“COME IN, BAUER,” cried Bennett, almost gaily. “How wet you are! Take off your shoes. Hope, get the man something to wear. Take off your trousers. Hot rum, eh? Come, I insist! Sit down, take off your shoes at once. Bauer, we shall observe High Tea. Play draughts—or checkers, as you call it. Oh, and Hope! A spot of rum for the master, too. And a ration for yourself, under the circumstances. Ah! Hope, we leave for England on the first seaworthy steamship to set sail, and so, God bless us all!”
Hope administered. Bennett stripped off his ceremonials, his top hat and morning coat and striped trousers, and took his ease in a black silk dressing gown. Bauer bashfully changed into another of Bennett’s gowns, which fitted grotesquely. They fortified themselves with rum and hot water, ham and eggs, hot pudding, and a few pints of stout.
“Now, Hope, the draughts board. And the steamship.”
They played checkers more or less intently. Bennett diverted himself (during the long minutes of deliberation while Bauer studied his moves) with discussions on the various ships Hope suggested. Finally they fixed upon one sailing Monday morning early.
“Will you go aboard Sunday evening, sir?” Hope asked.
“I shall.”
“The newspapers have been less insistent, sir. May I inform them of your departure?”
“You may not. No.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Have Podham-Jones explain it to the Embassy in the morning. I shall see Mrs Christien and their lawyer tomorrow. Ah. My compliments, Hope, to everybody else, and may they all go straight to hell. Sorry, Bauer, but you will forget my king, won’t you? Stout’s made you a bit muzzy. However, will you join me in another game?” At twenty to eight, the telephone rang. Hope, answering it, said, “Mr. Boxworth, sir. Wishes to know if you are in.”
“I am.” Bennett interrupted the game, told Bauer, “Go away now. Sleep. Read a book. Shan’t go out tonight.” Then he strode to the telephone—but Hope was hanging up.
“I want to speak to him.”
“He rang off, sir.”
“Damn.”
“He said you expected him at eight.”
“I do. Is he coming?”
“He implied he would, sir.”
“Damn. But never mind.”
Bennett dressed, and with a complete return of his earlier restlessness, paced the room while he waited for Boxworth. Eight came. Boxworth did not. Five, seven, ten, fifteen minutes slipped past. The sound of traffic along Madison Avenue, hushed and filtered, seeped into the room, accentuating the quiet. Twenty past eight, twenty-five, twenty-eight. Bennett filled his pipe, lighted it, puffed grimly on it.
At quarter to nine, Bennett telephoned. Boxworth’s room did not answer. At ten of nine, Bennett admitted to himself the certainty of a growing conviction (growing, indeed, since afternoon) so violent and disturbing, that no consideration could persuade him to ignore it. Waiting longer had become intolerable.
“My hat, Hope,” he called. Hope appeared somewhat nervously from the bedroom. “Raining? My umbrella. And a cab, if you please.”
“Are you going out alone, sir?”
“Yes. Don’t wait for me. May be very late. Stop looking forlorn. Shan’t be stoned by an aroused citizenry. At least, not if I take the precaution to pull up my collar well about my face. Thank you. Good night.”
Bennett sucked on his cold pipe during the ride through the rain. He still held it in his teeth, as he stalked into the Burgundy. Beyond the dignified palms, a flustered clerk told him he could not see John Box-worth.
“Why not?”
“Orders, sir. I’m afraid I’m not permitted to explain.” Bennett nodded, turned away from the desk, filled his pipe again, and lighted it. He waited, leaning on his folded umbrella. Then Lowes Levison, thin, dark and grim, came in from the street. Bennett had expected something of the sort.
“Hello there, Mr. Bennett. Are you in on this?”
“They found him?”
By a brief, cynical smile and a movement of his eyes, Levison showed that they had, upstairs.
“Dead?”
“Yes. They want me to identify him.”
“Ah.”
“Suicide,” said Levison. “Shot himself in his bath.”
“How dashed queer,” said Bennett.
“That at least. Tussard’s waiting for me. Come along up, Mr. Bennett, if you don’t mind the nasty details.” Together, they went to the elevator.
2.
Boxworth’s rooms were solid, dignified and old-fashioned, and inappropriately cheerful. In the large sitting room there were a great many paintings and photographs of celebrated actors, actresses and horses.
