“Oh, everywhere. It scared the daylights out of me.”
“Did you see her go up?”
She shook her head. “Heard her. And then—nothing. She couldn’t have come down again without passing me.”
“You’re sure of that? H’m. What shape was she in?”
She wet her lips. “Upset; about—about Harry, mostly.”
“Suicide frame of mind?” said Nelsing.
“Good heavens! I never thought of that. But what could she have done to herself?”
“Jumped out a window.”
Georgine shut her eyes, visualizing those empty rooms. “The windows were all closed, except for one open a crack in the bedroom.”
“Off the sun-deck, then.”
“That’s over the living room, isn’t it? I’d have heard her walking; and I never heard a sound after her feet on the stairs.”
Nelsing seemed to relax. “On what stairs, going up or down?”
Her eyes opened and she looked at him, startled. “I don’t know.”
“Look,” he said kindly, “didn’t you happen to think how those houses are built? There’s a short flight of steps going up to the bedrooms, and another that goes down to the game room.
“Oh,” Georgine said on a long note. “I forgot. The poor thing probably passed out down there. Somebody ought to be told about it, she might lie there for hours.”
“We’ll call up Gillespie,” Nelsing said, stepping on the starter. “Your house is nearest.”
“So,” McKinnon’s mild voice said from behind her, “that’s why you were in such a dither when you came out.”
“Had me going for a minute,” said Nelsing. “Here, where’s your door key? Let me have it.” In her cottage, he went straight to the telephone. “Gillespie. When’d you get in?…Oh, I see. Is your wife at home? Look on the lower floor, will you?…Yes, in the hall or your brother-in-law’s bedroom.” He turned, leaning against the table, and said to his companions, “Dear Ralphie slept down there. Gillespie’ll be back in a minute.”
Ralphie’s bedroom, Georgine thought; Mimi remembered something he’d left behind.
“What?” Nelsing said into the telephone. “She’s not there? Oh, the garden door was unlatched. Well, she probably went out that way, and Mrs. Wyeth didn’t see her go. She was planning to see me at the Hall of Justice, it seems. Good-by.”
She’d scarcely have gone to the police by herself, Georgine thought uneasily; it was too much trouble to convince her at all. And yet, there was a chance that Mimi would prefer a voluntary-seeming visit. She could have had a dress and shoes downstairs, somewhere, and slipped out by herself—maybe forgetting that anyone was waiting.
It was just possible, but a stronger possibility was that Mimi hadn’t been able to go through with it; that, with guilt as a spur, she’d run away.
I don’t want to believe it, Georgine told herself. I liked her; I liked her better when she was common and pathetic, and half seas over. I can’t tell anyone I suspected her, not till I’m sure.
“Not at the Hall of Justice, either,” said Howard Nelsing, turning away from the telephone.
“Give her time,” said Georgine. She sat down, not looking at either of the men. She braced herself for the inevitable question.
“You and she were talking,” said Nelsing meditatively. “What was she coming to tell me?”
“I can’t tell you that. Let her do it.”
“Evidence?”
“Not—not direct evidence.”
“A confession?”
“Nothing of the sort.”
“Did she know who killed Hollister?”
“Oh, don’t look so menacing!” Georgine snapped. “If she’d said anything of the kind, don’t you suppose I’d have let you know long ago?”
“I’m not so sure. Why won’t you tell me what you talked about?”
“Because I told her I wouldn’t,” said Georgine defiantly. “If it had been anything of immediate value, I’d have telephoned you at once. You’ll have to take my word for that.”
“You told her you wouldn’t,” Nelsing repeated scornfully. “Why, you meant that about not caring for justice! I thought it was only a figure of speech, I was ready to believe you hadn’t any more information about Hollister’s death; but now you admit—”
“Hey, Nelse,” said Todd McKinnon from his obscure corner, “leave her a few human virtues. In some circles, people who keep their words are highly thought of.”
