Beware the Young Stranger

Beware the Young Stranger

Ellery Queen

MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

CAST OF CHARACTERS

J
OHN
V
ALLANCOURT
—He had played for high stakes before—but never for his daughter's life

K
EITH
R
OLLINS
—Life was a survival of the fittest, and he would stop at nothing to reach his
querencia

H
OWARD
C
ONWAY
—Married into the country club, he resented any tremor that might affect his money-in-law

R
ALPH
H
IBBS
—With his major stockholder lying in a funeral home, Ralphie boy could finally make his own decisions

I
VY
F
ERGUSON
C
ONWAY
—To her, existence was a cocktail in one hand and a bridge deck in the other

D
ORCAS
F
ERGUSON
—She had built a financial empire out of debts and despair, and a private life out of deception

N
ANCY
V
ALLANCOURT
—Young and vulnerable, she could not attach conditions to her loyalty

S
AM
R
OLLINS
—Ironically, he was paid to keep silent when the last thing he would have done was to talk

1.

Vallancourt was the last of the foursome to reach the locker room. Coming off the eighteenth green, he had been hailed by a gushing, well-padded matron he barely knew.

She had three out-of-town guests at a cocktail table on the clubhouse terrace, and she insisted on introducing John Vallancourt to them as “our own
distinguished
diplomat, the man who knows all the secrets of those nasty foreign countries.”

Lanky and trim, a silver-and-tan man of fifty-odd years, Vallancourt exchanged small talk, managed a tactful escape, and immediately forgot the incident. He had more important things to think about. Nancy, for instance, his daughter.

In the deserted locker room, he stripped, showered, toweled briskly, and put on the dark gray Italian silk suit he had worn to the club this morning.

He made an admission to himself: he was disturbed. Playing around sixty-five hundred yards of golf course with Keith Rollins today hadn't quieted his sense of caution. Vallancourt had experienced similar emotional radar in foreign capitals when United States prestige and best interests were at stake; and in the solitude of big-game country, when the hunter was cut down to size.

His wariness over Rollins was not because the time had inevitably arrived when there must be a change in his relationship with Nancy. He was prepared for the change. The emergence of his daughter into womanhood was welcome and good. He looked forward to seeing his bloodline extended in Nancy's children …

Vallancourt thought he was alone. But then he turned and saw Keith Rollins at the far end of the row of lockers. The diplomat's usually warm brown eyes chilled slightly. He wondered how long the man had been standing there watching him.

Keith was smiling as he came forward—a good-looking young man of twenty-two, heavy-shouldered. His face was cut in firm, rather angular lines. He had restless eyes of dark blue, almost purple, under brows as heavily black as his curly hair.

He lit a cigarette. “Afraid we all ducked when we saw the old biddy making for you. Mr. Conway and Mr. Hibbs are in the cocktail lounge.”

“I'm used to old biddies,” Vallancourt said, also smiling.

Keith squinted through a wreath of smoke. “You play a bang-up game of golf, Mr. Vallancourt. Nancy warned me.”

“You don't play so badly yourself. You had me scrambling right down to that wild second-shot gamble on seventeen.”

“Maybe next time,” Keith said.

In spite of Keith's casual friendliness, the words came out with an I'll-get-you-yet undertone. It struck Vallancourt, coming after a whole day of observation, as being prompted by something more than a mere desire to win. The older man wondered suddenly how often before Keith's need had carried him almost to victory, then turned on him in the final moment, as it had today on the course.

Keith moved ahead, holding the locker room door open for Vallancourt.

“Anyway,” Keith said, “today meant a little more to us than a golf game, didn't it?”

“In what way?”

“You wanted to look me over, didn't you?”

There was a flicker of resentment in the nightshade eyes.

“I suppose I did,” replied Vallancourt.

They started down the rubber-tiled corridor in the direction of the dining room and cocktail lounge.

“At least,” Keith laughed, “I'm glad you didn't suggest a weekend hunting trip in the mountains. I show up better with golf clubs than a rifle.” They walked on a few steps, and he went on without a pause. “From what I hear you're pretty good at assessing people. I'd value your opinion of me, Mr. Vallancourt.”

“Do you think I've had a proper chance to form one, Keith?”

“Some men in your spot would have formed one right off—even before they met the poor guy.”

“And what do
you
think of
me
?” asked Vallancourt.

“You're Nancy's father. That's good enough for me.”

Clever, Vallancourt thought. Designed to put the opponent on the defensive. Does he see opposition in all people? They reached the end of the vaulted corridor. Wide doors directly ahead swung into the dining room and bar; an archway to their left, fringed with ivy, led onto the terrace. Faint sounds of people drifted to them.

Keith paused, looking through the arch at the sun outside. “I get the message, Mr. Vallancourt. In your silence.”

