A notable repast was prepared in honor of the occasion by the Moments’ Alabama negress. The professor did not afford a large staff of servants, but Heliotrope was a ménage in herself. She was mammoth. Her advent upon any scene had somewhat the appearance of the mountain bearing down upon Mahomet. Her noodle rings, however, were beyond comparison or rhetoric.
By the time the larded tenderloin had run its course, the conversation was established. Rainfall, it developed, was not inclined to become excited over the warning he had received.
“As a matter of fact,” he observed, “it may be sheer tomfoolery—a practical joke. I can think of seven of my colleagues who would have done it if it had occurred to them.”
“Sophomoric humor,” commented Saxon. “Fellows like that ought to grow up.”
The physician shrugged. “Nobody ever does grow up, you know—and I’m not sure that it’s such a good thing.” He laughed. “As a student, I once thought it amusing to put a set of human fingers in a bowl of oxtail soup. The resemblance to—” He interrupted himself. “I’m sorry! Do forgive me, Miss Moment.”
“What a ghastly notion!” said the girl. “Whose soup was it, Dr. Rainfall?”
“Chapman’s,” grinned the doctor. “He was one of our lecturers. I’m afraid I didn’t like him.”
He was in excellent form. He rattled on for some time about his student days, and they gathered that life at medical school was a joyous sequence of rows with the professors.
“Well,” said Ghost, after a pause, “I don’t know that I exactly blame you. In similar circumstances, I’d take my own chances, too. I’m blessed if I know what could be done to protect you, anyway. You are bound to come and go between your home and the hospital.”
“Exactly,” said Rainfall. “And I don’t want a collection of policemen hanging around either place. It isn’t good business. Naturally, I’ll be careful in the streets—but I can’t call out the militia to guard every avenue I use.”
He was secretly of the opinion that the threat was not a joke at all, but he saw no reason to advertise his belief. He still hoped, in point of fact, that the attack would be made. His plan of defense, in such event, was carefully considered, and he was satisfied with it. There was nothing timid about Rainfall.
“Of course,” continued Ghost, “your warning may be in the same category as Miss Moment’s. You are probably being warned not to meddle with what does not concern you.”
“That may be it,” agreed the physician. “But what have I done?” he complained. “I don’t know what else I could contribute.”
“A very sound idea, however, on general principles,” observed Professor Moment complacently. “I have myself a magnificent passion for minding my own business. It keeps one out of a great deal of mischief.”
Howard Saxon was still dubious. “What bothers me,” he said, “is why the fellow took the trouble to warn you. He’s been lavish enough with his murders, Heaven knows. And if Mr. Ghost’s idea of a murder sequence has any merit, he isn’t through yet. He may be planning something particularly devilish for you, Rainfall. Watch your step! Both you and Miss Moment, as a matter of fact, should be carefully guarded. I’ll do it myself, if nobody else will.”
“Oh, I’ll be careful,” promised Rainfall lightly. “Miss Moment, happily, is already well protected.”
Nevertheless, it was his own idea, also, that the new development had been oddly handled. He too had wondered why he had been warned instead of being promptly murdered. In view of the definite terms of the notice, the warning was a gesture incongruous and unnecessary.
He had not told the others exactly what the square of paper had said.
“Of course,” he added, after a moment, “if I am attacked—and the attack fails—we’ve got the murderer.”
“How do you mean? Why have we?” The questions came from Howard Saxon.
“If he doesn’t get me first,” said Rainfall, smiling, “I shall certainly get him.”
For a little time the meal continued in silence. The physician’s quietly positive assertion had shocked them all. For a chilling moment something sinister and immediate had seemed to threaten everyone at the board. A frown was gathering on Ghost’s brow. With crisp irritation he broke the spell.
“The police,” he observed, “have been very remiss. There is an explanation of this affair, if they would only quit running in circles and look for it.”
Rainfall glanced up, surprised. “You mean that you can see some sort of pattern in it?” he asked.
