I was too terrified to move or breathe. I cried out when Glenn’s hands closed on my shoulders.
“Go downstairs, Anne,” he said quietly. “Go at once.”
“No,” said I. “No, I won’t. You’ve found the gold, haven’t you? You’ve found the hiding place. Where is it, Glenn?”
He turned on his flashlight. His face was still deathly pale, but strange and secret now, set and determined.
“There’s nothing here,” he said.
Bewildered and confused, I looked around. The balcony was as it had always been. The floor that had quivered was solid and secure. The iron railing that enclosed the narrow little eyrie was intact, cut only by the four massive columns. Serene and white, the ghostly pillars rose in their remembered way to the roof. They broke at the balcony, and other, similar columns descended to form the classic entrance to the house. So far as I could see, each of the four was identical—a smooth and soaring shaft, simple in design. The capital of each was decorated with carved acanthus leaves; a single spray of acanthus leaves encircled each at the level of the floor.
There was nothing different, surely, about the third column in the row of four. Then why was Glenn standing there? Why was he standing there, before the third in the row, as though he meant I should examine everything except that single wooden column.
“What was the noise?” I said.
“Go downstairs,” said he. “You’ve seen, yourself. There’s nothing here.”
Obediently, I turned toward the window, and swiftly turned again and darted past him. I was too quick for him. My outstretched hands closed upon the column he hadn’t meant that I should examine. Glenn tried to force me back. He himself was responsible for What happened. I grasped the railing to steady myself, took a sidewise step. I had intended to push the column, to throw my weight against it, to explore the rounded shaft with my fingers. It was by accident and not design that I trod upon the spray of acanthus leaves that entwined the base. No pressure was necessary. One needed only to know the trick, one needed only to step upon the proper spot.
Again the air was filled with ponderous creaking. Slowly and protestingly the column moved, swung free of the railing, spun outward from the balcony, came to a wheezing halt. A circular hole in the floor was revealed, a hole that opened immediately into the curved and airless interior of the column directly below.
I never clearly understood, even in later days, the system of weights and counterweights that operated the swinging column, even though the mechanism was many times explained to me. But even in that first moment I clearly understood that the dead space inside the hollow wooden pillar below, as wide and as deep as a well, would be a perfect spot in which to conceal a fortune.
“The gold,” I whispered, and dazedly peered down the opening in the floor.
“No, you don’t!”
Glenn caught my shoulders, shoved me savagely toward the window. But I had seen—seen the flat ladder nailed to the curving walls of the circular interior. Someone was clinging to the ladder. Someone who had descended into the airless place, and who now, crouched midway to the surface, was awaiting an opportunity to emerge.
“Glenn! Someone—the killer—is in the column now . . .”
Glenn flicked off his flashlight so that we were again in darkness. He pushed me violently toward the window, and with equal violence I resisted.
“Have you gone crazy? Now’s our chance . . .”
He clapped a hand across my mouth. “You keep quiet! God, why didn’t you stay in the car . . .”
A shuffling sound drove icy terror through my veins. Whoever had been inside the lower column had now crawled through the opening, was on the balcony, was creeping toward us. Glenn’s grip was like a vise. Terror gave me strength. I twisted free, and somehow managed to seize his flashlight. I whirled around.
The figure that I framed in cruel, blazing light made a futile attempt to duck into the shadows. Hoy Hieronomo was caught squarely by the light. Hoy Hieronomo, who should have been in Boston, stood upon the balcony of Hieronomo House. One hand covered his face in an instinctive effort at concealment—clutched in the other was the handle of a heavy brief case.
“Turn off that light!” cried Glenn to me. But there was no fury in his voice now. He was sobbing.
I was standing in the foreground. Cousin Hoy looked at me, and for a moment I saw murder in human eyes. They were pale blue eyes, with a queer, hard shine in them. Hoy took a stealthy forward step. Glenn cried out again.
