The velvet hand Read online

  The coat was thrown over a chair in readiness. Kit got into it. Philip’s eyes followed every movement she made, as though he were watching the finishing touches being put on a piece of sculpture. His composure continued to amaze her; he would pay for it later. It had endured unbroken over the interminable week-end, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Sunday night, all that day.

  She and Philip were the only ones who knew of that second call from the people who had Libby. There was no one to appeal to. They were cut off from the forces of law and order by an unscalable wall. They had to get Libby without help—or not get her at all.

  Philip had insisted that not even Hugo should be told that they had been contacted a second time. Hugo had gone back to New York on Thursday. Every time he had called since Philip had said there was nothing new, and Hugo had apparently accepted it. Kit had rather wondered at his absence. George had come and gone on Saturday night unenlightened. As far as William and Miriam and Anita Stewart were concerned the situation was just as it had been from the beginning—Libby had run off with Tony Wilder and they were waiting to hear from her—they hadn’t been told of Wilder’s visit or anything about him. Anita generally dropped in on Sunday morning for a late breafc&st; she hadn’t come yesterday, had said over the phone that s’:h& bad a bad cold.

  Beret, gloves, purse; Kit picked up the candy box and tucked it under her arm. Philip said briskly, clipping his words, “You’re sure you remember. . ."

  She nodded. The instruction had been detailed, and the journey she had to make was simple, and cunningly plotted. Every step of it was clear in her mind. Her uncle went with her into the outer hall and rang the bell for the automatic elevator. "Don’t stay here too long alone, Philip.” She touched his shoulder. It was like rock. She turned blindly away.

  In the lobby she passed Mrs. Grey, a birdlike woman from the second floor, and agreed that it was a nasty night. The white and gold box with its vivid loops of ribbon was conspicuous against the rose of her coat. Mrs. Grey said archly, “Someone’s going to get something sweet,” and Kit thought, if you only knew, and pushed open one of the heavy front doors.

  Rain was still falling; the pavements were wet and a little slippery. It was almost dark. The light was a deep misty blue-violet. Kit turned right toward Park Avenue. There were two men in front of her who seemed to have sprung up from nowhere. One of them was enormously fat. There were more people behind her and across the street. She could hear footsteps now and again in a lull in the traffic. She mustn’t look back, mustn’t show the slightest curiosity, do anything disturbing. Her job was to establish contact, not to avoid it. At the southwest comer of Ninetieth Street and Park she hailed a cab, got in and said, “Grand Central.”

  Other cabs and private cars and buses all around; it was a crowded hour. The city was emptying itself. Kit looked studiously at her driver’s back. Presently she caught his eye in the rear-view mirror, and her heart thumped. Could he. . . ?

  Certainly not. He had been cruising.

  Don’t think, don’t think of anything but Libby; she crushed herself into a corner.

  How could you know they would keep their word?

  You couldn’t know.

  All right then, don’t think at all.

  She directed the man to drop her at the comer of Vanderbilt and Forty-second, crossed the street and went in under the canopy on the middle of the block. At once she was in a stream of people, a stream that deepened and widened into a hurrying river as other streams fed into it in the great station. Progress slowed to a crawl. Feet shuffled apathetically. Down the ramp and through a choked turnstile, down more steps with a slick of rainy footprints on them. On into the huge subterranean vault that was the eastern end of the crosstown shuttle. Shadows, wetness. Runnels of rain here and there. More people piling like foam flung up from an oncoming wave. A shuttle train rushed smoothly in, wearing big eyes of yellow light. A buffeting wind, a screech of brakes. Kit was practically lifted and carried into a car in that relentless forward surge.

  A smell of damp clothing, of camphor, a hat brim grazed her cheek, an umbrella ferrule struck her knee. She couldn’t think, could scarcely breathe. The opening of the doors at Times Square was like a dam bursting, two dams, pouring in opposite directions. More stairs, more bodies, more tunnels, Kit held the candy box tightly under her left arm; if she dropped it it would instantly be trampled underfoot and lost. Forcing and fighting her way to the uptown express platform she waited for a Van Cortlandt train. More people jamming at her back. The lean shining lines of the tracks stretching tautly in front. The hollow roar of the express advancing from the outer darkness of the tunnel, red lights flying. Again the forward squeeze. A woman with a hat shoved over her eyes shouting, “Out, please, out.” She vanished.

