For a long moment Karl Sheridan stood staring down grimly at the fragile, shining thing that had held death for one and now might well hold it for two. And even while he looked, his eyes contracted in a curious concentration—the vague intentness of those other magicians who gaze deep into crystal and see something strange and bewildering beyond its clear candor.… He took a linen handkerchief from his pocket and turned the glass in his hand slowly, polishing away the last traces of the fine gray dust.
Tess, her eyes, too, on the glass, said softly and distinctly:
“It must have been someone very stupid who did that, shouldn’t you say?”
“Or someone, perhaps, so clever that he was willing to have us think so.”
His eyes were still intent on something that was neither dust nor crystal.
“Though after all, Tess, what could he do? As you pointed out, he could hardly wear gloves while pouring Fay those drinks, and still less could he remove his own fingerprints and retain hers. No, I imagine that in all probability he reasoned that the coroner and the police would leap gratefully to the obvious and plausible conclusion of suicide—and that if by any highly improbable chance they did not, it would be considerably safer to leave behind him this anonymous confession of murder, rather than a confession signed by his own hand.… Believe me, before we are through we are going to discover that the person who did this thing was very far indeed from stupid.”
“Are we?” she asked, docile and attentive. “Well, then, Dion darling, we must be very careful not to be stupid ourselves, mustn’t we?”
“As you say, very careful.”
He could feel his heart sicken and twist within him.… Darling. Dion darling.… And she had not even realized that she had said it.… He returned the handkerchief to his pocket with meticulous care and stood surveying the glass in his hand with bitter distaste.
“You realize what I am doing, Tess? What I have already done? I have made myself an accessory after the fact, with a bit of linen and a pinch of dust. That, believe me, is a hard and ugly and quite incredible fact to face. It is active treachery and disloyalty to all that I have been taught to honor most. I have been taught, you see, that cooperation in the effort to combat crime is the foremost duty of every member of the police force.… Tess, I am a member of the police force.”
She said evenly:
“Are you asking me to release you from your promise? I distinctly remember your telling me that for these next few days you were on leave and not attached to any police force in the world.”
“That is true. But, Tess, how will I look, how will I seem, when at the end of those few days I go to your police with the evidence I have collected here? Even if it is evidence that will put handcuffs on a man, even if it is evidence that will put a rope around his neck, it will look as though I were a self-centered, conceited, fatuous young fool, eaten up by ambition and pride in my own ability. I do not greatly care for that picture.”
“K, you promised.”
“I was mad when I promised,” he said, quietly and bitterly. “Very well, I am still at your service, as you remind me. Though I warn you that it is entirely possible that all my trickery may prove as useless as it is detestable.”
“Useless? Why?”
“Do you think that your police are fools? I can assure you that they are not, from all that I have heard. If the slightest suspicion is aroused, they will be down on that glass like a pack of wolves, and it is quite needless to say that they will discover precisely what I discovered.”
“But, K, you said that it was practically impossible that murder would occur to anyone—you said that it looked like an absolutely open-and-shut case of suicide. You wouldn’t even believe yourself that it was murder. Why should they pay the slightest attention to the wretched glass?”
“There is not one chance in a hundred that they will,” said Sheridan somberly, his eyes turning back to the inscrutable cylinder in his fingers. “But it is that hundredth chance that has hung many a poor devil and made the fame of many a lucky detective. Who can tell what they might stumble on here that would point straight down the path marked Murder? … Not I, Tess, and not you! But I can tell you this: if they ever find that path, the first place that they will turn to for further directions will be this glass that I hold in my hand.”
“You’re sure?” She came a quick step towards him. “No, no, they mustn’t do that. Wipe it again, K—wipe it carefully. Mightn’t your own fingerprints be on it?”
“Hardly.” He smiled faintly, but his eyes were still grim. “A glass held as I hold it, this way, between thumb and finger, would have no mark of any kind.”
She watched, wide-eyed, the deft twirl that he gave it.
“Wouldn’t it really? Between your finger and thumb, you mean? This way?”
Her hand reached towards him swift as lightning, thumb and finger conscientiously extended. For a moment it hung poised, and then, above her startled exclamation, a small splintering crash rang out and Karl Sheridan stood staring down at the shining ruins of what would have undoubtedly been the state’s star exhibit.
“Oh, but, K, how clumsy of me—how dreadful!” The low voice was raised just a fraction to the proper pitch of contrite consternation. “It’s because my fingers aren’t as long as yours—but how could I have been so hideously careless?”
The young gentleman from Vienna abruptly recovered his voice and a smile that was even less encouraging than his narrowed eyes.
“I share your doubts as to its possibility,” he assured her pleasantly. “You think quickly, Tess—more quickly than I, apparently.”
Tess’s eyes wandered mechanically to the glass bucket where the partly melted cubes swam majestic as miniature icebergs.
“But it will just look as though it had slipped out of her hand, won’t it?”
“Not to anyone gifted with the possession of two eyes in his head,” he commented dryly. “Her hand does not swing over the hearth—not by eight good inches.”
“Doesn’t it?”
But her eyes were not on the small limp hand; they had not once rested on it since she had crossed the threshold. Her eyes were on the little bucket, just at the point where the carved monogram glittered deep in the cold frostiness, clouding the surrounding crystal. “Then we’ll have to move the love seats, won’t we? … D’you know, K, I don’t believe that either of us has been thinking particularly clearly.”
“No?” he inquired politely, eyebrows slightly raised.
“No; we’ve been drawing all these damning and definite conclusions from that glass, and I don’t believe that there would have been any finger marks on it anyway—not even if he had mixed it for her—not even if she did take it from him.”
“And may I ask upon what theory you base that extremely interesting conclusion?”
“Oh, I’d tell you even if you didn’t ask! Look, this is what made me think of it: See how wet and frosty that bucket is, even now? And the reason that people leave fingerprints is that the tips of their fingers are a little oily, isn’t it? Well then, K, if you touched a glass all fogged with moisture, how could the oil in your fingertips leave an impression? And this one must have been awfully damp, because it was so thin and Fay always takes dozens of ice cubes. Wouldn’t the police, if they’re as clever as you say they are, know all this and not bother about whether there were fingerprints on it or not?”
“If they suspected murder and did not turn to the glass to confirm their suspicions, they would hardly be as clever as I think,” replied Sheridan, still ominously agreeable. “You are proving now, Tess, how very dangerous indeed is that little knowledge that our copy books sighed over! Even on a damp surface such as this, fragments of fingerprints might be discovered, sufficiently characteristic to make identification possible; and if the glass had been handled before this moisture developed—as it undoubtedly was—excellent prints could be discovered and developed within any reasonable period of time after the moisture had evaporated.”
“Oh, K!” Her face, instead of bearing, as it most certainly should have, marks of disconcerted apology, lifted swiftly to his, flooded from brow to throat with a wave of pure relief. “Oh, K, I’m so glad.”
