“Is there anything to be gained by insulting me?”
“Eh? Maybe. Maybe not. Well, then, assuming you’ve stumbled onto a few secrets, what’s your game? Why do you question me about the woman you mention? What’s she to you? She ain’t my mistress, if that’s what’s bothering you? I’ve flirted with her a little—she’s pretty enough, of course. But I saw early in the game that she was nothing but a gold digger. That’s why I hired her to help me here.”
Well, I had the denial I had been seeking. I was no more assured of the truth of it, however, than I had been before. If there is a more unreasonable passion than jealousy, and one less admirable, from any point of view, then I do not know what it is. Ormes’s denial had, however, the virtue of forcing me to drop the subject. It was obvious that I could not, under any conditions, persuade him to deny his own denial.
“Very well,” I said. “With that point cleared up, we——”
“Where’s Agnes?” he demanded again.
“She’s . . . dead!”
“What?”
“Yes. In the garage. In the coupé you told me to use. Her throat cut and . . . mangled.”
“Good God!”
It was not from grief of his wife’s death that the shock he took sent him reeling back against the dressing table, clutching at it for support. I did see, however, that he saw swiftly enough most of the complications in which that murder must involve himself and his family. The bonds he had wanted to force Agnes to surrender—they might become his own now, and without a struggle, provided the woman had not made a will and had it recorded. If she had done so, leaving her property to outsiders, then bankruptcy stared him in the face again. Besides, how was the fact of the murder itself to be kept from the public? How was Grayce’s innocence to be established? How was the insanity that was eating out this family to be much longer hidden from prying eyes?
“I found the body,” I told him, “more than two hours ago. I went out early this morning, looking for Grayce, who had not yet returned to the house after attacking her aunt. The dogs chased me into the garage. So I found it.”
He staggered toward a chair and sank into it, burying his face in his hands. I waited for this first shock to pass. I felt no great sympathy for him, but I believed that he honestly dreaded the disgrace and the scandal about to fall upon him. I still think that he did. I am convinced that Gray’s word “obsession” had been well chosen as a term in which to describe the Ormeses’ fear of having their insanity made known. I do not know that they can be greatly blamed for that. It was a form of insanity more horrible——for surely there are degrees of it——than any other.
But I had not credited the fellow with recuperative power equal to that which he now displayed. While he yet sat in the chair, face buried in his hands, and before I had thought to break in upon his disordered state of mind with a reminder that some action must be taken without more delay, he had planned how to cast the shame and the blame of the crime upon myself. It is true that he had not planned well, but the fact of his having considered such a step showed me that he was not to be trusted unless I could defeat him utterly. Suddenly he lifted his head, staring with hate and fury into my eyes. Then he sprang to the door and slammed it shut, locking it and thrusting the key into his pocket.
“You can’t get away from me!” he muttered. “You did this! Confess it, before I choke it out of you!”
I stared at him in amazement. In a moment I saw how easily I had allowed myself to stumble thus into his trap. Of course he could accuse me, and of course the burden of proof of my innocence must rest upon myself. I should be presumed to be innocent in law. . . . I knew that pleasant fiction. But I should be arrested, nevertheless, and I’d probably be held without bail until that innocence had been established. If it ever was. Yet my discomfiture was not of more than a second’s duration. I still held a weapon, a better one than the revolver in my pocket, and which also he probably did not suspect me to possess.
“Don’t be a fool, Ormes!”
“I’m not a fool. You killed her. I can see it, now. Tell me why you did it.”
“Come, I’ve no time to waste in playing up to you like that. You know I didn’t kill your wife. Why should I have killed her? Do you think I’d have killed her to give you . . . Muriel?”
I saw that I had winged him. His clenched fists opened. He dropped his arms to his sides, and he stared at me again. I suppose he was wondering how I had become possessed of the woman’s name. Also, though it did not so present itself to me at the moment, I suppose he was glad of this new reason I had offered for his listening to me. It might prove more bearable than the necessity of treating with me under threat of such knowledge as I had hinted at possessing.
“Come,” I went on, “I know that she’s here. I know about your conversation with her in the library. It was only by the grace of God that I didn’t knock you down when you tried to kiss her in there. In view of all this, you’d better withdraw your charge, hadn’t you?”
He mastered himself, I could plainly see the struggle that went on within him. But curiosity and the fear of what I knew forced him to conquer his anger and to bear with me.
“I hardly think you’ll charge me again with that murder,” I pursued, “even after matters are so arranged as to make it plausible that I might have done it. If you do, I’ll be forced, purely in self-defense, to bring the authorities to look into the cistern under the fireplace. I——”
“What in hell are you——?”
“Well . . . isn’t it true?”
He understood at last that I really knew far more than enough to bring disgrace upon him. I knew more than he could attribute to hearsay, or pass off with a gesture, or disprove with circumstantial evidence or the evidence of his forged British documents. He must have understood, also, that I had gained one or more of his women to my side, else I could not have learned some of the things I knew. He was beaten. I did not trust the man, villain as I now held him to be, but I felt that he was not so great a fool as to force me into revealing the secrets I possessed. He might be slipping into insanity, but insanity is rarely lacking in a low cunning, save when it is mastered by passion. I drew forth the little revolver from my pocket and pointed it straight at his heart.
