Max Brand

Six Golden Angels

Warsaw 2019

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER I

THE sallowness of Martin, the valet, existed not only in the stained whites of his eyes but even in his yellow fingers, which were spare in flesh and grew larger toward the flat tips. The strength which his clothes concealed appeared in his naked hand, particularly as he gripped the big, streamlined automatic.

With a sort of flat-handed pass he made the heavy gun disappear in his clothes, produced it again through his back, apparently–and all the while watched carefully the face of Gains, the butler, who attempted to preserve a wooden indifference; but his eyes were alive in spite of himself and glinted with every flash of the weapon.

“When you’re juggling,” said Gains, “you ought to keep to things that don’t have a mind of their own.”

“I won’t let this rod speak out of turn,” answered Martin.

“Why you packing it, anyway?” asked Gains, breaking down into open curiosity at last.

Martin allowed the automatic to remain in hiding beneath his coat.

“The old girl ought to have an airing now and then; that’s all,” said Martin. “And tonight may be the night for her to appear in company.”

The buzzer sounded on the pantry wall and the register indicated the library.

“J.J.’s gunna ask me is everything okay,” said Gains, rising. “Funny how he gets nervous every time he throws a party, eh?”

“He spent too many years prospecting the Canadian back-country,” said Martin. “New York will always be a pretty tight fit for him.”

Gains found John James Leggett pacing on the library rug.

“Does everything come along in good shape?” asked Leggett.

“Everything is in order, sir,” said Gains.

“Send me Cesare,” commanded Leggett.

While he waited for the chef he walked up and down the room looking at the books. Their titles meant nothing to him but the bindings made a pleasant tapestry of color along his walls and gave the room a sort of mental furniture. In this moment of great stress, he was not thinking consciously of his problem but was dimly remembering the hours he had spent in the leather room of the Zaehnsdorf bindery in London, thumbing hard-grained Morocco, or the soft Levant, or sleek vellums, or the deep neck wrinkles of brown sealskin. He had said to Zaehnsdorf’s manager: “I want a hundred and ten yards of books. Here’s the plan of the room. I don’t know a thing about books but I’d like some color on the walls.”

That was when the penthouse was rising on top of the huge loft building. Mike Ravenna said it looked too much like part of an English abbey, hoisted halfway to heaven, but that was before the landscape gardener had clothed the penthouse with time. The booming drone of a steamship’s whistle on the North River stopped Leggett in front of the mullioned window that filled the whole end of the room. A tremendous steamer was standing swiftly down the tide, making even the huge sky-scrapers seem like a city of toys. It angered Leggett a trifle whenever those monsters passed by, throwing his world out of scale; otherwise he liked the huge vibration of the whistles. He shut the passing of the great ship from his mind and looked down to his roof garden. Now that May put an end to the danger of frost, the gardeners made the whole formal design bloom with color inside the potted box-hedges. In the fountain the three bronze mermaids looked up with laughter at the spray which old Triton blew from his horn; descending, the water rained dazzling gold upon them, for the sun was turning red in the west.

The chef came in and held his tall hat at attention against his breast. The little starved man always seemed to be shrinking from a blow.

“Cesare, why don’t you eat some of the stuff you cook?” asked Leggett. “Why do I have to have a skeleton behind every feast?... Now listen to me, Cesare.”

“Yes, signore.”

“Everything must be perfect tonight. I want you to put your best touch in every dish; make music; make ’em sing. You hear?”

“Signore, everything shall be done con amore e passione.”

Leggett went down to the dining room and eyed the massed flowers with pleasure. Afterward he went up to the Venetian bedroom where the girls would leave their wraps. It was not to his taste. There was not a single chair to which a big man could trust his weight; but the women always exclaimed about the damask curtains, the carved and gilded furniture, and the grotesquerie of the little dancing figures which made a frescoed cornice around the walls.

