Episode of the Wandering Knife

by Rinehart, Mary Roberts;

  “No bomb, Patrick,” I said. “It doesn’t tick.”

  He looked abashed and turned away.

  And that, if you can believe it, is the way the knife came back. I had let the woman go, I hadn’t even noticed the taxi, and when in my room upstairs I opened the box and saw it, I simply couldn’t believe it. To make things worse there was no writing on the paper and nothing whatever to indicate where the box had come from.

  I stood there looking at it. Either it was incredibly good luck, or it was definitely sinister. I hadn’t an idea which. All I knew was that we had the damned thing again. It was lying in a nest of cotton, and if anything it looked more disreputable than ever. The hide on the handle was none the better for its long soaking in the tank, and some more of the hair had come off. Then I remembered that it had killed Isabel, and I went into the bathroom and lost the lunch I hadn’t eaten.

  I didn’t take it back to Mother. I locked it in my jewel case and then went across the hall. Mother was sitting up in bed with a tea tray beside her. For the first time in her life she looked like a wizened old woman. She could hardly hold the teacup, and when she looked at me all the life had gone out of her eyes.

  “Any word from Larry?” she asked.

  “Nothing. He’s probably busy,” I said, as cheerfully as I could. But she was not to be comforted.

  “He’s probably in a cell, Judy.”

  “Nonsense, Mother. They have nothing on him.”

  “What do you mean, nothing? They have the knife, haven’t they?”

  I took the teacup from her before she could spill it. Then I sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “As a matter of fact, Mother, they haven’t got the knife. They never have had it.”

  “What do you mean by that?” she said thickly.

  “It’s come back. It’s in my room.”

  I told her the story. She isn’t a particularly religious woman, although we have a pew at St. Mark’s and she goes now and then. But when after she heard it she lay back without speaking and closed her eyes I knew she was saying a prayer. When she opened her eyes again, however, she was her old shrewd self.

  “It’s just what I thought,” she said. “That plumber took it and his wife or somebody else brought it back. Probably they never read the papers. Where have you got it?”

  “In my jewel case. But it’s going to the police, Mother. There are to be no more tanks. We’re just making things worse for Larry.”

  I think she would have agreed. After all she is nobody’s fool, and as she said when Barnes was found he could validate Larry’s alibi that he had not gone to his house. But just then the telephone rang, and I answered it from beside her bed.

  It was Tony King, speaking from a pay telephone, and his voice was grave.

  “Listen, sister,” he said. “There’s a spot of trouble. Barnes has been found, out the Sunnyside Road. He’s been shot.”

  “Oh, no!” I said beginning to shake. “I can’t bear it. Do you mean he’s dead?”

  “Yes. Don’t take it too hard. These things happen. It hasn’t necessarily anything to do with the other affair.”

  “But the police think it has, don’t they?”

  He hesitated.

  “Well, there’s a chance. They may hold your brother for a bit. Only as a material witness, or something of the sort. Don’t worry.”

  “Listen,” I said. “Stop treating me like a child. Why are they holding Larry? They can’t think he killed Barnes.”

  I heard Mother give a thin wail from the bed, but it was too late. She knew the worst by that time. And Tony King went on. It was possible that Barnes had known something about Isabel’s death and had to be put out of the way. As for details, if I wanted them, the State Police had found the body some ten miles outside the city limits. There had been a brushfire, and one of the troopers had gone along a wood road to put it out. Barnes was lying there, among the leaves. He was dressed as he had been when we all saw him last. He had been shot through the head, and he had been dead over twenty-four hours. There was no sign of the gun which killed him.

  And Tony added something else which practically sent me in to a tailspin.

  “You might take a look at the cars in your garage,” he said guardedly. “You may have some visitors before long. Somebody in a car took him to where he was found. I want a little time, if I can get it.”

  Mother was up and trying to get her nightgown over her head before I hung up. It stuck hopelessly, of course, and I jerked it back and shoved her toward her bed.

