Catspaw Ordeal Read online

  Edward Ronns

  (Edward S. Aarons)

  Catspaw Ordeal

  Chapter I

  THE DAY had been like the other days, only worse. Like all the other days for the past month and the past year, it had been building up, and all the days together made a pyramid balanced upside down on its peak. Today the whole structure of his life had begun to topple of its own inverted weight.

  “Mr. Archer,” said the barman.

  “One more rye and soda, Tommy.”

  “Mr. Archer, don’t you think—”

  “Don’t play nursemaid to me, Tommy.” Archer’s voice was savage. “Do your job and cut the advice.”

  “All right, Mr. Archer. Don’t get sore.”

  “I’m not sore,” Archer said.

  It was quiet in the bar before the evening rush began. He liked it here. It was a place where he could forget his troubled days. He knew he couldn’t forget Rosalind, and he told himself he didn’t want to forget her, because he didn’t want to make the same mistake ever again. Rosalind had finally tipped the pyramid and brought about the crash. Today was the day, all right. Quite a day.

  It shouldn’t have bothered him, but it did, and the knowledge was irritating. He looked at himself in the blue-tinted bar mirror and wondered what there was to like in what he saw. Perhaps it was as much his fault as hers. Or maybe it was nobody’s fault. You fell into something, and if you were content to drift with the tide, then nobody was to blame but yourself for where the tide happened to take you.

  It was cool here. He could hear the sound of traffic on the Post Road a block away, the heavy Diesels pounding their way from New York to Boston and back again. All day the sun had baked the Sound and the town, and there had been no escape from the weather or his thoughts. Tom’s Bar had no pretensions. It was just a bar, as close to an old-fashioned saloon as any place could be. Not that Archer, at twenty-nine, could remember what the old-style saloons had been like. All he remembered of prohibition were the stories told by rum-running neighbors up in Oquihippit, Maine. This wasn’t Maine, this was Southwich, Connecticut, and he had been around the world and fought in a war and married and now he was damned near divorced. Now he owned half the town, together with his brother-in-law, who liked owning half a town and the Manning-Archer Metallurgy Company. Everything should have been fine and dandy, the happy success story you read about, but everything was rotten and crawling with discontent, and it was all inside himself.

  Because Rosalind had gone away.

  He stopped thinking about it at that point, just as he had checked his thoughts all day. He thought of Della Chambers, instead, and that was a funny thing, because he hadn’t given Della a thought since the war had ended. But she had been in his mind for the last few days, oddly mingled with his thoughts and troubles with Roz. And then, pulling out of the plant this afternoon, he imagined he had seen her in the entrance to the Southwich Inn. It was a hallucination, of course, and she couldn’t be really in town; Della belonged to a wild and crazy past that was dead and gone, buried under the years of respectable, Connecticut-suburban living with Rosalind and Stanley Manning and powdered metallurgy. The sounds and the sights of his years at sea during the war were just echoes in the back of his mind, and his memories of Della and the liberties in New York and Boston were the same. Dim echoes, no longer firm with flesh and blood and passion and fear.

  “Mr. Archer,” said the barman.

  “All right, Tom.”

  “It’s getting close to six o’clock.”

  “I know it.”

  “Well, don’t you think you ought to—”

  “No.”

  “You’ll be late for dinner, that’s all I’m thinking.”

  “Tommy, you’re as nosy as everybody else,” Archer said. “Are you worried about my home life, too?”

  “Do you feel all right, Mr. Archer?”

  “I feel fine.”

  “Somebody was asking about you just now.”

  Archer thought of Della and said, “Who?”

  “Young fellow, over in the booth there.”

  The quick pulse of excitement died. He didn’t turn around. “Tom, do you believe in extrasensory perception?”

  “I guess I don’t know what that is, Mr. Archer.”

  “It’s when you’re better at guessing things than other people. It’s when you think you’re going to meet somebody, and then you do, and you wonder if it’s a coincidence or if you actually caught somebody’s thought waves.”

