The Scarlet Letters (5 page)

“When was it issued?”

“Last week. Shouldn't it have been? After all, he's a friend of yours.” Inspector Queen sounded sarcastic.

“I don't know,” said Ellery.

“Think it ought to be revoked?” When Ellery did not reply, the Inspector said, “Ellery, you there?”

“I was just thinking,” said Ellery. “If a man is bent on securing possession of a gun, the fact that his license has been revoked isn't going to stop him. And there's no nourishment in jailing a man for using a gun without a license after he's used it. No, Dad, let it ride.”

For three days Nikki accompanied Dirk Lawrence to the Westchester gun club, developing a bulky notebook and a slight case of deafness in both ears. Dirk's behavior toward Martha was impeccable, and Martha, reported Nikki, seemed content with small favors. She was very bright and gay when they saw her. The Alex Conn play was in its last week, and she was busy reading manuscripts. At the theater, she explained. She didn't want to drag her work into Dirk's working quarters; the apartment was too small.

“Sounds good,” said Ellery.

“It sounds better than it looks,” replied Nikki with grimness. “After all, Martha's had training as an actress. But she can't fool me. Her shoulders are developing a permanent hunch. She's waiting for that next blow to fall.”

The next blow fell from an unexpected direction, and it struck an unexpected target. For a few days Nikki transcribed her notes and organized them. There was no return to the gun club and the Army automatic vanished. Then, after the weekend, Dirk began visiting the New York Public Library at 42nd Street to read up on background for his story. He spent most of Monday and Tuesday away from home. Late on Tuesday afternoon Nikki dropped in to the Queen apartment.

Ellery was shocked. She was haggard; her eyes were wild.

“Nikki, what's the matter?”

“How can you tell?” Nikki laughed hollowly. “Dirk's still at the library and Martha's due home any minute. I can't stay long … Ellery, I did something today I've never done in my life. I deliberately eavesdropped on a telephone conversation.”

“Dirk?”

“Martha.”

“Martha?”

“It was this morning,” said Nikki, leaning back. “I was up early–I've suffered stupidly from insomnia lately–and I'd just taken my coffee and toast into the study to start typing Dirk's library notes of yesterday when the phone rang. Charlotte–the maid who comes in every day–hadn't got there yet, and Dirk and Martha were still asleep, so I answered. I said hello, and a man's voice said, ‘Good morning, Martha darling.'”

Nikki opened her eyes and looked at Ellery as if she expected a suitable response.

But Ellery said irritably, “What am I supposed to do, phone for the reserves? There must be a hundred men who call Martha darling. I do myself. Who was he?”

Nikki's head rolled. “Give me credit for some sense, Ellery. This wasn't an ordinary, garden-variety darling. This was a darling of a different hue. Rose-colored, if you know what I mean.”

“Sorry,” said Ellery wearily. “Go on.”

“I explained that I wasn't Martha, that Martha was still in bed, and that if he'd leave his number I'd have Martha call back when she woke up. He said never mind, he'd call back himself, and he hung up. And there were no roses in his voice any more when he said it.”

“It could have a dozen explanations–”

“Wait. Martha got up about twenty minutes later; I was watching for her. I made sure Dirk was still asleep, then I shut the kitchen door and told her a man had called who wouldn't leave his name and who'd said he was going to call back.

“She went white. When I asked her what was the matter she said it was just nerves, she didn't want to set Dirk off on one of his jealousy tantrums again. She said she thought she knew who it was–some agent who'd been pestering her about a playscript–and that she'd call him back while Dirk was asleep.

“I knew she was lying from the way she waited for me to leave the kitchen before making the call–they have an extension in every room. So I went back to the study, closed the door, and very carefully lifted the receiver on the desk and listened in.”

Nikki stopped to moisten her lips.

Ellery said tenderly, “Oh, for the life of a spy. And what did you overhear?”

“The same man's voice answered. Martha said in a low voice, ‘Did you call me just now?' and he said, ‘Of course, sweetheart.' Martha told him he shouldn't have phoned, she'd begged him never to phone her apartment. There was absolute terror in her voice, Ellery. She was almost hysterical with fear that Dirk might wake up and listen in. The man kept soothing her, calling her ‘dearest' and ‘darling,' and he promised that ‘from now on' he'd write, not phone.”

