Lady in Peril

by Ben Ames Williams

  She said she had no thought at the time of following him; but later, Lola came to join Hammond for their entrance; and at the same time Annette went out to the stairs to go down cellar. The angular maid’s dislike of firearms was a standing joke in the company. Seeing her go, Clara realized that Doctor Canter must be alone; and she turned irresistibly that way, driven by the fury his mocking mirth had a while ago aroused.

  Miss Moss interrupted her at this point to ask: “Where was the pistol, Clara?”

  “Oh, I had already put it down. There’s a props table back of the drop, right by Mr. Hammond’s door,” she explained. “I laid it down there, while Clint was talking to Doctor Canter, when he first came in.”

  “Was that wise? Someone might have picked it up, fired it accidentally.”

  “I wasn’t thinking,” Clara explained. “I was so mad I couldn’t. Then when I remembered and looked for it, it was gone. I supposed the props man had found it. He’d spot it in a minute if it didn’t belong on the table, you know!”

  Miss Moss inquired: “When was it you looked for it, found it gone?”

  “Just after the curtain.”

  “Where was Doctor Canter then?”

  “By Mr. Hammond’s dressing room. Just outside the door.”

  Tope asked quickly: “Then someone had picked it up after you laid it down and before Doctor Canter left Hammond and went on to Miss Cyr’s dressing room!”

  “Yes,” Clara answered. “Yes, I’m sure! It was gone!” Tope nodded, and she went on to tell how she confronted Canter in Lola’s dressing room, striking out at him blindly with lashing tongue.

  “He was so hateful!” she cried. “So contemptible! I don’t know what I said; but he laughed at me, and I got so mad I began to cry. So I ran out, and I didn’t want anyone to see me. There were some flats leaning against the wall in the wings there, and I just crawled behind them and cried!”

  “Could you see anything?”

  “I didn’t look out!” the girl told them honestly. “I was an awful sick cat just then. I just wanted to hide.” And Mat drew her close against his side, and she lay there relaxed and comforted.

  Inspector Tope asked one other question: “Hews, how could a man go into Miss Cyr’s dressing room and not be seen?”

  Mat said readily: “Why, no trouble about that. You see, sir, there were windows in the second act set, and a back drop behind them, with buildings painted on it, so that the audience looked across the street, or seemed to. That drop stretched clear across the back of the stage. It wasn’t more than three feet out from the door of Lola’s dressing room; you had to be careful not to touch it, crossing back stage while the act was on, because of course if you did it would make the buildings painted on it shiver and shake, make the audience laugh.”

  “So the door wasn’t in sight, unless you were behind that back drop?” Tope insisted. “How about from the flies?” Mat shook his head. “There wouldn’t be anyone up there, probably.” And he added: “You could see her door from outside Mr. Hammond’s dressing room, of course, or from the wings on the other side, if you were far enough back from the stage.”

  “People did cross back there, during the act?”

  “Oh, yes,” Mat assented. “You remember, just before the machine gun business, four of us go into the elevator. Well, the other three don’t come on again. Kay drags me on. I’m supposed to be badly hurt. But the other three go around behind, the back drop to get to their rooms.”

  “I went across that way,” Clara interjected.

  “These three men,” Tope urged. “They’d tie crossing through there about the time the shooting was going on?” Mat shook his head. “No, sir,” he confessed. “You know, that scene gets the audience plenty. We had little peep holes where we could watch the people out front have a fit while we were supposed to be getting shot!”

  “You did that, the night Canter was killed?”

  “I guess so,” Mat assured him. “You couldn’t see much; but we always got a kick out of it. Like reading your own obituary or something.”

  “Anyone else on that side of the stage?”

  “There was a prop man, usually. And maybe a couple of stage hands. But you don’t notice anything back stage, unless it’s something unusual.”

  Miss Moss seized on this: “You wouldn’t notice a man moving about, if you were used to seeing him there?”

  “Why, not especially,” Mat agreed.

