by Helen Reilly
And Ellen. She seemed frightened, distraught, as if in the whirl of swiftly moving events she didn’t quite know where she was going. There was a lost air to her. As for the magpie he had encountered outside the florist’s shop, she was a sharp dame. No putting anything past her. She was the wily sort—and that went for her long weedy husband too.
Gregory, the one he had least dwelt upon in these ruminations, was called sharply to his attention some time later. Buying a paper and surveying the dark street casually, the Scotsman recognized Gregory Cambridge standing in the shadows beyond the movie theater. The doors opened and the first-show crowd streamed out. Judith Borrow was among them.
McKee saw Gregory start toward the girl’s slim striding figure, stand still and draw back. Surging out from between the two show placards at the front of the theater, Savage hurried after Judith Borrow. Cambridge remained where he was. Five minutes later he entered his sedan and drove out toward his house.
It was the next morning that the trifle turned up that brought him to the partial resolution of some of these things, a trifle light as air but so sinister in its implications that it rocked McKee back on his heels.
At half-past nine Niles, one of the men watching the Gregory Cambridge house, entered the little room in the police station. Niles said,
“After I was relieved a little while ago I was passing the back of the house when something blew across the snow in front of me. I saw it shining in the sun lying on top of a big snowbank. I picked it up. Here it is.”
He took an envelope from his pocket, inverted it gently over the top of the desk and tilted out the contents. A few flakes of blackened ash and the fragment of a butterfly’s wing came to rest on a sheet of paper in front of the Scotsman.
Segments of orange and blue were divided by delicate bars of deep purple. The texture was more exquisite than that of the most gossamer silk. The wing had been torn roughly, its fragile and translucent loveliness was surrounded by a charred, jagged edge. Somewhere recently, the Scotsman bent and sniffed, it had been thrust into flames.
McKee sat staring motionless at it for a long time. Without looking up he said harshly to Niles,
“Go get Michael Savage. I want him. Bring him in.”
CHAPTER 22
“SIT DOWN, Mr Savage.”
The young man who entered the room and slammed the door behind him showed no sign of obeying the waved invitation to the chair beyond the desk at which the Scotsman was seated. His thin intellectual face, with its aloof eyes and its effect of being farther away in space than the actual distance warranted, was flushed and angry. He said, “I have no intention of sitting down, Inspector, and I have no intention of remaining here. I’d like to know what in hell you mean by having me dragged out of my room in the hotel in this fashion.”
“I mean business, Mr Savage.” McKee was quiet but firm.
“Well, if you mean business so do I,” Savage said furiously. “If you want to ask me any further questions place a charge against me and see whether it’ll stand up.”
The Scotsman’s tone changed. He leaned toward the young man. He said, “Sit down, Mr Savage. I ought to prefer a charge of first-degree mopery against you for being a damn fool.”
Savage’s resolution wavered. He looked at the inspector distrustfully but with slightly lessened hostility.
“Sit down,” McKee repeated, “and take it easy.”
The young man dropped sulkily into the indicated chair.
The Scotsman opened a drawer, took out a piece of tissue paper that held the fragment Niles had picked up in the snow, pushed it a little way across the desk and said,
“You know what that is?”
Savage frowned in perplexity. “Why, it—it looks like a piece of butterfly’s wing to me. What’s the catch, Inspector?”
Every last trace of levity was wiped from McKee’s face and voice as he said slowly, “It’s an arrow pointing straight toward one of the most deadly poisons in the world, Mr Savage. The poison is hydrocyanic acid. Luke Cambridge was poisoned with hydrocyanic.”
“That’s all very well,” Savage said, “but what has the butterfly wing got to do with it?”
McKee explained succinctly. Butterflies were preserved by a process in which hydrocyanic was evolved. It was a simple problem in elementary chemistry. Anyone who collected butterflies ought to be thoroughly familiar with it.
