by Rufus King
The silence remained unbroken.
Surely he had waited long enough.
He stood up and tentatively started to open the little door. He heard no sound. He opened the door wide and stepped out into the music room.
Then he turned and carefully shut the little door.
CHAPTER XXXIII
SIX-EIGHTEEN A.M.
Dr. Johnson could not determine what Ann was doing there.
She was seated on the floor with her back resting against the spinet. One ankle was in her hand, as though she had been rubbing it. He thought she must have fainted and have just come to. Her eyes were startlingly wide open as they stared at him in fright. Yes, surely it was fright. He smiled at her reassuringly.
Then he stopped smiling because what could he say? Scarcely that he had just stepped in to examine the 16 double open diapason. A devil of a mess, now that he thought of it. He didn’t want to kill her. Queer that in spite of all the others he revolted at the thought of killing Ann. Possibly it was because he had given her life, because he had brought breath to her even though Alice had been dead.
Yes, that would be it. But he’d have to do something about his appearing so oddly like this. Possibly, quite possibly, she would not know about the structural features of great organs. The little door might signify nothing to her beyond a door to another room or a hallway. “What happened, Miss Marlow?”
“I’m quite all right, Doctor.”
“Let me help you.”
Her voice stopped him.
“No—please—”
Ann stood up swiftly and faced him, with her back pressed against the keyboard, her fingers gripping its ivory keys. Her lips winced once, and he wondered again about her ankle.
“I take the liberty of coming in here, sometimes very early in the morning. I have a modest talent for the spinet. I find pleasure in exercising it.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“You’re trembling.”
“No—really, I’m perfectly all right.”
Ann did not know about the structure of the great organ, and so the spinet-playing excuse for Dr. Johnson’s being there held a reasonable note. And Ludwig, after all, had been very drunk. But this did not hold water. There was something about Dr. Johnson’s manner—stupid to call it an emanation, but that was what it amounted to—queer, and furtively evil, and deadly. It seeped through his pleasant surface like a miasma. But no doctor would—doctor—men in white—white—“Doctor, do you ever wear those—smocks, do you call them? You see them on surgeons in the movies.”
Dr. Johnson’s smile froze.
“Very rarely, Miss Marlow.”
“But you have worn them?”
“Why?”
Fool! He knew why. He knew that Ann suppressed a scream. Of course she had been brighter than all the rest of them about Ludwig’s all-but-forgotten riddle of the white back in the window: one that was not a shirt, or a dress, or a coat. Jerry Abbott had been bright about it, too, so he had had to arrange the “hunting accident” to kill Jerry Abbott, for Abbott had found him in the laboratory one morning and had laughingly suggested that “there was Ludwig’s white back.” He had never worn another one after that.
Ludwig with his riddle still lived on unmurdered because Dr. Johnson preferred him to. Ludwig not only offered a good suspect for Estelle to hint at, but it had been to Ludwig’s financial advantage that the riddle remain unsolved, even should the smock idea have crossed his mind. Anyhow, he could always take care of Ludwig should he have to. Something along the line of induced apoplexy would turn the trick.
Well, it was too bad about Ann. He would have to kill her now that she had solved the white-back riddle. How stupid of her. How wretchedly stupid of her to have thought it up. And how unkind to him.
But perhaps it would be for the best. She probably had a whole lot of Justin Marlow’s tenacity in her. She would keep on the trail as doggedly as Justin had.
He had hoped that with Justin out of the way the whole thing would die from inanition. The radioactive substance given to Justin years ago when Justin had started in so actively to clear Fred’s name had seemed such a foolproof answer and so secure.
Estelle certainly would never have bothered to pursue the quest, and who else was there? No one, until Justin had produced Ann so swiftly out of a hat. That was why the pyrogallol had been used to speed the more leisurely radium: Ann’s appearance and the fact that she had been put in Alice’s rooms which were, in consequence, opened for the first time since Alice’s death.
How confusing such webs were when you became enmeshed in them! You scarcely knew where to turn or why. The point eventually was reached where your brain refused to function any longer with clarity. Why had the opening up of Alice’s rooms panicked him so? Was it again the letter? He had never had access to them after that moment when he had looked through her desk just after having killed her. Or had it been that wretched bad luck of Ann’s taking the ocelots with the grim result of the skeleton bones in silver on the films?
Now there (Dr. Johnson’s busy brain grew once more pleasantly clear and sharp) he had been amazingly clever in having taken that bull by its horns, for the enlargements were bound to become a nine days’ wonder, and any physician would have recognized the bone patterns for what they were, any layman, even, who had ever seen an X-ray shot.
Yes, kill her and get it over with, and that would be the last.
“Why are you up so early, Miss Marlow?”
“A friend has just landed at the airfield, Doctor.”
