He doesn't know about it yet. She's used another name, and I gather she only works when he's out, which is probably most of the time. But something has happened to make him suspicious. He was certainly tailing her today."
It was a relief to talk about the case. Nevertheless, he was still restless when they went up to the living room. Usually on his few evenings at home he caught up with his reading, while Margery knitted and listened to the radio. But he could not settle down. There had been something almost sinister in the way Collier had held Anne's arm that morning and almost forced her into the car, and the thought that she was alone with him now, virtually at his mercy, was not conducive to peace of mind.
He took to pacing the floor of the long room with its faded Aubusson carpets and its comfortable Victorian furniture. His hands were in his pockets and clenched into fists until he realized it and drew them out. Margery watched him.
"Thinking of killing him yourself?" she inquired blandly. "I wouldn't blame you."
"It wouldn't be the first time I've wanted to," he said. "Mind if I go out? A little air will do me good."
She didn't mind. One of the pleasant things about Margery was that she seldom minded anything he did; a reason perhaps why a good many mothers of daughters resented her bitterly. But he had a faint qualm himself. He knew how she liked the few evenings he was at home.
He agreed not to stay long, and picking up his hat in the front hall stepped out into the night. The rain had finally ceased, but the gutters were still running and a passing taxicab splashed water from a puddle over the pavement. From the areaway below a light streamed out from the kitchen, and he saw Thomas Carlyle, daintily lifting his paws as he surveyed his sodden world.
Forsythe looked down at him.
"Not a good night for love, Tom," he said. "Better stay home for once."
Tom, however disdained him and, tail high in the air, moved away.
At first, Forsythe had no definite objective. It was not until he was well up Lexington Avenue that he decided to go on. The exercise plus the fresh air had their usual effect, and he began to rationalize his situation. Why get into what Margery would have called a tizzy because ten years ago a young girl with eyes like stars and fabulous lashes had gone to her first dance in a badly fitted dress, and had remembered him? Or had put her head on his desk that day and wept for her dead brother? And why in the name of heaven believe that her husband was potentially a deliberate, cold-blooded murderer?
He swung along briskly. The rain had swept the streets clean and even the air had lost its customary mixture of smoke and fog. He liked New York at night, the lights in the tall buildings where some late office worker or cleaning woman was busy; the shop windows extravagantly showing their prodigality of clothing, of food, of the vast resources of the country, as against the poverty of the Europe he had left after the