The Ghosts' High Noon Read online

  “I’m all attention.”

  Colonel Harvey crushed out his cigar in an ashtray. He rose up, bustled across the office, then bustled back to his chair and stared hard at his guest through the big spectacles.

  “The first two congressional districts of Louisiana,” he said, “are both in New Orleans, adjoining parishes on each side of Canal Street. The Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives from the second district is a young lawyer, about the same age as you, called…By the way, Jim, what’s your middle name? Or have you got one?”

  “Yes. It’s Buchanan, a family name. But I’ve never used it in a by-line. Why do you ask?”

  “Because this man running for Congress is also a James Blake. There’s never likely to be any confusion between you: he’s James C. Blake, C. for Claiborne, a good old name, too; his friends call him Clay. He’s a colorful character and a good speaker, they tell me; everybody seems to like him. Jim, I want a personality story on Clay Blake.”

  Jim made a last stand against that hypnotic eye.

  “But why, of all things, a political assignment for me? Both Wilson and Roosevelt claim to be progressives. I’m a conservative, even a reactionary, insofar as I’m anything at all; I distrust progressives and hate reformers. In the name of sanity, Colonel, why a political assignment for me?”

  “First,” said Colonel Harvey, “because the personality piece is what you do best. The one you wrote for me eighteen months ago, about that actress What’s-her-name, was a real daisy. Every reader felt he’d actually met the woman and knew what she was like. Second, because this isn’t merely politics; it’s human interest. And that’s not all. When you first walked in here I spoke about ordinary news, which this isn’t. There may be a big story in it.”

  “How so?”

  “Don’t worry about the ‘progressive’ angle; Clay Blake, like most Southerners, is as conservative as you are. Candidates for Congress, as a general rule, are a dime a dozen; nobody cares. This one’s different. He can't help being elected, because he’s unopposed; no Republican has had a Chinaman’s chance there since they kicked out the last carpetbagger in 1877. So apparently he can’t help being elected. But the underground wire has it that some enemy is out to ruin him.”

  “Who’s trying to ruin him? And how?”

  “That’s what my spies can’t tell me. I’m hoping you can find out. At least there’s something damned funny going on in the Crescent City. Surely that interests an under-the-surface merchant like you?”

  Jim stood up and extended his hand.

  “You’re bloody well right it interests me, Colonel! I’m sorry if I backed away too soon.”

  “Then you’ll take it on?”

  “With pleasure. I don’t know New Orleans, but I know somebody who can give me a line on conditions there.”

  Colonel Harvey, after gripping Jim’s hand, snatched another cigar out of his pocket and used it like an orchestra leader’s baton.

  “Let’s understand each other. I want copy, tentatively, for this Saturday’s issue. If there’s any prospect of a real story, perhaps even a chance to beat the wire services, just conceivably I might give you another week to make good. But I’d prefer something for this Saturday. And you know our deadline, late Thursday, so there’ll be no time to mail your story. Either telegraph it from New Orleans, or phone through to rewrite as you used to do in your salad days. Got that?”

  “Got it. Any further instructions?”

  “There’s the matter of your train. No need to rush off this morning, I find. Your best bet,” and Colonel Harvey tapped the railway guide, “is the New York-Atlanta-New Orleans Limited, very much travel de luxe, leaving Penn Station 4:48 P.M. You’ll be off today, Monday, and arrive Terminal Station, New Orleans, early Wednesday morning. How’s that?”

  “It won’t do, I’m afraid.”

  “Won’t do?” yelped Colonel Harvey. “What do you mean, it won’t do?”

  “I said, didn’t I, that there’s someone who can supply the information I must have?”

  “You mean the friend and classmate I’ve heard you mention once or twice in the past? What’s his name: Leo Somebody?”

  “No, not Leo Shepley. Leo’s a rake and a bon viveur, though anybody who takes him for a fool will get a healthy shock. He used to come to New York for periodic hell-raising when I was with the Banner, but I haven’t seen the old so-and-so in about eight years.”

  “Well, then?”