  And they were able to learn nothing more; so they turned at last to this more recent tragedy tonight. But in the end Clint began to yawn, and Miss Moss disappeared and came back to whisper to Clara, and then Clara and Mat bade them all good night and departed arm in arm. Clint presently vanished too. It was past three o’clock; that still hour when sleep does rule the world, and silence presses down.

  Inspector Tope and Miss Moss sat for a longer while, talking in low tones; but they too were in a sort of waking slumber. These murders ceased to seem of any great import, and by and by they both fell silent, and then he saw her eyes close. He said gently at last that she had best go to her room; and she smiled and assented. She brought a blanket, in case he wished to sleep; she ordered the cushions on the broad couch; she urged:

  “And you should lie down I There’s no need to worry about me!”

  He said with a chuckle: “Nothing much I could do, anyway, ma’am. I don’t carry a gun; not much of a hand in a rough-and-tumble any more. But I’ll stay around. I might leave, come morning, before you’re up; but you’ll be all right then.”

  She said quickly: “I will want to see you tomorrow!”

  “I’ll come back,” he promised; and he cleared his throat and took his courage in his hands. “Even if it weren’t for this, I’d come to see you. If you’d let me.” He added: “I—want to know you, ma’am.”

  She smiled, confessing: “I feel as if we’d already known each other a long time, Inspector.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way,” he told her.

  And they stood for a little, looking at one another uncertainly, as though each waited for the other to speak. But he could find no word; and she said at last, very gently:

  “Is it good night; then?”

  “Why, yes, ma’am, good night,” he echoed, in something like relief.

  And her eyes were dancing as she turned away.

  When she was gone, Inspector Tope turned off all the lights save one shaded bulb upon the table, and he lay down and drew the blanket over him. He thought he would not sleep; yet suddenly he did, and woke to find his thoughts full of fragments—disjointed phrases, vague possibilities, doubtful conjectures—out of which abruptly some order seemed to him to appear. If one moved about back stage whose presence there was a customary thing, none might mark what he did or where he went . . . A watch might be wrong . . . The door of Lola’s dressing room was most easily visible, and most readily accessible, from Hammond’s dressing room . . . A man might pass from one room to the other, behind the back drop without being seen . . . And—a watch might be wrong. Particularly, wrist watches might be wrong . . . They were not in general so accurate as other pieces. A watch might be wrong!

  He sat up briskly, as though it were important to stick a pin in this possibility before it should escape. He sat up, and he saw gray dawn at the windows peering in. He sat up, and he stood up; and he folded the blanket neatly, and restored the cushions to their places, and found his hat and coat. He went out without a sound, and rang for the elevator and descended through the sleeping building.

  There was a policeman in the lobby, the man O’Malley who had been at the theatre the night before. Tope spoke to him. “O’Malley, go upstairs! Stay in the corridor outside 14-A,” he directed. “Don’t let anyone go in unless you know him.”

  O’Malley grinned. “Inspector Hagan told me to keep an eye on the girl up there,” he assented. “And we’ve got men in the basement, and the alley behind, to see no one goes out.”

  Tope nodded. “Good,” he agreed. “But y
ou go upstairs, and don’t let anyone in, either. That will suit Hagan too.”

  He saw the other depart to follow his suggestion; and Inspector Tope went on his way. He wished to see Doctor Gero; but in the taxicab it occurred to him that the Medical Examiner had been late abroad, might still be sleeping. So Tope breakfasted, and it was after seven o’clock before he rang the other’s bell.

  Doctor Gero, roused from sleep, nevertheless did meet him in friendly fashion; they had worked side by side for a long time, these two. Tope came directly to the point.

  “I don’t figure in this business at all, Doctor,” he admitted. “No right to any information. But tell me something, will you?”

  The other chuckled. “Certainly,” he assented. “Anything you want.”

  And the old man asked precisely: “Hammond was shot twice?”

