“He did not,” Miranda denied quietly. She was on the other side of her brother from the trooper, her hand on his sleeve. “But, Jeff, I think Mr. Fuller’s right. I think you ought to speak with him before you let them try to … to …” She faltered.
He looked down at her. “Much obliged, Sis,” he said bitterly. “You think I shot him. Don’t you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You think maybe I did. She doesn’t, but you do. I’ve been thinking you did all afternoon and when you couldn’t look at me when you were telling me about them identifying the gun—and you knowing I had borrowed it myself last night—”
Brissenden barked, “I say get him out of here!”
Inspector Damon shook his head and muttered, “Let ’em talk.”
Fuller tried to get in: “I must insist—”
“I want to get a refusal for the record,” said Derwin. “I’m going to question him and if he refuses to answer on the advice of counsel, he has that right. Previously questioned, he has said nothing about having a gun. I also wish to question Mrs. Pemberton. I presume it was Mr. Fox who informed her that the gun that shot her father had been identified as his property. Anyway, she has admitted that she knew that and she also knew that her brother had borrowed one of Fox’s guns, and has concealed that fact.”
He glanced aside, saw that the pimply young man had got his notebook and was on a chair busy with it, and turned to Jeffrey. “Mr. Thorpe,” he demanded, “what did you do with that gun which you had borrowed when you brought it home with you, to this house, last night?”
Fuller commanded, “Don’t answer!”
Jeffrey had opened his mouth but closed it again. He looked at the lawyer. “You mean well, Mr. Fuller,” he conceded. “It doesn’t seem to me that this was the time or place to charge me with flouting my father’s authority, but you have sons of your own and I suppose you had to get that dig in.” He looked at Derwin. “I’m willing to grant that you mean well too, since you’re the district attorney.” He looked at Brissenden. “You’re a pugnacious jackass, and if I get out of this alive I’m going to meet you unofficially and sock you one. Now if you’ll all stop yapping I’ll tell you about that gun.”
“Jiffy, I order you—”
“Let me alone. If the truth won’t do it, to hell with it. When I got home and went up to my room last night—oh, I’m glad you’re in time to hear it, Fox, since it was your gun. How’s the vice-president?”
“He’ll keep for a while.” Fox smiled at him. “I’m glad I’m in time to hear it.”
“So am I. When I got home and went up to my room last night I took the gun out of my pocket and put it on the bed table. When I dressed this morning I put it in my pocket again. It was still there when Miss Grant and her uncle arrived around nine o’clock this morning. I tried to get Miss Grant to talk to me and she wouldn’t. I got peeved, not with her, with myself, and decided that I was acting like a half-wit and that I would drive off somewhere and not come back until she was gone.”
He looked at Brissenden. “That was the mysterious errand in my car which I refused to tell you about because it was none of your damn business. A few miles down the road I nearly collided with a truck and realized that in the condition I was in I was a highway menace, but the real reason I came back was that I knew Miss Grant was here and I couldn’t stay away.”
He looked at Nancy. “I apologize for bringing your name in so often but if I’m telling it I might as well tell it. When I sat down in the car the gun in my hip pocket dug into my behind, and I had taken it out and laid it on the seat. I felt silly with it anyhow in broad daylight and besides—” He stopped. “No, I might as well tell that too. I knew Miss Grant and her uncle had seen it in my pocket, because I had overheard a remark he made to her. Of course they’ll now be asked to explain why they didn’t mention that I was carrying a gun, but you can’t put them in jail for that.The fact that I knew they had seen it made me feel sillier. Anyhow, when I got back here and left the car out in the circle, I forgot all about the gun. I didn’t even see it on the seat when I got out of the car, because my mind was on something else, but it must have been there, since I had put it there only fifteen minutes before, when I started out. That was the last time that I actually remember seeing it, when I put it on the seat. I haven’t seen it since.”
As he stopped, Fuller was at Nancy like a hawk after a chicken: “Miss Grant, you saw the gun in Jeffrey’s pocket before he left you to go for a ride?”
