Gilette was studying the watch strap. He fitted the little stirrup into a torn bit of leather where it had once formed part of the buckle.
“Where did this come from?” Gilette held up the stirrup.
“From the floor next to Tenney’s body.”
Gilette’s eyes narrowed as the policeman in him asserted itself. “Why didn’t you tell about it then?”
“I’d just picked it up when Jarvis arrived. I forgot I had it until today.” Ward grunted softly. “Even then I didn’t know what it was until I remembered Len not having a watch … Tenney was shot at close range,” he said. “There were signs of a struggle. Somehow that buckle was ripped out.”
He went back to his chair and when no one said anything he continued, his voice clipped and aggressive.
“I didn’t go out tonight to watch for Dunham. I didn’t think the murders and Alma’s disappearance were connected but I knew Len had killed Tenney and I wanted to watch the house in case he came out.” He shook his head and glanced morosely at Osborne.
“What I couldn’t understand,” he said, “even when I knew about Tenney, was why you killed Johnny. I couldn’t find a motive or any explanation—until a few minutes ago.”
“Motive?” Osborne scoffed openly. “I think you’re out of your mind. There never was a motive.”
“Suppose I give you one.”
“Go ahead.”
“Your oil lease,” Ward said. “And that phony note.”
“No,” Alma spoke up quickly. She looked uncertainly from Osborne to Ward. “There really was a note, Duncan. We found it when Mr. Talbot and I went through the safe. The note accounted for the missing currency.”
“Yes,” Ward said. “There had to be a note. MacQuade being the sort of person he was, Len knew he’d have to leave a note to explain the shortage. My point is that Johnny knew nothing about any note.”
Gilette tried to get into the argument. He said perhaps Ward had better explain and Osborne said:
“If he can.”
Ward took his time in order to be sure of himself, but once he made up his mind he went on hurriedly.
“Your trouble was the same as Gordon’s, Len. Johnny should have died but he didn’t.… You know about the oil lease?” he said to Gilette.
“A little.”
“I’ll tell you about it. By Len’s own story the opportunity to get a piece of those prospective wells came suddenly. This friend called him up one day from Trinidad and said he’d fly here the following day if Len could raise the money and wanted to get in on the deal. Len apparently said yes, because the fellow came.”
He took a breath and said: “The money was paid, the agreement was signed. I’ve seen it. The date on it is March 1. And in any event you can check with the airport. February 28 was the first Len had heard about it. The following day, March 1, he pays over the equivalent of seventy-five hundred dollars. If he was telling the truth then he had those two days, and those two only, to get the loan from Johnny and give him a note. But Johnny had his stroke on the 27th.”
He leaned forward, his words deliberate. “What I didn’t know until a half hour ago was that Johnny was in a coma for four days—from the 27th to March 2. He could not have loaned Len the money because he was unconscious. He certainly knew nothing about the note.”
He hesitated, hearing now the sound of someone’s labored breathing. He did not glance round; he kept his eyes on Osborne, aware now that the deep tan had begun to fade in the hard-jawed face.
“You were in the same spot with Dunham. Once Johnny made an accounting you were cooked. But luck was with you there because Johnny didn’t feel up to business. Every day might be the day Johnny discovered what you’d done and you knew when that happened that, at the very least, he would disinherit you and probably insist that you sign over your oil agreement to him. Then you learned the long-missing nephew was coming, the nephew who was an accountant and would get the estate in order. That’s why you tried to poison Johnny the night before I came.”
He went on relentlessly, relating the story Johnny had told him and he had told Kate.
“I doubt if you expected to get away with it, Len,” he said. “They do a lot of autopsies here and the fact of poison would probably be discovered. But you may have known that murder by poison is one of the hardest things in the book to prove. In any case you were ready to gamble because reports on the drilling had been favorable. Here was your one chance to make your fortune and you made up your mind you would get it.”
He leaned back, suddenly weary, and tired of talking. His throat was dry and he swallowed before he continued quietly.
