Sloane said nothing and the sheriff said: “What words?”
“These.” She pointed. “ ‘Dear Jim’ and all the words after ‘believe me.’ ”
The sheriff took the note from her fingers and read it slowly and ponderously again.
“You claim then that whoever (according to your story) took this note from you deliberately added enough to make a case against this Cady fellow?”
“The note as she claims to have found it is enough,” said Sloane dryly. “That leaves, do you see, ‘cold-blooded murder is too much.’ (Evidently referring to the plane crash.) ‘I won’t do any more, I can’t!’ (Which, in so far as it can, confirms my theory that Creda Blaine was a part of whatever conspiracy there was.) And ‘Jim—believe me’ certainly refers to Jim.”
“But it’s the rest of it that seems to make it clinching,” said Eden quickly. “Her handwriting would be so easy to imitate.”
Sloane said: “How long have you known Jim Cady, Miss Shore? I was under the impression that you met him first when you came to St. Louis for Miss Blaine’s wedding.”
Eden hoped the warmth in her face was not a flush.
“That’s quite true,” she said stiffly. “But I saw the note, you see—”
“Why did you remove it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You gave me to understand you touched nothing.”
“I—but that seemed to me—” She stopped there, helplessly.
“It seemed to you, I suppose, to incriminate Jim. It occurred to you then, too, that a situation whereby a man may wish to receive the entire proceeds from his own invention rather than a mere salary for the time he worked on that invention is not outside the realm of possibility?”
There was a shadow over the detective’s face as he spoke but his eyes remained as coldly inhuman as two small blue icebergs.
“No! Nothing of the kind occurred to me. I—I was frightened—indescribably shocked. I—I had no clear thoughts. I—it was on the desk you see when I saw someone watching me—”
The sheriff, who had been tilting back in his chair, let the two front legs down with a bang and the detective leaned forward and said: “What’s that? You said nothing—Who was it?”
“I don’t know. I’m not even sure there was anyone. I didn’t—didn’t think of it,” said Eden quite honestly. “There was so much else and it—it was only a motion—felt rather than actually seen—”
“Listen, Miss Shore,” said the detective rather tensely. “Suppose you begin at the beginning and tell every thing—”
“But the letter. It is wrong—”
“Suppose there were two letters. Suppose she started the other one, the one you found, and left it. And wrote this one complete.”
“But that” Eden thought of Dorothy. “How did Dorothy Woolen happen to have it? Why was it in her room? What does she know of it?”
The detective rose and pulled the shade to keep the level rays of the sun from his eyes and said over his shoulder,
“She insists that she knows nothing of it. Now, then, Miss Shore, we’re waiting. Start please with the time when you left the lounge last night.”
Eden looked at the implacable shoulders of the detective, at the sheriff who, broodingly, looked back at her, took a long breath and began.
The sun crept lower and blue and purple shadows grew at the base of the mountain rims and in the hollows of the arroyo and under the cottonwoods. For they stopped her now and then to question, exhaustively and repetitiously, and it took time.
So she and Jim Cady had strolled down to the clump of pines along the drive, had they? They had been altogether alone? Had they talked of anything in particular? Oh, just chatting—had Jim mentioned the plane crash? Oh, he had. Well, what had he said?
Instinctively she kept the knowledge of the thing that had happened there in the soft shadow of the pines from them. It had no bearing upon murder. It was a thing separate—and besides, just then, she couldn’t have borne to tell anyone. Noel had dimly perceived it; she hoped no one else.
She went on, and the questioning went on. It was a little difficult getting around the brief conversation she and Averill had had in her room, but she managed it. They questioned her over and over again about the time during which she had been alone in her room, next to the room where Creda was murdered. They dug down into her memory and consciousness with prodding, sharp tentacles, demanding answers.
But she remembered only what she remembered. Averill had gone away, still wearing her yellow cloak. There had been voices, women’s voices she thought, and then silence. Silence until there was the sound of a drawer pulled open. (Yes, it might have been the chest of drawers being pulled away from the wall, but she didn’t know why.) And silence again, and then those stealthy, tiptoed steps, entering, pausing, leaving again and closing the door afterward.
And that was all. At length they permitted her to go on. Her own entrance and horrified discovery; the thing that must have been the revolver which she thrust aside without looking when she knelt beside Creda (they listened to that in unrevealing silence); her effort to pull the scarf away. They interrupted her there.
“You knew it was your scarf?”
“Yes, of course.”
“What did you think when you saw it there?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I wondered who had taken it. I didn’t think—I couldn’t.”
“Why didn’t you remove it?”
“I—” She hesitated and repeated: “I didn’t think of that either. Why should I? I didn’t murder her. My only thought was to help her if—if I could. And to call someone.”
“You removed the note to Jim Cady?”
“Yes.”
“What happened next?”
They questioned her at length, as if they were waiting for it, about the half-glimpsed face vanishing into the deep shadow, of the pines. Who was it? She didn’t know? Well, exactly what had she seen? Oh, it was just an impression of a face. Could it have been Strevsky’s? Perhaps. Roy Wilson’s? Perhaps, again. Major Pace’s? She couldn’t tell; there was just a motion and a white, blurred oval vanishing. And a sense of surveillance.
