Stranger Than Truth Read online

  “No, Mr. Barclay.”

  “What are you trying to get at?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  Barclay knew the power of silence. In the outside offices typewriters were clicking, people talking on telephones, office boys slamming doors, but Barclay’s quarters were soundproof. There was only the muted hum of traffic, twenty-five stories below.

  “Look, Mr. Barclay,” I began nervously, “I heard the lady in plaid had been found and I naturally thought the murder’d been solved.” I spoke in the clear monotonous voice of a schoolboy reciting the multiplication tables. “As I told you in my memo, I thought we could use the cuts instead of junking them. Save the organization some money.”

  It was a neat excuse. Showed that I had the interests of the firm at heart, rather than a single magazine. It should have convinced Barclay of my good will.

  He shook his head. Strong, tanned hands clenched and unclenched. He seemed older. There was not so much arrogance in his carriage.

  “Tell me, Mr. Barclay, why do you want to suppress that story?”

  He crossed the office. The thick carpet muffled his footsteps. He came close to me and we stood side by side, Barclay six foot three and Ansell, a pint-sized runt. But Barclay could not answer my question.

  I went on bravely. “What have I got to be afraid of? I don’t eat shrimps. I can’t take seafood. I could get the waitress to say that I ate lamb chops that night.”

  “You’re a cocky little guy, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t like being pushed around. Why the hell are you afraid to run the Wilson story?”

  Barclay walked back to his desk, head high. “All right, I’m going to lay my cards on the table. After you know, you may change your tune. Sit down.”

  I sat down.

  The door opened. Munn rushed in, the carbon copy of my memo in his hand. “Did you see this?” he said.

  “I know all about it, Ed. John and I are talking it over now.” Barclay had recovered his poise. Edward Everett Munn was the dirt under his feet.

  Munn looked at me as if he could not believe that I was there, sitting in a comfortable chair, peacefully talking to the boss about that infamous memo.

  “I shan’t need you, Ed.”

  “I’d better stay.” Munn stood firm.

  “I told you I didn’t need you,” Barclay snapped. “Get the hell out.”

  There was neither devotion nor obedience in the look Munn gave Barclay. I expected a retort, even a quarrel. But Barclay had caught the look of rebellion in Munn’s face, and had turned to stone. The silent trick was evidently one of his strongest weapons. Munn shrugged one shoulder and went away.

  “What’s this all about, Mr. Barclay?”

  “Why are you so keen on this Wilson story, John?”

  “I’m a writer, Mr. Barclay. I wrote a story. You said it was a good story and then you refused to publish it. That’s all that concerns me.”

  Barclay rolled my memo into a cone and swept its point back and forth across his desk blotter. It was the first time I had seen him make a nervous or unnecessary movement. “Do you know that Eleanor was a friend of Wilson’s?”

  There was a long silence. He looked at the paper cone, at the desk blotter, at his hands, while he waited. I showed no surprise. I wasn’t shocked because I had had this information already—from Wilson himself. Back on St. Valentine’s Day he had inscribed a volume of poetry to a genteel lady.

  “Was she?” I had decided to play dumb, to wait and learn.

  “Do you know she had a date with him the night he was killed?”

  That hit me harder. It took effort for me to answer in the same dry monotone. “Did she?”

  A light burned green in the box on Barclay’s desk. He spoke into a grilled panel. “I’m busy now. I’m not taking any calls.” The room was getting dark. Twilight had entered like fog. The big man sat quietly at his desk, shoulders bowed, arms extended, hands limp beside the bronze nudes that held a cauldron of ink.

  In a voice so cold and distant that I barely recognized it as my own, I said, “She had a date with Wilson the night he was killed, you say. What happened? Do you know the facts, Mr. Barclay?”

  He crushed the pink memo and tossed it into the waste basket. “You know how I feel about secrets.” His voice was warmer. Barclay had decided to take me into his confidence. “I don’t believe in secrets. Buried truths are festering sores. Dig them out, cleanse the wounds, tell the truth no matter how painful. That’s my creed and I try to live by it. But when someone else is involved,” he drew in his breath, “and that person has never confided in you, it plays the very devil with your conscience.”

