AND WHEN they got there the house was empty. Before they left New York it had been surrounded by the state police. Again and again during that ride, Tannin, stirring in his corner, had seen McKee glancing at his watch. He had on the way up taken a wide swing east so as to pass the hospital where Silva had been killed. As they went through gates and up an overgrown driveway where dandelions were golden buttons sprouting through gravel, he snapped his watch shut, dropped it back into his pocket. The journey had taken exactly (from the building in which the little South American’s body still lay) an hour and ten minutes. Which amounted precisely to this: if Barcley had telephoned to the colonel at half-past eight (and they all knew then of Silva’s confinement in the hospital in the Bronx), both Waring and Archer had been drawn sharply back into the picture. Some one of the people involved in Rita’s murder had killed Silva, and these two men could just as easily have driven south from Connecticut as any one of the others could have driven north from Manhattan. They had plenty of time.
Routine work, performed mechanically. The two men got out in a circular sweep below a long white house faintly visible in starlight. A state trooper stepped forward, made his report. They had arrived at one-twenty. The place seemed deserted—at any rate, there were no lights. An admirable country home, secluded, neat. The flowering shrubs needed pruning. They went in through a pantry window. Caution was entirely unnecessary, the birds had flown: There was plenty of evidence of their having been there, traces of food in the blue-and-white kitchen, two beds in an upstairs room still unmade, but no indication of what time they had left the house.
A station wagon was missing from the garage. McKee put various agencies in movement, dropped into a chair in front of the fire in the living room, would have seemed asleep except that his eyes were wide open on tarnished andirons. Rita and her past with which one of these people was connected? The Archer yacht anchored in the harbor at Barranquilla, Colombia; the exact date was indeterminate, but sometime in the spring of 1926. And it was in April that Silva had been captured in a shack fifty miles up country at Costa de Muerte. Donaher would arrive here tomorrow. Tonight, Kingston. At seven in the morning the forty-passenger Sikorsky flying boat would leave for the longest over-water flight in the world, six hours to Barranquilla, where he would be met by a local agent of Scadta, a Colombian-German syndicate, and whirled into the mountains. But that was a long time away, and a great deal could happen here in New York while the lieutenant was busy digging up whatever fragments of Rita’s history he could unearth, Rita and her dead husband and Silva and that shadowy fourth man or woman. Some one of the people was playing possum behind more than half a dozen obliterating years and a battery of lies and evasions.
He pronounced their names aloud in the silent room, making the sergeant jump. “Count them, Tannin: Barcley, Mrs. Barcley, Waring, Gregory Archer, Judith Pierce, and Gerald Gair. All of them with money, all people who have traveled, all——” The shrill ringing of a phone in the hall cut him off.
It was the Homicide Office calling. Waring had turned up at the Barcley house in Sixty-eighth Street in the missing station wagon, was waiting for the Barcleys when they themselves arrived home at a quarter of two. Waring was alone. Archer was not with him. What were the inspector’s orders?
“Have them tell the colonel,” McKee called languidly from his chair, “where I am.” And when the sergeant came back into the room, “I’m sure he’ll be anxious to see me. There are so many explanations to be made. The colonel will want to do that. He’s a plausible fellow. We’ll have a visit from him, Tannin, before very long. It will pass the time. Look for Archer ourselves as soon as it’s morning.”
As usual, he was right. Dawn was washing the world back into view behind the windowpanes, gnarled apple branches were being threaded with new leaves, a glimpse of the Sound over their crests, when a car climbed the driveway and came to a stop outside. Tannin brought the colonel in.
Waring was a changed man, or a remarkably good actor.
His face was gray, burnt out, and he dropped heavily into a chair opposite the inspector’s and seemed to have some difficulty with his vocal cords, had to clear his throat twice before he could speak. He didn’t hedge now, said with hoarse directness: “I have a statement to make.”
McKee smiled without moving. “That’s splendid, Colonel. We’ve been waiting to hear from you for some time.”