The body was being removed from the bath. It had to be carried through the bedroom and a small dressing room. It went into a wicker basket, and it was stopped on its way to the service elevator for Levison to look. Levison gave the necessary identification. John Box-worth had a great hole in his chest.
Tussard looked sharply at Bennett, when he first caught sight of him; then nodded to him shortly, and for the most part ignored his presence. Tussard had been leaning over the tub of soapy water in the bath, dipping an army revolver into it. He put the revolver aside on a towel, and straightened up.
“Finger prints?” asked Levison.
Tussard shrugged, and dried his hands on a clean towel. “Hot soapy water,” he said. “Gun must have been in half an hour or more. I was just seeing. I guess the water would wash them off.”
“How odd,” said Bennett.
Levison asked, “What’s odd?”
“Dashed thorough ablutions, you know, for a chap intending to kill himself the next minute.”
“Suicides,” said Tussard, “are pretty usually full of inconsistencies. You get used to those things after a while. Well, we’re through in here. We’ll go out in the front room.”
There, among the amiable actors and horses, Tussard lowered himself into a chair and shielded his eyes from the lamp light with his hands. Levison looked at the pictures on the walls, occasionally relieving his feelings with a dark, sardonic smile at some friendly sentiment written on them. Bennett leaned carelessly against the end of a sofa, and smoked his pipe, and appeared now to have lost all interest in the affair.
“How about his family? Has he got any?” asked Tussard.
“No family,” said Levison. “What time did it happen?”
“About eight, or a little before.”
“Was the shot heard?”
“No, but the water was running over, and leaking through the ceiling, and one of the maids saw it and came up. She found the body at seventeen after eight.”
“He’d been here all day long, I suppose?”
“Looks like it. Cigars he must have smoked, a couple sandwiches and some tea he made himself. Just sat here thinking, I guess, and not answering the door or the phone, till he got ready to finish himself. He didn’t go in or out. Nobody came in to see him.”
“Did he telephone at twenty to eight?” asked Bennett. “He didn’t use the telephone at all.”
“Indeed,” said Bennett.
“Was there a farewell letter, or a confession, or anything of that sort?” Levison asked.
“Nothing. He just decided to finish himself off, while he was sitting there in a hot bath.”
“With the water running,” said Bennett.
“That’s right.”
“How do you know,” asked Levison, “he died at eight?”
“Condition of the body,” said Tussard.
“Was the gun his own?”
“That’s something we don’t know yet. It’s got to be traced.”
Tussard yawned heartily, twice. He said, half to himself, “I could do with some sleep tonight.”
“It’s all wound up, you think?”
“Sure it’s all wound up.”
“I’m glad of it. I don’t believe it yet, but I’m glad of it.” Levison put a cigarette between his lips, and forgot to light it. “Where does the cripple fit in?”
“I don’t know,” said Tussard. “I’m going to let that stuff go till the morning. I got to go over his papers and letters and things first.”
“I wish you luck,” said Levison. “If I’ve served my purpose, I’ll run along.”
“Thanks a lot, Mr. Levison, for coming up.”
“Quite all right.”
“I’ll drop in and see you tomorrow. I’ll have to see you tomorrow, too, Mr. Bennett. I found a little note about an appointment for eight o’clock, and I want to talk it over with you. Just to get everything straight.”
“Indeed. Please do.”
“Kind of a coincidence, his being dead at eight o’clock, just the time you said in your note.”
“Yes. Extraordinary. There are too many extraordinary coincidences altogether, aren’t there? I’m coming with you, Levison. By the way, Tussard, I came up here this afternoon and put that message under the door., And at twenty to eight this evening, Boxworth seems to have telephoned me. Yet the clerk, tells you Boxworth had no visitors come up, and he didn’t use the telephone. Most extraordinary, eh? No, I must go. Really. Goodnight.”
“Wait a minute, Mr. Bennett. Is this straight?”
“Quite. Until tomorrow. Good-night.”
As Bennett went out, he saw Tussard grabbing savagely for the telephone.
3.
Levison flung his cigarette far out into the wet street, climbed after Bennett into the taxi, and said at once,
“Glad you think the same thing. I know John Boxworth didn’t kill himself.”
“Why?”
