by Helen Reilly
The ex-Navy man might be telling the truth about the bonds, or he might not. There were other considerations. Invariably, Darrell was around whenever things happened. He had been outside Michael Nye’s apartment at close to the time Nye died, he had returned the silver leopard with which Nye was killed to Catherine Lister’s apartment, he had been instrumental in the successful eluding of the police on the journey to Clearwater, and while there, he had—happened—to hear someone in Catherine Lister’s supposedly empty room. All this simply because he was engaged to Miss Harriet La Mott. For an engaged man, Stephen Darrell managed to give a remarkable amount of his attention to extraneous things, people, among them the girl with the chiseled white face looking bleakly out into the snowy garden.
McKee shot a sudden question at him. “What were you going to see Michael Nye about last Friday night, Mr. Darrell?”
It caught Darrell off base. “I—” he paused. The pause was scarcely perceptible. “I expect to go out to the Philippines shortly. Mike Nye had been there. I wanted to talk to him about equipment, the climate, and so on.” Except for the hesitation at the start, it was smooth, too smooth by a mile. McKee had a sudden illogical conviction that whatever the purpose of Darrell’s purportedly abortive visit to Nye on last Friday night, it was closely connected with the painter’s death. He had the same feeling about Michael Nye’s having elaborately made a will in Catherine Lister’s favor when apparently he had nothing to leave her. Apparently—In both cases the feeling was very strong. As far as his real business with Nye went, Darrell wasn’t going to give of his own accord. Well, there were other ways—
At his question and Darrell’s answer, there was a slight tightening of the skin over Catherine Lister’s delicate bones, a faint contraction of her mouth, a darkening of her gray eyes. The lines of her long-legged, oddly graceful figure drew together. When he let Darrell go and began probing, he didn’t get anywhere in particular, but the result was at least interesting.
“Mr. Nye and Mr. Darrell were friends, Miss Lister?”
“Why yes—Yes, of course.” She was belatedly vehement and uneasy.
So the two men had not been friends—“You know of no disagreement between them at any time?”
Color swept up into Catherine’s face. It faded, leaving her whiter than before. She told herself that if Mike had said anything to Stephen about his treatment of her two years ago there had been no witness. She said firmly aloud that there was no possible reason why Mike and Stephen Darrell should have quarreled.
Yes, there was pay dirt here if he could get at it, McKee decided. Michael Nye had been in the West for the last year and a half, and Stephen Darrell in the Pacific for almost two, so whatever the disagreement between them it had occurred before that. Research was indicated. He registered Catherine’s relief when he abandoned the subject and turned his attention to the bonds.
There was nothing out of the ordinary about them to the naked eye except that something had spilled over them at some time. It looked like tea or coffee that had been wiped hastily away. The vague tannish-gray blotches had no connection with the bloodstains on the envelope in which the bonds had been enclosed. They were far older in origin.
The laboratory men might be able to find something informative, latent fingerprints, dust, etc. The Scotsman returned the envelope to the brief case. “I think that finishes us up, Miss Lister.” He began switching off the lamps.
Catherine waited for him near the door. Color and light disappeared in sections and dimness swallowed the room. She jumped a foot when the phone on the pretty little desk rang.
The shrill summons, a perfectly ordinary sound, was queerly disturbing in the stillness. The small busy town with its church and post office, its library and bank and single row of shops, seemed incredibly remote. Whiteness glimmered in squares where snow drove past the windows. It had grown darker out. The stormy November afternoon was drawing in, closing down. The bell continued to peal angrily.
McKee crossed to the desk and lifted the instrument from its cradle. He said, “Hello… Yes, McKee here… You did?” He listened a long while. Then, “Fine, Passeau, I’ll be along to see her presently. Get a statement.”
He hung up and stood quietly beside the desk, staring out into the falling snow. His glance was fixed, immovable. His eyes were a faint gleam far back in shadow-filled eye sockets.
He didn’t speak. The suspense was intolerable. Catherine said, out of a tight throat, “Did—has something happened?”
