Black Cat Weekly #10

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1WE HAD just reached the salad course when Adele—she sat next to me at dinner—looked again at Tom Cantrell and made a small sound of satisfaction. Then she nodded to me.

“That’s it,” she said confidentially. “I’ve got it now!”

“Got what?” I asked.

“An explanation of our host,” she told me. “He rather alarmed me at first. He’s so—overpowering. But now I know what he is; he’s an extrovert.”

“He’s what they named it for,” I said, “—or should have.”

She took no risk in saying that of Cantrell. He sat at the head of the table, big and white-maned and beaming, in love with himself and the world and filled with beaming triumph. I regarded him with detached foreboding. When Cantrell was triumphant, other people were apt to be uncomfortable.

“He’s an extrovert,” repeated Adele, “about to—to—what is the word? Swimmers swim; Burglars burgle. What do extroverts do?”

“They show off,” I said.

Jermyn, the butler, changed my plate. Adele waited until he moved away, then smiled frankly at me. “Will he, tonight?” she asked. “Show off, I mean.”

“He will also breathe,” I told her. “He looks like he has something special in mind, though, and his schemes usually make other people uncomfortable. Not intentionally, perhaps, but they do.”

Cantrell boomed at me. “Morden! Sam Morden! If you can tear your eyes away from the young lady—”

I flushed. “I didn’t hear you before.”

“I’ve been talking to Purcell here,” boomed Cantrell zestfully. “He’s a photographer, Sam. An artist photographer. He’s going to take pictures of my collection for some stupid picture magazine... Have you met him?”

He waved a ham of a hand. I had seen Purcell before dinner, and I’d been introduced to him by Cantrell’s nephew Terry. We nodded to each other again.

“’Telling him about my Fouche traveling-desk,” said Cantrell. “You tell him about it, Sam.”

I looked at Purcell and said carefully; “It’s a very nice piece. A traveling-desk, Empire, in rosewood and apple, with sand-box and inkbottles complete. There’s not much doubt that it belonged to Fouche, Napoleon’s Minister of Police, you remember. In Bourrine’s memoirs he mentions Fouche writing at that desk, giving orders for sabotage or that ghastly spy-school of his.”

Cantrell chuckled. Adele looked at me interestedly. “Am I sitting next to a monster of erudition, or what?” she asked. “How do you know such details?”

“Business,” I admitted. “By profession I deal in fine furniture and objects of art. You might say antiques if you want to be unpleasant; I’ve sold Cantrell some stuff.”

Cantrell raised his voice. He boomed out a detailed account of the spy-school Fouche created for Napoleon, relishing every word of it. That school took abandoned or kidnapped children of every nationality and trained them to be ruthless and dependable secret agents. It also supplied Fouche with a series of youthful mistresses, who were later his spies as well.

Adele listened for a moment or two, and shivered. “I don’t like that,” she admitted to me. “He—”

“He collects pieces associated with the most disreputable characters of history,” I explained. “I don’t think he’d harm a fly out of malice, but he isn’t remarkably tactful and—as you said—he’s an extrovert. That’s all.”

Cantrell went on. The story about the spy-school is quite authentic; his face got redder and he beamed more widely as he saw faces turned to him. To Cantrell, happiness seemed to consist of having people look at him with strong emotion. Of any sort.

Adele turned her head away from him. “Let’s talk about something else,” she urged. “Don’t you know any nice, homey scandal about somebody here tonight?”

“No-o-o-o,” I said. “I’m afraid not. Being in the family, you’d know any scandal I did.”

“Oh, but I’m not really in the family,” she told me, “I think our host is my second cousin once removed, or something like that. Nothing that really counts. I was visiting Aunt Cassie” —her eyes went to Mrs. Winthrop, across the table —“when she packed up to come here. I’m close enough kin to be brought along, but that’s all. We just got here this morning.”

She added with amiable malice. “It’s hoped to have something promised for Joe’s education, but I’m the poor relation of a poor relation.”

Cantrell’s story came to an end. Mrs. Winthrop said, “You have such fascinating possessions, Tom! You must have an extraordinary talent for finding them!”

“Wait till after dinner!” he said gleefully. “I’m going to put on a show that’ll make Sam Morden want to cut his throat! You haven’t seen anything yet!”

Sitting at the head of the table, shaking with amusement, Cantrell wore the expression of a cat that has swallowed an unprecedented number of canaries. He c****d an eye at me. “Remember that South American stuff, Sam?”

