Dead Birds (Saturday Evening Post serial)/Part 3
[ PART 3 ]
VIII
FOR several moments nobody spoke. Then Dodge gave a short, bitter laugh.
“Well, at least, John, it's taken my mind off Barclay's gambling debt a little.”
The bishop turned to him. “De you know, Sherrill, I've a pretty strong hunch that Smith-Curran himself advanced that money? He would if he had the money, and possibly he had. His daughter's jewels are genuine, I'm sure.”
“Why not?” Marsh said. “With Barclay's receipt he wouldn't have stood to lose, even if Barclay did commit suicide, which I think is all bunk.”
“So do I,” the bishop agreed. “Think of the hold it would give him on the boy, and if he is the arch criminal I suspect him of being he'd be quite capable of such a coup, both in design and execution.”
Dodge nodded.
“He might even have twisted it in such a way as to incriminate Barclay, as a parricide.”
The bishop rose and laid his hand on the bowed shoulder of bis old friend,
“Don't take it so hard, Sherrill. We all know that Barclay never dreamed of anything so ghastly, The boy's as clean as a hound's tooth.”
“It's merely the idea, John. What a world! What ought I to de?”
“You've done it. Barclay will have your cable by now. Your paternal forgiveness and solicitude have triumphed over this delegate from hell. The question now is, What course are we to take in his direction?”
“I'm in your hands. By Christopher, John, I'll never laugh at you for an opera-bouffe detective again!”
“Let's hope you may, dear boy. That's less harrowing than this.” He looked at Marsh. “What course of action would you advise, McQuentin?”
“None,” Marsh answered shortly. “No criminal action, I mean.”
“What!” The bishop's voice was sharp. “Do I understand you to say that no criminal action be taken against this desperado, this potential assassin?”
“Well, what is there to take?”
The bishop stared at him blankly.
The gusto of deduction together with his eloquence had rather drawn the focus of his mind away from the final issue. He got it new.
“My word, but I believe you're right.”
Marsh nodded.
“Since the crumbs left by the birds have been gathered up by Iona and the birds probably destroyed, what evidence is left? And if Smith-Curran has actually loaned Barclay the money to square himself, it would look like a pretty dirty trick to turn round and accuse him of an attempt at murder for which there is no proof.” He looked from one to the other of the older men. “But the deuce of it is that this attempt having failed through what looks like a providential intervention, Mr. Dodge may still be in danger of his life.”
The bishop nodded.
“I've thought of that. Look here, Sherrill, you go out aboard the yacht and stay there until I get rid of these fiends.”
“I'm hanged if I will, John! What d'ye think I am? I may get upset about Barclay, but so far I've never lost any sleep over my own health forecast.”
“I know; not even when they tried to blow you up in Washington when you were chairman of the Committee on National Defense. You even refused to have a guard. But that was war. This is quite another kettle of cold-blooded fish. Remember you owe something to your family, so don't be foolhardy.”
“Oh, Bishop Starr, What About Mr. Dodge? Is He So Badly Hurt?”
Marsh interrupted to ask, “You said that Iona told you she went into your room last night to persuade her father to postpone his talk with you for another time and place. Did she volunteer that?”
“No, I told her point-blank that I believed she had paid me a call, and asked her why.”
“Did she seem embarrassed?”
“Not particularly.”
“Just what are you driving at, Marsh?” the bishop asked.
“Just this, sir; I don't believe Iona knew anything about this attempt.” The bishop frowned.
“Oh, don't you? Why not?”
“Call it a hunch, an instinct.”
“Not gratitude?”
“No, sir. That might shape up later. Just now I want to get the straight of it; true it up, like a boat. I don't believe she suspected any attempt to murder Mr. Dodge until I told Cicely and her about the starlings. Then I think she stood there listening under the window, pretending to look for four-leaf clovers. It was still that side of the house, and she could have heard clearly our voices, then McGinty's denial of having spread poison. That gave her the idea. When she went into Mr. Dodge's room the night before she might have found her father by the head of the bed, beside the night table, and wondered what he was doing there. But once she did suspect, naturally she would try to cover his tracks.”
“Well, I hope you may be right,” said the bishop, looking unconvinced.
“I'm inclined to agree with Marsh,” Dodge said wearily. “Her father impressed me as a good deal of a ruffian from the start, a swanking swashbuckler. He's more of a bandit than poisoner, as a practice, I should say. Told me he served through the Russo-Japanese War with the Russians, being out of the British Army then. He was also with the Russians at Tientsin. That makes the Great War and three others he's served through. What price a human life to a man like that—a mercenary? Come, I'm all in, dead beat, fagged to a frazzle. Let's adjourn court until tomorrow.”
She Stared for a Moment at Marsh as He Stood There With Iona
“You go out aboard, Sherrill.”
“John, if it weren't for your cloth, I'd tell you to go where bishops are badly needed.”
“Then Marsh and I will do a sentry go.”
“Oh, well, if you're going to worry—go snap on the launch signal, will you, Marsh? The button over the door-bell under the marquee. I want to finish my cigar.”
“Good lad,” said the bishop. “Then I'll say good night and God bless you.”
He rose, with Marsh, and they made their way through the billiard and dining rooms to the big hall, where the bishop paused at the foot of the stairs.
“I shall take this to my friend the district attorney of New York before we go any further, Marsh. It's out of his jurisdiction, but he can advise us. You will see Sherrill into the boat?”
“Yes, of course, sir.”
The bishop glanced up the widely spaced shaft of the stairway and lowered his voice.
