Walter’s lean jaw hardened. Val saw the taut whitening line. He got into his car without a sign that he had seen.
“It’s like the end of a bad dream,” thought Val, shivering. “For all of us.”
Then they were pushing slowly through the silent crowd and she sat up straight and tried to look as she fancied Marie Antoinette had once looked in a somewhat similar situation.
IV
— And Sudden Death
After lunch Pink said he had to see a dog about a man and Jardin dropped him at the Magna studio on Melrose.
“We may as well face it, Val,” said Rhys when Pink had gone. “We’ll have to go there some time.”
“Why not now?” smiled Val. She felt better, because the sherry had been good and so had the chicken patties. And it was true — they might as well get used to the notion that they were proletarians just as quickly as they could. The only fly in the afternoon’s ointment was Walter; he had left them abruptly, with a gloom that was odd even for him.
Val brooded about Walter as Rhys drove up to Santa Monica Boulevard and turned west on the car-tracks. She would definitely have to do something about Walter. Things couldn’t go on this way. It was absurd of him to reject her proposal of marriage — absurd and a little dangerous, considering that last quarrel with his father and the look in his eye.
“Here we are,” said Rhys bravely.
Val sat up. There they were, one square from Hollywood Boulevard’s bedlam — in front of the La Salle.
“Parking,” said Rhys, “is going to be a problem.”
“Yes,” said Val. “Won’t it?”
Rhys finally found a tiny space near a curb, and he parked and they got out and looked at each other and squared their shoulders and entered the hotel. “You must be the Jardins,” said a small blonde girl with a blonde dip over one eye. “Pink ’phoned me about you. I’m Mibs Austin.”
“Hello, Mibs,” said Val, looking around at the lobby.
Miss Austin took the earphones off her head and leaned earnestly across the register. “Now don’t let anything worry you, honey. I just about run this dive. Watch out for Fanny, the woman who’ll clean your apartment; she skips corners. The radio needs a new thingumbob — I’ve told the manager about it. And, Mr. Jardin, the valay here is very high-class.”
“I’m sure we’ll love it,” said Val.
“Oh, and your stuff came, too,” said Miss Austin. “I watched myself. They didn’t break a single thing.”
“Stuff?” echoed Val. “What stuff? Oh, you mean the trunks. Thanks, Mibs; we’re terribly grateful for everything.”
They took the wheezy elevator to the third floor, rear — it was thirty dollars a month cheaper in the rear — leaving Miss Austin behind to stare. Trunks? Who said anything about trunks?
Rhys pushed the key slowly into the lock of 3-C, and slowly opened the door, and Val slowly went in and said: “Oh!”
The pseudo-modern furniture, the noisy drugget, the questionable prints — all, all had vanished. In their places were the things the moving men had carried out of Sans Souci under the mysterious Mr. Queen’s vigilant eye only a few hours earlier.
Rhys said: “I’ll be double-damned.” He dropped his coat onto his own sofa and sank into his own leather chair.
Val flew to the telephone. “Mibs! Who brought our furniture here? I mean, how did—”
“Wasn’t it supposed to be? The man said—”
“Mibs! Who?”
“The movers. They just brought the van loads and dumped ’em. We had orders to take out the hotel furniture this morning.”
“Oh,” said Val. “And who was it ordering that?”
“Why, the gentleman in 4-F. What’s his name? That Mr. Spaeth. Oh! Miss Jardin, is that the Spaeth—?”
“Hello,” said Walter from the doorway, and Val dropped the ’phone to find him grinning at her like some friendly mugwump.
“Walter, you fiend,” sobbed Valerie, and she ran into her bedroom and slammed the door.
“Was it you?” asked Rhys.
“It’s all here,” said Walter gruffly. “I mean everything we could cram into five rooms. Here’s the warehouse receipt for the rest, Mr. Jardin.”
“Warehouse receipt?” said Rhys in an odd voice.
“I’ve put the leftovers in storage for you.”
Rhys laughed a little blankly and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m afraid what’s happened today is getting to be a little too much for my primitive brain. And that Queen fellow — who was he?”
Walter dropped his hat and coat on the sofa and sat down to light a cigaret. “Funny thing. He’s just come to the Coast on a movie-writing contract — he’s a writer as well as a detective, you know — and an old school chum of mine in New York told him to look me up. So I asked him to act as my proxy. He did it well, don’t you think?”
“But, Walter, why?” asked Rhys gently.
Walter scowled at his smoke. “Well... I know how stiff your neck is. You wouldn’t have accepted money. So to avoid arguments...”
Jardin rose and went to the window and pulled up the Venetian blinds and threw the windows open; the drizzle had stopped and the sun was trying to shine again. Traffic noises roared into the room from the rear street below. He closed the windows at once and turned around, a little shrunken.
“It’s wonderfully decent of you, Walter. But I simply can’t accept it. Besides, Val has told me about your father cutting you out of his will.”
“I’ve some money of my own from my mother’s father — plenty more left.”
Rhys smiled sadly. “I’ve deposited the cash, and it’s too late today to draw it out again. But, Walter, the first thing—”
“Forget it.”
“Walter, you make it awfully difficult.”
They eyed each other in silence, at an impasse. Then Val sobbed from the bedroom: “The least you could do, you swine, is come in here and console me!”
Walter rose with a foolish grin.
“I think,” murmured Rhys, “I’ll go out for some air.” He picked up his hat and left as Walter went into the bedroom.
A little later the telephone rang and Val ran into the living-room, fussing with her hair, to answer it. All trace of tears had vanished. Walter followed, looking even more foolish, if that was possible, than before.
“Yes,” said Val. “Just a moment. It’s for you, Walter. The telephone operator wants to know if you’re up here.”
Walter said: “Hullo,” still looking foolish, then he said nothing at all as he listened to a voice, the foolish look slowly turning grim. Finally he muttered: “I’ll be right over,” and hung up.
“What’s wrong?”
Walter reached for his hat and coat. “My father.”
Valerie went cold. “Don’t go, Walter.”
“I’ve got to settle this thing once and for all.”
She flew to him, clinging. “Please, Walter!”
Walter said gently: “Wait for me. I’ll be back in half an hour and we’ll drive out Wilshire to the beach for dinner.” And he pushed her away and went out.
Val stood still for a long minute. The old half-quenched fears began to burn brightly again. She picked up the coat left on the sofa and took it into the foyer, hardly aware of what she was doing.
But as she was hanging the coat in the foyer closet awareness returned. She held the coat up and looked at it more closely. It was Walters! He had taken Rhys’s by mistake — they were both tan camel’s-hair of the same belted style, of a size.