‘Bring in Crawford!’ All afternoon the word had periodically come out: ‘Bring in Crawford,’ and at each call Crawford, more shattered, more bewildered, more desperately ill with weariness and anguish, was led in, only to come out again to a stark and tragic Sydney who, between rounds as it were, tried mechanically to warm his hands with her colder hands.
Stebbins decidedly had it in for Crawford. Naturally he was prejudiced by a nasty little battle that had left him two badly wounded men.
“What was Judge Whittaker’s Diary to you? You needn’t answer. I know. And we’ll get you for that anyway. Where is the Diary now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Answerme.”
“I don’t know.”
“When you killed Blake to get it what did you do with it?”
“I didn’t kill Blake.”
“What were you doing at 3A.M.?”
“I was down at the Turnpike.”
“After killing Blake.”
“I told you I didn’t kill Blake;” with infinite weariness.
“Were you in Miss Video’s room at 2:30?”
“No. She was with someone else.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. I heard voices and didn’t knock.”
“Whatdidyou do?”
“Saw to the basement door for admitting my men.”
“Taking time to dispose of Blake.”
“I didn’t kill Blake.”
“Does your wife know of your relationship with Miss Video?”
“She does.”
“Since when?”
“A few days ago.”
“Did you quarrel?”
“Not exactly.”
“Did you suggest putting Miss Video out of the way?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Did you say, ‘It’s Bertrand Whittaker’s life or mine’?”
“I did. I have not denied my intention to kill Whittaker.”
“When did you admit your men to the house?”
“They were never in the house.”
“Are these the gloves with which you filched Miss Mdevani’s pistol and handled the paper knife against Blake?”
“I didn’t kill Blake.”
And so on, over and over, with Crawford’s voice dull and monotonous. But driven and hounded as he was he never yielded a point beyond his admission of an old murder and an intended one. But, as Stebbins said to Berry, it was merely a matter of time before they had a full confession from Crawford: he was the kind that eventually succumbs to third degree methods. And Stebbins was the one man sure of the way the wind blew!
He treated Nadia on the other hand with due respect, as they did all three. Stebbins obviously feared her. Berry sat gazing at her, spellbound. Belknap looked anywhere but at her, paced the floor, threw spokes in the wheels of Stebbins’ questionnaire, and put up defences that, in his blindness to them, he apparently thought were as invisible to others.
“Your handkerchief, Miss Mdevani?” Stebbins produced the handkerchief found by Belknap.
“Mine.”
“That handkerchief,” Belknap interposed impatiently, “was on the library floor when I helped Whittaker to his room at 11:30.”
“This is the first we have heard of it,” Stebbins snapped.
“I haven’t the least idea when I dropped it,” Nadia went on, ignoring the interruption. “Possibly it was when I found Blake, about 4:30.”
“You found Blake?” Stebbins pounced on her.
“I did.”
“And why didn’t you notify someone immediately?”
“There was scarcely time. Mrs. Crawford did it for me.”
“Where were you when Mrs. Crawford screamed?”
“In Mr. Belknap’s room.”
“You had gone to tell him?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Had you heard anything onyourrounds? The way trailsdidn’tcross last night beats everything.”
“I heard that rat in the library walls—you recall my mentioning him, Mr. Belknap? His teeth turn out to have been a tool called a gimlet.”
“Is this your pistol?”
“It is.”
“When did you have it last?”
“It was on my dresser when I came down to dinner.”
“Have you a permit?”
“I have. I have carried a weapon for years. A lone lady, you know,” she smiled.
“Why did you leave it on your dresser?”
“I had taken it from my handbag when I was fishing for my lipstick. I neglected to return it.”
Belknap stood directly in front of her, his hands thrust deep in his pockets.
“I saw it there myself not later than one-thirty, or two. Your window was open to the balcony. It was when I went to close it that I saw the figure on the terrace which I am willing to swear was that of Dorn.”
“You are forever ringing your Milton Dorn in on this, Belknap. For God’s sake produce him.”
“My scouts are out,” Belknap said with suave contempt. “The report comes that he never has returned to town. So far, so good. I think if you would dwell a moment on this phase of the case you would find the house bore me out in saying Dorn left here last night in a strange state of perturbation.He looked like a man about to lose sane control of himself.”
