Gertrude. You don’t know—God, it’s cold.”
He was hovering closely over the fire. Daphne, still in the clutches of that strange lassitude, had leaned back again, her head on the cushions behind her, her eyes closed. There was nothing Johnny could do. Nothing anybody could do. The case was too strong.
Their voices hummed quietly and distantly, with now and then a word or phrase emerging. Lawyers—money—evidence—Archie—tongs—nail polish …
“What about nail polish?”
“It’s only an idea.”
The voices merged again, blurring together until she heard Dennis say clearly:
“… a nasty trick of pinching one’s hand.”
“Hand!”
“Why, yes. I was thinking that if so slight a pressure as one needed to grip a piece of coal made the handle pinch as it did, then so heavy a grasp as would be needed to—to kill a man must have left a mark of some kind on the murderer’s hand.”
“A—Oh, come, Dennis, that’s fantastic.”
“And you see, the nail polish acts a good deal as collodion might act. It’s a kind of lacquer or something, isn’t it, Daphne? … Daphne!”
She brought herself back from a tremendous distance.
“Nail polish, Daphne. What’s it made of?”
“I—Why, I don’t know, Dennis. Lacquer, I think. Some thing that evaporates quickly—”
“My idea, you see,” said Dennis. “Oh, it may sound farfetched, but it struck me all at once, and I think it struck Wait, too. My idea is that whoever used the tongs and killed Archie had a badly pinched or perhaps cut hand. And that the murderer may have thought the nail polish would pull the edges of the cut together. Would it do that, Daph?”
“Yes.”
“And also serve to disguise the cut. It might not have worked—but the whole point is, the murderer might have thought it would work. Anyway, I’m sure there would be a cut. I’ve known those tongs long and well, and the damn things have given me many a pinch.”
“Oh, Dennis,” said Johnny deprecatingly, “it’s such a—such a slim chance. I hate to discourage you, but—”
“Yes. I suppose it is slim. But we are in a position to grasp at slim chances. After all, you know, Johnny, it’s—it’s our lives at stake. Murder—”
Johnny fidgeted.
“Something will happen to help you,” he said. “I wouldn’t worry too much. No need to talk of it so desperately.”
It was like Johnny.
“I’ve got to make something happen,” said Dennis. He was leaning on the mantel, staring down at the place where the tongs usually stood against the coal scuttle. Staring at the cotton gloves hanging limply across the coal scuttle. Daphne’s eyelids drooped and then flew open. For Dennis said in the strangest voice, “There were no fingerprints on the tongs.”
“Uh!” said Johnny in a startled way. “Fingerprints! What do you mean? Certainly there were no fingerprints.”
“No fingerprints,” repeated Dennis and stared down at the coal scuttle. Daphne was all at once rigid, except for her heart, which for no tangible reason was leaping and fluttering in her throat.
It was very still. So still that Johnny, who never liked silences, began to wriggle and murmur something about the dampness and chill, the slush outside.
The windows, black and glittering, reflected them knowingly. Reflected Daphne’s shining hair and the scarlet scarf she wore. Reflected Dennis’ long, easy figure, so curiously still. So alert in its stillness. As if—which was absurd—as if he were stalking something.
“Funny,” Johnny was saying all at once. “What’s happened to everybody? First time since the murder the house hasn’t been lousy with policemen. Where do you suppose they are?”
Dennis still said nothing. And still did not move, and there was no way for Daphne to know, as she did know, that every nerve in his long, lean body was strung tight and tense.
Johnny stopped rubbing his hands together and looked at Dennis, his blue eyes very bright. Looked and bobbed suddenly to his feet.
“You didn’t fix the fire,” he said. “You didn’t—” and slid across the few feet intervening and clutched something and dropped it in the fire.