“Glad? And why, then, are you glad?”
“Because you were right and I was wrong. Because you do think faster than I do, and you’re a hundred times more intelligent, and—”
“I see. Your faith was shaken as to my qualifications for the task to which you have done me the honor to assign me? Well, you are probably quite right. Once again, will you permit me to resign it?”
“No, no. I can’t, truly. You mustn’t ask me to let you off. You promised to help me. I simply won’t have all those clever police of yours tramping around here prying out everything about Fay, and I won’t ever—I won’t ever, ever stop until I find out who did this.” She halted abruptly, the flashing and imperious energy that vibrated through every note of her voice checked by the watchful irony in the dark eyes fixed on hers. After a moment she went swiftly towards him, placing her hand on his wrist. “K, what is it? I don’t understand, truly. Only a few minutes ago you were my old playmate, my new friend, who wanted to help me, even though it cost you a good deal to do it. I felt as though I’d known you all my life. And now—now—”
Sheridan dropped his eyes to the white fingers lying on his dark hand. He dropped them quickly, before she could hear those eyes saying more clearly than any voice, No, no, you are mistaken. A few minutes ago I was your lover. But his voice said quite evenly:
“And now, Tess, do you think that the charms that you cast will bind me faster than the promise that I gave?”
She took her hand away swiftly, the gray eyes bright with resentment.
“And now you aren’t my friend, are you? You’re a stranger, and a thousand miles away, and tight shut up inside yourself—and hard.”
“You are right, I think. As you say, I am hard.”
“No, no, you can’t make me believe it—not really—not underneath.… Something that I’ve said has made you angry, hasn’t it? Or something that I’ve done? Was it because I broke the glass? Because you thought I’d done it on purpose?”
She paused, waiting for an answer, and when none came, she said with a small grave smile:
“But, truly, I think that it’s I who should be angry about that. You aren’t being very fair to me, are you? You have no reason in the world to think that about me.”
Sheridan remarked, with considerable formality:
“Possibly my memory is at fault, but I assure you I have no recollection of saying that you broke the glass on purpose.”
“Oh, there wasn’t any necessity for you to say it. You probably have a vision of yourself as a strong, silent man, but I can assure you that you have an extremely expressive countenance. I didn’t like the look on it a bit.”
“That is unfortunate—especially since the broken glass is entirely unimportant.… It does not happen to be the glass that the murderer used.”
“Not the glass that he used? K, what on earth are you talking about?”
“The simple truth—the quite self-evident truth, if you stop for a moment to analyze it. I realized it some time before I had finished polishing away the dust, though not, I confess, before I found that it was guiltless of fingerprints. My mind is undoubtedly not at its best tonight—probably the result of too many railways, too many admirable wines, and too few hours of sleep for several nights past.”
He did not add, And of a lady white as snow and golden as honey, who calls me “Dion darling” without even knowing what she has done, but his heart added it for him.
Tess said despairingly:
“Oh, I’m losing whatever mind I ever had. You actually mean that this glass didn’t have hyoscine in it?”
“I did not say that. It certainly held whiskey and soda—and, if the murderer was as clever as I believe him to be, an insignificant amount of hyoscine as well. Because, you see, I am quite sure that from the beginning he foresaw the possibility of an investigation—however remote, however improbable, still it was there. And to the best of his ability—for you realize that he was handicapped—he prepared for that eventuality. To fit in with the theory of suicide, it was essential that there should be found, in this glass, whiskey, soda, further diluted by ice cubes, and hyoscine-hydrobromide. I am entirely convinced that if the dregs left in the glass had been analyzed, they would have contained precisely these ingredients.” He smiled, briefly and without marked amusement, as he indicated the glittering fragments on the hearth. “Obviously, it would be a little difficult to analyze the contents now!”
Tess Stuart followed the eloquent gesture, unsmiling.
“Yes, that’s fairly obvious. It was stupid of me to be so careless. How do you mean that he was handicapped, K?”
“Principally, by time. Time is the great enemy of the murderer—and he had little margin, I think, to set his stage for suicide. There was always the possibility that some servant might turn up—that you might return unexpectedly early and run into him as he left—that his exit might be blocked if you brought someone with you and went into one of the rooms downstairs.… I imagine that he heard the wheels of Time’s chariot very clearly in his ears as he worked, and that even while he realized that it was insane to risk any chances of discovery by leaving something undone, he hurried desperately.”
She murmured, her eyes as fixed on the bits of glass as though she were mesmerized:
“Oh, yes. It’s insane to take chances if you can possibly help it. I know that.”
Suddenly she jerked her head back abruptly, and for the first time he saw in her eyes panic, stark and appalled.
“K—K, you make it sound so dreadfully, so horribly real. I was pretending it wasn’t real at all, and now I can see him hurrying and frightened and listening—fixing the glass, and fixing the note, and fixing—K, don’t let me believe it—don’t, don’t!”
He caught at her wrists, holding them in a grip as relentless as handcuffs.
“Tess, listen to me; no, do not try to get away—you must listen. If you do not wish me to go home as soon as I have telephoned for a doctor to take care of you, you must get yourself in hand at once. I will not have you making yourself ill with terror. I will not have you driving yourself into a collapse from nerves. I can stand many things, but not to see you break.… Shall I telephone?”
She whispered:
“No, don’t telephone. I’m all right now—you’ll see. Give me another chance; I didn’t mean to be troublesome.… You were saying something about a glass, weren’t you? That this—that this wasn’t the glass. Am I being stupid not to understand?”
“You are being quite incredibly brave and clear-headed.” He released her wrists very gently and stood frowning abstractedly at the hands that had held them. “This room—I wish to heaven that I could get you out of this room. You should not be here, I should have thought of that before. There is no place that we could sit—a drawing room downstairs perhaps—a living room?”
She shook her head, once more controlled and clear-eyed.
“No—I don’t care to risk it. These rooms are actually cut off from the rest of the house and sound-proofed into the bargain. Dad had them fixed that way when they were remodeled, so that the phonograph and the radio wouldn’t bother him. But we’d have to pass by the servants’ wing to get down to any of the living rooms—and if any of the servants happened to hear us talking, it might make difficulties tomorrow, mightn’t it? Because we simply never use the living rooms; the servants aren’t any better than spies, and they know that we’re perfectly well aware of it—and so is Dad.”
“But if your father is so very stern with you, Tess, how does it come that he permits you to live in this sound-proof fortress unmolested?”
