CHAPTER XXXIV

The four-part Sheraton table was still reduced to a conversational size, and Estelle, in her seating, had thrown Mrs. Post to the winds.

Sergeant Hurlstone and Bill flanked her. She wanted to chip from Sergeant Hurlstone the steps that had led him to his astonishing solution of the case. Estelle shuddered when she considered what Dr. Johnson might have done to her sinus—like that mad doctor who had upset Paris ten years ago through his glittering habit of inserting typhoid virus into occasional pills.

And she wanted to size up Bill.

Ann found herself between Sergeant Hurlstone and Clarence Harlan, whose early rising and absence from his rooms when Washburn had rung had been due to Estelle. Estelle also had wakened early in a dread of worry over her situation as Chief Suspect and had summoned Harlan to talk things over.

Medical Examiner Bedmann was not present because he was taking care of Dr. Johnson, after Dr. Johnson had broken down and completely gone to pieces.

Ludwig was not present because Bill had landed a haymaker and broken Ludwig’s nose.

It was the least, Bill had felt, he could do. After he finished breakfast and said good-by and was gone, then, of course, if Ludwig again pushed Ann into a spinet somebody else would have to take care of re-breaking Ludwig’s nose.

Sad, Bill thought, helping himself largely to broiled kidneys and bacon, that it should all end like this. Tough on everybody. Tough on Marlow, who had led such a rottenly unhappy life, only to be murdered at the end of it. Alice and Fred, Ann’s parents—a rotten business that was for your money. Tough on himself too.

Bill decided he would never marry at all, now that Ann with her millions was definitely out. Maybe the war would take care of it and save him, via a bachelor’s grave, from a celibatic old age.

Bill listened absently while Sergeant Hurlstone said to Estelle: “Most desks of the Adam period had secret compartments in them. Wall safes were unheard of in that day, and people wanted some reasonably secure place for their private papers. I knew that Alice Marlow had used the desk constantly for writing her poetry, and it was perfectly probable that she should have come upon the secret compartment in time. It was the sort of romantic thing she would have wanted to keep to herself, even from her husband, and of course she would have put the letter from Dr. Johnson’s mother in it.”

“But what made you interested in the desk in the first place?”

“Motive. For twenty years everyone had more or less taken it for granted that Alice Marlow’s murder was a crime of passion, that jealousy had been at the base of it, or love. Every one of Mr. Marlow’s investigations had concentrated along that line and they had come to nothing. So it probably was something else. That left the rest of the string. Blackmail, threats, fear—things usually based on a paper or a document of some kind. Well—”

Bill, with no hesitation, accepted more kidneys from Washburn. He let Sergeant Hurlstone rattle on, giving him even less than half an ear, until he heard Ann say: “What was the point you made so much of about the chow dog, Chin?”

“The dog’s just lying there and trembling while her mistress was being stabbed was the point. That meant that Mrs. Marlow’s attacker was either somebody the dog had absolute confidence in, or else it meant a person whom even a chow would be afraid of. Now Danning, your maid, had told us in her testimony that Chin had cut her foot on the morning of the crime and that Dr. Johnson had treated it and bandaged it up. Probably Dr. Johnson had given the dog a lot of care.”

“Of course. Chin trusted him.”

“Perhaps, but in any case Dr. Johnson would fit in either as someone in whom the dog had confidence or of whom she was afraid. As a matter of fact, the whole outline of the case pointed to the murderer having more than an average knowledge of medical matters and drugs. Take the ptomaine, the radioactive substance, the effects of pyrogallol, especially when pyrogallol fitted so aptly as an additional irritant to Mr. Marlow’s disease—all of those things cried Doctor quite obviously, and in this business when you settle on the obvious you usually find that—”

On and on and on, Bill felt, will he go. Normally Bill would have been avidly interested. Not now. His hunger sated, the gnawing ache had moved back from his stomach to his heart. How lovely she was. How lovely she always had been. How sad.

Washburn, at this point, announced the press.

The landing field, Washburn intimated, was black with planes which were at the instant disgorging reporters, cameramen, sob sisters, and apparati for the newsreel men.

Clarence Harlan at once took command.

He said to Ann: “Just leave them to me. In my long, long day I have eaten more reporters than that young man of yours has just eaten kidneys.”

“I am not her young man,” Bill said coldly.

“That is what you think, Mr. Forrest. Washburn, please herd the mass of them into the lounge. Break out gallons of your finest whiskies. Prepare steaming pots of coffee—sandwiches, toast, eggs. There will be no need for you to resort to forcible feeding. Ann, do not worry. By the time Washburn gets through with them they’ll barely want to interview me, much less you.”

“But I want them to interview me.”

“What?”

“I want to give them an interview right now.”

“My dear child, you don’t realize what you’re saying.”

“I realize perfectly, and I have not been bereft of my senses. I suppose they’ll cover most of the papers in the country?”

“Nothing so modest as a country.”

“Good! Washburn, please let me know the minute they’re in the corral.”