Part 7

The summer-house, a small, six-sided building, was covered by a thick growth of Virginia creeper that swathed its rustic shape. In four of its walls the vines, matted into a mantle of green, had been cut away to form windows. Framed in these squares sea and land views were like pictures brilliantly bright from the shaded interior. The other two sides held the entrances, one giving on the path that descended to the pine grove, one to its continuation to the Point. A circular seat ran round the walls and a table in the same bark-covered wood was the only movable piece of furniture. This was drawn up against the seat at one side. Rawson moved it out as the other two ran exploring eyes over the walls, the door-sills and the floor of wooden planking upon which a few leaves were scattered.

“Here,” he cried suddenly. “What’s this?” and drew from a crevice where the legs crossed, some scraps of a coarse gold material.

He held them up against the light of the opening--three short strands of what might have been the gilt string used to tie Christmas packages.

“What do you know about this?” he said, offering them to Bassett’s gaze.

Bassett looked, and Williams with craned neck and lifted brows looked too. They were exactly of a length, broken filaments of thread attached to the end of each.

“They’ve been torn off something,” Rawson indicated the threads, “caught in that joint of the table legs and pulled off. Did she have anything like this on her dress anywhere, a trimming or----”

“Fringe,” Bassett interrupted, “the fringe on her sash.”

“Ah!” Rawson could not hide his exultation. “_Now_ we’ve got something we can get our teeth into.”

“Yes.” Bassett took the pieces and studied them in the light. “That’s what it is. She wore a wide sash round her waist with ends that hung down edged with gold fringe. This is a bit of it.”

“Well,” said Williams, “that’s a starter anyhow. She was in here.”

Rawson sat on the bench and drew the table into its former position:

“It not only proves she was in here, but it proves a good deal more. This is the way she was, with the table as we found it close in front of her. The ends of her sash would have been in contact with the table legs. Now she jumped up quickly--do you get that? If she’d gone slow or had time to think she’d have felt the pull and unloosed the sash--but she sprang up, didn’t notice.” He looked from one to the other, his lean face alight.

“Frightened,” said Bassett.

“So frightened she didn’t feel it, and moved with such force she tore the fringe off. That scare took her up from the seat and sent her flying through the doorway for the Point.”

“Hold on now,” said Williams. “If she was as scared as that why didn’t she go for the house where there were people?”

“Because she was too scared to think. Some one with a pistol was on the other side of the table.” He rose and went to the entrance facing the Point. “And the person with the pistol shot at her from here--winged her as she ran.” He turned to Bassett. “That’s why you saw no one when you looked out after you first heard the shot. The murderer was in here lying low.”

“Yes.” Bassett thought back over the moment when he had stood in the living-room doorway. “That’s the only place he could have been or I’d have seen him. But they wouldn’t have been any time together--couldn’t have had a quarrel or a scene. According to Mrs. Cornell it was only six or seven minutes after she saw Sybil go out that she heard the shot. That would give them only two or three minutes in here.”

“Time enough to draw a gun and back it up with a few sentences. It bears out what I’ve thought from the start--not an accidental meeting but a date, to which the woman came unsuspecting and the other primed to kill.”

“Then Mrs. Stokes got on to that date,” said Williams, “and broke in on it. And there’s only one person that date could have been with--Stokes.”

Bassett’s nerves were raw with strain and anxiety. This reiteration of a rendezvous with Stokes maddened him:

“But it couldn’t have been. I’ve told you. I knew Miss Saunders well. I know what she felt about the man, and besides I have the evidence of my own eyes that she avoided him in every way she could. Make an appointment to meet him alone! She’d as soon make an appointment with Satan.”

Neither of the men answered him for a moment. Williams regarded his sentiment with respect. He had been a friend of the dead girl’s and it was natural he should stand up for her, whether rightly or wrongly Williams was not yet sure. Rawson was impressed; he had formed a high opinion of the director’s candor and truthfulness and his words weighed with him:

“I go a good deal by what you say, Mr. Bassett, and as to this meeting of which I’m convinced--whom it was with I don’t know. Williams here has made up his mind and worked out his case. I don’t agree with him. I believe Mrs. Stokes is telling the truth. What she says hangs together all right. I think her explanation of the passage of time when she was on the shore is entirely plausible. That she may know something is possible, but I don’t think she’s guilty.”

