Belknap entered his room just before dawn and turned up the light. Nadia stood against the wall inside the door, both hands at her throat, her breath coming in gasps. Her face in the sudden light was as pale as the under side of willow leaves before a storm, or after. Here it seemed that the storm must have passed a moment since.
Belknap sprang to her and seized both her wrists in one vice-like grip.
“Nadia! you haven’t done it?”
“No, no, I haven’t doneit, as you call it,” she whispered.
“Whathaveyou been doing then?”
“I have been running, my dear detective; don’t you see that?” She tried to laugh.
“Why? What from? I thought nothing could ever frighten you. Once and for all, NadiaMdevani,” he continued as her eyes fell before his, “I ask you to keep out of this. Can’t you begin to see what I am here for? I am here for game, and you are not fair game. Or perhaps it’s that you are too fair.” His voice wavered. “Anyway, keep clear.”
“I can’t, Mr. Belknap. On my soul, I can’t. There is too much at stake. If I were the only one. But I am not.” She handed him a slip of paper that had been crumpled in her hand.
He took it to the table, and smoothed it under his palm.
“Did you follow instructions?” he asked, in a low voice. “Is that what the running was about?”
“No, no. I didn’t do it, on my word of honor.” Then her eyes suddenly lifted wide open. “There is someone in the hall behind me. Do you hear?” Her body was stiff, her face frozen.
“No,” said Belknap, matching the softness of her voice. “But it seems quite possible. Itwouldbe strange if you and I were the only ones abroad in the house tonight, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” she whispered. They stood motionless. “It is going downstairs. Oh my God, it will find it.Do something, Belknap. Quick, destroy that paper, if you love me!”
A long, long scream penetrated the house from corner to corner, like a knife thrust. And then the silence fell again. Nadia drew a deep, shuddering breath, and when she spoke her voice was stronger.
“Perhaps you had better go down, Mr. Belknap. Something seems to be wrong.”
“Something does. You may come with me if you care to.”
They went down and to the door of the library where there was a light. Sydney Crawford stood over a body lying crumpled on the floor. The body was Hartley Blake’s, and was stabbed so well and so often as to have watered the rug thickly with blood.
Sydney, with stricken eyes, met Belknap’s gaze.
“I found this,” she said. “I’m sorry to have screamed, but it was a little unexpected.”
Belknap turned on his heel and rang the service bell. He crossed to the telephone on Whittaker’s desk and lifted the receiver.
“Sit down, Mrs. Crawford. You, too, MissMdevani. Don’t look at the body. I shall have the police here in a moment. But perhaps I can help you, Mrs. Crawford, if you have anything to say to me before they arrive. I shall undoubtedly be on the case, since I have had the misfortune to be at Thorngate this week-end—(Police Department? Ordway Belknap speaking. You may or may not know my name. I am up at Judge Whittaker’s place. Yes, Whittaker. There has been a murder committed here during the night. Body just discovered. You had better send up a sergeant with a few men. The guests, I am afraid, will have to be held. Pick up a doctor of course. Right you are.)”
He hung up, and crossed to the divan for a lounging robe which he flung quickly and deftly over Blake’s body.
“Blake’s dead,” he said to Julian and Joel who had just put in an appearance. “The police are on their way. Meanwhile, if you will excuse me, I shall look the ground over. Seems to have been an impulsive affair,” he continued, “with the knife left behind.” He picked up the long, thin, bronze paper-knife, which lay, stained with blood, a littleto the left of the body. There was also a woman’s lace handkerchief, which Belknap offered to Sydney.
“That is not mine,” she said quietly.
“Just as you say,” Belknap replied, thrusting it into his pocket. “We’ll soon know whose it is.”
John came to the door.
“Did you want me, sir?”
“I did, John. Will you round up everyone in the house, including the help. There has been a murder. Colonel Blake. The police will want you all for questioning. Not that most of you aren’t here already,” Belknap smiled at the room. Crawford had come in on Julian’s heels. Romany and Whittaker, however, were still absent.
Belknap bent to the body and examined rapidly and thoroughly.
“There’s the off chance we might find something, Mrs. Crawford,” he remarked. “If Blake, under cover of darkness, returned for a cachéd Diary and met his death because of it, the murderer may not have had time to relieve him before you, or shall we say I, appeared.”
Sydney made no answer; but her two lovelyhands lifted from her lap in a little helpless gesture of futility.
