The Door

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  That was all. Katherine rose, and the men scrambled to their feet. She gave to each of them a steady look, said, “Thank you, you have been very good to come,” and then turned and went out.

  I did not see her again until dinner.

  During the afternoon however, I heard Judy telephoning Wallie, and he came at six o’clock. From six until almost seven he was closeted with Katherine in her room, and the very fact that their voices were never raised seemed to me an indication of the tenseness of that meeting.

  There was no compromise in either of them. Only suspicion and jealousy on Katherine’s part, and a fury of hatred and revenge in Wallie. I know now that a little gentleness, some remorse for that tragic youth of his, and he would have weakened. But poor Katherine was as she was; she made no play for sympathy. She sat perfectly still and interrogated him.

  “You refuse to say what this secret fund was for? Or for whom?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You know what you are doing, of course. You are allowing your father’s memory to be besmirched. For I warn you I shall take this will into court.”

  “Then it will be you who are doing the soiling,” he said, and stood turning the ring around his finger.

  Just before seven he went down the stairs and out the front door. I was sitting in the library, but he did not turn his head.

  In the meantime other things were happening of which we had no knowledge at the time. We knew of course that Mr. Henderson had been to the District Attorney, and that the police had learned that the two murdered women had been the witnesses to the second will.

  But we knew nothing of the activities of the night watchman in New York, Charles Parrott.

  He was shrewd enough, this Parrott, but even a stupid man might have been suspicious. Here was Howard receiving a secret visitor at two in the morning, a man who ducked in past him, with his cap drawn down over his head, a large ulster overcoat and a muffler about the lower part of his face. And in the morning Howard was dead.

  That apparently roused no suspicion in itself. But two things followed it. One was that fatal attempt of Mary Martin’s to bribe him to say nothing of the night visitor. That had failed, and so she had vanished. Then there was that early morning search of mine. He was still on duty, and the sight of a woman of my age wandering in that courtyard in the rain and carefully inspecting the ground must have been unusual, to say the least.

  And then came that fatal move by Dick Carter the day of the funeral.

  “Which one is it?” Parrott had asked.

  “Dark coat and striped trousers,” said Dick.

  “Well, he’s the same build. I didn’t see much of his face.”

  He read the papers, and he knew Sarah Gittings; knew about her murder too, and Florence’s, the “Shoe” murders.

  He went to Evans, the valet, a day or so later.

  “Did you see Mr. Somers when he died? I mean before he’d been moved?”

  “I did,” said Evans with dignity.

  “How about his feet? Did he have anything on them?”

  “I believe he was in his stockings,” said Evans, and through the simple and fortuitous circumstance that poor Howard had dropped his slippers before he picked up his highball, Parrott went to the police!

  The rest is shrouded in mystery. Some time toward the end of that week a lieutenant from the homicide squad in New York took a train and saw Inspector Harrison and the District Attorney. On Monday an order was obtained to disinter Howard’s body, and a secret examination made. Nothing was given out, even Katherine did not know.

  But it was discovered that Howard Somers had died, not of an acute heart attack, but of cyanide of potassium, “probably administered in whisky.”

  Cyanide of potassium! And Howard had had a cold, and could not detect its peculiar and unmistakable odor; and Mary Martin had opened the windows, so that no one else might notice it. Opened the windows and broken the glass.

  They kept their secret well, did the authorities. After all, murder had not been proved; men with hopelessly broken health had killed themselves before this. And our own local authorities were not minded to let go of Jim, anyhow. They had Jim, and now they had the motive.

  Mr. Waite saw the District Attorney that afternoon, Tuesday, the seventeenth. I think myself that he was frightened. And small wonder. Of the three who had met in that room at the Imperial Hotel only he himself was left.

  He must have been worried; he must have wondered how long he had left for those little vacations to cure his arthritis, for the pleasant routine of his office, for his golf and bridge, for the little dinners with good wines and his friends about him.

  So it is not extraordinary that he went to the District Attorney that morning after he left us, and asked for police protection. Or that in doing so he virtually signed Jim Blake’s death warrant. The District Attorney listening absorbedly and Mr. Waite telling that story.

  “And what do you make out of it, Waite? There was still a valid copy of the will among Somers’ papers.”

  “Wills have been destroyed before this.”

  “You think the Gittings woman got the copy to show Blake, and then he killed her?”

  “He may have, hoping to get hold of the original later.”

  “And later on the Gunther girl got troublesome and had to be put out of the way?”

  “Something like that, perhaps. I don’t know. It’s damned sordid. Only I don’t want to be the next to go!”

  “You’re all right. As for its being sordid, almost all motives for crimes are sordid; cupidity, sex, jealousy. Sordid, all of them, but actuating motives just the same. Well, you don’t need a policeman; we’ll get this bird now, thank God. The press has been yelling for weeks, and I’ve had a few letters myself.”