“Yes,” she said clearly and firmly. “Just a minute or two after we got here.”
“You the same, Mr. Grant?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see it in his pocket, or in his possession—did you see it at all—after he returned from his ride?”
“No. I didn’t know he had gone for a ride, but when he returned around ten o’clock after an absence of perhaps a quarter of an hour, I didn’t see the gun. Nor at any subsequent time.”
“Did you, Miss Grant?”
“No.”
The lawyer’s eyes swept that half of the room where the guests were scattered. “Did any of you see a gun in Jeffrey Thorpe’s possession after ten o’clock this morning?”
He had pushed the question through, raising his voice, in spite of an attempted interruption by Derwin, and, though the interruption forestalled vocal replies, apparently he was satisfied by the negative expression of the faces, for he turned to the district attorney and told him:
“Go ahead and ask him anything you want to.”
“Thanks,” said Derwin sarcastically. He glanced at the stenographer. “You have it that those questions were asked of Grant and his niece by Mr. Fuller?”
“Yes, sir.”
“With no attempt at interference by me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Derwin confronted Jeffrey. He looked sufficiently grim and determined, though not at all happy. “Mr. Thorpe,” he said gruffly, “you have a legal representative present. I think it would be proper for you to accept any advice he may give you. It is also proper for me to tell you that in my opinion, with the evidence now in my possession and the admissions you have yourself made, your indictment on a charge of first-degree murder would be procurable, but I am not at the moment making that charge. I don’t intend to be precipitate, but I do intend—”
“Don’t lecture him,” Fuller snapped. “And don’t threaten him. If you want to question him, do so.”
Derwin ignored it, kept his eyes at Jeffrey and finished his sentence. “I do intend to see that guilt is punished. Your statement is that you left the gun—the gun which was subsequently used for the commission of murder—”
“That was not his statement,” Fuller contradicted. “The identity of the weapon used.”
“Very well. Your statement is that you left the gun which you had borrowed from Tecumseh Fox—at his home from his employee—on the seat of your car when you returned from a ride about ten o’clock this morning?”
“That’s right,” said Jeffrey.
“And you haven’t seen it since?”
“That’s right.”
“Didn’t you see it lying on the library floor within a few feet of your father’s dead body?”
“No. I didn’t see the gun or anything else. I was looking at him.”
“You didn’t see the gun at all?”
“No.” Jeffrey was meeting the district attorney’s grim gaze with a scowl. “And since I knew that gun could be traced to me, if I had shot him and had left it there I would have been a bigger boob than I am.”
“If you did it, you had to leave it somewhere and there wasn’t much time. Then your contention is that the murderer got the gun from the seat of your car.”
“I’m not making any contention. I’m just telling where I left the gun.”
“Haven’t you returned to your car at all since ten o’clock this morning?”
“Yes. I went there this afternoon about four o’clock to see if the gun was stil
l there and it wasn’t.”
“After Colonel Brissenden had finished his interview with you?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t mention that gun to Colonel Brissenden, did you?”
“No.”
“You didn’t mention that you had borrowed it, or that it was in your possession this morning, or that you had left it on the seat of your car?”
“No.”
“Didn’t the possibility occur to you that it was that gun that had killed your father?”
“Yes.”
“And that it might therefore be an important clue. So you were willing to hamper the investigation of your father’s murder?”
“No. I wasn’t hampering it. I knew you had the gun that had killed him, because I heard Colonel Brissenden say it was there on the floor, though I hadn’t seen it. If it was the gun I had left in my car and the murderer had got it from there it wouldn’t have helped you any to know that, because any one who was around could have got it. As a matter of fact, I would probably have told you about it if it hadn’t been that sap Brissenden that was questioning me. And I would have told even him, if he had had the brains to show me the gun and ask me if I had ever seen it. I was expecting he would—”
“He couldn’t, at that time. It was away being tested. We had to establish that that gun had fired the bullet—What is it, Colonel?”