“It is quite obvious,” Julian said unexpectedly, “that you intend to make Mrs. Crawford responsible for Colonel Blake’s death, Mr. Belknap. I feel called upon to ask you to keep your suspicions, even such proof as you may have, until a moment more in keeping with judicial etiquette.”
Belknap flushed darkly.
“Don’t be too hard on our detective, Mr. Prentice,” Nadia cried. “He does not suspect Mrs. Crawford of this ghastly affair, but he very much wishes he did. And the wish has been father to the possibility. He really suspects me. Therein lies the difficulty.”
“Spare the noble gesture, Nadia.” Whittaker was standing in the door. “Isuspect you myself when you go altruistic. Ah, Belknap! in your element I see! I can’t believe it. Blake murdered! That it should have happened in my house. Terrible! John said he was unable to rouse Romany with his knock, so I sent one of the maids to her room. And I gave orders for the servants to wait in the hall. Does that meet with your approval, Belknap? I shall sit down, if I may. Last nightand this morning, taken together, are more than is good for me.”
As he sank heavily into a chair there was a windy bustle at the front door, a careless, strident laugh, and a stamping of feet, that in its sincere disrespect for the traditions and restraint of Thorngate, announced the arrival of the police. Belknap stepped toward the library door.
“This way, Sergeant. We have been waiting for you.”
“Don’t Sergeant me, Belknap,” came a pleasant, resonant answer from the hall; and a man of medium stature, with clear, blue eyes and gold-bronze hair, faced him in the doorway. “Your humble servant. It’s nice to see you again. I’m only sorry for one thing, that you have the jump on me as usual.”
“Berry! Why, land alive, where didyoucome from? Don’t worry about being a step behind me. There’s going to be plenty for both of us. Come in. Whittaker, you know Lieutenant Berry. There’s only one other in the room important enough for you to meet at the moment. Berry, this is Colonel Blake. Colonel, Lieutenant Berryhas come to see what he can do for you.” Belknap indicated the body with a motion of his hand. “You brought a doctor? It will be convenient to know about when death occurred.”
“Yes. Doctor Giles is here. Giles,” he called. “Get on the job, will you? Come along in, Sergeant. This is Sergeant Stebbins, Ordway Belknap; Belknap, Sergeant Stebbins. Now, old man, what’s the story? The sooner we catch the scent the better. When did you arrive?”
“Before the trouble began. That may help us, and it may not. What doyousay, Whittaker? Shall I—”
John’s voice was heard in the hall.
“Oh, Judge! Lily has fallen downstairs. I think it’s a faint, sir.”
“Pick her up,” said Whittaker.
John and two cops between them lifted her to the library couch.
Berry glanced at her.
“If the superstition that the object last beheld leaves its mark branded on the face I should say your Lily had been seeing things! Where hasshebeen?”
“To the room of one of the guests,” Belknap said. “Perhaps we’d better take a look.”
But Lily opened both eyes and gazed glassily at the ceiling.
“Miss Romany’s stiffer’n a post,” she said.
“Sergeant,” said Belknap quickly, “will you and Berry go up to Miss Video’s room? John, show them up. You may begin to notice there’s something damn wrong with things around here. Thereis. And I must have a word with the Judge alone. He’s the one to bring it to a standstill—if there is still time.”
He seized Whittaker by the arm and half led, half pushed him into the dining-room. Berry and Stebbins made the stairs three at a bound. Julian dragged Joel onto the terrace outside the windows.
“Julian—darling,” Joel protested, “pleaseleave me alone. I must go to bed. I’m ill, really I am; and so is poor Uncle Bertrand. Didn’t you see how frightfully he looked?”
“Now don’t poor your Uncle Bertrand in front of me, Joel. If you begin sticking up for him nowthat he’s in such a pickle you and I part company. He’s downright responsible for the whole mess. And don’t you dare talk about going to bed either. I’vegotto talk to you—to you or someone else—or I’ll simply burst. And I refuse to burst in front of Belknap. You must spare me that, dear. Now listen to me.” His voice fell almost to a whisper. “I’ve got a clue—aclue, do you hear me? A tangible clue! Darling,don’tshut your eyes. Look.”
Julian produced a little square of fool’s cap with letters as unintelligible to Joel as hieroglyphics typed across it. Joel feverishly rubbed out its network of wrinkles and squinted at it as though she were near-sighted.
“Oh, Julian, I don’t want to know about this. Don’t let’s get mixed up in it. Let’s run away, do.”
