Corpses at Indian Stone (2 page)

The professor leaped out of the car and seized the old man's arms. "John! You haven't changed a particle! Sarah didn't tell me you'd be here! This is great! And--look.

Sarah's feeling badly--so you and Chillie get her inside, first. I'll take care of the bags, with Windle."

"It's mighty nice to see you, Mr. Aggie." He peered at the professor with the pathetic eagerness of the family retainer who has missed the steps between a childhood and a maturity. He could not seem to reconcile the bearded man with a memory which slowly faded from his eyes. He went down to aid Sarah, glancing back at Aggie. The pair, harried by Chillie, walked into the house. Windle began unsnapping, unstrapping, unbuckling and uncovering;

Aggie left him at the chore. He stepped up on the big, shadowy veranda. The light over the front door was not burning; Sarah had entered through· a side vestibule. In the gloom, he slid his hand along the railing to see if the initials he had carved long ago--and for which carving he'd had his ears boxed--were still tangible in the wood. They were. He fingered them. A.T.P. Something in old John's eyes had started him thinking.

Thirty-four years old. The letters had been there for twenty-two. A long time. Old John was disappointed in him, somehow. Aggie had never had occasion to be disappointed in himself, but he could see the butler's point of view. Mature. A scientist.

Renowned in his field. A popular lecturer. Slangy, contemporary, knowing--but a shy man, really, with a phobia about crowds and meetings and parties. A misfit in a well-to-do summer colony like Indian Stones. A bachelor. A chap with a wisp of beard and no golf game. One who would prefer a book to a tea dance, and an assorted stack of petrified bones to a pack of playing cards. A man who would be petrified on his own account in the presence of such a person as Beth Calder.

He'd teased Sarah about it--and he loved Sarah. He knew she was excessively loyal to him. Sarah financed his extravagant expeditions and she even tried to wade through his scientific treatises. But it was going to be hard for him, this summer. He could banter with one or two people at a time, so long as they knew and understood him; he could lecture; but with strangers, his tongue froze and his assurance vanished. An introvert. A misogynist. A self-made dry-as-dust. He'd have to avoid this Beth person--

and, if Sarah was serious, that act would hurt her feelings.

He shrugged and turned back toward the car. A shimmer at the side of the front door caught his eye. He walked toward it. Stuck into the frame of the door, impaling a small, white card, was a knife of the sort that is taken on hunting trips. Aggie himself had one much like it. He pulled it out and the card came away on its tip. He carried the card to the light. It said: "Henry H. Bogarty." Aggie looked from the knife, which was sharp and shiny, to the card. The handle of the knife was engraved and monogrammed. He put it on the rail of the porch and walked toward the automobile. Windle had carried the luggage indoors and was about to drive the car around to the garage. Aggie realized he had spent several minutes in maundering. He did not stop the chauffeur. Instead, he went into the house.

CHAPTER 2

Old John was coming from Sarah's room, which was on the ground floor, across the hall from the living room. Aggie beckoned with his head, and, when the old man came close, handed the card to him. "Know who that is?"

The butler read the name and nodded. "Why, certainly. Although I haven't heard much about him for-well-thirty years, I'd say. Not till this evening, that is."

"It was pinned to the door frame with a knife. A mean-looking knife."

"Knife, sir?"

"Yeah. I left the knife outside. Didn't want to alarm Sarah. It was biggish. Sort of-

-threatening."

Old John smiled. "I don't think it's that. Mr. Hank--that's Mr. Bogarty--was quite a gentleman--in a rugged way. He wired your aunt he was coming here. The telegram is in her mail--and she's going through it now. Mr. Hank probably had no way of leaving his card conspicuously enough for us to notice. He was like that, Mr. Aggie. I mean to say--

the rough--and-ready sort--"

"I see."

"Does it look familiar to you? The house?"

Aggie glanced around the room. It looked startlingly familiar. He recalled vividly the way the stones fitted around the fireplace--their size and their shape--and the Navajo rugs--and the opulently ponderous "rustic" furniture-Sarah had, always been what she called an "outsize." Only little things were new: stiff, white draperies, a chandelier, some bookcases. Aggie smiled slowly. "Yes," he said. "I do remember, John. It's a funny feeling."

He stepped across the hall and knocked on his aunt's door.

