Страница:
Getting O'Gar on the phone, I asked him if he had heard from New York yet.
"Uh-huh," he said. "Upton-that's his right name-was once one of you private dicks-had a agency of his own-till '23, when him and a guy named Harry Ruppert were sent over for trying to fix a jury. How'd you make out with the shine?"
"I don't know. This Rhino Tingley's carrying an eleven-hundred-case roll. Minnie says he got it with the rats and mice. Maybe he did: it's twice what he could have peddled Leggett's stuff for. Can you try to have it checked? He's supposed to have got it at the Happy Day Social Club."
O'Gar promised to do what he could and hung up.
I sent a wire to our New York branch, asking for more dope on Upton and Ruppert, and then went up to the county clerk's office in the municipal building, where I dug into the August and September 1923 marriage-license file. The application I wanted was dated August z6 and bore Edgar Leggett's statement that he was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on March 6, 1883, and that this was his second marriage; and Alice Dain's statement that she was born in London, England, on October 22, 1888, and that she had not been married before.
When I returned to the agency, Eric Collinson, his yellow hair still further disarranged, was again lying in wait for me.
"I saw Minnie," he said excitedly, "and she couldn't tell me anything. She said Gaby was there last night to ask her to come back to work, but that's all she knew about her. But she-she's wearing an emerald ring that I'm positive is Gaby's."
"Did you ask her about it?"
"Who? Minnie? No. How could I? It would have been-you know."
"That's right," I agreed, thinking of Fitzstephan's Chevalier Bayard, "we must always be polite. Why did you lie to me about the time you and Miss Leggett got home the other night?"
Embarrassment made his face more attractive-looking and less intelligent.
"That was silly of me," he stammered, "but I didn't-you know-I thought you-I was afraid-"
He wasn't getting anywhere. I suggested: "You thought that was a late hour and didn't want me to get wrong notions about her?"
"Yes, that's it."
I shooed him out and went into the operatives' room, where Mickey Linehan-big, loose-hung, red-faced-and Al Mason-slim, dark, sleek— were swapping lies about the times they had been shot at, each trying to pretend he had been more frightened than the other. I told them who was who and what was what on the Leggett job-as far as my knowledge went, and it didn't go far when I came to putting it in words-and sent Al out to keep an eye on the Leggetts' house, Mickey to see how Minnie and Rhino behaved.
Mrs. Leggett, her pleasant face shadowed, opened the door when I rang the bell an hour later. We went into the green, orange, and chocolate room, where we were joined by her husband. I passed on to them the information about Upton that O'Gar had received from New York and told them I had wired for more dope on Ruppert.
"Some of your neighbors saw a man who was not Upton loitering around," I said, "and a man who fits the same description ran down the fire-escape from the room Upton was killed in. We'll see what Ruppert looks like."
I was watching Leggett's face. Nothing changed in it. His too bright red-brown eyes held interest and nothing else.
I asked: "Is Miss Leggett in?"
He said: "No."
"When will she be in?"
"Probably not for several days. She's gone out of town."
"Where can I find her?" I asked, turning to Mrs. Leggett. "I've some questions to ask her."
Mrs. Leggett avoided my gaze, looking at her husband.
His metallic voice answered my question: "We don't know, exactly. Friends of hers, a Mr. and Mrs. Harper, drove up from Los Angeles and asked her to go along on a trip up in the mountains. I don't know which route they intended taking, and doubt if they had any definite destination."
I asked questions about the Harpers. Leggett admitted knowing very little about them. Mrs. Harper's first name was Carmel, he said, and everybody called the man Bud, but Leggett wasn't sure whether his name was Frank or Walter. Nor did he know the Harpers' Los Angeles address. He thought they had a house somewhere in Pasadena, but wasn't sure, having, in fact, heard something about their selling the house, or perhaps only intending to. While he told me this nonsense, his wife sat staring at the floor, lifting her blue eyes twice to look swiftly, pleadingly, at her husband.
I asked her: "Don't you know anything more about them than that?"
"No," she said weakly, darting another glance at her husband's face, while he, paying no attention to her, stared levelly at me.
"When did they leave?" I asked.
"Early this morning," Leggett said. "They were staying at one of the hotels-I don't know which-and Gabrielle spent the night with them so they could start early."
I had enough of the Harpers. I asked: "Did either of you-any of you-know anything about Upton-have any dealings with him of any sort-before this affair?"
Leggett said: "No."
I had other questions, but the kind of replies I was drawing didn't mean anything, so I stood up to go. I was tempted to tell him what I thought of him, but there was no profit in that.
He got up too, smiling politely, and said: "I'm sorry to have caused the insurance company all this trouble through what was, after all, probably my carelessness. I should like to ask your opinion: do you really think I should accept responsibility for the loss of the diamonds and make it good?"
"The way it stands," I said, "I think you should; but that wouldn't stop the investigation."
Mrs. Leggett put her handkerchief to her mouth quickly.
Leggett said: "Thanks." His voice was casually polite. "I'll have to think it over."
On my way back to the agency I dropped in on Fitzstephan for half an hour. He was writing, he told me, an article for the _Psychopathological Review_-that's probably wrong, but it was something on that order— condemning the hypothesis of an unconscious or subconscious mind as a snare and a delusion, a pitfall for the unwary and a set of false whiskers for the charlatan, a gap in psychology's roof that made it impossible, or nearly, for the sound scholar to smoke out such faddists as, for exaniple, the psychoanalyst and the behaviorist, or words to that effect. He went on like that for ten minutes or more, finally coming back to the United States with: "But how are you getting along with the problem of the elusive diamonds?"
"This way and that way," I said, and told him what I had learned and done so far.
"You've certainly," he congratulated me when I finished, "got it all as tangled and confused as possible."
"It'll be worse before it's better," I predicted. "I'd like to have ten minutes alone with Mrs. Leggett. Away from her husband, I imagine things could be done with her. Could you get anything out of her? I'd like to know why Gabrielle has gone, even if I can't learn where."
"I'll try," Fitzstephan said willingly. "Suppose I go out there tomorrow afternoon-to borrow a book. Waite's _Rosy Cross_ will do it. They know I'm interested in that sort of stuff. He'll be working in the laboratory, and I'll refuse to disturb him. I'll have to go at it in an offhand way, but maybe I can get something out of her."
"Thanks," I said. "See you tomorrow night."
I spent most of the afternoon putting my findings and guesses on paper and trying to fit them together in some sort of order. Eric Collinson phoned twice to ask if I had any news of his Gabrielle. Neither Mickey Linehan nor Al Mason reported anything. At six o'clock I called it a day.
V.Gabrielle
VI.The Man from Devil's Island
VII.The Curse
"Uh-huh," he said. "Upton-that's his right name-was once one of you private dicks-had a agency of his own-till '23, when him and a guy named Harry Ruppert were sent over for trying to fix a jury. How'd you make out with the shine?"
"I don't know. This Rhino Tingley's carrying an eleven-hundred-case roll. Minnie says he got it with the rats and mice. Maybe he did: it's twice what he could have peddled Leggett's stuff for. Can you try to have it checked? He's supposed to have got it at the Happy Day Social Club."
O'Gar promised to do what he could and hung up.
I sent a wire to our New York branch, asking for more dope on Upton and Ruppert, and then went up to the county clerk's office in the municipal building, where I dug into the August and September 1923 marriage-license file. The application I wanted was dated August z6 and bore Edgar Leggett's statement that he was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on March 6, 1883, and that this was his second marriage; and Alice Dain's statement that she was born in London, England, on October 22, 1888, and that she had not been married before.
When I returned to the agency, Eric Collinson, his yellow hair still further disarranged, was again lying in wait for me.
"I saw Minnie," he said excitedly, "and she couldn't tell me anything. She said Gaby was there last night to ask her to come back to work, but that's all she knew about her. But she-she's wearing an emerald ring that I'm positive is Gaby's."
"Did you ask her about it?"
"Who? Minnie? No. How could I? It would have been-you know."
"That's right," I agreed, thinking of Fitzstephan's Chevalier Bayard, "we must always be polite. Why did you lie to me about the time you and Miss Leggett got home the other night?"
Embarrassment made his face more attractive-looking and less intelligent.
"That was silly of me," he stammered, "but I didn't-you know-I thought you-I was afraid-"
He wasn't getting anywhere. I suggested: "You thought that was a late hour and didn't want me to get wrong notions about her?"
"Yes, that's it."
I shooed him out and went into the operatives' room, where Mickey Linehan-big, loose-hung, red-faced-and Al Mason-slim, dark, sleek— were swapping lies about the times they had been shot at, each trying to pretend he had been more frightened than the other. I told them who was who and what was what on the Leggett job-as far as my knowledge went, and it didn't go far when I came to putting it in words-and sent Al out to keep an eye on the Leggetts' house, Mickey to see how Minnie and Rhino behaved.
Mrs. Leggett, her pleasant face shadowed, opened the door when I rang the bell an hour later. We went into the green, orange, and chocolate room, where we were joined by her husband. I passed on to them the information about Upton that O'Gar had received from New York and told them I had wired for more dope on Ruppert.
"Some of your neighbors saw a man who was not Upton loitering around," I said, "and a man who fits the same description ran down the fire-escape from the room Upton was killed in. We'll see what Ruppert looks like."
I was watching Leggett's face. Nothing changed in it. His too bright red-brown eyes held interest and nothing else.
I asked: "Is Miss Leggett in?"
He said: "No."
"When will she be in?"