“But, good lord, there are a lot of butterfly collectors in the world,” Savage broke in. “Surely everyone with a yen for ”
McKee interrupted him. He shook his head. He said, “It isn’t the possession of dead butterflies that’s so significant. It’s the lack of possession, the deliberate effort to get rid of the suggestion of butterflies under the circumstances and at this time. Mr Savage, the remains of a paper which was used as the backing for a case containing a number of these insects was found almost, but not quite completely, destroyed in the incinerator at the back of Gregory Cambridge’s house here in Edgewood early this morning.” “Gregory Cambridge!” Savage was startled.
“Not Gregory Cambridge alone, unfortunately,” the Scotsman replied. “I wish we could narrow it down to that. But we can’t. The fact of the burned remains being in the incinerator at the back of his house takes in everyone who was in the house or in the immediate vicinity since the incinerator was cleaned out yesterday morning. This includes the maids, a visitor or two, the lawyer, Mr Stone, Toby Newell, Irene, Ellen and Gregory Cambridge, besides Leslie and his wife Muriel.”
Savage looked from the delicate fragment, still beautiful and glowing inside the charred edging in spite of the cruel treatment it had received, to the Scotsman’s stern face. He threw himself back in his chair.
“All right,” he said, “if that’s so what did you bring me in here for?”
“I’ll tell you why I had you brought,” McKee answered. “The person who burned those butterflies killed Franklin Borrow, poisoned Luke Cambridge and shot Jones. He or she is still at large. A person who killed three times isn't going to hesitate to kill a fourth.”
“A fourth! Kill—a fourth?”
“Yes,” McKee said.
Savage was visibly shaken. McKee could see him turning over in his mind the picture of a murderer roaming loose. There was a slight pause before Savage put the obvious question, put it as though he feared the answer.
“Who, Inspector, who is the fourth intended victim?” he finally asked.
“Judith Borrow,” the inspector answered quietly. His tone carried conviction, left no possible doubt that he meant what he said.
Savage stared at him whitely. Emotion deprived him of speech. He was no longer aloof or detached. His eyes were wide open, blazing. His mouth was a tight line. He jumped to his feet and started with a rush toward the door. McKee’s voice halted him.
“You’re not going to do any good that way.”
Savage said passionately, “Do you expect me to sit here chewing the fat while Judith is somewhere out there in this danger? I love that girl, Inspector, and-- ”
“I’m glad to hear it,” the Scotsman said. “That’s exactly what I was banking on when I sent for you.”
Savage hesitated. “Well, what do you want me to do?”
The inspector motioned him back to the chair he had vacated. “I want you to sit down again. I want you to stop being a boy scout. I want you to come clean, to tell me the truth from the beginning. I want you to stop hiding things and muddying up the whole case. Is that good enough?” Savage walked slowly back to the chair. He seated himself just as slowly, still looking intently at the inspector. A struggle was going on within him but it was clear that what McKee had said struck home. All at once he gave in. The strain of the last six days suddenly showed itself. The fight went out of him. He said in a new and different tone,
“Maybe you’re right at that, Inspector. I’m sorry if I-- ”
“Never mind that,” McKee said. “Your personal reaction isn’t the important thing. No, our job now is to get t
he whole truth, solve this crime and put the murderer in custody. Until then, until that time, no one will be safe, most particularly Judith Borrow.”
Savage was convinced. “All right, Inspector. What do you want to know?” He told his story.
He had done precisely what he had said he had done on the afternoon Borrow was killed in Garth and Campbell’s. From noon on he had been working on the floor below Borrow. Judith had come down to see him and they had quarreled about the mannequin. He had been startled a bit, because he had thought he had done a good job on the mannequin, had really caught the spirit of Judith in it.
Some time after she left he did put on his hat and coat and start upstairs. On the way up he heard the noise that later turned out to be the explosion of the gun that killed Borrow. But as he said earlier, he saw nothing suspicious when he reached the big room above and consequently had left the store. It was when he arrived in front of the show window outside and saw Borrow lying dead behind the sheet of plate glass that he made his decision to start for Fieldston.
