There is No Return

by Anita Blackmon

  He shook his head again. “That didn’t save the professor.”

  There was no answer to that, so I attempted none. “I wish you’d let me know the results as soon as you search each room,” I said.

  “It’s all a piece of foolishness,” he muttered.

  Nevertheless he lumbered off to issue orders to Mart Butler, and I turned toward the stair.

  “Where are you going, Adelaide?” demanded Ella.

  I was for the second time tempted to take her into my confidence. Unfortunately Ella elected to press the question.

  “Not to your room, I hope,” she said with so much emphasis I bristled.

  “And why not, I pray?”

  I suppose all our nerves were the worse for wear by this time. At any rate Ella and I glared at each other like a couple of hostile mastiffs.

  “I’ve kept silent,” said Ella, “because I’m fond of you, Adelaide, and, after all, I don’t know that you have been aiding and abetting that girl.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” I cried with heat, although I am positive my face gave me away.

  “I can’t prove that she and Chet Keith were in your room last night,” said Ella, “but I did hear voices.”

  “Nonsense!”

  “And they didn’t come from the hall.”

  “Rubbish!”

  “I hate to go to the sheriff behind your back, Adelaide.”

  I lost my temper completely. “You can go to the devil if you like!” I snorted and marched off up the stairs.

  I have always prided myself upon being a level-headed woman, but there is no denying that my courage descended in exact proportion to my ascent toward that upper floor at Mount Lebeau Inn where Butch was again propped up in his chair against Sheila Kelly’s door. He had lost a great deal of sleep and his eyes were bloodshot, yet he seemed very wide awake. He kept glancing here, there and everywhere while I explained about the visitors which I expected shortly.

  “It’ll be nice having folks about,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of spots I’d rather be in alone than this.”

  I heartily agreed with him. The second floor was not a cheerful place under the best of conditions.

  “I never saw a house so full of creaks,” muttered the deputy, again glancing over his shoulder. “You need eyes in the back of your head.”

  I knew what he meant. The wind had risen and the ancient walls of the inn popped and squeaked, exactly as if somebody or something was creeping up on you from the rear.

  “I keep thinking I hear that door open,” said the deputy, looking toward Professor Matthews’ room.

  I shivered. I didn’t need to close my eyes to see the professor’s livid face as I had last beheld it.

  “Don’t be silly,” I said irritably. “The door’s locked, isn’t it?”

  “Yep,” admitted Butch with a gloomy nod, “it’s locked and the key’s in my pocket, as if that meant anything to her.” He gestured toward Sheila Kelly’s room and I sighed.

  “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” I said firmly.

  “That’s what I thought yesterday,” muttered Butch, turning suddenly to stare down the shadowy corridor beyond us.

  It took me quite a while to unlock my door. My fingers seemed to be all thumbs. Once inside I had even more trouble closing the door behind me. I felt the greatest reluctance to being alone in that room. I felt reluctant to be there at all. My first glance was for the door between me and Sheila Kelly. The key was in the lock, just as I had left it when I went downstairs. After I had pulled down the shades and turned on every light in the place, including the one in the bath, I went over to the door and listened.

  There was not a sound from the adjoining room. I had expected more of that forlorn weeping which had distressed me before. I found its absence no less distressing. I could not forget how the girl had looked when they took her out of the parlour downstairs, dazed, mute, completely desperate. I kept remembering what Chet Keith had said he feared for Sheila Kelly. I knew that they had searched her again to make sure she had no lethal weapons upon her such as the butcher knife which had been plunged into Jay Stuart’s breast and which the sheriff said came from the kitchen at the inn.

  “There are other ways to do away with oneself,” I remember thinking with a shudder.

  Then someone knocked at my door. “The sheriff says you wished to see me, Miss Adams,” murmured Jeff Wayne.

  I have wondered since why he and the others submitted so tamely to my request, even when reinforced by the sheriff’s orders.

  At the time I was too busy trying to put a proper face on my actions to worry about anything else.

