Talmage Powell

Fury in the Family

I.

I was tired, hot, cramped. I’d been punching the coupé over the flat, broiled Louisiana countryside all the way up from New Orleans. The scenery had been a succession of pine and dead cotton fields, sun-baked villages, an occasional weathered house or filling station. Once or twice the road had wandered through dank, green swampland.

Now, in the distance, standing black against the sky on its steel stilts, I could see the huge water-tank that marked Maceton. I’d be glad enough to get to Maceton and out again. I was here for a good reason: money.

At noon that day, I had jostled through the New Orleans crowds and entered the Plantation Building on Canal Street. I’d barged in Ansel Mace’s office without letting the receptionist stop me. I’d got the maple door of Ansel Mace’s private office open, the brunette receptionist tugging at my sleeve and telling me what awful fates befell people who slammed in on the revered presence of Ansel Mace that way.

“You again,” Mace said. “You might as well save your breath, Miss Carson.” Miss Carson snorted, gave me a look. I tweaked her chin, closed the door behind her.

Ansel Mace had risen. The huge windows, framing part of the New Orleans skyline behind him, made a good background. The Mace name was a powerful, honored one, despite Ansel Mace’s apparent efforts to ruin it completely. He was tall, gaunt. Riotous living hadn’t yet turned his sharp-chiseled face flaccid.

“The mail man breezed right by my office,” I told him. “Didn’t so much as look in — much less leave me a letter with a Mace Brokerage Company return.”

Mace reseated himself. Before he had a chance to open his anger-tightened mouth I said, “Fields’ are sore. They want their dough — or that bracelet. You’ve told us you gave it to a dancer at the Kit Kat Klub over in the Quarter, that she left town, that you’re trying to find her. All right, I’ve been trying to find her, too. But Fields’ — and I — are tired of stalling. You seem to think the Mace name will make us wait indefinitely. Three hundred dollars. Please.”

He almost snapped a pencil in his fingers. “I’ve told you, Martin...”

“That I’d get a check today.” I put my knuckles on his desk. “Listen, this is costing me. Fields’, along with several other firms, gives me a yearly retainer for just such stuff as this. If nothing pops up, I get my dough for being lazy. But now and then I lose money worrying with a petty deal. This is one of those times.”

I stood straight, pushed my hands down in my pockets. “Now, I’m telling you straight goods, Mace. I either get that money, or I’m adopting you, and you won’t like it. It’s not up to me to chase around hunting that Kit Kat dame any longer. You’ll find me camping in your living-room tonight, at your breakfast-table tomorrow morning. I’ll dog your every movement, and if you try yelling copper, we’ll tell them the whole deal of a guy giving away bracelets he hasn’t paid for. You...”

He glowered; then, surprisingly, laughed. “I believe you mean that!”

“I do,” I assured him. “Have some nice wines for dinner tonight.”

Still laughing — and I wasn’t sure how forced it was — he said, “I see how you work. Your yearly clients pay a flat retainer. The less time consumed on anything for them, the less the cost to you. Why didn’t you explain that before, Martin? I was hoping to get the bracelet itself, to return to Fields’. But I’d decided to mark it up, finally, as one more payment on my education with women. So I really intended to send you a check today. It merely slipped my mind, that’s all.”

He pulled a checkbook from his desk drawer. It might have made some guys feel foolish or even regretful, but I wasn’t built that way. Throwing a few words in his teeth was getting the matter concluded, wasn’t it?

Then he was looking at me keenly. He pushed the checkbook aside, and after a minute said, “Why didn’t I think of you before, Martin? Listen, how’d you like to pick up a few dollars along with finishing that Fields’ bracelet business?”

“That’s what I keep a license for,” I told him, somewhat warily.

“You might have heard of my father, old Theron Mace,” he said. “Made a fortune in oil in Oklahoma when he was young, came back to the old family homestead, built a big house, and bribed the people of Maceton with a hospital to change the name of the place for him. Now, in his Maceton home, the old man is sick, dying. Had a stroke a few months ago. Before his illness, he met a dame in Mobile. I hear she’s showed up at the family manse.

“Frankly, the old boy has never approved of some of my escapades, but I never believed he’d cut me off completely. However, just a couple hours ago I had a phone call from old Theron’s doctor, Cole Delanard. Doctor Delanard knew me when he was practicing here in New Orleans. He tells me that old Theron is sinking fast and certain parties are around him like parasites. I want you to go up there, get the lowdown on the whole situation, act as my agent for my best interests. The minute you get back, I’ll give you a check for five hundred. Give Fields’ their dough and keep what’s left. The trip shouldn’t keep you over one night, but if it does. I’ll agree to kick in your regular fee.”

I mulled it over. I didn’t see a thing to scare me off. After all, old Theron was Ansel Mace’s father. I nodded in agreement. “Five hundred, the minute I get back. If you try to stall me then, Mace, I’ll take this place apart and haul you into court.”

He said he hadn’t been trying to stall any of the time, poured me a drink, told me how to get to Maceton, and forked over twenty bucks for expenses. Over the drink, he told me to call him at his country place, which was just outside New Orleans, the minute I had seen his father and to see the old man the very first thing.

