SPIDER

“BUT IT IS FANTASTIC,” SAID SUSAN Dare, clutching the telephone. “You can’t just be afraid. You’ve got to be afraid of something.” She waited, but there was no reply.

“You mean,” she said presently, in a hushed voice, “that I’m to go to this perfectly strange house, to be the guest of a perfectly strange woman”

“To you,” said Jim Byrne. “Not, I tell you, to me.”

“But you said you had never seen her—”

“Don’t maunder,” said Jim Byrne sharply. “Of course I’ve never seen her. Now, Susan, do try to get this straight. This woman is Caroline Wray. One of the Wrays.”

“Perfectly clear,” said Susan. “Therefore I’m to go to her house and see why she’s got an attack of nerves. Take a bag and prepare to spend the next few days as her guest. I’m sorry, Jim, but I’m busy. I’ve got to do a murder story this week and—”

“Sue,” said Jim, “I’m serious.”

Susan paused abruptly. He was serious.

“It’s—I don’t know how to explain it, Susan,” he said. “It’s just—well, I’m Irish, you know. And I’m—fey. Don’t laugh.”

“I’m not laughing,” said Susan. “Tell me exactly what you want me to do.”

“Just—watch things. There ought not to be any danger—don’t see how there could be. To you.”

Susan realized that she was going. “How many Wrays are there, and what do you think is going to happen?”

“There are four Wrays. But I don’t know what is going on that has got Caroline so terrified. It was that—the terror in her voice—that made me call you.”

“What’s the number of the house?” said Susan.

He told her. “It’s away north,” he said. “One of those old houses—narrow, tall, hasn’t changed, I suppose, since old Ephineas Wray died. He was a close friend, you know, of my father’s. Don’t know why Caroline called me: I suppose some vague notion that a man on a newspaper would know what to do. Now let me see—there’s Caroline. She’s the daughter of Ephineas Wray. David is his grandson and Caroline’s nephew and the only man—except the houseman—in the place. He’s young—in his twenties, I believe. His father and mother died when he was a child.”

“You mean there are three women?”

“Naturally. There’s Marie—she is old Wray’s adopted daughter—not born a Wray, but more like him than the rest of them. And Jessica—she’s Caroline’s cousin; but she’s always lived with the Wrays because her father died young. People always assume that the three women are sisters. Actually, of course, they are not. But old Ephineas Wray left his fortune divided equally among them.”

“And they all live there together?”

“Yes. David’s not married.”

“Is that,” said Susan, at the note of finality in his voice, “all you know about them?”

“Absolutely everything. Not much for you to go on, is it? It was just,” said Jim Byrne soberly, with the effect of a complete explanation, “that she was so—so horribly scared. Old Caroline, I mean.”

Susan retraced the address slowly before she said again: “What was she afraid of?”

“I don’t know,” said Jim Byrne. “And—it’s queer—but I don’t think she knew either.”

It was approaching five o’clock, with a dark fog rolling up from the lake and blending itself with the early winter twilight, when Susan Dare pressed the bell beside the wide old door—pressed it and waited. Lights were on in the street, but the house before her was dark, its windows curtained. The door was heavy and secretive.

But they were expecting her—or at least Caroline Wray was; it had all been arranged by telephone. Susan wondered what Caroline had told them; what Jim Byrne had told Caroline to say to explain her presence; and, suddenly, what Caroline was like.

“Little Johnny hung his sister.

She was dead before they missed her. Johnny’s always up to tricks,

Ain’t he cute, and only six—”

The jingle had been haunting her with the persistency of a popular dance tune, and it gave accent to the impatient little beat of her brown oxford upon the stone step. Then a light flashed on above the door. Susan took a deep breath of the moist cold air and felt a sudden tightening of her nerves. The door was going to open.

It swung wider, and a warm current of air struck Susan’s cheeks. Beyond was a dimly lit hall and a woman’s figure—a tall, corseted figure with full sweeping skirts.

“Yes?” said a voice harshly out of the dimness.

“I am Susan Dare,” said Susan.

“Oh—oh, yes.” The figure moved aside and the door opened wider. “Come in, Miss Dare. We were expecting you.”

Afterward Susan remembered her own hesitation on the dark threshold as the door closed with finality behind her, and the woman turned.

“I am Miss Jessica Wray,” she said.

Jessica. This was the cousin, then.

She was a tall woman, large-boned, with a heavy, dark face, thick, iron-gray hair done high and full on her head, and long, strong hands. She was dressed after a much earlier fashion; one which, indeed, Susan was unable to date.

“We were expecting you,” she said. “Caroline, however, was obliged to go out.” She paused just under the light and beside a long mirror.

Susan had a confused impression of the house, in that moment; an impression of old, crowded elegance. The mirror was wavery and framed in wide gilt; there were ferns in great marble urns; there were marble figures.

“We’ll go up to your room,” said Jessica. “Caroline said you would be in Chicago for several days. This way. You can leave your bag here. James will take it up later; he is out just now.”

Susan put down her small suitcase, and followed Jessica. The newel post and stair rail were heavy and carved. The steps were carpeted and thickly padded. And the house was utterly, completely still. As they ascended the quiet stairs it grew increasingly hot and airless.

At the top of the stairs Jessica turned with a rigid motion of her strong body.

“Will you wait here a moment?” she said. “I’m not sure which room—”

Susan made some assenting gesture, and Jessica turned along the passage which ran toward the rear of the house.

