The Frightened Fianc?e

by George Harmon Coxe

  He said, “Nadine Winsor,” softly, and saw her fumbling with the buttons of a blouse as she moved in and out of the rectangle of light.

  He thought the blouse was greenish, with cap-sleeves, and with the buttons attended to she came out of it expertly and tossed it aside. In almost the same movement her hands went behind her to attack the fastening of her brassière, still moving, into the light now, head slightly cocked as she swung her arms forward and hunched her shoulders to let the filmy garment slide free. She turned to toss it away. She straightened, half-naked. Then she was out of sight behind an open door.

  Holland stood where he was, still intent upon that window next to his, counting other windows—Mrs. Allen by’s, his own, Nadine’s, and the two on the left which remained dark. One of these would be Tracy’s and now, as his thoughts came back to her, he felt the surge of resentment come again.

  Somewhere in the house she lay asleep and he did not know how to reach her or, should he reach her, what to say. She was going to marry Roger Drake, and Drake occupied the guesthouse, and it was from this direction that the explosive sound had come.

  He glanced that way now, then back at the house as Nadine’s light went out. He stood a moment more, waiting, and it seemed now as if the night had turned suddenly cool. There was an odd chill moving about his ankles and calves, though his torso was still moist under the robe, and presently he found himself moving slowly back across the ledge to the sand, walking diagonally until he reached the grass and continuing toward the trees and shrubs, beyond which the glow of light still shone against the sky.

  There was a path here, narrow but well cleared. The darkness seemed thicker as he entered it, and he was guided by his sense of touch and the character of the ground under his slippers. Once or twice he strayed, but contact with bushes served to keep him on the proper course. After a few seconds the light ahead was more distinct, and he went on steadily until he came to the cottage which stood in a clearing.

  Stopping on the edge of this, he was aware that another path made juncture here with the one he had been on. The second one took off at a different angle, apparently leading to the rear of the main house and the circular drive, and now, starting across the clearing, he saw a second light which had been screened from his view by the guesthouse, and came from another cottage somewhat larger than this one. Then, remembering things that Walter had told him, he recalled the history of the point and its former owners. This house through the trees must be the Carver cottage, its tenant, whoever he was, still up in spite of the hour.

  Holland tightened his robe as he approached the front of the guesthouse. He had no clear-cut idea as to why he had come; it was rather a combination of impulses that moved him—the sound in the night, the porch climber, the festering sore of his shame when he recalled his earlier encounter with Drake.

  “All right,” he said, “so find out about it. Go ahead and talk to the guy.”

  “All right, I will,” he said, answering himself and noting that the light he had seen came from a room at the rear and on the right side of the cottage.

  There was no porch, but a single step led to a screen door, beyond which the inner door stood open. In the reflected light from the room in the rear, the front room seemed empty so he knocked and called out.

  “Drake.”

  He waited, knocked once more. He opened the door and stepped across the threshold, again calling the man’s name. By that time he could see that two doors gave on this living-room, that the one on the left was closed, the other one brightly ajar.

  He walked toward this, pushed gently, and a bedroom opened up before him. An odd tension that had begun to work on him when he entered the house started to telegraph its warning, but he had no other premonition of danger as he paused there. He saw in his first glance the spool bed, the table-desk, the chest, the two maple chairs. A man was slumped in the boudoir chair, but this was turned away so that he could not see the face. A bright sport jacket, apparently draped on the chair back, had fallen to the floor and although he could see the extended legs it was the hands that gave him his first shock, limp hands hanging straight down with the fingers curled inward so that the knuckles brushed the rug.

  Holland moved then, the pressure churning inside him. “Drake!” he said sharply as he circled the chair. “Drake!”

  Somewhere in the distance a car started. A tiny segment of his brain captured this sound, wondering if it came from the house and then deciding it was farther away than that though in the same general direction.

  Then, as the sound faded, he forgot everything but the man in the chair and the ugly dark blotch that stained his shirt. He stepped forward, hardly thinking now, and took a limp wrist in his fingers.

  For perhaps ten seconds he knelt there trying to obliterate the thumping sound of his heart. He noticed vaguely the bruise on one corner of the chin, the fresh-looking scratch on the cheekbone. Then his thoughts raced on and he knew finally that Tracy would never marry Roger Drake on Sunday. Drake was dead.

  five

  THE VIOLENCE with which death sometimes surrounds itself had been amply demonstrated to John Holland during the war, but he had never before been brought so close to it as a civilian. In this instance he felt no sense of personal loss, or even any great shock once the fact of death had been established. That this should be so was due, he knew, to the fact that to him Roger Drake was a complete and unwelcome stranger.

  He had seen the man but once, and then under circumstances far from pleasant. Now, as he glanced again at the pale, bloodless face he saw in his mind the man as he had been in life—a hard-eyed stranger of his own age, without distinction but good-looking in a sleek, superficial way; a man who wore flashy sport coats with padded shoulders and spoke in the clipped vernacular of the city. Beyond that there was nothing but the knowledge that Drake had been engaged to Tracy. Perhaps that was why, in his reaction, there came to him a feeling of great weariness and despondency that had as its root not so much the tragedy itself as the thought of the trouble which was sure to follow.

