Tiger Milk Read online

  Rennie Carver drew out her cigarette case. “Do you know what that green book bag makes me think of? A tumbrel with victims on the way to the guillotine. Cigarette?”

  Courtney laughed and shook his head. The stewards were preparing to serve lunch. The Azores were not far off.

  Berkeley had luncheon with the Carvers and Courtney. The plane was winging above a great cloud bank, although from time to time the ocean could be seen as if through gauze.

  She noticed Linda Baker lunching with Luce and two other men, acquaintances made on the plane. Luce sat there talking in his easy assured manner, a cigarette in his fingers, an occasional smile curving his thin mouth. She thought again what a strange, contradictory man he was—carrying off a situation with debonair gallantry to assist her to get out of Spain, and then showing a streak of cruelty in the dastardly way he had knocked a desperate refugee off the Lisbon train.

  Shortly after luncheon the Azores were sighted—those Portuguese outposts in the Atlantic—and in a few more minutes the big plane circled for its descent above the green huddle of mountains and glided down in a long gradual swoop. The islands took on entity and individuality as the plane dropped nearer and by the time it had skimmed over the water and settled, the town of Horta was plainly discernible. It looked like a toy town, everything about it on a small neat scale, toy waterfront, toy churches, toy houses.

  The day was darkening over Horta. Although the Clipper was due to stop only to refuel, the moment they stepped out of the plane to walk about on the quay it was evident that there might be some dirty weather in the offing. The wind over the Atlantic was freshening and the waves, looking an ugly gray, were mounting steadily. By the time of the take off, the word was definite—the Clipper would lay over until better weather conditions prevailed.

  “It will pass over,” said a radio officer cheerfully. “We’ll be out of here and winging for New York tomorrow sure.”

  The passengers were directed to the small lodging-house that served as Horta’s hotel. Berkeley and Linda decided to share a roof rather than pair off with one of the women on the plane whom they did not know.

  “It lightens these little inconveniences of traveling,” remarked Linda. “Although,” she added, standing at the window of her room, “I don’t believe this is going to be so inconvenient. I like the looks of this little town.”

  She turned away, kicked off her high-heeled shoes and curled upon her bed. Lighting a cigarette she exhaled a long stream of blue smoke and sighed with content.

  “That Robert Luce is an interesting man,” she said meditatively. “And on the handsome side, too.”

  Berkeley turned from her suitcase to regard her intently. “Luce?” she said. “Oh, yes.”

  “I didn’t meet him while we were in Valleron. Did you?”

  “Yes,” said Berkeley. “I met him there.” She turned back to her suitcase.

  Linda Baker laughed. “He didn’t make much of an impression on you, evidently.”

  “He’s just,” said Berkeley, “a man.”

  “That gives him a good start in life,” smiled Linda. “Do you know anything else about him? What does he do?”

  “Darling, I don’t know.” Berkeley’s voice was somewhat abrupt. But what on earth did she know about him? Hardly more than when she had met him. Somebody who walked around like a gentleman, but was as hard as nails.

  “I’d just be intrigued to know,” said Linda. She was silent for a few moments, then swung her feet to the floor and sat up. “Are you ready to look over the town?” she inquired. “We might as well know the worst.”

  But Horta, they found, was a delightful little town. Its main street was cobbled and clean, with tiny mosaic sidewalks, and the two-story houses were bedecked with some of the most beautiful little balconies Berkeley had ever seen. There were only a few people on the street or driving in cars.

  They walked through the little park of palm and orange trees, paused to survey the Atlantic kicking up in the crescent shaped harbor, and then turned their steps back toward their room.

  “A lovely spot for one, two, or three days,” said Linda as they mounted the stairs. “Say, a week at the outside. But after that I think Horta might tend to pall a bit, don’t you?”

  Berkeley assented to that, although there were far worse places. As they entered the room they could hear a sprinkle of rain on the roof and a faint whine of the wind out beyond the harbor. She hung up her coat and sat down in a wicker chair.