He liked better the bathroom with its sunken tub of pale green marble and the dressing-room with the stiff yellow skirts of the table repeated endlessly in the surrounding mirrors. His own image multiplied in the same manner and it was this sight of himself that drove him away suddenly. Remembering the old prospecting days, lean and hard, it was difficult to identify himself with the swollen body on the long legs, like a crane at a stand in good fishing waters. Like the bird, all the lines of his face dropped down to a long nose and a long, fleshy chin. It was a red face, moist and shining.

Gains called him away to the telephone. A man’s voice clear and strong with youth said over the wire: “Mr. Leggett?... Hello, Uncle John! This is David.”

“That’s not David Ryder,” said Leggett. “You’re away off at sea on a steamer, David.”

“There was a handy little dirigible going across and I shifted to another fellow’s ticket,” said David Ryder. “Can I see you? I’ll be at the hotel...”

“You’ll be here!” shouted Leggett. Something stopped his voice. He controlled himself. Then he added: “Come right out. Having a dinner tonight. Rush along so you’ll have time to change.”

He sent for Martin and said: “My nephew is arriving. I don’t know when he’ll leave. He takes the guest suite.”

“Yes, sir. The suite?” repeated Martin.

“I said the suite. And until he gets a valet for himself, you’ll more or less forget me to take charge of him. Though he may not have many clothes to take care of. Not to begin with,” added Leggett.

“More or less forget you; yes, sir,” said the valet.

Leggett grinned at him.

“You’re a cruel, hard, cold sort of a devil, aren’t you, Martin?” he asked.

“As you please, sir,” said Martin, with none of the French sour going out of his face.

“When you take care of David Ryder, you damned thief,"‘said Leggett, “you’ll walk on eggs and break none of ’em!”

“Certainly, sir,” said Martin.

“Wait a minute,” commanded Leggett. “I want to say something.”

“Yes, sir,” said Martin.

“What am I going to talk to you about now?”

“Something very intimate, sir.”

“Why should I be intimate with you?”

“Because you could send me up the river for twenty years by lifting your finger, sir.”

“You know, Martin, sometimes I think I ought to have nobody about me except ex-convicts.”

“Besides me, you have Gains, sir,” said Martin.

“What! Gains, too?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Leggett.

“Yes, sir,” said Martin.

“You hired Gains for me yourself,” said Leggett.

“I wanted to share my good fortune... with a friend, sir.”

“You think you can trust Gains, eh?”

A very faint smile twisted the mouth of Martin.

“As long as I live, sir; yes.”

Leggett regarded him for a moment with a sinister pleasure.

“Why do I enjoy you so much, Martin?” he asked.

“Because you like to own your people body and soul, sir,” said Martin.

“That’s good. That’s damned good because it’s true,” said Leggett. “The point at hand, Martin, is that the arrival of my nephew unbalances my dinner table tonight. I have to have a sixth woman... Is there anything in the world that I haven’t talked to you about?”

Martin lifted his green eyes to the ceiling.

“No, sir. Nothing,” he said.

Leggett laughed a little but kept watching the face of Martin with cautious attention to overlook no shades of meaning.

“How do I seem to you just now?” he asked.

“I think you find this is a very special day, sir.”

“I expect it to be a special night,” said Leggett. “You think that this fellow Daley really knows something?”

“I am sure of it, sir.”

“About one of my guests of tonight?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I wonder which one it could be?” murmured Leggett. “Tell me the exact words that Daley used.”

“He said: ‘I’m bringing the dope in pictures and writing. What I bring is going to blow that party all to hell. After Mr. Leggett’s had a chance to look over my stuff and check it, he can pay what he thinks it’s worth.’”

“We’ll find out what he has when the time comes. Let’s get back to the last topic. Every one of the five women who are coming tonight has sold her soul to the devil; do you know that?”

“Certainly, sir,” said Martin.

“You’re a complacent sort of a scoundrel,” said Leggett. “Do you even know their names?”

“The Countess Lalo, Miss Leslie Carton, Mrs. Eric Claussen...”

“How do you know all this?”

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