“We ought to get him out of here! Take him to the courthouse!”
Inspector Damon caught Derwin’s eye and, barely perceptibly, shook his head. The district attorney hesitated a moment and then returned to Jeffrey:
“If you object to the audience, Mr. Thorpe—”
“Not at all,” Jeffrey declared. “I’m not going to your damned courthouse as long as I have any alternative.”
“Very well. After you learned from your sister that we had identified the gun as the property of Tecumseh Fox, why didn’t you come forward and tell us about it?”
“I was making up my mind to. I knew then I’d have to. She only told me a little before dinner started.”
“Oh.” Derwin sounded sceptical. “That made you decide to tell, did it?”
“Yes.”
“But you weren’t in any hurry. You had to have dinner first. A vital piece of information for the inquiry into the murder of your father, but any time this week would do.”
“I said I was making up my mind.” Jeffrey’s color had heightened. “I deny it was a vital piece of information. I didn’t say ‘any time this week.’ You can leave the sneers for the colonel.”
“I wasn’t sneering, Mr. Thorpe, I was commenting, I think not improperly, on your attitude—or rather, your actions. It seems to me reasonable to say that if they were not actuated by a sense of guilt, they displayed a remarkable apathy towards the object of our investigation. If you resent my remark, I resent your failure to impart information in your possession. It costs us, at the least, much valuable time. I should think Fox would also resent it, since he narrowly escaped arrest as a material witness. And speaking of the motivation of your actions, what did you borrow the gun for? What were you going to do with it?”
Jeffrey nodded gloomily. “Uh-huh. That’s where you’ve got me.”
“Why have I got you?”
“Because the only explanation I can give for borrowing the gun will sound loony. It was loony. I’ll have to drag Miss Grant in again. Do you remember that photograph of her you showed me yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“And later you showed it to my father and he didn’t deny it had been given to him?”
“Yes.”
“All right. When you showed it to him and he didn’t deny it was his, I wished in my heart he had been killed instead of that fellow at the bungalow. I wanted him dead. I wanted—”
“Jeffrey!” Fuller’s voice was sharply warning. “You don’t need to—”
“Let me alone,” said Jeffrey impatiently. “I’m all right. I wanted to kill him myself and by God, if I found—I would have. But last evening at Fox’s place I learned that that was bunk. My father had never even seen Miss Grant. So when I left there I was feeling exuberant. Call it that or call it loony. Anyhow I had a reaction and I was feeling better toward my father than I ever had in my life, and I was ashamed because I had wanted to kill him, and the reaction to that was that I wanted to protect him—”
“Tchah!” Brissenden snorted.
Jeffrey ignored it. “I knew the man in the bungalow had been killed by someone who wanted to kill my father. I thought he wouldn’t stop with one attempt and he might make another one any minute, even that very night. I felt like protecting him. When I saw him—Pavey—there on the porch with a gun as we went out, on an impulse I asked to borrow it. By the time I got home, I was already feeling silly, because I was so seldom where my father was that my chances of protecting him were practically non-existent. When I dressed this morning, I put the gun in my pocket, because I expected to drive over to Fox’s place during the morning and return it, and then Miss Grant and her uncle suddenly arrived and put that out of my mind.”
He looked at Nancy. “I hope you’ll forgive me for dragging you in so often.”
“You can’t help it,” she replied. “I dragged myself in by taking Uncle Andy to that bungalow.” She moved her eyes to the district attorney and spoke to him: “Anyway, this is all stupid. I didn’t interrupt before because I thought Mr. Thorpe would want to explain about the gun in any case. But he couldn’t possibly have killed his father, because at the moment the shot was fired he was on the other side of the house behind the rose trellis and I was looking straight at him.”
She might as well have lit the fuse of a giant firecracker and tossed it under their feet.
Miranda stared at her an instant and then jumped and threw her arms around her. Jeffrey goggled at her. Tecumseh Fox threw up his hands. Brissenden and Derwin were speechless. Inspector Damon gazed at her pessimistically.
