Evidence of Things Seen (22 page)

“Yes; I know it.”

“I'll meet you up there, I'll leave my car on the road.”

“Why shouldn't we talk in your car?”

“Anybody might come along. I tell you I don't want people to think we have secrets.”

“Why shouldn't we have secrets?”

“I'll explain. Five o'clock?”

Gamadge, after a moment, said: “All right.”

“Thanks very much.” The hurry and strain left Craye's voice. He said: “I suppose I was a fool not to be more candid at first, but—oh, well; I've made up my mind now.”

“Might I ask whom you're going to consult about our meeting on the Ladder?”

“Oh—well, I'd rather not say.”

“Mrs. Star knows already, doesn't she?”

“Er—yes. Naturally, since we talked about my clearing the thing up.”

“You wouldn't mind telling me whether you're going to consult more than one other person?”

“I don't know why you should be interested.”

“I am, though.”

“Only one person, in the strictest confidence.”

Gamadge left the telephone, got an empty jar from the kitchen, and called Clara. They went up the road, and he fixed the jar in the crotch of a tree; Clara smashed it squarely with her first shot. Gamadge refused to use more ammunition. “I don't think,” he said, “I'll improve my marksmanship with one shot––or with twenty.”

“I hope we're not going to kill five people,” said Clara, affecting sarcasm.

“We can't kill anybody until Duckett fixes me up with a permit.”

Gamadge drove into Avebury that afternoon. When he returned he had a dip in the pool, and then dressed and strolled up the road. The pistol was in his coat pocket.

Clara called after him: “I'll bring you your stick, if you're taking a walk.”

“If I want a stick, I'll pick one up.”

He turned back twice to look at her before he rounded the bend.

Craye's car stood glittering just beyond the green tunnel that was the entrance to the Ladder. Gamadge left the warm brightness of the road for shade, coolness, quiet broken by the occasional crack of a twig or rustle of leaves. With his hand lightly clasping the handle of the gun, he began the ascent; the walking was even rougher than before—new channels had been washed in the soft earth by the storm of Thursday night. He balanced along the tops of the ruts, with long steps from rock to rock. The stream made itself heard on his right.

Twenty yards ahead the trail lost itself around a bend, and a solid wall of trees confronted him. It was from the corner of his eye that he caught sight of the thing half camouflaged among bushes to the right, patterned with light and shade. It was up at the very turn of the track, and he would never have seen it if he had not been on the watch; but he made out the faded purple of dress and sunbonnet. A bush or briar seemed to have plucked the dress away from the left shoulder—there was a patch of light brown where it had been. Gamadge caught a glimpse of brown flatness under the sunbonnet, like features barely evident through the last wrappings of a mummy.

The appearance was so daunting that in spite of himself Gamadge stood for an instant motionless; but as a purple arm rose, he fired. No answering shot came; he had dodged off the trail and behind a tree before he heard one, like a belated echo of his own.

Utter silence followed, and when he peeped from behind his defense the figure had vanished. He listened, heard no crackle of leaves underfoot to warn him that he was being encircled, and began a circumspect advance from tree to tree; but when he rounded the bend he stepped forth into the open; the incident seemed to be closed. A gray-brown figure lay twisted like a snake across the trail; its head was against the edge of a rock, its raised left shoulder dripped with blood. At its feet lay a sordid heap of purple garments, torn off and flung down in an abandonment of wild haste. An automatic pistol showed among the limp folds of the sunbonnet; its barrel was warm to the touch of Gamadge's fingers.

E
LI CAME CRASHING
through the woods on the right. He stopped in his stride at the edge of the trail, and like a wild creature at gaze took in the scene before him.

“You did stick around, then. Good for you.” Gamadge had his handkerchief out, and was searching Craye's pocket for another. Eli, his clasp knife already in his hand, turned his black eyes from the automatic in Gamadge's left hand to the one that lay among folds of purple calico. “Did he git
you
?”

“No.” Gamadge lifted Craye, while Eli cut pale fawn-colored shirting from the wounded shoulder. Eli said: “You got him, all right. Bullet went right through. Pad him up before he bleeds to death.”

