“Here’s what we’ve got,” he said. “These two, young Jervis and his sister, came back right after the first act curtain. Miss Ransom was dressing. Miss Jervis went in with her. Hews was dressing, and young Jervis went into his room. Then they all went into Hew’s dressing room, and then they all came out, laughing and talking.
“And about that time, Doctor Canter came in. He came up the steps right beside them, and Jervis here saw him, and this young fellow said something to Canter, under his breath mad. Someone heard Jervis say: ‘I set out to kill you once. I can still do it.’ And Canter laughed at him.”
He hesitated, watching Clint; he swung suddenly to Clara.
“And then Miss Jervis said something to Canter,” he continued. “And Canter grinned and went on, past Hammond’s dressing room. Hammond’s valet came out and called him back, and Hammond came and spoke to him in the door. Then Canter went on to Miss Cyr’s dressing room.
“Nobody saw anything else; and nobody saw Canter again till Miss Cyr found him. As far as we know.”
His eyes swung heavily from one of them to another, around the little circle. Clara, Clint, Miss Moss, Tope. Then back to Miss Moss again. He addressed her:
“Now I want these two to tell me what they said to him, and him to them.”
Clara cried: “I told you we didn’t see him!”
“I know,” he assented, almost kindly. “You were scared, lied. That’s all right. I don’t blame you. Most folks do the same. But you did see him, and talk to him. What did you talk about?”
“I didn’t see him,” the girl insisted.
Hagan looked at Clint almost appealingly. “I don’t want to make trouble for you folks, Jervis,” he urged. “Your sister’s excited and scared. You tell me what was it all about?”
Clint answered stiffly: “My sister has told you we didn’t see him!”
But Miss Moss spoke then; and she smiled. She said: “Be patient with them, Inspector. They are young. I can tell you what happened; what was said.”
Inspector Tope saw Clara’s eyes widen, saw Clint’s movement of incredulous astonishment.
But Miss Moss ignored them, spoke to Hagan. “Clara met Doctor Canter in California,” she said explicitly. “He paid her much attention. They went together one afternoon to a roadhouse in the mountains, for dinner; but a snow squall blocked the roads and forced them to stay all night. A woman who was in love with Doctor Canter found them there in the morning and tried to shoot him. The affair got into the papers and resulted in some ugly publicity for Clara.
Clint was in Paris at the time; and he started home to kill Doctor Canter for having compromised his sister. I was able to stop him, to summon Clara home.”
She paused a moment, then went on: “So tonight when Clint saw Doctor Canter in the theatre, he warned the man to keep away from Clara; and Doctor Canter said something scornful about Clara. I don’t know what, but I suppose she heard him and resented it furiously, and told him so. That is what happened, Inspector, I am sure.”
Tope saw that the girl’s eyes were brimming. Clara caught the older woman’s arm, gripped it tight. “How did you know?” she whispered. “How could you know?”
Miss Moss smiled gently. “I’m an old woman, dear,” she returned. “Old women become sometimes very wise!”
And Clara faced Hagan then. “He tried to make love to me that night out there, and I wouldn’t let him,” she said bravely. “So he called me a poor sport, said I wanted to play with fire without getting burned. And tonight he called Clint a loud-mouthed pup, and he called me a cheat!” Her cheeks were white, but her eyes were steady and fine.
Hagan seemed to consider; and Miss Moss asked: “You see?”
Hagan nodded slowly. “I didn’t know about the California end,” he admitted. “But I’d have found it out. You saved time by telling me. Now let’s go on from there.” He turned to Clara.
But before he could put another question, there was an interruption. A woman came toward them across the stage; a woman tall and gaunt, with heavy black hair, and a dark shadow across her upper lip, and deep black eyes. Inspector Hagan turned to meet her; and she said huskily:
“Miss Cyr can see you now!”
Hagan forgot Clara instantly. “Good!” he exclaimed. “I’ll come.”