  Tom’s Irish face was dubious. “Sounds like pixies.”

  “I’ve been thinking of a nixie, not a pixie.”

  “A girl?”

  Archer said, “It’s good to know you haven’t forgotten the old folks’ talk, Tommy. Yes, a girl.”

  “This is a fellow who was asking about you.”

  “Then to hell with him,” Archer said.

  He finished his drink, and Tom pretended not to notice. Archer studied his fingers around the highball glass, wishing he had a radio key in his fist like in the old days, aboard the Martin J. Crump. The poor old Crump was buried miles deep in the icy waters off Norway, in Hell’s Corner of the Murmansk run. There had been other ships later, until the war ended, but the Crump was his first love. He could feel the room lift and fall with his memories, and he knew Tom was right and he’d had too much to drink. Turning, he looked for the man who had been asking about him.

  It was no one he knew, yet the face was familiar, and Archer wondered why he had been seeing that face so often lately, here and there on the streets of Southwich, even on the secluded roads of Bass Point, where he lived in relatively feudal splendor as co-owner of Southwich and the Manning-Archer Company.

  Archer stared, and the man in the booth stared back, his face too young for the hard eyes, his mouth too soft for its knowing smile. The man in the booth wore a coat cut too wide in the lapels and shoulders, and his white shirt, wrinkled by the heat, had collar points that reached far down out of sight. His necktie, a blue figured silk, was tied in a knot almost as big as Archer’s fist. New York, Archer thought, really pretty and tough, and suddenly the liquor and the heat and the thoughts of the long day behind him and the longer night ahead, without Rosalind, made him want to see just how tough and pretty the stranger might be. He pushed away from the bar, asking for trouble and welcoming it.

  “You wanted to talk to me?”

  “No,” said the stranger.

  “You were asking Tom about me.”

  “Sure,” said the stranger.

  “All right,” Archer said. “What do you want to know?”

  “Nothing. I know all I want to know, Archer.”

  The man slid out of the booth with a quick, fluid movement and faced Archer. His eyes were pale and cool and challenging, and Archer felt a quick shock at the contemptuous look in them. He wished suddenly that he hadn’t had so much to drink. And then his anger that this man’s face would be a satisfactory target.

  “You seem to know me,” Archer said.

  “I know all about you, chum.”

  “You’ve been following me for a week.”

  “Maybe. But that’s my business.”

  Archer said, “It’s mine, too.” An idea came to him, shocking in its implications. “You’re not a detective, are you?”

  The man smiled again. “Worried?”

  “Well, are you?”

  “My business again, chum.”

  Archer felt a quick squirm of nausea inside him. A private detective. It was incredible that Rosalind would do this, divorce or not. He couldn’t believe she would even talk to a sharpie like this, with his wide lapels and big gaudy tie and cool hatchet face, too young and too wise. The thought took the anger out of him for a moment. Up to now, he hadn’t th
ought Roz was serious. She had gone to New York, but he had been sure she would come back. Now he wasn’t too sure of anything.

  A movement behind him caused an interruption. A slim girl with straight taffy-colored hair worn in a simple, page-boy bob came out of the ladies’ room to rejoin the other man. She was young, with a plain, unadorned face, but she carried herself with quiet poise that bespoke good breeding. Her gray gabardine suit and white frothy blouse were almost prim. She looked like a schoolgirl, but she wasn’t; she was older than that. Her hazel eyes were quick and fearful, as if she sensed the conflict between Archer and her escort.

  “Skit,” she said, “I think we should be going.”

  “This is Mr. Archer, Lisbeth.”

  She didn’t look at Archer. Her hand tugged at the dark-haired man’s arm. “Please, Skit, come on.”

  Archer said, “If my wife hired you to—”

  “Nobody hired me,” said Skit. “Relax, won’t you?”

