How Many Cards?/Chapter 9

cCARTY smiled to himself as he left Mrs. Kip's house and started eastward. That shot in the dark had found its mark; she had not denied that Waverly was the sender of the message warning her of Creveling's death, and that he himself had been interrogated in connection with it. But why had she been so warned? How was she concerned and what had her relations been to the dead man and to Waverly? Could it be that she was the woman in the case, the woman because of whom they had quarreled a fortnight before?

That she had been apprised of his possible coming and knew that he was no reporter McCarty was well aware despite her pretense. Why had she lied so hastily about the whereabouts of her companion Miss Frost? But for the lucky chance of his arrival at the moment that the trunk was being removed he would in all probability never have heard of the woman. Could the events of the night have had anything to do with her sudden departure?

McCarty boarded a downtown Madison Avenue car, his thoughts still busied with the queries which that brief interview evoked. Mrs. Kip had protested against his interrogation, but she had not dared to turn him summarily from her door until she learned that suicide had been accepted by the police as the solution of the mystery. Did she believe that Creveling had killed himself and was notoriety all that she feared? The only statements she volunteered were that she had retired early on the previous night and the explanation of her bandaged arm. She had slipped on a rug—but was that the true explanation?

She was pretty enough in a florid, overblown way and there was a devil of mischief in her eye; just the type to appeal to a man satiated with cold beauty and smothered in conventions, yet she wasn't the sort to lose her head. McCarty was convinced of that. She had made a hard fight for social recognition according to Jimmie Ballard and now that it was won she would take care that no hint of scandal jeopardized it. There was something vaguely familiar about her, too, and McCarty had an almost photographic memory. Where had he seen her before?

At the Fitz-Maurice Hotel he alighted from the car. It was well on into the luncheon hour and the lobby of the fashionable hostelry was crowded, but he shouldered his way through the throng to the desk and asked for Miss Letitia Frost. After an interval he was directed to the elevator and upon one of the upper floors he was ushered into a tiny rear suite, to find himself confronting a stout, elderly woman with a high, thin nose and bright, dark eyes whose darting glances were like those of some predatory bird beneath a mass of elaborately coiffed white hair.

"I am Miss Frost. May I ask what your business is with me?" Her voice boomed out with surprising depth and austerity.

"Just to ask you a few questions, ma'am, if you'll be good enough to answer them," McCarty replied meekly with a disarming smile.

He was about to continue when the lady forestalled him.

"By what authority, if you please?" she demanded coolly. "Your name is unknown to me—"

"By the authority of the Police Commissioner!" McCarty interrupted, his usually impervious good nature deserting him for the moment in the face of her arrogance. "You've been acting, I understand, as companion for Mrs. Baillie Kip."

"Police!" Miss Frost gasped. "Oh, that horrible, low-bred creature! I feared gossip and possibly scandal but never, never this! What is it, sir? What has she done?"

"I didn't say she had done anything, ma'am," McCarty said more mildly, for the sharp hawk-like face seemed to have aged perceptibly in the last minute. "We just want to get a line on her, that is all."

"It is enough!" Miss Frost wrung her hands. "To think that I should have been so misguided as to lend her the prestige of my chaperonage, a woman who is—is questionable in the eyes of the police! I shall never be able to hold up my head again—I, whose position in society has always been unassailable in spite of financial reverses! My reputation, my standing will be ruined—!"

"Not at all, ma'am, you can rest easy on that score. This is confidential, just between the two of us. Your name needn't even be mentioned if you'll tell me what you know about her."

Miss Frost glanced about her helplessly and then sank into the nearest chair, with a fluttering gesture toward one across the table.

"I know literally nothing about Mrs. Kip!" she disclaimed. "Less, in fact, than on the day when I went to make my home with her. The Frosts are one of the oldest families in society and in my younger days—but I digress. For the last ten years or more, Mr.—er—McCarty, I have found it necessary to augment my income by introducing to society certain members of the nouveau riche who would otherwise have been unable to obtain a foothold. I have been instrumental in arranging some of the most brilliant alliances of the past decade. You have heard of Senator Welkyn?"

McCarty nodded.

