She did not answer. Her hand began to move very gradually away from her throat, down along the starched dress, as though feeling its way back to her side.
He stood there gazing at the frail golden chain around her neck. After a time he said dispassionately, “If you killed your stepson and shot Darryl Rand, Mrs. Kirk, don’t admit even this much. Don’t admit anything until you’ve seen a lawyer.”
Her lips twitched now, and the low words that came from them had a faint intonation of panic. “You don’t think—that?”
“A number of people will think it.”
“But I couldn’t have!”
He listened, his face tightening a trifle as he waited.
“I was downstairs—with you—when Deb was killed.”
“Were you?” He looked back at her. “And you were on the stairs, screaming, immediately after Rand was shot. But the question will be whether you had just run down or—up.”
“I had just run down. I’ll tell you the whole truth now. I had fallen asleep when the shot came.”
He said in a hard voice, “I doubt that. I think that you had been on the stairs for some time. If so, you either shot Rand yourself or you know who did.”
She was staring at him with her great eyes, her fingers frozen against the dress. She whispered, “Have you told anyone?”
“About that? You can be sure that it will have occurred to more than one person. It will have occurred to the murderer.” He was watching her. “Get this straight, Theresa. Unless you are the murderer yourself, you are in deadly peril.”
She moved away a step, uncertainly. “You don’t understand——”
“I understand that. And I insist that you should come downstairs now and make a statement.”
“I can’t—now.” She glanced back at him half pleadingly. “Give me just a little more time to think this over, won’t you?”
He started to speak again but changed his mind. As he stood there watching her walk down the hall into the doorway near the landing, he realized that what this frail, intense woman wanted was not a little more time in which to think, but a little more time in which to act.
He was certain that she would act now, almost immediately, and her action would speak not only more loudly than words but more truthfully. For he was convinced that Theresa—Mrs. Martin Kirk—knew beyond all doubt who had killed Deb and who had shot Darryl Rand, and in the fact that she was unwilling at this stage to divulge it lay the secret of the case.
He saw that Kroll was wise to wait—to wait for the move which she would be sure to make.
He turned his eyes instinctively toward the other doors along that narrow passage, and suddenly he found himself wondering. Cautiously and without sound he began moving down the still corridor, opening each of them in turn and glancing in.
Only two besides Theresa’s were furnished; the remaining two were completely empty. But at the end there was a sixth door which he opened with an immediate quickening of attention. He seemed, in a sense, to recognize it.
He closed the door swiftly behind him, reaching for the light chain. He pulled it, but the light did not go on. He moved across the dark, windowless space, little wider than a long closet, and groped his way up the short flight of stairs. When he reached the top, he took out his lighter, which he had remembered to refill, and examined the trap door. It was not locked. He pushed it up warily, half expecting to hear it squeak, but there was no sound. The hinges evidently were well oiled.
He scrambled upward into the musty air of the attic and stood still, his finger on the lighter. It was actually not quite as dark there as in the narrow stair-space below. Two wan streaks of light, filtering in through shuttered windows, gave him some idea of the dimensions of the place. It was wide, low-ceilinged, with sloping sides and exposed rafters. Across the vague expanse loomed a number of indistinguishable objects that were probably boxes, old trunks, and discarded pieces of furniture; and over it all lay dust and silence.
He bent down close to the floor and switched on the lighter again. There in the faint film of the dust he saw what he was looking for—those scattered imprints leading away from the trap door opening. The indistinct footprints extended outward as far as he could see in the brief flare. He switched off the lighter and went back.
He turned down the stairs with an odd, ominous feeling of repetition. It was almost as though he were walking once more after the scurrying Cotton down this same staircase, as though the clock were about to strike again—and this time strike the hour that would be death.
He was only halfway down when Carlo Pugh rounded the turn precipitately and almost collided with him. The little man grunted with alarm and involuntarily grasped the railing.
“It’s all right,” said Cabot. “Calm down. What were you retreating from?”
Carlo gave him an agitated glance and gestured dramatically with his free hand. “From stupidity, Cabot!” he exclaimed. “From that militant and invincible stupidity against which, as Schiller said, the gods themselves contend in vain!”
“Oh!” said Cabot. “I gather, then, that Jeff Boynton and Bill Kroll didn’t exactly applaud your theory of the crime?”
“Not only did they not applaud it,” Carlo continued with mounting indignation, “but Kroll eventually went so far as to express a suspicion of me—of me, Cabot!” Carlo took a deep breath. “He said that he had had his eye on me all along—on me—and that I was either the prize snooper of all time or a murderer who had played a game so complicated that I was getting mixed up myself!”
“Well, after all,” said Cabot mildly, “you yourself said that it was unwise in a murder case to eliminate anyone.”
“Yes, but—“ Carlo gestured again—“but surely, Cabot, you realize that a very simple process of reasoning does eliminate me?”
“Does it?” asked Cabot. “Maybe I’m being dumb about this.”
Carlo appeared almost at a loss for words. “Why, hang it all, man,” he said, “I was the one who told you about the note!”
“So you were.”