"Come in," she shouted from her bathroom. "John?"

"Aggie."

"Be right out. I'm fixing myself an ice bag." There was a sound of chopping.

"These darned cubes are harder to break up than an old-fashioned hunk."

"Need help?"

"No." She appeared, presently, en déshabillé. That is, she was wearing some sort of net over her gray hair--a purple net--and the most voluminous red silk kimono Aggie had ever seen. The ice bag had been lashed to her neck with a lurid batik. She walked across her room and dropped down on her enormous four-poster bed. She observed, after a sigh of relaxation, the activity of her nephew. "You make a practice of going through other people's mail?"

He glanced up from the bedside table. "Invariably. You know what you remind me of, Sarah? Sunset over Grand Canyon."

She whooped with laughter. That act seemed to hurt her throat and she spent a moment grimacing. Then she held out her hand for the telegram.

"That's from Hank Bogarty," she said, "'ARRIVING SHORTLY FOR NEW

GRUBSTAKE. LOVE. HANK.''

"I can read," Aggie answered. "Who's he?"

"Oh. An old friend. I can't imagine why he's coming. We haven't seen him around here for ages. Some of us grub-staked him once--lent him the money to go prospecting with--ever so long ago. It'll be nice to see him."

Aggie was satisfied.

For a moment, the sight of the knife in the doorjamb had startled him. There was something sinister about it. Like finding a medicine man's ouanga pinned on your tent.

Now, his momentary fear vanished. Foolish, he thought, to bring the associations of Congo voodooism to the United States. He was always doing things like that. The price you paid for being an anthropologist.

Sarah was settling herself for a talk. He helped her arrange the bedcovers. John knocked lightly on the door and came in. "Mr. Calder's outside," he said. "He wants to talk to you."

Aggie looked at his aunt with feigned dismay and said flatly to the old man, "His daughter Beth is with him, I suppose? Has he got a wedding license filled out in triplicate? A ring? Tell him I never marry except on Thursdays."

Old John was perplexed. "Miss Calder isn't there. He's alone. He seems disturbed."

Aggie glanced at his aunt--and his glance held. Something had happened to her.

She looked afraid--or worried. He said, "You'd better interview this cluck after you get some sleep. Isn't he the cad who ran off with the doctor's wife--and then left her in California--a fate worse than death?"

Sarah did not smile. "Tell him to come in, John. Aggie, beat it."

"I will not. I'm
your
guardian--for a change. I stay. What does this oaf want?

Why. are you suddenly full of hornets?"

"I'm not," Sarah said. "It's just that--well--nobody cares for Jim Calder--much. He rarely comes up here. His family does--his daughter--and his son--and his son's wife. But Jim has hurt so many people--that he's--"

There were steps in the hall.

The man who came in looked unlike either a home-wrecker or a robber of widows and orphans. He was a gaunt, weary-appearing person with a short, iron-gray pompadour and liver-spotted hands. Although it was a warm evening, he wore a dark, wool business suit and a stiff white collar. His dull plaid tie had too tight a knot in it. His face was sanctimonious; his eyes were blue, hard, and not particularly pleasant. He said, in a crackling voice, "Oh--Sarah--you had a wire from Bogarty--?" and then he saw Aggie.

He did not introduce himself, or wait for an introduction, or even allow Aggie to perform the amenities. He said, "John didn't tell me you had anybody here! The old fool is probably getting senile! I want to see you alone."

Sarah's gray eyes were placid. "Probably, Jim, you didn't give poor old John a chance to tell you anything. You generally don't. Your manners were always cheesy."

That did not disturb Jim Calder in the least. He stared at Aggie. "Will you leave the room, please?" He added, "whoever you are."

Aggie found himself angry. Calder's rudeness was of the deliberate, meaningless sort that evokes rudeness in others. He replied, after a second, "Why, I'm sorry. My aunt's ill. I'm a doctor. I was going to treat her. But you need treatment more--for too much gall."

A faint flush tinged Calder's pallid cheek. It increased as he perceived that Sarah was giggling. "Who are you?" he asked. "Sarah, are you sick?"

"Jim," she said, "for heaven's sake, sit down. You'd think, at your age, you'd have learned that you don't have to beat everybody on earth to the draw. Yes, I heard from Hank. Here's the wire. And this is my nephew--the famous Dr. Plum, of Brandon University. Make an obeisance, Aggie, and beat it."

