Part 10

“Yes, you can. There should be nothing left, as you say, that you and I cannot say to each other. We have been through too much, we have seen too much, ever to let pride interfere between us again. And you can depend upon me to the end of creation. I’ll never let them distress you—never, never, never.”

“As if I hadn’t been distressed!”

“I know. And I have been one of the worst. I’m sorry, so terribly sorry.”

“_Don’t._”

“Don’t what?”

“You know.” She lifted her eyes, steadily at last, to meet his, and he saw their depths below depths of suffering.

“Tell me,” he insisted.

“I love you.”

“Say it again.”

“I love you.”

Suddenly they clung together. And all the time his mind whirled against itself. How in God’s name, at his time of life, could any woman be doing this to him! Perhaps even now she was tricking him for a way out for herself. But he felt her shivering against him, felt her lips, and knew that was not true. For, together with her love for him, he felt an overwhelming despair in her that frightened him—as though she fully intended to go through with her mad confession. It was mad to have admitted anything! It was going to make his efforts to save her almost hopeless.

“We mustn’t,” he said huskily, trying to hold her off and only holding her closer. “We have other things to think of. It’s desperate. They’re waiting for us. In the first place you must retract whatever you have said, and we’ll try to clear you in the courts. Failing that, we’ll make a get-away—Timbuctu or the Gold Coast, it makes no difference to me. I’m as tired of the game as you are.”

“No—no—no,” she protested. “I won’t let you do that, ever. Oh, my dear, I didn’t mean to tell you how much I cared. Truly I didn’t. I only meant to say good-bye to you. I couldn’t deny myself that. I don’t understand how this other happened. I suppose because we both cared. I hadn’t an idea you did. You have been considerate in some ways, yes, but not really kind. But now I see what it’s been for you. You have been fighting it too, as I have. How cruel to know at the very moment of separation. For it _is_ good-bye. It can’t be anything else, for either of us. Please, no—don’t, don’t, don’t kiss me. I can’t bear it.”

“Be still. We are going to get you off, dear heart. You must be brave, that’s all; and help me.”

“No. I am not going to let you _try_ to get me off. We have you to think of now. Not me any longer. I am beyond being worried about. I never expected to escape the fruits of my sins as long as I have. That I happen to die innocent is a queer twist of fate, nothing more. I would have died really guilty of something within a month—a year. Who knows? And I’ve put up a good battle, as battles go in this world. I have just got around to surrender. I’m through. So it’s fare thee well, dear, forever and ever, instead of—of ‘they lived—.’” Her voice broke.

“_Stop_ it!” He shook her fiercely. “Pull yourself together, Nadia. For God’s sake, don’t stand here talking sentimental nonsense. What we have to do is _plan_. The enemy is outside that door; can’t you realize that? We’ll have to have every ounce of our wits about us to fend them off. What did you admit? Tell me that.”

“Everything. Every murder. What was the point of haggling over an extra one or two. And, what’s more, I’m sticking to it, darling.” She drew a deep breath. “It’s the only solution. Believe me, it is. Nothing in the wide world, including death twenty times over, could make me let you undertake your wild scheme for us. My dear, you are a great man, a strong one, an esteemed one. I am a wretched little criminal—clever, yes, but wretched all the same. Do you think loving you, worshiping you as I do, I could dream of letting you face downright ruin for my sake? It isn’t to be thought of.”

Nadia stood back and lifted her face to his. Her eyes were wide open, lucid, adoring, and, to him, the mirrors of love and integrity. Then, as she gazed at him, the tears, the first he had ever seen her shed, and he had thought her incapable of tears, welled up and fell quietly across her cheeks.

“I love you, don’t you understand that? Don’t you understand what love means? I couldn’t let you hurt yourself for me. The very fact of my love for you makes it absolutely imperative I never retract a word I have said to them. For my confession puts me out of harm’s way and so puts temptation out of yours.” Her little smile came, tender now.

Belknap walked away from her and back, restlessly.

