by Philip Wylie
They waited until John had gone downstairs again. Aggie dropped four lumps of sugar into his aunt's cup. "That puts a new face on what's happening here!"
"Does it, Aggie? Are you sure?" She stirred the coffee and drained the cup.
"I don't know exactly what I mean, myself. But--a fortune in gold stowed away in a cellar! That, somehow, is more in scale--with things." He smiled at his aunt. "I'm mighty glad you told me. At least--we know what to think about. What to check on next.
You better get back to your room--"
Sarah nodded, leaned ponderously forward, and tried to stand. The effort sapped the blood from her brain. She tottered, smiled rather foolishly, and fell back in a faint.
Aggie heard his voice shouting for John; the old man's feet clattered on the stairs. He wrapped one arm around his aunt's back and thrust the other under her knees. With a strain that enlarged the veins along his temples, he lifted his aunt and carried her to his bed.
"Call Dr. Davis, at once," he said, when John entered.
John hurried down the stairs again. Aggie listened to Sarah's heart. It was feeble and uneven, but not desperately so. Just a faint. Fatigue. Strain. Relief. Good old Sarah.
He unwrapped the cold, moist towel from her neck and began to wipe her face with it, roughly. Sarah stirred.
"Old fool," she muttered. "Old sissy! How'd you get me in this bed?"
Aggie grinned. "Levitation."
Sarah's answering grin was faint but game. "What a powerhouse! Well! All the Plums were dynamite in their day. I feel terrible, Ag."
"John's calling Davis." He heard feet again. "I can't get them," John said anxiously. "Wire out of order, the operator says."
Aggie dropped the towel on a chair beside the bed. He was immobile for a second-two--three. He became paler. Perspiration dampened his forehead. On a chair were his black trousers, casually folded. He' put them on over his pajamas. He stuffed in the tops as if they had tails, like a shirt. "I'll go over," he said quietly. "You stay with Sarah. Get her some water to drink. She's all right, but Dr. Davis should be here." He started for the door and came back for his pipe, tobacco and matches. Sarah was watching him and her eyes were scared.
He went through the steps he had taken on the night of the twentieth: getting keys from the teapot, reassuring Windle, starting the station wagon, driving swiftly through the blue dark, and banging on the Davis door. This time, lights flashed on. But Danielle came down the stairs in the same negligee. He sucked in his breath when he saw her. She swung open the door and said, "Yes?"
"Sarah's pretty sick. Your phone's not working--"
"Oh. I'll wake Dad."
She was gone. Sharp steps upstairs. Distant knocking. her voice, calling her father. A door squealing open. Then the steps--running. She talked on the stairs. "He's not in his room! Hasn't been there! He--! Come on!"
Aggie followed her through the house again--as before. She threw words over her shoulder. "He said something--when I came home from the club--about going to his darkroom for a while."
They went through the large, old-fashioned kitchen, a pantry, a woodshed. Down steps. Into the moonlight again. Danielle cried, "Yes! The light's on! Thank heaven! I was frightened!"
He could see a small square of light on the leaves of a maple. They entered the garage, passed the cars there, turned into the hall, and Danielle knocked on a door. No response. She twisted the handle. "Locked," she said. "Maybe he fell asleep." She raised her voice again. "Dad! Oh, dad!"
Aggie reached in front of her and tried the handle. The door was locked, all right.
And it was a sturdy door. He was trying to keep calm. "We could go out to that window--
and look in. He may be taking a stroll. Visiting somebody. Something."
She jerked her head affirmatively and they ran back outdoors. She led the way around the garage. The window from which the light streamed was small and high--
higher than Aggie could reach. Its panes were set in a hinged frame that was open so that light fell into the leaves of a big maple which grew near the barn, at a slight angle from the window. He could see black paint on the panes to make the room totally dark for daylight photographic development. He looked for a box, a wheelbarrow, a barrel--to stand on.
"Boost me," Danielle said.