“Then you must think it’s Stokes,” said Williams with some heat. “There’s nobody else it could be.”

Rawson considered before he spoke:

“I don’t see Stokes as deliberately murdering the woman he was in love with. That’s generally an act of impulse, sudden desperation. And there was no impulse here. Careful premeditation--the stealing of the revolver, luring her to this summer-house, the threats or rage when she got here that made her fly. It’s more like the working out of revenge than the act of blind passion. Stokes doesn’t look to me the kind of man that would kill so carefully. He’s too soft.”

“Then who is it?” Williams exclaimed. “Somebody killed her.”

Rawson moved toward the doorway:

“That’s about all I’m willing to agree to at present. But I’d like to see Stokes again. He and his wife may know more than they say--I don’t deny _that_--but she’s got a better nerve than he has. We’ll get him into the library and have a whack at him.”

XII

BASSETT was detailed to find Stokes and bring him to the library. A summons from the director would have an air of informality which might put Stokes off his guard. Rawson did not communicate this to his messenger, but told Williams when they were alone. He had been watching Stokes and thought the man showed signs of strain. That morning at the beach Stokes’ manner and appearance had suggested a nerve tension which might rise from anxiety about his wife, but might also be the result of some knowledge he was struggling to withhold.

Bassett found Flora and Shine on the balcony and heard that Stokes had gone to his room to try to get some sleep. He knocked on the door and to a gruff “Come in” entered to find Stokes lying on the bed. He rose quickly, exhibiting the same alacrity his wife had shown earlier in the day.

“Of course,” he said. “I’m ready to come whenever they want me. In fact I’ve been lying here expecting it, going back over last evening, trying to think of anything I may have overlooked that might help them.”

There was a willing bruskness in his manner, an almost hearty readiness to do what was asked of him that seemed not quite genuine, adopted, perhaps, to hide the natural nervousness of a person in his position. Seated in an easy chair before the two men, Bassett back of them by the window noticed that his hands were restless, smoothing and pulling at his clothes, settling his tie. Despite his disquiet he assumed an attitude of expectant attention, gravely awaiting their will, his eyes glancing from one face to the other. He might readily have been a guilty man primed for attack, or an innocent one shaken by the untoward circumstances in which he found himself.

Rawson’s manner was friendly and reassuring. They wanted to get all possible information on the movements of the company the evening before. Last night the examinations had been cursory and fuller ones were necessary. They would like to know just what he had done from the time he entered the house to change his clothes to the time when he had heard the shot.

He answered promptly with businesslike directness. Went to his room, changed his clothes, laid on the bed resting for a while, then sat on the balcony reading the paper.

While he was sitting there Miss Saunders must have passed the end of the balcony by the path that led to the Point.

She must have, but he had not seen her, being occupied with his paper.

Had he while in the house seen Miss Saunders or heard her voice?

He had not. He had no idea she had come in.

Had he seen his wife?

“My wife? Yes, I saw her for a moment. In the hall when I came out of our room after dressing.”

“Did she tell you she was going to take a walk round the island?”

“Well, I hardly remember.” He tilted his head sidewise with an air of careful consideration. “Yes, I believe she did say something about it--it’s very vague in my mind. It made no impression on me. We exchanged a few words and parted.”

“She said nothing to you about Miss Saunders being in the house?”

“Why no, she didn’t know it. We didn’t mention Miss Saunders at all.”

“But she was--she had been--a frequent subject of conversation between you?”

His eyes, looking at Rawson, seemed to harden and grow more fixed:

“We _had_ talked of her--naturally being in the same company.”

“Your wife and Miss Saunders were not very friendly?”

A fierce light rose in the fixed eyes, the nostrils widened.

“What are you getting at, Mr. Rawson?”

“Our business, Mr. Stokes. We’re here to investigate a murder and we can’t spare people’s feelings or shut our eyes to disagreeable facts.”