“I think you make a good point, Belknap,” Berry spoke. “In many ways the whole campaign has the earmarks of the inspired scheme of a maniac, conceived and executed with that type of brilliance. We must at least leave no stone unturned in the hunt for Dorn. That’s enough of you for the present, Miss Mdevani. Now let’s have a crack at Miss Lacey, Sergeant. In a moment—time out for drinks.”
It was a terrified and incoherent Joel that faced her three interlocutors—more terrified than seemed quite called for under the circumstances, bad as the circumstances were. Horror was to be expected, and fear of a sort perhaps, but not stark terror. But Joel was the victim of a terror that alternated moments of intense shivering with a rigid paralysis of movement. She bravely tried to control herself, and sat sipping the brandy Belknap had poured for her and smiling mechanically. Berry was extremely kind.
“Will you tell us, Miss Lacey, as clearly and consecutively as possible, the story of your night last night? There is no slightest wish on our part tohurry or confuse you. We need your help in settling an affair thathasbeen tragic and is likely to be more so unless we do something about it. Will you describe to us the way you spent your time between 10:30 last night, when I understand you retired, until 4:30 this morning when Colonel Blake’s murder was discovered?”
Joel, in broken snatches, told them of how she had gone to her room in a perturbed state of mind—puzzled by her uncle, bewildered at the startling rapidity with which a dangerous situation had fallen out of the blue, and inwardly shaken by a tale of murder that had struck home to one of their own number.
“Did the fact that your uncle read a passage of this Diary relative to a crime actually committed by Mr. Crawford mean that he might equally well have touched on crimes of others present? Or do you think he was choosing this way to cruelly pay off a score against Crawford?”
Joel drew a deep breath and looked quickly at Belknap.
“I think it must have been a personal question between my uncle and Mr. Crawford,” she said firmly.
Belknap appeared deaf to question and answer. Joel shuddered a little and dropped her eyes.
“Thank you, Miss Lacey. There seems to be mutual agreement on that point. You went to your room, you say. What next?”
She had prepared for bed slowly, for there was no hope of sleep and she wished to fill the time. She had stood at the window, walked the floor, sat by the fire. She thought, and thought; about shoes and ships and sealing wax, but about sin in particular, and finally about sin in the abstract.
“That’ll do,” said Stebbins curtly. He had been bothered by the way all his witnesses were inclined to wander off the beaten track into philosophizing and psychologizing. “Go on with the story.”
Then the idea of going directly to her uncle had occurred to her. At least she might find out why he was in this cold, bleak, inhuman mood. It might be he was facing a dilemma that was slowly but surely cornering him. Put in a corner for badness Bertrand Whittaker always went from bad to worse. This was worse.
She had crept out and along the hall—last night’s atmosphere had called for creeping—and was about to tap on her uncle’s door when sheheard voices within: her uncle’s and Romany’s. Joel turned swiftly and slipped into a darkened doorway; and Romany had made her exit with a last dramatic fling over her shoulder. “All right, Bertrand, I’ll match you revelation for revelation if that’s your game. There are several of you due for a fall if I let so-and-so out of the bag. And I’m going to let her out.” Joel had caught so-and-so’s name and promptly lost it again in the frightful medley of subsequent events. She hoped it would come back. It was troubling her with a feeling of its vague familiarity.
Romany had disappeared, and no longer wanting a scene with her uncle, Joel had returned to her room and knocked on Julian’s door to ask for comfort and sympathy. She and Julian had discussed pros and cons, thises and thats, until Julian felt it was his turn to try to pour oil on Whittaker. He had left her sitting alone and desolate—promising a quick return; but he had never come back.
And very late, feeling badly in need of a bracer, she had summoned the courage to venture down to the tray of liquors in the library.
Here Joel paused in her slow, hesitant narrationand trembled uncontrollably from head to foot like a spent runner.
“What’s troubling you, Miss Lacey?” Berry asked gently. “Did something happen in the library? Come now, what was it?”
“No, nothing happened exactly. I’m easily frightened I guess.”
“You were frightened?”
She seemed unable to answer, and turned an appealing glance toward Belknap.
