Читать книгу The Skeleton at the Feast - Carolyn Wells - Страница 4

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TWELVE people sat at supper in the spacious dining room of Manning Carleton, in his Fifth Avenue home.

Not an apartment. Even the most modern apartments, with their penthouses and terraces, had no charm for a Carleton.

No, he lived in one of the few remaining mansions on the Avenue, and his corner lot, facing Central Park, was the despair of all realtors and the hope of the construction companies.

The house was a double one, with rooms each side of its central entrance hall, and it extended to a great depth along the side street.

Next to the house, on Fifth Avenue, was a smaller house, whose architectural details proved it to have been built at about the same time.

This house also was owned by Manning Carleton, and there was no slightest chance that either of the two homes should fall into the hands of a wrecking company during the owner’s lifetime.

The larger house had been the home of Manning Carleton and his forebears for three generations, and the smaller house had been in the family an equally long time.

The last Carleton to occupy the smaller house was Roger Carleton, brother of Manning. But he had died ten years ago, and since his death the house had been rented to strangers.

At present it was occupied by Jack Mortlake and his wife, most satisfactory and exemplary tenants.

The Carleton house was on a north corner, and the front corner room was a large and heavily decorated drawing room. Back of this was a charming boudoir or morning room, devoted to the exclusive use of Carleton’s wife, Pauline, or Polly, as she was called by her friends.

Back of the morning room was the dining room, a nobly proportioned apartment, with ornate frescoes and crystal chandeliers that had hung and twinkled over many a Carleton banquet.

Old-fashioned, yes. Antique, no. Yet the appointments were harmonious and beautiful, even as they had been when Manning Carleton was born in this house, sixty years ago. No modern innovations had been allowed, save in the matter of electric or other inventions that added to the comfort or convenience of the home.

And now, round the long and wide extension table, were gathered a dozen merrymakers to welcome the advent of the New Year.

In fact, they had done so. It was now ten minutes after twelve, and the greetings had been said, the toast drunk, and the songs sung that tradition decreed appropriate to the occasion.

Though rather a decorous lot, some of the party inclined to gayety, lured on, perhaps, by the excellence of the champagne or the potency of stronger libations.

Pauline, the hostess, was the second wife of Manning Carleton and thirty years his junior. This, in addition to her own charm, vivacity, and self-esteem, gave her all the latitude she wanted, and she took all there was.

Queen of her home, her husband, and her household, she never knew what it was to have a wish ungratified or a whim unhumored.

If she sometimes regretted that her life mate was not a man nearer her own age, she never let it appear by word or look to the man she had chosen.

Her attitude toward him, while not adoring, was affectionate, chummy, and ever solicitous of his comfort.

Polly was pretty—very pretty, with a tangle of golden windblown bob, big, innocent-looking pansy eyes, and a little heart-shaped face that could be wistful or merry to order. Incidentally, it could be suffused with amorous longing, but a glimpse of that radiance was seldom vouchsafed to Manning Carleton.

At the head of the long table Polly had on her right, Professor Abel Scott, old college chum of Carleton, and a correctly absent-minded, bewildered type. At least, he seemed to be, but there were times when a shrewd glance from under his bushy gray eyebrows rather belied any absentness of mind.

To offset this grave and reverend seigneur, on Pauline’s left was Donald Randall, a young man who was over head and ears in love with her.

Randall was fat and pop-eyed, yet, strange to say, even these drawbacks couldn’t prevent his being a handsome man with a splendid physique and great charm of manner.

Carleton, though most amiable and unnoticing in the matter of Polly’s court favorites, had at last begun to wonder if he oughtn’t to notice Randall, but he had, so far, postponed the matter.

Now, on the host’s own right hand was Zélie D’Orsay, a rather disturbing friend of Pauline’s, and possessed of a strong desire to disturb Manning Carleton himself.

Just why, nobody knew, not even Zélie, but the impulse was largely the result of an innate tendency to tackle the most difficult job that presented itself. And it was to the credit of Manning Carleton that he had so far resisted her wiles, for the siren was of the dusky-haired, sloe-eyed persuasion, and her tactics were perilously akin to those of Machiavelli.

It was, perhaps, the necessity of dividing his attention between Zélie and his left-hand neighbor that saved Carleton from making a fool of himself that New Year’s Eve.

The lady was his tenant from next door, from the other house, as it was usually called.

Mrs. Jack Mortlake—her husband was also present—was a good-looking woman of thirty-five, whose placid serenity of countenance was achieved by a strong and determined will power.