“Have I shown any signs of expecting that? I’ve put myself at your disposal, my wife has. We’re ready to give you any help we can, but I’m not ready to back up any damned suspicions that have been put into your mind.”

“We’re not asking you to,” said Rawson. “But we know what was going on here before the shooting.”

Bassett spoke up:

“I’m the person that told them, Aleck. It had to be done. They had to be acquainted with the whole situation, and they got it from me. But they heard no lies, no suppositions--you know you can trust me for that.”

Stokes’ glance shifted to him. Through its savage defiance Bassett could detect the torment of his soul, despairingly betrayed to the one person he knew would be just.

“Oh, I’m not blaming you,” he answered: “You couldn’t do anything else. And they can hear it all from me.” He looked at the two men. “I don’t want to keep anything back. You don’t have to use any of your third-degree methods with me. I’m willing to tell. I was in love with her, madly, like a fool, hounded her, dogged her footsteps. You’ve heard that. And my wife was jealous--so jealous they all could see. You’ve heard that too.”

The confession of his passion, remorseless in its bitter revelation, was horrible, like the tearing aside of wrappings from a raw wound.

“Yes, we’ve heard it,” muttered Williams.

“She hated me. I don’t know whether you’ve heard that too, but I’m telling you and perhaps you’ll believe what I say if it’s against myself. She hated me, and I wouldn’t let her alone. My wife was jealous. Do you see--is it clear? Oh, we’re in damned bad, my wife and I, but we’re not in so bad as you’re trying to make out.” He jumped to his feet, the shine of sweat on his forehead.

“I don’t see, Mr. Stokes,” said Rawson quietly, “where you get that. We haven’t made out anything yet.”

“Oh, I can see. We were the only people outside the house--that’s enough to build a theory on. And motives--who had a motive? That’s the way you go to work. Find a motive, fit some one to it. My wife had a motive, that’s sufficient. Don’t ask what kind of woman she is, don’t look any further, you have to get some one and she’s the easiest. Christ!” he cried, throwing out his arms with a dramatic gesture, “it would make the gods laugh!”

“Mr. Stokes, if you’d take this calmly----”

“Calmly! Seeing what you think and where you’re trying to land us! But just let me ask you something.” He thrust his head forward, the chin advanced, the eyebrows in arched semicircles rising almost to his hair. “Do you happen to remember there were five hundred people on the island that afternoon? Any kind of person could have been here on any kind of errand.”

Rawson answered with a slight show of impatience:

“Just leave our business to us, Mr. Stokes. You’re here to answer questions.”

“Oh, that’s plain--questions all pointing one way. But there were other people on the island besides that crowd--besides us--who might have had a motive. Isn’t anger a motive?”

He projected the sentence with a malevolent force, the words enunciated with an actor’s incisive diction.

“Anger!” ejaculated Williams. “Where does that come in?”

“Here, on Gull Island. Oh, we’ve had more than jealousy. Rage and spite will go as far. Take your eyes off my wife and me for a moment--look somewhere else.”

Rawson’s face showed no surprise, blankly inscrutable, but Williams wheeled in his chair and turned an expression of startled inquiry on Bassett. Bassett, in his turn, was staring in astonishment at Stokes.

“What are you talking about?” he said. “Rage and spite--whom do you mean?”

“I mean Joe Tracy,” was the answer.

“Joe Tracy!” exclaimed Williams, looking vaguely about in a baffled searching of memory. “Who’s he?”

“Good God, Aleck!” Bassett made a step forward: “Get a hold on yourself--think of what you’re saying. He wasn’t here, he’d left the island before that.”

Stokes paid no attention but went on, glaring into Rawson’s expressionless face:

“A damned devil of a boy with a record. Ask him,” he pointed to Bassett, “ask any of them what kind he was and how he acted here. It isn’t I alone that saw it. Yesterday morning at the rehearsal he’d have struck her if Bassett hadn’t interfered. What was the matter--I don’t know. I don’t pretend to know everything, but I know rage and hate when I see them.”

“Aleck, you’re crazy,” Bassett’s voice was raised in exasperated insistence: “He’d _gone_.”