But as he turned, Miss Moss touched his arm. “May I come too?” she asked. “Inspector Tope and I? I have some interest here, Inspector. These children have—no one but me.”
Hagan hesitated; but Tope urged: “She might help, dealing with this other woman, Hagan. You saw how she guessed that about the young ones. She’s quick, wise!”
“I’m not much on handling women,” Hagan confessed. “And this one might take handling.” He hesitated. “All right, come along,” he decided. “We’ll see!”
And he led the way across the stage . . .
Lola Cyr, when she collapsed in the first shock of this tragedy, had been carried into Kay Ransom’s dressing room. That way Hagan turned now, and Miss Moss and Inspector Tope followed him, leaving the younger folk behind. Hagan knocked on the door, and someone called:
“Come! Come in, Inspector!”
So Hagan entered, and they followed him. The maidservant stayed outside.
For a moment after they thus came face to face with Lola Cyr, these three looked at her in that long silence which her appearance always could command. She wore a metal-cloth negligee that fitted her smoothly, leaving her figure’s sleek and perfect contours all revealed. Her turban was of the same material, white as silver is white. Her cheeks were warm, her lips a flame, her eyes shadowed pools. Tope, could guess that her beauty was as much art as nature; yet the art was completely effective. This woman half sat, half reclined upon a low couch at one side of the small room, and she looked up at them without any expression in her eyes at all, so that her face was like a mask.
Like a mask of deadly terror, Tope thought; and he was sure of this when after they had stood a minute staring at her thus, she smiled as though her courage were renewed by the fact that she had impressed them so. He understood suddenly that this—for all the bizarre and provocative costume which she wore—was no exotic enchantress; this was a woman, woeful and perturbed, filled with a terror only half concealed.
Inspector Hagan must have seen her across the footlights; yet he asked slowly: “You’re Lola Cyr?”
The woman smiled again; “My name is Lily Mount, Inspector. Lola Cyr for the stage, yes. But very much Lily Mount just now.”
Hagan cleared his throat in a deep embarrassment. “I expect you’re upset,” he suggested.
“I was,” she assented. “Yes, I suppose I am!”
Tope found himself liking her. Hagan must have felt this too, for he said quickly: “That’s all right! I’m trying to find out what happened here; but if you’re too tired to talk to me . . .”
“No, I’m rested now.”
“Well, I won’t bother you any more than I have to,” Hagan promised. “This Doctor Canter came to see you?”
She nodded. “Yes,” she said.
He asked: “Friend of yours, is he?”
The woman hesitated. “Publicity is meat and drink to us,” she explained at last in an ironic tone. “It does an actress no harm to be known as—the pursued of all pursuers. I encouraged him as I encouraged other men. We play a part off the stage, you know, as well as on!”
“Didn’t like him?”
She said thoughtfully: “You will hardly understand. I have tried to build a reputation around myself; tried to erect an image in the public mind. Doctor Canter—and other men—were properties, adjuncts of the part I sought to play.”
Hagan looked at her doubtfully; and he rubbed his hand across his mouth in a puzzled fashion. He said: “I ought to take that the worst way, ma’am; but somehow it don’t sound so, coming from you.” He shook his head. “It sounds foolish for me to say so, but I’m betting whatever you did was all right.”
She smiled faintly; and Miss Moss moved a little nearer where
the other woman sat. Then Hagan said:
“I don’t know as I’d feel the same if I were your husband. But I guess you’re not married.”
She hesitated, and her eyes clouded for a moment; then she said: “Yes. But that doesn’t matter now.”
Hagan asked in a slow surprise: “Separated, are you?”
“He is not here,” she answered.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Any chance that he came here tonight and killed Canter for chasing after you?”
She shook her head: “He did not kill the doctor. No.” The Inspector hesitated. “Where is he?” he insisted. “What’s his name?”
“I do not know where he is,” she replied.
So the Inspector turned to the business here in hand. “All right,” he commented. “Now Canter came to your dressing room, before the second act.”
“Yes.”
“Sat down and talked to you?’
“Yes. While I was changing.”