“In the absence of all tangible proof against this man, as you were so quick to perceive, we must proceed with caution. What a pity the analysis was not exhaustive. If Sherrill had only put me in possession of all the facts before he left for town!” He gave Marsh a look that was keen to sharpness. “When, may I ask, were your own suspicions first aroused?”
“I can't say precisely. I think the first vague glimmer came just after breakfast when I walked out onto the lawn with Cicely and saw that there was no clover where Iona had been standing, close under the window where the starlings were.”
“You should have tried immediately to communicate with Sherrill.”
“He'd gone by that time, and I had no idea where to catch him. Besides, my suspicions were too vague. I began to wonder if she hadn't been eavesdropping, and if so what was the reason for her wanting to.”
“I see. Your mind works slowly but logically. My own mental processes are apt to be simultaneous, from all sides, fourth dimensional, as one might say.”
Marsh nodded.
“I don't think my suspicions really crystallized until Mr. Dodge told me that the analysis was negative. With the cutworm poison eliminated, there had to be something to explain what killed those birds. I examined their bodies carefully and there wasn't a mark on them; not even a skin bruise or broken bone or traumatic injury of the slightest sort. Mr. Dodge and I both noticed, though, that they seemed very quick to stiffen.”
“Such small creatures would,” said the bishop. “In my youth I was keen for what I then considered to be sport, bird shooting. I remember that a shot quail used to stiffen within a few minutes, even in the pocket of my shooting coat on a warm day.”
“Yes, it had to be poison. There was nothing else to account for it that I could think of. So I began to try to piece it out. I remembered that Mr. Dodge had broken up his jam sandwich and tossed the pieces out to the birds, and that started me to wondering if there could be anything about that to destroy the birds. Then I thought of what he had told me of his being sure that Iona had been in his room just before he entered it.”
“Precisely my own course of deduction. What then?”
“Well, it was vague and struck me as too far-fetched, but I thought to myself, 'What if these people are clever crooks who have managed to get close to Barclay? What if for some reason I've no means of guessing at they might have wanted to dope Mr. Dodge so that there would be no danger of his waking while they make a search of his room, his pocketbook and desk drawers?' It occurred to me that a sufficient quantity of some strong hypnotic drug in a small jam sandwich to dope a big man might be enough to kill a small bird outright. That was all I could think of.”
“A reasonable theory, though it did not occur to me. I perceived immediately a more sinister design.”
“I didn't get that far,” Marsh said, “possibly because I hadn't learned the facts about Barclay. In fact, it was your comprehensive summing up that cleared the mystery for me. When I asked Mr. Dodge if the chemist had analyzed for anything besides arsenic and strychnine, I was thinking of opium or hashish or something of that sort, not prussic acid.”
“I see. But you agree with me now?”
“I'm obliged to, sir. Your points are convincing. Besides, for one thing, I don't believe that wild birds would keep on eating enough of anything containing a vegetable drug to kill them.”
“Nor do I. But a prussic or hydrocyanic principle would be disguised by the peach flavor, which is identical. And it would not need but a peck or two. Iona gathered the remaining crumbs. All the same, it might be worth while to take an electric torch and search the lawn right now.”
“That's occurred to me, sir. Suppose we wait, though, until Mr. Dodge goes off aboard. There, I'm batty. He told me to snap on the launch signal.”
Marsh turned away. He had taken but a single step toward the main entrance to the house when all of the lights were suddenly extinguished, plunging the place in total darkness.
“What's this? What—is—this?” hissed the bishop.
Marsh clapped his hand to his pocket, but no match box was therein. His collapse in the water had decided him to stop smoking for a week at least, and being resolute in such matters he had left cigarette case and matches on his dresser. He stood for an instant listening intently.
The bishop's vibrant voice called, not loudly and with a tremor in its note, “Sherrill! I say, Sherrill!”
There was no answer. There came from the location of the lair, on the extreme opposite side of the house, a faint slam, as of one of the French windows swung to. Marsh plunged in that direction through the absolute dark, collided with a piece of furniture and sprawled across it. He recovered himself and groped on like a man struck blind in a moment of crisis.
“Sherrill! Sherrill!”
The bishop's voice was low, sibilant and penetrating. Even in his fearful stress of mind he forbore making an outcry to alarm the household before he and Marsh could determine what had happened and what procedure to follow. A nonsmoker and in a house of that ultra-modern sort, he also was unprovided with means for striking a light.
Marsh reached the portières of the dining room, coasted along its wall, fending himself off various objects, gained the billiard table, which he circumnavigated to reach the half-drawn portières of the lair. Plunging forward, he fetched up against the big table desk and pawed frantically over it, hoping to find a match box. What price the expediency of modern invention with an electric-lighting system so infallible that even standing lights of kerosene against just such a situation had finally been discontinued?
Then his blind and frantic efforts met with a check. His fumbling hand encountered something wet and greasy on the rim of the desk. An ancient instinct told him what it was even before he had obeyed one as deeply implanted, to scent his hand, The same primitive prescience told him the true character of this glairy stuff.
It was fresh-spilled blood.
“Oh, Marsh, You'll Suppress That—Throw It in the Sea? He Didn't Do It! He Didn't! I Know He Didn't!”
IX
THERE was no lack of courage in the bishop's cosmos, but the orderly system of his nature was for the moment confused as much by the utter absence of light as by the appalling character at what he was certain must have happened—the assassination of his dearest friend.
The next moment found him lurching his blind way toward the lair. The darkness was impenetrable, for not only had the fine day concluded with a heavy murk drawn across the sky, this thickening as the night wore on, but the windows of the ground floor were all of the long French sort, with sheet-iron volets that were closed and bolted by the butler before his retiring. A precaution against burglars, as there had been an epidemic of housebreaking at about the time the house was built, this still occurring sporadically.
