Homicide House: A Mr. Pinkerton Mystery. Zenith Brown
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door and glance up.
“Oh, hello, Mr. Pinkerton.” Her face broke into a sunny smile. She took a quick light step over to the middle of the hall and looked up at him. “Oh, Mr. Pinkerton, the most wonderful thing’s happened! You can’t ever guess!” Her eyes were dancing, her whole face lighted up. “I can hardly believe it!”
“I—I think it’s very nice,” Mr. Pinkerton said.
He felt a glow of modest pride because he didn’t have to guess. He knew. He thought Mary Winship-was a pretty girl, one of the prettiest he’d ever known—in real life, that is, not of course in the films. He also thought she was sweet, an old-fashioned virtue he did not look for in the cinema. At the moment she seemed to be both in an extraordinary degree. Slender and graceful as an osier wand, she had wide-set violet-blue eyes fringed with curling dark lashes so long they would have looked unreal except that her brows were thick and shining and her hair almost blue-black and curly too. She did not always look so radiantly happy as she did just then. Once Mr. Pinkerton had seen her in a tea shop, looking tired and so hopeless, all by herself, that he hadn’t spoken to her, thinking perhaps she had just come there to be alone and get a little peace away from her dominant aunt, her invalid mother and her poisonous cousin Eric. But now she was radiant and lovely.
“I’m very pleased about it too,” Mr. Pinkerton said. He wished Dan McGrath could see her then.
“Oh, Aunt Caroline told you? I thought she’d just decided. You know, she’s really an angel! Just think of it—a whole month in Paris! I knew I was to have a week’s holiday, but not now, and here at the flat, not a whole month in Paris. But I’ve got to rush—I’m going on the night boat. Good-bye, Mr. Pinkerton—take care of yourself. I’ll bring you a present!”
She was off, her feet fairly dancing as she waved her hand and ran along the hall to her aunt’s apartment, leaving Mr. Pinkerton mute and stricken halfway up the dimly lighted stairs.
“—Paris. She’s going to Paris.” Some cracked disembodied voice was whispering it in his incredulous ear. “She’s not happy about Dan McGrath. She’s happy because she’s going to Paris. She’s happy because she’s getting away from here.”
Suddenly Mr. Pinkerton caught his breath, standing perfectly still. The truth was brilliantly clear all about him.
“She’s not going to Paris. They’re sending her to Paris. To get her away from here. Her aunt’s sending her away so she won’t see Dan McGrath.”
Mr. Pinkerton’s own voice was telling him that, but he knew it was not the truth. They were sending her away, but it was not on account of Dan McGrath but on account of her father. They were sending her so she would not see Scott Winship. But it was all the same. A month in Paris . . . Miss Grimstead had said a month of sea air in Bournemouth. It was the same month—except that his was to begin on Monday, Dan McGrath’s in the box room and Mary’s in Paris both began that very night. Mr. Pinkerton’s pallid viscera turned over in agonizing protest. It couldn’t be, not after Dan McGrath had come all the way from America. Somebody had got to stop it.
He looked around frantically, as if he hoped by some miraculous dispensation Dan McGrath would appear out of the murky depths of the cabbage-scented hallway and put a stop to it then and there. And it was all his fault. If he had never mentioned Scott Winship it would never have happened. And it couldn’t happen. It mustn’t be allowed to happen. He blinked his watery grey eyes and swallowed. Then he moistened his lips. It had got to be stopped, and he was the one who’d got to stop it.
“Oh, dear!” Mr. Pinkerton said. It was all very easy to say he had got to stop it. The question was how to do it. If only Dan McGrath was there . . . He glanced down into the hall. Eric Dalrymple-Hughes was coming out of his flat. He was whistling under his breath, a jaunty self-satisfied young man, well built and handsome, too handsome for his own good, in Mr. Pinkerton’s opinion, and with a weak mouth and petulant voice. He was a feeble reed to lean on, but at the moment he was the only reed there was, and Mr. Pinkerton himself was hardly a sturdy oak.
He straightened his narrow shoulders and made a pathetic effort to clear his throat and attract Mr. Eric Dalrymple-Hughes’s attention as he paused to light a cigarette. He cleared his throat again. It was at least audible this time, but not so audible as to account for the startled jerk of the young man’s head as he looked up.
“Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”
He snapped his lighter shut and blew a casual ribbon of smoke upward out of the side of his compressed lips. He started to move along.
“Mr. Dalrymple-Hughes! Wait a moment, will you please?”
Mr. Pinkerton found his voice. He scurried anxiously down the stairs. Eric Dalrymple-Hughes, his cigarette poised with an air of bored distinction, waited for him, his brows raised a little, looking so very down his handsome nose that Mr. Pinkerton would have gone no farther had there been any other way.
“It’s—it’s about your cousin, Miss Winship—she mustn’t go to Paris tonight.” He blurted it out breathlessly. “You’ve got to stop her. She really mustn’t go.”
That Eric Dalrymple-Hughes thought he had taken leave of his senses was perfectly apparent, even to Mr. Pinkerton. He did not stare at him precisely, but he looked at him a moment as if not quite sure he was actually there. Then he raised his brows.
“And just what business of yours is it whether my cousin goes to Paris or does not go to Paris, Mr.—Mr. Pinkerton, I believe?”
“Yes, I’m Mr. Pinkerton. I live on the third floor. And it’s not really any business of mine. But there’s an American coming here—to the flats, I mean—”
“An American?” Mr. Eric Dalrymple-Hughes gave another slight start. “I don’t understand, I’m afraid,” he said briefly.
“Oh, I know you don’t. But it’s quite true. I met him in front of your Aunt’s house this afternoon, and he was looking for your cousin. He didn’t know where she lived now, and I told him. He’s got a room here, the box room, and he wants to see her. So you see she—she mustn’t go to Paris just now. Your Aunt thinks he knows her father, Mr. Scott Winship, but I’m sure he doesn’t at all. He was just asking if he’d come back. And he never said Mr. Winship was here, or that he’d seen him. He just asked—”
Mr. Dalrymple-Hughes was examining the tip of his cigarette with studied unconcern. “Why should he be interested in my deceased uncle?”
“Oh, no, no!” cried Mr. Pinkerton. “He’s not interested in your uncle. It’s your cousin Mary. He came all the way from America to see her, so she mustn’t go off like this. She’s simply—”
He stopped. The young man was regarding him with a skeptical, puzzled, half-amused and half-not-amused-at-all eye that was discouraging in the extreme. It was plain that the idea of anyone so much as crossing the road to see his cousin was too bizarre for him to consider seriously. Mr. Pinkerton almost gave up.
“At least let me speak to Mary Winship before she goes? Do that, will you?”
He was so in earnest that he knew he sounded absurd, pleading this way about such an incomprehensible matter, and knowing that pleading would not be enough he made a sudden desperate gamble. “You said—I heard you tell Mary you needed cash. I can let you have some. I could let you have a hundred pounds—or two hundred. If you’ll bring Mary up and let me talk to her, I’ll—I’ll give you the money.”
It was not only a gamble. For Mr. Evan Pinkerton, who never spent a sixpence without misgivings or a pound without cold chills, it was more than that; it was fantastic. Eric Dalrymple-Hughes stood looking at him. What he was thinking Mr. Pinkerton had no way of telling. There was nothing on the handsome conceited young face that had any meaning for him, friendly or unfriendly.
He stood simply staring for an instant, said then, quite coolly, “I’ll see what I can do,” turned on his heel and went back into his own apartment.
Mr. Pinkerton