“I came in from the dining room when Miss Lacey was there,” Belknap said in a low voice, holding Joel steady with his eyes. “She was hysterical and overwrought, but it hardly seemed surprising considering the general tension of the household. It appears I was wrong. Can’t you tell us what upset you, Joel dear?”
“You—came in from the dining-room,” she whispered, her face colorless. “I was tired and nervous, that’s all. You startled me dreadfully. Nothing more.”
“You are sure, Miss Lacey?”
“Absolutely sure. Of course. Mr. Belknap was so kind as to see me to my room. I was doing my best to fall asleep when Mrs. Crawford screamed.”
This was the most they could win from her—even when Stebbins insisted on a turn of the screw. She became stony and expressionless under pressure and they dared not urge her for the time being, though they felt she was decidedly withholding something of real importance.
“You had better go and try once more for a little sleep, Miss Lacey,” Berry said. “We all need it,” he added with a weary sigh. “What do you say we call it a day, boys? Can I have a word with you, Belknap?Whata fog!”
Belknap had been unable to guess which way the cat was jumping as far as Berry was concerned. He had not shown his hand in the least; and as for his face it was the perfect detective face, charming but expressionless, bland and open, but with as much depth as a plaster cast. It was only, as Julian remarked to Joel outside, when you took the trouble to meet his eyes squarely that you positively jumped, as if you had caught the eyes of your ancestral great-great-great somebody-or-other rolling at you from the wall. A secret chamber, and holes where the canvas should be! In Berry’s case that must mean something—if nothing more than that he was seeing more than he let on. It was certainlyone of the first reasons why Julian was intending to take matters up with him alone.
Berry had so far only shown an interest in funny little irrelevant, or seemingly irrelevant, details. His total contribution to the afternoon’s entertainment had been sudden pesky interruptions, at inopportune moments, when he insisted upon shelving the important point at issue for the sake of what was a minor matter to Belknap and a very, very minor one to Stebbins. Stebbins saw things in black and white. Belknap was more willing to consider the shadings, but he had had to admit that a great many of Berry’s nuances escaped him. Berry’s “pardon-me” was a vague murmur about an Achilles heel—that one never knew in what out of the way spot the weakness might turn up. Best to probe them all with your spear thrust.
For instance, there was the sprinkling of the few dried carnation petals fallen across Romany’s rumpled hair and pillow—Stebbins had them now in a cup at his elbow, somehow pathetic, as if they had been her ashes. Romany, as she was discovered by Lily, and later examined by Berry and Stebbins, was a little heap of pink maribou dressing gown on her bed—her face ivory white under her amberhair—theatrical and unreal: “Call itLa Mort du Cygne, or, better still,She Who Gets Slapped,” Julian had said, standing in the doorway of her room that morning. She had apparently been unexpectedly seized and held firmly, there was little sign of struggle, by two hands, with the thumbs pressing deeply at the base of the throat where there was a faint congestion and discoloration. There was only the one material clue: the carnation petals. And that seemed immaterial, since there was a bowl of carnations on the bedside table, which made it more than likely she had been holding one for its scent. Or was it possible the murderer had his sentimental moments!
But Berry made harpstrings of those petals and played on them in and out of season. Had anyone worn a lapel flower the evening before? Everyone was agreed that Dorn was wearing one—but they were equally agreed it was a gardenia. Belknap himself was positive on this point, although some of the others lost their certainty. Belknap also saidhemight have been wearing one himself; he exchanged glances with Nadia.
“Next time you offer me a flower for my buttonhole, Miss Mdevani,” he said in a gently banteringtone, “don’t let anyone’s presence deter you. I should be charmed to have one from your fair hand.”
“It will be freshly plucked,” she answered him, her eyes very bright, high color on her face.
“No innuendoes!” Berry had cried. “You two need a moor and a moon. Remember this is a court of law.”
“I am not likely to forget it,” she said. “But, dangerous as it is to me, the moor and the moon would be more so,” and she tilted her chin at Belknap.
This had been a temporary fade-out of Berry’s interest in the carnation. But he had returned to it often, as he had to other apparently illogical and tiresomely remote incidents. It had the effect, however, of whetting Belknap’s appetite for enlightenment: had Berry a theory, or no theory; was he throwing dust to cover what he considered the crux of the whole business, or was he merely floundering in a waste of motives, unable to take the bull by the horns? Certainly it was time the two of them went into a huddle and exchanged views, even if the views were limited.