  “Wait a minute. If she hadn’t confided them, how did you know Eleanor’s secrets, Mr. Barclay?”

  “Eleanor had a date with Wilson; they were to have dined together the night of his death. I learned about it by mistake. The switchboard girl thought his message was meant for me instead of Eleanor. Mr. Barclay, not Miss Barclay, you understand. As soon as I learned about it I sent for Eleanor and demanded an explanation.”

  “Why?”

  “Eleanor had never told me she knew Wilson.”

  “Should she have?”

  He swallowed twice, nodded and said, “A father is a father.”

  “So I’ve been told. Do you always demand an explanation when you discover that she’s dining with a man? Or was there something special about Wilson?” My voice was low, my manner objective. I might have been asking his opinion of an unimportant editorial detail.

  “If you knew the facts you wouldn’t be quite so flippant, young man. Eleanor had a gun on her when she came into my office. She was hysterical…” His voice trailed off, and he looked beyond me into the window which the room’s lights and the sky’s darkness had turned into a mirror. It gave back a hard, glazed portrait of Noble Barclay.

  “A gun. Why?”

  “She’d been in the Studio, directing pictures for Truth and Love. When she came up here, the gun was in her hand.”

  “What the hell’s that got to do with Wilson?” I shouted. Barclay’s facts had not got under my skin. They were too tenuous and irrelevant. What irritated me was his assumption that I ought to be frightened off by scattered hints. “Are you trying to scare me off by hinting that Eleanor shot him with one of the Studio guns?”

  Barclay winced. “You love her, John. You and I, we both love that kid. I was glad when I saw that she was falling for you. A clean, intelligent and ambitious young man. Why do you suppose I’ve been trying to build you up? You’ve got a great future, you know.”

  “Shrimps, Mr. Barclay. I do not eat shrimps.”

  “Eleanor needs you. You can help her, take care of her…”

  I saw then that Barclay wasn’t merely playing a game. Veins bulged on his forehead. The sweat stood out in giant dewdrops. His eyes clouded.

  “Look, Mr. Barclay, let’s get at the facts. You found out that Eleanor had a date with Wilson, and you sent for her to come up here. She had a gun in her hand, one of the property guns from the Studio. It wasn’t loaded; those guns never are. Granted that she could have got shells if she had wanted them, why should she? What possible reason could she have had for wanting to kill Wilson?”

  “She was very angry when I sent for her. Irrationally angry.”

  “Why irrationally? She’s a grown woman and even though a father is a father, must she be interrogated whenever she dines with a man? What was there about Wilson? You must have known something, Mr. Barclay, to have sent for her.”

  “Did she ever mention Wilson to you, John?”

  I had begun to sweat, too.

  “That’s what I thought,” Barclay said. “She’s kept it from you, too. It’s that secretive strain in them. Her mother was the same way. You could never tell what she was thinking.” He passed his hand over his eyes as if he had caught a glimpse of some hideous shape lurking in the shadows. “Eleanor’s mother killed herself, you know.”

  I did know. The Int
roduction to My Life Is Truth is Barclay’s autobiography.

  “Her family,” he went on huskily, “overbred aristocrats. Sensitive. Secretive. She’s been growing more and more like them. John, I’ve been worried.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead. His voice, more than his words, confessed hidden fear. I thought of the creed by which he lived. Buried truths are festering sores…

  “Are you trying to tell me, Mr. Barclay, that you believe Eleanor killed Wilson?”

  Scorn twisted his mouth. His dark eyes hardened. Noble Barclay shuddered with contempt at John Miles Ansell, an insensitive dolt who asked stupid questions. Everything that Barclay had tried subtly to convey I had cried aloud. Why, unless sternest truth demanded, should a father accuse his daughter of murder?