I nodded.

“Did you hear about my new rococo desk?”

I nodded again. I hadn’t seen it. I’d heard of it and its association with a fine scoundrel named Poisson, and that it had been sent to Cantrell on approval. He’d evidently bought it.

“Just wait till after dinner!” repeated Cantrell. “You’re going to be hit harder than you were by that South American stuff!”

Adele touched my arm, as I stared at my plate. “Talk scandal to me,” she whispered. “If you don’t say something soon, he’ll know he has you disturbed.”

I managed a smile of sorts. “There’s not much gossip about,” I said without enthusiasm. “You know Terry and Sally.”

She looked at the other two members of the dinner-party who were near our own age. Terry Cantrell was Tom Cantrell’s nephew and supposedly his heir. Sally Morris was his second cousin and a nice kid. But they looked horribly uncomfortable; in fact, I thought Sally was trying not to cry.

“Terry’s a pretty good guy, except for a slight penchent for going off an getting quietly stewed occasionally. Living with Cantrell should excuse that.”

Adele said meditatively, “It might.”

“It does!” I assured her. “Terry says he hates his cousin Sally, and she patently adores him. Nothing dramatic in that. I don’t know this Purcell person at all. Just met him.”

“He’s a photographer,” said Adele, “he had three pictures in Life, once. He is an Artist. He is a Great Man. He’s staying here to photograph the collection, and he made tentative passes at me within one hour of our first introduction.”

I found myself bristling. Adele nodded, smiling at me. “Thanks. But I handled it. Permanently. I doubt that he knew he’d been squelched. Please don’t scowl at him!”

Cantrell raised his voice again. “Check my facts on this, Sam!”

He beamed, red-faced and waited until he saw my eyes on him. “I was telling Purcell about the desk. The rococo one. It belonged to Poisson. I’m going to have Sam expertize it for me,” he explained to Purcell, “because he’s the only honest dealer in America. —Eh, Sam?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Now, Poisson was a scoundrel for you!” said Cantrell happily. “I’ve always wanted a piece he’d owned. He was Secretary for Police Affairs to the Directory. He arranged denunciations and it’s said he sold orders of execution to people who wanted their enemies out of the way. It’s not on record that he ever sold a pardon, though! He was in charge of the royal possessions in the Louvre for a while. Half the crown jewels disappeared, but he caught most of the thieves with their loot and collected a fine bonus and the thanks of the nation. The thieves said he’d helped them steal the stuff in the first place, but nobody believed them because every major stone in the crown jewels was recovered—all but the Regent diamond. That’s never been seen from that day to this. Oh, Poisson was a thoroughpaced scoundrel! He was a prosperous rentier under the Consulate until somebody who disliked him caught him and quite literally cut his heart out. Charming!”

He turned to me.

“The essential facts are there,” I said drily, “and quite correct.”

“And Sam knows!” crowed Cantrell triumphantly. “He knows all about furniture and history and such stuff. Everything! And he’s honest!”

Adele looked at me curiously. “Now why does he harp upon your honesty? Why does he say that you are the only honest dealer in the country? Are you a sort of freak of nature?”

“Not at all,” I told her. “But, speaking generally, an honest dealer is one who takes a loss on what you buy from him; a crook is one who breaks even or makes a fair profit.”

As a matter of fact, Cantrell did have a special reason for considering me honest, but it wasn’t anything for me to brag about. I looked at my plate again and Adele said in a mildly hopeful tone, “Would I rate as a crook? My father brought some pewter back from the Argentine years ago, and I sold some of it for a ridiculous price.”

I had no suspicions. I said, “There’s not much Spanish pewter, and almost no South American. But it’s good stuff, what there is. It does fetch very good prices.”

“You probably know the pieces I sold,” she told me. “Our host—my second cousin once removed—is the proud owner now. He paid me a hundred and twenty-five dollars for a dozen platters.”

Crash! If the plaster of the ceiling had suddenly detached itself and fallen down upon the dinner-table, knocking us all out of our chairs, it might have been more of a shock. But I doubt it.

“I wish you’d say that again,” I said with a quite incredible calmness. “What did he buy from you? And what did he pay?”

“A dozen pewter platters,” said Adele. “It was last year. They came from South America a long time ago —Buenos Aires, I think. They were about a foot across, with decorations in relief around the rim. That hundred and twenty-five dollars bought my last year’s Spring outfit.”