McKee turned toward her a little. He nodded. He said, feeling his way through the intricacies of a case whose tangled paths kept leading deeper and deeper into an uncharted labyrinth where the predictable fizzled and the strange was the obvious, “We know who removed the leopard from the living-room of your apartment last Friday afternoon.”
Catherine reached back of her, supported herself by a hand on a table. Was the inspector going to tell her?
He did. She said, “No,” and let the table take her weight, sagging back against it.
Chapter Fifteen - A Discovery About the Leopard
THE PERSON who had removed the leopard from the top of the bookcase in the living-room of her apartment on Lorilard Place was not Stephen Darrell, or Nicky or Angela or Hat or Francine or Tom—it was Mike Nye himself.
In that first moment Catherine had no room for anything but sheer unadulterated amazement. The bitter irony of Mike’s having provided the weapon for his own slaughter was completely incomprehensible.
There was no mistake. Mrs. Bridges, the landlady of the house on Lorilard Place in which Catherine lived, had come forward with the information less than half an hour ago. McKee gave Catherine the gist of what Detective Passeau, one of many men working on this outstanding problem, had given him over the phone. It was short, simple, and conclusive. The story would have been in their hands earlier only that Mrs. Bridges had spent the week-end with a sister in New Jersey, and hadn’t heard of Michael Nye’s death until she got back that day.
Late on the preceding Friday afternoon, when Mrs. Bridges was preparing for her trip in her rooms on the first floor of the Lorilard Place house, Michael Nye rang her bell. He had come to see Catherine and Catherine wasn’t home. He said he would wait for her in her apartment if Mrs. Bridges would be kind enough to admit him with her passkey. This Mrs. Bridges did without hesitation. She knew Mr. Nye was a friend of Miss Lister.
Half an hour later Mrs. Bridges encountered Mr. Nye in the courtyard. He was on his way out. They walked to the street together. Mr. Nye said he had decided not to wait, after all. He was carrying a brown paper bag under his arm. Sticking up out of the paper bag was the head of the silver leopard.
Snow hissed softly and wind blew. White veils over the dark trees shook in long folds. Catherine walked a narrow path through swirling obscurities. Mike and her leopard. Why had Mike taken the leopard? He must have had a reason. You didn’t go to your friends’ apartments while they were out and pick up casual ornaments and wander off with them because the fancy took you. They were back where they had started from, to the leopard—and the leopard was more of an enigma than ever.
She said, “Mike must have gone down to my place after leaving Mr. Harris’s office.”
“Where he was told that twenty thousand dollars’ worth of bearer bonds, these bonds”—McKee touched the brief case—“were missing.”
“But the bonds weren’t in my apartment. I don’t see—”
It was the Scotsman’s turn to retreat. Narrow-eyed, narrow-lipped, he was pacing the floor with short jerky steps, thinking deeply, charting a course, without instruments, in complete darkness. He thought about Nye’s trip from the lawyer’s straight to Catherine Lister’s apartment, of Nye’s removal of the leopard, of the appearance of the bonds in Nye’s rooms later on without, as far as they had been able to establish, the intervention of any human agency. Perhaps there had been none. There was one way, and only one, to find out whether or not he was on the right track.
“We’re through here, Miss Lister.”
He couldn’t get away from Brookfield and back to the city fast enough. It was almost half-past three. Outside in the quiet village street it was still light. The snow was slackening and the wind was blowing from the southeast.
It was too early for serious storm. Tomorrow would be warmer. The cab Angela Wardwell sent for Catherine Lister was parked at the foot of the lawn in front of the Inn.
McKee put her into it thoughtfully. He had half a mind to take her back to New York with him. He had no men here, and he didn’t like the things that were happening. But to disturb the status quo openly and without more to go on might be as dangerous as doing nothing at all. He pushed uneasiness aside. The state police were competent. Catherine leaned toward him anxiously. “Am I—they’ll all be at the house—am I to tell them about Mike and the leopard, Inspector?”