  “Yes, once through the heart, and once in the face. Through the left wrist, and into his face just below the eye. The bullet hit his wrist watch, drove a piece of the stem of it into the wound I”

  “Then his wrist must have been pretty close to his face when the bullet hit him.”

  “Yes. His hand was driven back against his face. The watch cut his cheek!”

  “How long had he been dead when you saw him?”

  “An hour or so. The watch stopped at twelve-thirty-eight.”

  “Which bullet would you say hit him first?”

  “Why, the face wound, I suppose. After the other, there’d have been no need to shoot him again.”

  “Gun was wrapped in a blanket, wasn’t it? To kill the sound?”

  “Yes.”

  “Find any pieces of blanket in the wound?”

  “Some in the wrist, yes,” Doctor Gero agreed. “I didn’t notice any in the face, or chest!”

  Tope tapped his hand on his knee. “Where’s that blanket? Have you got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s look at it,” said the older man intently.

  And Doctor Gero, after a thoughtful moment, led the way into his office. The blanket was packed in paper there; he unwrapped it and they spread it on the floor to examine the marks it bore.

  There were four holes which a bullet might have made. Around one was a powder smut; the others showed this in less degree or not at all. Tope turned the blanket over, looked for a similar smudge upon the other side; and he stood up quickly.

  “Only one shot went through this blanket, Doctor,” he said. “See! It was folded to make four thicknesses, but one bullet made all four holes.”

  “That’s right,” the younger man assented. He looked at Tope. “What does that mean?”

  And Tope chuckled with a sudden deep triumph. “You tell Hagan about it,” he directed. “Don’t say I told you! Just tell him the man that killed Hammond shot him through the heart; then he turned Hammond’s watch ahead, half an hour or so, and got a blanket to muffle the noise, and shot him through the wrist and face!”

  “Alibi?” Gero exclaimed.

  “You tell Hagan!” Tope repeated; and his eyes were shining. “Let him figure it out. Let him get the man. The way to train a fighting dog is to let him win some battles. It will do Hagan good to win.”

  “You’re not taking a hand?” the Medical Examiner inquired.

  “Not unless I have to,” Tope promised. “Not unless Hagan misses. I want him to put this through, himself!”

  “Who did it?” Gero asked. “Where is he? Won’t he get away?”

  But Tope shook his head. “He’s been on the dodge two months, and he’s still in town,” he said. “He had reason enough to get away before, but he didn’t, and he won’t run, now. He’s got reasons to stay.”

  “What reasons?”

  “Four hundred thousand of them,” Tope chuckled. He turned briskly toward the door. “Phone Hagan, tell him,” he urged. “Let him put it through!”

  He chose to walk back to his room on Boylston Street. He wished to change his clothes before setting forth upon the final business of this day. He came to his room and telephoned Dave Howell; but Howell was not to be located and Tope left word at Headquarters for him to call.

  He got into a tub; and while he dressed he whistled cheerfully, and he moved briskly to and fro. He had only begun to dress again when someone knocked on the door. He called discreetly through the panels:

  “Who is it?”

  And Miss Moss answered.

  Inspector Tope looked at himself in dismay. He protested: “You wait five minutes, ma’am, I’m dressing.”

  He thought there was faint mirth in her tones. “All right,” she agreed. “But—hurry, please! This is important; a matter of time, I think.”

  “Make it one minute, then,” he promised. He tossed his discarded garments into the bathroom, closed the door. He drew the cretonne curtains across the alcove to hide his unused bed. He found his slippers and dressing gown. He combed his hair; and within the promised minute, he had opened the door to her. She came quickly in.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Morning, ma’am,” he returned; and he told her apologetically: “I didn’t dress, but I didn’t want to keep you waiting.”

  “You’re quite all right,” she assured him smilingly. “Listen, Inspector. I woke with a thought.”

  “Yes?”

  “To shoot a man through the wrist; that doesn’t happen often. An accident that fixes the time of the shooting so exactly. Does it?”

  “I never knew it to happen this way before! Not in over thirty years.” His eyes were twinkling with a deep appreciation of her shrewd intelligence.