“Nancy! You lovely Nancy!” Miranda cried, squeezing her.
Jeffrey said in a tone of solemn awe, “By God. But you weren’t. I didn’t kill my father and that will be all right somehow, but you know damn well you didn’t see me.”
Nancy nodded not at him but at Derwin. “Yes, I did. I was looking straight at him when I heard that shot.”
Brissenden started a bark, “You have stated—you have absolutely stated—”
“I know what I’ve stated.” Nancy’s tone was spirited. “I said I didn’t see him. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that all the time I was sitting on the terrace I knew he was there behind the trellis watching me. I did know it. I saw him. The reason I didn’t get up and go somewhere else was that I was tired and didn’t want to move, and it was cool there. I’m telling the truth about it now because—all this about the gun—I couldn’t very well let an innocent man be accused of murder—not even him—”
“Why did you run to the swimming pool?” Derwin demanded.
“Because I thought that was where the shot came from.”
“You have stated that you had been with Jeffrey Thorpe at the swimming pool and you thought he was still there.”
“I had been with him at the swimming pool. Or he had been with me. He followed me. I said I thought he was still there because I wasn’t admitting that I knew he was behind the rose trellis.”
“But if you knew he wasn’t at the pool, why did you think the shot came from there?”
“Because,” said Nancy patiently, “it sounded like it. I’m not an expert on acoustics, but no doubt—”
“I said all along to get him out of here,” Brissenden blurted savagely. “She would never have been able to play that trick if you hadn’t let him—”
“Shut up!” Derwin told him.
Another voice broke in. “May I make a request?” It was Tecumseh Fox. “You fellows are about played out. It’s getting on your nerves and I don’t blame you. Every fish you make a grab for slips right out of your hands. I’ve had
it happen to me. Haven’t you, Inspector?”
Damon nodded. “Too often for comfort.”
“What’s your request?” Derwin demanded.
“Nothing very momentous,” Fox assured him.
“I agree with the colonel that it’s sort of crowded in here and I suppose, with this snag you’ve struck, you’ll be starting another series of interviews. Won’t you?”
“If I’m here all night—” Derwin began grimly.
“Sure.” Fox nodded sympathetically. “But before you begin, I request permission to finish a little game I was proposing when that shot interrupted us. It’ll only take a few minutes.”
“What kind of a game?”
“I’ll show you. Just a foolish idea of mine.” Fox turned brusquely. “Have you got the pads and pencils, Bellows? There, on the table. Pass them around—here, give me some. Only those who were in here at the time—Here, Mrs. Pemberton, Miss Grant—Take it, Mr. Fuller, you won’t have to write what I say if you don’t like it—”
“Write what?” Brissenden spluttered. “What are you trying to get away with? Let me see one of those pads!”
“I can’t allow this, Fox—” Derwin began; but Inspector Damon muttered at him, “Let him alone, I would. With him you never know.”
Fox tossed him a smile. “Thanks, Inspector. I didn’t know either, but it’s a bright idea.” His eyes swept the group. “For Mr. Jordan, Bellows. That’s right. Now. Each one of you will write what I dictate and put your name beneath it, or your initials will do. As I have said before, it will be a sentence from the Declaration of Independence.”
“Tschah!” Brissenden snorted.
“Certainly,” Fox went on, “there is no compulsion on any of you to humor me, but Mrs. Pemberton kindly consented, so I hope you will. Here’s the sentence—”
“Print it or write it?” Kester inquired.
“Either one, whichever you please. Writing would be faster. Here it is: ‘We mutually pledge to each other our lives …”’ He paused. A glance showed him that all eight of the pencils had started to move. He waited a moment. “Got that? ‘We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.’” He waited again. The last of the pencils to stop movement was Luke Wheer’s. “That’s all. Now please put your name or initials at the bottom—what’s that, Mr. Fuller? That’s all right, here, give it to me, I’ll initial it for you.”
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