Dorsey hesitated. He raised his right foot and reached down to it. Carlson took a quick step forward. He caught Dorsey’s hand, caught his foot, took the shoe carefully off. He held it out at arm’s length, turned away from Dorsey toward the others and turned the shoe slowly over. There was a bright small flash, a soft thud as a small object hit the carpet. It rolled and was still. Swede Carlson bent down and picked it up. He held it in the palm of his hand.
“You got anythin’ else to say, Syms?”
“Yes.” His face was white now. “This is— I didn’t even know Wernitz. I haven’t any motive— You’ve got to prove—”
Gus jerked his head around as John Maynard spoke in his deliberate drawl.
“You’ve talked too much already, Dorsey. Ain’t much more for you to say. I reckon your motive couldn’t be much clearer. I told you when you came in it was all up. You misunderstood me, Dorsey.”
“What do you mean, I—”
“We didn’t know nothin’ about you and Wernitz when you came in this room. We got you here for somethin’ entirely different, Dorsey.”
The ashy-gray of Dorsey’s face turned slowly white as he stared at his uncle, speechless for an instant. He found his voice. “I—don’t know what you’re—”
“I expect you’ll know when I tell you Miss Mattie Lewis died of a heart attack at nine o’clock last night.”
Gus Blake’s eyes moved from one to the other of them. The sweat stood out on Dorsey’s forehead, glistening in the lamplight. His lips moved, repeating the name soundlessly.
“That’s right. Miss Mattie Lewis. And because Gus Blake took the day off, your cousin Connie put the announcement of her death and her obituary over on the want-ad page instead of the front page where it belonged. You didn’t see it. If you’d seen it, you could have rushed around and saved yourself again. Happens her nephew has to go out of town tomorrow, and he brought her savings book round to Ferguson this afternoon. Miss Mattie deposited $1,200 Thursday. It’s credited in her book, bringin’ her total to $3,380. Wernitz’s savings book’s disappeared, Dorsey. Vanaman can’t find it in his safe and the police didn’t find it on his body. But Wernitz kept Vanaman informed of his accounts. He says his total is $8,240. The bank records show him at $4,240. That’s what we called you in here to explain. How many accounts you’ve been jugglin’ the last five years we don’t know yet, but Ferguson’s callin’ all the savings-deposit books in.”
Dorsey Syms moved his hands slowly down the sides of his coat, wiping the cold sweat off his palms.
“You thought Wernitz was closin’ his account and you didn’t have the four thousand to pay out. There wasn’t time, Friday afternoon when you heard he was leavin’, to rig it so you’d be in the clear. And Miss Mattie dyin’ suddenly leaves you in the same spot, Dorsey. Only if it hadn’t been for that, God knows how long before we’d have caught up with you. Mr. Rogers thought the police ought to be here when we asked you to explain if you could, and that’s the only reason they were here in this room. And I wish you’d get this man out of my house, Carlson.”
Connie Maynard sat
huddled in a corner of the sofa, staring blindly into the empty fireplace. Gus Blake stood there, one elbow on the mantel. There was an incredible and ironic quality about it that left him still working back through it from the beginning, trying to make out how it could have happened the way it did. They were alone in the house. Jim Ferguson and Orvie’s father had gone. The Maynards had gone to take poor old Uncle Nelly home, to help him cushion the shock for Aunt Mamie, if it could be cushioned. Of all of them Mr. Rogers was the one who could take it easiest. Dorsey had never been a friend of his, and to him right was right, wrong was wrong, and in a bank integrity added up to the biggest asset of all.
I ought to have noticed something was up when they all showed at the club and all left,
Gus thought. If none of them had showed, people might have begun to wonder a little. He got out a cigarette. So the captains and the kings were gone, and he and Connie were the only ones left. He thought of Mr. Hugo Vanaman for an instant, who had eased out without any one’s being aware of him. It could have been a great moment for Mr. Vanaman, seeing what he called very high-class people having to turn on one of their own.
Connie reached out to the cigarette box on the table, and left her hand there, still staring into the fireplace.
“Dorsey always was a heel,” she said abruptly. “I never thought he was that big a heel. Oh, it’s awful, Gus! He— he had everything—family, education. If he wanted money, why didn’t he work for it? Dad and Mr. Rogers both offered him jobs he’d have made a lot more money in—”
She stopped for an instant. “Made it honestly. And he’s got plenty of brain—”
She broke off without finishing the word. Brains. Who was she to talk about brains? She closed her eyes wearily.