"His wife was an absolute failure in Washington four years ago but I schooled her with the utmost patience and last season succeeded in launching her triumphantly at Newport." Miss Frost continued nervously. "Finding that she no longer needed my sponsorship, she presented Mrs. Kip to me as the widow of a Western copper king. I have blamed myself a hundred times since for not having looked up Mrs. Kip's antecedents with my usual care, but Mrs. Welkyn's minute details of her history and assurance that they had been girls together convinced me that she was quite—er—possible, especially as I had watched her previous unsuccessful attempt to break into society some years ago and knew that she had held herself sedulously above any hint of gossip.

"We came to a financial agreement last autumn and on my advice she took the house in which she now lives and where I went to reside with her. You must know the success of my efforts in her behalf even in so short a time; she is received at the larger functions everywhere and has even achieved a degree of intimacy with such people as Mr. John and Lady Margaret O'Rourke, the Douglas Waverlys, Nicholas Cutter and their set. I had intended to eliminate the Waverlys in the course of time as my—er—client penetrated still more exclusive circles, and was really using Nicholas Cutter merely as a stepping-stone to that end for he holds the open sesame everywhere, you know, but Mrs. Kip did not prove tractable.

"For a long time I have felt uneasy about her. In the first place she was most secretive about her financial affairs. I was given to understand in a general way that she had large holdings in the West from which she received ample dividends, but I observed that those dividends seemed to fluctuate in value more irregularly than even the wildcat stocks in which my poor misguided father lost most of his fortune years ago. At times Mrs. Kip would indulge in the most reckless extravagances and at others there would seem to be scarcely sufficient available funds to maintain her comparatively small establishment and notices would come from the bank that her account was overdrawn quite alarmingly, but she would always manage to recoup at the crucial moment."

"How?" McCarty asked.

"That was one of the mysteries which gradually seemed to arise about her, at least in my mind." Miss Frost spoke now with evident care. "I fancied she had influential friends from whom she borrowed when necessary, but I never could learn who they were. Another thing about her which I could not understand, Mr. McCarty, was the reason for her unexplained absences at most—most unconventional hours. Usually I arrange a daily social program for my clients as though they were débutantes, but Mrs. Kip soon gave me to understand that she would exercise her own judgment in such matters. I do not pry into the affairs of other people, but when I am practically responsible for their presentation to the right society I must be sure that they do not jeopardize my reputation as well as theirs by indiscretions, however innocent."

"And Mrs. Kip was what you call indiscreet, ma'am?" McCarty's own words were carefully chosen.

The lady set her thin lips in a straight line.

"That is the mildest word with which I can describe her conduct, Mr. McCarty, although I could not with actual proof breathe a word against her personal character or reputation. I only know that she would go out, sometimes in the afternoon but more frequently at night, and remain until all hours without a word to me as to her plans and the next morning she would invariably appear haggard and worn, in a state of nervous exhaustion bordering on prostration, as though she had been through some feverish excitement."

McCarty leaned forward with sudden interest.

"How often did she go on these expeditions of hers?"

"Only occasionally at first and at irregular intervals; sometimes on several successive days, and then a week or two would elapse before she went again. It seemed to me at times as though she were fighting something and if I were not familiar with the habits and demeanor of a drug addict through an unfortunate experience with a former client I would have believed her a victim. I forebore to question her at first, but of late her disappearances have become more frequent, averaging several times a week; she has totally forgotten or disregarded engagements for social functions for which I had been at infinite trouble and pains to procure invitations for her, placing me in a most embarrassing position. Indeed, it seems to me that she had lost all ambition for her own advancement and was content to drift. Her financial affairs, too, appear to have reached a crisis and I felt that at last I should be compelled to speak."

Miss Frost was nervously clasping and unclasping the arms of her chair and a fine network of veins stood out upon her forehead.

"Did Mrs. Kip receive any messages or telephone calls just before she went out on these occasions?"

"Sometimes, but I never knew their nature nor from whom they came."

"Did she go alone?"

"Invariably."

"And come home alone?" McCarty insisted.

"As far as I know." Miss Frost shrugged. "She always used her own latch-key and the servants were instructed to leave the chain off the door but were never permitted to wait up for her. I did once, but Mrs. Kip was displeased and made a most distressing scene, practically accusing me of attempting to interfere in her affairs. I should have left her then but I realized that she was unnerved and not quite herself and made allowances, too, for her lack of breeding. However, I could not tolerate my position any longer after this morning!"

"What happened, ma'am?" McCarty heaved a sigh of relief. "'Twas that I wanted particularly to see you about."