Even if Ansel Mace hadn’t told me exactly how to find the place, I’d have known the Mace house. Ten minutes after running the gauntlet of Maceton’s half-dozen red lights I saw the house. Set on the only prominent rise of land for miles around, it was a colonial mansion of whitewashed brick, its Doric columns two stories high, big enough for a junior college. And the grounds would have made a good campus. Surrounded by a high stone wall covered with ivy, a green velvet lawn was visible through the open wrought-iron gate. Here and there were clusters of shrubs, flower beds, stately poplars.

I didn’t see anybody, and since the gate was open. I jackrabbited the dusty coupé’s nose through the gate. That’s about as far as I’d got when the explosion came. I heard a tinkling on the hood of the coupé like miniature hailstones. But it wasn’t thunder and hail. Somebody had fired a shotgun and damn near ruined what was left of the paint job on the front end of the coupé.

After a moment, gun out, I poked my head back up to the level of the window. A garrulous voice said, “Git outta the way of my shots!” And I saw an overalled old man coining along the stone wall. The wall had concealed him from outside.

He carried the shotgun loosely in his gnarled hands. I watched him. As he neared the car, I noted his lean stringiness, his leathery face, his shock of white, wiry hair.

“You oughtta be more careful,” he informed me. “Jumpin’ your car in the drive that way, I didn’t have time to leggo the trigger. An’ you let that pesky rabbit get away. He’s ruined the beans down behind...” He had leaned on the window of the car, saw the gun in ray hand. I said, “You’re right about people being careful.”

He spat on the ground. “Who are you? What do you want?”

I handed him my card. “Ansel Mace sent me up here.”

His lips tightened their wrinkles away. “Allan Martin,” he read the card, “a private detective, huh? Well, I’ll tell you somethin’, feller. I already got a healthy dislike for you — or anybody else that messes with Ansel Mace. If he sent you up here to cheat away part of old Theron’s money...”

“He’s Theron’s son,” I reminded. “Anyway, that’s Ansel’s idea — to see that no cheating b done.”

“Huh! I reckon he’s heard about that woman bein’ here.”

“Yes,” I said.

“You oughtta make a pair, I reckon. Name of Jeannie Dupree, she used to whisper songs in one of them Mobile night clubs. At that, she can shore act, would almost convince you that she’s honest sorry for old Theron and tryin’ to cheer up his last minutes outta the goodness of her heart. Huh!” It was s snort this time. “Well, ray name’s Jeddrath Sloan. I’m the handyman, but if you want anything done around here for you, you’ll have to do it yourself. You and Ansel Mace. Hub!” He stalked off.

If the coupé had been less a crate. I’d have called him back to pay for a paint job; in the hood were a few score shiny little pits where the shot had hit. As it was, I chuckled at the vinegary old guy and drove on toward the house.

I left the car on the edge of the drive. The dying sun cast thick gloomy shadows over the wide veranda. I let the heavy knocker fall on the massive oak door. A moment later a thin, pinch-faced maid answered the booming, dull knock. Along with a few other last-minute instructions, Ansel Mace had given me a note on one of his letterheads stating that this would serve as credential of one Allan Martin, employed by him. The maid handed it back. I told her, “Mr. Mace wanted me to look in on his father, and see Doctor Cole Delanard. Incidentally, Mace told me I might need to stay overnight and I’ve got a toothbrush and extra shirt in the pock-marked coupé there in the drive.”

The maid nodded. “I’ll show you to a room later. Doctor Delanard is upstairs with Mr. Theron Mace. He’s been there all day, sir, as the old master is sinking fast. No one has been allowed in his room, but as you come directly from Mr. Theron’s son...”

“Sure,” I said. Then I went with her down a hallway that could have been hired out for a gilt-party ballroom. The maid indicated the room, and I mounted the wide stairs.

A short, startlingly fat man answered my knock on Theron Mace’s door. He reminded me of one of those dime-store toys that you tip over only to have it bob upright again. “Doctor Delanard?” I asked.

He nodded.

“I’m Allan Martin,” I said. “Ansel Mace sent me up.”

He eased out in the hall, closing the door softly. He squinted at the card I handed him, said, “It was a good idea, Ansel sending you up here. It’ll make me feel a lot better, knowing a detective is on the scene.”

“It’s that bad?”

Delanard raised his pinkish brows. “As old Theron’s will stands, Ansel Mace gets next to nothing. But lying here, ill, Theron has thought about his son. He’s talked of changing his will, favoring Ansel. Certain people would like to see the old man die before he can do that. Old Jeddrath Sloan for one. Jed has given Theron Mace a lifetime of devoted service. He’s been well paid, but feels that Theron owes him something more, a sort of reward, I suppose. And then, Mr. Martin — then there is the girl, Jeannie Dupree.”

“Yes,” I said. “The girl.”

Delanard coughed behind his hand. “I don’t know exactly how Theron’s present will stands, but I do know that it was made in a moment of heated anger at Ansel, his son, giving the greater part of the fortune to the servants, charities, Jeddrath Sloan. And, I think, the girl.”

“I’ll get around to that, Doctor. Right now I’d like to see the old man. It’s been a hard push to drive it here in four hours, and Ansel — since he couldn’t leave New Orleans — asked me to give the old man his best wishes first thing. And see if I could gather what’s in old Theron’s mind.”

