by Q. Patrick
“Half your salary!” It was Robert who broke in, his jaw set, his lips very white. “Why the devil didn’t you tell us, Faith? Jimmy and I, we’d—we’d have—”
“How could I tell? Jimmy and I were only just married. I wasn’t really established as an actress. How could I risk having Minna tell the world I was a jailbird? Besides, if she was really blackmailing me, I did owe her something and I was earning a good salary. That’s how I figured it. But about two weeks ago something happened that made me realize I’d have to give up playing for a while. I wouldn’t be able to help Minna out any more. I went to her and told her so. She was just too, too sweet. She said money meant nothing to her anyway. All she wanted now was to make her name the way Jimmy and Robert and I had done. That’s when she broached the subject of Jimmy’s adapting her book.”
Her husband broke in: “So that’s why you worked on me so hard. Minna was holding you up at the point of the parole board!”
Faith nodded. “I knew you’d turn it down, of course. I was scared stiff. When I returned the manuscript with apologies. I sent a big cheque with it—more than I could afford. But I knew that wouldn’t hold her. I wasn’t surprised when she called up, all honey and molasses, to tell me about the party. It was being given to discuss her manuscript, she said, and she was sure that some way could be found to make Jimmy change his mind about the dramatization.”
There was a long moment of silence. “What did she mean by that?” asked Jimmy uneasily.
“How do I know? How do I know anything? But I was still scared this afternoon when we went to the party—terribly scared. I was certain Minna was going to pull something particularly nasty and embarrassing.”
She wheeled round to face them, her voice rising in a sudden, hysterical crescendo.
“And when I heard she was dead, I was glad. I was terrified they would find the parole board’s letter. But even so I’d never been so glad in my life. I could have shrieked for joy. I—I—”
Jimmy sprang to her side, gripping her shoulders. “Get hold of yourself, darling. Do you want everyone in the theatre to think you murdered her?”
“Why not? You think it, don’t you? You think I killed her because she was going to expose me in front of all of you as a thief.” She pulled herself away from him wildly. “A jailbird. And now a murderess. That’s swell, isn’t it? That’s a swell combination for the mother of your child!” Jimmy was staring blankly. “The mother of my—wha-at?”
“Child, darling.” Faith’s laughter was half stifled now. “That’s why I’m having to leave the show. That’s why I’m so crazy with joy that Minna’s dead. I couldn’t have trusted her not to tell about the penitentiary—ever.”
Jimmy’s jaw dropped. After a protracted pause, Robert gave a little twisted grin and said: “Congratulations, Faith.” Faith smiled at him fleetingly, but her entire concentration was on her husband. She was watching him with a kind of desperate urgency.
“You—you don’t mind?” she faltered. “I mean about— everything, all I told you? It doesn’t make you despise me?”
“Despise you!” Jimmy’s dark eyes had crinkled suddenly at the corners. “Darling, if it wasn’t for that mayor’s wife’s fur coat, I wouldn’t have met you, would I?”
“Jimmy!” Gradually the cloud of anxiety slipped out of
Faith’s eyes. She took a small, uncertain step toward her husband, the full skirt of her old-fashioned costume rustling around her.
Then suddenly she was in his arms.
Robert, his eyes very grave, nodded Leslie to join him, and they slipped out of the room.
It was not until they had reached the stage door that Leslie realized she had forgotten her pocketbook. When she went back for it, neither Faith nor Jimmy seemed to notice her. Jimmy’s arm was still around his wife’s waist.
As Leslie tiptoed out, she heard his voice, very low and husky:
“Darling, why didn’t you tell me right from the very beginning? If only I’d known, I’d have murdered Minna— months ago.”
* * *
When she left the Vandolan Theatre with Robert, the last vestiges of Leslie’s editorial independence had deserted her. Almost for the first time in her life. Miss Leslie P. Cole felt as clingingly feminine as she looked. With a little comfortable sigh, she let her hand slip through Robert’s arm. It was such a strong, adequate arm.