Dropped it in the fire, and Dennis sprang upon him too late and snatched the flaming cotton gloves out of the fire, and Johnny was struggling with him while Dennis tried to push him back and to stamp out the fire from the flaming gloves on the hearthrug. He flung Johnny away, but Johnny returned to clutch again at Dennis. Daphne thought she screamed, but she couldn’t have, for no one came. The struggling bodies of the two men made a confused, changing blur against the red fire. Nightmarish in its silence. All at once it stopped; Johnny was panting, and everything in the whole world was terribly, horribly awry. For Dennis was saying, “… there’s blood on them. Blood on them.”
And Johnny said pantingly, “You’re too late. They’re burned. Burned. The only evidence—”
“The evidence that could have saved us. Your daughter.”
“Not my daughter,” said Johnny, whispering stertorously, and his eyes darting brightly here and there. “And they’ll let her off, anyway. She’s pretty. They never execute a pretty woman. She has more chance than I would have.”
The queer thing was that even then he was handsome and amiable, except that his eyes were so bright and glassy.
“Wait, Johnny. Tell us how you did it. You were so clever. You—”
Johnny gave an odd little giggle.
“You’re trying to get me to talk. Well, I won’t. But I didn’t kill Ben, and nobody can say I did.”
“You’re sending us to death in your place, John Haviland. You can’t do that. I’ll—”
“You can’t threaten me, Dennis. I’m perfectly safe.” He did not even look at Daphne. “You can’t prove any of this.”
Dennis took a step forward, and Johnny humped back toward the door, but Dennis did not follow him; he bent instead to pick up the gloves—gloves which fell in charred fragments under his touch.
“I’m perfectly safe,” said Johnny again. “And I’m going away.” Except for his bright eyes and his voice, which had grown high-pitched and feverish, he looked as unruffled and bland as if he had announced a pleasure trip. “I’ve money. I’ve a little left from it. Put away where nobody could find it. You’ll tell them; you’ll try to set them on my trail, but I’ve got it planned. I’ll—” He stopped suddenly and blinked. “But I don’t need to leave at all, do I? That would make them think I was guilty. You’ll tell, but you can’t prove it, and I have an alibi. I have—”
The door opened so quietly that they did not hear it; they were only suddenly aware of its opening and that Wait was standing there near Johnny. Standing there and saying, “Come along, Haviland.”
“You can’t—I didn’t—”
“We’ve found the keys. You led us to them. Come along.”
“Father!” cried Daphne, remembering suddenly only the false face he’d showed her; she ran to Johnny. “Father!”
He thrust her roughly away.
“They killed Ben,” he cried to Wait. “Dennis. Daphne. I didn’t.”
Wait caught his hand. Turned it palm upward to the light, showing a deep red cut with shiny, puckered edges from the lacquer which only partially concealed it. Johnny writhed and struggled, but Wait held him. Other men were in the room, too. Somebody had the gloves which had been burned. No—it was another pair of gloves, unburned; loose cotton gloves, coal-stained, pulled inside out. And there was a dark brown stain on the inside—a stain which they were fitting over the cut on Johnny’s palm.
Out of the confusion came Wait’s voice, suddenly rich and deep, “Give a man rope enough,” he said, “and he’ll hang himself. You’ve done it, Haviland.”
“It’s a trap,” screamed Johnny, his eyes glittering. “It’s a trap!”
“The trap,” said Wait, “was when we let you show us tonight where the keys had been lost. We found them after you gave up.”
They met Amelia in the hall, who went past them as if she did not see them and into the playroom. Rowley came, too, and Gertrude huddled in the hall, listening and trembling.
But Daphne did not hear.
“You are under arrest, Haviland. Charged with murder—”
“I didn’t kill Ben. I have an alibi. I—”
“Johnny!” said Amelia and turned to Wait. “Tell me. Why are you arresting my brother?”
Wait looked at her thoughtfully. “Very well,” he said. “A fund—an emergency fund—a secret contingency fund—was left by your father. Did you know of it?”
She thought for a moment and said, “No,” clearly.
“He refers to it in his will, but in so general a way that it would have significance only to someone who knew or guessed of the fund.”
“Where, in the will, Mr Wait?”
