Why should Cardynge call me? I only met him once. And not about anything dangerous. Was it?
“I’m sorry, Mr. Cardynge,” Yamamura said. “This agency doesn’t handle divorce work.”
The man across the desk shifted in his chair and took out a cigaret case. He was large-boned, portly, well-dressed, with gray hair brushed back
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above a rugged face. “I’m not here about that.” He spoke not quite steadily and had some difficulty keeping his eyes on the detective’s.
“Oh? I beg your pardon. But you told me”
“Background. I … I’d tell a doctor as much as I could, too. So he’d have a better chance of helping me. Smoke?”
“No, thanks. I’m strictly a pipe man.” More to put Cardynge at his ease than because he wanted one, Yamamura took a briar off the rack and charged it. “I don’t know if we can iielp. Just what is the problem?”
“To find my son, I said. But you should know why he left and why it’s urgent to locate him.” Cardynge lit his cigarette and consumed it in quick, nervous puffs. “I don’t like exposing my troubles. Believe me. Always made my own way before.”
Yamamura leaned back, crossed his long legs, and regarded the other through a blue cloud. “I’ve heard worse than anything you’re likely to have on your mind,” he said. “Take your time.”
Cardynge’s troubled gaze sought the flat half-Oriental countenance before him. “I guess the matter isn’t too dreadful at that,” he said. “Maybe not even as sordid as it looks from the inside. And it’s nearing an end now. But I’ve got to find Bayard, my boy, soon.
“He’s my son by my first marriage. My wife died two years ago. I married Lisette a year later. Indecent haste? I don’t know. I’d been so happy before. Hadn’t realized how happy, till Maria was gone and I was rattling around alone in the house. Bayard was at the University most of the time, you see. This would be his junior
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year. He had an apartment of his own. We’d wanted him to, the extra cost was nothing to us and he should have that taste of freedom, don’t you think? Afterward . .. he’d have come back to stay with me if I asked. He offered to. But, oh, call it kindness to him, or a desire to carry on what Maria and I had begun, or false prideI said no, that wasn’t necessary, I could get along fine. And I did, physically. Had a housekeeper by day but cooked my own dinner, for something to do. I’m not a bad amateur cook.”
Cardynge brought himself up short, stubbed out his cigaret, and lit another. “Not relevant,” he said roughly, “except maybe to show why I made my mistake. A person gets lonesome eating by himself.
“Bayard’s a good boy. He did what he could for me. Mainly that amounted to visiting me pretty often. More and more, he’d bring friends from school along. I enjoyed having young people around. Maria and I had always hoped for several children.
. “Lisette got included in one of those parties. She was older than the rest, twenty-five, taking a few graduate courses. Lovely creature, witty, well read, captivating manners. I … I asked Bayard to be sure and invite her for next time. Then I started taking her out myself. Whirlwind courtship, I suppose. I’m still not sure which of us was the whirlwind, though.”
Cardynge scowled. His left hand clenched. “Bayard tried to warn me,” he said. “Not that he knew her any too well. But he did know she was one of theit isn’t fashionable to call them
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beat any more, is it? The kind who spend most of their time hanging around in the coffee shops bragging about what they’re going to do someday, and meanwhile cadging their living any way they can. Though that doesn’t describe Lisette either. She turned out to have a good deal more force of character than that bunch. Anyhow, when he saw I was serious, Bayard begged me not to go any further with her. We .had quite a fight about it. I married her a couple of days later.”