“I’m not,” cried Eva. “I weigh—”
“Well, maybe skinny isn’t the word,” he said judicially, looking her over. “But you need fattening up. And then there’s your nose. Turned up — that’s what I mean. Like Myrna Loy’s. And the dimples.” He scowled. “Sucker for a dimple!”
Eva felt rather like laughing, and then rather like crying. Things happened so suddenly these days. Terry Ring! This large, uncouth... She felt instantly ashamed. That wasn’t very nice. And he was real, and exciting. You never knew what he would do or say next. Life with him would be... But Eva stopped herself. It was all too ridiculous. What did she know about him? For that matter, she was engaged to another man!
“I know I must seem like some kind of a freak or greaseball to you,” muttered Terry. “No education except what I’ve picked up, dragged up on the streets, no manners or anything. I guess it’s just my lousy luck to fall for a girl who’s miles above me.”
“I don’t like you any better for saying that. Manners and education and how you were brought up — they don’t mean very much.” Eva added bitterly: “Karen Leith proved that.”
“Not that I give a damn, you understand!” he snarled. “I’m okay. I get along all right. And if I wanted to learn what spoon to use on the Beluga, why — say, I’ve learned tougher things than that!”
“I’m sure you have,” murmured Eva.
“What’s this stuffed shirt you’re hooked to got that I haven’t got? Running out on you! No guts, that’s what he’s got. A yellow streak a mile wide — that’s what he’s got!”
“Now please, Terry,” said Eva desperately. “I won’t have you saying things like that about Dr. Scott.”
“So he’s got a family. Me... I was swiping rolls from a bakery and sleeping on the docks at seven. All right, he went to some fancy college and became an M.D. and has dough and knows all the answers and gets all the nit-wits on Park Avenue chasing him—”
“That’s quite enough, Terry,” said Eva, coldly.
“Aw, listen, kid, forget it.” He rubbed his eyes. “I guess I’m being a dope. Forget it.”
Eva smiled suddenly. “I don’t want to quarrel with you, Terry. You’ve been nicer to me than... anyone.” She put her hand on his arm. “I’ll never forget that.”
“’Scuse,” said Fung in Terry’s ear. “Te’y, you come.”
“Huh? Some other time, Fung. I’m busy.”
But Fung was insistent. “You come, Te’y, you come!”
Terry looked away, looked up again. Then he rose, fingering the knot of his tie. “Excuse me a minute, Eva. It’s probably some guy on the ’phone.”
He stalked away after the Chinese, and Eva saw them vanish through the archway into the adjoining room.
As she opened her bag to get her compact, Eva wondered just why Ellery Queen had thought it necessary to employ artifice to speak to Terry Ring. For a moment the world contracted around her and she felt alone again.
Eva slowly unscrewed her lipstick and poised the inner lid of the compact. In the mirror she caught a glimpse of the two men standing together just beyond the archway, in earnest conversation. She saw Terry’s face, and it looked worried. And she also saw something small pass from Ellery to Terry, and Terry putting it into his pocket.
Mystery! More mystery. Eva stroked the lipstick on — two dabs on the upper lip, one in the center of the lower lip; and while her little finger spread the red stuff, shaping it to the curve of her lips, she wondered with a constriction of her heart where it would all end. She put the lipstick away, and powdered herself, and in the mirror regarded the nose which Terry Ring had so fervently admired. And she even tried out — quickly, furtively, of course, and feeling a little guilty — the dimple at the left side of her mouth.
Then the two men came back, grinning to conceal an unconcealable gravity, and Terry paid for the meal, incredibly, with a dollar bill and some coins, and flipped a half-dollar at Wei, who caught it very deftly, and took Eva’s arm and led her up into Pell Street, squeezing her elbow experimentally and yet with reassurance.
And Mr. Ellery Queen followed, sighing.
19
Terry was just putting his arms around Eva on Friday morning and kissing her dimple when Mrs Rabinowitz, the elderly woman who came in every day to clean his Second Avenue apartment and fix his meals, woke him up.
“Huh? What?” grumbled Terry, sitting up in bed.
“It’s a telephone,” said Mrs Rabinowitz, firmly shaking his brown shoulder. “Get up, you loafer! Ain’t you ashamed of yourself, sleeping nakkid?”
“All right, all right. Scram, Gwendolyn,” growled Terry, beginning to throw his covers off.
Mrs Rabinowitz screamed, then giggled, then retreated in haste. Terry got into his robe and cursed. People ought to have their heads knocked off for telephoning at seven o”clock in the morning! But when he picked up the receiver he stopped frowning quickly and grew very quiet indeed.
“Oh, it’s you. Wait a minute.” He ran over to close the living-room door. “All right. What’s the bad news?”
“You may take your hair down now, Terry,” said Ellery. “They’ve found her.”
“Uh, huh,” said Terry. Then after a while he said: “What do you mean?”
“Now, look here,” said Ellery. “I haven’t got up at six-thirty just to parry your evasions, my fine fellow. You know as well as I. They’ve found Esther Leith MacClure, and if you’re interested as I think you are, you’ll get into your pants pronto.”
“Philadelphia?”
“So you do know! Yes. The flash came late last night.”
Terry stared at the telephone. “What else?”
“That’s all we know so far. Dad’s sending Sergeant Velie down there by the ten o”clock train. I thought we might trot down there ourselves — a little earlier.”
“What for?”
“You never know. Are you with me?”
“Does Eva know?”
“Not yet. Nor Dr. MacClure. I thought we might get the doctor off quietly and take him with us.”
“Where’ll I meet you?”
“At the MacClure apartment. A half-hour?”
“Make it twenty minutes.”
Terry jumped for the shower. He did not bother to shave. He was dressed and at the door in eight minutes. But he stopped with a thoughtful frown, went back to his bedroom, took a.38 automatic out of his dresser drawer, slipped it into his coat pocket, chucked Mrs Rabinowitz under her third chin, and left running.
Dr. MacClure was just about to drink his tomato juice when the house ’phone rang. He put the glass down untouched.
Venetia called: “It’s fo’ you, Dr. John. Some man Queen. He’s downstairs.”
The doctor jumped to the telephone. As he listened, his face went slowly gray. “Yes.” He nodded several times. “No, she’s still asleep. I’ll be down in a minute.”
He went to the door of Eva’s bedroom and listened. But Eva was not asleep; she was sobbing. The doctor knocked, and the sobbing stopped.
“Come in,” said Eva in a muffled voice.
The doctor went in and found Eva in bed with her back turned to the door. “I’ve got to go out for a while, honey. The foundation... What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” said Eva. “I just didn’t s-sleep very well.”
“Dick?”
She did not reply; he saw her shoulders heave. As he bent over to kiss her he thought grimly of young Dr. Scott and of his complete silence and absence the evening before. Dr. MacClure thought he knew why young Dr. Scott had not called. And he thought it was not inconceivable that young Dr. Scott would never call again. Young Dr. Scott had found the pace just a little too hot for him. He had wanted a fiancée not a victim of circumstances; a wife, not a potential headline.