So it was with great expectations that Belknap answered Berry’s proposal.
“Yes, let’s go into retreat. I have a little to say myself.”
“Nadia!”
“Mr. Belknap! God rest you merry gentleman!” Belknap had approached Nadia where she stood alone, in an alcove of the great East Room. She had been trying to concentrate on a specimen of modern French art. The fog pressed a whited face against the windows near her.
“Your mood is a difficult one, Nadia. I want to talk to you.”
“Let nothing you dismay.”
Belknap threw out his hands in a helpless gesture.
“You’re not kind,” he said. “Shall we go outside?”
“No,thankyou. Remember your Mr. Dorn.” Her dim smile, secretive, came and went.
“Come now, what would you have had me do? Tell them about the code—or have you conveniently forgotten the message? By the way, did Igive it back to you? I haven’t been able to find it.”
She whirled on him.
“Didn’t you destroy it?”
“Perhaps. I can’t remember. Mrs. Crawford rather upset our tête-à-tête.”
Nadia looked him critically, menacingly, up and down from chin to brow and brow to chin. Her nostrils quivered; her cheeks sucked in; her eyes narrowed to shining cracks.
“There are moments when I suspect you of double dealing, Detective. You may be out to get me after all, and are finding the back-handed method the cleverest. (Damnthe O’Neill reiteration of that fog horn!)”
In a flash he saw the single frayed thread by which she held her nerve.
“That is not true, Nadia, and you know it.” Belknap returned her look with one as piercing and equally cruel in its way. “Guilty or not, it’s all one to me. But Iamout to get you. Yes, I want you.”
Her look was filmed with another, a softer one.
“You—want me. What does that mean? Is ‘want’ the word you intend?”
He admired her frankness; though he hated the woman of it, that must always have the facts sugar-coated. He was hard to her.
“That is the word I meant. Want. Are you suggesting that overnight it should or could be anything else?”
She gave an odd little sigh.
“That’s that,” she said with a faint shrug of her lovely shoulders. “Only there is so much want and so little—of the other.”
“Possibly. My impression is we wouldn’t need much of the other.”
Because he didn’t touch her, they were both being hurt by the desire to touch. She flinched a little before the brutal magnetism of his eyes. She felt gutted by them as by a fire; and shuddered her whole body to shake herself free, as a dog shudders rain.
“We won’t talk of it now,” she said restlessly.
“We must take advantage of the time that remains to us.”
“Meaning by that that my hours are numbered?” She threw him a quick sidewise glance under a curve of her lashes. “Don’t youtrulythink your studied lack of interest in me will getme off? Really, that’s altogether too modest!”
“You are unfair, my dear. I am doing my best for you.”
“Go on. Say it: ‘without belief.’”
“Belief! Belief in what? Your innocence? God in His heaven, you didn’t imagine your love potion as strong as all that, did you? Let’s be honest. We can afford to be, you and I. It takes courage, but courage is the coin of our particular realm.”
“Who is to be honest?”
“Both of us, beautiful.”
“You begin.”
“Ladies first.”
“What you crave, I suppose, is a full confession, brief and to the point, omitting details. Mr. Belknap, I could almost think you are making love to me (oh, using the word lightly, don’t be alarmed!) to acquire information to be used against me. It may be you are regretting your gestures in my favor. Are you worrying about the reputation of Detective Ordway Belknap?”
“Hardly so late in the day. It’s been already thrown to the dogs. I have an intense distastefor attitudes or I should say I had thrown it at your feet, cold heart.”
“Not so cold as you might think perhaps,” and there was a tremor below the voice. “I seldom meet a man I feel is my match or better. I had hopes of you. You disappoint me.” The acrimony crept back. “To give me to understand that you pass up a brilliant display of your methods when you fail to put your finger on me doesn’t speak well for yourself, John. Even Sergeant Stebbins admits I’m too easy to be right.” She had the audacity to look mischievous.
“Stebbins be damned. It’s just his bull-headed sort than can’t see the obvious for dust. Nadia, you’re beating around the bush most successfully, but though I like to hear you play with words let’s clear the decks. And then my congratulations. Three in an evening is a jolly good bag.”
