Black-Eyed Stranger Read online

  “Very sorry,” Alan said, stiffly, removing his arm. “I didn’t know you were busy, Kay.”

  “Oh, but I’m not. Not at all.” Now she was saucy. “Mr. Lynch came to see Dad.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “You don’t. You don’t, indeed,” muttered Sam. “But never mind. Sister, will you please—”

  “If it is anything I can be helpful about,” began the blond boy smoothly, thrusting himself forward like a shield.

  Sam’s nerves screamed. “I want to see Charles Salisbury,” he snarled. “Do you mind?” He swung on the girl. “Where is he?”

  “In the library, I think.” She turned as if to lead Sam there.

  “Better … ask, dear,” Alan said warningly.

  “Oh. Yes, I’d better.” She looked a little flustered and uncertain. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”

  “I’d be so happy if you only would,” said Sam grimly.

  He turned his back on Alan Dulain. Alan sat down and lit a cigarette. He said coldly, “You were not kicked out of any office of mine, Lynch.”

  “It was kicked out in my language. I don’t know what it was in yours.”

  “I am in the habit of practicing the elements of courtesy.”

  “Sure. ‘Thank you.’ ‘Please.’ ‘I beg your pardon.’”

  “As you wish.” The patience in the voice was as insulting as Sam’s sarcasm.

  Sam turned around and the other crossed his legs. “It ought not to be necessary for me to say this,” Alan began.

  “’Tisn’t,” snapped Sam. “So don’t.”

  The blond man smoldered but he went on quietly. “I told Miss Salisbury that you were no good.”

  “Katherine,” said Sam, “should have listened.”

  But the other man had control. He said, patiently, “She is too young, Lynch, as you must see. Too inexperienced, too romantic, to understand what I said, literally. She really doesn’t know what it’s all about. Therefore, it’s up to you.”

  “Why?” Sam was furious.

  “Surely—”

  “I’m no good. She’s too dumb. But you know what’s best for everybody. You’re sitting on a cloud, seeing the right. You fix it, why don’t you?”

  “I will,” snapped Alan. “I’ll do that.”

  They waited in silence. Time stretched, and Sam’s nerves with it. He thought of his car down in the street, a badge of his presence here. Where he seemed to have fallen into a bog, to be struggling, weighted by delay and again delay. And delay was stupid. It could only work against him. For his neck was out.

  He lit a cigarette, and his eyes fled nervously from the blond boy, who sat quietly, toward the door through which the girl had gone, and then skipped around the walls of the huge dim room, and he put out the cigarette and lit another.

  Chapter 6

  CHARLES SALISBURY had a clean and “talcumed” look. Even his hair looked powdered. His eyes were oyster gray. His suit was gray with a palergray woven in but lying like a frost on the fabric. He made one think of a seascape on a dull day, all clean grays. Middling tall, erect, he walked in with so measured and deliberate a stride that his daughter beside him seemed to curvet like a pretty pony.

  “How do, Alan?”

  “Afternoon, sir.” Dulain, for his manners, rose.

  Kay turned her father with a touch on his arm. “Dad, this is Mr. Lynch who wants to talk to you about something.”

  The oyster-gray eyes were cool and inquiring.

  “Alone,” said Sam rudely. He heard Dulain clear his throat. “He’s about to warn you to look out for me,” said Sam quickly, “so let’s take that for said, and let’s get this over. Can’t we?”

  “I was merely going to identify you as an ex-newspaperman.” Dulain’s voice was buttery. It said, I am a gentleman.

  “I’ll identify myself whenever it’s necessary.”

  Charles Salisbury said frostily, “What is this all about?”

  “I’ll tell you what it’s about, alone.”

  “Then suppose you wait in there.” Salisbury was curt.

  “I’m in a hurry,” snapped Sam.

  “Daddy,” the girl spoke gently, “I should have said that Mr. Lynch is a friend of mine.” Her reproach was not for her father, Sam knew, but for him.

  “Sorry,” said her father more genially, “But your manner, sir.”