  He took out his handkerchief and wiped his sweaty palms. He was not aware of this until he glanced down and saw what he was doing, and when he put the handkerchief back, his hands still felt damp and unclean. He took a breath and shook the stiffness from the back of his neck as his thoughts moved on.

  He had no idea who was responsible nor did he have any particular desire to find out. He did consider the effect the tragedy might have on Tracy, but such speculation was beyond him at the moment and he merely stood in the center of the room, aware that there was no gun in sight, glancing idly about while his nerves quieted and he brought his emotional reactions into balance. The bright plaid sport coat caught his eye again and though it occurred to him that a search of this might bring forth interesting information he knew that such investigation was for the police and not for him.

  He noticed again the bruise on the dead man’s cheek—and the scratch. He wondered if he had put the bruise there until he remembered that his attempted assault had been a complete and utter failure. The sore spot on his own jaw proved this, and as he pursued the thought it came to him that the police might be very interested in the movements of one. John Holland during the past hour or so.

  The faith of the innocent helped to lessen his concern on this point and when, turning slowly in his inspection of the room, he saw the closed door in the inner wall. he opened it and stepped into a small bathroom.

  A second door like the one he had entered gave on a bedroom similar to the one he had left. There was no light on here but he could see that the French door in the outer wall stood open and this struck him as odd because the air in the room seemed stale and musty. There was something else, too, some odor, not stale, that suggested someone had been there not too long ago.

  On impulse then he found a light and snapped it on. In an ash tray beside the bed he discovered a cigarette butt. There was a smooth indentation in the counterpane, as though someone had sat there rec
ently. Other than this the room was neatly in order, the rear window tightly closed in contrast to the door that stood open.

  Not moving from the light, he snapped it off and retraced his steps, walking past the still figure in the other room and opening the screen in the French door beyond. He went down one step to a small terrace. On the right this led to the cleared area in front of the house; on the left, toward the rear, a tangle of vines and bull-briars closed off the terrace and he walked to the edge of these to see what was behind the house. That was how he happened to kick the gun that someone had dropped there.

  He seemed to know it was a gun as his slippered toe struck it and he picked it up, unthinking, finding it to be a revolver which he thought might be a .32. He brought it back to the step before he realized his mistake.

  He did not know much about fingerprints except what he had read, though it seemed clear enough now that if there had been any prints on the gun he had already smudged them. If any prints remained they would most likely be his own and yet if he wiped the gun now and replaced it he would have to explain why he had done so. This somehow seemed more suspicious and more difficult of explanation than what he had already done so he said, “The hell with it,” and started around the front of the house, first carrying the gun in his pocket and then, when its weight pulled the robe open and banged uncomfortably on his bare leg, holding it in his hand.

  At the edge of the clearing where the paths came together he took the one leading inland. This came out, as he had expected, near the driveway, and he circled this, keeping to the grassy edge, until he reached the steps.

  He could see the dim glow of the night bulb in the hall windows overhead, but there was no other light as he eased open the screen door and entered the main hall. He had noticed the long table here before and he felt sure he had seen a telephone there. In this he was right, but as he leaned over to grope for it he saw the gun in his hand, the open robe, and bare shanks. Together they were enough to stop him and make him think.

  With no way of knowing how long it would take the police to get here he was nevertheless sure of one thing; when they came there would be an investigation and most likely a lengthy one, and he had no desire to sit around for hours in his bathing-trunks. He felt the need of clothing. Another couple of minutes could make no difference and he took a step toward the stairs before he realized how it might look if he ran into someone in the upper hall with the gun in his hand.

  Turning back, he eased open the table drawer and put the weapon inside. He went up the stairs as quietly. as he had come down. He reached his room without trouble, found his trousers, socks, shoes, and a shirt. In all it was no more than three minutes before he was back downstairs, and yet as he came now to the table and the telephone he had an unaccountable feeling that something had been changed.

  He did not know why he should think so since he had neither heard nor seen anything since he had left the spot. Yet so strong was the impression that he turned his back to the table and glanced up and down the hall.

  There was almost no light here, but there was enough to tell him that the corridor itself was empty. In front of him the stairs sled upward. To the left of the stairs as he faced them there was a doorway leading to the dining-room; to the right, past the alcove behind the stairs, was another door, closed and leading to he knew not where. The wall at his back was cut by two other doors, one near the front and the other closer to the rear but both leading to the drawing-room, and now some sound or shadow of a sound strengthened the intuitive impression that someone else had watched him from a doorway and now moved about in the blackness beyond.

  He told himself he was crazy, that it was nothing but nerves and imagination brought about by the unaccustomed strain and tension. But even as he told himself all this he was moving, on tiptoe, along the wall toward the front and the nearest living-room doorway.