  This wait! If the blow outside should develop into one of these long stormy spells they would be stuck here indefinitely. She clasped her hands behind her head and looked around the room as if to estimate the surroundings of a place that might become rather like a prison.

  Her eyes passed over the little desk, to the dressing table, to the cramped closet space—back to that little desk!

  For a long moment she stared incredulously, her eyes widening. On the desk was an inkstand, a vase of flowers, and a small object, a small ivory object—a beautifully carved piece of ivory in the form of a crouching tiger.

  A half smothered exclamation burst involuntarily from her lips. An ivory tiger!

  Linda Baker started perceptibly at that sudden exclamation. She turned from combing her hair before the dressing-table mirror and looked at Berkeley in surprise.

  “What is it, Berkeley?” she asked.

  Berkeley walked over to the desk and stood there, looking down at the ivory object.

  “This thing,” she said. “It—I just happened to see it here.”

  Linda looked at it over her shoulder.

  “That ivory thing?” she repeated. “Is that what you mean?”

  “Where did it come from?” said Berkeley steadily. “Did you see it before we left for the walk?”

  “No,” said Linda. She picked it up and examined it with interest. “You know,” she exclaimed, “this is a really beautiful piece of work, Berkeley.”

  Berkeley reached out a hand for it. The ivory image was hard and cold to the touch. But Linda Baker was right, this was a beautiful piece of carving. The sinuous, crouching form had been done in exquisite detail, shoulders hunched forward, tail curled around his body. The stripes had been denoted simply by faint markings on the surface of the ivory. The whole image looked remarkably realistic—you could see the big padded paws with claws distended, the great head low and jutted forward, the ears flat to the head.

  She put it back on the desk and remained standing there, contemplating it.

  “It seems to have a fascination for you,” she heard Linda say with a laugh. “It is so extraordinary?”

  Well, it was extraordinary, in a way—to see something that had been in her thoughts—so suddenly—

  “Oh,” she said, turning away, “it’s just that I didn’t remember seeing it there before.”

  * * * *

  The wind changed toward evening and the rain ceased. The sky remained overcast, but there was an occasional fitful gleam of brightness among the rolling clouds as they parted momentarily. Improving signs pointed to a take-off on the morrow.

  Berkeley expected to have dinner with Courtney, but when she came downstairs she found him talking with Linda and Robert Luce and was greeted with a proposal to make it a foursome.

  They had dinner in a cafe not far from the fresh and verdant little park of palm and orange trees. From where they sat they could see the circlet of lights around the shallow crescent that served as Horta’s harbor.

  When Courtney and Linda left the table to dance Luce remained standing, looking down at Berkeley.

  “Would you care to dance, Miss Britton?” His thin mouth broke into the hint of a smile.

  “I believe you know I would not,” returned Berkeley.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “But I really would have liked it.” He paused. “Miss Britton, I think we should have a few words tonight, don’t you? It will probably be the last opportunity we shall have.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, considering, “I imagin
e we should. What is the matter with right now?”

  He moved his head in the direction of several of their fellow flight passengers who were just entering the cafe.

  “I would suggest that this talk be as private as possible. Would you be willing to sit out this dance in that little park nearby?”

  She hesitated, then nodded abruptly. “All right,” she said. They strolled down to the little park, lighted by an indirect but luminous glow from lamp light shining through the trees. There was a cool flowery fragrance about the park. Overhead the moonlight was gilding the edges of breaking clouds.

  She sat down on a bench beneath a clump of willowy pains. Robert Luce stood before her in his straight, poised way.

  “I presume you will go to Reno,” he said without preamble.

  “I’ll try to act in a less obvious way,” said Berkeley. “If it should be necessary to go to Reno, I will. But you can depend on my taking the necessary steps immediately. I shall need to know where to reach you.”

  “That will be difficult,” he said slowly. “I’ll try to furnish you an address, however.”

