To love and to honor (27 page)

"The morning after—the day of the discovery of the bag of jewels in the turret room—I long-distanced Washington and was put in touch with Captain Max Gould who was trying to find his wife. We arranged for him to come here and check. Ordinarily, I wouldn't butt in. when a woman deserts a husband, it's the business of the couple—but in this case I was convinced that the missing lady was wanted also by Uncle Sam. When she left her husband she had these jewels and objects of art. To my mind that tied her up with the smugglers. There were plenty of contributing clues to back me up. I discovered that long ago the Captain had decided she had sold their treasures. That fact helped. That's the score so far. Only one piece of the puzzle missing now. Who has passed on the loot after it was landed at Rockledge?"

"I'm sure I know," Cindy declared eagerly.

She reminded him of the shadow with the tilted hat

brim she had seen in the hall of the The Castle; went back to the man on the beach with the parlormaid from Rockledge; to the lacquered black hair of the clown who had stolen the limousine; told of her startled recognition of him when she saw the servant at Hal Harding's playhouse this afternoon. She felt his quick look at her and wished she had omitted that last item of identification.

"I believe that he had hidden the jewels in the turret room the afternoon I saw him in the hall," she concluded.

"Could be, though I would hesitate to accuse a person of crime on the sole evidence of a tilted hat brim. Now that so much has been uncovered the finish will come in a burst of speed. I shall be glad to have it cleared up. I've been called to Washington."

"Not back into the service?" That wail sounded as if she cared. "I thought you intended to stay here until you finished your book." That was better. The statement held just the right amount of tepid interest.

"I'm not called back into the service. I had planned to stay here and finish my book, but, the Inn closes early and-"

"This country is gorgeous through September and October." Why was she trying to sell him this place when she would be glad to have him go?

"It must be. There's The Castle ahead. I'm coming in, Cinderella. I have a plan to present to—"

She clutched his arm.

"Stop! Quick. A light flashed in the turret room. The rest of the house is pitch black."

TWENTY-NINE

*'I don't understand the absence of lights. Where are Sary and Joe?" Cindy whispered.

"We'll find out. I'll park the car in the shadow, lock it and dim the lights. I don't dare leave it dark for fear of an accident. If I drive nearer the house, we may be heard. Come on. Walk on the grass. Have you a key?"

She nodded. Her throat was so tight from excitement she couldn't produce a whisper. Were they on the trail of the person who had hidden the jewels? Could they trap the man with the tilted hat and lacquered hair? He had made a miraculous getaway when the limousine had crashed into the roadblock; "I don't know how he done it unless with mirrors," the sergeant had declared truculently. Another flash in the turret room so quickly gone she wondered if she had imagined it. The front steps at last. Ken Stewart held out his hand.

"The key." His whisper started icy tingles along her veins.

He opened the door. Closed it soundlessly. In the dark hall they stood motionless. Listened.

"Footsteps. Hear them?" The faint distant creak of a floor board brought with it the memory of the many times she had shivered with childish fear in this very spot imagining she heard the smugglers. "Whoever it is appears sure there is no one in the house."

"I'm going up," she whispered close to his ear, "to lock the door to the stairs. Lock him in."

"No. I'll rout out Joe and we'll nab him. He won't have a chance/'

**We can't spend time locating Joe. He may be knocked out somewhere, must have been, or the person in the turret room couldn't have entered the house."

She twisted free from his tightened grip, kicked off Mrs. Drew's sandals and ran swiftly up the stairs. Lucky she knew every inch of this house, she thought, as she felt her way in the Stygian gloom of the upper hall. Wliy hadn't Sary left lights? Perhaps she had. Perhaps the man in the turret room had put them out-or his accomplice had.

Accomplice. That was a thought. The door to the stairs. At last. She listened. Came another creak of the floor above as if someone were walking carefully. With a little prayer that it wouldn't squeak, she slid the bolt cautiously. Now to get downstairs before a hand could grab—

An iron grip closed on her shoulder. She caught at the fingers covering her mouth. A seal ring. Ken Stewart had followed her.

"Did you lock it?" he whispered.

"Yes."

They crept down, stopping every few stairs to listen.

*'Hear that? He's at the door to the hall trying to get out. It's bolted. He'll have to come down the secret stairs." At the door of the old kitchen she caught his hand in hers.