Vaguely there stirred in her mind the recollection of a time when she had not wanted Robert Boyer to kiss her, simply because he was an author. Her taboo seemed very remote now.
At that moment she would have liked very much for him to kiss her.
But Robert seemed far away. There were deep lines around his mouth, and his dark eyes were preoccupied. He was thinking perhaps of Faith whom she had always felt he really loved.
Suddenly, unreasonably, Leslie was jealous of Faith Felton.
Robert said: “How about some food before we call it a day?”
They found a quiet place across the street, chose a remote table. Robert stared abstractedly, his steady brown eyes fixed on a point above Leslie’s head.
“It curdles my blood to think of what Minna was doing to Faith,” he said.
“Everything about Minna curdles my blood now I know the truth. She’d been blackmailing Dave too, you know. And Lieutenant Trant thought she might have been doing the same thing to you.”
Leslie produced, from her pocketbook, the typed copy of the telegram from the Labrador police and told him what the lieutenant had said.
Robert stared at it with a wry smile. “This is one count on which Minna wasn’t guilty. I got her to send that telegram. Pierre Bernard was quite a friend of mine. His death was a big jolt. I wanted to do what I could for his parents.” He twisted the paper over, glancing at the French manuscript on the other side. “Hello, what’s this?”
“Just part of poor old Lenoir’s translation of Mark. I thought I might keep it for curiosity value, but I’ve got a signed first edition and I don’t really need it.”
Leslie took the paper back. She was just tearing it up as a cheerful voice behind her said:
“A swell piece of sleuthing. I thought I’d track you here.” Leslie glanced up to see Gordy Keath. To her surprise, she was faintly irritated at his arrival. Without being asked, he drew up a chair.
“I’ve just been through the mill with Trant.” said the agent. “He almost broke his back trying to wheedle a murder motive out of me. But I just didn’t have one. I’m a beautiful, innocent boy.”
Gordy continued to talk with rather exasperating facetiousness while Leslie and Robert ate. At length Leslie rose and announced that she was going home, glancing tentatively at Robert. But before the author could move, Gordy had jumped up, gripped her arm and was drawing her toward the door.
He called to Robert over his shoulder, “I’ll take the lady home and you’ll pay the check. A fair distribution of labor. Good night.”
Too exhausted to object, Leslie let Gordy bundle her into a taxi. She had not the energy to object, either, when he slipped his arm around her waist. And illogically she discovered that the sensation was not unpleasant.
“It’s just occurred to me,” he said, “that I’ve never made love to you, Miss Cole. That was a gross oversight. There should be an emotional as well as a mental bond between agent and publisher.”
He bent and kissed her chin. Leslie drew away and said, “Please don’t be debonair, Gordy. I just couldn’t bear it.”
“I’m not being debonair, darling.”
Impulsively he took both her arms, twisting her around so that she was facing him. In spite of the half-mocking smile on his lips, his eyes were serious, almost tender. “Seems like it takes a murder to bring out the man in me. I’m rather crazy about you, Leslie. You’re the prettiest female publisher in New York.”
In spite of herself, Leslie was smiling. “You’re a dope, Gordy. But I like you.”
“She likes me!” Gordy took her hand and pressed it fervently to his he
art. “Dear Miss Cole, this evening you have made me the happiest of men. Dare I venture to hope—”
“Get out, Gordy,” said Leslie. “We’re here.”
Gordy kept the taxi waiting and went with her up the steps of her apartment house. Leslie started fumbling through her pocketbook for her front door key. She juggled small change, her spectacles, her compact, stray letters. But there was no key.
“Darn it,” she said. “I must have left my key at the office. Be an angel, Gordy, and help me search for the janitor.”
Eventually they found a very sleepy janitor who produced an extra key. Although Gordy pleaded to be allowed up, Leslie was tired enough to be adamant.
But she let him kiss her good night.