“Mr. Belknap,” she said with a sudden hard seriousness, “I have killed no one at Thorngate—neither Blake, nor Romany, nor my beloved Bertrand. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Desperate as my case may look the fight isn’t over yet. It’s just begun. I expect to produce a murderer to take my place, and I believe I have my man,using the word to cover the female of the species, under surveillance.”
“Confide in me?”
“No-o-o, I think not. Finder’s keeper’s, until—oh well, until.”
Belknap’s dark face darkened another shade. Evenhiscontrol was wearing as sharp and thin as an edged tool. This futile fencing with Nadia Mdevani, taken with the savage unaccountable ache she stirred in him, was trying his last ounce of endurance. Yet there seemed to be no other way with her unless it were to eat humble pie; and be damned if he’d bend his nature for any woman.
“You and Miss Lacey appear to know it all.” His tone harbored scorn at the root of its being. “I should say it was about time you did something about it.”
Nadia looked serious.
“Thereissomething troubling Joel Lacey,” she said. “But she is keeping it well to herself, in spite of you and that Sergeant Stebbins; and even me. For I’ve been hot on her trail. I should say it was loss of nerve and not lack of knowledge that is holding her tongue-tied. Perhaps she’dbetterlet well enough alone. Do you know, dear man,there are times when terror rises in me like a cold fountain. Not that I’m afraid of death exactly; but I don’t relish it just around every corner. Did you see ‘Outward Bound’?”
“Yes, why?”
“Nothing much. Only those blind ships blowing down there in the fog reminded me of it. Who will be next, Mr. Belknap?”
“You take it for granted therewillbe a next.”
“Don’t you?” her eyes were steady on his.
“Then perhaps it is my duty to see you under lock and key. You don’t go so far as to deny I could command your arrest, do you? There is that Berlin-Viennese Murder Ring to account for.”
“You know too much,” she murmured with serpent softness. “Did Bertrandtellyou more than he knew? Or did he write it?”
“Meaning?”
“Exactly what you care to have it mean.” She paused. “Are you asking for it—my arrest?” There was no slightest trace of apprehension in her manner.
“No; not exactly. I’m asking for something far more necessary to my peace of mind.” Hetook her wrists suddenly and drew her towards him. “Kiss me.”
She twisted her hands free and turned away. But her lips were drawn a little, and her face very white.
“I think not,” she said. “The Devil’s in it I know, and Bertrand Whittaker. Possibly Cain, Orestes, Brutus, Hamlet’s mother and a few besides. But let’s keep Judas out of it if we can.”
Stebbins had departed. Headquarters needed him. And he had gone, warding off with both arms a hornet’s nest of reporters all down the drive to his parked car. He said he’d be back if he was wanted, or something turned up in the way of evidence. For all the help he was he might as well stay away, Julian said, but perhaps he was good camouflage. The house did somehow feel a little more exposed without him; although he left a substantial guard.
There was a tense, uncomfortable, haphazard meal in the nature of a buffet supper. The kitchen was so disorganized it was a miracle anything like food came out of it. No one was on the best of speaking terms with anyone else—unless perhaps Julian with Joel, and she was too distressed with weariness and fear to know what hewas saying. So he had resigned himself to sitting near her where she lay on the library divan, her tear-darkened lids closed over her tired eyes. He tried to figure rhyme or reason into the events of the twenty-four hours. He traced patterns and followed clues to where they disappeared in storm and mist. He tried flying below the clouds, tried to get above them, and failed to make it either way. For all he knew he was flying upside down. And yet his mind seemed lucid, even brilliant. It was extraordinary how nearness to Joel had the power to heighten and stimulate whatever he was doing, talking, thinking, feeling, dreaming. If she now and then failed to catch his innuendoes, the stupid darling, yet it was her very presence that made him even half-way witty. And, if she didn’t quite understand music as he understood it, it was her closeness to his shoulder at a concert that lifted him beyond the appreciative to the creative listener. He leaned over now and kissed her cheek gently, not to disturb her.
