Death and the Maiden

by Q. Patrick

  No one answered for what seemed like hours. My arm ached from holding the telephone, and every nerve was tense, on the alert for some sound in the darkness around me. And then, as I shifted the receiver to my left hand, I thought I heard something—a faint creaking from the shadowy obscurity of the stairs.

  But I wasn’t sure and at that moment a sleepy voice said “Hello” from the other end of the wire.

  “Can you please get me Jerry Hough?” I whispered.

  “Lee, what on earth are you doing at this time of night?”

  I recognized Steve’s voice and said: “Please, Steve, give Jerry a message. It’s terribly important. Tell him to meet me by the North Gate—now, as soon as he possibly can.”

  “But, what…?”

  “Please. I can’t explain.”

  I had slipped the receiver back on to the stand and was moving toward the front door when the creaking sounded again from the stairs. There was no mistaking it now. I spun round, staring uneasily through the darkness. I could just make out a white figure, descending, coming toward me.

  I had one crazy moment of alarm. Then I heard Elaine’s voice, vague, uncertain.

  “Lee, where are you? What are you doing?”

  I hurried to her. She seemed half dazed with sleep and the sedative which Marcia had given her.

  “I heard you telephone Jerry. And you’re dressed still. Where are you going?”

  “It’s all right, darling. Don’t worry. Just get back to bed.”

  I took her arm and led her up the stairs. She was docile as a child. Almost before I had tucked the sheets round her, she had fallen asleep again.

  For the second time I tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs. With a hideous clanking of locks Igot the front door open.

  Out on the campus it was cold and dark. The moon had gone and the stars were dim. Only a dirty puddle of light behind the chapel gave a hint of dawn.

  I hurried past the gray buildings and over the grass, damp with dew, to the North Gate. Jerry arrived almost the same time, limping down the drive from Broome. He had put on an old pair of corduroy pants and a wind-breaker. There was something large and infinitely comforting about him.

  I slipped my hand into his. “Jerry, you must think I’m crazy dragging you out at this ungodly hour. But I’ve just thought of something frightfully important.”

  I told him everything then; how Trant had found that letter in the lining of my coat; how he thought he had the solution at last; and how it had suddenly occurred to me that the fragments of the letters Norma had destroyed might still be in the Saylers’ car.

  “There’s just a chance,” I concluded.

  He didn’t answer for a moment. He seemed still, in the grip of sleepiness. Then, very quietly, he said. “I remember now. Norma did take the Clarionout with her. Maybe we will find those letters in the car. But Trant said it was dangerous for you, Lee. I don’t want you to take any fool risks.”

  “But there’s no risk so long as I’m with you.”

  He took me suddenly in his arms and kissed me, his lips staying warm on mine. Then he drew away.

  “Let’s get going,” he said gruffly.

  We left the campus and started down the road to the village.

  I shall never remember at exactly what point it was that some instinct warned me that we were being followed. The conviction seeped gradually into my consciousness with nothing tangible to support it. There was no sound behind us. And yet I had that obscure feeling of alarm and I was certain that somewhere back there in the darkness someone was moving stealthily forward.

  I didn’t pass on my suspicions to Jerry. They seemed too fantastic. But once I turned and glanced sharply over my shoulder. Nothing was visible except a white cat scurrying silently to cover.

  But that queer sensation did not leave me. And I thought with sudden apprehension how almost anyone could know that Jerry and I had gone out together. Steve knew; Elaine knew; there was that upstairs telephone at the Hudnutts’ house; and Jerry, I knew, had been obliged to pass Dean Appel’s rooms when he left Broome.

  Jerry’s pace quickened as we caught sight of the college garage at the very end of Wentworth’s modest main street.

  It looked exactly as it had a few hours before when I was there with Steve. One weak light burned in an unshaded bulb from the middle of the ground floor ceiling; the gray cement of the ramp sloped upward into darkness; the solitary old night attendant sprawled forward on a chair in the office, sound asleep.