Now, as the bishop groped his way along, much as Marsh had done, he wondered that nobody had apparently discovered the extinction of the lights. One would have thought that some person of the many guests and servants might still have been up, if not stirring. But it was a well-ordered household and a considerable period of time had elapsed since the last one had retired. An hour, perhaps, as the consultation in the lair had been deliberate, consumed far more time than required for a description of it. Also it had been physically rather a fatiguing day, and the first sleep of night is apt with persons of normal health to be the most profound.
The bishop was skirting the billiard table when Marsh's voice in the hoarse agonized whisper of horror in the dark came from the lair.
“I say, bishop, can't you get a light somewhere?”
“Has he been murdered?”
“I'm afraid so. I can't find him. Ah, here they are!”
At last Marsh's hand had fallen on the matches. He struck a light, then glanced quickly on all sides, at the chairs, the floor with its precious rugs. The match flared to its end and he lighted another from it.
The bishop joined him. Their swift examination of the limited premises failed to reveal the body of Dodge. Marsh displayed his blood-smeared hand.
“It was on the desk; just a few drops. He's been stabbed through the heart, then carried off.”
“Try the telephone. Get the police if you can.”
“No use. I've tried. Wire's cut, with the lighting one.”
“Then hurry to the garage and wake up the chauffeur. Better not rouse the household just yet. I want to find out if he's in his room—Smith-Curran, You run to the garage and send the chauffeur to fetch the police. Get a torch from him—two torches. Hurry! I'll wait for you here. Get a weapon, if the chauffeur has one.”
Marsh went out through the long window door, which was ajar. Dodge, he thought, might have been reaching out to close the iron volet, or blind, when stabbed, possibly from behind, as they had heard no outcry. He had perhaps lurched back and fallen across the desk, which would account for the blood. This, welling up into his throat, might have strangled his voice. Or the shock alone might, in a man of his age, have resulted in the instant stoppage of his heart—killed him in his tracks.
Marsh ran across the open lawn to the garage. Scooping a handful of gravel from the path, he threw it against an upper window of the room where one of the chauffeurs slept. The man thrust out his head.
“Come down, quick! Mr. Dodge has been murdered! Hurry and get the police!”
The chauffeur wasted no time in idle questions. He furnished Marsh with the desired torches and an automatic pistol, then jumped into a car held ready for any sudden call.
“As soon as you get back,” Marsh ordered, “take a length of wire and try to find the break and connect the lights and telephone. Mind you keep on the road!”
“No fear, sir. I drove for the general staff through the war.” And he was off.
Marsh ran back to the house. The bishop was still lighting matches, examining the premises as best he could. He eyed the automatic in Marsh's hand and nodded.
“Now let's go up and talk to Smith-Curran,” he said grimly.
With the house still plunged in utter stillness, they went back and up the stairs. Marsh led the way to the rooms occupied by Iona and her father, the latter's next his own. With his pistol ready, he rapped. There was no answer. Marsh rapped again. There came a rustle in Iona's room, as if she had risen in bed, then the click of an electric light switch and a low exclamation, as of surprise. The bishop nudged Marsh.
“An alibi—or art.”
“More than her father's furnished,” Marsh muttered.
Iona called, “That you, daddy? I'm so relieved. The lights are off.” She got out of bed.
“Come to the door, please. It is Bishop Starr and McQuentin.”
The bolt was slid and the door opened a crack, The bishop flashed his light on her face. She blinked. “Please don't do that.”
“I beg your pardon. Where is your father?”
“Oh, Bishop Starr, then he was right! There are burglars? What's happened? Is father hurt—killed?”
“Not to our knowledge. But we fear the worst for Mr. Dodge. When did your father go out—and why?”
“I was just getting into bed when he came to the door.” Iona drew her night-dress up about her throat. “He whispered that he had put out his light and was sitting by the window smoking a cigarette when he saw two figures slink along the terrace just beneath. He said he was going down to investigate. I begged him not to, but father's that kind.”
“Was he armed?”
“No—that is, he had only the brass poker he'd taken from his fireplace.”
“How long ago was that, Miss Smith-Curran?”
“Twenty minutes, perhaps, though it seems like an hour. He told me not to turn on my light. I've been lying in the dark, waiting. Oh, Bishop Starr, what about Mr. Dodge? Is he so badly hurt? And where can father be?”
“I can't answer either question just yet, Miss Smith-Curran. Please go back to your bed, and do not leave your room until sent for.”
The bishop closed the door, practically in Iona's white, frightened face. Marsh, even in his grief and horror at what had taken place, thought it a little rough, still believing Iona to be ignorant of the affair. Smith-Curran had always been a wrong 'un, Marsh imagined, and there is a penalty attached to one who is begotten of a wrong 'un, just as there is for being born that sort oneself.
He flashed his torch down the corridor. At the far end of it an open door partly obscured the window just beyond.
“That's the way he went,” the bishop muttered, “Down the servants' stairs and out through the butler's pantry and kitchen. The chances are he peered into the lair from the terrace, and seeing Sherrill there alone, and nobody in the billiard room, took it for granted that we had gone up to bed. Or he might actually have seen us say good night and go out of the lair. And we two gabbling at the foot of the stairs like a couple of old fishwives while Sherrill was being done to death! Oh, God, forgive us!”
“It's not yet certain, sir,” Marsh began, but the bishop interrupted with a sort of rage.
“Certain as that the wrath of God shall find out the shedder of innocent blood—the avenger of the blood. This bête sauvage struck him down with the hearth poker as he was leaning out to close the blind. The blow sent him reeling back across the table. Sherrill would have given a cry if stabbed.”