  “The man I mean is Charley Emerson, formerly of New Orleans. He made history on the Sentinel, the best police reporter in the country and the authority on his home beat.”

  “The Sentinel, eh?” Colonel Harvey began fishing in his pockets. “That’s old Alec Laird’s pride and joy, if I’m not mistaken. Alec must be in his dotage by this time, but I hear he’s picked a good successor. And the name of George Harvey, Jim, is open-sesame at the Sentinel. If you need any help, just present this card to the managing editor.”

  “I’ll have the card, if I may; but I can get what I need from Charley Emerson, thanks. Not long ago he received a legacy from some well-heeled relative: no fortune, but enough for a comfortable retirement. He lives in Washington now, quote, ‘to observe the inanities of the political scene.’ If I’m to waylay Charley right away, it means a local train to Washington; there’s one at noon. So I can’t possibly take the train you—” Jim stopped suddenly. “Here, hold on!”

  “What’s the matter with you, boy?”

  “If this crack Limited is Atlanta-New Orleans, it must stop at Washington.”

  “It does stop at Washington; there’s a lieover of twenty minutes or so. Great God in the bushes! You can take the de luxe after all, boarding at Washington tonight!”

  “That’s the general idea.”

  “Then everything’s in order, Jim; the rest is up to you. Your usual fee, plus a walloping bonus if you come up with something good. And expenses, of course.”

  “Speaking of that, Colonel, will expenses run to a lower berth both ways?”

  “My dear fellow,” Colonel Harvey said with a touch of grandeur, “you’ll be representing Harper’s Weekly. Take a drawing-room and occupy it in solitary state. No, wait! A train from here at noon should get you to Gastown not much later than six o’clock. And you know Dice Reynolds, our man in Washington?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right! I’ll phone Dice to make the New Orleans reservation and meet you at Union Station with the tickets. That’s about all, except…in case I want to get in touch with you, at what hotel will you be staying in New Orleans?”

  “It had better be the St. Charles; that’s the only one I know.”

  Jim stood up and took his hat from the desk. Colonel Harvey bustled after him as he made for the door.

  “One last word, my lad. Forget this obsession of yours about crime and the police. Take it from a man who was once managing editor of old Joe Pulitzer’s World: mysterious happenings in real life aren’t at all like mysterious happenings in a story by Conan Doyle or Arthur B. Reeve. Or in The Count of Monte Carlo either. Where you’re going, there’ll be no beautiful and enigmatic English girl to distract you from business. And you’ll meet no spy of the German Emperor, who turns out to be something else at the end of the book. It’s a straight job of reporting; keep it that way. Now goodbye, good hunting, and don’t let me down!”

  Jim descended the spiral staircase, his footsteps ringing on iron and echoing back in the old tower. He had plenty of time for a noon train; it was not yet eleven. He had begun to enjoy this. And he felt unwontedly exuberant without knowing why.

  Colonel Harvey was right, of course. He must not look for sensationalism round some corner or indeed round any corner: not at staid Harper’s, not on a Southern Railway train to New Orleans, not even in New Orleans itself. If he had put more truth into The Count of Monte Carlo than anybody would believe, it was because some people on this earth really did lead lives of adventure and intrigue, walking with danger as though with a m
istress.

  But not Jim Blake; never Jim Blake!

  And yet, if he faced sober truth, would he have wanted a life like that? Could he have endured a life like that? Franz von Graz didn’t enjoy it; Franz was the original haunted man. In the novel, of course, Franz’s identity had been so disguised that he could be called a fictitious character. But what had happened, eventually, to that Austrian in the service of Imperial Germany? Was he jailed or dead, either through some slip of his own or because, as Franz feared, the Wilhelmstrasse had decided he knew too much?

  Jim reached the counting-room floor: darkish, as always, with its pervasive aroma of damp and old Bibles. There sat Polly Wrench behind the switchboard. Jim retrieved his suitcase, thanked Polly, and started down the very broad staircase to the entrance lobby.