“Nadia,” he said slowly, “I have things to say to you I never intended saying. But I see I must be honest with you to bring you to your senses. You have got to be shocked into fighting if we are going to save ourselves for each other. Which is all that’s left that matters—our having each other—isn’t it?”

“It is,” she whispered breathlessly, a hand at her throat.

“Then you will understand and forgive, for that reason, and for another, almost as important, that you are no better than I am. We are birds of a feather and can properly appreciate each other,” he added with a grim laugh.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we are equally criminals, Nadia. In this case I happen to be the worse one of the two. I’ve killed five people (that is, if Joel Lacey is dead yet) since four o’clock this morning. Rather a record, isn’t it? Do you know, there have been times when I was sure you guessed, _more_ than guessed. And on top of it I have made you confess to the whole show, which was also plotted. _I_ planted that circumstantial evidence upon you, dear. Couldn’t you see? I was intent on beating you at your own game. God, what a beautiful job I made of it! One of my best. And now to have it busted up by a slip of a woman. Not that it isn’t worth it,— Nadia, don’t _look_ at me like that. You’re _not_ looking at me. What _are_ you—”

The dining-room door behind Belknap had stood ajar by the shadow of an inch. It was now thrown open and Stebbins and Berry advanced on Belknap.

“Hands up!” Stebbins thundered.

“It’s hands up, Belknap,” Berry said. “Thank you, Miss Mdevani. That was splendidly done. You acted—”

Berry should have saved his congratulations. As Belknap raised his hands he drew his pistol from his shoulder holster, and, though he would never have had the extra second to swing on his captors, he did have the split fraction of a second to fire straight before him. The shot of his 38 calibre police revolver was deafening. Nadia, shot directly through the breast, put her two hands where the bullet had entered, and without a sound fell in an uneven heap at Belknap’s feet.

XXIV

_He knocked the pistol out of his hand, small room was there to strive ‘’Twas only by favor of mine,’ quoth he, ‘ye rode so long alive._’

The game was up. Almost on the instant that the shot was fired Berry struck down Belknap’s hand and twisted the gun from him. There was no flicker of resistance on Belknap’s part. Nor would there have been the chance of any if Stebbins had had his way. For the Sergeant was a prey to impulsive rages and quick on the trigger. If Berry, in tackling Belknap, had not had a strong arm for Stebbins, Belknap would have joined Nadia Mdevani in the dust.

“No!” Berry cried sharply. “Not that way. Shooting’s too good for him. And we want the dope.”

Stebbins, like copper wire, cooled off as rapidly as he had heated.

“I’m sorry,” he growled. “It’s just that it’s rank cold-blooded murder to shoot a lady down like that.”

Berry had to laugh.

“Not his first one, Sergeant; you should be used to ’em. Come on, lend a hand.”

They bound Belknap, securely. No more playing with fire. And a swift body-search from head to foot revealed several damning articles of trade: Whittaker’s Diary in an inner pocket; several varieties of poison in neatly labeled pill-boxes; a pair of suède gloves; a very exquisite six-inch dagger with an inlaid handle of silver and lapis; a kit for the designing and manufacture of keys; a veritable armory of revolvers, six; a cunningly contrived combination tool that in its various transformations became a screw-driver, a hammer, an auger and bit, a saw, and God knows what else.

“By the way,” Berry shouted suddenly, as he was arranging the articles in an orderly row on the divan table, “where’s Joel Lacey?”

“Oh yes, of course,” Belknap murmured quietly, coolly, and as if to reprimand Berry for his raised voice. “You _would_ want to know. Well, dead or alive, you’ll find her in that strong-box over yonder. Top left-hand drawer, so to speak! If you ever knew the combination it isn’t the same now. I changed it.”

“To what?” Berry cried desperately from where he already stood beside the great door of Whittaker’s wall-safe. “Quick!”

“9031.”

Berry fumbled stupidly with the locks. The terrible speed of events during the past few hours, together with the excited, thrilling knowledge of his own scoop (it had been his idea to put Nadia up to her piece of acting, which he had to admit had been beautifully done on her part) had reduced the still ingenuous Berry to a trembling, weakened condition of hand and eye. Stebbins, whose emotional flights limited themselves to rage and suspicion, took the job from him. Under his stolid fingers the blocks fell quickly, expertly into place. And, on the final number, the heavy door sprang. The two men slowly swung it back.