  Barclay walked off. At the end of the room, he squared his shoulders, turned and came back to me. The mood had lightened. He was no longer contemptuous, but sympathetic, my ally in sorrow. His hand fell upon my shoulder and his eyes sought understanding.

  “She needs love, John.” His voice tightened. “If I’d been able to help her mother, she’d have been all right, too. We’ve got to take care of that girl, you and I…”

  I shrugged away from the heavy hand. “Your facts haven’t convinced me. They’re irrelevant. They don’t prove anything. I care too much for her to believe she’d be capable of anything like that.” It was a noble speech, but unconvincing. I did not even succeed in fooling myself.

  “Fine!” Barclay boomed. “Splendid, my lad. Good for you. That’s what she needs, love, devotion, unswerving loyalty.”

  “I’d have to have proof,” I blustered, “damn good proof before I’d believe anything.”

  “Then you’ll never do anything to harm her.” Barclay offered his most magnanimous smile. “You’ll do everything in your power to protect her. I can trust you to look out for my little girl.”

  He swung out his hand. I took it. The clasp was strong, hard and dry. To Barclay that handclasp meant he had won me, and we were united now in our determination to protect Eleanor. To me it was phony, like the oaths and handclasps and drawn blood of schoolboy vows. I jerked my hand away. Barclay let his drop and stood quiet for a moment. There was a pinched look about him. He seemed afraid to turn around. I listened, too. There was no sound in the office except his heavy breathing.

  It had grown very dark. The room smelled of sweat.

  There was a sheet of yellow paper stuck into my typewriter. On it Eleanor had typed:

  Johnnie darling:

  I can’t go to dinner with you in an old hat. Loving you as I do, it is imperative that I have a new one. I shan’t be back at the office, so stop by for me around seven. I do love you.

  E.

  A silly note, but I liked it. The switch from melodrama to millinery lightened my mood. How could I suspect a girl who had to buy a new hat because she loved me? Notice that word, suspect. I tried again and again to reassure myself by arguing that Barclay had dragged Eleanor’s name into the case merely to throw me off the scent, but I could not achieve one hundred per cent conviction. I did not believe Eleanor had killed Wilson but I was sure she knew something about the murder.

  Why, for instance, had she never told me of her friendship with Wilson? Why had she kept it from her father until the switchboard gave Mr. Barclay’s secretary the message intended for Miss Barclay? Was it merely coincidence that this happened on the day of Wilson’s death, or had there been some connection? Why had Barclay summoned his daughter from the Studio when he heard that she was dining with Warren G. Wilson?

  It was half past seven when I arrived at Eleanor’s. I was late deliberately. My idea was to get her out of the apartment, into some public place where we would both have to be careful of our words and our voices. I had no definite plan, but I knew myself well enough to distrust any vows of discretion.

  She greeted me sweetly. We kissed.

  “What’s the matter?” she said. “Why are you like that?”

  “Like what?”

  Without answering she went off to fetch her wraps. I looked at the Blake again, studied Wilson’s inscription. When I heard her coming, I put the volume back on the shelf. She was wearing a fur coat that smelled faintly of camphor. Her hair hung loose. It was tied on the side with a brown bow.

  “Where’s the new hat?”

  “I didn’t get one.”

  “Why not?”

  “I couldn’t find one I liked.”

  “In all that time? You were gone two hours.”

  “I don’t like the hats this season. They look like deformities.”

  On Fifth Avenue we turned. Eleanor went on talking about hats. She was trying to be funny. The season’s hats were all designed by men who hated women, she said, or by hideous women who wanted to destroy other women’s looks.

  “You’ve certainly given a lot of thought to the psychology of modern millinery,” I said. “Why don’t you do a piece for Truth and Love about it?”

  “I’m sorry if I bore you.”

  “Where were you this afternoon?”

  “I went to buy a hat.”

  “Why didn’t you buy one?”

  We had started across Fifth Avenue. A bus came along. I jerked Eleanor toward the curb.

  “What’s the matter, Johnnie? Why are you acting like that?”

  “If I’m acting any differently than I usually act I’m not aware of it. Why are you so sensitive?”

