“Who were Mooreland’s heirs?” he asked suddenly.
“Marsh was one of them, of course. Then there was yourself, Carstairs, Carmody, Harry Stoddard, and the servant he took with him when he went into hiding in the old hilltop hotel.”
“Oh, the servant,” said Harrington absently.
“Yeah. I guess he earned his share, if he ever gets it. He stuck to Mooreland through thick and thin. ‘Snooks,’ Mooreland called him. Sounds like a dog, eh? Well, that’s what Snooks was—a faithful old dog.”
Harrington nodded absently. “And where do you come in?”
“Right here,” said Tarkin.
He leaped with the lightness of a cat, yet the sudden impact sent Harrington staggering against the wall. A moment’s chaos, then the slamming of a door. Harrington felt his pocket.
The coffin was gone!
CHAPTER XXI — In the Class
In an instant he was racing in pursuit, marveling at Tarkin’s lightness of touch and cursing his own carelessness. A groan escaped him as he rushed out upon the piazza and heard an engine’s roar and saw a red tail-light twinkling among the trees. It seemed the thoughtful Tarkin had made his plans with a view to a hurried departure.
Harrington ran down the curving driveway to the garage. As he reached it, he caught a final glimpse of the darting red light which showed the way Tarkin and the million in diamonds had gone. He flung the great sliding doors wide and saw the graceful lines of the Waynefleet sedan gleaming in the dusk. It would have to prove its mettle tonight.
He sprang for the driver’s seat, then came to a dead stop. A small light was moving inside the car, and the rear door was blocked by a man’s shoulders and back. A mutter sounded, and the shoulders and back straightened up. Whittaker’s dour face and rangy figure appeared in the meager light. He held a flashlight in his hand.
“Oh, hello, Mr. Harrington,” was his casual remark. “You look excited.”
“The diamonds—Tarkin—“ said Harrington breathlessly.
Whittaker nodded. “Yes, I expected that You’re going to chase him, I suppose? You will have to hurry. I think he took Carmody’s car, and that baby can certainly hit it up. And now Carmody will have to stay here till you get back. There won’t be another car on the place.”
Harrington, one foot on the running board, stared at him. He talked as calmly and ramblingly as if Tarkin had run away with a pocketful of junk instead of a million in diamonds.
“Don’t you understand? The diamonds!”
“Yes. Too bad. Well, you had better step on her. You’ve still got the gun I handed you, I suppose?”
Harrington gave a dazed nod. He touched the starter, and the engine responded with a lusty snort. He heard Whittaker bang the door shut and warn him against reckless driving, and then the car shot out of the garage and tore into the driveway. Harrington switched on the head lamps and gazed out along the winding ribbon of road, and a dejected mutter fell from his lips. Tarkin had a good two minutes’ start, and a faster car as well. All he could hope for was a stroke of luck.
He flew past Luke Garbo’s garage. It was dark and showed no sign of life. Now a three-cornered crossing was In front of him, and there was nothing to Indicate which way the blackmailer had gone. Possibly, in order to avoid pursuit, Tarkin had defied the traffic regulations and darkened his lights.
Having nothing to guide him, he made a random turn, and now he was speeding along the same road he had traveled when Marsh had so mysteriously appeared in the car. It was just possible that Tarkin had gone to the old hilltop hotel. It seemed to be a central point in all sorts of villainous activities, and a likely destination for a man with a million dollars’ worth of diamonds in his pocket.
He urged the car to its utmost speed. There was a roar of wind in his ears. The landscape, black and shadowy beneath the stars, was a breathless stream of hills and dips and curves. Now and then a morbid urge caused him to glance at the rear-view mirror. It required but a slight stretch of the imagination to see Marsh’s face back there in the dusk. The night, the crazily winding road, and his taut nerves made it easy to recreate that astounding scene.
Mile after mile slipped by in a panorama of black jungles and heaving fields. Soon he would reach the point where the narrow hilltop road branched off to the left. And now, as a swift climb brought him to the apex of an elevation, he could see a ribbon of dusky silver gleaming down below. Apparently it was a stream winding its way through the valley.
