Lady Afraid (2 page)

She nodded. “Just like getting yourself Christmas every day of the year.”

“Do you know him well?”

“Captain Most? Oh, I was introduced to him years ago. I’ve sailed in races—half a dozen maybe—that he was in, and won. But I don’t think I ever exchanged fifty words with him until we were reintroduced yesterday.”

Mr. Arbogast’s chuckle gurgled like syrup simmering. “I’ll tell you a secret. Captain Most wasn’t at all anxious to take the job until he saw our
Vameric
.”

“No?”

Mr. Arbogast nodded. “But don’t worry! He likes the boat. Most is taking the job. He phoned me last night, saying so.”

Now Mr. Arbogast ducked his head, shot a startled glance through the windows. “Oh my!” he said. “The yard! We must get off here!” He endeavored to seize the cord that needed to be pulled to stop the bus, but he had neither height nor reach for it; he was like a puppy jumping vainly for a bone. Any ordinary man would have blushed. But Mr. Arbogast only looked up at Sarah. “Would you pull the string?” he asked mildly.

Mr. Arbogast got off with care, turning sidewise, and while he was doing so, Sarah saw Captain Most waiting under the awning of the lunchroom near by.

Captain Most, thumbing tobacco into his pipe, came forward. Mr. Arbogast greeted him and added something else with a swing of his head in Sarah’s direction. He was calling Most’s attention to her, and Most responded with the air of having just realized she was there. Sarah felt that Most had seen her at once; she already suspected that he rarely missed anything.

Most came onto the bus, waited at the step for her, his face turned slightly from the rain. He did not offer to assist her the step down from the bus, and she concluded that Most was never guilty of gentle gallantry.

“Bye, Sarah,” said Mr. Arbogast happily. To Most he said, “I’ll be in Mr. Collins’ office, Captain.” And he left then.

“Congratulations, Mrs. Lineyack,” Most said.

She hesitated and then replied, “A little soon for that, isn’t it?”

“Could be,” Most said. “But I don’t think so. Your boat’s all right.”

These were not strong words, but from Captain Most they were significant. She lifted her eyes to Most’s face; her smile was grateful. And she recalled a thought she’d had of him about his size:
He’s a big man
,
and bigger than you think until you stand near him
,
and inside he’s probably like that too.
His face had a homely angularity, not unpleasant. It, like his hair, had been out in the sun a lot.

“Thank you, Captain Most,” Sarah said gravely.

“I’ll buy you”—his head inclined toward the lunchroom—“a cup of coffee.”

Surprise threw confusion of a rather warm sort upon her. “Oh, I—I can’t. I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m supposed to meet someone. He’s probably waiting.”

Most nodded, but with no enthusiasm, and he took a match from a waterproof case, ticked it alight on a strong thumbnail, applied it to the bowl of the pipe which he had been holding hooded in his hand. He produced some smoke gloomily, then drew the pipe from his teeth and murmured, “Some other time, then.”

Why, the invitation was important to him, Sarah decided.

“Perhaps,” she replied, and was conscious of some disappointment when Most clamped down on the pipe again and turned away. He was not a man who threw many words around, apparently.

The wind gave a fight for her raincoat, drops of rain hit her face, and she walked toward the lunchroom.
A man like that
, she thought,
could be very good or very bad for a woman.

T
HE LUNCHROOM DOOR RESISTED
her, the wind a live force against it; then it gave, and she stumbled inside….

Her man was not there. His name was Calvin Brandeis Brill. A lawyer. About thirty-five, slightly built, and with a long face that lay in dour planes. He wasn’t there.

Her eyes went to the grease-fogged clockface above the short-order grill. The hands stood at two minutes past nine. The lawyer had said he would be there at eight-thirty.

The counterman greeted her and she replied, “Good morning, Mike. Has anyone been asking for me?”

“No, Sarah.”

“A thin, dark man, an attorney?”

“Huh-uh,” Mike said, and then asked, “Coffee as per usual—no sugar and heavy on the cream?”

“Yes, I guess so.”

The table she chose, and carried her coffee to, was small and very obviously a table for two. She selected it because of that and tilted the other of the two chairs forward against the table edge as a sign that it was taken. Sinking into the other chair, she was quite aware of tension, the mere act of bending her legs at the knees was a consciousness.