Joel was there. She lay in a tumbled, cramped heap among a litter of papers on the safe bottom. There was no least sign of life—and there was an odor of chloroform. From her attitude it appeared unlikely she had ever regained consciousness since being thrown into the airtight compartment. They lifted her to the couch. Belknap kept his eyes averted.

Julian chose this particular moment to appear. He was shouting something about the doors of the wine cellars being locked and no keys to be found— He stopped, looked, and, in another flash, was on his knees beside Joel, his arms around her, calling her name. It took Berry every ounce of extra strength to tear Julian free and fling him away on the floor.

“_Keep off_, you fool. Give the child air. She is dying for lack of air—just that.”

Berry, with Stebbins’ clumsy help, rendered such first aid as one gives the drowning. Julian hovered near them muttering a frantic rigmarole of endearments for Joel, and ugly curses for humanity in general, Berry in particular. Two policemen, large and unresponsive, kept a firm guard on Belknap who sat stone-motionless, apparently absorbed in his bound hands lying limply before him on the table. He remained breathlessly still, until at last—it seemed forever—Joel, almost invisibly at first, and then visibly, drew a breath, stirred, and faintly stiffened with renewed life as a Japanese pulp flower opens to water. Then, in unison with her, Belknap too breathed, stirred, shifted his position. Berry saw, and as he quietly lifted Joel into Julian’s arms, felt a pang of sympathy for the great man he had so long admired and envied. How are the mighty fallen. But he had only to look at Joel’s face, and Julian’s, to lose every iota of it.

“Here, boy, carry her upstairs. Wrap her up good and warm; and give her some hot brandy, if you can find any. She’ll be as right as rain in no time, mark my words for it. And, what’s more, it’s going to be plain sailing for you two from now on. Remember that, and don’t worry.” He tapped the Diary with a meaning forefinger. “It’s a closed book; you know what I mean. Easy there, don’t fall.” He turned to question Belknap.

“Now come across, Belknap. _Talk._ Or shall we run you up to town for that? Room 27 at Headquarters is a fine place to talk. As you should know.”

Belknap, examining his folded hands with meticulous interest, spoke sidewise through a lifted corner of his mouth.

“Can the rough stuff, Berry. It won’t get you anywhere with me, as _you_ should know. What’s eating you? Curiosity? Yes, I killed ’em. Do I _have_ to say it? Oh, don’t let it worry your poor weak intellect that you haven’t the right man. You have. How many did I murder? I lost count. You add ’em up. And don’t for God’s sake ask me why. Why the Hell! Look in that rotten little Diary there. It’ll tell you why and then some. _One_ of us had to wipe out the litter before it hatched; to make his world safe—for crime. I got in my licks first, that’s all.” Belknap would have made a waving gesture with his right hand but was checked by its anchorage to his left. “Let’s clear out of this,” he cried. “I expect you’re champing at the bit to drag me at your chariot wheels through the streets of Rome. Well, do it and be damned. Only get it over.” Belknap’s eyes, a little sunken in their heavily shadowed sockets, gleamed feverishly. The lines in his face had deepened. He looked his age. “When, may I ask, did _you_ catch the cat out of my bag? I hadn’t a notion I’d let it out. Thought I had it pretty well sewed in. Like the Little Red Hen you must have left a stone in its place. Or _she_ did, the vixen. I should have marked the extra weight. _Christ_, the mess I’ve made of the perfect crime; all in my best tradition. And I had it on toast but for playing with fire. The utter fool I was to take her into my game when I already had her so neatly fitted to my boots. Just as I fitted Violet Mowbray to Blake’s, and Durgin to Allan Galt’s, and Thane to— Take her away,” he shouted suddenly, hoarsely, half rising to his feet. “In God’s name why leave the carrion about! Get her false face to Hell out of here or I’ll—”

Berry came close to Belknap. His face was white. He gripped the sides of the table between them till the knuckles of his hands shone; and in a level, hard voice spoke into Belknap’s eyes and teeth.