“The irony of it all is that if the cable had come a day sooner Johnny would still be alive; so would Tenney.”
“How so?” Kate said when no one else spoke.
“With that cable and his partnership agreement he could have gone to the bank and borrowed enough to cover the shortage. That kind of collateral would have been good enough for a loan.”
“You mean he could have exchanged the money he borrowed for the note before Johnny discovered it?”
Ward did not answer her because he was watching Gilette. The Major had been listening to everything, sitting motionless, his shrewd little eyes half-closed. Now he again inspected the watch and its broken strap which he still held. He looked over at Osborne.
“Anything to say, Len?” he asked. “You don’t have to, you know.”
Osborne moved in his chair. “What do you think you can prove, Freddie?” he asked.
“On MacQuade’s death probably not very much. But on this”—he glanced again at the watch—“I think we’ll have enough.” He pushed forward on the couch. “We may as well go along now, if you’re ready.”
Osborne watched the Major stand up. Very slowly then he opened the desk drawer, and just as slowly reached inside. When his hand came out it held a foreign-looking automatic. He did not actually point it at Gilette, but put it flat on the desk, the muzzle turned in the Major’s direction, and kept his hand on top of it.
“Sit down, Freddie. You’re going much too fast, old man.”
Gilette’s face tightened. He put the watch and buckle in his pocket and straightened the skirts of his jacket.
“We’ll have none of that, Len,” he said stiffly.
Osborne’s face was shiny and his lips barely moved when he spoke. The threat in his words came not from what he said but from the quiet, intense way he said them.
“It makes things a bit easier,” he said, “knowing the police never carry guns here.” He watched Gilette take a step. He lifted the automatic. “Think it over, Freddie. It’s rather pointless, isn’t it, being a dead hero?”
Gilette took another slow step, his body tense and jaw ridged.
“Freddie!”
Kate Royce’s voice cut sharply across the room, its cadence commanding. When Gilette looked at her she said: “He’s right, you know. It is pointless. We’re not in any hurry, are we?” She looked at Osborne and her tone grew thin and contemptuous. “Just what are your plans, Len?”
Osborne continued to watch Gilette but he spoke to the girl. “Alma, darling,” he said. “Will you do me a favor? There’s a blue leather box in the bottom drawer of my bureau. You’ll find it under some things. Get it, will you, like a good girl?”
Alma rose at once, unflinchingly, her small face pale but composed. When no one said anything she turned towards the door to the inner hall and stairway.
23
LEN OSBORNE watched her go, his fingers playing absently with the automatic although he did not pick it up. He glanced over at Kate and his smile was twisted.
“My plans?” he asked, as though she had just questioned him.
“Yes.… Do sit down, Freddie!” she added impatiently and waited until Gilette shrugged and obeyed. “I mean, you’re not planning to continue the slaughter, are you, Len?”
“Slaughter?” His brows came up, as though this was some new and strange word. “Hardly,�
� he said. “As a matter of fact I hadn’t considered myself in that light but I see what you mean. Johnny meant nothing to me. I rather despised his dictating, penny-pinching ways.”
“Always,” Kate said cuttingly. “You had only one thing in mind, your own sweet self. He supported you, gave you everything you owned and you accepted it all without the slightest trace of gratitude. With resentment, really. It was never enough to satisfy you and yet you did not have the backbone to get out and shift for yourself.”
“I’m afraid we’re getting away from the subject.” Osborne’s dark eyes held unpleasant glints but his grin remained fixed, as though it had been carved there at birth. “My point was simply that I never considered it slaughter to do what I did to Johnny. There was very little life left in him, you know, and I’m not sure he actually knew what happened to him. If it hadn’t been for Melvin—”
He broke off as Alma came back to the room carrying a rectangular leather box. She placed it on the desk and he thanked her.
“Melvin,” he said disdainfully, “was a fool. A simpleton.”
