The Crooked Lane

by Frances Noyes Hart

  She unloosed the hard-wrung hands in her lap and bestowed on him a lovely, vague smile, the slim body suddenly relaxed.

  Sheridan smiled, too, a trifle mechanically. He had, abruptly and inexplicably, the almost clairvoyant conviction that Tess Stuart was talking to gain time, with all this babble of switches and servants—it was not like her to be so spendthrift with words, and the relaxation struck him—quite as inexplicably—as even more vigilant than the tension that had held her taut as a charged wire. But for what reason was she sparring for the minutes that were slipping away from them now of all times?

  “As you say, it must indeed have been a relief to be sure that no one could overhear your conversation, especially under what you refer to as the circumstances. There must have been times when you found it even more dangerous than annoying.”

  Tess, her eyes meeting his unflinchingly, said readily:

  “Oh, there were! There was you, of course—and no matter how ambiguous we managed to be, there was always that dreadful off chance that someone might have wits enough to put two and two together and make a fairly dangerous four.”

  “And Dion’s calls, too—were they not a little dangerous?”

  She looked at him strangely for a moment before she said in a small, distant voice:

  “Yes—Dion’s calls … I worried about them rather badly, too. Was there something you wanted to ask me about Dion, K?”

  “I thought that it was you who were going to ask me things. Or was it that you were only going to tell me them?”

  She whispered, lifting both hands to her brow and pushing back the shining weight of hair with the old gesture that nearly broke his heart:

  “I don’t know. I don’t know how much I’m going to tell you. That was what I was trying to decide. I thought—I thought that maybe you might be able to help me.”

  “Maybe I can. Though not the way that you expected me to, I am afraid.” He knew now why she had been talking all that grave, unimportant nonsense about telephones and servants; he had been quite right. She had been talking to gain time—time in which to think—time in which to draw a long breath and gather those clear wits of hers together, so that she could use them for some purpose still dim and unfocused.… Time in which to plan. Something had happened so swiftly that she had not yet found time to plan.… He struck a match, lit a fresh cigarette, and continued conversationally, “When I could not reach you at your own house, I tried this one. Someone—Abby Stirling, I think—had told me that Mallory had left some time around eleven because of a telephone message that, I gathered, he had received from you. It was well over half an hour before I called both houses, and this one didn’t answer, either.”

  “No,” she said in the same small, strange voice, “I suppose it didn’t. That must have been the bell that we heard ringing. Timothy and Susan had gone home, and Dion said not to answer it.”

  “I see. Perhaps, after all, Tess, before you tell me anything whatever as to what you and Dion were doing here tonight, I should tell you something; something of the utmost importance. In fairness to all three of us. But, first, will you answer me a question?”

  “Any question.”

  “Thank you. When you called up Mallory tonight at the Lindsays’, was it to tell him that I suspected him—that he was in danger?”

  “I didn’t have to tell him that, K. He knew that you suspected him and that he was in great danger.”

  “You had told him?”

  “No. He had told me.”

  “But these suspicions—when did he begin to have them?”

  “From the first time that he talked to you about it—about Fay’s murder, I mean. That was this morning, wasn’t it, before he went to the embassy? K, how can it have only been this morning? Afterwards—when the telephone message came to you from the airfield, he was sure.”

  “I see. Then it may interest you to know, perhaps, that Mallory was the one to entertain the suspicions. When I spoke to him this morning, I was concentrating my efforts almost entirely on Jack Byrd and Jerry Hardy, with two or three other possible strings to my bow that I was not at all anxious to use.”

  “Are you naming those strings, K?”

  “Why not? It will only show you how very unintelligent a fairly intelligent person can be, and I imagine that already you are aware of that. Joan and Allan Lindsay, for two—and Abby Stirling for a barely possible third. Dion, it seemed to me, had a really impregnable alibi.”

  “Doesn’t the very fact that you call it an alibi mean that you weren’t quite sure that it was impregnable?”

  Sheridan looked up at her quickly.

  “You, Tess, are very clever indeed! Still, I assure you that this morning I was quite clear that his alibi was impregnable. There was that telegram from New York so clearly establishing the time of his arrival—and he himself so clearly establishing the time of his departure—and then I knew quite well that there was a murder that had been committed that could not by any possibility have been hurriedly accomplished.… And incredible as it may seem to you, Tess, I did not at first think of the possibility of an airplane. When I actually did, it was not in connection with Mallory at all. I was still hot on Byrd’s or Hardy’s heels.”

  “In books,” said Tess, her eyes as wide and innocently critical as a child’s—“in murder stories and mysteries and that sort of book, I mean—it’s always the person with a really perfect alibi that you suspect first, don’t you? … After you’ve read a good many of them, of course.”

  “As I have read no more than two or three in an obviously misspent life, the point is somewhat academic,” said Sheridan urbanely. “But as a mere member of the police service, I can assure you that a perfect alibi is an extremely useful thing to have about in an emergency. In such an emergency, for instance, as murder.”

  “No—no—I think that you always suspected him,” said Tess, unshaken. “You needn’t look at me like that—I don’t mean that you’re lying to me. It wasn’t the top of your mind—the conscious part of you—that did the suspecting; it was something deeper than that—that part that dreams, and feels—and knows. I don’t care what you call it. They’ve given it a whole lot of pet names in Vienna, haven’t they? … When did you definitely know that you suspected Dion, K?”

  “Definitely? When Nell Tappan told me that the malachite and lapis-lazuli backgammon markers were his, of course. Actually, I considered the possibility almost from the minute that young Trent from the airport told me that a tall, stooped, elderly gentleman, with glasses and a limp and a German accent and a black band on his arm, had left Baltimore in a specially chartered plane at Crawford Field Saturday night. It struck me, you see, as too many things to attract your attention for one old gentleman to have—and they would be just about the right number for a talented young Irishman who wanted to emphatically convey the impression that he was somebody else. I did not then, however—nor even much later—give up those other strings for my bows. They had to be literally wrenched out of my hands, and a malachite marker thrust into them before I actually surrendered.”

  “I know that you didn’t want to think it was Dion,” she whispered, and for a moment the steady voice was shaken. “I don’t think that I’m an especially grateful person, but I’ll be grateful for that, K, always, as long as I live. Didn’t Nell tell you that my own markers were malachite and lapis lazuli?”

  “Oh, yes. She told me that, too.”

  “Well, then, didn’t it ever occur to you that the marker we found might have been mine?”

  “Yes. That occurred to me. That occurred to me more than once.”

  “I thought probably that it did.” She sat silent for a moment, stroking one of the long white hands very softly with the tips of the other, as though she were sorry for them—and Sheridan, noticing for the first time how fragile they looked, in spite of their slim young strength, was sorry for them, too.… When she spoke again, her voice was very gentle and, tragically and incredibly, a little mocking, too.

 
“When was it that you first suspected me, darling?”

  “You?” Under the shock of that unexpected broadside, he felt his heart stagger and his lips whiten; but the words that he forced through them were as evenly spaced as her own. “Almost from the first, I think.… How did you know?”

  “How could I help knowing? I’m not precisely a fool, after all! But I wondered—I wondered what I’d done to make you really think of it first.”

  “There I am not sure. You see, Tess, I did not even dream that I thought that nightmare of a thing. Something in me built a wall so high, so strong, so impregnable, that every clue that pointed to you shattered to pieces against it. It was like what you were saying about Mallory, perhaps; perhaps he, too, was inside that wall with you, and I did not know that, either.”

  He dropped his head in his hands with a gesture so honestly despairing and exhausted that it was robbed of any touch of melodrama, and when he spoke again the voice was as despairing and exhausted as the gesture:

  “After all, even in the beginning I realized that you were incredibly cool and collected and clear-headed for one so young, and extraordinarily intelligent for one even very old, Tess. And I knew, too, that you were quite fearless, and quite reckless, and intolerant of coercion of any kind whatever. And that you had lied to me twice before that first night was over.”

  “Twice?” The wide silver eyes, the deep silver voice were a little vague, as though she found it difficult to concentrate on this strange girl that he knew so well. “I remember once—about the backgammon marker—but not any other time, truly. And about the marker, what could I possibly have done, K? I knew it was Dion’s, of course, and then I was backed into a corner, and still there was absolutely nothing that I could do about it but lie—even though I realized perfectly, all the time I was doing it, what a desperate chance I was taking. But there was the other chance, too, that I might get away with it—the chance that Fay might have lost her own markers somewhere, and that they wouldn’t ever turn up again—or at least that you wouldn’t know that they were jade and ivory, instead of malachite and lapis lazuli. I had to take that chance, didn’t I?”

  “That and several others, unfortunately. Still, it was twice that you lied to me; once about the marker, which you had quite definitely made my business—and once about Dion Mallory, which was quite definitely yours.”

  She asked, “What did I tell you about Dion that was a lie?”

  “Oh, everything, I think. Not in so many letters and syllables, perhaps, but in every gesture, every inflection, every laugh or smile that implied that what you felt for Mallory was no more than affection, flirtation, diversion—what in this country you call a thrill. It was that lightness and that laughter that gave me the stones and the mortar for the wall that I built and held you both safe in its circle. Did you not know that?”

  “Oh, yes, I knew that.”

  “Tess, do you then love him so greatly?”

  She asked, very simply:

  “But, K, don’t you really know?”

  “No. Not yet. Not surely and finally. In a little while I will have to be sure, but for now—for both our sakes—let me not be sure. Because now I am going to tell you what I started to speak of a few minutes ago.”

  She murmured with the catch of mockery more tragic than tears:

  “K, don’t tell me that it’s going to be like Tosca.”

  He stared at her, frowning.

  “Tosca? Why in heaven’s name should it be like Tosca?”

  “Oh, K, you can’t have forgotten? Darling Scotti, and the candles, and all those lovely soprano and baritone hysterics about the lady’s honor or the lover’s life.”

  “Now that you describe it so vividly, I recall it perfectly, thanks.… No, it is not going to be in the least like Tosca. I have no bargains whatever to propose. Tess, do you remember exactly what I said that first night when you finally managed to persuade me, how much against my will God only knows, to try to find out who murdered Fay? About what I should feel bound to do if I discovered the murderer?”

  “You mean that you would turn the—that you would turn whoever had done it over to the police? Oh, yes, I remember that.… I’ve remembered it quite often.”

  “It is about what I said then that I feel quite sure that you should know before you tell me any word further about you and Mallory, and whatever plans you may have made tonight—because when you know what it is that I am going to say, I think it quite sure that you will not wish to tell me anything more at all.… Tess, I do not think that you will be able to believe me, but I still intend to do exactly what I told you that I would do that night.”

  She said slowly, the wide eyes on his unwavering and unterrified:

  “Oh, but you’re wrong! I can believe it quite easily—I’ve believed it from the first, no matter how horrible it seemed. It was Dion who couldn’t.”

  “Dion?”

  “He thought that when it actually came down to it, you wouldn’t be able to go through with it—but that was because he couldn’t have gone through with it himself, of course. If you’re Irish, with a good soft, sentimental streak running through you from your heels to your head, it simply wouldn’t occur to you that anyone could actually be coldblooded and hard and ruthless enough to turn over someone that he seemed to—oh, well, call it care for—to the proper authorities to be hanged by the neck until dead. But I told Dion that you were perfectly capable of it. I knew—because I’d be perfectly capable of it myself.”

  “You?”