“But the lights”
“He had an accomplice, of course; somebody to cut the wires where they left the house, at his flashed signal. That might have been his daughter. There was plenty of time for her to get back to her room. He is apt to come back at any moment now. The chances are that he seized the body of his victim and carried it down to throw off the pier. He's a lean, powerful fellow. But we might verify that about the poker and make sure that he's not in his room after all.
Marsh laid his hand on the knob and opened the door, a little warily. Flashing his light about, they saw that the bed was freshly laid back, but had not been used. Smith-Curran's clothes, the blue serge coat, white flannel trousers worn by him that afternoon and evening were folded with military neatness and laid across a chair by the door, ready for the valet to take and press. It looked as if he had, as Iona had told them, sat by the window in pajamas and kimono to smoke a final cigarette before getting into bed.
“His nightdress would be an alibi of sorts,” said the bishop, and turned his torch on the ornate rack of hearth implements beside the fireplace. Brush, shovel and tongs were there, but the poker was missing. “Yes, he did it with the poker.”
Marsh was thinking hard. The first confusion of shock had now passed, to leave his brain clear and active. He began to find certain flaws in the bishop's indictment of Smith-Curran in regard to this horrid crime; not unanswerable ones, but still points that demanded, closer scrutiny.
“He must have known that I hadn't yet come up, because my room is next to his. In that case, he would have reasoned that I must still be with Mr. Dodge.”
“No doubt he did,” the bishop retorted. “I just this moment pointed out that he probably saw us say good night to Sherrill and go out of the lair. He then gave us ample time to get to our rooms before striking the lethal blow and signaling to have the wires cut. We stood there talking at the foot of the stairs for at least five minutes.”
“Then you believe the lights were cut off after Mr. Dodge had been struck down?”
“Yes, on further consideration; as, if they had been cut off before, Sherrill would have been put on his guard—called out to us or made some exclamation. I should say that the murmur of our voices must have been audible to him, with the house silent.”
“Then if Smith-Curran first struck down Mr. Dodge, why should he have put out the lights at all, if he calculated that we must be already in our rooms and preparing for bed? Wouldn't we have reasoned that to plunge us in darkness would be sure to rouse our suspicion that something was amiss?”
“Not necessarily,” snapped the en “He might have counted on our merely thinking that something had gone wrong at the power plant, and that they would go on again directly. That happens sometimes in suburban places, and even in some cities. Last winter while visiting in Washington, at a big house on Massachusetts Avenue just off Sheridan Circle we were plunged in darkness for two hours. There were lamps and candles, of course. But our rooms are supplied with candles here, on the night tables and dressers.”
“But all the same,” Marsh persisted, “why should he have wanted to cut off the lights, with everybody gone up but Mr. Dodge, and nobody about the premises, no neighbors within view, no night watchman? I should think he'd have wanted light, if only to remove possible incriminating traces.”
“My dear Marsh”—the bishop's voice was nervously petulant—“how can we say at this moment just what his reasoning was? Whoever cut the wires may not have known which was telephone and which was light. Or the man may have wished to eliminate all risk of being seen and recognized. In any case, he would count on a certain period of confusion that would give him time to dispose of the body in some fashion and return. He's apt to come at any moment. When he does, you will have to hold him up with your pistol and stand guard until the police arrive. You had better station yourself behind that door at the head of the back stairs—take him by surprise. If he attacks, don't hesitate to shoot, and shoot to kill.”
Here evidently was a churchman of the militant sort, no conscientious objector to the taking of a certain sort of human life. But the most pious of prelates have been known to tuck up their cassocks and grasp a musket at the approach of a painted savage, and as the bishop saw him, Smith-Curran was infinitely worse. A soul already lost, a faggot for the burning.
“I am going to look around outside,” he said. “If he comes before I return note particularly his aspect and his behavior, what he says and how he says it. Don't let him blarney you.”
“I'll try not to lose my head, sir,” Marsh said.
“That's it. Don't get rattled, and don't permit your sympathy for his daughter to influence your sounder judgment. I now agree with you that she must be entirely ignorant of the whole affair—or else a consummate actress. But it's too early to decide.”
“One minute, sir. Wouldn't it be better not to let him know of our suspicions until the police arrive—or not even then, for that matter? We haven't much to back them up.”
“What's that? We haven't much But bless me, didn't he go out—with the poker?”
“Yes, but what if he tells us what he told Iona? It might have been true, at that.”
“My dear Marsh, stop and think. This is not an attempt at burglary, but a murder, and the victim's body disposed of so that there can be no corpus licti. The motive was not theft, with the striking down of Sherrill necessary to that end. Before this tragedy we had already a straight case of attempted murder, and now this man has slipped out the back door with the poker and not yet returned. What more do you want?”
“I don't know. It seems a stupid trick for a criminal of experience.”
“He underrated the acumen of some of us here, and he knew nothing of our deduction about the starlings.”
“Then Iona can't know anything about all that.”
“No, I shall have to concede you that point.” The bishop's tone was unconsciously reluctant. He disliked to see a fish slip from his net. “Perhaps you are right, though, about making no charge against the man just yet. Better not put him on his guard before being questioned officially. But I want you to observe him closely. Note every word and gesture and expression. Now I'll go out and look round a little.”
He went out of the room and to the main stairway. Marsh stood on the threshold of Smith-Curran's room, deep in thought. The bishop must be right, he reflected, but this crime seemed an ill-conceived one for a clever criminal.
