The Back-seat Murder

by Herman Landon

  “Good Lord!” Harrington exclaimed under his breath.

  “You see,” she went on, “I’ve never been convinced that it was Mr. Marsh who killed Mooreland. I’ve been just as ready to believe that Mr. Stoddard was the murderer. Either that, or else they planned it together. There were lots of reasons for suspecting either of them or both of them. And so I’ve kept them both dangling, in a way. Mr. Stoddard knew I had an ulterior motive in getting the position of nurse at Peekacre, but he was mistaken about the motive. Tonight, thanks to my carelessness, he stumbled upon the truth.”

  Harrington gazed at her In amazement. A thousand questions were thronging his mind, but he refrained from asking them.

  “You seem desperately anxious to bring Mooreland’s murderer to justice,” he declared.

  “Oh, I am!”

  “But that wasn’t your reason for coming here tonight?”

  “No, not exactly. I came because—Oh, I suppose it was a sort of intuition. I was astounded when you told me about the letter Mr. Marsh had dictated and about the instructions he had given you. I knew there was some deep purpose behind it, but I couldn’t figure it out. Then, after you had gone, an idea popped in my mind. I saw it all in a flash—or I thought I did. And so I rushed out here to warn you and prevent a murder.”

  “Murder?” he echoed.

  “Yes, I felt certain Mr. Marsh meant to murder you. It seemed very clear then—horribly clear. But now—“ Her voice faltered and she gazed uncertainly about the room.

  “But I had no intention of going to this place,” he pointed out. “What led you to suppose that you would find me here?”

  With a thoughtful frown, as if trying to collect a sequence of ideas, she glanced off into space.

  “I don’t know. I reasoned it all out, but it seems absurd now. If you knew all that I know, perhaps you would understand. Anyway, I was almost certain that, if Mr. Marsh meant to do you harm, the harm would be done here.” She gave a nervous laugh. “As Mr. Stoddard remarked, it’s a perfect setting for a murder. I supposed you would be held up on the way and enticed to this place somehow. My mind wasn’t very clear on that point. It seemed—“ She turned on him suddenly, with a startled look in her eyes. “And I was right!” she exclaimed. “You did come here!”

  Their eyes met in an expression of mutual wonder. Yes, he reflected, she had been right, or very nearly right He wondered by what process of reasoning, or by what flash of intuition, she had divined Marsh’s intention.

  “How did it happen?” she asked.

  He turned away, hesitated, listened to the roar of the storm, then faced her again. She had to know the gruesome truth very soon. It might as well be now.

  “Mr. Marsh is dead,” he said gently.

  She stood stonily still, staring at him. Then she swayed a little, and he led her to the ramshackle sofa at the side of the room.

  “Dead?” she echoed huskily. “Murdered?”

  “Yes, and in the most curious way.” As clearly as he could, he told her what had happened, beginning with Marsh’s sudden and inexplicable appearance in the car and concluding with a description of the dramatic scene that had terminated in the mysterious death thrust.

  She sat very still when he had finished. Only her hands moved nervously.

  “I should have driven straight back to Peekacre,” he added, “but just then I saw a light over in this direction. I was seized with a wild idea that I might catch the murderer, and so I ran over.”

  “And you almost caught him,” she said unthinkingly.

  He gave a start and fixed her with a searching look.

  “You think Stoddard is the murderer?”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t say that. I don’t know. All I know is that he would be capable oi almost any atrocity.”

  He turned away, and in his mind he ran over the incredible things that had happened in the car.

  “I doubt,” he said huskily, “if any human being could have committed this murder in the way it was done.”

  She bowed her head in thought. He gazed down at the gleaming waves of brown that curved away from her forehead.

  “I think we had better go,” he murmured. “Your car is waiting, isn’t it? I don’t suppose you want to go back to the attic any more tonight?”

  “The attic?” She shivered. “Oh, that was just an after-thought When I didn’t find you here, I supposed my suspicions had been wrong, and then I thought I might as well go up there and look around a bit.”

  “I see,” he said, still gazing down at her head and wondering how many mysteries and secrets wore contained there. As yet she had given him only a few glimpses.

