Part 7

“Hardly so late in the day. It’s been already thrown to the dogs. I have an intense distaste for 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. Even _his_ control 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.

“There _is_ something 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’d _better_ let 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 there _will_ be 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 Bertrand _tell_ you 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.” He took 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.”

XVI

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 he was 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—even Julian 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 only _could_ forget 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, simply _must_, 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. Something _had_ happened 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 in the 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. _That_ might 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 supposed the 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 killed victim—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. _The_ bullet. Julian was still bothered by the question of his two shots. One must have been an echo.

And _had_ Nadia 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 to work. 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.

“I _will_ come 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 I _did_ remember. 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.

XVII

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. _Something_ had 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 there _was_ a 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 hearing It 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 until the 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. _Too_ dreadful—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 made by 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. She sprang 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 for _any_ escape. 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 of her 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 to _think_ the 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.

XVIII

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 made of 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—had _you_ hit 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 asking _me_ questions, 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.”

But severe as the tone was, a quick glance at Berry’s face revealed a twinkle behind it, and Julian was thrilled down to his bootstraps at the intimate badinage.

“I promise not to flatter myself too much, Mr. Berry,” Julian smiled shyly. “Now about those shots, sir,—and then I have a clue or two I’ve been hoarding just for you. I heard two shots, unless my hearing had gone double. I _was_ tired, but I hadn’t been drinking. However, I’m wrong by the facts; the Colt had been fired but once. So my testimony doesn’t signify.”

“Amateur reasoning, Prentice. Try to figure out why after you go to bed tonight—I hope you are _going_ to bed—and the effort will put you to sleep better than sheep-counting. Or come and tell me if you _do_ find the nigger in your wood pile. All right, give us your clues. I’m all excited.”

Julian produced his slip of thin white paper with its cryptic message.

“You see Colonel Blake was tagged and numbered,” he said.

“I’m surprised you knew the code. Very keen of you. Where did you find this?”

“On the stairs, after Mrs. Crawford screamed.”

“Is that the sum total of your knowledge of its antecedents, birthplace, and purpose in life. Then we’re about as well off as we were a month ago.”

Julian looked quenched.

“Can’t it be traced?” he murmured.

“What with—a stencil? Never mind. Don’t let it worry you. Oh, I’ll _keep_ it,” he added, as Julian extended a hand. “Our friend Stebbins will enjoy it. _If_ I show it to him. He hasn’t a flare for motives, but he eats up clues. Have you others?”

“No, not exactly. But I thought I’d better mention that Miss Lacey just remembered the name she was trying to recall. _You_ know, the name mentioned by Romany. It’s Violet Mowbray. Does it mean a blessed thing to you? It doesn’t to me.”

Berry’s eyes were intent on the pattern in the rug. Again Julian could make nothing of his face. Then Berry clicked his tongue, with a sound like a miniature gunshot, and for the startled Julian it registered the click of an idea.

“Uhmmm?!” Berry prolonged the interrogatory exclamation with exaggerated softness. “Very strange. In fact, _very_ strange. Thank you, Prentice. You _are_ contributing your bit at last. It fits. It jolly well fits. Which is what I’m looking for, you know—things to fit _my_ preconceived idea. There are two ways of working this detective racket, son—theory first and theory last. Mine’s first. I make my facts fit the crime.— Hello, Belknap. Come in. Prentice and I are having a truth party. Or rather he’s come across with a little truth after keeping it back all afternoon. But I’m being lenient with him because he claims it’s all due to my charms. He saved up just to give me a few pointers. Aren’t you jealous?”

“Rraather.” Belknap always went his English ancestors one better in accent whenever his dignity was endangered. “Shall I retire?”

“By no means. I’m sure even the untutored Prentice will agree that in matters of codes and Violet Mowbrays three heads are better than two. There’s no such thing as too many detectives, is there?”

“Violet Mowbray!” Belknap showed sudden and marked interest and for a man who rarely showed any it _was_ remarkable. He closed the door. “What about Violet Mowbray? I thought I had her under lock and key. Is she abroad?”

“We don’t know. It was the name Miss Lacey couldn’t remember and has remembered.”