The Scarlet Letters (9 page)

Nikki phoned on Sunday morning to say that Martha and Dirk had come in at five
A.M
. from their Scarsdale party, making so much noise that the neighbors banged shoes on the walls. Nikki, lying awake in the dark, had heard Dirk yelling drunkenly in the kitchen that he would kill with his bare hands the next man she allowed to paw her, and Martha shrieking back that she couldn't stand it any more, nothing had happened in the world that any sane man could take exception to, and if he didn't stop assaulting men who danced with her and turning perfectly nice house parties into waterfront free-for-alls, with the police having to be called and everything–and a lucky thing for him Hal Boyland knew that state trooper personally!–why, so help her God, she would have him committed to a mental hospital; and so on, far into the morning. They had wound up hurling crockery at each other, which terminated hostilities, since an egg cup caught Dirk on the temple and opened a streaming cut over an inch long, at which Martha fainted and Nikki crawled out of bed to tend the wounded and clean the battlefield.

“I just looked in to see if they were dead or alive,” sighed Nikki, “and Dirk's sleeping on the floor to one side of the bed and Martha's sleeping on the floor on the other side. I guess they had a last-gasp fight as to who would
not
sleep in the bed with whom, and couldn't settle even that. If it weren't so tragic it would be hilarious.”

Sunday was passed in a truce of silence, with Nikki the desperate mediator. On Sunday night Dirk apologized, and Martha accepted his apology; and on Monday and Tuesday Dirk resumed his old, almost obsolete, canine habits and followed her wherever she went with humility and adoration. Martha was cool, but she stuck to home, and toward evening on Tuesday she thawed.

But on Wednesday morning the next letter came.
D
was the code designation, and the date and time were Friday at eight-fifteen
P.M
.

Ellery was at one of Mr. Rose's lonelier tables by seven-forty-five, hoping for an even break in the odds on Harrison's table being within range. He was studying the menu with both elbows elevated when Van Harrison walked in at seven-fifty-eight and was ushered to a reserved table of even lonelier location, with the odds going crazy. Harrison sat down not a dozen feet away. Fortunately again he was in profile to Ellery, and Ellery could watch him and the approach from the entrance at the same time.

Harrison ordered a cocktail.

Women were turning to look at him. He was dressed in a suede cream-gray suit with a white carnation in the lapel; diamonds glittered at his cuffs, and he raised and lowered his cocktail glass with a ceremoniousness that did his cufflinks full justice. His tempered profile he used like a rapier, keeping it carefully poised, or flicking it this way or that ever so slightly, with a half-smile on his lips, at once kind and masterful.

Didn't he know they were bound to be seen? Or didn't he care?

Ellery watched the women. They were impressed and delighted. He shook his head.

Then he realized that it was eight-twenty. Martha had not yet come.

He wondered if his watch was right.

But he saw Harrison glancing at his wristwatch, too, with a frown.

Probably she was held up in traffic.

At eight-thirty-five Ellery began to doubt his traffic theory.

At eight-fifty he abandoned it.

At nine o'clock he knew Martha wasn't coming, and that was when he began to get the uneasy feeling that perhaps Dirk was.

Harrison was annoyed. Harrison was more than annoyed–he was livid. The table was set for two, and it was apparent to his public that the empty chair was going to remain empty. Some of the women were tittering.

At nine-five the actor summoned the maître and imperiously waved away the second chair and place-setting. His gestures and expression said that a stupid mistake had been made by the management. And a waiter ran up to take his food order.

He ordered coldly, in a loud voice.

Ellery rose and sought a phone.

The receiver at the other end was snatched up halfway through the first ring.

“Hello?” It was Martha's voice, dry, braced.

Before Ellery could answer he heard Dirk explode in the background. “Damn the phone! Hang up, Marty. The hell with whoever it is.”

“But Dirk–Hello?”

“Ellery, Martha.”

“Ellery. Hel
lo
, dear.”

He wriggled at the relief in her voice.

“It's Ellery. How are you? Why haven't we seen you? Where are you calling from?”

Dirk's voice made some irritated sounds.

