Cabot leaned forward, thinking of innumerable questions that might be asked. But he suddenly realized that none of them loomed in his consciousness as clearly as the question which he was still asking himself: Where had Lib gone? He glanced at his watch. It was three twenty-seven.
He said, “The only daylight left in it is the fact that you called me last night, before the plan had time to go through. That was too late for Deb, but it saved you. It forced the killer to act quickly, and the result, ironically enough, left you with an alibi.”
Rand’s pale face was thoughtful. He said, “That will fall through, I think—the alibi. It probably wasn’t a slip. You can expect a devilish subtlety in this thing, Cabot.”
Cabot said, “You know what you’ll have to do, don’t you? You’ll have to lay all your cards on the table.”
Rand lifted his hand. “No. That’s not it.”
Cabot said, “This is no time to worry about being charged with criminal negligence in an accident or to wonder whether your reputation will suffer if you admit having lied to the police. This business has lost its amateur standing in wrongdoing, Rand. It’s murder.”
Rand repeated, “That’s not it. Don’t you see?” His head turned slowly. “I can’t prove it, Cabot. I don’t know who walked out of here with that note, and I can’t even risk a guess. The only chance on God’s earth to catch him now is to let it go on—to let his plan work up to the last minute!”
“That is, if your theory is correct, to let your own alibi explode, to fall under suspicion yourself, and finally to give him an opportunity to leave that suicide note beside your dead body?”
Rand nodded, his eyes on Cabot. “It will develop quickly—you’ll see. In the meanwhile I am perfectly safe, for he can’t afford to kill me too soon. I can simply play dazed, and neither the police nor the killer will suspect that I’ve talked with you already.”
Cabot got up. “The police suspect it now,” he said, “but the killer apparently doesn’t. That’s one break.” He stood there, irresolutely. “I’ll be darned if I can decide whether your plan is brilliant or crazy.”
Rand’s gaze followed him. “Will you give it a chance to work?” he asked. “Will you at least see me again before you tell Boynton about this?”
Cabot said, “I’ll go that far. But don’t be surprised if I see you again within thirty minutes.”
He got out of the apartment unobserved and slipped from the house without encountering anyone except the detective at the door.
It was after four o’clock when he got to his apartment.
He didn’t realize until he reached the entrance that his pulse was pounding. He fitted his key into the hole and bounded in impulsively, leaving the door swinging.
He switched on the lights and glanced around the living-room. Then he walked on automatically into the little dining-room and across it into the kitchenette. They, too, were dark and deserted, and he turned from them to the bedroom as the last, but most likely, resort.
His pulse was still pounding.
As the lights flashed on he saw that there was no one there. The bed had not been slept in. He called, “Lib,” perfunctorily, and then stopped. She was gone.
But there should be a note.
He started toward the bathroom. But then, halfway across the room, he saw it. It was lying there on the bed, white against the whiteness of the pillow.
It was typed. It read: “In case you come in, I couldn’t contact Velery by phone. Wendell and I are going after him, as you wanted two. Am afraid he’s celebrating something. Maybe our wedding. Lib.”
His face cleared. He almost laughed from sheer relief. Yes, that was like Lib, he thought. The note, and going after Velery. But why had she typed it on his portable? Surely she could have found a pencil. But perhaps not. It didn’t matter.
With tension relaxed, he realized that he was fagged out. A shower, possibly, was the solution. He thought that he would try it, anyway.
The shower did make him feel better at once, but better in the wrong way. He felt luxuriously relaxed, ripe for rest. He came out of the bathroom, yawning, and stood for a moment, stretching his sinewy, unclothed body.
It seemed silly to think about dressing at four-thirty in the morning. Preposterous. He sat down on the edge of the bed, stifling another yawn. The languor was almost overpowering. He decided to stretch out for a few moments before he put on his clothes.
He pulled the coverlet over him and lay still. He found that he could, without half trying, shut out of his mind the whole business of the murder and all its attendant worries, the memory of everything that had taken place during the past few hours—even the thought of Lib herself. The almost magical ease with which he attained that contemplative calm surprised and vaguely pleased him. It occurred to him that he might at one time or another have stumbled, unaware, upon the secret of Yoga. Perhaps he was a Rosicrucian, getting on the mental beam.
The one thought which intruded upon his strange new equanimity was the recollection that he had left the apartment door wide open. But that did not disturb him in the least, for he was sure that he would be lying there, at the most, for only five minutes before he got up to dress.
He was mistaken.
Chapter Nine
In what might have been five minutes or five hours, he was aroused by a succession of peculiar sounds. It was a clatter that sounded strangely like the rattle of dishes. After listening to it somnolently for some time, he concluded that it was dishes.
He had evidently gone to sleep in a restaurant.
A voice said, “Good morning.” It said it pleasantly but just a little authoritatively. He considered the voice drowsily, as he had considered the sounds. He decided that it was, on the whole, a rather familiar voice. He had heard it before.
He opened his eyes.
Lib was standing there, holding a tray. On the tray a tall glass of orange juice towered brightly beside a steaming cup of coffee, and two wide-eyed fried eggs seemed to be winking at him from under curling eyebrows of crisp bacon.
