CHAPTER ELEVEN

That’s how I happened to hear as much of the testimony as I did. At that it’s rather disquieting to realize how very little I knew of what was actually going on behind the hard-bitten red countenance of the gentleman from the Baltimore Bureau of Detectives. There was a certain vague feeling of satisfaction in the fact that Mr. Doyle didn’t know it either.

Sergeant Lynch came down with Michael. I was a little shocked at the change in him. He looked like a man who had gone through the seven circles of hell. His face was drawn and gray beneath the almost mahogany layer of sun tan; his eyes were dark haunted hollows. He kept moistening his lips feverishly and throwing away one half-smoked cigarette after another.

“Sit down, Mr. Spur,” said Lieutenant Kelly. He watched Michael intently, without moving his head. I recalled then who it was that Lieutenant Kelly reminded me of. It was an old chimpanzee in the London Zoo; he had very intelligent gray eyes that followed you around through a stubby fringe of colorless lashes, and looked as old and wise as sin, and about as sympathetic. Otherwise the resemblance was not very strong. The chimpanzee’s hair was thin and rather ratty.

On the whole, however, I thought Lieutenant Kelly was very considerate. He said he wanted to get to the bottom of things, and wanted to know what Michael had been doing and how he’d happened to come back to Ivy Hill, and what he had done that night.

Michael said he had been with an engineering outfit building a dam in Arizona for the last six years. He’d got a degree in engineering from the University of California in 1925. The job was practically over, and he’d come to New York to see about tying up with a crowd of younger men who were doing some port construction in the Near East. That’s when he had decided to drop down to Baltimore and run out to see the Trents.

Lieutenant Kelly asked him if the decision was very sudden, and he said no.

Lieutenant Kelly produced a telegram and handed it to him.

“You recognize this?”

“Yes. I sent it.”

“Why’d you send it at two A.M.?”

Michael said he had been to a party, had taken a girl home, and happened to run across a telegraph office that was open, and sent it.

“Were you tight?” Lieutenant Kelly asked.

“Not very.”

“But you didn’t just make up your mind on the spur of the moment to come down?”

Michael hesitated. The door opened, and Mr. Archer came in. He was in a little better humor than the last time I’d seen him, but he had, it developed, strong ideas on the way Mr. Doyle was allowing things to be done.

“If Spur is—as I understand he is—practically accused of murder,” he said, “this questioning is irregular to say the least.”

There was some rather heated discussion between the two of them, during which Lieutenant Kelly looked calmly on through his white eyelashes. It was ended by Michael’s saying positively that he understood he didn’t have to make any statement but he wanted to get the thing cleared up; and Lieutenant Kelly went back to his last question, which I read from my notes.

Michael answered promptly that he had been thinking of coming ever since he’d left the West Coast, but hadn’t made up his mind until that night.

“You did come entirely of your own free will.”

I thought Michael hesitated again, but maybe I was wrong. He said, “Oh, entirely.”

Lieutenant Kelly explained that what he was getting at was this: was there any outside reason for his coming—was he summoned by anyone, or what?

“No,” said Michael. “Not a bit.”

“You ever think of coming back before?”

“Often. But I was out West, and busy. I never got around to it before.”

“Now then,” said Lieutenant Kelly. “When you decided to come down here, did the idea of it make you nervous? I mean, figuring this Dr. Sartoris is right, did you have any idea that coming back would be hard on you?”

“Not if you mean did Í think I’d have another attack of my old . . . illness, if you can call it that. Fve not had any trouble for years. None that Fve known of. Fve always been careful not to keep a gun in my kit, but . . .”

“Eh?” said Lieutenant Kelly, looking up. “What’s that?”

“I mean that since I shot my father, Fve never had a gun in my possession.”

“Did you know there was a gun in this house?”

Michael hesitated.

“Yes,” he said.

“Whereabouts?”

“In the library, in the drawer of the table where Mr. Trent was sitting.”

“How’d you know there was one there? “

Michael pressed out his cigarette in the ashtray, his fingers as taut as steel springs.

“I can’t answer that,” he said curtly.

“But you did know it was there?”

“Yes.”

I saw Mr. Doyle and Mr. Archer exchange glances.

“Now, then,” said Lieutenant Kelly. “When you got down here, how did everything strike you?”