“I imagine that one of the reasons is that I told him I’d walk straight out of his front door and take the first position I could get as a dress model, or a dance hostess or a clerk in a dry-goods store, if he didn’t give me some place where I could call my soul my own,” replied Fuller Stuart’s daughter in a voice as icy as her father’s. “He loathes notoriety, and he knows that I’m a good deal more apt to do things than to argue about them. And then he was trying to bribe Fay to behave herself—and of course he didn’t know anything about the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign. I think that he’d worked it out that we’d have to share the sitting room if we ever wanted to see our friends, and that I might have a somewhat chastening effect on Fay’s activities.”
“And did you, Tess?”
“No,” said Tess, briefly and colorlessly. “You know that I didn’t.”
“But all this?” He indicated the table with its array of bottles. “It was not forbidden? Or are the servants in so far your accomplices?”
“Oh, of course it’s forbidden! But Fay tended to that.”
She crossed the hearth to the bookshelves near the empty love seat, ran her fingers lightly down the molding that paneled it, and stood back in order to let him see more clearly the cupboard with its neat rows of bottles and glasses concealed behind the gayly colored books.
“She bribed the carpenter who was remodeling it,” Tess explained in reply to his look of blank surprise. “I didn’t find out until quite a bit later, and I wasn’t precisely exhilarated by the discovery—but after all, you’ll have to admit that the carpenter made a good job of it. All those nice little bottle openers, and corkscrews, and the racks for the glasses—”
“Exactly. The glasses—any number of glasses, aren’t there? And any number of things to put in them! Scotch, bourbon, bonded rye, House of Lords gin, cognac—what kind fairy godmother keeps this little cellar so well stocked, I wonder?”
“Fay had her own sources of supply,” said Fay’s tall sister, in a voice infinitely remote from all such traffic. “She didn’t discuss them much with me; I’m afraid that I wasn’t a particularly good audience.”
“No, I imagine not … Italian vermouth, Bacardi, white mint, half a bottle of curaçao—” He checked the last row of bottles and stood staring at them with a scowl of profound irritation. “No, but surely, Tess, there is something missing.”
“Missing? From that cupboard?” She mirrored his frown, delicately and scornfully. “Oh, wines, you mean? Fay didn’t care for wine—and then of course you couldn’t keep them at the right temperature in a place like this.”
“No, no, not wines. It is a little bottle that I am looking for—a little bottle about eight inches high in a wrapper with a great deal of printing on it. Where are the bitters, Tess?”
“The bitters?”
“Yes, surely—the Angostura bitters. On the wrapper it tells you how excellent they are with boiled fish or stewed prunes, but in this great country I think that you use them more in these rye drinks full of fruit peels you call Old Fashioneds, and now, it seems, even quite straight with gin. It should be—it must be—somewhere on one of these shelves.”
“K, have you gone completely mad? Why should there be bitters in the cupboard?”
“Because there must be—because it is simply inevitable. Perhaps tucked in behind—”
“There aren’t any bitters. Fay loathed anything like that; she said it reminded her of the medicine she had when she was sick with malaria in Puerto Rico when she was a baby.”
“But her friends? Surely she would have kept some for her friends?”
Tess said very slowly and dispassionately:
“If Fay’s friends didn’t like what she liked, they weren’t very fortunate.”
He asked, brushing aside the last remark as though he had not even heard it:
“She wouldn’t touch anything bitter, you say? No, but that’s simply not possible.”
“It’s not only possible; it’s a fact. After all, you didn’t know Fay and I did! Why, only a few weeks ago we were in Palm Beach, on a house party over Easter—and everyone was drinking Indian tonic and gin, and Fay thought that it was just a new mineral water. When she found out what it really tasted like, she simply dashed the glass to pieces on the patio tiles and went upstairs shaking and crying—and she couldn’t go to the dance at the Everglades that night because her head was aching so dreadfully. So you see.”
“So I see nothing—nothing whatever. Not so much as half an inch into the darkness.… What was it that that tonic tasted of?”
“Oh, it tastes of quinine, of course—and that reminded her of all those dreadful months of malaria, and she simply couldn’t bear it.”
“Quinine. Quinine, no less. Well, that is the end! She could not take even a swallow of something that reminded her of it without becoming actually ill?”
“No—I’ve told you so already. K, will you be good enough to tell me what this is all about?”
“Certainly I will tell you. If what you say is entirely accurate, then the only conclusion that is possible for me to draw is that she was not murdered.”
Tess, a little whiter than before, said scornfully:
“That’s sheer insanity—or is it a trick so that you can get to bed earlier? I suppose that after she killed herself, she wiped off the glass and tipped it over on the floor?”
He lifted his head, meeting the silver lightning of her eyes with a dark flash of his own.
“Perhaps, as you so intelligently suggested, the glass was unusually wet because of the amount of ice that she put in it, and, therefore, failed to retain even fragments of her fingerprints. In any case, it was not murder.”
Tess gave a frenzied stamp of. her foot, looking, for all her inches, like a thwarted and outraged child.
“It was, it was—you know it was! How can you talk such revolting nonsense—how can you know that it wasn’t murder?”
“Quite simply. No, do not say anything more until I have explained. You are very angry, I know—and I am a little angry, too. I did not appreciate as I should that remark of yours about a trick to get to bed.… Are you listening?”
She turned toward him a rebel’s face. “Yes.”
“Very well. You will have to listen carefully, because it is quite technical. How much do you know of the properties of hyoscine hydrobromide?”
“Do you mean of its uses?”
“No. Of its composition—its derivation.”
“Nothing whatever.”
“Well, then, it is an alkaloid, of the nightshade or henbane family. The alkaloids have one attribute in common: they are bitter. Brucine and strychnine the most intensely so, quinine considerably less, and hyoscine possibly the least of all—but still far too bitter to have a grain of it disguised by a hydro-alcoholic solution such as whiskey and soda, which would simply tend to intensify it. Do you follow me?”
“Perfectly, thanks.”
“So much the better. Then you will see without difficulty why I was sure that the hyoscine was not administered in a highball, and why I eliminated this glass. If it was suicide, a person who was not abnormally suspectible to bitterness might have managed to get it down, though I should imagine that it would be an extremely disagreeable drink—but it would be utterly and absolutely impossible to conceal the flavor from someone who was not deliberately making an effort to take it.”
Tess, her eyes on the elaborate and invisible pattern that she was drawing with one steady finger on the shelves before her, asked carefully:
“Not if she’d had several highballs?”
“From what you tell me of Fay, not if she’d had a dozen. A hundred of those little white tablets ground up would fill a teaspoon with a powder bitter as the very devil. And if she could not bear the taste of anything bitter, how could it have been murder, Tess—how could it?”
She said, gently and strangely:
“Still it was murder. I see what you mean, K, but it was murder.… Couldn’t he have sweetened it somehow—with sugar-—saccharin?”
“Enough sweetening to have killed that taste would have made her very ill indeed before she had half done with it.”
“Well, then, what did he use, K? He must have used something.”