That was not unpleasant either. But when Leslie was alone in her room the vision of Robert’s dark, lean face rose up to obliterate the image of Gordy. She moved to the bookshelf where she kept her prized first editions and fingered them appraisingly. Mark was as nearly a great work of fiction as America had produced in years. I t would be something if only she could feel that the author of a novel like that was—fond of her.
She took that solemn thought to bed with her.
* * *
As she lay beneath the warm blankets, waiting for sleep to come, Leslie tried not to think. But, in spite of herself, her mind started circulating around the terrible events of that evening. She thought of Minna. Minna had rated no sympathy when she was alive, but Minna had been murdered— murdered by someone she, Leslie, knew intimately.
One of her friends... one of her six fellow guests... Which one?
That appalling thought merged in her mind with a queer belated pity for Minna. Minna might have been different if she had had the breaks. She had seen the rest of them making good all around her. But for her there had been nothing—a bad novel, a broken romance, a scarred face...
Minna’s scarred face followed Leslie into her dreams, haunting her, tormenting her with macabre fantasies.
She tried to push the nightmare from her, forced herself to wake. But, somehow, to her sleep-drenched mind came the uneasy sensation that Minna was somewhere near her, that she was moving about in the darkness of the living room next door.
Surely that was the creak of a board.
She was straining her ears now with the desperate concentration of the half-wakened sleeper.
Either it was some trick of her nightmare, or she was actually listening to the sound of footsteps and breathing in the next room. Distinctly she heard it, the sharp intake of breath.
And it came from the passage right outside her bedroom door now. It was Minna—Minna was coming into her bedroom.
That was absurd, of course; utterly ludicrous. Minna was dead. That jerked her back to common sense.
But someone—a living, breathing person—was standing there outside her bedroom door. Once again the unmistakable sound of footsteps. Then a faint squeak as the door was pushed stealthily open.
Leslie lay perfectly still in the numb embrace of fear. Her body was incapable of movement. Only her thoughts rushed round like whirlwinds in her brain.
She had suddenly remembered her lost front door key. With blinding conviction she knew that she had not left it at the office. It had been in her pocketbook. And someone had taken it—someone at one of the places she had visited that night.
Someone had got into Minna’s studio and murdered her.
And now—there was someone in her room.
Again that scarcely audible creak. This time it was nearer. Still she could not move or speak. Only her brain hammered the question—Why? Had this person come to kill her as he had killed Minna? She hadn’t harmed anyone, and she didn’t know anything except what she had learned from those papers Trant had found. Was that the reason? Had she perhaps stumbled on some knowledge which,
without her knowing it, pointed to the criminal?
And then suddenly, without her being conscious of it, the question in her brain had formed itself into words.
“Why are you here?” The unfamiliar sound of her own voice startled her. “What—what do you want?”
As soon as she had spoken she knew she had made a dreadful error. There flashed through her mind an article she had read the other day. It was about burglars and what to do if anyone broke into your bedroom at night. “Don’t,” it had said, “let the marauder know you’re awake. Go on pretending to be asleep or it may be fatal. Don’t speak to him. Don’t look at him. Remember he may be more frightened than you and when a criminal is frightened—he kills.”
But she had spoken. She had given herself away. That realization brought panic. Wildly she put out a hand and groped for the reading lamp by the bed.
“Don’t touch it.” The dazzling glare from a flashlight shone full in her face. Then, either it was the voice again or her nightmare framed in words! “And don’t scream or I’ll kill you.”
She blinked helplessly. The voice told her nothing. It was muffled, unreal. And it was impossible to distinguish even the barest outline of the figure behind that white blaze of illumination.
The core of light moved nearer and nearer. For a moment a handkerchief flickered into the patch of brightness. A sweetish sickly smell invaded her nostrils.
“Don’t move.”
A hand had touched her now. It was moving toward her throat.
A scream rose to her lips, but the sound was muffled by the handkerchief held tightly over her mouth. For a long moment she knew the terrors of imagined suffocation. Her fingers clawed at the hand that held the handkerchief, clawed feebly... more feebly...