Instinctively he eased his pressure on the accelerator. A disturbing sensation, stronger than the zest oi the chase, came upon him. It was somewhere in this vicinity that Marsh had so mysteriously appeared in the rear seat. And down below, at the foot of the hill, he saw an arched span across the ribbon of silver. In another moment there was a rumbling in his ears. He was crossing a bridge. The Crooked Creek bridge?
The ribbon of silver was behind him now, and before him was another stiff climb. He should have taken it with a rush, but instead he let the engine slow down. A stupefying sensation was beating against his brain. His senses seemed to go numb, as if stunned by an incredible manifestation.
A whiff of cigar smoke was drifting over his shoulder!
He lifted his eyes to the rear-view mirror and held them there rigidly. The car, even at the slow speed it was now traveling, lurched dangerously. He righted it by force of instinct and applied the brakes, stopping on the edge of a ditch. His eyes, rounded and glassy, were still fixed on the mirror. He shook his head and gave an insane laugh. No, such an astounding thing could not happen more than once in a lifetime. He must be dreaming.
But there it was—a man’s face in the mirror. Someone was occupying the rear seat, and curls of smoke issued lazily from the cigar clamped between his teeth. Harrington laughed again, like a drunken man. Incongruities were thronging his brain. Marsh, too, had sat in that seat smoking a cigar. But this man did not have Marsh’s square shoulders and broad face.
“Whittaker!” he exclaimed thickly.
The district attorney nodded as casually as if it were the most natural thing in the world that he should be sitting there. Harrington turned in his seat, feeling that the thing he had seen in the glass must be an optical illusion. But there was nothing illusory about the occupant of the rear seat He was very real and very matter-of-fact.
“How—how did you get here?” Harrington stammered, gaping at him fishily.
“Simplest thing in the world,” Whittaker assured him.
Harrington stared at him as he sat in the dusky interior of the car. His brain described a few dizzy revolutions.
“But Marsh—Marsh didn’t—”
“No, he didn’t. But maybe Storm will find the answer to that.” Through the car window he looked out at the meandering banks of the creek. “See anything of Storm’s car?”
Harrington looked dazedly about him. The bridge was less than a hundred feet behind. There were woods on all sides, but through the trees could be seen the pearl-gray streak of the creek.
“I don’t see any car.”
“Well, Storm isn’t very far away. And he’s shrewd enough not to leave his car whore it can be seen. I guess be followed the creek down a little ways. Of course, he may have found what he was looking for and gone back.”
“Wouldn’t we have met him if he had done that?”
“Oh, you can never tell about Storm. He doesn’t do things in the expected way. He may have gone back by another road. But I guess we’ll wait a little while.”
Harrington nodded dully. He was not giving much thought to Storm and his mysterious search. The major portion of his brain was occupied with Whittaker’s sudden appearance in the car. It could be explained in a very simple manner, perhaps, but that explanation threw no light on Marsh’s equally sudden appearance in the same car. There was a divergence of circumstances at the very outset They converged only at the point where the rear-view mirror had reflected a man in the back seat.
“So you gave up the chase?” Whittak
er inquired. Harrington started. Tarkin and the million in diamonds had gone completely out of his mind.
“Just as well,” said Whittaker. “I suspect you took the wrong road, anyway.”
Harrington stared at him. He seemed to take the matter very calmly, as if a fortune in diamonds could be picked up any day.
“Which way do you think he went?”
“I don’t know, of course, but I have an idea that he went to Carmody’s house.”
“Carmody’s house?” Harrington’s brain turned over several puzzling circumstances. “But he didn’t start that way. Besides, there’s nobody home.”
“That’s so. But, if Tarkin was going to Carmody’s, you may be sure he didn’t go the shortest way, but zigzagged about a bit to throw off pursuit. Anyway, that’s what I should have done if I had been in his place.”