Unbuttoning her raincoat filled out a few moments and she did it slowly; each move now was calculated to help with waiting. She sugared her coffee. She moved her purse to two different spots on the table, as if it was of some importance where the purse lay. Finally, from the pinwheel her thoughts had become, she selected a sturdy niche—Captain Most—and in this haven her speculations moved more safely.

Most was one of those men who are legends within a profession and hardly heard of outside it. He was also one of those men about whom tales are told when the teller has need of the unusual. Most, they said, had twice crossed the Atlantic singlehanded in sailboats less than thirty feet long before he was twenty years old. Tales like that. Violently adventurous.

Captain Most was what is known in yachting circles as a professional. A paid skipper. He had captained winning craft in the toughest cruising races—twice he had won the Norway race, and the Bermuda one oftener. The man, at sea with his eye on the luff of a sail, was surely an artist.

Sarah, whose life had been the sea, was not skeptical of the man’s deeds—she knew them for what they were. Not inconsiderable, either. But she had wondered what his personality would be. It was true that she had met him long ago, and a number of times since, but those meetings had always been crowded, urgent, rather lost in the excitement and tension that precedes sail races, or in the more boisterous tumult of celebration and wassail-taking that follows them. She had not only met Most before; she had danced with him a few times. Possibly he had not remembered, but on the other hand, she rather believed he had.

She had wondered if the man would be a poseur, a martinet, a prima donna. Sometimes they were; sometimes it was that which was in them and drove them to accomplish their deeds. But yesterday she had found she understood him rather well. A man, Sarah had placed him at once, who had no predominant need for social approbation of others, a man who probably lacked insulation, who felt things rather intensely. Most was clearly one thing—he was his own man. He gave obsequiousness to no one, neither to Mr. Arbogast nor to Mr. Collins, owner of the yard, and Sarah had noticed this and admired the quiet way he managed it. She had drawn conclusions about him because of it. In general she suspected him to be oversensitized, overexposed, naked to his environment. She gave him a pattern of jagged, impatient reactions; it would be difficult for Most to wait for anything, and relaxation would come hard for him, and come only consciously.

These were pretty deep conclusions to draw of a man. But this man was—to use Mr. Arbogast’s word again—salty; and so was she, and she could measure a salty one.

Anyway, Mr. Arbogast was lucky to get such a one to skipper
Vameric.
She was surprised he had.
So
,
for that matter
,
am I fortunate
, Sarah reflected. A man like Most would draw the best from
Vameric.

Slowly, almost furtively, the lunchroom door opened. A shotting of rain came in. Then a man, his head drawn down into upturned coat collar.

The newcomer’s eyes traveled the room, passing Sarah without sign. There was water spilling off the brim of his felt hat, and suddenly he swept off the hat, snapped away the water, replaced the hat, turned down his coat collar with quick thumb strokes. As suddenly, he approached Sarah.

“Good morning, Mrs. Lineyack,” he said briskly.

She replied, “Hello, Mr. Brill. I’d started to think you weren’t coming.”

He shrugged. “Vile weather.”

Her nod was slight. Rather more strongly than usual, she did not like this man. It had occurred to her that Calvin Brandeis Brill, attorney-at-law, had come to her in the beginning with this thing. Come adeptly, with so little air of soliciting this particular piece of business that for a long time she had not realized that he was out-and-out mercenary.

“Well?” More tension than she wanted got into her voice. “Is today to be the day, or isn’t it?”

The lawyer leaned back, took his time answering, took enough time so that she suspected him of indicating he would not be driven by her impatience.

“Do you know the firm of Maurice and Black?” he asked.

Sarah shook her head.

“Private detectives,” he said.

She looked at him blankly.

“I’m using them,” he said. “They’re scouting the scene of operations for you. I’ll get a report from them later in the day, and you’ll need to wait for it.”

“I wish you hadn’t done that!” she said sharply.

His eyes grew opaque, and presently a thinness that could be contempt settled on his thin lips. “They’re not expensive.”

“It’s not that!” Sarah retorted. “It’s just that I’d rather no one knew.” She frowned and then added gravely, “I don’t like the idea of someone I don’t know, private detectives or anyone, being told about it.”

