The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original)

by Unknown

  There seemed the merest edge of contempt in her tone as she mentioned the antique symbol. Stoddard let it pass without comment, however.

  “About how much time elapsed between the firing of the shot and your entrance into this room?” he went on. “I must ask these questions, you know,” he added gently, noticing signals of distress in her eyes. “We’ve simply got to find out who did it!”

  Julia nodded.

  “Yes—I know,” she whispered. “I ran in at once—a few seconds, that’s all.”

  Stoddard was incredulous now.

  “But how could he have got away in so short a time without your seeing him?”

  Tears suddenly welled up into the girl’s dark eyes.

  “I don’t know! I don’t know how he got away!” she sobbed, with such emphasis that Stoddard was startled. “Uncle Nat and I were alone in the house. Mrs. Bell, the housekeeper, is visiting in Los Angeles over the weekend. Tyson, the man around the place, has gone to San Paulo for the car—it is being overhauled. He’ll be back soon. Someone must have got into the house, shot Uncle Nat, and got away. I don’t know how he got in, or who it was!”

  Her voice had risen hysterically; she broke into a paroxysm of sobbing.

  Stoddard’s protective instincts were thoroughly aroused now. He longed to utter some word of comfort, but he was essentially an outdoor man and he could think of nothing adequate to the situation; so he simply waited for the girl’s outburst to subside. Stoddard was as ignorant of women as he was wise in the ways of men, but he had an unusually keen brain and he thought he detected in the girl’s behavior a note of panic which her natural distress at her uncle’s tragic end did not account for satisfactorily. Moreover, how Hammond’s murderer could have got out of the house—provided, of course, he was not still in it—without Julia seeing him was utterly beyond Stoddard’s understanding. The engineer puzzled over these points until he found Julia looking up at him.

  “I’m sorry I broke down like that,” she said quietly. “What shall we do?”

  “I’m going to search the house,” Stoddard declared. “If the man we want isn’t hiding in it he must have got out through a door or window somewhere! You had better stay here.”

  Julia shook her dark head decidedly.

  “No, I’m going with you! I simply couldn’t stay here!”

  She led the way into the hall, and snapped on a light. Stoddard preceded her to the front door. It was bolted on the inside. Julia said nothing. Stoddard felt a queer chill run over him. They began a tour of the house, commencing with the drawing-room. The windows of the latter were fastened—on the inside. They passed into the dining-room and then into the living-room. In these rooms also the windows were fastened.

  “Uncle Nat had Tyson bolt them on account of the wind,” Julia explained tonelessly.

  Stoddard did not reply. There seemed nothing to say. A sense of emptiness possessed him; he felt as if the atmosphere of the place were choking him. He avoided Julia’s eyes. They continued their rounds of the house in silence, coming into each of the five bedrooms and the two bathrooms in turn. All the windows were bolted. Finally they entered the kitchen. The single window was fastened and the back door which led into an outhouse was bolted on the inside. There was no basement. Every means of egress from the house was secured on the inside.

  “I bolted the kitchen door after Tyson went to San Paulo,” Julia said, in the same toneless voice. “Uncle Nat has one or two valuable antiques, our house stands alone, and he was always very particular about having the doors locked and bolted, especially at night.”

  Stoddard said nothing. Not until this moment had he permitted himself to contemplate the conclusion that had been hammering at his brain since they had found the front door bolted. Julia was looking at him unhappily, searching his face for some key to his thoughts. Stoddard contrived to avoid meeting her eyes. It was inconceivable that she had taken her uncle’s life, yet he was compelled to consider the evidence of his senses. His respect for the principles of logic, inculcated in him during a lifetime of professional experience, was not to be lightly put aside. Julia had known they would find the windows and doors bolted before they had begun to examine them! This, of course, accounted for that panic-stricken note he had detected in her breakdown in the library.

  Then a revulsion of feeling set in. Julia could not have done this monstrous thing! Such a theory was too fantastically horrible for sane and reasonable thought. There must be some logical explanation that did not offend every canon of decency. Stoddard forced himself to meet her wide, searching eyes. His suspicions were sacrilege; he swept them out of his mind. Julia caught him by the arm.