He very much wished she would tell him what had been so upsetting her since she had seen that black figure eight in the wainscoting. Not that it wasn’t a strangely sinister and upsetting discovery—evenJulian couldn’t control a shudder at the thought of it. But Joel’s upset condition had been chronic. It was just because she claimed it would upset her more to talk of it than to try to forget it (oh, if she onlycouldforget it!) that he had decided not to urge her. Besides, she had said it was all a frightful nightmare, utterly impossible and false. She must, simplymust, put it out of mind.
Julian, though, had been having a few weird and outrageous ideas himself; and he would have liked nothing better than to compare notes with Joel. Dorn was troubling him like a ghost or a vampire. The least stir of the curtains, the quietest footstep, went through his body with a needle-thrust of exquisite horror. Perhaps Belknap had not been alone in having a fleeting glimpse of the man—if man he still was. To Julian to be insane was to be inhuman. Somethinghadhappened when Joel was in the library, Julian felt convinced of that. By signs of a strained understanding between her and Belknap he came to the conclusion they both knew what it was. He could almost have said they shared a guilty secret, as if they were shielding someone, against the rules of the game. Why inthe name of heaven should they shield Dorn? He might have been a friend of Whittaker’s, but as far as Julian knew Joel had scarcely met him; and Belknap, the night before, had shown a positive dislike for him.
It might be Mrs. Crawford they were combining to protect. There seemed to be an all-around conspiracy to spare Sydney. Well, who could wonder, really? After Whittaker’s unspeakable betrayal, and Neil’s and Romany’s, and the thought of the Diary with its ghastly story ever appearing in print, who could blame her for getting her hands on the Diary if it meant Hartley Blake’s life—for revenging her honor if it meant Romany’s life—or her husband’s honor if it meant Whittaker’s? Or perhaps Belknap and Berry were closing in on Sydney obliquely, by way of pressure brought to bear on Neil.Thatmight break her to admission. Although the way she looked tonight, coming and going from the room where Neil lay ill and delirious, nothing short of death would break her.
They had been hard on Neil Crawford—unnecessarily so, Julian thought. Though even if someone had been ahead of his assassins in the case of Whittaker, as Crawford insisted, he supposedthe law could do something about the mere fact of intended murder. And Crawford, as well as his wife, had reasons for wishing Romany and the Diary disposed of. When it came right down to it any one of them might have killed Whittaker. But how thankful one was, Julian drew a deep breath, to have it done for him. He even wondered if there mightn’t now be a chance for some of them to wiggle out scot-free—with the past still a closed book. One thing about Belknap he had to admit was jolly decent—and that was his not stressing what must have been as obvious to him as to the others, perhaps more obvious: namely, that Whittaker’s intention had been to make a clean sweep of his guests. Not only was Belknap being discreet with regard to the content of the Diary, but he was actually soft-pedaling it. No doubt wholly in consideration of Nadia Mdevani as usual! But in this instance he was benefiting others than Nadia. And Julian for one was deeply grateful.
Again, who had killed whom? Who had chased whom around the walls of what? However you looked at it any one could have killed every other one. And quite possibly victim could have killedvictim—perhaps two-thirds of the murderers were among the murdered. Which could lead to conjuring in terms: victor-victim, or victim-victor. Blake may have killed Romany, Romany Blake. Even the doctor was unable to tell which had died first—the times had apparently so nearly coincided. Or Whittaker could have killed both. The one proven fact was that neither Blake nor Romany could have killed Whittaker. It was hoped there would be one more fact settled with the matching of markings on the bullet and pistol.Thebullet. Julian was still bothered by the question of his two shots. One must have been an echo.
AndhadNadia Mdevani fired her own weapon? She had been found in the library—its only occupant. But she gave the appearance of not having stirred for hours. Perfect acting. But it would take superhuman agility to have cleared the wall-space and become rooted to the couch before he had sprung in from the terrace outside. And why had she left her gun lying around? Perhaps she thought nothing would be discovered before she returned in quiet to dispose of it. No, that wouldn’t do: she herself had spotted the holes.The margin between being innocently honest and too honest because of guilt is so slight it would take a wiser and more practiced analyst than Julian considered himself to be to gauge it. Here again he had hope of Berry. And it was clear Berry was not particularly inclined to Nadia’s guilt. He seemed to have other fish to fry. What fish?