“Not clearly—no! But there is a pattern, and there is an explanation. These murders aren’t anything casual, a scheme hatched by some ingenious madman to attract attention to himself. I have already said that it all dates back to something in the lives of the men murdered. Somebody has nursed a long grudge. Now he’s paying it off. He waited, I think, until he could get his victims together—in the same city—at the same time. Bluefield, of course, lived here; but what of Gaunt? Lear came only occasionally. Was it coincidence that brought them here together, in the space of a few days? Possibly it was, but it furnished the opportunity the murderer had been waiting for.”
They were all looking at him with fascinated interest.
“That’s all simple enough, isn’t it? And why were the three murders so sensational? There was no effort to cover them up, if we except the faint suggestion of suicide in Bluefield’s case—which nobody could take seriously for a moment. Publicity is the keynote. Bluefield and Gaunt and Lear were not quietly murdered and their bodies hidden, as we might have expected them to be. The actual murders may have been quiet enough; but in every case there was a blare of trumpets waiting, just around the corner. Bluefield’s body was placed in his own window—Gaunt’s on a statue about to be unveiled. Could anything more clearly indicate the murderer’s wish to call attention to what he had done?”
“Hardly,” agreed Rainfall.
“Lear’s case is only slightly different. He was killed while an audience waited for his appearance on the stage. What I am trying to say is that, in every case, the murderer knew that discovery of his crime would follow hard on the heels of the crime itself. He wanted it that way. He invited discovery by the most ingenious advertising methods he could imagine. Not discovery of himself, of course, but discovery of his deeds.”
“What do you argue from that?” asked the doctor.
“That his injury—the thing that made him do all this—his grievance, whatever it may have been—was quite possibly of a similar sort. That’s not very clear, perhaps. I mean, his methods may very well reflect a sensational publicity attendant on the injury for which he seeks revenge.”
“‘An eye for an eye’ quite literally, you mean?” asked Holly Moment. “That ought to make it easy to trace him, Mr. Ghost.”
“One would think so—but there’s no telling how far back it all goes. I thought at first that the original grievance might be something fairly recent. My feeling now is that it is not. If it were something within easy memory, the similarity of the cases would have been apparent to somebody; the newspapers of the entire country are featuring the case. But we have heard nothing…. Well, that’s part of what I had in mind. I suggest also, as I have suggested before, that there may be other men marked for murder. I won’t be dogmatic about it, but I think the death notices indicate the possibility. If I’m right, then other men already are aware of their danger. In effect, every ‘Dead Man Inside’ has been a warning to the next man on the list.”
Rainfall demurred. “If that were so,” he asked, “wouldn’t the others, realizing their danger, hustle off to the police?”
“Possibly they can’t,” said Ghost. “For reasons of their own, they may not want to. As I say, I don’t insist on any of this. I do say that it’s possible—the suggestion is there—and nobody has gone to the police for protection, although that circumstance, as evidence, is pretty negative.”
“It all sounds a bit melodramatic, don’t you think?” Rainfall was faintly quizzical.
Ghost laughed. “It does,” he admitted. “It is! It’s a flight of the imagination, nothing else. I might go farther and suggest that the entire episode is a chapter of criminal history. That is, an episode in the lives of four warring crooks. What do we know, after all, about Bluefield and Gaunt? About Lear, for that matter? Nothing but what they have been willing that we should know—the surface facts of their lives. We don’t even know the surface facts about Gaunt.”
“I think it’s gorgeous,” said Saxon. “Follow through, Mr. Ghost! I mean, what’s the rest of it?”
“Well,” said Ghost, “it’s a theory that fits the facts as we know them—that’s all. I may be twisting facts to suit the theory. It’s a habit of mine.”
“But what possible grievance could such a man have?” asked Holly Moment eagerly. “Do you mean that—”
“That somebody once killed him and set him in a window?” finished Ghost, smiling. “Not exactly. But I think reasons may be imagined. For instance, suppose that, years ago, these citizens who are now being murdered, one after another, were part of a conspiracy by which the father or the brother of the man now committing the murders was done to death in similar fashion and his body posted in public for neighborhood inspection! Something like that. Suppose even a similar death notice to have been employed. That is fantastic, to be sure; but no more fantastic than the present series of murders.”