“Damnation, I’d forgotten you were there. Keep out of this, Mac. I’ll question a witness in my own way, and if you don’t like it you can get the hell out.”
“I do not like it,” said McKinnon deliberately. It was the first time Georgine had seen him when he wasn’t casual. He sat relaxed as ever, but his voice rang like a coin flung down on marble. “We private citizens can’t be expected to share this passion of yours for abstract justice and the hell with good faith and kindness and everything else. We’ve got to live with ourselves afterward.”
Nelsing turned slowly. For half a minute something flickered almost visibly between the two men. “Very pretty,” he said. “And just what’s your interest in helping Georgine keep information from the police? Anything personal?”
“Only what I said.” McKinnon’s voice was quiet again, his face immobile. He shrugged and got up. “I’m on her side, that’s all. I’ll be going now. No, it’s all right, Georgine, he’s not going to torture you. I know him better than that.”
“Just as soon have him gone,” Nelsing murmured, closing the door behind the erect figure. “Would you mind, after this, saving your revelations until we are alone?”
Georgine looked at him, startled. “I will if you think I should.”
Todd was a writer, he was interested in every detail of the crime whose scene and actors he was studying. It was natural that he should be omnipresent. Nelsing couldn’t suspect him.
Although, she reflected ruefully, he’d never tell me whom he suspects. Well, he won’t shake my story about Mimi.
She sat up, preparing for battle; but unaccountably, Nelsing’s severity had abated and he didn’t try many more questions. He said, finally, “Please don’t think I doubt your word.” He called up his office again, and was told that Mimi Gillespie had not appeared.
“If she’s run away she won’t get very far,” he said, his handsome mouth set in a straight line. “The boys will be on the lookout for her. I’d better get up to her home and have a look around before the light goes.” And stalked out.
Georgine locked the door tightly behind him. She sat down again, trying not to think of Mimi’s hand reluctantly detaching itself from the door-frame, of Mimi’s piteous voice breaking as she said her brother’s name.
But of course. She was still afraid of getting Ralph into trouble for his part in the blackout. “Maybe,” Georgine told herself uneasily, “I should have given away that part so they could catch him”—and at once found arguments in her own support. How could it help now? The blackout was nearly a week ago and by now Ralph Stort must either have been caught or got away.
Been caught—or got away. She drew herself together, uncomfortably. She didn’t know what they would do to anyone they caught.
“There’s no very serious penalty,” the army officer said in a cautious murmur to the doctor. “He’d be grounded for life, of course. The ship would be confiscated, if there were anything left of it.” He paused, his eyes narrowed, seeing again the barren stretch of desert, and the grotesque crumpled shape of the Cub cruiser. “What I want to know is why he did it?”
“If you don’t find out now, sir,” the doctor said, “maybe you never will. Yes, he’s conscious, able to talk a little. No more than fifteen minutes, please.”
The window gave on a stretch of desert, and on the formidable wall of the Tehachapi mountains. A bulky dark shape cut diagonally across it; a leg, held high in the harness of a fracture bed. The man in the bed was almost invisible under swathed bandages.
The officer sat down and began his inquisition in a quiet voice. He spoke for several minutes. Now and then the man in the bed muttered a word of affirmation or denial.
“Why was it, Stort?” the officer said. “Why was it necessary?”
“…Teach whom a lesson?”
“…You can’t mean that. They weren’t doing so badly; not enough for you to concern yourself about them.”
Fishy, he thought disgustedly; and thought of the stoppage of work at the shipyards, of the four deaths from heart attack, of the dubious citizens able to slip about unnoticed in the sudden darkness.
“Who made you?”
“…Yes, we should be interested in confirmation of the story.”
“…Who?”
The officer sat back, his brows drawing together. “I’m afraid that will be impossible.” He looked narrowly, curiously at the swollen eyes peering from under the bandage. “That man is dead. He died during the blackout.”
“…I’m telling the truth, of course, Stort, Hollister was killed in a freak accident; a driverless car plunged downhill and struck him as he was going on his rounds.”
