Jeffrey, with his white face, was there. He looked directly into the big man’s eyes and said harshly, “Yes. It’s you.”
“Yes, my boy, it is.”
“Ghost! I... what...” The district attorney was incoherent. He appealed to Miranda. “You’re mistaken... this is some—”
“They are not mistaken,” the big man declared. “I am Ridley Thorpe. This is my friend, Henry Jordan. Henry, I believe you’ve never met my son and daughter. Shake hands with them; Miranda; Jeffrey. I’m tired and I want to sit down.”
Chapter 9
They sat around the desk, except Ben Cook who was against the wall with his chair tilted back and Derwin who was standing, wary and incredulous; and Ridley Thorpe was in command. Unshaven and disheveled and battered as he was, he had not dominated stormy directors’ meetings for twenty years for nothing.
“First,” he told Derwin, “get on the phone and stop meddling at once. Everyone prying into my papers and affairs and belongings. Call them off.”
Derwin shook his head. “Oh, no. That’s not first. First you satisfy me. Do you think I’m going—”
“All right. I’ll satisfy you. I’m Ridley Thorpe. My son and daughter—”
“Your son recognized the remains—”
“Quit interrupting me! My son and daughter recognize me. I used to spend weekends at that bungalow in order to get some privacy, but it became too widely known that I did so and I was annoyed. Three years ago I found a man who closely resembled me and hired him to spend weekends at the bungalow, impersonating me, leaving me free to enjoy genuine privacy at such places and in such activities as might appeal to me. I have done so. I have devoted my weekends to various relaxations and mild amusements, my identity never suspected because it was generally believed that I was at the bungalow — and thanks to my stand-in, I was. Frequently I have taken little trips with my friend Henry Jordan on his boat. I did so last Friday evening. Ordinarily I return Sunday evening or Monday morning, but this time I was worn out and it was hot and I stayed on the water. We anchored at various spots on the sound, fishing, talking, sleeping—”
“Didn’t you go ashore?”
“No. On that boat I can forget the world and give my nerves a rest. We didn’t leave the boat until this afternoon, after the thunderstorm. We were anchored in a little cove on Long Island. When the storm was over we chugged down to Port Jefferson and went ashore — I was intending to get back to business — and the first thing I saw was big headlines about the investigation of my murder. I would have had to wait an hour for a train, so I got the police and told them I wanted a fast car. They didn’t want to believe me and I suppose I can’t blame them. Here I am.”
He looked at his children. “I’m sorry you had this shock, Miranda. You too, Jeffrey. But you’ve had the advantage of reading my will. It treats you fairly, doesn’t it?”
“Perfectly.” Miranda’s gaze hadn’t left him once. “But I knew it would. More than one shock, though. Two. The first one was — shocking. This is shattering.”
“Of course it is. You were a multimillionaire in your own right. Now you have to go back to pestering Vaughn to watch for a good moment to get my consent to an extra twenty thous—”
“I didn’t mean that, Father. I only meant it’s a shattering surprise.”
“It is. Yes,” Jeffrey muttered.
“Yes, my boy, you too. Shattering. Well, I’m not dead. By the way, where in the name of heaven is Vaughn? I read a paper on the way here. And you’re District Attorney Derwin, investigating my murder. Good gracious, it’s a fantastic mess! Have the meddling stopped at once. I don’t want an army of people — Here, give me that phone.”
“Just a minute.” Derwin dropped into his chair and got his hand on the phone. He turned: “Is your name Henry Jordan?”
“Yes, sir.” Jordan’s deep-set grey eyes were level and his tone quiet and composed.
“What’s your occupation?”
“I’m a retired ship’s officer.”
“Where do you live?”
“914 Island Street, City Island.”
“How long have you lived there?”
“Five years. Ever since I retired.”
“Do you corroborate what this man has said?”
“I do.”
“Is he Ridley Thorpe, the financier and corporation executive?”
“He is.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Seven years. I first met him when I was purser on the Cedric and he was a passenger.”
Derwin snapped at Ben Cook, “Send a man to City Island to check it. Got the address?” Cook nodded and tramped out. Derwin turned to Miranda:
“How sure are you that this man is your father?”
“Completely. Of course he is.”
He shifted to Jeffrey. “Are you sure too?”
Jeffrey nodded without taking his eyes from the ghost.
“You are?” Derwin insisted.
“Certainly I am. Wouldn’t I be?”
“I’m asking. You were sure that the body you saw was your father’s.”
“I wasn’t asked if I was sure. I didn’t — there was no reason to doubt it. It looked like him — only — it was a body. This is my father, alive.”
The district attorney regarded him glumly, then slowly transferred the regard, first to his sister, then to Henry Jordan and last to his ghost.
“I would say,” he growled, “that fantastic mess is a damn mild term for it. I’ll want a signed statement from you, Mr. Thorpe, and copies of it will be furnished to the press. From you also, Mr. Jordan. God, what an uproar—” He looked at the phone, his hand still clutching it, in sour distaste, lifted it and clapped it to his ear, and told the transmitter:
“Get Colonel Brissenden. He’s somewhere in New York, probably at the Thorpe residence. Find him. Send in a couple of men, whoever’s out there. As soon as I’m through with Colonel Brissenden I want Joe Bradley...”
Nine minutes later the radio had it. Long waves, short waves, old-fashioned sound waves, undulated and quivering with it. City editors shouted it and telephone wires let it pass, and swift rumor distorted it. From different spots in New York, three newsreel trucks headed north almost simultaneously. At a water-front dock at Port Jefferson a policeman on guard arrested a man for swiping a cushion from the cockpit of the Armada for a souvenir...
In the district attorney’s office at White Plains, Derwin was desperately mopping his face with a wet handkerchief and trying to handle with official calm an utterly preposterous situation, Ridley Thorpe, with his friend Henry Jordan at his elbow, was carefully dictating a statement to a stenographer whose hand was trembling with excitement, Miranda was deliberately and effectively using a compact, and Jeffrey was sunk in his chair, scowling with compressed lips, when the door opened for a state trooper to usher in three men. Vaughn Kester, in front, looked pale, exhausted and tense; Luke Wheer’s eyes were threatening to pop entirely out; Tecumseh Fox’s apparel was untidy and his face exasperated, but his step was still quick and light and might even have been called jaunty.
Derwin jumped up and started to bark at the trooper, “Didn’t I tell — take them outside and—”
But that was beyond his handling too. Bedlam intervened, everyone joining in. Luke and Kester saw their employer and made for him. Miranda exclaimed something at Kester. Jeffrey leaped for Luke and got him by the arm and shouted at him. Fox stood aside, taking it in. Derwin abandoned official calm completely and barked helplessly.
Ridley Thorpe’s voice finally emerged from the confusion: “I tell you we were on the Long Island shore all the time! You should have found us Monday! Inexcusable incompetence—”
Miranda: “But Vaughn, why didn’t you—”