“You see,” I told him, “I’ve the whip hand. I could kill you where you stand and leave the house. I’ve a right to do it. No sentimental jury in this land of the free and easy would convict a man who shot down his wife’s seducer.”
“What?”
He sprang up and advanced upon me, heedless of the weapon in my hand.
“What the devil did you say?”
“You heard me well enough. I sha’n’t repeat it. Muriel is my wife . . . legally.”
“Seaverns, is this true?”
“Of course it is.”
“I didn’t know.” He turned away toward a window. “I give you my word,” he said, earnestly, after a few moments. “I didn’t know that. I never met her until a few weeks ago. She never told me anything about you. She never mentioned that she was married. How could I know of it?”
I suppose that he had not fully grasped the fact of his wife’s death. Probably his present earnestness was due, in some measure, to a desire to gain me to his side, so that I should not spoil the plan he had formed of forcing Agnes to give up to him the bonds he coveted. I had no wish to help him.
“Of course,” I sneered, “you are a liar and a scoundrel.”
“No, damn you!” he snarled, turning fully toward me and advancing once more across the room, nothing daunted by the menacing gun. “I’m not! I didn’t know it. Not that it would have made the slightest difference to me if I had. Only . . . I’d not have been so dunderheaded as to bring you here.”
I was wondering, meanwhile, what Muriel herself might have to say to my claim that she was still legally my wif
e. Moreover, I had confessed the fact of the divorce to Gray. But I had no time for any detailed reasoning upon such a subject as that. I had gained an important advantage over an enemy, and I must follow up that advantage. There would be ample time, later, for admissions, explanations, and perhaps apologies.
“So now,” I said, “maybe you’ll tell me the truth of why you brought me here.”
“I did tell you, Seaverns. I really thought you’d get busy and write that history. I supposed you needed the money, too. We’ve always been friends.”
“Didn’t you know that the time set in your aunt’s will had expired?”
He cringed before me as a whipped dog might have done! This chance blow had hurt him nearer than anything I had so far said. I could not help wondering at it. Did the man know that he was slipping into insanity? Was this the thing he most feared of all things in his life? Knowing of the taint in his blood and of the threat which it always held against him, he must have lived in such fear as made life a veritable hell on earth. On my word I felt something of pity for him as I watched him cringing before me, and before the renewed threat of that Thing within him. I hated doing it, but it seemed to me that one more job in a tender spot must clinch the fact of his subservience to me.
“Never mind,” I said. “I know you’re a liar, in spite of all you say. But maybe I can guess pretty well at your reason for lying. I’ve seen Grayce, both sane and crazy, and I’ve had a few words with Barbara and with Gray. I know what I know, Ormes. I’m not so thick-headed as you must have thought me. But let all that pass now. What are you going to do about the body in the garage?”
“I . . . don’t know,” he whimpered.
He was definitely beaten. Plainly he was in deathly fear of me now.
“I thought you’d not want it reported to the authorities,” I told him. “So I said nothing to Doctor Barnes, when he was here, and so far I don’t think that even Hobbs knows of it.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, I’m not sure. He may have been out there since I left the place. I rather fancy, though, that he’s been busy in the house.”
“Then . . . then I’ve got to do something to prevent . . . But I must have time to think. Will you help me, Seaverns?”
“It depends. I’ll help you if you play fair. What do you want me to do?”
“I—I don’t know. Won’t you leave me alone now? Leave me for a few minutes, at least. I must have time to think this out . . . alone.”
It flashed upon me that he contemplated suicide. But if he did that, if he did that, we could call the police, attribute the murder to Ormes, then prove our contention by pointing to the crime against his own life. I am quite aware that many good people will condemn me for leaving him as I did, believing, as I did, that I should never again see his face alive. It is not a question, however, of right and wrong. I, and several women along with me, had become involved in such a tangled web of scandal and violence, that I was not in position to stand upon nice questions of proper conduct. If Ormes were to kill himself, it would offer a way out for all of us. I left the room hoping that my suspicion would prove to be true of the event. I had forgotten those bloody female fingerprints.
“Very well,” I said, as he unlocked the door for me with the key which he had put into his pocket, “I’ll go. But if you try any tricks, so help me God, I won’t spare you, Ormes!”
“Damn it! I won’t hurt you. I know when I’m licked.”
“One thing more. Does Muriel know I’m here?”
“Of course not, unless you’ve told her. I’ve never so much as mentioned your name to her. She doesn’t know I’m acquainted with you.”
I returned the revolver to my pocket. I had ceased, some minutes since, to menace him with it.
