There is No Return

by Anita Blackmon

  I glanced at my watch. It was too early to dress for dinner. It was too early to go back downstairs, unless I wanted Ella to know how I hated to stay alone in that room. My head felt thick. After all, I had had very little sleep the night before, and the day had been nerve-racking, to say the least, nor am I so young as I might be. I did not believe I could close my eyes; nevertheless I thought it a good idea to lie down for a few minutes and make an attempt to relax. I was surprised at how good the bed felt, for the inn’s mattresses will never take a prize.

  I remember the cat hopping up beside me and turning around several times before curling up in a tight grey ball against my back. I remember telling myself that I should have to make him get down. After all, one doesn’t share one’s bed with a mangy alley cat, although it was oddly comforting to have him there with his loud purr, cosy and warm behind me. I remember telling myself with some chagrin that anything was better than being alone in that dark dreary room with the rain washing against the windows and the wind lamenting outside like a lost soul.

  I don’t remember anything else until I awoke, sitting bolt upright in bed, every muscle in my body taut with terror. I did not know what had aroused me, I did not know why I was literally speechless with fright. I simply sat there, the very blood in my body congealing with horror, staring straight before me at the dim grey oblongs which were the windows in a room that had grown pitch dark with the rain and the approach of night.

  Then, near me, a door closed stealthily.

  I still contend that I cleared the quite considerable space between me and the light switch at a single leap, although Ella persists in saying that is impossible for a woman of my age and build.

  The fact remains that scarcely a minute elapsed from the time I heard somebody close my door until I flicked on the lights with a shaking hand. The resultant illumination blinded me for a moment.

  Then my eyes adjusted themselves and I saw that horrible thing on the foot of the bed.

  It was not quite dead, although it had been completely eviscerated.

  As I stared at it, my vocal cord paralyzed with horror, the gaunt green eyes fastened on me in dumb agony and the mangy grey tail lashed feebly while one long thin leg twitched in agony. It even made a frenzied effort, before it collapsed in its death spasms, to crawl toward me. It was then I screamed and went on screaming.

  By rights the deputy Butch should have been the first to reach me, but as I discovered afterward he waited to prop his chair, under Sheila Kelly’s door. So it was Ella, of all people, who came to my rescue, bouncing into the room as if she had been shot out of a gun and proceeding to shake me violently before she snatched up the water pitcher off my bedside table and drenched me. I was still spluttering when Chet Keith collided with Butch Newby and Sheriff Latham on the threshold of my room. Back of them I saw Fannie Parrish, her wiry iron-grey hair standing on end with fright, clinging to Captain Bill French, who was furiously biting his moustache.

  “Good Lord, Miss Adams, I thought you’d been murdered!” exclaimed Chet Keith, suppressing a grin as he observed the trickle of water meandering down my face from the false curls on my forehead, which had taken the full force of Ella’s deluge.

  “We all expected you to have your throat cut,” contributed Fannie Parrish with a nervous giggle.

  “What’s the big idea?” demanded the sheriff. “Scaring us out of our wits!”

  This time I could not be mistaken about Butch’s remark. “Damned hysterical women!”

  It is necessary to explain that in their preoccupation with me nobody as yet had discovered that grisly object upon the foot of my bed. I suppose I should have been flattered at their concern, especially Ella’s, who looked far more shaken than I did and who still clutched the water pitcher and was inclined to brandish it.

  “Do put that thing down,” I said crossly. “Aren’t you satisfied with nearly drowning me?”

  To my consternation Ella burst into tears. “I twitted you into coming off up here by yourself and if anything had happened to you, Adelaide, I should never have forgiven myself.”

  “There, there,” I murmured, patting her arm and feeling very foolish. “I’m sorry to disappoint everybody but I’m all right.”

  To my relief Ella promptly reverted to form. “Then what in heaven’s name do you mean, Adelaide Adams, by scaring the daylights out of me?”