And all the time that sweetish sickly smell. A smell that made her think of dim corridors and white-robed figures.
A hospital smell... it was as though every hospital in the world were falling on top of her pressing her down into oblivion.
And then, at last, there was nothing in the world. Nothing except unconsciousness...
* * *
With the first glimmerings of returning consciousness, the hospital smell came back. Then Leslie was aware of a splitting headache and a dull sense of nausea. She forced her heavy lids open. The blurred outlines of her own familiar furniture told her it was morning. Suddenly memory came rushing back, bringing with it some of the horror of the night.
That handkerchief pressed over her face! That smell... chloroform, probably, or ether. Gradually her thoughts struggled into coherence. Whoever it had been could not have wanted to kill her—only to render her unconscious. Had he come to steal? She slid out of bed and made a hurried examination of her more valuable possessions. Her handbag, her jewel case—nothing was missing. She pulled out the drawers of her desk. Letters, manuscripts, were all untouched.
It must then, she thought dazedly, be something connected with Minna’s murder. She must call Trant at once.
As she telephoned, the pain in her head made her wince. But in a short time she was talking to Lieutenant Trant at police headquarters and giving him a broken account of the night’s happenings.
He promised to come right over, and it was almost no time before he arrived. He was wearing a blue suit with a lighter blue shirt and tie. He looked very smart, very pleasant and, she thought, slightly apologetic.
After a quick glance around the room, he led her purposefully into the bedroom and put her back to bed with the efficiency of a trained nurse.
“There!” He smiled sympathetically. “I’ve got a doctor.
He’ll be here right away. How do you feel?”
“Terrible. And it’s—it’s all crazy. Someone broke in and yet nothing seems to be missing.”
“I think you’ll find you’re mistaken, Miss Cole.”
Leslie stared incredulously. “You mean you know what’s been stolen?”
“I’m making a guess.” The detective sat down on the edge of the bed, his grey eyes watching her with the same apologetic smile. “I blush to admit it, but I used you last night as a kind of decoy. By sending you on those various errands, I hope
d to force things to a head. Things got forced all right—far more so than I expected.”
He gave a little rueful shrug. “I thought the murderer of Minna Lucas would be interested in something you had in your possession. But I never dreamed he would steal your front door key, break in and chloroform you to get it. Now I’m responsible for that headache of yours. And I’m very sorry.”
To her surprise, Leslie did not feel angry with this unaccountable young policeman. There was only awe and a queer tinge of admiration.
“You mean you really had this all figured out? You know who killed Minna?”
“I was pretty certain a couple of hours after I’d seen the body.” There was nothing bombastic about that remark. It was a mere statement of fact. “And now, what happened here last night gives me the final piece of evidence I needed.”
Leslie’s startled movement sent pain spinning in her head again. “But who...”
“There’s time enough for you to find that out, Miss Cole.” The detective’s eyes were very grave. “Believe it or not. it’s not always pleasant being a policeman. We have decent feeling. And one of my most decent feelings is a very wholehearted dislike for Miss Minna Lucas. I don’t exactly relish the prospect of arresting her murderer.”
At that moment the doctor arrived. After a brief, fussy examination, he pronounced that there was nothing seriously wrong and gave Leslie something which removed her headache with incredible swiftness. He called Trant in: “Slight shock. Overdose of ether.” he said with rigid economy of words. “Liquid diet. You her husband? ‘
Trant grinned. “Yes,” he said.
“Cup of tea. Quick. Strong. Hot,” snapped the doctor and was gone.
Still grinning, Lieutenant Trant disappeared into the kitchen and returned presently with a cup of strong, hot tea.
As Leslie sipped it. she said hesitantly, “Then you are going to make an arrest?”
He nodded. “I had made arrangements for a last roundup in my office at headquarters this morning. But when I heard of your—er—indisposition, I took the liberty of switching it here. I guessed you wouldn’t feel like going out, and I particularly want everyone to be—in at the finish. Is that all right?”
