Part 4

“Darling, I can’t help it. Oh my God, I was just coming to tell you about my murder before you should hear about it from another, or read of it in a tabloid, or have it sprung upon you when I am cross-examined. Joel, we are in for a very great deal of horridness—worse than we realize.”

“Not worse than _I_ realize,” she said, with inexpressible weariness. “Julian dearest, you must listen to me; and then,” she smiled faintly, “I will hear about your murder.”

He put her hands to his lips.

“_Don’t_,” she said, drawing back. “Perhaps you won’t feel that way when I’ve told you. After all if you have killed one—husband—.” She found it almost beyond her to say the word.

“Joel, you didn’t kill Jerry. You didn’t, you didn’t. Say it, I tell you. Say you didn’t.”

“I did. But it wasn’t quite a murder, really it wasn’t. Listen, Julian, stop crying. I swear to you it wasn’t altogether a murder.”

“I don’t know what you mean ‘not altogether a murder.’ Murder is murder, you can’t get away from that.” Julian’s tone was low and dull. “Joel, I can’t bear it.”

“I should have thought being in a glass house you wouldn’t throw stones,” bitterness had crept into her voice.

“Mine was self-defense—in a way it was.”

“And mine was an affair of honor—in a way it was. I am going to tell you the whole story. It’s our only hope, Julian—for us both to tell everything.

“Jerry and I had been in love, really and terribly in love, for several years. It was after we knew Junior was on his way that we married. Oh, not because we _had_ to. It was Jerry’s idea that we’d call that our own private marriage, if we found that we could have one, and then accept the necessary legalities for its sake. You see what I mean. I thought it a sort of romantic super-modernism, a beautiful way of counting out the world. Don’t laugh at me, Julian; for the laugh _was_ on me. The first shock came when we knew. He said, ‘I wonder whether we really _need_ to go through the outward form!’ Puzzled, but no more, I said, ‘Of course, don’t you think so?’ and his answer was, ‘Just as you say, of course.’ ‘As _you_ say,’ note that. It took me months of increasing pain to realize that it wasn’t romance for him, but a way of keeping free himself while achieving a son.

“Well, I thought it all out; and it seemed to me I had been deceived as surely as any girl in melodrama. After all it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other, the old Tess of the D’Urberville way and the modern, talking-it-all-out way, isn’t it? Instead of the enraged father and brother going on the warpath (fathers and brothers have been made to feel gun-shy these days) the woman herself, whose boast is that she can take care of herself, should have more than the theoretical right to do it. She should be able to fight it out to the death. Call it a new form of dueling if you like. So I went to work to clear my honor. That’s what it amounted to. I had ceased to care, to love him, of course, or I suppose I couldn’t have done it. I took shooting lessons at the 79th St. Armory. _He_ had been a good shot since the War. Then I challenged him, coolly and seriously. I meant it. I named the hour, and the spot (in Central Park), and said he could name the day.”

“_Joel_, what did he say!”

“He laughed. I suppose I should have known he would. But I was made blind angry by it. So I went for a gun and—ended it all.”

“How did you get away with it?”

“I didn’t intend to. But I had taken his pistol from the drawer—and that, with the position in which he lay, pointed to suicide. It was never finger printed. Our friends claimed we were the most devoted couple they knew. I went to Uncle Bertrand immediately (he was Judge in our Precinct at the time), but he persuaded me, wrongly I know now, to keep silent; he said Jerry had it coming to him. But I wish I’d just run away from him instead.” Joel was crying with eyes wide open.

“Oh, Joel dear, you poor extraordinary child. I would have killed him for you.”

“Perhaps, but you weren’t around in those days; and besides, it was the feeling of defending my own name that made me do it. I wouldn’t have brooked a _man’s_ defending me.”

“Now that I’ve got to do something about your uncle, what would an extra murder more or less have mattered?”

“Julian,” she said quickly, “you can’t stop my uncle if he is bound and determined, even by killing him. He would have a way of getting around his own murder, if it took his ghost to do it.”

“I won’t try murder, sweetheart. But I am going to have a talk with him—_tonight_.”

Julian stood up and bent over to kiss her.

“I’ll be back soon, I promise. Don’t you move.”

“Julian, please stay. I don’t want to be left alone in this awful house.”

But the door had closed behind him.

IX

And down the corridor Neil Crawford closed another door behind himself and Sydney. Their eyes met with a bleak and hopeless questioning.