"Probably not for several days. She's gone out of town."
"Where can I find her?" I asked, turning to Mrs. Leggett. "I've some questions to ask her."
Mrs. Leggett avoided my gaze, looking at her husband.
His metallic voice answered my question: "We don't know, exactly. Friends of hers, a Mr. and Mrs. Harper, drove up from Los Angeles and asked her to go along on a trip up in the mountains. I don't know which route they intended taking, and doubt if they had any definite destination."
I asked questions about the Harpers. Leggett admitted knowing very little about them. Mrs. Harper's first name was Carmel, he said, and everybody called the man Bud, but Leggett wasn't sure whether his name was Frank or Walter. Nor did he know the Harpers' Los Angeles address. He thought they had a house somewhere in Pasadena, but wasn't sure, having, in fact, heard something about their selling the house, or perhaps only intending to. While he told me this nonsense, his wife sat staring at the floor, lifting her blue eyes twice to look swiftly, pleadingly, at her husband.
I asked her: "Don't you know anything more about them than that?"
"No," she said weakly, darting another glance at her husband's face, while he, paying no attention to her, stared levelly at me.
"When did they leave?" I asked.
"Early this morning," Leggett said. "They were staying at one of the hotels-I don't know which-and Gabrielle spent the night with them so they could start early."
I had enough of the Harpers. I asked: "Did either of you-any of you-know anything about Upton-have any dealings with him of any sort-before this affair?"
Leggett said: "No."
I had other questions, but the kind of replies I was drawing didn't mean anything, so I stood up to go. I was tempted to tell him what I thought of him, but there was no profit in that.
He got up too, smiling politely, and said: "I'm sorry to have caused the insurance company all this trouble through what was, after all, probably my carelessness. I should like to ask your opinion: do you really think I should accept responsibility for the loss of the diamonds and make it good?"
"The way it stands," I said, "I think you should; but that wouldn't stop the investigation."
Mrs. Leggett put her handkerchief to her mouth quickly.
Leggett said: "Thanks." His voice was casually polite. "I'll have to think it over."
On my way back to the agency I dropped in on Fitzstephan for half an hour. He was writing, he told me, an article for the _Psychopathological Review_-that's probably wrong, but it was something on that order— condemning the hypothesis of an unconscious or subconscious mind as a snare and a delusion, a pitfall for the unwary and a set of false whiskers for the charlatan, a gap in psychology's roof that made it impossible, or nearly, for the sound scholar to smoke out such faddists as, for exaniple, the psychoanalyst and the behaviorist, or words to that effect. He went on like that for ten minutes or more, finally coming back to the United States with: "But how are you getting along with the problem of the elusive diamonds?"
"This way and that way," I said, and told him what I had learned and done so far.
"You've certainly," he congratulated me when I finished, "got it all as tangled and confused as possible."
"It'll be worse before it's better," I predicted. "I'd like to have ten minutes alone with Mrs. Leggett. Away from her husband, I imagine things could be done with her. Could you get anything out of her? I'd like to know why Gabrielle has gone, even if I can't learn where."
"I'll try," Fitzstephan said willingly. "Suppose I go out there tomorrow afternoon-to borrow a book. Waite's _Rosy Cross_ will do it. They know I'm interested in that sort of stuff. He'll be working in the laboratory, and I'll refuse to disturb him. I'll have to go at it in an offhand way, but maybe I can get something out of her."
"Thanks," I said. "See you tomorrow night."
I spent most of the afternoon putting my findings and guesses on paper and trying to fit them together in some sort of order. Eric Collinson phoned twice to ask if I had any news of his Gabrielle. Neither Mickey Linehan nor Al Mason reported anything. At six o'clock I called it a day.
V.Gabrielle
The next day brought happenings.
Early in the morning there was a telegram from our New York office. Decoded, it read:
LOUIS UPTON FORMER PROPRIETOR DETECTIVE AGENCY HERE
STOP ARRESTED SEPTEMBER FIRST ONE NINE TWO THREE FOR
BRIBING TWO JURORS IN SEXTON MURDER TRIAL STOP TRIED TO
SAVE HIMSELF BY IMPLICATING HARRY RUPPERT OPERATIVE IN
HIS EMPLOY STOP BOTH MEN CONVICTED STOP BOTH RELEASED
FROM SING SING FEBRUARY SIX THIS YEAR STOP RUPPERT SAID TO
HAVE THREATENED TO KILL UPTON STOP RUPPERT THIRTY TWO
YEARS FIVE FEET ELEVEN INCHES HUNDRED FIFTY POUNDS BROWN
HAIR AND EYES SALLOW COMPLEXION THIN FACE LONG THIN NOSE
WALKS WITH STOOP AND CHIN OUT STOP MAILING PHOTOGRAPHS
That placed Ruppert definitely enough as the man Mrs. Priestly and Daley had seen and the man who had probably killed Upton.
O'Gar called me on the phone to tell me: "That dinge of yours-Rhino Tingley-was picked up in a hock shop last night trying to unload some jewelry. None of it was loose diamonds. We haven't been able to crack him yet, just got him identified. I sent a man out to Leggett's with some of the stuff, thinking it might be theirs, but they said no."
That didn't fit in anywhere. I suggested: "Try Halstead and Beauchamp. Tell them you think the stuff is Leggett's. Don't tell them he said it wasn't."
Half an hour later the detective-sergeant phoned me again, from the jewelers', to tell me that Halstead had positively identified two pieces-a string of pearls and a topaz brooch-as articles Leggett had purchased there for his daughter.
"That's swell," I said. "Now will you do this? Go out to Rhino's flat and put the screws on his woman, Minnie Hershey. Frisk the joint, rough her up; the more you scare her, the better. She may be wearing an emerald ring. If she is, or if it-or any other jewelry that might be the Leggetts'— is there, you can take it away with you; but don't stay too long and don't bother her afterwards. I've got her covered. Just stir her up and beat it."
"I'll turn her white," O'Gar promised.
Dick Foley was in the operatives' room, writing his report on a warehouse robbery that had kept him up all night. I chased him out to help Mickey with the mulatto.
"Both of you tail her if she leaves her joint after the police are through," I said, "and as soon as you put her in anywhere, one of you get to a phone and let me know."
I went back to my office and burned cigarettes. I was ruining the third one when Eric Collinson phoned to ask if I had found his Gabrielle yet.
"Not quite, but I've got prospects. If you aren't busy, you might come over and go along with me-if it so happens that there turns out to be some place to go."
He said, very eagerly, that he would do that.
A few minutes later Mickey Linehan phoned: "The high yellow's gone visiting," and gave me a Pacific Avenue address.
The phone rang again before I got it out of my hand.
"This is Watt Halstead," a voice said. "Can you come down to see me for a minute or two?"
"Not now. What is it?"
"It's about Edgar Leggett, and it's quite puzzling. The police brought some jewelry in this morning, asking whether we knew whose it was. I recognized a string of pearls and a brooch that Edgar Leggett bought from us for his daughter last year-the brooch in the spring, the pearls at Christmas. After the police had gone, I, quite naturally, phoned Leggett; and he took the most peculiar attitude. He waited until I had told him about it, then said: 'I thank you very much for your interference in my affairs,' and hung up. What do you suppose is the matter with him?"
"God knows. Thanks. I've got to run now, but I'll stop in when I get a chance."
I hunted up Owen Fitzstephan's number, called it, and heard his drawled: "Hello."
"You'd better get busy on your book-borrowing if any good's to come of it," I said.
"Why? Are things taking place?"
"Things are."
"Such as?" he asked.
"This and that, but it's no time for anybody who wants to poke his nose into the Leggett mysteries to be dilly-dallying with pieces about unconscious minds."
"Right," he said: "I'm off to the front now."
Eric Collinson had come in while I was talking to the novelist.
"Come on," I said, leading the way out towards the elevators. "This might not be a false alarm."
"Where are we going?" he asked impatiently. "Have you found her? Is she all right?"
I replied to the only one of his questions that I had the answer to by giving him the Pacific Avenue address Mickey had given me. It meant something to Collinson. He said: "That's Joseph's place."
We were in the elevator with half a dozen other people. I held my response down to a "Yeah?"
He had a Chrysler roadster parked around the corner. We got into it and began bucking traffic and traffic signals towards Pacific Avenue.
I asked: "Who is Joseph?"
"Another cult. He's the head of it. He calls his place the Temple of the Holy Grail. It's the fashionable one just now. You know how they come and go in California. I don't like having Gabrielle there, if that's where she is-though-I don't know-they may be all right. He's one of Mr. Leggett's queer friends. Do you know that she's there?"
"Maybe. Is she a member of the cult?"
"She goes there, yes. I've been there with her."
"What sort of a layout is it?"
"Oh, it seems to be all right," he said somewhat reluctantly. "The right sort of people: Mrs. Payson Laurence, and the Ralph Colemans, and Mrs. Livingston Rodman, people like that. And the Haldorns-that's Joseph and his wife Aaronia-seem to be quite all right, but-but I don't like the idea of Gabriclie going there like this." He missed the end of a cable car with the Chrysler's right wheel. "I don't think it's good for her to come too much under their influence."
"You've been there; what is their brand of hocus-pocus?" I asked.
"It isn't hocus-pocus, really," he replied, wrinkling his forehead. "I don't know very much about their creed, or anything like that, but I've been to their services with Gabrielle, and they're quite as dignified, as beautiful even, as either Episcopalian or Catholic services. You mustn't think that this is the Holy Roller or House of David sort of thing. It isn't at all. Whatever it is, it is quite first-rate. The Haldorns are people of-of-well, more culture than I."
