Chocolate Cobweb Read online

  I can be honest, thought Mandy stubbornly, although I’ve sure made a fool of myself. “Not really,” she said, “but I did … play a little bit with the idea. Possibly I’m romantic or something.” Her nervous smile asked for understanding and forgiveness.

  “Your own mother told you about this?” said Ione coolly.

  “Yes.”

  “Does she suppose …?”

  “Oh, no, no. We didn’t even discuss it,” said Mandy fiercely. “Because—well, we just know it makes no difference, anyway.”

  Ione’s plump little face was closed, somehow. Calm, not angry, perhaps thoughtful. She said no more. She ushered Mandy into the room with a gesture.

  The picture was hanging above a small corner mantel. Mandy didn’t want to look at it, particularly. But she did. She drew nearer. It was a head and shoulders. It was Belle, and she was lovely. But there wasn’t the enchantment, Mandy thought, the elusive challenging life. The impression of radiance at which one must snatch, quickly, because it was as slippery as time. It would pierce your heart and go. This was Belle, lovely and beloved, but not so much caught as held.…

  Mandy’s thoughts strayed. Thone’s room. As she stood with her back to most of it, her eye sought the wide window glass across which the curtains had not been drawn. It made a mirror against the dark. She could see the bookcases, half empty, the small desk, bare. The single bed, the night table. The dark tile floor whose insane coldness was covered, in part, by a thick fur rug. An uninhabited room. His suitcases …

  Then she saw, in the glass, Ione lift her hand and strike out at something that stood on the night table. It fell with a crash to the hard floor. She leaped at the noise, turned.

  “Oh, dear!” wailed Ione. “Oh, dear, look what I’ve done! My elbow! How stupid of me!”

  But, thought Amanda, in dumb surprise, it wasn’t your elbow. You did it on purpose. I saw you!

  She went over to help, instinctively. She knelt, fumbling for an old handkerchief in her pocket somewhere. The stopper had come out of the dainty little thermos jug and liquid seeped forth.

  Ione picked it up, as Amanda, head bent, dabbed at the floor.

  “I dare say the insides are all in bits,” said Ione worriedly. “He mustn’t drink it, of course. Glass, you know. So dangerous. Oh, isn’t that a pity!” She went trotting to an inner door, a bathroom. Water ran. “Yes, indeed. I’m afraid it is broken,” she called back, rather cheerfully. “Don’t touch that mess, my dear.”

  “I don’t think it’s hurt anything.” Amanda looked at her handkerchief. A loathsome old rag, it had already been used to clean up a little oil paint once or twice. Now it was freshly stained with brown. She rolled the dampness inward and put it in her pocket. Her fingers found a clean one there, and she dried her hand on that.

  Ione came back with a towel. “Thone’s so fond of hot chocolate,” she puffed, mopping. “Oh, well, it can’t be helped. There. That will do, I think.” Then suddenly, “Please let me have your handkerchief.”

  “Oh, no,” said Mandy.

  “Please,” said Ione. Her hand, held forth, was steady and demanding. “You’ve soiled it. I will have it washed for you.”

  “Oh, please. Don’t bother. It doesn’t matter.”

  “But I insist.” The jolly little face was smiling. The hand was still held out. It would never move, never retreat.

  “It’s just an old rag,” said Mandy honestly. “You mustn’t trouble.”

  “Not at all, my dear,” said Ione, rather coldly. “I’ll just take it, please. You shall have it again, once it is fresh.” It was as if Amanda thought she’d steal it!

  Amanda’s face flushed. She thought, with a flare of antagonism, All right, you little fuss-buzz. “Very well,” she murmured. But she didn’t fish out the old rag. She put the cleaner bit of cloth—one of her best, she thought with satisfaction, and monogrammed, too—into that insistent hand. “Although it’s hardly even damp, you see,” she said.

  “There now,” said Ione, looking about with a sigh. “Have you looked enough?” She herself had not once glanced at the portrait.

  “Oh, yes, quite enough, thank you. I’ll go now,” said Mandy. “I’m sorry if I—upset anything.”

  Ione laughed merrily. “It would seem that I’ve done the upsetting, now wouldn’t it?” she said, twinkling. “I must tell poor Thone. Ah, well … Come along.”

