Jade Venus

by George Harmon Coxe

He leaned across the arm of the chair. “And speaking of copies, one was made of the Jade Venus, right? By whom?” He waited, half turned his head. “Was that your door?”

  Murdock was watching it. Someone had knocked but so faintly he could not be sure it was his door. He got up and waited, and then he heard it again. He went over and opened the door and Gail Roberts smiled up at him and said:

  “Hello. Are you busy?”

  Murdock grinned and took her hand. “I should say not,” he said. “Come in.”

  He pulled her into the room and closed the door. “Oh,” she said when she saw Watrous. “I didn’t know—I mean, I was just—”

  “Hello, Miss Roberts.” Watrous was on his feet, smiling.

  “I just had to get out.” Gail’s small face was pale and tired and when she smiled it made things worse because you could see how hard it was to do. “I couldn’t stay in the house any longer.”

  She stopped. Murdock felt a cord tighten somewhere in his chest. He realized how pathetically alone she was and he was angry with himself for having neglected her so long. He glanced at Watrous and Watrous knew how it was.

  “Take this chair,” he said. “I was just going.”

  “You weren’t really,” Gail said. “I should have phoned from downstairs. Please don’t go. I can only stay a minute.… No, I mean it, Kent.”

  She was bareheaded and wore a Chesterfield and Murdock was unbuttoning it. Watrous put his own coat on. “Do you know if Louise is at the house?” he asked.

  Gail Roberts shook her head. She stood still and let Murdock take her coat. “Not when I left.”

  “Hmm—well—” Watrous started for the door. “I stopped in the Art Mart this afternoon,” he said to Murdock. “Carroll’s got a couple of things there.”

  “Oh, yes.” For just an instant Gail’s eyes were bright and there was a lilt to her voice; then everything was like it had been. “Yes,” she said. “Did you like them?”

  “One of them,” Watrous said. He stopped at the door and looked at Murdock. “I may still buy that street scene I saw this morning. I was a little annoyed then, I guess.”

  When the door closed, Murdock gave Gail a cigarette and asked her if she would drink a drink if he ordered it. She said no and then leaned forward and her young face was sober and intent. “I wanted to ask you—” She paused, groping for words. “Do you remember I told you a young man named Lorello came to see Uncle Albert the other day? Well, there was a little piece in the paper—”

  She stopped, held by something she saw in Murdock’s face. “Oh,” she said. “Then it is the same one?”

  “Louise told me,” Murdock said and explained how they had been at the Silver Door the night before.

  “But—what does it mean, Kent? It said in the paper Lorello played a guitar. Why should he come to see Uncle Albert? And—now he’s found dead.”

  “He was murdered,” Murdock said. “Like Andrada.”

  She just looked at him, her mouth round, apprehension and bewilderment in her gaze. He went to the window and looked out, standing very straight, not seeing the lights of the city and the stars high above, seeing only with his mind and knowing finally that he was going to tell Gail Roberts what the Jade Venus meant. He came back to her and smiled and said, “Get comfortable. This will take quite a while.”

  She leaned back and tucked her feet under her and pulled the skirt of her plain black dress over her knees. “I’m going to tell you a story,” he said, and he told it, just as he had told it to Bacon the day before.

  He spoke of the Andrada brothers and what had happened to them and how he had run across the painter from Venatra who had mumbled the story of the maps and the painting of the Jade Venus. He talked steadily, taking his time, and what emphasis he put on certain parts of the story was unconscious and came only because his mind had folded back and it was all so very real to him, so very important.

  Gail Roberts did not move. Her face was pale again, but no longer from suffering or from any memory of the things that had happened to her the past two days; the paleness came from concentration, from the awareness of what had been behind the plot to steal the Jade Venus, from the understanding of what her guardian’s murder might mean.

  For long seconds after Murdock finished the story she sat still, her gaze still intent upon his somber face. When she saw he was offering a cigarette she took it; only when she leaned forward to get a light did she seem aware of her surroundings.

