THERE WERE CARS PARKED ALL ALONG Stanley’s side of Adams Place, so that I had to park quite a ways down the block. I got out and started along, stopped and took a second look ahead of me. A woman was just crossing the sidewalk in front of his house to her car. I thought at first it was Mrs. Hilyard. Then I realized that, oddly enough, it really was Mrs. Hilyard, and that she was coming from Stanley’s. It seemed reasonable enough for me to be surprised at it, after all the elaborate camouflage of his staying in and creeping out after dark to keep people from seeing that somebody had violently assaulted him. It was even more surprising to think that Mrs. Hilyard apparently still had the idea that Diane was going to marry him.
I went on slowly until she pulled out and turned the corner at the end of the block. Stanley’s Filipino houseman opened the door tentatively and squinted through the crack. He recognized me instantly, took the chain down and opened the door with smiles and bows; I suppose relieved that I hadn’t brought an Army officer along this time.
Stanley was not only down, he was dressed.
“I thought you weren’t receiving,” I said. I put my coat over the back of the sofa. It must have been the only time in Stanley’s life that he hadn’t bounded to help a woman off with her wrap.
“I’m not,” he said.
“I thought I saw Mrs. Hilyard just leaving.”
He gave me a jittery glance. “She didn’t come in; she just brought some flowers. There they are over on the table. Good Lord, can’t a—”
“Oh, hush,” I said wearily. “I don’t care if the Empress of Japan calls on you, darling. What is it you want?”
He went the rest of the way to the window and came back. Just as he’d got to the other sofa facing me the telephone rang.
He jumped as if a firecracker had gone off in church. The phone was right by me, and he must have thought I was going to answer it, because he shot around and picked it up before the little brass objets on the shelf had quit tingling.
“Hello.”
I was so close that I could hear the voice at the other end.
“Hello, Stanley. John Primrose speaking. I believe Mrs. Latham is there. I’d like to speak to her, please. How are you, by the way?”
Stanley looked rather taken aback. “Yes, she’s here. She’s just come. I’m all right, thanks.”
I took the phone quickly, not imagining what could have happened. Or how he knew where I was, for that matter.
“Hello.”
“Hello,” he said placidly. “That’s all I wanted to say, really. Just keeping track of you, that’s all.”
“You mean that’s the only reason you called?” I demanded. “In that case, let me tell you something. I nearly fired my cook this morning, before I discovered your perfidy about the hat. You can just take it out of my house right away.”
There was a sort of shocked silence at the other end of the line. I realized with complete horror that I shouldn’t have said it. Stanley would probably tell Mrs. Hilyard the minute I left the house.
“And if Stanley mentions it, I’ll phone every newspaper in town about his black eye,” I added.
Colonel Primrose chuckled. “I’ll see you shortly.”
I put the phone down. Stanley was opening a fresh pack of cigarettes.
“Does he call up everywhere you go?” he asked. “Why don’t you marry him and be done with it?”
“Because he never asked me in the second place,” I said. “And you know the first place, darling?”
“I know it’s none of my business, but—”
“Look, Stanley,” I said patiently. “If that’s what you woke me up at daybreak and got me over here to talk about, I’m going back right now.”
“It’s not. I want to talk to you about this fellow Digges.”
“Then go ahead. And quit roaming around! Can’t you sit down and quit being so jittery?”
“You’d be jittery too. You don’t seem to realize what all this means to me!”
He sat down opposite me. “This is the point,” he said, “I know Diane isn’t going to marry me now, unless—— Oh, well, we’ll skip that. But this Digges. They’re going to arrest him for the murder of Hilyard.”
“Really?” I said. “How did you know?”
“Because he’s the chap whose clothes they’re talking about in the morning paper.”
“It doesn’t say so. How did you know?”
“Because it’s my blood on his clothes!” He almost screamed it.
“Oh,” I said.