  From the hall they could hear Fanny saying, “Only a week, Thone? Oh, too bad. But you must come and see me. Promise?”

  “I’ll be there,” he promised. “Ah, Miss Garth.” He got up.

  Amanda took the one step down. She went to the older man. This time he rose. “I’m going now,” she said. “Thank you, sir. Good night.”

  “Don’t go.” Whatever destroying emotion he had felt, it was gone. “Are you living out here, my dear?”

  “Yes, in North Hollywood.”

  “Your people were living in the East at that time?”

  “Yes, but Mother found a position out here. Mr. Callahan, of Callahan’s Sons, is a friend.”

  “And you are studying?”

  “Yes, sir, although I have a kind of part-time job, besides.”

  “You must come in the daylight,” said he. “You must show me what you have been doing.” Amanda gasped. “We must talk a little about painting. We are old friends,” said Tobias.

  Her puzzled heart melted. “I’d love to come again, if you’re sure …”

  “How about an afternoon?”

  “May I? May I call you?”

  “Please.”

  She gulped and swallowed. “I must get back. Good night, sir. Thank you.” His hand was warm. “Good night, Miss Austin.”

  “Come and see me,” invited Fanny. “I am a lonely old woman.” This was a lie. “I’m at the Allwyn. I do love company.” Fanny could say what she wished to say with that face of hers. It said to Mandy, “Child, I’ll answer questions.”

  “You’re very kind,” said Mandy, blurting it. Oh, she did like Fanny Austin, the dear, charming old monkey-faced darling.

  “Have you a car?” asked Thone politely.

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Good night, my dear,” said Ione.

  “Good night, Mrs. Garrison.”

  “We shall see you again?” She was Mrs. Santa Claus, after all, so cute and jolly. The whole mysterious tension seemed to have vanished. Everyone was being nice.

  Amanda said she hoped so, as Ione’s hand touched hers a moment. Amanda walked, then, back to the hall, and Thone’s hand came up to remind her of the step. She veered away from it, stepped up. They went out into cool darkness. She found the door handle of the car.

  “Good night, Mr. Garrison.”

  There they were, out in the evening air, standing together in the road. He was much taller than she. His shoulder was level with her head. Mandy stiffened her neck, got into the car. He hadn’t said good night. She put her key in the lock.

  “Only one thing,” said young Mr. Garrison quietly, and her foot trembled away from the starter. “You mustn’t worry my father.”

  “Oh …”

  “Only a few of us know how to speak to him of Belle.”

  “I won’t,” said Mandy.

  Something about him softened. “Just talk about painting,” he suggested lightly.

  Her voice trembled. “That’s what I came to do.”

  He stood there and said nothing. Mandy’s face burned in the dark. Her toe pushed the button. The car’s racket filled that humiliating silence. She said, as the motor quieted, sounding as light and gay as she could, “I may not see you again, Mr. Garrison. It’s very nice to have met you. Good-by.”

  He stepped back, lifted his hand.

  She backed down the mountain to the turn-around place with ferocious skill.

  CHAPTER 5.

  THE LUNCHROOM SWARMED WITH customers. Smell of coffee rose, dish-clatter of the post-movie rush hour. Drowsy husbands and dreamy-eyed wives ate silently, looking back on th
e show. Fellows and their girls, the show forgotten, stepped into roles in their own small dramas.

  Mandy picked at the paper doily.

  Gene Noyes pushed his cup away. “Late,” he said. “Listen, Mandy, I’m going to take you home and dump you. You aren’t here, anyway. You’ve got your mind on something else and I can’t snap you out of it.”

  “That’s so,” she admitted. “I’m sorry.”

  “Let me in on it?”

  She looked at his friendly face, his puzzled brown eyes, waiting for her to let him in. “Gene,” she said, “see if you can make any sense out of this. If a woman deliberately …”

  “Yeah. Go ahead.”

  Her fingernail took the scallops off the doily.

  “Where were you tonight?” She looked up, startled. “Listen, Mandy, you know I’m kinda crazy about your mother. Whatever you were up to, it didn’t set so well with her. I’d think about that, if I were you.”

  “Oh.” She put her hands to her temples. “I know. You don’t need to tell me.”