Waring ignored the jibe, brushed it away with a wave of his hand. “It has been a terrible night, terrible, but perhaps I’d better begin at the beginning so that you will understand. I brought Gregory Archer up here to this house on the day after the dancer was killed down in the speakeasy. I knew that he was innocent, but he was in no shape, either mentally or physically, to be questioned by the police.”
“You mean,” McKee interrupted softly, “that he’s a dipsomaniac, was in the grip of a terrific hangover and … might blurt out things that would be prejudicial to him?”
“I … he … well, he’s very young. He does drink too much. But——”
“How old is Gregory Archer, Colonel?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“I should scarcely call him a boy. You’re his guardian?”
“Co-guardian and executor of his father’s estate with the Bennington Trust Company.” You could feel wariness back of his big spare frame.
“And when does Gregory Archer legally come into control of his heritage?”
“When he’s thirty.”
“Had he married in the meantime without the consent of the trustees … what?”
“The bulk of the estate would have gone to various charities. He would have been left with the interest of a small residue to live on.”
“In case of his death, who would benefit?”
Waring looked as though he were going to protest what he evidently considered meaningless questions, changed his mind. “The aforementioned charities and myself.”
“Nothing would go to his mother?”
“Claire was left amply provided for when her husband died. Barcley himself is a wealthy man.”
McKee abandoned this subject abruptly. “You say that Archer had been drinking and that you wanted to get him back on his feet. How did you go about it, Colonel? You didn’t cut off his supply completely, did you?”
“I’m not a fool.”
“I see. You rationed him after you got here. And yet the whisky glass on the tray beside the bottle down in your library in the house in Gramercy Square was clean. You didn’t consider that he needed a touch before starting out on that journey?”
Suddenly the colonel was shouting in the stillness of a room broken only by the laced call of birds beyond the windows. “Isn’t this all very absurd? I came here at a considerable trouble to tell you something and you won’t listen. He’s gone. He got away. We don’t know where he is now. We’re worried. When I came back to this house at seven o’clock tonight after going over to town for some food, he wasn’t here.”
And his bloodshot eyes were cold as he watched the effect of this, red veins mottling his fleshy cheeks. The Scotsman, rousing himself lazily, asked a number of questions. To which Waring replied that when he entered the upstairs bedroom Archer wasn’t in it; that he hadn’t the slightest notion where he’d gone, that he himself had driven back to the city in a Ford station wagon belonging to his sister——
“After,” McKee murmured, “you had that telephone call from Barcley telling you all the news. You wouldn’t get an evening paper here, naturally. Wouldn’t know about what was going on. You wouldn’t care to repeat the substance of that telephone talk?”
All trace of emotion suddenly vanished from Waring’s face. He rose without haste, picked up his hat and stick, and said: “I have told you the truth about Gregory. I can do no more. You don’t seem inclined to help us find him. Very well, we will have to take what steps we can ourselves.”
That was at twenty minutes to six on the morning of May twenty-fourth.
Fairfield County is one of the richest in the state of Connecticut. Great estates lie flung over the tumbling hills in every direction. New York has invaded it here and there, but an occasional oasis lingers where the country people relax only among themselves or with “city folks” who have lived there for a long time. The colonel and his sister were old residents, and Gregory Archer had spent a good many summers with them in that remodeled farmhouse within sight of the shore. Archer had to be found. Tannin worked hard that Sunday morning gathering information, as a result of which McKee, in an entirely different suit of clothes which had been sent up from New York, took a stroll at a little after eleven when the air was still full of the lingering sound of church bells.
Beyond the post office was a field where daisies were tight buds in high grass and, opposite this field and before you come to the Inn, there was a very impressive building of white stucco with four pillars and a stained-glass window either side of the front door. This was the establishment and home of Mr. Edward Bell, among other things an ardent fisherman.
A stranger, if he wanted to see Mr. Bell, would have gone up steps between these pillars. McKee didn’t. He strolled around to the side, nodded carelessly to a tall, weedy individual doing, in spite of the Sabbath, some excellent spadework in a garden, and said: “Nice-looking potatoes you’ve got there. Ed at home?”
“Yeah, he’s looking for a call—go on in.”
