“Yes.” She wrung her hands together until the knuckles were bone white, but her voice did not waver.
“Was that simply chance, or had you any reason to believe that you might find him there?”
“I had every reason. He told me that he was going to be there.”
“He told you that? When?”
“Just after—just after we put the lights out… before we started upstairs.”
“You were in the dark when he told you this?”
“Yes. In the dark.”
“Could anyone have overheard you?”
“I don’t know. We were talking quite softly, in whispers. He’d followed me over to the window; I thought that all the others were near the fire. They were trying to put it out, I think.”
“But someone might have followed him in the darkness, of course. Can you remember just what he said to you, Jill?”
“Yes. He said that he wanted to try a scheme that he and Sunny and I had talked over at the last party that we had here. He’d been reading the Purloined Letter—you remember how the thief left it lying right under the nose of the searchers, and no one ever found it because it was so obvious; he was sure that it would work perfectly in Hide in the Dark.… He chose the sofa because that was where he was supposed to wait until the signal to hide, and he was sure that no one would dream that he’d just go on sitting there.”
“And he asked you to join him?”
“No; he simply asked me to be very careful not to give him away. It was I who suggested it. I—I wanted to ask him a question; I’d been trying all evening to get a word with him.”
“What question?”
She stared back at him despairingly, the colour draining back from the delicate hollows in her cheeks.
“I can’t tell you. It’s no good asking me, I can’t. It wasn’t about me … it was about other people. I’ll tell you anything else, but I can’t tell you that.”
Gavin Dart looked gravely and compassionately at the hard-wrung hands.
“Jill, I have no power on earth to force you to tell us anything whatever, but I can give you my word that in the end it will be far, far easier for you if you tell us now what that question was.”
“I wasn’t thinking of what would be easier for me,” said Jill Leighton. “I can’t tell you what it was, either now or later.”
“Very well. Will you tell us, then, just what you did, from the time that the last gong struck until you screamed?”
“Yes. I waited to let the others get a good start and then went straight down to the Priest’s Room on the second floor. I thought that I’d use those stairs to get to the chapel and then to this room—that I’d be less likely to run into anyone that way. But there was someone in the Priest’s Room, so I came back by the front stairs. I could hear someone moving around in this room—footsteps, and a little crash of some kind, so I stood back against the stairs, waiting. Two people passed quite close to me, one going upstairs and the other crossing into the library, and then everything seemed quite still in the room, so I went in.… I came straight over … straight over to the sofa, and sat down on the end nearest the door. I waited a second or so and then I whispered, ‘Are you there, Doug?’ No one answered, and I put out my hand, and touched his sleeve. I said, ‘Doug, it’s Jill!’ and when he still didn’t say anything, I thought that he must have fallen asleep, and I put out my other hand to give him a little shake. And then I felt then I felt—” She turned a face that was suddenly deathly sick against the cushion of the chair, her voice trailing off into something fainter than a whisper. “Then I felt that my hands were … wet.…”
“Gavin, don’t ask her anything more now.” Lindy’s voice was stirred from its cool tranquillity to something startlingly like indignation. “It’s sheer mediæval torture to make her go over that part of it. Jill, darling, it’s all over; you don’t have to tell us any more at all, darling … not ever.”
Jill said, “There’s nothing more to tell. That’s all… I’m all right, Lindy; don’t bother about me, dear.”
“I bother about you rather a lot,” murmured Lindy, a soft passion of indignation still shaking her voice. “Chatty, hand me up that other cushion for her, there’s a good child—no, the one near Joel’s foot.”
Chatty reached for it obediently, and then pushed it from her with a small sound of amazement, leaning forward to inspect it more closely.
“But, Lindy, it’s simply sopping! How on earth—oh, Joel, look out! It’s your feet; they’re absolutely wringing wet—look, almost up to your knees! Where in heaven’s name have you been? … Wait—here’s one of mine, Lindy.”
Gavin, inspecting the tip of his own immaculately polished shoe with grave interest, inquired sympathetically:
“So you got your feet wet, Joel? Hard luck. But you can’t expect to keep dry shod on a night like this.”