“Run away!Me? Why it’s the chance of a life-time to make a reputation for myself. You aren’t going to be the kind of wife that asks her husband to sacrifice himself for her on the eve of establishing his career, are you?”
“No-o—only I’m afraid of it, like a bomb. I’d rather somebody else handled it. Let’s take it tothat sergeant, or Mr. Belknap, or Lieutenant Berry. Perhaps it’s really important.”
“Perhapsit’s important. I like that. Itisimportant. It’s a code message. Acode. And codes are my middle name. Didn’t you know that, darling? Good in arithmetic, fair in geography, poor in deportment, rank in spellin’; but perfect in codes. I know as much about codes as that Philo Vance man knows about all other subjects put together. I have an idea he crams, while I have made codes my life work. Began in grade school behind those old desk tops we used to have, do you remember, when what was learned on top was nothing to what was learned under cover.”
“Oh, Julian, do stop fooling. If you get into one of your fooling moods there’ll be no keeping even these murders serious. For heaven’s sake, if you know so much about codes, don’t keep me in suspense.”
“It’s a difficult code, Joel. One of the toughest. That Japanese thing they used during the War. But I’ve figured it. Listen. ‘Blake has been tapping the STC wires. This week-end is your chance. Get him.’”
“Addressed to whom?”
“Addressed, stupid! You didn’t think they’d write a code and address it, did you? If it came here at all it came by messenger, of course. But it’s unlikely it came here. Whoever received it brought it with him.”
“And if we knew who received it, it would at least settle Colonel Blake’s murder, wouldn’t it? Oh, Julian, youareclever. Where did you get it?”
“On the stairs as I came down.”
“Julian, it’s a wonder you’re alive! To thinkyou’ve been the first to pick up a clue with all these great detectives about. And where were you all night? I waited and waited—and worried and worried— Why didn’t you come back?”
“Joel, I’m so sorry. Truly I am. But do you know what I did, dearest? I went to sleep.”
“Tosleep?”
“To sleep, that’s what I said.” Julian came to his own rescue before her tone of reproach. “What’s so funny about that? I was tired. I went to your uncle’s room and he wasn’t there. So I waited. I dropped off on the lounge. He never came back as far as I know. When I woke it was all hours. I’d heard nothing. And comingout into the hall I was welcomed by Mrs. Crawford’s reveille.”
“Julian, howcanyou say such things. When I’m feeling so terribly, too.Domake me rest somehow, dear. My head—my eyes— No, there isn’t time for it, I know. We must take your wonderful clue to Mr. Belknap.”
“Not Belknap, sweetheart. Never Belknap. He has the fanatic’s eye and it doesn’t appeal to me. Perhaps Berry, sometime. I rather cotton to Berry. But for the nonce I hunt alone. I might accomplish miracles with a dash of luck. You must realize I have a deductive mind—as well as aseductive, darling.”
“Please— Don’t.I can’t play with you. We must go—”
Go where was settled on the instant by what Julian would have sworn were two shots in rapid succession, which rang out in the interior of the house. Two policemen, guns in hand, breath shortening, came scuttling around opposite corners of the house.
“Prisoner’s Base or Run Sheep Run?” asked Julian delightedly. “Or just plain catch-as-catch-can?” he added, springing ahead of them into thelibrary. Nadia sat alone in the room—with Blake’s body almost at her feet. Her head lay back on the divan top. A lighted cigarette hung between very red lips. She had taken time out to make up. There was not the flicker of an expression in the more than usually mask-like face. Nor did it unbend as Belknap opened the dining-room door, asking for Doctor Giles.
“Quick. I’m afraid they’ve got Whittaker. Where in Hell are the police?”
Whittaker lay huddled over the table, his face in his arms. Dr. Giles’ hasty examination showed that he had been shot from behind. The bullet had entered below the left shoulder blade, passed through the heart (death being instantaneous), and lodged in the table, splintering the wood deeply. Berry remarked on the last.
“Close range, that,” he said. “Are yousurethere was no one else in the room, Belknap? Could someone have slipped in behind you both?”
“It seems very unlikely. I should have said the shot came from the direction of the library. But I myself was facing that particular door.”
“There were two shots fired,” said Julian.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Prentice.” Belknapwas short in his speech. “There was one shot fired as you can see.”
“Not necessarily. Every shot doesn’t hit its mark.”
“Granted. But that will be ascertained in due course.”