For if Nadia, Sydney and Crawford, by a bare chance, were all innocent, who was left? Joel, himself,—and of course that mysterious Dorn. Why couldn’t they find Dorn? Talk about the ineffectiveness of the police! The one thing you’d think they might accomplish would be the finding of a human being who had had less than twelve hours’ start. Particularly if he was, as began to seem more than likely, hanging around Thorngate. If it wasn’t for this blasted fog he’d go hunting himself, even if it meant a hand-to-hand encounter. Anything was better than waiting for Dorn to move. What was that noise now—like a finger-nail on glass? A twig rubbed on the window by the wind? But there wasn’t a wind. Wind and fog don’t go hand in hand. The thing to do was to find Berry and get down towork. It was this terrible inactivity that was beginning to tell on his nerves.
He hated to leave Joel, even for a moment. Looking at her sad, white face as she lay there sleeping (she had fallen into a restless sleep) his heart ached for her. Forgive her her murder! He had scarcely thought of it since she had told him of it. He would protect her against the past as well as against the future. He prayed the future had nothing worse in store for her. He touched her hand.
“Iwillcome back soon this time, my darling,” he whispered.
Joel stirred, shifted. Her lips moved, though her eyes were closed. She whispered something, and Julian bent down quickly to listen.
“Violet Mowbray, that’s the name. You see Ididremember. Violet—Violet—Violet—” She trailed off into indistinguishable sounds.
Julian waited, hoping she might, while she was about this opportune sleep-talking, give away more important matters. But she didn’t speak again, and Julian, pleased as Punch anyway with what she had revealed, went off to find Berry.
Then, very suddenly, Joel woke up. She came wide, staring wide, awake. The library was dark. It hadn’t been dark when she fell asleep.Somethinghad waked her. Was it the snapping of the electric switch? Was it the closing of a door—the door must be shut for there wasn’t a glimmer of light? Was it the Presence by its mere presence? For therewasa Presence. As sure as death there was Someone in the room with her. She could almost, her nerves were so tense, so painfully sensitive, tell exactly at what spot the Someone was. Her nerves were like the antennæ of a beetle or the searchlight rays of a battleship, reaching out and feeling It somewhere between her and the terrace windows. She couldn’t move her eyeballs in that direction—not that she could have seen It if she had. But without hearingIt she knew It moved, and without hearing It she knew It breathed. Her flesh experienced such a pain of terror that it stung even the inner membrane of her nostrils, like intense cold, and brought the tears of intense cold under her eyelids. If she could scream or move! But she was incapable of either. Except for the waves of fear that went over her in pain, her body was detached and subject to no sweating exertion of the will. Her brain alone was active, in a strangely shrunken but vivid way. Like a little cornered rodent, very small but very much alive, it tore quivering about in a tiny brightly lighted trap. It had static, feverish, stricken eyes and it ran up one side of its cage only to fall back and hysterically attempt the other. If something would mercifully happen—instantaneous death instead of waiting for it in a condemned cell.
She remembered! How much she remembered, in flashes, with the clarity of flying bird shadows on sunlit snow; and in bitter irony watched herself remembering, realizing it was what one conventionally did during numbered seconds. There was that terrible hanging story of Ambrose Bierce’s when you didn’t know untilthe last sentence that the whole action took place in the man’s mind between the tightening of the noose and the extinction of life. She herself had had a somewhat similar experience on a bobsled run on an icy hill that led across a river at the foot, when it became certain that a skid on a turn was going to throw them clear of the bridge into the gorge. Her soul had deserted the doomed ship and calmly watched the end of her body. That she lived through it wasn’t by her soul’s grace! Hadn’t she heard of a preposterous religious notion that dying a violent death, smashing up the body, meant the soul was a long time making Heaven, being slow to extricate itself from the flesh? Why, at this moment her spirit had walked out on her and was leaving her body to encounter the dreadful thing unattended.Toodreadful—she fled it down the nights and down the days.