It had no props, no frame or blind or plant. There was nothing to account for the act, like a rifling of the desk drawers as if in search of the safe combination or the ripping out of the paneling, or something of the sort.
Would such a criminal as the bishop claimed Smith-Curran to be have made such a stupid job of it? Marsh did not think so. Still, he might be stupid, ruthless, but not cunning. And he might have believed that Dodge suspected something that he had thus far withheld but was apt at any moment, the next day perhaps, to lay before some expert criminologist. Smith-Curran might have decided to take a bold chance.
Marsh was convinced, however, that Iona knew nothing at all about the affair, suspected nothing. Her face in the aperture of the door had shown astonishment as well as horror. Marsh wondered what, in the event of Smith-Curran's conviction, her position would be. With such testimony as the bishop had to offer, which he himself would be bound under oath to support, Iona could scarcely escape indictment and conviction of being accessory before the fact, and sentence to a long prison term. She had been with her father in Dodge's room, appeared the next morning to have been searching the lawn to remove any morsels of evidence left by the starlings, lied about finding a four-leaf clover where no clover grew, started to drive off in the car with the dead starlings that would seem unaccountably to have worked their way out of Dodge's brief case. And it would not impress a jury as probable that a young woman should have remained lying on her bed in the dark while her father went out on a burglar stalk, armed only with a brass fire poker, in a house that contained a number of stalwart men.
There was no getting round the fact that Iona was in deep. Close examination of her previous relations with Barclay might bog her even deeper, in the matter of possible motive. Two big fortunes were involved.
And Marsh reflected, only thirty hours before, Iona had saved his life. This undeniable fact would not have prevented his taking any action in his power, no matter at what cost to Iona, to safeguard Dodge's life. But now that the blow had fallen, Dodge presumably killed, and Iona innocent, as Marsh believed, his obligation to her was of a magnitude that he could not deny. He must warn Iona of the net soon to be drawn about her, give her a chance to prepare some sort of a defense before being taken unawares by her first examination. There was no time to lose. The police might now arrive at any moment.
Marsh stepped to Iona's door. He was about to rap, when it opened suddenly and Iona confronted him. Evidently she had thought both men to have gone and meant to steal to the top of the stairs and listen, for she was still, as far as Marsh could ascertain in the dark, only in her nightdress. And at the same moment he heard the purr of a motor as it slowed to turn into the grounds.
“Iona,” he whispered, using her first name in his haste, “there's something I must tell you quickly. The police are coming, and the bishop has a strong case against you and your father, first for the attempted murder and now for the actual murder of Mr. Dodge.”
Iona gave a low moan.
“I knew he thought that. It's preposterous—Marsh.”
“I know that you are innocent,” Marsh said, “but things look black for your father. The evidence is strong against him. Wait!”
He hurried to the window at the far end of the hall, which commanded a view of the entrance drive before it curved round to the front of the house. The car had stopped and Marsh saw the flicker of a torch. Its bright beam flashed up into the air, against the foliage of a tree. That, Marsh thought, would be the chauffeur examining the wires. The car started ahead again. Marsh went back to Iona, who had stepped out into the corridor.
“Now listen carefully to what I have to say.”
And as rapidly but comprehensibly as possible he gave her a clear brief of the bishop's summing up. Iona listened tensely, without interruption. Marsh, even while talking, heard the car come to a stop before the perron of the house, then a murmur of voices in which he was able to distinguish the bishop's vibrant tones.
As he finished speaking Iona raised her hands to her temples. Marsh, even in the murk, was able to see the dim gleam of her bare white arms. He failed, however, to see another white figure that had come from the other end of the corridor to the head of the stairs.
Iona, as if overwhelmed at what she had just been told, made some indistinguishable murmur in a low, stricken voice. And at that moment the hall lights, with those others that had been turned on at the moment of extinction, flared out brilliantly.
Looking then over Iona's shoulder, Marsh saw Cicely standing with one hand on the heavy carved rail that guarded the shaft of the stairway. She stared for a moment at Marsh as he stood there with Iona, then turned with a gesture of unspeakable disgust and made her way rapidly back to her room.
X
THE sudden illumination acted as a stimulant to Iona. She gave a choking gasp.
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” she moaned. “It's ghastly! It's horrible! You don't believe it, Marsh?
“Not where you're concerned,” he answered in a dull voice.
Here, no matter what might yet happen or be proved, was the end of all relations save hostile ones with the family whose patronage, then intimate friendliness, had promised such bright things for the future. Marsh felt that no amount of explanation could ever obliterate the impression that Cicely had received while yet in ignorance of the frightful tragedy that must now at any moment plunge her into a black abyss of broken-hearted sorrow. She adored and idolized her father. No doubt the reason for her being still unmarried at twenty-four was because she had not yet met the man who impressed her as in any degree filling his measure.
“What am I to do? Oh, what shall we do?” Iona moaned. “Where is father? Have they arrested him?”
“I don't believe so. They've just arrived. Nothing is certain
“But it's outrageous, Marsh. How can anybody be so cruel? Especially a man in holy orders, a bishop? The man's a fool. He's mad. Father has been through some fearful things in wars the world over. South Africa and China and Russia and the Great War, but he's no assassin. It's preposterous!”
Marsh heard steps coming up the stairs. He thrust Iona gently back into her room.
“Hope for the best,” he said. “I'll do what I can for you. Try to get ourself in hand. You are going to need all your courage and clear-headedness.”
He closed the door and walked back to the head of the stairs, meeting the bishop at the top of them.
“The police are here,” panted the churchman, “and as you see, the chauffeur has found and connected the break in the circuit.”
“He was quick,” Marsh muttered.