They padded up both wounds with the handkerchiefs, strips of Craye's shirt, and a staying outer bandage of Eli's far from antiseptic bandanna. Gamadge meanwhile described the occurrences of the past ten minutes. “His car's just down the road,” he ended.

“We'll take him to Stratfield Hospital. Is it Mr. Craye?”

“Yes.”

Eli examined the back of Craye's head. “He won't die of your shot, but he got an awful bang on that rock when he fell.”

“Take charge of this, will you?” Gamadge had replaced his gun in his pocket; he lifted the other by its barrel, shifted the safety catch, and handed it to Eli. Eli said: “It's a .38 too.”

“So I see. It was fired from over here, but I can't see the shell.” Gamadge hunted about on the extreme edge of the trail.

“Could be in the stream, beyond or back of you. I wouldn't want the job of finding it, or finding your bullet, either.”

“Nor I.”

Eli picked up purple calico, a pair of brown silk gloves, and a strip of brown chiffon veiling. He stuffed the latter articles in his pocket, hung the sunbonnet over his arm, and shook out the draggled and spattered dress. “Where's the bullet hole?”

“Oh. The dress was pulled away from the fellow's shoulder; I saw a lightish-brown patch.”

“An' fired at it. Bull's eye.” Eli showed Gamadge how to make a stretcher of their coats, and how to get Craye on it. “Mustn't shake him up.” Eli bundled the purple dress, and placed it under the injured head. “Might be a concussion, looks that way to me.”

They went carefully down the trail. Eli said: “He thought first he wasn't hurt so bad, got out of the clothes and perhaps dropped the gun on purpose. But he bled too much, fainted in his tracks, went down bang on that rock. Was you watchin' for him?”

“You bet I was watching; but I thought I'd get shot as I jumped for a tree on the other side of the trail.”

“Perhaps he didn't know you had a gun; surprised him a second. Then he took one shot at you, and decided he'd better get out of here.”

They soon reached the road. Craye was got into the back of his car, with Eli beside him to steady him against jolts; but there were no jolts. Gamadge, relying on Eli's first aid work, drove with more care than speed.

The moment Craye was out of his charge and in the hands of the orderlies at Stratfield hospital, Gamadge made for a telephone.

“Don't wait dinner,” he told Clara. “I'm stuck in Stratfield for I don't know how long.”

“How on earth did you get to Stratfield? Walk?”

“I got here in Craye's car. He—er—had an accident.”

“Right up there on the road?”

“Right up there. I'm at Stratfield hospital. You and Maggie will be all right till I get back; the case is busted, Clara.”

“Oh, Henry, what on earth—”

“I'll tell you when I see you. You won't be the star witness at the inquest, I will.”

“May I tell the Hunters? Perhaps they'll come down and have supper.”

“Good idea. Yes, tell them. No reason why not.” When he turned away from the telephone Ledwell was behind him, eyes snapping. “Well, I understand you broke the case for us, Mr. Gamadge; glad of it, of course; but this is a terrible thing for Stratfield. Terrible. Our best old family. I understand—Eli says Craye called you up and asked you to meet him in the woods. Wanted to give you private information.”

“Yes.”

“But you took your gun along. Why? Had it doped out that he was the killer?”

“I knew he had the idea from something I said last night that I was on the warpath.”

“You saw him start to shoot, fired first, and got him in the shoulder. When you reached the bend he'd just had time to strip off the dress and sunbonnet, but he fainted before he could fire again. He could have said later that somebody wearing the clothes had got both of you.”

“So he could.”

“We've been working on those Jeans women since yesterday, and I think we'll come out all right on the motive for the Radford killing. We can put them on the stand to swear that they got some scandal about him and that refugee—Mrs. Star, she calls herself—from Alvira Radford. They can testify it isn't hearsay, because Craye's relations with the Star woman aren't the issue; the issue is whether the story was circulated, whether he heard about it, and whether it tended to incite him to murder. Can you help us on that? I mean, have you any evidence tending to show that he'd heard the story?”