Wait quoted it quickly and accurately, as if he were reading it: “‘… with the knowledge that in case of a future period of economic depression and financial need the said company and corporation is amply protected and duly provided for under the now existing agreements and provisions.’ “
“Yes, I suppose it could mean that. I never thought of it, however; ‘agreement,’ yes, that might be interpreted to mean something definite and specific. Did you find such a fund, Mr Wait?”
“I found the record of it, but the fund no longer exists.”
“No longer—”
“There is no fund,” said Wait. “This evening, late, we found something we’d been looking for for some time. Since, in fact, a visit to the Loop office of the Haviland Bridge Company. Keys,” said Wait, “that ought to have been in Brewer’s pockets—along with the other things you expect to find in a man’s pockets which were all there when the body was found. But no keys. And no keys could be found here or at his apartment. We found the keys tonight, sent a man into town with them, who telephoned to us after he had roused Brewer’s senior secretary, who recognized one of the keys as possibly belonging to one of the small locked boxes in the company safe. There are a number of such boxes; Brewer himself—and your father before him, Miss Amelia—kept a record of the boxes, and one was for various confidential matters which passed on, when old Mr Haviland died, to the incoming president and manager. It wasn’t exactly a secret, this box; still it was nothing even the various secretaries knew much about. Their duty was to put files and records into the big safe; to see it was locked at night and unlocked in the morning. Not to examine certain small boxes. In short,” said Wait abruptly, “one of Brewer’s keys unlocked one of these small boxes. In it was found a signed receipt for this fund which had been placed in another bank and under John Haviland’s name. Old Mr Haviland’s idea seems to have been to keep the fund a secret in order to prevent its use unless the company was in real and desperate need. And he trusted his son.”
“It sounds very like my father. But I knew nothing of it.”
“The fund is gone,” said Wait. “And Ben Brewer demanded its return.” He paused. Johnny did not move or speak. Wait went on, addressing Amelia: “Brewer threatened exposure—”
“I don’t think he would have carried out such a threat, married to Daphne,” said Amelia quickly.
“John Haviland must have thought that, too. But Brewer told her he would not be influenced by her. Probably he thought she knew of the missing fund.”
“How much money was this? What happened to it? How was it invested? Where—”
“It was in bonds, originally. Bearer bonds. It’s gone, though; doesn’t exist. And couldn’t be replaced without exposure, so Ben was murdered. Ben was murdered by one of three people.”
“Who? Have you proof?”
“There’s evidence on the key ring. Evidence for a jury, which needs, to be just, material evidence. Evidence for me and for the coroner and for the grand jury, who are not given by God any assurance that our own reading of the heart and guilty soul of a murderer is right. Material evidence. Where’s the key ring, Schmidt? … Thank you.”
It was a pigskin case, which unfolded. A row of keys dangled from a bright metal bar and made a small, hoarse clatter. And there was a dark smudge on the pigskin case.
“A fingerprint here,” said Wait, pointing to the metal bar. “A smudge of blood here. Soaked by the snow and slush, but blood, indicating it was taken from Brewer after the murder.”
“Where did you find it?” said Amelia in a whisper.
“Behind the firs along the path to the springhouse. It slipped, I suppose, from the murderer’s grasp when he was trying to descend a very slippery little decline—because someone—Daphne Haviland—was climbing the path, and the murderer heard footsteps and turned away to avoid her. He slipped, perhaps—perhaps flung out a hand to grasp at a low-hanging bough of fir—at any rate, he must have dropped the key case and could not find it in the snow. Was obliged at last to give up and—and return to the house without it.”
“Whose fingerprint?”
“Archie Shore’s.”
“But Archie—Archie was killed!”
“Oh yes. Archie was killed. John Haviland killed him.”
“Do you have proof?” said Amelia again, with stiff, purple lips.
Wait looked at the cotton gloves—the gloves for which he had substituted other gloves—now burned—to bait another trap; the gloves which had left no fingerprints on the tongs; the gloves which had a bloodstain on the inside corresponding to the position of the cut on Johnny’s palm; the gloves Johnny had returned to the coal scuttle after Archie’s murder and under their very eyes. He ought to have seen that, thought Wait; but he didn’t. When Dennis had put the coals on the fire that night there had been no gloves; he had used his bare hands. And Johnny a little later … He turned to Johnny.
