Yellow Room

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  Nevertheless, he called Washington that night, driving over to the railroad station to do so. He asked that no name be used in the return telegram or telephone message, and felt he had done all he could as he drove back.

  It was his turn to keep an eye on the Spencer place. Alex was to relieve him at four in the morning, and was already snoring stertorously in his bed when Dane went out. It was still raining, a thin drizzle which would do little to help the crops but was enough to wet him pretty thoroughly as he went through the trees. It was very dark. His landmark was the light marble of the fountain, and he found it and stopped there. From where he stood the house was a dark mass, looming a hundred yards ahead. Its very darkness and stillness reassured him. He moved, limping slightly, toward it.

  There was a clap of thunder then, and somewhere not far off a car backfired. Or was it a backfire? He was not certain. The rain had suddenly increased to a roar and made all sound uncertain.

  He finally decided it had been a car, and began as usual to quietly circle the house. He moved first along the side toward the sea, where the terrace was empty, the chairs and tables taken in against the rain, and he went on noiselessly, until he had reached the entrance at the rear.

  Each night he or Alex had watched the windows and tried the doors. Now, as he felt for the one on the drive, it was open. What confronted him was only the empty darkness of the hall. It startled him by its very unexpectedness, and it was a moment or two before he stepped warily inside. Except for the splashing of the wall fountain in the patio everything was quiet, and he was uncertain what to do. Either one of the household had left the house for some purpose, or someone had been admitted. The door had surely been locked before the family went to bed. But the total darkness made it unlikely anyone had come in. Then who was missing?

  He stood for a second or two before he decided to make a move. He knew the house fairly well by that time, and he found the stairs without trouble. Still groping, he passed the door to the yellow room and went on to Carol’s. It was closed and locked. He began to feel rather absurd, but he knocked finally, and felt an enormous relief when he heard her voice inside.

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “It’s Jerry Dane,” he said. “Don’t be frightened. I found the front door open and the house dark. I was afraid someone might have come in.”

  “Just a minute.”

  He heard her light snap on, heard her closet door open and knew she was putting on something hastily over her night clothes. She looked very young and startled when she opened the door, her hair loose about her face and her eyes wide.

  “Did you say the front door was open?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t understand. I locked it myself tonight. What time is it?”

  “After one o’clock. Perhaps you’d better check up and see if anyone has gone out. I’ll look around myself. Somebody may have come in, but I doubt it.”

  He turned on the lights in the yellow room while she hurried on. It was empty, and the windows were closed. He was still there, remembering it as he had first seen it, when Carol came back.

  “It’s Elinor,” she told him. “I can’t understand it. Why would she go out on a night like this? And Greg’s asleep. I heard him snoring. She must have gone alone.”

  He glanced into Elinor’s room before they went downstairs. The bed had been used. The book she had been reading was on the table beside it, and a breeze from the open window was ruffling its pages and sending in a thin spray of rain. A pair of sheer stockings hung over the back of a chair, one or two silk undergarments were strewn about, and her evening slippers were on the floor.

  “You see,” Carol said, her lips stiff. “She had undressed for the night. She had gone to bed too. Why would she go out? Or where?”

  “There’s a chance she’s in the house. I didn’t look in the service wing downstairs.”

  But Elinor was not in the house. Five minutes after he had discovered the open door Dane turned his flashlight up the hill and saw something lying there among the burned and sodden bushes near the lane.

  It was Elinor, and she had been shot.

  She was not dead. She had been shot through the thigh, and she was bleeding so profusely that Dane was afraid to move her. She was unconscious, and she remained unconscious through much that followed: the rousing of the household, Dr. Harrison on his knees in the rain and mud beside her, the arrival of the ambulance, and Carol’s departure in it while Greg dressed and got his car.

  Dane was glad to have a few minutes to himself, but he learned little. There had been footprints both in the lane and on the hillside, but either the rain had obliterated them or the ambulance had destroyed them. He did find a small pool of what looked like bloody water in the lane itself, and within a foot or two of it a small shell comb, like those Elinor wore in her hair. She had been shot there, he decided, shot and then carried a few yards up the hill.

  He was still there when Greg called him to the car. Greg was badly shocked. His hands were shaking, and after a look at him Dane told him to move over and took the driver’s seat himself.

  “That shot,” he said as they started. “It was fired pretty close to the house. Didn’t you hear it?”

  Greg shook his head.

  “No. I don’t hear much once I’m asleep. It was an accident, of course.”

  “Why?”

  Greg stared at him.

  “Don’t tell me you think somebody tried to kill her,” he protested. “Why would they? She doesn’t even belong here. It was someone after a deer. They come down from the hills at night, you know.”

  “Rather early for deer, I imagine,” Dane said dryly.

  “I’ve seen them as early as this.”

  “It was no deer who carried her from the lane to where we found her. And it’s a pretty stormy night for hunters, you know. Why don’t you face it, Spencer? Someone tried to kill your sister tonight.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” Greg moaned, and lapsed into bewildered silence.

