Hangman's Whip

by Mignon G. Eberhart

  “I still think Richard’s best move is to plead guilty; tell him that—if you happen to see him before I do.”

  Search turned abruptly away. Diana and Calvin went to the door with him and Search went up to Ludmilla’s room.

  But Ludmilla, already in bed, staring at nothing with bleak china-blue eyes, had little to say. She had told the sheriff about the poison, yes. He’d not said much of it although he had asked questions. What questions? Well, mainly about the people who had been in the house the times when she thought the attempts to poison her had occurred.

  “I’m not sure he believed me,” she said. And added: “It was my bathrobe cord they found, you know. Hidden. I don’t know how it got there, but they think it was used to—to—” She stopped, her lips blue white. “Go to bed, Search. You look like a ghost.”

  All of them probably were staggering from fatigue. It was only a little after nine when Search left Ludmilla and went to her own room, but Diana and Calvin had already come upstairs.

  As she turned out her light she wondered, looking out into the black night, where Richard was. It seemed an age, literally, since the moonlight night, warm and balmy and clear, when she and Richard had sat down there on the pier and built their castle in the air. So soon and so ruthlessly demolished. Now it was so cloudy and overcast that there was only a dim line of blacker shadow down there to mark the willows.

  She had not been alone all day; the silence and darkness of the little room were rather a relief to taut and overtired nerves. It must have been late when she began to dream about the cottage.

  The cottage, in her dream, was amazingly clear; it was small and dark and she was again on its threshold; this time there was no light in the little living room, but she could feel its presence all around her. She knew there was something horrible and threatening somewhere near her, and there was again a sickish, sweetish smell—only sharper and clearer than it had been before. Sharp and clear and strong—and the cottage and her dream vanished except for the reeking odor of chloroform.

  Struggling out of heavy sleep, away from the singularly real dream, she realized that she was in her own room. But there was still something horrible and menacing somewhere near.

  And the odor of chloroform saturated the darkness around her.

  Chapter 12

  SHE DID NOT MOVE. But instantly she was sharply aroused and conscious. And whoever was there in the darkness knew that she was awake. She knew that, without knowing how she knew it.

  The odor of chloroform permeated everything. And whoever stood there waited as breathlessly as she waited.

  Instinct told her that. As instinct held her tense, afraid to move, listening for a sound. Perhaps three or four seconds passed; it seemed an eternity of time but could have been no longer. Then two things happened. There was a barely perceptible motion somewhere in the room. And with shocking abruptness something went over with a loud crash in the hall outside.

  She didn’t really hear her bedroom door close. Yet she knew that whoever had stood there was gone although the reeking odor of chloroform was still sharp and strong.

  There was a lamp on her bed table; somehow she reached it and turned it on. The room leaped out of terrifying darkness into familiarity. No one was there. The door to the hall was closed. It took perhaps ten seconds for her to get to the door. Perhaps she couldn’t have opened it if she’d given herself time to think, but she didn’t.

  The hall was completely dark. And it was just then, hesitating on the threshold, that she heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

  Light footsteps, running, clear and distinct. Footsteps that reached the hall below, became less staccato, all at once dwindled into nothing. There was no sound of a door opening or closing. There was no sound at all from the cavern of blackness.

  And she turned and saw, on the floor beside her bed, a small can on its side and a folded thick white square that looked like a man’s handkerchief.

  The odor of chloroform all around her was sickening. That was the way Eve had died.

  She must have, then, screamed.

  Calvin was the first one to hear her and came running, turning on the hall lights, shouting. Diana followed him and then Ludmilla. She heard herself explaining, telling them.

  She pointed, and Calvin knelt—his thin hair awry, his green pajamas very bright—beside the small can that lay on its side on the floor. Diana had her hand over her nose and looked sick. Ludmilla was white with her hair tousled, her eyes frightened. All of them were asking questions.

  “But he’s downstairs,” Search tried to tell them. “I heard him go—there was a crash in the hall.”

  That much at least was indisputable. A light table lay on its side, and a vase which had stood on it was broken on the floor—water spread from it in a puddle, and some zinnias sprawled in bright patches beside it.

  The can was indisputable too, and the man’s handkerchief. But that was all.

  “Get your revolver,” Diana told Calvin. “Wait, I’ll get it. You’d better telephone the sheriff.”

  But Calvin didn’t telephone then. He looked at the can and the handkerchief, looked at Search and ran into the hall, following Diana. She had got his revolver from his room, and he took it from her hand and examined the loading swiftly and turned to the stairway.

  “Be careful,” cried Ludmilla breathlessly.

  They all huddled together, Diana leaning over the railing, her face as pale as her trailing white silk dressing gown. Calvin edged along the wall, the revolver in his hand, his bright pajamas looking incongruously gay. He reached the landing and an electric-light switch. The lower part of the stairway sprang into light and the hall below was empty, for Calvin glanced up at them, shouted: “Nobody here. Telephone Howland. Tell him to come over and we’ll search the place,” and plunged on down the stairs.

  “I’ll telephone,” cried Diana and ran to her room.

  From the upper hall they could follow Calvin’s progress through the lower floor by the snapping of the electric-light switches and the opening and closing of doors.

