TORCHY MEETS ELLERY BEAN

Course, I was sayin' it mostly to kid Vee along. I expect I'm nearly as strong for this suburban life stuff as she is, but whenever she gets a bit gushy about it, which she's apt to such nights as we've been havin'

recent, with the moon full and the summer strikin' its first stride, I'm apt to let on that I feel different.

You see, she'd towed me out on the back terrace to smell how sweet the honeysuckle was and watch the moon sail up over the tall locust trees beyond the vegetable garden.

"Isn't it a perfectly gorgeous night, Torchy?" says she. "And doesn't everything look so calm and peaceful out here?"

"May look that way," says I, "but you never can tell. I like the country in the daytime all right, but at night, especially these moony ones,--Well, I don't know as I'll ever get used to 'em."

"How absurd, Torchy!" says Vee.

"Makes things look so kind of spooky," I goes on. "All them shadows. How do you know what's behind 'em? And so many queer noises. There! Listen to that!"

"Silly!" says she. "That's a tree-toad. I hope you aren't afraid of that."

"Not if he's a tame one," says I. "But how can you tell he ain't wild?

And there comes a whirry-buzzin' noise."

"Yes," says she. "A motor coming down the macadam. There, it's turned into our road! Perhaps someone coming to see us, Goosie."

Sure enough, it was. A minute later Mr. and Mrs. Robert Ellins were givin' us the hail out front. It seems they'd come to pick us up to make a call with them on some new neighbors.

"Who?" asks Vee.

"You couldn't guess," says Mrs. Robert. "The Zoscos."

"Really!" says Vee. "I thought they were----"

"Yes," chimes in Mrs. Robert, "I suppose they are, too. Rather impossible. But I simply must try that big pipe organ I hear they've put in. Bob thinks it's an awful thing to do. See how shocked he looks. But I've promised not to stay more than half an hour if the movie magnate is in anything more startling than a placid after-dinner state, or if the place is cluttered up with too many screen favorites. And I think Bob wants Torchy to go along as bodyguard. So won't you both come? What do you say?"

Trust Vee for takin' a dare. She'll try anything once. I expect she'd been some curious all along to see what this new Mrs. Zosco looked like. "What was it you said she used to be called, Torchy?" she demands.

"'Myrtle Mapes, the Girl With the Million Dollar Smile,' was the way she was billed," says I. "But them press agents don't care what they say half the time. And maybe she only smiles that way when the camera's set for a close-up."

"I don't care," says Vee. "I think it would be great fun to go."

As for me, I didn't mind, one way or the other. I'd seen this Andres Zosco party plenty of times, ridin' back and forth on the train. He'd even offered to pick me up in his limousine and give me a lift once when I was hikin' up from the station. And I must say he wasn't just my idea of a plute movie producer.

Nothin' imposin' about Mr. Zosco. Hardly. Kind of a dumpy, short-legged party, with a round smooth face, sort of mild brown eyes, and his hair worn in a skinned diamond effect. You'd never take him for a guy who'd go out and buy a Hudson River steamer and blow it up just for the sake of gettin' a thousand feet of film, or put on a mob scene with enough people to fill Times Square like an election night. No. He was usually readin' seed catalogues and munchin' salted peanuts out of a paper bag.

It was early last spring that he'd bought this Villa Nova place, a mile or so beyond the Ellinses, and moved out with the bride he'd picked out of his list of screen stars. I don't know whether he expected the Piping Rock crowd to fall for him or not. Anyway, they didn't. They just shuddered when his name was mentioned and stayed away from Villa Nova same as they had when that Duluth copper plute, who'd built the freak near-Moorish affair, tried the same act. But it didn't look like the Zoscos meant to be frozen out so easy. After being lonesome for a month or so they begun fillin' their 20 odd bedrooms with guests of their own choosin'. Course, some of 'em that I saw arrivin' looked a bit rummy, but it was plain the Zoscos didn't intend to bank on the neighbors for company. Maybe they didn't want us crashin' in either, as Mr. Robert suggests.

You couldn't worry Mrs. Robert with hints like that, though. She's a good mixer. Besides, if she'd made up her mind to play that new pipe organ you could pretty near bet she'd do it. So inside of three minutes she had us loaded into the car and off we rolls to surprise the Zoscos.