“Keep quiet, and listen to me for a change! You’ll take a page from _my_ book now. I’m not a proud man, or a boastful one, Ordway Belknap, one-time Judge, and _one-time_ detective, but this here is a haul of mine, and you know it. For once in a lifetime _I_ had a hunch. From the crack of the whip this morning I had you on the list. As a _guest_ in this house last night. Don’t you see what a difference that makes in the point of view? You came here too early for safety, my boy, and you’re leaving here too late. It may be true I didn’t downright suspect you until Mdevani and Lacey caught onto something at sight of your black number on the wall. But then it took a psychologist (and that’s my strong point) to figure why they were keeping their mouths shut. One was scared of her life of you; and the other cared about you. Right? After that I found the extra bullet. And I knew right then, as well as you did, that neither would fit the Mdevani weapon. We’ll prove tomorrow, when it won’t matter a hoot, that they both fit this little gun of yours.” Berry picked up Belknap’s 22 and dropped it again with a clatter that echoed in the tense stillness of the listening room. Berry was decidedly working himself into a heat. “Then Lacey remembered the Mowbray name—and I saw why the poor little actress had to be bumped off. She was the only one of your morning’s bag I had to find your motive for. Blake had to go because he was so much a part of your most recent legal crime. Yours and the Judge’s.”

“Bit off there,” Belknap hissed, his face dark and threatening, close to Berry’s. “I can’t have you _imputing_ motives. I collided with him in the dark last night. He knew what we both were after—and that _I_ got it. So I got him.”

“Aha! That’s the way the wind blew, is it? And after that you strangled the baby doll—”

“Before, as it happens.”

“Well, _before_. A Hell of a lot of difference it makes when you did it. Too bad I had to come barging in just about then, before you’d finished off your Damon and Pythias friend. Guess Whittaker threw his dice so you’d play the villain’s part all along. He had it in for you, to my way of thinking. Clever idea your wall-hole and the planted gun. But a bit out of the reckoning that your first shot missed. However, I’d have got you anyway, one shot or two. The holes, by the way, reminded your girl-friend that she’d once interrupted your investigation in this room at an embarrassing moment. _She_ lit the Murad, I understand. Miss Lacey was also reminded that you mysteriously emerged from no man’s land when she was here in the night. Whereupon it ceased to be no man’s land. And don’t think I missed the little by-play when you tried to convince Miss Mdevani she hadn’t done what she knew she did—put that carnation in your buttonhole. She was too keen to try that kind of trick on. I don’t know when you made up your mind to lay the whole pack of crimes at her door. But I suppose you rifled her room of her gun and handkerchief for the express purpose. Damn lucky for you she came across with the Blake order for you to sprinkle about. _And_ the drug for Crawford, for you to exchange _en passant_. God, you’re a beast. Worse than they come. Why Crawford? Just because it clinched the case against her? His death to insure hers? And all the time making eyes at the woman you were playing for a sucker. Well, don’t ever kid yourself you succeeded in putting it over on her. She was watching you cut your own throat. Only wasn’t helping give you away until she had to. Until it was your life or hers. But with you determined to make it hers she still had enough guts left to outplay you. For she _has_ outplayed you. Dead as she lies on that floor, God rest her soul, she’s better off than you are. No, Dorn was your best bet for a double if you had to have one. You should have stuck to someone who couldn’t defend himself.”

“Defend himself!” Belknap laughed ferociously, breathing hard. “Dorn defend himself! It is to laugh! About as much chance of his coming back to—”

And Milton Dorn came back. Above the strained, ugly, mounting voices of the two men pitched against each other came the crash of the window-doors to the terrace, burst forcefully open. On the sill, exaggerated and unattached against the swirling mist, stood two of Stebbins’ uniformed guards with a sagging body slung between them from the knees and armpits: like some strange inhabitants of Davy Jones’ locker bringing back to earth a victim too horrible for even the sea to swallow.