Rainfall shook his head. “It won’t do, Mr. Ghost,” he said. “An affection for a parent, or a brother, even complicated by a scheme of vengeance, wouldn’t carry over the number of years you appear to be suggesting. I mean, an affection for a dead parent or brother. Children grow up; they have their own lives to live, their own problems to solve, without worrying about the past. They might threaten vengeance—but I think the idea would fade after a few years.”
“Possibly it would,” agreed Ghost. “I’m not suggesting anything too youthful. There is a very significant circumstance, however, that has not been considered. It fits in at this point. Do you realize that the murdered men were all of about the same age? Now what does that suggest? Surely not a crank with a grudge against men of forty!”
“What does it suggest?”
“The associations of a man of middle age are business associations, or golf associations, or—well, something like that. The point is, the men they meet and get to know at all intimately, are men of all ages—young and old and in between. But when several men of the same age are apparently closely associated—so closely that some other man finds it expedient to wipe out the group—the suggestion is that the murdered men made one another’s acquaintance at the time of life when men of the same age are thrown together. In other words, in youth. Not babyhood, of course, or even childhood. Adolescence!”
“Whew!” cried Rainfall, laughing.
“You don’t agree?”
“I don’t know! As you explain it, it’s almost immorally plausible; but you could be wrong, you know. Men of forty do foregather, I suspect, even in middle age.”
“No doubt they do,” admitted Ghost. “My theory was intended to fit this case; and it is as likely to be right as it is to be wrong.” He smiled. “Well, whatever occasioned the murders, and whenever they were planned, I think the motive was revenge.”
“I should have preferred a solution involving a woman,” said Rainfall. “That way, I agree, a man’s vengeance might achieve a very respectable longevity. Give your murderer a sweetheart, Ghost— one who was in some way snatched away from him by these others. Even so, I should prefer your solution if the grievance were less ancient—if it went back only a few years.”
Ghost spread his hands in good-humored disclaimer. “It isn’t a solution, I know! It’s a little journey in what you once called retrospective penetration. And there may very well be a woman in the case. There usually is, I believe. But I visualize the murderer as a man of about the same age as his victims; and I think there are a number of men still in the world who, if they would, could tell us who he is.”
“On that we are agreed,” said Rainfall. “Your entire argument, for that matter, is fascinating— and you may be right.”
“Oh!” cried Holly Moment. “If only I had had a really good look at him!”
“You saw quite enough, in my opinion,” said her father; and Saxon nodded emphatically.
“Thank your stars that you didn’t,” added Rainfall. “If you were known to be able to identify him, your life wouldn’t be worth that!” He snapped his fingers. “We are in the same boat, Miss Moment!” He smiled at her. “But since neither of us knows any more than he has told, we are probably safe enough. If only Mr. Ghost, now, would appoint himself a committee of one to solve this mystery!”
Ghost laughed heartily. “As my physician, do you recommend it? I’m supposed to be convalescent, am I not?”
“Your mental agility would seem to be unimpaired.”
“It must serve,” said Ghost, “such as it is. The case fascinates me, I confess—and blush for the confession.”
The coffee was coming in, backgrounded by the immense bulk of the negress Heliotrope. She set the tray down carefully upon the table and moved to the buffet. Miss Moment lifted the silver urn and poured the brown coffee into blue enamel cups.
Suddenly, Ghost, who had been looking idly into the adjoining front room, stiffened in his chair.
“Excuse me,” he said quietly, and rose to his feet.
Then, while the others stared in amazement, he stepped swiftly and silently to the front windows, opening upon a wide veranda, and flinging up the center frame, looked out into the darkness. An instant later, he had stepped through the aperture onto the porch and vanished.
Three men got quickly to their feet and followed, the professor’s chair crashing behind him. But even before Saxon, the most agile, could clamber through the window, Ghost was back.
“Gone!” he said laconically. “Don’t everybody come out.”
He climbed inside and again stood among them. “It was a man,” he continued easily. “He was looking in at the window. I suppose he saw me as I stood up.”
Saxon exploded into something resembling passion. “There!” he cried. “You see?” He looked at Ghost as if daring him to deny, ever again, that the life of Holly Moment was in hourly peril.
But Ghost only shrugged and smiled. “It’s all right, old chap,” he observed soothingly.