  “I want to ask you some questions, Mr Wayne,” I said. “Will you take a chair?”

  He gave me a resentful glance, but he accepted the seat to which I motioned him and waited with obvious impatience for me to sit down across from him. Now that I had him there, I realized that I had only the vaguest idea what I wanted to ask him. I was obsessed with one thought, to kill enough time to permit the sheriff to make his search.

  “You are in love with Judy Oliver, aren’t you, Mr Wayne?” I asked.

  He coloured darkly and I think he flirted with the notion of telling me that it was none of my business, which of course it wasn’t, but I continued to stare straight into his haggard eyes, and he suddenly shrugged his shoulders, which I chose to take as assent.

  “Was Gloria Canby in love with you?” I demanded.

  “She intended to marry me,” he said harshly.

  “That wasn’t my question.”

  Again I thought he meant to defy my right to interrogate him, and again under my unwavering glance he thought better of it.

  “If she was capable of being in love with anybody, it was with Hogan Brewster,” he said with a scowl.

  “But she was engaged to you?”

  “To spite Judy!” he cried. “She couldn’t bear for Judy to have anything she wanted!”

  I looked at him very hard. “Was Gloria Canby murdered?”

  “I don’t know. She may have been. God knows we all had reason enough to kill her.”

  “You too?”

  His hands clenched but he said nothing.

  “You could have killed her, couldn’t you,” I prodded him, “the time she attacked Judy with the can opener?”

  His face worked. “Yes.”

  “That’s why you have never told Judy that you love her, isn’t it? You were afraid of Gloria Canby. You’re still afraid of her.”

  “Yes,” he said in a whisper.

  I put my hand over his. “The dead cannot return to torture the living, Mr Wayne.”

  “You never knew her!” he burst out. “There was nothing she wouldn’t do! When she died I thought Judy was safe, but she isn’t! She’ll never be safe as long as that girl” — he threw a haggard glance at Sheila Kelly’s door — “is at large.”

  The telephone rang. It was an old-fashioned instrument on the wall. I watched Jeff Wayne’s drawn face as I crossed the room. I could see him distinctly in the mirror over the dresser. A nerve was jumping in his temple.

  “Nothing doing,” said Sheriff Latham gruffly when I picked up the receiver.

  “You didn’t overlook anything?” I asked.

  “No,” he growled and hung up in my ear.

  So nothing incriminating had been found in Jeff Wayne’s room.

  I wondered how I was going to get rid of him, but he solved the problem for me by rising to his feet.

  “Have you quite finished with prying into my affairs, Miss Adams?” he inquired in a resentful voice.

  In spite of his obvious animosity toward myself I felt sorry for him. “Why don’t you go downstairs and take Judy into your arms and ask her to marry you?” I suggested.

  “And have Gloria get her as she got the others?” he asked and walked out.

  Lila Atwood also stared at me curiously when I let her and her husband in. “The sheriff said you wanted to speak to us, Miss Adams,” she mu
rmured.

  Allan Atwood said nothing at all. He avoided meeting his wife’s gaze. He pulled out a chair for her, but he was careful not to touch her. I saw her flinch when he moved away from her, but she faced me with perfectly level eyes.

  Again I was at a loss how to proceed. “You young people got off to a very bad start, didn’t you?” I asked, more or less at random.

  Allan glared at me. “Suppose we did?” he inquired angrily. “What’s it to you?”

  I was too conscious of the weakness of my position to take umbrage at his tone. However, Lila chose to be as gracious as her husband was rude.

  “Yes, Miss Adams,” she said in her beautifully modulated voice, “Allan and I got off to about the worst possible start when we were married, if that is what you mean.”

  “It’s rather a shame that Gloria Canby spoiled everything for you on your wedding day,” I murmured.

  Allan shot me a furious glance. “Lila didn’t kill her,” he said in a stifled voice.

  I saw his wife draw a quick breath. “Thanks, Allan,” she said and half held out her hand to him, but he looked hastily away and she flushed painfully.