“Keith,” Vallancourt said quietly, “aren't you jumping to conclusions?”

“How come?”

“Aren't you actually anticipating that I'm set on forming a negative opinion of you? The contrary is true.”

“I know Nancy is all you have, Mr. Vallancourt, how close you two have been.”

“It was my job to bring her up, Keith. Her mother died when Nancy was very young.”

“More than just a job. Lots of men would have parked her in a school and let it go at that. But all those years in Cairo, Rome, Athens, you kept her with you.”

“They were wonderful years.” Vallancourt sighed.

“If the Secretary of State or the President need you, you'll go again. You always have. Only this time without Nancy. That must be a grim prospect.”

“You're a perceptive young man, Keith, but you're wrong about that.”

“I see,” Keith said, slowly. “You're glad to see her grown up.”

Vallancourt smiled again.

“I've known it was coming, of course.”

“You just want to make sure she doesn't fly out of the nest with the wrong pigeon.”

Vallancourt felt a prickle on the nape of his neck. This boy, he told himself, carried himself in an eggshell.

“Keith, why don't we give each other a little time?”

Keith's glance slid away. “Maybe you're right, Mr. Vallancourt. I get the feeling we've started off like two tomcats rounding a dark corner from opposite directions.” He hesitated. “I don't want it that way, Mr. Vallancourt.”

The quick shift in the boy's mood was ingratiating. Vallancourt said warmly, “Neither do I.”

“Nancy and I wish it could be perfect for us,” Keith said. “But, perfect or not, I know how we feel about each other. Nothing can change that, nothing.”

“Then we'll have to try to put a light on that corner, won't we, Keith?”

“Yes, sir. Well, I'll cut out now. I know you want to have a drink with Mr. Conway and Mr. Hibbs.”

“You're more than welcome to join us, Keith.”

“Thanks. I'll take a raincheck.”

“Are you seeing Nancy this evening?”

“Yes, Mr. Vallancourt.”

John Vallancourt watched the boy move through the archway to the terrace. Then he slowly turned toward the cocktail lounge.

Howard Conway and Ralph Hibbs were at a table near the floor-to-ceiling windows. Vallancourt had little trouble spotting them. Few people were in the lounge; most had sought the terrace in the perfect weather. A promise of summer was in the air.

With gestures, Conway was talking golf. Hibbs nodded morosely; he had had a miserable time of it, from the first tee.

They glanced up as Vallancourt approached the table. Conway lifted his drink. “The old girl inveigle you into addressing the Thursday Literary Society?”

“Not quite.”

“Buffoon like that, calling you across the terrace. It would bug me.” A robust man whose awkward appearance was misleading, Conway finished his drink and eyed his glass thoughtfully.

“Oh, she probably has her points,” Ralph Hibbs said. “If it was a feather in her cap to introduce John to her friends, I'm sure John didn't mind.”

“For you, Ralph, everybody's got points,” Conway said with a sigh. “What are you drinking, John?”

“A short Scotch will do it.”

“I owe you five bucks,” Hibbs said. “Let me add a drink for interest.” He turned to order from the trim waitress who had come to the table. He was a big, placid, very likable man, in Vallancourt's opinion. He golfed as he did everything else, with sweating, honest effort.

“I might as well shell out, too,” Conway said. “You trimmed us today, John.”

“Playing over my head,” Vallancourt smiled. “Keith was pressuring me. The boy is good.”

“If he'd let himself be.” For the benefit of the waitress, Conway jiggled his glass. He and Hibbs had a common heartiness of physique, bone and flesh. But otherwise the two men differed. There was a kind of fagged-out quality in Ralph Hibbs, a softening at the edges, a sagging of the jowls, an under-pallor in the full cheeks. His hair had grayed, thinned, and all but vanished. An ophthalmologist had put bifocals on him; an internist had prescribed pills, which Hibbs carried about with him and took faithfully.

Howard Conway's large, firm face, thick hair, quietly clear eyes made Ralph Hibbs seem bumbling by contrast. Vallancourt wasn't at all sure.

“By the way,” Hibbs said, “where'd Keith get to? I thought he was waiting for you, John.”

“He was. He had to leave.”

“Burned off in that sport car, I bet,” Conway said.

“Oh, I don't know,” Hibbs said. “He's conservative behind the wheel, considering his age. Good with cars. If I add a European make at the agency, I may ask Keith to go to work for me. I think he could sell cars.”

“What do you know about the boy, Howard?” Vallancourt asked Conway.

“Not much.”

“You're married to one of his aunts.”

“But it wasn't Ivy who brought him here to live, John.”

“Then he didn't arrive at Dorcas Ferguson's on a casual visit?” Dorcas Ferguson was Ivy Conway's sister.

“No,” Conway said, “he's here for good, from what I understand.”