Sergeant Stebbins had been a strong and silent man since his arrival. A square-headed, ruddy-cheeked, heavy-jowled man, he gave the appearance of being a stone wall instead of a hurdle to anyone who didn’t take him cautiously. And something in Belknap’s last remark seemed to have set his back up.
“Due course!” he rumbled. “Due course! I guess that’s what’s been the whole trouble around here. You’ve been taking your time, haven’t you? Due course! In all your fancy detective work, Mr. Belknap, haven’t you caught on that when it’s one murder you act quick, when it’s two you jump into it, and when it’s three greased lightning shouldn’t have a look-in. I’m sorry to say it, but I think there’s been criminal negligence, Detective. Three murders in as many hours is rather a record inmyobservation, and under your very nose, so to speak. It’s clearly my duty to put everyone in thehouse under arrest. You’re damn lucky I don’t include you. Now we’ll get down to brass tacks. A little examining of witnesses won’t come amiss. Who was in the library when the Judge got his?”
“I was; and I was there alone.” Nadia was contemptuous.
“I thought so, lady,” Stebbins said. “You look the kind. We’ll begin with you. The rest of you can clear out of here; and wait your turn in there.” He signified the library with a twist of his thumb.
“One minute, Sergeant,” Belknap coldly interceded. “My impulse of course is to pick you up by the neck and throw you out, your silly nickel badge to the contrary. But, strange as it may seem to you, I have a positively fiendish desire to get to the root of this succession of violent crimes that have spoiled a good week-end. That I happened to be present in an unofficial capacity may be a misfortune in a sense. Privately speaking, it is. But it has also given me certain angles of an extraordinary situation that you could never arrive at if you questioned yourself blue in the face. Whether or not you may wish to take advantage of what I have to offer isanotherquestion. I assure you itwill be perfectly agreeable to me to paddle my own canoe, and let you paddle yours.”
“Hold on, boys,” Berry interrupted quietly. “My dear Stebbins, you and Belknap had better get together on this. I’m sure we’re all determined upon clearing things up as rapidly and expeditiously as possible. You and I naturally recognize that Mr. Belknap is in a most embarrassing position; and it is more than decent of him to remain on the case. But since he has agreed to throw in his lot with us, I thinkweshould be open to the charge of negligence if we refused his evidence, don’t you? Besides, you can appreciate that he and I are birds of a feather and must work the same airways. So losing him, you lose me.”
Stebbins grumblingly changed his tune. “Have it your own way, Mr. Berry. Have it your own way. I’m sure Mr. Belknap has valuable material to contribute—only the sooner he comes across with it the better, and safer, for all concerned.”
“Keep your opinions until they are called for, man,” Belknap said curtly. “Or until you know something of the lay of the land.” Swinging on his heel he made an imperious, inclusive gesture that swept the room clean of momentarily irrelevant persons.
“Clear out of here,” he ordered.
As the door closed on the retreating group, that tried to make its exit with dignity, but somehow failed to convey better than the appearance of a disorganized partridge brood scuttling into a thicket, Belknap returned to Berry and the Sergeant.
“Now,” he said, “let’s you and I start from scratch. I’ll concede you that much. I’ll throw down what I’ve seen and heard to date. After that I make no promises.” He smiled with a bleakmockery. “There are conclusions and conclusions—andconclusions. And what I may make of a given detail may differ widely from what you make of it. Then again, it may not: ‘great minds,’ they say.— However that may be, don’t let’s make a girls’ dormitory of it and hang confidences around each other’s necks. I’ve always played, and always will play, a lone wolf game. I’m an Akela or nothing. So you’ll have to—”
“We will, Belknap, we will. Don’t worry about us.” Berry interrupted gently, trying to conceal a faint embarrassment. “What’s to do now is to get going, isn’t it? Before your friend’s body here has gone cold. Quick, Belknap, snap into it. Every second may count.”
Belknap regarded Whittaker with a swift, half-averted glance, and a spasm of pain twitched the taut little muscles drawn slantwise across his square jaws.
