She whispered, “Mr. Cabot——”
The wisp of sound, fainter even than her own voice, came directly from behind her ear.
“Keep looking at the clock. Don’t turn. Don’t try to scream.”
Her interlocked fingers gripped each other with such convulsive force that an abrupt numbness began to spread upward through her wrists. She found herself struggling to reply, to whisper back, but her tongue had suddenly become a contorted, dead weight in her mouth.
The little voice said, “You thought I was Cabot. Were you going to tell him?”
She whispered almost inarticulately, “To tell him—what?”
“What you saw last night.”
She was trying to remain motionless, but it seemed to her that her whole body was swaying stiffly, rocking back and forth with a strange, violent regularity, like a ship caught in a maelstrom. But after a second she realized that it was an illusion created by the frantic pounding of her heart. That was the maelstrom. She hadn’t moved.
She strove to shape the right words—the clever, delaying words that might prolong it. Play for time, she thought—play for every precious moment. The person behind her didn’t know about the footsteps that had passed the door. The footsteps would return. They would stop.
She whispered, “I didn’t see anything.”
“You were on the landing and you didn’t see anything?”
“No!” she breathed quickly. “I was not on the landing!”
“The police think you were. And if you had been, you would have seen something—wouldn’t you?”
“But I wasn’t! I swear it. I was here. I had fallen asleep. The shot awakened me.” Her dry tongue was writhing in her mouth, damming the words. “I—-I couldn’t wake up completely. I was dazed. I heard someone run past my door. I didn’t realize it then, but it was the person who had shot Mr. Rand. That person ran up the stairs and down the hall to the fire-escape before I could get the door open.” Both her arms now, joined rigidly at the clasped hands, felt numb. “You know I wasn’t on the landing. You’d have seen me.
There was a pause, and then the voice said ever so softly, ever so slyly, “Have you told the police this—about hearing someone?”
“Not yet. I——“ She broke off. “I was in here. You must believe me!”
There was still that tiny change—that new and dreadfully confiding quality about the voice. It said:
“Must I?”
Still staring fixedly at the clock, she saw that it was thirty-three minutes past twelve. She thought hypnotically: It’s fast. That time won’t exist—won’t ever exist—for me. I shall be dead. She heard herself speaking almost involuntarily—the last quick, desperate words that might buy seconds.
“There’s a chain around my neck. There’s something on the end——”
“I see it. I am looking directly down at it.”
“I believe in that thing. And I swear by it that I didn’t see you. I swear by it that I don’t know who you are. If I’m lying, may its mercy be denied me. May I spend all eternity in hell.”
There was again a short, complete silence before the whisper came once more, and her straining ears caught in it a strange suggestion of something which was almost like fellowship and yet was nearly inaudible, so utterly quiet had the voice become, so horribly meditative.
“Let’s hope there’s not a hell,” it said. “Let’s hope there’s—nothing.”
She knew that she had not yet been touched, nor had the chair. But all at once she could no longer hear the ticking of the clock and she could no longer see its face. The very walls of the little room appeared to be receding from her and at the same time to be toppling slowly into a vortex that was widening outward from her feet. She tried to cry into that swirling void—to cry to something which she felt was there—but the words sounded in her own mind as no more than a whisper of supplication.
“Forgive me,” she said. “I wanted to live.”
Cabot and Kroll came down the narrow stairs from the attic and went out into the hall. They were dusty. They were silent.
“It’s odd,” Kroll mumbled after a moment. “That stain we found on the cloth in the trunk, Cabot—I believe it was blood. And I have a hunch that it was the knife that was wrapped in that cloth—and then taken out.”
“If it was,” replied Cabot, “it was taken out for a purpose.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s being used again.”
Kroll looked aghast. “You mean now? In broad daylight, with the place full of detectives?”
“Now. Perhaps at this very moment.”
Kroll muttered, “You may be right at that. I’ve a queer feeling that something is happening.” He stopped. “We’d better look in on Rand.”
Cabot said thoughtfully, “I think that Rand is comparatively safe—unless he did see the person who shot him. What the murderer does from now on will be done, so to speak, in self-defense.”
“Safe?” Kroll grunted. “I don’t see how you figure it that way. If this thing, from the beginning, was primarily a plot to kill Rand and make it a perfect crime——”
Cabot interrupted. “But it wouldn’t be now. And one of the peculiar characteristics of this murderer, Kroll, is the fact that he has seemed more fanatically intent upon the perfection than upon the actual murder.” He paused. “If his purpose had been merely to get rid of Rand in a hurry, he would certainly have seized the opportunity he had while I was lying unconscious in front of Rand’s bedroom door. All he would have had to do then was to open the door, go in, and dispose of Rand once and for all. But he didn’t.”
“He didn’t,” said Kroll, “because he thought then that his original plan would go through. He merely wanted to give himself a little more time—keep you from talking with Rand just then.”
Cabot shook his head. “That brings up another puzzling question,” he said. “Everybody in this house apparently knew at the time that Rand was asleep. But all of them, with one exception, would have assumed that it was a natural sleep, from which I could easily have awakened him. The one exception was, of course, the murderer, who had drugged the whisky. The murderer knew perfectly well, therefore, that Rand was under the influence of a powerful opiate and that there wasn’t the slightest danger of his talking for hours. Why, then, should he have taken that desperate risk of slugging me as I walked toward the bedroom?”