“Yes, he met two constables on their way here in a car. The driver hailed him asked if anything was wrong at the Dodge place. It seems there was a telephone call for the house, and Central, on being unable to get communication, suspected something and immediately informed the police station. There is so much of that sort of thing nowadays. Dear me, dear me, now I have a frightful task. I must tell Cicely.”
“Break it to her gently,” Marsh advised. “Tell her that Mr. Dodge has been kidnaped; say we hope that he may not have met with foul play.”
“I'll do my best. She's a brave girl. For some reason there's been no time to go into, the police seem to think there's more behind this than I have briefly outlined to them. They are not impressed by my charge against Smith-Curran, but I have not gone into the first attempt. They think it's an outside job, to get at the contents of the safe. Now they want the safe opened to discover what it may contain.”
“Does anybody know the combination?”
“Yes, Cicely. Sherrill gave it to her in case something should be wanted in his absence. These two men are not of the town police, but a pair sent here to investigate another criminal case. They impress me as efficient. No sign of Smith-Curran?”
“No. Doesn't that strike you as rather odd?”
“It's all grotesque. I am on the point of losing my wits. How about Iona?
“She came out of her room and I told her just what had happened.”
“Was that discreet?”
“What does it matter? She's not guilty. It was indiscreet, though. Cicely had been wakened by the car stopping at the door and came out to the head of the stairs. Just then the lights went on and she saw what must have seemed a scandalous affair, considering her ignorance of what's happened.”
“Dear me, what a frightful, ghastly mess. I must go. They are waiting for the safe to be opened. They hope to find something that may “furnish a clew of sorts. They won't though. You had better wait here until relieved, Marsh. I consider it vitally important that Smith-Curran's aspect be noted before he may be able to suppress any evidence—bloodstains on his person, and the fire poker.”
“Very well.”
The bishop made his way to Cicely's room at the head of the stairs. Some minutes passed. He came out followed by Cicely, who had slipped on a dressing gown of some dark stuff. She held herself rigidly, walking with a firm step. Her gaze went for a moment in the direction of Marsh, who was standing with his back against the wall; but she gave no hint of seeing him at all.
Nevertheless he felt no anger. Pity submerged all other emotions. Poor girl, facing bravely her life's first overwhelming grief, and not overwhelmed. She had been very little when her mother died. The bishop, Marsh believed, would hardly have bothered at this moment to say anything in defense of Marsh's position when the lights flashed on, especially as Cicely would not have mentioned her witnessing it. The human mind does not, as the bishop had claimed for his own, work fourth dimensionally. An actual fourth dimension is required for that.
As the minutes now dragged past, Marsh began to find his vigil becoming insupportable. He found himself resenting the bishop's self-assumed direction of the case. After all, what right had this prelate to give Marsh his orders? The police were now in charge of it, not this, as Marsh began to feel, officious clergyman. If, in the opinion of the proper authorities, it was advisable to take Smith-Curran red-handed on his entrance, why had they not given their orders to that effect—detailed one of their own men? It struck Marsh also that only two men were entirely inadequate for a criminal affair of such gravity. But perhaps they had telephoned for more, who might arrive at any moment.
Then, as Marsh's impatience was becoming rapidly exhausted, Iona's door opened and she came out clad in a dark jersey dress.
“Any news of my father?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“What are they doing downstairs?”
“Examining the contents of the safe.”
“I can't stand this any longer, Marsh. It's terrible about Mr. Dodge; but for all I know, my father may have been killed also. He's impulsive and absolutely fearless. He may have run right into it. I want to go out and look for him.”
“Come on then,” Marsh said. “I'll go with you.”
Ignoring the bishop's orders with a sort of angry relish, Marsh led the way to the back stairs. They went down them, through the butler's pantry, the laundry that put off at one side and out into the night. Making their way close to the wall of the house to the wing at the end of which was the lair, they approached it silently. Marsh was flashing his light along the terrace, and now as they drew near the corner of this wing some bright metallic object flashed within the zone of light, just around the corner of the lair and against the wall.
It was the brass fire poker, a sort of tomahawk implement. Marsh picked it up. His first close scrutiny on holding it to the torch showed a smear of blood and some few hairs on the heavier squared extremity.
“That did it,” Marsh said grimly.
Iona had seemed to freeze. Her breathing was a series of gasps, as if she had been running up a steep hill.
“Oh, Marsh, you'll suppress that—throw it in the sea? He didn't do it! He didn't! I know he didn't! But that poker would be horribly damning. Throw it in the water!”
“I can't do that, Iona. Sherrill Dodge was my friend.”
“Marsh, I saved your life! You said yourself I saved your life! If it hadn't been for me you would not be here now to get my father unjustly incriminated. If I'd let you drown” She wrung her hands. “There's no sense in it, no reason.”
“Hush!”
They were dangerously close to the window of the lair for even Iona's low impassioned whisper. At any moment somebody inside might open it and come out. Marsh, holding the poker in his right hand, took Iona's elbow with the left and urged her across the terrace, down the steps and onto the lawn. They were both wearing the deck shoes with which they had been shod on landing from the yacht.
Out of earshot from the house and shrouded in the gloom of that black night, Iona turned their steps toward the shore. Marsh did not resist. Some voice within him was repeating over and over, “She saved my life. Yes, she saved my life. She held me up when I was sinking and might have drawn her down. Yes, she saved my life. And after all, is dead. She saved my life, and I can't help save Dodge's.”