He clapped his hand weakly to his head and said, “My lord!”
She inquired with only minimum amusement, “Is that what you usually say when somebody serves your breakfast in bed?”
He said wonderingly, “I don’t know. It’s never happened before.”
“Well, don’t let it give you too many ideas. I had a few minutes to spare before I had to rush down to the office.” He stared at her half incredulously. She was fully dressed for the street. She even had her hat on. And she was standing there, holding a tray. Suddenly it seemed to dawn on him that it was really she. “Sweetheart!” he exclaimed, and threw the covers aside and started to bound from the bed.
She fell back at once with a sound like a stifled scream. The tray almost fell from her hands. The orange juice splattered.
He hastily jerked the covers back, up to the neck.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Phil Cabot!” she gasped. “Don’t you—don’t you ever? I mean—no pajamas?”
He muttered apologetically, “I’m sorry I frightened you.”
She said, “I wasn’t frightened.” She said it a trifle defensively.
“Well—shocked you.”
“I wasn’t shocked.” She put the tray on the bed. “That’s silly. Did you think I had never before seen a——”
He suddenly sat bolt upright, clutching the covers to him.
“When?” he demanded.
“Why, on beaches and places like that. It’s nothing. It was just the unexpectedness of the thing——”
“Oh!—beaches.”
She eyed him sternly. “Phil, you’re only half awake. A nightmare is still holding a priority on you. Drink that coffee.”
He started sipping it. It was good coffee. It was still hot.
She said, “I got Wendell and Velery. They’re due at the office in thirty minutes. I’ll just have time to make it.”
“There’s no need for such a great rush——�
��
“Oh, yes, there is! I was told to be there early. I was told to have other people there early. They’re waiting for me.”
“Now, wait—I have to tell you, don’t I?”
“You can phone. That’s the way you’ve always saved time.”
“Now, listen, Lib——”
“Eat those eggs——“ The telephone rang, and she ran out.
She came back in a few moments, explaining. “It was Jeff Boynton. He wants you at the Rand house immediately.”
“He does, does he?”
“And his voice sounded like no-fooling,” she said. “It sounded a little like the majesty of justice—oh, I have to run!”
“Come here for just a minute.”
She came but not quite close enough. She stood there utterly preoccupied, looking at her wrist watch, shaking it a little. She said, “I wonder if that could be right?”
He thought for just a moment of taking the bull by the horns, of casually flipping the covers aside and stepping out upon the rug fearlessly and nonchalantly, maybe even with a yawn.
But he was almost certain that history would repeat itself, that she would once more give that suppressed shriek.
She said, “Why are you looking at me so strangely—with that slightly starved look? Can’t you eat it—the breakfast?”
“The breakfast is all right,” he said. “The breakfast is fine. It’s not that——”
“Well, whatever it is,” she said, “I have to go. I’m late.”
“Wait! Aren’t you going to kiss me goodby?”
“Did you kiss me goodby last night?”
“That was different. I——”
“No, it wasn’t.” She kept on moving toward the door. “We have a job to do, Phil, and we simply have to forget the kissing until we can concentrate on it.”
She disappeared through the doorway, and he raised his voice.
“It was different. I felt myself weakening. That’s why——”
Her reply reached him from somewhere out in the corridor. “How do you know I’m not weakening?”
“Lib!” he shouted and tore across the bedroom after her.
Her shoulder was just vanishing through the entrance door. The door clicked to behind her.
He shouted again, “Lib!” and sprinted to the door. He had a sudden, mad impulse to run out into the lobby after her, to beat her to the elevators. But he knew, from the implacably resolute line of that vanishing shoulder, that it was no use.
No use, indeed. He could speed after her through all the sedate corridors, down the stairs, even out upon the avenue, shouting “Lib!” at every step, and still she wouldn’t stop. They would go on and on, and she wouldn’t so much as look back. Crowds would gather. Traffic would jam. Police whistles would blow. Headlines would flare: BRIDE PURSUED BY NUDIST GROOM. Oh, the devil!
He felt like a fool.
He went back and ate the eggs.
The moment he walked into the Rand house he became aware of a certain difference in the atmosphere. The sunshine was like a great light turned on, accentuating rather than decreasing the horror of the night. The tension seemed to have grown, to have become visible. It was apparent even in the guarded and automatic smile of the detective at the door, in the restrained voices which sounded from the drawing-room, and in the wary, unsmiling nod which Jan Utley gave him as she passed through the hall.
He walked after her, and she halted before the dining-room door, glancing back.
He said, “I’d like to talk with you confidentially, Miss Utley. Would that be impossible just now?”
She shrugged. “Everything seems impossible before breakfast. But come in.”
They entered, and Cabot closed the door behind them. Through the doorway at the other end Mallie came lumbering in with a pot of coffee. There was no sign of Theresa.
Cabot declined breakfast but took a cup of coffee. He waited until the cook had gone out before he spoke. “You’ll recall that when we met we agreed to have a discussion later. This seems to be the time for it.”
Jan looked up. “Is it? I’m not so sure. The situation has altered considerably.”