So terrifically hot the house was. So crowded with old and almost sentient furniture. So very silent.

Susan moved a bit restively. It was not a pleasant house. But Caroline had to be afraid of something—not just silence and heat and brooding, secretive old walls. She glanced down the length of hall, moved again to put her hand upon the tall newel post of the stair rail beside her. The carved top of it seemed to shift and move slightly under the pressure of her hand and confirmed in the strangest way her feeling that the house itself had a singular kind of life.

Then she was staring straight ahead of her through an open, lighted doorway. Beyond it was a large room, half bedroom and half sitting room. A lamp on a table cast a circle of light, and beside the table, silhouetted against the light, sat a woman with a book in her lap.

It must be Marie Wray—the older sister; the adopted Wray who was more like old Ephineas Wray than any of them. Her face was in shadow with the light beyond it, so Susan could see only a blunt, fleshy white profile and a tight knot of shining black hair above a massive black silk bosom. She did not, apparently, know of Susan’s presence, for she did not turn. There was a kind of patience about that massive, relaxed figure; a waiting. An enormous black female spider waiting in a web of shadows. But waiting for what?

The suggestion was not one calculated to relieve the growing tension of Susan’s nerves. The heat was making her dizzy; fanciful. Calling a harmless old woman a black spider merely because she was wearing a shiny black silk dress! Marie Wray still, so far as Susan could see, did not look at her, but there was suddenly the flicker of a motion on the table.

Susan looked and caught her breath in an incredulous little gasp.

There was actually a small gray creature on that table, directly under the lamplight. A small gray creature with a long tail. It sat down nonchalantly, pulled the lid off a box and dug its tiny hands into the box.

“It’s a monkey,” thought Susan with something like a clutch of hysteria. “It’s a monkey—a spider monkey, is it?—with that tiny face.”

It was turning its face jerkily about the room, peering with bright, anxious eyes here and there, and busily, furiously eating candy. It failed somehow to see Susan; or perhaps she was too far away to interest it. There was suddenly something curiously unreal about the scene. That, thought Susan, or the heat in this fantastic house, and turned at the approaching rustle of skirts down the passage. It was Jessica, and she looked at Susan and then through the open doorway and smiled coldly.

“Marie is deaf,” she said. “I suppose she didn’t realize you were here.”

“No,” said Susan.

“I’ll tell her—” She made a stiff gesture with her long hand and turned to enter the room beyond the open door. As her gray silk rustled through the door the little monkey jerked around, gave her one piercing black glance and was gone from the table in a swift gray streak. He fled across the room, darted under an old sofa.

But Jessica did not reprove him. “Marie,” she said loudly and distinctly.

There was a pause. Jessica’s flowing gray silk skirts were now silhouetted against the table lamp, and the monkey absently began to lick its paw.

“Yes, Jessica.” The voice was that of a person long deaf—entirely without tone.

“Susan Dare is here—you know—the daughter of Caroline’s friend. Do you want to see her?”

“See her? No. No, not now. Later.”

“Very well. Do you want anything?”

“No.”

“Your cushions?”

Jessica’s rigid back bent over Marie as she arranged a cushion. Then she turned and walked again toward Susan. Susan felt queerly fascinated and somehow oddly shocked to note that, as Jessica turned her rigid back to the room, the monkey darted out from under the sofa and was suddenly skittering across the room again in the direction of the table and the candy.

He would be, thought Susan, one very sick monkey. The house was too hot, and yet Susan shivered a bit. Why did people keep monkeys?

“This way,” said Jessica firmly, and Susan preceded her down the hall and into exactly the kind of bedroom she might have expected it to be.

But Jessica did not intend to leave her alone to explore its Victorian fastnesses. Under her somewhat unnerving dark gaze, Susan removed her cock-eyed little hat, smoothed back her light hair and put her coat across a chair, only to have it placed immediately by Jessica in the enormous gloomy wardrobe. The servants, said Jessica, were out; the second girl and James because it was their half day out, the cook to do an errand.

“You are younger than I should have expected,” she said abruptly to Susan. “Shall we go down now?”

As they passed down the stairs to the drawing room, a clock somewhere struck slowly, with long trembling variations.

“Five,” said Jessica. “Caroline ought to return very soon. And David. He usually reaches home shortly after five. That is, if it isn’t rainy. Traffic sometimes delays him. But it isn’t rainy tonight!”

“Foggy,” said Susan and obeyed the motion of Jessica’s long gray hand toward a chair. It was not, however, a comfortable chair. And neither were the moments that followed comfortable, for Jessica sat sternly erect in a chair opposite Susan, folded her hands firmly in her silk lap and said exactly nothing. Susan started to speak a time or two, thought better of it, and herself sat in rather rigid silence. And was suddenly aware that she was acutely receptive to sight and sound and feeling.

It was not a pleasant sensation.

For she felt queerly as if the lives that were living themselves out in that narrow old house were pressing in upon her—as if long-spoken words and long-stifled whispers were living yet in the heated air.

She stirred restively and tried not to think of Marie Wray. Queer how difficult it was, once having seen Marie and heard her speak, not to think of that brooding figure—sitting in its web of shadows, waiting.

Three old women living in an old house. What were their relations to one another? Two of them she had seen and had heard speak, and knew no more of them than she had known. What about Caroline—the one who was afraid? She stirred again and knew Jessica was watching her.

They heard the bell, although it rang in some back part of the house. Jessica looked satisfied and rose.

“It’s David,” she said. At the door into the hall she added in a different tone: “And I suppose Caroline, too.”