  The express pulled out past rows of dejected faces sullen with the determination to get on the next no matter what. Local stations rocked by, vague blurs on the gloom. Kit hung onto the overhead strap, her face partly in a man’s newspaper. Another man’s face with three moles on it, presented to her broadside, filled her field of vision. Looking down at her left hand holding the candy box tightly against her, she wondered if it was her own. Sixty-sixth Street flew past; a terrible struggle to get out at Seventy-second, the spearhead of another throng forcing its way in. She left the uptown platform, mounting steps to the overhead ramp, and descended to the downtown platform, using the middle stairs.

  A south-bound local was just pulling out and for a minute or two there was a lull. People strung thinly along the edge of the platform, the overhead lights beating down on their vacant stares or heads bent over newspapers; Kit stared furtively through her lashes. A young man with no hat in a leather jacket leaning against a post and whistling with an air of solitary gaiety glanced at her quickly and away. An older man beside the slot machine; was he the one who had walked in front of her on Ninetieth Street? No, the Ninetieth Street man was shorter. The hysterical click of heels ... A tall woman in a green raincoat with the hood pulled over an untidy mass of hair was coming down the stairs. Had she seen the woman before? No, it was just the raincoat, there were hundreds of green raincoats, a particularly obnoxious chartreuse that was popular that season. A hurrying figure jostled the woman in the green raincoat and she tripped on the bottom step and her purse flew out of her hand, spilling its contents wildly. A downtown express came to a halt and gushed people in hordes.

  Kit continued to look around covertly in the thickening human forest, jostling, pushing, sighing, murmuring, rustling newspapers, but there was no familiar face. They were all strange. And yet somewhere near her was the man or woman who had talked over the phone in that harsh sexless voice. That was the purpose of this carefully planned itinerary, to keep her, Kit, in view, to make sure that she was alone and not, however skillfully, accompanied by the police or some other observer.

  A downtown local came in. She boarded it. It was crammed. Out of the local at Forty-second. It was there, as she was trying to get into the south-bound express that the box was garnered.

  Flesh a wall in front of her, a wall in back; she didn’t think she was going to make the train. She was helpless; she could neither advance nor retreat, hemmed in by a solid mass of humanity. Suddenly the impossible happened. Her forward progress was sharply accelerated. She felt the box slipping, half-turned, and was sent smashing into the car by a hard thrust in the middle of her back. She went almost to her knees, knocking against people. A heel ground down on her toe. Someone swore. Voices rose. Struggling erect, Kit tried to turn toward the platform, and couldn't. The door slid shut. The train was under way. The candy box was gone.

  Kit got out at the next station and started home. When she climbed to the street at Eighty-sixth Street she was astonished to find that it was not yet full dark. A clock in a drug store said 6:08. It was coming down cats and dogs and cabs were harder to find than hens’ teeth. She walked north through the downpour, indifferent to it, welcoming the sting on her cheeks and forehead. Mission accomplished
? If only she could be sure that she had actually made contact with Libby’s abductors. When she was given that headlong shove she might have dropped the box, and it might have fallen between the train and the platform, or someone with a taste for sweets might have grabbed it in the melee. On the other hand, was it likely that whoever had been told to collect twenty-five thousand dollars in United States currency would have let it slip through his fingers by chance?—for of course she had been trailed every step of the way.

  She was in the apartment taking off her wet coat when the bell rang. It couldn’t be Libby so soon—it couldn’t, . . She flew to the door. It was Hugo, and Hugo knew. Starting for Denfield, he met Philip at the train and tinned back. He took Kit by the shoulders in the small square brightly lighted foyer. “Thank God.” His face was grimly white, his mouth a line.

  Anger stirred turgidly in Kit. Hugo Cavanaugh was a very charming man, and everybody liked him. He liked people, too. Apparently he liked her, and apparently his concern was genuine. She didn’t want any part of his concern. He had lost his right to that months ago.