“But I am telling you quite honestly that if what you say is true I can think of nothing that it is possible for him to have used. I thought first of a very dry vermouth cocktail—if there had been enough vermouth cocktails preceding it—but she would hardly have been likely to start a series of cocktails at ten o’clock at night, would she? Even if she liked vermouth!”
“She hated it. The only kind she liked were Bacardis, and Orange Blossoms, and Clover Clubs—sweet things like that.”
“And then, of course, I had thought of gin and bitters. But bitters are out, apparently, and anything remotely connected with the whole family of bitters.… I am feeling stupid and inadequate enough to satisfy even you, Tess. You should be a little kinder.”
She said, touching his hand lightly:
“I know I’ve been disgusting. I don’t like the way I’ve been behaving at all, but, truly, I don’t think that it’s all my fault. I’d counted on you so, and even though I know it’s outrageous of me, I can’t help feeling—I can’t help feeling that somehow you’ve deserted me.” She wrung her hands together in a despairing gesture, and he made a motion to go towards her—and checked it almost as soon as it was made. “K, for heaven’s sake, what is it? It isn’t that you’re being stupid and inadequate. I know that you’re being frightfully intelligent about everything, but you’re making me feel like a bad little girl being lectured by a very stern, disagreeable professor. But why, K? When I’ve told you—when I’ve told you over and over again that you’re the only person in the world that I could turn to for help?”
To his astounded incredulity, he heard a voice that sounded distinctly like his own inquire dispassionately:
“Why not Dion Mallory?”
For a moment she stood staring at him blankly, lips parted, eyes dark with amazement.
“Dion? What do you mean? Dion’s on his way to New York—he told you so himself.”
“As you say. But surely you could send for him? I believe that you said that you were in constant telephonic and telegraphic communication.”
“I said nothing of the sort. And why in heaven’s name should I send for him? Dion isn’t a detective.”
“So I have gathered. But he has other qualifications, has he not?”
“What qualifications?”
“It is you who should know best, surely. Is not Mr. Mallory your fiancé?”
She said slowly, her voice touched with incredulous scorn:
“I think that you have lost your senses. What earthly difference can it make to you whether Dion Mallory is my husband? … As it happens, he is not my fiancé. Are you quite through with the cross-examination?”
Karl Sheridan, feeling bands loosen suddenly about his tired heart—though there was little enough, heaven knows, in the words or tone of this frozen young goddess to unloose them—said very simply:
“Forgive me, Tess. As you say, I have lost my senses. I am a fool and a boor, at that. It is not an excuse that that strong, silent man of whom you make a little mock should give, but I think perhaps it is because I am rather tired. Today I have traveled a long way—farther than from New York. Farther, I think, than from Austria. If you will still let me help you, I will be very proud.”
She unclasped the hard-wrung hands, brushed the hair back from her brow with the old childish gesture of bewilderment and fatigue, and bestowed on him a small, wan smile.
“Poor K, I’m so sorry. It was horrid of me to behave like such a tragedy queen, but I’m afraid that I’m a little tired, too.”
And he saw for the first time how desperately tired she was, this child with a face strange and lovely as a lost mermaid—even her eyes, the color of moonlight on water; even her parted lips, that faintest and purest of coral; even the soft, pale hair and the snow-white skin seemed drowned fathoms deep in fatigue.… He must be quick to help her, so that he could release her from this trance of weariness into sleep, and, please heaven, dreams less terrible than reality. He went to her, taking her hand in his; it was cold, and it clung to him as though in his touch she found comfort.
“Too tired, is it not so, to go any further tonight, my poor Tess?”
“No, no; too tired not to. If we stopped now, I might go crazy, I think. And there’s so much still to do. We ought to go over this whole room, oughtn’t we, to see if he left anything behind him? And we ought to find out what she actually took that hyoscine in. And we ought to move the love seats closer to the hearth, so that there won’t be the space between that one and the broken glass. Shouldn’t we do that first, so that we’ll be sure not to forget? I could help—I could help with the other end.”
“No. I do not wish you to touch that love seat. Stand here, and I will do it myself.”
But she clung to his hand desperately.
“You can’t, K. It might tilt—or slip. If it slipped—”
He could feel the shudder run like ice through the slight, cold hand, but even before it was gone she had released his and slipped from him.
“Let’s try this one by the cupboard first. I’ll just hold it steady, and you can do the actual lifting.”
Sheridan, his eyes intent on the pale lips that could not quite control their tremor, moved quietly to the end nearest the hearth, swinging the seat over the required eight inches with competent ease.… Light, fortunately—and that small, huddled burden in the corner of the one opposite would add little enough to its weight.… But his eyes, unswerving from her strained face, did not relax their vigilance.
“It will leave signs of where it has stood, I am afraid. We’ll have to do something about that.”
“No, no. It won’t leave any signs. We shift them about a good deal, especially when we use the fire—so we had those little rubber cup things put on.… Now the other one, K?”
“Tess, let me do that other one. You will see, it will be quite simple.”
“K, please—I’ll turn my head away. It won’t take a second, and I couldn’t bear it if—I couldn’t bear it if anything happened.”
She was already at the far end of the love seat in the corner of which curled, small and glittering, all that was left of Fay Stuart—and Sheridan, with a final glance at the white curve of Tess’s sharply averted face and a despairing shrug of his shoulders, swung into position at the opposite end. A quick lift, a short step to the side—there was the sound of something sliding, a small, muffled crash, and he saw her stagger and fling her hands up to her face, trying to hide even from him the desperate terror that transfixed it.
He was beside her quicker than thought, his arms about her—his useless arms, that could not shelter her from this nightmare, that dared not hold her close and fast.
“Tess, it was only the little bag—do not tremble so—it was only the little bag. I left it too near the edge, and so it slipped, and all her things fell out—it was that that you heard. Look, they are here on the floor.”
But she did not look; she could only cling to him as though she were drowning, the pale, bright head buried against his shoulder, tremor after tremor shaking her from head to foot. When she finally spoke, he did not know her voice, drained as it was of everything save horror.
“I thought—I thought I saw her move.”
“She did not move, I swear. She is exactly, absolutely as we found her. Tess, you must not tremble so. You will make yourself ill; God forgive me, I think that you are ill already. One moment only, and I will get you something to drink—a little brandy—”
“I won’t touch it. I couldn’t swallow it—it chokes me even when you talk about it. If Fay—if Fay hadn’t—if she hadn’t—” He could hear the clicking of her teeth, fighting to get the words out, but after a moment it ceased; she raised her head, pushed him gently from her, and said in a voice that was again her own, though so low that he had to bend his head to catch it:
“I’ve made a fool of myself again, haven’t I, darling? I don’t blame you for wanting to get rid of me, but I’m afraid you can’t just yet. Are those the things out of her bag? Wait, and I’ll help you pick them up.”