"Then what's the matter with them?"
He shook his head gloomily. "I honestly don't know that anything is. I don't like it. I don't like having Gabrielle go off like this without letting anybody know where she's gone. Do you think her parents knew where she had gone?"
"No."
"I don't think so either," he said.
From the street the Temple of the Holy Grail looked like what it had originally been, a six-story yellow brick apartment building. There was nothing about its exterior to show that it wasn't still that. I made Collinson drive past it to the corner where Mickey Linehan was leaning his lop-sided bulk against a stone wall. He came to the car as it stopped at the curb.
"The dark meat left ten minutes ago," he reported, "with Dick behind her. Nobody else that looks like anybody you listed has been out."
"Camp here in the car and watch the door," I told him. "We're going in," I said to Collinson. "Let me do most of the talking."
When we reached the Temple door I had to caution him: "Try not breathing so hard. Everything will probably be oke."
I rang the bell. The door was opened immediately by a broad-shouldered, meaty woman of some year close to fifty. She was a good three inches taller than my five feet six. Flesh hung in little bags on her face, but there was neither softness nor looseness in her eyes and mouth. Her long upper lip had been shaved. She was dressed in black, black clothes that covered her from chin and ear-lobes to within less than an inch of the floor.
"We want to see Miss Leggett," I said.
She pretended she hadn't understood me.
"We want to see Miss Leggett," I repeated, "Miss Gabrielle Leggett."
"I don't know." Her voice was bass. "But come in."
She took us not very cheerfully into a small, dimly lighted reception room to one side of the foyer, told us to wait there, and went away.
"Who's the village blacksmith?" I asked Collinson.
He said he didn't know her. He fidgeted around the room. I sat down. Drawn blinds let in too little light for me to make out much of the room, but the rug was soft and thick, and what I could see of the furniture leaned towards luxury rather than severity.
Except for Collinson's fidgeting, no sound came from anywhere in the building. I looked at the open door and saw that we were being examined. A small boy of twelve or thirteen stood there staring at us with big dark eyes that seemed to have lights of their own in the semi-darkness.
I said: "Hello, son."
Collinson jumped around at the sound of my voice.
The boy said nothing. He stared at me for at least another minute with the blank, unblinking, embarrassing stare that only children can manage completely, then turned his back on me and walked away, making no more noise going than he had made coming.
"Who's that?" I asked Collinson.
"It must be the Haldorns' son Manuel. I've never seen him before."
Collinson walked up and down. I sat and watched the door. Presently a woman, walking silently on the thick carpet, appeared there and came into the reception room. She was tall, graceful; and her dark eyes seemed to have lights of their own, like the boy's. That was all I could see clearly then.
I stood up.
She addressed Collinson: "How do you do? This is Mr. Collinson, isn't it?" Her voice was the most musical I had ever heard.
Collinson mumbled something or other and introduced me to the woman, calling her Mrs. Haldorn. She gave me a warm, firm hand and then crossed the room to raise a blind, letting in a fat rectangle of afternoon sun. While I blinked at her in the sudden brightness, she sat down and motioned us into chairs.
I saw her eyes first. They were enormous, almost black, warm, and heavily fringed with almost black lashes. They were the only live, human, real things in her face. There was warmth and there was beauty in her oval, olive-skinned face, but, except for the eyes, it was warmth and beauty that didn't seem to have anything to do with reality. It was as if her face were not a face, but a mask that she had worn until it had almost become a face. Even her mouth, which was a mouth to talk about, looked not so much like flesh as like a too perfect imitation of flesh, softer and redder and maybe warmer than genuine flesh, but not genuine flesh. Above this face, or mask, uncut black hair was tied close to her head, parted in the middle, and drawn across temples and upper ears to end in a knot on the nape of her neck. Her neck was long, strong, slender; her body tall, fully fleshed, supple; her clothes dark and silky, part of her body.
I said: "We want to see Miss Leggett, Mrs. Haldorn."
She asked curiously: "Why do you think she is here?"
"That doesn't make any difference, does it?" I replied quickly, before Collinson could say something wrong. "She is. We'd like to see her."
"I don't think you can," she said slowly. "She isn't well, and she came here to rest, particularly to get away from people for a while."
"Sorry," I said, "but it's a case of have to. We wouldn't have come like this if it hadn't been important."
"It is important?"
"Yeah."
She hesitated, said: "Well, I'll see," excused herself, and left us.
"I wouldn't mind moving in here myself," I told Collinson.
He didn't know what I was talking about. His face was flushed and excited.
"Gabrielle may not like our coming here like this," he said.
I said that would be too bad.
Aaronia Haldorn returned to us.
"I'm really very sorry," she said, standing in the doorway, smiling politely, "but Miss Leggett doesn't wish to see you."
"I'm sorry she doesn't," I said, "but we'll have to see her."
She drew herself up straight and her smile went away.
"I beg your pardon?" she said.
"We'll have to see her," I repeated, keeping my voice amiable. "It's important, as I told you."
"I am sorry." Even the iciness she got into her voice didn't keep it from being beautiful. "You cannot see her."
I said: "Miss Leggett's an important witness, as you probably know, in a robbery and murder job. Well, we've got to see her. If it suits you better, I'm willing to wait half an hour till we can get a policeman up here with whatever authority you make necessary. We're going to see her."
Collinson said something unintelligible, though it sounded apologetic.
Aaronia Haldorn made the slightest of bows.
"You may do as you see fit," she said coldly. "I do not approve of your disturbing Miss Leggett against her wishes, and so far as my permission is concerned, I do not give it. If you insist, I cannot prevent you."
"Thanks. Where is she?"
"Her room is on the fifth floor, just beyond the stairs, to the left."
She bent her head a little once more and went away.
Collinson put a hand on my arm, mumbling: "I don't know whether I-whether we ought to do this. Gabrielle's not going to like it. She won't-"
"Suit yourself," I growled, "but I'm going up. Maybe she won't like it, but neither do I like having people running away and hiding when I want to ask them about stolen diamonds."
He frowned, chewed his lips, and made uncomfortable faces, but he went along with me. We found an automatic elevator, rode to the fifth floor, and went down a purple-carpeted corridor to the door just beyond the stairs on the left-hand side.
I tapped the door with the back of my hand. There was no answer from inside. I tapped again, louder.
A voice sounded inside the room. It might have been anybody's voice, though probably a woman's. It was too faint for us to know what it said and too smothered for us to know who was saying it.
I poked Collinson with my elbow and ordered: "Call her."
He pulled at his collar with a forefinger and called hoarsely: "Gaby, it's Eric."
That didn't bring an answer.
I thumped the wood again, calling: "Open the door."
The voice inside said something that was nothing to me. I repeated my thumping and calling. Down the corridor a door opened and a sallow thin-haired old man's head stuck out and asked: "What's the matter?" I said: "None of your damned business," and pounded the door again.
The inside voice came strong enough now to let us know that it was complaining, though no words could be made out yet. I rattled the knob and found that the door was unlocked. Rattling the knob some more, I worked the door open an inch or so. Then the voice was clearer. I heard soft feet on the floor. I heard a choking sob. I pushed the door open.
Eric Collinson made a noise in his throat that was like somebody very far away yelling horribly.
Gabrielle Leggett stood beside the bed, swaying a little, holding the white foot-rail of the bed with one hand. Her face was white as lime. Her eyes were all brown, dull, focused on nothing, and her small forehead was wrinkled. She looked as if she knew there was something in front of her and was wondering what it was. She had on one yellow stocking, a brown velvet skirt that had been slept in, and a yellow chemise. Scattered around the room were a pair of brown slippers, the other stocking, a brown and gold blouse, a brown coat, and a brown and yellow hat.
Everything else in the room was white: white-papered walls and white-painted ceiling; white-enameled chairs, bed, table, fixtures-even to the telephone-and woodwork; white felt on the floor. None of the furniture was hospital furniture, but solid whiteness gave it that appearance. There were two windows, and two doors besides the one I had opened. The door on the left opened into a bathroom, the one on the right into a small dressing-room.
I pushed Collinson into the room, followed him, and closed the door. There was no key in it, and no place for a key, no lock of any fixable sort. Collinson stood gaping at the girl, his jaw sagging, his eyes as vacant as hers; but there was more horror in his face. She leaned against the foot of the bed and stared at nothing with dark, blank eyes in a ghastly, puzzled face.
I put an arm around her and sat her on the side of the bed, telling Collinson: "Gather up her clothes." I had to tell him twice before he came out of his trance.
He brought me her things and I began dressing her. He dug his fingers into my shoulder and protested in a voice that would have been appropriate if I had been robbing a poor-box:
"No! You can't-"
"What the hell?" I asked, pushing his hand away. "You can have the job if you want it."
He was sweating. He gulped and stuttered: "No, no! I couldn't-it-" He broke off and walked to the window.
"She told me you were an ass," I said to his back, and discovered I was putting the brown and gold blouse on her backwards. She might as well have been a wax figure, for all the help she gave me, but at least she didn't struggle when I wrestled her around, and she stayed where I shoved her.
By the time I had got her into coat and hat, Collinson had come away from the window and was spluttering questions at me. What was the matter with her? Oughtn't we to get a doctor? Was it safe to take her out? And when I stood up, he took her away from me, supporting her with his long, thick arms, babbling: "It's Eric, Gaby. Don't you know me? Speak to me. What is the matter, dear?"
