by C. Daly King
‘Then you would have been on the field at 8.34, if you stopped to speak with the stewardess, and you reached here at 8.37?’
‘But I didn’t reach here.’
‘Oh. Where did you go?’
‘I came up to the house, but I didn’t come in. When I was nearly here, my scarf blew off, and I saw that I had lost the clip for it. I looked around in the snow for it, and then I went back to the ’plane to look for it.’
‘Why all the rush? I should have thought you would have been pretty cold after walking across the field. You could have come back later, after you had warmed up a bit.’
‘I was cold, but I wanted to find the clip. It is rather valuable.’ She pointed to the ornament, now holding the gay scarf securely below her throat. ‘It has two real sapphires in it, you see.’
‘So you turned around and went back again. Wait now, you must have been near this house at 8.36 or 8.37, if you started at 8.34. Did you see anyone coming in here when your scarf blew away?’
‘Yes. Someone opened the door and went in as I approached the house. The pilots, I suppose.’
‘You’re sure it wasn’t anyone else? You must have been close enough to see.’
‘I don’t know. I was close enough, of course, but I had my head down against the snow that was blowing in my face. I don’t know who went in. I only know that I was aware of the door being opened and then closed just as the scarf blew away.’
‘So you came back. If you looked in the snow first, I should give you, say, four minutes for that. That would bring you to the ’plane again at 8.40. You found your clip in the cabin?’
Fonda nodded. ‘Yes, I did. I had to search for it a little. Then I found it under the seat behind mine. It must have dropped off during the storm.’
‘Are you sure of that – that you had it up to the time we ran into the snow over the mountains?’
‘Why, no, I’m not sure at all. I was only guessing. I suppose it might have fallen off any time after we got into this ’plane at Cheyenne. Even when I was getting in, so far as that goes. I didn’t notice it at all until my scarf blew away . . . Well, and then I came back here again with the stewardess. I helped her carry some of the Thermos bottles she brought over with her.’
‘8.43, on the field again, and 8.46, at the house? Well, never mind; I don’t suppose you noticed that, either. I can check it with the stewardess. Can you help me with anyone else’s statements? Did you pass anyone on the field close enough to identify them?’
‘No, I passed some people, I think, but everyone seemed to be going a different way than I did, and I had my head bent down. I can’t say who they were.’
‘And what else?’
‘Nothing else, I think. That is what I did, and the only person I really met was the stewardess. Oh, but there’s this. She and I were the last to come in here except you ... I know, because I looked for you when we got here.’ For the first time Fonda dropped her eyes. The lashes, Lord noticed, could be seen curving outward from the curve of her cheek. Why the dickens, he wondered, did he persist in noticing these things?
‘That’s all,’ he said abruptly, and actually felt her blue eyes on him again as she looked up.
‘I have to go now?’
‘That’s right. You have to go now.’
She said ‘All right’ submissively. ‘I suppose you want to see someone else?’
‘I want to see the stewardess.’
‘Oh.’
Fonda slid to her feet in a single, graceful movement and stood looking down at him. ‘I think she’s very pretty, don’t you?’
‘No doubt,’ Lord answered shortly.
‘I’ll get her for you.’
When she was almost at the door he stopped her. ‘By the way, do you play tennis?’
‘I do,’ the low voice assured him. ‘I play quite decently. Will you play tennis with me, Michael?’
‘I should be delighted to play with you, Fonda. Let’s hope nothing will prevent it.’
‘Nothing will prevent it, Michael,’ she said softly. She smiled invitation to him across the room. She opened the door. Fonda was gone, and the single light shone bleakly above the rumpled bed. Lord shook himself and muttered, ‘What a damned fool I am . . . and maybe I’m not, at that.’
When the stewardess appeared, he said, ‘Have you had anything to eat, Miss Gavin? No? Well, I’d like a little something, if you can scare it up, and if you haven’t had anything yourself, why not bring in enough for both of us? I want to ask you a few questions, and we might as well have a bite together while I’m doing it.’