  I took a long breath and pointed, rather melodramatically I am afraid, toward the bed. I think it was Chet Keith who first brushed by me and stood looking down at that gruesome corpse, his face as white as paper. Then everybody crowded into the room to stare at the mangled alley cat. That is why, later, I could not swear to who was there and who wasn’t and when. I recall Lila Atwood and how expressionless she was except for her sickened eyes, and Judy Oliver, clutching her brother’s arm but gazing at Jeff Wayne, who had run in from outside and looked very cold and wet and tired, and Allan Atwood hovering for a moment on the threshold before he gave way to Coroner Timmons, and Patrick Oliver, great circles under his ingenuous blue eyes, saying his Aunt Dora had sent him upstairs to find out what had happened. Even the woman in the wheel chair refused to be left alone in the lobby and managed to hobble in, supported by Miss Maurine Smith on one side and on the other by the porter Jake, whose face was chalky with fear and who refused even to glance at my bed.

  Everybody kept asking me questions. How had it happened and what was the cat doing in my room and why didn’t I know what had taken place? I think I must have explained separately and collectively a dozen or more times that I was as much in the dark as anyone. You would have thought I had deliberately planned the episode to reduce Fannie Parrish and certain other guests of the inn to a more complete state of gibbering panic, if that were possible.

  “I don’t know where the cat came from,” I repeated wearily. “It was just here when I came to my room and it was cold and wet and” — at this point my tone bristled in spite of myself — “I let it stay.”

  “Of all the silly things to do!” protested Ella, eyeing me sharply.

  “It seemed a good idea at the time,” I said weakly.

  Hogan Brewster, who had taken Allan Atwood’s place in the doorway, grinned at me. “I don’t suppose you could have taken to walking in your sleep, could you, Miss Adams?”

  “I didn’t butcher the poor animal, Mr Brewster, if that is what you mean,” I said with a shudder.

  He continued to favour me with his sardonic smile. “It’s a little uncanny, isn’t it, that you were shut in here alone with the beast when it happened. I mean there was a guard outside in the hall and Jeff here was doing sentry duty under the window, or were you?”

  Young Wayne coloured angrily. “Yes.”

  The deputy sounded slightly nettled. “I was sitting down the hall. I had my back this way, but I don’t see how nobody could have come out of this room without my hearing them.”

  My eyes met Chet Keith’s and I knew that he had remembered about unlocking the door into Sheila Kelly’s room the night before.

  Sheriff Latham scratched his head and looked at me very hard. “You say just after you woke up you heard a door close, Miss Adams?”

  I nodded and again Chet Keith’s eyes met mine.

  “The door into the hall?” persisted the sheriff.

  “What other door could it have been?” I demanded tartly. “Or do you think somebody is hiding in my bathroom?”

  That created a diversion. The sheriff and Butch promptly strode across the room and inspected the bath. They looked both uneasy and crestfallen when they returned.

  “It couldn’t have been the door into the adjoining room,” said Chet Keith, wearing his blandest expression. “It is locked.”

  He seized the knob and shook it vigorously to sustain his contention.

  “Moreover, the key is on this side,” he announced.

  I think I must have blinked, but Chet Keith regarded me without batting an eye. There was a key in the lock on my side of the door, but it ha
d not been there when I detoured the sheriff and his henchman into the bathroom.

  “As if locks and bars mean anything to that girl!” cried Fannie Parrish, staring intently at the dividing wall between my room and Sheila Kelly’s. “As I’ve said before,” she repeated emphatically, “none of us is safe! Not one! So long as Gloria Canby’s unhappy spirit continues to roam this house!”

  Sheriff Latham had a bewildered look. “I don’t take no stock in this supernatural business,” he said doggedly. “If that gal killed the cat, she come out of a door just like anybody else.”

  He fixed a piercing glance upon Butch, who coloured darkly.

  “I ain’t saying nobody didn’t come out Miss Adams’ door,” he said in a heckled voice. “I told you I had my back turned and I may have caught a wink or two of sleep.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time he’s slept on duty,” I put in with a sniff.