  It took a long time for Diana to get Howland by telephone, but she came back into the hall as Calvin, having covered the front of the house, apparently was going back to the butler’s pantry.

  “Howie’s coming as soon as he gets dressed. I think we ought to telephone the sheriff.” She went to lean over the railing above the stairs and listen. “I do hope Calvin’s careful. He ought to wait—”

  “They’ll not find anyone,” said Ludmilla.

  And they didn’t. Even when Howland Stacy arrived and he and Calvin together made a systematic search of the house, opening every closet and cupboard and searching the attic and the cellar with its rambling passages and old coal and fruit cellars.

  But for the chloroform, Search thought, they would have been inclined to believe that she had dreamed the whole thing. The chloroform, its faint persistent odor all over the house, was irrefutable.

  “But why?” said Diana, looking at Search. “Why?”

  The question was inevitable, and there was no answer.

  “I don’t know. I only know that someone was there.”

  “Well, nobody’s in the house now,” said Calvin, sighing exhaustedly. “And I for one am going back to bed.”

  Howland stayed the rest of the night, sleeping in a guestroom with the door left open in case, he said, whoever had been in the house returned.

  They didn’t call the sheriff. By the time Calvin and Howland had finished the search of the house it seemed useless.

  “There’ll be time enough in the morning,” said Howland, yawning. “Perhaps they can find footprints or something. But I doubt it. And I still don’t see why anyone should come into the house like this and try to frighten Search.”

  He didn’t say try to murder Search. Ludmilla said practically: “Well, we’d all better go back to bed.”

  They did. Search made an excuse of the smell of chloroform still in her room and spent what was left of the
night on the couch in Ludmilla’s small dressing room. It was humpy and creaked when she moved, but she felt safer there.

  But no matter, she thought, what any of them thought or said; no matter what the search of the house had failed to discover, she was certain of two things. Someone had stood beside her bed, there in the darkness; someone had crept out of the room when he was convinced that she was awake; someone had run lightly, but certainly and quickly as if he knew the house, down the stairs. The can of chloroform and the handkerchief were proof of it.

  That was the way Eve was murdered. Chloroform and then a thin cord around her white throat.

  But there was no one whom she, Search, threatened. No one to whom her life was a danger.

  Unless—perhaps there was literally no reason for the attack. A homicidal maniac—that was what they called it, didn’t they? It was not a nice thought. And, again, who?

  Ludmilla in the next room turned out her light and called softly:

  “Go to sleep.”

  It had always been Ludmilla’s panacea for troubles. Go to sleep.

  Morning dawned still chilly and cloudy. That was Friday, July 15.

  Calvin telephoned to the sheriff shortly after breakfast to report the incident of the night, and Howland drove into the village and returned with the papers.

  There was still no news of Richard.

  They read the papers—reluctantly, shrinking from the pictures and the headlines, yet unable not to look. Calvin and Howland read every word and talked of Richard’s escape and the possibilities of his capture and once of what effect, if any, the affair would have upon Calvin’s budding political hopes. With Diana’s money safely invested behind him, her ambition to spur him on and his own indubitable talent for making friends and speeches he had, a year or so before (after a tentative committee appointment or two), shut up shop altogether as a lawyer and embarked fully upon a political career.

  “Well,” said Howland, “if you need publicity to get your nomination you’ve certainly got it.”

  “It’s the wrong kind of publicity,” said Calvin gloomily. “Hullo—here’s the sheriff’s car.”

  That was about ten. The sheriff, looking enormously refreshed but worried, stumped up the steps to the porch.

  “Well, now,” he said, “what’s all this about somebody in the house last night with chloroform?”

  “We didn’t touch a thing,” said Howland. “The chloroform can is exactly as we found it.”

  Diana led the way upstairs.

  The sheriff frowned over the can of chloroform and put the folded handkerchief gingerly away in an envelope. Al, the thin, bald little aid, came with him and wrapped the can in paper before he went away with it.

  The sheriff talked to Ludmilla then for a long time in the library, with the great sliding door closed, and after that and sundry mysterious telephone calls, which seemed to consist mainly of monosyllables on the part of the sheriff, he sent for Search again.

  It was almost noon. The sheriff sat ponderously in a chair that was too small for him, watched her with shrewd eyes half hidden by his thick jutting eyebrows and questioned her.

  “Tell me again the whole story. Of last night, I mean, and this chloroform business. Who was it?”

  “I don’t know.” At his gesture she sat down gingerly on the edge of a chair. It was chilly in the house that day, so she wore a crimson cardigan over her white blouse, and it was so dark and shadowy that the sheriff had turned on the old-fashioned table lamp before him, with its bronze base and bead-fringed, mottled green glass shade. It gave an eery light, greenish yellow, so the sheriff’s heavy-featured face looked sallow.

  “Don’t know,” said the sheriff, “or won’t tell?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You say you heard footsteps running down the stairs?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Yes. It was distinct—”

  “There was a light in the hall?”

  “No. There was no light anywhere then. A moment later I turned on the light in my room.”