Delanard opened the door. “Quietly, please. He’s been sinking rapidly all day. I’m not sure he’ll last the night. I’ll see if he’s asleep.”

Inside the doorway, I shuddered. It was like walking in a tomb. The blinds were drawn, shrouding the room in dense twilight. The old man lay on his back in the four-poster bed, eyes closed, the old-fashioned nightcap covering his head to his ears, the silk comforter pulled to his chin.

Delanard eased back across the room from the bed. “He’s asleep,” he whispered. “As soon as he wakes, I’ll let you know.”

I nodded. “I’d better go back downstairs and see if I can get a clear circuit to New Orleans. Ansel asked me to phone as soon as I arrived.”

I left the room. I started down the stairs in a hurry; but halfway down I stopped. She was standing in the downstairs hallway, looking up at me.

The girl.

II.

She was small without looking weak. Her face had a fresh, young color, and her hair was a rich, warm brown.

“Jeddrath tells me a private detective named Allan Martin is looking for my scalp. Would you be Mr. Martin?”

I nodded, moving toward her at the foot of the stairs. “Uncle Jed put it a little strong. I suppose you’re Jean Dupree?”

“Yes,” she said. “Ansel Mace sent you up here to run me off, didn’t he? To get me away from his father?”

“Something like that,” I admitted. “But you don’t look exactly like...”

She waited, and when I didn’t finish it, she said wryly, “A siren? Thanks for the backhanded compliment But you can tell your employer that he needn’t be afraid I’ll try to influence his father if old Theron really wants to make a new will, favoring Ansel Mace, as Doctor Delanard has mentioned to us.”

She turned and started down the hall, I in step beside her. “There’s nothing,” she said, “I mind telling you about myself. It’s true that I was singing for a living in Mobile. Theron Mace was an old friend of my father’s, long ago, before my father died. Old Theron was lonely, Ansel, his only son, was certainly no comfort to him. Old Theron Mace looked on me simply as the daughter of a dear old friend.”

I waited; somehow I couldn’t quite meet her eyes. Then I remembered what Jeddrath Sloan had said about her being such a wonderful actress, and I colored, and when I looked back at her, I guess my eyes were hard.

She didn’t seem to notice. She went on speaking as if she felt she owed it to me to explain this, and I could take it or leave it. “Not long after that,” she said, “I had pneumonia. Theron Mace was a real friend in need, a second father. I’m allergic to sulpha drugs and had to be cured the old-fashioned way. I had a battle of it. So finally, when I saw a small item in the New Orleans paper about Theron Mace being desperately ill I came up here. It was the least appreciation I could show. You can tell Ansel Mace that — and several other things that I’m too much of a lady to say aloud!”

She wheeled and hurried down the hall. The flash of her ankles was swell. I was quite suddenly aware that my pulse hadn’t beat this fast in several years, if ever. I laughed, sprang after her, caught her wrist. “Hey, wait a minute! You’ve had your say, now let me tell you what I...”

A big, unpleasant voice behind me said, “Let her go, you!”

I turned. The man must have been somewhere near the hallway the whole time. But I’d never seen him before. He was tall, inclined to stoutness. His face was pudgy, his mouth small, and his black hair blossomed out of his head the way a beet top grows. His imported tweed suit must have cost every dime of a couple hundred bucks.

“Hannibal,” the girl said, sharply.

“Hannibal?” I met his glower with one of my own. “Where are your elephants?”

“You’re not a damn bit funny, Martin,” he informed me. “I’m Hannibal Constan, and next to Theron Mace, the Constans are the richest people in Mace County.”

“Shall I salaam now?”

He got his hand tangled in the lapels of my coat. The hand felt surprisingly strong. “You’re going to leave Jeannie alone — that’s what you’re going to do, Martin! Everybody around here’s got it in for her, and I’m using a little of my time to look after her. Jeddrath Sloan hates her, makes things unbearable for her. I could kill Jeddrath for that — and anybody else!”

I glanced at the girl. Hannibal Constan was very much that way about her; but she looked at him pityingly. She was just not his type and couldn’t feel that way in return. “Brother,” I told Constan, “you’ve got it bad. But if you don’t take your hand off my coat you’re going to have something else a lot worse. I’m not going to be unfair to anybody, especially a girl, but if you think you’re up to...”

I saw it in his eyes, but I never thought he’d do it. Until he’d done it. He swung at my face, and I rolled enough so that the blow caught me high on the shoulder. Even so, I slammed back into an antique gate-leg table, spilling the vase of flowers on it with a crash. My whole arm was numb. That guy wasn’t all fat, I realised, looking up from the carpet where I’d tripped beside the table.

The girl saw me flashing to my feet, and fearing an explosion in the first degree, grabbed Hannibal’s arm and rushed down the hall with him. I think he’d have liked more words with me, considering the way he looked at me over his shoulder, but he’d have rushed anywhere with Jean Dupree.

That pinch-faced maid had heard the vase crash. She came down the hall. I told her, “I’ll personally pick you some more posies, Matilda. It was worth it. The things life does teach us about human nature.”

Then I went off to find a phone and call Ansel Mace.

