IT WAS not the fact of death as such that held Scott there on one knee as reaction began its work; it was the thought of what he had said earlier, the fancied picture he had of Freddie shuffling off alone across the Aquatic Club pier to his death, because he, Scott, had been abusive and had refused to listen when Freddie asked for advice. There was no trick on Freddie’s part. He had wanted help, needed help. He had known then who had killed Julia; he must have known. He had held back the information for some personal reason of his own, knowing this was wrong and bothered by the knowledge. Now—
With tremendous mental effort Scott forced the picture from his mind and tried to think. Still on one knee he let his harried glance move on, taking in the canvas chair, the cot with its bleached-blue covering, the table with the radio, the smaller one with the telephone. To his left was a darkened hall leading to other rooms, the door on one side of which stood ajar.
As remembered things came flooding back the pattern he had been seeking seemed to fall in place. He seemed to understand what had happened, and why. That it was nothing he could prove seemed unimportant now. He would tell what he knew and the rest would be up to Major Briggs.
When his glance came back to the telephone he knew what he had to do. He rose wearily. He took a breath but he did not touch the telephone or even make a move in that direction, then or ever.
It was luck rather than any great alertness or instinctive pressure on his part that warned him in time. One moment he was concerned only with the problem of murder and its ramifications; the next he stiffened as he stood, scalp tightening as a curious fear that was akin to panic took hold of him.
He had heard nothing at all but the distant radio. What he had seen was but a shadow of movement, caught briefly in the corner of his eye.
The door in the hallway which stood ajar had moved.
Not much. No more than an inch. Except for the acuteness of his vision he would not have noticed it at all.
He did not try to tell himself this was nothing but pressure of ragged nerves on imagination. The door had moved. Someone was waiting in the darkness of the other room and his mounting fear came not from this but from the sudden realization that there was no gun in sight.
Freddie had been shot, but there was no gun! The killer still had it, and he, or someone else, was waiting.
An instant later Scott had his nerves in hand and the panic had gone as swiftly as it came. He knew what he had to do, and he did it slowly and with deliberation, turning towards the front door, his face expressionless and a grim smile working at his eyes.
No telephone. Not now. Major Briggs would have to wait.
He opened the door and went out on the veranda. He closed the door behind him without looking back. When he started his car he raced the motor in case anyone was listening. He drove to a space just short of the highway corner, pulled in and cut his lights. The hand that presently lit his cigarette was steady.
He did not have long to wait. He heard the car coming up behind him, saw it pull on past and hesitate at the intersection before turning left and accelerating.
Scott did not get a good look at the driver but he thought he recognized the car, and its license number was firmly fixed in his mind as he stepped on the throttle. He had to wait at the intersection for a speeding car to pass but it was the bus that licked him. It was rolling fast, the ticket-taker clinging to the side rail, and he might have been able to cut in front of it had it not been for the car coming from the opposite direction. As it was he was held up. He had to sit there and watch the bus flash past and then he had to follow it. Because of oncoming traffic he had to wait behind it when it stopped to discharge passengers. When, a quarter of a mile farther on, he was able to get by, he knew his chance was gone and he slowed down, thinking hard, wondering what he should do first.
The thought of Sally made him turn left and start up the hill, using the road which skirted the golf course and wound upwards towards the bluff on which the Crane house stood. In less than five minutes he was swinging off the road and into the drive which led to this massive, gray-stone structure which reared bleak and foreboding against the night sky.
He saw as he approached that most of the house was in darkness, the only light showing dimly from the drawing-room windows on the right. There was no car out front, no one on the wide veranda as he climbed the steps. The front door stood open and he went inside without knocking. A glance told him the drawing room was empty and now, in the shadowed dimness of the hall ahead of him he saw the telephone. It stood on a small stand and on the shelf below there was a directory. He did not expect to find Briggs at Headquarters at this hour so he looked up the number of his residence.
It was when he started to dial that number that he heard the noise. It was not loud, nor could he characterize it at the moment; but it was distinct enough to make him stop dialing, to make him put the phone down and go back to glance again into the drawing room. When it remained quiet and empty in the half-light of the single electric bulb, he crossed to the room opposite and in front of the stairs. There was only darkness here, and no sound but the hollow rap of his shoes on the polished wood floors.
“Hello,” he said. “Anyone here?”
His words had an empty, artificial sound as they echoed in the high-ceilinged hall and now, telling himself that what he had heard must have come from outside, he went back to the telephone and dialed his number. Seconds later the Major’s voice came to him.
Scott apologized for calling Briggs at his home. He said that something had happened but first he wanted to know about Waldron. Had Briggs found him.
“Oh, yes,” Briggs said. “We took him off the Colombie a half hour before she sailed. He did a rather clever thing. Took a third-class passage. We very nearly missed him.”
“Where was he going?”
“He was booked to Cartagena.”