“What about when you went on?”
“I left him there.”
“Which entrance did you use?”
“The one on this side.”
“Who was around that entrance when you went on?”
“I remember a young man, and the usual people in the company.”
Inspector Hagan nodded. “A young man and a girl?” he suggested.
“No, this young man was alone,” she insisted. “I noticed when he looked at me.”
The Inspector glanced at Miss Moss; he urged then: “You might not have noticed the girl. Miss Jervis.”
“Clara Jervis?” the woman asked. “Oh, I saw her in California at our rehearsals there. And I’ve seen her here, but not tonight. I’m sure I would have noticed her.”
Hagan stood with bowed head for a moment, returned then to his questioning: “All right. Now you and Hammond were on during the machine gun stuff, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Young Hews on? Or Miss Ransom?”
“No. The boy goes off just before the guns start; and Miss Ransom is on the staging above, by the elevator shaft, ready to take her cue right after the shooting.”
“But you and Hammond were on?”
“Yes.”
“Who came off first? You, or him?”
“We came off together,” she said, a little wearily. “He went with me to my dressing room.”
“Why?” Hagan asked. “Do that often, did he?”
The woman hesitated. “He knew Doctor Canter was there,” she confessed. “And he didn’t like the man. He was protesting at my receiving the doctor, as we went along behind the back drop to my room.”
“And Canter was there?”
She shook her head. “No, when Walter and I got there, he was gone.” She explained hurriedly: “Walter Hammond. Mr. Hammond.”
Miss Moss watched her attentively, and Lola looked up at the other woman for a moment, as though in faint dismay.
“Canter was gone?” Hagan repeated. “Or you didn’t see him, anyway.”
“His hat and coat were on the chaise longue, but he wasn’t there,” she assented.
“What did you think?”
“I was a little relieved. I had been afraid he and Mr. Hammond might quarrel. I supposed Doctor Canter had gone out front to watch the act, perhaps; or he might be somewhere back stage.”
“Hammond stay there with you?” he asked.
“There’s a wardrobe off my dressing room,” she explained. “Annette and I went into the wardrobe—it’s really a large closet and lavatory combined—and he stayed in the dressing room, talking to me through the open door. Or rather, I was talking to him.”
“What about?” he asked.
“I was telling him not to be an idiot about Doctor Canter.”
“What did he say?”
She smiled faintly. “Nothing,” she said. “He answered me once, and then he didn’t answer again; and when I came out—it was only a moment or two—he had gone.”
“Gone where?”
“I supposed he’d gone to take his cue. And then Madison came desperately looking for him, said he had disappeared. I didn’t know what to think.”
“You went on, after that?”
“Yes. And then during the intermission we were all scurrying around. We had to make the third act go. It was a strain, hard on us all.”
Hagan hesitated. “And it wasn’t till afterwards that you found—him?”
Her lips were white. “After my last exit,” she assented. “I was tired, worn out. I went back to my dressing room and sat down and stretched my legs, relaxed. And my foot hit something, under the dressing table. So I leaned over to see what it was.”
He said quickly: “Never mind. Don’t worry about that.”
“His eyes were open I” she whispered. “He was looking up at me!”
“Never mind,” he repeated, reassuringly. “I know all about that. Now where do you think Hammond went?”
She said slowly: “I’ve been trying to guess. I think perhaps he saw Doctor Canter under there. He’d had some trouble, years ago; a scandal that hurt him professionally. I think he was afraid of being involved again, lost his nerve, ran away.”
“Any chance Canter could have come back, while you were in the wardrobe?” Hagan asked sharply. “Any chance Hammond could have killed him then?”
“None at all!” she insisted. “I’d have heard the shot, heard any movement. The door was open between, all the time.”
Hagan nodded. “Canter was shot while you and Hammond were on the stage, I guess,” he agreed. “While the guns were going. If that’s so, Hammond didn’t do it; but he was a fool to run away!”
“You can’t know what it is,” she Urged, “to be afraid!”