“I don't want to interrupt whatever you two are doing,” Ellery said. “Is Nikki around?”

“Nikki, it's for you.”

“I'll take it in the dressing room, Mar.” Nikki, quick.

“Yes, do that!” Dirk.

“Dirk.” Martha was laughing. “Don't mind him, Ellery. He's in one of his dedicated-artist moods. All
right
, Dirk! Why don't you drop in later, Ellery? He's really dying to see you. Me, too.”

“Maybe I will. If I can get away, Martha.”

“Here I am,” panted Nikki. “Hang up, Mar! A girl has to have
some
privacy.”

“Bye.” Martha laughed; and he heard the click.

“Nikki?”

“Yes.”

“Is it all right?”

“Yes. Dirk's got her occupied.”

“What happened?”

“You at the–?”

“Yes.”

“And the character–?”

“Still here, waiting. Dirk's doing?”

“Yes. He picked tonight to want to read his book to Martha as far as he's got. He's really terribly enthusiastic about it, so naturally–”

“Say no more. But wasn't she ready to go out?”

“Uh-huh. An appointment with a set designer … she said. She phoned somebody with her back turned and left a message that Mrs. Lawrence couldn't make it at the last moment and would call tomorrow about another ‘appointment.'”

“A message he didn't get. Okay, Nik. I was worried.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Hang around here a while. Maybe I'll drop in later.”

“Oh, do!”

Ellery went back to his table.

Something new had been added during his absence. A thin small man in a dinner jacket had his palms planted on Van Harrison's table and was leaning over it, talking. The man had pointed ears and a Hallowe'en smile and whatever he was saying amused him greatly. But it was not amusing Van Harrison. Harrison was looking ugly and old. His long, beautiful hands were clasped about his soup bowl and his knuckles showed pale points. Ellery had the oddest conviction that what Van Harrison wanted to do, more than anything else in the world at that moment, was to pick up the bowl and jam it over the thin man's face.

Then the man in the dinner jacket turned his head slightly and Ellery recognized him. It was Leon Fields.

Fields's syndicated column,
Low and Inside
, was the
pièce de résistance
of over six hundred daily newspapers serving the appetites for gossip, rumor, and innuendo of unestimated millions of the sensation-hungry. His juiciest paragraphs were headed:
LEON FIELDS MEAN TODAY
, and these dished out the
filets mignons
of his nightly shopping excursions in the supermarkets of Broadway and café society. As a famous wit remarked to Ellery one night at the Colony, while they watched Fields tablehopping, “One hint that Leon's in the neighborhood, and nobody goes to bed.”

Fields had the unadmired reputation of never losing his meat once he got the scent. On the Rialto it was earnestly said that nothing had been surer than death and taxes until Leon Fields came along.

Ellery had followed his career with clinical interest, and it had only recently dawned on him that Fields was a much-maligned character. The evidence was hidden and scattered, but it was there. Viewed without prejudice, Fields's activities took on an almost moral blush. He never hounded the innocent; his victims were invariably guilty. Unsavory as some of his tidbits were, no one had ever been able to make him swallow his own words. When Fields printed it, there was a fact behind it somewhere. And Ellery had heard of numerous targets of other columnists whom Fields had spared because they were victims of circumstances. He was as quick to defend as to condemn, and some of his most vicious manhunts had been undertaken in the interests of the helpless and the wronged. He had once written in his column: “Last week a Certain Nobody called me a son-of-a-you-know. Thanks, pal.
My
mother was an underdog. What was yours?”

The possibility that Leon Fields was on the trail of Van Harrison lowered Ellery's body-temperature with great rapidity.

He watched anxiously.

And suddenly Harrison was on his feet, fists waving. He said something to Fields, and the thin man's smile vanished. The columnist's hand reached for the sugar bowl. Harrison began to shove the table aside.

The floor-show was on and all eyes were on the performers. No one seemed to notice what was happening.

Ellery looked around. He could not afford to be seen by Harrison. But unless he could avert a brawl …

“Quick!” He grabbed the sleeve of the passing maître. “Break that up if you don't want trouble!”