No, choking her would never do. Not if Estelle were to be suspected of it, the pyrogallol-in-the-carafe attempt of Estelle’s having presumably failed. That bit of inspirational chicanery still stood up nicely in its use to pin Justin’s murder on Estelle.But how simple! The case of antique weapons was still at hand, just as it had been at hand when he had lolled Alice. Not the Cellini dagger, of course. He smiled faintly. Justin had disposed of that. But there were others. His eyes darted slyly toward the case and considered a thin stiletto of Spanish steel. Just such a weapon as Estelle might choose.
“Were you on your way downstairs to meet your friend, Miss Marlow?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
He moved several casual steps and reached the case. He wished Ann would do something. An overt cue to force him into the distasteful plunge. He wanted her to scream now, because then one hand could press the scream back while his other hand took the stiletto from the case. Or if she would run. Anything but this detestable standing there and staring at him, shaking with terror. It was fear hypnosis that held her, he supposed. For an instant he examined her clinically. Yes, that was it.
Mother, Ann thought, was right here too. Only her back was toward him on that distant afternoon, and she didn’t know he was going to kill her. She never saw him take the dagger from the case, as Ann was seeing him. Mother—Mother—darling Mother, what shall I do?
He had the stiletto in his hand, having lifted it as though he were just casually examining it. How chill the grip felt, just as had the Cellini one. Ail right. Get it over with.
He was prepared for her screaming or for her making a break toward the door. He was prepared even for her coming out of her hypnosis and attacking him. He was prepared against anything but what she did do: her sagging to the floor and her saying: “My ankle is sprained. I am in pain. Would you help me, Doctor?” She said again: “Doctor—”
His loose lips quivered, and for a brief instant all the torture of his lifetime seemed to strike him. Then he smiled down at her pityingly. Silly little fool! Practically hurling the Hippocratic oath in his teeth, as if for years that tear-jerking rubbish any longer had had the power to affect him. But her sagging down at his feet had confused him, just as this sudden clattering of many other feet behind him was confusing him. He raised the stiletto to strike.
And so they found him.
CHAPTER XXXIV
The four-part Sheraton table was still reduced to a conversational siz
e, and Estelle, in her seating, had thrown Mrs. Post to the winds.
Sergeant Hurlstone and Bill flanked her. She wanted to chip from Sergeant Hurlstone the steps that had led him to his astonishing solution of the case. Estelle shuddered when she considered what Dr. Johnson might have done to her sinus—like that mad doctor who had upset Paris ten years ago through his glittering habit of inserting typhoid virus into occasional pills.
And she wanted to size up Bill.
Ann found herself between Sergeant Hurlstone and Clarence Harlan, whose early rising and absence from his rooms when Washburn had rung had been due to Estelle. Estelle also had wakened early in a dread of worry over her situation as Chief Suspect and had summoned Harlan to talk things over.
Medical Examiner Bedmann was not present because he was taking care of Dr. Johnson, after Dr. Johnson had broken down and completely gone to pieces.
Ludwig was not present because Bill had landed a haymaker and broken Ludwig’s nose.
It was the least, Bill had felt, he could do. After he finished breakfast and said good-by and was gone, then, of course, if Ludwig again pushed Ann into a spinet somebody else would have to take care of re-breaking Ludwig’s nose.
Sad, Bill thought, helping himself largely to broiled kidneys and bacon, that it should all end like this. Tough on everybody. Tough on Marlow, who had led such a rottenly unhappy life, only to be murdered at the end of it. Alice and Fred, Ann’s parents—a rotten business that was for your money. Tough on himself too.
Bill decided he would never marry at all, now that Ann with her millions was definitely out. Maybe the war would take care of it and save him, via a bachelor’s grave, from a celibatic old age.
Bill listened absently while Sergeant Hurlstone said to Estelle: “Most desks of the Adam period had secret compartments in them. Wall safes were unheard of in that day, and people wanted some reasonably secure place for their private papers. I knew that Alice Marlow had used the desk constantly for writing her poetry, and it was perfectly probable that she should have come upon the secret compartment in time. It was the sort of romantic thing she would have wanted to keep to herself, even from her husband, and of course she would have put the letter from Dr. Johnson’s mother in it.”
“But what made you interested in the desk in the first place?”
“Motive. For twenty years everyone had more or less taken it for granted that Alice Marlow’s murder was a crime of passion, that jealousy had been at the base of it, or love. Every one of Mr. Marlow’s investigations had concentrated along that line and they had come to nothing. So it probably was something else. That left the rest of the string. Blackmail, threats, fear—things usually based on a paper or a document of some kind. Well—”
Bill, with no hesitation, accepted more kidneys from Washburn. He let Sergeant Hurlstone rattle on, giving him even less than half an ear, until he heard Ann say: “What was the point you made so much of about the chow dog, Chin?”