  “I’ve got no manners,” said Sam, “not really, and no time for any right now. Let’s get to it.” None of them knew what drove him. It was a mistake to sound so rude. But his sense of a long time wasted and the presence of Dulain combined to be infuriating.

  “If,” said Alan, now tolerantly, indulgently, “this is so private, Kay, perhaps you and I …”

  “No, no,” said Salisbury gracefully, “we can as well …”

  Sam’s voice rose. “Listen. Everybody. I want to see Salisbury a minute alone. And quick. Now, can it be arranged?”

  Salisbury moved his frosted brows. “Is what you have to say at all important?”

  “Very important,” gasped Sam.

  “Very well. I’ll give you a minute. If you will come with me.”

  Sam stumbled toward the indicated door. He felt reduced and compressed into a ruthless order, Salisbury’s sense of order, his measured pace, the marching regularity of his arrangements. He also felt like a boor and he felt angry.

  And once again Salisbury turned back. “Oh, Alan, about that boat of yours, use my anchorage, of course.”

  “Ooooh!” cried the girl, young as morning, clapping her hands. “Alan, you bought it?”

  “I sure did.” The blond boy was happy that she was happy and the father was held, watching, smiling at her pleasure, and Sam groaned.

  “Take me out on the Sound?” she cried. “When?”

  “Tomorrow? You don’t have afternoon classes?”

  “No, but, darn it, I’ve got my music lesson.”

  “How about after that?”

  “Wouldn’t it be too late?”

  Sam Lynch, leaning on the wall, said heavily, “Yeah.”

  “What?”

  “Too late.” He lifted both hands and they were shaking. “Listen. Please. What do I have to do?” His anxiety, his irritation cracked in the room. He knew it was wrong to expect them to meet his mood without his information. He tried hard to be fair. He said, without anger, “It’s urgent.” But it came out flat.

  There was a murmuring exchange between the men.

  Salisbury said, “Yes … er … I … er …” And then to Sam, briskly, “This way.”

  Sam wheeled but the girl’s voice came after him. “I hope you will come to see me, some day.”

  He heard Dulain’s voice warn, “Kay.”

  But she said, defiantly sweet, “Won’t you, Sam?”

  He said, “I guess not, sister. I don’t think so. Thanks all the same.” He followed where he was led, leaving the girl and the blond boy without another word or a glance, without turning his head. He followed through a door, down a short passage, into a small room full of books and leather.

  Charles Salisbury moved toward the desk. He rested his fingertips on its surface. All here was peace, was order. It was due time. “Mr. Lynch?” Now that he gave his attention he gave it totally. Sam stood in this man’s aura, a radiation of his decency and order. And Sam, too, leaned on the desk, with no time to waste.

  He said, quietly, “Mr. Salisbury, I came here to tell you that I overheard a plan to kidnap your daughter, Katherine.”

  “What,” said Salisbury with a bridling movement of his head, “are you talking about!”

  Sam was willing to concede that it took some time. He was willing to wait until this penetrated. He felt sorry for this man. He said, rather dryly, but patiently, “I’m talking about a plan to kidnap your daughter.”

  “You must be—” Slowly, Charles Salisbury sat down.

  “Don’t let her go to that music lesson. Don’t let her be on the street at any time without a guard.” It was too fast
.

  “But you—” The man did not know how to look bewildered. He simply looked blank. “You must give me some grounds. I can’t believe—”

  “You don’t have to believe it,” said Sam, still patient. Still sorry. “You can’t afford to take the chance that I might be mistaken.” The father said nothing, but sat behind the desk, looking numb and blank. “You can see that, can’t you?” Sam pressed more sharply. Then he shrugged and half turned, for he must wait a little.

  “Just a minute, young man.” Now, the gray eyes showed a glint of anger and Sam suspected it was a way to cover and deny a thrill of fear. “What makes you think you can walk into my house and make so horrifying and sensational a statement without any—” But the father’s hands began to flap helplessly. The shell of his placid orderliness was cracking. “You must give me some facts,” he said, loud with his dismay. “Do you expect me to take you seriously?”