  16

  ELINOR WAS IN THE operating room when they reached the hospital, Carol, white-faced and quiet, was waiting outside in the hall. Dane thought she looked heartbreakingly anxious, when Greg went to her and took her hand.

  “She’ll be all right, kid. You know that, don’t you?”

  She roused and tried to smile at him.

  “You’d better call Howard, Greg. It’s Saturday. He may be in Newport.”

  He seemed relieved to have something to do. He went down to the telephone, leaving Dane awkward and tongue-tied. When Greg came back he reported that he had failed to locate Hilliard, he was neither at his apartment in New York nor at the Newport house.

  “Probably at one of the golf clubs,” Greg said, “but I can’t chase him all night. I left word at both places to have him call. It’s all we can do.”

  Dane listened glumly. He was restless. In his slacks and rubber-soled shoes he had been pacing the hall, feeling that somewhere he had fumbled. He was convinced that all these people, Elinor and Gregory and even Carol, had known something they had not told anyone. Had Gregory actually been here in Elinor’s car the night the girl was murdered? Was that what they were hiding? Yet looking at Carol, clinging to Greg as if she found him a tower of strength, it seemed impossible to believe that she knew or even suspected such a thing.

  Greg’s distress, too, was evident. Always Dane had realized that the tie between Elinor and Greg was very close. He would never have shot her. But he was conscious of a faint stir of jealousy when Greg put his arm around Carol and she rested her head on his shoulder.

  “You’ve helped me weather a lot of storms, kid. We’ll weather this all right.” He beamed down at her, his pleasant face strained and tired. “She’ll be all right. Lost a lot of blood, that’s all. And blood’s what I ain’t got anything but!”

  It was three o’clock in the morning by that time. Somewhat belatedly Floyd had been notified, and he stamped out of the elevator in a bad humor, followed
by Mason, who looked only half awake. Dane took advantage of his arrival to slip downstairs and telephone Alex.

  “Get the car down to the hospital as fast as you can,” Dane told him. “Don’t ask any questions. Just get here.”

  He did not leave at once, though. Floyd had followed him down. He had to tell his story, and to realize that the chief of police was regarding him stonily.

  “It’s a queer thing, Dane,” he said, “but you’ve been mixed up with this funny business from the start.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You walked up the drive to the Spencer place every morning, didn’t you? Maybe you were there when this girl arrived.”

  “So I killed her!”

  “So maybe you knew who she was,” said Floyd, still cold.

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” said Dane wearily. “I didn’t know her. I never even saw her before. And I’d never seen Mrs. Hilliard until she came here.”

  “So you say. What were you doing out at Joe Norton’s last night looking over Lucy’s things? Did she have something you wanted?”

  Dane laughed mirthlessly.

  “I’ll tell you someday,” he said dryly. “And I’ll tell you this now. Either Mrs. Hilliard was knocked out on the lane, or she was shot there. In any event she was dragged or carried to where she was found. And I didn’t do it.”

  Floyd was still watching him with cold unblinking eyes.

  “All right,” he said. “Then maybe you’ll explain why you were around the Spencer place tonight in the rain. Carol says you came in and wakened her. That might be damned smart of you, Dane, if you knew what you were going to find.”

  “I’ll tell you that right now,” Dane said sharply. “I was doing what you ought to have been doing. I was keeping an eye on Crestview. Somebody around here is dangerous, Floyd. Maybe you’ll get that into your dumb head someday.”

  But Floyd was not dumb, and Dane knew it. As he waited for the car he went over what he knew. Elinor had not been taken out of the house. She had gone out for some purpose of her own and, unlike the murdered girl, she had been fully dressed, even to the heavy shoes on her small feet and the light raincoat which had enabled him to find her.

  Where had she been going? To the Wards? There was the story that Mrs. Ward had seen a man in her car the night the girl was killed. It might have worried her. But at such an hour? And in a storm?

  He dismissed the Wards for what he was beginning to call X, the unknown. X, he thought grimly, would solve the equation, only he had none of the other factors.

  He got away finally, irritated and taciturn. The rain was still heavy, and the night air cold. In the car he told Alex nothing except that Elinor Hilliard had been shot, and left that individual in a state of smoldering resentment. And at the entrance to the Spencer place Dane told him to turn in, without explanation.

  “You might hang around,” he said. “I may be some little time.”

  “And what will I be doing hanging around?” Alex demanded, his voice sulky.

  “Try taking a nap,” Dane said halfheartedly, and got out as the car stopped.

  The house was still brightly lighted. He found the front door locked, rang the bell without results, and going around to the kitchen saw through a window the women inside, gathered in a close group and obviously terrified. He knocked on the glass and heard one of them scream.

  “It’s only Dane,” he called reassuringly. “I’ve come from the hospital.”

  The noise subsided and Maggie admitted him, looking relieved.

  “I’m sorry,” she explained, “but we decided not to let anyone in. There’s a coldhearted murderer around, major.”

  “You’re probably right,” he told her gravely. “That’s how I happened to be here tonight. I was afraid something would happen.”