  He had the best of all possible worlds. He would become involved in no sensationalism, and wanted none. He was a detached observer, a reporter: no more. Nothing personal could…

  Then it happened.

  Vaguely he had heard light footfalls rap across the counting-room floor and descend the staircase at his back. He glanced over his right shoulder just as the girl behind him, four or five steps up, caught her heel on a tread and pitched headforemost.

  Jim’s suitcase bumped down the steps and skittered across tile in the lobby. He did not see the suitcase after dropping it; his arms were too full of femininity. Jim had to brace himself as he caught her, or they both would have gone rolling like the suitcase.

  He staggered but kept his balance, his left arm underneath her waist, taking the weight against arm and shoulder. Though not heavy, she was very supple. He became conscious of white silk blouse, of tailored blue-serge skirt and jacket, of heavy dark-gold hair under the small straw hat. A gold-mesh handbag swung by its chain from her right wrist.

  In that undignified position, head down and tilted so far forward that Jim could not see her face, she spoke in a soft, slurred, breathless voice.

  “Oh, this is awful!” And she shivered all over. “I can’t think how…Put me down, won’t you? Please put me down!”

  He carried her to the foot of the stairs, slid his hands up under her arms, and set her down to face him.

  “I say, I am sorry!” she cried. “I’m not even wearing one of those dreadful hobble skirts, so I can’t think how I came to be so clumsy. It was good of you to catch me, but I do apologize. I am so frightfully sorry!”

  And she looked up into his eyes.

  Jim felt a trifle light-headed.

  “Madam,” he began oratorically, “you may regret the circumstances of our first encounter. Permit me to say I welcome them almost as much as I welcome you. You’re British, aren’t you?”

  2

  HER AGE HE ESTIMATED in the middle twenties; as he afterwards learned, she was twenty-seven. “Beautiful” would have been too strong a word. But she was very pretty, with those healthy, fresh-complexioned good looks which seem to radiate innocence or even naïveté Wide blue-green eyes contemplated him within a fringe of dark lashes. And yet nobody could have called this girl naïve. Despite her embarrassment and pouring contrition, the pink mouth showed a sense of humor struggling through. Her admirable bodily proportions seemed emphasized rather than concealed by the severe tailored costume.

  For something else had occurred as they looked at each other.

  The shock and tug of mutual attraction was a palpable force in that dusky entrance hall; it could almost be breathed. That she felt this as well as he did Jim could not doubt; the intense blue-green eyes communicated it before they retreated from him.

  “British?” she said, trying to conquer confusion. “That’s fairly obvious, I expect. Yes, I’m British. And you’re Mr. Blake, aren’t you?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’ve seen your photograph somewhere. You—you wrote that very entertaining book. And you used to live in England, didn’t you? May I ask how long you’ve been back in the States?”

  “Just a year: as of October, ’11. Now, since you know my name…?”

  “Yes; how ungrateful of me! Mine is Matthews, Gillian Matthews. I’m usually called Jill.”

  “Then may I ask, Miss Jill Matthews, what you’re doing on these sinister premises? Are you a writer or an artist?”

  “Goodness, no! Nothing so fetching or glamourous! You, as a famous author…”

  “I’m not a famous author; I’m a working newspaperman in quest of a story. But there’s a cab waiting outside. May I offer you a lift uptown?”

  “No, really!” Jill Matthews cried. “That won’t do! That’s dreadful!”

  “Forgive me, but what’s so dreadful about offering you a lift? It’s not considered an insult even in London.”

  “Mr. Blake, you don’t understand! That wasn’t what I meant at all!”

  “Much as I hate upsetting you, surely this alarm is out of all proportion to the actual suggestion? Since fate quite literally threw us together, we seem destined to become better acquainted. Is that idea so distasteful to you?”

  “Really, Mr. Blake, you persist in misunderstanding!”

  “How so?”

  “It’s not distasteful in the least. I shouldn’t mind becoming better acquainted, as you choose to put it. But we can’t become better acquainted; we couldn’t, even if that were our dearest wish. I’m leaving New York today; I’m going home!”

