“We—met at school, yes,” said Eden, and Averill added demurely: “We’ve been the best of friends for many years, Mr. Sloane. Since school days.”
“I see,” said Sloane in a voice that struck Eden as being rather dry. “Well—correct up to that point, Miss Shore?”
“Where did you?” began Eden, her own voice a little husky and then checked her question and said: “Quite correct.”
“Good. In 1930 your father lost his money; he died in 1931 and your mother (who was Eden Jane Sothern also of Lake Forest) died shortly after. You went to New York and held—apparently you held a succession of jobs.”
“Yes; yes, that’s true.”
“You kept up your friendship with the Blaines?”
Eden glanced once at Averill and said, “Yes.”
“I see. Saw them whenever they were in New York, I presume?”
“Yes,” said Eden, still a little huskily.
“Came to St. Louis four days ago to be Miss Blaine’s bridesmaid at her wedding?”
The wedding. “Yes,” said Eden stiffly, not daring now to glance at Averill, not daring to look at Jim.
“You subscribe to this whole account, then?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Miss Shore, in your present position you must come into contact with a great many people.”
“Why, I—yes, I suppose I do. Briefly.”
“Of,” said Sloane, “probably many nationalities.”
“I—” Eden was bewildered. “Yes, I suppose so. But still—”
“Miss Shore, please think back and answer a—a rather important question.” Sloane paused as if to arrange his words and then said so carefully that the question took on more significance than its words alone claimed: “Have you ever told anyone about your friendship with the Blaine family?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” began Eden crisply. “It’s nothing to boast of if you mean—”
“Really, Eden,” said Averill.
“I don’t mean that,” said the detective impatiently. “I mean—has anyone ever questioned you about the Blaines? Shown any marked interest? That’s a better way to put it.”
“No. No, of course not.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Positive.”
“Thank you. Miss Blaine—”
“You don’t mean you have a story of my life there, too! How perfectly absurd! I had nothing to do with—”
“Will you listen, please, Miss Blaine? Thank you. Averill Blaine; born November 30, 1910, in Byton Parish, Louisiana; lived in St. Louis since 1914; daughter of—we all know all this. Educated privately and at Miss Snelle’s School; made her debut in 1928.” Again he seemed to scan and telescope: “M’m’m—maid of honor Veiled Prophet’s Ball; two years in London and Paris—” He stopped and glanced at Averill and said: “You must have a fairly wide foreign acquaintance, Miss Blaine.”
“I suppose I have,” said Averill icily. “What of it?”
“Accurate so far?” asked the detective pleasantly.
“I suppose so. Yes.”
“Good. Now then—engaged at one time to Noel Carreaux—engagement broken—this was apparently some time ago—just after your debut—”
“It was not a formal engagement at all,” flashed Averill. “I can’t imagine where they got such extremely old and unimportant information!”
“Probably,” said the detective, “by inquiring of your friends. The police have their own methods—”
“And very unpleasant ones, I should say,” said Averill.
Noel put down his cigarette. “Now then, Averill. We’ve got to go through a certain amount of this. After all, nobody’s going to hold a brief and childish engagement to me against you.”
“I didn’t mean that, Noel. It’s all this disgusting poking into our private lives—”
Sloane resumed: “Engagement to James Cady announced—let me see—a month ago, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Jim.
“Wedding to be this week. On the death of your father you inherited his property and holdings of Blaine Company stock; right, Miss Blaine?”
“Certainly.”
“Very well. Now, then, the police were unable to get much of a record of Creda Blaine. They know, in fact, nothing except that your uncle married her five years ago. The wedding took place in New Orleans; they have got in touch with the police there but so far they’ve discovered simply nothing of her or her family. Now she didn’t drop down out of the sky or come up out of the bay. What do you know of her?”