Susan knew she was tense. Yet there was nothing in that house for her—Susan Dare—to fear. It was Caroline who was afraid.

Then another woman stood in the doorway. Caroline, no doubt. A tall slender woman, a blonde who had faded into tremulous, wispy uncertainty. She did not speak. Her eyes were large and blue and feverish, and two bright pink spots fluttered in her thin cheeks, and her bare thin hands moved. Susan rose and went to her and took the two hands.

“But you’re so young,” said Caroline. Disappointment throbbed in her voice.

“I’m not really,” said Susan.

“And so little—” breathed Caroline.

“But that doesn’t matter at all,” said Susan, speaking slowly, as one does to a nervous child. There were voices in the hall, but she was mainly aware of Caroline.

“No, I suppose not,” said Caroline, finally looking into Susan’s eyes. Terrified, Jim had said. Curious how right Jim managed to be.

Caroline’s eyes sought into Susan’s, and she was about to speak when there was a rustle in the doorway. Caroline’s uncertain lips closed in a kind of gasp, and Jessica swept into the room.

“But I must know what she’s afraid of,” thought Susan. “I must get her alone—away from Jessica.”

“Take off your coat, Caroline,” said Jessica. “Don’t stand there. I see you’ve spoken to Susan Dare. Put away your hat and coat and then come down again.”

“Yes, Jessica,” said Caroline. Her hands were moving again, and she looked away.

“Go on,” said Jessica. Her voice was not sharp, it was merely undefeatable.

“Yes, Jessica,” said Caroline.

“Marie is reading,” said Jessica. “You needn’t speak to her now unless you wish to do so. You may take Susan Dare in to see her later.”

“Yes, Jessica.”

Caroline disappeared and in her place stood a man, and Susan was murmuring words of acknowledgment to Jessica’s economical introduction.

David, too, was blond, and his eyes were darkly blue. He was slender and fairly tall; his mouth was fine and sensitive, and there was a look about his temples and around his eyes that was—Susan sought for the word and found it—wistful. He was young and strong and vibrant—the only young thing in the house—but he was not happy. Susan knew that at once. He said:

“How do you do, Miss Dare?”

“Don’t go upstairs yet, David,” said Jessica. Her voice was less harsh, she watched him avidly. “You ought to rest.”

“Not now, Aunt Jessica. I’ll see you again, Miss Dare.”

He walked away. “Aunt Marie all right?” he called from the stairway.

“Perfectly,” said Jessica. Her voice was harsh again. “She’s reading—”

Afterward Susan tried to remember whether she could actually hear David’s steps upon the padded stairs or whether she was only half consciously calculating the time it took to climb the stairs—the time it took, or might have taken to walk along the hall, to enter a room. She was sure that Jessica did not speak. She merely sat there.

Why did Jessica become rigid and harsh again when David spoke of Marie? Why did—

A loud, dreadful crash of sound forever shattered the silence in the house. It fell upon Susan and immersed her and shook the whole house and then receded in waves. Waves that left destruction and intolerable confusion.

Susan realized dimly that she was on her feet and trying to move toward the stairway, and that Jessica’s mouth was gray, and that Jessica’s hands were clutching her.

“Oh, my God—David—” said Jessica intelligibly, and pushed the woman away from her.

She reached the stairway, Jessica beside her, and at the top of the stairs two figures were locked together and struggling in the upper hall.

“Caroline,” screamed Jessica. “What are you doing? Where’s Marie—where—”

“Let me go, Caroline!” David was pulling Caroline’s thin clutching arms from around him. “Let me go, I tell you. Something terrible has happened. You must—”

Jessica brushed past them and then was at the door of Marie’s room.

“It’s Marie!” she cried harshly. “Who shot her?”

Susan was vaguely conscious of Caroline’s sobbing breaths and of David’s shoulder pressing against her own. Somehow they had all got to that open doorway and were crowding there together.

It was Marie.

She sat in the same chair in which she’d been sitting when Susan saw her so short a time ago. But her head had fallen forward, her whole body crumpled grotesquely into black silk folds.

Jessica was the first to enter the room. Then David. Susan, feeling sick and shaken, followed. Only Caroline remained in the doorway, clinging to the casing with thin hands, her face like chalk and her lips blue.

“She’s been shot,” said Jessica. “Straight through the heart.” Then she looked at David. “Did Caroline kill her, David?”

“Caroline kill Marie! Why Caroline couldn’t kill anything!” he cried.

“Then who killed her?” said Jessica. “You realize, don’t you, that she’s dead?”

Her dark gaze probed deeper and she said in a grating whisper: “Did you kill her, David?”

“No!” cried David. “No!”

“She’s dead,” said Jessica.

Susan said as crisply as she could: “Why don’t you call a doctor?”

Jessica’s silk rustled, and she turned to give Susan a long cold look. “There’s no need to call a doctor. Obviously she’s dead.”

“The police, then,” said Susan softly. “Obviously, too—she’s been murdered.”

“The police,” cried Jessica scornfully. “Turn over my own cousin—my own nephew—to the police. Never.”

“I’ll call them,” Susan said crisply, and whirled and left them with their dead.

On the silent stairway her knees began to shake again. So this was what the house had been waiting for. Murder! And this was why Caroline had been afraid. What, then, had she known? Where was the revolver that had shot Marie? There was nothing of the kind to be seen in the room.