“Write?” said Ellery.
“Write
?”

“That's what he said. Martha hung up in such a hurry she dropped the phone–I heard the bang.”

“Write,” muttered Ellery. “I don't get that at all. Unless he
is
an agent, and Martha was telling the truth.”

“If he's an agent,” said Nikki, “I'm a soubrette.”

“His name wasn't mentioned?”

“No.”

“What about his voice? Could it have been anyone we've met with or through the Lawrences?”

“It's possible. I thought it sounded familiar, although I couldn't place it.”

“What sort of voice was it?”

“Very deep and masculine. A beautiful voice. One of those voices women call sexy.”

“Then you shouldn't have had any trouble identifying the body that went with it!”

“Oh, stop being so male, Ellery. The point is, I think Mr. Dirk Lawrence has pushed little Mar into a romance. I'm all for it, mind you, but not while Dirk parks that cannon in the apartment. What do I do now?”

“Did you try talking to Martha again?”

“She didn't give me the chance. She showered, dressed, and was out of there before my hands stopped shaking … I've been wondering why Martha's acted so strange lately! It was bad enough when Dirk had no grounds. I can imagine what she's going through now.”

“So he's going to write,” Ellery was mumbling.

“That's what he said. What do I do, snitch the letter?” Nikki sounded bitter.

“You can't do that. But watch for it, Nikki. If possible, find out who the man is. And, of course, do your level best to keep it from Dirk.”

Each morning Charlotte, the maid, stopped in the apartment-house lobby to pick up the Lawrence mail from the switchboard and mailbox cubby. On the morning after the mysterious phone call, Nikki beat Charlotte to the cubby by half an hour.

Nikki went through the pile of mail in the elevator. There were five envelopes addressed to “Mrs. Dirk Lawrence” and to “Martha Lawrence.” One was a flossy handwritten number from a Park Avenue post-deb friend of Martha's family, but this, Nikki knew, contained nothing more lethal than an invitation to a society wedding. The other four envelopes were typewritten and bore business address imprints in their upper left-hand corners; one was from Bergdorf Goodman.

Nikki riffled through Dirk's mail automatically. One, postmarked Osceola, Iowa, and forwarded by his publisher, was unmistakably a fan letter; there was a bill from Abercrombie & Fitch Company, and a large grand envelope from the Limited Editions Club.

But that was all.

Nikki dropped the letters in the catchall salver on the foyer table, where Charlotte usually left them, and hurried to the study, grateful that the post office still limited itself to a single delivery per day. She felt mean and dirty.

She was to feel dirtier.

Dirk, always a late riser, was still in bed when Nikki finished transcribing his Tuesday's library notes and found herself with nothing to do. Wondering if Martha was awake, she wandered out of the study. Charlotte was in the foyer, vacuuming.

“Mrs. Lawrence? She just got up.” Charlotte poked the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner in the direction of the kitchen.

The pile of mail on the foyer table had dwindled.

Nikki went through the swinging kitchen door with a thump. Martha cried out, whirling.

“Nikki!” She tried to laugh. “You startled me.”

She had been standing by the dinette table, holding a letter. Unopened envelopes lay on the table.

“I–I thought it was Dirk.”

Color came back to her cheeks.

“My goodness, does he affect you that way?” said Nikki cheerily. But she was not feeling at all cheery. Martha had been alone, reading her mail. Why should she have jumped so at an interruption? They were just business letters.
Or were they
? “I think,” said Nikki rather faintly, “I'll have a cup of coffee.”

As she went to the electric range she saw Martha stuff the envelopes from the table and the letter she had been reading into the pocket of her robe. Martha's movements were hasty and blundering.

“I'd better snag the bathroom before Dirk monopolizes it,” Martha said with a shrill laugh. “Once he gets in there …” The rest was lost in the roar of Charlotte's vacuum cleaner as Martha fled.