  The girls looked panicky again, and he hastened to reassure them. He felt that it was over now, and Mrs. Hilliard would certainly live. In that case she might tell them who had shot her. There was no mystery about her being out. She had gone out, perhaps for a breath of fresh air, and had probably been attacked in the lane and carried—he did not say dragged—to the hillside.

  Maggie gave him some coffee, her consistent remedy for all emergencies, and only after he drank it did he tell her he would like to go up to Elinor Hilliard’s room.

  “There may be something there to indicate why she went out,” he said. “Anyhow I’d like to look at it. Did Mrs. Hilliard get a telephone call tonight?”

  If she had they did not know it. They let him go up alone, and after a brief survey which showed him nothing he wanted to know he went on to the yellow room. The lights were turned off, although he did not remember that either Carol or he himself had done so, and when he switched them on he stared around him in astonishment. The room had been hastily searched. One window was open, the edges of the rug had been turned back, the mattresses on the twin beds displaced, and a loose baseboard had been pried away from the wall near the mantel.

  Dane stood looking at this last for some time. It had been a good hiding place if she had used it, he thought sourly. And either someone who had known it was there or who had better eyes than his had seen it.

  He went back over the night’s events. Carol had had no chance. She was in the house only long enough to notify Gregory and call the doctor. Gregory himself? He had come on the run, still pulling on his dressing gown as he came. Anyhow why should he? He had several days in which to search the house. After that, with the exception of the servants, the house had been empty. But the lights had all been on, and it seemed unlikely that anyone could have entered the front door while they were on the hillside. He was certain, too, that the windows of the yellow room were all closed when he saw it last.

  Alex’s ladder, he thought, his mouth tight. He had slipped up badly there. He should have seen that it was taken away.

  Before he went downstairs he examined Gregory’s room. It was furnished as it probably had been since his boyhood holidays there: his college photographs on the wall, a snapshot of a grinning youth who might have been himself at sixteen holding a string of trout, a shelf of books, and a glass-topped box of slowly desiccating moths.

  The room was kept with military tidiness. Greg’s uniforms were hung up, the drawers in the bureau neatly in order. The closet door was open as Greg had left it, and Dane looked at the suitcase on the floor. It was closed but not locked. He opened it, to find a service automatic. It had not been fired recently, however, and he put it back and shut the case.

  There was no sign of any intruder downstairs until he reached the side door. This, more or less under the staircase, opened on to a grass terrace, and the door was unlocked. Careful not to disturb any possible prints he went outside and found what he had expected. The ladder was lying on the ground under the windows of the yellow room. The picture was clear now, so far as it went. Whoever had entered the house had used the ladder, but had left by the side door.

  Once more he cursed Tim for his refusal to fly back. He left the ladder where it was, and going back to the car found Alex asleep in it, which added to his irritation.

  “No hope you saw anybody around, I suppose?” he said, taking the wheel himself.

  “You told me to take a nap.” Alex was aggrieved. “Who’d be hanging around a night like this anyhow?”

  Dane drove home, to call the hospital and learn from Carol that Elinor was out of the operating room, and that lacking a blood bank they had typed Greg and were giving her an infusion.

  “They think she has a good chance. She’s stronger than she looks, you know.”

  “Good. What about you?”

  She seemed surprised.

  “Me? I’m all right. Anxious, of course. I’d better come back and get dressed.”

  “Listen,” he said earnestly. “I want you to stay there until full daylight. If you won’t I’ll come for you myself. I’m not taking any chances on you.”

  There was something new in his voice, a sort of protective t
enderness she had not heard in it before. It made her feel a little happier. She had not had much affection since Don’s death, and even Don himself had been a casual, debonair lover. After a moment’s silence, she said, “You think it’s a homicidal maniac, don’t you?”

  “I told you once, the first murder is the hard one.”

  After some argument she agreed to stay, and at last he relaxed and went to bed. Not to sleep at once, however. He was puzzling over the yellow room and what—if anything—had been hidden in it. And for some reason he was seeing Mr. Ward, small and elderly and wary, saying that he did not run to the police with what he called tittle-tattle, and rather abruptly ending the interview and not shaking hands when he left.

  He would have been greatly surprised had he known that at that same moment Mr. Ward was putting his car away with as little noise as possible, and stealthily entering his stately house. Or that when he went up to his dressing room he took a revolver out of his pocket and placed it carefully in a drawer, under a tidy pile of the stiff-bosomed dress shirts he so seldom used these days.

  Dane was up and out again at eight that Sunday morning. The rain had stopped, and except for Maggie returning from early Mass there was no one in sight at Crestview. He waited until she was safely in the house, then going through the woods to the crest of the hill he began to work his way down. No one had traveled in that direction, however. He crunched and slid through the debris of the fire, watching the ground intently, and was brought up suddenly by a small shallow hole.

  It was freshly dug. A pool of rain water lay at the bottom, and a garden trowel had been dropped a few feet away. Dane examined the hole carefully. It was only a foot or so deep and as much across. The ground around it was trampled, and he thought the digging had been hasty.