“Not very much, I’m afraid,” said Averill slowly. “She never talked much of her people. I think her name was Hursten; I think she was about forty though she never talked of her age. In fact—well, she never talked of her life previous to her marriage to Bill. She—I think before her marriage she must have had a small income; certainly she had to have something to live on—”
“You don’t know where that income came from? I mean—had she been married previous to her marriage to Blaine?”
“No, I don’t think so. If so it was never mentioned. She—she had money—not much but some—before her marriage but I don’t think she had any profession and if it came from her own people then she never mentioned it. I do know that it ceased about the time of her marriage.”
Sloane leaned forward; his brown, lean face seemed to tighten a little.
“Are you sure of that?”
“Oh yes. Creda was extravagant, you know. Loved to spend money. And, after all, Bill’s funds were not unlimited. She borrowed of me sometimes when she was low, then she would have a row with Bill and get more money and be very rich for a time and then”
“Blaine always gave her money?”
“Why, I” Averill’s eyes looked startled. “I suppose so. I never questioned the source of it.” She stopped and thought and said: “I always assumed she got it from Bill. I don’t know where else it would come from. Creda was really perfectly square with Bill.”
“She—forgive me, but it’s a routine inquiry—she never had any affair with another man?”
“I would say, no. Definitely, no. Creda was by nature flirtatious but that was all. She—there’s no use in not telling the truth; she was vain and loved attention but that’s as far as it went. I think—yes, I’m quite sure she was—well, faithful to Bill, if I have to put it like that. Creda had her own notions of dignity, you know. She was—” A thin pink came into Averill’s cheeks but she said coldly enough: “She was exactly what she was; I don’t know what her origins were and I think if they had been anything to boast of I should have heard. She was intelligent—shrewd, rather. I think she could have lived by her wits if she had needed to. Really that—that is all I know of her.”
P. H. Sloane looked at the sheaf of papers in his hand for a long moment. Then he said slowly:
“It must have occurred to you all that the murder of last night may have been no ordinary murder; I mean that it may have a meaning and a significance quite apart from any wholly personal revenge or quarrel. If Creda Blaine had permitted herself to become entangled in an espionage net—”
“Espionage!” cried Averill sharply. “What on earth do you mean?”
“Just what I say. Jim tells me, and Noel agrees, that there have been a few attempts in the past to steal plans and new devices and inventions at the Blaine Company plant. They both agree that, occasionally, they have had reason to suspect leakage somewhere, although they could never pin the thing down. It’s quite possible that Creda Blaine, through her husband but naturally without his knowledge, was the source of this leakage. In that event why she was murdered or what went wrong it’s impossible to say. But it does presuppose that Creda Blaine herself was the object of the attack and not Averill Blaine.”
“But I—but she—” Averill lifted her small head higher and said stubbornly: “She was wearing my yellow coat. Her face was covered; she was in my room.”
“Nevertheless I—at the moment, at any rate, and failing
direct evidence to the contrary—will have to proceed on the theory that whoever killed her knew it was Creda Blaine, and that there was some urgent reason for that murder. It was also someone with whom she felt perfectly at ease and, so far as she knew, had no reason to fear. Otherwise she would certainly have called for help.”
“No,” said Averill suddenly. “Not Creda. She—she never could speak when she was frightened. It was a nervous kind of thing; any fright or nervous shock seemed to paralyze her throat muscles. If a car skidded, if she had a frightening dream, anything. She used to laugh about it.”
Eden remembered a moment of horror, with flames bursting against the clear sky and a falling plane and Creda’s sudden, frozen silence.
Noel cleared his throat uneasily. “That’s right,” he said. “Bill used to kid her about it. He used to tell her she’d make a good—” A quick look of regret flashed upon his face and he stopped.
“A good what?” asked Sloane.
“Well, a good criminal, he used to say. Because she would never give herself away in times of stress. Bill was only joking,” he added quickly.
“That then,” began Sloane slowly, “would explain—” He did not finish but left the sentence hanging in mid-air for a thoughtful second or two before he resumed abruptly: “Do any of you know of any definite attempts on the part of anyone to buy or steal any information at the plant?”