Hagan shook a stubborn head. “Any man that runs away when there’s trouble coming is a fool,” he insisted. “If you run from a dog, he’ll bite you; and if you run from the law, the law will grab you on suspicion. A fool, I say.”
And a voice from the doorway echoed: “Yes, so I have decided!”
Lola was on her feet with a single movement; these others swung in quick astonishment to see the man who stood there. It was Walter Hammond himself. He still wore the dead man’s hat and coat. His lips were tight, and he was pale and rigid. But he said steadily:
“A fool, yes! So I’ve come back, Inspector.”
Hagan nodded heavily. “Well, that’s sensible,” he agreed. “Come in, and shut the door!’
7
INSPECTOR HAGAN, and Inspector Tope; Miss Moss, and the woman who called herself Lola Cyr; and now Walter Hammond I These five stood in a compact group in the little dressing room, and they watched one another warily, as though on guard. For a space no one spoke at all.
Then Miss Moss and Inspector Tope, as though there were a bond between them, drew somewhat apart from the others. Tope leaned his shoulders against the wall, and Miss Moss stood precise and erect beside him, her hands clasped in a fashion curiously prim. Lola Cyr, after that first movement which brought her to her feet, seemed to wilt wearily again; she sat down in the chair by the wide dressing table with its frame of lights about the mirror. Hammond looked at her with a long glance, and he moved a little toward her. Then Hagan, wiping his mouth with his hand, crossed to the door as though to bar that egress, and there turned and faced them all.
He said after a moment: “You were wise to come back, Hammond. We’d have had you by morning, anyway.”
Hammond nodded: “I suppose so. But I came back because I’m—too tired to run away.”
“Tired of what?”
“I had my fill of dodging, years ago,” he said ruefully. “Probably you remember. A mess about a woman’s dying, after dining with me. The law never even accused me; but the newspapers convicted me. It cost me my job, put me on the street. I went hungry, sometimes. No, I won’t dodge any more.”
Hagan said, with a certain friendliness in his tones: “I guess you got a bad
break; but you’re all right in this. Canter was shot; and he must have been shot while the guns were going on the stage, or someone would have heard it. You were on the stage while the guns were going, so that lets you out.”
“I know,” Hammond agreed. “Thanks.”
“So why did you run away?” Hagan asked.
“Scared,” the man said.
“Scared of what?”
“When I found him. Scared you’d try to pin it on me!” There was a long silence, an instant that seemed eternal. Then Hagan coughed; and he repeated: “You found him?”
“Yes.”
“When was that?”
So Hammond answered slowly: “Why, when Lola and I made our exit in the second act. I went to her dressing room, stayed to talk to her a minute. She was in the little closet, the wardrobe, with her maid. I sat down on the chaise longue, and felt something hard under me, and picked it up. It was a gun!”
The room was taut; but Hagan asked sharply: “Pistol?”
“Revolver. One of these nickel-plated ones. Not a prop. At least I never saw anyone use it in the show. I picked it up, saw it was loaded, with real cartridges. And I broke it, and one of them had been fired. That startled me! I looked around, and the first thing I saw was a man’s foot, sticking out from under the curtain around Lola’s dressing table.”
“All right,” Hagan prompted. “Next!”
“Why, I crossed over to see who it was. Thought it might be someone hiding there . . . And I saw it was Canter, with a spot on his shirt front that told the story.”
“So you ran?”
“I shoved his foot out of sight,” Hammond assented. “I grabbed his hat and coat off the chaise longue. I stuffed the gun under one of the pillows. You’ll find it there. And I went out through the door behind the boxes at that end of the stage. There were some folks in the wings, but they were watching the act. No one spotted me.”
“Where’d you go?” Hagan asked.
“Walked the streets. Sat in the Common, on a bench. Thought. Came back.”
“How’d you get in?”
“The stage door. Peterson told the cop there who I was. The cop told me you were in here.” He grinned. “I brushed past him and came in.”
Lady in Peril Page 9