Kroll threw up his hands. “It’s got me,” he said. “Maybe it wasn’t the murderer who beaned you.”
They moved on down the passageway, and as they neared Theresa’s door their footsteps instinctively slackened. Kroll came to a full stop and stood there listening, while Cabot automatically went on another step before he turned back.
The silence within the room seemed complete, and it remained unbroken. At last Kroll swerved toward the threshold. He was reaching for the knob when he halted again.
From inside came a very faint sound. It was a sort of soft squeak. It came once; it was repeated once, less distinctly; and then it stopped. But Cabot immediately felt sure what it was. It was the rocking chair in which he had found Theresa sitting by the table. She must be sitting there now.
Kroll said as they went on down the stairs, “Maybe I’m making a mistake by not putting that woman under a light and sweating the truth out of her. But I don’t think it would be easy—or fast.”
Cabot answered, “I’m sure that it wouldn’t. This way you have a double chance that something decisive will happen any minute. She will try to get to the murderer—or the murderer will try to get to her.”
Kroll nodded. “The few things about it that are obvious,” he said, “all add up to that. The woman is after money. That was why she came here in the first place—to see whether she couldn’t get something out of this Magnamite business. She probably hated Rand and felt an instinctive sympathy for the murderer. Very likely she also hated the stepson, who was providing some unexpected competition, and his death was very convenient. By playing her cards just right sh
e has found out who killed him and who shot Rand, and the fact that she is not telling leads to only one conclusion. She is planning to come to terms with the murderer.”
Cabot halted at the foot of the staircase, gazing at the closed doors of Rand’s apartment. “But there is another possibility,” he said. “We must remember that the essence of the situation which Theresa now controls is that Darryl Rand has been—and presumably still is—in danger. She might think that this puts her in the ideal position to bargain with him for the money to which she thinks that she is morally entitled. She can tell him who his enemy is and can remove his danger once and for all time by saying a few words. But—“ Cabot shrugged—“she might say to him rather than to the murderer, ‘I’m poor...’”
Kroll nodded, scowling. “Perhaps that is more likely,” he conceded, “since Rand, after all, is the one who has the money. But either way we shall have her—when she makes her move.” He turned. “I’m going to see Fleming before I go downstairs,” he said. “I want to find out whether anybody has been up here.”
Cabot nodded silently and continued to stand there, gazing across the corridor for several minutes after Kroll had gone.
The little stir which he presently heard on the landing behind him was very slight, as slight as the scamper of a mouse across the floor. He did not turn his head, for he was sure that it was Theresa. It was Theresa, who had slipped out of her room after they had passed; Theresa still wavering between the desire to speak and that counter desire to keep silent. If he looked around, she would be certain to shrink back out of sight.
His gaze remained fixed upon Rand’s apartment. Behind those closed doors, he felt instinctively, lay the explanation of his growing conviction that something was wrong. He wondered suddenly whether anyone could have reached Rand without being seen by either the detective in the hall or the one watching the fire-escape. There was just a chance.
He strode abruptly across the corridor and opened the study door. He swung on across the quiet room into the bedroom and stopped short.
The bed was empty. There was no one in the room.
He cut across at once to the bathroom and looked in. The shower curtains were drawn, and he glanced behind them quickly before he turned back into the bedroom. He got down on his knees to peer under the bed, and then he raised his eyes and gazed searchingly around the room.
He couldn’t see any place at all that would have served. And yet Rand, he thought, should be there behind something.
He dashed back into the study and had almost reached the outer door when he halted with an abrupt realization that there was such a place here.
He whirled toward the desk and at once saw the foot sticking from behind the edge.
Darryl Rand lay there face downward. His body was twitching slightly, and he was gasping in the peculiar manner of a semi-conscious person struggling in the grip of paralyzing shock. The sound, though, was so faint that Cabot felt no wonder at having noticed nothing when he first walked through the room.
He bent over Rand and pulled aside his pajama coat. He saw at a glance that there was no fresh wound and he realized that the man had merely been knocked in the head and dazed.
He straightened up, confronting Kroll, who had come in behind him.
Kroll gasped, “Rand! How did this happen?”
Cabot said shortly, “You’ve just demonstrated it.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean——“ Kroll cut off abruptly.
“Fleming swears that nobody came through the hall except Mallie.”
“I don’t think Mallie did this.”
“Neither do I. Somebody else must have used the fire-escape.” Kroll spun around. “Is he hurt badly?”
“I doubt it. I believe I can bring him around.”
Kroll was headed for the door. “I’m going to check with McCann about that fire-escape.”
Cabot called, “Wait! Give me a hand.” But Kroll was gone.
Cabot cursed softly and prepared to play the strong man. He got Rand into the bedroom and on the bed with less difficulty than he had expected, and then he started to work on him with wet towels, a bottle of smelling salts which he found in the bathroom, and finally a bottle of brandy.