But Sheridan, standing like a barrier between her and the scattered contents of the little glittering bag, spoke in a voice so’ inflexible in its determination that this time she lifted startled eyes to him.
“Do not touch them. Tess, if you do not leave this room—if you do not get somewhere out of this atmosphere of death and terror that is eating into your heart—I swear to you that I will walk straight out of that door, and I will not come back. I have been already tonight ten kinds of a lunatic, but I am not the particular kind that will stand quietly by and let you kill yourself with fear. If you do not think that it is safe to go downstairs, and if you still wish me to clear up certain things tonight, we can try one of these other rooms. Where does this door lead?”
She murmured, with a tremulous smile:
“You’re being so angry because you’re trying to take care of me, aren’t you? I think I rather like being taken care of. That door leads to Fay’s room.”
“Would you prefer your own?”
“It doesn’t make any difference. Hers is more comfortable, I think, and it’s probably in better order. Wait, I’ll turn on the light.”
She went by him on feet so light and sure that he wondered why he had ever thought that she had been going to die of terror, there in the circle of his arms.… He heard the click of a switch and followed the light feet slowly.
Inside the room that had been Fay’s, all starry blue and crystal, the little silver-lacquer bed, swan-shaped and immaculate, stood waiting patiently, snowy pillows piled high, snowy coverlets turned back with exquisite precision. On the mirrored table beside it a lamp burned, frosty and serene. There were mirrors everywhere—over the great glittering dressing table that was a mirror in itself, over the mantel of carved crystal, between the tall windows with their silvery curtains.
Even the doors were mirrored, the crystal panels painted in garlands of blue and mauve and silver flowers that could have bloomed only in dreams. K, staring at the shining shelves with their burden of crystal trees and carved figures, jade and amethyst and tourmaline from far-away lands, felt suddenly chilled as that other, smaller Kay, wandering desolate through the Snow Queen’s palace. Of all the rooms that he had ever been in, this seemed to him the emptiest and the loneliest; not a picture, not a flower, not a book.
It wasn’t a room, of course; a room is a place where someone lives, and this was only a gallery of empty picture frames that would hang now forever empty. The only sign that a human being had passed through it before was the dash of coral made by a lipstick as it lay mirrored in the silver lake of the dressing table—and someone had forgotten to replace the stopper of one of the flasks shaped like a spray of lilies that stood beside it. It was the fragrance from the open flask that haunted the room—the ghost of flowers long since dead—cool, disturbing, and remote.
Even the intricate arrangement in the fireplace of the miniature white birch logs, delicate as lace, held no promise of warmth, and the silver brocaded pattern on the two deep chairs that flanked the fireplace shimmered like snow crystals.… The clock on the mantel ran carelessly up and down its little chime of silver bells four times; with an effort that astounded him, he lifted tired eyes to the quiet girl leaning against the mantel.
“Four o’clock,” he said gently. “So late—too late, my poor Tess. You will sit here?”
Still silent, she took the chair on which his hand rested, leaning back with a long shudder of utter weariness. For a moment, looking down at the lashes that rested on her cheeks like dark shadows of fatigue, he thought that she had slipped from him with the ease of an exhausted child into the blessed release of dreams—but a second later the lashes lifted, and as he saw the nails cutting deep into her palms, he realized that no more than the sword relaxed in its sheath could this pale child relax while life burned in her.
“Now, why didn’t I think of that myself?” she murmured, her mouth twisted to rueful mirth. “I’ve been wondering for ages what it was I wanted so desperately to do. Just to sit down—just to put my head back and close my eyes and take one long, long breath down to my heart—why didn’t you tell me before, K? And there’s another chair, by the way. Why not try it?”
He answered, gravely compassionate:
“Tess, before I take that other chair, think once again, will you not? If I stay now there are many things that I should ask you; things, I think, that it might hurt to answer, and it seems to me that in all truth you are too tired to be hurt any more. Shall I not go now, so that tonight you can rest? In the morning, if you need me, I give you my word that I will return at once.”
She said, not stirring:
“No, don’t go, please. Stay. In the morning, with all those people that you say will come, how could I see you? I’m sorry that I was such a coward, but I’m not afraid of being hurt. You can ask your questions.”
But he did not want to ask them. Renegade to all that those drilled and disciplined years had taught him on the score of the vital importance of the Case and the profound unimportance of the Individual, he wanted only to protect her—only to be sure that she should find some brief space of peace in the short time that remained between night and dawn.
“But I, you see,” he said slowly, “I am afraid of hurting you. You should have chosen a braver man to help you. Look—will this not do? I will fix for you now a sedative—a bromide—in the corner of the black bag there is a most admirable one that will give you, I can promise, several hours of good sleep. Tess, rest now, I beg of you, so that tomorrow will not be too hard to bear.”
She murmured, almost absently, her eyes on the crystal globe in which, the silver bells of Fay’s clock hung prisoned:
“I don’t think that I feel like resting just now, thanks. And I don’t think that I feel much like taking a—sedative, either.”
Standing motionless, he heard once more the far-off echo of her voice saying, “Yes—hyoscine. That’s a sedative, isn’t it?” and knew only too well why that word no longer spelt peace for her, but torment. Twice-damned fool to have forced her to remember! … He took his hand away sharply, turning from her a face so dark with the bitterness of defeat that she laid one hand on his arm, summoning again the smile that broke his heart.
“K, please, I hate to be tiresome and melodramatic again, but I do want rather badly to have you stay. I’d try to sleep, but I’m afraid to. That sounds stupid, I know. But it’s just that I’d rather have real things—even the most terrible ones—ahead of me, instead of the things that I might dream about. The only things that I’m really afraid of are dreams. Don’t go away, K—don’t let me dream. Pretty soon there’ll be light in the sky, and then I won’t mind so much. But don’t go now—don’t go now.”
Useless to tell himself that it was only the skilled investigator, the coolly detached scientist, that she was urging to stay by her in her need—not the lost playmate of a childhood distant a hundred years—not, surely, the infatuated young fool, lost up to his heart in the dreams that she dreaded.
Not lost so deep, however, that he could not turn as though for rest to the chair that she indicated; not lost so deep that he could not turn to her once more a face all courteous and controlled attention.
“You are wiser than I, as I have suspected more than once,” he told her. “Four o’clock—as you say, that is not a good hour to be awake—and alone. You have won; you shall have your questions.… Why did you say to me, Tess, that Fay had fifty men who would wish her dead? Were you trying to tell me by that that she was no more, no less, than a common blackmailer?”
“Oh, much more,” she said, “and much less. Blackmailing seems to me far too pretty a name for it. You risk something when you go in for blackmail, don’t you? But Fay never risked anything at all. Did you ever hear of a columnist called X?”
“I am afraid that I’ve never even heard of a columnist. Should I have?”