Villa Nova, you know, is perched on the top of quite a sizable hill, with a private road windin' up from the Pike. As you swing in you pa.s.s an odd-shaped vine-covered affair that I suppose was meant for a gate-keeper's lodge, though it looks like a stucco tower that had been dropped off some storage warehouse.

Well, we'd just made the turn and Mr. Robert had gone into second to take the grade when I gets a glimpse of somebody doin' a hasty duck into the shrubbery; a slim, skinny party with a plaid cap pulled down over his eyes so far that his ears stuck out on either side like young wings.

What struck me as kind of odd, though, was his jumpin' away from the door of the lodge as the car swung in and the fact that he had a basket covered with a white cloth.

"Huh!" says I, more or less to myself.

"What's the matter?" asks Vee. "Seeing things in the moonlight?"

"Thought I did," says I. "Didn't you, there by the gate!"

"Oh, yes," says she. "Some lilac bushes."

And not being any too sure of just what I had seen I let it ride at that. Besides, there wasn't time for any lengthy debate. Next thing I knew we'd pulled up under the porte cochere and was pilin' out. We finds the big double doors wide open and the pink marble entrance hall all lit up brilliant. Grouped in the middle of it, in front of a fountain banked with ferns, are about a dozen people who seem to be chatterin' away earnest and excited.

"Why, how odd!" says Mrs. Robert, hesitatin' with her thumb on the bell b.u.t.ton.

"Looks like a fam'ly caucus," says I. "Maybe they heard we were coming and are taking a vote to see whether they let us in or bar us out."

I could make out Andres Zosco in the center of the bunch wearin' a silk-faced dinner coat and chewin' nervous on a fat black cigar. Also I could guess that the tall chemical blonde at his right must be the celebrated Myrtle Mapes that used to smile on us from so many billboards. To the left was a huge billowy female decorated generous with pearl ropes and ear pendants. Then there was a funny little old guy in a cutaway and a purple tie, a couple of squatty, full-chested women dressed as fancy as a pair of plush sofas, a maid or so, and a pie-faced scared-lookin' gink that it was easy to guess must be the butler.

Everybody had been so busy talkin' that they hadn't heard us swarm up the steps.

"I say," whispers Mr. Robert, "hadn't we better call it off?"

"And never know what is going on?" protests Vee. "Certainly not. I'm going to knock." Which she does.

"There!" says I. "You've touched off the panic."

For a minute it looked like she had, too, for most of 'em jumps startled, or clutches each other by the arm. Then they sort of surges towards the doorway, Zosco in the lead.

I expect he must have recognized some of us for he indulges in a cackly, throaty laugh and then waves us in cordial. "Excuse me," says he. "I--thought it might be somebody else. Mr. Ellins, isn't it? Pleased to meet you. Come right in, all of you."

And after we've been introduced sketchy all round Mr. Robert remarks that he's afraid we haven't picked just the right time to pay a call.

"We--we are interrupting a family council or something, aren't we?" he asks.

"Oh, glad to have you," says Zosco. "It's nothing secret, and perhaps you can help us out. We're a little upset, for a fact. It's about my brother Jake. He's been visiting us, him and his wife, for the past week. Maybe you've seen him ridin' round in the limousine--short, thick-set party, good deal like me, only a few years younger."

Mr. Robert shakes his head. "Sorry," says he, "but I don't recall----"

"Oh, likely you wouldn't notice him," goes on Zosco. "Nothing fancy about Jake, plain dresser and all that. But what gets us is how he could have lost himself for so long."

"Lost!" echoes Mr. Robert.

"Well, he's gone, anyway," says Zosco. "Disappeared. Since after dinner last night and----"

"Oh, Jake, Jake!" wails the billowy female with the pearl ropes.

"There, there, Matilda!" put in Zosco. "Never mind the sob stuff now.

He's all right somewhere, of course. He'll turn up in time. Bound to. It ain't as if he was some wild young sport. Steady as a church, Jake. No bad habits to speak of. Not one of the kind to go slippin' into town on a spree. Not him. And never carries around much ready money or jewelry.

No holdup men out here, anyway."

"But--but he's gone!" moans Matilda.