And there was the letter, on the floor under the dinette table, where it had fallen from Martha's pocket.

Nikki drew a deep breath and pounced.

It was not a business letterhead. There was nothing on the sheet of white paper but a single line of typing. The line had been typed in red.

Thursday, 4
P.M
., A

There was nothing to indicate what the typewritten words meant or who had typed them.

The back of the sheet was blank.

At the sound of Martha's voice from the foyer Nikki dropped the letter under the dinette table and ran to the cupboard. She was taking down a cup and saucer when the door banged open.

Martha was terrified again. She looked frantically about.

“Nikki, did you happen to see a letter? I must have dropped it–”

“Letter?” said Nikki as casually as she could manage. “Why, no, Mar.” She went to the range and picked up the coffeepot.

“Here it is!” The relief in Martha's voice was almost too much to bear. Nikki did not trust herself to turn around. “It fell under the table. It's a–it's a bill I don't want Dirk to know about. You know how he acts when I buy something expensive out of my own money …”

Nikki murmured something female.

Martha hurried out again.

Nikki telephoned Ellery from the public phone booth in the lobby.

“Now, Nikki,” said Ellery, “what's the point of crying?”

“If you could only have seen her, Ellery. Frightened, lying … It's not like Martha at all. And me, spying on her–lying right back …”

“You're doing this to help Martha, not hurt her. Tell me what happened.”

Nikki told him.

“You didn't see the envelope?”

“I must have, when I looked over the mail in the elevator this morning. But I have no way of telling which one the letter was in.”

“Too bad. The envelope might have–”

“Wait,” said Nikki. “I do know.”

“Yes?” said Ellery eagerly.

“The message on the sheet of paper–the enclosure–was typed on the red part of a black-and-red ribbon. I remember now that on one of the envelopes I handled this morning Martha's name and address were typed in red, too.”

“Red typing on the
envelope
?
”
Ellery sounded baffled. “You don't happen to recall the name of the business firm imprinted on the upper left corner?”

“I think it was an air-conditioning company, but I don't remember the name.”

“Air-conditioning company … Not a bad dodge. Any envelope like that would naturally be taken to contain an advertising mailing piece. So if Dirk happened to get to the mail first–”

“Ellery, I've got to get back upstairs. Dirk may be up.”

“You say, Nikki, this took place in the kitchen?”

“Yes.”

“I seem to recall a wastepaper basket near the dinette alcove. Is the basket still there?”

“Yes.”

“She may have dropped the envelope into it. She'd have no reason to be careful about the envelope. Did you look in the basket?”

“I didn't look for the envelope at all!”

“Naturally,” soothed Ellery. “But it won't hurt to look, Nikki. I'd very much like to examine that envelope.”

“All
right
,” said Nikki, and she used the phone for punctuation.

She brought him the envelope at noon.

“We needed some more carbon paper, so I told Dirk I'd have lunch out today. I'll have to cab right back, Ellery, or they may suspect something. It was in the wastepaper basket.”

“Lucky!”

The manila envelope was of the clasp type, about five inches by eight. A strip of heavy adhesive paper had been used for sealing above the clasp. On the face, typed in red, were the words “Mrs. Dirk Lawrence” and the Beekman Place address. The inscription in the upper left corner was
THE FROEHM AIR-CONDITIONER COMPANY;
the address was The 45th Street Building, 547 Fifth Avenue, New York. The entire left side of the envelope was decorated with a cartoonical drawing of a heat-prostrated family, over the legend:
Why Live in a Turkish Bath This Summer
?

“This is a current city-wide promotion campaign,” Ellery said, turning the envelope this way and that. “Dad received a similar envelope last week, enclosing a mailing piece on the new Froehm air-conditioner.”

“Was the address in red?”

“Black. This is a puzzler, Nikki.”

“How do you mean?”

“There was more in this envelope than that single sheet of paper you saw Martha reading.”

Nikki stared at it. “It does look as if it had contained something bulky.” The empty envelope was not flat. A rectangle of creases back and front held it in a three-dimensional shape. “Maybe the pamphlet about the air-conditioner, although how he got a letter into a business firm's envelope–”