“You killed Archie Shore because, when he killed Brewer at your bidding—”
“No. No. That was Archie’s doing. I didn’t tell him to do that. I didn’t know he was going to kill Ben. He promised to silence him. To—” The voice broke and stopped, as if suddenly aware of the things it was saying.
“Come, now, Haviland. We know you killed Shore. We know your motive. Tell us just how and why Brewer died.”
“No. I mean, I don’t know.”
“You mean you won’t tell. Shall we guess? And prove our guess?”
“You can’t.”
“Oh, can’t we! Listen: Archie came to you and had no money and wanted some.”
“No.”
“You said you had none. He said, ‘What about this fund that was left in your care?’ Archie had a position in the company at the time the fund was set aside in your care; somehow he knew of it. You said, ‘There is no fund.’”
“No. No.”
“He said, ‘There must be some of it left. No matter what you’ve done, there’s some left.’ You told him Brewer knew of it. You knew Archie Shore was a thoroughgoing scoundrel; you knew if anybody could get that receipt away from Brewer, could make him let up on you, it was Archie.”
“No.”
“Archie, say, was to dig up something against Brewer; something he could hold over him. You didn’t propose to look too closely into the manner and means Archie Shore was to use. You preferred not to. All you wanted was the result.”
“This is all guesswork. You can’t prove any of it.”
“So Archie Shore set about the job. He thought you still had money; you let him think so and promised him money if he managed this affair with Brewer. And Archie failed, perhaps, to find any weapon he could use against Brewer—any threat, that is, for he resorted to another weapon. A revolver. You were to see that Brewer got to the springhouse to meet Archie, as he had planned, away from the house. You chanced upon the means of sending Brewer there. And instead of saying Dennis Haviland and the girl were to meet about midnight—when the house w
as still, they said—you told Gertrude definitely they were to meet at eleven-thirty. Because you hoped Archie would have finished with Brewer before they came.”
“Not murder. Not murder.”
“Archie killed Brewer. Because, perhaps, Brewer defied him. Because there was by chance another revolver in the springhouse, and Archie must have seen it and at the same time a way to throw any particle of blame from himself. He probably had his own revolver, which we later found in his room, but if so he did not need it. But after that murder Archie had you at his mercy. He told you so openly. He knew what you had done. He had keys to the private box. He could wait his own time to secure the record of the fund that was entrusted to you. He’d lost the keys, but knew approximately where they were to be found, when he dared look for them. He must have told you. You searched for them tonight when the thaw came—and we watched, hidden, while you searched. And after you’d returned to the house, we found them because you showed us the way.”
“You can’t prove it. I admit nothing.”
“You knew you had to kill Archie, for you were afraid to threaten Archie Shore in turn, because he was stronger than you; because he laughed at you.”
“You can’t prove any of this. This is all supposition.”
“We can prove it all,” said Wait. He had hoped for a confession, but he didn’t really need it. It took time and pressure to secure confessions; people never confessed wholly just at first. It might even mean a long court battle.
“You murdered Shore. And you are morally responsible for the murder of Brewer, though unfortunately we can’t charge you with it. Good God, man, we can prove all the facts—the record of the fund, the way you used it—”
“How was it used?” said Amelia.
“Stock market,” Wait said shortly.
“Trying to make the fund bigger,” said Amelia bleakly. “Trying to build a fortune for himself. Oh, Johnny, Johnny, if you hadn’t been born such a coward—and such a selfish fool!” said Amelia bitterly.
In the quiet dining room beneath old Rowley Haviland’s portrait Dennis held Daphne tight in his arms. He didn’t say any of the things he might with truth have said. Things they had all known but that Daphne had not admitted except perhaps to herself. That Johnny’d been kind only when it cost him nothing. Because it was easy for him. That he’d used that facile charm to avoid anything that pressed upon him.
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