“I don’t see that. It has merely developed. The original mystery of Deb has been heightened by his murder.” He was watching her. “But you know, Miss Utley, one of the odd features of this case is the fact that neither you nor your sister appeared last night to take that situation seriously.”
Jan was putting a piece of bread into the toaster. “Surely you realize that that was because the possibility of—well, all this, seemed just then so extremely remote. But maybe I should explain that we had been hearing a good deal about a fantastic theory of Carlo Pugh’s——”
“I heard about that, too—from Deb. I can understand how it might have made my arrival seem rather ridiculous. But if so, why were you so anxious at that stage to talk with me?”
She hesitated momentarily. “Well, frankly, I wanted to feel you out. I was not convinced that you were coming here solely because of Deb. It was altogether too likely that Darryl was really employing you for some other purpose.”
“What other purpose?”
“I didn’t know. I still don’t know. And perhaps you don’t either.” She looked at him steadily for a moment. “I understand that Darryl is still unconscious this morning. He may not become rational for hours.” Her eyes were thoughtful. “I wonder if that could have been the plan?”
“I don’t think that the effects of drugs can be calculated that nicely. It was too uncertain, for one thing, when he would be found.”
“That’s true. And if you hadn’t found him when you did, he might have died?”
“Possibly. And then, again, it might only have prolonged the period of unconsciousness and gradual recovery.” He broke off abruptly, wondering whether he had not just stumbled upon the deadly logic lurking in what had occurred. He recalled that most powerful narcotics, given time enough to get a real grip upon a man but not time enough to cause his death, could be expected to retain for hours a paralyzing effect upon the mind.
If the person who had stolen the suicide note was planning to use it as Rand anticipated, he would certainly have considered it necessary to get Rand out of the way for such a period, both to prevent his talking and to permit the development of some sort of case against him that would make his eventual suicide plausible.
In that event Rand’s apparent alibi would turn out to be a boomerang, and the use of the veronal would prove to be, not a weakness, but an integral part of the plot.
But why had Jan Utley put her finger so unerringly upon the crucial point? He looked back at her. “You think, then, that the murderer may have had some design against Rand that was incidental to the murder of Deb?”
She replied slowly, “I am wondering if the murder itself was not incidental in some way to that design against Darryl.”
“That’s amazing!” His exclamation was charged with a genuine surprise, though it was not evoked by the fact disclosed; it was her admission of it that was astounding. “What makes you believe that?”
She gave a slight shrug. “Simply the fact that Darryl was obviously worried about something before Deb ever came here. He acted like a man who was afraid, like a man who had an enemy.”
“Your sister mentioned that.” He paused. “If he did feel that he was in danger, it seems remarkable that he told his wife nothing about it—don’t you think?”
She waited a moment and then said something else that was wholly unexpected. “From the fact that he didn’t, I gather that he suspected me of being involved in his danger.”
“You!”
She said, “Your start was not entirely convincing, Mr. Cabot. I think you’ve been here long enough to learn that Darryl would be likely to suspect me of almost anything.”
He was watching her closely across the table. “But why?”
She pulled off her glasses with a restless gesture and, holding them vertically by the earpieces, began moving them in a preo
ccupied manner back and forth across the tablecloth. The prong beside the right lens made a faint tracery on the linen.
He was a little fascinated by the unpredictable change in her face. He knew that it was not the mere absence of the horn-rimmed glasses that made her seem different. It was also the fact that she was no longer peering through them with a half-aggressive intentness but was looking down at them so quietly and contemplatively. She seemed so much younger, so infinitely more feminine, that he wondered whether a beautician and a designer couldn’t rather easily accomplish a professional miracle.
She looked up at last and started to put the glasses back on.
He said, “Has anyone ever told you how different they make you look?”
She appeared startled for a second before she smiled. “Gail has been telling me for years,” she answered. “She has a highly romantic Pygmalion theory, acquired largely from the movies. Every once in a while she starts in to do me all over again, and I put up with it for a time. But it invariably begins and ends with the glasses.” It was difficult to determine whether the oblique smile expressed wisdom or bitterness. “The truth is that I’m two-thirds blind without them. And why should I go around bumping into doors just on the chance of bumping into a man? I prefer the luxury of being myself. To the devil with sex.”
But he noticed that she did not immediately put the glasses back on. She automatically began tracing again on the tablecloth.
She said, “I haven’t answered your question, have I? It’s rather complicated. But the essential fact is that Gail and I were orphans, Mr. Cabot, and we were brought up mostly in boarding schools. For that reason, among others, we have been much closer than sisters usually are. All during our childhood we knew that, we had nobody on earth except each other. And—“ Jan’s eyes were very intent upon the moving glasses—“well, in a sense, it’s still that way. In moments of crisis—in a real pinch—we feel that there’s no one else.”
She stopped, looking across the room. “It was never the kind of affinity that exists between twins, but the very reverse. When Gail was only nine and I was ten, people were already remarking how pretty she was and how intelligent I was. It could have turned out to be envy, I suppose, but it didn’t. It turned out to be love.
The Whistling Legs Page 9