An opportunity having occurred to rent the Carletons’ other house, Nan Mortlake had decided that her husband should do so, because of a great hope in her soul that proximity to the Carletons themselves would help her along on her somewhat uphill climb to the social heights she longed to attain.

As a matter of fact it had, so far, done nothing of the sort, but Mrs. Mortlake had not yet lowered her banner with its strange device, and her soul still whispered, “Excelsior!”

To-night, then, she sat next her host, albeit not at his right hand, and wreathing her face with smiles she endeavored to wring from him some helpful invitations over which he had jurisdiction.

Mellowed by the occasion and the celebration thereof, Carleton was proving rather more amenable than usual, and Nan Mortlake was in ecstasies.

Well, the others at the table were Carleton’s grande dame of a sister, who, in another age and environment, might have looked like Madame de Pompadour, but who probably would have talked with Violet Carleton’s sharp and ill-natured tongue.

And his son Claude, handsome, debonair, distinguished looking, and full of the joie de vivre that belongs to New Year’s Eve and its due and proper celebration.

Jack Mortlake was simply his wife’s husband.

The two secretaries, correctly quiet and demure, were Peter Gregg, confidential secretary of the great man of affairs, and Emily Austen, social secretary to Pauline.

That, then, is the roll of guests, with one important addition.

The twelfth member of the party, sitting between Claude Carleton and Miss Austen, was Kenneth Carlisle, the well known and in some circles famous private investigator. He himself preferred the simple term detective, but his business had become so widely known and his services so greatly in demand that a more pretentious title seemed necessary.

Now Carlisle had been an investigator only a few years. Before that he had been a screen star, a movie actor of great popularity. But, fed up with the adulation of the picture-loving public, and having a decided taste for crime investigation, he had changed his career entirely and was rapidly becoming as noted in his second venture as in his first.

His Hollywood days had left their impress. He was handsome in his own right, but his studio experiences had given him a grace of bearing and a charm of manner that never forsook him.

His dark, lean face, though mobile, was entirely under his control, and his calm was immovable unless of his own volition.

His eyes, dark and deep set, were a decided asset in his present calling.

He could sit in front of a suspect and by merely looking at him from under his dark, compelling eyebrows could often bring about a confession obtainable in no other way.

For the rest Carlisle was simply a correct-mannered gentleman of a bland and entertaining demeanor.

But this astute and clever detective was not at the Carleton supper party in his rôle of sleuth—not at all.

He had been invited because he knew all about Hollywood, and he had accepted the invitation because Claude Carleton, the man who had proffered it, had been so insistent, even urgent, that Carlisle hadn’t the heart to refuse him.

The two had met the week before at some club, and learning of the detective’s previous career Claude had made up to him and had begged him for points about Hollywood and its ways and means, saying he was just going there to become a screen actor himself.

Always helpful, Kenneth gave him valuable advice and sage counsel. Also letters to managers and producers, also social introductions.

Whereupon, partly from a sense of gratitude, partly in hope of getting more advantageous assistance, Claude invited him to the party and urged him until he consented.

And now, seated at the supper table between Claude and Miss Austen, he was feeling a trifle bored.

The conversation, though light and bright, failed to interest him; the repartee, though a trifle above the average, was tame compared to the rapid-fire give-and-take of a Hollywood crowd.

Not that Carlisle was overcritical, but he seldom went where there was even a chance of his being bored, and he felt a slight chagrin that he had let himself in for it.

And then, partly because of his presence, partly because it was the trend of the times, the talk veered to detective stories.

“Is it necessary,” Don Randall was asking, “for a detective to quote philosophy or poetry all the time?”

“For a fiction detective, yes,” Carlisle answered him, “for a live one, no.”

“But why, for the story-book man?” Randall pursued.

“So the reader will know he is a detective,” Carlisle stated gravely. “Would either Sherlock Holmes or Philo Vance stick in your mind if they hadn’t aired their erudition as they did?”

“No, I guess not,” and Randall looked thoughtful. “Ninety-nine out of a hundred story-book sleuths are as smart as those two, but they don’t stick in your memory because they don’t get off highfalutin lingo.”

“Nonsense!” broke in Zélie. “Great detectives are great because of what they do, not what they say. Same as everybody else—I mean, great people in any line, in any field.”

“A great criminal, then, is great because of grande dame—”

This was Pauline’s contribution to the conversation and was promptly cut off by her husband.

“Shut up, Polly,” he exclaimed, with his customary gallantry. “I don’t like to hear you talk of criminals.”