  “And Tony Lorello brought the letter back from Bruno Andrada?” She whispered rather than spoke the words, so hushed was her voice. “And somehow he steamed open the envelope and found out about the hidden writing and kept copies before he delivered it. And George Damon found out what—”

  “Something like that.” Murdock did not want to go into the theory of the murder then. He had told his story for a purpose and he wanted an answer. He said, “The important thing, Gail, is—”

  The knock on the door stopped him. It startled Gail and she turned quickly and caught her breath. Murdock glared at the door and exasperation warped his brows. There wasn’t any doubt about this knock. It was on his door and when it came again he went over and opened it.

  “Oh, hello,” he said.

  Roger Carroll gave him the lopsided grin. “I hoped I’d catch you,” he said. “I—I thought if—”

  “Come in,” Murdock said resignedly.

  He stepped back and Carroll walked in front of him. Murdock closed the door and watched the artist, seeing him stop short and stare at Gail Roberts.

  Gail was already on her feet reaching for her coat. “Hello, Roger,” she said quickly.

  “Gail!” Carroll’s voice was oddly thick. He took a step and then stopped when he saw how busy Gail was with her coat.

  Murdock stepped past him and held the coat.

  “I’m sorry,” Carroll said. “It isn’t anything important. I’ll stop in some other time, Murdock. I wish you—”

  “I was leaving anyway,” Gail said. “We were just talking.”

  Carroll’s long jaw was set and a growing stiffness settled about the mouth. He looked as if someone had slapped his face and his glance was hurt and tormented and utterly beaten. After the first moment of recognition, Gail kept briskly busy with her coat and scarf and gloves. No one spoke and the silence grew strained and uncomfortable and Murdock watched it all and analyzed their separate reactions as best he could. Finally Gail was ready.

  “Good night, Roger,” she said. But she did not look at him and walked past as though he were not there. Kent Murdock went with her into the hall.

  “There’s a little more to the story,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  She did not look at him and he thought the corners of her eyes were wet. She kept her face averted as she said good night and started along the hall. He stepped back into the room.

  “I’m sorry,” Roger Carroll said and cleared his throat.

  “It’s okay. She’s had a bad day.… Take off your coat.”

  “No, I can’t stay. The reason I stopped was to ask about Mr. Watrous.”

  “Oh? Well, sit down, anyway.”

  Carroll opened his coat, an old tweed with a piece of the lining showing beneath one skirt. He pushed it back and sat down, propping his hat on his knees.

  “He was in here about an hour ago.” Murdock glanced at his watch and saw it was 10:30.

  “He probably thought I was nuts this morning,” Carroll said. “I mean, painting pictures to sell and then refusing to sell one when I get the chance.”

  “It’s like Barry Gould said. They’re your pictures.”

  “Sure. I paint them to sell. I wouldn’t have blamed Gould if he’d walked out too. But, well—Gail was with me the day I roughed out that blue valley picture. That was just after I got back and before the professor got down on me.” He laughed shortly. “Not that he was friendly, but he tolerated me. And that day Gail and I took a picnic lunch and went out to Weston and walked across coun
try for a while. She picked out the scene, as a matter of fact, and—”

  He stopped and turned his hat around. Murdock waited, watching the long thin fingers, the way a strand of hair broke away from the rest and began to slip across the bony forehead. He did not help a bit; he just waited until Carroll glanced up.

  “I’d like to have a man like Mr. Watrous take one of my pictures. I’d be willing to give it to him if I could just get him to hang it in his house. So his friends could see it. It would be the best publicity a guy could have.”

  “I doubt if he’d accept it that way,” Murdock said.

  “No, I suppose not.… But what I wanted was to ask if you knew where he was staying. I thought I’d stop in, or telephone him. I’ve got a couple of oils at the Art Mart—”

  “He saw them,” Murdock said. “I think he liked one. He liked that street scene this morning too but you made him sore and he walked out.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “He’s at the Raleigh,” Murdock said.