  She rose. “Yes, let’s go. Fm really dreadfully tired. Such excitement! “

  She smiled wanly as he helped her into her raincoat A brave, splendid girl, he reflected, and what a maze of terrors and mysteries she was moving in!

  The storm had abated only a trifle. They stopped on the piazza steps, and he swept his flashlight over the soggy ground, but in the downpour they could see only a few feet ahead.

  “Stoddard?” he muttered. During the past few minutes the dark man had been almost forgotten. “Wonder which way he went.”

  They stared out along the misty path projected by the flashlight In the distance, trees were swaying and groaning, and it was disquieting to think that one of them might shelter an evilly disposed man with a pistol.

  “I think he went away,” said Theresa. “He happened to mention that he left his car in the garage.”

  “But we would have heard the noise of the engine,” he pointed out.

  “Not in this storm.”

  He swung the flashlight back and forth. For Theresa’s sake he was anxious to guard against an attack from ambush. Presently the moving beam picked out the dim contours of a tumble-down structure. The double doors stood wide open.

  “The garage,” she said. “And it’s empty.”

  With a sigh of relief he took her arm and, bending against the gale, they walked out into the howling deluge. They had taken only a few steps when another troublesome thought occurred to him.

  “Stoddard couldn’t have got very far,” he remarked. “My car is blocking the road a little way down the hill, and there isn’t room to pass.”

  “But there are three roads. I have an idea Mr. Stoddard took one of the others.”

  They quickened their steps, although it seemed as if the wind were constantly pushing them back. She guided him to the narrow clearing, sheltered on one side by a dump of trees, where her car and chauffeur were waiting. All in all, he reflected, it was best that she should return with the chauffeur, although he should have preferred to have her beside himself in the Waynefleet sedan. But that, he decided, would be too gruesome an experience.

  His swift glance at the chauffeur’s face was reassuring. He felt the man could be trusted. But he searched the car thoroughly before he assisted her to her seat and made sure that the doors were securely locked. After the experience he had been through, he felt that he could not be too cautious. Then, after telling her that he would see her soon at Peekacre, he walked the short distance to where he had left his own car.

  As he approached, he searched the soggy ruts for signs that another car had been through, but there were none. Evidently Theresa had been right. Stoddard had gone away by one of the other roads. He opened the rear door and flashed his torch into the interior. The body had sagged a little deeper into the cushions, but otherwise the scene was exactly as he had left it. He shook his head slowly and shut his mind against a horde of perplexities. Then he took his seat at the wheel and started back.

  CHAPTER VII — The Man in the library

  The coach Theresa had borrowed from the obliging Mr. Carmody was not far behind when Harrington drove into the grounds of Peekacre. It swung up to the front entrance, the passenger alighted and went inside the house, and the coach drove away. In the meantime Harrington put the Waynefleet sedan in the garage, and for a few moments he stood in perplexed contempl
ation of the lifeless form in the rear seat. The proper procedure, he understood, was to leave it there for the official inspection. Questions and mysteries thronged his mind as he turned away, carefully locked the garage door, and walked up to the house.

  It was late, and a glance along the rambling stone and stucco structure showed only a few lights burning. Evidently the servants had retired. Harrington felt cold and wretched, and he would have preferred to step into dry clothes at once, but first he would have to notify the authorities. The telephone was in the library, and he hung his dripping raincoat on the rack in the hall and walked in.

  He took but a few steps inside the room, then stood still and stared. Theresa was there, and her face told him at a glance that a disagreeable complication had set in. She was still in her green raincoat and her small black hat, and her eyes were fixed with a look of dread and aversion on a man seated at the rosewood desk.

  He was an undersized man, almost bald, with an unhealthy complexion, a sharp nose, and an unwholesome grin which exposed several gold teeth and was doubtless meant to be ingratiating.

  “This gentleman says he is waiting for Mr. Marsh,” Theresa explained.

  At complete ease, the caller leaned back in the tall chair in which Christopher Marsh had been accustomed to sit when he attended to his correspondence.