In spite of her blonde hair and her blue eyes, in spite of her prettiness, she seemed a complete contrast to the girl who had just left. She stood thinking a moment. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’ll do that, if you don’t mind.’ She had meant to eat with Hal Lovett after the detective had finished with her; but he was getting pretty fresh. She would give him his sandwiches and have her own in here. Of course, it might make the junior pilot even fresher the next time they were alone. Well, that was O.K., too. She disappeared through the doorway.
In a few minutes she was back again. They sat at opposite ends of the keeper’s bed, a plate of sandwiches between them and a smoking Thermos flask of coffee on the floor at their feet. The detective, after his first bite, found that he was hungrier than he had thought. He finished off two large sandwiches before asking any questions at all. With the third, however, he put his chart on the cover beside him and looked over at his companion.
‘From what I’ve been told, it appears that you stayed in the ’plane for some time after we came down – until after everyone had left, in fact. Is that correct?’
Marjorie said, ‘Yes, that’s right.’ She had finished eating, and was sipping hot coffee from a paper cup. Her voice was cool and efficient. ‘Two of them came back later.’
‘Before we get to that, can you tell me anything about the order in which the passengers left the cabin originally? I’m trying to check up on the stories they have told me.’
‘Yes; but I’m not sure I can remember just how everybody left. You went first and then the pilots went; they found the lieutenant lying in the snow outside and carried him off to the house. The man who speaks with an accent came next; I should think he was English.’ The stewardess paused and was evidently searching her memory. ‘After that I’m not entirely sure. The two girls came to the back of the cabin, and the one with the blonde hair asked me where the house was, I think. One of them left right away and one stopped for some minutes near the door before getting out, I think, but I wasn’t noticing especially; I was busy straightening up the cabin and seeing what I had for a supper. While I was doing that the other men left, too, but I can’t say in what order. The psychologist with the grey hair was the last; he stayed for some time after everyone else had gone. I don’t think he was feeling very well at first, but he was all right when he finally got up.’
Lord was writing in his note-book, comparing the statement with his chart. ‘That’s pretty good,’ he remarked. ‘Better than I expected . . . And now what about the ones who returned? Especially the times when they came back, if you recall.’
‘The first one to come back was the short man. He came in just a moment after the grey-haired man left.’
‘Just a moment afterward, you say?’ Lord asked. ‘That’s funny. Pons – your grey-haired man – said he didn’t see anything of Tinkham as he was leaving.’
‘That’s queer.’ The stewardess thought a moment. ‘I’m positive there couldn’t have been a minute between them, hardly half a minute. I was back in the rear of the cabin then, by the door. I don’t see how they could possibly have missed each other.’
‘There it is just the same. They did. I’ve known Dr Pons a long time, and his evidence is perfectly trustworthy. Well, we’ll let it pass now. What did Tinkham do when he came in?’
‘I don’t know that, I’m afraid. I didn’t watch him. I was counting sandwiches. But he was only there a m
inute or less. He got a bag he had left behind and went right out again. It was several minutes after he had gone when the blonde girl came in. She said she had lost a scarf clip and wanted to look for it. I helped her search, but I hadn’t noticed it when I had gone through the cabin after we landed, and I didn’t think it was there. I looked around the rear end and in the lavatory, but she found it up forward under one of the seats. Then we talked a little and she took some of the Thermos flasks and we left. I locked the cabin door after we had gotten out.’
‘I don’t suppose you noticed the time at any of these points?’
‘Only when I finally left the cabin. I looked at the clock then. It was 8.42 exactly.’
Lord checked the time with his data, and found that he appeared to have calculated Fonda’s movements remarkably accurately. After a pause he continued, ‘You said that there were several minutes between the time Tinkham left and the time Miss Mann returned. I should say she must have come back at about 8.40 if you left at 8.42. Two minutes is quite a long time, even for a reasonable search; but if that is so, it would put Tinkham in the ’plane about 8.37. He himself put it later than that. Can you be sure about the interval between the two returns?’