"Hold tight to me. I know the way. We'll c-catch him. Could you flash your cigarette lighter just once till—I can feel your 'No' headshake. I'll find what I want without it." With hand outstretched before her, she aossed from the desk to the old oven. She stood still. Listening.

"That's Sary. Putting her key in the front door. Stop her. Quick/* she whispered. She saw his dark shadow move toward the hall. Heard his stifled, "Stay out."

On the step he pulled Sarah Ann Parker close to the door.

"Don't speak," he warned. "Someone in the turret room."

"Lot I care who's in the turret room," her low voice was hoarse. "I was called on the phone an' told a boat

had been found on the beach with Cindy's sandals; that a cardigan with her initials had been picked up floatin'. I knew I hadn't ought to, but I made Joe go with me. I saw 'em. They were hers. I don't care if I don't live any longer with her g-gone. I've just been hangin' on till she married an' had a baby I could love." She pressed her head against his shoulder and shook with dry sobs.

He put his arm about her. Whispered close to her ear.

"Cindy is inside, Sary." She jerked up her head. He warned. "Don't speak. That was a yam to get you out of the way and—"

"But I saw-"

"Never mind what you saw. She's inside. A light flashed in the turret room. We heard footsteps. Where's Joe now?"

"He was here a minute ago."

"We'll find him. Come in. If you stumble over anything I'll-"

"You won't have to break my neck. I know every inch of this house light or dark. Want to know somethin'?" Sarah Ann Parker was herself again. "If you make a sound it's your neck'll be broken. Come in."

"You here, Cindy?" The low query was strained and breathless.

"Yes, Sary. Ken. He's opened the turret room door to the secret stairs. Listen."

"O.K. Sary, find the light button. WTien I say go, snap it, understand?"

"Sure, I understand. Here, grab this warming pan, he may be ugly."

"Keep it. I'd rather have my two hands. Cindy, go back by the door. You—"

Came the sound as of a truckload of hardware clashing, crashing down stairs, accompanied by a cannonade accompaniment of thud! thud! thud! Simultaneously light flashed on; pumpkin-yellow walls glowed; copper shimmered; the cupboard banged open with a force that sent treasured plates of mulberry and black Canova to the four comers of the room. A figure shot out from behind it, with a grayish-white bag clutched in its arms, a hat with a tilted brim tipped over its face.

"Enter, Mr. Simpkinsl I was expecting you." Cindy's voice and laugh were high with excitement. "There are ladies present. You really should remove your hat, Mr.—"

"Cindy, come here." Ken Stewart grabbed her arm but not before she had snatched the felt hat. She stood as if turned to stone.

"Hal," she whispered incredulously. "Hal HardingI"

As if he realized the absurdity of his position flat on the floor staring stupidly up at her, Harding rolled to his knees, and with a grimace of pain struggled to his feet.

"Whoever planted that assortment on the stairs is wasting her time in this village, Sarah Ann Parker. She should be in the FBI." He tenderly massaged his right hip as he talked. "Too bad I couldn't finish the job of protecting you, Cindy. I intended to get the stolen property you have been hiding out of the house to save you the unpleasant notoriety of appearing in court to testify why you are aiding theft."

"Me? I—aiding theft? You're crazy. That bag was hidden in the turret room by—"

"He doesn't need your explanation, Cinderella. He knows who hid it there."

"I do, do I?" Harding's menacing step forward matched in vicious intent his truculent voice. "You've interfered in my affairs, Damon or Stewart—whatever you happen to be calling yourself now—for the last time. You-"

"Not quite the last time." Ken Stewart's cold voice sent icy inchworms of apprehension looping along Cindy's veins. "Unfortunately—I didn't want the job—I shall be forced to testify that I have known for some time that you are the liaison man between Mrs. Drew's importations and the gang that comes to your place to collect the smuggled loot."

"No. Oh, no!"

"Liarl" Cindy's broken protest was lost in Harding's shout. A little foam had gathered on his lips. "You've cooked up this yarn because Cindy loves me and you want her. 'Peter, Peter, had a wife and couldn't keep

her/ that's you. I don't know the Drew woman. Never saw her until I met her at the Armstrongs'."