  “My name is Tarkin—Samuel B. Tarkin,” he announced importantly. “I’m here to see Mr. Marsh on private and important business.”

  “Who admitted you?” asked Harrington coldly.

  “The butler. He knows me. I often call on Mr. Marsh. The butler said he might not return till late, so I said I would wait. Will he be back soon?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” Harrington declared, irritated by Tarkin’s manner. “But I am Mr. Marsh’s secretary and you can state your business to me.”

  “Won’t do,” the little man declared, shaking his head.

  Harrington scowled. He was anxious to telephone, but he did not care to do it in Tarkin’s presence.

  “I am not sure Mr. Marsh will return tonight,” he said brusquely. “Hadn’t you better come back in the morning?”

  “H’m,” said Tarkin, and his unwholesome grin seemed to spread from his crooked mouth to his shrewd, rheumy eyes. “Mr. Marsh must have changed his habits, if he is staying out all night Never knew him to do that before.”

  “Mr. Marsh’s habits are his own concern. I really think you hadn’t better wait It is highly uncertain whether he will return tonight.”

  “Uncertain, eh?” Tarkin slanted his head to one side and gazed shrewdly at Harrington. “Well, life is a pretty uncertain proposition, isn’t it? We never know, when we start out to go somewhere, whether we are coming back alive.”

  Harrington started and fixed the man in the chair with a sharper look. At first he had been merely annoyed; now he regarded Tarkin with a new and apprehensive interest. Out of the corner of an eye he caught a startled look on Theresa’s face.

  “You know, don’t you,” Tarkin pursued, “that Mr. Marsh will never again sit in this chair? It’s too bad. It’s a nice and comfortable chair.”

  Harrington walked slowly up to the desk and, leaning over it, looked straight into the man’s shifty eyes. “Just what do you mean by that?” he demanded. “You heard what I said.” Tarkin ran his fingers appreciatively over the handsomely carved armrests of the chair. “It’s a nice piece of furniture—much nicer than a coffin.”

  A gasp sounded at Harrington’s side. Theresa had come up and stood staring tremulously at the man in the chair.

  “Oh, come to the point,” Harrington snapped.

  “No hurry, is there?” Tarkin giggled and rubbed his hands together. “You’re Mr. Harrington, aren’t you? Anyhow, that’s what you call yourself. Names don’t mean much these times. And the young lady, I think, is Miss Theresa Lanyard. It isn’t her real name, but who cares?”

  Harrington measured the little man with a look of stupefaction mingled with uneasiness. Tarkin appeared well informed. His rheumy eyes glowed slyly as he saw what a sensation he had created.

  “You talk like a man out of your senses,” Harrington remarked. “You say yourself that names don’t matter. Then why stress such an unimportant point?”

  “Well, it’s like this. Suppose Mr. Marsh should never come back? Suppose his dead body should turn up somewhere? Suppose he’s been murdered? You know what would happen. The police would come around and ask a whole lot of questions. They would soon find out that you aren’t Mr. Harrington and that the young lady isn’t Miss Lanyard. They would want to know all about you. And they’d think it very curious that you two should have hired out to Mr. Marsh under phony names. Wouldn’t they now?”

  Tarkin’s watery eyes were very innocent as they traveled from one face to the other.

  “Go on,” said Harrington stiffly. “Miss Lanyard and I are both tired, but we will give you five minutes more.”

  “You will give me ten—maybe twenty. Now suppose it should turn out that Mr. Marsh had been afraid of you two who had hired out to him under phony names—that he’d gotten the idea into his head that you were after his life? Suppose the police found out that Marsh had been suspecting you of plotting his death? It wouldn’t be so good, would it?”

  Harrington’s eyes narrowed. Tarkin’s information appeared surprisingly complete and exact. He felt a quiver at his elbow, and his eyes met Theresa’s.

  “No, it wouldn’t be so good,” Tarkin repeated. “But it might be even worse. Suppose, for instance, that Mr. Marsh was murdered under your very nose, so to speak, and that you couldn’t explain how it happened? The harder you tried to explain, the more convinced the police would be that you were lying. Pretty bad, eh, Mr. Harrington?”

