“Throwing stones,” she gasped. “Throwing stones – with Karen – with Karen …”
He slapped her so hard with his open palm that she squealed with pain and shrank away from him, on the edge of collapse.
“I told you to shut up,” he said frowning; but it sounded in the oddest way like an apology.
He turned away from her at once, as if he were ashamed. Not, thought Eva wildly, for having slapped her, but for having been apologetic about it. She watched him, feeling so stupid and empty that unconsciousness would have been a relief.
The stranger looked briefly at the broken window. It was the center window which had been shattered – both panes, for the window was open from the bottom. He stared thoughtfully at the thick vertical iron bars, uniformly six inches apart, which protected all three windows on the outside. Then he went over to look at the rock. On the way he glanced at his wrist watch.
The rock was lying in the middle of the bedroom. It was the most ordinary rock imaginable. Its underside was uppermost, black with bits of loam, some of which was scattered over the floor, and damp-looking, as if it had just been picked up in the garden. It was an oval five inches thick in its long diameter. He prodded it with his foot and turned it over; the other side was clean. And that was all.
“Screwy,” he said after a moment; and Eva knew he had reached a decision. “Some kid.” His light shrug dismissed the incident. “Miss MacClure.”
“Yes?” said Eva.
He straddled the rock and looked at her. “You sure you heard Karen Leith’s voice when the Jap gave her the stationery?”
“I’m sure.”
“That the stationery – that wad of paper on the desk?”
Eva looked. There was the deckle-edged sheet with its faint rose-on-ivory pattern of chrysanthemums. But it was crumpled into a ball. The blank envelope lay near it.
“It looks the same,” said Eva in a lifeless voice.
He moved then, towards her, and taking out a handkerchief picked up the crumpled sheet with it, smoothing the sheet out. Something was written on it – Eva read the words, but her mind refused to function normally, and the words remained meaningless. The word “Morel” did sink in – that was Karen’s lawyer. It was apparently the beginning of a letter to Morel which had never ended. It stopped in the middle of a sentence.
“That her handwriting?”
“Yes.”
He crumpled the paper carefully and dropped it back on the desk in the exact spot on which he had found it. Then he went around the desk and looked through all the drawers.
“No other stationery,” he muttered, and stood musing a moment, pulling at his upper lip. “Look, sister. The Jap woman’s out. She gave Leith the sheet of paper and left. It was blank when you saw it in the Jap’s hand?”
“Yes.”
“Then she couldn’t have done it. Leith woman wrote on it after the Jap left. Proves Karen was alive after the Jap left. All right.’ He glanced at his wrist watch.
“Kinumé,” said Eva. “Kinumé wouldn’t do a thing – like this.”
“I said she didn’t, didn’t I?” He was growing angry. “You were in that sitting-room all the time. Leave it at all?”
“No.”
“Who went in and came out while you were waiting in there?”
“Nobody.”
“Nobody!” He seemed startled. The old puzzlement came back into his eyes as he searched her face. She wondered why. No, she didn’t. Nothing mattered, really, with Karen – with Karen dead. All she wanted was Dick …
The brown man ran to the door, listened, yanked it noiselessly open, stood on the threshold looking over the sitting-room. There were two doors in the sitting-room - the one from the corridor and the one in which he stood. He rasped without turning around: “You’re sure, now. You didn’t fall asleep?”
“Nobody went in or out.”
He came back, clenching his hands lightly. “The Jap again. How long was she in this bedroom?”
“Not ten seconds.”
“Nuts!” His face reddened with anger. “Karen was knifed while you were sitting in that room. You say nobody passed through it. Then how the hell did the killer get in? Even supposing the killer was in here hiding before the Jap maid brought the paper,
how the hell did he get out?
Tell me that. Well, tell me!”
“I don’t know,” said Eva. Her head ached and it was hard to think. It didn’t seem important.
He was growing angrier. Why was he so angry? “All right. Killer didn’t get out through the sitting-room.” It was as if he were debating it with himself. “But he must have got out – he’s not here now. How? Through these windows? They’re all barred. Let’s get crazy. Let’s say he never got in at all – was outside all the time, hanging from a rope from the roof or some cockeyed thing, and threw the knife at her through the bars. Then why isn’t the knife still sticking in her neck? No dice … And there’s no door in this room to the hall – there’s just this one door from the sitting-room. God damn it!”