But she would be willing to swear, if need be, that someone had been outside the cabin, watching from the shadow of the pines. Y-yes; yes, she would be willing to swear it.
“Go on.”
But when at last she finished they questioned again, going over every item and every step. And then went back to St. Louis. Went back even to her little apartment in New York—so incredibly distant, so completely outside the world that had enfolded them, shutting out every other existence. Yet hinging so definitely and strangely upon that distant past.
That gave her the chance she needed, however, to tell them of suspicions that were merely suspicions, of half-formed ideas—of facts that were not quite facts. So she thought Creda and Pace had already known each other; why? Exactly why had she failed to believe Creda’s denial? And what was this about a key?
They seemed covertly excited about that, although Eden herself had all but forgotten the key in the welter of what seemed to her more important events that had intervened. Sloane rose and paced the floor.
“The St. Louis police say that the night watchman at the Blaine plant swears nobody entered the plant the night before the crash,” Sloane said to the sheriff. “But it’s a big place; there’s only one man at night; night watchmen have been known to go to sleep on the job before this. But I don’t see what Creda Blaine herself could have known of the engine. It isn’t everybody who would have known of the engine. It isn’t everybody who would know exactly what to do to cripple the plane, or exactly how to mend the break with the diabolic skill that was employed. Wax—”
“There was wax missing from the library table. The table where Averill says she placed the plans for the engine. Red sealing wax.”
It angered Sloane. He turned swiftly toward her and pounded the desk top with the flat of his hand and swore deeply. “Why haven’t you
told me all this before? Why have you kept these things secret? Why have you—”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, P. H.,” said the sheriff easily. “There’s not been much time, you know. God damn it, the woman was murdered only last night.”
Only last night, thought Eden incredulously. It had been, as a matter of fact, only thirty-six hours or so since the great silver plane had landed them in that fantastic, distant, mountain-rimmed world; a lonely world, beautiful, queerly thrilling, and at the same time frightening. And she seemed to know it as intimately and as familiarly as if it had been years.
“I’m done with this thing,” said Sloane, still white. “You take it over, Utley.”
“I can’t. You know what I’ve got on my hands.” The sheriff was weary and undisturbed. “I know how you feel, P. H., when it’s your friend—Cady, I mean. But you can’t help it.” He rolled a cigarette expertly, lighted it and said reflectively: “I remember how I felt when I had to arrest Apple Johnny Redback. We’d punched cattle together as youngsters; ridden in many a roundup. Were with the same outfit; how Apple Johnny could sing.” He sighed a little and pulled his sagging body upward. “But I had to go after him, just the same—you remember? That was two years ago in January—we had a thaw. A bullet from—one of my men’s guns got him.” A ghost of youthful, singing Apple Johnny seemed to tug lightly at the sheriff’s arm. He moved restively, said: “It’s all in a lifetime, P. H. Can’t be helped,” and dismissed the ghost. “Now then, Miss Shore, anything else?”
There was nothing. But they kept her there, nevertheless, questioning over and over again—her scarf, the note in Creda’s writing, the silence in the cabin and those furtive tiptoed footsteps. At the last they asked her whether she had had any quarrel with Averill, and Eden hesitated and said at last, because she had to, that she had no quarrel with Averill. It was not the letter of the truth; it was in a deep sense, however, fact itself. But she did not try to excuse it with specious reasoning. She simply lied, flatly, because there was nothing else to do. Because Creda had worn Averill’s yellow cloak; because she had died in Averill’s room; because her face had been veiled.
Because all at once, starkly, the significance they would give those, facts if the knowledge of her quarrel with Averill and the reason for that quarrel were laid before them, became comprehensible to her. Stood out sharply and stiffly in her mind. She was dull with fatigue by that time, but she saw that clearly as she had not seen it before.
For that would be a motive.
And there had to be a motive. If the murder of Creda was intentional or if it was a failing attempt upon Averill’s life, there still had to be a motive.
It was an endless circle. Eden straightened her drooping shoulders wearily and stared at the tip ends of her white slippers and tried to brace herself for the next questions.
But there were no more. For Chango came with trays of silver and china and proceeded to lay a small table with dinner for the sheriff and Sloane, and they told her she could go. But not without admonishment. Through the open door the sheriff said loudly: “But try to remember, young lady, who it was you saw in the cabin last night.” And Sloane followed her to the door and stood there, watching her as she went upstairs.
It was night by that time. The sun dropped down behind a distant mountain rim and instantly twilight came with only a lingering touch of light in the sky and crimson upon the Sangre de Cristo peaks at the eastern horizon.
Dinner was late and rather an ordeal; no one wanted to talk; the candles flickered on the table; and Chango gave them scant attention, reserving his real efforts for the two men dining alone in Sloane’s study. He did tell them that the searchers were returning, two or three at a time, and that so far Roy Wilson had not been found. Nor, added Chango, little eyes glittering, the hatchet.
One of them had, however, found a rather curious thing, but he had taken it immediately to Sloane and even Chango knew nothing of it then.
