From the taxi window, on his way downtown, he watched the snow-heavy Christmas trees pass by. Somewhere, at Corey’s apartment or at the Ross Steel Products Company, people would be starting to wonder about Corey. A maid, perhaps, had found his bed unslept in and was speculating idly as to why Mr Lathrop hadn’t told her he was spending the night out. Soon a secretary at the office would be thinking: ‘Mr Lathrop’s late this morning.’ An attendant at the garage might be wondering whether he’d remembered to drain the radiator of that station wagon he had blocked up for the winter a while ago.
Since yesterday the whole face of the city had changed. It wasn’t just a town any more. Both for himself and for Ellie wherever she was — it was becoming a trap.
Outside the Rosses’ apartment house in Gramercy Park, snow clung to the iron railing which surrounded the gardens and sat in white puffs on the winter bushes. Mark entered the old-fashioned foyer and moved to the cramped self-service elevator. The atmosphere of the house depressed him. To him money was something you took intelligent advantage of once you’d got it. Why did the immensely rich Rosses choose to play at the simple life? Just because Mrs Ross had been a Van-Something that didn’t mean they had to live in the Mayflower.
The elevator stopped at the third floor. The Rosses owned the whole building. Mrs Ross’s father had built it. But they kept only one floor for themselves. A dowdy ‘family’ maid opened the door. She looked uneasy.
‘Oh! Mr Liddon. One moment, please.’
She made as if to close the door, but he pushed past her into the foyer.
‘Where are they?’
‘In the library, but . .’
He ignored her twitterings and strode through the foyer. The maid scurried ahead of him, and, opening a door, announced breathlessly:
‘Mr Liddon.’
Mark walked past her into a room of sad brown leather and musty blue. Everything remained the way it had been left by Mrs Ross’s father. A bust of Dante stared from its niche above the bookshelves. A portrait of Mrs Ross’s father, painted by Sargent, stared with equal stoniness from above the marble mantelpiece, beneath which a meagre fire was burning.
Mrs Ross sat by the fire, with a coffee-cup in her hand and a low table set with a breakfast tray at her side. She was a large woman with deliberately untidy grey hair and a handsome profile. Mr Ross, thin and dignified as an elder statesman, stood by the window. It had started to snow again. White flakes twirled and sank behind him. They both looked at Mark unsmilingly.
She said: ‘Why, Mr Liddon, we thought you were in Brazil or somewhere.’
She used his name as if it were slightly foreign and difficult for her quiet precise voice.
‘I got back earlier than I expected,’ Mark said. ‘Ellie’s not home. I’ve come to find out if you know where she is.’
Mrs Ross sipped her coffee. ‘She’s not here, I’m afraid.’
‘No,’ said Mr Ross, ‘she’s not here.’
A small clock chimed softly from the mantel. There was a Christmas tree in the corner, carefully trimmed with tinsel snow and shining balls, blue, yellow and green. Mark wondered irrelevantly what two old people wanted with a Christmas tree. Probably it was because there’d always been one. Another of Mrs Ross’s memorials of her dead father.
He said: ‘Know where she is ?’
Neither of them spoke. They were not being rude or hostile; they were too polite for that. They were just passively uncooperative.
Finally Mr. Ross said: ‘I’m afraid Ellie doesn’t keep us informed of her comings and goings.’
‘But you’ve seen her recently ?’
Mr and Mrs Ross exchanged a swift look which seemed to serve them as an adequate means of communication. The snow falling past the window gave the weird illusion that Mr Ross was moving very slowly upward.
He said: ‘As a matter of fact Ellie came to visit us last week.’
‘And she didn’t say anything about going away for Christmas?’
‘I don’t believe so,’ said Mr Ross. Mrs Ross’s untidy head was bent over her coffee. ‘Yes,’ continued Mr Ross. ‘Ellie came to visit us because she wanted to borrow — money.’ He pronounced the word as if it were almost indelicate.
‘Borrow money?’ Mark said.
‘It appears she had been gambling. She owed a large sum. She was not able to meet it.’
‘It’s happened again and again,’ put in Mrs Ross suddenly, and the soft bitterness in her voice managed to reveal a whole life of maternal disillusionment.
So Ellie had been gambling. She’d got a little high at Victor’s, had one of her ‘majestic hunches’ and lost her shirt. Now the whole picture was changed again — and for the worse.
He asked: ‘And you let her have the money?’