He wrapped his arms around her knees and lifted. Her palms ran up the wall, like little slapping feet. She caught the sill and pulled her weight higher. He pushed on the bottoms of her feet. She looked in, then. And the sounds of night, the whispering of leaves and the trilling of insects, were obliterated by her scream.
CHAPTER 10
Danielle's scream did not last long-although it was the sort that begins hysterics.
Aggie could not be sure whether it was real, or a deliberate achievement. But he did not want the neighborhood roused. He could feel the girl wobbling above him, and he dropped her, catching her roughly by the waist.
That arrested the scream--left it hanging in the night--shrill, eerie, truncated. She opened her mouth to scream again. Aggie put his hand over it. She commenced kicking and biting, but she didn't make any more noise. He saw to that: he held her there, locked, gagged, waiting to see if a light would go on in one of the servants' rooms or one of the houses in the surrounding woods. There was no light; the girl was beginning to relax.
"Listen!" he said in a whisper. "If you yell, you'll wake up the neighborhood! If there's anything we can do about things--this is our chance. What did you see? Will you answer without making an uproar?"
She tried to kick him again. Then she nodded, because his reaction had been to hold her more firmly. He took away his hand. She spoke in a shuddering monotone: "It's Dad! He's lying in there--with a knife sticking out of him and blood all over the floor!"
"Yes?" He was commanding her to go on.
"We've got to do something--get the police--!"
Aggie shook his head. "Not yet. Whoever killed him--doesn't know he's been found and may be relying on that--"
Her answer was violent--although whispered. "Nobody killed him. He killed himself! You fool! The door is locked--a child couldn't crawl through the window--and it's the only one!"
Aggie's eyes were accustomed to the penumbral glow of the little window. He saw her well-tossing back her hair, shaking. He was still waiting for lights, but none came. One screl,tm-heard for a moment and at a distance-will pass as the sound of a door, of a tree, or of a rabbit caught by a nighthawk. It is the second and the third and the fourth screams that rouse all humanity. He thought of that. He thought, also, about the window and the door. It gave him a sense of frustration.
"I'll look." He began searching for something to stand on.
"There's a ladder inside the garage. To the left," she said.
He lit matches until he found it. A stepladder, but a long one. He carried it back. It reached to the window. He leaned it against the wall. Danielle stood by in silence and Aggie climbed swiftly.
Dr. Davis was lying on his back on the floor. His right hand was clenched around the hilt of what was, presumably, a knife; there was a blot of blood under and around him. No telltale expression marked his ashen face; it was like most faces in death: flaccid, meaningless. The knife had been plunged into his heart. He had undoubtedly died in a second. Two lights burned in the room--a red one on a stand on the drainboard of a sink and a bluish, "sunlight" bulb in the high ceiling overhead. There was a ventilator fan in the room, and it was humming. Water was running from a rubber hose into a tub; several photographic enlargements eddied in the current. Ranged about, on two deal tables, were porcelain pans and brown glass bottles--the accouterments of an ordinary darkroom. The place smelled of chemicals.
Aggie came down the ladder.
Danielle snatched his arm--startling him. "I just thought! Is he dead? Surely dead?"
"Yes. He is."
"He killed himself," she whispered. "Killed himself! It isn't the thing I'd--! And yet--he was so frightfully upset--!"
; "He killed himself," Aggie repeated. As he said it, he wondered if Dr. Davis had killed himself. Any other idea seemed outrageous. There was the dead man in the small room, with the tiny window and the heavy door. Key inside: Aggie had seen it from the high angle at which he had stood. And a small, ordinary bolt shot, besides. There was the knife in his heart--and his right hand still closed upon it. Suicide. To think otherwise was preposterous.
Jim Calder had stumbled into a deadfall. George Davis had stabbed himself. Hank Bogarty had skidded into a lake. There was no black fox.
"A surgeon," he muttered, standing uncertainly beside the girl, "would hardly use a knife--that way--would he?"
"He'd know how," Danielle answered. "And he either would--or he wouldn't. If Dad had decided--he'd do it any way that was convenient. Convenient--and effective."
"We ought to get that door open," he said.
"Have you a cigarette?"
"No."