Who am I to talk about anything?
she thought suddenly. Pride, arrogance, conceit—all the things everybody could see in Dorsey, her father had described to her in herself that same afternoon. Cocksure, conceited, thought everybody else was stupid. She’d thought the same thing. Even after John Maynard had given her the going-over he had, she’d gone on being cocksure and conceited, until Swede Carlson had caught her out down there in the playroom.
What if he knew what she’d really done? She caught her breath. What if Janey had taken the capsules and had never waked up? How different would she be from Dorsey now? But she wasn’t a thief.
She moved uncomfortably on the sofa. She was a thief. A different kind, maybe a worse kind. She closed her eyes again to keep from seeing Gus at the end of the hearth. She hadn’t got away with it—but neither had Dorsey. They were both too arrogant, too conceited. Or maybe people didn’t get away with things as easily as they thought. Maybe that was what her father had meant. Maybe he’d just been giving her a chance, trying her out to see what kind of stuff she had in her. What if he came back thinking she was really just another Dorsey, different in degree but not in kind? She put down the lighter and threw her cigarette into the ashes in the fireplace.
“Take it easy, Con,” Gus said.
“I can’t.” She got to her feet. “I can’t take it easy. I’m just like Dorsey. I’m the same sort of heel he is, Gus.”
He looked around at her.
“It’s true, Gus. I’m as rotten in my way as Dorsey is in his.” She said it passionately. “You don’t know what a terrible thing I did. I saw Janey take some—”
“Stop it, Connie. Just shut up. Janey told us. It didn’t take much to figure something was the matter with you last night. Carlson figured it and so did I. It doesn’t matter now. Janey’s Janey. You can’t beat Janey. And if you’d learn what you are, maybe you’d pull up your socks and quit being a stinking witch. I told you that tonight. All this business ought to make you start playing the game, instead of trying to beat it, the way both you and Dorsey’ve been doing.”
She looked steadily at him, her face colorless, her eyes wide.
“And don’t come over and give me another crack. I wouldn’t take it again.”
“Oh, no, Gus. That—that’s not what I was thinking.” She moved back to the sofa unsteadily. “You say things to yourself, and even say them out loud, but you don’t really believe them. You can forget them. If somebody else says them, that means they know them, too. You can’t forget that so easily.” She moistened her lips and put her hands up to her forehead. “Gus—if you and Janey will ever have anything to do with me anymore— I mean, if you see me starting to act like—like myself, I guess I mean, will you stop me? If you don’t—”
“Will do,” Gus said.
A cheerful voice sounded out in the hall. “Hey? What goes on?” Connie sprang to her feet. Orvie was out there. Gus moved toward the door. Janey must be with him. And they hadn’t heard yet.
“Don’t! Don’t tell them, Gus. Later. Let’s tell them later.” She whispered it desperately under the covering sound of the front door slamming shut and their voices outside.
Gus nodded. “Hi, there! Come on in.”
They came in, Orvie and Janey, their cheeks wind-flushed, Janey’s tow hair blown out from the black velvet bow on the top of her head.
“How’s Uncle Nelly?” she asked quickly, looking from one of them to the other.
“He’s going to be all right, I hope.”
Connie opened both eyes wide. Behind them in the hall was somebody else. For an instant she didn’t recognize him. Then she remembered. “Oh, Mr. Vanaman,” she said. “What are you—”
“The forgotten man,” Gus murmured. He reached in his pocket for a cigarette. “What can we do for you, Vanaman?” he said.
Mr. Vanaman was doing all right for himself. He had taken Janey’s hand and was shaking it with cordiality.
“This is a great pleasure, Mrs. Blake.” Holding her hand still, he turned to Connie. His hawk eyes were sharp and bright. “I took the liberty of using your telephone to ask Mrs. Blake to come here and join Mr. Blake. It was— presumptuous. But I wanted to be the first to break the good news to her, and him, and to offer if needed my professional advice and services.”
Janey looked blankly from him to Gus, and back again.
“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr.—”
“Vanaman, Mrs. Blake.”
He dropped her hand. He drew a document from his inside coat pocket.
“You know, of course, Mrs. Blake, that your father was a great friend of my late client Paul M. Wernitz. There’s no point in my going into details at this time, nor would it be proper for me to divulge all of them here. But Mr. Wernitz, who had no living relatives, did not forget his friendship with your father when I drew up his will for him. And what I want personally to be the first to tell you, Mrs. Blake, he also remembered you.”
Her blue eyes opened wide. “He—”
“He remembered you, Mrs. Blake. I can’t tell you how much personal pleasure it gives me to tell you that Mr. Wernitz has left to you all of his interest in the
Smithville Evening Gazette.