  “Oh.… Well, thanks.” Carroll stood up. The torment had gone out of his expression now and he smiled a little, as though he was grateful for the information. He hesitated; then, when Murdock made no attempt to rise, he went to the door.

  “You know about Tony Lorello, don’t you?” Murdock said.

  “Why, yes. I didn’t know you knew him.”

  “I talked with him last night—before he was murdered. I have an idea he was killed because he knew something about the Jade Venus.”

  Roger Carroll leaned against the wall and was silent.

  “You know the one we found at the Art Mart was a copy, don’t you?”

  “I heard it was.”

  “And you probably got an idea that the reason those two thugs cleaned out your place this morning was because somebody—probably George Damon—is still looking for the original.”

  “I thought it must be something like that.”

  “Nothing was missing when you got it back?”

  “No.” Carroll grinned, mistaking the point Murdock was leading up to. “Your T-wharf canvas is okay.”

  “Any idea who might have had the chance to copy the Jade Venus?”

  Carroll pushed away from the wall and the good humor went out of his face. “I don’t see how anyone could. Not while Andrada had it.”

  “How long would it take? To make the copy?”

  “Maybe five or six hours—if a guy could work fast.”

  Then, because too much was involved to consider anyone’s feelings, Murdock eyed his man deliberately and said, “How do you work?”

  Carroll’s glance slid by him and came back hard and defiant. “If you think just because you bought a picture from me you can—”

  “I bought the picture because I liked it,” Murdock said. “How long would it take such a copy to dry?”

  Carroll clamped on his hat. “Even working with poppy oil and a thin technique,” he said, “it would take twelve or fourteen hours.” And with one final glare for Murdock, he opened the door and went out.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ALARM IN THE DARK

  GAIL ROBERTS PUT THE CAR AWAY and walked along the side of the house to the front door. She had noticed a light in Mrs. Higgins’s room beyond the kitchen wing, but when she glanced in the drawing-room windows she saw the lights here were as she had left them and she guessed that Louise had not come home.

  She went up the front steps and unlocked the door reluctantly, discouraged at the prospect of an empty house. She put the key on the tray in the hall and hung up her coat. In the drawing-room doorway she paused and rubbed her arms, not because she was cold but because it was so quiet, so still here.

  It would have been nice to have found Louise curled up on the divan. She could have greeted her almost with affection, a feeling which heretofore had not been displayed by either of them. Thinking about this now, she wondered why.

  Not that they hadn’t managed to get along all right since Louise had come to live here four or five weeks ago. They were polite to each other and always there was a surface friendliness; but nothing more. They had, Gail realized, very little in common. Perhaps that was the reason. Louise, with her mink coat and slinky gowns and her pieces of jewelry she had salvaged from Italy, made it clear that she expected to be waited on. She was generally in bed until close to noon and she was not above some rather obvious flattery in getting Arlene to serve breakfast in bed. Louise had made it clear that she was merely waiting for something better to turn up. Gail had often wondered what the something would be and when it would appear; then, too, Louise had been very friendly with Roger Carroll. They had come back from Italy on the same boat and once, when piqued about something, Louise had implied that she had lent Roger money since they had been back.

  Gail found such thoughts disturbing and brushed them aside. Finally she smiled. Because right now it would be nice to have Louise here, to be able to talk to someone and break the silence that hung so heavily over the rooms.

  She turned and went through the dining-room to the kitchen. She did not know what she wanted but opened the refrigerator door and poked around, finding nothing that appealed and settling finally for a glass of milk and an ice-box cookie that Mrs. Higgins always had on hand in a tin on the pantry shelf.

