Yet for some odd reason Whittaker’s ring, following the words of their last meeting, gave him pause. He knew Whittaker as a dangerous person, friend or enemy, often even more dangerous as the former. Their relationship had of late been strained. Belknap had all but come to the conclusion that any intercourse between them, kindly or unkindly, had been dropped. Then why this matter of life and death? Oh well, curiosity had killed more than cats. He reached for the receiver.
“Yes? Oh, Whittaker? Good to hear your voice.” (a little overdone that. Rang false) “Of course, old boy.” (Now why was he calling him ‘old boy’?) “I’d be delighted, more than delighted.” (Good God, I don’t even mean delighted) “Something thrilling for me to do? You’re going to put me wise? Oh, I see: give me an opportunity to get wise. Of course. Any old thing for a change.... No, I don’t exactly catch your meaning. You’re pleasantly mysterious as usual.” (Diabolically so, is what I want to say, and I will say it one of these days.) “A house full of criminals? Since when have you been on week-end terms with Sing Sing? They’ve never been in Sing Sing? You want me to help you put them there, is that it? You bet your sweet life. Anything to do with what you let fall to my ear last week? It has? When do you want me? Dinner tonight. Thanks most awfully. I’ll be there.”
He hung up; but failed to return to the Audubon which lay open on his knees, an original Folio, given him with relief and gratitude by Colonel Blake. Instead he relapsed into a brown study and considered a rather sinister possibility from several angles and in varied lights.
II
Belknap made the distance to Whittaker’s Long Island mansion at Blue Acres in something under an hour. His Dusenberg, long and low-slung, colored to please his own eye, and fitted with special gadgets for defence and utility, was also a demon for speed, and even in traffic had broken many records, largely its own to be sure. He had always driven himself, and he had often reflected that if he had not been a lawyer or a sleuth he would have been ticking off mileage at Daytona. Such was his love of the power and beauty of line of a splendid machine. And he admired as much as he admired any work of art his brown, thin, muscular hand on the wheel, one mahogany, the other coffee.
As he turned into the wide, sweeping drive of Thorngate, he slowed the car to a crawl, and savored for a moment the view of the Sound, the lemon and orange sunset beyond it, the peace of the trees and shrubs and flowers on either side. He listened with one ear to the swish of the tires in the traprock gravel roadbed, and with the other to the cicadas making the mad sound of a semi-anæsthetized brain among the oaks.
Black John, alert and loquacious, opened the door to him, and showed him immediately to a large, luxurious room on the second floor. Belknap stood at the long windows, looking down, and shedding, with the deafness characteristic of his general indifference, John’s flow of well-intentioned chatter as he unpacked and laid out Belknap’s week-end wardrobe. Belknap was so far removed from it as to be unaware of John’s withdrawal. Unaware also of Bertrand Whittaker’s entrance.
“You made the trip in short order, I imagine. How are you, Belknap?”
“Splendid, thanks. Yes, I came down fast enough. There is nothing to warrant a leisurely drive on Long Island—until after Shinnecock Hills perhaps. Before that the sooner it’s over the better. You know I am still forever being surprised that there can be such charming and secluded spots as this within a stone’s throw of these atrocious main highways. And yours is one of the best, Bertrand.”
“Isn’t it, Belknap!” Whittaker’s face lighted with pleased vanity. But it died on the instant. “I shall hate to leave it. More than I shall hate to leave anything else, I assure you.”