  She freed herself. She said tiredly, “Nice of you to be worried, Hugo, but as you see, I’m sound in wind and limb.”

  His expression changed. She knew that she had hurt him. Well, why not? He had hurt her, plenty—why should she feel sorry? He looked at her in silence, then his mask came on, the pleasant, intelligent, civilized, forceful mask he presented to the world at large.

  “They collected the money? Tell me about it, Kit.”

  “I will in five minutes. Go into the living room and sit down, get yourself a drink if you want one. I’m soaking and I’ve got to change.”

  What she wanted to do herself was to take two aspirin and go to bed and sleep for twenty-four hours. She felt drained, empty, had never been so exhausted in her life. She showered and dressed, putting on a gray flannel suit and a white silk shirt, and went to the phone and talked to her uncle. Philip’s jubilation frightened her. He was being too sure. If Libby wasn’t returned soon, it would be the end of him. Hanging up, she said that to Hugo, and he agreed.

  “Your uncle’s had it tough, and with vermin like this . . .Well, there’s no telling.”

  Illogically Kit was furious at a conclusion she had already reached independently for herself. “Why do you say that? You didn’t say it when we first heard from them. You said it was a business proposition and they’d give Libby back when. . .”

  “Easy, Kit, easy. You’re dead on your feet.” Hugo fixed her a highball, made her sit down. Fighting an inclination to burst into tears, she gave him a careful account of what had happened, clarifying her own mind as she did so. She was practically sine that the candy box had been collected by the people it was intended for, that it hadn’t been haphazardly snatched, and that she hadn’t dropped it by accident when she got that shove. In the trip through the subway she hadn’t seen anyone she knew, anyone who was even vaguely familiar. Actually the Seventy-second Street platform, the downtown one, was the only place where it had been possible to see at all. She told Hugo about the fat man there, and the tall woman in the green raincoat. "It darted through my mind that it might be Eleanor Oaks —only it wasn’t.”

  At that point Hugo stopped her. He was suddenly alert. "What was this woman on the Seventy-second Street platform like?”

  Kit frowned. Fishing for cigarettes in a pocket, she lit one. “I didn’t get a very good look at her, but I can assure you it wasn’t Eleanor Oaks. Eleanor Oaks wouldn’t be caught dead in such clothes—and they weren’t a bit alike. My woman was completely different. She had a lot of dyed yellow curls in one of those mid-man cuts coming from under her hood, and the purse she dropped was strictly from a dollar ninety-eight, and worn at that. What makes you so interested in her?”

  Hugo said slowly, running a hand through his hair, “I wouldn’t know whether a raincoat was cheap or not, but a woman rather like the one you describe walked out through the lobby of the Hotel Bronson where Wilder is staying at around four-thirty this afternoon. I was lunching in Creevin’s with a client today and caught sight of Wilder at the bar. I had nothing much to do, and thought I’d tail along with him and see if anything gave. He went back to his hotel at close to three, and upstairs to his room. I hung around in the lobby until after five.”

  “What made you notice your woman particularly?”

  Hugo said, “I kept checking on everybody, and like you, the color of the raincoat caught my eye. Hideous. Besides, the woman was tall and I looked every tall woman over, thinking of Eleanor Oaks.”

  “Well,” Kit was decisive, “I can tell you this, the woman in the green raincoat on the Seventy-second Street platform was not Eleanor Oaks.” She glanced at the clock and got hurriedly to her feet. “I don’t want to leave Philip alone. I’m going to take the seven o’clock train and I’ll probably have trouble getting a cab on a night like tins.” Hugo said he’d drive her up. “You’ll get there faster.” She hesitated, and then agreed.

  She had driven up with George and Anita last Wednesday; the drive with Hugo was different. Then they hadn’t known. . . . Libby, her heart cried, and terror descended on her in an enveloping cloud. She fought clear of it with every ounce of her will. She mustn’t collapse now. She and Hugo didn’t speak more than half a dozen words after they hit the parkways. Rain was still coming down hard, sheets of it battered at the windows and half-flooded the road, and he gave his entire attention to driving, a big shadowy figure at the far end of the wide leather seat. Kit’s eyes were heavy. She dozed from time to time, not with her head on Hugo’s shoulder, came fully awake only when they pulled into the driveway in Denfield.