  Archer hit him then. The liquor and the heat and his troubles over Roz exploded with his fist on the man’s jaw. The taffy-haired girl gave a little scream. Skit crashed back into the booth, blood smearing his mouth. His pale eyes were surprised and dangerous, and he thrashed about for a moment, untangling himself from the table and bench. Then his movements became fluid again and he came up and out, something glimmering in his hand. The girl’s scream was louder this time. He had a knife. Archer swung again, but the man ducked and Archer’s fist caught his shoulder, turning him slightly, but not enough.

  He came forward, and now Tom bellowed from behind the bar and there came sounds at Archer’s back. The anger boiled over in him and he hit the sharpie once with his left, then sank his right into the man’s middle. Skit’s breath exploded and he slashed wildly with the knife. Archer dived for him and felt Tom’s burly body knock him off stride, and then there was a welter of flailing hands as the girl rushed between them.

  “Mr. Archer! Please!”

  The other man sprawled on the floor, gasping, his neat black hair looped down over his face, his elegance in disarray. The girl knelt beside him, her face agonized, whispering in urgent tones. Skit shook her off angrily. The girl caught at his shoulders and glanced up at Archer, who was being backed to the bar by Tom. Her eyes pleaded with him, holding a wild and innocent fear, and Archer felt sober suddenly, the heat out of him, regret taking the place of his anger. Let Rosalind hear about it, he thought. Let the whole town know how he’d beat up his wife’s private snooper. He breathed deeply, aware of a stinging pain across his left hand where Skit’s knife had nicked him. There was a thin red line of blood. He sucked at it, watching the man being helped to his feet by the girl.

  He felt surprised at the suddenness with which it had happened. It fitted the mood of the day, with Roz leaving and the rebellion still inside him. He leaned against the bar and watched the girl whisper again to her escort. Neither looked at him again. The man gathered something up from the booth and twisted away from the girl’s hands, stalking toward the door. The girl hesitated, then followed, although he acted as if he didn’t care one way or the other.

  It didn’t make sense. Surely Rosalind didn’t suspect him of playing around with another woman, and surely she knew she didn’t have to use a private cop to get him to grant a divorce. It wasn’t another woman that had driven them apart. It occurred to him that maybe this had nothing at all to do with Roz, and then someone spoke his name and he saw Stanley Manning, Rosalind’s half brother.

  “Danny. What’s the matter with you, anyway?”

  Archer eyed the fat man. “Where did you come from?”

  “I’ve been here for half an hour.”

  “Spying on me?” Archer asked.

  “Worried about you, Danny. About you and Roz. And about the way you picked that fight just now.”

  Stanley Manning was short and stout, at least twenty years older than Archer and Rosalind. His mouse-gray hair was thin, and he had three chins and a belly, and his voice had the unctuous righteousness of a Rotarian declaiming the virtues of a one-industry town. He looked hot and flushed, his rimless glasses were fogged, and his pink skin shone warmly in the dim bar light. His white seersucker suit was rumpled. He took Archer’s arm paternally.

  “Come to the Inn with me, Danny. For dinner.”

  “Why?” Archer asked. “So you can give me a lecture on my marital duties, and how much I owe you and Roz, and whether I beat her regularly?”

  “Now, Danny—”

  “You know she’s gone into town, don’t you?”

  Manning nodded. “We can straighten this out, Danny.”

  “It’s later than you think,” Archer grinned.

  “Not too late for Roz, Danny.”

  “It’s too late when she puts goons like that on my tail, following me all over town.”

  “Roz wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

  Archer looked at the fat man. “Then maybe you did it. Maybe I should have clobbered you instead of Hatchet Face.”

  “I don’t know that man, Danny. Be reasonable.”

  Archer said, “Stanley, we’ve got along for five years. You and Rosalind set up the plant, it was your money and hers that built it. Everything has been fine, except that you keep sticking your nose into my private affairs.”

  Manning said gently, “Roz is my sister, Danny. I simply want her to be happy.”

  “Well, she isn’t,” Archer said. “Not with me. So it’s my fault. Let it go at that. Good-by, Stanley.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look, Danny. Do something for me. Call Roz.”

  “No.”

  “Just make a single gesture, Danny—”

  “No.”