Rainfall was examining some faint spots on the window pane. “Here are his fingerprints, Ghost,” he exclaimed. “By Jove, perhaps we’ve got him!”
“Yes,” agreed Ghost, “I noticed them. We’ll want to get those while the impressions are fresh.”
“Did you see him, Mr. Ghost? Did you see his face?” asked Holly. She was standing with her father’s arm around her.
“About as much of him as you did, I imagine,” smiled Ghost. “Supposing him to have been the same man! It doesn’t follow that he was, of course. This fellow may have no connection whatever with—with the subject of our conversation.”
Saxon disagreed warmly. “Excuse me, Mr. Ghost,” he apologized, “but I think he has.”
“So do I,” said Ghost, “but we can’t prove it; and certainly he chose an awkward evening, if it was murder he had in mind. He might easily have picked out a less formidable occasion. There are evenings when Miss Moment is less thoroughly surrounded.”
It was puzzling. Had some new development, as yet unknown to them, he wondered, been responsible for this espionage? All things considered, the move was more likely to be directed against Rainfall than against Holly—but why, at the moment, against either?
“Hadn’t we better notify the police at once?” asked the professor a bit nervously. “Maybe this fellow is still somewhere around.”
Ghost hesitated. It was, of course, exactly the thing that should be done, as a matter of sensible routine.
“Look here,” said Rainfall, “this is more likely to be my affair than Miss Moment’s. Don’t you think so, Ghost?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, then, I’m getting out of here—now. I won’t involve any of the rest of you in this.”
“Nonsense!” said the professor. “You’ll stay here, of course. There’s plenty of room.” His hospitality rose triumphant over his apprehension. “We’ll heat up the coffee again and make a night of it!”
It sounded like an invitation to some sort of a debauch.
“To tell the truth,” answered Rainfall, “I’m afraid that fellow may have been merely a spy for somebody already at work in my apartment. I must really get back there. There’s nothing to fear; but if it will make you feel any better, I’ll pick up a policeman en route.”
Ghost nodded. “I think the doctor is right,” he said. An idea had crossed his own mind, and he was eager to test it.
“Good,” cried Rainfall. “I’ll call a cab at once.”
“I’ll go with him,” said Saxon, as the physician hurried off to the telephone.
Ghost shook his head. “Let him alone,” he advised. “He knows what he’s doing.” He hesitated. “I may want you to stay here, Saxon, until I get back. But say nothing of that, please, to anybody.”
They accompanied Rainfall to the curb, when the taxicab had arrived, and Ghost took careful note of the driver’s number. It was unlikely that the call had been anticipated and a ringer substituted, but at the moment no chances could be taken. Saxon watched him with fascinated interest.
“Tell your man to drive fast, Rainfall,” Ghost whispered to the doctor, “and keep to the lighted thoroughfares. You’re armed, I suppose?”
“Hip and thigh,” grinned the physician. “I’ll telephone you from the flat as soon as I get there.”
“All right—and be careful!”
The motor purred softly; there was a shifting of gears, and the cab was away. Ghost put his lips to Saxon’s ear as they walked back.
“Into the house with you, now,” he said, “and close the door with a bang. I’ll be after you in a minute.”
Saxon stared at him, bewildered; then complied. The front door closed after him in memorable fashion.
Left alone upon the sidewalk Ghost pushed into the deep shadows of a great bush, close to the stairpost, and waited. It was his first definite move in the case, single-handed, and a little thrill of excitement added itself to the emotions thronging inside him. In a moment it passed, and he waited coolly for whatever might occur.
Would the fellow, if he were still around, return to the house? Or was the attack, as he was inclined to suspect, directed against the physician?
Another moment passed. Then, in the next street, a hundred feet beyond, a second motor sounded, roared for an instant, and took on the smoother accents of locomotion. A dark and powerful car spun quickly around the corner and passed the house with flying wheels.
Rainfall’s conveyance was crossing the intersecting avenue, two blocks away.
Forgetting that he was still convalescent, Ghost ran swiftly to the house.
“Another cab, Howard!” he said. “Call it quickly, while I’m putting on my things; then stay here with the professor and Miss Moment until you hear from me again. Rainfall is being followed, and I’m going after him myself.”