Jim said almost nothing; he looked taut and white; he had offered, Sloane had said, no explanation for Creda’s dreadful, scrawled letter. But perhaps there was no explanation. There could, in fact, be no explanation for Jim to give them. So Eden reasoned.
Once she caught his eyes but the look in them told her nothing.
And certainly everyone—except perhaps Dorothy, who ate and drank with her usual calm and hearty appetite—showed the effects of the nerve strain and tension of the past few days.
After dinner they separated. Eden walked aimlessly out to the long porch; the stars were out by that time, remote and bright. Stars that, last night, she had thought to hold in her own grasp. The path stretched invitingly away into the cool and quiet night, with the clump of pines showing black and thick. She had an impulse to walk along the path and, indeed, had started down the steps when Noel came along the path, stopped beside her and said: “Going for a walk, Eden? How did you come out with the masterminds?”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. He started down the steps as if to accompany her and, as she paused at the top of the short flight with her hand irresolutely on the railing, he stopped too and looked up at her. The light from above the door into the hall fell dimly into his face. He said: “Come along, Eden dear. Let’s stroll a bit. Besides, I—I really want to talk to you.”
The soft light and the pleading look which was suddenly in his eyes reminded her all at once of a younger Noel. And of a younger Eden. How long ago, now, that childish little romance seemed.
The thought of Jim had lain like a cold weight in her heart all that day. Noel’s presence was irresistibly comforting, his kindness and affection inexpressibly warming.
“Dear Noel,” she said and put her hand out toward him in an impulsive little gesture. He took it and as impulsively and rather eagerly caught it to his cheek.
“You look,” he said quickly, “like the Eden I used to know. Like the girl I loved. Like the girl—like the girl I still love. Eden—”
She didn’t withdraw her hand. She didn’t move but stood perfectly still on the step above him looking down into his suddenly youthful face, smiling a little wistfully, a little tenderly, touched by a recaptured and gentle memory.
“Noel—you can’t mean that. It’s too late—”
“It’s never too late,” said Noel. “And I do mean it.” He came closer impetuously, still clasping her hand tight. “I do love you, darling. Believe it or not, I’ve always loved you. But I—” Someone crossed the hall inside with a brisk ring of footsteps. He frowned a little. “This isn’t the proper time or place. But then I never do things at the proper time and place. Come along, Eden; let’s walk down the path and I—you’ll let me tell you. Will you?”
Down the path toward the pines where she’d walked the night before with Jim? With the same stars looking down from the night sky?
But this was, she remembered suddenly and with a shock, exactly what she had come for; this was why she’d left New York; this was why she’d accepted Averill’s invitation. Because she had made up her mind to induce, by whatever means she could discover, the very words Noel was uttering. Well, she ought to feel pleased. She ought to accept the opening he had provided. She ought—definitely, instantly, adroitly, to settle the thing then and there. For certainly nothing had changed except that her need for Noel—for kindness, for care, for security—was even greater than it had been.
The outside world still existed beyond that lofty, mysterious rim of mountains. Afterward she would be thankful for Noel.
She said gravely: “Yes, Noel. I’ll come with you.”
“Eden—” His face became sober; his eyes bright and purposeful. “Eden,” he repeated. “Does that mean—”
She must say it quickly. Instantly. While she could say it. While she could remember that that was the decision she had come to, thoughtfully and quietly, before she had met Jim and enchantment had fallen upon her, blinding her eyes and her senses.
“Yes, Noel.”
She could not read the look in
Noel’s face. And footsteps came rapidly again along the hall and someone stepped onto the porch and banged the door behind them and it was Jim. He paused for a moment, while she half turned to look at him. His face was in the shadow, with the light behind him; he did not move or speak for a perceptible moment as if he were taking in every possible implication of the little tableau.
Then he said, his voice quite without expression: “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I only wanted to ask Eden about—about this letter Chango found. Sloane says she got hold of it first. God knows, I don’t know anything about it. Will you,” he asked with chilly politeness, “tell me where and how you found it? Anything at all—”
Noel went up the steps again, drawing Eden after him.
“As a matter of fact,” he said cheerily, “you did interrupt an important moment. And a—a particularly happy one,” he said, smiling at Eden and drawing her hand closely through his arm. “However, Jim, don’t worry about that confounded letter. Oh, yes, I know about it; they’ve questioned everybody probably. But it means nothing. They can’t possibly take it seriously. Good God, you wouldn’t sell out your own people! You wouldn’t wreck your own engine and steal your own plans. It’s crazy. Even Sloane and the sheriff must see that.”
“Nevertheless,” said Jim, “that’s what they seem to think. Even Sloane. I hoped that Eden could tell me something that would help explain it.”
Noel looked at Jim, looked at Eden and shrugged.
“All right,” he said lightly. “I’ll leave you two alone to thresh it out. But remember, Eden, what you promised me.” He turned away with a wave of his hand and a smile at Eden. Jim said: “Will you come in here, please; the big dining room seems to be unoccupied.”
She preceded him into the house and into the long dining room, with its chairs stacked on tables and its windows bare, pending the arrival of the dude season. The light from the hall streamed in, but there was no other light and it gave her a sense of isolation.
Chiffon Scarf Page 18