Mace’s voice, coming from his country place just outside New Orleans, sounded strained. “What’s the lowdown, Martin? Have you seen the girl?”

“Yes,” I hesitated. “She doesn’t exactly seem the type...”

“Listen, Martin! I’ve never seen the girl, but don’t you go letting a good-looking face and figure make you forget who you’re working for.”

“I couldn’t forget that,” I bit back at him, “but there’s nothing I can do but ride the boat. Your father’s asleep. Everybody around hero knows he’s mentioned changing his will in your favor. Doctor Delanard let it leak out. If the old man rallies, he might do just that I’ll be on hand to see that nothing happens to him, that he gets the chance to change his will if that’s what he wants.”

“Maybe I’d better try to come on up there,” Mace said tightly. “My wife’s got my town car and my roadster’s in the garage with a couple of crumpled fenders. I’ll have to get a bus. I can’t get there before midnight, five hours or so from now.”

“Suit yourself, Mace. Personally, I’m going to eat. I smell some very savory odors coming out of the kitchen.”

He muttered a curse and slammed the phone up.

Doctor Delanard stayed in Theron Mace’s room, not coining down to dinner. I’d expected that, and I’d guessed Jean Dupree and I would have dinner in the mellow, brown-panelled dining room. I hadn’t thought anyone else would be there. But Hannibal Constan was. Evidently, the girl had been talking to him, for he begged my pardon for socking me. I told him sure, let it ride at that. It made the girl less strained.

From the kitchen, I could hear Jeddrath Sloan’s leathery voice as he ate and talked to the pleasant, gigantic Negress cook. Hannibal Constan, living up to the promise he must have made the girl, tried to be a good dinner companion. I learned that he’d been here at the Mace house the day she’d arrived. He’d stuck around, and was occupying one of the guest rooms upstairs.

Objectively, the dinner was dry enough; but the girl’s presence lent spice. I kept trying to figure her. Angel? Or female devil?

After dinner, Constan and the girl went off in the direction of the library. I walked upstairs, tapped on Theron Mace’s door, and called out to Doctor Delanard. He cracked the door, told me everything was okay, and I went back down. I got a couple of magazines from a rack in the sunken living room, planted myself where I could watch the hall, the stairway, Theron Mace’s room. As long as I didn’t let anybody get in there with divers notions of forever making old Theron unable to make a new will I was earning my dough.

Outside, the Louisiana night was thick, black. Faintly I could hear the murmur of night creatures, now and then the sounds of Jean’s and Hannibal’s voices in the library. I had called Ansel Mace just before seven. It was now nine, perhaps ten after. If he’d got the seven-thirty bus out of New Orleans, he’d be another three hours getting here.

I yawned, wondering how much longer I was going to have to keep up this vigil. Then Cole Delanard burst out of Theron Mace’s room upstairs, and I took a look at him and bounded to my feet. He was yelling for the maid and cook. I said, “Anything wrong?”

“No,” Delanard said, “the old man has rallied. There’s often a last burst of strength in stroke cases of this type. I think he knows he’s dying. He wants to change his will. I need the cook and maid for witnesses.”

The maid scurried by me, followed a moment later by the cook. I followed them up the stairs. I’d expected to sec Jed Sloan bursting out in the hallway.

And quite suddenly, I knew that Jean Dupree hadn’t been acting. Here was a grim, cold household, soggy with riches, waiting for an old man to die, as chill and implacable as if they’d been waiting for the final turning of a card, which would decide which way the riches would go. Jeannie Dupree had brought the only warmth, the only real tenderness and pity to the house.

Delanard had left the door to old Theron’s room cracked in his haste. The maid and cook were huddled back against the wall. The room was so deeply shadowed the man in bed was obscured in gloom. I could hear the wheezing of his breath, see faintly the outlines of his face. The nightcap covering his head to his ears with its bright tassel looked pathetic.

Delanard was bending over the bed, close to the old man to catch his every word. Between wheezes the old man said, “...Is my only son, after all. So to Ansel Mace, I, being in sound... mind... bequeath all my stocks, bonds, and securities, to the total... of three million dollars... to my servants... each... I leave ten thousand dollars cash... and to Jean Dupree... I leave this house... the acreage adjoining...” The voice was a lost whisper. Cole Delanard was scribbling like mad on a sheet of paper he’d grabbed. “...And to Doctor Cole Delanard... who... has kept me alive... this... long, I bequeath stocks and cash in the sum of five hundred thousand dollars... all properties and cash not specifically named... go to my son, Ansel Mace... I...”

I thought he was going to croak then and there. I’d never heard a hollow, whispering voice Like that one. Then he pulled a trembling hand from the covers, fumbled the pen from Delanard’s hand. A spasm crossed the aged face; for a moment it seemed he would rear up in bed and die before he could ever sign that will. Then he smashed the pen against the paper and made two strokes, a shaking X, I guessed. Without strength to sign even his full name, he lay back, shivered once, and died.

I heard the maid sob, the cook mumble soft, dark words. Delanard pulled the coverlet over Theron Mace’s head, ushered the maid and cook to the door. I turned and went down the hall.

I met Jean and Hannibal Constan in the downstairs hallway. She said, “Is he... is...”