Michael laughed shortly. He shrugged his shoulders, thrust his hands deep in his trousers pockets, sank his chin down on his chest and slouched down on his spine with his legs stretched out.

“It all seemed downright crazy,” he said thickly. “Not a damn thing was changed except that Aunt Emily had got fat and Cheryl had got tall. Everything else was just the same. Perry, and Dick Ellicott. Mr. Trent and Mr. Archer here. Even Agnes Hutton. And old Magothy and all the tin suits stuck around. It gave me a queer feeling that I’d just dreamed everything. I felt if I’d look up suddenly I’d see Dad coming in the room.”

Mr. Doyle nodded at Mr. Archer with complete finality, but Lieutenant Kelly seemed unimpressed.

“You tell anybody that, Mr. Spur?” he asked.

“Yes. I told Mr. Trent, and Miss Cather.”

Lieutenant Kelly looked at me. I nodded.

“Anybody else?”

“Dr. Sartoris, when he looked in before I went to bed.”

“All right,” said Lieutenant Kelly. “Now, then. What time’d you get here?”

“I got off the trolley in Annapolis about eight-thirty and got a taxi. About nine, I guess.”

“What time’d you go to bed?”

“I went upstairs about quarter to eleven and read a little. I don’t know when I went to sleep, I was dead on my feet. Perry Bassett gave me a couple of pills to make me sleep.”

“You usually take pills to make you sleep?”

He grinned suddenly.

“Not out West on an engineering job. You slave in the sun all day and you don’t need ’em. I used to, when I was here.”

“All right. Just tell us the rest of it.”

Lieutenant Kelly crossed one carefully creased leg with a shiny yellow boot at the end of it.

“That’s all there is,” Michael said simply. “I’d had a night cap with Mr. Trent, about a quarter to eleven, said good night to him and went to my room. Dr. Sartoris came in and said we might have a talk in the morning. Perry Bassett came in and brought the pills. I went to bed, read a while, had another drink, and went to sleep. I slept—as far as I know—until I heard the row outside in the hall and found out Mr. Trent was dead.”

“To the best of your knowledge you weren’t out of your room after eleven o’clock?”

“I wasn’t out of my room until I heard the noise in the hall.”

“O.K.,” said Lieutenant Kelly. “Now, lady, if you can type that out I’d like Mr. Spur to sign it. Just read it off, will you?”

I read it, rather haltingly.

Michael nodded. “That’s right,” he said.

“All right, then, Mr. Spur. I guess that’ll be all. Have ’em get the doctor fellow.”

We waited—I looking over my notes and writing bits in before I forgot them, Lieutenant Kelly paring his nails with the gold knife on one end of the heavy gold chain he wore festooned across his stomach, Mr. Doyle shuffling papers impatiently—until there was a rap on the door. I looked up expecting to see Dr. Sartoris. Instead it was Sergeant Lynch.

“The gun ain’t showed up, chief,” he said. “But I found something here.”

He had a dark bundle in his hands, and he deposited it carefully on the end of the table.

I tried to look around Mr. Doyle’s lank form to see what it was.

“Yeh?” said Lieutenant Kelly. Ï could tell by his voice that he was interested.

“It looks like blood, all right,” said Mr. Doyle. “Hold it up, Kelly. Is there any more?”

“It’s just over the right sleeve,” said Sergeant Lynch.

I stood up so I could see too, and sat down again abruptly.

It was my dressing gown they were looking at.

“Well, well,” said Lieutenant Kelly. “Where’d you find it?”

“It was all folded up and packed in the bottom of a woman’s suitcase. I guess she was making a getaway. Maid says it belongs to Miss Louise Cather—she’s the New York woman.”

Lieutenant Kelly and Mr. Doyle turned around and stared at me. Mr. Doyle seemed quite excited, and a rather ominous look came into his eyes, which were unpleasant enough anyway.

“So that’s what’s up, is it?” he said.

I hadn’t noticed that Dr. Sartoris had come in until he spoke up now and said, “Don’t be a damn fool, Doyle.” It was the first impolite thing I had heard him say. It was neither suave nor imposing. I stared at him through a fog of bewilderment.

Mr. Doyle was very much annoyed, and Sergeant Lynch came to his defense.

“Damn fool, is he?” he said coolly. “Well, what’s more, there’s blood all over the window sill in her room. Let’s see you laugh that off, big boy.”