"I'm going to the house to get one. And to have the jitters." He shook his head.
"You're not going to get one. And to have the jitters."
"Yes. I am. I'm shaky inside, and sweating like an icebox. I'm going to lock myself in my room, and yell."
"No." He said it absently, but with such force that it was extremely compelling.
"You are going to get a cigarette, if you want. Then you're coming back. We'll go in there."
"How?"
"Do the servants sleep in the garage?"
"No. The top was an old haymow. The darkroom is where the chute used to be--
that's why it's so high."
"Oke. I'll shut the garage doors--and use an automobile jack."
She came back about ten minutes later. Around her, the woods and the dark houses were thick with sleep. She had changed into a dress and she was carrying cigarettes in her hands. On her feet were wedgies and her legs were bare. She was as pale as paper. Aggie glanced at her. He had turned on the lights of one of the cars to furnish a reflected radiance for his work. He had jammed a jack against the darkroom door and he was turning its crank.
"I stuffed a robe from the limousine in the little window," he said. "This is going to make a hell of a racket."
It did. The metal lock ticked under the strain, as if it were getting hot. The wood in the door frame began to crack and splinter. Aggie kept turning. Then there was a sharp, explosive sound as the lock itself bit through its iron socket and the screws on the bolt wore out. The door burst open, swung clear around, hit the wall, and rebounded almost shut again.
The jack blocked it.
Aggie went into the room. He yanked the car robe from the window by jumping for it. He unfolded it, and, after a long look at the body, he spread the plaid wool cover over it. Then Danielle came in--still holding the cigarettes in both hands.
"Smoke one," he said. "Here. Give me one, too." He said that because of the glassy expression in her eyes. He took two cigarettes from the package, poked one between her lips, and struck a match. She began to smoke automatically. He puffed on his as if it were a pipe. "It's a knife," he said. "Hunting knife. Heavy. The kind you wear in a sheath around your belt. Did he have one?"
She did not answer.
He stepped close to her. "I asked you--did your father have one? We have a lot to do, tonight. You've got to snap out of this. Your father is dead. All right. It's terrible. All right. You're shocked. But I need a witness to all I do right now--and I may need help. Is that clear?"
"I want to go back to the house," she answered raggedly.
"And you're not! You're staying here!"
She stared at him with zombie eyes. A little color crept through her pallor. She turned and started toward the door. Aggie grabbed her arm and whirled her around. He slapped' her cheek, hard. "I'll keep on," he said, "until you come to your senses." She did not budge. He shook her and slapped her again.
Tears slowly filled her eyes. She cast down her gaze. She shivered. Then she swallowed several times and drew a deep, quaking breath. When she looked up, there was a light of sanity in her gaze. "All right. I'll stay, Aggie."
"Good. Did your father have a hunting knife?"
"No. At least, I don't know. I never saw one."
"No matter. What was he developing?"
"Why don't you look?"
He had started toward the tub in which the white prints were revolving slowly. "I mean--what did he say he was developing?"
"He didn't say. He never did. He takes thousands of pictures. He is a camera fiend.
Was, I mean. Took."
Aggie dipped into the water and lifted a print. It was a close--up photograph of the ground--of leaves and pine needles and moss--and it showed the vague indenture of shoes. He frowned and dropped it back. He lifted another. It was a shot of a neatly chopped log. He felt that the picture should suggest something to him, but it did not, so he captured a third with wooden tweezers. That one made the others plain. It was a picture of the deadfall--taken-apparently--on the morning after the discovery of Calder.
The morning after Davis had gone on his early walk. The body was no longer in the trap. But stains around the dropped log were clearly discernible. It was an expert picture, technically.
Aggie returned that print. "Your father," he said, a shade unsteadily, "must have gone up there again the day after the discovery--that rainy day--and taken pictures as a final check on himself. Thorough--that. Crazily thorough. He wanted to be sure he'd left no signs." He pondered. "Probably sneaked up at dawn--and evidently before the rain started. That may be when he got blood on his shoes, and why he got rid of them this afternoon."