“Couldn’t he come back? Aren’t there boats to be hired at Hayworth?” He turned to Rawson. “I don’t accuse him, I’m not like you, I don’t jump at conclusions, point and say ‘There’s the murderer!’ But I want a square deal and I won’t get it till you’ve looked up Joe Tracy. Call your dogs back from the scent they’re on and put them on his. Justice--that’s all I ask for--justice for my wife. For myself----” He stopped. His excitement seemed suddenly to die. He looked old and wearied, his body relaxed, the fire in his sunken eyes extinguished in a profound gloom. “It doesn’t matter what happens to me. I’ve thrown everything away--and Sybil’s dead.”

There was a slight pause. Rawson broke it, clearing his throat and rising from his chair:

“That’s enough for the time being, Mr. Stokes. You can go now, if we want you we’ll call on you later!”

Without a word Stokes turned and left the room. When the door had closed on him Bassett said:

“He’s out of his mind--Joe Tracy--when he knows he wasn’t here.”

Williams gave a bearish shrug:

“Oh, pshaw, what’s the matter with him’s easy to size up. Breaking down, losing his nerve. Whether he knows his wife did it or not he sees everything points there and he’s just laying hold of anything to mark time. They go like that--I’ve seen ’em before.”

Rawson, who had been standing with his hands deep in his pockets and his eyes fixed on the floor, moved to the chair:

“Let’s hear about this boy, Mr. Bassett--all this anger and hate business he’s been buzzing round.”

He sat down and lit a cigar. Through the smoke he watched Bassett with a narrowed glance as the director unfolded the story of Joe, the quarrel and Sybil’s accusation.

When it was over Rawson knocked the ash from his cigar, meditatively looking at the crumbling gray heap:

“Are you under the impression, Mr. Bassett, that her story was true--that the boy _had_ been spying on her?”

“I don’t know. Of course she was in a high-keyed emotional state that might engender unjust suspicions. On the other hand you couldn’t trust his word, and there was big money offered.”

“And when you returned to New York you would have found it out.”

“Yes, I told him that.”

“And he would have realized that it would go hard with him, where you were concerned, and with the rest of the profession?”

“Yes, he’d know. She was very popular and there was a general sympathy for her. Any one acting against her interests would have met with a pretty cold reception.”

Williams stretched and rose from his chair:

“Well, it’s all right to gather up everything, but it doesn’t get us any further. If the boy’d been here, seeing what he was and how he felt, there might be something in it. But as he got out before the shooting it leaves us just where we were before. What do you think about going up and looking over that top story--routine business we ought to get through.”

“Not now,” Rawson moved to the door. “I’m going across to the mainland.”

“Mainland--what’s that for?”

“Look up some things--that boy’s movements for one. I’ll take Patrick and the launch and send him right back. The causeway’s covered so we don’t need him there. If Mr. Driscoll ever wanted to sell this place I’d recommend it for a penitentiary, save the state some money, only want guards twice in twenty-four hours. Come down to the dock with me, Mr. Bassett, and tell me which way Tracy was going.”

Bassett went with him feeling for the first time that he could give information with the tranquillizing assurance it would react on nobody. When he left Rawson at the dock he went to look for Anne.

XIII

TO THE outside eye Anne had presented no more dolorous and dejected an aspect than any of the others. If she could not eat, neither could they, and if she sat sunk in somber gloom they either did the same or gave expression to their nerve-wracked state by breathless outbursts of speech. No one, not even Bassett, noticed that Anne’s demeanor was in any way other than what might have been expected.

Had they been able to see into her mind the group at Gull Island would have received its second staggering shock.

She kept as much to herself as she could without rousing curiosity. She had to think and to be alone where she would focus her thoughts, hold them trained on what she knew and what might develop. She wanted to keep her mind on the main issue, inhibit any fruitless speculations, wait and be ready. Joe was on the island and with the guarded causeway would stay on the island till after they had gone. Her hope, giving her strength to go through the automatic actions of behavior, was, that suspicion not being directed to him, he could lie hidden till they left and then make his get-a-way. She knew that Gabriel had gone to White Beach for a week’s deep-sea fishing, and Gabriel was the one person besides herself who knew that Joe had not crossed to the mainland. They surely would be moved away before a week and if, during that time, the belief that he had gone remained unshaken, he was safe.