“My wife could repeat a conversation she had with him, but I'm not sure that a jury would be allowed to infer anything from it.”

“We'll work on that; what I'm hoping is that he'll come through himself. We're getting Mrs. Star over here, and we'll have her in the room when he comes to—if he does. The doctor won't promise anything for tonight. We'll have her here, though; we might get some information from what they say to each other.”

“I don't think Mrs. Star will oblige you with much information.”

“Not if she's an accomplice. Anyhow, we'll keep her here; we don't want those refugees cooking up a lot of alibis for Craye. I only hope they haven't cooked any up already; for last Saturday, I mean.”

“They haven't. One of the things that gave him the jitters was the fact that Mrs. Star spoiled his Saturday alibis last night.”

“No! That's something anyhow. His man's gone, half his help are gone, and he could go in and out, make all the trips he pleased, nobody the wiser. We know that. I never could see the Grobys in all this; couldn't see them thinking up that circus with Mrs. Hickson's old clothes.”

“But there's the financial end of it to consider, Ledwell, isn't there? Those lost securities of Alvira Radford's.”

Ledwell, fiddling with his hat, frowned. “We don't know they're lost. They may turn up. She may have been selling ‘em one by one, living on the proceeds. You can't tell what an elderly woman will get into her head in times like these. But you also can't tell what happens to big fortunes in times like these. Craye might have been short of cash, funnier things have happened. He's paying terrific alimony to that wife of his, but they say she's tough, with a tough background—she may have something on him. Even the Craye fortune couldn't stand up against steady blackmail.”

“No.”

“Terrible job, though, looking into these rich men's financial affairs; they're protected by all sorts of buffers and dummies.”

“I'll have the name of an investigator tomorrow; I was thinking of employing him myself. And I could let you have my notes on the case. Perhaps by tomorrow I may have fresh ideas on the subject.”

“I hope so.” Ledwell looked eager. “And I want you to let me send you home in my car. I appreciate your work on this case, Mr. Gamadge, and I appreciate the way you're cooperating. I want to say I'm glad the thing's breaking the way it is.”

“So am I.”

An orderly put his head into the waiting room, to say that a woman called Star was making a fuss in the office.

“Send her up to me.” Ledwell posed sternly beside a table with a potted palm on it, until—a few seconds later—Mrs. Star stood in the doorway. Her long gray cloak gave her a military air, and her bare head was also soldierly—rigid on her neck. She looked like one who is no stranger to official interference. She ignored Gamadge.

“I demand to know,” she said, “what has happened to Mr. Craye. I was told that he had had an accident; but when I arrive I am not allowed to see him, and I am given no information. I am told by an officer of the state police that I am not to go back and talk to Mr. Medos and Madame Fouret.”

“Don't you want to wait till he's conscious, Mrs. Star?” Ledwell returned her stony gaze stonily.

“I wish to be free to come and go. Was Mr. Craye attacked?”

“I don't know why you should think so.”

“You are at war.”

“I haven't heard of anybody being attacked because they harbored refugees.”

“Have you not?”

“No,” said Ledwell, “and neither have you.”

“You don't know all that can happen when a country is at war with the Axis powers.” She turned her head stiffly to look at Gamadge. “What has this gentleman,” she asked, “to do with Mr. Craye's accident?”

Gamadge said equably: “I was on the spot. I found Mr. Craye on the Ladder trail, just above the cottage, knocked out.”

Mrs. Star did not exactly stagger, but she certainly stepped backwards as if she had lost her balance. She said, recovering herself, “
Knocked
out?” and suddenly there were tears in her eyes.

“From a fall,” Ledwell amended but she paid no attention.

“Mr. Craye has been our best friend,” she said. “He means a great deal to the people in his house. Is he seriously hurt?”

“Every chance of his getting over it,” Ledwell told her.

“I should like to go and tell Mr. Medos and Madame Fouret that. Then I shall return.”

“The truth is, Mrs. Star, we don't want his accident talked about till he wakes up and tells us about it himself.”