  “Mr. Stoddard,” she began, “I heard you knocking at the front door! I didn’t dare to open it! I was terrified—I couldn’t think! My uncle had been shot down, and I was the only one in the house with him—so far as I knew. I felt sure that every window and door was fastened on the inside—and I had seen no one—heard no one! I was nearly frantic. You know what it means! They’ll say I—did it!” Her voice broke; then she went on more quietly. “I can’t think how it has been done—men don’t pass through adobe walls and locked doors!” She gripped Stoddard’s arm in a sudden access of terror. “You don’t think—you don’t think I did it, Mr. Stoddard?”

  “No!” Stoddard shouted. He caught the girl by the shoulders. Their eyes held and kindled; an indissolvable bond of understanding seemed to draw them together. “You didn’t do it, Julia, and nothing will ever make me think you did!”

  A sob of relief broke from the girl’s lips. Stoddard was seized with a nearly irrepressible desire to draw her to him. He contented himself with merely pressing her hand reassuringly.

  “You must phone the police,” she whispered.

  Stoddard had forgotten the police. Julia was right, of course. The sooner he got in touch with the authorities, the better. Just then he heard the purr of an engine in the drive outside, followed by the creak of a stopping car.

  “Tyson,” Julia stated.

  There came a slow, dull knock on the kitchen door. Stoddard shot back the bolt.

  Tyson was a little wisp of a man with disheveled grey hair, small eyes of a curious faded blue, rather shrewd in their expression, and a wizened skin that reminded Stoddard of a last year’s apple. He was quite old—seventy, at least: his small, thin body was stooped with age, though a sinewy strength like that of an old gnarled stick still clung to it tenaciously. At sight of their grave faces, a look of apprehension leaped into his faded eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” he queried in a thin, cracked voice.

  Stoddard looked at him gravely for a moment without speaking. The kitchen grew very still and quiet, and the old man seemed to grasp something of the gravity of the situation.

  “Mr. Hammond—” he began in a trembling voice.

  Stoddard nodded.

  “Mr. Hammond is dead,” he stated, slowly. “He has been shot.”

  Tyson’s eyes almost started out of their sockets; his russet color faded and he caught at the table to support himself. Stoddard watched him narrowly.

  “Dead!” Tyson muttered, as if he found the fact unbelievable. “Dead!” Then he shot a sharp, penetrating look at Stoddard. “Who did it?” he croaked.

  “We are trying to find out,” Stoddard returned gravely. “Did you meet anyone in the drive or on the road?”

  Tyson shook his head emphatically.

  “I saw no one,” he quavered shrilly.

  The engineer silently led the way into the library. Julia was still deathly white, but into her face had come an impassive expression that suggested little of the terror and misery behind it. Tyson stared at the body of his master in silence, a look of unutterable horror in his faded eyes.

  Stoddard picked up the telephone and got in touch with the office of the San Paulo Town Marshall. The latter, it appeared, was out. He would return within the next half hour and would come at once. Stoddard put the instrument down, thankful for the small re
spite.

  Tyson was still staring at Hammond’s body in frozen silence and Stoddard dismissed him impatiently. The old man went off to his kitchen mumbling indistinguishably to himself. Two chairs were drawn up before the fireplace, and Stoddard dropped into one of them. Julia seemed on the verge of taking the other when she cast a shuddering glance at the limp figure by the desk. She went to the switch and snapped out the light. Then she took the vacant chair.

  “You don’t mind—the dark!” she whispered, tremulously. “I can’t bear the light—with him there.”

  Stoddard nodded understandingly. The dying firelight played redly on Julia’s dark head. They regarded each other unhappily. Neither of them spoke. The silence seemed to knit them closer together. Outside, the wind still swished dismally in the tree tops. Suddenly, Stoddard took Hammond’s letter from his pocket and showed the postscript to the girl.

  “Why did you write that, Julia?” he asked, gently.

  She looked at him searchingly for a moment.

  “I was doing secretarial work for Uncle Nat.”

  “And you didn’t want me to buy the Parsee Sunrise?”

  Julia’s eyes grew humid with expression.