Shambling along in this way, Iona clinging to Marsh's arm, they came presently to the path at the top of the rocky rampart along the shore. Here they paused. The tide was out, though there were no mud flats, as the shore line on this promontory was fairly sheer; but there were black fissures between the rocks, and impenetrable chasms from which a cool dank air rose, impregnated with the cadaverous odor of dead mollusks and rotting detritus that had washed ashore.
This and the heavy darkness, unstirred by the faintest draft of moving air, gave to what was normally a charming spot an atmosphere like that of a Stygian flood across which those departed the world of light and motion waited to be ferried.
Neither of them spoke. Marsh, holding the accusing implement in one hand an with Iona clasping the other in both of hers, an imploring gesture, stared out across the sunken stretch of water that was flat as a pool of coagulating ink. Of the Trilby, at her moorings out there, only the riding light was visible, as though his fond creation had receded from before his perception, like all associated with her.
For it was in Marsh's mind that here, through some mocking trick of destiny, his march to success had reached the end of its beat; that he stood on the edge of a future rather like the waste in front of him, dark, uncertain and in which he might yet sink to an unknown depth. Well, poor Dodge was probably out there somewhere, in body if not in spirit. And here stood himself, Marsh, who had begun to love the man, his hand clasped in that of the daughter of Dodge's murderer, and giving ear to her implorings.
Marsh no longer felt any doubt of Smith-Curran's guilt. Call it stupid, a burst of homicidal mania, blood lust, anything you like, the poker had proved the man a murderer. But Marsh still believed Iona innocent of all association with the affair. Since Dodge was dead, why ruin utterly her life? Leave vengeance to the Lord, and to the law. It couldn't help Dodge. And why exalt the credit of the bishop as a crime detector?
The bishop, Marsh felt, ought to be ashamed of himself. Defense was one thing and revenge entirely another. It was not becoming to his cloth, once the crime had been committed, to keep on nosing like a questing bloodhound or play the part of police. Marsh owed him no odds—and he owed Iona his life. But for Iona, he would at this moment be down there under that black slimy water in the black mud, bait for crabs.
Thrusting out the arm to which Iona clung, Marsh whirled the brass poker up over his head, then flung it spinning in a dull golden arc against the sky of wet soot. Far out from the shore, in four-fathom water at mean low tide, a faint splash reported that it was stricken from the records.
XI
MARSH, as he recovered from this record poker throw, became acutely conscious that with that lethal if domestic implement he had flung overboard a good deal besides. Iona's arms were round his neck, her face against his chest. She was choking her acknowledgment in a low, strangled voice. These were incoherent, probably to Iona herself as much as to Marsh, who was not giving the slightest thought to them.
His mind was now entirely self-centered. Here of his own deliberate act he had stepped beyond the pale of civic virtue, repudiated an obligation not only to the land of which he was a citizen in good standing but to a dear friend, and to the family of that one. He had consigned to the oblivion of bottom mud the one bit of really damning evidence against Smith-Curran. The blood, the hairs on the poker were subject to comparison and identification; would have been enough to hang a man, Marsh thought. So that in suppressing them Marsh had made himself accessory after the fact to the murder of his friend and patron.
Iona, still clinging, was sagging now. The burden of her weighed on him, unpleasantly at first. Then, as instinctively his own arms encircled her body to relieve the strain on his neck, a thrill almost like a stab of pain went through him. This, in a way, was a mental as well as physical reaction. It crossed his consciousness that there was now established between them a sort of union to make them of similar species, a bond of outlawry that placed them side by side in their relation to a more law-limited society. Well, let be. His rise had been a bit skyrocketish, so let him burst in a vortex of bright multicolored sparks before his spent shell started down.
His clasp of Iona tightened. Good or bad, innocent or guilty, this creature in his arms was of a sort to fill the needs of a self-determined Adam. Her lithe suppleness, which might be of soul as well as body for all he knew or cared, roused in Marsh a sort of savage recklessness, an indifference as to whether he hurt her, just as he had felt indifference as to whether he drowned her. If now, Marsh reflected profanely, he were to be driven out of paradise just when his title to it seemed guaranteed, then he would take with him a solacing Eve. Also, he remembered, he had, in the eyes of Cicely and her complete future vision, done so already.
Iona murmured, “You've squared your debt, Marsh. And he's not guilty.”
Marsh did not answer. He was in this moment like a man who has stepped outside his self and surveys that simulacrum with a contemptuous defiance. What worth all the work and worry and suppressions of his past life? At that moment, from no great distance farther along the shore and under the break of the low cliffs' edge, as it looked, there came a sudden upward flare of light. It shone out against the murk, then was extinct. Marsh laid his lips to Iona's ear.
“Keep still. There's somebody over there—under the ledge.”
He released Iona, who turned. They stood for a moment listening. Again there came that sudden upward flare of light, as if some person at the bottom of one of the many fissures between the rocks had lighted a cigarette, when the reflection of the match had been faintly thrown in air.
Marsh and Iona obeyed instinctively that primitive impulse that prompts one to crouch on discovery of an alien presence at a moment of stress, and where passions are rife. It was past the time and not the sort of night to tempt boating couples or canoeists to land along the shore. The same idea occurred to both, that here might be some solution for the disappearance of Dodge, the interment of his corpse below high-water mark, that all betraying signs of a new-dug grave that may be washed away as the tide rose. Marsh, at that moment, was convinced that here was the reason for Smith-Curran's failure to return. It was imperative that Dodge's remains be hidden beyond mortal ken as soon as might be. The law requires a corpus delicti, or at least some part of one. In such case, as it seemed to Marsh, the man described himself a bungling assassin to have forgot about the fire poker. The blood and hair on it when matched might have made these present efforts a waste of sweat and labor; carrying the heavy body such a distance, scratching out a hole deep enough to contain it—and here the poker would have come in handy—and lugging big stones to hold the cadaver down.