  I had hold of her arm. She pulled it away. “You kissed me as if I had halitosis. Then you got mad because I talked about hats. In fact you accused me of lying because I couldn’t find a hat I liked. Then you practically yanked my arm out of its socket.”

  “I’m sorry. I was trying to save your life.”

  “Maybe you’re sorry about last night. Perhaps you regret it now, saying you love me and,” she hesitated, shy of words, “making plans.”

  I did not try to comfort her. We walked at opposite edges of the sidewalk. I led her past five restaurants to the door of Jean Pierre’s.

  “How about this place?”

  “No.” Before I had a chance to argue, she had turned around and was walking downtown again.

  “Want to go to the Brevoort?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Why don’t you like Jean Pierre’s? The food is wonderful.”

  “I don’t want to eat there.”

  “Does it remind you of Wilson?”

  The attack was not planned. Impatience had shoved me off balance. I was too restless to fence around any longer, too undisciplined to follow a pattern.

  Eleanor said, “Is that why you took me there?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you knew him?”

  We were again at a crossing. Eleanor darted into the street so that I’d have no chance to take her arm. At the other side she waited. Falling into step beside me, she remarked coolly, “I’ve known lots of people I’ve never told you about. Have I ever told you how Lindbergh kissed me? I’ll show you the photographs if you’re interested.”

  “You knew I was writing the Wilson story.”

  “No, I didn’t. Not until you were ill at the hospital. Alfie Witzel was doing a Truth and Love yarn about Tommy Manville and I had to finish it, because he was rushed over to Truth and Crime to finish your Unsolved Mystery.” She spoke as if there had been no more to it than a switch in office routine.

  “Just the same I should think you’d have told me about him.”

  “Why?”

  “It isn’t everyone who’s been intimate with a murder victim.”

  “I was never intimate with Mr. Wilson.”

  “I don’t mean intimate. I mean you knew him and he was murdered. It seems strange you never mentioned him. When I was freelancing I knew a woman who came from the same part of Chicago as Loeb and Leopold and she made a career for herself of it.”

  “I didn’t know him so awfully well.” She glanced down Fifth Avenue toward the hotel where Wilson had lived and died, and then looked away as i
f it had been no more important to her than Grant’s Tomb. Her defiance had melted into a strange sick indifference.

  “Were you in love with him?”

  “Don’t be a fool, Johnnie. He was forty-eight. Let’s not go to dinner right away. Are you hungry?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I couldn’t look at food. Let’s sit in Washington Square.”

  The night was cold. We must have looked like a pair of idiots to the cop who watched over his shoulder as we chose a bench. Idiots, or lovers who had no place for privacy. We did not sit like lovers. There were six or seven inches between us.

  “How long did you know him?”

  “Mr. Wilson?” From where we sat we had only to raise our eyes and we could see the terrace of Wilson’s apartment. “I met him last year. In September. September thirtieth.”

  “And you say you didn’t know him very well.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You seem to be pretty accurate about the day you met him. It must have been sort of important to you if you remember it that well.”

  She laughed. “I remember the day because it happened to be important to me. It was the day I broke my engagement.”

  That knocked the breath out of me. “There seems to be a lot of things you’ve never told me.”

  “I wanted to forget about it.”

  “Who was the man?”

  She jerked her dress down over her knees and pulled her fur coat over the hem of her dress. A man and woman passed, pushing against the west wind. It was a raw night and we were a couple of fools to be fighting on a bench in Washington Square.

  “Who was he?”

  Eleanor laughed again, mirthlessly, and the woman looked back at us. After a while she said, “I hated him.”

  “And you were engaged to him?”

  She nodded.

  “Why?”

  “I oughtn’t to get emotional, ought I, now that it’s all over?” Her voice sounded like one of the smaller brass instruments. “It was just after my father married Gloria. Not that I dislike Gloria…” she grimaced and went on quickly, “Gloria’s very nice. She adores my father. This man was older; he seemed kind and he was a good friend of my father’s, too…”