  “I wonder if I can make you understand, Mr. Stoddard,” she went on, slowly. “Uncle Nat hated beauty—my father loved it—passionately. After the accident—you remember?—he simply adored that Parsee symbol. It was pitiable to see him with it. Last year when Uncle Nat wanted him to sell it to you, he went into hysterics and made me promise to keep it—always. Just before he died he made me promise again. Uncle Nat has charge of my estate until I am twenty-five—next June—and he insisted on selling the Sunrise. I begged him not to. He called me a silly fool—said the market was just right for disposing of antiques—and he wrote that letter to you. He gave it to me to mail. I was desperate and I added that absurd postscript. I might have known that it would bring you quicker than anything else!

  “Uncle Nat had no feeling, no love, no tenderness in him!” Julia continued bitterly. “Sometimes I positively hated him!” She leaned forward. “Do you know, Mr. Stoddard, I can’t help thinking that that Parsee Sunrise has something to do with his death!”

  This had already occurred to Stoddard, and he nodded silently. Julia’s explanation had increased his fears on her behalf. If she repeated it to the police an ambitious prosecuting attorney would easily find in her dislike of Hammond and in her desperate determination to prevent him from selling the symbol a motive strong enough to account for the crime.

  “Julia,” he began, earnestly, “I had to break that window to get into the room! We’ve got to tell the San Paulo marshal that I found it broken and open! We must give the impression that someone got in, shot Nat Hammond, and got out that way! And we are not going to say anything about your trouble with Hammond!”

  But Julia shook her head emphatically.

  “No, Peter.” She smiled, using his first name with a tenderness that thrilled him. “We are going to tell the truth—all the truth—nothing else! Don’t you understand? If we lie, they’ll find us out somehow and that will make it all the worse.”

  “But appearances are so strongly against you!”

  “I know. That is why I’m going to tell the truth, Peter. Nothing but the truth. It is the best way. You’ll stand by me, won’t you?”

  A lump rose in Stoddard’s throat and he could not command his tongue. He caught her hand in his and pressed it tightly. The contact seemed to tell her more than a hundred expressions of loyalty could have done.…

  Stoddard leaned back in his chair and ran a weary hand through his hair. His brain ached with the strain of its continuous application to this impossible problem he had set out to solve. Every facet of the riddle had an adamantine hardness that defied his mental powers as resolutely as Lucifer ever defied the hosts of heaven. He felt as if he were traveling along the convolutions of a maze—a maze with neither entrance nor exit. Well, there was an opening somewhere and he must find it. He must!

  Stoddard shut his eyes to ease the throbbing in his head. The house was silent. Outside, the wind had dropped to a thin wail. The fire in the grate had sunk to a bed of red embers. He did not move. Neither did Julia. She was staring into the grate, chin cupped in her hands, waiting.… Some time passed. Then, suddenly, Stoddard heard a tiny whisper of sound like the quick patter of infinitesimally small feet on the floor near the antique desk.

  Cautiously turning his head he strained his eyes at the place from where he thought the sound had come. But the shadows were too thick; he could see nothing. The noise continued. Stoddard’s hard-muscled body grew rigid; his hands clamped down on the arms of his chair. Still he could not identify the sound! Apparently, Julia had not noticed it. She was still gazing into the red-embered grate.

  The sound possessed Stoddard body and soul. Identify it he must! Setting his eyes on the whereabouts of the light switch he tensed his body and sprang at a single bound across the intervening floor space. His hand closed on the switch; light flooded the room.

  There came a sharp yelp of pain. Three streaks of white whizzed across the floor and vanished behind the antique desk. Stoddard gaped at them in amazement. Mice! White mice! A wave of exasperation swept over him. He had made a fool of himself over these! Then he saw Julia smiling wryly up at him and he grinned sheepishly.

  “They are quite wild, now,” she said. “Father got them—after the accident. He thought the world of them and he trained them to do the prettiest tricks! Tyson promised to look after them, but Uncle Nat, of course, ordered them destroyed. Tyson simply worshiped Father and he left their cage open—on purpose, I’m afraid—and they got away. That desk was Father’s—he used to let them have the run of it. Uncle Nat had Tyson set traps—you’ll find one behind the desk. Probably there’s a mouse in it.”