The air was hot—the house terribly still—and she, Susan Dare, was hunting for a telephone—calling a number—talking quite sensibly on the whole—and all the time it was entirely automatic action on her part. It was automatic, even when she called and found Jim Byrne.

“I’m here,” she said. “At the Wrays’ Marie has been murdered—”

“My God!” said Jim and slammed up the receiver.

The house was so hot. Susan sat down weakly on the bottom step and huddled against the newel post and felt extremely ill. If she were really a detective, of course, she would go straight upstairs and wring admissions out of them while they were shaken and confused and before they’d had time to arrange their several defenses. But she wasn’t a detective, and she had no wish to be, and all she wanted just then was to escape. Something moved in the shadows under the stairs—moved. Susan flung her hands to her throat to choke back a scream, and the little monkey whirled out, peered at her worriedly, then darted up the window curtain and sat nonchalantly on the heavy wooden rod.

Her coat and hat were upstairs. She couldn’t go out into the cold and fog without them—and Jim Byrne was on the way. If she could hold out till he got there—

David was coming down the stairs.

“She says it’s all right to call the police,” he said in a tight voice.

“I’ve called them.”

He looked down at her and suddenly sat on the bottom step beside her.

“It’s been hell,” he said quite simply. “But I didn’t think of—murder.” He stared at nothing, and Susan could not bear the look of horror on his young face.

“I understand,” she said, wishing she did understand.

“I didn’t,” he said. “Until—just lately. I knew—oh, since I was a child I’ve known I must—”

“Must what?” said Susan gravely.

He flushed quickly and was white again.

“Oh, it’s a beastly thing to say. I was the only—child, you know. And I grew up knowing that I dared have no—no favorite—you see? If there’d been more of us—or if the aunts had married and had their own children—but I didn’t understand how—how violent—” the word stopped in his throat, and he coughed and went on—“how strongly they felt—”

“Who?”

“Why, Aunt Jessica, of course. And Aunt Marie. And Aunt Caroline.”

“Too many aunts,” said Susan dryly. “What was it they were violent about?”

“The house. And each other. And—and other things. Oh, I’ve always known, but it was all—hidden, you know. The surface was—all right.”

Susan groped through the fog. The surface was all right, he’d said. But the fog parted for a rather sickening instant and gave her an ugly glimpse of an abyss below.

“Why was Caroline afraid?” said Susan.

“Caroline?” he said, staring at her. “Afraid!” His blue eyes were brilliant with anxiety and excitement. “See here,” he said, “if you think it was Caroline who killed Marie, it wasn’t. She couldn’t. She’d never have dared. I m-mean—” he was stammering in his excitement—“I mean, Caroline wouldn’t hurt a fly. And Caroline wouldn’t have opposed Marie about anything. Marie—you don’t know what Marie was like.”

“Exactly what happened in the upstairs hall?”

“You mean—when the shot—”

“Yes.”

“Why, I—I was in my room—no, not quite—I was nearly at the door. And I heard the shot. And it’s queer, but I believe—I believe I knew right away that it was a revolver shot. It was as if I had expected—” he checked himself. “But I hadn’t expected—I—” he stopped; dug his fists desperately into his pockets and was suddenly firm and controlled—“but I hadn’t actually expected it, you understand.”

“Then when you heard the shot you turned, I suppose, and looked.”

“Yes. Yes, I think so. Anyway, there was Caroline in the hall, too. I think she was screaming. We were both running. I thought of Marie—I don’t know why. But Caroline clutched at me and held me. She didn’t want me to go into Marie’s room. She was terrified. And then I think you were there and Jessica. Were you?”

“Yes. And there was no one else in the hall? No one came from Marie’s room?”

His face was perplexed, terribly puzzled.

“Nobody.”

“Except—Caroline?”

“But I tell you it couldn’t have been Caroline.”

The doorbell began to ring—shrill sharp peals that stabbed the shadows and the thickness of the house.

“It’s the police,” thought Susan, catching her breath sharply. The boy beside her had straightened and was staring at the wide old door that must be opened.

Behind them on the padded stairway something rustled. “It’s the police,” said Jessica harshly. “Let them in.”

Susan had not realized that there would be so many of them. Or that they would do so much. Or that an inquiry could last so long. She had not realized either how amazingly thorough they were with their photographs and their fingerprinting and their practised and rapid and incredibly searching investigation. She was a little shocked and more than a little awed, sheerly from witnessing at first hand and with her own eyes what police actually did when there was murder.

Yet her own interview with Lieutenant Mohrn was not difficult. He was brisk, youthful, kind, and Jim Byrne was there to explain her presence. She had been very thankful to see Jim Byrne, who arrived on the heels of the police.

“Tell the police everything you know,” he had said.

“But I don’t know anything.”

And it was Lieutenant Mohrn who, oddly enough, brought Susan into the very center and hub of the whole affair.

But that was later—much later. After endless inquiry, endless search, endless repetitions, endless conferences. Endless waiting in the gloomy dining room with portraits of dead and vanished Wrays staring fixedly down upon policemen. Upon Susan. Upon servants whose alibis had, Jim had informed her, been immediately and completely established.

It was close to one o’clock when Jim came to her again.

“See here,” he said. “You look like a ghost. Have you had anything to eat?”

“No,” said Susan.

A moment later she was in the kitchen, accepting provender that Jim Byrne brought from the icebox.

“You do manage to get things done,” she said. “I thought newspaper men wouldn’t even be permitted in the house.”

