The Balcony

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  Glick asked a few quick, sharp questions. Had Dan and I met by appointment? No. How then had it happened that both of us had set out toward the cave almost simultaneously? An accident. It seemed a circumstantial accident, didn’t it? What had made us both believe that Amos possessed information of Great-aunt Amanda’s death? The Negro had talked to us, had promised to reveal his information. Why hadn’t he brought the information to Glick himself? Amos was frightened, because he personally was involved. In what way was Amos involved?

  Dan had been put through the story many times, but our accounts dovetailed perfectly. Had we any evidence to offer now, before Glick went to examine the mute evidence that could be found in the underground cavern?

  I plucked Dan’s sleeve. “Amos’ unfinished confession. You put it in your pocket.”

  Dan pointed mutely. His pocket was badly torn, was held by a few threads to the jacket. The battle in the cave—the reality of which was doubted by nearly everybody present—had cost us the confession. Dan no longer had possession of the document which Amos had begun to write, and then, oddly, had left unfinished. The crumpled piece of paper must be lying where the battle had raged. So we had to hope.

  Sheriff Glick had no intention of permitting me to accompany the official party of investigation. Dan would be needed as a guide. I could be escorted up to bed to await further interrogation in the morning. I refused to be left behind.

  It seems to me now that even before our party left Hieronomo House and started to retrace the path Dan and I had traversed to Great-grandfather’s cave, I understood that Dan would need me. As we descended into the echoing corridor, illumined now by powerful flashlights, I know I felt a strong foreboding of fresh disaster.

  Sheriff Glick was definitely friendlier. I thought that must be because he was satisfied that the cave at least existed. He had concrete evidence. I felt no lightening of spirit. Dan was far ahead of me. They had not removed his handcuffs. He was permitted to lead, but a deputy—the lantern-visaged Cary, in fact—followed close behind. Cary held a loaded gun, and looked as though he would be glad of any chance to fire it. Glick’s weapon was in his hand, cocked and ready. Since the Sheriff was at my heels, I was keenly conscious of the fact. I don’t remember that we talked much. Dan did speak once, and bitterly.

  “If I’d been armed an hour ago, if only I’d had my own gun, I’d have got your killer for you, Sheriff. And gladly.”

  “Your own gun?” echoed Glick, alertly.

  “Locked up at home,” said Dan.

  Sometimes, in recurring dreams, the same remembered shapes and outlines will appear. Once again Dan came to a sudden stop. Ahead of us loomed the iron bars, the door. Beyond, lay Great-grandfather’s cave.

  Dan stepped inside, and Cary followed. Sheriff Glick pushed me across the threshold. And then, abruptly, everything was different, the dream completely altered. I looked around the cavern, bright now with dazzling light that devoured all lurking shadows. I gasped, and was silent. Dan was silent.

  The cave showed no signs whatever of the struggle we had so circumstantially described. Someone had swiftly put the place in order. The overturned table now stood upright, exhibiting in neat array the worn old Bible, Amos’ brush and comb, the wax-encrusted saucer and a little pile of matches. The cot that had fallen had been hauled back into position in the semicircle with the others. The shattered chair, with which Dan had attempted to bludgeon the invisible attacker, had been removed. Not so much as a broken splinter was to be seen.

  The scattered handcuffs had likewise vanished. When Dan went to the roll-top desk and began opening drawers, he discovered that the paper handbills seeking runaway slaves had also disappeared, and with them, John S. Hieronomo’s telltale ledger. The drawers were empty. There was nothing inside the desk. The rolltop had been carefully dusted.

  Nothing remained as we had described it. We could no longer prove the falsity of John S. Hieronomo’s glittering reputation, the baseness of the business with which he had established the family fortune. We could no longer prove that Amos had hated Great-grandfather and had assisted in covering up his murder, thus beginning the train of circumstances that somehow had encompassed Great-aunt Amanda’s death.

  Sheriff Glick didn’t seem to be surprised. He calmly looked around. He turned several times to survey every inch of the circular chamber. In the glaring light, the place was unutterably dreary, but was in no way sinister.

  Apparently the cot where Amos had slept, the chair that supported his clothes, had not been worth the trouble of concealment. They alone had escaped the general transformation. The Negro’s clothes were folded exactly as they had been when first Dan and I had set foot in the chamber. The worn old quilts, the sleazy blankets, were still spilling from the narrow bed. Glick moved in that direction.

  “Your story,” said he, “does seem to check in one particular. Evidently Amos has been living underground. I wonder—did he tell you why?”

  “You’ll have to wait and talk with Amos himself,” Dan said dully. “Until then it’s useless for me to offer any further explanations.”

  The Sheriff wasn’t listening.

  I was watching him with eyes as dull as Dan’s. As the Sheriff approached the untidy bed, he hesitated. He gazed at it a moment. Suddenly, he knelt and pulled the cascade of quilts aside. He didn’t turn; he was peering underneath the cot. His face was hidden. I couldn’t see his expression. But to this day I can hear his voice, the tone, the words.

  “Quick, somebody help me lift this bed!”

  The cot was light and was easily lifted. Amos lay in a huddled heap in much the same position that Great-aunt Amanda had lain five days earlier. Like her, Amos had been shot to death—shot directly through the heart by someone who had stood very close, taken deliberate aim and fired. Beside his crumpled body was the gun that had killed him.

  Moving like a sleepwalker, Dan approached the spot. Still like a sleepwalker, he got down upon his knees. Quite unconscious that his hands were manacled, in a gesture that was totally instinctive, he started to reach for the weapon.

  “Don’t touch that gun!”

  “Sorry,” said Dan, and lifted dazed and stricken eyes. “I—I didn’t think. The gun—it happens that the gun is mine.”

  Someone uttered a low, incredulous whistle. Glick’s face was expressionless.

  “I rather thought,” said he, “that the gun was yours.”

  XXVII

  “THE CASE IS CLOSED,” said Sheriff Glick with finality and conviction.

  We were closeted in the library of Hieronomo House. We had been there for many hours. Sheriff Glick, two deputies, a stenographer whose name I never learned, Dan and myself. Three of us had talked, and the other three had listened, and the stenographer had filled her pad with the neat and careful pothooks that she quite obviously expected would lead Dan Ayres into the death house. She was an unpleasant-looking woman, thin, flat-chested, gray hair severely combed. She had a cold, I remember, and she clutched her handkerchief in one hand and her pencil in the other, determined not to lose a word if it killed her.

  Sheriff Glick had led the interrogation. His questions had a dry and impersonal flavor, as though he put them only for the sake of form. Dan and I had certain legal rights, and those rights were scrupulously observed. The Sheriff was not unkind or brutal. Dan was allowed to smoke and a glass of brandy was at his elbow. They had removed his handcuffs. The divan had been carried in for me and heaped high with pillows. An ice bag chilled my swollen throat. Glick asked his questions and, as best we could, we answered them. We told the truth we had so long withheld. For five solid hours we talked and—in vain. It was now past one A.M.

  The Sheriff sat at the library table with a drop-light shining on the notes that he personally had made. He glanced at his scattered papers and then at Dan. One by one, he ticked off the points which apparently convinced him that Dan was guilty of two brutal murders. His voice wasn’t threatening or harsh; it was low and even. He sounded like an idealis
tic and high-minded district attorney, determined to avoid any hint of prejudice, as he addressed a doubtful jury.

  “Suppose, Ayres, we start with the first murder. You were with Amanda Silver on Wednesday afternoon. Daisy Witherspoon places you there. She glimpsed you as you quickly, not to say surreptitiously, left the room where Amanda Silver died. The gun that killed Amanda Silver—John Hieronomo’s gun—was discovered Thursday afternoon on a country road near Baltimore shortly after you went that way. Your fingerprints are on the gun. I’ve heard your explanation of these circumstances and, frankly, I consider it incredible.”

  Again he glanced at his papers.

  “Now let us consider Amos—what happened to that disturbed and unhappy soul. You broke out of my office, climbed through the window and rushed out here to see Amos. Why? Why were you in such desperate haste?” Said Sheriff Glick in measured tones, “I don’t for a moment doubt that Amos knew something about the murder of Amanda Silver. But I suggest that what Amos knew implicated not some mysterious unknown, but implicated you, Ayres! I suggest that you went to the cave to silence Amos. He won’t talk now. He was shot to death—and with your gun.”

  Dan and I gazed hopelessly at one another, and were silent. It was all so futile. How could we continue to defend ourselves when every word we uttered was received with open disbelief?

  Once the second murder was disclosed, we ourselves could understand certain things about how Amos met his death. We knew now that the Negro’s body had lain beneath the disordered cot when first we entered the cavern, that the far-off, booming sound we had heard as we groped our way along the twisting corridor had been not the echo of a dislodged stone, but the report of a gun. Amos had died almost as we reached him. The killer, warned of our imminent approach and realizing that we blocked the passage to the surface, had thrust the Negro’s body into the single possible place of concealment in the bare and circling chamber, the single spot we had not examined or approached. Amos’ own cot, draped in quilts and blankets, had hidden his body. Amos’ cot had served also to hide the killer.

  When we passed through the iron-barred door, Dan and I had shared my great-grandfather’s cave with a murderer, and a murdered man. Our blundering search had been witnessed, our frightened words overheard. It had never been intended that we should escape with the confession that Amos had begun, and had not lived to finish. We were not to be permitted to carry to the authorities any piece of evidence linking the death of John S. Hieronomo with the death of Amanda Silver.

  The killer’s chance had come when the flashlight dropped, and plunged the cavern into darkness. In the darkness, and without risk to the closely guarded secret of identity, the unknown’s object had been achieved. Dan and I had fled the cavern, empty-handed. After our departure—probably within the space of minutes—the clean-up had occurred, and every scrap of physical evidence that would corroborate our story of the cave had been spirited away.

  These things Dan and I now knew. Knowledge is not proof. Dan’s words that slowly had become despairing fell on deaf ears. Sheriff Glick had his case, he had Dan, and he didn’t mean to let him go.

  “The first gun,” repeated Sheriff Glick, “John Hieronomo’s gun, was covered with your fingerprints. The second gun—the gun that killed Amos—belongs to you. What am I to think except that you fired them both?” “I swear I wasn’t armed tonight,” said Dan, as he had said so many times before. “My gun was locked up in the playhouse in my father’s safe. The gun itself—if you’d only see my point—is evidence of a plot against me. Someone else got possession of my gun, used it; and the purpose was to make me appear a murderer. Have you examined the playhouse?”

  The Sheriff frowned. The deputies looked significantly at each other. The stenographer blew her nose. “I know you went to the playhouse,” Dan said.

  “I went there, yes,” replied Glick. He leaned slightly forward. His eyes were tired but steady. “I believe you know the condition in which I found the place. I don’t deny you’re clever. Clever and stupid too, as guilty men often are. The playhouse was carefully prepared. Very carefully prepared. The broken window, the safe door hanging on its hinges—obviously forced—the screwdriver lying on the floor . . .”

  Dan stared.

  “You tried to make it look,” said Sheriff Glick, “as though someone else had broken in. But I was not deceived. I realize that your only hope is to attempt, in any way you can, to establish some hazy conspiracy against you. Believe me, Ayres, it’s too late now to confuse the issue.”

  He got up from his chair, lie nodded, and one of the deputies touched Dan on the shoulder. Dan rose. The stenographer folded up her notebook and tucked it in her purse.

  I couldn't believe that: they were taking Dan away, that the interview was over. I must have made some final, frantic protest. For I, too, was on my feet, was standing before Sheriff Glick.

  “Please, Miss Hieronomo.”

  I hadn’t realized that I was clinging to his arm until, not ungently, he disengaged my hand. Dan started across the room, the deputy at his heels.

  “It’s no use, Anne.”

  “I’m afraid it isn’t,” said Sheriff Glick, and my heart sank at the expression on his face. His expression was gentle, almost sympathetic. “It’s painful for me, Miss Hieronomo, to heat you defend this man. Loving, loyal women make the task of all policemen hard. They always have, and I suppose they always will. They listen to their hearts, and deny then reason. I can understand your motives, and still regret that you continue to defend this man—this murderer—who almost killed you.”

  Dan and I were partially to blame for his attitude. Our efforts to solve the mystery had worked as a dreadful boomerang; we bad field out tongues too long. We bad given Sheriff Glick cause to distrust us, and distrust us he plainly did. Stubbornly, he dung to his own personal theory on the evening’s events. To Sheriff Glick, the mysterious unknown, the intruder to the cave, did not exist, was merely an invention of Dan’s which I supported because I loved him. Glick insisted that no struggle bad occurred in the cave except a struggle between Dan and myself, although he did admit that in the darkness Dan might have mistaken my identity. “Possibly Ayres didn’t want to kill you, Miss Hieronomo. In your emotional state you’d be of more use to him alive than dead.”

  It was preposterous—so preposterous that one felt baffled, trapped, completely helpless. It was like arguing with a man who spoke a different language.

  “What about the gold? The gold Dan got from Aunt Amanda. The gold is the essential clue.”

  “I’m not engaged in treasure hunting,” said Sheriff Glick. “My job is to arrest a murderer. To my way of thinking, Ayres and Amanda Silver may have quarreled over the gold. With the help of Daisy Witherspoon, I’ll get the necessary information as to where and how the fortune figures in the situation. Daisy has been rather noncommittal on that score, and I’ve had no time to press her. But no doubt she’ll clarify the point in time. I can’t expect in a single day to pull all the loose ends together.”

  He showed amazing patience, and he was not a patient man. It seemed to me that he was purposely refusing to consider anything that might work to Dan’s advantage. That wasn’t like him either. Or was it?

  Dan was staring at the Sheriff with an odd expression in his eyes. Suddenly, in an intangible way, he seemed to be less tired and hopeless. There was a tiny, thoughtful crease between his brows.

  Sheriff Glick pulled on his overcoat, reached out for his hat. Then, quite deliberately, he turned his back as Dan took me in his arms. One of the deputies glowered, and the stenographer emitted an indignant little sniff. But Glick let us have our moment together, and we didn’t mind the others.

  I think that I was crying. Through tears I heard Dan’s whisper. His mouth was placed against my ear.

  “Cheer up, darling. Something screwy is going on. I don’t know just what . . .”

  “Sorry, Ayres,” said Sheriff Glick.

  He approached us and held out the handcuffs.
I couldn’t restrain an involuntary cry of protest. Dan’s lips were thin and white.

  “I assure you, Sheriff, that isn’t necessary. I’ll go peaceably.”

  “Sorry,” Glick repeated.

  The handcuffs were snapped into place. I moved automatically toward my own coat. Nothing had been said about what was to be done with me, but since I shared Dan’s putative guilt, I assumed that I too would be conveyed to the village jail. Indeed, that was the way I wanted it.

  “You may stay here tonight, Miss Hieronomo,” said Sheriff Glick.

  “No,” said I.

  “Your family is scattering tomorrow,” the Sheriff remarked. “You may spend your last night with them. I’ve no objections. I’ll call for you tomorrow, and in the meantime make arrangements for you to await—ah— developments at the Village Inn.”

  “I prefer to go tonight.”

  “I prefer you stay,” said he. “I must request that you do. No arrangements have been made as yet to accommodate you elsewhere.”

  Again the situation had a preposterous and an unreal air. If I were a material witness, an accessory after the fact, as Glick had suggested repeatedly, why was he willing to leave me behind? He was more than willing, he seemed to be determined that I remain in Hieronomo House. Dan’s eyes met mine. I, too, was now convinced that something very odd was going on.

  “Your family,” said the Sheriff gently, “would wish you to be here with them. Naturally. They’ll have things to say to you, and you’ll have things to say to them.”

  I started to shake my head.

  “I’ve had no opportunity,” said Sheriff Glick, “to satisfy your people’s very natural anxiety about the conclusion of this case. I’ve had no chance to give them facts to which they are entitled. You have my permission to answer any questions your people may care to ask.”

  The clock in the corner struck two. The Sheriff started as though the hour were itself a signal, glanced at his watch, and nodded. Our party moved out into the foyer. The great front door opened, and a moment later it was closed. Dan was gone. The Sheriff and his deputies were gone, the stenographer and her notebook.