“Oh, Neil,” she breathed. “What are we going to do?”

“What am _I_ going to, you must say, Sydney. Remember, my dear, you are not in this. And remember that whatever I do or don’t do will be entirely governed by my love for you and my desire to _keep_ you and the children out of it.”

“You _can’t_ keep me out of it, Neil, even if you wanted to. That is the way, with things relating to one or other of two people who are closely united, both are in them for good or bad. So I’m in this with you to the very last—that is, if—if—”

“If I want you?” He took her shoulders in either hand. “Is that what you are trying to say? You know I want you. You know I love you, that I never have loved, never will love, anyone but you. I can’t help myself. We were made in patterns that match, like a jig-saw puzzle. We wouldn’t match anyone else, no one else would match us.”

She did her best to control the wave of feeling that made her draw free of him.

“She doesn’t feel so, Neil, or think you do. She loves you; and said it tonight too definitely to make me feel you have not returned in kind. Neil, where are our promises?”

“My God, Sydney, since when were you such an innocent as to think promises were anything more than baubles, pretty but—but vain. The promises to love forever until death do us part—”

“Keep still, Neil! You know as well as I do that those aren’t the promises I am thinking of. Besides, we never made those particular promises. But we did promise we weren’t going to go living around with other people unless we _meant_ it—meant it down to the ground, do you hear me?” She was trying to keep her voice under control, but it would rise spasmodically. “And here you seem to have done just that.”

“I wasn’t just living around, Sydney. You know me well enough to know I’d be fastidious about such things. Romany and I got into it somehow, quite naturally. Why can’t women realize how little such things mean to a man, and to some women. She’s one of them. We’ve never spoken of love; do you hear that?”

“Neil, how silly to say such a thing, when by its very nature love is somehow involved. In the very essence of it—your winnowing of the physical from the spiritual—it is the ruin of all idealism. Someone we know, who was it, was saying the other day that the trouble with the younger generation is that it lacks guts. You are exactly what he meant, Neil.”

“Don’t be vulgar about it, Sydney. Vulgarity doesn’t suit you. Only the sophisticated can get away with it. Your delicacy is one of the reasons I care for you. And I _do_ care. You can’t say I don’t love you, or you me. Can you say it?”

“Which only makes it frightfully much worse. And don’t lie to me. She couldn’t have written you a letter like that if you hadn’t used love, in one form or another, toward her. Don’t quibble about the meaning of the word love.”

“What do you mean ‘such a letter’?”

“I saw a letter on your desk, Neil. I had to read it, you can see that.”

“Then you got just what was coming to you, Sydney. Even a wife, a wife least of all, doesn’t read a man’s private correspondence unless she wants to get hurt.”

“All right! Say it if you will. It can’t make matters any more terrible than they are. I saw the address on the envelope (I knew she had been in Hollywood this spring), and in a flash I remembered that—that night. It’s asking too much of human nature to ask it to turn its back on the truth at such a moment. And you can’t say it isn’t better to know the truth at whatever cost to us both.”

“If you think so, yes.” Crawford’s anger died as he saw her face change. “Oh, Sydney, don’t look at me like that. I’m sorry. I’m _so_ sorry.” He tried to take her hands and failed. “And now this other thing to hurt you. I can’t endure it.”

“This other is bad, yes. But not really bad, my dear, as compared to my trust and respect, trust in you and self-respect, splintered to atoms overnight. Bertrand Whittaker can do his worst, can put you behind bars, and me talking to you through bars, but it won’t be a patch on the edge taken off what we have been years in building. Marriages aren’t built in a day. There must be something wrong with me and my dreams, I suppose. Before we left home tonight I happened to pick up a picture of Bunny, and realized it was the one that had been in the town house all winter, watching you—watching you—,” she trailed off helplessly. “I seem so to confuse illusions and realities.”

“Don’t confuse them. Don’t have illusions. Yet that’s why I love you, for the image you make of a perfect life. But it can’t be lived, Sydney. It can’t.”

“_Our_ chance is gone, if that’s what you mean.”

“I don’t see how it affects us in the least if our love remains to us. I have never told her I loved her.”

“How charming for her!”

“That wasn’t what she wanted. She understands. I’m not the only one for her. It isn’t as if she were— She can take care of herself.” He paused. “Oh, I wouldn’t mind if she were dead if it would do us any good.”