“The dog’s just lying there and trembling while her mistress was being stabbed was the point. That meant that Mrs. Marlow’s attacker was either somebody the dog had absolute confidence in, or else it meant a person whom even a chow would be afraid of. Now Danning, your maid, had told us in her testimony that Chin had cut her foot on the morning of the crime and that Dr. Johnson had treated it and bandaged it up. Probably Dr. Johnson had given the dog a lot of care.”
“Of course. Chin trusted him.”
“Perhaps, but in any case Dr. Johnson would fit in either as someone in whom the dog had confidence or of whom she was afraid. As a matter of fact, the whole outline of the case pointed to the murderer having more than an average knowledge of medical matters and drugs. Take the ptomaine, the radioactive substance, the effects of pyrogallol, especially when pyrogallol fitted so aptly as an additional irritant to Mr. Marlow’s disease—all of those things cried Doctor quite obviously, and in this business when you settle on the obvious you usually find that—”
On and on and on, Bill felt, will he go. Normally Bill would have been avidly interested. Not now. His hunger sated, the gnawing ache had moved back from his stomach to his heart. How lovely she was. How lovely she always had been. How sad.
Washburn, at this point, announced the press.
The landing field, Washburn intimated, was black with planes which were at the instant disgorging reporters, cameramen, sob sisters, and apparati for the newsreel men.
Clarence Harlan at once took command.
He said to Ann: “Just leave them to me. In my long, long day I have eaten more reporters than that young man of yours has just eaten kidneys.”
“I am not her young man,” Bill said coldly.
“That is what you think, Mr. Forrest. Washburn, please herd the mass of them into the lounge. Break out gallons of your finest whiskies. Prepare steaming pots of coffee—sandwiches, toast, eggs. There will be no need for you to resort to forcible feeding. Ann, do not worry. By the time Washburn gets through with them they’ll barely want to interview me, much less you.”
“But I want them to interview me.”
“What?”
“I want to give them an interview right now.”
“My dear child, you don’t realize what you’re saying.”
“I realize perfectly, and I have not been bereft of my senses. I suppose they’ll cover most of the papers in the country?”
“Nothing so modest as a country.”
“Good! Washburn, please let me know the minute they’re in the corral.”
CHAPTER XXXV
Photofloods flooded; cranks ground, and Graflexes synchronized with flash bulbs.
The worst, the really bad part of it, was over. Ann had frankly and with sincerity expressed her feelings regarding her change from being a Ledrick into becoming a Marlow. She had touched on her genuine sorrow and shock at Marlow’s death.
She saw that Harlan had stopped looking at her with anguished worry and that he was regarding her with a rather awed admiration. Bill’s face wasn’t bad either, although he did look puzzled.
“This may strike you as a breach of taste, gentlemen,” Ann said, “but you and your readers will understand the situation in which I find myself. For some time before Mr. Marlow’s tragic death, before either of us had the faintest inkling of my relationship to the Marlows, I had accepted Private William Forrest’s proposal of marriage.” Lenses veered; bulbs flashed; Bill’s mouth opened, and it stayed open until it occurred to him to close it. The pictures of this (next day) enchanted Fanny. She cut out as many as she could find of them and varnished them to the inside of an aquarium as a goal for the fish to aim at.
“Mr. Forrest has just enlisted in the Marines. Ordinarily Mr. Marlow’s death would have deferred our marriage for a suitable length of time, but Mr. Forrest is going away. As I have said, you will understand and your readers will understand. That is why I am announcing the engagement now.”
She gauged the flush of rage mounting on Bill’s cheeks. “Mr. Forrest,” Ann hurried on, “is making the Army his career. It is his hope and my hope that in the years to come he may rise to the rank of his great-grandfather, General Lawrence Montague Forrest, whose—”
“How in—? How do you know anything about—?”
“Never mind! General Lawrence Montague Forrest, whose record was so splendid during the Civil War. I am sure you will understand when I add that General Forrest’s wife was Virginia Abigail Braddock, of the Washington Braddocks, a family of great wealth. If Mr. Forrest had intended to continue in civilian life the difference in our financial standings would have been embarrassing, but with a military career before him no such embarrassment could possibly exist, especially with the precedent for such a match already established in his family.”
Ann thought she heard Harlan mutter: “I ought to take her into my firm.” She noticed that Bill’s face had lost its fiery look and seemed dazed.
She heard a reporter asking whether there were any definite plans as yet for the weddi
ng.
“There are,” Ann said. “Mr. Forrest will have left for service by the end of the week. We will be married on Friday by a justice of the peace. It was Friday you had decided upon, wasn’t it, Bill?”
“Yes. And as soon as this interview is ended I’m going to fix up a date for you with Ludwig and a spinet.”