  “What on earth do you think you can do?” I demanded. “Get back there and stay there.”

  “I’m going to my son,” she said defiantly. “He needs me. He hasn’t even a razor, or anything to sleep in. And bread and water to eat! As though he would kill a policeman he didn’t even know. Or his own wife.”

  Which was Mother, of course, but which didn’t help any. It took some time to get her into bed again. She was threatening to go to Washington and see the President and the British Ambassador when I finally got out of the room. And of course, I was too late. When I got downstairs there were three men at the garage talking to Jim, our head chauffeur, and I didn’t need to be told that they were detectives. I watched them go inside, and the lights go on—it was getting dark by that time—and after a few minutes one of them drove Larry’s car out, another got into the car they had brought, and the third one started for the house.

  That was when I panicked.

  Panic is a queer thing. Either you think like blazes, or you don’t think at all. I don’t remember thinking. All I knew was that he would probably search the house, and that the knife was in my room. The rest was pure instinct, and pretty rotten instinct at that. I ran upstairs, put on a loose coat, dropped the knife in my pocket and started down again.

  I was just too late. The doorbell was ringing, and one of the men was at the door opening it.

  X

  I did the only thing I could think of. I sat down on the edge of the fountain and slid the knife into the pool. I must have looked like an idiot, sitting there dabbling my hand among the water lilies, but perhaps that was the police idea of how people like us amused ourselves. Anyhow this one took it in his stride.

  He came in and took off his hat.

  “My name’s Anderson,” he said. “I would like to see Mrs. Shepard, or Miss Shepard.”

  “I’m Judy Shepard,” I said, getting up. My voice sounded thin, but at least I could speak. “I’m sorry about Mother. She’s in bed.”

  “Then I’d like to talk to you,” he said, looking around him. “Is there any place …”

  I didn’t blame him. It was like trying to talk in Madison Square Garden. I took him into the library and closed the door. Then I sat down, because my knees were shaking. He produced a card and handed it to me, but I didn’t even try to read it. He was polite enough, however.

  “Miss Shepard,” he said, sitting down rather close to me. “I wonder if by any chance you heard a car leaving your garage, the morning after your sister-in-law was killed. Early in the morning.”

  “No, I didn’t. But the men sleep over the garage. They would know.”

  “You’re sure of that? Your room faces toward the garage, doesn’t it?”

  They knew a lot about us, evidently. I began to feel indignant, which was at least better than wobbling.

  “If you mean did my brother take a car out at that time you’re crazy,” I said hotly. “He was in bed, in a state of collapse. It took two men to get him up the stairs.”

  “I haven’t said anything about your brother,” he told me, and eyed me with sharp gray eyes. “I’m merely asking about your cars.”

  “Anyhow, who could get a car out that morning?” I said. “You had men all over the place. You even had a guard at the gate.”

  “There are two other gates.”

  “They were padlocked. The gardeners had orders to lock them that night. The Mayor—”

  “I know all about that. Are t
here no other keys to them?”

  Well, it was no use lying to him, with extra keys hanging inside the service door at the rear and tags on them in Alma’s neat writing. I had to admit it, and he began to look quite amiable. He got up and took his hat.

  “I’ll take a look at them,” he said, and went out.

  I had a bad moment when he passed the fountain, but he merely gave it a glance and went on, with Patrick, who had appeared by that time, trailing behind him. He was not gone long, and when he came back he did not sit down again. He told me about Barnes, watching me like a cat as he did so: the car that had picked him up at his house, the finding of his body, the bullet wound in his head. If he wanted to break me up he certainly did so. And when he said they had taken Larry’s car for examination, and that one of Larry’s revolvers was missing from his house, I simply went berserk. I remember shouting that there was a plot to involve us all, that Larry had never killed anyone, and that the whole damned police force ought to be put away as lunatics. He waited stoically through it. Then he opened the door, and Patrick was just outside.