"There was a musicale last night—the last of Mrs. Fales Ogden's Lenten affairs, and one of the most exclusive of the season—and I had with the exercise of the greatest diplomacy obtained invitations for Mrs. Kip and myself. Late in the afternoon Mrs. Kip went out alone and on her return informed me flatly that she had made another engagement for the evening and would not be able to attend the musicale. I was deeply affronted, but in my position, Mr, McCarty, one must use the utmost tact at all times and I did not protest, merely dispatching a last-minute excuse of sudden illness to Mrs. Fales Ogden. Mrs. Kip did not dress for dinner and about ten o'clock she called a taxi instead of her motor and went out in the plain velvet tailor-made and sables she had worn in the afternoon.

"My discontent in my position had been growing and I was seriously considering the severance of my connection with Mrs. Kip; her dereliction last night was the final straw and I determined that this morning we must have a thorough understanding. I could not sleep under the circumstances, so I know definitely at what hour Mrs. Kip returned."

She paused and McCarty eyed her expectantly. Mrs. Kip had been at pains to impress upon him the fact that she had retired early; had she gotten the uncompromising Miss Frost out of the way that her lie might not be refuted?

"Well?" he urged, as the elderly companion was still silent.

"Mr. McCarty, it was almost daylight! I heard her close the front door downstairs and slide the chain into its groove, although she did it as quietly as possible. Then she came up the stairs, stumbling and catching at the balustrade as though she were faint or ill. I arose and was on the point of going to her when I remembered her displeasure on that former occasion, so I merely opened my door and glanced out into the hall. She passed without seeing me and I—I was so shocked at her appearance that I could not have uttered a word had I so desired!"

"What was the matter with her?" McCarty demanded.

"Her sable scarf was gone, although she still held her muff, and her velvet suit was torn and bedraggled." Miss Frost spoke with morbid relish and her dark eyes snapped balefully. "She limped, too, and hugged one arm to her side as though it hurt her. I should have gone to her assistance at once had not something in her expression warned me that she was not in any mood to brook intrusion. Pain and rage and a look of vindictive determination were all written in her face and I withdrew and shut my door. I could hear her pacing the floor of her room until the day broke when I fell asleep at last. I arose at my usual hour, however, and came downstairs just in time to see her receive a note from the hands of a messenger. I was astonished to see her up and dressed for she usually breakfasted in bed, especially when she had been out—"

"Wait a minute, please," McCarty interrupted her. "You saw the messenger, you say; was he in uniform?"

"No. I did not observe him particularly, but he appeared to be a shabby looking lad. Mrs. Kip bade me good morning in an absent-minded sort of way and instead of following me into the breakfast room, went into the library with the unopened note in her hand and closed the door. I saw that her arm was clumsily bandaged and while I was at breakfast the doctor was announced; she must have summoned him before I arose. I slipped out into the hall as he was leaving and asked him how Mrs. Kip's arm was, and he said that she had suffered a bad sprain and made some reference to a fall which I did not understand until later."

"Was it about her slipping on a rug or something yesterday?" asked McCarty.

"Yes, as I remember!" Miss Frost glanced at him in surprise and then went on: "Mrs. Kip came down again in a few minutes and at my natural inquiry about her injury she told me that she had slipped and fallen in her room on her return the night before. She must have seen in my face that I knew the truth, for suddenly she flared out at me with all the violence of an unrestrained, ill-bred nature and a most disgraceful scene ensued!"

Miss Frost's head with its elaborate puffs bobbed agitatedly and an indignant flush mottled her face.

"I had never realized before how thin was the veneer; how utterly common she was! I can assure you, Mr. McCarty, that I have never been so insulted! Among other remarks which I shall not repeat, she said that she was not a child and was tired of my eternal spying; that I was an interfering old busybody! She actually dared to insinuate that I was a—a sort of society grafter, an object of charity, after all that I have done for her! I was simply stunned, but when I pulled myself together to announce of my own accord my immediate departure from her house she forestalled me by demanding that I leave at once. She actually dismissed me! Gave me notice, as though I were a servant! Words cannot describe my humiliation, but if I can build social reputations I can also demolish them! Mrs. Baillie Kip will not find a door open to her three days from now!"

"Hold on a bit, ma'am!" McCarty stemmed the outraged flow of words. "She got in a temper just because you looked disbelieving at her excuse about her arm?"