“Oh, the police are all right—they’ll give a statement to all of us—treat us right, you know. More cake? And don’t forget I’m in on this case. Have you found out yet what Caroline was afraid of?”

“No. I’ve not had a chance to talk to her. Jim, who did it?”

He smiled mirthlessly.

“You’re asking me! They’ve established, mainly, three things: the servants are clear; there was no one in the house besides Jessica and David and Caroline.”

“And me,” said Susan with a small shudder. “And—Marie.”

“And you,” agreed Jim imperturbably. “And Marie. Third, they can’t find the gun. Jessica and you alibi each other. That leaves David and Caroline. Well—which of them did it? And why?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But, Jim, I’m frightened.”

“Frightened! With the house full of police? Why?”

“I don’t know,” said Susan again. “It’s nothing I can explain. It’s just—a queer kind of menace. Somewhere—somehow—in this house. It’s like Marie—only Marie is dead and this is alive. Horribly alive.” Susan knew she was incoherent and that Jim was staring at her worriedly, and suddenly the swinging door behind her opened, and Susan’s heart leaped to her throat before the policeman spoke.

“The lieutenant wants you both, please,” he said.

As they passed through the hall, the clock struck a single note that vibrated long afterward. It had been, then, eight hours and more since she had entered that wide door and been met by Jessica.

Lights were on everywhere now, and there were policemen, and the old-fashioned sliding doors between the hall and the drawing room had been closed, and they shut in the sound of voices.

“In there,” said the policeman and drew back one of the doors.

It was entirely silent in the heavily furnished room. Lights were on in the chandelier above and it was eerily, dreadfully bright. The streaks showed in the faded brown velvet curtains at the windows, and the wavery lines in the mantelpiece mirror, and the worn spots in the old Turkish rug. And every gray shadow on Jessica’s face was darker, and the fine, sharp lines around Caroline’s mouth and her haunted eyes showed terribly clear, and there were two bright scarlet spots in David’s cheeks. Lieutenant Mohrn had lost his look of youth and freshness and looked the weary, graying forty that he was. A detective in plain clothes was sitting on the small of his back in one of the slippery plush chairs.

The door slid together again behind them, and still no one spoke, although Jessica turned to look at them. And, oddly, Susan had a feeling that everything in that household had changed. Yet Jessica had not actually changed; her eyes met Susan’s with exactly the same cold, remote command. Then what was it that was different?

Caroline—Susan’s eyes went to the thin bent figure, huddled tragically on the edge of her chair. Her fine hair was in wisps about her face; her mouth tremulous.

Why, of course! It was not a change. It was merely that both Jessica and Caroline had become somehow intensified. They were both etched more sharply. The shadows were deeper, the lines blacker.

Lieutenant Mohrn turned to Caroline. “This is the young woman you refer to, isn’t it, Miss Caroline?”

Caroline’s eyes fluttered to Susan, avoided Jessica, and returned fascinated to Lieutenant Mohrn. “Yes—yes.”

David whirled from the window and crossed to stand directly above Caroline.

“Look here, Aunt Caroline, you realize, that whatever you tell Miss Dare, she’ll be bound to tell the police? It’s just the same thing—you know that, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, David. That’s what—he—said.”

Lieutenant Mohrn cleared his throat abruptly and a bit uncomfortably.

“She understands that, Wray. I don’t know why she won’t tell me. But she won’t. And she says she will talk to Miss Dare.”

“Caroline,” said Jessica, “is a fool.” She moved rigidly to look at Caroline, who refused to meet her eyes, and said: “You’ll find Caroline’s got nothing to tell.”

Caroline’s eyes went wildly to the floor, to the curtains, to David, and both her hands fluttered to her trembling mouth.

“I’d rather talk to her,” she said.

“Caroline,” said Jessica, “you are behaving irrationally. You have been like this for days. You brought this—this Susan Dare into the house. You lied to me about her—told me it was a daughter of a school friend. I might have known you had no such intimate friend!” She shot a dark look at Susan and swept back to Caroline. “Now you’ve told the police that you were afraid and that you telephoned to a perfect stranger—”

“Jim Byrne,” fluttered Caroline. “His father and my father—”

“That means nothing,” said Jessica harshly. “Don’t interrupt me. And then this young woman comes into our house. Why? Answer me, Caroline. Why?”

“I—was afraid—”

“Of what?”

“I—I—” Caroline stood, motioning frantically with her hands—“I’ll tell. I’ll tell Miss Dare. She’ll know what to do.”

“This is the situation, Miss Dare,” said Lieutenant Mohrn patiently. “Miss Caroline has admitted that she was alarmed about something and why you are here. She has also admitted that there was an urgent and pressing problem that was causing dissension in the household. But she’s—very tired, as you see—a little nervous, perhaps. And she says she is willing to tell, but that she prefers talking to you.” He smiled wearily. “At any rate (it’s asking a great deal of you), but will you hear what she has to tell? It’s—a whim, of course.” There was something friendly and kind in the look he gave Caroline. “But we’ll humor her. And she understands—”

“I understand,” said Caroline with a flash of decision. “But I don’t want—anyone but Susan Dare.”

“Nonsense, Caroline,” said Jessica, “I have a right to hear. So has David.”

Caroline’s eyes, glancing this way and that to avoid Jessica, actually met Jessica’s gaze, and she succumbed at once.

“Yes, Jessica,” she said obediently.

