Эллери Куин: The Devil To Pay

“Oh, I see,” said Walter. “The first one is pop, and the second is Pink.”

“A detective,” said Val, looking interested. “However did you know?”

“Red hair — Pink — they seem to go together. Besides, I don’t get the feeling that your father would thumb his nose. Who’s Pink?”

“Why?”

“Your boy-friend?”

“So that’s the way the wind’s blowing,” remarked Miss Jardin shrewdly, sinking her small teeth into the orange. “Three minutes, and the man’s poking his nose into my private affairs! You’ll be proposing next.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Walter stuffily. “If I’m boring you—”

“Aren’t you the one!” smiled Val. “Come here, little boy.”

Walter wavered. Women of the modern school worried him. The only female he had ever known closely was Miss Titus, an aged English lady who had tutored him and tucked him into bed until he was old enough to go to Andover; and Miss Titus until her departure for a better world had deplored every feminist fad which passed her by, from smoking and knee-length skirts to suffrage and birth control.

Walter looked Miss Jardin up and down again and decided he would like to learn about women from her. He settled himself on the rail. “Your father is terribly young-looking, isn’t he?”

“Isn’t it disgusting? It’s the vitamins and the exercise. Pop’s a sports fiend. That’s where Pink comes in — just,” said Valerie dryly, “to relieve your mind, Mr. Spaeth. Pink’s a phenomenon — can play and teach any game ever invented, and besides he’s a dietitian. Vegetarian, of course.”

“Very sensible,” said Walter earnestly. “Are you one?”

“Heavens, no. I’m carnivorous. Are you?”

“It’s a debased taste, but I’ll admit I do like to sink a fang into a filet mignon .”

“Swell! Then you may take me to dinner tonight.”

“Well — say — that would be fine,” mumbled Walter, quite unconscious of how the magic had been done. He wondered with desperation how this delectable conversation might be prolonged. “Uh — he does look like your brother. I mean, as your brother might look if you had—”

“I’m taken for pop’s sister already,” said Val tragically.

“Go on,” said Walter, examining Val all over. “You’re the young connubial type.”

“Mr. Spaeth, you’re positively clairvoyant! I sew the meanest seam, and I’ve always been marked A in bedmaking.”

“I didn’t mean exactly that.” She did have the most remarkable figure, Walter thought.

Valerie eyed him sharply. “What’s the matter? Am I coming out anywhere?”

“There’s something wrong with the movie scouts!”

“Isn’t it the truth? Just like the Yankees letting Hank Greenberg go to the Tigers — a Bronx boy, too.”

“You’d photograph well,” said Walter, edging closer. “I mean — you’ve a nose like Myrna Loy’s, and your eyes and mouth remind me of—”

“ Mr . Spaeth,” murmured Val.

“My mother’s,” finished Walter. “I have her picture. I mean — how did they ever miss you?”

“Well, it’s like this,” said Valerie. “They’ve camped on my tail for years, but I’ve always turned ’em down.”

“Why?”

“I’d never succeed in the movies,” said Val in a hollow voice.

“That’s nonsense!” said Walter warmly. “I’ll bet you can even act.”

“Shucks. But you see — I was born right here in Hollywood; that’s one strike on me. Then I hate sables and flat heels. And I’m not a homesy girl sick of it all. So don’t you see how hopeless it is?”

“You must think I’m a fool,” growled Walter, whose large ears had been growing redder and redder.

“Oh, darling, forgive me,” said Val contritely. “But you are wide open for a left hook. Finally there’s kissing. Look!” She seized him, squeezed him with passion, and kissed him fiercely on the lips. “There, you see?” she sighed, biting into the orange again. “That’s how it is with me.”

Walter smiled a flabby smile at the polo fiends around them and wiped the lipstick off his mouth.

“What I mean to say,” continued Val, “was that in the movies you’ve got to go through all the motions of passion, but when it comes right down to it they just peck at each other. When I kiss, I kiss .”

Walter slid off the rail. “How do you spend your time?” he asked abruptly.

“Having fun,” mumbled Val.

“I knew there’d be something wrong with you. You never got those hands over a wash-tub!”

“Oh, God,” groaned Valerie, “a reformer.” She popped the last segment into her mouth. “Listen, my lean and hungry friend. Pop and I, we live and let live. We happen to have some money, and we’re trying to spend it as fast as we can before it’s taken away from us.”

“You’re the kind of people,” said Walter bitterly, “who cause revolutions.”

Val stared, then burst into laughter. “ Mr . Spaeth, I do believe I’ve misjudged you. That’s the cleverest line! Isn’t the next step a suggestion that we stage a private sit-down strike in the nearest park?”

“So that’s what you meant by having fun!”

Valerie gasped. “Why, I’ll slap your sassy face!”

“The trouble with you people,” snapped Walter, “is that you’re economic royalists, the pack of you.”

“You just heard somebody say that!” flared Valerie. “Where do you come off lecturing me? I’ve heard about you and your father. You’re just as fat leeches as we are, feeding on the body politic!”

“Oh, no,” grinned Walter. “I don’t care what you call yourself or my old man, but I work for a living.”

“Yes, you do,” sneered Val. “What’s your racket?”

“Drawing. I’m a newspaper cartoonist.”

“There’s work for a man. Yes, sir! See tomorrow’s funny section for the latest adventures of Little Billy.”

“Is that so?” yelled Walter.

“Mr. Spaeth, your repartee simply floors me!”

“I draw political cartoons,” yelled Walter, “for the Los Angeles Independent! ”

“Communist!”

“Oh, my God,” said Walter, waving his long arms, and he stamped furiously away.

Valerie smiled with satisfaction. He was a very young man, and he did look like Gary Cooper.

She examined her mouth in her hand-mirror and decided she must see Mr. Walter Spaeth again very soon. “And tonight’s date,” she shouted after him, “is definitely off. But DEFINITELY!”

There were other nights, however, and other meetings; and it was not long before Mr. Walter Spaeth despairingly concluded that Miss Valerie Jardin had been set upon earth for the express purpose of making his life unbearable.

Considering Miss Jardin in toto , it was a pleasant curse; that was what made it so vexatious. So Walter wrestled with his conscience daily and nightly — Walter was an extremely spiritual young man — and he even plunged into Hollywood night life for a time with a variety of those beautiful females with whom Hollywood crawls.

But it all came out the same in the end — there was something about the idle, flippant, annoying Miss Jardin to which he was hopelessly allergic.

So he crept back and accepted every electric moment Miss Jardin deigned to bestow, thrashing feebly in his exquisite misery like a flea-ridden hound being scratched by his mistress.

Being totally blind to the subtleties of feminine conduct, Walter did not perceive that Miss Jardin was also going through a trying experience. But Rhys Jardin, physically a father, had had to develop the sixth sense of a mother in such matters.