Scott had it on the tip of his tongue to tell Briggs about Freddie, and then he stopped. The sickness was still with him, born of guilt, the thought still festering that if he had listened to Freddie in the first place the little guy would still be alive. Now, in his own mind, it was no longer enough that he tell Briggs; he felt compelled to do something on his own, something that might help to ease his conscience. If he could have a hand in helping to trap the one who had killed Freddie it might assuage the feeling of self condemnation. Even if he failed it seemed terribly important that he try, and because there were things he had to know first he said:
“When did you pick him up?”
“Around four.”
“Where is he now?”
“Oh, we’ve been holding him.”
Well, that takes care of that, Scott thought, feeling very little surprise now that he understood Waldron could not be guilty of murder.
Aloud he said: “What does he say about Luther?”
“Oh, he corroborates that statement in part. When I confronted him with that newspaper piece he admitted right off that he was the missing Tim Welsh. He had about twelve thousand, American, on him in cash. The balance is no doubt in some deposit box in a New York bank.”
“Luther saw him rowing back from the Griselda?”
“And Waldron admits he was out there. He got the idea from you at the Club Morgan. Julia Parks sent him the article as we suspected and then called him up from the Carib the night of her arrival. When you told him she was in the forward cabin he saw a chance to get to her alone so he drove to the Aquatic Club, found a skiff tied at that little landing stage and decided to appropriate it for a few minutes.”
“Did he say why he wanted to see Julia?”
“Oh, yes. Said there was no telling what she might say when she was drunk and he hoped to make some sort of agreement with her before she got other ideas. He was willing to pay something for her silence and, in fact, had hoped to reach that agreement at Club Morgan; that’s why he was waiting there. She’d promised to come but she didn’t.”
“Does he admit that he killed her?”
“Quite the contrary. He insists she was dead when he went into the cabin. It frightened him so when he realized his position that he was afraid to row back to the Aquatic Club—afraid someone would see him and remember—which is why he rowed directly to the beach where Luther saw him. . . .”
Briggs had other things to say about that meeting but Scott did not hear him. What he heard was something else, something that came not from the receiver but from somewhere in the house.
He did not know what it was but he was sure he had heard it. He waited for it to be repeated as he had waited for a repetition of that sound he had heard earlier. He thought it came from somewhere in the rear or from below, and he turned, breath held as he listened, peering into the unrelieved darkness at the back of the hall, neck muscles tensed and his nape prickly.
The wind working on a loosened door? No. For there was no wind. Nor was there any repetition of the sound, only the metallic clatter of Briggs’ voice in the diaphragm of the telephone. Scott put it back to one ear and tried to listen with the other.
Briggs was explaining how Luther had arranged passage on the Estelle and how Waldron had hired the mate to make sure Luther was aboard in time.
“Naturally he won’t admit he was the one who struck you from behind at the dance. That would make him guilty of assault. Neither will he admit that he killed Julia Parks . . . As a matter of fact,” Briggs added, “I’ve been in touch with New York by overseas telephone and they say that Welsh—or Waldron—has no record of violence. Still-”
Scott was listening again for sounds in the quiet house. He wondered if there could be a servant out back somewhere until he recalled that Crane had said there were no servants sleeping in while his wife was away.
He remembered too about the massive construction of the house and its thick-walled and vaulted cellars. Then, deliberately, he closed his mind upon such speculations. He had found out what he wanted to know and it was time now to get on with the job.
“I think Waldron’s right,” he said. “I don’t think he killed Julia.”
“Really.”
“I think Freddie Gardner knew what was going on thatnight.”
“You do?” said Briggs in a voice that suggested none of this was getting through to him.
“Freddie knew and Freddie made the mistake of telling the wrong person. I think the same person killed Freddie that killed Julia; it’s the only way it figures.”
“What?”
“And it couldn’t have been Waldron because you’ve been holding him.”
“But what’s this about Freddie?” Briggs said, irritable now.
“He was killed tonight and not too long ago. Shot to death at his house.”
Major Briggs was not a profane man but he knew the proper words and now he gave vent to them. He did a good job but Scott could not appreciate it because just then he heard the car start up somewhere behind the house.
In the next instant the motor raced and Scott, remembering how Freddie’s car had been left out back the night before, understood that this car he heard had been there before he arrived. Someone had been lurking in the house, and he had heard a noise, and now, seeing a quick flash of reflected light skip across the ceiling, he jumped up.
“I’ll call you back,” he shouted. “I’ll call you at Freddie’s house.”
Briggs was shouting too as the connection was broken. Scott had time to think that the Major was going to be very very sore indeed at this seeming lack of cooperation; then he was running through the door and across the veranda as a car roared down the driveway, only its tail lights and license plate visible.
Scott did the best he could. Leaping sideways off the high steps he reached his little sedan in two strides. A second later the motor was going and he was in gear. A jerk at the wheel started him off just as the headlights of the car ahead turned into the highway, and then he was rolling downhill and making the same turn, not sure he could follow the other car but fairly certain who was driving it and where it was going.