"There's nothing the matter except that she's got a skinful of dope," I said. "Don't try to bring her out of it. Wait till we get her home. You take this arm and I'll take that. She can walk all right. If we run into anybody, just keep going and let me handle them. Let's go."
We didn't meet anybody. We went out to the elevator, down in it to the ground floor, across the foyer, and into the street without seeing a single person.
We went down to the corner where we had left Mickey in the Chrysler.
"That's all for you," I told him.
He said: "Right, so long," and went away.
Collinson and I wedged the girl between us in the roadster, and he put it in motion.
We rode three blocks. Then he asked: "Are you sure home's the best place for her?"
I said I was. He didn't say anything for five more blocks and then repeated his question, adding something about a hospital.
"Why not a newspaper office?" I sneered.
Three blocks of silence, and he started again: "I know a doctor who-"
"I've got work to do," I said; "and Miss Leggett home now, in the shape she's in now, will help me get it done. So she goes home."
He scowled, accusing me angrily: "You'd humiliate her, disgrace her, endanger her life, for the sake of-"
"Her life's in no more danger than yours or mine. She's simply got a little more of the junk in her than she can stand up under. And she took it. I didn't give it to her."
The girl we were talking about was alive and breathing between us-even sitting up with her eyes open-but knowing no more of what was going on than if she had been in Finland.
We should have turned to the right at the next corner. Collinson held the car straight and stepped it up to forty-five miles an hour, staring ahead, his face hard and lumpy.
"Take the next turn," I commanded.
"No," he said, and didn't. The speedometer showed a 50, and people on the sidewalks began looking after us as we whizzed by.
"Well?" I asked, wriggling an arm loose from the girl's side.
"We're going down the peninsula," he said firmly. "She's not going home in her condition."
I grunted: "Yeah?" and flashed my free hand at the controls. He knocked it aside, holding the wheel with one hand, stretching the other out to block me if I tried again.
"Don't do that," he cautioned me, increasing our speed another half-dozen miles. "You know what will happen to all of us if you-"
I cursed him, bitterly, fairly thoroughly, and from the heart. His face jerked around to me, full of righteous indignation because, I suppose, my language wasn't the kind one should use in a lady's company.
And that brought it about.
A blue sedan came out of a cross-street a split second before we got there. Collinson's eyes and attention got back to his driving in time to twist the roadster away from the sedan, but not in time to make a neat job of it. We missed the sedan by a couple of inches, but as we passed behind it our rear wheels started sliding out of line. Collinson did what he could, giving the roadster its head, going with the skid, but the corner curb wouldn't co-operate. It stood stiff and hard where it was. We hit it sidewise and rolled over on the lamp-post behind it. The lamp-post snapped, crashed down on the sidewalk. The roadster, over on its side, spilled us out around the lamp-post. Gas from the broken post roared up at our feet.
Collinson, most of the skin scraped from one side of his face, crawled back on hands and knees to turn off the roadster's engine. I sat up, raising the girl, who was on my chest, with me. My right shoulder and arm were out of whack, dead. The girl was making whimpering noises in her chest, but I couldn't see any marks on her except a shallow scratch on one cheek. I had been her cushion, had taken the jolt for her. The soreness of my chest, belly, and back, the lameness of my shoulder and arm, told me how much I had saved her.
People helped us up. Collinson stood with his arms around the girl, begging her to say she wasn't dead, and so on. The smash had jarred her into semi-consciousness, but she still didn't know whether there had been an accident or what. I went over and helped Collinson hold her up-though neither needed help-saying earnestly to the gathering crowd: "We've got to get her home. Who can-?"
A pudgy man in plus fours offered his services. Collinson and I got in the back of his car with the girl, and I gave the pudgy man her address. He said something about a hospital, but I insisted that home was the place for her. Collinson was too upset to say anything. Twenty minutes later we took the girl out of the car in front of her house. I thanked the pudgy man profusely, giving him no opportunity to follow us indoors.
Early in the morning there was a telegram from our New York office. Decoded, it read:
LOUIS UPTON FORMER PROPRIETOR DETECTIVE AGENCY HERE
STOP ARRESTED SEPTEMBER FIRST ONE NINE TWO THREE FOR
BRIBING TWO JURORS IN SEXTON MURDER TRIAL STOP TRIED TO
SAVE HIMSELF BY IMPLICATING HARRY RUPPERT OPERATIVE IN
HIS EMPLOY STOP BOTH MEN CONVICTED STOP BOTH RELEASED
FROM SING SING FEBRUARY SIX THIS YEAR STOP RUPPERT SAID TO
HAVE THREATENED TO KILL UPTON STOP RUPPERT THIRTY TWO
YEARS FIVE FEET ELEVEN INCHES HUNDRED FIFTY POUNDS BROWN
HAIR AND EYES SALLOW COMPLEXION THIN FACE LONG THIN NOSE
WALKS WITH STOOP AND CHIN OUT STOP MAILING PHOTOGRAPHS
That placed Ruppert definitely enough as the man Mrs. Priestly and Daley had seen and the man who had probably killed Upton.
O'Gar called me on the phone to tell me: "That dinge of yours-Rhino Tingley-was picked up in a hock shop last night trying to unload some jewelry. None of it was loose diamonds. We haven't been able to crack him yet, just got him identified. I sent a man out to Leggett's with some of the stuff, thinking it might be theirs, but they said no."
That didn't fit in anywhere. I suggested: "Try Halstead and Beauchamp. Tell them you think the stuff is Leggett's. Don't tell them he said it wasn't."
Half an hour later the detective-sergeant phoned me again, from the jewelers', to tell me that Halstead had positively identified two pieces-a string of pearls and a topaz brooch-as articles Leggett had purchased there for his daughter.
"That's swell," I said. "Now will you do this? Go out to Rhino's flat and put the screws on his woman, Minnie Hershey. Frisk the joint, rough her up; the more you scare her, the better. She may be wearing an emerald ring. If she is, or if it-or any other jewelry that might be the Leggetts'— is there, you can take it away with you; but don't stay too long and don't bother her afterwards. I've got her covered. Just stir her up and beat it."
"I'll turn her white," O'Gar promised.
Dick Foley was in the operatives' room, writing his report on a warehouse robbery that had kept him up all night. I chased him out to help Mickey with the mulatto.
"Both of you tail her if she leaves her joint after the police are through," I said, "and as soon as you put her in anywhere, one of you get to a phone and let me know."
I went back to my office and burned cigarettes. I was ruining the third one when Eric Collinson phoned to ask if I had found his Gabrielle yet.
"Not quite, but I've got prospects. If you aren't busy, you might come over and go along with me-if it so happens that there turns out to be some place to go."
He said, very eagerly, that he would do that.
A few minutes later Mickey Linehan phoned: "The high yellow's gone visiting," and gave me a Pacific Avenue address.
The phone rang again before I got it out of my hand.
"This is Watt Halstead," a voice said. "Can you come down to see me for a minute or two?"
"Not now. What is it?"
"It's about Edgar Leggett, and it's quite puzzling. The police brought some jewelry in this morning, asking whether we knew whose it was. I recognized a string of pearls and a brooch that Edgar Leggett bought from us for his daughter last year-the brooch in the spring, the pearls at Christmas. After the police had gone, I, quite naturally, phoned Leggett; and he took the most peculiar attitude. He waited until I had told him about it, then said: 'I thank you very much for your interference in my affairs,' and hung up. What do you suppose is the matter with him?"
"God knows. Thanks. I've got to run now, but I'll stop in when I get a chance."
I hunted up Owen Fitzstephan's number, called it, and heard his drawled: "Hello."
"You'd better get busy on your book-borrowing if any good's to come of it," I said.
"Why? Are things taking place?"
"Things are."
"Such as?" he asked.
"This and that, but it's no time for anybody who wants to poke his nose into the Leggett mysteries to be dilly-dallying with pieces about unconscious minds."
"Right," he said: "I'm off to the front now."
Eric Collinson had come in while I was talking to the novelist.
"Come on," I said, leading the way out towards the elevators. "This might not be a false alarm."
"Where are we going?" he asked impatiently. "Have you found her? Is she all right?"
I replied to the only one of his questions that I had the answer to by giving him the Pacific Avenue address Mickey had given me. It meant something to Collinson. He said: "That's Joseph's place."
We were in the elevator with half a dozen other people. I held my response down to a "Yeah?"
He had a Chrysler roadster parked around the corner. We got into it and began bucking traffic and traffic signals towards Pacific Avenue.
I asked: "Who is Joseph?"
"Another cult. He's the head of it. He calls his place the Temple of the Holy Grail. It's the fashionable one just now. You know how they come and go in California. I don't like having Gabrielle there, if that's where she is-though-I don't know-they may be all right. He's one of Mr. Leggett's queer friends. Do you know that she's there?"
"Maybe. Is she a member of the cult?"
"She goes there, yes. I've been there with her."
"What sort of a layout is it?"
"Oh, it seems to be all right," he said somewhat reluctantly. "The right sort of people: Mrs. Payson Laurence, and the Ralph Colemans, and Mrs. Livingston Rodman, people like that. And the Haldorns-that's Joseph and his wife Aaronia-seem to be quite all right, but-but I don't like the idea of Gabriclie going there like this." He missed the end of a cable car with the Chrysler's right wheel. "I don't think it's good for her to come too much under their influence."
"You've been there; what is their brand of hocus-pocus?" I asked.
