Joe didn’t wait for more. He almost knocked the chair over as he bounced to his feet. His face was flushed; his eyes steely. He stood over the arrogant figure on the bed. He said in a voice that rasped, “You’re darned well right they don’t i concern me. What do you think I am? A whining busybody to pick your private skeletons clean and throw the morsels over back fences? Take your darned job and your whimpering brat and to hell with both of them! The sooner they got there the better!”
He turned without waiting for an answer and stormed toward the door. Raleigh’s voice stopped him as his hand touched the knob.
“That attitude won’t get you anywhere, South. Come back and cool off.”
Joe looked at Raleigh suspiciously. A half-smile lifted the corners of the sick man’s mouth. That did it. Joe relaxed, but his anger was still bubbling. He stood over the bed and said between tight lips, “Okay, it’s your move.”
Raleigh’s smile was all the way now. “Quite a temper you have there.”
“Not temper,” Joe corrected. “Pride. You’re no different from all the other guys that shuffle gold and clip coupons. You have no control over your families and when one of them gets in trouble your only concern is how to keep your gilt-edge names, out of the headlines. I repeat. Don’t hand me any of that stuff about prying. I don’t give a hang about your private affairs except that the more facts I have the better I can do my job.”
“Be that as it may. South,” Raleigh snapped, “I can usually take care of my own.”
Joe had planted himself gingerly in the white chair again. He grunted, “It don’t look much like it in this case.”
Raleigh was still smiling. He said, “Right. I can guess now why your license was suspended. You ought to try to control that temper.”
Joe said, “So you know that, do you? Van Pelt didn’t miss a trick when you talked to him. Skip it, and let’s get this over with.”
“My idea exactly, South,” he frowned. “You can understand all this is extremely distasteful to me.”
It was a concession to apology. Joe said, “Van Pelt mentioned your nephew’s allowance as part of the root of the trouble. Why is it so small against the amount of the inheritance?”
Raleigh leaned forward. “All right, South. You can have it for what it’s worth. My brother, the children’s father, left a fortune in trust for them. They were young—motherless—and he made me their guardian as well as one of the trustees.” He paused and looked at Joe as if uncertain how much he should tell the detective. After a moment he went on. “The will is a complicated one, the kind a man of my brother’s temperament would be likely to make. Richard’s income is only two thousand a year until his twenty-sixth birthday—two months from today. If he marries before that he inherits immediately.”
“Yeah. Van Pelt told me all that. What was the idea tying the girl’s dough in knots?”
Raleigh stiffened. “That has nothing to do with your job, South. We’ll stick to the pertinent facts.”
“Okay. Only it’s still screwy. She gets the same allowance until she marries. Then her only reward is a substantial increase, and she still has to wait five years for her share of the estate. If she doesn’t marry she has to wait till she’s thirty for the ‘substantial’ increase.” He shrugged. “But I haven’t ever been a wealthy parent—thank God—so I don’t need any pointers. Skip it.”
Raleigh’s smile was sardonic. “I haven’t either, South, so we’ll both skip it. It isn’t as bad as you think,” he added. “After all, Naomi is nearly twenty-five, and the will protects her in case anything happens to me or to Richard.”
“I see,” Joe mused. “Van Pelt tells me that Richard has been up to these tricks for over a year now. It isn’t hard to guess that he got impatient and decided to grab himself some dough the easy way.” Something about the set look in Raleigh’s eyes prompted him to add, “He hasn’t had advances against his inheritance, has he?”
Raleigh glared, “Look here, South. Need you be so darned inquisitive?”
Joe flushed and started to rise. Raleigh waved him back. “All right, all right,” he said testily. “We’ll never get anywhere if you don’t control that temper.”
“And we’ll never get anywhere if you don’t try to remember that I need information if I’m to work intelligently,” Joe retorted.
Raleigh said with evident distaste, “Naomi thinks he’s had well over fifty thousand dollars from Van Pelt during the last two years. I learned this only recently. I pay his debts, within reason, of course, but I’ve refused to allow him more than the amount provided by the trust.” He closed his lips with a snap.
Joe said, “That’s better. It brings us to the question as to whether he’s messing around with gangsters for profit or just for excitement. In other words, if he had his legacy now, would he drop them?”
“What do you mean?”
“If what Van Pelt says is true I’m afraid the gentlemen Richard is tangled with won’t be so easy to brush off.”
Raleigh looked worried. He said, “Um-m. Yes. I see what you mean. But”—the coldness crept back into his voice—“it’s your job now. Take it or leave it. I usually pay for what I get and I expect results.”
In spite of the arrogance Raleigh’s voice was tired. For a few minutes Joe had actively disliked him until he remembered that he wasn’t a well man. Illness had wiped some of the steel from the handsome features and Joe suddenly felt sorry for him. He said, “And I take it I’m to find the root of the trouble and nip it or see that Richard doesn’t get clipped?”
“That’s it exactly, South.” Raleigh relaxed against the pillows. For a moment he actually looked embarrassed. “And there’s another thing. Er . . . ah . . . I’d rather Richard wouldn’t know that I’ve . . . ah . . . hired a bodyguard for him. I’m sure you will get better results that way.”
Joe hid a smile. The Raleigh pride must be protected. He said with a straight face, “Will he think I’m a Russian prince or just a long-lost cousin?”
The smile that crossed Raleigh’s mouth this time was attractive. He said, “This must sound like a penny thriller to you, South. No, I merely told him that I was expecting an old friend from Montana You needn’t bother about the town. Dick has never been west of Philadelphia.”
Joe said, “Okay,” and waited. This ought to be good.
“You’ll have to stay at the house, of course,” Raleigh reached for the dressing gown and took out a bunch of keys. “There’s the key to the place on 78th Street. You should find Dick there sooner or later. Naomi is staying at a friend’s apartment in Gramercy Park.”
Joe took the key and scribbled the house number on a scrap of paper. He said, “Okay. Anyone else I’ll have to cope with out there?”
“Only the maid. The other servants are on holiday until I get out of here.”
Joe said, “I’ll keep you posted.” Raleigh didn’t answer. At the door Joe looked back. The patient’s eyes were already closed.
The subway back to the hotel was crowded. Those suits in Raleigh’s closet and the nurse. Did the nurse come with the room or the room with the nurse? And who did you have to be to get a nurse like that? A sign on a platform said Times Square.
The Hotel Brant loomed through the weather like a gray ghost Carton and Kierney were no longer there. The suitcase hadn’t been completely unpacked and it took only a few minutes to finish the job. He added a respectable camel hair topcoat, some clean shirts socks and the half empty pint of rye Kierney had deserted. He didn’t remove the neat .82 under the pile of shirts at the