“He’s dead,” I said. “He managed to make his new will.”

“I don’t care anything about the will! Can’t you understand? The poor man! The poor, poor old man!” Despite the fortunes Theron Mace had left, I saw what she meant.

Hannibal slipped his arm about her. When she sobbed, he soothed her. I found myself wishing I were in his place. I said, “Well, I guess I might as well not muss up another guest room tonight. I came here to wait until the old man had died and make sure, meantime, he had the chance to fix himself another will if he wanted to. He’s done both, and I guess I...” Hannibal was leading the girl back toward the library.

I got my hat from the antique hall tree and went out the front door. My car wasn’t where I’d left it. I called out Jed Sloan’s name, got no answer, and walked around the side of the house. The car was in the garage, where I guessed Jeddrath had put it.

I backed out of the garage. In the night the house looked white and spectral; a faint fog was rising, shredding across the lawn. I thought about the girl in there; then I kicked the clutch and started down the driveway.

The Mace house was a few miles from Maceton proper. I first noticed the thumping in the back end of the coupé when I hit a rut in the road. It sounded as if the spare tire had come loose from its moorings and was slogging around in the luggage compartment. Finally, I pulled the coupé over to the side of the road, thinking it would be better to take a few minutes putting the spare hack in place than driving all the way to New Orleans with that annoying thumping behind me.

I was about a mile out of Maceton. The road lay like a fat, sluggish snake in the moonlight. I raised the lid of the luggage compartment and the night suddenly turned very cold.

I was hauling a dead man around with me.

III.

It was Jeddrath Sloan, twisted there in the trunk compartment. His leathery face wore a frightened grimace; his eyes were like two pieces of ice in the moonlight. He had been stabbed in the throat, and the blood, caked with dust from the compartment made his neck a mess. I touched the thing he’d been slabbed with, using my handkerchief. The weapon that had taken his life was a long fingernail file with a fancy, curlicue mother-of-pearl handle.

Far off in the night, I heard the hum of a car motor — coming this way. It jerked me out of the paralysis. I slammed the compartment down, got in the coupé, and swung it around in the road. In another two and a half or three hours Ansel Mace should arrive from New Orleans.

It seemed to me there were a few things Mr. Mace hadn’t told me about the set-up at Mace Manor...

Back at the Mace house, I ran the coupé in the garage, opened the compartment once again. Carefully, I pulled the leathery-faced corpse out. I carried Jeddrath over to the corner, around the pair of long, sleek cars that filled the rest of the garage. I dumped him there, got a piece of tarpaulin from a narrow workbench, covered him with it. It might not have been so good, but it was a lot better than having Jed Sloan in the luggage compartment of my car.

When I went around the house. Hannibal Constan was standing on the corner of the veranda, looking out in the night, smoking. I must have still been shuddering from the shock of finding Jeddrath Sloan’s body. Constan looked at me in the glow from the wan, overhead veranda light, said, “Anything wrong?”

“Nothing time and effort won’t fix, I guess.”

“I thought you’d gone, Martin.”

I shrugged. “I decided the drive back to New Orleans was too long and uncomfortable to make tonight.” I ran the back of my hand over my lips and decided I might as well get started, in a round-about way, on this business of Jeddrath right now. I asked Constan: “Have you seen Jed Sloan around?”

“Not in the last hour or so. Just a little while before old Theron passed on, Jeannie sent Jed up to her room for some trifle.”

“How long before he came back down?”

Hannibal shook his beet-top thatch.

“Why — I don’t know. Come to think of it, he might not have done the errand. An independent old cuss. The way he resents Jean being here, I hope he shoots himself with that shotgun of his.”

“He won’t,” I assured him.

I went on in the house, tossed my hat back on the hall tree, and walked upstairs without being too noisy about it. I tapped on Jean Dupree’s door. There was no answer, no sound in the room.

I tried the knob; the door swung open, and I slipped inside. I clicked on the light. The room had a nice feminine smell, but when I walked over to the dressing table it seemed a chill wind off distant swampland surged into the room.

A tan leather case was open on the dressing table. The case contained a manicuring outfit, a comb, brush, hand mirror — all done in mother-of-pearl. But one leather loop was empty. It was just the right size. You didn’t have to be a soothsayer to know that a long, keen nail file with a curlicue, mother-of-pearl handle was missing from the outfit...

I glanced about the room. There were no signs of a struggle, but any signs could have been erased; Jeddrath’s body could have been pushed out the window, to lie at the side of the house unnoticed until the opportunity had occurred to put him in my car, in an effort to get the corpse away from here and divert suspicion the wrong way.

But could a woman have handled a heavy, limp body in that manner? What if Jean had stayed downstairs after sending Jeddrath up here, and hadn’t followed him? How about Cole Delanard? Ansel Mace had said that Doctor Delanard had been his chum in New Orleans, which didn’t raise Delanard’s reputation in my opinion. Had Delanard, going in too strongly for wine, women and ribald song, in some sort of jam that made him hot-foot it away from the bright lights of New Orleans to this backwoods spot?

I went downstairs and found the maid. Between her sobbing laments for old Theron Mace, she told me Cole Delanard had gone home. She told me how to find his place, and I went out without seeing anyone, entered the garage, and climbed wearily in the coupé.