  That was on Tuesday afternoon, May the seventeenth.

  That night the District Attorney sent for Jim to question him for the second time, and in Jim’s absence they searched his house; issuing a search warrant on a trumped-up charge against Amos for bootlegging.

  For the sake of form two Federal officers ostensibly conducted the search, but Inspector Harrison actually did so. Amos opened the door, and protested violently that he knew nothing of any liquor. But they pushed past him and went upstairs, taking him along. In Jim’s room they found the golf suit and the shoes which Amos admitted Jim had worn the night of Sarah’s death, and later they smuggled them out. Also they discovered that Jim had recently burned some letters, and Inspector Harrison spent some time on his knees examining the fireplace.

  But they still had that pretense of bootlegged liquor to carry out, and they had not found the sword-stick. So they went over the house. Amos was calmer by that time. It was only when they got to the door of the cellar that he showed excitement.

  “Nothing down there but the furnace, sir,” he said to the Inspector.

  That made them suspicious, so they went down and turned on the lights. At first glance it was unsatisfactory; a cement floor, a white-washed brick wall. They went over that wall carefully for loose bricks, but there were none. They were quite sure by that time that Amos was uneasy. Indeed, one of the Federal officers drew a notebook from his pocket and pretended to write down a memorandum. When he had finished he passed the note to the Inspector.

  “I guess that’s correct, Inspector?”

  “I believe so,” said the Inspector.

  But what he had read was this:

  “Watch the darky. He’s scared.”

  They started to search again.

  Chapter Seventeen

  THERE IS NO RECORD of that scene in the District Attorney’s office, but from what we know now, and from what was brought out at the trial, I can measurably reconstruct it. Jim, wary and uneasy, holding one of his eternal cigars in a mouth that twitched steadily, taking the opportunity they offered of lighting them, the careful bestowal of their ashes, to think; and the District Attorney, firing questions at him, endlessly, interminably.

  “You knew nothin
g whatever of this will, then?”

  “I never heard of it until Alex Davis told me, in New York.”

  “He told you you had been disinherited?”

  “Yes. That didn’t bother me. What worried me was my sister.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s evident, isn’t it? She was devoted to her husband. She had to learn that without her knowledge he had done a thing which affected her child as well as herself.”

  “And in favor of her stepson.”

  “Yes.”

  “What were her relations to this stepson? Friendly?”

  And Jim pausing, lighting a fresh cigar, or pulling on the one he had.

  “Not entirely. The usual difficulty. He resented her.”

  “And she resented him?”

  “Probably. Somewhat.”

  “You’re fond of your sister, Mr. Blake?”

  “Very. She is all I have.”

  “You saw this second will in New York?”

  “I did.”

  “Do you remember how the envelope was marked?”

  “Yes. Perfectly.”

  “It was endorsed in Mr. Somers’ own writing, ‘To be handed to my son Walter in the event of my death.’ Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why was that, Mr. Blake?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Doesn’t it show that Mr. Somers wanted to be certain that this will reached his son’s hands? That there would be no—interference?”

  “You can construe it that way if you like.”

  “You had no knowledge of this will when you made that night visit to Howard Somers?”

  “I never made such a visit. How could I? You’ve had men watching me for weeks.”

  “Now, on the night of Sarah Gittings’ death, I want you to describe your movements.”

  “I have said all I intend to say. I went out for a walk. After I had started I remembered that my sister, calling from New York, had given me a message for Sarah. I went to a drugstore and telephoned, but she had gone out.”

  “What was this message from your sister to Sarah Gittings?”

  “I’ve told you that. She wanted her to look after my niece, Judy. There was a young man here she was fond of. My sister didn’t approve.”

  “After you telephoned, where did you go?”

  “I walked on. I went to see a woman. I don’t intend to say more. Then I started back.”

  “That would have been when?”

  “Perhaps nine o’clock. I don’t know exactly.”

  The District Attorney bent forward.

  “And you still decline to give the direction you took?”

  “I do. I have done nothing wrong. I decline to be put on the offensive.”

  “But suppose I show you the route you took that night, Mr. Blake? Suppose I tell you that from that drugstore you went to the path through the Larimer lot, and down that path to the park? And that later you returned by the same route? I warn you, Mr. Blake, that we know a great deal, and that you are only damaging yourself by these evasions.”

  And still Jim obstinately silent, and the District Attorney leaning back in his chair and watching him.

  “You carried the sword-stick that night?”

  “I told you before that I did.”

  “Did you see Sarah Gittings during that walk?”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Yet you were on that path that night, Mr. Blake. We know that. You went down that path into the park, and later on you went up again. At one point you stopped for some time. You either sat or stood on that hillside, and you smoked a cigar. You were not alone at that time. A man does not pause on a dark hillside on a cool spring night to look at nature.”

  And then Jim made his unconscious admission.