“What did he see?” Ward asked.
“Saw me at the safe. Naturally he saw Johnny stretched out there but he didn’t know he was dead at the time. But he did see me take the three mortgages out and leave the room.”
Ward asked another question because he wanted to keep the other talking, to keep his mind off the gun.
“I’ve been wondering why you took them. Just to confuse the issue?”
“Exactly. What you might call a red herring, I suppose. I was not sanguine about the death being called natural—though I admit I knew nothing about the button that Johnny must have snapped from the pillow—and I didn’t know then that Gordon had had a row or that there was any shortage. I wanted suspects. I knew the mortgages would be missed. If they stayed missing they would provide an additional motive. I didn’t know what those two chaps in Bequia and St. Vincent would do with theirs once they got them in the mail, but I thought perhaps Mike might tear his up.”
He glanced up at the big man who stood near the hall door. “Sorry I misjudged you, Mike. I hope you didn’t mind.”
“Not at all, chum.” Fabyan watched him with narrow-eyed attention. “I appreciate your interest.”
“When Tenney learned about the murder,” Osborne went on steadily, “he approached me. Suggested we should have a talk. I wasn’t sure exactly what I did intend to do when I went to see him but when I found out what he knew I was aware of my danger. At that I think I could have put him off with a few pounds until I’d had a chance to think of something better.”
He lifted his hand, let it fall back on the gun. “Apparently he mistook my intent. I threatened him a bit, naturally, and he pulled that little gun—you know of course it was his,” he said to Gilette. “We struggled for it and it went off.”
“In his chest,” Gilette said. “After that you drove as fast as you could to Miss Connant’s—”
Ward started to interrupt, to say that Osborne must have been driving the car which had nearly clipped his taxi the night before; then he realized there was no point going into that now. He listened to the Major continue.
“She was sitting out front in the darkness and you told her it was ten twenty when in reality it was closer to a quarter of eleven. Dunham, driving up a few minutes later, saw your car and supported the alibi.”
Osborne went on as though there had been no interruption, as though his mind was still back in Tenney’s living-room.
“I knew I’d lost the watch,” he said. “I picked it up but just then I heard Alma’s car stop outside and I stepped into the bedroom, still not knowing the buckle was missing.… Slaughter?” he said, as though the word had never left his mind. “Yes, I suppose one could call it that, now that you mention it. And frankly I think I’ve had enough providing we can reach an understanding. I don’t seem to be very good at it.”
“Then why not hand over the gun, like a good chap,” Gilette said. “It’ll do you no earthly good. You can’t possibly get off the island, you know.”
Osborne considered this, his grin still fixed, the perspiration glistening on his forehead.
“I’ve given the matter some consideration,” he said, “and I’m very much afraid you’re right. With the help of this”—he touched the gun—“I think I could get the cruiser’s tanks filled. I could get a start all right but when daylight came, and it’s nearly dawn now, a plane would pick me up in no time. Even if I reached the Grenadines …”
He let the sentence dangle and looked out the open window where the sky was beginning to gray. He picked up the gun, replaced it, opened the leather box and took out a tiny, capsule-like object and examined it.
Ward watched him, fascinated, and now a new kind of tension began to pluck at his nerves and a sudden coolness fingered his spine. Somehow he seemed to know what the capsule was for, but because it was hard to make so quick an adjustment, he had trouble accepting his conclusion. He waited, motionless like the others, watching.
“I told you I was in the O. S. S.,” Osborne said, speaking to the room at large. “Some of us, depending on the assignment, were supplied with these.”
He held up the capsule and it glistened in the light. “Very handy at times, they told us. Very ingenious. I kept it as a souvenir. Cyanide, I think—no, not cyanide. I understand cyanide must first be ingested by the stomach before it works properly and that takes minutes sometimes. This is a derivative of some kind, liquid, the ne plus ultra, as it were.”
Gilette spoke quickly, his tone imperative. “Put it away, Len.”