McKee pushed open a small door to the left of commodious garages, found himself in a large room with an organ in one corner, two handsome ferns in jardinières on a wide sill, Axminster rugs, three overstuffed chairs, and a sofa. There were doors at either end. He went through the one on his right, was in a small bar office. The office was empty. He thrust his head down some cellar stairs, didn’t hear anything, and tapped on another door beyond. A voice drawled, “Come ahead,” and the Scotsman obeyed the invitation.
There were two men in the room into which he stepped. It was a strange place. There was a great deal of plate glass running from floor to ceiling, and behind the plate glass a number of handsome and imposing caskets were ranged in rows. McKee picked Bell out unerringly, small, dark, neat, with a chubby face, a man of sixty-eight who didn’t look a day over forty. He was in the act, with the help of his assistant, of pushing a newly arrived coffin into its niche, had in fact paused a moment before to examine the fluted satin interior with a glance of admiration.
He sprang like a soldier to attention at McKee’s entrance, but McKee said: “I’m a friend of Greg Archer’s. I’ve often heard him speak of you. I was passing and I thought I’d look in.” Bell relaxed, put a half-smoked cigar back between his teeth, and held out his hand. “Pleased to meet any friend of Greg’s. You’re Mr.…?”
McKee ignored the question, put his shoulder against a narrow strip of wall, felt for a cigarette, and asked with interest: “How’s business?”
He had struck the right note. Bell’s face creased itself into lines of satisfaction. He said confidentially: “Looking up. Getting better. We had two last week, one yesterday, and we’re expecting another now at any moment. Look out for that corner, Elmer. That-a-baby.” The casket slid smoothly into place.
McKee discarded his cigarette, offered the undertaker a cigar, lit one himself, and pursued his inquiries. Bell and Archer were fast friends and ardent fishermen. If anyone would know his whereabouts, this man ought to. And in the country things get around. He explained that Archer had promised him a spot of eeling; had said he would be at the house on the shore this week, but that when he arrived Archer wasn’t at home. “Although I’m sure he was in town yesterday.”
Bell was at first hurt and then informative. “That’s right. I thought he might be up, because I did see the colonel around a couple of times, met him in the drugstore yesterday evening, but I didn’t get to speak to him. The eels are running good now. Lemme see where you might find Greg …” There was a chap named George Buckley who did for the colonel’s sister, looking over the place while she was away—he ran a little trucking business, but did odd jobs on the side. George had a boat. He lived over at the station. “Turn left at the railroad bridge, dead-end street, little red house on the right.”
McKee shook hands cordially with the undertaker and left the shop. The words “drugstore” and “colonel” had sent a little tingle along his spine. Sending Tannin to cover that end, he went in search of George Buckley. He left the Cadillac at the station and walked down a narrow lane. Insects sang loudly in the grass. Trees were waving masses of green against a pale sky. He thought of a lot of things. The persistence of Archer’s flight, the way he was being helped by his people. And yet it wasn’t such a bad idea, would never have done in the case of a poor man, but with shekels to grease the wheels, put gas in the tank, buy faithful help, he could vanish indefinitely, holding the case in status quo until such time as pursuit slackened and fresh crime and violence engaged the attention of the authorities.
There was no one in the little red house. It was locked up tight. A lean-to at the back that served as a garage was empty. The Scotsman shopped around the neighborhood. Cottages stood back under trees, in straggling yards. George lived with his father (his mother was dead), and the old man “took a drop.” They didn’t get on very well together—which didn’t matter, but what did was: George had not been home the night before and had gone off in his truck at about nine o’clock, and, “might have been trekking out to that camp of his that he’s building up in the hills.”
After that McKee drove across to the state troopers’ barracks in record time. Clear as crystal now what had happened. Barcley had found out by inquiry at the garage where the Hispano was cached (this was afterwards verified) that the police were on Archer’s trail. He had phoned Waring, and that interesting young man’s base had been shifted—with considerable skill. In the barracks McKee asked questions, bent over a map. No one knew quite where the camp was situated except that it must be out Redding way. He didn’t wait for Tannin, who was still gathering information about the colonel. A half-hour later, with a trooper who knew the country beside him on the seat, he left the village behind. That ride was memorable—in more ways than one.