"Well, no," the lady conceded. "I was disgusted at the insult to my intelligence and let her know what I had seen. I think I also mentioned other occasions to which I had taken silent objection and perhaps I expressed my opinion as to being used as a cloak for actions which I did not understand. When our interview terminated I packed at once and came here.

"In strict justice to the woman I cannot say that her manner was other than most circumspect when she was under my eye; she was popular and had several admirers, but there was no suspicion of a love affair. I did not know what to think of those nocturnal excursions of hers, but I could not believe that there was anything actually disgraceful about them. Still, servants talk and such things get about; I was afraid, as I say, of scandalous rumors and gossip, but I never thought of anything criminal! What is it, Mr. McCarty? I have told you all I know and I am at your mercy! Tell me what hideous notoriety I must prepare myself to undergo?"

"None, I hope, ma'am," he responded. "You say she was recklessly extravagant at times; what did she spend her money on?"

"Rare jewels, more furs than she could possibly wear and antique rugs and objects of art which she was too ignorant to appreciate. She bought as mere fancy dictated, seemingly for the sheer pleasure of spending money."

"That neck piece that she wore out last night and didn't have on her when she came back—?" McCarty began.

"That was one instance of her extravagance," Miss Frost interrupted him. "She has another set of sables, as well as all kinds of fur garments for every possible occasion, yet she must have these because they were reputed to have been made for the Czarina and smuggled out of Russia after the revolution. Twenty thousand she paid Van Brincken for the set and the very next week she was unable to meet her florist's bill!"

"How would you describe that neck piece, ma'am?"

"A five-skin scarf of Imperial black Russian sables," replied Miss Frost promptly. "The private seal of the Czarina was stamped on the small gold clasp which fastened it together under one of the skins at the throat."

There was a pause and then McCarty asked:

"Who were Mrs. Kip's admirers? You say she had several—?"

Miss Frost raised her hands in protest.

"I really couldn't think of mentioning names! It would mean social suicide for me to drag into the notoriety of a police investigation in connection with this woman any of the prominent families whose friendship I enjoy, especially as I do not know what she has done!" Her voice rose quaveringly. "I would never be able to obtain another client!"

"But this is just confidential, between you and me." McCarty smiled. "I know all about the Waverlys and O'Rourkes and Crevelings, but as far as I can make out Cutter is the only bachelor in their immediate set."

"Mr. Cutter has been attentive to Mrs. Kip, but not more so than to many another attractive widow or divorcée," Miss Frost observed. "No débutante has ever interested him although he would be a splendid catch. One of my few failures was an attempt to bring about a marriage between him and Gwendolyn Rossmore. I managed to send her in to dinner with him three times in succession and you would never believe the trouble I took to drill conversation into that girl! Sports with the hors d'œuvres, art with the soup and fish, Maeterlinck with the entrée, opera with the roast—but all for nothing! He is the most difficult—"

"Ha-h'm!" McCarty looked somewhat dazed, but stuck doggedly to his point. "About the gentlemen who paid attention to Mrs. Kip. Who were the others, Miss Frost?"

"Well, if you must know, Fales Ogden, junior, and Harry Palladin and Jules Thoreau were among others but none of them was serious and I am compelled to say that she did not encourage them. Although I lived in the same house with her we were never upon an intimate footing and I could not induce her to discuss the past, but I gathered that widowhood was rather a release for her; she assured me more than once that she would never marry again."

"Well, ma'am." McCarty rose. "I'll not be detaining you any longer now, nor will I give you away. Mrs. Kip may be all right as far as we know, but we've reasons for wanting to look her up and make sure. Good day to you, ma'am."

Leaving the agitated social sponsor, McCarty made his way from the Fitz-Maurice to a modest quick-lunch establishment near the Grand Central Station. He had forgotten all about breakfast in the excitement of the morning and now he ordered a hearty meal, pondering as he ate upon the information he had just gained. What could be the explanation of Mrs. Kip's mysterious conduct? What dominating factor caused her to set aside the social ambition which had been her ruling passion for years, ignore invitations for which she had long angled in vain, and steal almost surreptitiously from her own house on secret errands?

The questions multiplied in McCarty's brain. Where had she been on the previous night that she found it necessary to lie about it? What was in that message which Waverly had sent to her, and what was her connection—a rank outsider—with the set in which the Crevelings had moved? That some community of interest drew them together was plain, but what could there be in common between a gentleman like John O'Rourke and a bounder like Waverly, an aristocrat such as Mrs. Creveling and a climber of Mrs. Kip's type? Could the answer be found among the others of their immediate circle?

