There is No Return

by Anita Blackmon

  Looking a little guilty, Ella placed her weapon upon the foot of the bed, and I will swear that Hogan Brewster drew a breath of relief. He cast a wry glance at Sheila Kelly when they started to take him out of the room. She had stood there like a statue all during the melee, but I doubt if anything would have convinced Sheriff Latham or Ella of what had actually happened to the girl except the small demonstration which Hogan Brewster then proceeded to put on. It is the only score in his favour among all the black marks against him, although I have never known whether he meant to do anybody a favour or whether it was pure exhibitionism on his part.

  The man was theatrical, with a strong appetite for the lurid, just as Ella had predicted.

  “Stand up. Sit down. Laugh,” he directed Sheila Kelly rapidly. “Laugh like Gloria Canby, as if you didn’t give a damn for man, God or the Devil.”

  It made the hair at the base of my skull prickle to watch her. She stood up, she sat down, she laughed. It was horrible.

  Hogan Brewster smiled. “How do you like my robot, Sheriff Latham?” he inquired mockingly.

  I am positive that the sheriff had never heard of a robot, but nobody could have watched Sheila Kelly’s performance without realizing that her mind was in complete subjection to that fiend across the room.

  “Too bad,” murmured Hogan Brewster, “that there are some things which you cannot hypnotize a subject into doing, such as — murder.”

  I have commented before upon his swiftness and I have never blamed Sheriff Latham for what happened. It was too unexpected. Not until Hogan Brewster had jerked away from Butch and scooped up the knife did anybody realize his purpose and then it was too late. He fell at Sheila Kelly’s feet, and to me the most macabre thing about the whole frightful business was that it was not he but she who screamed and clutched frantically at her throat as if it were her lifeblood streaming out, as if it were she, not Hogan Brewster, gasping in his death agony.

  “It’s better so,” said Chet Keith when I talked to him later.

  I knew he was thinking of Sheila Kelly. She had collapsed after Hogan Brewster’s death. It kept Ella and me busy for an hour, looking after her, for which release I think the sheriff was grateful. However, the girl’s first conscious thought was for Chet Keith. She knew nothing of that grisly scene in my room. The last thing she remembered was hearing the tumult downstairs and shooting the bolt on her side of the door with the intention of finding out, if possible, how badly the newspaperman was hurt. That was still paramount in her mind when she came to. As soon as her fit of hysterics had subsided she insisted on going downstairs and seeing for herself the extent of his injuries.

  Chet Keith was disposed to make light of them. “What’s a tap on the head to a he-man?” he scoffed, though he looked very pale, I thought.

  I caught his eye. “Let her fuss over you all she will,” I whispered. “It’ll take her thoughts off herself.”

  He nodded. “I expect you’re right.”

  I knew I was right. Sheila Kelly had been through a hideous experience. Her nerves were on the ragged edge. I thought it would be a long while before she recovered entirely from the degenerating influence which had played hob with her mind, but I was ready to pin my faith upon the old principle that love and time will work miracles, and you had only to watch her hovering over Chet Keith as he reclined upon the couch to know that she was in love with him. I suppose she had been all along, although she had been too proud to admit it.

  “We’re going to be married as soon as we can get down off this damned mountain,” he said, and while she caught her breath she did not deny it.

  “Yes,” admitted Fannie Parrish when I questioned her, “I saw Hogan Brewster put something in the wastebasket after the chauffeur was killed. It may have been a piece of yellow rubber. In fact I’m sure it was.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. I knew that, until I prompted her, Fannie had no idea what she had seen nor the slightest conception of its meaning.

  There was another thing which I badly wanted to know. “About those ESP tests which you took in the Canby drawing room,” I asked Lila Atwood, “was Brewster present?”

  She shook her head and I frowned. “But he must have heard about them?” I persisted.

  Her lips curled. “Oh yes, Aunt Dora told him at great length, although he ridiculed the idea. Nevertheless,” — she turned white — “I caught him several times attempting to worm his way into my thoughts.”

  “Without success?” I asked quickly.

  “Yes,” she said with a spirited tilt of her head.