"It isn't hocus-pocus, really," he replied, wrinkling his forehead. "I don't know very much about their creed, or anything like that, but I've been to their services with Gabrielle, and they're quite as dignified, as beautiful even, as either Episcopalian or Catholic services. You mustn't think that this is the Holy Roller or House of David sort of thing. It isn't at all. Whatever it is, it is quite first-rate. The Haldorns are people of-of-well, more culture than I."
"Then what's the matter with them?"
He shook his head gloomily. "I honestly don't know that anything is. I don't like it. I don't like having Gabrielle go off like this without letting anybody know where she's gone. Do you think her parents knew where she had gone?"
"No."
"I don't think so either," he said.
From the street the Temple of the Holy Grail looked like what it had originally been, a six-story yellow brick apartment building. There was nothing about its exterior to show that it wasn't still that. I made Collinson drive past it to the corner where Mickey Linehan was leaning his lop-sided bulk against a stone wall. He came to the car as it stopped at the curb.
"The dark meat left ten minutes ago," he reported, "with Dick behind her. Nobody else that looks like anybody you listed has been out."
"Camp here in the car and watch the door," I told him. "We're going in," I said to Collinson. "Let me do most of the talking."
When we reached the Temple door I had to caution him: "Try not breathing so hard. Everything will probably be oke."
I rang the bell. The door was opened immediately by a broad-shouldered, meaty woman of some year close to fifty. She was a good three inches taller than my five feet six. Flesh hung in little bags on her face, but there was neither softness nor looseness in her eyes and mouth. Her long upper lip had been shaved. She was dressed in black, black clothes that covered her from chin and ear-lobes to within less than an inch of the floor.
"We want to see Miss Leggett," I said.
She pretended she hadn't understood me.
"We want to see Miss Leggett," I repeated, "Miss Gabrielle Leggett."
"I don't know." Her voice was bass. "But come in."
She took us not very cheerfully into a small, dimly lighted reception room to one side of the foyer, told us to wait there, and went away.
"Who's the village blacksmith?" I asked Collinson.
He said he didn't know her. He fidgeted around the room. I sat down. Drawn blinds let in too little light for me to make out much of the room, but the rug was soft and thick, and what I could see of the furniture leaned towards luxury rather than severity.
Except for Collinson's fidgeting, no sound came from anywhere in the building. I looked at the open door and saw that we were being examined. A small boy of twelve or thirteen stood there staring at us with big dark eyes that seemed to have lights of their own in the semi-darkness.
I said: "Hello, son."
Collinson jumped around at the sound of my voice.
The boy said nothing. He stared at me for at least another minute with the blank, unblinking, embarrassing stare that only children can manage completely, then turned his back on me and walked away, making no more noise going than he had made coming.
"Who's that?" I asked Collinson.
"It must be the Haldorns' son Manuel. I've never seen him before."
Collinson walked up and down. I sat and watched the door. Presently a woman, walking silently on the thick carpet, appeared there and came into the reception room. She was tall, graceful; and her dark eyes seemed to have lights of their own, like the boy's. That was all I could see clearly then.
I stood up.
She addressed Collinson: "How do you do? This is Mr. Collinson, isn't it?" Her voice was the most musical I had ever heard.
Collinson mumbled something or other and introduced me to the woman, calling her Mrs. Haldorn. She gave me a warm, firm hand and then crossed the room to raise a blind, letting in a fat rectangle of afternoon sun. While I blinked at her in the sudden brightness, she sat down and motioned us into chairs.
I saw her eyes first. They were enormous, almost black, warm, and heavily fringed with almost black lashes. They were the only live, human, real things in her face. There was warmth and there was beauty in her oval, olive-skinned face, but, except for the eyes, it was warmth and beauty that didn't seem to have anything to do with reality. It was as if her face were not a face, but a mask that she had worn until it had almost become a face. Even her mouth, which was a mouth to talk about, looked not so much like flesh as like a too perfect imitation of flesh, softer and redder and maybe warmer than genuine flesh, but not genuine flesh. Above this face, or mask, uncut black hair was tied close to her head, parted in the middle, and drawn across temples and upper ears to end in a knot on the nape of her neck. Her neck was long, strong, slender; her body tall, fully fleshed, supple; her clothes dark and silky, part of her body.
I said: "We want to see Miss Leggett, Mrs. Haldorn."
She asked curiously: "Why do you think she is here?"
"That doesn't make any difference, does it?" I replied quickly, before Collinson could say something wrong. "She is. We'd like to see her."
"I don't think you can," she said slowly. "She isn't well, and she came here to rest, particularly to get away from people for a while."
"Sorry," I said, "but it's a case of have to. We wouldn't have come like this if it hadn't been important."
"It is important?"
"Yeah."
She hesitated, said: "Well, I'll see," excused herself, and left us.
"I wouldn't mind moving in here myself," I told Collinson.
He didn't know what I was talking about. His face was flushed and excited.
"Gabrielle may not like our coming here like this," he said.
I said that would be too bad.
Aaronia Haldorn returned to us.
"I'm really very sorry," she said, standing in the doorway, smiling politely, "but Miss Leggett doesn't wish to see you."
"I'm sorry she doesn't," I said, "but we'll have to see her."
She drew herself up straight and her smile went away.
"I beg your pardon?" she said.
"We'll have to see her," I repeated, keeping my voice amiable. "It's important, as I told you."
"I am sorry." Even the iciness she got into her voice didn't keep it from being beautiful. "You cannot see her."
I said: "Miss Leggett's an important witness, as you probably know, in a robbery and murder job. Well, we've got to see her. If it suits you better, I'm willing to wait half an hour till we can get a policeman up here with whatever authority you make necessary. We're going to see her."
Collinson said something unintelligible, though it sounded apologetic.
Aaronia Haldorn made the slightest of bows.
"You may do as you see fit," she said coldly. "I do not approve of your disturbing Miss Leggett against her wishes, and so far as my permission is concerned, I do not give it. If you insist, I cannot prevent you."
"Thanks. Where is she?"
"Her room is on the fifth floor, just beyond the stairs, to the left."
She bent her head a little once more and went away.
Collinson put a hand on my arm, mumbling: "I don't know whether I-whether we ought to do this. Gabrielle's not going to like it. She won't-"
"Suit yourself," I growled, "but I'm going up. Maybe she won't like it, but neither do I like having people running away and hiding when I want to ask them about stolen diamonds."
He frowned, chewed his lips, and made uncomfortable faces, but he went along with me. We found an automatic elevator, rode to the fifth floor, and went down a purple-carpeted corridor to the door just beyond the stairs on the left-hand side.
I tapped the door with the back of my hand. There was no answer from inside. I tapped again, louder.
A voice sounded inside the room. It might have been anybody's voice, though probably a woman's. It was too faint for us to know what it said and too smothered for us to know who was saying it.
I poked Collinson with my elbow and ordered: "Call her."
He pulled at his collar with a forefinger and called hoarsely: "Gaby, it's Eric."
That didn't bring an answer.
I thumped the wood again, calling: "Open the door."
The voice inside said something that was nothing to me. I repeated my thumping and calling. Down the corridor a door opened and a sallow thin-haired old man's head stuck out and asked: "What's the matter?" I said: "None of your damned business," and pounded the door again.
The inside voice came strong enough now to let us know that it was complaining, though no words could be made out yet. I rattled the knob and found that the door was unlocked. Rattling the knob some more, I worked the door open an inch or so. Then the voice was clearer. I heard soft feet on the floor. I heard a choking sob. I pushed the door open.
Eric Collinson made a noise in his throat that was like somebody very far away yelling horribly.
Gabrielle Leggett stood beside the bed, swaying a little, holding the white foot-rail of the bed with one hand. Her face was white as lime. Her eyes were all brown, dull, focused on nothing, and her small forehead was wrinkled. She looked as if she knew there was something in front of her and was wondering what it was. She had on one yellow stocking, a brown velvet skirt that had been slept in, and a yellow chemise. Scattered around the room were a pair of brown slippers, the other stocking, a brown and gold blouse, a brown coat, and a brown and yellow hat.
Everything else in the room was white: white-papered walls and white-painted ceiling; white-enameled chairs, bed, table, fixtures-even to the telephone-and woodwork; white felt on the floor. None of the furniture was hospital furniture, but solid whiteness gave it that appearance. There were two windows, and two doors besides the one I had opened. The door on the left opened into a bathroom, the one on the right into a small dressing-room.
I pushed Collinson into the room, followed him, and closed the door. There was no key in it, and no place for a key, no lock of any fixable sort. Collinson stood gaping at the girl, his jaw sagging, his eyes as vacant as hers; but there was more horror in his face. She leaned against the foot of the bed and stared at nothing with dark, blank eyes in a ghastly, puzzled face.
I put an arm around her and sat her on the side of the bed, telling Collinson: "Gather up her clothes." I had to tell him twice before he came out of his trance.
He brought me her things and I began dressing her. He dug his fingers into my shoulder and protested in a voice that would have been appropriate if I had been robbing a poor-box:
"No! You can't-"
"What the hell?" I asked, pushing his hand away. "You can have the job if you want it."
He was sweating. He gulped and stuttered: "No, no! I couldn't-it-" He broke off and walked to the window.
"She told me you were an ass," I said to his back, and discovered I was putting the brown and gold blouse on her backwards. She might as well have been a wax figure, for all the help she gave me, but at least she didn't struggle when I wrestled her around, and she stayed where I shoved her.
