Part 5

“_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 to that sergeant, or Mr. Belknap, or Lieutenant Berry. Perhaps it’s really important.”

“_Perhaps_ it’s important. I like that. It _is_ important. It’s a code message. A _code_. 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, you _are_ clever. Where did you get it?”

“On the stairs as I came down.”

“Julian, it’s a wonder you’re alive! To think _you_’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.”

“To _sleep_?”

“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 coming out into the hall I was welcomed by Mrs. Crawford’s reveille.”

“Julian, how _can_ you say such things. When I’m feeling so terribly, too. _Do_ make 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 a _se_ductive, 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 the library. 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 you _sure_ there 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.” Belknap was 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 in _my_ observation, and under your very nose, so to speak. It’s clearly my duty to put everyone in the house 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 is _another_ question. I assure you it will 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 think _we_ should 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.”

XII

“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 bleak mockery. “There are conclusions and conclusions—_and_ conclusions. 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. I won’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 he had 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 about his neck and prove how _they_ stood. _Also_ if proving was necessary. But it brought Mrs. Crawford to her senses, and _she_ was knocking Miss Video into a cocked hat when Colonel Blake seemed to consider knocking the Judge into one. Then the lights went out. They _would_! 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. _Too_ little. It was ominous. There was nothing much _I_ could 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.”

“Did _he_ have 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 had that dress-suited fellow spotted from the minute I came in here. I’ll have _him_ on 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 than a 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. _He_ may 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 the library, 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. Says _she_ was 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 cover _her_ tracks.”

“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. Her record 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—”

XIII

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 something _should_ be 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, I _do_ want 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?”

“_Stop_ it, Julian! If you’re the kind of man that can pun at such a moment as this you aren’t fit to marry. And I never _will_ marry you—never, never,—_Come_ away 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.”