In fact, we may as well say the
Smithville Gazette
is yours. Ninety per cent of the stock certainly constitutes you owner and publisher.”
He shook Janey’s limp hand again.
“I hurried back from New York especially, in case someone else might give you the news instead of myself.”
Mr. Vanaman looked beamingly around at the others. His smile, cordial and alive, quietly died, faded, and disappeared. He looked from one to another in the dumbfounded silence.
“May I— Is there— May I ask what is the matter with all of you?”
His eyes, darting rapidly, fixed themselves on Orvie Rogers.
“Is there anything funny in what I’ve said, Mr. Rogers? What
is
the matter?”
Orvie Rogers gulped and got his voice. “No,” he said hastily. “Not at all. There’s nothing at all the matter. It’s not—it’s not funny. It’s wonderful. Nothing’s the matter at all.”
Gus Blake found his voice, too. “Not a thing in the world, Vanaman,” he said as easily as he could.
“Nothing at all, Mr. Vanaman,” Connie Maynard said. She laughed suddenly. “Except—except that the editor of the
Smithville Gazette
is Mrs. Blake’s husband. And he has prejudices. He won’t work for a dame. He said so publicly this very evening.” She laughed again.
Still Janey hadn’t spoken. Mr. Vanaman smiled again, puzzled still but vaguely reassured. “Well. It wouldn’t seem—”
Janey’s blank uncomprehending face had begun gradually to light up. It broke out now into the old radiant delighted smile, her blue eyes shining as if all the stars in the Milky Way had suddenly collided and were shooting off a million splinters of light. She turned to Gus and started to go to him. He stood there propped against the high carved mantelpiece. Janey stopped, her lips parted. She caught her breath, swallowed, and turned back to Mr. Hugo Vanaman. She could feel the bright glow creeping along her pale cheeks as she went dizzily toward him.
“You’ve been very kind! I’ll—I’ll talk this over with my husband— He’ll know better what we ought to do.”
She looked at Gus again. “If we went home now, maybe—maybe we could—could talk about this?”
Connie Maynard went toward the door. “It mightn’t be a bad idea,” she said, “if we leave the proprietors alone, for this scene. What about a drink, Mr. Vanaman? You and Orvie and I could probably find one in the pantry.”
“Good,” Orvie Rogers said. He smiled. He added, surprisingly, “I’ve always admired unexpected tact.”
At the door Connie turned back. “I suppose,” she said, “this means I don’t have a job any more. Shall I quit, madame publisher, or would you rather have the pleasure of firing me?”
Janey’s eyes widened. “Oh, no, Connie!” she said quickly. “I don’t—I wouldn’t want to be mean! I—I guess people are only mean when they’re unhappy, and afraid. And I’m not either anymore.” She smiled at Connie, and at Gus. “Anyway, I don’t have anything to do with that. That’s the editor’s job, not the publisher’s. Except I do think you might do a—a spectacular and—different sort of Woman’s Page. But right now I’d rather you’d use your—your waning influence to get the editor to come home. I’m still terribly in love with him.”
She flashed her radiant springtime smile at both of them. Connie laughed again. “I’ll brush up on my bran muffins in the morning.” She looked over at Gus. “You heard what the Big Boss said.”
“Gus knows I don’t want to be anybody’s boss, Connie.”
Gus Blake prodded himself out of his moon-struck trance and grinned as he moved away from the sustaining mantelpiece. He came over to her.
“I’ve taken that all back, Janey,” he said very soberly. “I don’t want to quit my job. There’s one little dame I want to go on working for as long as she’ll let me.” He looked down at her through a blue twinkling mist. “So let’s go home, Janey. I love you. I—I never knew how much until—”
“Oh, don’t, Gus—please don’t,” she whispered quickly. “I understand. You don’t have to—”
“Good girl.”
He bent down and kissed her gently on the top of her small tow head.
FIN
Leslie Ford (1898-1983) was one of the pseudonyms of Zenith Brown (née Jones). The other names this author used are Brenda Conrad and David Frome. Leslie Ford was born in Smith River, California and educated at the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1921 she married Ford K. Brown. Leslie Ford became the Assistant in the Departments of Greek and Philosophy, then the Instructor and teacher of English for the University of Washington between 1921 and 1923. After that she was Assistant to the Editor and Circulation Manager of Dial Magazine in New York City. She became a freelance writer after 1927. Ms. Ford was a correspondent for the United States Air Force both in the Pacific area and in England during the Second World War. Her series characters were Lieutenant Joseph Kelly, Grace Latham and Colonel John Primrose.