“Well? Think, Cabot!” said Carlo suggestively. “Would I have done that if I had been the one who had stolen it, who had killed Deb, and who was planning to use the note against Darryl?”
“No.”
“Then—“ Carlo shrugged—“to accuse me is palpably ridiculous.”
Cabot hesitated and then said very deliberately, “It would be ridiculous, Pugh, within the circumstantial limits you’ve described. But why confine ourselves to those limits? It’s as foolhardy to eliminate possibilities as it is to eliminate people.”
Carlo said, “I don’t understand this—not at all.”
“We have to consider an alternative theory,” Cabot went on evenly, “that the murderer intended to fix the ultimate responsibility for all this, not on Darryl Rand, but on Jan Utley. We have to remember that while Rand had stuck his neck out by writing that suicide note, Jan had stuck hers out by stealing it.”
Carlo stood perfectly motionless for a moment, as if paralyzed by sheer surprise, but Cabot noticed that his eyes had narrowed. “Oh! Oh, I see!” he said at last. “Then you think that the killer intended not only to kill Deb and Darryl but to convict Jan?”
“It’s conceivable,” said Cabot, “and if we could find someone who had a motive for wanting to get rid of all three, it would be more than conceivable.” He paused. “How this applies to you, of course, is pretty obvious. If that had been the murderer’s long range objective, he would probably have wanted to establish fairly early in the game both the fact that such a note existed and the fact that it had been stolen. And if he was planning to make Jan walk into a trap later on by confessing the theft, he would very likely have given her a little hint which would have led her to believe that she could be identified, anyway.”
“I see,” Carlo said again, and there was no longer the slightest indication of either surprise or indignation in his manner. It had become coldly reflective. “In short, Cabot, you are implying that
I would have acted precisely as I did if I had been the murderer?”
Cabot amended, “On the basis of this particular theory.” Carlo waited a moment. “I presume,” he said thoughtfully, “that this was the real reason for the Captain’s rather inchoate diatribe against me?”
“I don’t know.” Cabot shrugged and started to move away. “I can’t read Kroll’s mind.”
“Then,” said Carlo softly, “you have not yet propounded your startling new hypothesis to the authorities?”
Cabot said, “No,” and went on down the stairs wondering suddenly whether he had just been a fool.
When he reached the foot, he paused and looked around him. He saw no one in the lower hall, but as he stood there he heard a low, peculiar sound which at that moment seemed utterly unreal.
He moved noiselessly to the door of the service hall and listened.
Gail Rand’s little suppressed giggle had ceased, and in its place there was only a murmur of conversation—a double murmur—in which the man’s voice predominated.
A snatch of it became distinguishable. “Listen! Do you think I’m that crazy? Do you——”
He realized that he was hearing them as Darryl Rand must have heard Deb and the woman. It was odd, he thought, how much better women were at whispering than men. If he had not heard the giggle in the first place, he would be totally unable to determine that it was Gail. But he recognized the man’s voice at once, and he reflected that it certainly should not have been as much of a surprise as it was proving to be. What had Mallie said?
He noticed suddenly that the handle of the door was turning, and he took a long stride away. He walked on until he was opposite the library, then turned his head quickly as though to peek into the room. Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed Greg Rand standing in the doorway behind him, like a great frozen figure, looking at his retreating form. There was no sign of Gail.
He turned into the drawing-room with an abrupt realization that during the past five minutes he had managed to put both feet into it.
If the murderer happened to be Carlo Pugh, Greg Rand, or Gail, the attempt upon his own life, which Jeff Boynton had so darkly predicted, might come, after all—and it would not be long delayed.
Kroll looked up from the desk and said soberly, “You were right, Cabot, about that woman in Cleveland.”
Cabot said, “So you’ve been checking on that—through the Cleveland police?”
Kroll nodded. “The woman you talked with has admitted that she isn’t Mrs. Martin Kirk. She was merely using the apartment and had agreed to answer any calls for Mrs. Kirk. She thought, though, that her friend was in Los Angeles.”
“Anything else?”
Boynton took it up. “The description of Mrs. Kirk tallies exactly with Theresa. The woman in Cleveland admitted having reason to believe that Mrs. Kirk felt a bitter animosity toward Darryl Rand, not so much because of Kirk’s death as because she had received nothing from the Magnamite deal.”
Cabot stood still, recalling abruptly what Theresa had said about her employer, Mrs. Martin Kirk. She was after money.
Yes, all that fitted in.
Kroll was saying, “But that’s not half of it. We have checked back with Dr. Odom, and we’re pretty sure now that Theresa—Mrs. Kirk—wasn’t slugged.”
Cabot asked thoughtfully, “Why?”
“It was not the right kind of wound. The doctor, when he dressed it, didn’t know what was supposed to have caused it; and, as close-mouthed as those fellows are, he didn’t ask any questions. But he says now that it could hardly have been from a blow by a blunt instrument, or there would have been some contusions of the flesh around the cut. Instead of that, the cut was clean, shallow, and one she could easily have inflicted upon herself.”
Boynton was studying Cabot’s face. “If you have any doubt, Phil,” he said, “that the woman staged that attack upon herself, why don’t you remind us that you had given her the key to Deb’s room and that all she had to do was to walk in?”
