The room into which she guided him seemed at first like a great pool of shadows. Malone blinked again and the effect of the sunlight began to leave him.
The room was enormous and magnificent, yet curiously, at the same time, pleasant. The furniture was large enough not to be dwarfed by the two-story ceiling, but it looked comfortable. The fireplace at the far end of the room was undoubtedly a priceless museum piece, but a friendly little blaze glowed in it.
Malone paused for a moment just inside the room. He felt uneasy. It was the very pleasantness of the atmosphere that oppressed him. He had a curious feeling that the Fairfaxx house should be dark and gloomy, festooned with spider webs, with doors that creaked and windows that rattled after dark. Instead, it was cheerful and warm, and somehow the very cheerfulness was frightening.
Malone damned himself for being a superstitious Irishman, took two more steps into the room, and realized that it was full of people.
At the far end of the room, one of the most beautiful blond girls in the world sat in a wing-chair, her exquisitely shaped head resting back on its cushions. Her hair was the color of cornsilk in August, that pale and that shining. Her slender lovely legs wore stockings that matched her hair. The rest of her wore a close-fitting dress of some soft woolen stuff the color of old oak leaves, and a lot of fluffy dark brown fur was thrown over her shoulders.
She jumped up and walked across the floor to meet him. Malone winced. He’d seen electric sparks like those in her eyes before.
“You rat, Malone!” Helene Justus said. “I’m ashamed of you. The idea of taking nice old Mr. Rodney Fairfaxx off to jail when you knew perfectly well he was innocent!”
Chapter 4
“I have trouble enough on my hands,” Malone said indignantly, “without you showing up to complicate everything.”
He wouldn’t have admitted it for anything on earth, but secretly he was very glad to see her. Helene had caused him a lot of trouble in the past; she also had been a great deal of help to him.
He’d met her for the first time in rather similar circumstances. A corpse had been involved and a friend of Helene’s had been carted off to jail. For just a moment the present scene blurred a little before his eyes and he visioned Helene as he had first seen her—clad in ice-blue satin lounging pajamas, a fabulously beautiful fur coat and—galoshes. She’d had Jake Justus with her. In fact, that had been the day she and Jake Justus had met.
It suddenly occurred to him that Jake would be the ideal person to interview the red-faced man next door. If the interview turned out one way, Jake—ex-reporter, ex-press agent—would be able to collect a lot of helpful information. If it turned out the other way, Jake would undoubtedly shove the red-faced man’s teeth right down his throat. Whichever way it turned out was going to be okay by Malone.
As a matter of principle, however, he glared at Helene and added, “And I didn’t take Mr. Rodney Fairfaxx off to jail. The police did that. I’m only his lawyer.”
The two young Fairfaxxes, Elizabeth and Kenneth, had risen from the conference at the far end of the room and come to greet Malone. From their appearance and manner no one could have guessed that the head of the house had just been arrested for murder.
“Good to see you, Mr. Malone,” Kenneth Fairfaxx said.
Elizabeth Fairfaxx smiled at him and said, “I don’t believe you’ve met all these people.”
It was all very ordinary, very normal. But before Elizabeth could begin introducing him around, Kenneth laid a hand on his arm.
“Mr. Malone. This is—frightful,” the young man said. “Frankly—we can hardly realize it.” He poured bourbon into a glass, aimed the siphon inaccurately at it and said, “Oh damn!” Then, “Mr. Malone, tell me—surely they realize—nothing can be done to him—I mean—they must realize that he didn’t know what he was doing—”
Malone caught the glass just in time, handed it back to him and said, “My dear boy, you have no need to worry. Your uncle couldn’t be in better hands.” He spoke with all the assurance in the world, with what his friends and enemies usually referred to as his “cell-side manner.”
Yet he felt uneasy even as he spoke. It was the very pleasantness of the atmosphere, the even tones of the voices that worried him.
The two young people were much too calm, much too easy. He’d seen that kind of calmness and ease before. Usually, in witnesses just before they collapsed on the stand. Here were two charming youngsters who must have been devoted to old Mr. Rodney Fairfaxx, who had seen him arrested for murder and carted off to jail, and they were being calm and easy about it.
Perhaps, he told himself, that was what came of being brought up on the right side of Chicago Avenue. Malone himself had been raised south of Twelfth Street, back of the stockyards. He instinctively expected people to swear, cry, or get drunk and beat up a policeman when a beloved relative was dragged off to jail.
He had an uncomfortable suspicion that as soon as the house was empty of visitors Kenneth Fairfaxx was going to swear and Elizabeth Fairfaxx was going to cry. And a good thing for the both of them, too.
As for getting drunk and beating up a policeman, he’d attend to that himself. Preferably, the policeman involved would be von Flanagan.
“What would you say to tea?” Elizabeth Fairfaxx asked, “or a drink?”
“To the first,” Malone told her, “I’d say ‘Heaven forbid!’ To the second, ‘Heaven be praised!’”
She laughed easily and pleasantly and mixed him a drink that was considerably more bourbon than soda. “I hope this isn’t too strong.”
“Personally,” Malone said reassuringly, “I always put the soda in with an eye-dropper.”
She smiled again and said, “I’ll take you around.” Then she paused, her hand on his arm. “Mr. Malone, I hope you don’t think I—I mean, there’s no point in going to pieces just because someone—Uncle Rodney—” She paused once more, swallowed hard, and said, “It seems much more practical to be up and doing, and have all your wits about you.”
“Much more practical,” Malone said, resisting an impulse to pat her hand. If she’d been only a few years younger he’d have had to resist an impulse to take her out and buy her an ice-cream cone.
He liked Elizabeth Fairfaxx, liked everything about her; her long-legged, graceful walk, her loosely combed tawny hair, the scattering of freckles on her well-shaped nose, and the fact that she could carry off a situation like this one with such magnificent aplomb. On a witness stand, she’d be a sensation. He hoped she’d never be on one. Most of all, he hoped she hadn’t murdered three inoffensive and insignificant postmen.
It was definitely a relief to sit down beside Helene after his tour of the room.
She put down her drink and said accusingly, “You haven’t answered my question. Why did you let them take nice old Mr. Fairfaxx off to jail?”
“I had my reasons,” Malone whispered ominously. “Now answer one for me. What the hell are you doing here?”
Helene glared at him, a dangerous light in her blue eyes. “Where else do you think I’d be at a time like this? I’ve known the Fairfaxx family all my life.” She added indignantly, “Old Rodney Fairfaxx was my mother’s godfather. Elizabeth went to school with me. She was captain of the hockey team and president of the Junior class. I’ve still got a scar where she nicked me accidentally in a practice game.”
“That makes you practically cousins,” Malone said. “Yes, at least that. She’s a nice girl and I admire her. Do you think she murdered those three postmen?”
“Damn you, Malone!”
“I