“I think not, Miss Lister. I’ll tell them myself later. And don’t mention the bonds, either, for the present.” Stephen Darrell had asked secrecy of him when he arrived at the Inn a half-hour in advance of Catherine and Angela Wardwell. “If you can see your way to it, Inspector, I’d just as soon no one would know I found the bonds and brought them to you. Sticking your neck out where a murderer’s concerned, interfering with his little plans, isn’t exactly healthy.” If Darrell had told the truth, his attitude was good common sense. If he hadn’t, well, that was something else again. In either case, no useful purpose was to be served by broadcasting the fashion in which the bonds had been recovered. He had agreed to Darrell’s request.
“Good by, Miss Lister. Take care of yourself.”
She said cheerfully. “I will, Inspector.” Her quick smile was queerly disturbing.
He shut the cab door, got into the long black Cadillac parked a few yards away, and the two cars moved off, Catherine going north through the snowy fields, McKee south in the direction of New York, the police laboratory, and the silver leopard, exhibit A in the murder of Michael Nye.
“Catherine, come in. We thought you’d never get here. You poor lamb, you must be exhausted.”
Francine opened the great blue doors, in shadow beyond the towering pillars of the big white house on a hill among trees a mile and a half north of the village. Catherine followed Francine inside. The wide central hall, running through the house to similar doors at the back, was warm and bright. There was a long drawing room to the left, but the hall was used as a gathering place by the family. Chairs were arranged at comfortable angles, the lamps were low, there was a fire on the hearth, wood crackled with a cheerful sound, and tongues of flame leaped dancingly against the soot.
Except for Francine, the hall was empty. Angela was lying down. Tom and Hat had gone into the village, Tom to post some letters; he had arranged with his office to have his assistant take over for a day or two. Hat was at the local hairdresser’s. Nicky had gone looking for Catherine.
“He got tired of waiting. You must have missed him. Let me have your coat—Here, sit here.” Francine pushed a fat chair upholstered in dove gray nearer to the fire. On a table beside it there were sandwiches in a silver basket and a tray holding drinks.
Her own cottage was less than a quarter of a mile away across the fields. Catherine had half thought of having the taxi take her there. But it would be dark and dusty and cold, and depressed and bewildered by the discovery that it was Mike who had removed her leopard, she was glad she hadn’t. She wasn’t up to effort of any sort.
Mrs. Barker, the wife of the neighboring farmer, had sent two of her daughters over to the big house to dean and cook. The house was never really closed. Tom and Francine often spent week-ends here, and there was plenty of food in the freezer, plenty of oil to run the furnace. All that had had to be done to make the place completely habitable was to throw a few switches.
Francine asked Catherine why the inspector had kept her so long and whether there was anything new. Her casual manner was out of register with the intentness of her round brown eyes.
She was shrewd. Feeling uncomfortable as well as guilty, Catherine said, “Just more questions,” bit hungrily into the second of two very small sandwiches and wondered ’why Francine, who had no nerves ordinarily, was on edge.
She urged Catherine to eat, not noticing that the basket was empty, poured her a glass of sherry and swished around the floor in a stunning lounging robe of heavy brown moiré that rustled, talking in her clear downright voice.
It was too bad about Mike’s money. It would turn up some place. “He made bushels—he must have. He wouldn’t have made a will leaving you something if he had nothing to leave. I expect they looked through all his papers for bankbooks and things.” Were there hordes of papers? Did Mike have mountains of old stuff like Tom had, or would if she didn’t put her foot down?
Catherine said she didn’t know but she understood that the search of Mike’s apartment had been thorough. “No,” she said, “Mike had no other house anywhere where his records would be,” not that she was aware of. That was why he had kept the Fifty-ninth Street apartment on, to have something permanent to come back to from his wanderings. He painted all over the map.
“He should have married when he was young,” Francine remarked, straightening an old maple-framed hunting print on the wall. “I wonder if he was always in love with Angela? Oh, well, it doesn’t matter now.”
The suggestion was disagreeable to Catherine. She hadn’t cared particularly for her uncle, but Angela and John were devoted to each other and Mike was their friend.