“God be merciful to him,” he said in a lowered key. “Though he doesn’t deserve it, I fear,” he added, hardening instantly, as a man does who dislikes being caught out with an emotion. “First of all, you must know he is largely to blame for the argument I expect he’s having with St. Peter. Iwon’t waste precious time going into the story now. It’s rather complicated. The point you need to know for a starter is that he did a sneaking, low-down thing last night that set the house completely by its ears, where it still is. Under cover of reading us a bit of original manuscript to amuse us, he made it a passage from his Diary that disclosed—names withheld, but entirely obvious—one of his present guests as an erstwhile murderer. (Neil Crawford, the man in evening dress.) What made matters more acute was that he had claimed, at dinner, that the Diary was on the eve of being published, real names given, his own included. I doubt the truth of the claim somehow. But we can check it. Be that as it may, there has been no congeniality or conviviality in our midst for the past eight hours, as you can well imagine. I had had an inkling there was trouble in the wind. In fact the Judge had given me to understand he was out for blood.”
“Wanted you to keep an eye on Crawford in case of—of reprisals, is that it?” Berry, as he threw out the question, was rapidly taking notes. He was a methodical man, Berry, and, though hehad an excellent memory, refused to depend upon it.
“Something of the sort.”
“And when did the first storm warnings occur?”
“Immediately,” Belknap continued, pacing the room restlessly. “And it was right there I somehow made my first blunder. And having lost the trail once I’m afraid I’ve blundered often. In fact, as I see it now, I probably made a serious error even earlier when I let one of the party slip away without even getting out orders to have his trail picked up. A man by the name of Milton Dorn left directly after dinner last night—though I’m sure his first intention had not been to leave before morning. Doubtless there’s nothing more in it than that he foresaw bothersome complications; but he’s someone to look up.”
“Just to get back to what happened after the old man came clean about this guy Crawford,” Stebbins growled, with a distrust of your famed detective that was slow to be appeased. “What about it?”
Belknap’s invulnerable self-complacency affected Stebbins and Berry in totally dissimilar fashion.It stirred in the Sergeant a confused, stubborn rage, such as the English peasant feels for the arrogant huntsman heedlessly taking his fences, even though the hunter does no actual damage. While Berry, understanding Belknap’s natural pride, and realizing all that nourished it, only wished that a man of so great a professional stature should know the meaning of humility. “Perhaps the day will come,” Berry thought in passing, “when he will come a cropper in a case of importance, and, bowing his head, will bow his heart.”
“I was coming to that,” Belknap was saying. “Forgive my lack of speed and clarity in presenting the facts. My own thinking leads me astray. Each item, as I check it for your benefit, gives me pause to reconsider. To go back: Whittaker read his Diary. Suddenly, at a bad moment in the gruesome tale, Crawford gave himself away, if that were needed, by a call for water and help from his wife. Apparently she was so bewildered by the catastrophe that was falling upon the family she let another catastrophe present itself head over heels. For she delayed going to her husband long enough to allow his mistress—that little red-haired minx you’ve just seen upstairs—fall abouthis neck and prove howtheystood.Alsoif proving was necessary. But it brought Mrs. Crawford to her senses, andshewas knocking Miss Video into a cocked hat when Colonel Blake seemed to consider knocking the Judge into one. Then the lights went out. Theywould! Well, instead of going to the Judge’s rescue, which I guess is what I should have done, I spent my time reinstating the lights. They showed, when they came on, rather a mess. Whittaker was pretty well floored by what must have been a blow with intent to kill. Mrs. Crawford and Miss Video were looking murder at each other. Crawford appeared about to die of heart failure.”
“Who stood where?”
“The ‘foreign lady,’ as you call her, Sergeant, was nearest to the Judge. Blake seemed not to have reached him. Though he may have been on the spot and retreated. The rest were as they had been, as far as I can recall.”
“Gosh-all-hemlock! Pretty good pickin’s, eh?” Stebbins, flushed with excitement, was forgetting the chip on his shoulder. “What next, Mr. Belknap?”
“Little enough for awhile.Toolittle. It wasominous. There was nothing muchIcould do, really. Every one went to bed, or pretended to. I think they would have gone home, to a man, last night, but were downright ashamed to suggest it. Or perhaps they felt, as I did, that with morning a bad dream might vanish. Perhaps it’s the best excuse I have to offer for not proving much good in the crises. I assisted Whittaker upstairs, and suggested he apologize to Crawford and clear the air. I said he was getting the house into all sorts of a pickle—to say nothing of the real danger to himself. But he was in a mean mood. He had been ill lately and not himself. I’ll tell you about that later, too. Anyway, he stuck to his guns. He wasn’t badly hurt, though might have been. A slight head wound that someone will have to account for along with everything else.”
“Didhehave any ideas?”
“None. We discussed the loss of the Diary. But that didn’t seem to worry him much, either. I imagine the threat of printing it was merely a ruse to drive his point more terribly home to Crawford. Poor Crawford.”