“…What’s the trouble? What did his death mean to you, besides this matter?”
The battered mouth under the bandages stayed tightly shut, and the tortured dark eyes turned to the window and would not meet the officer’s.
The officer repeated his questions, gently enough. He asked others. There was still no answer.
He could bring no pressure to bear. There was nothing more that could terrify Ralph Stort, who was dying; nothing except the possibility of saying too much. He did not speak again before he died.
Georgine Wyeth wondered if she had slept at all, if the miserable dreams from which she had so often started up had been the product of sleep or of the waking mind. And there was the rap of knuckles on her door, again; for a blurred moment she thought this was yesterday morning, and it was the Professor knocking, and it was all to be done over again. “I won’t go into Mimi’s this time,” she told herself dizzily, struggling out of bed.
“Just a minute,” she said, startled wide awake by the sight of Nelsing on the doorstep; and rushed back into the bedroom to tie up her hair in a neat bandanna—he would catch her in curlers!—and put on some clothes.
“She hasn’t turned up?” Georgine asked anxiously.
“Who, Mimi? No,” said Nelsing soberly. He sat down, his eyes fixed on her so that no evasion was possible. “You asked me to wait till this morning, Georgine. I’ve done it. Now, will you help me, please?”
She nodded, for some obscure reason unable to speak.
“I’ll tell you what we’ve done. We’ve made inquiries of every person who was at home in Grettry Road yesterday afternoon, and got nothing. Peter Frey is the only one who might conceivably have seen Mimi go out the garden door, and as it happens he didn’t. He was in his basement studio, and all the south and west windows have been covered; something about the light. He wasn’t watching, anyway. Sheila Devlin was at home, but she’s very uncommunicative, beyond saying she saw no signs of Mimi. McKinnon was on the other side of the street, around the curve. He couldn’t have seen anything, either. Professor Paev—didn’t seem inclined to help us.”
Georgine smiled faintly, for the first time that morning.
“So it’s up to you, to give me some idea of why Mimi Gillespie was upset yesterday; so upset that she rushed downstairs and into the garden and disappeared.”
She felt tired and defeated. “All right, I’ll tell you,” she said dully. “She knew there was to be a blackout last Friday night. Her brother knew it too. He caused it.” She stopped, and looked at Nelsing. “You’re not surprised.”
“We had some kind of an idea,” said Nelsing smoothly, “when we investigated at Stort’s ranch and heard the deputy sheriff’s story. His sister had claimed she knew nothing about what he did after he left on Thursday.”
“She did, I’m afraid,” said Georgine. “And if that wasn’t a mystery to you, I didn’t do any harm by holding it back. That’s all there was to her story.”
“Oh, no, it isn’t. The fact that she knew is plenty important. Oh, you saw that too, did you? I want the story in full, please.”
“You knew that Hollister made him do it?”
“I know it now. Pretty much to have been expected, don’t you think? Could have been guessed when we found out why Hollister was in Grettry Road. What more?”
“Nothing much.” Georgine told him, though, looking with a sort of painful wonder at his face as she talked.
All that fuss last night had been for nothing, if he knew the story already.
Then why was he listening so carefully, relaxed yet intent? Because he was checking up on how truthful she was? Well, she was doing her best. “And so I asked her,” she concluded wearily, “if anyone else knew about this; and she said no, that nobody could possibly have heard her and Ralph talking. And then she—went.”
“Just like that, quietly?”
“No. She stopped a minute by the stairs, and said, ‘Oh, my God,’ as if she’d just thought of something, and ran.”
Nelsing nodded. “She was fairly tight, you said? Probably just dawned on her what kind of spot she was in.”
“Nelse, do you really think she has the stuff of a murderer in her?”
“You’d be surprised what real devotion can do,” he said.
“Would you blame her?”
“Now, Georgine, you know better than to put it that way. No matter how unselfish the motives are, you can’t condone the taking of human life. Isn’t that so?”