  However, I reminded myself, as material for Hogan Brewster to try out his embryonic hypnotic powers upon, Lila Atwood was a very different proposition from Sheila Kelly, whose resistance to mental suggestion had been reduced to zero.

  “It was nauseating,” Lila continued with a shudder, “feeling him squirming about, trying to get inside my mind. As if he hadn’t done me harm enough when he planted the razor blade in my possession.”

  “Have you any proof that Hogan Brewster mailed you the razor blade?” I exclaimed.

  She glanced at her husband and he coloured darkly. “I recognized Brewster’s writing on the wrappings,” he confessed, “but when I taxed him with it he convinced me that Lila had helped him kill Gloria. He said if I turned him over to the police he’d name Lila as his accomplice.”

  “That’s why you let him hang around?” I ventured. “You didn’t dare kick him out.”

  “And have him take Lila to the chair with him!” cried Allan Atwood. “I couldn’t, no matter what I believed about her and him, because-because I love her.”

  His wife’s eyes were radiant. “Darling!” she whispered, and this time when she put out her hand he seized it and pressed it tightly.

  My own eyes misted. I was glad those two were due for a little happiness at last. It no longer seemed strange to me that Lila Atwood should have fallen in love with her inept young husband. There is a maternal strain in every woman, even spinsters, and she was a thoroughbred if I ever saw one.

  It remained for Dora Canby to present me with the most surprising reaction to that night’s work. “I sent for you,” she announced when her niece Judy conducted me into her room, “to ask you one question.”

  “Yes?” I said, feeling uncomfortable.

  I am still unable to decide whether to feel sorry for Gloria Canby’s mother or just plain irritated with her.

  “Is it true that, when my daughter died, she was in love with Hogan Brewster?” she asked.

  “Everybody says so,” I replied, pursing my lips.

  She sighed. “I never trusted the man. I told Allan that Brewster was a snake in the grass. I told Gloria so too, but she paid no attention.”

  She regarded me sharply. “If Gloria was in love with Brewster, she couldn’t have been in love with Jeff, could she?”

  I have never known why she seemed to believe that I was familiar with all the inside details of the case unless it was because I was in at the death, so to speak, and I have always known that I had no justification for my reply except my own impression. Nevertheless it does not trouble my conscience.

  “She was never the least in love with him,” I said.

  The light in Judy’s eyes was my reward.

  Dora Canby frowned. “Then I suppose it is foolish for him to stay single on Gloria’s account.”

  “It is extremely foolish,” I said firmly.

  She gave Judy a petulant glance. “You want to marry him, don’t you?”

  The girl flushed painfully. “He doesn’t care for me.”

  “Nonsense!” I cried. “He is desperately in love with you, child.”

  “You think so?” she faltered, her lips quivering.

  “I know it,” I snapped and this time I was not forced to tamper with the truth.

  “Then,” said Dora Canby in her fretful way, “they had better get married at once, don’t you think?”

  “The sooner the better,” I said fervently, feeling touche
d at the passionately grateful glance which Judy bestowed upon me.

  “Even Patrick is deserting me,” murmured Dora Canby mournfully. “He wants to be an aviator and I have promised to buy him a plane.” She frowned again, then went on quite brightly, “At least I know that my darling Gloria is at peace at last, now that Thomas is dead.”

  I simply stared at her. “But you must have realized, Mrs Canby,” I said in a feeble voice, “that all those-those messages from your daughter were faked.”

  “How absurd, Miss Adams!” she replied coldly. “Of course I realize nothing of the sort.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, then closed it. I felt completely uncertain of my ability to disabuse Dora Canby of any conviction upon which she had set her heart. As I have said, for all her timidity, she was as stubborn as a burro and fully as exasperating in her cerebral processes.

  “Naturally,” she continued, her weak mouth setting in obstinate lines, “I shall see that that girl comes to no harm.”

  “You mean Sheila Kelly?” I faltered.

  She glanced at me with a trace of impatience. “I mean the envelope which my daughter Gloria deigned to occupy for a time,” she said with so much finality I was silenced.