“Neil, hush! Nothing, not even our own deaths, could do us any real good again. How can you think wrong will right wrong?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how I think a lot of things I’m thinking. For instance, Bertrand Whittaker must be stopped dead in his tracks. He can’t be allowed to do this to Bunny’s life, or yours, or mine either. I’ll kill him first. The past is over and done with and he has no right to revive it.”

“The past is over; yes, the past is done with. She said she had your picture and Bunny’s on the dresser before her. Listen to that—_Bunny’s_ picture. What’s Bunny to her under the circumstances, I’d like to know, that she should be able to make free with her picture: stepchild, love child or godchild? I don’t suppose any of them fit, but they sound so refreshingly shocking it’s fun to use them.”

“_Stop_ making a scene, Sydney! I didn’t think you had it in you to make scenes and say such wild, bitter things. I can’t _tend_ to a scene now. Can’t you _see_ I can’t?”

“When did it all begin, Neil? Don’t say it began in the common old-fashioned way at the common old-fashioned time. Don’t say it began when Bunny was coming.”

“Of course it did. When did you think it would have begun? You didn’t expect me to be a monk, did you? Sydney, let’s stop talking, please; and think about what’s got to be done. What do you say we clear out of the country and make a fresh start. Australia or somewhere.”

“A fresh start! How devastating it sounds—to start over after eight years. It can’t be done, and the soul still live. As if one were told, after a terrible day of sled-pulling in an Arctic storm, that one had to retrace one’s steps without rest or food. It couldn’t be done, and the body live. That’s how I feel.”

“Sydney, quiet. Quiet, dear, you must stop. And help me plan. I must find Giordano. I see it clearly. I must find him tonight. He will deal with Whittaker.”

“Oh no, no, no, no. You mustn’t get in touch with those men again. You are finished forever if you try that. Neil, don’t do anything rash. I’ll talk to Bertrand the minute I have a chance. He will listen to reason. You know we have always said the day might come, and we promised to keep our heads. Our promises again! She said the rain where she was made her remember your night rains. Neil, Neil! what does that do to our rains, our trains, our meteorites, our—our—.” She was sobbing now with a desperate tearless exhaustion.

“Nothing. Nothing. It doesn’t do anything to them, dearest one. We have our love. With Romany, as we agreed, it was all just a symbol. Do you hear me, Sydney? Stop crying. Stop it. I have something that has to be done. _Stop it._”

He went to the telephone on the stand between the beds. She screamed.

“Keep away from that telephone, Neil. Can’t you see what frightful things may be going to happen in this house tonight. A call can be traced—you mustn’t _touch_ a telephone.”

She sprang toward him; but he had lifted the receiver and she couldn’t struggle or argue with him against the ear of the operator. The number he gave was AUdubon 2-1801. It answered.

“Hello. Crawford speaking.” Then he never _had_ been out of touch with them. “Pick up Disuno if you can find him. If not, one of the others. The address is Bertrand Whittaker’s, Blue Acres. Outside the park gates at three.”

Neil hung up.

“You have made the mistake of your life, Neil Crawford. If a breath of what you have just done reaches the police it’s all over but the shouting, Bertrand or no Bertrand.”

“And it’s certainly all over if I do nothing. No, this is going to be Whittaker’s life or mine.”

“Ordway Belknap may be here for a purpose.”

“They have foiled better men than Belknap.”

“You have been with them ever since?”

“You didn’t for a minute imagine I could have been anywhere else did you? Once with them always with them as far as the underworld is concerned. They never release us.”

“And you never told me how it has been with you!”

“You couldn’t have helped in the least. I’ve saved Giordano from the chair twice over. And Disuno hasn’t hide nor hair that he doesn’t owe to me. Now I need them, that’s all. And you, my dear. And always you.”

He took her in his arms now, but she was strangely unresponsive. For her the living spark of whatever it was that had existed between them, whether love is the word to call it or not she had never known anyway, was as snuffed out as though it had never been.

X

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 done _it_, as you call it,” she whispered.

“What _have_ you 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, Nadia Mdevani,” 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. It _would_ be 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, Miss Mdevani. 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 little to 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 lovely hands 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. “_I_ suspect 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 night and 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 did _you_ come 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 Berry has 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 do _you_ say, 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 has _she_ been?”

“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.

XI

“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. There _is_. 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, “_please_ leave 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 now that 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’ve _got_ to 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—a _clue_, do you hear me? A tangible clue! Darling, _don’t_ shut 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.”