Danielle said glumly, "It just doesn't make sense."
"Not really. No, it doesn't. Sarah says your father wouldn't have done it--anyway.
No matter what the evidence."
"You've told Sarah!"
He nodded. He leaned against a cupboard marked "Plates for Portable X."
"X" meant X ray. "Suppose he didn't kill Calder. The fact that he's dead, himself, doesn't mean--necessarily--that he did. Could any conceivable set of circumstances explain--what we know? On that first night he went for a consultation. Was he called?"
Danielle nodded. "The phone rang and he answered. He could have faked his end of the call, though. Now that I think of it--he sounded surprised--lowered his voice--"
"Let's say he was called--somewhere--by somebody. He went--around what time?"
"Midnight. Maybe later. Between twelve and one."
Aggie had a recollection. "Was that about when you heard the chopping in the woods? Was it right after he'd gone?"
She said distractedly, "It was after. I don't know when! I wasn't keeping tabs on every second. I didn't know people were going to die! Wes asked me the times of things--
over and over--!"
"Steady. Suppose he heard the chopping when he drove away? Wondered about it-but went on and made his call, anyhow. At least, he brought back an X-ray plate. Took it out here that night and was presumably working on it when I arrived to get him for, Sarah! But--the power was off! He couldn't have done much about examining a negative without electricity."
"He could have developed it, though, and got it ready. If he'd been in a hurry, he could have done that so he'd be able to examine it by daylight."
' That's right. Then I came. He called on Sarah. After that--according to your cook--he was missing for a long while. Maybe he just took a walk--went down to the lake. And maybe he went up on the side of Garnet Knob, to see who had been chopping up there in the dark, and found Jim in the deadfall. Perhaps we'll never know--if he did either of those things. I'm still assuming that what he did not do was to kill Calder.
Anyway, after the deadfall had been found--early the next morning--he took these pictures. No doubt of that. And today--he sank some shoe pacs in Lower Lake. No doubt of that, either. He wasn't wearing shoe pacs the night he called on Sarah. I'm sure of that.
He was as smooth as a Park Avenue specialist can be. That hints that maybe
he wasn't up on Garnet Knob when Calder was killed. Hints--but doesn't prove. Wes can dredge up the shoe pacs--and the shoe pacs probably won't show any more than we've guessed--that maybe, at some time or other, your father stepped into some blood of the same type as Calder's."
"Why torture your mind?" she asked dully. "He's dead too, now. There's every reason to think he killed Jim. And no use standing here to invent a perfect swarm of other possibilities."
Aggie's lips locked for a moment. "Plenty of use, Danielle. Suppose that your father had nothing whatever to do with the business on the hillside? Nothing, that is, except to take these pictures--the day after we all knew about it?"
"Then--why would he do that?"
"For a reason you made clear this evening--yourself. Because the people of Indian Stones take things into their own hands. Your father--as you said--twice as readily as anybody else. He was a self-confident, egotistical, resourceful man. He was worried.
Anybody could see that. He had a reason to worry. Hank's wire. The gold."
He had said that deliberately. The information about the gold would certainly come out now. Its secret had survived one apparently accidental death. It could not sensibly be kept in the face of another death. So, covertly, he watched Danielle.
She said, "Gold? What are you talking about?"
Aggie was quite certain, then, that Danielle knew nothing about the cache in the clubhouse cellar. "They had some gold," he said rapidly. "In a common store. Sarah--
your father--Waite--Calder. Gold they got by subsidizing Hank Bogarty. Hank's telegram--and the knowledge of the gold--and Calder's death--upset all of them terrifically. So--" Aggie lowered his voice as he came to the conclusion of his hypothesis-
- "I wonder if, maybe, your father was just trying to back up the efforts of the police by doing a little research of his own. By taking these marvelous photographs. By snooping around. The way you have been--and I have been. The way any other enterprising person would, in the face of fear and worry and tragedy."
"It sounds like Father," she said slowly. "Just like him. He never trusted anybody as much as he did himself. Still--if he's innocent--why did he take his own life?"