  “Don’t wake him,” I whispered. “I know where the Sayler car is.”

  Quietly we crept up the slope. Jerry’s right foot dragged slightly.

  We came to the second floor where the ramp turned sharply right. Then we were groping our way up even higher to the third floor where the college cars were parked.

  At the head of the ramp we paused, staring forward into the impenetrable darkness, trying to get our bearings.

  Jerry’s hand was in mine. “There must be a light somewhere.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I know the way. We can use the dashboard light on the Sayler car.”

  And I did know the way then. Straight ahead was the little closed-in repair shop where I had seen Dean Appel’s coupe in the process of being painted. Eight cars down on the left side was Steve’s automobile; and then next to it, between it and the repair shop, came the Saylers’ maroon sedan.

  Very slowly we made our way forward, keeping to the left. I let my fingers slide along the backs of the cars, counting each in turn. One, two, three …s

  I counted to eight. That was Steve’s. Then we were at the ninth. I felt for the door handle, pressed it down, squeezed into the front seat and found the ignition key. Then I switched on the dashboard light.

  “I’ll search in front, Jerry,” I whispered, “and you take the back.”

  I heard Jerry climb into the back seat; heard the click as he switched on the ceiling light; then the back of the car sprang into dim illumination.

  With fingers none too steady I started to search. First the cubby hole in the dashboard; then the right side pocket; then the left. I found a rag, some maps, a half empty package of stale cigarettes and an old lipstick which I recognized as Elaine’s—nothing more than that. Behind me I could hear Jerry fumbling with the upholstery. I followed his lead, feeling down behind the seat. My hand squeezed along the groove, touching nothing at first. Then, suddenly, it reached something hard. Shakily I pulled the thing out. I saw rough yellow covers, a woodcut of the college library.

  “I’ve got it, Jerry,” I exclaimed. “It’s the Clarion.”

  Jerry jumped out of the back seat and was at my side. “And the pieces of the letters—are they still inside?”

  He flicked the magazine open. Then he drew in his breath.

  There, between an amateur poem and the report on the Wentworth Debating Society’s activities, lay a thick wad of torn scraps of notepaper. The faint light from the dashboard shone down on them. It revealed fragments of Grace’s large, back-sloped writing which, during the past hectic days, had become so horribly familiar.

  Jerry was staring down at them, his face very grim. I was the first to speak.

  “Jerry, what ought we to do? Ought we to try to piece them together, or…?”

  “The police had better see them,” he cut in. “Right away. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  He closed the magazine and leaned back over the seat to switch off the ceiling light. I switched off the light on the dashboard. For one instant we sat together in the pitch darkness.

  Just as I was feeling for the handle, Jerry gripped my arm.

  “Don’t move. Someone’s coming up the ramp.”

  And I heard it, too. It seemed incredible that I could have been so engrossed with what we had discovered not to have heard it earlier—that fàint sound from the ramp—that cautious, hesitating sound of footsteps.

  Suddenly my old dread of that unknown pursuer came rushing back. If this were the garage atten
dant coming toward us, why should he be moving so furtively? I heard those uncertain footsteps nearer now … nearer … and I knew with blinding certainty that I had been right. Someone had been following us from the college.

  And the person who followed had not lost our track.

  The footsteps had reached the head of the ramp now. They seemed to hesitate there—nine cars away from us in the thick darkness.

  Jerry whispered in my ear, voicing my own thoughts: “If it’s the attendant he’ll switch on the lights now.”

  We waited tensely, pressed close together on the front seat of Norma’s car.

  No lights were turned on. And the footsteps had started forward again. I seemed to feel their vibration rather than hear them on the concrete floor.

  Jerry’s hand was still warm on my arm. Once again his voice came, soft and close: “I’m going to see who it is. Stay here, don’t move and keep your head down. He won’t think of looking in the cars.”

  “Jerry, you mustn’t…!”