  “Get her some ammonia or something,” he said. “And perhaps she’d better go to bed.” He looked at me. “I’m sorry, Miss Shepard. Just remember this: It’s pretty hard to send even a guilty man to the chair. If a man isn’t guilty …”

  He didn’t finish. He put on his hat and went away, and I laid my head on Patrick’s shoulder and cried. He put his old arm around me.

  “Never mind, Miss Judy,” he said. “Never mind. It will be all right.”

  I quieted after a while, but of course it was no use trying to get the knife, with the hall brightly lighted and somebody on duty there all the time. Neither murder nor sudden death could upset that routine. I went upstairs and washed my face in cold water. Also I put away my jewel case. It was six o’clock then, and it is odd to remember that it must have been about the same time when Andrew Leland walked into Inspector Welles’s office at Headquarters. The finding of Barnes’s body had been announced over the local radio, and he had evidently heard about it. I can picture him sitting there in his big ugly house, red brick outside and red carpets and brocade hangings within. All the proper Lelandish arrangements made for Isabel’s funeral the next day, the street to be blocked off from the curious crowd, the cards to be presented at the door and then because of the silence over everything, turning on the radio.

  Anyhow he walked in, still neat, still stiff, and yet somehow pathetic. He walked over to the desk and stood there.

  “I have come to demand my son-in-law’s arrest for double murder,” he said.

  “I see,” said the Inspector. “Won’t you sit down?”

  But he did not sit. He stood there, straight and terrible.

  “He killed my daughter,” he said. “And he killed your man so he couldn’t tell that he had seen him on his way to do it.”

  “Have you any idea,” said the Inspector quietly, “why he would have killed your daughter?”

  He must have hesitated. He knew too much, and surmised so much more. There must have been a terrific struggle going on between his pride and his certainty that Larry had murdered Isabel. In the end his pride won.

  “I do not pretend to know what goes on between husband and wife,” he said. “He killed her. I know that. And if you let him escape the chair I will never believe in human justice again, or a god.”

  He went out after that, as stiffly as he had gone in.

  Even Alma did not know of that visit. She came downstairs to dinner, although she said her headache still bothered her.

  Neither of us had changed, and she was still in the heavy black she had worn to the Leland house.

  But her rooms were in the same wing as mine, and she had seen the detectives.

  “What did they want?” she asked. “One of them took a car away, didn’t he?”

  “Larry’s car. Yes.”

  “But why?”

  “Don’t ask me,” I said shortly. “They’ve found the policeman, Barnes. Somebody shot him.”

  She looked shocked.

  “Shot him!” she said. “Why on earth would anybody do that?”

  “It’s perfectly simple,” I said. “Larry killed Isabel. Barnes saw him, so he killed him too. Now all they have to do is to find blood in his car and he’ll go to the chair.”

  She looked at me sharply.

  “You’d better take a sedative,” she said. “You’re on the edge of a crack-up, Judy.”

  She followed me into the library. I wanted to be alone, but I saw she had something more to say, and she proceeded to say it.

  “I think I’d better tell you something, Judy,” she said. “I know you’ll keep it to yourself. I’m pretty sure someone did take a car out of the garage the night Isabel was killed. Some time toward morning.”

  I must have looked startled, for she smiled.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not telling it,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep, and you know where my rooms are. It went toward the service gate. I didn’t think much of it at the time. The place was crawling with cars. But later I remembered. Those gates were locked that night.”

  I was definitely frightened. I had never thought of Alma as a source of danger. Yet if she was questioned, she might be. There must have been times when she compared her lot with mine. And I hadn’t even told her that I was trying at last to be a useful citizen. She would only have thought I was dramatizing myself. For the first time I wondered if she really liked any of us.

  For a minute I had a wild impulse to bribe her, to offer her my mink coat, to try to buy her silence with anything I had. I think she knew it too. She stiffened.

  “I’ve said I’m not telling, Judy,” she said quietly. “Let it go at that.”