“Maurice and Black aren’t going to spill anything, Mrs. Lineyack. Do you know what would happen if you called them up right now? They wouldn’t know a thing about it.”

“I don’t care. I don’t approve,” she said firmly.

“I’m sorry, but it’s already done, Mrs. Lineyack,” Brill told her, and got up and went to the counter. He came back presently with a glass of milk and two pastry rings on a saucer. He added, “Really, Mrs. Lineyack, you’re going to do this open and aboveboard. You must make no act that the law can construe as evidence that you thought you were doing wrong. Before this is over with, we may need that point in your favor.”

He had, she knew, defeated her with logic. She remained silent, the quality of dislike for the man strongly about her. She wished wryly that she had possessed the mental brass to double-cross him, take his idea, lay it on the desk of some lawyer she liked. Surely a congenial one could be found.

She detested acts of sly intrigue. About to engage in such an act herself, she nonetheless was repelled by foxy ways. And this Brill was clearly an artist at furtive maneuvering. The circumstance of their acquaintance was an example: A girl Sarah knew, a girl named Lida Dunlap, who worked in Mr. Arbogast’s office, had introduced Brill to Sarah at a Biscayne Yacht Club dance. The first evening Attorney Brill had been merely conventional: he had made passes at her, had been rebuffed, and had been too sly to drop the amorous approach instantly. She remembered how gradually he had wheedled from her the story, getting the gate open for himself as it were. She was now sure that from the first he’d known who she was and had her case in mind for himself.

But Brill had been all business once he had maneuvered into position. His next step apparently had been to impress on her that he was a good lawyer. He had practiced in Chicago until a few months ago, and he had casually presented newspaper clippings of cases Attorney Calvin Brandeis Brill had handled in Chicago. All criminal cases, she noticed. And she had thought him gaudy, like an uninhibited actor. As he was. But his brash, foxy self-confidence must have sold itself. For here she sat.

Brill was eating wolfishly now, cramming pastry past his lips, washing it down with milk. Pastry rings, milk, vanished with repulsive speed.

“Here’s one other thing you had better do, Mrs. Lineyack,” he said. A sugar crumb lay in his mouth corner. His tongue got it with a quick flick. “You had best leave a note.”

“Note?” Sarah frowned.

“Yes. Something that will clearly state, from the beginning, your legal position in the matter. Type the document if you wish, but sign it. And leave it in a conspicuous place. And you might leave more than one copy, being sure to place them where they will positively be found.”

“You mean,” Sarah asked, “a statement of the facts?”

“Something like that. And I would suggest that you append your address to the statement, to give a genuinely honest touch.”

Sarah’s head came up; alarm widened her eyes. “Oh no! The Lineyacks would find me at once!”

“They’re going to find you quick enough anyway, you know.”

She shook her head stubbornly. “No, they won’t, not at once. Because I’m going away for a few days.”

“Going away?” the lawyer said. “Going away?”

“Yes.”

“Disappear?”

“Well—yes. For a few days.”

Brill turned down a mouth corner briefly, said, “Not so good, Mrs. Lineyack.”

“You’re not going to talk me out of it, Mr. Brill,” Sarah said stubbornly. “I’ve already made plans.”

“You mean you’re set on doing that?”

Unalterably, flatly, she replied, “Yes… I’m going to have a few days alone with the child. After those few days—well, I can face what will come then.”

His right hand shot up, his mouth opened; in the end he did not say it, whatever it was, and his hand fell to the table. He contemplated the hand, turned it over, inspected the neat manicure, made a fist of the hand, said, “Well, if you’re that determined…” The hand became an open palm, as if it had released a bird. “I suppose it won’t look too bad,” he added.

“Wouldn’t it help if I put in the note that I’m going away with my son?” she asked.

“Yes, by all means. I advise that. Put it in the note you’re going to leave.”

“I will do that, then.”

“This disappearing you’re going to do—only for a few days, you say?”

“Yes.”

“How many days?”

“Well… about a week.”

“Make it a week exactly. Let’s not have any abouts,” Brill said. “Today is Thursday. Next Thursday you and the boy be back in town.”

“Will they… then…” The words crossed like sticks in her throat.