  “O.K.,” he said. “I’m not scolding. I thought maybe you didn’t know, that’s all.”

  She smiled at him. “Gene, tell me this. Suppose you saw a woman deliberately knock a jug of hot chocolate over onto a hard floor, so that it broke, and the chocolate had to be thrown away. What would you think?”

  “Who was supposed to drink the stuff? Was she?”

  “Not she. Somebody else.”

  “I’d think she didn’t want the other guy to drink it.”

  “But why not?”

  “Maybe,” he shrugged, “it wouldn’t be good for him. Maybe he’s too fat already.”

  “No.”

  “Well, then, maybe she’s just mad at him. Wants to spoil his fun.”

  “Childish …?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No,” said Mandy.

  “O.K. Then maybe the stuff is poisoned.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Mandy.

  “Then he’s a drug addict and takes his dope that way and she’s trying to cure him.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!”

  “Well?” He raised his brows at her. “What else is there? You saw something like that, Mandy? That’s what’s eating you?”

  “I can’t understand it.”

  “Who fixed the chocolate for him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If it was just plain chocolate, that’s one thing,” said Gene cheerfully. “And if not, then it’s something else again, hm?”

  “Yes,” she said, “of course.”

  “You’d have to start by finding that out. But if the stuff’s gone down the drain, you’re never going to find out. So why not skip it, Mandy?”

  Mandy said slowly, “It’s not quite all gone.” He looked at the handkerchief she pulled out of her pocket, the stain that was revealed as she unrolled it.

  “Magic of science, hm? And I’m a magician, too. I’m a chemist, you just remembered.”

  “Could you, Gene?”

  “Um … maybe.”

  “Would you?”

  He picked up the rag, looked at the stain, sniffed it. “What’ll you give me?” he grinned.

  “Oh, Gene, please!”

  “You’re pretty serious, Mandy.”

  “It was so strange,” she said.

  “You really want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “O.K.,” he said. He put the handkerchief in his pocket.

  “When, Gene?”

  “In a hurry?”

  “Well, I …”

  “Frank Mitchell’s got a pretty nice little lab he lets me fool around.”

  “Can’t you do it at Callahan’s tomorrow?”

  “No.”

  “When, Gene?”

  “You want this, Mandy? O.K. Early in the morning.”

  “I thank you,” said Amanda.

  “So I’ll be up at the crack of dawn, and I don’t even know what I’m doing. That’s love, baby.”

  “Nuh-uh. Science!” said Mandy, dimpling. The rest of his date was livelier, Gene felt.

  But as Amanda took off the yellow suit at last in her own room, restored to her from Cousin Edna’s tenancy, she kept gnawing at that inexplicable incident. Thone’s room, Thone’s hot chocolate, for Thone to drink. If there had been anything wrong with it, then someone in that house was trying to harm him. Or, even if it was perfectly good plain chocolate, why did his stepmother think that he mustn’t drink it? Did she think someone in the house wanted to harm him? Who? Why?

  There could be someone living there whom Amanda hadn’t seen. Maybe he even had a wife. Maybe that’s why he was so—so distant. She thought of those suitcases, that male room. No, if he had a wife she wasn’t with him. At least …

  It’s none of my business, Amanda told herself. I’ll keep away. I won’t go back there any more. I can make a fool of myself once and no harm done. If I forget about it now, stop it, drop it …

  She scolded herself to sleep at last.

  Between classes the next morning, she telephoned. “Gene?”

  “Hiya, Mandy. How’s it go?”

  “Fine. Did you try to find out … what I wanted to know?”

  “Oh, that. You know what was on that handkerchief, Mandy?”

  “I’m asking you. You’re the genius.”

  “By the way, I thought you were a lady. Call that a handkerchief?”

  “I never said I was any lady.” Mandy kept her voice patient and grimaced with the effort. “Come on, Gene.”

  “Hypnotic,” he said. “One of those patented barbiturates, probably.”

  “But what is it?”

  “Sleeping dope.”

  “Oh.”

  She heard him breathing in the interval. “Pretty stiff solution, Mandy,” he said warily.

  “What would it do?”

  “Wouldn’t do any good.”

  “Do you mean, like poison?”

  “Yup. Quite a lot like poison. Fact, it is poison.”