  She did not see why it should be difficult. Surely, he had a home, or an office, or something. She said so.

  Robert Luce’s lean face was indistinct, shadowy. “I expect to be out of touch,” he said in a deliberate low voice. “My plans are unsettled.”

  He was silent, then.

  “I wish I could thank you more deeply,” said Berkeley. “Somehow I can’t—I can’t thank you the way I should have liked—after what I saw on the Lisbon train.”

  “Miss Britton,” he said abruptly, “take my advice and get back quickly to your peaceful, country-loving life. You were terribly close to something in which you would have been as helpless as a babe in the woods. There is more afoot, my dear, than you could possibly understand.”

  Berkeley nearly laughed. He was telling her that something was afoot. But he went on before she had a chance to speak.

  “Pull that good life of yours around you, Miss Britton. And be glad you never knew what passed so close to you.”

  “I don’t understand you,” she said directly.

  “Of course not. There is no reason why you should. I was just thinking out loud. Not at all courteous and I’m sorry.” She saw his hand move in a brief wave. “This is the last private talk we probably shall ever have. Let me wish you the best in life, Miss Britton. Happy landings in New York.” For some strange reason she wished that he would go on, because it really had seemed as though he had been thinking out loud and it was only in the thoughts that lay behind those dark eyes that any kind of a clue was possible.

  “That winds up everything, I suppose,” said Berkeley. “Once again, my thanks for helping me to get out of Spain.”

  They returned to find it fortunate indeed that they had chosen other surroundings to have their talk. Their own party had been absorbed in a big gathering that included nearly all of the flight passengers. A party was developing spontaneously.

  Berkeley did not stay with it until the end. Her talk with Luce had driven the party spirit from her. She told Linda and Courtney that she was enjoying a headache and refused to let him accompany her back to the lodging-house.

  “Heavens!” she exclaimed. “In Horta, wherever you are going, it’s just around the corner.”

  When she arrived at the lodging-house she went directly up the stairs to her room.

  An airways notice had been shoved under the door. She read it and put it on the desk. Then about to turn away she paused suddenly. That little ivory tiger was gone. She stared at the place where it had been.

  Just as discovering it there had given her something of a shock, so did finding it gone. What could have happened to it? Who could have taken it? And why?

  Her mind was still preoccupied with those questions even after she settled herself in bed.

  Linda Baker came into the room soon after and found her still awake and a light burning. She was carrying a bouquet of lovely blue hydrangeas.

  “Hello, Berkeley,” she said. “Headache better? We took a drive. It might have done you good.”

  Berkeley surveyed her seriously. “Linda, that little ivory tiger is gone. Vanished.”

  Linda looked at her. “Oh, that thing,” she said. “Really.” She laughed. “First you see it and then you don’t.”

  “It means,” said Berkeley deliberately, “that somebody came into this room and took it.”

  “But, Berkeley, what of it?” expostulated Linda Baker. “Neither of us owns the knickknack. Probably they rearrange the ornaments in these rooms from time to time.”

  Berkeley nodded. “Perhaps that’s it,” she agreed.

  But as she closed her eyes she felt sure that it wasn’t. Somebody had put that little ivory tiger on the desk that afternoon while they were out on their short walk around Horta. And now it was gone.

  CHAPTER 8

  The plane was off the next day for the final hop to New York, the Azores only a memory in the great expanse of sea. The motors of the big Clipper drummed a steady roll call of the miles hour after hour as the shadow of the silver plane fled over the waves of the Atlantic.

  Berkeley surrendered a bridge hand to pretty little Mrs. Deering, the American wife of a British naval officer, and withdrew from the table of His ex-imperial Highness, a famous French couturier, and a good-looking Englishman attached to some governmental purchasing commission.

  As she walked up the aisle she saw Linda Baker and the English movie actress at a compartment table with Luce and four other men, all with whisky-and-sodas before them. She was cordially invited to join, but smilingly declined and continued on up the aisle until she found an empty compartment.