Osborne regarded him openly, the grin expanding at last. “Come now, Freddie,” he chided, “you can’t have everything. I’ll leave you the pistol, how’s that? You see I happen to have a decided aversion to the phrase—‘hanged by the neck until you are dead.’”
With that he picked up the gun, calmly put it in the drawer and closed it. As he came to his feet he popped the inch-long capsule into his mouth.
Ward was on his feet, not knowing how he got there. Behind him Fabyan swore softly. Kate uttered a throaty, sucking sound and Alma cried out:
“No, Len. Please, no!”
He looked at her. “It’s all right,” he said. “Didn’t mean to frighten you. You see, this thing doesn’t dissolve. One has to crunch it, with the teeth.”
He tongued the capsule inside one cheek where it made a slight bulge against the skiny skin.
“All I want from you, Freddie,” he said, “is a little time. Say an hour. Call out the constabulary, if you like, and station them here and there. But don’t rush me. I’m going to my room.”
He paused, his hard-jawed face a twisted mask in which only the eyes were alive and wary and sick.
“The reason I insist is that I am now a man of property. Remember, I have oil wells. I must give some thought to the proper disposal of my estate. Under the circumstances I imagine a holograph will should prove adequate.… Gordon!” he said, a bite in his voice.
Dunham had been sitting motionless on the couch, a dejected forlorn figure who, after his part had been played, had been ignored by everyone. Now he let his glance come up.
“You’re getting a much larger part of the estate than you deserve,” Osborne said. “Something should be done about you. Perhaps some one will lodge a kidnapping complaint against you; I certainly hope so.… Alma.” He looked at the girl and continued quietly. “You have enough, too. And Kate, you’re provided for as well.…
“I think I’ll leave my oil interests to Barbara,” he said after a moment. “For one thing I can be sure she’ll enjoy them. Also,” he said, “with the additional income she’ll be much less likely to marry you.”
He stared contemptuously at Gordon and stood away from the desk, looking at each one in turn, as though to orient himself, then centered his gaze on Fabyan who had moved closer but still blocked the doorway to the hall.
In that silent moment Ward had a hard time accepting this thing that
was about to happen. Osborne had spoken in a bantering, condescending way but the things he had said were true, all of them. Ward sensed this was no bluff. Osborne was beyond that and his bantering had been the product of great effort and mental strain and perhaps a twisted sort of pride. He knew exactly what he was going to do, there could be no questioning his courage, and for the first time Ward began to understand what he was really like.
Endowed by nature with a certain charm and good looks, he had traded on them where he could and when these failed him there were not enough of the more solid virtues of character to sustain him. He had taken two lives, one of them almost in accidental fashion, and he apparently suffered little remorse. To him the venture had been a gamble and he had brushed aside all other considerations. Now that the gamble was lost and the odds had caught up with him he understood that he must pay off; this was his way of doing so.
In that interval when he looked about him, he stood with his shoulders up and his chin high, and it seemed to Ward that even now there was something pitifully magnificent in his defiance and the consistency of his attitude.
“Don’t get tricky, Freddie,” Osborne said finally. “And you, Mike, I’d feel better if you stood away from that door and gave me more room.” He glanced at Gilette. “Unless of course you’d rather it happened here.”
His mouth twisted with the movement of his tongue and Ward knew the capsule was held in readiness. Fabyan waited, hands on hips, his weight on the balls of his feet.
Gilette spoke sharply. “Do as he says, Mike!”
Fabyan countered without batting an eye. “And what’re you going to do?” he asked.
“What would you suggest?”
Fabyan seemed to be measuring his man, the distance between them.
“Maybe,” he said, “I could get him by the throat before he could swallow.”
“It wouldn’t be enough.”
Fabyan remained unconvinced. “How do we know it’s not a phony capsule?”
“No, Mike.” Alma’s voice was utterly weary and drained of all emotion. “He showed it to me a long time ago. He told me what was in it.”
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