  “Gene! Would it … is it enough to …?”

  “Hell, I dunno,” he said irritably. “I’m no doctor. I’d say it was damn dangerous.” His voice faded, came back stronger. “What are you going to do, Mandy?”

  “I don’t know,” she whimpered.

  “Maybe you oughta—”

  “Where’s the handkerchief, Gene?”

  “I left it in the lab.”

  “Oh.”

  “Listen, Mandy, you keep away from whatever this is. Hear me? Why don’t you tell somebody the whole thing? Tell me the story and I’ll do something. Meet me for lunch, Mandy?”

  “I—I don’t know. I …”

  “At least you oughta tell the one who was meant to drink that stuff,” he said sternly. “Give him a chance. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, but that way you’d be safer.”

  “You’re sure, Gene?”

  “Naturally.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll have to call you back.”

  “See me tonight? Mandy …”

  “Maybe. Thanks. Good-by … so long.…”

  Poisoned! And he might have …! Oh, no! screamed Mandy soundlessly. No! She leaned on the wall of the booth. Students went by in the corridor, eleven-o’clock classes coming up, Easter vacation in the wind. They were walking in another world.

  If it hadn’t been for a date with Gene last night, the thought of poison might have grazed her mind and disappeared again. She would have gone on wondering, but never known. Not as she knew now. She wouldn’t have this fact, like a boulder in the road. Couldn’t go around it. There it lay.

  So what was there to do? You go to the police, she thought. That’s what you do. You tell them there was poison in a certain thermos jug in a certain house. They say, “How do you know?” You can show them how you know.

  Then they say, “Who put it there?” You don’t know.

  “Why?” You don’t know.

  “Well, who got it?” Nobody got it. It was thrown away.

&
nbsp; “Whatcha want us to do, lady?” Save him! Keep him!

  “What’s it to you, lady?” I don’t know what it is to me, but he must not die!

  Oh, no, that wasn’t any good, not that way. No, the thing to do is go to him. Tell him. Warn Thone himself to be careful. That’s much quicker, much better. That’s direct. That is all the police would do, anyhow.

  She found the Garrison number in the book. The housekeeper’s voice said, “Hello.”

  “Mr. Thone Garrison, please.” She didn’t know how she was going to say this.

  “He isn’t in right now.”

  “Oh.” She felt sick with disappointment. “When will he be back?”

  “Not until late this afternoon. Can I give him a message?”

  The wire sang. “No,” said Mandy sadly, “no message.”

  She sagged against the wall. Then she pulled herself up and dialed the number again. “This is Amanda Garth,” she said briskly. “I want to speak to Mr. Tobias Garrison, please.”

  “Mr. Garrison is busy just now.” The same mechanical voice. “Can I give him a message?”

  “Please just ask him if Amanda Garth may come to see him today.” The line was empty for a minute or two and Mandy closed her eyes, walking in the square hall, stepping one step down.

  “Mr. Garrison suggests tomorrow at two.”

  “Not today?” she wailed. Then quickly, “All right, yes. That will be fine. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

  She hung up, gnawed her thumb. Tomorrow. She snatched at the book again. No, Fanny wasn’t listed. But wait, she had been told … The Allwyn. She got it, asked for Miss Austin’s apartment.

  Fanny said, “Yes?… Oh, yes, my dear?”

  “May I come to see you?”

  “Of course. When would you like to come?”

  “Are you busy now?”

  “Now?” Wonder at this urgency sung over the wire. Then Fanny said, “Why don’t you come and take lunch with me, Amanda? I have three or four important people here whom I will firmly get rid of.”

  “Oh, thank you,” Amanda choked.

  “You interest me,” said Fanny. “You come along.”

  CHAPTER 6.

  MANDY WAS CALMER BY THE TIME she got to Fanny’s. Her hostess’s shrewd eyes took in this fact at once. Mandy found herself welcomed with a blunt and most warming eagerness. Fanny was curious and she didn’t care who knew it. Fanny said, “Sit down, you pretty thing, and ask me questions. I am intrigued. I did enjoy your entrance yesterday. I never heard of such a thing as this baby business. Belle never mentioned it to me. You did hit a snarl up there, now, didn’t you?”