"No? How come you picked up her favorite pet name, 'sugar'? I heard you call Cinderella that the first time we met, remember? When Mrs. Drew came out with it at the Armstrong dinner, it fitted like the missing piece of a picture puzzle. I knew you were the guy I was looking for, that you were in cahoots with the smugglers, that you had picked up the name from constant association with Sally Drew. If you knew nothing about the woman why try to prevent Cindy from calling on her? You knew the outer measurements, interior and deck arrangement of her boat because you had sailed on it with a former owner, you said. Phooeyl You've sailed with her, and you declared you never had met her, that statement will take a lot of explaining in Court."

Harding flung himself on the si>eaker in a fury of hate.

"You-you-"

"That's enough of that. Mister." A burly man in a red and black plaid lumber jacket caught his hands and pinioned them behind his back. Had "Brother Joe" materialized from the air, Cindy wondered.

"What do you people think you're doing?" Harding twisted his arms and Joe released his hands. He nervously adjusted the collar of his blue shirt and settled the striped tie. "Someone's been kidding you. I was tipped off a conspiracy was brewing to drag in Cinderella Clinton's name as accessory to a smuggling enterprise, that she had received and hidden stolen goods. I came in secretly to get the bag out of the way before she could be accused."

"Secretly. Sakes' alive, 'twas you, Hal Harding, who phoned me to go look at Cindy's clothes, picked up on the ledges, and your boat with her sandals, so's you could get into this house, said I'd better get my brother to go along. Most broke my heart tryin* to make me think she was gone, you—"

Ken Stewart caught Sarah Ann Parker's arm and forcibly drew her back from what threatened to be assault and battery.

TO LOVE AND TO HONOR «35

"You found the things I told you you'd find, didn't you?" The contemptuous demand brought a nod and broken "Yes" in reply.

"You acknowledge that's true. The facts had been phoned me." Harding touched the bulky gray-white bag on the floor with the toe of his shoe. "Here are the stolen jewels. If you don't believe they are jewels, open the bag. To substantiate the fact that Cinderella Clinton hid them—"

"You heell You rat-"

"Leave him lay, Colonel. We've got plenty to jail him."

The voice checked Ken Stewart's forward lunge. Cindy brushed her hand across her eyes, shook her head as if to clear them. It couldn't be the man Simpkins leaning nonchalantly against the side of the doorway with his right hand thrust into the pocket of his brown tweed coat. It was. She looked down at the soft hat clutched in her right hand, the hat she had pulled away from Hal's face; the hat with the tilted brim she had been so sure had been worn by the shadow who had vanished from the hall the afternoon she had met the bracelet man at Ella Crane's shop. Memory broadcast Sary's voice:

"Hal Harding came through the garden looking for you, just as I was leavin'. When I told him I expected you any minute he said he'd hang round till you come."

Was it possible he had hidden the jewels that afternoon? Had been in the house when Sary returned, had slipped out without being seen? But he had declared only a few hours ago that he had not worn a hat this summer. A red herring drawn across his trail? It was unbelievable, not only that he would be dishonest, but that he with a large inherited fortune would need money from such a source. Why didn't someone speak? Was the man in the doorway a black magician whose spell had turned each person in the room to stone? Hal Harding's eyes looked like nothing so much as huge light blue glassies bulging from their sockets.

"Simpkins," he cleared his hoarse voice. "Simpkins, have you been fooling me? I'll get you for this."

The man in the door way straightened from his non-

chalant lounge and entered the room, his right hand still in his coat pocket.

"Your mistake. Take it easy. There's a car waiting outside. Come along and tell your story. You'll find your gal confederate, Rena Foster—the newsgirl at the masquerade—waiting to tell hers."

"Now you've made your mistake—Simpkins. I go nowhere till I have a lawyer—"

"Counselor Armstrong was your lawyer in your divorce cases, wasn't he? He'll be waiting for you."

"Let him come here. I'm not going—"

"Joel"

The authoritative voice rocked Cindy's conviction that she was awake and not dreaming. The man who had taken command of the situation couldn't be the tough whose picture she had snapped; he was—the features were the same, but—

"Come along quietly, Mr. Harding,'* the voice of the man she had thought of as Simpkins broke in on her confused reflections. "Bad enough to bring this trouble into Miss Clinton's house—look at this mess of broken china—we don't want to add to that unpleasantness by knocking you out."