Joel gave the cuff of his trouser a vicious wring and turned an indignant eye on his suave interrogator.
“How do you mean, on a night like this? The weather to-night hasn’t got anything more to do with me than it has with you.”
“Oh, my mistake; it looked for a moment as though you’d been battling with the elements.”
“Well, I haven’t.” Joel’s glare was entirely unmollified, and his grip tightened on the thin little paw of the young thing seated beside him and staring at Gavin Dart with the disconcerting intensity of a very small, slightly ruffled owl, round-eyed and solemn. “I haven’t set my foot outside of this house since supper. What do you think I am, anyway—cuckoo?”
Gavin, passing over this impassioned and rhetorical question with an agreeable smile, asked mildly: “Was the sewing room fairly damp?”
“Quite a little wag, aren’t you?” inquired Joel bitterly. “No, Scotland Yard, the sewing room was not fairly damp. I got my feet wet crashing into that damned tub of apples over there, if that’s what you want to know.”
Gavin followed the spacious gesture toward the corner with eyes luminous with interest.
“Did you, now! And just how did you come to crash into it?”
“Well, it was black as a nigger’s pocket, and I was feeling my way along the wall, trying to get back to the door. I ran bang into the rotten thing; it came slopping out all over my ankles like a tidal wave … I got as nasty a crack in the shin as I’ve had in a couple of cycles, too, if that’s of any interest to you.”
“Of the greatest interest, I assure you. You mean that all this happened on your way upstairs, just after the lights went out, and before the first gong sounded?”
“Now don’t you wish I’d say yes to that?” demanded Joel with more than a trace of belligerence. “Oh, I’m not as dumb as I look—I heard you asking Jill if someone couldn’t have eavesdropped on her when she was making a rendezvous with Doug right about in that corner.… No, sir, it was not before the first gong rang. It was after the second gong rang.”
“You hadn’t confided in us that you were in this room at approximately the time of the murder, had you?”
“You’re darn shouting I hadn’t. And as far as I’m concerned,” added the rashly impenitent Joel, “it would have been all right with me if you hadn’t ever found out that I was within a mile of it. Not after that crack of Larry’s about even Cæsar’s wife not being above suspicion! If involving me means involving Ray, you can bet your life that I’m going to fight like a wildcat every time I catch any of you trying to pin anything on me. I’m the lad that got her into this mess, and I’m the lad that’s going to get her out.”
“My dear fellow, there’s not a man here that doesn’t feel exactly as you do! I’d be the last person in the world to blame you for a moment for trying to keep free of incriminating evidence—our only difference would be as to the safest method to go about it. I’m sorry if my manner has been offensive; I don’t want to put in a bid for sympathy, but I pledge you my word that I’m not at all in love with my present job. I have every intention of seeing it through, however, and you could he
lp me quite a bit, if you felt like it.”
“I’ve been talking through my hat,” said Joel, with fervent simplicity. “All right, fire ahead … I feel like it.”
“The time element in this thing interests me considerably,” explained Gavin Dart. “I want to narrow it down all I can. How long after the second gong sounded were you in this room?”
“Oh, about two minutes maybe. Look, it was like this. I was worried half crazy about Ray, and I wanted to get hold of her to tell her how sick I was about the way that I’d lit into her, but she was doing her best to keep out of my way … you were, weren’t you, Ray?”
“I certainly was,” said the little owl solemnly. “I certainly was.”
“So the only idea that I had from the time that we started out was to track her down and explain to her how I felt about things, and see if I couldn’t get her to see them my way.… Well, you’ll probably get a good laugh out of the way that I started out, but I can’t help that. All I knew was that I had to get hold of her, and I only knew one way to do it. She uses some funny kind of perfume—I could find it in the dark, all right, but I don’t know what you call it. What in Hades do you call it, Ray?”
“It’s Wallflowers. English Wallflowers.”