Rand groaned, spluttering a little as the brandy went down his throat. His eyelids fluttered and then closed again, and Cabot thought grimly: Now, if this turns out to be doped, everything will be just dandy.
At last Rand’s eyes opened again and stayed open. He moaned once more and tried weakly to sit up in bed.
Cabot said, “That’s not necessary. Just tell me who hit you.”
Rand was holding his head in his hands, his fingers feeling gingerly for the bump. He groaned again. “Cabot, there’s some aspirin in the bathroom.”
Cabot got the aspirin and waited impatiently while Rand swallowed two tablets and a glass of water. He said, “Now, who hit you?”
Rand’s eyes were a little clearer. He said, “I don’t think anybody hit me. It didn’t happen that Way, Cabot. You see, I struck my head when I tripped over the desk drawer.”
“Tripped?” exclaimed Cabot. “Then there wasn’t anybody?”
“Yes, there was somebody.”
“Well, I don’t get it.”
Rand put his hand to his aching head again and explained wearily, “I had gone in there to get a paper out of the desk. I had the lowest drawer partly open and I was bending over it when I became aware that somebody had come in behind me.”
“Did you see him?”
“I had only a glimpse of movement. But that made me recoil from it, and I stumbled against the open drawer. I went over just as the person rushed at me. That was probably what saved me, and it was also what knocked me silly—I think.”
“Then the person ran out?”
“I suppose so. I think that I made quite a racket when I fell.”
Cabot said, “The skin of your teeth, Rand, is thick enough to be tattooed.” He stopped. “You’ll recall that I mentioned the danger you were in if you were holding something back?”
Rand was not looking at him. He said queerly, “Yes.”
“Well, if this was an attempt to kill you, it confirms——”
His statement was interrupted suddenly by the ringing of the house telephone beside the desk. He answered it and heard Kroll’s excited voice, calling from downstairs.
“Get back to the third floor, Cabot—at once!”
“What’s up?”
“Somebody was seen going up there—and hasn’t been seen going back! It looks like we have the killer trapped. Step on it!”
Cabot pounded up the stairs two steps at a time and looked swiftly down the hall before he flung open the door of Theresa Church’s room.
She was sitting in the chair. She was sitting with her back to the door, just as she had sat before, but her back was no longer erect. She was slumped over, with her head hanging down inertly in the posture of one overtaken by profound exhaustion. Her hands were clasped limply in her lap, her intent eyes fixed upon them by the droop of her bent head.
There was surprisingly little blood.
Chapter Eighteen
Cabot turned slowly and looked around the plain, small room. It was difficult, somehow, to think of it as the scene of the horror which had taken place there between the iron bedstead and the cheap oak dresser. The loud, brazen tick of the alarm clock filled the hushed space, a final triumph of the trivial.
He walked quietly toward the dresser and then stopped. Kroll was in the doorway, staring at Theresa Church. He passed the tip of his tongue over his dry lips and moved on mechanically into the room. He said, “She’s dead?”
Cabot nodded. “Stabbed through the heart.”
The Captain circled the chair silently and then spun away. “You stay here,” he said. “I’m going to the attic!” Cabot asked quickly, “Who was seen coming up here?” Kroll snapped, “Jan Utley—slipping up the fire-escape!” He glanced back from the doorway. “Nobody has been on this third floor, C
abot, except that girl—and Mallie!” Cabot moved on to the dresser.
He opened the lowest drawer first and found it empty. Then he pulled out the next one and looked down at a pitifully small pile of clothing, mostly cheap underthings and cheaper hose. They were scattered out over the bottom of the drawer, as though someone had searched through them hurriedly without making any effort to rearrange them.
He noticed as he closed the drawer that it had a slight squeak.
He went carefully through the two smaller drawers at the top, but he found nothing except a collection of toilet articles. There were no letters, no papers of any kind. But at the back of one of the drawers he discovered a lead pencil and a narrow, ruled writing tablet. Several sheets had been tom off the pad unevenly.
He went on into the tiny bathroom and looked down at the lavatory. The surface of the bowl was so completely dry that he felt sure that no pair of hands had been washed there recently. The same was true of the tub. But as his gaze moved around the narrow tiled floor, he spied something which he stooped for and picked up charily.
It was a torn scrap of damp paper lying against the wall near the base of the wash bowl. Across it ran a faint blue line which was evidently the ruling of a tablet, and on the line there was a fragment of penciled writing. It looked like—2:30 toni.
Two-thirty, he thought, or possibly twelve-thirty—tonight.
He glanced back at the lavatory with a clear picture in his mind of what had happened. Someone had stood there methodically tearing written sheets into shreds and washing them down the drain. This remnant had fluttered to the floor and had lain there unseen behind the lavatory pedestal.
He became aware that someone had come into the bedroom, and he walked back with the scrap of paper still between his fingers.
It was Kroll, advancing across the room with a set face. He said, “I was too late.” He broke off, looking at the fragment of paper. “What’s that?”
Cabot handed it to him. “I found it under the lavatory,” he explained. “What did you find?”
“The killer wasn’t in the attic—but had been. The hasp on the trap door was not as we left it.”
The Whistling Legs Page 18