By the time I had got her into coat and hat, Collinson had come away from the window and was spluttering questions at me. What was the matter with her? Oughtn't we to get a doctor? Was it safe to take her out? And when I stood up, he took her away from me, supporting her with his long, thick arms, babbling: "It's Eric, Gaby. Don't you know me? Speak to me. What is the matter, dear?"
"There's nothing the matter except that she's got a skinful of dope," I said. "Don't try to bring her out of it. Wait till we get her home. You take this arm and I'll take that. She can walk all right. If we run into anybody, just keep going and let me handle them. Let's go."
We didn't meet anybody. We went out to the elevator, down in it to the ground floor, across the foyer, and into the street without seeing a single person.
We went down to the corner where we had left Mickey in the Chrysler.
"That's all for you," I told him.
He said: "Right, so long," and went away.
Collinson and I wedged the girl between us in the roadster, and he put it in motion.
We rode three blocks. Then he asked: "Are you sure home's the best place for her?"
I said I was. He didn't say anything for five more blocks and then repeated his question, adding something about a hospital.
"Why not a newspaper office?" I sneered.
Three blocks of silence, and he started again: "I know a doctor who-"
"I've got work to do," I said; "and Miss Leggett home now, in the shape she's in now, will help me get it done. So she goes home."
He scowled, accusing me angrily: "You'd humiliate her, disgrace her, endanger her life, for the sake of-"
"Her life's in no more danger than yours or mine. She's simply got a little more of the junk in her than she can stand up under. And she took it. I didn't give it to her."
The girl we were talking about was alive and breathing between us-even sitting up with her eyes open-but knowing no more of what was going on than if she had been in Finland.
We should have turned to the right at the next corner. Collinson held the car straight and stepped it up to forty-five miles an hour, staring ahead, his face hard and lumpy.
"Take the next turn," I commanded.
"No," he said, and didn't. The speedometer showed a 50, and people on the sidewalks began looking after us as we whizzed by.
"Well?" I asked, wriggling an arm loose from the girl's side.
"We're going down the peninsula," he said firmly. "She's not going home in her condition."
I grunted: "Yeah?" and flashed my free hand at the controls. He knocked it aside, holding the wheel with one hand, stretching the other out to block me if I tried again.
"Don't do that," he cautioned me, increasing our speed another half-dozen miles. "You know what will happen to all of us if you-"
I cursed him, bitterly, fairly thoroughly, and from the heart. His face jerked around to me, full of righteous indignation because, I suppose, my language wasn't the kind one should use in a lady's company.
And that brought it about.
A blue sedan came out of a cross-street a split second before we got there. Collinson's eyes and attention got back to his driving in time to twist the roadster away from the sedan, but not in time to make a neat job of it. We missed the sedan by a couple of inches, but as we passed behind it our rear wheels started sliding out of line. Collinson did what he could, giving the roadster its head, going with the skid, but the corner curb wouldn't co-operate. It stood stiff and hard where it was. We hit it sidewise and rolled over on the lamp-post behind it. The lamp-post snapped, crashed down on the sidewalk. The roadster, over on its side, spilled us out around the lamp-post. Gas from the broken post roared up at our feet.
Collinson, most of the skin scraped from one side of his face, crawled back on hands and knees to turn off the roadster's engine. I sat up, raising the girl, who was on my chest, with me. My right shoulder and arm were out of whack, dead. The girl was making whimpering noises in her chest, but I couldn't see any marks on her except a shallow scratch on one cheek. I had been her cushion, had taken the jolt for her. The soreness of my chest, belly, and back, the lameness of my shoulder and arm, told me how much I had saved her.
People helped us up. Collinson stood with his arms around the girl, begging her to say she wasn't dead, and so on. The smash had jarred her into semi-consciousness, but she still didn't know whether there had been an accident or what. I went over and helped Collinson hold her up-though neither needed help-saying earnestly to the gathering crowd: "We've got to get her home. Who can-?"
A pudgy man in plus fours offered his services. Collinson and I got in the back of his car with the girl, and I gave the pudgy man her address. He said something about a hospital, but I insisted that home was the place for her. Collinson was too upset to say anything. Twenty minutes later we took the girl out of the car in front of her house. I thanked the pudgy man profusely, giving him no opportunity to follow us indoors.
VI.The Man from Devil's Island
After some delay-I had to ring twice-the Leggetts' door was opened by Owen Fitzstephan. There was no sleepiness in his eyes: they were hot and bright, as they were when he found life interesting. Knowing the sort of things that interested him, I wondered what had happened.
"What have you been doing?" he asked, looking at our clothes, at Collinson's bloody face, at the girl's scratched cheek.
"Automobile accident," I said. "Nothing serious. Where's everybody?"
"Everybody," he said, with peculiar emphasis on the word, "is up in the laboratory;" and then to me: "Come here."
I followed him across the reception hall to the foot of the stairs, leaving Collinson and the girl standing just inside the street door. Fitzstephan put his mouth close to my ear and whispered:
"Leggett's committed suicide."
I was more annoyed than surprised. I asked: "Where is he?"
"In the laboratory. Mrs. Leggett and the police are up there. It happened only half an hour ago."
"We'll all go up," I said.
"Isn't it rather unnecessary," he asked, "taking Gabrielle up there?"
"Might be tough on her," I said irritably, "but it's necessary enough. Anyway, she's coked-up and better able to stand the shock than she will be later, when the stuff's dying out in her." I turned to Collinson. "Come on, we'll go up to the laboratory."
I went ahead, letting Fitzstephan help Collinson with the girl. There were six people in the laboratory: a uniformed copper-a big man with a red mustache-standing beside the door; Mrs. Leggett, sitting on a wooden chair in the far end of the room, her body bent forward, her hands holding a handkerchief to her face, sobbing quietly; O'Gar and Reddy, standing by one of the windows, close together, their heads rubbing over a sheaf of papers that the detective-sergeant held in his thick fists; a gray-faced, dandified man in dark clothes, standing beside the zinc table, twiddling eye-glasses on a black ribbon in his hand; and Edgar Leggett, seated on a chair at the table, his head and upper body resting on the table, his arms sprawled out.
O'Gar and Reddy looked up from their reading as I came in. Passing the table on my way to join them at the window, I saw blood, a small black automatic pistol lying close to one of Leggett's hands, and seven unset diamonds grouped by his head.
O'Gar said, "Take a look," and handed me part of his sheaf of paper-four stiff white sheets covered with very small, precise, and regular handwriting in black ink. I was getting interested in what was written there when Fitzstephan and Collinson came in with Gabrielle Leggett.
Collinson looked at the dead man at the table. Collinson's face went white. He put his big body between the girl and her father.
"Come in," I said.
"This is no place for Miss Leggett now," he said hotly, turning to take her away.
"We ought to have everybody in here," I told O'Gar. He nodded his bullet head at the policeman. The policeman put a hand on Collinson's shoulder and said: "You'll have to come in, the both of you."
Fitzstephan placed a chair by one of the end windows for the girl. She sat down and looked around the room-at the dead man, at Mrs. Leggett, at all of us-with eyes that were dull but no longer completely blank. Collinson stood beside her, glaring at me. Mrs. Leggett hadn't looked up from her handkerchief.
I spoke to O'Gar, clearly enough for the others to hear: "Let's read the letter out loud."
He screwed up his eyes, hesitated, then thrust the rest of his sheaf at me, saying: "Fair enough. You read it."
I read:
"To the police:-
"My name is Maurice Pierre de Mayenne. I was born in Fйcamp, department of Seine-Infйrieure, France, on March 6, 1883, but was chiefly educated in England. In 1903 I went to Paris to study painting, and there, four years later, I made the acquaintance of Alice and Lily Dain, orphan daughters of a British naval officer. I married Lily the following year, and in 1909 our daughter Gabrielle was born.
"Shortly after my marriage I had discovered that I had made a most horrible mistake that it was Alice, and not my wife Lily, whom I really loved. I kept this discovery to myself until the child was past the most difficult baby years; that is, until she was nearly five, and then told my wife, asking that she divorce me so I could marry Alice. She refused.
"On June 6, 1913, I murdered Lily and fled with Alice and Gabrielle to London, where I was soon arrested and returned to Paris, to be tried, found guilty, and sentenced to life imprisonment on the Iles du Salut. Alice, who had had no part in the murder, no knowledge of it until after it was done, and who had accompanied us to London only because of her love for Gabrielle, was also tried, but justly acquitted. All this is a matter of record in Paris.
"In 1918 I escaped from the islands with a fellow convict named Jacques Labaud, on a flimsy raft. I do not know-we never knew-how long we were adrift on the ocean, nor, toward the last, how long we went without food and water. Then Labaud could stand no more, and died. He died of starvation and exposure. I did not kill him. No living creature could have been feeble enough for me to have killed it, no matter what my desire. But when Labaud was dead there was enough food for one, and I lived to be washed ashore in the Golfo Triste.
"Calling myself Walter Martin, I secured employment with a British copper mining company at Aroa, and within a few months had become private secretary to Philip Howart, the resident manager. Shortly after this promotion I was approached by a cockney named John Edge, who outlined to me a plan by which we could defraud the company of a hundred-odd pounds monthly. When I refused to take part in the fraud, Edge revealed his knowledge of my identity, and threatened exposure unless I assisted him. That Venezuela had no extradition treaty with France might save me from being returned to the islands, Edge said; but that was not my chief danger: Labaud's body had been cast ashore, undecomposed enough to show what had happened to him, and I, an escaped murderer, would be under the necessity of proving to a Venezuelan court that I had not killed Labaud in Venezuelan waters to keep from starving.