  By the Mauretania, no doubt. Jim’s elbow brushed the newspaper he had thrust into his pocket; profanity wrote a fine legible script across his brain.

  Is it ever thus? You meet the one girl for whom you could really go overboard: dark-gold hair, Circe in pink-and-white flesh, every potentiality to make a man dream; and she gets away from you before you can do one damned thing about it. On the other hand, today and tomorrow are not forever.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I must catch a noon train for Washington on the first lap of my story assignment. But you, I gather, won’t be leaving until afternoon. Are you staying with friends? Or at a hotel?”

  “I’m at the McAlpin Hotel. Only…!”

  “The McAlpin’s not far from Pennsylvania Station; I can drop you at the hotel. At least there’ll be time to exchange views, and find we have similar views on most created things. Then, when we meet again…”

  “Oh, silly, how can we meet again?”

  “Easily; I’m a man of leisure, as a general rule. And don’t think I’m eccentric; here are some plain facts. This present assignment will take only a few days. Once I’ve learned the truth about somebody’s plot to ruin an honest man, I’m strongly tempted to follow you wherever you are. You’re quite a charmer, Jill; you would draw an anchorite from his cave and disturb the meditations of Marcus Aurelius himself. I will follow you, my sugar-candy witch, and catch up with you at last if I have to put Scotland Yard on your track.”

  “I—I almost wish you would. You’re worse than eccentric; you’re raving mad! And…and isn’t that the woman from the switchboard, signaling to you up there?”

  Jill had pointed. He swung round.

  Polly Wrench was in fact standing at the head of the stairs, her arm raised.

  “Mr. Blake!” called Polly.

  At the look on her face as she peered past him, at the sudden scurry of footsteps here in the lobby, Jim whirled back again. The great doors to the street stood wide open, showing a throng of passers-by on the sidewalk beyond. Jill Matthews had gone.

  “Mr. Blake!” shouted Polly. “Colonel Harvey wants to know—”

  “So do I,” Jim yelled back, and bolted into the street.

  He couldn’t see Jill: not for the moment, at least. Across the square stood three hackney carriages, two open and one closed, as well as a single motor-cab. Jim’s own cab still waited, turned now to face the other direction. But its driver had disappeared, too.

  Jill must have run hard. He saw her sitting in one of the open carriages over the way. He saw this just as its coachman’s whip went up, and the carriage rolled out and w
as lost to sight in a press of other vehicles surging uptown.

  Jim charged into the square, but had to turn back or be run down. Three seconds later the absent cab-driver emerged from a saloon, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  You couldn’t shout instructions to follow a carriage no longer in view; you couldn’t even tell by which of several routes she might be going. Jim went indoors for his suitcase, said, “Penn Station!” and then fumed all the way there.

  Colonel Harvey had declared there was something damned funny going on in New Orleans. There was something equally damned funny about the behavior of Miss Jill Matthews. She didn’t object to being called by her first name; she didn’t object (on the contrary) to some muffled, frantic semi-lovemaking in the lobby at Harper’s. But she wouldn’t share a cab with him between Franklin Square and the McAlpin Hotel. Even the prospect she had characterized as “dreadful,” and it explained nothing merely to say she was leaving for home.

  Jim’s first impulse, to call at the McAlpin en route, would have proved impracticable even if he had been sure she was really there. When he thought there would be time for both hotel and station, he had reckoned without midday traffic in New York.

  Three times they were held up by stoppages, usually involving a brewer’s dray or two. At Madison Square, bearing west along Twenty-third Street, the cab developed engine trouble and had to be coaxed back to life. When at length he reached the great new railway temple on Seventh Avenue, Jim had just time to buy the two necessary tickets and swing aboard before his train pulled out.

  Blue-green eyes, seductive mouth: no! For the present, anyway, he must forget the infernal girl and concentrate on business. Settling back in a green-upholstered chair of the parlor car, with periodic excursions to the washroom-smoker for a cigarette, he added up the meager store of facts he now had. Unless Charley Emerson could add greatly to them…!