CHAPTER TWELVE

I looked helplessly at Lieutenant Kelly. He was examining the sleeve of my gown quite calmly and without any apparent excitement. I didn’t know him well enough at that time to know that he never got excited, or that if he did there was never any evidence of it, or any change in his sober matter-of-fact habit of taking everything as it came and doing the best he could with it. I was so glad he was there that I could have cried, almost. It seemed to me that Mr. Doyle would be delighted to fix this affair on somebody outside the family circle. As a matter of fact, if I’d known what was in Lieutenant Kelly’s mind I’d have seen that I was just as good a suspect as anybody, for his purposes. As it was, of course I felt I couldn’t be seriously suspected.

He handed me the dressing gown.

“This yours?” he said.

“Yes.”

“How long’s that been on there?”

“I never saw it before in my life.”

“How’d it get there?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t go near Mr. Trent, and I didn’t touch anything when I ran across the library. Anyway, that sleeve was on the outside—I mean it was away from the body—because I ran between the table and the fireplace.”

He grunted.

“We’ll just go up and have a look,” he said. “Excuse us a minute, doctor.”

I glanced at Dr. Sartoris to let him know I was grateful to him for coming to my defense. But he was standing there in front of the fireplace, calmly blowing a long column of cigarette smoke ceilingward, as if the whole thing were an unconscionable bore. I didn’t know then that his belongings had been searched as thoroughly as mine had. As I learned later, two men had come from Baltimore shortly after ten o’clock, and having begun in the library, were searching the entire house. So far the only thing that had turned up was my blood-stained silk dressing gown.

I went upstairs with the two policemen. Sergeant Lynch pointed with some personal satisfaction to the dark smear on my window sill.

“Blood,” he said simply.

Lieutenant Kelly nodded perfunctorily, and turned to me.

“Know how that got there?” he said.

“No. I don’t know.”

“Did you lean out the window last night?”

I tried to remember, but last night seemed years past, and even my own actions were confused.

“I may have, when I came back upstairs after Mr. Doyle and the doctor left,” I said. “I don’t remember.”

He grunted.

“I want a picture of this,” he said to the sergeant.

“O.K., chief.”

“Now let’s have a look at these bags.”

Sergeant Lynch put my luggage up on the bed and opened it. Lieutenant Kelly looked on while he removed the entire contents of both bags. They even opened an empty leather writing case that had got in by accident.

I thought Lieutenant Kelly seemed more interested in it than seemed natural.

“What’s that for?” he demanded.

“It usually has small note paper in it,” I said. “It’s a writing case. My colored maid packed for me. I suppose she thought I might need it, and didn’t notice it was empty.”

He nodded.

“May I ask what you’re hunting for?” I said rather tartly.

He looked rather queerly at me. Then he said, “We’d like to find a thirty-eight automatic revolver for one thing.” He winked at Sergeant Lynch.

“You don’t mean the gun that killed Mr. Trent?”

“That’s the one,” he answered amiably.

“Do you mean you haven’t found it? “

“That’s the idea. Seen it around any place?”

He winked at the sergeant again.

“Why, yes,” I said. “I saw it on the table, last night, in front of Mr. Trent.”

The mirth disappeared instantly from Lieutenant Kelly’s eyes.

“What’s that?” he said sharply.

“I said I saw it last night on the table in front of Mr. Trent’s body.”

“No kidding?”

“Of course not.”

“Yeh?” he said. “I guess I want to have a good long talk with you, lady. You just come with me. Keep at it, Bill. Where’s Norton?”

“He’s doin’ the grounds and the garage, chief.”

“O.K.”

I went downstairs again with Lieutenant Kelly. He took a key out of his pocket and opened the door into the library. The heavy curtains had been pulled aside, but the room seemed cold and dreary. Ï didn’t know that they’d removed Mr. Trent’s body, and it was a little shock to see the chair at the table empty. I suppose it would have been a worse one if it had not been.

“Sorry, lady,” he said gruffly. “But Doyle said there wasn’t any gun in sight last night. Sure you weren’t seein’ things?”

“No indeed,” I said. “When the light went off, I was staring hard at the table and Mr. Trent. I still had an image of it in front of me after the light went off. There was a gun on the table—right here.”