“That’s not so,” said Eva dully. “There is another door.”
“Where?” He whirled around, stabbing the room with his eyes.
“But don’t touch it, please, please don’t.”
“Where is it?”
“Karen – Karen never allowed anyone to touch it. No one – no one ever went near it. Not the servants or anyone.”
He was over her now, so furious she could feel his hot breath on her forehead. “Where is it?” he muttered.
Eva whimpered: “Behind the Japanese screen. The screen is hiding it.”
He was there in two leaps, flipping the screen aside. “Where’s it go? Quick!”
“To – to the attic. Where Karen used to do most of her writing. No one’s ever been up there – not even my father. Oh, please don’t …”
It was an ordinary door set in an ell of the room. His fever drained off, leaving him colder than before. He did not move, did not touch the door. He stared. Then he turned around. “It’s got a bolt. The bolt is in the socket.
On this side of the door
.” He was not angry at all now, just watchful – watchful as he had been when he had first come into the room. His shoulders were hunched a little. “Did you touch this bolt?”
“I haven’t been near it. Why – what – ?”
He chuckled again, that same dry humorless chuckle.
“I – I don’t understand,” whispered Eva.
“It sure looks bad for you, beautiful,” he said. “It sure looks like curtains for you.”
There was the ghostliest sound from the dais. It froze them both. Eva’s hair – she could feel each hair rise – tickled her scalp. It was a gurgle, a faint thick gurgle, a horrible gurgle, but human and … alive.
“Oh, my God,” whispered Eva. “She’s – she’s –”
He was past her before she could move; and when she found the strength in her legs to move, he was already kneeling.
Karen’s eyes were open and they were glaring at Eva with such intensity that Eva closed her own eyes to shut off the glare. But she opened them again, because she could still hear the gurgle which came from that torn throat without the least flutter of the bloodless lips.
The man said harshly: “Miss Leith. Who stab –”
He never finished. The glare glazed over, never moving; and something red gushed out of Karen’s wry mouth – Eva saw it before she turned her head blindly, her own breath coming in gusts.
The man rose. “Could have sworn she was dead. Damn it! She hung on like …” Then he took out a cigaret and very slowly lit it, putting the burnt match in his pocket and not looking at Karen any more.
When he spoke, the words dribbled with the smoke out of his hard young mouth. “What have you got to say for yourself?”
Eva could only look at him; she scarcely heard his voice.
“Haven’t even got the brains to alibi yourself,” he said bitterly. “What the hell brought me here to-day? I’m going soft.”
“You said –” began Eva in a cracked voice. “You said
I
–”
“Gorgeous, you’re on one tough spot. Either you’re the dumbest jane I ever met, or the smartest.’ His cold eyes brooded on her, still weighing, still puzzled.
“What do you mean?” she faltered. “I don’t –”
“She was alive when you got here. Between the time the Jap left and the time the ’phone rang, nobody could have got in or out of this bedroom through the sitting-room, because you said so yourself. Nobody could have got out through these barred windows. Nobody could have got out through the only other door in this room – that one going up to the attic … because it’s bolted from the inside. So what? There’s just no other way to get out. Figure it out for yourself.”
She shivered suddenly, rubbing her eyes. “I’m dreadfully sorry,’ she said in a quiet tone. “I guess I’m a little – a little … the shock of Karen’s … You can’t mean –”
He pulled her to him with his free arm and twisted her about until she was staring into his troubled gray eyes. “I mean,” he said savagely, “that no one
did
get out, because no one
could
have got out. I mean
you’re the only one in this whole God-damned world who could possibly have bumped her off
.”
His face swam before her, the brown oval darkening, fading, going out before her eyes. Richard, Richard, Richard, please. Please come, Dick. Dick …
“And not only that,” she heard his voice going on, in the same savage troubled way, “in just about two shakes of a lamb’s tail the New York police department is going to come into your life. Karen Leith had an appointment with a headquarters dick for five o’clock this afternoon in this room. And it’s two minutes to five now.”