“Sorry,” growled one of them apologetically, dimly conscious of the startled horror in the silenced room, “we found this in the old well down back. Thought you might need it, Sergeant. So we brought it along up.”

The man’s recourse to the neuter in referring to his burden all too vividly indicated its lifelessness. Not that it could have possibly been otherwise. Its face was crushed out of human shape. The head fell back and off to the side, loosely, as though the neck were broken. The covering of one leg was savagely torn and the flesh from thigh to knee bared to the bone. The clothing was stiff and ungainly with congealed blood.

“Speak of the Devil!” Belknap whispered.

“Dorn, I take it,” Berry said with super-gentleness. He forced an odd laugh. “Say, you boys, next time you make a visit with that kind of visiting card, come to the front door—and ring. I don’t like stage entrances. Another of yours?” he asked, turning to look at Belknap, through narrowed eyes, as no man looks at a man.

Belknap smiled.

“How _did_ you guess it, Lieutenant? Yes, number one. I had to scotch him on the spot last night when he was trying to slip from under. Couldn’t take any chances on how much he knew. Talk about your blind witnesses! None of ’em even saw me take my little trip to fetch something from my car last night. Went out on Dorn’s heels, too.”

“That’ll do from you,” Berry said. “Not another word. We’ve had enough. Take him to Glory for me, men. Sergeant,” he added to the stupefied Stebbins, “will you give them a ring in town and say we’re on our way—with the goods. _Broad_cast it. Tell them to be ready with the racks and boiling oil. And clean up this mess as best you can when my back’s turned. Run the bodies down to the morgue in the morning. There’ll be autopsies, I suppose, though God knows they aren’t needed. Come along, you,” he said, as Belknap rose unsteadily to his feet.

But Belknap, with a quick, vicious movement of his bear-like shoulders, thrust his jailors aside, and bent over the motionless, shrunken form of Nadia Mdevani. Even, bending down and using his two hands as one, he turned her face uppermost. It was an exquisite and clear-cut face, very quiet, very perfect, like a medallion or cameo face. And as devoid of expression. Suddenly Belknap straightened, threw back his head, and laughed wildly, breaking into a snatch of song:

“_‘She was my woman, But she done me wrong._’”

“Shut up, Belknap,” Berry shouted. “Don’t go playing the sentimental fool so late in the day. I guess _she_ could have sung that song as it should be sung. And meant it.” Pushing Belknap roughly toward the hall door, Berry turned back to give his final orders. “By the way, Sergeant, I believe there are a few left-overs straying about the house. I wouldn’t care to sleep here myself and it’s likely they wouldn’t. You’d better round ’em up and take ’em places. There’s that John, and the girl named Lily, I believe. And of course Mr. Prentice and Miss Lacey and Mrs. Crawford—”

“You are most thoughtful, Lieutenant Berry.” Sydney Crawford, in hat and cloak, descended the stairs toward them. “But don’t have me on your mind. I’m just leaving—and I have my car.” She was about to pass them, and paused. “Thank you, Mr. Belknap,” she said, stiffly, her glazed eyes rigidly avoiding him, “for a thrilling week-end. And for my precious life which it is a joy to be able to dispose of as I please. Goodnight.”

Berry forever after wished he had obeyed his immediate impulse to detain her. It might have made the difference between another life and death. For, three days later, her body came ashore above Greenwich. It was the only death directly connected with that memorable week-end at Thorngate that was entered on the records as suicide.

But Berry, although it was with a strong feeling of apprehension and pity that he watched her go toward the garage, escorted by a kindly and gallant policeman, was more than anxious to reach town and deliver up his capture. He drew on his gauntlet driving gloves, accepted a light for his fag from the respectful hand of Sergeant Stebbins, slipped behind the wheel of his old Stutz, and circled out of the Thorngate drive cold on the stroke of midnight.

The following entry from the Diary of Judge Bertrand Whittaker, was incorporated verbatim in Berry’s written report of the preceding case given next day to Berry’s friend and chief, Inspector Thomas O’Donnell, of the New York Detective Bureau: