by Peter Baron
Kaye looked at her but made no answer.
“Was Keating so clever that he disbelieved my story on the night that Dennis murdered Ralph?” she raved. “No, he never doubted that I was awakened by Dennis or that Ralph’s death came as a terrible shock. The clod—the blundering fool. I was awake, I tell you. I heard it all. Heard Ralph fall when Dennis fired, and laughed to myself. It was supremely ironic, wasn’t it, Kaye, that Dennis should commit murder to obtain something that was even then in my hands? That little blue slip of paper that George gave Ralph and which Ralph had so carefully—oh, so carefully—placed in his safe. I had to bite my lip to restrain my laughter, Kaye. I should have loved to have seen Dennis’ face when he read my note—the note that I had put there less than an hour previously. Wasn’t that funny? Go on, laugh, you poor sane fool.”
A peal of discordant laughter broke from her.
“Sane—you!” she burst out again. “Yes, but not so sane that you will escape the grave I dug for you. Yes, the grave! I dug it for Superintendent Kaye and Superintendent Kaye shall occupy it—side by side with Larry Wade. An unfortunate young man, that. He chose to wear the cloak of Superintendent Kaye and in the end it stifled him. If I could have remembered where I had seen his eyes before—he might have escaped.”
She paused for a moment and turned to look out of the window.
“The grave,” she whispered, “and no one will know, Kaye. No help from the others will save you, my friend. No help from these healthy people with the brains of maggots. Ian lies helpless with concussion of the brain—that splendid sane brain. Mrs. Greer, with her dirty little soul, is strapped to a bed, where she may rot for all I care—and the clever, intriguing Larry, dying.”
She glared down at the prostrate Larry and suddenly kicked him. A faint moan escaped the wounded man and the horrible grin returned to her face.
“There are your sane people! Ian plotting his little scheme in this room—the dolt. Would he have plotted had he known that I was in the garage listening to his little machinations on a dictograph? Even now he does not know how I forestalled Clem on the night that that very amorous gentleman raided Larry Wade’s flat.”
The recollection seemed to amuse her and she sat there chuckling silently.
“I heard it, Kaye, on my little dictograph—it has told me many things. And I got to Larry’s flat first. He was clever, that one. I did not find the slip that Dennis gave him and I could not stay because your thick-witted friend Keating arrived with Clem—I wonder how that loving soul detected me? But he paid for his discovery. I shot him, Kaye—shot him twice, and got away through the servants’ exit of a flat opposite.”
Kaye, carefully effacing any expression of interest, listened intently.
“The luck was with our Clem,” she said thoughtfully. “He didn’t die——then. Like a fool he returned to Reigate. The fool—thrice fool. He knew who I was and yet he returned—perhaps to warn Ian. Was that loyalty? If it was it cost him a big price. I was waiting for him and although he came in by the back entrance, I saw him lurching up the garden. It was I who muffled that beastly-minded Alice Greer—I who shot Clem down and made certain that he would not again interfere with me.”
She rocked backwards and forwards in an ecstasy of merriment.
“Ian never knew what it cost me that night to lay there and simulate sleep while he shook me. He is not very brilliant. Even now he thinks that my draught was doped. So it was, but I never drank it. Oh, no. I made him do as I chose, like a master mummer jerking the strings that make puppets dance. You said my mother’s family had a strain of madness in it, but it had also a strain of greatness. It produced a great, known, actress—my mother, and an even greater unknown actress—myself.”
That also amused her and the insane light in her eyes flared up again as she recalled her own ingenuity.
“It was you who found Clem, wasn’t it, you interfering pryer? You found him where Ian had left him after so carefully borrowing my car. He thought I did not know—and in the morning tried to keep his guilty secrets concerning Clem to himself. But you knew, didn’t you, mister detective? Oh yes—you knew. I wonder I did not detect you before.”
Kaye smiled complacently. It was an unwise thing to do. It fanned her rage against him to greater intensity.
“Yes, you frightened me, but not so much as Larry frightened me. To me, he was Superintendent Kaye—the master brain of the Round Table—that collection of merciless fiends whom Keating talked of so often. Yes, I admit it, your name frightened me. I sent telegrams to Larry, thinking him Kaye, warning him off, but he ignored them. He would have done well to have heeded. His assumption of your name undid him. He never knew who I was, but Keating let fall that Kaye knew the Poacher’s identity. That sealed Larry’s fate.”
Kaye regarded her with even less disguised amusement and risked goading her to an even worse excess of passion to gain the knowledge he sought.
“It was you who fired at Larry the other night?” he said.
“Yes, it was I, but I missed him. I could not stay because Ian was coming down—but how did you know that, you uncanny fiend?”
“I saw you from my bedroom door,” he replied. “You returned to your room and reappeared, excellently simulating the appearance of a newly-awakened person—to inquire the cause of the noise.”
“That cunning was the fruit of madness,” she said and her voice sank to a harsh whisper. “Madness that I felt stealing through my veins like fire. Was I not desirable outwardly? And inwardly, a thing that men lock in stone cells, and shun.”
He remained silent—too wise to move and a little chary of speaking.
“No, you won’t speak—and soon there’ll be no chance. You want to put me away—in a stone cell—as a maniac, don’t you?”
Her eyes narrowed cunningly.
“Oh, no. It is I who will put you away. Do you hear? Beneath the ground—think of it, Kaye—the worms that will feed on your fat carcass.”
He stole a look at the dock and inwardly wondered how long it would be before Keating arrived.
“And with you gone—Kaye, the road is dear, I win. Sanity, bah! It has led you to your death and my so-called insanity has led me to success. Was it the brain of a mad woman that plotted coups—that let others do the work and then pounced? The Poacher, they call me. And truly. Was it a mad brain that conceived the idea of protecting the Colonel on that night when your stolid unimaginative friend Keating would have trailed him? Protected him so that he might risk and I might reap?”
She rose and struck him full in the face, drawing blood. The sight of it made her cower back.
“Blood. My God!—blood—running in a stream—down Larry’s face—running from Ralph’s shirt front, the night Dennis shot him. Blood!” Her voice raised to a terrible scream and she collapsed in her chair, her face covered in her hands.
There was something akin to pity in Kaye’s eyes as he watched her rocking herself in an agony of terror.
Suddenly she fronted him again.
“Yes, you are clever, Superintendent Kaye. Very clever—you let Larry Wade take what was coming to you. You work in the dark like a burrowing mole—afraid of the light. Clever? Yes, my God, you’re clever, but I am cleverer.”
She bit at her nails and peered around the room, into which the first gray streaks of dawn were penetrating.
“Oh, yes, I am clever. Only a genius could have played the part of a carefree girl, with rage and madness gnawing at her heart. Only a perfect brain could have schooled my itching fingers to type the maudlin manuscripts penned by fools for bigger fools to publish. Only a finely attuned intellect could have repressed the burning energy by day that consumed me by night!”
She peered about her and Kaye moistened his lips. Till that hour he had congratulated himself on withholding his hand until the Poacher or Larry, or even Ian, had traced the haul that the Colonel had hidden. Now, it looked as though he might pay for that restraint with his life.
“And why should
I be forced to scheme for the things that are my due? Am I not beautiful? I have plotted and schemed to lift myself from the rut of nasty little cheap typists—the modern shingled misses with their prattle of dances and jazz—imbecile, short-skirted little man-snatchers, born to bear children and die in respectable poverty. Poverty. Bah! I loathe it, and the world stinks of it. A mean penurious stench that chokes inspiration and fetters ambition.”
She flung out her arms.
“No, I am born to be admired, to be toasted and loved—but not by such grave-cheating derelicts as Keating—old and fireless man who seeks only to renew his youth. Nor yet by coarse-mouthed, crooked-minded jackals like Clem Wade. No, my friend, by some clever man like Larry—I could have loved him, Kaye, and instead, I killed him. But I didn’t know—I didn’t know. I thought he was you, you shabby twister.”
She fell silent and rising suddenly walked to the windows. Pulling aside the curtains she unlatched the windows and flung them wide open. Then she walked back to him.
“Out on the lawn,” she said slowly, “there is a newly dug hole. I dug it—for you. By half-past three, Kaye, you will be in that hole—amongst the worms and roots. At four o’clock there will be no hole. And no Superintendent Kaye. Do you understand me?”
Kaye’s face remained immobile. There was nothing he could do or say, but his brain was working furiously. What was keeping Brown and Keating? If they left it much longer——
“Get up,” she commanded, and he obeyed.
“Walk through those windows,” she directed, “and walk straight on across the lawn. Make one false move and instead of walking to your grave you’ll die here. You would be heavy to carry, Kaye, with your fat bestial body, so walk.”
He walked through the windows and then heard a peculiar sound as of some heavy body being dragged along the carpet. Half turning, he saw a sight that sent him sick with horror.
She had seized Larry by the collar and with a strength that he would not have suspected, was dragging the wounded man across the floor.
“By God, you inhuman fiend,” he burst out, “that man’s wounded——”
“Gently, gently,” she said with an evil smile on her lips. “He is in a better condition now than he will be later. Now, however great his pain, he lives.”
With an effort Kaye controlled himself. Her inhumanity shocked even a hardened man like himself, but it warned him of the need for caution. Help should arrive any minute and it would be suicide to do anything at the moment. One glance at her devilish eyes told him that if he sprang at her he would die before he was within touching distance. He walked steadily across the lawn and she followed him.
As he came abreast of the rhododendron bushes, she called to him, “Stay where you are and push those bushes aside.”
Still obedient he pushed the rhododendrons aside, and at her command, plunged through them. He escaped falling into the grave by the merest fraction of an inch and if he had had any doubts of her intentions they were scattered by the thought of the devilishly careful way in which she had laid her plans.
As he stood there on the edge of the hole, still threatened by the automatic she held, he thought furiously. It was obvious that Keating had been delayed and unless help of some kind came, that he himself was doomed to end his life in the grave at his feet. Even as the thought came to him she dragged Larry forward. Releasing him, she gave him a violent push and watched him topple into the grave.
“I have not done with you yet, my friend,” she said. “Presently you join him, but I have something else to show you first. Turn round and walk towards the lake.”
As before, he obeyed implicitly. He was no coward, but like any other man thought twice before inviting certain death. They reached the lake in silence, and she called a halt again.
“It is as well that you should see my success,” she taunted.
“‘Success consecrates the foulest crimes,’” he said, between his lips, and wondered if Seneca had contemplated anything so foul when he penned the phrase.
“This is retribution, Kaye,” she gibed, and feeling in her pocket produced the three slips of blue paper and spread them on the stone edge of the lake.
“Read,” she invited, and he obeyed.
The three slips as she had placed them made a connected message despite the fact that the letters were unevenly spaced and staring down he saw:
“Lake overflow pipe Marske House,” he read slowly and she laughed.
“My uncle George was ingenious, wasn’t he?” she jeered. “Unfortunately he didn’t count on equal ingenuity elsewhere. The lake overflow pipe—I wonder why I never thought of that?”
She stared down at the lake and following the direction of her eyes he discerned the circular mouth of the overflow pipe that drained off superfluous water.
“As a privilege, you shall be the instrument of my triumph,” she boasted. “Put your hand into that overflow pipe.”
He obeyed. There was nothing else to do. In her present mood she would have fired without compunction. The pipe was laid underground, running parallel with the surface, and he was hampered by the fact that his hands were manacled. For some moments he found nothing. Then his searching fingers encountered a handle attached to something heavy and metallic.
He pulled the handle towards him and an oblong metal box came gradually into view. It was heavier than he had anticipated, and as the other end left the pipe, it fell heavily into the water. With an effort he dragged it up on to the rim and panting from the exertion, released it.
It was a steel box about two feet in length and six inches in depth and width, fitted with handles at either end and a small padlock in the center. Its unusual shape made it unlike any box he had ever seen and he guessed that its contents also would do something to preserve its originality.
Her thoughts ran on parallel lines and he saw an almost bestial animation light up her face.
“Stand away from that box,” she commanded, and before he realized her intention, she had fired at the padlock. It made more noise as it flew apart than the gun had made in exploding.
“Open it,” she commanded, and he obeyed, and for the first time saw the Morcovian emeralds and the neat piles of notes on which they were lying.
It was for the contents of the box that three men had lost their lives, he reflected, and his thoughts communicated themselves to her.
“Yes—they are costly, aren’t they? They have been purchased by blood, Kaye. I, myself, killed to possess them, but I did it for the emeralds, Kaye. Because I love them and because they are green—green as the sea at dawn—green—glorious green.”
She gloated over them, but she was not so preoccupied that she did not see the movement of his hands.
“You prefer to die here, perhaps?” she asked coldly. “Keep your hands still!”
The fanatical joy in her eyes had been effaced by an expression that foretold—he knew not what.
“Now, Kaye,” she said softly, “we will return. Pick up that box and walk. Do it carefully. I have gone through much for its contents.”
He looked into two eyes that held an unswerving resolution, and obeyed. Turning, he walked back to the house.
He would not have admitted that he was afraid, but the perspiration was trickling down his face and his mouth felt unpleasantly dry. Every step that took him nearer to the house added an ounce to the weight of his feet.
He was conscious all the time of her soft footsteps behind him, and although he was in a measure prepared, he felt a slight shock when she spoke.
“You can stop, Kaye—close to the grave.”
He felt as if he had been staving that command off for so long that he had definitely prevented it from being uttered. The realization that he had failed was like a blow in the face.
“Put that box down,” she said, and mechanically he lowered it and turned to face her.
“This is goodbye, Superintendent,” she said mockingly. “It is a pity that a talented man like yourself should die unhonore
d and unsung—probably unmourned, save by Keating.”
The name appeared to revive her more vicious instincts and she broke out into a sudden violent tirade.
“Keating—that aged, bald-headed courtier who proposed to me. Do you hear? And why didn’t I accept him? That would have been poetic justice, wouldn’t it, Kaye? That doddering old imbecile wanted youth—and I was to give it to him. And madness. Would he have wanted that, do you think?”
Peals of laughter burst from her and shook her slender body.
“Think of it, Kaye—our children—with the faces of Keating, and my madness. What a divine joke to spring on a merciless world. I’ll repay the clod for the insult of that proposal some day—but unfortunately you won’t see it.”
The gun in her hand was slowly elevated and Kaye saw her finger curve round the trigger. It was the end. As he closed his eyes a report shattered the silence.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
There are men whom one may awaken at a quarter to two in the morning with immunity. Cheerful tempered men with excellently controlled nerves; men trained to repress the more human emotions; men who even smile at that hour. There are such men, but Inspector Keating was not among their number.
It took him a good five minutes to rub the sleep out of his eyes, and dining that time Detective Sergeant Brown stared owlishly at his superior and no less owlishly at the hotel proprietor. That gentleman, dad in pajamas and a woolen sweater, was privately reckoning up the chances of hitting Brown with the heavy stick he held and getting away with it. Gradually Keating got Brown into focus and glared at him. “And what the hell do you want?” he demanded suddenly. “I thought you were nice and safely tied up somewhere.”
“Gentleman thinks it’s a night dub, sir,” the hotel proprietor explained resignedly and had the satisfaction of seeing Brown look sheepish.