Hoy stared at his son, and, as he stared, he changed. It is impossible for me to describe the look that came on his face—the wretchedness, the misery, the blank despair. In a twinkling, Hoy became another man—a small, fat man, helpless and entirely hopeless. He straightened himself with a kind of jaunty dignity. “Son . . .” he began, and then he, too, broke down. They faced each other, the father and the son—and in their tragedy I had no part. Both of them had forgotten me, that I was there. The father who was a killer, and the son who, unknowing, had tracked him down.
“Did you have to come here, Father?”
“I—I thought so,” Hoy said vaguely. “God knows I earned the money—three times over.” He made a fumbling, uncertain gesture. His hands relaxed. The brief case thudded to the floor. The fastenings weren’t clasped. Gold spilled through the open flap, bags and bags of shining coins, bursting in a yellow flood from rotted cloth. Hoy turned out his pockets. The yellow tide advanced in a widening circle around his feet. The little man’s eyes were glittering; they, too, had yellow lights. In that last extremity, I suppose the thoughts that assailed Hoy Hieronomo were hardly sane.
“I take after John Hieronomo,” said he. “Always did. Something that’s in most people was left out of us. But this I’ve learned, and he learned it, too. Gold is cold comfort in the end. Remember that, son—gold is cold comfort in the end. Gold won’t buy you peace of mind—gold won’t make you forget the faces of the dying. It’s not my fault,” said he in a high and rising voice, “that I’m a murderer. I’m not to blame. You’ve got to understand that, Glenn. I never really wanted to kill anyone— things just worked out that way.”
Hoy stood against the railing of the balcony. He was shivering violently—the small, bald man so ill cast physically in the role that he had played. He faced the window. Glenn and I stood with our backs to it. Before we heard the stir of movement in Great-grandfather’s room, Cousin Hoy must have sensed approaching danger. He stiffened.
In the room behind us I heard cautious footsteps, whispered voices. I doubt that Cousin Hoy ever heard them. But he knew—he must have known that a trap had been laid, that pursuit was closing in. Perhaps when first he entered the house he realized in some dim way that he had made an error that would be fatal. Perhaps he no longer cared.
Hoy stepped over the railing of the balcony to a little ledge beyond. The ledge was barely wide enough to support him. Momentarily, as his fingers grasped the railing, he teetered in empty space.
Glenn screamed, “Father!”
Simultaneously, the balcony blazed with light. Men were streaming through the window. I saw Sheriff Glick, I saw Chief Deputy Hiram Cary, I saw Dan. I tried to speak. In the noise and the confusion I could not be heard. Glenn had rushed to the railing. He leaned far out. I saw his outstretched hands close upon the empty air.
I saw Hoy jump. He jumped without a sound. He dropped as a petal drops from a wilted flower. One instant he was in sight, and the next he was gone.
I have no recollections of our wild rush downstairs. But I know that when we reached him, Cousin Hoy was still conscious. He lay on the cracked concrete that fronted Hieronomo House, his glazing eyes staring toward the portico. His right hand was lax and loose, but as he was lifted gently, his left hand opened. A single coin rang upon the pavement and rolled away. The coin was gold. It was dated 1913.
XXXI
COUSIN HOY DIED THAT NIGHT. He lived only long enough to gasp out his story to Sheriff Glick, to give his own incredible an
d egocentric defence of three murders committed because Hoy Hieronomo “could see nothing else to do.” What Hoy presented to Sheriff Glick was less a confession than a justification of an attitude and a way of thinking. John S. Hieronomo, dead a quarter of a century, had left one descendent unlike him in appearance but in character identical—vain and callous, lacking his progenitor’s flash and corrupted talents, but with the same cold heart.
At the age of twenty-two, like the grandfather whom he emulated and hated too, Hoy Hieronomo had considered any existence intolerable without money. Hoy had grown up untrained to be anything except a rich man’s heir; he had expected to inherit money. Rather than see the fortune leave the family—“be squandered on a young new wife”—Hoy, a spoiled, a conscienceless and ruined youth of twenty-two, had killed John Hieronomo and persuaded Amos, whose motives for compliance were entirely different, to arrange the “accident.” Thus had begun the chain of tragedy.