Cole Delanard’s house was about two miles on the other side of Mace-ton. A long box hedge fronted the highway; the house itself was a rambling, hulking structure in the darkness.

I left the coupé in the drive. The house was unlighted. There was no sign of life or movement over the whole of the flat, black landscape. The fog rolled up around the house, over the lawn, and clouds clutched and receded from the pale yellow moon.

I knocked, listened to the echo. I tried it a couple more times; then I walked off the porch, skirted shrubbery growing beneath the front windows and went around the side of Delanard’s house.

There was no light in the back of the house, either. The place was still, dead. From the back yard, where I now stood, I could see the outbuildings, the barn, the flat, perfectly naked acres that stretched for miles in every direction until they were swallowed by night.

Then I stiffened, staring hard at the barn, wondering if it were the rising night wind rustling a stall shutter, or if a man had really moved out there.

I started forward, across the back yard, the wind sobbing in the multiple gables and eaves of the house which was now behind me. I didn’t see the shadow again. I skirted the barn. Hulking in the night, it was a gigantic structure that could have used a coat of paint. Its massive double doors were closed, padlocked. If I had really seen a man, he hadn’t gone in this way.

I swept the sprawling held with my gaze. It appeared to be hard, sunbaked earth, likely not farmed since Cole Delanard had been living in the place. I took half a dozen more undecided steps. The moon swept free of clouds. It was then that I saw the dark, small splotches on the earth. At first I thought they were large drops of blood, then I bent closer, touched my finger to one; it was oil. I was chiding myself for letting my taut nerves see blood where there was only drops of oil — when the shooting started.

I heard the blasting of the gun, saw the flashes of it at the corner of the barn. I threw myself flat, digging my own gun from my shoulder rig.

I knew what had happened. Whoever had been in back of Delanard’s house had heard me at the front, seen me come around the house, watched me go toward the barn.

Two more shots crashed from the far corner of the barn, and dry dust jumped in my face. His marksmanship was an unhealthy thing for the person on the receiving end.

I rolled toward the barn, snapped a quick shot at the corner that sheltered the murderous party. That one didn’t do so much good, so I took better aim, squeezed the trigger again. I’d have bet splinters jumped off the barn planking in his eyes that time.

I heard the quick shuffle of feet, fading, running. I was at the comer of the barn in nothing flat. There I paused. I didn’t want to go chasing around the side of the barn and have a slug play a tune on my ribs.

Then I heard the grind of a car starter. Its sound was familiar. I’d left the keys in the coupé.

I ran across the yard behind Delanard’s house, heard the car skittering up the driveway. The tail-lights of the coupé were a hundred yards up the road by the time I reached the mouth of the drive.

I jammed my gun back in its holster, thought of all the dirty words I’d like to say. It was a long hike back to Maceton where I hoped I could get a cab to take me to the Mace house.

Lights were still burning here and there in the white-washed colonial mansion where old Theron Mace had lived and died. I paid off the driver of the cab, mounted the broad steps to the veranda. The Mace home had looked elegant when I’d first come here late this afternoon. Now, close to midnight, it sent a crawling sensation down my spine. I went down the vaulted hallway to tell the pinch-faced maid to fix that guest room.

I didn’t know whether I’d do any sleeping or not. I thought about the way I’d come here to do a perfectly plausible piece of work and how the affair was now dragging me along with it. I knew I’d have to stick around until I’d found that coupé. I didn’t know how much old Jeddrath might have bled in the luggage compartment and I didn’t know what kind of ideas the local law would have if the killer contrived to plant the coupé where they could take a look in the compartment.

I found the maid back in the sprawling, scrubbed kitchen. I gave her instructions about the room for me. She set aside her coffee cup, said she’d catch some sleep herself if she ever quit thinking about old Theron’s death. Then she tossed her head. “But I’m not the only one. That Dupree woman must have something on her conscience. She’s been sitting out there in the back yard for the past five minutes.”

I looked out the back window. Small and lovely in the moonlight, Jeannie Dupree was sitting on a stone bench near the rock garden.

I opened the door, went out. The maid snorted.

Jean started a little when she heard my step. “Oh... Mr. Martin.”

“Couldn’t sleep?”

“I... was thinking about poor old Theron... dying.”

I sat down beside her on the cold stone of the bench. “I want to apologize for the thoughts I had about you when I left New Orleans. I mean... I hadn’t met you then, didn’t know...”

“...Yes?” Her smile was nice.

“Well, you know how it is.” Her nearness made me giddy.

She touched my hand. “You don’t need to apologize, Allan Martin.”

“Yes,” I said. “Because I’m going to show you something — and I want you to know that I’m on your side. I don’t believe you did it. If you had, you’d have got rid of that fingernail file when it was done, and I can’t fancy you stalking me around a barn and shooting that well.”

“Why, what are you trying to tell me?”

“Come on,” I said, “and I’ll show you.”

We crossed the yard, entered the garage. We walked down the passage between a sleek car and the wall. I struck a match. Just ahead of us was the tarpaulin I’d thrown over old Jeddrath Sloan’s corpse.