She said nothing. “It’s plain enough,” he went on, “what Mrs. Gillespie did. She took a powder. If you’d been willing to tell me last night what was worrying her, we’d have had a better chance of catching her.”
“Then I’m glad I didn’t,” Georgine muttered stubbornly. “And haven’t you considered that she could be innocent, and might simply have wandered away and passed out somewhere in the brush?”
“We’ll take everything under consideration,” said Nelsing, all at once bored and impatient. He got up. “Are you going to work up there today?”
“I suppose so. I’ve only about twenty more pages to do, but I don’t get a chance to finish them!”
“Very well. But please don’t talk, don’t spread this story about the blackout. Among other things, it’s a military secret.”
Going down into Grettry Road seemed to get harder every day. Georgine paused at the top, late in the morning, and braced herself as if she were about to plunge into icy black water. Yet the street was as placid as ever under the gray light; a sprinkler whirred on the Devlins’ lawn, and Claris Frey looked out the Frey kitchen window, where she seemed to be washing dishes, and smiled. Georgine found herself looking around, just why she did not know, for a lean graceful figure with sandy hair. No sign of him this morning.
But when she came out, after a completely uneventful day, at five o’clock, he was sitting on the broken white fence at the foot of the road. He had taken his mouth-organ from his pocket, and was breathing into it.
“Don’t play that!” Georgine cried out at the second bar.
“You don’t care for it after all?” The agate eyes turned to her, and McKinnon gave a mock sigh.
“It’s bad luck,” Georgine said with a little shiver, and saw his eyes go blank and narrow. She added hurriedly, “Maybe I’m getting superstitious, but I can’t ever hear The Trout again without thinking something’s going to happen.”
“Then I’ve played it for the last time,” McKinnon said. “But surely things haven’t been happening for twelve hours out of every day, since I’ve known you?”
“You haven’t been playing it that often!”
“Just about. Maybe,” he suggested gently, “you’ve listened only when you were sort of sharpened up by apprehension.”
“Maybe,” Georgine said, again shivering. “The other day, when I was waiting for Mimi, it—it seemed as if
your music had lured her away, and she’d followed it and disappeared. They haven’t had any word of her?”
As they passed the three white houses, she looked nervously at each one. The first two already looked empty and desolate, with accumulations of dead leaves drifting across their shallow porches. “They haven’t had any word,” the quiet voice beside her repeated.
“Just to go off like that, into thin air!” Georgine said apprehensively. “It isn’t right, she can’t have gone far. I wish I could get hold of her again, it seems as if I blundered horribly somewhere.” She looked back over her shoulder, and stopped in her tracks.
“Todd,” she said, keeping her voice level with some difficulty, “I seem to have left my—my keys behind, at the Professor’s. Don’t walk all the way back with me, you go on slowly and I’ll catch up with you. Oh, no, no, I know just where I left them, thanks.”
This was something that must be done alone. If Mimi were afraid of anyone else’s knowing her secret, she would hide again if anyone but Georgine spoke to her, or entered her house; and it must have been Mimi whose hand had lifted that curtain, upstairs in the Gillespie house, and so hastily, furtively, let it drop again. She had been hiding somewhere, and managed to elude Nelsing’s search; and when the search was dropped, she had crept home again.
There, Todd had rounded the corner, and was out of sight. Georgine turned swiftly and ran uphill. She rattled cautiously at the Gillespies’ door, and found it unlocked, and stepped in.
If that hadn’t been Mimi? The only other person it could be was Harry, and there was no reason for him to be furtive. If it should be, she could just inquire if there was anything new…
“Mrs. Gillespie,” Georgine called softly. Surely there had been a footfall above her; the hall was chilly, close and dark; the blinds all over the house had been closed. “Mrs. Gilles-pie!”
That was a perfectly good name, but it took on a silly sound when you were constantly shouting it upstairs, and getting no answer. “Mimi,” she said, more loudly. “Come on, it’s safe enough, I only want to help you.” No answer.
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