The Gift Shop Read online

  Harry said to the white-coated backs bending over poor old Bernie, “His name is Beckenhauer. What’s wrong with him?”

  “Knife wound,” said one of the men, glancing upward. “Not new, either.”

  A man in a gray suit beamed his attention on Harry. “Who are you, sir, if you don’t mind? I’m police.”

  “Fairchild. Friend of his.”

  “You supposed to meet him?”

  “He phoned me.”

  “He tell you what happened?”

  “No. Fact is, he didn’t make a lot of sense.” Harry wasn’t going to talk, but he had to say something. He didn’t want to make himself sound too mysterious. There were bystanders, for instance. Big chap, wearing sad white flowers. A fat lady. A little man. “He mumbled something about being roughed up in Honolulu,” said Harry, owing this much to the authorities. “I just got the idea that he was hurt and where he was. So I said I’d come. How is he doing?”

  “They’d better take him.”

  “Right,” said Harry. “Hey, can they take him to St. Bart’s?” He touched one of the white shoulders. “Can you do that? I’ll call my brother, the doctor. He’ll be taking care of him. How about me setting it up? You tell St. Bart’s, Dr. Richard Fair-child.” There was doubt. There was discussion. There was compromise.

  The policeman said, “Pardon me, but are you Harry Fair-child?”

  “That’s right.”

  The magic of that moneyed name received a brief ceremonial silence, during which Harry got down on one knee and looked intently at poor old Bernie, at his gaunt face and the faint stubble on it, at his frightening and uncharacteristic helplessness, and the flowers around his neck. His jacket had been pulled open. An envelope was coming out of his inside pocket. Harry’s hand went out, but the policeman, breathing on the back of his neck, said, “Don’t touch.”

  Harry rose and said somberly, “What do you call this?”

  “Foul play,” said the policeman. “I’ll want a few more answers, in a minute.”

  “If I have any more,” Harry said morosely.

  He stepped out of the way as the white-coated ones prepared to shift the unconscious man to a stretcher. The policeman snatched at the envelope and kept it in his hand. Harry, feeling very uncomfortable about poor old Bernie, shifted farther out of the way and began to stand as tall as he could and look carefully around.

  He had a word and he was supposed to use it to find some kind of message and take that to his father. Cautiously. So much was clear. But how was that word going to lead him to a message, here in these marble halls? And where was the one “swine”—which plural Bernie had significantly used as if it were singular—where was the “swine” who had been eavesdropping?

  People were moving, but leaving one wide way. Harry turned to watch the stretcher-bearers. Wait. Had they understood? He took a few quick paces; he seemed to be wading through children. “Hey!” he called, loudly enough for those men to hear him. “Dr. Fairchild is going to want him in St. Bart’s. So bear that in mind, right?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Fairchild,” said one of the men.

  Then Harry saw the policeman cutting across over there, going to the bar, or the coffee shop, or … ah, the gift shop! Then Harry caught, through its glass walls, a promise in the bright clutter of its wares.

  The gift shop was unusually crowded, especially by children. More than one set of parents had shepherded the young into this shelter while the wounded man, the stretcher—those distressing tipoffs to the existence of pain and trouble—were going by.

  Jean Cunliffe, who was talking to the man in the gray suit, saw this tall young man come in. He pushed through the milling people and established himself as if to stand in line and be next. This brought him close enough to overhear, and she hesitated. But the man in the gray suit gave the newcomer a permissive nod and said to Jean, “Go on, Miss.”

  “Well, I knew right away that there was something the matter with him,” she continued. “I couldn’t tell what. All he said, all he did, was to ask me where the phones were. So of course I told him. But I thought it was funny because he’d just walked by the phones.”

  “How do you know he had just walked by the phones, Miss?”

  “Oh. Well, I didn’t know it. I guessed it, because he must have just come off the plane from Hawaii. Because he was wearing flowers.”

  “I see.”

  “Of course, maybe he came up the stairs. I don’t know.” Jean strained to be perfectly honest. The policeman almost smiled at her.