  Archer pushed away from the bar and the fat man’s disapproving face and went outside.

  Chapter 2

  THE BOUNDARIES of Southwich flowed into those of the next towns along the Sound, tied together by the busy ribbon of the Boston Post Road. There were plenty of bars on the highway and off on the side streets. Archer was surprised to find it still daylight when he left Tom’s, and surprised again, later, when he left another place to find it quite dark and late.

  He had no idea what time it was. He knew he’d had too much to drink, and he shouldn’t drive. He paused beside his car on the hot, silent sidewalk, wishing he could wipe the churning thoughts out of his mind. He felt sorry for himself one moment and angry the next, his anger being directed at Rosalind. She didn’t understand. No matter how often he’d tried to tell her about Stanley and the way things were going at the plant, she remained blindly obdurate, her loyalty toward Manning greater than her loyalty to himself. He should have pulled out of Southwich long ago, and taken Roz with him. His share of the plant never really belonged to him; it was Stanley’s money, and Rosalind’s, that had started the whole thing. Oh, it was going to be easy to repay—so he’d thought. The figures on future production were all there. They would all prosper, and out of the profits Archer could pay off his pride and retire Rosalind’s money and then he’d stand on his own two feet. The plant was busy, all right. Outwardly, it seemed to make money hand over fist. Yet somehow the profits were never there to help Archer redeem his self-respect.

  He remembered Rosalind saying, “Dan, darling, you’re being silly. You talk about my money and what you owe me. There is no such thing as that between us. Why can’t you see that?”

  “I’m not made that way,” Archer had replied. “I used your money for the company, and I want to pay it back.”

  “Our money,” Roz insisted gently.

  He could see her now, smiling indulgently, and he remembered thinking that she would never understand the meaning of a man’s pride. Romance was all very well, but the thing stuck in his craw, this business of seeing her inheritance vanish into the mysterious complexities of the metallurgy plant. It was as if they were now dependent on Stanley’s charity, which was more than Archer could endure.

  “I want
out,” he told Rosalind. “I walked into a rat-trap, and the little door went click, and now all I do is run around in circles trying to find a way out.”

  “Darling, I don’t see why you’re so unhappy about it.”

  He had looked at Roz in frustration. He couldn’t tell her of the suspicions he harbored against her own brother. You couldn’t tell your wife you thought her brother was a crook who hated your guts and was weaving a careful web to get control of her money. Roz wouldn’t believe it. And he had no proof, anyway. Nothing tangible. He had bitten back the angry words then; but he couldn’t hold them in forever. His anger at himself, his failure to protect Rosalind’s interests made him difficult to live with.

  The quarrels began gradually, creeping into the daily pattern of their lives without either realizing what the inevitable climax would be. Rosalind was a proud girl, a wonderful girl, Archer thought. Maybe even now he ought to drive into New York and tell her all about it. But there could be no easy solution. He wanted to quit Southwich for their mutual salvation; but Roz would never leave. She liked the security of their house and their suburban existence. She wouldn’t understand the wanderlust that had lived in him ever since his days at sea, during the war. For Roz, this was as full a life as either of them could wish for.

  Then, this morning, it came out. He had been talking about the war, about Burke Wiley, first officer on the Martin J. Crump, and somehow he had mentioned Della Chambers, too. A queer stiffness came over Rosalind’s face when he mentioned having seen Della Chambers near the Southwich Inn. It was a part of his life that Roz had never probed much, and he had offered her little of it, knowing she would not understand. But she understood about Della, all right. She knew all about Della.

  “Danny,” she said over her coffee cup, “this is more than I can take.” Her hand trembled when she lowered the cup, and it rattled against the saucer, and this seemed to touch off the tight anger inside her. “We’ve made a grave mistake.”

  “Now, Roz—”

  “You’ve been talking about this Della girl and Burke Wiley more than you realize. It’s as if you keep wishing for those so-called old days of yours. I think I understand now what the real trouble is between us. We don’t belong together. Your world isn’t mine. You’re not happy, and we ought to face it.”