Richard Deming - Gallows in My Garden

As always the sight of her dark-eyed blondness put a lump in my throat. As usual I had resolved no lump would develop this time, but as we stopped in the open door she was laboriously entering figures with a desk pen too long for her, the pink tip of her tongue was pressed against her upper lip to help her concentrate, and she had a smudge of ink on her nose. The lump came up in spite of me.

“Manny!” her husky voice said.

She came around the desk, grabbed my lapels, and greeted me with a short but solid kiss.

“Cut it out,” I growled. “I got a date with me.”

Fausta’s eyes narrowed at Grace, then she screwed up her nose at me, turned, and went back to her chair.

“Pooh! If Grace were really your date, you would tell me some lie about business. I do not care anyway. I am through with you. I give you back to the Pirates.”

“You mean the Indians,” I said. “I need a favor.”

Her eyes narrowed again. “All right. We will make a trade.”

I shook my head. “No trade this time. It’s a favor for Grace, not me. I want you to hide her out a few days.”

“Surely,” she said agreeably. “She can stay in my apartment upstairs. No rent, except each day she stays, you will take me out one night.”

“I said no trade,” I said, exasperated. “This is for Grace, not me.”

“Pooh! Then she can sleep in the street.” She looked calmly from me to Grace, who only grinned at her.

“All right,” I said. “I won’t argue about it. But I’ll pick the nights.”

“No you will not, my smart one. You would pick them all next year.”

“Okay,” I said, giving up. “You pick them.”

My resistance to Fausta’s bargaining was always weak, but in a sense it was sincere. There was nothing I liked more than piloting Fausta around town, but it worked like a drug, and the hang-over was not worth the momentary pleasure. It made me start wondering if it really mattered whether you or your wife had the money, and by the time I decided it really did, as I inevitably decided each time, the break had the same effect on my nerves as suddenly taking dope from an addict.

Mouldy Green said brightly, “You got ink on your nose, Fausta.”

I turned on him and snapped, “It looks good there.” Then more mildly I said, “This is Grace Lawson, Mouldy. Nobody gets up to see her while she’s here. Got that?”

“Sure, Sarge. Nobody.” Then he asked, “How about Fausta?”

“Except Fausta and me!” I yelled at him. “I can hear you,” he said in a hurt voice.

In spite of what i had told the family, I had not entirely eliminated the servants as suspects, which still left me eleven people to choose from as Grace’s assailant. Tentatively I was working on the assumption that the same person had killed Don Lawson, and of the eleven suspects presumably only Arnold Tate could not be Don’s killer, since he had returned to school the Sunday night Don disappeared.

I do not possess the type of mind capable of making brilliant deductions from bits of cigarette ash, and any results I get generally come from good old-fashioned leg work. I don’t know where Bertillon would have started in this case, but it was my simple intention to check Arnold’s alibi as a first move, so that I would either have one less suspect or an exceptionally good one.

Of course it was possible that Don’s death was just what it seemed, a suicide, and had no connection with the attempts on Grace. But to my mind this was stretching coincidence a bit far.

From El Patio I had the taxi driver take me to my flat, where I left my overnight bag and returned to the taxi again.

“Bus depot,” I told the driver.

As he started up, he glanced in the rearview mirror and kept glancing at it again every few seconds for the next two blocks.

“Listen, mister,” he said finally. “We got a tail.”

Without turning I asked, “What is it?”

“Yellow convertible with red upholstery. Hell of a thing to tail anyone in. Sticks out like a circus wagon in a funeral parade.”

“Just pick us up?” I asked.

“Naw. Just after we left El Patio, I guess. I remember seeing him in the rearview, but I didn’t think nothing of it till I pulled away just now and he pulled out right after us from a quarter block back. Want I should lose him?”

I said, “No. Find a dead-end street and turn down it.”

“You ain’t aiming to get in a fight or nothing, are you?” he asked uneasily.

“Not if it’s who I think it is,” I assured him.

The cabbie shrugged, bore down on the gas, and sped straight ahead for three blocks. With a squeal of tires, he suddenly swung right into a narrow street that ended fifty yards on at a board fence.

I had him turn into the first driveway, jumped out, and made the corner just as the convertible careened around it as though afraid it might lose sight of us. When the driver saw the board fence ending the street, he slammed on his brakes and sat there looking foolish while I went over to him.

I said, “Hello, Mouldy.”

“Why, hello, Sarge,” Mouldy Green said in a surprised voice.

I said coldly, “Let me guess before you make up a story. Fausta is afraid I’ll fall down and hurt myself, and you’re supposed to tail along and pick me up.”

“Aw, I was just riding around. How you like my new car?”

“Just the thing for trailing people,” I told him, “though you might have the wheels painted red.”

“Yeah, I was gonna,” he said seriously. “But Fausta said I’d be conspicuous.”

“Look, Mouldy,” I said. “You ride back to El Patio and tell Fausta I’m a big boy now and don’t need a nursemaid.”

Mouldy scratched his flat head. “Jeepers, Sarge. Fausta’ll be mad. How about ditching the cab and I’ll take you where you want to go.”

“No,” I said shortly. “I got enough troubles without you. You go back to El Patio and protect Grace Lawson from murderers.”

He looked at me sadly, then shrugged his shoulders and backed the car. I stood at the corner and watched until he disappeared down a side street two blocks away.

At the bus depot I learned the next bus for the state university left in ten minutes, and purchased a round-trip ticket. Taking a seat at the rear, I idly surveyed the street while waiting for the bus to start.

Just as our driver began to cut from the curb, a yellow convertible crept alongside, and Mouldy Green peered up at the windows. Almost too late he slammed on his brakes, which prevented his radiator from mashing into our side, but apparently was too sudden for the car behind him. There was a mild crash, the bus stopped and the driver and passengers all peered out at the convertible.

Mouldy climbed out and walked back to stare ruefully at his rear bumper, which was locked with the bumper of a black sedan.

Seeing that the damage, if any, was minor, and that the bus was not involved, the driver shifted and completed his pull into the street. But not before I caught an unnerving glimpse of the black sedan’s two occupants, who had stepped out either side of the car. Both were clad in white Palm Beach and wore sailor straw hats. The driver I had last seen less than two hours before on a train headed north, and his tall companion was staring down his nose at Mouldy in the condescending manner of an English lord.

If we were going to have a parade, I thought, it was just as well Marmaduke Greene was in it, for while it was unlikely he would be of any help, he was almost certain to confuse the enemy as much as he did me.

During the thirty-minute ride I could detect neither the black sedan nor the convertible trailing us, nor did I see either after we arrived. I walked the three blocks from the depot to the men’s dormitory.