“I knew him far too well, Mr. Bennett. Boxworth wasn’t a murderer in the first place. If he had been one, and if he’d been afraid he was about to be caught for the crime, he’d have moved mountains with lawyers, and he’d have fallen back on every legal dodge that exists. Too soft and civilized for violence. Too sane, too completely sane. Believe me, it was physically impossible for him to raise a hand against another human, and very much less against himself.”
“I think I agree.”
“More than that: John didn’t own a gun. He wasn’t in the army, in the first place. He detested weapons, in the second place. He was the perfect city man—afraid of horses, clumsy at lighting fires, shocked at people who go hunting in the fall. He simply wasn’t the kind of man who could take a gun in his hand and point it. You wouldn’t beat a woman or a child—he wouldn’t pick up a gun and point it, even at a target. It’s my rotten habit to pull wings off flies and stick pins in my fellow humans to see them jump. I’ve taken John Boxworth to pieces often. I know him perfectly. I know he’d have seen a lawyer, if he’d been worried about Tussard discovering something. It’s raw. Damn it, I don’t believe a bit of it. Neither do you. Makes me sick. If you don’t mind, we’ll get out here, Mr. Bennett. I need a drink.”
Levison, suffering a strong nervous reaction now, needed several drinks, and stiff ones, to bring him back to his usual cynical composure. They sat on a wicker sofa in a pleasant blue basement that had once been part of the servants’ quarters in a private house. Excepting themselves and the waiter, the room had nobody in it Levison sent the waiter away.
“You know what really happened, don’t you, Mr. Bennett?”
“I think so.”
“That’s why you tried to get in touch with Boxworth today, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“You tried to prevent it, didn’t you?”
“Quite. Indeed, I thought I had succeeded.”
“Do you mind telling me what you know?”
“Not at all, I assure you. Nothing more I can do, you know. Therefore, I don’t mind chatting about it. Avoiding, naturally, any libelous particulars. And not requiring your belief. Give me a match.”
When he had wetted his throat with whisky and drawn on his pipe sufficiently, Bennett continued, “John Boxworth was afraid. He hid. Too kind for his own good, he kept his fear concealed. Perhaps he warned the murderer that he knew him and meant to expose him.”
“He would.”
“Precisely. Unwilling to accuse another of the crime, he waited, and locked himself up for fear of being killed because he knew too much.”
“And the murderer got at him just the same.”
“The murderer, as you say, got at him. By some subtle pretense, he entered Boxworth’s rooms. Perhaps he told him he had decided to give himself up. Dare say we shan’t know. He got in, took the gun out of his pocket and shot Boxworthwhile he was taking his bath. He may have washed finger marks off the revolver before he let it fall to the water. He may have worn gloves, and dispensed with ‘washing. No doubt he took Boxworth unawares, and killed him before he could raise an alarm or defend himself. And little doubt, I think, that the shot was not heard because it happened very much earlier than Tussard thinks. Several hours earlier. Both servants and guests, most of them, would be out of the rooms at six o’clock. The murderer, of course, came and went safely unobserved, as I did.”
“Pretty neat.”
“Oh, very. Both courage and execution improve, you observe. Desperation makes our murderer more proficient, though jumpy and undependable. He may be comforting himself now with the assurance that he has stopped a damning mouth, and ended pursuit by throwing in Tussard’s way a dead suspect who has tacitly confessed.”
“Will Tussard fall for it?”
“I think not. No. I warned him, you know.”
“He’ll look up our alibis.”
“Quite.”
“For eight o’clock, or for six o’clock?”
“Tussard is not unintelligent. The murderer will have an alibi for eight o’clock. Otherwise, I’m sure he would not have taken the trouble to telephone me to indicate that Boxworth was alive at twenty to eight; or to run hot water into the bath, to delay the cooling of the corpse. Rather ingenious, don’t you think? Those several hours in a hot bath confused the medical evidence, and made death seem to have been later than it was. Conjecture? I admit it. Reasonable conjecture, nevertheless. That Boxworth committed suicide, is both unreasonable and fantastic.”
“One question, Mr. Bennett.”
“What is it?”
“Who is the murderer?”
“I shan’t tell you.”
“You feel like letting him get away with it, and us go to the devil, I suppose.”
“I feel impotent, and unconcerned.”