“I will finish your sentence for you, Mrs. Carleton,” Carlisle smiled at her; “a great criminal must be a man of superior intellect, iron nerve, and a vacuum where his conscience ought to be.”

“The nerve and the lack of conscience, yes,” agreed Randall, “but not of superior intellect. That is absurd. Think of the crimes committed by the entirely uneducated, the underworld, the—”

“But I said a great criminal,” Kenneth smiled at him. “I don’t count gunmen and yeggs among our great criminals.”

“Don’t say ‘our great criminals,’” objected Manning Carleton; “it sounds as if we were proud of them as a class!”

“No I don’t mean it that way,” Carlisle went on. “But even in crime, as Pope says, ‘Some are and must be greater than the rest.’”

“Now I know you’re a real detective,” cried Polly, clapping her hands. “You’re quoting poetry!”

“I agree with Mr. Carlisle,” put in Miss Carleton, her black eyes snapping from beneath her carefully arranged transformation of waved gray hair. “Crime, like any other undertaking, is greater if committed by an intellectual mind.”

“Do you mean it is a greater crime or a greater achievement?” said Professor Scott slowly, and looking at Miss Violet, who sat next him.

“Both,” she replied. “It is a greater, a more impressive achievement, and consequently a greater, that is, a more to be deplored, crime.”

“Well meant, though not so well put,” declared her brother. “But say no more, Violet. As I told Pauline, the subject of crime is not one I care to hear discussed by my women folks.”

“And do your women folks discuss only what you say they may, Mr. Carleton?” cried Nan Mortlake. “How droll! And how it must narrow their field of conversation! Do you obey the despot, Mrs. Carleton? And Miss Carleton?”

Her rather commonplace features took on the sly look habitual with those who love to “take a rise” out of their friends.

But as neither of the women she addressed answered her, and as others quickly filled in the breach with their remarks, the rise wasn’t taken.

“Of course there are great crimes,” resumed Carlisle, less bored now than he had been. “They are on record.”

“Yes, indeed,” agreed Gregg, the secretary. “Look at all those books of Edmund Pearson’s. They describe in detail the most celebrated crimes, and explain why and how they are great. The matter is looked at scientifically—”

“As it should be,” declared Professor Scott. “Pearson is a great writer and thinker. The finest in that field. But not the only one. Many scholarly writers deal with similar subjects.”

“Let them,” cried Manning Carleton angrily. “But that’s no reason the matter should be discussed at my table! I insist on a change of subject.”

“I never read Mr. Pearson’s books,” Pauline said, paying not the slightest heed to her husband’s dictum. “But I adore Edgar Wallace’s. They say he writes one every week.”

“No Wallace for me!” put in Jack Mortlake a trifle timidly. “I like the old Sherlock Holmes formula.”

“So do I,” agreed Professor Scott. “That’s my choice, too. Murder on the first page, solution on the last. All in between, clues, evidence, deduction, and false leads.”

“That’s the S. S. Van Dine type, too,” Mortlake stated. “And the formula of all the best English writers. And, by jingo, they can deliver the goods. Their best authors do detective stories, even Milne and Phillpotts and Zangwill and that Bentley chap.”

“You’re a real connoisseur, Mr. Mortlak,” said Carlisle, looking at him in slight surprise.

“Well, I read a lot of ’em. They’re my favorite recreation.”

“I can’t go ’em,” admitted Randall. “Oh I read some books, but mostly I go in for the short stories, the detective magazines, you know.”

“Why not the murder trials as reported in the tabloid newspapers?” asked Carleton, in a tone of withering sarcasm.

“I like those too,” Randall said frankly. “Only you never get anywhere with them. They set the problem and then go off and leave it, usually forgetting to come back. Now in fiction you’re sure to get your solution.”

“I’ve heard that every human being is a potential murderer,” stated Zélie, with the air of saying something astounding. “Do you believe that, Mr. Carlisle?”

Kenneth smiled. “Like most of those shocking assumptions, it means nothing,” he returned. “If murder is merely the act of killing, then anyone who can use a gun, or a dirk, or his two fists is a potential murderer. If murder is a state of mind—or to put it in Scriptural phrase, if ‘as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,’ then many, if not all, of the dwellers on this earth are most certainly potential murderers. The great majority of these, we doubtless all admit, are restrained by the fear of being found out. Were it not for this fear I shudder to think what might happen.”

Carlisle spoke very gravely at the last, for his work had brought home to him the conviction that what he was saying was entirely true.