“You haven’t been long in America, have you, darling? And you make Vienna sound more enchanting than ever! Some columnists are simply privileged blackmailers. X is one of them; the most famous—and the most infamous. I suppose that he’s done as much harm as anyone in these United States. His column runs in hundreds of papers every day.”
“And Fay?”
“Oh, Fay’s one of the most talented of his spies.”
“I see.” Something in the brave, light scorn of the face that she turned so defiantly to his touched him more than any shamefaced evasion. Well, if she could face these ugly truths with such unflinching valor, so could he. “And this X—does no one know who he is?”
“I very much doubt it. I don’t believe that if anyone did know, X would be in a condition to conduct his column tomorrow.”
“As bad as all that, is it?”
He smiled grimly at the fierce, fastidious contempt in the low voice.
“Oh, a good deal worse than all that.”
“But why Fay, in the name of all that is decent and indecent? Why should Fay have supplied this jackal with his daily ration of carrion?”
She said in a singularly lifeless voice, her eyes intent on the patterns of her linked fingers:
“She needed the money.”
“The money? But, Tess, your father is many times a millionaire, surely. How is it possible that she could have needed money?”
“It does seem a little ridiculous, doesn’t it? But she hadn’t a cent. Dad cut off her allowance over a year ago when he found out that she was spending it principally on stuff to drink, and gambling; and since then she’d had nothing but charge accounts for her clothes. Not even a cent for a taxi.”
“Gambling, you say? Was that, then, this other thing that you told me was worse than the drinking?”
“No. No, that wasn’t gambling. I don’t think that gambling’s particularly revolting, do you? I should think that it might be rather fascinating, though I’ve never tried it long enough to make sure. But I can remember hearing the little Swedish governess saying to a new maid, while they were fixing up the nursery fire one night, that my mother would gamble the diamonds off her neck and the clothes off her body on anything from a race horse to a roulette wheel. It sounded rather lovely and reckless to me then—it does now. But Dad thinks that it’s worse than arson or bigamy. He nearly lost his mind when he found out that Fay was starting to do it. She came home drunk one night from the races in Baltimore, with the card still in her hand—and he swore that he’d cut the poison out of her veins if it killed them both. And he started out by cutting off her allowance.”
“And did that work?”
“Oh, yes,” she said gently. “I think that you could say it worked. She didn’t have any money, and I honestly think that she believed that Dad would kill her if he ever found her drunk again. So she started out to find a substitute for her allowance—and she found it in sending especially selected bits of offal to X’s column. And then she had to find a substitute for drink—something quiet and safe, that Dad wouldn’t know about—something that would make her feel straight up on the crest of the wave and still let her walk straight, and talk straight, and not run the risk of stumbling outside of Dad’s door, when he’d locked up the elevator so that she had to walk up three flights of stairs at four o’clock in the morning.… She found that, too.”
“You mean drugs, Tess?”
“What did you think I meant?” she asked, her voice a dead level. “Yes, drugs. Morphine, cocaine, heroin—anything she could put her hands on. She’d been trying out the lot of them for about two months when I came back from New York unexpectedly two weeks ago and caught her experimenting with a hypodermic. You were wondering about why I got the hyoscine, K. That’s why.”
“Yes. Why else should you possibly have had it? I am not proud of my record for intelligence tonight, believe me! You were trying to break her of the drug habit by its use?”
“She was trying to break herself of the habit. By the time I found her out she was scared to her bones and simply frantic with nerves—and she didn’t know how to stop.”
“But, Tess, how long had she been doing this?”
“Oh, not very long—not more than a month or so, I think. She started in at some slumming party that she and some of her delightful friends got up, and at first she was simply enchanted with the whole performance. I don’t think that any of them realized how far it was going—but it seems that Fay was abnormally susceptible.” After a moment of silence, she said bitterly, “She was abnormally susceptible to anything that was bad for her.”
“So then you got the hyoscine, Tess—and she proved again abnormally susceptible?”
“Yes. I only gave her a hundredth of a grain the first night, but she was really hysterical, and it sent her temperature up two or three degrees and made her heart bang dreadfully. We were both pretty badly frightened, and I put it away in my medicine cabinet and told her I wouldn’t let her try it again until I’d managed to get some medical advice. And last week she started in drinking again.”
“It is true that some people are affected that way exactly, though it is not usual. But you, Tess, how in heaven’s name did you know of the hyoscine treatment?”
Had he imagined that there was a swift flicker of lashes over the clear candor of her eyes? Her voice followed so promptly on it that it was impossible to tell.
“Oh, there’s been quite a lot about it in the papers here. Someone from a foundation in New York got a prize for work that he’d done on it as a sedative in treating the drug habit.”
“And you had no difficulty in obtaining it?”
“Very little.”
“Extraordinary country! You mean that you can get it without a prescription?”
“I don’t know. I should think that it might be complicated. At any rate, I didn’t need a prescription.”
“I see. You did not get it at a drugstore.”
“No. I didn’t get it at a drugstore. And I can’t tell you where I did get it, so it’s no use asking me. I gave my word of honor not to.”
“You realize, of course, that it might be an exceedingly important clue?”
“Might it?” she asked wearily. “I don’t think so, honestly. But even if it were I’m afraid that it wouldn’t make any difference. I have a fairly liberal code of ethics, but I don’t break my word of honor.”
The clock on the mantel rang a silvery warning, and he glanced up at it mechanically.
“No. I can see that, too. Well then, Tess, that is that, is it not? I have learned quite enough tonight to keep me very busy indeed tomorrow. And if you will permit me once more to give one good look about that room, I believe that I will have found out all that can be discovered at present, and I can even show you a small light in the sky to befriend you after I have gone. You will wait in here, naturally. I have your permission?”
She rose, already on her feet before he had moved.
“Of course I’m coming, too—there’s something I want to make sure of. Didn’t you say that it was awfully important to find out what the hyoscine was put into?”
“It is important, certainly, but not important enough to have you return to that room again. Nothing is important enough for that.”
She said, her voice once more filled with that strange, deep serenity that had riveted his attention the first time that he heard it:
“I’m not afraid of the room any more. I’ve always known, underneath, that the hardest things at the time are the easiest things in the end. I don’t know why I forgot it tonight. K, could someone have given her that stuff in black coffee?”
“Black coffee!” He smote his hands together in a sudden flare of enlightenment. “Tess, I believe that now you have hit it! Good, strong, black coffee—with many lumps of sugar in it to hide the bitterness. Did she take it often at night—and one cup or many cups? What was her habit?”
Tess shook her head absently.
“It wasn’t a habit. Even with quantities of sugar in it, it was too bitter for her. But I’ve made her take it twice, when she’d absolutely made up her mind to go on to some party and wasn’t in any condition to go on, to put it mildly. It pulled her together quite a lot.… I thought we might see whether anyone had been using the percolator in the kitchenette.”