  “Yes. I don’t think that either of us can have even one little drop of Irish in us, K. Oh, we’re romantic enough, but I think that most hard people are a little romantic, don’t you? Ruthlessness and romance are very convenient companions—and if you’re loyal into the bargain, they’re pretty dangerous ones. I know that, too. Loyalty’s bred as deep in my bones as it is in yours.… Still, it does seem even now a little fantastic to realize that you’d actually turn me over to the police as a murderess, just to satisfy your pride—and your loyalty to a tradition and an ideal.”

  “Turn you over?” His voice was harsh. “Tess, what insanity is this? After all those fine, brave speeches about your hardness and your coldness and your courage, are you now playing a game of quixotic lunacy with me in which you are to offer yourself up as an innocent victim, while the actual murderer goes scot free? There, if you like, is something considerably worse than Sardou at his most dreadful! … You know as well as I do that it is Dion Mallory who killed your sister—that it is Dion Mallory that I intend to turn over to the proper authorities before this night is over.… Are you telling me that you did not know that, Tess?”

  Tess, her hands once more wrung hard together, whispered:

  “I thought I knew. But there was always just the chance that I might be wrong, wasn’t there? After all, you did suspect me, K. You did say that I had the motive, and the means, and probably the opportunity.”

  “That was only to explain what deep underneath I feared—never what I acknowledged, even to myself—never what I actually believed, even in my worst dreams. And you know as well as I that I had Dion’s note to Fay with the red stamp on it, and the ruby glass through which the orange ink on the stamp became clear.”

  “I ought to know it,” she said somberly. “I gave them both to you myself.”

  “Well, then, surely you must realize that those nine little words sealed his death warrant as definitely as though he had signed a confession.”

  “Oh, I realize it well enough, I suppose. Even though I’ve never been absolutely sure that you’d worked out how to use the two things together. You did say at first that you hadn’t any idea what the glass was for. Or was that just a lie to throw me off the track?”

  “I did not tell you any lies, Tess—to throw you off the track or otherwise. I was not, you see, by any means sure where that track lay. As for the glass, it was only tonight that I remembered—and while that was not very bright perhaps even for me, I had a long way ba
ck to remember. Nineteen years back, to a stern old gentleman with a white beard holding a candle off a Christmas tree so that it shone through a square of red glass, and a little boy on tiptoes could read more clearly the fine orange slanting letters on another red stamp that spelled death to a spy—and a traitor. I can see them now—‘Troops ordered to move forward night of December twentieth.’ Nine words there, too.”

  She twisted the hands in her lap together until suddenly they looked tortured, but her voice was as serene as the white, clear face:

  “Were there nine in Dion’s?”

  “Dion’s? Did he not tell you?”

  “No—he couldn’t remember. Doesn’t that sound absurd?” She smiled up at him—a small, careful smile, touching and forlorn. “Oh, he remembered that it was about meeting her Saturday night, of course, but he was in such a daze of fury and despair when he finally got down to the quill-pen and orange-ink business that he couldn’t remember exactly how far he committed himself—as to the time and the date, and things like that.”

  “Exactly as far as he possibly could,” Sheridan assured her levelly. “Dion’s read ‘Will meet you in night nursery tonight at eleven.’ As the envelope was postmarked last Saturday morning there couldn’t be even what the law hopefully refers to as a reasonable doubt about that, could there?”

  “No.… No, thank God.” He saw, to his incredulous amazement, that her face was suddenly bright and tremulous with tears—a strange, brilliant shower through which her eyes smiled at him, starry and triumphant. “K, where’s your handkerchief? I forgot to bring one; that proves the kind of steady, reliable criminal I’d make, doesn’t it? … Thanks, darling.”

  Her fingers touched his fleetingly as she reached for the sheer square of linen that he produced, and at something in their touch he drew back his hand mechanically—something so alien from their usual velvet delicacy that he felt as though they had been drawn rasping across every nerve of his body. Though, strangely, they were not rough at all. They were smooth—a curious, sinister smoothness, as hard and inflexible as though some ugly magic had sheathed the soft flesh in little caps of horn.… He sat staring down at his own hand, as though somehow it had betrayed him.