‘Well, I’m pretty sure about it. Of course, I can’t be positive, but I should say there was a longer time between when he left and she came in than it took to find the clip. Yes, I’m fairly sure of that, as I remember it now.’
In the stewardess’s column of his chart Lord put down ‘Tinkham (?)’ at 8.37. He asked a few more questions while drinking a second cup of coffee, but it was plain that he had now found out all she had to tell. She confirmed Fonda’s statement that they had been the last except the detective to reach the house by saying that no one except him had come in later. As everyone had been present in the front room when he arrived, it amounted to the same thing. She began gathering up the papers in which the sandwiches had been wrapped and screwing the cover on the Thermos flask.
Lord said, ‘Thank you, Marjorie, for the food and the information, both. I understand we may be going up again soon. Is that right?’
‘I think so,’ the girl answered. ‘They have been clearing a track across the field and refuelling the ’planes. If that is all you want of me, I had better give the pilots something to eat before we start.’ He nodded, and she walked quickly across the room to the door. A competent young woman, Lord thought as he brought his chart back to the chair. Pretty and attractive, too, but certainly matter-of-fact.
He sat down and looked the chart over attentively. It was filled now; everyone had been accounted for as far as was possible. Unfortunately there were fewer alibis than he had hoped; still there were some. He put down his own movements as he recalled them – 8.28, seat; 8.29, getting up; 8.30, out door; 8.31, nose of the ’plane; 8.32, baggage compartment door; 8.34, struck down in the snow; and from then on to the end of the chart, still in the snow. He knew he had not come to until 8.50, because he had looked at his watch at once on regaining consciousness. The chart, however, ended at 8.46 with the arrival of Fonda and Marjorie at the house.
He sat regarding his handiwork for some minutes. Then an idea occurred to him, and he ruled off with heavy lines the ‘Crucial Period,’ 8.33 to 8.37 inclusive. During this time the murderer must have been engaged in reaching the baggage compartment, knocking him out, attacking the helplessly unconscious Cutter and leaving the scene. He surveyed the spaces between the heavy lines. Fonda, Isa, Tinkham, Craven, they were all unaccounted for except on their own stories during this period. No corroboration. So that was that. Only Bellowes and Didenot had really been exonerated, and he had never thought seriously of them, anyhow. Too bad, but that was all his interviews had accomplished.
He sighed and set about marking with symbols such times as his note-book told him could be checked by at least two witnesses. For Bellowes and Didenot he assigned a star – *; for the keeper who had seen Isa through the window at 8.36 a square – ; for Pons and Craven at 8.40 a cross – +; and for Fonda and the stewardess, when Fonda had returned to the ’plane, a circle – °.
REPORTED MOVEMENTS.
Now it was completed, entirely completed. He gazed at it in the poor light as if the paper itself could perhaps tell him the answer. His head was aching and he was forced to admit that nothing very satisfactory had been accomplished. Fonda, Isa, Tinkham, Craven. One of them – one of them must by all reason be the criminal it was his task to convict – but which one? Irrationally and quite against his will he hoped it wasn’t Fonda.
8900 FEET
They all trooped out on the field, following the pilots down the cleared runway to the transport at the eastward end of the snow-covered expanse. The ship had been swung around again, with its nose into the wind, and the cabin lights gleamed through the windows against the background of dark forest beyond the borders of the field. Next to the transport the little combat ’plane had been taxied and now stood waiting for its companion to take off first. Fed, warmed and entirely revived, Lieutenant Philips already sat at his controls, his motor idling slowly in the brisk wind.