  “But you say the fellow ran downstairs. In the dark?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’d have had to know the house well to do that.” He was watching her closely and she was aware of it.

  “Yes, I know. I thought of that too.”

  Almost casually he tossed his first small bomb.

  “Did you look at the handkerchief?”

  “N-no. It was a plain white handkerchief—a man’s.”

  “It belonged to Dick Bohan. His initials are on it.”

  “But—but it wasn’t Richard!” she cried sharply and hunted for reasons. “His things are in his room. Anybody could have taken it. It wasn’t Richard. I would have known. And he wouldn’t have tried to give me chloroform. Don’t you see how absurd that is!”

  The sheriff lifted his shoulders.

  There was a little silence. Then he said thoughtfully: “They tell me the doors weren’t locked.”

  “That’s true, I suppose. We never lock the doors. No one does here at Kentigern.”

  “No one did,” said the sheriff, correcting her. “It’ll be different now. Look here, Miss Search, can’t you give me any clue to whoever this fellow was?”

  “I’ve told you everything, except that I”—she leaned forward, meeting his eyes—“I know it wasn’t Richard.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He wouldn’t have done that,” she repeated. “He wouldn’t have tried to murder—”

  The sheriff said quickly: “Do you think it was an attempt to murder you? Well, that’s interesting. Why?”

  “Because of the chloroform. That was the way Eve—”

  He interrupted impatiently.

  “No, no. I mean why would anybody murder you?”

  “Oh.” She drew back. “I don’t know. There’s no reason. There’s nobody who—who hates me—like that. Nobody—”

  Her voice drifted into silence. The sheriff picked up a pencil and tapped on the table with it, a monotonous, steady little tattoo.

  “Nobody would murder you,” he said presently. “Perhaps that’s what Eve Bohan thought too. Well—look here, Miss Search; tell me the truth. You’re in love with Richard Bohan, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes. You want to help him, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t—” He rose and towered above her, looking very big and powerful and threatening, so she remembered suddenly that all the force of the law was behind him. “You didn’t make up this story, did you, Miss Search?”

  “Make up—”

  “Get some chloroform—scream; tell them this story of some intruder—all that in order to make me believe that someone was in the house last night—someone that was not Dick Bohan. That someone tried to murder you—not Dick Bohan. That someone—not Dick Bohan—killed Eve. Did you try to do that?”

  She had felt skepticism in his questions; so that was why.

  “No. Believe me. I’m telling you the truth. It wasn’t Richard last night. And it was someone else.”

  “But you didn’t see him?”

  “I couldn’t. It was dark.”

  “He didn’t speak. You heard him run down the stairs. No one else saw him. There’s only that can of chloroform—and the handkerchief.”

  “Isn’t that enough? Doesn’t that prove it?”

  “No.” He sighed, sat down again slowly, tapped the pencil on the table, examined its eraser, frowned and said: “I told you I’d tell you the truth. All right, I will. Miss Ludmilla tells me that she told you about the—the attempts to poison her.”

  “Yes. I didn’t believe it—I thought there was some horrible mistake, until the kitten—” She stopped, looking at him questioningly.

  He nodded. “Yes. It was arsenic. And, so far as I can discover, it was in the food you gave the cat.”

  “Cook said—”

  “Cook said it came from Miss Lud
milla’s tray. That was her dinner tray from the previous night. That was Tuesday night, the night you arrived. Miss Abbott had not eaten any of the steak. I had a long talk with Miss Abbott. So far I’ve talked only to her about this—and necessarily to the cook and to Jonas.” He paused, thought for a moment and said slowly: “I guess the time’s come to question everybody in the house.”

  “Then it’s true?”

  He went on thoughtfully, as if he hadn’t heard her. “We checked back over the dates when these attacks happened. There were three times; the first time was, she thinks, during the second week in June. Here on the place at the time were Richard Bohan (who stayed at the cottage) and his wife, Diana and Calvin Peale and Miss Ludmilla. Nobody else, although Howland Stacy dropped in for a cocktail late in the afternoon; there was no other caller that day, and Howland stayed only an hour or two, played a set of tennis and drove back to Chicago that night. That night Miss Ludmilla had her first attack of arsenic poisoning. The second time was about a week later; the middle of June. Howland Stacy was not here at the time—at least he was not in the house. I’ve not questioned him about that date yet; according to Miss Ludmilla it was the sixteenth of June. The others were here—the same people: Diana Peale and Calvin, Richard and his wife. The servants (except for Jonas) were later dismissed and a new—the present set came. The others went back to Chicago and are being hunted out and questioned; I doubt if we’ll be able to sift any pertinent fact out of the inquiry. I have not been able to, so far, from the present servants. It is almost impossible for anyone to recall small matters, largely of routine, with much exactness. That is, what food was ordered, how it was prepared and served—things like that. … The third attack occurred a little over two weeks later, and Miss Ludmilla, rather against Diana’s advice, called a doctor from Chicago and, naturally, insisted upon seeing him alone. He consulted another doctor. You’ve seen the report, Miss Ludmilla tells me.”

  “Yes.”

  “It reached her about a week ago. She sent for you.”

  “Yes. She wrote to me and then telephoned.”