“Poor Crawford!” Stebbins snorted. “Haven’t you eyes in your head, Belknap? Why, I’ve hadthat dress-suited fellow spotted from the minute I came in here. I’ll havehimon toast in a jiffy. A little rough stuff and he’ll—”
“Loss of the Diary?” Berry asked, having caught up on his notes, and ignoring, as did Belknap, the fact that Stebbins had spoken. “What do you mean?”
“What I said. It disappeared during the fracas. Not that it matters much. I can retail you enough of what was said of Crawford to see him convicted hands down, if that’s the count we want to get him on. Somehow, I think it isn’t.”
“We’ll see. And after you all withdrew—what then?”
“Nothing, my dear Berry. I was a night-hawk; more so than usual, though at my best I’m up and about most of the night. Rotten sleeper. Always was. Possibly the most telling bit of evidence I picked up during my sleepless walking was what I’m convinced was a glimpse of the departed Dorn. From an upper window I saw a figure I’d swear was his run along below the terrace wall and into the shrubbery at the north corner. It moved with extreme rapidity and a lightness of footing that made me almost uncertain I saw more thana shadow. But for a twig that snapped as he vanished I would have let him pass as shadow. I went immediately down, and around by the opposite side, with intention of circumventing him, but, though I remained concealed in a niche of the north wing for at least half an hour, he never materialized.”
“So that was that. Interesting, but not particularly helpful. Who else did you cross footsteps with during the night?”
“With several. Every one had dragged anchor and was adrift. Miss Video spent a few moments in Whittaker’s room. I believe he found her there when he went up. And she seems to have enticed him to return the visit. For Mr. Prentice, the young man in negligee, spent most of the night asleep in Whittaker’s room waiting for the absent to return.Hemay have had designs on the Judge.”
“Or the Judge on Miss Video? What about Crawford?”
“Never saw him. What became of him I haven’t a notion. Probably was the one person to go quietly to bed, having a wife to see that he got tucked in. I bumped into Miss Lacey in thelibrary, quite late. Said she was after a bracer, and looking for her fiancé. She’s engaged to young Prentice. And she’s Whittaker’s niece, as you doubtless know. I saw her to her room, as she was in a state of nerves. And, soon after, I decided the tenseness of the situation had eased, for the time being at least, and turned my back on it. But I’d hardly entered my room when Miss Mdevani came on a visit. She was quite incoherent, but before I could begin to make head or tail of what about, we picked up the first death broadcast. Mrs. Crawford had found the Colonel. Saysshewas looking for her husband, which leads one to believe he wasn’t in bed after all, as do the clothes he’s wearing. Or else she’s trying to coverhertracks.”
“You don’t think your Miss Mdevani was—fresh from the kill, so to speak? Her manner might suggest it.”
“I’ve thought of it, of course. Who wouldn’t? But—well, with Miss Video’s death, and the Judge’s, I’ve rather discarded her. I feel the three are the work of one. A woman is seldom a good wholesale murderer.”
“Granted. But she’s tarnation clever. Herrecord isn’t savory, as we all know. Though I admit the motives, such as we have, don’t fall her way. This man Crawford has motive enough for a couple—perhaps even the third, for if he wished to destroy the Diary, as he conceivably would, and Blake was the first to nab it, Blake might have to die. Yes, it looks black for Mr. Crawford. What do you say, Sergeant?”
“My feeling exactly. It looks mighty black for Mr. Crawford. Him that kills once can kill again and kill easier. Come on: let’s catch him cold before he clears out. And before there’s any more shooting. One, two, three murders—”
The words were scarcely spoken when the air was again split by gunfire. A very sharp report came from somewhere: the yard, the basement, or the servant’s wing. It acted as a signal for a pell-mell return of the others from library to dining-room.
“If that was in the kitchen,” Julian, who led the re-entry by a yard, said with solemn severity, “it looks to me as if they’d invaded neutral territory and somethingshouldbe done about it.”
Sergeant Stebbins, who seemed to have a keener ear for direction, hurriedly threw up the window on the view, and shouted in the stentorian accents of the law:
“Say, what’s the shootin’ all about, idiots? Haven’t you no restraints? What’d you see, a jack-rabbit?”
“We wasn’t shooting, sir,” a distant voice came up as through a funnel. “There’s somebody way back down in under the porch. Guess they fired accidental-like.”