I wasn’t present at the final scene, I did not hear Hoy’s confession, and I am glad of that. Dan took me next door, left me in his mother’s care and returned almost at once to Hieronomo House. He was very gentle, hut hurried and preoccupied with things yet to be done, and I was too numbed to ask any questions. Actually, I felt no curiosity then—I felt only a kind of hysterical relief that everything was over, that we were through with murder and disaster.
Dan was exonerated, he was free. He was not in handcuffs; he had indeed been a member of the group who had rushed out upon the balcony and arrived too late to prevent Hoy’s leap. But again I was too dazed to wonder how that had happened.
Hermine Ayres made up a couch for me in the cheerful living room, and wouldn’t let me stir, help her build up the fire, or assist in any way. She tucked pillows beneath my head, wrapped a comforter around my feet and hoped that I would try to sleep. Sleep was impossible. Nevertheless, I was grateful for my hostess’ transparent little plot. Hermine Ayres was more bewildered than was I at the dramatic conclusion of our case, but she was determined not to talk about it.
We stayed together in the cheerful living room—I on the couch, Hermine Ayres sedately seated on a chair pulled close. She occupied herself with a bit of knitting, completely unaware that she was carefully knitting into a soft gray sock a toe of quite a different color. Neither of us spoke of waiting for Dan’s return, but it was for his step that we listened, for the sound of his key in the lock.
Our lights were still burning brilliantly hours later when Dan returned. It was exactly four A.M. His mother folded up her knitting, and rose slowly to her feet. I sprang from the couch. And then both of us paused. Dan was not alone. His companion was Sheriff Glick.
Cordell Glick had brought to a successful termination a complex and complicated case. But he didn’t look triumphant. He looked very tired. He hesitated and then came on in.
“I know,” said he, “that I owe you people an apology. You particularly, Miss Anne, and Dan here. My apology is this. I caught a brutal, cold-blooded murderer in the only way I could. I’ll go into my reasoning later. At the moment it’s enough to say that there will be no more tragedies at Hieronomo House.”
He sank heavily into a chair. “Hoy Hieronomo is dead,” said he.
Dan came over to where I stood and took my hands. But I felt no shock, no grief, no emotion of any kind. Cousin Hoy was dead, and it was better so. Dan and I sat down together on the couch. Hermine Ayres remembered that she was hostess and slipped out into the kitchen, and presently came back with a pot of coffee. For some minutes the Sheriff didn’t speak.
At length he sighed.
“An extraordinary man died tonight,” said he. “For all his commonplace appearance Hoy Hieronomo was an extraordinary individual. No doubt the history of crime numbers others like him, but it was my first experience with the type. To the end Hoy Hieronomo—captured and dishonored, revealed as a killer before his own son—felt justified in everything he’d done. Lay there dying, and protested the righteousness of his motives. He wanted his son to understand that, although he’d killed three people, he wasn’t an ordinary murderer.”
The Sheriff turned sombre, frowning eyes upon the glowing fire. I imagine he was seeing there a round, almost cherubic face, topped by a bald, pink skull. Not a murderer’s face, but the face of any middle-aged and moderately unsuccessful business man. Glick stirred, and again he sighed.
“Suppose I start with what happened twenty-five years ago when Hoy Hieronomo killed his grandfather and, with Amos’ help, covered up the crime. In his own mind Hoy was justified, more than justified. Why? He acted ‘for the family;’ murdered in a frantic attempt to keep ‘the old man’s money for all of us.’ What this high-minded killer didn’t realize of course was that the fortune had already vanished from the bank. Afterwards— like the others—Hoy supposed that Daisy Witherspoon had got away with everything. But he did not regret his crime. Why should he regret it? He killed John Hieronomo ‘for the family’s sake.’ ”
I could almost hear Cousin Hoy say those words. He would never have comprehended that in reality he was thinking only of himself, only of his own personal and haunting fear of poverty. But Hoy did not pretend even to himself that he had killed Aunt Amanda for the family’s sake.
“Hoy called the murder of Amanda Silver an act of self-defense,” said Sheriff Glick.
“Self-defense!”
I stared incredulously. In the firelit room was silence. Hermine Ayres had been pouring out the coffee. She paused, and held one cup suspended in the air.