Mr. Calder's expression was still uncompromising. "Oh," he said. "Yes. Heard of you. Excuse us."

Aggie wandered to the door. "Rudeness is pretty inexcusable," he said, "when you consider it abstractly. Nevertheless, Mr. Calder, inasmuch as I have no further desire to stay here--"

"Oh--for mercy's sake, man--get going!"

Aggie went. He found old John standing uneasily in the living room. "That man, "

said the servant, exercising the liberty of long habit, "always makes me boil!"

"Like dry ice," said Aggie. "Has he a daughter named Beth?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Aggie. And a son. Bill. Neither of them anything like their father."

"I should think not. The impossibility of tribal survival for the completely misanthropic strain--"

"I beg pardon, sir?"

"I said, among savages, upon whom we so-called civilized people look down, such a man would have been taken outside the compound and knocked on the head."

"Plenty of people would applaud it."

"So Sarah said."

Aggie strolled over to the bookcases as if to discover what his aunt's reading habits were. He was thinking that be did not know much about Sarah. They corresponded--merrily--through the years. They saw each other fleetingly during winter vacations. At Indian Stones, and in New York, she was a social high priestess, a fabled meddler in the affairs of others, and a gossip without a peer. He knew, also, that she was generous to the point of vice, and that her heart was made of mercy. As old John went on talking, Aggie pretended to look at the book titles. But he did not see them. The attitude of Mr. Calder about the long-time unseen Mr. Bogarty was obviously one of perturbation--and Sarah was obviously connected with it.

"Mr. Calder," said John, "ruined the life of Mrs. Davis. And left the doctor with a young daughter--"

"So Sarah said," Aggie repeated.

"He is a broker. His family was one of the first to settle at Indian Stones. He managed the fortunes of many of us. Lost some--Mr. Browne's, for example. James Calder stripped him. Mr. Browne killed himself and his wife died shortly afterward. Mr.

Browne's son--Jack-manages the club, now. A very splendid young man, for all his tragedy. I mean--losing his father and mother
and
his inheritance--in one swoop, so to speak. Jim Calder's underhanded work cost your aunt money. And the Draymans and the Pattons. Lots of us.

Aggie smiled at the old man's inclusion of himself in the communal disasters.

"Too bad. But most of 'em could afford it."

"I couldn't," John sighed.

"You?"

The old man nodded tremblingly. "Even me. He has that preacher's face. Even when you know he's not to be trusted, he can make you trust him. He's very shrewd.

Positive--and sort of--hypnotic. He got to talking, one day, about how had I invested my life savings--"

"How much did he take you for?"

"Nine thousand three hundred and sixty-two dollars. All I had." John cleared his throat. "Your aunt knows nothing of it, Mr. Aggie. I'd rather you didn't tell her. It was my own fault--my own foolishness. Miss Sarah will take care of me of course--when I become too old to be useful. I realize that. I'd only hoped--before the incident--that I could be independent--at that time. You know how a man feels--"

Aggie glanced bitterly toward the hall. "Yeah. I know about men like Calder, too.

For fifty cents, when he comes out, I'd hang one on him--"

"I've felt that way myself. Very often. Indian Stones has been a tranquil place. A place of a good deal of affection. But, having him here all through the years is like--"

"--a ghoul at a feast."

At that point, the subject of their talk came out of the bedroom. He slammed the door without reference to Sarah's condition and stalked through the living room. At the front door he turned and said, "You're a doctor. Tell me something better than tramping the woods at night for insomnia."

Aggie looked at him. "A clear conscience." Calder did an effective piece of work with his second slam; the house shook. Aggie caught sight of John's wistful grin at the insult. He went back to Sarah's room. His aunt was manifestly upset. Her color was poor and she kept fiddling with the ice bag on her neck. "Some human beings," she said,

"ought to have been born inside the fur of jackals."

Aggie nodded. "Look. What's this all about?"

"Nothing. Nothing important. Things that happened long ago. Some day Jim Calder's past is going to catch up with him. Right now--he's worried. He wanted my moral backing for a little inhospitality, that's all. You go to bed, Aggie. It's late. You need sleep--and so do I. Whatever I've got, it feels like triple-grippe plus hangover, and a small case of crud, besides."