  But his lips had found mine, keeping the words back. He squeezed my hand and then, noiselessly, so that even I scarcely heard him, he slid open the door on his side and was out in the darkness, close to the rear wall and the repair shop.

  I was alone in the car. I slipped down in the seat so that my head would not be visible through the window. I had stopped being afraid for myself. I was just desperately anxious for Jerry out there in the darkness, facing the unknown menace of those moving footsteps.

  And I was sure that there was menace in that slow, stealthy progress toward us. The wild idea that it might be one of Trant’s men flashed into my mind, bringing momentary relief. But it went as soon as it had come. A policeman would have turned on the lights; would have asked who was there. No, it was far more likely to be the person who had followed us from Wentworth. But why? Trant’s warning scudded through my thoughts. Was that the explanation? Was there really danger for me—danger so great that someone had seized the first opportunity to reach me when I was defenseless in a dark, lonely garage? Or had the person guessed the reason for our journey? Did he want those pieces of letter, which we had just found?

  It was then that the most convincing and, perhaps, the most frightening explanation came to me. Suppose the murderer had guessed where Steve had put my galyak fur coat. Suppose he didn’t know that the third, most vital letter was in the hands of the police. Suppose this was a desperate attempt to retrieve that letter addressed to me—the letter Grace had hidden in the lining of my coat and which Lieutenant Trant had said held the solution to the whole mystery.

  If that were so, there could be only one destination for this moving presence. He would be coming here to the Saylers’ car—right here where I was crouched in hiding.

  I felt a crazy desire to call out to Jerry, to tell him to come back to me. But I knew at once that would be fatal.

  Besides, there was no sound from the darkness to give me a clue as to where he was. The footsteps seemed to have stopped, too. I could not catch the slightest movement anywhere. The smell of oil, cars, leather—they all seemed a part of that long, brooding silence. Very carefully I pushed myself up in the seat so that I could peer through the windshield.

  Nothing but darkness. Then, suddenly, without the slightest warning, a flashlight snapped on to my right—at the spot where that person must be standing motionless.

  That bright beam shining down the broad aisle between the rows of cars brought with it the final touch of panic.

  I slid down in the seat again, my heart beating wildly. The flashlight was only a dull radiance above me now—a radiance which, second by second, grew stronger.

  And I knew it was moving down past the cars picking out each in turn and then traveling to the next—coming relentlessly toward me and Norma’s maroon sedan.

  Then, just as I was sure fingers were moving to open the door at my side, there was a sudden, sharp sound from the darkness to the left. The flashlight’s beam jerked away from the car. There was silence, then that sound again and footsteps moving cautiously away from me.

  Relief and anxiety warred with each other as I realized what had happened. Jerry had seen that figure coming to the car. He had deliberately revealed his presence in the darkness to attract the unknown danger away from me to him.

  My pulses stabbing, I raised my head a fractional distance so that I could peer out of the windshield. I saw the beam of the flashlight playing tentatively over the wall, trying to pick out the source of the unexpected noise. It moved along the wall, revealing dark stains of oil and scars in the stone. It reached the open door of the little repair shop, showing what I had already seen that evening, the gleaming back of Dean Appel’s sports coupe.

  Then I saw something else. At the edge of that shaft of light, inside the repair shop, pressed against the wall, I could make out the vague figure of Jerry. He was crouched intently forward, the Clarion still gripped in his hand.

  For what seemed like hours, the beam from the flashlight wavered to and fro, each time skirting Jerry’s half-concealed figure.

  Then, at last, it was shining directly on him.

  It was ghastly seeing him hunted by that light when I was so completely unable to help him. Jerry had the fragments of the letters. I knew he would do everything to keep them safe. But what could he do? It was impossible for him to tell whether or not there was a revolver behind that blinding circle of light. It would be useless to make a dash forward, particularly with his broken ankle still weak.