  Her headache was better after dinner. She suggested some gin rummy, and we played for half an hour or so. I lost three dollars—she could always beat me—and feeling that I had added a trifle to the silence fund went up to see Mother. We had dined early, and it was still only eight-thirty. Mother was over her hysteria. She was playing solitaire, as she always does when she is nervous. She was sitting up in bed with a board on her knees.

  “I’ve put in a call for the Governor,” she said. “Of course the wretch is out to dinner. You would think he had enough to do to run this State without going to parties.”

  “Like the Mayor?”

  “I had a reason for asking the Mayor,” she said coldly.

  She deliberately cheated herself as usual, and when the thing came out she announced that she had won two hundred and eight dollars. But she was still worried about Larry.

  “You’d better go down tonight and pack a box for him,” she said. “The poor boy hasn’t even a clean handkerchief. And if those wretches use a rubber hose on him maybe you’d better take some iodine.”

  I assured her they would do nothing of the sort, and she relaxed somewhat. But I had to tell her about the knife: that it was in the pool, and why. She looked worried at first. Then she thought it over.

  “Perhaps it’s not such a bad hiding place after all,” she said. “I read a story once, something about a letter. They merely turned it inside out or something, and left it where anybody could see it.”

  I laughed a little, and kissed her.

  “Then you did read a book once,” I said. “Well, chin up, old girl. We’re not beaten yet.”

  Maybe it was the mention of a chin. Don’t ask me. I know nothing about the human mind. But all at once I remembered why the woman who had brought back the knife that afternoon had seemed familiar. Her profile had been like the one in the snapshot I had found in the magazine in Isabel’s room, chin and all. In that case …

  I didn’t stop to think it out. I didn’t tell Mother. When I left her I went downstairs and got my coat from the powder room where Patrick had hung it that afternoon and started for Larry’s house.

  To my relief the police guard was gone. The place was dark, except for the service wing and a light upstairs, shaded for the dimout. I
went in through the kitchen. Only Anna was there. She was listening to the radio, and her eyes were bright with excitement.

  “They found that policeman, Miss Judy. Somebody killed him.”

  “Yes, I know, Anna. Is it all right if I go upstairs?”

  “Why sure, miss. Mr. Scott’s up there. He came to get some things for Mr. Shepard. He’s not coming home tonight.”

  She was enjoying it, I thought furiously. It didn’t matter to her that not far away Jim Barnes’s wife and children were in trouble, or that Isabel was dead, or Larry might never come back. I left her there and went almost blindly up the stairs. A small bag of Larry’s was standing packed in the ball, but there was no sign of Don. I suppose I had moved quietly. The carpets are very thick. For when I did locate him he was not in Larry’s room. He was in Isabel’s, bending over an open chest of drawers and fumbling in it.

  He looked completely shattered when he saw me.

  “Larry doesn’t keep his things there,” I said. “What’s the idea, Don?”

  I think he hated me just then. He shrugged his shoulders and gave me an imitation of a smile.

  “You would turn up,” he said. “Well, if you want the truth, I was looking for something. It isn’t here, so—that’s that.” He fumbled for his cigarette case. “I suppose you know they’re holding Larry?”

  “Why on earth would they? They can’t think he killed Barnes.”

  He didn’t answer immediately. He lit a cigarette before he spoke.

  “I’m afraid it’s his car. I’m sorry, Judy, but they think Barnes was shot in it. Of course it’s ridiculous but …”

  I suppose I had expected it. I wasn’t surprised. It was all part of the net closing around us. But I was angrier than I had ever been in my life.

  “You believe it, don’t you, Don?” I said bitterly. “You’re standing by him, but you think he’s a monster, that he’s killed two people: the woman he loved and a man he didn’t know. Then you come here snooping, to find something to prove him guilty.”

  It got under his skin.

  “I wish you’d keep out of this,” he said roughly. “There are angles you don’t know. If I could only find out …”