  Stoddard fumbled behind the back of the desk and drew out an old-fashioned mousetrap of the box type. In it was a tiny white mouse, stiff with terror.

  “I am sure Tyson lets them go after he catches them,” Julia continued. “The place is overrun with them and they never seem to get any less. Tyson was with Uncle Nat and Father for thirty years—he went with them everywhere—and he considers himself a privileged person. I’m sure he couldn’t be persuaded to kill the little things. He adored Father.”

  Scarcely conscious of what he was doing, Stoddard knelt down, opened the trap and shook the tiny rodent out onto the floor. It streaked across the room and vanished behind the antique desk. His mind pivoted upon that last remark of Julia’s. She had said that Tyson had adored her father! Could it be possible that Tyson had shot Nat Hammond because of some fancied or magnified wrong done to Walter Hammond by his brother?

  Stoddard’s heart leaped at the thought. Then he dismissed the notion. It was absurd, of course. Tyson was driving back from San Paulo at the time the shot was fired. Moreover, every door and window in the house had been locked on the inside—Stoddard shook his head in a gesture of rage and despair. His brain was numb; he could not think coherently. Setting aside the trap he looked at Julia.

  “Do you know where the Parsee Sunrise is?”

  Julia shook her head.

  “No, I don’t. Uncle Nat hid it away. I never could find it.”

  “Did Hammond have a pistol of any sort?”

  Julia nodded.

  “Yes, a small automatic. I don’t know where he kept it. I think he was afraid of Father getting it.”

  Stoddard glared malevolently at the antique desk. A curious feeling that it was in some way connected with Hammond’s death came upon him. More than ever did it seem a sinister presence, brooding over the room.

  To distract his unhappy thoughts he commenced a thorough search of the five drawers of the desk. Perhaps he might find the Parsee Sunrise. The drawers were crammed with a miscellaneous litter of papers, appertaining to Hammond’s business affairs, personal and private.… When he had finished several minutes later he had found no sign of the ancient symbol.

 
; His brain had cleared, however, and he eyed the desk thoughtfully. Then he began to run his fingers slowly and heavily over the top of the desk, studying with particular care the beautiful grain of the wood. Nothing resulted from this proceeding and he turned his attention to one of the massive legs that supported the desk.

  At that moment a powerful car throbbed up the cinder drive and slurred to a stop in front of the house. Heavy feet approached and someone hammered authoritatively on the front door. Tyson shambled out of the kitchen. Stoddard looked up; the color receded from his cheeks.

  “The San Paulo marshal!” he whispered.

  Julia nodded. She had gone deathly pale. Stoddard caught her hands tightly between his.

  “We’ve got to tell him that I found this window open!” he stated, emphatically.

  “No!” The fierceness of her tone startled Stoddard.

  “If you do, I’ll tell him the truth of it, anyway! We won’t accomplish anything by deceit. I know!” Her voice softened. “Peter—don’t worry. Things will come out right, you’ll see.”

  A sudden impulse to press her hand to his lips overcame Stoddard. As he yielded to it the look in her dark eyes seemed to leap out at him. Her lips trembled; she withdrew her hand gently, as a heavily built man with a hard, shrewd face and frosty blue eyes strode into the room.

  Tyson hovered near the door. The marshal went directly to Hammond’s body and glanced at it coolly and appraisingly; then he addressed himself to Stoddard.

  “Bartlett is my name,” he stated, in a crisp voice. “I am the San Paulo city marshal.” He said this as if he wished to leave no doubt of it in their minds. “What’s happened here?”

  Stoddard had intended to gloss over the evidence so damaging to Julia’s case as much as possible—not that he expected to accomplish anything by so doing—but before he could utter a word Julia plunged into a vividly phrased recital of what they knew of the affair. She quickly explained Stoddard’s presence in the house, how he had effected an entrance, and her relationship to Hammond. The possible connection of the Parsee Sunrise with the shooting she touched on briefly, also. Then, as if her case were not black enough already, she specifically mentioned that they had searched the house and found no one, and that every window and door had been fastened and bolted on the inside. Frankness, her only card, she played skillfully. She finished with a little hopeless gesture that wrung Stoddard’s heart.