She smiled at me, and I was stunned—because I did know those platters. They were why Cantrell considered me an honest man. He’d showed them to me before he’d bought them, and I’d told him what they were. They were plainly Spanish ware, and as plainly South American. But they hadn’t the dark, almost purplish patina of ordinary pewter; they had an ever-so-faintly greasy feel, and they rang when they were struck. Pewter doesn’t ring that way. So I told Tom Cantrell what the platters were. I could even tell him who’d made them; they’d been made by a gentleman who was hanged in Buenos Aires in the year 1803. His offense was counterfeiting Spanish coins. These platters—like the two or three other known examples of his work—were beautifully done. They were practise-pieces, I’d say, for coining. But the odd part was that they were counterfeit, too.

Tom Cantrell had showed me counterfeit pewter, made by that storied Spanish-American scoundrel who’d counterfeited sound silver eight-real pieces—in platinum! He wasn’t the only man ever to do so. More than one man essayed dishonesty in that fashion a hundred and fifty years ago, when platinum had no value whatever and gold and silver had. A dozen times over, right here in the United States, a quaint old pewter piece has turned out to be worth several times its weight in gold as platinum bullion. But Tom Cantrell had found a dozen foot-broad platters!

Pressure began to build up inside me. I might have exploded at that instant, but there came a stirring. Cantrell heaved out of his chair and led the way to the living-room. Tall French windows opened out-of-doors from there. It was a big room, full of showy pieces, of which each one had once belonged to a notorious scoundrel. But Cantrell had never looked quite so suitable an inheritor of their possessions as he did to me now!

He chuckled to himself, and I looked away from him, abruptly raging. I’d helped cheat Adele without knowing it. He’d bought the platters after I told him what they were. He hadn’t bragged about that particular coup—I’d thought because he couldn’t claim his own cleverness as the source of it. Now, though, I saw why; he’d victimized a girl, and kin at that.

He did keep the platters on a special hutch cabinet in his study, and sometimes he gloated to me privately, but that was all. Now he had some other idea of what seemed to me devilment in mind. He grinned exuberantly at Terry and Sally. Terry looked rather sick. Sally was white, but I couldn’t read her expression.

“Are you two ready?” Cantrell asked them, beaming. “I’m going to make a show of it!” Then he boomed at me. “Remember that South American business, Sam! You’re going to see something, now! I’ll need a few minutes to get everything set, and then I’ll call you in. Get ready to cut your throat!”

Shaking with anticipatory chuckles, he went into his study and closed the door. I found my hands clenched; I was seeing red. I heard Purcell hail the butler.

“Er—Jermyn,” he said. “Did you say someone would be going downtown presently who could mail a parcel for me?”

“Yes, sir,” said Jermyn unbendingly. “One of the servants goes off-duty and will mail it in the post-office, sir. Mr. Cantrell usually sends mail in by someone going off-duty like that, sir.”

“I’ve a roll of colored film to be mailed,” said Purcell. “I’ll pack and stamp it.”

He nodded to me as he passed on the way to the stairs leading up.

“We’ll talk presently, Morden,” he said condescendingly. “You might do the captions on the pieces I’ve photographed, eh?”

I didn’t answer; I was simply too sore to think of but one thing. What Cantrell had done was legal enough. Buying and selling on the open market in fine furniture and objects of art is strictly a caveat emptor affair; you may get a bargain, or you may not. But to cheat a girl who is related to you, in cold blood and with my help—

Adele said in my ear, “How long will the performance be? If it’ll take time, I’ll get my cigarettes.”

I automatically offered mine, but she shook her head. “My one eccentricity, a special brand. What will the show be like?”

“I’ve no idea what he intends,” I said evenly, “but I’m getting an idea of what it may turn out!”

I was getting an idea, seething as I was.

“Such as—?” said Adele, curiously.

“He could intend anything,” I said savagely. “Anything on earth that would make him the center of a big scene! If sending a man to his death or ruining a woman’s reputation would put him in the limelight for one second, he’d do it without malice and think of it as a gigantic joke!”

Adele didn’t smile. But there wasn’t anything in particular to say. After a moment she observed, “I’ll run up then. I hope it’s not what you seem to think.”

“Now,” I said grimly, “it’s what I intend!”

I’d made up my mind in the past five seconds. Adele went upstairs. I fumed to myself. Joe Winthrop eased out of a side door. We adults were pretty dull company for a sixteen-year old boy. His mother blinked, and said with determined enthusiasm, “Cousin Tom seems quite thrilled over what he’s to show us! I shan’t want to miss anything. I’ll get my glasses.”