“All right, then. Now, we are going outside, Miss Caroline. You can say anything you want to say. And remember we are here only to help.” Lieutenant Mohrn paused at the sliding door, and Susan saw a look flash between him and Jim Byrne. She also saw Jim Byrne’s hand go to his pocket and the brief little nod he gave the lieutenant.

“Do you mind if I stay in the room but out of earshot, Miss Jessica?” Jim asked.

“No,” Jessica agreed grudgingly.

“We’ll be just outside,” said Lieutenant Mohrn, speaking to Jim. Something in his voice added: “Ready for any kind of trouble.” She saw, too, the look in Jim’s eyes as he glanced at her and then back to the lieutenant, and all at once she understood the meaning of that look and the meaning of his gesture toward his pocket. He had a revolver there, then. And the lieutenant was promising protection. But that meant that they were going to leave her alone with the Wrays. Alone with three people, one of whom was a murderer.

But she was not entirely alone. Jim Byrne was there, in the far corner, his eyes wary and alert and his smile unperturbed.

“Very well now, Caroline,” said Jessica. “Let’s hear your precious story.”

“It’s about the house,” began Caroline, looking at Susan as if she dared not permit her glance to swerve. “The police dragged it out of me—”

Jessica laughed harshly and interrupted.

“So that’s your important evidence. I can tell it with less foolishness. It is simply that we have had an offer of a considerable sum of money for the purchase of this house. We happen to hold this house—all four of us—with equal interest. Thus it is necessary for us to agree before we can sell or otherwise dispose of the property. That’s really all there is to it. Caroline and David wanted to sell. I didn’t care.”

“But Marie didn’t want to sell,” cried Caroline. “And Marie was stronger than any of us.”

“Miss Caroline,” said Susan softly. “Why were you afraid?”

For a dreadful second or two there was utter silence.

Then, as dreadfully, Caroline collapsed into her chair again and put her hands over her mouth and moaned.

But Jessica was ready to speak.

“She had nothing to be afraid of. She’s merely nervous—very nervous. I know, Caroline, what you have been doing with every cent of money you could get your silly hands upon. But I intended to do nothing about it.”

Caroline had given up her effort to avoid Jessica. She was staring at her like a terrified, panting bird.

“You—know—” she gasped in a thin, high voice.

“Of course, I know. You are completely transparent, Caroline. I know that you were gambling away your inheritance—or at least what you could touch—”

“Gambling!” cried David. “What do you mean?”

“Stocks,” said Jessica harshly. “Speculative stocks. It got her like a fever. Caroline has always been susceptible. So you have no money at all left, Caroline? Is that why you were so anxious to sell the house? You surely haven’t been fool enough to buy on margin.”

Caroline’s distraught hands confessed what her trembling lips could not speak.

David was suddenly standing beside her, his hand on her thin shoulder.

“Don’t worry, Aunt Carrie,” he said. “It’ll be all right. You’ve got enough in trust to take care of you.”

Over Caroline’s head he looked at Jessica. The look or the tenderness in his voice when he spoke to Caroline seemed to infuriate Jessica, and she arose amid a rustling of silk and stood there tall and rigid, facing him.

“Why don’t you offer to take care of her yourself, David?” she said gratingly.

David was white, and his eyes brilliant with pain, but he replied steadily: “You know why, Aunt Jessica. And you know why she gambled, too. We were both trying to make enough money to get away. To get away from this house. To get away from—” He stopped.

“From what, David?” said Jessica.

“From Marie,” said David desperately. “And from you.”

Jessica did not move. Her face did not change. There was only a queer luminous flash in her eyes. After a horribly long moment she said:

“I loved you far better than Marie loved you, David. You feared her. I intended to give you money when you came to me. You had to come to me. You would have begged me for help—me, Jessica! Why did you or Caroline kill Marie? Was it because she refused to sell the house? I know why she refused. She pretended that it was sentiment; that she, the adopted daughter, was more a Wray than any of us. But it wasn’t that, really. She hated us. And we wanted to sell. That is, you and Caroline wanted to sell for your own selfish interests. I—it made no difference to me.”

Caroline sobbed and cried jerkily:

“But you did care, Jessica. You wanted the money. You—you love money.” There was a strangely incredulous wail in her thin voice. “Money—money! Not the things it will buy. Not the freedom it might give you. But money—bonds, mortgages, gold. You love money first, Jessica, and you—”

“Caroline,” said Jessica in a terrible voice. Caroline babbled and sobbed into silence. “Caroline, you are not responsible. You forget that there are strangers here. That Marie has been murdered. Try to collect yourself. At once. You are making a disgusting exhibition.”

All three looked at Susan.

And as suddenly as they had been diverted from each other they were, for a moment, united in their feeling against Susan. She was the intruder, the instrument of the police, placed there by the law for the purpose of discovering evidence.

Their eyes were not pleasant.

Susan smoothed back her hair, and she was acutely aware of the small telegram of warning that ran along her nerves. One of them had murdered. She turned to Caroline.

“Then were you afraid that Marie would discover what you had been doing with your money?” she asked gently.

Caroline blinked and was immediately ready to reply, her momentary feeling against Susan disseminated by the small touch of kindness in Susan’s manner.

“No,” she said in a confidential way. “That wasn’t what I was afraid of.”

“Then was there something unusual about the house? Something that troubled you?”

“Oh, yes, yes,” said Caroline.

“What was it?” asked Susan, scarcely daring to breathe. If only Jessica would remain silent for another moment.