  I lay there in the car, desperately afraid for him, cursing myself. It was all my fault. I had brought Jerry into this. Against Trant’s warning, I had got him to come with me to the garage.

  The light was still fixed, vivid and unshifting, on Jerry. He hadn’t moved either. Then, very slowly, he started backing away, deeper into the repair shop. And I saw he was doing the only thing possible. He was trying to lure that figure into the small, confined area, where they could meet on equal terms. Step by step he went backward, his right leg dragging slightly. And with each movement the flashlight followed him, nearer … nearer.

  Jerry was deeper in the shop now, between the wall and Dean Appel’s car. But the moving light was catching up with him and now it revealed something I hadn’t been able to see before.

  I caught my breath. Right behind Jerry, where he couldn’t possibly see it, a heavy iron jack was sprawled across the concrete floor. Each movement brought him nearer to it. With that awkward backing movement, with his bad ankle, he was certain to trip He …

  I stifled a warning cry.

  But it had already happened. In one awful moment I saw Jerry’s foot strike the jack; saw him stumble; saw the Wentworth Clarionslip from his hand as he clutched at Dean Appel’s car for support. The unknown person with the flashlight moved swiftly forward into the repair shop.

  The beam showed me Jerry falling heavily against the gray concrete of the floor. Then it snapped out and there was utter darkness.

  The next few seconds are vague and chaotic in my memory. I heard a scuffling, a little cry of pain and then—silence.

  And suddenly there was a new sound, a long grating sound which jarred through the stillness. Someone was pulling shut the heavy sliding door of the repair shop.

  My mind was completely absorbed by the implications of that sound. Jerry had fallen and struck his head against the floor. There had been no fight. That could mean only one thing. Jerry must have been hurt; Jerry must still be lying there in the repair shop where this unknown person was shutting him in. My last link with Jerry and safety was gone.

  And now …

  The next thing happened so quickly I was not ready for it. It came just at the crest of my panic, when my mind wasn’t working logically any more. The door to my left was jerked roughly open. Someone was in the car with me; someone had slammed the door shut and was groping through the darkness, close to me, feeling for the ignition key.

  I made a small, ineffectual grab, trying dazedly to snatch the key, to s
top this person starting the car. My hand touched fingers. They were slender, with pointed nails—fingers, of course, which were not Jerry’s. I snatched my hand back. I heard the drone of the car’s engine, heard the gear click into place, the scraping of the hand brake. The car was moving forward, swinging right, away toward the ramp.

  I could think only of one thing then. I was there in the car with this person who was not Jerry. The car was moving forward. Someone was deliberately driving me away from Jerry … somewhere. The last shreds of my control warned me what to do. My left hand felt wildly for the door handle and found it. Still driving blindly, with no light, the car gathered momentum on its way toward the head of the ramp. I swung the door open. I felt a hand flung out toward me, grabbing my arm. But I shook it free and threw myself outward, away from the car.

  I heard the car drone on, not pausing. For one second I seemed suspended in the darkness; then there was dull pain in my temple, pain pulsing and then slipping into the darkness and nothingness.

  I don’t know how long I lay there stunned by my fall. Gradually I began to think again, to feel the pain in my temple. I lifted a hand. There was cold metal behind my head—a car fender. I must have struck it when I fell.

  I remembered that, remembered Norma’s car plunging away toward the ramp. Then everything else slid out of my mind as I thought of Jerry.

  Where was he? Was he still locked there in the repair shop?

  And—as if in answer—I heard vaguely, far away, the steady throb of an automobile engine. At first I had the dim idea it was the unknown person in Norma’s sedan still somewhere there in the garage. Then, slowly, it dawned on me that the throbbing came from behind—from the direction of the little repair shop.

  Bringing sudden horror, the truth screamed itself at me.

  Someone had started the engine of Dean Appel’s car. Jerry must be lying there helpless in that small, airless room with a car engine running. Jerry was in there with the deadly carbon monoxide fumes from the exhaust—stifling him.