The startled maître got there just as Van Harrison's arm came up with a fist at the end of it. He caught the fist, stepped between the two men, and said something very quickly. A large man in a tuxedo appeared from nowhere. In a moment the group had left the floor and two waiters were clearing Harrison's table.

Ellery shoved a ten-dollar bill into his waiter's hand and hurried after them.

They were in a milling huddle at the checkroom, Harrison being held ungently by the large man in the tuxedo. Ellery walked up behind Harrison and handed the girl his check and a quarter.

“Let go of me,” he heard Harrison say in a strangled baritone. “Take your hands off me.”

“Let him go,” said the columnist. “He's harmless.”

“Okay if you say so, Mr. Fields,” said the large man.

“Just let me pay my check,” the actor raged. “If you're not a yellow dog, you'll be waiting for me outside.”

Fields spun on his heel and walked out.

A crowd was gathering. The large man began to disperse them.

Harrison flung a bill at the headwaiter, jammed his Homburg on his head, and strode out. His cheeks were gray and they were quivering.

Ellery followed.

The sidewalk under the marquees was deserted; plays along 46th Street had just settled down to their second acts. The columnist was waiting under the marquee of a darkened theater ten yards up the street.

Harrison broke into a run. Toward Fields.

Ellery quickened his pace, looking back over his shoulder. A knot of people had formed at the entrance of the Diamond Horseshoe, craning. As he looked, they began to move toward him in a body. Somebody across the street turned to shout something. A man wearing a camera on a leather strap appeared, stared, began to cross on a long diagonal run. A cruising cab shot by, jammed on its brakes, and backed up to the dark theater.

When Ellery turned around, Harrison and Fields had disappeared.

He lowered his head and sprinted.

“They're in the alley.” The cab driver was leaning out. “What is it, a fight?”

“For God's sake, don't go away!” Ellery dashed into the alley.

They were rolling up and down in the darkness. The actor was cursing and sobbing, Fields was silent. He's slighter and shorter than Harrison, thought Ellery, and thirty pounds lighter. He hasn't a chance.

Ellery groped toward the commotion, shouting, “Stop it, you fools! Do you want the police in on this?”

A tangle of arms and legs jarred him, and he staggered back to bang his shoulder blades against the brick wall of the theater.

Something flashed at the head of the alley and his arm instinctively came up to protect his face. The man with the camera … There was a crowd on the sidewalk, blocking the exit. Then the darkness fell again, darker than before.

Suddenly he heard Leon Fields cry out. There was a scrambling sound, and all sound stopped.

“Where are you, damn it!” Ellery snarled. “What did you do to him?”

Harrison stumbled by, still cursing. The camera flashed again. The actor lowered his head like a bull, charged, and scattered the crowd.

A woman screamed, “Don't let him get away!”

A man jeered, “Okay, lady. You stop him.”

Nobody came into the alley but the cameraman. Ellery heard him swearing; he had dropped his case of bulbs.

Ellery found Fields lying face down on the cement, unconscious. He felt swiftly for blood, but could locate none. He slung the little columnist over his shoulder and lumbered up the alley, keeping his head down.

“It's all right,” he kept saying. “One side, please. Just a brawl … Cab!”

The last thing Ellery heard as the taxi shot away from the curb was the cameraman, still swearing.

“Who was that other guy, Gorgeous George?” asked the cab driver. “Is he still out?”

“He's coming to now.”

“Too bad it was dark in the alley. I bet it was a pip. Where to, bud?”

“Just get out of Times Square.”

Leon Fields groaned. Ellery chafed his hands, slapped his cheeks.

He was thinking: Dirk doesn't know what he accomplished tonight. If Martha had been there … He could see the tabloids clearly, and he shut his eyes. As it was, the story would break with a roar.
ACTOR SLUGS FIELDS.
With action pictures …

Fields said: “Who the hell are you?”

“Your fairy godmother,” said Ellery. “How's your jaw?”

“Fields feels lousy.” The columnist tried to peer through a rapidly swelling eye. “Say, I know you. You're Inspector Q's little boy. Did you rescue me from the bad man?”

“I picked up the remains.”