The matches struck would be to survey the finished job, Marsh thought, and immediately another problem presented. It was one thing to throw out into deep water the weapon or implement that Smith-Curran had used for the murder of Dodge, and quite another to withhold testimony should he now come on the murderer himself at the completion of his interment of his victim. In the first instance, that of the poker, Marsh had ceded to Iona's father the benefit of a slim doubt. But he could not find it in his heart or conscience to grant him any grace where there could be no doubt. No, the hand was played out, and no more tricks in sight for this thug.
“Wait here,” Marsh whispered, and started on hands and knees to crawl in the direction from which the flare of light had come. He was all set to cope with a murderer at bay, provided with a blinker and the automatic pistol the chauffeur had given him. The best thing for all concerned, Marsh thought grimly, would be for Smith-Curran to rush him with a chunk of jagged quartz and get himself killed.
He had not crawled many feet when Iona was upon him with a rush. She flung herself down at his side, her arms round his neck again.
“Marsh, you don't have to do this! It's not your duty!”
“I can't stand it, Iona. This goes too far, shoving the body of my dear friend in the mud. Let go!” And then, as her grip round his throat tightened,“Let—go—you—cat!” This last word he spat out in strangling rage.
For mere persuasion, implorings, suddenly had changed their character. It was not now Iona's arms that were round his throat, but a twisted silken. scarf with which she had deftly replaced them. So quickly was this accomplished that before Marsh realized what was happening, not only speech but breathing was choked off. He was on hands and knees, the woman on his back, and her hand in the knot she had managed to catch in the strong silken scarf now twisted it in the manner of a tourniquet. A French apache trick—la garotte.
Marsh flung himself over on his side, striving to seize on some part of her. But Iona, lithe as an otter, turned with and kept behind him. In such relative postures there was no force in the backward reach of Marsh's arm. Muscular leverage was against it. But if Iona had counted on that erratic heart action that had let him down in the water, then she counted in vain. Rage, horror, desperation and a growing suffocation served Marsh for the moment more in the nature of a stimulant. He threshed about, squirming to get back on hands and knees that he might rise and tear her off. But Iona, still tightening her throttle hold, squirmed partly under him, making it impossible for Marsh to get any brace of hands or feet—like a fallen horse that may be held down by a child sitting on the side of its head.
The struggle was as silent as it was savage. Marsh, in the very nature of Iona's vantage, could not cry out, and Iona did not. His struggles began to diminish in force. Distant chimes were ringing in his ears. Then, just as he verged on the loss of consciousness, the torsion round his throat was suddenly released. He gasped and the air rushed into his lungs. Iona sprang to her feet.
“Look out!” she cried. “They're coming!”
Even in his half-asphyxiated state Marsh realized that this warning must be for her father. Then, to his bewilderment, there came from that black niche in the rocks where the light had flared the sudden deep-toned thrumming of what sounded like a powerful marine motor. At the same moment two dark figures appeared, racing toward them across the lawn from the direction of the house. Straight on past Marsh and Iona they bounded, regardless of them, whipped down into the fissure with a rattle of loose stones that was followed immediately by a splashing and a clatter as if tumbling into a boat.
Marsh scrambled to his feet. Over the brink of the rocks a dark form took shape on the darker water, which immediately became a lambent blaze of phosphorescence. The craft was backing out at an angle that brought it broadside on, when it took form vaguely as a long speed launch, low and broad of stern.
There were then, as the bishop had opined, accomplices, though why these should have lingered on after the alarm and arrival of the police Marsh could not imagine. He thought then of the automatic in the side pocket of his coat, and whipping it out he began to fire on the launch, in which he could distinguish the figures of three persons. Aiming as best he was able for his swimming head, Marsh emptied the weapon, but without result. Then, as the launch forged suddenly ahead a bright tongue of fine flame leaped out—another and another.
“Drop!” Iona hissed.
They went to earth again, this time apart. The firing ceased as the launch tore a pale blazing crease over the black sheen of the water. It dissolved in the murk. Marsh looked at Iona.
“Nearly got me, didn't you?”
“I'm sorry, Marsh. I had to do it, but I wouldn't really have strangled you.”
“Oh, wouldn't you have? What do you think of your parent now?”
“He is innocent, of course. I know him, Marsh. But I simply couldn't let you heap up accusing evidence against him. Even if a man is cleared, there are lots of people who still believe him guilty. And it mustn't happen here and now, of all times and places.”
Shouts and cries had arisen at the house, the bishop's voice bawling Marsh's name. And then, as if in answer to them, there came from the place the launch had just left a faint, quavering cry for help. Weak as it was, there was a timbre to it that set Marsh's heart to bubbling and sputtering as his desperate struggle with Iona had failed to do.
“Help!” it called feebly, followed by a cough. “Help! Marsh! John!”
Marsh crowded back his growing faintness.
“Coming, Mr. Dodge!” he managed to call, and tottered in that direction,
Iona darted past him and down into the rift. Stumbling and sliding, Marsh followed her, sprawling at length onto the sand and shingle of a little beach with the sheer weed-hung rocks on either side. Scrambling up again, he discovered Iona on her knees between two prostrate figures. Marsh flashed his light first on one, then the other. They were, he saw, the still living persons of Sherrill Dodge and Major Smith-Curran. Iona was sobbing.
“Oh, Marsh, I knew he hadn't done it! They've killed him, I'm afraid—but he didn't do it. And look, Marsh! Turn your light here! Look at Mr. Dodge's head! There's not a scratch on it!”