  “I was alone. Absolutely alone.”

  “Ah! you admit then that you were there?”

  “I was there, yes.”

  “You met nobody? Talked to nobody?”

  “I did not.”

  “At what time were you there?”

  And again that almost infinitesimal pause, and Jim mopping his forehead.

  “I went down about half past seven.”

  “And you came back?”

  “Something after nine.”

  “And reached your house a little after ten? Come, come, Mr. Blake, that’s childish.”

  “I don’t know the time.”

  “What route did you follow, coming back?”

  “I cut across the park, coming up by the bridle path near Miss Bell’s house. From there I walked along the Avenue.”

  “That would take you past the Larimer lot where the dogs were tied at about what time?”

  “Possibly a quarter past nine.”

  “And you carried the sword-stick?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “There had been some hold-ups around the park. I don’t own a revolver, so I carried the stick.”

  “You saw or heard nothing suspicious? Near the lot, I mean?”

  “I heard some dogs barking.”

  “Where?”

  “Back on the Larimer lot.”

  “You knew Miss Bell’s dogs well, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well enough to recognize the noise they made? A dog’s bark is as individual as a man’s voice, Mr. Blake.”

  “I didn’t recognize them, no.”

  “Where did you put the sword-stick, on your return?”

  “In the hall, with my others.”

  “And it disappeared from there?”

  There must have been a slight delay, a slower reaction to that question.

  “It disappeared. Yes.”

  “Just when?”

  “I don’t know. I was ill at the time.”

  “How did you learn that it was gone?”

  “I had gone into the hall to call Amos. I looked down, and it was not there.”

  “You didn’t ask Amos about it?”

  “I don’t recall. I think possibly I did.”

  “And he said it was missing?”

  “That’s the way I remember it.”

  “Now, Mr. Blake, I am going to the night of the twenty-seventh of April. Where were you that night?”

  “The twenty-seventh of April?”

  “The night Judy Somers was struck down in the Bell garage.”

  Jim stared across the desk.

  “You are not intimating that I attacked my own niece, are you?”

  “I have asked you a question.”

  “I was at home. So far as I can recall, I have not been out of the house at night since Sarah Gittings was killed. And I certainly never struck Judy. That’s—that’s ridiculous.”

  The District Attorney glanced at the paper in front of him.

  “Do you recall the night when Miss Bell went to see you, after Florence Gunther’s body was found?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Had you sent for her?”

  “No.”

  “Not telephoned, or sent any message?”

  “None whatever.”

  “She walked over?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you sent her home in your car?”

  “I did.”

  “During the course of that visit, were the two crimes discussed?”

  “Somewhat.”

  “Did you make any suggestion to Miss Bell about your car?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. It had been her car. I bought it from her.”

  “There was nothing said about the carpet of that car?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Do you keep the mileage of this car, Mr. Blake?”

  “No. Amos may. I don’t know.”

  “Who carries the key to the garage?”

  “Amos. I don’t drive myself.”

  “You don’t know how to drive?”

  “I can drive, but I dislike it.”

  “Is the window of the garage kept locked?”

 
; “Usually. Not necessarily.”

  “If some one entered the garage by a window, could he take the car out?”

  “Yes. The doors to the alley are bolted. The key is to the small door into the garden.”

  “That is, some one who wished to take out the car could climb through the window, providing it was not locked, and take the car out?”

  “Probably. The window is rather high.”

  “But if he took a chair from the garden it would be easy?”

  “I imagine so. I hadn’t thought of it.”

  “So that if Amos had the key, it would still be possible to take the car out?”

  “I never crawled through a window and took that car out. If that’s what you mean.”

  “Do you know Miss Bell’s garage?”

  “I’ve been in it once or twice.”

  “It overlooks the ravine in the park, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know the tool room?”

  “I’ve never been in it.”

  “But you know she keeps a ladder there?”

  “I know she has a ladder. I don’t know where she keeps it.”

  This, or something very like it, went on for hours. And some time in that long interrogation they brought in the man Parrott. He came in on some excuse or other, looked Jim over and went out again. Jim was not suspicious.

  But by midnight he was showing signs of exhaustion, and even the District Attorney showed strain. It was a warm spring night. The men who came and went had taken off their coats, but Jim still sat there in his hard chair, neat and tidy, and twitching, and faced them all down.

  “You still decline to account for the time between seven o’clock and ten-thirty, on the night of April eighteenth?”

  “I shall do that if necessary. Not before.”

  “What were your relations with Sarah Gittings?”

  “Relations? I knew her, of course. Had known her for years.”

  “In case of distress she might come to you?”

  “She might, yes.”

  “Then this letter to you would not be unusual.”

  “I never received a letter from her. Why should she write me? She could have seen me at any time.”

  “We have absolute proof that she did write to you, Mr. Blake. And we believe that you received the letter.”