At first the going wasn’t bad, a dirt road between fields with farmhouses dotting it. Then at an intersection they turned sharp left into a narrow lane ribbed with rock that the Town Council had the impudence to call Bayberry Avenue. Bayberry Avenue dropped straight into a narrow valley between high hills that shut out the light on either side. The farther you went the worse it got.
Presently the Cadillac dropped to a walk, nosing around blind turns, branches slapping the windows; was at one moment threading the lip of a precipice with a sheer drop of a hundred feet to a rocky gorge below (the upper reaches of the Saugatuck), at another, negotiating a stretch of marsh in green gloom, where rotten planks were a makeshift bridge. Their gait was now about ten miles an hour and fast at that.
McKee controlled himself with an effort. All this backing and filling and dragging information from people who didn’t want to give it had taken time. And time, from the beginning, had been of extreme importance in the progress of this case. Everybody involved was fighting for it—the police included— but they had a different end in view. It was almost four o’clock when they left the barracks, and here in the valley dusk was beginning to sift down. He went on thinking. Rita and her wide-flung web! She had overstepped herself on that last night. Her greed was too much for her. She wanted Archer, and she wanted the emerald. Archer had brought Waring and Mr. and Mrs. Barcley to the Sanctuary, and the desire to regain the stone (for which Rita had resorted to blackmail) had brought the Gairs and Judith Pierce. Silva was already on her trail—and Silva was dead.
He turned to the more immediate problem. If those sub-pœnas were to be of any use at all, the whole cast would have to be assembled tomorrow morning—and that wasn’t very long away. Impenetrable shields of green hemmed the car in, ash, oak, maple, ironwood, and slim white birches looming through grayness, all choked with underbrush. More than once they passed a camp buried in the trees. Each time, after a brief scrutiny, the trooper shook his head. But as twilight deepened, even he began to lose hope. He said: “I haven’t been out this way in a year. The road empties into another valley farther along. We ought to reach Buckley’s place soon.” And they did. And it was up a mountain side.
They came quite suddenly on a dilapidated farmhouse, minus one wall, crouched under two mangy pines in the shadow of a cliff, and a woman washing clothes in the last of the light directed them with a fling of her thumb straight, apparently, into the skies. “George Buckley’s got a camp there.” They couldn’t take a car. It was what she said as they turned away, squeezing soapsuds out of gray flannel against a washboard, staring at them with dull eyes, that sent the Scotsman bounding towards the path:
“I ain’t seen him in quite a spell. He must be using the other road.”
The trooper objected to running. He objected still more to climbing, but climbing, and running and talking at the same time were too much for him. He did manage to gasp out, in that precipitous journey up the flank of the hill, that “… maybe you could get in from the east, but it would be a long trek across country, past the Devil’s Den and Chickawaw.”
Branches lashed their faces treacherously out of dusk, vines tangled their feet. But presently the trees began to thin, they were almost at the top, and now you could see, in the faint afterglow, a wide moor with a glimpse of something that might be the Sound on the horizon. They were on the cabin almost before it was visible.
Buckley had chosen well. The view in daylight ought to be magnificent. It was perched on the shoulder of the young mountain and half buried in laurel. But it was closed, shuttered and lifeless. They broke in. Ship lamps of bright brass hung on the walls of the big central room. The trooper lighted one (it was full of kerosene). They went through the place rapidly. The cabin contained, besides, two small bedrooms and a tiny kitchen, complete with an oil stove and ice box. The stove gave them valuable information. It had been used a short time before; the metal shield of one burner was still warm. But that wasn’t what interested the inspector most.
In the fireplace in the living room there was a half-burned log. The hearth was very neat, but off to one side a scrap of whiteness had escaped the flames. McKee picked it up, to stand very still, turning it over in his fingers. It was half of a small envelope such as druggists use, empty and with the edges charred. The trooper looked his curiosity, but the Scotsman merely said, pocketing the exhibit, “We’ve got to get out of here—we’ve got to get back to town.”
They didn’t even bother to close the door behind them.