She remembered climbing a big maple when she was a child—a maple in autumn leaf—and being drowned in a wave of pure, translucent color, and lost to the world until she emerged on the crest of the wave to a new world, seen from a great height, and by new, color-stained eyes. She remembered, as a test of courage, being madeby her father to traverse a grove of pines alone at night and being frozen stone cold by the approach of what proved to be pastured cattle. Uncle Bertrand was sending them all through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. How few of them—It moved!Her mind sprang from this hiding place of memories and fled precipitously to crouch in an opposite corner: she remembered a cool summer evening when she and her girlhood friend raced around the block on bicycles, and the horror that burst between them when a monster car, in the days when cars were few and monstrous, caught Margaret, and instantly killed her. She remembered picking English cowslips, unlike our American cowslip, in a Gloucestershire meadow, when she wore a pink muslin dress with white polka dots, and the yellow flowers with their imperishable, indescribable scent drew her on like Persephone from field to field. She remembered being dragged screaming from her first moving picture, a silent picture except for the gun fired point blank at her by a Western desperado in a close-up of face and gun-muzzle. If she could scream like that now! She screamed inside until her throat ached—and not a sound came. Shesprang to her feet and fled to the door, stumbling, falling, stumbling—and yet she had not moved by the fraction of an inch. Her mind, unable to face things, again escaped. She remembered spearing for suckers on a spring night, wading up a wide, slow brook, and the way they were all, with spears unlifted, fitfully illumined in the light of oil-soaked torches. She remembered the day on the beach at Shelter Island when Jerry had said, “Your wedding, you mean” to her “Is this making two ends meet, when you spend more money than we possess, always to be my funeral?” She remembered her black-and-red anger when he had laughingly mocked her; “Come now, my dear, I admit you’re a sweet bluffer, but for God’s sake don’t try being European with me. A duel? I know you too well. You haven’t the lightness of touch to get away with it.” Jerry! She mustn’t think of Jerry now or she would find herself between two fires—this new outer terror and the old inner one. Jerry’s face as—
Oh my God, It moved again! Too close this time foranyescape. Of course It knew she was there. That’s what It was here for. Where was Julian? Why had he left her? The last image ofher open eyes had been of Julian sitting near her—the last image of her mind’s eye had been of him still leaning over her, watching her drift into sleep. For one flash she considered It as Julian. No-no-no-no-no.No, he may have been a murderer once, but he wasn’t doing this to her now—he wasn’t, he wasn’t. It was—was the one she knew had killed the others: Blake, Romany, her uncle. It was— And then, with relief not even to have tothinkthe name, she suddenly yielded, and gratefully drank in the faint sweet odor of a cloth that was thrown across her face and bound at the back of her head. The little rodent, with its petrified eyes and thudding heart, couldn’t have stood the thudding, as of a motor too powerful for the body, another conscious second.
Detective Lieutenant Silas Berry of the New York Homicide Squad was fine-tooth-combing Romany’s room for possible clues.
“Mr.—Inspector—Lieutenant Berry.” Julian was inclined to embarrassment. “Can you spare me a few minutes? I want to talk.”
Berry laid his magnifying glass on the dresser.
“Nothing would please me more, boy,” he said cheerfully, folding his arms and leaning against the bed post. “As you have undoubtedly observed, we detectives just sit around waiting for someone to be kind enough to confess and save our faces with a critical public. What’s on your mind? I think it was you, Prentice,” he continued without interruption, “who thought there were two shots fired at Whittaker this morning. Not that he didn’t deserve a dozen to judge by the shambles he’s madeof the place by that betrayal of poor old Crawford. Are you still of the same opinion about those shots in spite of Mr. Belknap’s equal certainty to the contrary?”
Julian was filling his pipe with unsteady fingers in an effort to cover his excitement and pleasure at Berry’s tone of easy, natural camaraderie!
“Yes, Mr. Berry. I am. But I admit my willingness to be proved mistaken by anyone but Mr. Belknap.”
“I’ve remarked that you and Mr. Belknap don’t exactly see eye to eye.” Berry’s lips twitched in a half-smile. “Or is it that you’ve sighted identically, to the point of interference—hadyouhit on the Dorn solution too? You don’t fancy such a formidable rival, is that it?”
“Perhaps. Yes, Dorn was my original suspicion, and begins to look like my last. Do you really think he’s Mr. Belknap’s, though? Isn’t Mr. Belknap afraid of the woman in the case?”
“You mean Miss Mdevani, I suppose. Hold on now, you shouldn’t be askingmequestions, young man.” Berry caught himself up. “You’re here to answer them. Don’t misunderstand me and think I’m taking you on as a Watson.”