I pointed to a spot on the table. There were brown discolored patches where blood had spattered on the mahogany surface.

Lieutenant Kelly took a small but very powerful electric torch out of his pocket and held the beam on the spot. I watched his face as he bent down and looked at it closely from all angles.

“I guess you win, lady,” he said after a minute. “There’s a little trace of oil there. Lucky you saw that, now; we’d a never run on that by ourselves.”

He straightened up and fixed me with a coldly impersonal eye.

“What else do you know about this business, lady? You didn’t take that gun, by any chance, now, did you?” “No. I certainly didn’t.”

“And you still think somebody turned out the light on you, do you?”

“I certainly do.”

He shook his head.

“The fuse blew out, lady. That’s what happened.” I looked quickly at him.

“Then there wasn’t anybody behind me?”

“Nope.”

He pointed to the connection on the floor under the table into which the lamp was plugged, it was covered with a thick brownish stain.

“When Ellicott and Bassett came down,” he said, “they couldn’t turn on the lights until they’d got a new fuse in. There’s blood in the socket. Made a short. We’ve got the blown fuse.”

“Well,” I admitted, “I didn’t hear anyone, but I could have sworn I heard the click of the switch, not the sort of noise a blown fuse makes.”

He seemed to think about it, but he shook his head. “Hard to tell the difference when you’re excited,” he said.

“Then you don’t think there was a gun here either?”

“I wouldn’t, if there wasn’t that oil there, lady, and that’s a fact. And I’m blamed if I see what’s the big idea. Both Ellicott and Bassett say there wasn’t any here, and they came on the scene at the same time, and a fuse was blown.”

He scratched his head.

“It’s sure got me beat,” he said.

“Do you think, lieutenant,” I said with some hesitation, “that somebody else here might be trying to put the blame on Michael Spur? “

He just looked at me.

“You think this is a movie?” he said.

“Well,” I replied, “Mr. Trent told me, just a few hours before he was shot, that it was a swell layout for someone if they wanted to use it.”

I didn’t like the way he’d looked at me, and I replied with some heatedness.

“He did, did he?”

“Yes, he did.”

He thought about that for a moment. Then he said, “He didn’t just happen to say who’d want to use it, did he?”

“No, he didn’t. But I shouldn’t think it would be so hard to find out.”

I tried to use the same rather scornful tone of voice that he’d used.

“For example, he and Mr. Archer were having a knockdown dragout about this life story of his I was supposed to begin today. And he and Mrs. Trent and Dr. Sartoris were having a set-to earlier in the evening.”

At first he listened to me in spite of himself. Then he shook his head.

“It’s that red head of yours that’s got you going, lady,” he said with a grin, and Í flushed. My temper is pretty short, and my hair is rather red, although Î prefer having it called Titian.

“And what’s more,” he went on, lighting another of his poisonous cigars, “what’d you think if I told you Michael Spur came down here to get money to finance this business of making ports in the Near East? And the old man wouldn’t give it to him?”

“Who told you that?” I remanded. I was genuinely alarmed.

“That’s for me to know, lady,” he said, exasperatingly matter-of-fact. “No, all I’m telling you is just keep your shirt on and it’ll all come out sooner or later.”

He grinned amiably. “No kiddin’, now, about that gun? That’s straight? “

“Yes.”

“O.K. We’ll find it, Don’t you worry. Now let’s go back and find out what the rest of these birds got to say for themselves.”

I was a little dampened by all this. I could have sworn I’d heard the click of a switch when that light went off, and I sort of felt somebody in the room. I couldn’t expect Lieutenant Kelly, of course, to take much stock in anything as vague as all that, so I let it go.

“There’s one other thing I wanted to ask you,” he said as we went out. “How come you didn’t pipe up and tell Spur you saw him over there outside the window at twelve?”

“Oh, dear!” I said. “I forgot.”

“Yeah? Well, Mr. Doyle’s going to think you never saw him, or you wouldn’t have forgot, I’m just telling you, lady—watch your step around here until you find out what it’s all about. In fact, I got an idea.”

We stopped outside the dining room door.

“You just tell everybody you’re thinking of leaving tomorrow—that I said it was O.K. see?”

He slapped his thigh and chuckled heartily.

“I’ll explain later,” he added.