It was almost three o'clock when, having finished his meal, McCarty hailed a taxi and drove to the St. Maur apartments on Madison Avenue. Mrs. Lonsdale Ford was at home and would see him. Reluctantly he dropped in the elevator the newspaper which he had purchased on leaving the lunch-room and in which his interview with Jimmie Ballard appeared with arrant embellishments, trusting that a copy of it had not yet reached the eyes of the lady upon whom he was calling, but his hope was a vain one. Even as an obsequious Japanese butler ushered him into the drawing-room the curtains leading to the library parted and a slender, little woman with round, china-blue eyes and hair like spun flax fairly precipitated herself upon him.

"Oh, you're Officer McCarty, who found poor Mr. Creveling's body!" she exclaimed in a high, babbling voice. "I've been reading about you in the paper! Please, please tell me how it happened! I tried to get Mrs. Creveling on the 'phone but she wouldn't talk to me or else Stella Waverly wouldn't let her! I can't get my husband until the stock market closes and I've been just wild!"

"The Crevelings are great friends of yours, ma'am?"

"Of course! This is the most shocking thing!" She seemed to speak in italics and her tone suggested that the shock was more exciting than deplorable. "Lonny—my husband—and Mr. Creveling have put through several deals together and they were great pals! I think Mrs. Creveling is just the sweetest thing; I've missed her horribly since she has been out of town!—But did Mr. Creveling kill himself? Of course, you found the pistol in his hand, the paper says, but then there was that burglar you captured. I think it was too brave of you for anything!"

McCarty eyed the doll-like face before him with its insipid prettiness and his wonderment grew. "Sweet" was not a term he would have applied to the strong, self-contained Mrs. Creveling. What could there be in common between her and this shallow, empty-headed little creature?

"'Tis the opinion of the medical examiner that it was suicide, ma'am," he said gravely. "We're trying to find out from Mr. Creveling's friends if they knew of any reason he could have for killing himself; if he seemed in trouble or low in his mind. When was the last time you or your husband saw him?"

"I think Lonny saw him only yesterday, on business. The last time we met him together was on Tuesday evening, and we expected him last night but he didn't appear."

"He had an engagement with you?"

Mrs. Ford bit her pouting underlip and for the merest second the round, childish, blue eyes narrowed with a shrewdness oddly foreign and incongruous to them.

"Not with us, and it wasn't an—an engagement exactly. My husband and I dined and spent the evening with Mr. Cutter and they are such inseparable friends that we rather thought he might drop in."

A sudden remembrance of Douglas Waverly's testimony flashed across McCarty's mind. The last time he admitted having seen Creveling had been on Tuesday evening also, at the house of Nicholas Cutter.

"'Twas at Mr. Cutter's that you saw him on Tuesday, then, wasn't it?" he asked. "Who else was there?"

"The O'Rourkes and Mr. Douglas Waverly and Mrs. Baillie Kip." Mrs. Ford spoke haltingly and the high treble had lowered. "Mr. Creveling seemed in the very best of spirits; he always was when he—"

"When he what, ma'am?" McCarty prompted quickly as she paused.

The blue eyes fell and she began fiddling nervously with the many rings which covered her small fingers.

"When he'd got something that he wanted." The words came in a little rush. "He had a perfect craze for antiques, you know; musty old tapestries and faded rugs and books that nobody ever heard of. This time it was a rug, I think, with some queer unpronounceable name. He'd been after it for months—"

"I see," McCarty interrupted dryly. "Do you remember, ma'am, whether him and Mr. Waverly had much talk together that night?"

"Why, no!" The blue eyes opened wide once more. "I don't remember that they even spoke, but I wasn't paying any attention to them. I know Mr. Creveling left early, very soon after Mr. Waverly came."

"Is it a habit of Mr. Cutter's to entertain so much in his own house?"

Mrs. Ford stared at him and opened her lips to reply when there came the sound of a key grating in the lock of the hall door, and with a glad little cry she sprang up and rushed from the room. McCarty heard the door open and close, a muffled exclamation:—"Oh, Lonny!"—and then a man's voice rasped out hoarsely:

"You've heard, Nellie? You know? We're done for, girl! Done for!"