“It was my nose!” he cried. “He hit me! Twice, three times—I don’t know! He knocked me down! Then he picked me up—and that’s when he got the blood on him! My nose was like a fountain!”
“Then he didn’t kill Mr. Hilyard,” I remarked. “Stanley! You’re wonderful!”
“But wait, Grace! You don’t understand. That doesn’t prove anything! All it proves is about the blood. It was after Mr. Hilyard was killed that it happened. It was twelve o’clock. Here! Here in my own house! Right upstairs!”
“Do you mean he came here deliberately and attacked you?” I demanded.
“Yes! Oh, yes!”
“But why?”
“So I couldn’t go out! So I couldn’t marry Diane!” He was almost sobbing. “She didn’t have a headache. That isn’t why we came back early from the ball. She was angry at him. She’d just seen him the night before. She thought he was probably married to the girl he was with. She was unhappy—so unhappy! And so angry! I persuaded her to run away with me and get married right away. I was eloquent and comforting. We had to come home and change. I took her home. Digges was there with her father and that Eaton person. She marched in and told them, the three of them, to their faces, what she was going to do. Oh, it was so foolish!”
He put his battered face down in his hands, shaking with remembered anguish. I didn’t for a minute doubt that it was very genuine.
“Her father was in a rage. He ordered her upstairs. She went like a child. He went and locked her door—like a father in the old country. When he came back, he talked to me like a madman. I went out. Diane threw me down a piece of paper, outside. It said to come at half past twelve; she’d get out.” His head went down again. “But I must have dropped it! This Digges knew! He came at twelve. I was getting ready to go. She was waiting. He came here. He broke the chain off the door! He came upstairs! He stood in my door, and he said, ‘This hurts me worse than it does you, you louse!’ He called me a louse!”
“You’ve been called that before, Stanley,” I said.
“But not the same!” he groaned. “He said, ‘I’m going to fix that mug of yours so she can’t marry you tonight or next week. When she’s had time to think about it, it’s her business.’ And then——”
“Oh, don’t go on,” I said. “I can guess the rest of it.”
He was really sobbing now, with pain and humiliation and futile, frustrated rage.
“Why don’t you sue him?” I asked.
His head shot up. “No! That’s what I’m telling you, Grace! The publicity! Don’t you see? That’s the point! Unless the police understand it’s not Hilyard’s blood before the trial—don’t you see? He’ll keep quiet as long as he can—not for me, for Diane—but when he sees the noose he’ll tell. And then—” His hands spread wide in an eloquent gesture. “I will be laughed at everywhere. All over the world. I cannot stand it!” He broke down again, his face in his hands, shaking convulsively.
“I can see that,” I agreed. Then I thought of something. “Stanley, did you see him take Mr. Hilyard’s gun?”
He nodded. “It was me he was going to kill,” he said wretchedly. “I wish he had. I could have died easier than I can face my friends if this is known. He put the gun in his pocket and he said, ‘If you marry Diane tonight, I’ll blow your brains out.’ ”
“So that was it. What did you say? Didn’t you get a word in at all?”
He shook his head. “Not then. When he came here I was angry too. I laughed at him. I said, ‘What right have you to talk? They paid you twenty-five hundred dollars to get out of town so you couldn’t marry her. You accepted. You have no right to speak now!’ Oh, that was such a mistake! That was what Eaton told me; I didn’t know it was a lie.”
“You do now, I guess,” I said. “It was a mistake in any case. What do you want me to do?”
“Make Colonel Primrose understand!” He was almost on his knees. “You must do it, Grace! No one else can do it for me! I would die of shame!”
“You still haven’t told me what you were prowling around my garbage cans for last night,” I said.
“I can’t go out in the daytime, Grace. A man came just as I got there. I had to wait. You see, don’t you?”
“Yes, I see,” I said. I reached for the phone and dialed Colonel Primrose’s number.
“Look, colonel,” I said. “I’ve got some information that will interest you. Can you meet me at my house pretty soon? You might bring Bowen if he’s still with you.”