A hatless young man jumped out of the cab.
Mr. Queen felt a sudden agitation and rose for a better view.
The young man shouted something to Ed Hotchkiss, bounded up the steps, and jabbed at the Wright doorbell.
Old Ludie opened the door. Ellery saw her fat arm rise as if to ward off a blow. Then Ludie scuttled back out of sight, and the young man dashed after her. The door banged.
Five minutes later it was yanked open; the young man rushed out, stumbled into the waiting cab, and yelled to be driven away.
Ellery sat down slowly. It might be. He would soon know. Pat would come flying across the lawn . . . There she was.
“Ellery! You’ll never guess!”
“Jim Haight’s come back” said Ellery.
Pat stared. ”You’re wonderful. Imagine¯after three years! After the way Jim ran out on Nora! I can’t believe it yet. He looks so much older . . . He had to see Nora, he yelled. Where was she? Why didn’t she come down? Yes, he knew what Muth and Pop thought of him, but that could wait. Where was Nora? And all the time he kept shaking his fist in poor Pop’s face and hopping up and down on one foot like a maniac!”
“What happened then?”
“I ran upstairs to tell Nora. She went deathly pale and plopped down on her bed. She said: ‘Jim?’ and started to bawl. Said she’d rather be dead, and why hadn’t he stayed away, and she wouldn’t see him if he came crawling to her on his hands and knees¯the usual feminine tripe. Poor Nora!”
Pat was near tears herself.
“I knew it was no good arguing with her¯Nora’s awfully stubborn when she wants to be. So I told Jim, and he got even more excited and wanted to run upstairs, and Pop got mad and waved his best mashie at the foot of the stairs, like Horatius at the bridge, and ordered Jim out of the house, and¯well, Jim would have had to knock Pop down to get by him, so he ran out of the house screaming that he’d see Nora if he had to throw bombs to get in. And all this time I was trying to revive Muth, who’d conveniently fainted as a sort of strategic diversion . . . I’ve got to get back!” Pat ran off. Then she stopped and turned around. ”Why in heaven’s name,” she asked slowly, “do I come running to you with the most intimate details of my family’s affairs, Mr. Ellery Smith?”
“Maybe,” smiled Ellery, “because I have a kind face.”
“Don’t be foul. Do you suppose I’m f¯” Pat bit her lip, a faint blush staining her tan. Then she loped away.
Mr. Queen lit another cigarette with fingers not quite steady.
Despite the heat, he felt chilled suddenly.
He threw the unsmoked butt into the grass and went into the house to haul out his typewriter.
Chapter 5
Lover Come Back
Gabby Warrum, the one-toothed agent at the railroad station, saw Jim Haight get off the train.
Gabby told Emmeline DuPre.
By the time Ed Hotchkiss dropped Jim off at Upham House, where Ma for old times’ sake managed to wangle a bed for him, Emmy DuPre had phoned nearly everyone in town who wasn’t picnicking in Pine Grove or swimming in Slocum Lake.
Opinion, as Mr. Queen ascertained by prowling around town Monday and keeping his steel-trap ears open, was divided. J. C. Pettigrew, Donald Mackenzie, and the rest of the Rotary bunch, who were half-Country Club and half-tradespeople, generally opined that Jim Haight ought to be run out on a rail. The ladies were stoutly against this: Jim was a nice young man; whatever’d happened between him and Nora Wright three years ago wasn’t his fault, you can bet your last year’s bonnet!
Frank Lloyd disappeared. Phinny Baker said his boss had gone off on a hunting trip up in the Mahoganies. Emmeline DuPre sniffed. ”It’s funny Frank Lloyd should go hunting the very next morning after James Haight gets back to Wrightsville. Ran away, of course. That big windbag!” Emmy was disappointed that Frank hadn’t taken one of his deer rifles and gone stalking through the streets of Wrightsville for Jim, like Owen Wister’s Virginian (starring, however, Gary Cooper).
Old Soak Anderson, the town problem, discovered by Mr. Queen Monday noon lying on the stone pedestal of the Low Village World War Memorial, rubbed his salt-and-pepper stubble and declaimed: “
“O most lame and impotent conclusion!’ “
“Are you feeling well this morning, Mr. Anderson?” asked Ellery, concerned.
“Never better, sir. But my point is one with the Proverb, the twenty-sixth, I believe, which states: ‘Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein.’ 1 refer, of course, to the reappearance in this accursed community of Jim Haight. Sow the wind, sir; sow the wind!”
The yeast in all this ferment acted strangely. Having returned to Wrightsville, Jim Haight shut himself up in his room at Upham House; he even had his meals served there, according to Ma Upham. Whereas Nora Wright, the prisoner, began to show herself!
Not in public, of course. But on Monday afternoon she watched Pat and Ellery play three sets of tennis on the grass court behind the Wright house, lying in a deck chair in the sun, her eyes protected by dark glasses hooked over her spectacles; and she kept smiling faintly. On Monday evening she strolled over with Pat and a hostile Carter Bradford “to see how you’re coming along with your book, Mr. Smith.” Ellery had Alberta Manaskas serve tea and oatmeal cookies; he treated Nora quite as if she were in the habit of dropping in. And then on Tuesday night . . .
* * *
Tuesday night was bridge night at the Wrights’. Carter Bradford usually came to dinner, and Carter and Pat paired against Hermione and John F.
Hermy thought it might be “nice” to have Mr. Smith in on Tuesday, August twenty-seventh, to make a fifth; and Ellery accepted with alacrity.
“I’d much rather watch tonight,” said Pat. ”Carter dear, you and Pop against Ellery and Mother. I’ll heckle.”
“Come on, come on, we’re losing time,” said John F. ”Stakes, Smith? It’s your option.”
“Makes no difference to me,” said Ellery. ”Suppose I toss the honor over to Bradford.”
“In that case,” said Hermy quickly, “let’s play for a tenth. Carter, why don’t they pay Prosecutors more?” Then she brightened. ”When you’re Governor . . . ”
“Penny a point,” said Carter; his lean face was crimson.
“But Cart, I didn’t mean¯” wailed Hermione.
“If Cart wants to play for a cent, by all means play for a cent,” said Pat firmly. ”I’m sure he’ll win!”
“Hello,” said Nora.
She had not come down to dinner¯Hermy had said something about a “headache.” Now Nora was smiling at them from the foyer. She came in with a basket of knitting and sat down in the big chair under a piano lamp.
“I’m really winning the war for Britain,” she smiled, “all by myself. This is my tenth sweater!”
Mr. and Mrs. Wright exchanged startled glances, and Pat absently began to ruffle Ellery’s hair.
“Play cards,” said Carter in a smothered voice.
The game began under what seemed to Ellery promising circumstances, considering the warm vital hand in his hair and Carter’s out-thrust lower lip. And, in fact, after two rubbers Cart slammed his cards down on the table.
“Why, Cart!” gasped Pat.
“Carter Bradford,” said Hermy, “I neverheard¯”
“What on earth?” said John F., staring at him.