As he talked, describing the dead man’s insistence on the green dispatch box’s being put in a safe place should anything happen to him, the Scotsman got a slant on Savage’s attitude toward Franklin Borrow and his daughter. He had been genuinely fond of Borrow, had been merely carrying out instructions, and he had been in love with the girl for months. That was why he had lied in the beginning about her visit to him in the store, to protect her, just as probably she had lied thinking to protect him.
He said that instead of going on to Van Cortlandt Park he left the subway at 207th Street and took a cab from there, because the cab drivers at Van Cortlandt knew him on account of his previous journeys to the Borrow house and he wanted to keep the visit as quiet as he could.
“So that’s why we didn’t get hold of the man who drove you sooner,” the inspector murmured.
When Savage arrived at the house in Fieldston that snowy night he opened the front door with his key, ran up the stairs and saw a man bending over Judith who was lying on the dining-room floor. He thought the man was her assailant, hit him over the head as hard as he could with the lamp he snatched up.
McKee said musingly, “The girl was lying on the floor when you went in. It wasn’t her real assailant you got, it was Detective Todhunter, and you gave him a good sock too. But tell me, Mr Savage, if your concern for her was so deep why did you run off and leave her lying there like that?”
“Because,” Savage answered, “as I stood there with the lamp in my hand—I still had gloves on, I suppose that’s why you found no fingerprints—I heard a noise somewhere outside and a second later, through the window at the back, I saw the lights of a car flash.
“I realized then that someone else had been in the house before me, someone who was trying to make a quick getaway. I raced outside. A car was sliding and skidding down the narrow back road in the rear. It was getting under way fast. I ran after it but I didn’t have a chance, I lost it.” McKee interrupted him. “And that night, instead of returning to New York, you came right on up here to Edgewood. Why, Mr Savage?”
Savage said, “The car that was making the getaway had a Putnam County license plate. I could see the “P” in the center of the plate but I couldn’t make out the numbers. I knew that Borrow had had an appointment with Luke Cambridge up here for Thursday evening and I knew that Borrow had been killed. A Putnam County license plate could only mean some connection with Edgewood where I had been raised and where Luke Cambridge lived.”
McKee nodded. “I see, go on.” ‘
“That was one reason,” Savage continued. “The oth-"
“There was another?”
“Yes,” Savage answered. “The other reason was that Luke Cambridge had paid Borrow a visit in the house in Field-ston ten days before.”
“Wait a minute.” McKee threw up a hand. “Wait a minute.” His face was alight with sudden sharp inquiry, narrow with intentness. “Repeat that, Savage, will you? And take it slowly.”
Savage said a little wonderingly, “Yes. I’m—but that’s right. I remember it very distinctly. It was the night of January second, the night of the day after New Year’s. I went up that night expecting to do some work with Borrow on Easter displays. We did work for just a little while and then Borrow looked at his watch and said, ‘Savage, I’m expecting a visitor and if you don’t mind I want to see him alone.’
“Naturally I got my stuff together and left. I walked to the station. As I was going down the driveway I saw a car coming up. Luke Cambridge was driving the car himself.” “You’re sure it was Luke Cambridge?” McKee asked, a hand across his eyes.
“Positive,” Savage said. “As the car went past me he was leaning forward over the wheel and I got a good look at him. Don’t forget, I’d known Luke Cambridge by sight for a long time. I’d recognize that shock of white hair any place.”
“And this was ten days before the day on which Franklin Borrow was killed?” McKee pressed.
“Yes,” Savage said. “As I’ve told you I recall it distinctly because it was the day after New Year’s and I was still trying to work my way out of a hang-over.”
“Go on, Mr Savage.” The Scotsman’s covered tone held a brooding concentration that was not directed at the young man to whom he was talking. It was the link he had been looking for, the link connecting these two men, the link out of the past which had been reforged almost on the very eve of their joint deaths. There had to be something like that. He had felt it all the time. He crouched lower in his chair, eyes somnolent, gleaming. The picture was beginning to take on form and substance.