“The kitchenette. Will you tell me why in the name of the good Lord I have not thought of that kitchenette? You would prove more of a credit to the Criminalistic Institute than I, I believe. Let us see what the kitchenette will tell us about this unknown guest!”
But the kitchenette, apparently, was going to tell them precisely nothing. There it stood, behind the door opposite the study fireplace, blandly presenting for their inspection an interior as immaculate, as noncommittal, and, curiously, as ominous as an operating room. And there stood the percolator, its two great bubbles of glass swinging clear and shining on its silver pedestal; there, in glittering files, hung the racks of polished knives and spoons and an array of miniature aluminum pots and pans with jet-black knobs; there stood the electric refrigerator, severely chaste and classic, and a black-and-chromium sink that was a tribute to modernity. Sheridan, eyeing with marked distaste the general effect of order that had not been disturbed since the flood, lifted his hand to the black-and-white checked dishcloth and withdrew it moodily.
“Dry as a bone.… Where do you put the dish towels that you have used, Tess?”
“There, in that hamper under the sink.”
He inspected it almost perfunctorily, replacing the lid over the vacuum that it revealed with unconcealed displeasure.
“And the things that are not dish towels—orange peels, for instance, or coffee grounds?”
“In the black enamel bucket—the lid opens if you step on that tread on the side.”
The lid opened, and closed with a distinct clang.
“Empty,” said the policeman from Vienna bitterly. “The coffee is ruled out, I fear.… Tess, when in heaven’s name is this kitchen ever used? It looks like one that you see shining out at you from a store window.”
“Oh, I use it quite often myself,” she assured him with a pale smile. “Four of us were here only last night after the theater, and I made a salad and some toasted cheese sandwiches. The servants always see that it’s stocked with half a dozen fresh eggs, and some fruit and lettuce, and butter and cream and cheese. But of course the maid cleans everything up-when she straightens the rooms in the morning. That’s why it looks so beautifully tidy.”
Sheridan went past her to the refrigerator, opening the door.
“Ice cubes—both trays frozen,” he reported. “A basket of assorted fruit, two kinds of cheese, watercress, five eggs. Now why, Tess, five eggs? Did you not say six?”
She moved swiftly to his side, her eyes incredulous.
“But there are—there are six eggs, K! I noticed them myself, this morning, when I came in to see whether some flowers I’d left there last night were fresh enough to wear for luncheon.”
“Well, now there are five, as you can see. What, I wonder, has happened to our sixth egg?”
She stood staring down at them blankly, and then, light breaking over her face in a great wave, caught swiftly at his arm.
“Oh,” she cried vibrantly, “oh, oh, what a fool! It was that, of course—not the coffee. She was going to make one only a few nights ago, but there wasn’t any Worcestershire—”
He said quietly:
“If there is any fool here, I can tell you where he stands. A pick-me-up, of course. The only perfect medium, since you must take it at one gulp. Was it—what did we call that thrice-infernal thing that we consumed at Cambridge?—was it a prairie oyster?”
“I don’t know. Bill Stirling gave her one the other night, and she said it worked like a charm and that you hardly noticed it at all if you swallowed it quickly. It was a raw egg with lots of Cayenne and Worcestershire, and then you floated it in brandy to hide the taste.”
“We omitted the brandy in our day,” commented Sheridan grimly, “but the rest of it sounds appallingly familiar.”
“But, K, how on earth could he get rid of the eggshell? It isn’t in the bucket, is it?”
“No, it’s not in the bucket. But it doesn’t take long to wrap an eggshell in a handkerchief—a handkerchief that has first been used to wipe dry a glass—nor to put the handkerchief safe back in a pocket.”
“No. No, it wouldn’t, of course. Well, we can check up on the brandy, too. There was only half an inch or so left, in the bottle—we drank the rest last night—and if that’s gone now—”
She was by him in a flash, and even before he had reached her she had lifted the dark bottle from the cupboard and was holding it high against the light.
“Look, K, it’s empty! Then that settles that, doesn’t it?”
“It does indeed.” He moved towards the love seat, where Fay’s gleaming bag still lay near the hearth, its gay contents scattered in half a dozen directions, and knelt to collect them, a curious expression on his face. “Amongst other things it should settle conclusively my value to you as—should I say—a collaborator? Suppose that I leave you that black bag, Tess, and let you continue what I consider a very promising career as a detective without my somewhat misguided attempts at assistance?”
“Now,” said Tess Stuart, putting the empty bottle back on the cupboard shelf and closing the door on it with a gesture that combined irritation and despair, “you’re behaving like an extremely spoiled and cross little boy. You know perfectly well that the only times I’ve been of the slightest assistance were when I knew something about inside facts—like this brandy bottle, and the hyoscine. I don’t think I like you half as well when you go around flourishing inferiority complexes as though they were banners.… What’s that funny red thing in your hand?”
Sheridan, still feeling like the outraged head of the fifth grade who has just been spelled off his feet by a yellow pig-tailed upstart from the kindergarten, extended the small, ruby-colored square of glass for her inspection.
“That is precisely what I was about to ask you. You have never seen it before?”
She inspected the small object conscientiously, a critical frown between the dark-feathered, level brows.… A square inch of deep red glass bound with a fine line of black tape.
“No, never. What in the world do you think it is?”
“I cannot think. Somewhere, sometime, I have seen its mate, I believe—but so long ago that only a glimmer comes back like the light of an ornament on a Christmas tree. It could not have been on a dress, you think—a clasp on the belt of some masquerade costume?”
“No, no—I’m sure it wasn’t. It’s far too clumsy; and look, there’s nothing to fasten it on with.”
“As you say. Well, since we two have decided to be lawbreakers, let us be good liberal ones. I think that I will take this little red square that makes me think of Christmas trees along with me when I go. Maybe later it will make me think of other things.”
He took an envelope from his vest pocket, slipped the glass into it, and returned it with a somewhat disquieting expression.
“To be on the other side of the great wall of the law—that has in it distinct elements of novelty, I confess! Well, then, Tess, we are done, are we not? There is the mirror, the notebook, this foot of lace and inch of linen that you who are women call a handkerchief, the lipstick, vanity, and chain purse. Everything, I believe, but our red glass.”
He snapped the jeweled clasp of the purse and started to rise, when something caught his eye, and he bent closer, alert and tense.
“When did you say this room was put in order, Tess?”
“Sometime between noon and lunchtime, as a rule. Why? What is it?”
“It is given a thorough cleaning then?”
“Thorough? It’s given the usual going over with a duster and a carpet sweeper. Two or three mornings a week it’s vacuum-cleaned, too.”
“You are quite sure of that? There is no chance that it might be omitted?”
“Naturally I’m sure. Why should it be omitted?”
“Have you had anyone in this room today, Tess?”