"I still refused to join Edge in his fraud, and prepared to go away. But while I was making my preparations he killed Howart and looted the company safe. He urged me to flee with him, arguing that I could not face the police investigation even if he did not expose me. That was true enough: I went with him. Two months later, in Mexico City, I learned why Edge had been so desirous of my company. He had a firm hold on me, through his knowledge of my identity, and a great-an unjustified-opinion of my ability; and he intended using me to commit crimes that were beyond his grasp. I was determined, no matter what happened, no matter what became necessary, never to return to the Iles du Salut; but neither did I intend becoming a professional criminal. I attempted to desert Edge in Mexico City; he found me; we fought; and I killed him. I killed him in self-defense: he struck me first.
"In 1920 I came to the United States, to San Francisco, changed my name once more-to Edgar Leggett-and began making a new place for myself in the world, developing experiments with color that I had attempted as a young artist in Paris. In 1923, believing that Edgar Leggett could never now be connected with Maurice de Mayenne, I sent for Alice and Gabrielle, who were then living in New York, and Alice and I were married. But the past was not dead, and there was no unbridgeable chasm between Leggett and Mayenne. Alice, not hearing from me after my escape, not knowing what had happened to me, employed a private detective to find me, a Louis Upton. Upton sent a man named Ruppert to South America, and Ruppert succeeded in tracing me step by step from my landing in the Golfo Triste up to, but no farther than, my departure from Mexico City after Edge's death. In doing this, Ruppert of course learned of the deaths of Labaud, Howart and Edge; three deaths of which I was guiltless, but of which-or at least of one or more of which-I most certainly, my record being what it is, would be convicted if tried.
"I do not know how Upton found me in San Francisco. Possbly he traced Alice and Gabrielle to me. Late last Saturday night he called upon me and demanded money as the price of silence. Having no money available at the time, I put him off until Tuesday, when I gave him the diamonds as part payment. But I was desperate. I knew what being at Upton's mercy would mean, having experienced the same thing with Edge. I determined to kill him. I decided to pretend the diamonds had been stolen, and to so inform you, the police. Upton, I was confident, would thereupon immediately communicate with me. I would make an appointment with him and shoot him down in cold blood, confident that I would have no difficulty in arranging a story that would make me seem justified in having killed this known burglar, in whose possession, doubtless, the stolen diamonds would be found.
"I think the plan would have been successful. However, Ruppert— pursuing Upton with a grudge of his own to settle-saved me from killing Upton by himself killing him. Ruppert, the man who had traced my course from Devil's Island to Mexico City, had also, either from Upton or by spying on Upton, learned that Mayenne was Leggett, and, with the police after him for Upton's murder, he came here, demanding that I shelter him, returning the diamonds, claiming money in their stead.
"I killed him. His body is in the cellar. Out front, a detective is watching my house. Other detectives are busy elsewhere inquiring into my affairs. I have not been able satisfactorily to explain certain of my actions, nor to avoid contradictions, and, now that I am actually suspect, there is little chance of the past's being kept secret. I have always known-have known it most surely when I would not admit it to myself-that this would one day happen. I am not going back to Devil's Island. My wife and daughter had neither knowledge of nor part in Ruppert's death.
"_Maurice de Mayenne._"
"What have you been doing?" he asked, looking at our clothes, at Collinson's bloody face, at the girl's scratched cheek.
"Automobile accident," I said. "Nothing serious. Where's everybody?"
"Everybody," he said, with peculiar emphasis on the word, "is up in the laboratory;" and then to me: "Come here."
I followed him across the reception hall to the foot of the stairs, leaving Collinson and the girl standing just inside the street door. Fitzstephan put his mouth close to my ear and whispered:
"Leggett's committed suicide."
I was more annoyed than surprised. I asked: "Where is he?"
"In the laboratory. Mrs. Leggett and the police are up there. It happened only half an hour ago."
"We'll all go up," I said.
"Isn't it rather unnecessary," he asked, "taking Gabrielle up there?"
"Might be tough on her," I said irritably, "but it's necessary enough. Anyway, she's coked-up and better able to stand the shock than she will be later, when the stuff's dying out in her." I turned to Collinson. "Come on, we'll go up to the laboratory."
I went ahead, letting Fitzstephan help Collinson with the girl. There were six people in the laboratory: a uniformed copper-a big man with a red mustache-standing beside the door; Mrs. Leggett, sitting on a wooden chair in the far end of the room, her body bent forward, her hands holding a handkerchief to her face, sobbing quietly; O'Gar and Reddy, standing by one of the windows, close together, their heads rubbing over a sheaf of papers that the detective-sergeant held in his thick fists; a gray-faced, dandified man in dark clothes, standing beside the zinc table, twiddling eye-glasses on a black ribbon in his hand; and Edgar Leggett, seated on a chair at the table, his head and upper body resting on the table, his arms sprawled out.
O'Gar and Reddy looked up from their reading as I came in. Passing the table on my way to join them at the window, I saw blood, a small black automatic pistol lying close to one of Leggett's hands, and seven unset diamonds grouped by his head.
O'Gar said, "Take a look," and handed me part of his sheaf of paper-four stiff white sheets covered with very small, precise, and regular handwriting in black ink. I was getting interested in what was written there when Fitzstephan and Collinson came in with Gabrielle Leggett.
Collinson looked at the dead man at the table. Collinson's face went white. He put his big body between the girl and her father.
"Come in," I said.
"This is no place for Miss Leggett now," he said hotly, turning to take her away.
"We ought to have everybody in here," I told O'Gar. He nodded his bullet head at the policeman. The policeman put a hand on Collinson's shoulder and said: "You'll have to come in, the both of you."
Fitzstephan placed a chair by one of the end windows for the girl. She sat down and looked around the room-at the dead man, at Mrs. Leggett, at all of us-with eyes that were dull but no longer completely blank. Collinson stood beside her, glaring at me. Mrs. Leggett hadn't looked up from her handkerchief.
I spoke to O'Gar, clearly enough for the others to hear: "Let's read the letter out loud."
He screwed up his eyes, hesitated, then thrust the rest of his sheaf at me, saying: "Fair enough. You read it."
I read:
"To the police:-
"My name is Maurice Pierre de Mayenne. I was born in Fйcamp, department of Seine-Infйrieure, France, on March 6, 1883, but was chiefly educated in England. In 1903 I went to Paris to study painting, and there, four years later, I made the acquaintance of Alice and Lily Dain, orphan daughters of a British naval officer. I married Lily the following year, and in 1909 our daughter Gabrielle was born.
"Shortly after my marriage I had discovered that I had made a most horrible mistake that it was Alice, and not my wife Lily, whom I really loved. I kept this discovery to myself until the child was past the most difficult baby years; that is, until she was nearly five, and then told my wife, asking that she divorce me so I could marry Alice. She refused.
"On June 6, 1913, I murdered Lily and fled with Alice and Gabrielle to London, where I was soon arrested and returned to Paris, to be tried, found guilty, and sentenced to life imprisonment on the Iles du Salut. Alice, who had had no part in the murder, no knowledge of it until after it was done, and who had accompanied us to London only because of her love for Gabrielle, was also tried, but justly acquitted. All this is a matter of record in Paris.
"In 1918 I escaped from the islands with a fellow convict named Jacques Labaud, on a flimsy raft. I do not know-we never knew-how long we were adrift on the ocean, nor, toward the last, how long we went without food and water. Then Labaud could stand no more, and died. He died of starvation and exposure. I did not kill him. No living creature could have been feeble enough for me to have killed it, no matter what my desire. But when Labaud was dead there was enough food for one, and I lived to be washed ashore in the Golfo Triste.
"Calling myself Walter Martin, I secured employment with a British copper mining company at Aroa, and within a few months had become private secretary to Philip Howart, the resident manager. Shortly after this promotion I was approached by a cockney named John Edge, who outlined to me a plan by which we could defraud the company of a hundred-odd pounds monthly. When I refused to take part in the fraud, Edge revealed his knowledge of my identity, and threatened exposure unless I assisted him. That Venezuela had no extradition treaty with France might save me from being returned to the islands, Edge said; but that was not my chief danger: Labaud's body had been cast ashore, undecomposed enough to show what had happened to him, and I, an escaped murderer, would be under the necessity of proving to a Venezuelan court that I had not killed Labaud in Venezuelan waters to keep from starving.
"I still refused to join Edge in his fraud, and prepared to go away. But while I was making my preparations he killed Howart and looted the company safe. He urged me to flee with him, arguing that I could not face the police investigation even if he did not expose me. That was true enough: I went with him. Two months later, in Mexico City, I learned why Edge had been so desirous of my company. He had a firm hold on me, through his knowledge of my identity, and a great-an unjustified-opinion of my ability; and he intended using me to commit crimes that were beyond his grasp. I was determined, no matter what happened, no matter what became necessary, never to return to the Iles du Salut; but neither did I intend becoming a professional criminal. I attempted to desert Edge in Mexico City; he found me; we fought; and I killed him. I killed him in self-defense: he struck me first.