  “I thought at first the watch might have been wrong,” she confessed. “But now I don’t think so. I believe this was arranged just to deceive us about the time.”

  “You do?” he echoed, admiringly. “It might be, at that.” And he asked: “But what for?”

  “So whoever did it could prove he was somewhere else at the time!”

  Tope seemed to ponder this. “But if it was Peace, nobody knows where he was,” he pointed out. “So he couldn’t prove he wasn’t there . . .”

  “It must be someone we know; someone whose whereabouts we know.”

  He looked at her intently. “What would be your notion about that?” he asked.

  She started to speak; then she laughed suddenly, and said: “Now, Inspector, you already know all this; know who it is. You’re pretending, trying to flatter me. Aren’t you? Honest, please?”

  And he wagged his head in a slow confusion. “Why, I own up,” he admitted. “Yes, I think I know who did it. But you’re smart, to figure it out yourself!”

  “You mustn’t humor me like a child!” she protested; and he said seriously:

  “Ma’am, I like to humor you! I do.”

  She smiled happily. “Why?” she asked, in a challenging tone. But before he could reply, she said quickly: “Besides, I’m not just guessing. I am very sure.” She watched him gravely. “After I woke, and thought, I spoke to Miss Cyr, and then I called her maid on the telephone and asked her . . .”

  “Asked her what?” he exclaimed intently.

  “Asked her whether Mayhew, Mr. Hammond’s man, went down cellar to keep her company that night, during the shooting, as he usually did.”

  Tope watched her, waiting for the word he knew must come; but while he waited the phone rang, and he picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?” he said; and a reedy, masculine voice inquired: “Inspector Tope?”

  “Yes. Speaking.”

  “I want to ask you something, Inspector. Can you speak freely? Are you alone?”

  Tope looked sidewise at Miss Moss. “Yes, sir, all alone,” he replied. “What did you want to know?”

  And the voice said briskly: “This. Can you tell me . . .” Then silence.

  The Inspector moved the hook. The operator asked: “Number please?”

  “I was cut off, operator.”

  “With what number were you talking?”

  “They were calling me.”
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  “Hang up for a moment and they will call you back!” Inspector Tope hesitated doubtfully; he set down the telephone, and he said to the woman here beside him: “Someone started to ask me something, and then hung up!”

  Miss Moss caught his arm. “Someone wanted to find out whether you were at home!” she guessed swiftly. “Wanted to be sure you were alone . . .”

  Instantly he turned and caught up the telephone again, called supervisor, gave his name. “Trace that call, quick!” he directed. “Police business!”

  These two waited without speaking till the answer came; the Inspector listened, said a brief: “Thank you.” And he turned to Miss Moss again.

  “The call came from a drug store two blocks from here,” he reported.

  “He’s coming!” she whispered.

  And then they heard a light step on the stair!

  It was Miss Moss who in this moment was the first to move. She made a sign for silence; she slipped across the room and parted the curtains which hid the Inspector’s bed in its niche in the wall. She disappeared; the curtains were still swaying when a knock sounded at the door.

  And Inspector Tope, with no least hesitation, walked across the room to open it. A man stood in the dusky hall; a small man, in some faint fashion familiar. The Inspector nodded, bade him in.

  The man entered. He was, Inspector Tope saw, rather past middle life; a precise little man, whose clothes were perfection, whose dark mustache was close clipped, whose eyes were keen. He paused just inside the door, his hat in his left hand, and he said:

  “You are Inspector Tope?”

  “Yes,” Tope assured him. He was trying to remember where he had seen this man before. Also he was relieved that the man’s back was toward the curtains that hid the bed.

  “My name is Mayhew,” the man explained; and Tope remembered. The night of Doctor Canter’s death he had caught a glimpse of this man, hanging up a pair of trousers in Hammond’s dressing room, going calmly about his usual tasks while disorder moved all around.

  Yet he only said: “Mayhew, eh? I don’t know you, do I?”