“So far as I know, no one has been in the room since it was cleaned except Fay, you, and I—and one other person. And it was most certainly cleaned this morning, because I happened to hear the upper housemaid, Rose, with the vacuum cleaner, and I called out to be sure to throw out the dead flowers on the kitchenette sink. Now will you tell me what you’re staring at through that glass?”
“Most assuredly. There are marks here on the carpet, Tess—four round little indentations, quite sharp and clear. They are directly opposite the place where Fay was sitting, but some distance away—roughly, perhaps three feet. I am quite sure that those marks were made by someone fairly heavy sitting in a chair with small, tapering feet—and sitting there for some time. The pile of the carpet is quite sharply depressed. You see, I think that this person who was sitting there was our unknown visitor, Tess—but I wonder just why that chair was so far from the love seat opposite?”
Tess, schooled by now to the feminine wisdom of thinking neither too hard nor too fast, murmured docilely:
“I wonder, too.”
“There might be one very excellent reason, of course. Let us see if we can make conjecture fit these little marks.”
He rose, replaced the brocade bag on the love seat, and moved thoughtfully towards the black bag, from which he again extracted the steel tape measure. His eyes remained preoccupied even after he had measured the spaces between the little marks, and subjected the carpet between them and the love seat to a severe scrutiny with the magnifying glass that he took from his pocket. It was only then that he lifted his head with a smile that flashed triumph to her like a greeting.
“They are there, Tess—those other four marks—quite faint, but when you know where to look you will see them clearly. So, then, they were playing some game. Not bridge, since there were only two who played—and, also, the marks that the table feet have left are a little closer together than those of a regulation card table. What then? Russian bank, perhaps? Chess? No, no, I have it—backgammon! That is what you call that game on the table near the door, is it not?”
“Yes. Don’t you play it in Europe?”
“It is possible, but I have not heard of it. I do not have much time for games, alas, but I can remember seeing in my grandfather’s castle an old fruit-wood table with an inlaid pattern like yours.… Now who in Washington plays backgammon, Tess?”
“Oh, every mother’s son and daughter of us! It’s dying out in some parts of the country, I’ve heard, but here everyone’s still mad about it.”
“All those at the dinner tonight, for instance?”
For a moment he could see mirrored in the gray eyes, clear and shining as spring rain, the gay wreath of faces about Cara Temple’s mirrored table.
“All of them but Noll Parrish, and he’s taking lessons. You simply can’t turn that backgammon table into a clue, K.”
“Can I not? Clues are not things that come running when you whistle for them, Tess. Clues are little things that lie almost under your eyes, almost under your hand, camouflaged as skillfully as those great guns in the war—guns big enough to blow a world to pieces, and yet quite invisible unless you know where to look for them-—and from what angle. That is why we will have a look at that backgammon table, I think. Who knows, we may find a clue no larger than your fingernail—yet large enough to blow a world to pieces? Let us make quite sure that it is not there.”
He started to rise, the measure still in his hand, and paused, riveted, one knee to the floor, his eyes on the dark shadow beneath the love seat.
“Now how in the name of wonder did that thing get there?”
He extracted the minute object and rose, staring down at it speculatively as it lay in the brown cup of his hand.
“What is it?” she asked curiously—but no curiosity concerning heaven, hell, or earth could again move Tess Stuart one inch closer to that love seat tonight.
“God knows. A little green stick no larger than a match. It looks as though it were made of some kind of semiprecious stone. Wait, here is a light to see it better.”
She moved towards the lamp near the door. All that space between her and the fireplace—that was better.
“Oh, I don’t need a light; I know perfectly what it is. It’s one of Fay’s backgammon markers. You keep score with them, you know. The rest ought to be over here on the table. Probably it dropped off when—when someone was moving it.”
“No, when I knelt to get the glass, it was not there, I can swear. Perhaps it fell when we moved the love seat forward. That would account for the fact that it was under the love seat.”
Tess, her eyes on the backgammon table, murmured:
“But, K, the markers aren’t here! That’s strange, isn’t it? She always keeps them right in this corner of the table.”
“Perhaps the person who put them away did not know that—perhaps even he did not put them away,” he said, and though his voice was carefully unstressed, even in his ears it had a sinister ring. “They may have slipped beneath the cushions somehow.” He saw her flinch at that, and added swiftly, “We will not look further tonight, of course. But tomorrow—later tomorrow—will you have the maid make a thorough search? I would like if possible to see them. They came in some kind of a container, I suppose?”
“Yes. A little round box of tooled leather.”
“And you are quite sure that this is one of Fay’s?”
He held it close to the lamp, and she turned wearily towards it.
“Of course. You said it was green stone, didn’t you? As a matter of fact it’s made of—” Her voice checked, and he glanced up swiftly at the still face bending above it. For a second—no, for a fraction of a second—it was stamped with a look that he could find no name for. What was it? Amazement? Incredulity? Anger? Terror? It was gone even while he searched for a word, and the lovely face lifted steadily to his. “It’s made of malachite,” she said. “I gave it to her last month on her birthday.”
Last month. And she had been nineteen. And she was dead.… Well, for tonight he was through with thumbscrews!
“See, my poor Tess,” he said gently. “There is your dawn coming in at the window. Now shall I not wish you sleep to keep you well companioned, and courage to face the day that has come? I would wish you sweet dreams, but you will have none of them.”
“No,” she said. “No dreams.… I wish that I could find some words to thank you.”
“I do not very greatly care for words. Those in your eyes put me deeply in your debt. Will you promise me that you will not come again into this room until you have someone to come with you?”
She said, her hand on the door to her room:
“Yes, I’m glad you made me promise. I’ll take a book and read. No, not the one—not the one on the love seat. Give me that little brown leather one—there, near your hand.”
“The good Herrick?”
He carried it to her with a little smile. Almost everything she did amazed him and yet seemed as inevitable as it was strange.
“Yes—you like him, too, don’t you? He sings about lovely things—glowworms and primroses, spring mornings and summer nights.… It’s good to remember that those things didn’t die when Herrick did. Good-night, K.”
“No, I will wait till your door is closed,” he said, “and until I hear it lock. Then I will turn out the light there in the hall and set back the latch on the door downstairs as I go out. Till tomorrow night, then, Tess?”
“Till tomorrow night—yes.”
He stood waiting, motionless, until he heard the faint click of the latch, and then without a backward glance at the strange world of terror and beauty that lay behind him, he crossed to the door that led to the hall, and closing it so carefully that there was no sound from it at all, he stood leaning against the wall for a little space, his eyes closed. After a moment he stirred, lifted his hand to the dangling chain that extinguished the light, and drawing a long breath, turned his face steadfastly to the darkness that lay before him.
All the way down the stairs, he could feel the backgammon marker in his hand, small and cold and smooth as the bone of a fairy skeleton.… He could still feel it after the great door had swung to behind him.