  “And then, Miss?” he said, almost gently.

  “Well then, he just turned around and went away, and I saw that he was—you know … It’s still on the f-floor. I called. But then I thought I’d better find him. And the Security man came.”

  “I see. Thank you very much, Miss.”

  “What did happen to him?” she burst out.

  “We don’t know. But we will.” The policeman turned to Harry. “We’re not going to get much here. It didn’t happen here. Looks like Honolulu, all right.”

  “I’d like to have your name,” said Harry genially, “and give you my number.”

  Jean watched the exchange of cards and couldn’t help thinking that this was odd. Shouldn’t the encounter have gone the other way? Why wasn’t the policeman demanding information?

  The policeman said, “We’ll be in touch, Mr. Fairchild. Soon as we have a little news from the Islands. Couple of wheels I better get turning. Excuse me?”

  He left the shop. But the other one stood where he was, staring at the floor. Jean gave him a curious look; then she hurried behind the counter. She was about to wait on somebody, but he was quicker. There he was, standing over the toy table, exactly where the poor man had stood, and he was calling to her. “Miss?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said in her salesgirl voice. He was very nice looking, very well dressed; he had a nice smile. He had something—some kind of presence.

  He said to her benignly, “You were a good girl to take that trouble for my friend, and I appreciate it.”

  Jean felt herself turning a hideous red. She had put up with being called a good girl by that antique female, but to be so called by this character was simply humiliating. “Think nothing of it,” she said fliply, and thought hostilely, probably he isn’t a friend, either. How do I know?

  “Hey, don’t be so mad at me,” said Harry. “I can’t help it if you did a good deed. Listen, right now I want to buy something. How about everything on this table?”

  “What?”

  “This table,” he insisted. But he didn’t make a gesture, he didn’t sweep with his hand to indicate his meaning. “The one I’m leaning on,” he said. “Everything that’s here.”

  Mrs. Mercer had approached.

  The man said, “Here’s my card, and here’s—what’s this?—forty dollars on account. Now, I want the whole works packed up and sent to me, collect for the balance. Will you do that, please?”

  “Why, I—don’t know,” gasped Jean, who had never heard of such a deal and had no precedent. But Mrs. Mercer was peering at the card and the two twenty-dollar bills in Jean’s astonished hand.

  “Why, certainly, Mr. Fairchild,” she purred. “Just do what he says, Jean.”

  “Right away, Jean?” He had a flying eyebrow.

  “You mean tonight!”

  “Well, why not?” said Harry, with an air of sweet reason. “Send it by messenger, collect. That’s easy, isn’t it? There’ll be somebody there to take it in,” he soothed. “I feel, you know, that good deeds should be rewarded.”

  Then he nodded, gave Mrs. Mercer a nod and a smile for her very own, and strode away.

  “Is he crazy?” said Jean.

  “He’s Harry Fairchild,” said Mrs. Mercer with a gleam in her eye. “He can afford it. Meantime, these people need a little service. Do you mind?”

  Jean turned to obey. She was thinking. Somebody there to take it in? That will be his wife, of course.

  Out in the c
oncourse Harry stopped in his tracks. Dorinda, graceful and elegant in her green brocade cocktail suit, was stepping off the moving stairs. He waved and she saw him. Her pretty slippers were so quick to change course toward him that she walked right into a little boy in a cowboy outfit who had judged it possible to scoot across her former path. He was a sturdy little fellow, but she almost bowled him over, and he clutched at her skirt. Dorinda looked down and said something with a twist to her mouth that was not pretty at all. The child got his balance and Dorinda brushed by with an effect of having got rid of some annoying piece of dust. Harry Fair-child, who was not in the habit of making sentimental judgments, smiled at her.

  She came smiling. He held out his palm and she dropped his car keys into it. “What’s it all about?” she asked.

  “Fellow who phoned me passed out,” said Harry with a small shrug. “So I dunno. They carted him off in the ambulance.”