  Judy followed me to the door and squeezed my hand. “Thank you,” she whispered and added guiltily, “It was because of Lila I didn’t expose the professor after I caught him and Pat in the act.”

  I must have looked puzzled, for she hurried on. “That girl — she threatened if I told Aunt Dora to have Lila arrested for murder.”

  “You also believed Lila killed your cousin?”

  “Gloria said so — I mean that girl said so, and-and Lila has always been kind to me, about Jeff, you know. She even begged Uncle Thomas to give Pat a break.”

  “So that’s why you kept still.”

  Her lips quivered. “I couldn’t betray Lila. What if she had killed Gloria? It was no more than we’d all been tempted to do.” She swallowed painfully. “You were right,” she said, “but for Pat and me, none of this would have happened and I don’t know how I can ever forgive myself.”

  I had not even seen Jeff Wayne until he glared at me over Judy’s shoulder. “Don’t be silly!” he protested. “Nobody who matters a darn blames you for being the most loyal person in the world!”

  With another defiant glance in my direction he took Judy into his arms. As I walked away she was clinging to him with a blissful smile upon her face while he kissed her very thoroughly and murmured small endearments into her ear. Needless to say, the sight met with my full approval, in spite of the resentment which Jeff Wayne appeared to nourish in my regard. I’m afraid to him I shall always be a nosy old maid with an unholy talent for prodding him into unhappy disclosures.

  When I returned to the lounge it was almost two o’clock in the morning and everybody had settled down with pillows and blankets and overcoats to pass the remainder of the night upon the leather settees and in the deep armchairs which were scattered about. The death of Hogan Brewster had not removed the aversion with which we were all filled for the second floor at the inn. At least nobody showed any disposition to retire to it, not even Sheriff Latham, who was snoring away with his feet up on a windowsill, and least of all Butch, asleep in a straight chair by the desk, with Miss Maurine Smith’s head coyly resting upon his burly shoulder.

  Sheila Kelly was sleeping too, huddled down on the couch beside Chet Keith, but he looked up at me with a faint smile. “The bus will be here at five o’clock,” he said. “The highway department telephoned Captain French.”

  I glanced across the lobby to where the manager of Mount Lebeau Inn was reclining upon one of the stiff settles, his toupee slightly off centre where it had slid over one ear. Clinging to his arm, even in his slumber, was Fannie Parrish, silent practically for the first time since I had met her.

  I suppose I must have looked scandalized, for Chet Keith chuckled. “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody’s ship home,” he remarked. “They are going to be married.”

  “Fannie and Captain French!” I exclaimed.

  “The inn is done for, I’m afraid,” he explained, “but Mrs Parrish has quite a neat little income of her own, or so I understand.”

  “What about her poor dear Theo?” I inquired with a sniff.

  Chet Keith chuckled again. “As she reminded us a while ago, we all heard the message her poor dear Theo sent her. He wants his Little Butterfly to be happy.”

  “Fannie Parrish knows as well as I do that those spirit messages were a fake!” I cried indignantly.

  Chet Keith grinned. “People have a great facility for deluding themselves if it is to their advantage to be deluded.”

  I borrowed one of Ella’s wisecracks. “You’re telling me,” I said and repeated for his benefit that amazing conversation which I had had with Dora Canby.

  He drew a breath of relief. “It will be a great deal simpler with Mrs Canby taking that attitude,” he said with a wry grin, “and who am I to quarrel with what the gods provide?”

  I dare say I looked a little blank, for he went on to elucidate. “The sheriff is convinced, you are convinced, everybody here is convinced that Sheila was the victim of that devil’s machinations, but it is going to be a lot easier to get her out of this business if Thomas Canby’s widow refuses to prosecute.”

  “Hogan Brewster pointed out from the first that, with the Canby fortune behind her, Sheila Kelly would never be convicted,” I reminded him.

  His face darkened. “I should have known he was our man. The clue was right under our noses all along. I don’t doubt that is what put the professor wise.”

  “What clue?” I asked in a startled voice.