  “Just the same,” continued the deputy, looking baited but very certain of his ground, “one thing I can swear to: the Kelly dame never came out her door.”

  “When the man’s asleep, you could blow a trumpet back of his ear, without waking him,” said Ella with indignation.

  “Oh yeah?” retorted Butch. “Maybe so, but I’ve had my chair tilted back against the Kelly girl’s door for over an hour, and if you think she could move that chair with my two hundred pounds in it without waking me, lady, then there is such a thing as hypnotism and ghosts.”

  “You’d think,” interposed Fannie Parrish, “that all this commotion next door would have aroused her.”

  The sheriff scowled. “We’ll just see what she has to say for herself.”

  “The door’s bolted on her side,” I put in hurriedly.

  Hogan Brewster frowned. “How do you know, Miss Adams?”

  He had a talent for disconcerting me. “I happened to hear her shoot the bolt,” I said, conscious of the sheriff’s stare.

  “The partitions between these rooms aren’t soundproof,” interposed Ellen with suspicious quickness. “From my bathroom I can hear Adelaide every time she washes her hands.”

  The sheriff again transfixed Butch with a glance. “You’ve got the key to the Kelly girl’s room. Go around by the hall and open this door between. I want to see her face when she discovers the cat.”

  Butch saluted smartly and strode out. I remember holding my breath. I had a horror of meeting Sheila Kelly’s eyes, of watching her come into that room before all our staring eyes to be confronted with that limp, bloodstained thing on my bed. I noticed that Chet Keith’s hands were clenched. I have an idea that he, too, was holding his breath. However, although it was merely postponing the inevitable, Sheriff Latham was not destined at that time to have his promised interview with Sheila Kelly. Butch suddenly reappeared in the doorway. He looked as if he had taken a punch in the jaw.

  “Something’s wrong,” he said hoarsely.

  “What the hell!” exclaimed the sheriff, taking a step toward him.

  The deputy actually cowered. “The professor’s door is standing wide open,” he croaked.

  We must have all stared at him incredulously, for he went on insistently. “The key’s still in my pocket,” he said, “but his door’s wide open and-and ...” He swallowed. “There’s a little stream of blood creeping down the hall.”

  Again there was a period of confusion during which I cannot be positive of anybody’s movements, not even my own. I have a dim recollection of everybody crowding out into the hall, just as formerly everybody had crowded into my room. I remember Ella holding onto my arm convulsively and gulping as she stared over my shoulder at that prostrate figure beyond the open door down the corridor. I distinctly remember Fannie Parrish’s teeth chattering in my very ear and Judy Oliver beginning to sob loudly while Jeff Wayne took her hand and cradled it against his cheek and begged her not to be frightened because he would protect her with his life. I remember Chet Keith muttering over and over, “God! Good God! But I warned him.” And I shall never forget Sheriff Latham, after a moment’s hesitation, going into that room and kneeling down to murmur, “He’s dead! Dead as a doornail!”

  As if he needed to tell us that after we had one glimpse of Professor Thaddeus Matthews’ contorted and livid face, grinning above the gold handle of the scissors which protruded from the wet red gash in his throat.

  12

  “You have refused from the first to put any credence in there being something supernatural about this business, Sheriff,” Chet Keith kept hammering in. “From the beginning you have persisted in taking a common sense attitude toward the situation, in which you are quite right, according to your lights, but you can’t eat your cake and have it too.”

  It was some time later and we were all herded again into the front parlour downstairs, all of us, that is, who had attended the séance the night before. The folding doors into the rear room were closed, but Thomas Canby’s dead body no longer rested there alone.

  Another of the hard red sofas had acquired an occupant.

  “The girl killed him,” said Sheriff Latham, although his voice had lost its belligerence.

  The man actually seemed dwarfed in size, and while Coroner Timmons was once more putting up a pretence of conducting the investigation, the sheriffs muscular hands were not now operating the strings, or if so, very feebly.