“Take a deep breath,” I told Jean. I jerked the tarpaulin back. She said, “What is all this. Allan? Whatever is it you’ve been talking about — why don’t you show it to me?” I couldn’t show it to her or anybody else. Old Jeddrath Sloan’s corpse was gone.

IV.

I let the heavy canvas fall. “Let’s get out of here!”

She hurried after me, caught my arm, shook it. “Allan, you’ve got to tell me what was supposed to be there in the garage.”

But I didn’t. Headlights had swept into the driveway, coming up toward the house. “Later,” I said. “This must be Ansel Mace in a cab, coming from the bus station.”

I let Jean go on in the house, the question still in her eyes. I met Ansel Mace on the front veranda. He said, “I got here as quick as I could. Martin. How is the old man?”

“He’s dead,” I said. “But lie made a new will, favoring you.”

Ansel Mace was silent a moment, his frame gaunt, his face lined. “I’m sorry. We didn’t get along. But I’m sorry. I... think I’ll go to bed. The bus made a rough trip of it.”

I watched him up the stairs, heard him slam a door. The house was still. And quietly I went back outside.

I wanted to see where old Jeddrath Sloan had got to.

In the garage, I struck matches, finally found two parallel marks on the floor — made by a pair of heels attached to a body that had been dragged.

I followed the markings of Jed’s heels across the back yard. On the far side of the yard was a horseshoe court. Old Jed had likely been the type to go in for pitching quoits — but not the way I found him now.

Whoever had dragged him from the garage had dropped him on one of those iron stakes, so that the stake pierced the wound already in his throat. The long nail file was gone. It was a very neat attempt to make Jed’s death look like an accident, as if he’d been walking, tripped, fallen, his own weight impaling his throat when he’d struck the stake.

I shuddered and turned to creep back in the house. It had taken me some little time to find and trace those markings of Jed’s heel. The house was still as a tomb now, apparently wrapped in sleep. I tiptoed, groping to avoid objects in the dark, until I was in the huge downstairs hall, where someone had turned off the lights, the maid likely.

Then I heard the stealthy, morbid click of metal against metal in the library. The library door was cracked enough so that I could slip inside without noise. A human shadow stood at the far wall, a match flickering out in his hand. His back to me, I hadn’t seen him well enough to identify him; the wall safe was open. The clicking I’d heard had been his taking a metal tray from the safe.

I was in here with him — the murderer.

And he knew it, too. Even the sound of his breathing suddenly stopped as my shoe sighed in the nap of the carpet at my next step.

We stood like statues in the dense blackness of the library for seconds that dragged. At least I stood, and I thought he had. But he hadn’t. He was close to me. I sensed the movement of his arm, heard the rustle of cloth. I lunged to one side. The movement caused the gun or whatever heavy object he had in his hand to miss the crown of my head.

I caught it in the temple.

For a bursting moment I thought he’d killed me. I wavered, fell to my knees. I heard him running from the library, his feet padding in the carpet I clung to consciousness, knew he was taking the stairs, heard the faint closing of a door in the upper hall.

I pushed to my feet. I got out of the library. In the hallway I staggered into the old-fashioned hall tree, spilling it over with a crash. Well, let him hear me. I couldn’t help that. It was all I could do to stay on my feet.

I went up the broad stairway like a drunk, stood in the upstairs hall. I thought of the doors lining the hall, the dark rooms beyond them. He’d gone into one of them. Which?

I picked a door, turned the knob, and saw moonlight filtering in, brushing Hannibal Constan’s sleeping face. As gentle as his fairy godmother I laid a couple feet of Hannibal’s covers back. He wore purple pajamas that someday would give a wife cause for colored glasses or divorce. He never knew I’d been there.

Back in the hall, I chose another door. I heard a man’s breathing when I entered the room. I eased his covers back. I had found him. He hadn’t had time to do anything else; so he’d jumped in bed with his clothes on, feigning sleep. He might have been counting on my peeping in each room, but he hadn’t counted on my going one step further and pulling the covers off every man in the house-hold if need be.

But he was still a couple jumps ahead of me. He told me quietly, “I’ve got a gun, Martin. I can see your shadow clearly, and you’ve sampled my marksmanship once tonight — at Cole Delanard’s farm.”

The voice belonged to Ansel Mace.

“At the slightest move, Martin,” he told me, “I’ll start shooting. I’ve got your silence — everything — to gain and nothing to lose that I haven’t gambled already.” He snapped on the light, sat up in bed. The flesh between my eyes knotted. I was looking straight down the bore of his gun.

“You were a pretty smart man,” I said. “You and Doctor Cole Delanard. Old Theron — your father — died early this morning, or yesterday, didn’t he? He died without making a new will, leaving you with only the legal dollar.

“But Cole Delanard, with an unsavory past of his own that had run him out of New Orleans, knew you’d fall right in with the plan that occurred to his rotten mind. He called you, told you the old man was dead, but that he could cover the death, not allowing anybody in the room. Then you could sneak up here, take the old man’s place in bed, while Delanard would hide Theron’s body in the closet of his room, or some other place he’d think of. Then in bed, posing as your father, you would dictate a new will, leaving yourself millions, Delanard a half million for his trouble, a house you didn’t want to Jeannie Dupree and a few thousand to servants — to make the will look good.