  “Yes, I passed them,” she said a bit breathlessly. “Who is he? What happened?”

  “Nobody knows what happened. Excuse me, Dorinda? I said I’d phone my brother, the doctor.”

  “Well, surely,” she said, with a puzzled frown.

  So Harry tore off to the phone booths. He felt he had the situation well in hand, insofar as he understood it. He’d done all right, so far. But he had better get his wits together. He still mustn’t talk, and he still had to say something.

  Dorinda waited. The crowd was thinning. There was a little man, a nondescript little man, wearing a felt hat that was somehow more like every other felt hat in the world than felt hats are like each other. He was reading a newspaper, a nondescript newspaper somehow grayer than most, and he was ambling along, unregarded by anybody. He drifted. He halted. He continued to read.

  Dorinda spoke to him softly. “Excuse me. Do you know what happened to the man on the stretcher?”

  “No, ma’am, I don’t,” he said mildly. “I know he was making a phone call, right in the booth next to me.”

  “Well, yes He made a phone call,” she murmured, shifting restlessly, “but what …”

  “Just gibberish, really,” said the little man comfortingly. “They took him to the hospital.” He nodded pleasantly and began to drift away. “To St. Bart’s,” he added, with a certain brightness.

  The man with the white flowers went by, mopping his face with a white handkerchief. He stepped upon the moving stairs and was borne downward.

  Then Harry was bearing down upon Dorinda and the policeman in the gray suit was bearing down upon Harry. They converged.

  “Just one more thing, Mr. Fairchild,” said the policeman. “Excuse me. This Beckenhauer was a private investigator. I guess you’d know that. On some job for you, was he?”

  “Hey, not me,” said Harry recoiling. “I never did have occasion to hire one of those. But I’ll tell you this. Bernie is a good man, I’ve heard.”

  “Well thought of,” said the policeman gloomily. “Something a little bit peculiar.” He turned his back on Dorinda, and Harry turned with him. “Just spoke to his partner,” said the policeman in a low voice. “Five days ago they had vandalism in the offices. Files torn apart. Records burned. Partner says Beckenhauer’s secretary can talk to us in the morning. But he thinks the case he was on was ‘Fairchild.’”

  “Is that so?” said Harry. “Is that so?” He sucked a tooth. It gave him a thoughtful air.

  “You see my point? So why did he call you?”

  “I thought I had that figured out,” said Harry pleasantly. He turned, as if out of politeness, and included Dorinda within the group. “See, Bernie and I went to school together, same fraternity and all that. I’m figuring that he knew he needed some kind of help, in his condition, and … Well … there was my phone number, handy in his head.”

  “That could be,” said the policeman grudgingly. His eyes were steady.

  “I guess Bernie will tell us, soon enough, when they pull him out of it. Like tomorrow?” Harry sounded on the hopeful side, but his eyes kept a serious and steady communication going.

  “Could be,” said the policeman with a bleak smile. But his eyes said, don’t hope too much.

  “I wish I knew,” said Harry, in all truth. “I wish I knew what’s going on here.”

  “If you find out, let me know,” said the policeman with a glum sarcasm which was, nevertheless, an indication of his willingness to wait, if Mr. Fairchild said so.

  “And vice versa,” said Harry. (Then he had a flash.) “Oh, say, your people will notify … uh … Bernie’s people?”

  “Right.”

  “Then I guess this is where I came in,” Harry sighed.

  He knew he had the man’s permission to go. He took Dorinda’s arm and turned her toward the stairs.

  Jean, in the gift shop, was staring over the heads of some small customers. Who was he? And if he had a wife at home, then who was she. Jean certainly wished she knew what was going on here.

  Dorinda said, as they set off in the car, “I certainly wish I knew what was going on here. What in the world did the poor man expect you to do?”

  “I wonder,” said Harry, whipping into traffic.

  “He’ll be all right, won’t he?”

  “You know, I don’t think they’re so sure.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. Then are we going to the hospital now?”

  “No, no. Look, Bernie’s got a … Well … uh … There’s this girl …”

  “Oh?”