‘No,’ broke in Mrs Ross again. ‘No, we did not.’
Mr Ross smiled his sad, distinguished smile. ‘Perhaps this is as suitable a time as any to explain certain things to you. My wife and I have tried to be good parents to Ellie. We have given her every advantage and attempted to set her a good example. But for several years she has chosen to lead a frivolous and worthless life with what we consider idle and vicious associates. It has not been easy for us to see our only daughter systematically destroying herself, but you can hardly expect us to encourage that process.’
He paused. ‘We always hoped that these — these dissipations were a passing phase. We were pathetically prepared to believe that she might marry Corey Lathrop and become a responsible citizen again. But instead of marrying Corey —’
He looked down at his carefully manicured hands. ‘We have nothing against you as a man. How can we? We know nothing about you and were given no chance to. But we have everything against you as a factor in Ellie’s life. In the past we have helped her out of many scrapes and received precious little gratitude for it. After this — er — irresponsible marriage was thrust upon us we put down a foot which should have been put down much earlier. We told Ellie that in future we would give her no financial aid whatsoever. She has her own income from her grandmother. It should be more than sufficient to support in luxury both herself and any impecunious husband to whom she chose to attach herself.’
Mark’s anger rose to the obvious goad, but he was even more shocked than angry. His own parents would have disapproved of gambling too. But if Ellie had been their daughter they would have stood by her to the last ditch and the last debt. It was inconceivable to think of them adopting this glacial washing of hands attitude.
Suddenly he imagined Ellie as a little girl growing up in this bleak, loveless mausoleum. For the first time he saw pathos in her as well as brilliance. It added a new tenderness to his feeling for her. Poor kid, with a couple of icebergs for parents, no wonder she had run to ‘idle and vicious associates’ for warmth and affection. This was enough to have soured anyone on respectability for life.
The clock on the mantel chimed softly again. It was an idiot clock that had lost contact with time. A slight draught from somewhere made one of the golden balls on the Christmas tree nod.
‘She tried to borrow from Corey too.’ The words burst out of Mrs Ross as if there was some masochistic streak in her that enjoyed reopening wounds. ‘Imagine trying to borrow from Corey after jilting him the way she did. Corey asked Mr Ross what we wanted him to do.’
‘We told him,’ said Mr Ross, that he was on no account to lend her anything.’
‘Of course,’ said Mrs Ross She added suddenly: ‘Perhaps there aren’t even any debts. She lies. She always has ever since she was a little girl. You can’t tell what’s true and what’s false. Perhaps there aren’t any debts at all.’
Mark wanted to slap her face.
He said: ‘Then you can’t help me in any way?’
‘In no way whatsoever,’ said Mr Ross.
Mark started for the door. Behind him Mrs Ross’s voice, fine and brittle as porcelain, rose again:
‘John, dear, you’d better drink your coffee. It’s getting cold.’ Mark reached the door. Down in Gramercy Park a child shouted.
‘There, dear,’ said Mrs Ross behind him. ‘Drink it. You know how you hate your coffee cold.’
Out in Gramercy Park again, Mark hurried past the sedate, snow-covered gardens. The Lorton Club would be closed at this hour, but Ellie would certainly have Victor’s number in her telephone book at home. And he knew he had to see Victor at once.
Mark had seen enough racketeers around the athletic gymnasiums to know how the underworld mind operated. If Ellie owed Victor money and couldn’t pay, the fact that she was just a crazy kid and a personal friend wouldn’t help her at all. Victor would stop at nothing to see that the debt was settled.
What if he’d put the screws on Ellie and she had run away? Although the Rosses had forbidden Corey to help her, they were no match for Ellie in persuasion. What if she’d left Corey to handle Victor and Corey had bungled it badly enough to get himself shot? That could have happened. And, if it had, it would mean a new danger for Ellie — a danger far more immediate than any from the police. It would mean that Victor was on her trail — out after her blood too.
A gnawing fear for Ellie took possession of him. His instinct was to storm around to Victor and demand a showdown. But he knew that would be stupid. Victor was far too dangerous for crude tactics. He would have to walk very warily indeed.
There were three numbers listed for Victor in the black book. One of them said Victor D’Iorio. Mark hadn’t known his last name.
The first number didn’t answer. He dialed the second. Sa9-6412. A girl’s voice sounded in a languid: ‘Yeah?’
‘Is Victor D’Iorio there?’