Jim glanced at Noel and then at Dorothy. Noel said: “You remember the pistol clearance affair.” He turned to Sloane. “A rival firm, a foreign one, had our way of solving the trouble a month after we worked it out in the plant.”
Dorothy interrupted. She said calmly to the detective: “Yes, Mr. Sloane, there was a definite attempt. I myself was approached. I was offered sums of money varying with the importance of the information I was able to supply. I refused it. I told Mr. Carreaux and Mr. Cady about it. We decided it would be best to keep it to ourselves. It only proved that there really were attempts—as we had suspected in the past—to get information, particularly when we were developing the new engine.”
Averill gave a kind of gasp and said: “You didn’t tell me—”
“There was no reason to tell you, Averill,” said Jim rather wearily. “We didn’t even tell Bill. We didn’t want to upset you, and Bill always talked too much. It was just one of those things. Almost every airplane plant has its troubles with spies; sometimes they are commercial spies, sometimes simply agitators. You can’t tell. Anything, almost, seems to go under the label of espionage. It’s true, Sloane, that at least twice a rather important device of our own invention has turned up unexpectedly; once in use and once ahead of us in the patent office. Several times we’ve had reason to think that some of our plans about this new engine were known. But there was never anything definite—never anything you could put your finger on. The only definite fact we had to go on was this thing Dorothy has just told you about.”
“Miss Woolen, exactly who approached you with this offer? And when?”
“About a year ago,” said Dorothy composedly. “It was a letter, typewritten, with no heading. It wasn’t signed but it gave directions for communication with the writer, the number of a post-office box. I never knew, naturally, who had written it. I—I thought it was a joke,” said Dorothy calmly, “until I told Mr. Carreaux and Mr. Cady about it and I could see that they took it seriously.”
“What did you do with the letter?”
“I threw it away.”
“Do you remember the post-office box number?”
“No. I couldn’t possibly remember.”
“What exactly did the letter say? How were you to get information and what about?”
Dorothy’s pale eyes were as bland as an untroubled sea.
“Why, about the new engine, of course! It just said that the writer was willing to pay for any plans I could copy or secure for him; he would pay generously, I remember him saying, and I was to communicate with him by way of the post-office box. That’s all. I was never approached again about it.”
“Plans,” said Sloane. He swerved suddenly to Averill. “Miss Blaine, Jim says he has told me everything he knows of the plane crash. Consequently I know that the plans for the new engine—one copy of them—have disappeared and that you were the last person to have them. Now then, are you sure you placed them in the library drawer in the St. Louis house?”
“Perfectly sure,” said Averill.
“And you don’t know what happened to these plans?”
“No, certainly not.”
Noel, his peaked black eyebrows drawn nervously together, lounged forward, hands in his pockets.
“Look here, Sloane,” he said. “Granted that Creda’s death may prove to have a connection with the crash; granted Jim may be right in his explanation of the crash, even so I don’t see that you can do much in the way of investigation here. Wouldn’t it be better to let us go on to Louisiana, do what has to be done there, and after that—and after the wedding—meet us in St. Louis? I mean … Well, if Creda’s death was a result, really, of the crash, wouldn’t it be better to investigate the crash first, and then Creda—”
“You are quite right,” interrupted Sloane. “But in the wrong order. Creda Blaine was murdered in my house. In the county where I live and have some influence. That comes first. The crash of that plane is my affair only so far as it may possibly bear upon Creda Blaine’s murder. … It is true that I have set certain inquiries in motion in St. Louis but only because of the murder.”