  Afterwards there was always something dreamlike about that long, long night. The rooms seemed different, were on odd levels, and the very furniture, the lamps and pictures and rugs, looked strange. Their voices went on tiptoe through the hush while their ears listened for the sound of a car, of a voice, Libby’s voice. '

  All attempt at concealment had been thrown aside. Miriam had been told. Philip said they had a telephone call on Thursday. “That call. . .” Her aunt’s reaction was rather surprising. Kit softened to her, she must really love Libby. Miriam felt frightful. Her face went as gray as it could go under make-up and she all but fainted. “I can’t believe it,” she kept saying, “I can’t take it in.” She went upstairs at midnight. The rain kept on falling. The clock dragged its hands. It was one, and then it was two, then three.

  Kit and Philip and Hugo kept an unceasing and restless vigil, doing things automatically, hghting cigarettes and letting them go out, making coffee, drinking it, walking around. Someone would say, “The rain appears to be slacking off,” and someone else would say, “Yes, doesn’t it?” They were all very polite and quiet with each other, might have been strangers isolated in an airport waiting for a delayed plane to come in. And always there was that terrible question of whether Libby would be returned to them, a being of flesh and blood and spirit sold back for twenty-five thousand dollars, and if she was returned to them whether the merchandise would be in good condition. Whether it would be worth the money.

  The longest stretch was from three until the light began to come at half-past four. Grayness in the east, objects beyond the windows taking shape; the light broadened and it was full day and the sun was starting up beyond the eastern hills. The rain had finally stopped. Outside the dawn stillness was pierced delicately by bird songs in a monotonous rhythm. Thought had stopped now, everything had stopped, they sat around in chairs in the living room, people in a semi-coma, not speaking or moving. It was Philip who broke through the leaden inertia. He heard the sound first. Stumbling to his feet, he threw up a hand, his eyes wildly bright. “Listen,” he said. “Listen.”

  Kit heard it distinctly. A slow steady purring, as though there were a large tiger somewhere close by. The big living-room window commanded a view of the road beyond the sloping lawns. She went to the window. A car had drawn up in front of the hedge. They were running, all
three of them, through the front door and out onto the terrace. As though an invisible wire had checked further progress they jolted to a halt on the edge of it.

  A man was coming up the path carrying a burden. The burden was Libby. Libby’s head hung down danglingly, so did her arms and legs. Her eyes were closed. A long shaft of light fell full on her face, chin tilted to the sky.

  . . . The sight was too terrible to be borne. Philip didn’t bear it. He toppled forward in an arc, went hurtling down the steps and landed, hard, on brick and stone at the strange man’s feet.

  XI

  Libby wasn’t dead—her heart was beating faintly—but she was unconscious. Dr. Terry arrived less than ten minutes after she was carried into the house and upstairs to her room and laid on her bed, her face covered with blood, blood in the bright hair that was tangled and unkempt. Her tweed suit was torn in half a dozen places and covered with dirt and bits of twigs and leaf mold. Her stockings were ribbons, her sandals sodden and shapeless. Her eyes remained closed.

  The only thing Kit dared do was to remove the sandals gently and pull the covers up over her. Philip staggered into the room miraculously unhurt after that headlong plunge. He stared down at the red mask of Libby’s face, grotesque and almost unrecognizable against the white pillow, and sagged. Hugo got him into a chair, got brandy for him. Miriam came hurrying in, pulling on one of her elaborate negligees. For once her cold insensitivity was heartening. She took Libby’s pulse, flexed both her arms experimentally. “Get me a washcloth, Catherine.”

  It was magic the way Libby came out from under the redness, herself again, but so wan, so worn—so beaten. Blood still oozed from a cut on her forehead, another on her chin. Near the door the strange man wiped blood from his hands and went on talking to Hugo in a low voice. “I was afraid she’d die on me. .