Lord, walking behind the others, brought up the rear of the procession with Dr Pons. The psychologist was saying something about motives, saying it with emphasis, almost with enthusiasm. Lord’s attention to his friend’s remarks, it must be confessed, was not very close; he was trying to think if he had done everything that ought to have been done, back there at the house. The message to Headquarters in New York had been sent off under his own supervision, a long message, not only reporting the situation but requesting immediate information that would not be easy to obtain in the middle of the night; for a brief moment he wondered to whom that message would come, who would be on duty now to receive and deal with it. Someone with initiative, he hoped, for he needed the answer to his inquiry, and needed it soon. And his other message to Salt Lake City, that had gone off, too, clicking away over the wires of the Teletype system.
Ahead of them the others trudged dejectedly over the ground. They looked weary, some of them looked quite worn out. No conversation enlivened the passage. They came to the ’plane, and the pilots opened the cabin door and got in first. The rest stood clustered around the entrance as one of their number and then another clambered up over the high sill. He stepped forward and helped Fonda into the cabin with a strong lift. ‘Oh, Michael – ’ she smothered a yawn behind a slim, gloved hand – ‘I’m so tired. I want to go to sleep.’ Lord glanced at his watch and saw that it was five minutes past one.
Once in the cabin, no time was lost. The stewardess closed the door, walked up and down the aisle observing safety belts, and turned out the cabin lights. The motors roared, the transport shook itself into motion. Faster, bumping across the uneven field. Snow swirled past the windows, the motion smoothed itself out, they climbed into the air. Behind them the combat ’plane buzzed in their wake. It zoomed sharply, climbing faster than they, and passed them at 7500. It circled twice as the transport circled, then streaked out after them into the west. Clouds still were prevalent and the wind whistled fiercely through the pass between the mountains, but here and there a star peeped out of the night ahead.
In the cabin the lights came on again, and Marjorie Gavin passed up the aisle with blankets. She assisted in lowering the seats to the reclining position, she adjusted safety belts once more as the passengers lay back, she tucked the blankets around their prone forms. When she returned and switched off the lights once more, leaving only the dim night-light above the lavatory door, the cabin was quiet, several of the passengers already asleep. The drone of the motors made a low undertone to the occasional movement of the ship, which for the most part seemed as if suspended without motion in black vacuum. The flicker of the exhausts outside played with eerie dimness through the windows over the two lines of stretched-out figures.
The detective, who needed rest more than any of the others, had no time for rest. Two and a half hours to Salt Lake City, and Reno only three hours beyond that. He had no so
lution of the crime that so unexpectedly had upset his careful plans; he had not even the beginning of a trail to the criminal. The weapon, he considered, nine chances out of ten, was still in the murderer’s possession. By the same token, it was doubtless right here somewhere in this small cabin. Later, when sleep had claimed the others fully, he might make a quiet search along the seats.
He considered also the error by which he must have disclosed to some alert brain his ruse concerning the man now slain. He racked his wits, but for the life of him could not recall any obvious slip. Since noon he had steadily maintained to everyone that Cutter was dead, murdered. He had listened to no less than three theories regarding the method of the ‘crime’ and the identity of the hypothetical criminal, and apparently the three theorists had harboured no suspicions about the good faith of the event. Then why should anyone else not only have suspected, but have become convinced? Except possibly Craven. That Englishman, he thought, is a pretty slick piece of works with his transmediumisations and projections. The fellow seemed sincere enough, however, seemed really to believe in these strange Fortean notions. It was difficult to say, just the same. It was distinctly possible that he had been amusing himself – rather a macabre type of humour – at Lord’s expense and that of a man supposedly dead. To go further, it was within the range of possibility that Craven’s intentions had been somewhat more sinister than amusement.
Just now it was difficult, however, to follow the train of reasoning beyond that point. For one thing, it was no more than an unbased conjecture. For another, Dr Pons, who sat beside him, very plainly desired to discuss the matter of motives. They sat side by side on camp stools against the cabin’s rear wall beneath the single light that still burned. They had persuaded the stewardess to lie down in one of the rear chairs they had vacated, by a promise to call her immediately if anyone stirred. Then they had withdrawn to their present position, from which the low tones of their voices were surely inaudible to even the nearest reclining passenger.