Dora, sitting on a chair that Caruso had once sat on, holding her, a three months’ baby, in his arms, had a flush on her cheeks which did no harm to her appearance. Nor, for that matter, did the faint wrinkle on her brow which gave her eyes an intentness to match the earnestness of the young man who faced her.
“You certainly do,” she said with spirit. “Not that I don’t admire a good piece of bravura, but you pile it on so. Why don’t you carry cymbals?” The flush was spreading. “Please don’t stare at me like that!”
“I’m not staring. I’m just looking.” Ted, already on the edge of the bench, came forward another inch. “Look here, I might as well confess something. That was bunk about my wanting to plug you for radio. I wanted to come — I had to see you — and I couldn’t—” He was floundering. “Damn it,” he said resentfully, “when I’m talking to you I can’t even make a sentence with a subject and predicate! You might think if I wanted to see you I could just have told you on the phone that I wanted to see you!”
“Yes, you might,” Dora agreed. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because I was afraid you wouldn’t let me come! Not only do you have a funny effect on my grammar, you’ve turned me into a coward! Oh no, I had to think up something fancy for an excuse! That would have been understandable if I had just wanted to come because I like to look at you and hear you and be near you...”
He was suddenly redder than she was. He slid back on the bench and said in a determined voice, “But I had to see you because I had to tell you something. It was me that mailed that violin to Mrs. Pomfret.”
Dora’s mouth fell open.
“It was me,” Ted repeated firmly. “I wrapped it up and addressed it and mailed it to her.”
“Good lord,” Dora said dully.
“I nearly told them about it yesterday afternoon, there at Mrs. Pomfret’s, but I decided not to. Because I doubt if it would really help them any to know, but that’s what I want to ask you. I’ll do whatever you say. If you think I ought to tell them, I will.”
“But I don’t understand.” The flush had gone from Dora’s cheeks, leaving them pallid. “If that’s Jan’s violin — then it was you who took it...”
“No, it wasn’t. But I see now that I have to tell you that too. I thought maybe—”
“You don’t have to tell me anything.” Dora’s lip started to quiver and she put her teeth on it.
“You think I don’t?” Ted was getting to his feet, then he dropped back onto the bench again, looking helpless. “For the love of Mike, don’t look like that. That’s the way you looked the first time I saw you that Monday night — kind of, I don’t know, brave and beautiful — like that. I thought I was a grown man, I ought to be, I’m thirty years old, but I don’t know, when I look at you... Listen to me now, I came here to tell you a certain sapific thing — I mean a specific thing—”
A bell rang. Ted stopped short.
“That was a bell ringing,” he said.
“Yes,” Dora said. “My doorbell.” She didn’t move. “I don’t know who would be—”
“They’ll go away.” Ted was imploring. “Why not just let ’em go away?”
The bell rang again.
“Oh!” Dora sprang to her feet. “I forgot! Mr. Fox! He phoned not long after you did and said he wanted to see you and couldn’t find you and asked if I knew where you were — and I said you were coming here — and he asked if he could come and I said he could—”
“That bird,” Ted said gloomily. His eyes appealed to her. “He can go away as well as anybody else.”
Dora shook her head. “I couldn’t do that. He was nice to me.” She was moving toward a button on the wall. “Anyway, he knows we’re — I’m here—”
“Wait a minute.” Ted went to her, faced her. “Listen.” He swallowed. “What I told you about the violin — I’m not sure they’ll have to know. It would be, uh, embarrassing. So if you wouldn’t mention it to Fox? Please?”
The bell rang.
Dora’s questioning eyes slanted up under her troubled frown and met his, beseeching.
“Please?” he begged. “I came here to tell you about it, and I’m going to, and I’ll do whatever you think I ought to.”
Dora nodded uncertainly, turned from him to push the button, and opened the door to the hall. In a moment Ted’s voice sounded behind her:
“Yep, that’s him all right. That’s the way he would come up stairs. My God, he’s sprightly.”
Dora did not know that her manner of shaking hands with Tecumseh Fox at their first meeting, the day before at Mrs. Pomfret’s, was chiefly responsible for his being nice to her, so there could have been no artifice in its repetition now — the impulsive friendly offer halted abruptly in midair as if uncertain of its welcome. Fox, ready for it this time, had his hand already there. Ted Gill, having retreated within, was not seen until the other two had entered; he acknowledged Fox’s greeting with an uncivil grunt, watched the disposal of his hat and coat with a sullen eye, and, when Dora sat down, replanted himself firmly on the piano bench. He spoke as one in a hurry to get something disposed of:
“Miss Mowbray says that you phoned that you were looking for me. Can I do something for you?”
“Yes, if you don’t mind,” Fox took some papers from his pocket, thumbed through them and selected one, unfolded it and glanced at it. “I thought it would save time to write this out and have it ready for you to sign.” He extended the paper in his hand and Ted took it.
As Ted read, the others watched his face. At the first glance his brows were raised, then they came down to participate in a frown of astonishment. His lips parted, then his jaws snapped them shut. Finally he looked at Fox, plainly flabbergasted, and then got up and handed the paper to Dora.
“Read that, will you?” he requested plaintively. She glanced up at him, at Fox, and then looked at the paper:
I, Theodore Gill, hereby declare and affirm:
That on Thursday afternoon, March 7th, 1940, Hebe Heath admitted to me that on the preceding Monday evening she had removed Jan Tusar’s violin from his dressing room at Carnegie Hall, and taken it to her rooms at the Churchill Hotel, and that it was still in her possession. She also told me that it had been locked in her wardrobe trunk continuously from Monday night until that moment.
That I advised her to return the violin immediately to its owners (a group of five persons of whom she is one). That she asked my assistance. That I procured a carton, wrapping paper, tissue and string, packed the violin, addressed the package to Mrs. Irene Dunham Pomfret, and mailed it.
That the violin taken by Miss Heath from her trunk, in my presence, is the one I sent to Mrs. Pomfret, and I am firmly convinced, from what Miss Heath told me, that it is the one she took from Tusar’s dressing room Monday evening.
“I see,” Dora said. Her voice sounded strained. “Naturally you would want to protect Miss Heath—”
“Nothing doing,” Ted declared incisively. “Oh, no. This is bad enough as it is, without any misunderstanding on that score. Naturally I would want to strangle Miss Heath. But a publicity agent who obeyed his natural impulses would be in jail in five minutes. One of my colleagues in Hollywood...” He shrugged, and turned to stare at Fox. “You seem to be pretty stupendous. How come?”