But Caroline was fluttering again.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. You see, it was all so queer, Marie holding out against us all, and we all—except Jessica sometimes—obeyed Marie. We’ve always obeyed Marie. Everything in the house has done that. Even Spider—the—the monkey, you know.”

Susan permitted her eyes to flicker toward Jessica. She stood immovable, watching David. Susan could not interpret that dark look, and she did not try. Instead she leaned over to Caroline, took her fluttering, ineffectual hands, and said, still gently: “Tell me exactly why you telephoned to Jim Byrne. What was it that happened in the morning—or maybe the night before—that made you afraid?”

“How did you know?” said Caroline. “It happened that night.”

“What was it?” said Susan so softly that it was scarcely more than a whisper.

But Caroline quite suddenly swerved.

“I wasn’t afraid of Marie,” she said. “But everyone obeyed Marie. Even the house always seemed more Marie’s house than—than Jessica’s. But I didn’t kill Marie.”

“Tell me,” repeated Susan. “What happened last night that was—queer?”

“Caroline,” said Jessica harshly, dragging herself back from some deep brooding gulf, “you’ve said enough.”

Susan ignored her and held Caroline’s feverishly bright eyes with her own. “Tell me—”

“It was—Marie—” gasped Caroline.

“Marie—what did she do?” said Susan.

“She didn’t do anything,” said Caroline. “It was what she said. No, it wasn’t that exactly. It was—”

“If you insist upon talking, Caroline, you might at least try to be intelligible,” said Jessica coldly.

Could she get Jessica out of the room? thought Susan; probably not. And it was all too obvious that she was standing by, permitting Caroline to talk only so long as Caroline said nothing that she, Jessica, did not want her to say. Susan said quietly: “Did you hear Marie speak?”

“Yes, that was just it,” cried Caroline eagerly. “And it was so very queer. That is, of course we—that is, I—have often thought that Marie must be about the house much more than she pretended to be, in order to know all the things she knew. That is, she always knew everything that happened in the house. It—sometimes it was queer, you know, because it was like—like magic or something. It was quite,” said Caroline with an unexpected burst of imagery, “as if she had one of those astral body things, and it walked all around the house while Marie just sat there in her room.”

“Astral—body—things,” said Jessica deliberately. Caroline crimsoned and Jessica’s hands gestured outward as much as to say: “You see for yourself what a state she’s in.”

The old room was silent again. Susan’s heart was pounding, and again those small tocsins of warning were sounding in some subconscious realm. All those forces were silently, invisibly combating—struggling against each other. And somewhere amid them was the truth—quite tangible—altogether real.

“But the astral body,” said Caroline suddenly into the silence, “couldn’t have talked. And I heard Marie speak. She was in Jessica’s room, and the door was closed, and I heard her talking to Jessica. And then—that’s what’s queer—I went straight on past the door and into Marie’s room, and there was Marie sitting there. Isn’t it queer?”

“Why were you frightened?”

“Because—because—” Caroline’s hands twisted together. “I don’t know why. Except that I had a—a feeling.”

“Nonsense.” Jessica laughed. There was again the luminous flash in her shadowed eyes, and she spoke more rapidly than usual. “You see, Susan Dare, how nonsensical all this is. How utterly fantastic!”

“There was Marie,” said Caroline. “She was talking to you.”

Jessica’s silks rustled, and she walked rigidly and quickly to Caroline and leaned over so that she could grip Caroline’s shoulder and force Caroline to meet her eyes. David tried to intervene, and she brushed him away and said hoarsely:

“Caroline, you poor little fool. You thought you’d get this young woman here and try to establish your innocence of the crime. All this talk is sheer nonsense. You are cunning after the way of fools such as you. Tell me this, Caroline—” She paused long enough to take a great gasp of breath. She was more powerful, more invincible than Susan had seen her. “Tell me. Where was David when the revolver was fired?”

Caroline was shrinking backward. David said quickly: “She’ll say anything to protect me. She’ll say anything, and you—”

“Be quiet, David. Caroline, answer me.”

“He was at the door of his room,” said Caroline.

For a long moment Jessica waited. Then with terrible deliberation she relaxed her grip and straightened and looked slowly from one to the other.

“You’ve as good as confessed, Carrie,” she said. “There was no one else. You admit that it was not David. Why did you kill her, Carrie?”

“She didn’t kill her!” David was between the two women, his face white and his eyes blazing, “It was you, Jessica. You—”

“David! Stop!” The two sharp exclamations were like lashes. “I was here in this room when the shot was fired. I didn’t kill Marie. I couldn’t have killed her. You know that. Come, Caroline.”

She put her gray hand upon Caroline’s shoulder. Caroline, as if mesmerized by that touch, arose, and Jessica turned to the doorway. No one moved as the two women crossed the room. Jim Byrne glanced at Susan unrevealingly and then, at Jessica’s imperious gesture, opened the door. Susan was vaguely aware that there were men in the hall outside, but she was held as if enchanted by the extraordinary scene she was witnessing.

No one moved, and there was no sound save the rustle of Jessica’s silks while she led Caroline to the stairway. At the bottom step Jessica turned, and there was suddenly something less harsh in her face; it was for an instant almost kind, and there was a queer sort of tenderness in the pressure of her hand upon Caroline’s shrinking shoulder.

But that hand was nevertheless compelling.

“Go upstairs,” she said to Caroline, in a voice loud enough so that they all heard. “Go upstairs and do what is necessary. There’s enough veronal on my dresser. We’ll give you time.”

She turned as if to barricade the stairway with her own rigid body and. looked slowly and defiantly around her. “I’ll make them give you time, Carrie. Go on.”