“But why should Tarkin take the diamonds to Carmody’s house?”
“Ah, that’s a poser. We’ll have to ask Storm what he thinks about that.” Whittaker lowered his dour face over his cigar. “You see now how it happened, don’t you?”
“How what happened?”
“How Marsh got into the car.”
“No, I’ll be hanged if I do!”
“Well, maybe Storm will make it clear. I can’t be sure I’ll I hear from him.” He looked up and glanced along the sides of the car, then turned up the handles on each rear door and saw that the windows were closed. “Now, here is the setting, just as it was that night Just imagine that I am Marsh. Now take a walk around the car and see if you can figure out a way to get at me with a knife.”
Harrington fixed him with a long, wondering look, then stepped out and closed the door behind him. In a somber, tingling mood he ran his hands over every square inch of the outer surface. He paid particular attention to the rear window, for it was his impression that the fatal thrust had come from that direction. But there was no loophole anywhere. He could see no possible way in which an assassin, operating from the outside, could attack a man seated inside the car.
With a mutter of bafflement, he started back to his seat, and then something made him suddenly tense and alert. Reaching instinctively for the pistol Whittaker had given him, he glanced sharply along the ditch beside the road, partly concealed by a scrubby growth. He heard no unusual sounds now, only the rustling of dead leaves and a chirping and squawking from the depths of the woods. Yet, with pistol in hand and an uneasy sensation in his mind, he walked along the ditch, kicking a weed and a bush here and there. At length, convinced that he had been mistaken, he returned to the car.
“Well?” said Whittaker; and then, as he saw the pistol in Harrington’s hand, his eyes widened in astonishment “Oh, you went about it realistically, as if you were the murderer. But the murderer didn’t use a pistol. He used a knife.”
“I know,” said Harrington, not caring to correct him, “but I imagined the pistol was a knife.”
“I see. And did the imaginary knife give you an inspiration?”
“No.” Harrington sat down at the wheel and turned back, facing the district attorney. “For the life of me I can’t see how it was done.”
“H’m.” Whittaker grinned somberly. “Then we are exactly where we were before. If the murder couldn’t have been done from the outside, then it must have been done from the inside, and in that case only you could have done it That is, unless Storm can give us a different slant on it.”
As he spoke, he toyed absently with the lap robe that hung on a rope stretched out along the back of the front seat. Of a sudden a look of intentness came into his face.
“The seat curves forward,” he observed, “but of course the robe falls down straight A man, if he was as small as Tarkin, could almost hide behind the robe.”
Harrington started and leaned farther back. A look of keen interest appeared in his face, but it did not last long.
“It couldn’t be done,” he declared. “I sat like this when it happened, looking straight at Marsh, just as I am looking at you now. The murderer couldn’t possibly reach out from behind the robe and stab him without my seeing him. Anyway,” in a tone of finality, “there was nobody behind the robe. I made sure of that.”
“That’s out, then.” Whittaker sighed lugubriously. “I’m doing my level best to clear you, but I’m not getting much help. Now, just let’s try to figure it out. Marsh was sitting just as I am now. You had turned back in your seat and was looking at Marsh just as you are now looking at me. It was dark outside, and there couldn’t have been much light Inside the car, only what was thrown back by the head lamps. Still, I suppose, you could see what was going on. Now try and remember what you saw.”
Harrington searched his memory. The scene was very vivid in his mind. The same scene was before his eyes now, except that he had to imagine that the district attorney was Marsh and that a pistol was pointed at him. Could there have been a movement back there in the dusk which his eyes had failed to catch? It was possible. He had seen murder in Marsh’s eyes, and a man facing death was not overly observant.
“No,” he declared, “I didn’t see anything that explains how the murder was done. All I saw was Marsh’s face. It changed horribly. And then he let out a scream. And then—then he died.”
“H’m. A jury would have a hard time swallowing that. Now, just try to jog up the old memory. One thing is sure. With all the doors and windows closed, the murderer couldn’t have got inside the car while you sat looking at Marsh. Either he was inside the car before, or else he committed the murder from the outside.”