  “How long have you suspected your wife of killing your cousin?” I asked him outright.

  “I told you she didn’t kill Gloria,” he muttered.

  My eyes met Lila Atwood’s and hers were quite tragic. We both knew, in spite of his denials, that her husband did believe her guilty of murder.

  “It isn’t true, Miss Adams,” she said. “I did not kill Gloria.”

  “Do you know why I believe you?” I demanded, watching Allan closely.

  She shook her head and I said, still watching her husband, “You aren’t in love with Hogan Brewster.”

  “No,” said Lila, “I am not in love with Hogan. I don’t even like him.”

  Allan turned sharply. I caught a glimpse of the light in his eyes, then it faded, leaving his face even more drawn and haggard than before.

  “Why bother to lie?” he cried. “Gloria had Hogan hooked. She would have killed him before she let him go. He knew it and so did you. That’s why you —” He paused, biting off the word, his face deathly white.

  “So you do believe I killed her,” she whispered.

  His lips worked. “I told you I didn’t believe it.”

  “Is that why you hate me, Allan?” she asked, turning white. “Is that why you haven’t been able to stand the sight of me since Gloria’s death?”

  “What do you care whether I hate you or not?” he asked bitterly. “You’ve got Brewster. You’ve got what you want.”

  She was a proud woman and it must have cost her a great deal to say the thing she said in the face of his hostile scowl.

  “Hogan Brewster is nothing to me, Allan, less than nothing. You see, I had the bad luck to-to fall in love with my own husband. Funny, isn’t it, when he can’t bear me?”

  His hands clenched. “You can’t fool me and you didn’t fool Uncle Thomas,” he muttered.

  “What do you mean?” I asked quickly.

  He drew back, regarding me with wary, defiant eyes. “I didn’t mean anything.”

  “Did Thomas Canby believe that Lila murdered his daughter?” I persisted.

  “I don’t know what he believed,” he replied and added with a short, mirthless laugh, “and now nobody will ever know.”

  I stared at him, my pulses racing. Allan Atwood had ceased to puzzle me. He did not hate his wife. He was madly in love with her.

  “No,” I said slowly, “Thomas Canby did not live to accuse anybody of his daughter’s murder.”

  I was thinking of those ESP tests, of the facility which Allan had displayed at getting his thoughts across to a receptive subject. Chet Keith had said that Canby was killed to cover up the man who slew his daughter. It occurred to me that Chet was wrong. Perhaps Canby had died to prevent his accusing Allan Atwood’s wife of murder.

  “I can explain about the razor blade,” said Lila suddenly. “It came from a package in my possession.”

  Her husband took a quick step toward her. “Keep still,” he said.

  No, I thought to myself, it was not beyond reason to believe that, no matter of what he suspected her, Allan would go to any length to protect his wife.

  “It was a sample package,” said Lila steadily, “though why anybody should have sent me a sample razor blade I couldn’t imagine. It came through the mail the day before Gloria died. I put the parcel on my desk and forgot about it. But when they found Gloria’s body I looked for the blade and it was gone. Remember, Allan, you came into the room just as I was putting the empty box and the wrappings into the fire? You insisted on looking at them before I burned them.”

  He coloured darkly. “I don’t remember anything of the kind.”

  I nodded. “So ever since you saw that package in your wife’s possession, you have suspected her of murder.”

  “It never was in her possession!” he cried furiously. “I’ll swear to my dying day she never had it.”

  “Thanks, Allan,” said Lila again, with a note in her voice that brought a lump to my throat. “I didn’t know you liked me well enough to lie for me.”

  And then the telephone rang. I stumbled slightly crossing the room. Those two were staring at each other. I am sure for the moment they had forgotten me.

  “Darling!” whispered Lila. “Oh, my darling!”

  The sheriff sounded both tired and disgruntled. “All right, Miss Adams,” he said, “your hunch was one hundred per cent good.”

  I felt my knees weaken under me. “You found it?” I quavered.

  “Tucked away in a pocket of Atwood’s travelling bag.”