There was the complete and utter silence of sheer horror. And in that silence something small and gray and quick flashed down from the curtain and up the stairs.

“Holy Mother,” cried someone. “What was that?”

And David sprang forward.

“You can’t do that—you can’t do that! Caroline, don’t move—” Susan knew that he was thrusting himself between Jessica and Caroline, that there was sudden confusion. But she was mainly aware of something that had clicked in her own mind.

Somehow she got through the confusion in the hall to Lieutenant Mohrn, and Jim Byrne was at her side. Both of them listened to the brief words she said; Lieutenant Mohrn ran rapidly upstairs, and Jim disappeared toward the dining room.

Jim was back first. He pulled Susan to one side.

“You are right,” he said. “The cook and the houseman both say that Marie was very strict about the monkey and that the monkey always obeyed her. But what do you mean?”

“I’m not sure, Jim. But I’ve just told Lieutenant Mohrn that I think there should be a bullet hole somewhere upstairs. It was made by the second bullet. It is in the ceiling, perhaps—or wall. I think it’s in Jessica’s room.”

Lieutenant Mohrn was coming down the stairway. He reached the bottom of the stairs and looked wearily and a bit sadly at the group there. At Caroline crumpled against the wall. At David white and taut. At Jessica, a rigid figure of hatred. Then he sighed and looked at the policeman nearest him and nodded.

“Will you go into the drawing-room, please,” he asked Susan. “And you, Jim.”

The doors slid together and, still wearily, Lieutenant Mohrn pulled out from his pocket a revolver, a long cord, a piece of cotton, and a small alarm clock.

“They were all there hidden in the newel post at the top of the stairway. The carved top was loose as you remembered it, Miss Dare. And there’s two shots gone from the revolver, and there’s a bullet hole in the wall of Jessica’s bedroom. How did you know it was Jessica, Miss Dare?”

“It was the monkey,” said Susan. Her voice sounded unnatural in her own ears, terribly tired, terribly sad. “It was the monkey all the time. You see, he was sitting there, stealing candy right beside Marie’s chair. He would have been afraid to do that if he had not known she was dead. And when Jessica entered the room he fled. When I thought of that, the whole thing fell together: the hot house, obviously to keep Marie’s body warm and confuse the time of death; everyone out of the house to permit Jessica to do murder; then this thing you’ve found—”

“It’s simple, of course,” said Lieutenant Mohrn. “The cord fastened tight between the alarm lever and the trigger—the bit of cotton to pad the alarm. The clock is set for ten minutes after five. When did she hide it in the newel post?”

“When I went down to telephone the police, I suppose, and David and Caroline were in Marie’s room.—I want to go home,” said Susan wearily.

“Look here,” said Jim Byrne. “This sounds all right, Susan, but, remember, Marie couldn’t have been dead then. You heard her talk.”

“I had never heard her speak before. And I heard the flat, dead tone of a person who has been deaf a long time. It was Caroline who actually solved the thing. And Jessica knew it. She knew it and at once tried to fasten the blame upon Caroline—to compel her to commit suicide.”

“What did Caroline say?” Lieutenant Mohrn was very patient.

“She said that she’d heard Marie speaking with Jessica in Jessica’s room behind a closed door. And that she’d gone straight on past that door to Marie’s room and found Marie sitting there. Caroline was confused, frightened, talked of astral bodies. Naturally, we knew that Jessica was—rehearsing—her imitation of Marie’s way of speaking.”

“Premeditated,” said Jim. “Planned to the last detail. And your coming merely gave her the opportunity. You were to provide the alibi, Susan.”

Susan shivered.

“That was the trouble. She was sitting directly opposite me when the shot was fired upstairs. Yet she was the only person who hated Marie sufficiently to—murder her. It wasn’t money. It was hatred. Growing for years in this horrible house, nourished by jealousy over David, brought to a climax that was inevitable.” Susan smoothed her hair. “Please may I go?”

“Then Marie was dead when you entered the house?”

“Yes. Propped up by pillows. I—I saw the whole thing, you know. Saw Jessica approach her and talk, heard the reply—and how was I to know it was Jessica speaking and not Marie? Then Jessica bent and did something to her cushions, pulled them away, I suppose, so the body was no longer erect. And she turned at once and was between me and Marie all the way to the door so I could not see Marie, then, at all. (I couldn’t see Marie very well at any time, because she was in the shadow.) And when David and Caroline came upstairs, Jessica warned both of them that Marie was reading. I suppose she knew that they were only too glad to be relieved of the necessity to speak to Marie.” Susan shivered again and smoothed back her hair and felt dreadfully that she might cry. “It’s a t-terrible house,” she said indecisively, and Jim Byrne said hurriedly:

“She can go now, can’t she? I’ve got a car out here. She doesn’t have to see them again.”

The air was cold and fresh and the sky very black before dawn, and the pavements glistened.

They swerved onto the Drive and stopped for a red light, and Jim turned to her as they waited. Through the dusk in the car she could feel his scrutiny.

“I didn’t expect anything like this,” he said gravely. “Will you forgive me?”

“Next time,” said Susan in a small clear voice, “I’ll not get scared.”

“Next time!” said Jim derisively. “There won’t be a next time! I was the one that was scared. I had my finger on the trigger of a revolver all the time you were talking to them. No, indeedy, there won’t be a next time. Not for you, my girl”

“Oh, all right,” said Susan agreeably.