So far she was confident that no suspicion had touched him. She did not see how it could. They were all satisfied that he had left, her answer to Rawson had been accepted in good faith. There would be no investigating of his movements for there would be no reason for doing it. He had passed outside the circle of the tragedy, was eliminated as the actors were who had gone on the earlier boat.

If they didn’t find him!

Where was he? He had entered the living-room by the door that led to the kitchen wing and rear staircase. That would look as if he was in the house. But she knew that no doors were locked on Gull Island and that he might have come from outside, choosing a passage through the darkened building rather than expose himself to the moonlight. If he was in the house he must be in the vacant top story and she was certain--every sound of heavy footsteps had been noted by her listening ears--that the men had not been there yet. That would argue that they felt no need of hurry. Were they taking things in a leisurely way because of their assurance that no one could escape, or were they so convinced they had their quarry that no further search was necessary? What conclusions were they coming to behind the closed doors of the library--had they fixed on some one of the party, the obvious ones, Flora or Stokes?

She checked these disintegrating surmises, drew her mind back with a fierce tug of will. That would come later. If Joe got away she would tell, confess it all, go to jail. It didn’t matter, what happened then. Only what was here before her counted now.

When the search of the island started she went up to the side of the gallery that skirted the line of windows. From there she could command the whole seaward sweep of its ten acres. She would be alone here, secure against intrusion; she could drop her mask, let her face show what it might, not watch from beneath her eyelids for the questioning looks she dreaded.

The group of men came into her line of vision, moving across the flat land between the house and the ocean. She sat crouched, watching with set jaw. Presently they dropped over the edges of the cliffs, then inarticulate surges of prayer rose in her, blind pleadings; and, her hands clasped against her breast, she rocked back and forth as if in unassuagable pain. But they always reappeared without him, went down again, came up, scrambling through the stony mouths of ravines--always without him. When they returned to the house, she fell back in the chair, her eyes closed, whispering broken words of thanksgiving.

With her breath and her voice under control she went down-stairs. She knew now that he must be in the house.

After lunch she drifted out on the balcony with the others and from there saw Bassett and the two officers of the law go down the path to the pine grove. Following Sybil’s movements on the Point--that would take them some time. Mrs. Cornell said she was going to the kitchen to help Miss Pinkney (if it wasn’t for that work she thought she’d go crazy), and she advised Anne to go up-stairs and lie down.

“You look like the wrath of God, honey,” she said, hooking her hand through Anne’s arm and drawing her with her. “You can’t sleep, no one expects that of you. But stretch out on the bed and relax--you get some sort of rest that way.”

Anne went with her, Mrs. Cornell’s step dropping to a crawling pace as they crossed the living-room, her arm drawing Anne closer, her hearty voice dwindled to a whisper:

“Do you know anything?”

“No, how should I?”

“I listen all I can but they’re as tight as clams when we’re around. I think they’ve got a hungry sort of look as if they were on some trail. Haven’t you noticed it?”

Anne hadn’t noticed anything.

“Well, I have. I sit there slumped together and acting helpless, but I’m not like the Foolish Virgins--my lamps are lit.”

“Do you think they have any one in mind?”

“They have two, dearie, as we all have.” They had reached the door and she opened it warily. “And one moment I’m thinking it’s one and the next moment I’m thinking it’s the other and the third moment I’m thinking it’s neither of them.”

They passed through the doorway and went down the hall, stopping at the foot of the stairs. Mrs. Cornell offered a last consoling word:

“You can be thankful for one thing, Anne, Joe’s not being here.”

“Joe?”

“Oh, I’m not saying he had anything to do with it. But these cases--you read about them in the papers. Every little thing traced up. And she and Joe having been at loggerheads they’d be pouncing on that--not telling you anything, sending up your blood pressure with their questions. You’re spared that and it’s worth keeping your mind on. Nothing so bad but what it might be worse.”