  “Doesn’t seem she’s going to get officially notified. If you … uh … take my meaning.” He was making things up as he went along.

  “I see,” she said thoughtfully. “But you know about her? You think that’s why he called you?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Harry. “She’s carrying a bit of a torch, too, poor kid.”

  “And has,” said Dorinda dryly, “no telephone of her own.”

  Harry said quickly, “How did you know that?” and rushed right on. “Looks like Bernie’s been took bad, so maybe it’s not much of a mood for dining and dancing. Besides—I better go see this chick, don’t you think, Dorinda?”

  “Of course,” she said agreeably. “Raincheck?”

  “Good girl.”

  “Good guy?” she teased him.

  “Just a little old friend to all the world, that’s me,” said Harry, a touch bitterly, as he patted her knee.

  When he let her off at the bright entrance to the Beverly Hills Hotel he watched her turn her elegant back before he whisked away. It struck him as a little bit odd that a girl as smart as Dorinda hadn’t wanted to discuss a P. I. engaged in a case that bore the name of Fairchild. Surely she had heard what the policeman had said. Oh, well … Put it down to tact or something. He drove fast. Of course, he wouldn’t be surprised if poor old Bernie did have some girl, someplace, but not having the faintest idea who or where, Harry was off to see his daddy and find out what was going on here.

  Dorinda Bowie walked about fifteen feet. Then she turned all the way around, and walked back to the attendant. “Do you think you could find me a cab?” she asked sweetly.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  A cab came and discharged passengers. Dorinda got into it in her graceful fashion. “St. Bart’s Hospital?” she let her voice question. “Do you know where that is?”

  “St. Bartholomew’s? Yes, ma’am.”

  She smiled at the driver and settled back.

  Chapter Three

  Every time he put his foot into the downstairs of his father’s fine Georgian house Harry was forced to remember the day of his mother’s funeral. It had been an experience he didn’t wish to relive, if he could help it. He had fallen out of the habit of coming here very often.

  Cousin Elaine opened the door for him tonight. She was for tyish, a spinster related on the Fairchild side, and the very way she wore her hair clued Harry, the connoisseur, to the fact that this poor female had never had a clue. She had come blowing along from someplace—to attend the funeral possibly—a long twelve yea
rs ago, and she had ever since run this house, bossed the staff, and “taken care of the old man,” an arrangement pleasing enough to all, since servants come and servants go, but blood is thicker than wages.

  Now Elaine peered at him in her nearsighted way and exclaimed, “Oh, it’s you! Oh, I’m so glad. Your brother is here. Your brother Dick phoned. You were at the airport, weren’t you?”

  Elaine always called his brother the governor, “your brother,” and his brother Dr. Richard Fairchild, “your brother Dick.”

  “We are all just as anxious as we can be,” she went on. “Your brother Dick is operating. I’m so glad you’ve come, George.”

  She called him “George” because this happened to be Harry’s right name, but with the brothers he had, there was no fighting the inevitable. In fact, even his family called him “Harry,” and only Elaine seemed to remember an ancient truth.

  “Take me to your leader,” said Harry blithely, perhaps because poor Cousin Elaine was about as unblithe a character as ever breathed, full of duty and ancient rigidities. He followed her gladly up the sweep of the staircase. Harry didn’t mind upstairs so much, where the old man lived these days.

  But he was thinking about a rat in this house. Now who would that be? The servants were not visible at the moment. There was a couple, there was an in-and-out cleaning person. There was the chauffeur-gardener, who didn’t live in the house. Anybody else?

  In the wide upper hall there was a woman. She was an Oriental of some sort, perhaps partly Polynesian. She was not young. She was slim and dressed in a fashion that suggested the Chinese. Her manner was gracious and deferential. Harry had never seen her before.

  “Oh, Mei,” said Elaine, “here’s Mr. George. This is Mei Fong. Now come, George.”

  Harry could only grimace at the stranger; he went after Elaine into his father’s enormous bedroom.