And then, with his intuitive, almost clairvoyant insight, he glanced quickly from one to another, round the table.

So amazed was he at what he saw, he dropped his eyes instantly, only to raise them again, fascinated by the occasion.

For it seemed to him that everyone, or nearly everyone at the table was busy with his or her own thoughts. And it seemed to him that everyone was concentrating on murder or the possibility of murder, not in the abstract, but concretely.

Donald Randall, his prominent eyes more prominent than ever, was gazing far off, but his face bore a glare of venomous hatred, and his usually loose, slack mouth was set in a straight line.

Jack Mortlake, too, was absorbed in thought, and if his face was any indication whatever, he, too, was dreaming of killing somebody.

Miss Violet was fairly gritting her teeth in her frenzy of imagination, and her delicate old hands, with their falling lace ruffles, were clenched on the rim of the table.

The two secretaries, while not seeming to be of murderous intent at the moment, were looking at each other with meaning but shocked glances, as if well aware of the situation.

Claude Carleton was in what is popularly known as a brown study. But even as Kenneth stared at him he jerked himself together and resumed, with an effort, his gay demeanor.

“Hello, everybody,” he cried jovially, “I have to be leaving you soon. Let’s go back to the other room and have a bit of a dance before I go.”

“Going away?” asked Mortlake, also shaking himself free of his reverie. “Where?”

“Oh, didn’t you know?” Claude said in surprise. “I thought everybody knew. I’m going to Hollywood on the two o’clock train to learn to be an actor like Carlisle here. Like he used to be, I mean.”

“Good gracious, what a stunt!” Mortlake marveled. “Why, buddy, why?”

“Primarily to earn my living,” Claude laughed back, “and, too, because I feel the screen needs me. I hear it calling me. So I’ve had Carly down here to tell me things and give me pointers and so on.”

If Kenneth resented this familiarity on Claude’s part he didn’t show it at all, and he had honestly tried to do all he could for the chap. He had heard that he had tried to make good in his father’s banking office and had lamentably failed. And he thought if screen work was more in the lad’s line it was at least worth trying.

“Oh, take a later train, Claude,” Pauline begged as they all looked at him.

“Can’t, Polly. All my reservations and so forth are taken, and—”

Just then Fenn the butler came in and spoke to Mr. Carleton.

“Another present, I guess, sir,” he said, smiling. “And a big one! An enormous box—”

“Oh, what is it?” cried Polly, trying to collect the women’s eyes. “And I say, Manning, let’s have it brought out here.”

“No room for it, dearie. No, we chaps will forego our tarrying at the table, and we’ll all go in and open the box so Claude can be with us. I fancy I know what it is.”

He chuckled to himself, for an old crony had promised him a crate of pre-war fluids as a New Year’s gift, and it hadn’t yet come.

Pauline rose to all the dignity of her five feet four and shook out her flounces of golden gauze that made her look like a very animated butterfly.

“Take me, Claude,” she cried. “If you’re going away I must show you especial favor.”

Claude came toward her, none too willingly, it seemed, and escorted her to the drawing room.

The rest followed, in no strict order, Zélie, however, cuddling her arm through that of Manning Carleton, who couldn’t help himself.

At sight of the present everybody exclaimed.

For, held up at either end by a chair, was a long box that narrowly escaped looking like a coffin, but only because it was too short, too narrow, and not deep enough.

Though of smooth wood and free from splinters, it was merely a box of pine, the address splashed on with black marking paint, and the nails carelessly driven in.

“Yes,” Carleton said, grinning at it, “I know what it is. And you’ll all help me enjoy it, I hope. Old Garston sent it, I know, and it’s a fine brand, I’ll wager. Get some help, Fenn, and open it up.”

“In here, sir?”

“Oh, yes, right here. We want to see the whole performance. Sit down, all.”

Most of them seated themselves, awaiting with curiosity a sight of the contents.

“Hurry up, Fenn,” Claude shouted. “I can’t miss my train, but I must see the New Year’s present.”

Carefully Fenn and a footman drew the nails and took off the top boards. A white paper covered the contents, and on the paper lay a sealed envelope. Carleton took it from the butler and read its message aloud.

It was only a few words.

“ ‘I am sending you something supposed to be at many a feast.’ ”

“Ah, champagne, I’m thinking,” said Manning Carleton. “Go on, Fenn, remove the next paper.”

The man did so, and was barely able to repress an involuntary shriek.

For exposed to full view was a bleached and grinning skeleton, and on the bony chest was a card which read:

Long years ago you murdered me;

As I am now, you soon shall be!