Savage said: “There’s more to it than that, Inspector. This is what happened the first night. When I reached the front driveway there was a car pulled up just beyond the gateposts. I looked at the car. I couldn’t see very well, all I could see was that it was empty and the lights were out. But get this, Inspector, I had an impression, and I can’t tell you exactly where I got it, that someone who had been in that car was trekking up the hill on Luke’s tail. Maybe it was a sound I heard, maybe it was something I saw without recognizing it, but it was my impression that someone who had been in that car was following Luke.”
“Yet you didn’t turn back?” McKee said.
Savage shrugged, “Borrow had asked me to leave him alone with the visitor he expected. I didn’t think then it was any of my business. I didn’t know what was coming. But that’s why—-—”
The Scotsman again halted Savage. His concentration had drawn down to an even sharper focal point. The somnolence in his cavernous brown eyes was gone. They were brilliantly clear.
“Not too fast, Mr Savage,” he said. “I think we’re getting to it now. I think we are. This is the crux of the whole case. Let me have it once more. Your impression is that someone was following Luke Cambridge toward Borrow’s house when Luke went there on the night of the second of January, ten days before Borrow was killed.”
“That’s right,” Savage averred.
He seemed impatient to get on with the rest of his story. But McKee took him over the same ground again and again. There was a close and definite tie between Luke Cambridge and Borrow, a tie that had dynamite in it. It had its inception back there in that hotel in Colorado in the summer of 1912. It had lain dormant for all these years. Then Luke Cambridge had gone to see Borrow on the night of the second of January. Luke had been followed. Ten days later, when Borrow was in turn going to visit Luke at Luke’s home in Edgewood, Borrow was shot before the visit could be accomplished. And two days later, when Borrow’s daughter was about to see Luke and have a talk with him, Luke was also killed.
McKee lifted the sheet of paper holding the charred butterfly wing, let it fall back gently into place. The delicate burned fragment shivered a little and was still. The Scotsman drew a long sigh. He sat erect.
“All right, Mr Savage,” he said. “Now let’s get back to the night of Borrow’s death, the night you went to Fieldston, found Judith and my detective there
and ran out of the house in pursuit of the fleeing car whose lights you saw through the window.”
Savage said, “O.K., Inspector. As I told you I ran down that narrow road at the back of the house. The car had a pretty good lead on me and it was snowing hard. For a moment when it was a fair distance away and below me I thought I had it. Trying to get around a curve, it skidded and smashed into a tree. But before I could cut down much distance it righted itself and was gone.”
McKee’s mobile mouth twisted into lines of resignation. He said, “So that’s what you were doing up in Gregory Cambridge’s garage that night when Toby Newell surprised you. You were looking for a smashed fender, a broken bumper or some injury to a car that would identify it with the car that sped away through the woods in Fieldston.” Savage said yes.
“An amateur detective.” The Scotsman shook his head sadly. “There’s nothing worse than the gifted amateur. But it’s the nature of the beast. Boys will be boy scouts. That’s why you’ve been holding out on us all along. You wanted to play a lone hand and thought you’d come up with a fistful of aces.”
“Yes, Inspector.” Savage smiled ruefully. “I guess you’re right. But there were so many angles.”
“Leave detection to detectives. That’s what they get paid for,” McKee said. “When you looked over those cars of the Cambridges did you find what you were searching for?” Savage said, “There were some dents in some of the fenders but nothing conclusive. Of course the fenders could be fixed or shifted in a hurry. I wasn’t able to check on that.”
“Did you look Newell’s car over?”
Savage said, “I tried to but I didn’t get the chance.” “While you were hanging around trying to you didn’t happen to loosen the steering knuckle on Newell’s car, did you?” The Scotsman’s tone was sharp again.
“I did not,” Savage said firmly.
The rest of his story went fast. The Scotsman knew most of it already. His proximity to Luke’s house the night the old man was poisoned was the result of his overhearing Luke’s telephone call to Judith Borrow when he was in Judith’s apartment that Saturday afternoon. His presence in the hotel room when Jones was killed had the same motivation, a determination to see that the girl he loved was protected.