  She was in bed and just dropping off to sleep when she heard the front door open and close. She heard the click of distant light switches and presently she thought she heard the stairs creak and then, faintly, steps were in the hall and another door opened and closed.…

  Gail Roberts found herself staring up through the blackness of her bedroom and wondered if she had been asleep or only imagined it. When she turned her head the radium dial of the bedside clock said it was a few minutes after twelve, and she remembered hearing Louise come in sometime after eleven. She knew, finally, that she had been asleep and then she wondered what had wakened her.

  A vague recollection of some sound lingered in her consciousness, as though part of a dream, and she lay quite still, holding her breath and listening. A car went past on the street outside and faded rapidly into silence and then she heard something else, some shadow of a sound, unidentifiable and quickly gone, that seemed to come not from outside but within the house.

  She sat up, aware of a growing tension around her heart. She listened again. She glanced about her, peering into the corners of the room. The window was open a few inches and the curtains stirred gently in the night air and suddenly she shivered and found that she was cold all over. Not from the open window and the fresh coolness of the room but from something she could not understand, something intuitive yet frighteningly real. She swung her feet to the floor and reached for her negligee, wrapping it about her as she stepped to the door.

  Opening it, she looked into the blackness of the hall and listened. She heard nothing now and since she was a sensible girl and not easily frightened, she told herself it was only her imagination. Her brain told her quite definitely that she should go back to bed and stop this nonsense. But her spine was tight and prickly and the cold vacuum remained where her stomach had been and her throat was dry and every instinct told her something was wrong.

  All right then, she thought. Either find out or go back to bed—but stop being a ninny.

  The silent soliloquy helped. She stepped into the corridor, left her door ajar, and started toward Louise’s room, her bare feet making no sound on the rug.

  The window at the front of the house was at her back now and enough light from the night sky fell upon the hall so that she could make out the various doors. She stopped in front of Louise’s, listening a moment, still aware of the battle raging between mind and instinct, wondering whether she should knock or simply enter and call out.

  Finally she made her hand move. She reached out tentatively and as she did so a clicking sound that was loud and frightening startled her and she glanced down and saw the doorknob turn. She stared and caught her breath. The knob turned a little more and stopped a
nd then she saw the door move slowly inward.

  For the next fraction of a second she could not think or even move, but froze there, staring, held by some horrible fascination she could not resist. She saw the door open a crack, saw that the room beyond was in darkness; then panic struck at her and gave her strength and she fled, not toward her room but toward the stairs.

  She ran and ran and the hall was endless. Fear told her she would never find the stairs, could not have the strength to reach them, and then somehow she was going down the carpeted steps, remembering to hold her skirts so she would not trip. She was on the landing, hesitating now, looking back, listening once more while the skin crawled on the back of her neck.

  She heard it then, the quick, muted sound of footsteps. She saw, through the spindles of the bannister, a shadowy form loom above her; then she turned and ran to the lower hall, poising here a moment, trying desperately to think again, remembering finally the closet under the stairs. She stepped inside and closed the door.

  Over her head a stair creaked and she could hear the steady, even step of a man descending. She held her breath. She pushed her hands tight against her breasts to still the hammering of her heart. She thought, He didn’t see me. He’ll go straight to the front door. He’ll go out. Please, God, make him go out!

  She could see nothing now in the blackness. She did not see the door open. She did not know it was open until she felt the cold air sweep about her ankles. Terror struck at her. She opened her mouth to scream and then, as something white and blinding exploded in her face, her mind blacked out. She felt herself falling and as consciousness left her she thought she heard a bell ring distantly.

  Kent Murdock had one more caller that night. When Roger Carroll left he pulled a chair to the window and sat down. He was still there staring out into the night when Jack Fenner knocked shortly before twelve.

  Fenner’s alert agate eyes were busy as he walked in. “I thought you’d at least have a suite,” he said. “How can you entertain properly in one room?”

  He stepped to the bathroom, glanced in. He turned, frowning, and quickly but thoroughly inspected the room with his shrewd bright gaze. He went over to the bureau and opened the drawers and Murdock let him go. Finally Fenner snorted disgustedly.