  “You can’t have it both ways,” insisted Chet Keith. “You don’t believe that Sheila Kelly is possessed of a ghost which is able to pass through locked doors and solid walls at will, do you?”

  “No,” growled Sheriff Latham in an unhappy voice.

  “But by the evidence of your own man she never left her room. Or are you going to turn around and say now that there is such a thing as hypnotism and she hypnotized your deputy Butch into removing both himself and his chair from her door without either his knowledge or consent?”

  “Nope,” said the sheriff doggedly, “she never got past Butch.”

  “Then she didn’t kill the professor!” exclaimed Chet Keith. He did not look at me but he was perfectly conscious of what I was thinking, I feel sure. “And if she didn’t kill the professor she didn’t kill Canby!”

  The girl, sitting between the two deputies, did not lift her head.

  She had not looked up since they brought her into the room, quite a while after the discovery of the professor’s dead body. I had dreaded seeing her. I had wondered how on earth I could meet her eyes, knowing what I knew. It was all very well for Chet Keith to bulldoze the sheriff, but he could not deceive me. The door into her room had not been locked on my side when I went to sleep.

  “Or don’t you believe that the two crimes are connected?” demanded Chet Keith.

  The sheriff wriggled his burly shoulders. “They’re connected,” he admitted miserably, “though danged if I know how.”

  “It’s plain enough,” said Chet Keith quickly. “The professor knew something. If you want it in words of one syllable, he knew who murdered Thomas Canby and he paid for his knowledge with his life.”

  “Might be,” muttered the sheriff.

  Chet Keith’s face was pretty white. “As a matter of fact,” he said without any signs of happiness, “I signed the professor’s death warrant when I warned him in the presence of everybody in this room that I was going to get his secret out of him.”

  “You’ve been entirely too buttinsky in this whole affair,” said Sheriff Latham with a scowl.

  It was his last spurt of rebellion against allowing matters to slide out of his hands, and Chet Keith knew it.

  “You’re over your head, Sheriff,” he said, not unkindly. “You have been all along.”

  The sheriff was a bigger man than I had thought. He was big enough to acknowledge his limitations.

  “All right,” he said in a muffled voice, “this thing has got me beat. If you can do better with it, help yourself.”

  Chet Keith needed no second invitation. There was a set to his jaw which indicated that he had determined to take over
the situation and a glint in his eyes which said it would be unfortunate for anybody who tried to side-track him.

  “Sheila Kelly could not have killed the professor,” he repeated. “She could not have got out of her room. When Butch wasn’t propped up against her door, his chair was wedged under it.”

  “That’s right,” said Butch in a dogged voice.

  Still Sheila Kelly did not raise her eyes.

  “What about the amber hairpin which the professor was clutching in his hand?” asked Allan Atwood with a sullen frown.

  I caught my breath. I had not known till then that the dead man had held an amber-coloured hairpin in his hand when discovered.

  “Yeah,” put in Patrick Oliver resentfully, “what about it, Keith? Sheila Kelly’s the only woman at the inn with long blonde hair.”

  The sheriff took up the point with eagerness. “You wear hairpins like this, Miss Kelly?” he asked and held out another of those cheap celluloid pins which I had seen before.

  She stared at it and I saw the cords in her throat work, as if she were trying to speak, but no sound came.

  “Certainly she wears them,” interposed Chet Keith smoothly.

  “She has a couple in her hair now.”

  Everybody leaned forward, the better to see, and there they were, neatly pinning that pale coil of golden hair on the nape of her neck.

  “Let’s see one,” snapped Sheriff Latham.

  She put up her hand with a dazed gesture and removed a hairpin. It was a mate to the one which the sheriff had laid on the table beside him.

  “Might be its twin,” muttered the deputy Butch.

  “What of it?” I demanded tremulously. “You can buy a card of them in any dime store for ten cents.”