There was one person I must see immediately and come to an understanding with. That person was Muriel. There would be no longer any chance of concealing my presence from her, even if I still wanted to do so, for Ormes—if he lived!—would say something as soon as the two of them met, were it no more than to question her as to her silence regarding her marriage. Therefore, as soon as Ormes’s door had closed behind me, I took my way up the stairs toward Gray’s room. Gray might be with Barbara, or with Grayce, or she might have joined Muriel. I must chance the last. And I did not think, for a reason I had, that it was much of a chance, at that.
The door of the room was open. I paused within the frame of it. Muriel lay, fully dressed, across the bed, resting, probably, after the fatigue of her night’s journey from New York. Gray was not in sight. I rapped. The woman on the bed did not stir. She lay face down with her arms about her head. So then I entered the room and stood beside her, looking down upon her and silently swearing that she was even more desirable than Barbara’s pale and fragile beauty. And I grew angry with myself that this should be so, because I knew, then, that the magic of her face and figure might very easily and swiftly have again its accustomed way with me. Not more than an hour had passed since I had been looking with much tenderness into the yellow eyes of Gray Ormes. Yet, standing beside that bed, looking down at the woman who had divorced me, leagued herself with my enemy, perhaps submitted to his intimate embraces, I said to myself that though I might kill her without pity, I could not leave her without regret. But then, in such extenuation as I may be allowed, I must say that the dangers and horrors surrounding me doubtless worked together to make of this woman whom I had known well and loved a friend, who was come, as it were, to my aid and support, however little she might be really willing to help. In my confusion of mind I turned to Muriel. Had all difficulties been smoothed away, I might have been thinking at that moment only of Gray.
But Muriel’s sleep was not a very sound one, and my presence was making itself felt. She grew restless, stirring as one does when becoming gradually aware that another being has come close. Abruptly she turned her face upward and saw me. I said nothing. Her brown eyes widened in surprise and then in recognition. She whirled to a sitting position.
“You!”
“How are you, Muriel?” I asked in what I tried hard to make a courteous and kindly manner of speaking.
And then she said so queer a thing as startled me out of my assumed complacency.
“Selden, there is a man in this house whom you and I must kill.”
XII
It seems to me to have been as strange a thing as I had so far encountered that I did not find it strange for Muriel to say that she and I must become partners in a deed of murder. I do not mean that the murdering itself seemed, at that time and in that place, to be a thing of the commonplace, but that her claiming of my help appeared so natural as to evoke no surprise. If Ormond Ormes were to be slain, I did not intuitively think it queer that she asked me to help her do it.
Why was this? Was it because I myself stood in need of a friend? I do not think that a sufficient answer. I think it far more likely that the partnership between Muriel and myself must once have been far deeper and more sincere than either of us had supposed. It did not occur to me to suppose, either, that Ormes had “wronged” her in the sense that it would have at once occurred to my Victorian father to assume it, had he stood in my shoes. Muriel was not the woman to go about killing men for the sake of her “honor.” Muriel’s honor was a greater thing than her bodily chastity, and if she trusted a man’s promise and the man broke it, she was far more likely to despise herself for her feckless folly than to cry the man’s villainy in the public ear. Nor did I now surmise that she wanted my aid in any such trumpery cause. I knew without asking that the crime Ormes had done, or contemplated doing, was a real crime and a substantial one, and not a lover’s perjury.
Yet it is no less queer that, for all my knowledge of the woman’s character and ability to take care of herself—to defend, that is, her self-respect, I was jealous of what I suspected had happened between her and Ormond Ormes. I d
o not excuse myself. Neither do I wholly condemn my emotions. They were human enough, however vulgar. I shall content myself with setting down a true record of what happened. That, I fancy, will be enough.
“That’s as it may be,” I said. “Have you any notion of when it’s to be done? Or where, or how, or why?”
“But what are you doing here?” she demanded.
“I might ask you to reply first to the same question, since I saw you arrive in his car, with him, this morning, and while you had reason to think that his wife was in the house.”
“Yes, I did. I came here with him for the purpose of seeing her.”
“I know you did. I heard your conversation in the library. Besides, I know more about the rest of it than you do.”
“You did? You do?”
“Yes. If I hadn’t known what I did, and if you hadn’t been so well able to handle him, I suppose I’d have stepped out and knocked him into a corner. Habit of thought and action, you know. As matters were, I waited. Now I’ve just left him. I’ve taken the liberty of telling him that you are my wife.”
“You have? Oh, Selden, I’m so glad you did that!”
“Thanks for being glad. A week ago you’d not have been, perhaps. But you’ll be willing to back up my statement, then?”
“But where is Agnes Ormes? You seemed to hint that——”
“She’s dead.”
“Dead!”
“In a car in the garage yonder. I found the body a little while back. I was there when you and Ormes arrived.”
“But— Oh, this changes everything!”
“I’d be obliged if you’d tell me about it. I hate being kept in the dark, and I’ve had to unravel so many mysteries, during the past day or two, they’ve begun to pall. Suppose you tell me, without wasting time, for we’ve very little time to waste, let me inform you, why you came here, what you intended doing, and why you want to kill this man Ormes.”
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