  “Brewster said himself that he alone knew Gloria Canby’s nickname for him, yet Sheila called him by that name the night he was supposed to have arrived at the inn for the first time. She could have learned it from no one else.”

  I recalled the scene distinctly, there in the dining room.

  “The idea even occurred to me,” continued Chet Keith, “but I was obsessed with the notion that Thomas Canby’s millions were the motive for the crimes and, Lord knows, Brewster had money enough of his own.”

  I sighed. “What put me off was having every reason to believe that he did not arrive at the inn in time to be responsible for the Gloria manifestations, which were the cornerstone of the entire plot.”

  He nodded. “I think he had been hiding out somewhere in this vicinity the whole week. I don’t believe the telegram which he claimed to have received was ever sent. In my opinion he followed the Atwoods down here — trailed them, in fact.”

  I was prepared to go a step farther. “Like most murderers, he was a self-centred brute,” I said. “He realized, when the others left Long Island in a hurry, that something was up and, no doubt, he believed the exodus concerned him. I don’t think it improbable that, having a guilty conscience and a wholesome respect for Thomas Canby’s pertinacity, Brewster even went so far as to believe that Canby had secured the evidence for which he was seeking.”

  “Probably,” agreed Chet Keith. “At all events we know from Jay Stuart’s report, which Jeff Wayne overheard, that Brewster spent a lot of time in the hut across from the cemetery before he let his presence on the mountain be known. I suspect in the beginning he hid out in order to spy on the situation. Then he met Sheila and concocted his devilish plan and, concealing his presence until after Thomas Canby’s arrival, was an essential part of it.”

  “Of course Brewster was responsible for the rock in the road,” I remarked, knitting my brows. “Though whether he uprooted it himself or forced Sheila to do so we’ll never know,” said Chet Keith quickly.

  I shook my head. “He could not force her to commit murder, but she might have been persuaded to dig up the rock, just as he persuaded her to appropriate Dora Canby’s scissors, without her realizing that the act had criminal intent.”

  He winced. “I know.”

  “She told us herself that when s
he came to that afternoon she had dirt on her hands as if — as if she had been digging in the ground,” I faltered and then I drew a long breath. “But I prefer to believe, and I shall steadfastly maintain if asked, that he made her dig up a — a flower or something, so as to leave her with soiled hands and the conviction that she alone had been guilty of the attempt upon Canby’s life.”

  “Oh, sure,” muttered Chet Keith, his arm tightening about the girl beside him, whose face looked like an uprooted flower itself, a drooping, haggard flower with a broken stem.

  “He must have killed the chauffeur to prevent his telling about the hut,” I continued with a frown, “but if the cigarette butts and car tracks had been removed, as Stuart claimed, I don’t understand why Brewster believed the hut would incriminate him.”

  Chet Keith felt gingerly of his wounded scalp. “Jay Stuart was a square-dealer, according to his somewhat sinister code. He tried to the last to earn the thousand dollars he had been paid. In other words he lied when he said the hut had been cleaned up. At least it hadn’t been when I got there tonight, although Brewster went over the place with a fine-tooth comb after he knocked me out. Nevertheless, in spite of his elaborate and drastic precautions, he overlooked this.”

  He held out a fragment of black cloth.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “A piece out of an opera cape which the sheriff uncovered a while ago under the mattress in Brewster’s room. He must have caught it on a splinter and torn off this bit without noticing. Anyway, I found it clinging to a rough spot in the door of the hut.”

  “What on earth did he want with an opera cape in this benighted spot and at this season?” I exclaimed.

  “There was a skeleton key in the pocket,” remarked Chet Keith significantly. “Although we’ll never know all the truth, I don’t doubt that Brewster employed the key to his advantage with nobody the wiser, worse luck. He was probably here, there and everywhere when least suspected, and the cape must have been extremely useful when he wished to get about unobserved. It is black and, you might say, all-enveloping. I am certain he was wearing it when he attacked me tonight in the hut.” He gave me a rueful glance. “At least if I had had to go into court I should have been forced to testify that the thing which set upon me came out of that old deserted graveyard and resembled nothing so much as an enormous bat.”