Then she heard her own voice, remote and unrecognizable, screaming thinly: “No! I didn’t do it! Oh, please, you’ve got to believe me! I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!”
But all the time another voice was saying inside her brain that everything had come down with a crash, that there could be nothing more – no Dick, no marriage, no happiness … no life.
From far away Eva’s cheeks began to tingle under the impact of remote blows. And she began at the same time to hear the brown man’s voice saying remotely: “Snap out of it. For the love of Mike, fainting! Snap out of it.”
Then his voice came in full and bass, and she opened her eyes to find herself on the floor again with the brown man kneeling by her and slapping her with curt, snappy strokes that hurt.
“Stop slapping me,” said Eva feebly, pushing his hand away and sitting up. “I’m not a child.”
He hauled her to her feet and held her close to his chest, gripping her elbows; he shook her. “Did you knife Karen Leith or didn’t you? Talk, will you! … Fainting!”
He glowered down at her resentfully. Karen’s bedroom went dark again. Something like this had happened long ago. Long ago. There had been a boy in Nantasket with a quick brown face, like his, and hard gray eyes, like his; and she had once fallen from a tree and fainted and the boy had slapped her until she awoke screaming with the sting to slap back at him and call him names, red all over because she had fainted and he had seen her so. Her palms itched in the darkness, and she had to fight with herself to keep from slapping the brown man back. The fight dispelled the darkness.
“No,” said Eva, “I didn’t.”
His eyes were so suspicious, so puzzled, so like a little boy’s in their hardness and uncertainty, that Eva illogically felt sorry for him.
“If you did, tell me. I can keep my mouth shut if I want to. Talk!”
Eva MacClure, thought Eva – a girl engaged to be married, the envy of her friends, the center of a closed little universe of her own … caught in a trap. Caught in an enormous trap. She felt the bite of it. It cut clear through, shearing through everything with one snick of its jaws. Its painful teeth cut through the shadows, too. Karen – Karen was just a stiffening corpse, Dr. MacClure a man far away, Dick Scott a dangling delicacy never more to be tasted. Only she remained in this shut-in world of nasty reality – this frightening room with its corpse and blood and brown man … only she remained, and this bitter brown man holding fast to her elbows. Or no – it was she who was really holding fast to him. He was good to cling to. The grip of his hands was strong and warm and immediate.
“I didn’t kill Karen, I tell you.” She went limp against him.
“You’re the only one. Don’t try to kid me – I’ve been kidded by experts. No one else could have done it.”
“If you’re so sure, why do you ask me?”
He shook her again, pushing her back, looking down into her eyes.
Eva closed them, and opened them the next moment. “You’ll have to believe me,” she sighed. “I can only give you my word. You’ll have to believe me.”
He scowled, pushed her from him, and she fell back against the writing-desk. His mouth was a straight line.
“Damn fool,” he muttered. She knew he was talking about himself.
He began to look around with those quick animal movements which had such power to fascinate her.
“What are you going to do?” breathed Eva.
He jumped for the attic door, whipping out his handkerchief. He wrapped the linen around his right hand and went for the bolt on the attic door like a beast charging its prey. His swathed fingers grasped the little knob of the sliding bar and pushed. The bar did not move. He changed position and pulled. The bar refused to budge.
“Stuck.” He kept pulling. “That handkerchief. Get a move on. With the blood on it.”
“What?” said Eva dazedly.
“On the floor! Burn it. Quick.”
“Burn it,” repeated Eva. “Why? Where?”
“Fireplace in the sitting-room. Shut the door there first. Get a move on, will you!”
“But I have no –”
“My coat pocket. Damn it, jump!”
Eva jumped. Things had gone completely beyond her. Her brain was a blank, and she was grateful.
She fumbled in his pocket as he struggled with the stubborn bolt, feeling the writhing of his hips as he twisted and tugged. His lips were all but invisible and the tendons of his neck swollen and rigid. Then she found the matches, cool against her fingers.
She walked back, picked up the blood-smeared handkerchief by its monogrammed corner, and went slowly into the sitting-room. As she shut the sitting-room door to the hall she could hear the brown man panting in the bedroom over the bolt.
Then she was on her knees before the fireplace.