  “I do,” said Sam. “And,” he continued in a slow drawl, “perhaps you’ll notice, I am doing you quite a favor in this matter.”

  “Then you can do me the further favor,” said Salisbury sharply, “of explaining how you happened to—did you say—overhear?” His immaculate fingers tapped on the desk.

  “What do you care how it happened?” said Sam roughly. “I overheard it and I’m here to tell you so at considerable risk to myself.”

  “Nonsense!” said Charles Salisbury.

  “What do you mean, nonsense?” But Sam knew what he meant. The ideas before him were so foreign and unfamiliar that the man’s mind threw them out.

  “What’s behind this?” Salisbury’s face was hostile and suspicious. “This is absolute melodrama.”

  “That’s right,” said Sam gently. He had the image of feeding a strange new food with a small spoon to a reluctant baby. “That’s what it is.”

  Salisbury’s face colored. He said, flatly, “I don’t believe it.”

  “And what’s the point of my coming up here and lying about it?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sure I do not know. But you will have to give me something more than a bald statement.”

  “Will I?” said Sam, ominously. He began to feel he had been patient long enough.

  “Who is planning such a thing?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Do you know?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Then, why don’t you say?”

  “Because,” Sam shrugged, “if it gets out I’m up here naming names, I’m a gone gander.” He said it because he knew it. It was hard for him to remember that this might come fantastic to his listener’s ear.

  “Oh, nonsense!” said Salisbury again. He rose from the chair and leaned on his hands, fastening his eyes on the dark man’s face as if he would bore through to the essence of the mind behind it.

  “What do you think I am?” Sam said uneasily. “A loony? Listen.”

  “This talk about your danger. That’s too much really.” The gray eyes probed while the mouth sneered.

  “It’s my life,” Sam said, “and I’m fond of it. And I’ve got it in my mouth. And I suppose it’s no worry of yours. But she is. What’s the matter? Didn’t you hear what I told you? Don’t you read your paper? You think such things can’t be?”

  The eyes wavered. “I suppose such things can be. But there can be no reason—”

  “Reason,” Sam laughed. “Money’s enough reason. You’ve got money.”

  “Some,” Salisbury said slowly, suspiciously. “Other men have money.”

  “You’re known to have money.”

  “Yes, I suppose …”

  “Have you got fifty thousand dollars in cash?”

  The eyes flinched. “No.”

  “That’s too bad,” Sam said. “That’s what they’ll ask for.”

  The man gasped, and his hands curled on the wooden surface where they had rested. The flat detail, the mention of a sum, had struck through. “Mr. Lynch,” he said honestly, “I can hardly take this in. I don’t understand. Why should a kidnaper choose me and my family? I am by no means the wealthiest—”

  “Ah, don’t argue,” said Sam, pityingly.

  “But I … I have never had the slightest connection … I’m not … We don’t get into the papers. How could such people even hear of me? Hear of Kay?”

  “Oh, they hear,” said Sam airily. “Then, too, the sins of the employee are sometimes visited upon the boss. It’s a kind of an accident that they heard of you.”

  “I don’t … I don’t understand you.”

  “You had a watchman,” Sam bit his lip. “And when I open my mouth too much comes out,” he muttered. “Listen, don’t try to understand why. You don’t need to. It doesn’t make any difference how come you were picked to be the victim. I’m telling you that you were. She was. Your daughter, Katherine.” Sam began to feel frantic again. “Listen, please don’t argue with me. I heard it. I’m telling you. Now you’ve got to reckon with it.”

  Salisbury pulled himself together. With a certain courage, with an effort, he was trying to fit this wild thing somewhere in his pattern. He said, “And I insist that you do tell me, and exactly, what it was you heard. And wait a minute. Don’t go.” He brushed around the desk. He left the room.

  Wants a witness, said Sam to himself, automatically. He conceded that. He looked gloomily out of the window at the heaped city and its colors, the afternoon glow on the western faces of the heaped buildings, the yellows and the tender reds and the infinite delicate variations of browns and grays. Somewhere in the lovely mass, one pin point, one sick and savage little man with a brown face and a red brain threatened these decent people in their high place. And he, Sam Lynch, knew it.