“In order to understand,” said the Sheriff slowly, “you need to understand Amanda Silver. Daisy Witherspoon said once, quite correctly, that Amanda Silver brought her murder on herself. All of the Hieronomos are individualists. Amanda certainly was. A headstrong and determined woman who had her own ideas of justice and of honor and who was eager always to impress those ideas on others. This was the woman who, one day last spring, stumbled on her father’s long-missing fortune.”
Sheriff Glick sketched in the scene. Aunt Amanda had decided to paint the house in order to facilitate its sale. Accompanied by Amos, who was to do the work, she had gone to the balcony. There, by accident, as she was explaining that particular care must be taken with the ornamental fretwork, she had discovered the secret of the swinging column. For more than twenty-five years Amos, who stood by and watched her stumble on the secret, had known where the fortune was concealed. The Negro had helped John Hieronomo prepare the hiding place. But the mystical and superstitious Amos had intended, just as he had written in his confession, that “the tainted gold should lie and rot forever.” When the column swung outward from the balcony and the hidden gold was revealed in its dry, deep well, Amos had not shown enough surprise. Amanda had questioned him; the Negro had grown frightened, confused. Eventually Aunt Amanda had cornered Amos, obtained a truthful account of her father’s death.
“Amanda Silver decided then and there,” said Sheriff Glick, “to hold the reunion of the family. She intended on Thanksgiving Day—the anniversary of her father's death—to announce her news and to divide the fortune among those entitled to a share, including Daisy Witherspoon who was to receive her ‘dower rights.’ Only Hoy was left out in the cold. Amanda Silver had different plans for him. Very different plans. She did not forget that he had killed her father. Nor did she forgive.”
The Sheriff got up from his chair. He walked toward the couch.
“Amanda spoke to you, Dan, of amending the past to make the present bearable. She meant to amend the past in all respects—to deal out justice as she saw fit. She intended that Hoy Hieronomo, her father’s murderer, should die to expiate his crime. Die to save the family honor.”
Dan drew a long, deep breath. “Do you mean she tried to kill him?”
The Sheriff shook his head.
“Two egoists met in John Hieronomo’s bedroom last Wednesday afternoon—his daughter and his grandson. Amanda summoned Hoy into her presence and told him pretty much what I’ve just told you. She told
him she’d found the money and where. She told him that she knew he was guilty of her father’s murder. Then she handed him a loaded gun and invited him to kill himself. She even promised—standing there beside the canopied bed, calm and confident and utterly unafraid—that she would announce it as an accident.”
I could see the scene—the two people facing one another, the woman and the man. The woman who never for a moment doubted her own wisdom or that she was taking the proper course to avenge her father and still protect the family name. The small, fat man who heard her through, listened to those flat and definite plans of hers, and then looked at the loaded gun in his hand.
“Hoy shot her instead,” said Sheriff Glick.
One could understand how Cousin Hoy believed, in a strange and twisted way, that he had fired in self-defense. It was his life or Aunt Amanda’s life. He could kill himself or he could shoot the woman who stood between him and a life of ease and plenty. Hoy now knew—he had heard from Amanda’s own lips—the whereabouts of the missing fortune. His choice must have been easily and quickly made. For a little while Hoy must have felt quite safe. No one knew. No one except . . .
“Amos guessed, of course,” continued the Sheriff. “But Hoy believed that he could hold the Negro in line. Amos himself was implicated in the earlier murder. And then Amos began to waver, began to consult his conscience. and Hoy perceived it. If Amos confessed—and the Negro at last decided to make a clean breast of everything—Hoy was done.”
The Sheriff’s mouth twisted wryly. “Once again Hoy Hieronomo reached a typical decision. Once again he killed in self-defense, shot Amos in the back. By this time, however, Hoy was growing panicky. His plans weren’t working out, his control of the situation was slipping. Three murders—and Hoy hadn’t got the money yet. Worse from his point of view,” said Sheriff Glick and looked at Dan, “you weren’t behind the bars, arrested for his crime—and he had anticipated from the beginning that you would be.”
The Balcony Page 27