She went upstairs after Adele. That left only Terry Cantrell and Sally Morris and myself in the room, which was big enough to leave us practically alone, separately. I lighted a cigarette, my hands shaking, and Terry said with bitter courtesy, “There’s a moon outside, Sally. Shouldn’t we pay it a visit? I think Uncle Tom would approve!”

She flushed. “You didn’t have to say that, Terry! Go look at it yourself!”

“Oh, come! come!” said Terry, “we should be romantic! Especially tonight!”

Tears glinted in Sally’s eyes. She got up and went out of the room. Not toward the moonlight.

Terry looked at me and I ignored him. I went over to the library door. There were some good pieces even in there. One, especially, would be my explanation later on, if one were needed. It was an early Regency side-chair, with X-stretchers in the form of swan-necks, and a typical Louis XIV shell. I could make a pretense of examining it again. I thought it an extremely early Meissonier, but Cantrell liked it because it had belonged to the Compte de Massine, who is usually credited with the poisoning of Marguerite, daughter of the Duc d’Orleans.

Just as I turned into the room, I heard the clatter of a French window. Terry’d taken Sally’s advice and gone out-doors alone. It would be rather beautiful out there. Cantrell’s house was at the extreme end of some very optimistic city limits and he had four acres on a hilltop with a stone wall all about and some excellent landscaping within. With a suitable companion, plus the moon, it wouldn’t be bad at all. But he went out alone as I entered the library. I moved the chair, took down a couple of books. Then I left.

And then the whole thing, rococo and baroque and macabre, too, began.

It was one of those things that shouldn’t have happened, and by the ordinary laws of probability couldn’t have happened. But it did. And twenty minutes later I was back in the library with an awfully sickish sensation in my stomach, desperately pretending to be absorbed in that side-chair, when I heard a noise in the doorway. I looked up. People stared in the door at me. Somebody said sharply, “There he is!”

I straightened up and put my hands in my pockets. They were shaking badly. There was a curious look on the faces that regarded me. Adele stared at me with a startled, almost frightened expression. I came out into the living-room and the party was all together again, but Purcell was the only one who looked normal. Terry Cantrell was dead-white and his eyes burned; Sally Morris looked like a marble status, her lipstick lurid against a completely colorless skin. Mrs. Winthrop had sunk into a chair and somebody—a very pretty housemaid —was holding smelling-salts to her nose. The maid’s hands shook horribly. Joe Winthrop looked enormously excited and gawkily loutish. And Jermyn, the butler, was literally gray; I’ve never seen a living man look more like a corpse in my life.

“Sorry to have held up the party,” I said severely. “I’ve been right here all the time. I—got absorbed. Everything’s ready? We go to see the show now?”

There was a shocked pause. Terry Cantrell made an irresolute movement. Purcell said languidly, “Why —yes! Let’s go in to see it! In our host’s study. Lead on, Morden!”

But Adele said swiftly and angrily, “That’s not fair!” To me she added, as if the words hurt; “Mr. Cantrell’s been murdered!”

“Mur—Cantrell’s murdered?” I must have sounded rather unconvincing, now that I think of it. I stared about me. “Not Tom Cantrell?”

Joe Winthrop said in a voice that cracked with excitement, “We mustn’t touch anything! We’ve got to leave everything for the police!”

But I started for Cantrell’s study; I don’t know why. Nobody stopped me. I went to the study door and opened it, and took a step inside. Then I stopped short.

I saw Cantrell. It was so. He sat in a big, oval-backed Louis XVI piece that he used as a desk-chair. It had belonged to Talleyrand, who was scoundrel enough for anybody. I stopped short on the threshold. The whole thing was so incredible that I’d almost persuaded myself it wasn’t so—but it was. The expression on Cantrell’s face hit me like a blow. His face was empty; it had lost the look of triumphant braggadocio he had undoubtedly worn even in his sleep. For the first time in the four or five years I’d known him—and tried to sell him fine furniture and art objects—his face wasn’t a beaming brag.

I stood there staring. Then I realized the sort of silence that held in the living-room behind me. It was an accusing silence; they were waiting for me to say something that would be proof I’d killed Cantrell.

I didn’t. I was a little bit prepared. After all, I’d been in the study ten minutes before, and he’d been dead then, too.