  The witness was going to be Alan Dulain. Of course. Sam whirled around. He was surprised to be surprised. A muscle under his ear tightened, as his jaw cracked. His groan to himself (that he might have known) was inaudible.

  Salisbury demanded order. “Mr. Lynch, will you please repeat what you just told me. And will you repeat it in all detail. Let us have, please, exactly what it was that you say you overheard. This is my daughter’s fiancé. We will hear you together.”

  Dulain carried his head high. He had almost a military air of being in place and correct.

  Sam said, in a slow monotone, as if by rote, “I heard two men plan to kidnap Miss Katherine Salisbury. They will pick her up from the street, probably in a stolen car, probably tomorrow afternoon as she leaves this house or the Starke School, whichever is her habit, to go to her music lesson. They will either hide her alive, or they will kill her immediately. Probably the latter,” Sam said with brutal calm, “because that will be somewhat less trouble to them. They will ask at least fifty thousand dollars in ransom. That’s about the whole of it.”

  Alan Dulain’s weight shifted. “Where did you hear it?”

  “That’s irrelevant,” Sam said.

  “Who were the men?”

  “I won’t say.”

  “Can’t or won’t.”

  “Won’t.”

  The father braced one arm against the desk. “Alan, is this possible?”

  “I suppose it’s possible,” said Alan with faint contempt. “What he outlines is the classical pattern. But you must admit, Lynch, it’s a little hard to accept—”

  “Admit!” Sam raged. “What’s the difference what I admit? You want a debate?”

  “I’d be more inclined to credit your story if I could understand why you take the trouble to tell it.”

  “Oh, no trouble,” Sam said bitterly. “No trouble, really. Happy to do it. Put my neck out for the ax.”

  “Your neck.” Alan’s lips curled. “I know a little about you, Lynch, and frankly, what I know doesn’t incline me to think you a sentimentalist. Oh, I realize you must be somewhat interested in Katherine. But surely—”

  “Sweet Lord!” Sam’s shaking hands rose. “Why do I stand here and listen to this? Are you going to do something about protecting her? That’s all I want to
know.”

  “You may be sure of that,” said Alan Dulain haughtily.

  “I may, may I? Well, dandy! Have you got any idea, bright boy, how to protect her? Any slight notion? Or even the glimmer of what it is you’ve got to keep away from her? He,” Sam waved at the father, “hasn’t. Nobody in this dream castle really believes in the seamy side. I hope you at least heard of it.”

  “Please, please,” the father said, “no need to shout. Katherine is in no immediate danger. We must—”

  “How do you know?” Sam danced with his frenzy. “Do you even know where she is, this minute?”

  “Yes, of course,” the father’s eye rolled.

  Alan said coldly, “If it is any business of yours, she is upstairs, finishing a letter.”

  “And maybe she isn’t,” snarled Sam. “Maybe she changed her mind. Maybe they changed their plans. Maybe anything! I tell you, she is in as much danger right now as if the place were on fire. And what are you going to do about it?”

  The father was stiff and still. Alan threw one leg over the desk corner. “I can’t help wondering,” he frowned, “what is your concern. You barely met Miss Salisbury.”

  Sam bracketed his temples in a stiff hand. “Look, that doesn’t matter!”

  “This man,” Alan swung to the father who was growing grayer, somehow, “is a pretty devious type, sir. He is a writer of so-called crime—”

  “So-called!” screeched Sam. “God damn it, are you guys alive? What’s the difference what I do for a living? Or what I’m doing, trying to tip you off. Can’t you get it through your fat heads that right now in this town two flesh and blood men are discussing that girl and what they’ll do with her when they get her?”

  “That is a startling idea,” said Alan, unmoved, “but let’s not be too startled to think. My point is, you simply are not the public-spirited type, Lynch, as I have reason to know. That’s why I don’t accept … I can’t accept this … sacrifice.” His thin sharp face was cold. “I’m afraid I’d like to examine your motives a little.”

  “Will you quit with the psychology!” cried Sam almost in despair. “Listen!”