  “Appalling,” Harrington dryly agreed. He was no longer wondering how Tarkin happened to be in possession of so much accurate information. For the moment he was conscious of nothing but a fervid desire to pitch the man out the door. “So it’s blackmail,” he added.

  “Right,” said Tarkin. “Blackmail it is.”

  Harrington’s eyes were full of contempt. His fingers worked convulsively. It would be a great satisfaction to throw the blackmailer, squirming and squealing, out of the house, but he resisted the temptation. Instead he walked around to the end of the desk and picked up the telephone.

  “What now?” asked Tarkin, his rheumy eyes blinking.

  “You will see,” said Harrington, jigging the hook.

  “Better wait,” Tarkin advised. “I’m not through yet. When I’ve finished you may change your mind about calling the police. Look here.”

  He dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out a small package. Harrington’s thumb came to rest on the telephone hook. He watched tensely, and so did Theresa, while with exasperating slowness Tarkin unwrapped the little parcel. At length a small gray glove appeared. With a gloating expression the little man held it up to the light, revealing several reddish smudges on the fingers.

  “Blood stains,” he explained. “Not so good, eh?”

  Theresa gave a shuddering gasp. Harrington gazed dazedly at the glove which Tarkin was holding between the tips of two fingers. It was evidently a woman’s glove and, save for the stains, it looked as if it had not been worn long.

  “Where did you find it?” Harrington asked.

  “Not more than ten feet from the car you left in the road when you went to the old hotel.”

  “Oh,” said Harrington dully. The scope of Tarkin’s information was certainly astounding. “Then you were there?”

  “I always try to be where I can pick up a piece of easy money.”

  Harrington gave him a contemptuous look. The man’s brazenness was as amazing as his array of facts. The finding of the glove did not seem very important, however. It was only a minor item in a mystery that was inscrutable from beginning to end. What did a glove matter as long as it was impossible to figure out how Marsh had gotten into the car or how the murder had been committed?


  “Do I hear an offer?” asked Tarkin complacently.

  Harrington, still holding the telephone, appeared to consider.

  “An odd glove isn’t worth much,” he remarked. “I might offer you two dollars. I should say a pair could be bought for four. Don’t you think so, Miss Lanyard?”

  He glanced at her as he spoke, and he started as he saw the terrible whiteness of her face and the look of dread with which she stared at the glove held between Tarkin’s finger tips. For moments he could not remove his eyes from her stricken face. It was as if he were witnessing a revelation that convulsed body and soul.

  The blackmailer looked elatedly from Harrington to Theresa.

  “Any more bids?” he inquired, looking hopefully at the girl.

  Harrington’s eyes were still fixed on the white, agonized face. Then he looked down at her small, trembling hand, as if measuring it, and then, with equal intentness, at the glove. He nodded, and a look of tragic understanding entered his face.

  “Better hurry,” Tarkin advised. “To save time, let’s begin with five thousand. Not a penny less.”

  “You contemptible rat!” Harrington muttered, looking longingly at the blackmailer’s scrawny neck. “Where do you suppose a secretary and a nurse would find five thousand?”

  “Secretary and nurse! “ Tarkin giggled. “Say, that’s good! But we’re wasting time. And you can’t fool me. I know who you two are. It isn’t going to hurt you to fork over a measly five thousand. I might ask more, and I’d get it, too, but I want to be reasonable. Well, do we close the deal?”

  He moistened his lips with a satisfied air and looked expectantly at the two.

  “What do you say, Miss Lanyard?” asked Harrington gently. “Shall I give him the five thousand?”

  She fixed her stricken eyes on the glove. She gasped for breath as if suffocating. Her eyes fell.

  “Yes, please,” she said faintly.

  “That goes,” Harrington declared, fixing Tarkin with a look of profound loathing. He reached into his pocket. “I’ll give you a check for five thousand dollars and then—”

  “No, I’ll take the cash,” the blackmailer declared. “Checks aren’t so good in this sort of business. And don’t misunderstand me. I meant that I want five thousand from each of you. That makes ten. Even so, I’m letting you off easy. Now, if you—”