"In 1920 I came to the United States, to San Francisco, changed my name once more-to Edgar Leggett-and began making a new place for myself in the world, developing experiments with color that I had attempted as a young artist in Paris. In 1923, believing that Edgar Leggett could never now be connected with Maurice de Mayenne, I sent for Alice and Gabrielle, who were then living in New York, and Alice and I were married. But the past was not dead, and there was no unbridgeable chasm between Leggett and Mayenne. Alice, not hearing from me after my escape, not knowing what had happened to me, employed a private detective to find me, a Louis Upton. Upton sent a man named Ruppert to South America, and Ruppert succeeded in tracing me step by step from my landing in the Golfo Triste up to, but no farther than, my departure from Mexico City after Edge's death. In doing this, Ruppert of course learned of the deaths of Labaud, Howart and Edge; three deaths of which I was guiltless, but of which-or at least of one or more of which-I most certainly, my record being what it is, would be convicted if tried.
"I do not know how Upton found me in San Francisco. Possbly he traced Alice and Gabrielle to me. Late last Saturday night he called upon me and demanded money as the price of silence. Having no money available at the time, I put him off until Tuesday, when I gave him the diamonds as part payment. But I was desperate. I knew what being at Upton's mercy would mean, having experienced the same thing with Edge. I determined to kill him. I decided to pretend the diamonds had been stolen, and to so inform you, the police. Upton, I was confident, would thereupon immediately communicate with me. I would make an appointment with him and shoot him down in cold blood, confident that I would have no difficulty in arranging a story that would make me seem justified in having killed this known burglar, in whose possession, doubtless, the stolen diamonds would be found.
"I think the plan would have been successful. However, Ruppert— pursuing Upton with a grudge of his own to settle-saved me from killing Upton by himself killing him. Ruppert, the man who had traced my course from Devil's Island to Mexico City, had also, either from Upton or by spying on Upton, learned that Mayenne was Leggett, and, with the police after him for Upton's murder, he came here, demanding that I shelter him, returning the diamonds, claiming money in their stead.
"I killed him. His body is in the cellar. Out front, a detective is watching my house. Other detectives are busy elsewhere inquiring into my affairs. I have not been able satisfactorily to explain certain of my actions, nor to avoid contradictions, and, now that I am actually suspect, there is little chance of the past's being kept secret. I have always known-have known it most surely when I would not admit it to myself-that this would one day happen. I am not going back to Devil's Island. My wife and daughter had neither knowledge of nor part in Ruppert's death.
"_Maurice de Mayenne._"
VII.The Curse
Nobody said anything for some minutes after I had finished reading. Mrs. Leggett had taken her handkerchief from her face to listen, sobbing softly now and then. Gabrielle Leggett was looking jerkily around the room, light fighting cloudiness in her eyes, her lips twitching as if she was trying to get words out but couldn't.
I went to the table, bent over the dead man, and ran my hand over his pockets. The inside coat pocket bulged. I reached under his arm, unbuttoned and pulled open his coat, taking a brown wallet from the pocket. The wallet was thick with paper money-fifteen thousand dollars when we counted it later.
Showing the others the wallet's contents, I asked:
"Did he leave any message besides the one I read?"
"None that's been found," O'Gar said. "Why?"
"Any that you know of, Mrs. Leggett?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"Why?" O'Gar asked again.
"He didn't commit suicide," I said. "He was murdered."
Gabrielle Leggett screamed shrilly and sprang out of her chair, pointing a sharp-nailed white finger at Mrs. Leggett.
"She killed him," the girl shrieked. "She said, 'Come back here,' and held the kitchen door open with one hand, and picked up the knife from the drain-board with the other, and when he went past her she pushed it in his back. I saw her do it. She killed him. I wasn't dressed, and when I heard them coming I hid in the pantry, and I saw her do it."
Mrs. Leggett got to her feet. She staggered, and would have fallen if Fitzstephan hadn't gone over to steady her. Amazement washed her swollen face empty of grief.
The gray-faced dandified man by the table-Doctor Riese, I learned later-said, in a cold, crisp voice:
"There is no stab wound. He was shot through the temple by a bullet from this pistol, held close, slanting up. Clearly suicide, I should say."
Collinson forced Gabrielle down to her chair again, trying to calm her. She was working her hands together and moaning.
I disagreed with the doctor's last statement, and said so while turning something else over in my mind:
"Murder. He had this money in his pocket. He was going away. He wrote that letter to the police to clear his wife and daughter, so they wouldn't be punished for complicity in his crimes. Did it," I asked O'Gar, "sound to you like the dying statement of a man who was leaving a wife and daughter he loved? No message, no word, to them-all to the police."
"Maybe you're right," the bullet-headed man said; "but supposing he was going away, he still didn't leave them any-"
"He would have told them-either on paper or talking-something before he went, if he had lived long enough. He was winding up his affairs, preparing to go away, and— Maybe he was going to commit suicide, though the money and the tone of the letter make me doubt it; but even in that case my guess is that he didn't, that he was killed before he had finished his preparations-maybe because he was taking too long a time. How was he found?"
"I heard," Mrs. Leggett sobbed; "I heard the shot, and ran up here, and he-he was like that. And I went down to the telephone, and the bell-the doorbell-rang, and it was Mr. Fitzstephan, and I told him. It couldn't-there was nobody else in the house to-to kill him."
"You killed him," I said to her. "He was going away. He wrote this statement, shouldering your crimes. You killed Ruppert down in the kitchen. That's what the girl was talking about. Your husband's letter sounded enough like a suicide letter to pass for one, you thought; so you murdered him-murdered him because you thought his confession and death would hush up the whole business, keep us from poking into it any further."
Her face didn't tell me anything. It was distorted, but in a way that might have meant almost anything. I filled my lungs and went on, not exactly bellowing, but getting plenty of noise out:
"There are half a dozen lies in your husband's statement-half a dozen that I can peg now. He didn't send for you and his daughter. You traced him here. Mrs. Begg said he was the most surprised man she had ever seen when you arrived from New York. He didn't give Upton the diamonds. His account of why he gave them to Upton and of what he intended doing afterwards is ridiculous: it's simply the best story he could think of on short notice to cover you up. Leggett would have given him money or he would have given him nothing: he wouldn't have been foolish enough to give him somebody else's diamonds and have all this stink raised.
I went to the table, bent over the dead man, and ran my hand over his pockets. The inside coat pocket bulged. I reached under his arm, unbuttoned and pulled open his coat, taking a brown wallet from the pocket. The wallet was thick with paper money-fifteen thousand dollars when we counted it later.
Showing the others the wallet's contents, I asked:
"Did he leave any message besides the one I read?"
"None that's been found," O'Gar said. "Why?"
"Any that you know of, Mrs. Leggett?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"Why?" O'Gar asked again.
"He didn't commit suicide," I said. "He was murdered."
Gabrielle Leggett screamed shrilly and sprang out of her chair, pointing a sharp-nailed white finger at Mrs. Leggett.
"She killed him," the girl shrieked. "She said, 'Come back here,' and held the kitchen door open with one hand, and picked up the knife from the drain-board with the other, and when he went past her she pushed it in his back. I saw her do it. She killed him. I wasn't dressed, and when I heard them coming I hid in the pantry, and I saw her do it."
Mrs. Leggett got to her feet. She staggered, and would have fallen if Fitzstephan hadn't gone over to steady her. Amazement washed her swollen face empty of grief.
The gray-faced dandified man by the table-Doctor Riese, I learned later-said, in a cold, crisp voice:
"There is no stab wound. He was shot through the temple by a bullet from this pistol, held close, slanting up. Clearly suicide, I should say."
Collinson forced Gabrielle down to her chair again, trying to calm her. She was working her hands together and moaning.
I disagreed with the doctor's last statement, and said so while turning something else over in my mind:
"Murder. He had this money in his pocket. He was going away. He wrote that letter to the police to clear his wife and daughter, so they wouldn't be punished for complicity in his crimes. Did it," I asked O'Gar, "sound to you like the dying statement of a man who was leaving a wife and daughter he loved? No message, no word, to them-all to the police."
"Maybe you're right," the bullet-headed man said; "but supposing he was going away, he still didn't leave them any-"
"He would have told them-either on paper or talking-something before he went, if he had lived long enough. He was winding up his affairs, preparing to go away, and— Maybe he was going to commit suicide, though the money and the tone of the letter make me doubt it; but even in that case my guess is that he didn't, that he was killed before he had finished his preparations-maybe because he was taking too long a time. How was he found?"
"I heard," Mrs. Leggett sobbed; "I heard the shot, and ran up here, and he-he was like that. And I went down to the telephone, and the bell-the doorbell-rang, and it was Mr. Fitzstephan, and I told him. It couldn't-there was nobody else in the house to-to kill him."
"You killed him," I said to her. "He was going away. He wrote this statement, shouldering your crimes. You killed Ruppert down in the kitchen. That's what the girl was talking about. Your husband's letter sounded enough like a suicide letter to pass for one, you thought; so you murdered him-murdered him because you thought his confession and death would hush up the whole business, keep us from poking into it any further."
Her face didn't tell me anything. It was distorted, but in a way that might have meant almost anything. I filled my lungs and went on, not exactly bellowing, but getting plenty of noise out:
"There are half a dozen lies in your husband's statement-half a dozen that I can peg now. He didn't send for you and his daughter. You traced him here. Mrs. Begg said he was the most surprised man she had ever seen when you arrived from New York. He didn't give Upton the diamonds. His account of why he gave them to Upton and of what he intended doing afterwards is ridiculous: it's simply the best story he could think of on short notice to cover you up. Leggett would have given him money or he would have given him nothing: he wouldn't have been foolish enough to give him somebody else's diamonds and have all this stink raised.