“Accidental Hell! Go get ’em.”
Apparently there was an attempt to obey his order to the letter, for it was only a matter of seconds when, to judge by the firing, a regular battle was in progress.
“Hi, wait for me!” Sergeant Stebbins, bristling with zealous duty, turned on the room. “You folks stay where you are if you know what’s good for you. I guess we’ve grounded him—and sooner than I thought by a darned sight.”
“Dorn!” Julian exclaimed. “Well, it only goes to show that the first hunch is generally the right one.”
Joel was leaning weakly against the sideboard and sobbing in little gasping breaths like a spent runner. She held her head between her hands to close her ears against the racket.
“I can’t stand any more. I can’t. Oh, I can’t stand it. Turn that shooting off. Turn it off!” she cried.
“It isn’t the radio, darling,” Julian said quietly,putting his arm about her shoulders. “Though I admit it sounds like the Colt Revolver hour or something. What you think is static is being produced off stage by the housekeeper and that maid Lily who are rapidly losing their inhibitions in the pantry. Listen, dear, Idowant to see what’s going on.” There was a fresh burst of gunfire. “Please can’t I go to the lattice and be a Rowena to your Ivanhoe?”
“Oh, go along. Go away. I don’t care what you do.Julian, don’t go near that window. You’ll be killed.”
But Julian had taken her first words at their face value.
“A lot of ammunition used and nothing done,” he announced from a daring stand in full view of the lawn. “That man Dorn will have time to dig himself out under the house and make a dash for it by the front gate. The sergeant has drawn off all his men from the western front to cope with this unexpected offensive; and I’m sure it’s an un-Sound move. Did you get that one?”
“Stopit, Julian! If you’re the kind of man that can pun at such a moment as this you aren’tfit to marry. And I neverwillmarry you—never, never,—Comeaway from that window.”
“Don’t worry, the firing’s all in the wrong direction so far. The police are waiting to see the whites of their eyes. And that’s going to need television, considering where the enemy is in hiding.”
Sergeant Stebbins apparently thought so too. The disturbance came from under the porch of the servants’ wing, and from the floor of the porch to the ground, a drop of eight or ten feet, a fine-meshed lattice enclosed a garden tool-room and formed a walled passage to the basement. Its outside door was closed, undoubtedly barricaded. Stebbins had tried the basement approach and found it closed and sealed. But he had decided on squeezing tactics. Two of his men, stationed in the cellar, were to burst through the inner door at the moment of a supporting attack from the yard.
Without warning Sergeant Stebbins gave his two-shot signal. And the din was on. Julian, really pale, stepped back and held his hand across his eyes.
“Shiver my timbers!” he said, with a deep,trembling shudder. “God help whoever it is. He has pluck.”
The smell of gunpowder had sifted into the room. Underfoot the sounds of the splintering door were somehow more affecting than the actual shots. The tensity and misery of the five in the dining-room were reaching an unbearable pitch. The loss of the restraining influence, though not a happy restraint, of Belknap and Berry, who had gone to the front as staff officers, was tending to break down such morale as had existed. Joel was moaning as if she had been wounded. Sydney Crawford, with staring eyes, was gripping Neil’s arm between her two hands until every knuckle showed white. Neil was shivering from head to foot as a man shivers after too long a swim in cold water.
Suddenly it was the silence, crashing back into place, that seemed deafening, like lightning-cut cloud meeting in thunder. In it, Nadia Mdevani, who had appeared to be holding her nerve, lost it. She pointed, as if at blood.
“Look! In the name of Christ, look there. There’s what spelled Bertrand Whittaker’s death.”
It was a figure eight in the form of two overlappingholes bored in the paneling of the wall at the height of a man’s head. Freshly cut: there was a faint salting of sawdust on the hardwood floor beneath.
It took Joel to break the stillness in the room. With a face like a death-mask she gazed at the dark spot on the wall.
“I know now,” she said. “I know who killed Colonel Blake and Romany and Uncle Bertrand. But it can’t be true. It can’t be true that—” Julian didn’t let her finish. He crushed his hand over her mouth as Belknap came in from the butler’s pantry, with the sergeant and Berry.
“Hush! you little fool. Don’t go saying things. Don’tyoube responsible for hanging somebody. Let Mr. Belknap take care of that.” He shook her desperately. “Whatever you know or think, keep it to yourself, do you hear?Doyou? Don’t let ’em get it out of you.”
But Belknap had heard enough.