“Well, whatever its name is, it’s what I was after…. I started out after someone who brushed by me on the third-floor landing. I couldn’t be sure that it was Ray, but I could tell that it was a girl, because her arm was bare. I lost her somewhere on the second floor, so I thought I’d have a shot at the first floor. I came crashing on down and struck out for this room; it was quieter than the tomb, and the only thing that I could smell was the wind—someone must have left a window open, or maybe it just came down the chimney—anyway, there weren’t any more wallflowers around than you’d find in Iceland, and all of a sudden I got a rotten panicky feeling that I wanted to get out of this place…. I’d almost gotten over to that door into the service quarters when I turned square around and started clawing my way back along the wall to get into the hall and up to the second floor again—I had a hunch that she was up there—Ray, I mean. I was going pretty until I crashed into this darn tub right at the corner—”
“Wait a bit, will you, Joel? Did you hear anything at any time that you were in this room, anything that seems at all suspicious, I mean, now that you look back on it?”
“Not a doggone thing. The only sound that I heard the whole enduring time was me lighting into that avalanche, and saying, ‘Damn it to hell’—good and soft and emphatic. As soon as I got my breath back, I lit out again for the second floor—that’s how I got back to that rat’s nest of rooms that I was telling you about….”
“This all helps a lot, of course. Now, just how close should you say that you passed to the sofa at any time during this performance—I mean either coming or going?”
“Well, look, I’ll show you—that’s the surest way.” He was on his feet, all his eager interest at the service of his late adversary. “I came in, almost down the centre of the room—like this, see, and I was almost over to that service door when I changed my mind and went into reverse. I cut around here, just short of the cabinet, and came back along the wall, like this, past those windows and this other cabinet, and right here was where I came a cropper. I landed on the tub right at this angle—if I hadn’t been the ass of the world, I’d have remembered that we’d shoved it off here to get it out of the way. Well, you can see yourself what happened, can’t you? It caught me right above the ankle and I was as good as—” He broke off, staring down at the tub as though he were suddenly and incredibly confronted with Medusa’s head.
“By God, Gavin, there it is!”
“There what is?”
Something in his voice brought the contemplative inquisitor abruptly to his feet.
“The knife! Good-night, they must have just pitched it in without even—Look, the water’s all red—”
The door from the chapel opened with the quiet deliberation of fate itself, and Tom Ross and Kit Baird came through it more quietly still. Kit pushed it to behind him, and stood leaning against it, his hands deep in his pockets, a curiously arresting light in his eyes.
Gavin Dart, halfway between the fireplace and the transfixed Joel, turned to meet it.
“Hello, there—back already? And without a knife, I take it?”
“Without a knife.” Kit drew a clenched hand slowly from his pocket, and stretched it out, opening the fingers with a curious reluctance. “We found something else, however, on a little landing halfway down the stairs from the Priest’s Room.… It’s an earring—a diamond earring.… Anyone here recognize it?”
Hanna Dart extended toward him one long white hand, the great eyes frozen to something far beyond fear fixed on the little, little glittering fountain sparkling in his palm.
“I recognize it,” she said in a voice clear and strange as ice. “Will you give it to me, please? It is mine.”
Chapter VI
“Just a moment, Kit.” Gavin Dart laid a detaining hand on the outstretched wrist, staring down at the pretty trinket as though it were something inexpressibly ugly. “You say that this is yours, Hanna? I thought that you told us that you had put your earrings in the bedroom on your way upstairs?”
“That wasn’t true, Gavin; I never put them there. The other one’s here, tied in the end of my handkerchief.”
She rose, unknotting the crumpled scrap of lace and lawn, and handed him the little glittering heap with steady fingers. It was through Gavin’s that something like a tremor moved as he retrieved the one in Kit’s hand, and dropped the pair of them on the table beside him, as though the touch of them soiled his fingers.
“And what, exactly, was your object in lying about these?” he inquired evenly of the tall girl standing before him, motionless as a statue of ivory and gold.
“Gavin, you mustn’t try to frighten me, or I’ll say stupid things. It’s because I was frightened when I saw that the earring was gone that I made up that foolish story about leaving it on the dressing table.”
“I see. And when did you notice that the earring was gone, if we are now in your confidence?”