“Is Tussard getting anywhere?”
“Tussard is thorough, and sound. He will come to an end of these red herrings in time.”
“In time.”
“Ah. Quite.”
4.
Not yet disposed to sleep, and pressed by Levison, Bennett rode downtown and stopped with him at the Theatre. Holcomb, in the office that had once been Christien’s, sat working over a sheaf of papers. The sleek head, the bland and weary face, looked up at them as they stood in the doorway.
“Evening. Evening, Mr. Bennett. Looking for me?”
“Good evening. No. Not at all,” said Bennett. “Your soul is Tussard’s now.”
“Is Suttro still here?” Levison asked.
“Looking at the show. He’s in the projection room.”
“Does he know? About Boxworth, I mean?”
“He knows.”
The evening had been shattered by Boxworth’s death. These men seemed to be stumbling with oppressed spirits among the fragments. Without any purpose beyond getting together (as it appeared to Bennett) and sharing their feeling of unreality, they crossed the building towards the projection rooms and that curious chamber of opaque glass, part of the projection rooms themselves and yet cut off from the machines by sound-proof walls, a closet provided with every facility for giving directions to actors and, indeed, controlling an entire performance unseen, and from a distance. This was the Stage Manager’s box.
Levison led the way towards this place through the ‘cellar.’ The ‘cellars,’ paradoxically enough, were at the very top of the building, in the space above the dome of the theatre itself. They constituted the gloomy and weirdly irregular space between the upper surface of the greenish-gold dome, and the roof and walls, at the very top of the building. It is in the ‘cellars’ that the invisible lights which shine out brightly from the gold frescoes of the ceiling, or darken away with smooth facility above the heads of the audience, are tended and from time to time renewed. This space, this dark interval, is in some places crowded close and narrow; and in others, vastly empty and dark, due to the necessary awkwardness of fitting the boxlike exterior of the building above the arched and curving surface.
“Mind your head, Mr. Bennett,” said Levison. “You’ll have to stoop low.”
Holcomb solicitously helped Bennett by means of a hand on his elbow. Bennett shook his elbow free. There was a bridge spanning this ceiling, an iron scaffold intended for the use of agile electricians. From the bridge, frail iron ladders descended into depths of blackness, to give access to the clusters of lights. Endangering Bennett’s way as he crossed the bridge hung pipes in groups, and great bulky metal ducts for air; wire cables, braces, girders hanging in the gloom, or jutting at crazy tangents. These loomed like the very disorder of Chaos and interfered greatly with the light from the few naked electric bulbs hanging in the disorder. Shadows crouched, curved, encroached everywhere on their quivering bridge. Below them, the rough plaster (on its underside, this was the exquisitely tinted dome itself) and the framework supporting the arches curved down and away into deep and impenetrable pits of blackness. There was everywhere a smell of dead air and dust.
A door opening from the ‘cellars’ let them into a stair, which descended to the projection rooms. In the midst of the purring machines stood the Manager’s chamber. They entered, and found before them, visible through a wall of plate glass, the entire theatre and the distant stage. There were half a dozen armchairs, a table, a control board exactly like that backstage, telephones, loud speakers, and dials without number. The booth was a paradise for the lover of instruments and gadgets.
Suttro sat in a chair in a corner with his chin on his chest. He had little to say to them. None of them, probably, saw the picture that was playing on the distant screen below them. None of them listened to the reproduction of its sound. With a grunt, Levison flicked a switch, and the sound ceased entirely. Conversation began, struggled weakly, and only succeeded in not quite dying.
“It wasn’t suicide, of course.”
“Poor John Boxworth.”
“How the devil did he get into it?”
“Hard to understand. He wasn’t the kind to get mixed in anything.”
“Who do the police think did it?”
“What? Oh, I don’t know.”
“They don’t seem to get anywhere.”
“Mr. Bennett thinks Tussard will get it untangled soon. Don’t you, Mr. Bennett?”
This was Bennett’s last visit to the Chelsac Theatre and to Chelsea Project before his departure. It is of interest only because it was so thoroughly vague and unsatisfactory.
“I’m sure Tussard will look further,” said Bennett. “I must go. Perhaps the murderer will expose himself. I’m sure I hope so. Ah. Now, gentlemen, a good night to you all, and thank you...”