“He couldn’t have been in the car,” Harrington declared.
“Then it was done from the outside.”
“But that’s just as impossible.”
“If it is, then you’re the murderer. But let’s look into that. The wound was along the side of the throat, toward the neck. That proves—By the way, do you remember whether Marsh moved his head just before he was stabbed?”
“He might have—a little. I’m not sure.”
“Well, anyway, it looks as if the stabbing was done from behind. Now, except for the window, the back of the car is solid. Nobody could run a knife through it without leaving marks. There aren’t any marks—not even a scratch. I’ve looked. That leaves only the window.”
“And that window can’t be opened.”
“I know. But the murder couldn’t have been done any other way, unless you did it yourself. Now, granting it was done through the window, the murderer could have reached in behind Marsh’s shoulder and done his work without you seeing him.”
Harrington gazed thoughtfully at the window in the back. Yes, barring the fact that the window was immovable, save by a mechanical operation, something of that sort might have happened. The immovability of the window, however, was a stubborn fact. It knocked Whittaker’s theory to pieces. It shattered the only explanation that was at all workable. And now—He sat tense and rigid of a sudden, his eyes still fixed on the window in the back. Instinctively his fingers tightened around the pistol which he had held in his hand since he searched the scrubby growth alongside the ditch.
“What’s up?” Whittaker Inquired, noticing his expression.
“Oh, nothing,” said Harrington carelessly. His mind had just been reenacting the murder on the lonely hilltop, and in all probability he had only imagined that there had been a flicker—a flicker of a hand or a face—against the rear window.
Whittaker regarded him with a queer, far-off look.
“By the way,” he said suddenly, “Marsh was pointing a pistol at you. How did he hold it? Like a man who knows how to handle firearms?”
Harrington opened his eyes wide at the strange question.
“Come to think of it, it struck me that he handled it a bit amateurishly. But even an amateur can shoot straight at close quarters.”
Whittaker nodded. He seemed strangely excited.
“Let’s see that pistol.” He took the weapon from Harrington’s hand. “Now, don’t get nervous. I’m not goi
ng to hurt you. Is this the way Marsh held it?”
Harrington felt an odd thrill as the weapon was pointed at the region just above his diaphragm.
“No, he held it higher “
“Like this?” The district attorney raised the hand in which he held the pistol.
“Higher still. As I recall it, his hand was almost level with his chin. Yes, that’s about right.”
“Good Lord!” Whittaker exclaimed, and Harrington marveled at the look that came into his face. It was as if he had received a revelation too staggering for his mind to absorb. “And what became of the pistol afterward?”
“It fell at Marsh’s feet when he died. I picked it up and carried it about with me until the time when I was knocked unconscious in the old hilltop hotel. It was gone when I awoke.”
Whittaker stared at him in open-mouthed amazement, and Harrington wondered what astounding thought had entered his mind. And then, raising his head a little, his eyes fell once more on the rear window. He gave a violent start.
“Look out!” he cried sharply. “There’s someone—”
He jerked the pistol from Whittaker’s hand, aimed quickly, and fired. A thunderous crack, followed by the crash of broken glass, disturbed the peaceful landscape. The night was full of rumbling echoes. A gentle puff of wind swept through the broken window in the rear, scattering a film of acrid smoke. Through the lifting vapors Whittaker stared incredulously at his companion.
“Crazy?” he demanded.
Harrington, pistol in hand, leaped from his seat.
“Hurry!” he cried, “or he’ll get away!”
He scrambled through the snarled underbrush alongside the road, Whittaker following with the dazed air of one startled out of his senses.
CHAPTER XXII — The Face at the Window
After a wild scampering back and forth through the snarled vegetation, Harrington stopped and mopped the perspiration from his face. Puffing and grumbling, Whittaker ran up to him.
“Throw those fits very often?” he demanded, a little peevishly. “What’s it all about?”
The Back-seat Murder Page 16