Nicky was a long time away. She had been there almost an hour when he got back. Tom and Hat had the Bentley. Nicky had taken the station wagon. The curtains were drawn, shutting out the snowy twilight, but you could tell the difference in the motors. Nicky came in through the far end of the hall after putting the car away, his face ruddy from the storm.
“Well, here you are!” he exclaimed, looking at Catherine. “I went to the Inn and they said you’d gone. I was worried. Boy, some night, the wind’s blowing a half gale.” He put his hat and coat in the closet under the stair and advanced to the fire.
There was an odd sort of tension in his voice, his manner. Unconsciously Catherine braced herself. Nicky had been so full of plans about Michael’s money, of what they could do with it, the things they could have, and now—
He surprised her, pleasantly. He was disappointed and showed it. His disappointment was entirely for her. His blue eyes clouded, he said that poor Mike was a muddler but that no doubt the money was somewhere and would be found. If not—“What the hell! We’ll manage, won’t we, sweetheart? Sure, we’ll manage.” His arm was hard around her shoulders. “I’m going to get a job.”
Catherine felt like a worm. Her inability to respond to him, to his verve and charm, his quick smile, was enraging. Nicky loved her, while she—she was going to learn to love him, she told herself fiercely. There was nothing you couldn’t do, if you tried hard enough.
She jumped up, tapping the top of his blond head with her finger tips. “And I’m going to lose a job if I don’t call the office.”
She got long distance in the little writing-room at the front of the hall and was talking to Miss Trenchard in Production, when Hat came into view through the window, walking up the driveway, a scarf over her head, the skirts of her beaver coat swinging. There was no sign of the Bentley or Tom. It was odd to see Hat on foot. She never walked if she could ride.
When Catherine went back to the hall, Hat had come in. She was seated on a footstool in front of the fire displaying her newly done hair to Francine. “Like it? The woman’s really rather good; she did it differently at the sides.”
She spoke to Catherine obliquely, by indirection, using the third person. “Poor Catherine, first the police persecuting her and now this, about Mike. Manna from heaven and no manna. I think it’s a shame.”
“Thanks, Hat,” Catherine said thinly. “I knew you’d feel for me—especially as money is concerned.”
The moment the words we
re out, she regretted them, It was a break in technique. She hadn’t permitted Hat to ruffle her for years. Nicky looked uncomfortable, Francine amused. Hat turned the gold ball of her head, her pansy eyes wide and hurt.
“Oh, but darling, I didn’t mean—”
Catherine cut it short. “Sorry,” she muttered gracelessly. “I guess I’m tired. I think I’ll go and lie down for a while.”
Nicky protested. “Let me mix you a drink, that’ll fix you up.” But Catherine wouldn’t. Climbing the wide shallow stairs wearily, she thought about Stephen Darrell, and about the inspector. Had they left Brookfield together? There had been a distinct suggestion of urgency in McKee’s departure. Where was he—and what was he doing?
At that moment, McKee was in New York in a small room on the fourth floor of the police academy across the street from Headquarters doing absolutely nothing. He had just suffered a knockout blow. His elaborate theory lay in pieces around him. Hands thrust into his pockets, shoulders slack, he sat staring at the silver leopard on the deal table in front of him.
A man in a white coat named Binks stood on the other side of the table. Binks said, “We’ve given it everything we have, Inspector. Quantitative analysis, spectroscope—it’s no go. The thing’s solid metal straight through and through.”
The Scotsman had been convinced that there was a hollow space, a cavity, in the statuette, either in the body itself or in the pedestal on which it was mounted, and that the bonds had been hidden in this cavity. It was with this conviction that he had left Brookfield. It would have explained so much; the disappearance of the bonds for so long, Michael Nye’s having taken the leopard from Catherine Lister’s apartment when he was told that the bonds were missing, and their sudden reappearance, out of nowhere, on the desk in the Fifty-ninth Street apartment where Nye had been killed. Well, apparently he was mistaken.