‘Who wants him?’
‘Mark Liddon. I’d like to come around and see him.’
‘Hold it.’ There was a pause and the voice came back. Is that the Liddon married to Ellie Ross?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Business or personal?’
‘Both.’
‘When’d you want to come?’
‘Right away.’
‘I guess that’s okay.’
‘What’s the address?’
*
The house was a massive Victorian edifice with a haughty iron-grilled front door. Mark climbed the snowy steps and pressed a buzzer. The door was opened by a big man with a round, solid face and hairy wrists. He looked like a night-club bouncer, but he was dressed as a butler.
‘Mr Liddon?’
‘Yes.’
‘Step in. He’s in bed. He’ll see you upstairs.’
The butler closed the door, took Mark’s hat and coat and led him into a living-room that looked like a Hollywood set for an Edith Wharton novel. Only the most chic decorators, obviously, were good enough for Victor. Between two richly draped windows stood a large Christmas tree trimmed with tinsel and colored balls. The Rosses and Victor at least shared the same taste in Christmas decorations. The frou-frou of the room was climaxed by a marble staircase, which rose upward in a swan-necked curve.
The butler said: ‘Upstairs.’
As Mark started through the room, a girl came down the stairs. She was a sleekly built red-head, wearing a cream-colored quilted housecoat and smoking a cigarette from a long ivory holder.
She and Mark met half-way up the stairs. She paused, watching him from heavy-lidded, uninterested eyes.
‘You Liddon?’
‘Yes.’
‘Victor’s in bed.’
‘So I’ve been told.’
She stuck the cigarette holder between her teeth. Lazily she leaned towards him and, with orchid-nailed fingers, frisked him for a gun.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Go on up. First door to the left down the passage.’
As he continued up the stair, she stood, hand on hip, watching him. Below in the hall the butler stood watching him too.
He walked down the corridor, found a door and knocked. A voice called.
‘Come.’
He opened the door and stepped into the bedroom. The walls were covered with crimson satin. A woman’s silver evening dress was slung over a crimson wing chair. In an immense four-poster bed with a crimson canopy Victor D’Iorio was lounging, his head propped against a pile of pillows, a breakfast tray on a table at his side.
He was wearing white silk Russian pajamas. The jacket was unbuttoned, revealing an athletic expanse of hairless olive-skinned chest and stomach. His tar-black hair was ruffled, and his handsome face, dark almost as a Hindu’s, was veiled with an expression of near-sleep. The Hollywood atmosphere of downstairs was even more marked here — and screwier. It was as if two movies had been mixed up and Tarzan had strayed into a Lana Turner boudoir set.
Victor looked up at Mark from under lashes thick as twigs. If Mark hadn’t known he was one of the shrewdest and most plausible operators in New York he might have almost been fooled by the boyish charm. But only almost — for there was an intelligence in the drowsy eyes which was not completely camouflaged. Victor suppressed a yawn, smiled friendlily and patted the crimson spread.
‘Sit down, kid. Park it.’
Mark sat down.
‘Got a cigarette? For all the service I’m dealt in this dump I might have stayed put in the Y.M.C.A. Only one goddam cigarette in the whole house and that red-headed bitch just grabbed it off of me.’
Mark gave him a cigarette. Victor pushed himself up on one big elbow and, sticking the cigarette in his mouth, leaned it towards Mark’s lighted match.
‘Thanks, kid.’
Mark wondered why Victor had been so willing to admit him. It wasn’t the way of big racketeers to receive casual acquaintances. Perhaps he had his own reasons for wanting to see him. If, for example, he had shot Corey in Ellie’s apartment, Ellie’s unexpectedly returned husband would be very interesting indeed.
Victor took a deep drag on the cigarette. ‘Okay. What’s on your mind? Thinking of taking up boxing again? Just say the word and I can get you a good set-up.’
Mark said: ‘I’ve come about Ellie.’
Victor grinned. ‘About Ellie, eh? A swell kid, Ellie. Crazy as a hoot-owl. But a swell kid. What can I do for you?’
‘I’ve been away. I came back earlier than I expected. Ellie’s not home. I thought you might know where she is.’
‘Me?’ Victor watched him. ‘Why should I know where she is?’
‘You’re a friend of hers.’
Victor lolled over on his back, his knees pushing the crimson spread up into a tent-like triangle. The black eyes slid Mark a sidewise look. He seemed amused.