  For, whether from imagination or not, he thought that he heard again this whisper of sound which seemed somehow to suggest the faint rasping of metal and stone. It was gone almost at once, but he moved on, sliding quietly into the opening and stopping there with his back to the wall.

  With mouth open and breath held he listened, ears straining. The pulsing of blood inside his head set up an even beat of its own and once, as he tried to listen beyond this, he thought a floor board creaked across the darkness.

  Then, suddenly and from out of nowhere, the thought came to him that all this was ridiculous—the stealth, the listening, the stalking of something that might not even exist. He had so conditioned himself to silence when he first left for his swim that it had become a habit with him, an admirable one in the beginning but one which, he saw now, had no further motive or value. Soon enough there would be official noises to awaken those in the house, and right now if anyone was up and about he wanted to know it.

  He turned at once, making no special attempt to be quiet. He found a switch, snapped it on, and light from a floor lamp illuminated the vast room. There was no one here but himself, and though there were places where one could hide—behind the furniture and in the now gloomy sunroom which adjoined the far corner—he had no further stomach for his performance, or for the humoring of his instincts which had heretofore played him false.

  Turning out the light he went back to the telephone and asked the operator for the state police, propping himself on the edge of the table as he waited.

  “I want to report a murder,” he said when a voice answered. “At least I think it’s a murder.”

  The voice grew quick with interest. “Who’s this?”

  “John Holland. I’m at the. Allenbys’ on Hawk’s Point.”

  “Oh.” There was a pause. “Yeah. We already got that.”

  “Got what?”

  “A report on that. We got a man on the way now. Just sit tight, Mr. Holland. We’ll take care of it.”

  Holland hung up and stared at the telephone. He ran his fingers through his tousled hair. For a moment or two he tried to bring some order to the confusion in his mind, and then he gave up and opened the drawer which he noticed had not been entirely closed.

  He groped for the revolver, finding other things but no gun, and not thinking too much about it until he had the drawer wide and was sure.

  The table was long and narrow and as he bent closer he saw it had two drawers. He opened the second one, finding golf balls and tees, a pair of gloves, some papers, a canvas hat of some kind. He went back to the first drawer, examining every inch before he finally closed both drawers and straightened up.

  “So,” he said with some disgust, “maybe you weren’t alone, sucker. Maybe your instincts are better than you thought.”

  He was moving as he muttered the words. He went out the back way, down the steps. He found the path beyond the drive, seeing now the tennis court framework above the bushes on the right. When he came to the guesthouse clearing he crossed it without slowing down and headed toward the light which burned in the cottage beyond, finding first a path and then a gravel drive which he followed.

  White-painted clapboards standing out against the night sky enabled him to get a general idea of the size and character of the cottage, which was of the Cape Cod type, with an attached garage and a screened porch. The light he had seen came from the room adjoining the porch, and he circled this toward the front of the house, stopping once to glance through the windows at the man who sat at a paper-strewn desk, his head in his hands, a dark-haired man dressed in T-shirt and slacks.

  He apparently did not hear Holland for he was still at the desk when Holland went up the steps and knocked at the screen door. Then he stirred, dropping his hands and peering across the room and through the little entrance hall. He rose, reluctantly it seemed. He came forward, but with the light at his back all Holland could see was a stocky figure, dark and powerfully built.

  “Yes,” he said when he came into the hall. “That you, Rich?”

  “No,” Holland said. “My name’s Holland. I’m over at Allenbys’. I wondered
if you knew about the shooting in the guesthouse. Are you Mr. Carver?”

  “That’s right.” Carver opened the door. “Come in.”

  Holland followed the other into a living-room that smelled of tobacco and whisky, some of which apparently came from the man’s breath, the rest from a bottle and empty glass that stood on the desk beside a typewriter and the disordered papers.

  Carver, watching him closely now, said, “What makes you think I know anything about a shooting?”

  “If you were awake you might have heard the shot. Whether you did or not somebody telephoned the police and reported it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I phoned from the house and they told me they’d already had a call.”

  “Yeah,” Carver said, no longer watchful. “I came back here to get a drink. Would you like one?”

  “No thanks.”

  “It’ll be your last chance.”

  Holland said he realized that.

  Carver picked up the bottle, held it to the light, sighed, and put it back. He said maybe he’d had enough, too. He said maybe they’d better get back to the guesthouse before the police arrived. Holland nodded but his mind was speculating on the significance of a skinned knuckle, briefly visible when Carver handled the bottle.

  six

  THE SOUND of an approaching automobile came to them as they left the house and by the time they reached the gravel drive headlights were visible through the trees. Holland quickened his steps, and Carver kept pace so that they came into the clearing by the guesthouse just as a car stopped ahead of them on the curving drive which, Holland realized, apparently joined the road somewhere beyond the main house. The lights dimmed as the motor was cut. A door slammed and a husky, uniformed figure moved out of the darkness.