“Just after the lights went on; just after I saw—Doug.… That mirror over there—it’s right on a line, and I could see myself standing there … and one of the earrings was gone. I put up my hands quickly, as though I were covering my face, and got the other one off, and twisted it up in the corner of my handkerchief. No one was looking at me.… No one was looking at anyone but—Doug.”
Kit said quietly: “I was looking at you—in the mirror. It showed me exactly what it showed you, Hanna.”
She asked gravely: “Did it, Kit? I didn’t know that. Then that makes me a little duller than usual, doesn’t it?”
“And will you tell us exactly why you decided to go through all this elaborate deception?” inquired Gavin Dart, bitterness suddenly shaking his pleasant voice.
“But, Gavin, I’ve told you why, haven’t I? It was because I absolutely lost my head. I didn’t want anyone to know that one of the earrings was missing; you see, I was afraid that I might have lost it on those stairs, and I meant to get away as quickly as possible so that I could look for it.… And then I couldn’t get away.”
“You were actually on those stairs, then?”
“Oh, yes—Gavin, don’t you see, that’s how the earring was there?”
He said harshly:
“Apparently I am more successful as an investigator than as a judge of character. I’d have staked my life on your candour and integrity—and yet in a moment’s panic, you find it easier to lie than to breathe.… Well, I’m not enough of the stoic Roman to pursue this ghastly farce to a logical conclusion; I’ll hand over the rôle of inquisitor to anyone that wants it. How about you, Larry?”
“I’ll take a hand for a bit, if you don’t mind,” interposed Kit pleasantly. “There are two or three things that I’m not quite clear about even now. Why not sit down, Hanna, and help us to straighte
n them out?”
She said: “I’d rather stand, please. What is it that you want to know?”
“Suppose we begin at the beginning. How did you know about these stairs?”
“I didn’t know about them. I just—I just happened to find that door at the back of the closet.”
Something young and wild and imploring appeared for a moment behind the clear serenity of the tall goddess’s eyes, signalling to him frantically to turn back before it was too late—to have done with questions that led further into darkness.
Kit turned his head away, so that he would not see the desperate messenger.
“How did you happen to find it, Hanna?”
“I was following someone—someone that started down the stairs just ahead of me when the gong rang the second time.”
“You knew who this person was?”
“I wasn’t sure—only that it was a man. I knew that because there were only men in front of me and no one passed me.”
“Why are you so sure of that?”
“Because I started the second that the gong rang, and I had my hands stretched out on either side of me, like this.… He went straight down to the second floor, and turned off into a room at the right.… I stood in the doorway for a minute, listening, waiting to find out what he was going to do next, and then I heard a queer little rustling sound at the other end of the room; I put my hand out and felt the panelling and knew that it was Lindy’s room, and that the noise must be coming from her closet.… After a moment it stopped, and there was a little creak, and then a click as though a door were closing; then everything was perfectly still. I thought—I thought that Doug was probably hiding in the closet, and that the other person must have found him there.… I got across the room somehow; the closet door was open—I couldn’t understand that, because of the click, but I went on in anyway. There was a lot of tissue paper all over the floor and some boxes, too, but the closet was empty. I felt twice all around the walls to make sure, because I couldn’t, I simply couldn’t believe it, and the second time my hand touched the door knob. It wasn’t fastened very tight; it turned under my hand, and I’d have fallen if I hadn’t caught at the hand rail; that saved me.… I knew then that I was on some kind of a staircase.… I went on down a little way again—and then suddenly I realized that there was a landing, and I stopped to listen. I didn’t know at all where the stairs came out, and it was terribly dark and still; I felt as though I should die of terror if I couldn’t get out of that horrible, closed-in place.…” She put out her hands as though to push back even the memory of it, her eyes dilating strangely under the delicate brows. “I got back up the stairs somehow, and through the closet, and across to the door—I was just outside it in the hall, when I heard—I heard Jill scream. That was what I told you, Gavin—you know that I told you that, and it was absolutely true. The only thing that I said that wasn’t true was about the earrings, and that was such a little thing. Are you still angry with me, Gavin?”
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