  “Oh dear,” I whispered.

  “I’ll send it up by one of the boys.”

  “Thanks,” I faltered and replaced the receiver on the hook.

  The hardest thing I ever did in my life was face Lila Atwood. Her eyes were radiant. She was clinging to her husband’s arm. I knew then that I had made no mistake. Those two were in love. I remember telling myself that they deserved a break. Then I recalled the girl next door and those three mutilated bodies down in the parlour and shuddered.

  “That’s all,” I faltered. “I mean, you’re free to go if you like.”

  But not for long, I told myself, and tried to look away from Lila’s bright smile as she walked out of the room, still clinging to her husband’s arm. They were in love and he had killed to protect her and there was nothing ahead of her except heartbreak, I thought, my throat aching. For I knew to what use that book of mine had been put. I knew even before Miss Maurine Smith telephoned me from the office.

  “Captain French asked me to tell you, Miss Adams, that he hasn’t sold a toy balloon this summer,” she announced brightly, “but he bought two dozen and one is missing.”

  “A yellow one?” I asked in a faint voice.

  “Yes, Miss Adams, a yellow one.”

  My hand was shaking as I hung up the receiver. I never had believed that spirits can be materialized. I still did not believe it.

  There had been in my missing book a clever expose of a so-called ectoplasm. It was effected by means of a toy yellow balloon on which a face had been painted.

  18

  I knew why Thomas Canby had been killed. It was to cover up a murder nearly a year old. I also knew how Gloria Canby’s spirit had been made to seem to materialize that night in the parlour. For my own conviction I needed only the fact that a toy yellow balloon had disappeared from the showcase in the lobby. It was thoroughly explained in my book on pseudo-spiritualism. I recalled the page as distinctly as if I had it before me. There was even a photograph, showing the medium inflating the balloon under cover of her voluminous robes. It had been treated with phosphorus, the features first painted on, then traced over with wet matches, so as to shed a sepulchral glow when the balloon was released. Naturally the operator always insisted on holding the séance in the dark. It was a simple matter to puncture the thing at the proper moment, leaving on
ly a few pieces of yellow rubber which could easily be disposed of.

  I even fancied I could recall, during the confusion of that hectic scene in the parlour, having heard a tiny pop such as a punctured balloon might make. Proving my contention was another question, as I realized at once. Allan Atwood had done nothing so obvious as to purchase the yellow balloon. It had been filched from the showcase in the lobby. I felt positive that by this time any scraps of yellow rubber which might have been found in the parlour had disappeared. Certainly I had no hopes of finding them at that late date upon the murderer’s person.

  “I’ve got to confer with Chet Keith,” I told myself nervously.

  However, when I called downstairs, Miss Maurine Smith informed me that Mr Keith had not returned to the inn. “Do you think he has run away?” she inquired with her usual naiveté. “Mrs Parrish is certain of it.”

  “I suppose nothing of the sort,” I snapped and hung up.

  If I was convinced of anything, it was that Chet Keith was not the kind to run away. He was persuaded that Sheila Kelly was the victim of a diabolical plot. He would never give up the fight so long as there was a remote chance of saving that unfortunate girl. I glanced at the door between her room and mine. What was she doing, shut up there alone with her horror and despair? I shivered and when somebody knocked I started so violently I barked my elbow on the table.

  However, the knock was at the corridor door. “Miss Adams?” a voice called out.

  It was Hogan Brewster, of all people, which did not improve my temper. I had never liked him and, knowing how much embarrassment he had caused Lila Atwood, I liked him less than ever. Nevertheless I opened the door, although neither my tone nor my glance was friendly.

  “Well?” I demanded.

  He grinned. “The sheriff asked me to bring you this,” he said and handed me with his customary flippant smile the book which was responsible for my ever going to Lebeau Inn in the first place.

  Sheriff Latham had taken the trouble to wrap it in a newspaper and tie a string about it, and although Hogan Brewster stared at the bundle curiously I did not gratify his inquisitiveness by unwrapping it in his presence.