“Oh,” said Noel rather weakly. Sloane glanced through the papers again. “Mr. Carreaux, you’ve already subscribed to your own history; Jim—I know yours to be substantially correct. That leaves Miss Dorothy Woolen, Ludovic Strevsky and Major Pace. Miss Woolen’s is short; educated public schools, secretarial course at the business college and—”
“And ten years exactly at the Blaine plant,” said Dorothy Woolen suddenly. Her voice was as calm and unperturbed as ever, her whole thick body as phlegmatic; yet there was certainly something a little unexpected in the sudden way she finished her own brief, queerly brief, dossier. It startled Eden a little although she could not have said why. It startled Sloane, too, for he shot Dorothy a quick look and put down the paper thoughtfully. But before he continued Chango came to the door, hovered for a moment and advanced a step or two into the room. He looked oddly disheveled; instead of his usual spotless white coat he was in his shirt sleeves, with a long white apron tied around his waist. He said:
“Boss?”
“What is it?”
One hand which had been tucked away under his apron came into view. It held a crumpled white piece of paper. He said, advancing with the paper held gingerly between his fingers as if it might burn him: “Boss, I was cleaning the bedrooms. I found this.”
“Give it to me.” Sloane took the paper. They all watched while he smoothed it out and read the words written upon it. It took only a second or two. But in that second Eden was suddenly, painfully sure that she knew what the letter was.
She was right, but in an important way she was also wrong.
Chapter 17
SLOANE’S FACE HARDENED A little; without lifting his eyes from the note he said; “Where did you find this, Chango?”
Chango’s little beady eyes darted quickly around the room and fastened upon Dorothy Woolen.
“In Missee’s room,” he said and pointed at Dorothy.
“Do you know anything of this, Miss Woolen?”
Dorothy eyed the note dispassionately.
“I don’t know, I’m sure. I don’t know what it is.”
He neither read the note aloud nor showed it to Dorothy. Instead he said briefly to Chango: “Later.” The Chinese ducked out of the room and Sloane, a queerly startled and sober look on his usually enigmatic brown face, stood for a moment with the paper in his hand looking at it, then went back to the table and put the note carefully between two blank sheets of paper (to preserve fingerprints, thought Eden; if it was the note Creda h
ad been writing when she was killed then her own, Eden’s fingerprints would be on it). With an air of finality, as if there was now something more important he had to do, Sloane began to put together the written notes from which he had been reading.
There was an almost tangible change in the whole atmosphere of the room. Everyone there, perhaps, sensed that change and the reason for it; certainly every pair of eyes was riveted upon the table and the papers so carefully protecting the note Chango had brought. Certainly there was uneasiness and there was an added tensity of extreme, anxious curiosity. But no one inquired, and what was more important no one volunteered information. It was, however, as Sloane gathered up all the papers and was about to speak that Major Pace stepped forward suddenly.
“Before you go, Mr. Sloane,” he said quite simply, “I want you to clear me of suspicion concerning this truly horrible crime.”
If it took Sloane by surprise then he gave no hint of it. But Noel gave a smothered little exclamation and Averill’s hand went up to clutch the green necklace she wore with tight, nervous fingers.
“Well?” said Sloane.
“I realize,” said Pace, “that I am in a difficult position here. You are all known to each other; I am a stranger. And I came to buy an engine which is beginning to appear to be the crux of the whole affair. But mark you, I came to buy that engine—not to steal it. I came in good faith. I acted, under orders, as a private purchaser. That engine failed and killed two men. I could have had nothing whatever to do with that. But I was induced to believe that the reason for that failure could be corrected and if so the engine still had the advantages which made it of value to—to the government I represent. Well, then. I agreed to wait. I expected the treatment one reputable business firm accords another—if not what one gentleman accords another. Instead of that I—”
His face was gradually empurpling as restrained violence threatened more and more nearly the suave and pleasant manner with which he began his statement. “Instead of that I was brought out here willy-nilly by a crack-brained young fool and plunged into murder. A woman, brutally, cruelly murdered. A woman I did not know. A woman I met for the first time when I came to the Blaine house in St. Louis. A poor, pretty woman in whom I have no interest whatever. But she was murdered. And instantly the finger of suspicion points at me!”
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