“What’s this you know, Miss Joel?” he said. “Come now, out with it. No, don’t cry like that. I’m sorry. What’s the trouble, Miss Mdevani?” He turned to Nadia as Joel collapsed.
“You should have been barred from detectivework on account of your eyes,” Nadia said. “Look.”
“Aha-a-a? So that’s the way the wind blows? We’ll investigate directly. We have another matter to deal with right now. All right, Sergeant, there’s your man.” He indicated Crawford.
Stebbins went to Crawford and touched his arm.
“I place you under arrest, Mr. Crawford, charged with instigating the murder of Judge Whittaker. Your hired accomplices have confessed.”
Crawford looked dazed. Then he swung on Stebbins.
“They havenotconfessed,” he said. “For they did not kill Whittaker. If this is what is meant by third degree, you can do your damnedest. They are as innocent of this crime as you are. You can do your worst to me; but not to them.”
“The worst has been done to them I’m afraid,” Berry said quietly. “They are both dead. They told us to tell you the account is squared. Whatever that may mean. So I guess you have to go along with us. That gives usoneof our men, Sergeant. Now what’s this hole-in-the-wall business, Belknap? Neat work on your part, Crawford? You had things ready for business, I see.”
“There must be some entrance to the space between the wall and the tapestry of the library,” Belknap said. “We’d better call John.”
John came. He showed them a thin door within a door—a long, narrow, hinged panel that formed a door jamb in the dining-room-library doorway. Belknap went through it. No one spoke. When he returned he carried a Colt twenty-two in his handkerchief. He went directly to Nadia.
“I would offer you this back,” he said in a low voice, “but we shall need it. I’m truly sorry.”
“Don’t worry in the least.” She looked him straight in the eyes. “It is mine, yes. I missed it whenIneeded it last night.”
Late in the afternoon a ‘London’ fog had crept up from the Sound, and smothered in its furry, suffocating waves, Thorngate was sinking into depth below depth of depression. Julian asked weren’t there seven levels of Purgatory because if so they must be about six down at five o’clock and rapidly approaching the bottom. It was the total lack of headway made by the investigators, and the apparent helplessness of the law, that tripled and quadrupled the early gloom of the second night. Hours upon hours of questioning and cross-questioning by Stebbins, Belknap and Berry in turn had gathered no really tangible results. Yet the steady, unremittent grilling went on—and on and on and on, as Julian said, like the tail of Christopher Robin’s mouse.
Julian was unquenchable. During his own briefappearance in the witness box—an uncomfortable, straight-backed chair at one side of the dining-room table, the dining-room being the temporary seat of legal authority—he had played a combination of clown and dunce, to the rage of Stebbins, the scorn of Belknap, and the amusement of Berry. For Julian had at last made up his mind to throw in his lot, and his clues, with Berry’s, as soon as he could isolate Berry. And it was for this he was managing to keep his own counsel. He wasn’t casting bread on the troubled waters for that Savonarola Belknap, or Stebbins, to pick up and grow fat upon. But hedidfeel that he perhaps shouldn’t rate a whole investigation to himself, seeing it was his first. It would be positively presumptuous to suppose he had a chance to make a coup (not that he didn’t suppose it just the same) against such a field of stars. Belknap might even be called a first magnitude.
So when Stebbins was severe with him, chronically severe, he took refuge in an india-rubber persiflage.
“Miss Mdevani saw you on the stairs at 4:30A.M.What did you say you were doing about that time?”
“I swear I was doing nothing whatever about it. Time is one of those things you save time by leaving to its own devices.”
Stebbins huffed and he puffed; Belknap cleared his throat; Berry smiled.
“I said what were you doing in the hall at 4:30A.M.?” Stebbins’ voice did all the things Stebbins would have enjoyed doing.
“I had put my shoes out at 11P.M., and I thought they might be back by four.” Julian was examining the end of his tie.
“Contempt of court, Julian,” Belknap said. “Come now, boy—”
“You leave him to me,” Stebbins thundered. “I’m talking to him, Mr. Belknap. Now, Mr. Prentice, will you repeat that again about you and Miss Lacey?”
“The others must be tired of hearing it; but if you want it, I’m never tired of saying it.” Julian struck a sentimental attitude. “I love her.”
Stebbins blushed.
“I’m asking you what went on in your room—I mean what was Miss Lacey doing in your—I mean— Oh, get to Hell out of here. I’ll call you again when I need you. Bring in Crawford.”