  Almost home. She twined slender fingers together and considered the gray Atlantic below. Now about this business of an ivory tiger. Either she was wrestling with a moonbeam or she had hold of something that might be vitally important.

  There was no use wondering why somebody should put that little ivory image in her room and then, later, take it away. She did not have the slightest idea and there was no use making a merry-go-round of her mind about it.

  But the important thing was how anybody thought she would recognize its significance. Obviously, it meant nothing to Linda Baker. Therefore it must have been directed at her and for but one reason. Somebody knew that John Tresh had spoken to her and what he had said. “They have a lot of faith in something called an Ivory Tiger and they are sending it to America.”

  That had been a crazy statement to make. Perhaps that was why it had stuck in her mind.

  But who could have known about her talk with Tresh? She had only seen him once, during the siesta hour in that almost deserted hotel in Valleron. There was no one who knew of her connection with Tresh—she knit slim brows as a memory struck her. Yes, there had been one. Somebody who had arrived at Valleron just a short while before Tresh had died. Robert Luce.

  She remembered how she had handed him that cablegram from her father to corroborate her urgent wish to get home as soon as possible. “Your mother worried. Be careful Tresh situation. Please hurry home.” And Luce had studied that cable deliberately and then raised his glance slowly to her.

  She leaned back and closed her eyes. There was then only that muted drone of the motors and an occasional little dipping sensation to testify to the fact that she was in a plane.

  She opened her eyes as somebody spoke to her and saw Philip Courtney sitting in the seat opposite her.

  “Did I disturb you?” he asked. “It was just a tentative effort to see if you were asleep.”

  “No,” she told him, “I was just thinking.”

  He regarded her attentively. There appeared to be signs of strain about her fine eyes, a distrait quality to her manner.

  “Berkeley,” he said impulsively, “I know it’s none of my business, but is something bothering you?”

  “Oh, I’m just kicking a problem around.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”
he asked. “You know, Berkeley, I’ve had the queerest feeling that you might be in trouble or something ever since I met you back in Valleron. As I say, it’s not my business, but,” he grinned, “if I could stud my life with the bright deed of helping you I would consider anything else an anti-climax.”

  “It’s nothing I can’t handle, myself, Court,” the girl said gently. “Thank you, just the same.”

  “I expected that,” said Courtney. He laughed and ran a hand over his bronze hair.

  “I don’t see why you should. You’d be a handy fixer to have around.”

  “That’s what I am, Berkeley—around. Thirty minutes after this plane lands most of these people will never see each other again. Tragic note, eh? Ships that pass in the night, and so forth.” He bent toward her slightly. “But look out for me on the horizon at an early date,” he said easily. “I just love the Connecticut countryside.”

  “I hope you will, Court,” she said. “I’ll be expecting you.”

  He looked at her carefully, as if he still found it hard to know whether her mind was really focused on him or not. “Well,” he said, arising, “I’ll be off on my rounds.”

  He wandered off down the aisle. Berkeley glanced at her wrist watch. Soon now. For just a little while longer all these people would be together in this cabin, then they would scatter out from the airport. And one of them might be carrying a little ivory tiger, the possible symbol of a menacing, dangerous, enigmatic thing that was being sent to America. Something that old John Tresh had deeply feared.

  She shook her head impatiently. Her father might be able to make something of her information. But one thing was certain—she would be very much relieved thirty minutes after the plane landed. That was the length of time Courtney had estimated it would take for these people to go out of each other’s lives. Luce would be going out of hers with the rest of them.

  It was the tip of Long Island first and then within a very few minutes, to the west, the New York skyline emerged into distinctness.

  Always when she had traveled, it gave a magnificent lift to Berkeley to see her native shore. No matter where she had been or what fascinating experiences, there was something soul-stirring at the sight of that homeland of hers. There was no flag waving or cheering about her, but simply a genuine and loving appreciation.