Cabot smiled mirthlessly. “So you can refute it? No, Jeff. I can see as clearly as you can why she would have done it the other way. Even though she was standing there, holding the key, she couldn’t be sure that either Jan, Gail, or I would not pop back into the hall at any moment and trap her. She would have had to do it the way it was done—to give herself enough time and an alibi.”
Kroll said, “Why? That’s the puzzler. She must have found it necessary to get something out of that room at once. But what?”
Boynton shook his head gravely. “I’ve gradually acquired a feeling,” he said, “that this thing is a play within a play. Behind the scenes where these people move and act and where we ask questions, another drama is going on, Phil—a beastly drama that is just now reaching its height.”
Cabot said slowly, “This is the height, Jeff. Now. And we’re off stage.”
Kroll replied grimly, “Maybe so, but we’re in the wings. We’re in both the wings. I’d like to see anybody try to go down that hall now—or use that outside stairway.”
“Do you have a man in Rand’s apartment?”
“No. We’re playing out another length of the rope. And also, incidentally, using a little psychology on Rand. We’re leaving him alone, letting him think things out. When we go back, he’ll probably be ready to tell us what he’s holding back.”
Boynton was watching Cabot. “What, specifically, did you mean, Phil, by saying that this play had reached its height?”
Cabot waited a moment and then answered quietly, “What you meant, Jeff. What Kroll meant. All the loose threads of this thing have come together and have tightened. What all those threads are we don’t know, but we can see some of them. We can see that Gail Rand is on a spot. We can see that she has apparently succeeded in putting her husband on another. We can see that Jan Utley’s back is to the wall. We can see that Mrs. Martin Kirk is cornered. We can see that much and we can be sure that there are other threads which are still hidden from us but which have tightened with the rest.”
Boynton nodded solemnly; but before he could reply, Fant came in hastily and told him that he was wanted on the telephone.
Cabot looked at Kroll as Boynton hurried out. He said, “We’d better go up and start a dirty job.”
Kroll did not move. “You mean to question Mrs. Kirk? I’m waiting on that, Cabot. The chances are ten to one that she wouldn’t tell us the truth about it at present, anyway. I’m waiting for her to make a move.”
“So am I,” said Cabot. “That wasn’t what I meant.” He got up. “I meant to go a little higher. Through a trap door.” Kroll said impassively, “So you found that, too?”
“Yes.” Cabot stopped. “Have you searched it already?”
Kroll shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. “But—“ he got up abruptly with a swift jerk of his sinewy body—“that is the place that knife would be hidden—isn’t it, Cabot?”
“It is,” said Cabot, “unless the murderer has taken it out again.”
They faced each other for a moment and then turned simultaneously toward the door.
As they passed through the hall, the great clock was striking twelve.
Chapter Seventeen
Theresa Church looked at the cheap alarm clock on her dresser and noted that it was sixteen minutes after twelve. The clock, in spite of all her attempts at regulation, still stubbornly ran fast, and now she found herself wondering dully how much time it had gained.
The tick of the clock filled the quiet, dingy little room. It was the only sound. She made none herself as she sat there by the table with her back to the door. Nor had she heard any from the hall outside since the footsteps had passed by. She had not expected them to pass. She had been sure that they would stop. But that, perhaps, had been like the clock—or like her own too rapidly beating heart—straining on into a future that was not yet real.
The footsteps would return. That much was certain. They would stop. The men would come in. They would look at her grimly, sile
ntly, accusingly. And then it would begin—the hundreds of adroit questions, the hundreds of harried answers, the fingers pointed at her, the narrowed eyes, the one voice rising clearly above it all: “I have a warrant for your arrest.”
But no—no, she thought; it would be Cabot. It would be Philip Cabot who had looked at her and said, “You can’t lie.” It would be Cabot coming back again like fate, like her own conscience, like truth itself—to move steadily once more around the table and to stand there, so calm and inescapable as he waited. “Well, Theresa?”
She knew now that she would tell Cabot. She would tell him everything, and he would understand, perhaps not everything, but certainly the one fact that mattered. He would understand that she was human and that she was decent. It was strange to realize that that, somehow, was what she had wanted all along—to be so understood and to be so understandable. She had never, really, wanted the other thing.
She turned her gaze slowly to the clock and saw that the hands had moved on to twenty-two minutes past noon. There was still no sound from the hall. She looked down at the thin hands folded in her lap, and with the slight movement of her head she felt the play of the little golden chain around her neck. Once more, very gradually, she raised her eyes past the tangled mass of knitting on the table, past the dresser drawers directly opposite her, back to the clock again. It was twenty-four minutes past twelve.
He was coming in.
She sat quietly in the chair, her fingers interlocked lightly against her dress. She was saying to herself, “I am going to tell him. I am.” It was odd how peaceful that made her feel, how resigned. She waited in relaxed stillness for him to move on at that soundless pace around the table and to look at her.
The clock ticked on in precisely the same rhythm, for there was no other sound at all to break its monotony, and she knew without having actually seen or heard it that he had closed the door.
It was twenty-six minutes past twelve.
The Whistling Legs Page 17