“The room was practically dark. You favor your own father. No one ever got close to the bed — Delanard even saw to it the witnesses stayed back against the wall. A little make-up to add lines and a few contours was all that was needed in that bad lighting. Your father’s habit of wearing an old-fashioned nightcap that came to his ears helped — it further hid you and you didn’t even need a wig.”

“Keep talking, Martin.”

“I will,” I said. “You had it all set — then I popped in your office, unknowingly throwing myself smack in the middle of your plans, ruining them by telling you flatly that I was going to camp on your doorstep until I collected the Fields’ bill. Above all you couldn’t have anyone know you were leaving New Orleans, coming up here — except in such a way so it would look as if you’d arrived after your father had died. And you’d dipped to the bottom. You hadn’t even enough money to cover a check and get rid of me that way. You saw me throwing a kink in all your plans — a measly bill costing you millions. So you had to get me out of the way. You sent me up here, planning at the same time to use me for an alibi, asking me to phone you in New Orleans as soon as I arrived here, which would establish your presence hundreds of miles from here just two short hours before the will was made.”

“And how did I get up here, Martin?” His eyes were satanic.

“From your country place outside of New Orleans — by plane. You said yourself your wife was away with one of your cars. You managed the servants, giving them a night off, probably. No one saw you leave; neither did anyone see you land in the broad, dark field at Cole Delanard’s place. Then you ran the plane out of sight in his barn — and made the slip of letting a few drops of oil leak on the ground. I knew Delanard didn’t farm any by the looks of the land; so he wouldn’t have any kind of farm machinery dripping oil that led to the ham.

“Then you slipped over here, climbed a trellis, entering the upstairs through Jean Dupree’s room. Everyone — you thought — was downstairs. And you definitely couldn’t afford to be seen. At that moment everyone thought your father asleep; actually he was dead in his bed and you were all set to pose as him and make a new will.

“But Jeddrath Sloan, bating Jean, hunting something to use against her, slipped in the room, found you there. And right then you really got your feet wet — you snatched up her nail file and murdered a man, very quietly. You dumped him out the window, put him in my car later, thinking that Jean and I might be dangerous enough to throw to the law. With her nail file in Jed’s throat, and his body in my car, it wouldn’t have looked so good for us. I found the corpse, dumped it, and later, Hannibal Constan, seeing me come around from the garage and sensing something was wrong, got curious. He found Jed there, and our noble Hannibal, thinking to protect Jean, took the file which he recognized as hers, and tried to make Jed’s death look like an accident. I think I’m pretty close to being right. Hannibal will spill the truth about Jeddrath’s corpse being moved when he knows Jean is in no danger.”

“And you think alter I killed Jeddrath,” Mace said, “that I slipped in my father’s room, posed as him. and made the new will?”

“It’s the only logical thing to assume,” I told him, watching that gun until my eyes were crossed. “Then you went back to Maceton, got a cab and finally came here from the bus terminal. That left — you thought — only the detail of the old will in the safe, and you also wanted to make a thorough search of the contents of the safe, not knowing what old Theron might have put there relating to you.”

“And you’ll prove all this, Martin?”

“Delanard will crack under police pressure like a dead tree in a hurricane,” I said. “He’s that type.”

“And maybe you’re right,” Mace agreed, swinging out of bed. “So when I finish with you, I might have to take care of Delanard. A half million is too much for him anyway, but he held out for that.”

I saw the sweat on his face, the glitter in his eyes. I knew it was coming. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it, either. He was too far from me to jump him.

Then somebody in the doorway behind me started screaming. Mace jerked his head, his gun, that way. He squeezed the trigger and Jeannie Dupree just missed dying by inches.

Mace didn’t have the chance to shoot again. I had my hands on the gun. I hit him three times in the face. The second one would have been enough. His eyes rolling up in his head, he crumpled to the floor.

Jeannie Dupree came into the room, trembling. “I’d left my bedroom door open. I couldn’t sleep. I heard you crash into the hall tree downstairs, Allan. Then I heard your voices — yours and Ansel Mace’s.”

“I was hoping somebody would hear them,” I said.

“I knew the police would never get here in time. I couldn’t think. So I started screaming to give you a break.”

I dragged Mace out in the hallway, phoned the sheriff’s office. The house was coming alive from the sound of the shot. The sheriff assured me that Cole Delanard would be picked up in minutes.

Hannibal Constan, throwing a robe over his purple pajamas, and all the servants gathered around Ansel Mace’s unconscious form. They hurled questions in shrill voices.

It was too noisy, decidedly.

So I led Jeannie Dupree down the stairs, out on the veranda. The moonlight was soft now; the fog was clearing.

“Hannibal Constan thinks a lot of you,” I said.

“I’m flattered that he should,” her face was impish. “But heavens, did you glimpse those pajamas?”

That made me feel better. After a moment, during which we sort of drifted together, I said, “You risked your life when you screamed up there. Mace meant to kill you — and came very close to doing it.”

I listened to her breathing. Her face wasn’t impish now. It was soft, lovely, and serenely serious. “I wouldn’t have done it for just anybody,” she said.

It was what I’d been waiting to hear.

Content

Talmage Powell
Fury in the Family

I.

II.

III.

IV.