AFTER THAT things were plain enough to Telfair, but they were like things heard and experienced in a dream. They scarcely touched consciousness, which was a stiff layer stretched rigidly above his fear. He wouldn’t examine his fear, knew that he couldn’t do that and remain calm. And there was need for calmness now. McKee was very calm indeed. They crossed in the launch to the shore. A number of men loomed out of the darkness in the extensive and ornamental grounds surrounding the long low house on the hill above. They went through a garden and up steps. They went across a terrace and into the house. Some of the men went with them, some of the others were sent away.
McKee stood very tall and straight in the middle of a paneled room that had a lot of books in it and asked questions, addressing most of these to two detectives from the Homicide Squad who had followed the Barcleys and Waring down here earlier in the evening. He spoke slowly:
“You, Albright, stationed yourself out in front after the Barcleys entered the house at a little before eight. Then …?”
“Nothing for a while, Inspector. Mr. and Mrs. Barcley and the colonel went in and lights came on. About ten minutes of nine a taxi came up the drive, stopped at the front door. A girl got out. I knew it was the Pierce girl right away, because I was tailing her last week. She went into the house. The taxi drove away. She was inside about a quarter of an hour when a motorcycle man came over with orders to grab her if she showed. But as she was inside anyhow, and there was a man on the back——”
“I understand.” McKee turned to the second detective. “You’re sure, Brown, she didn’t slip out that way?”
Brown shook his head. “Not while I was watching. At about half-past nine, three people came out. I couldn’t see very well, but I made sure against the windows they were the Barcleys and Waring. They started across the lawn and down the hill. I followed. They went into a boathouse at the shore over on the left. It was pretty dark. They were in there a long time. I heard voices and tinkering noises and I figured they were trying to get some sort of launch started to get out to the yacht. Then, after about half an hour, they did get it started. I knew our men were out there. I stayed down on the beach ready to grab anyone who came back.”
“All right. Search the house, the outbuildings.”
The two detectives tramped away. McKee began to pace the floor, hands in his pockets, his head bent, concentrating on a problem of minutes. There was no question at all as to why the girl was there. She had come on the same errand that had sent her to the penthouse the morning they themselves paid it a second visit—to get the letters for which Rita was using blackmail. The letters had been lost in the shuffle after the dancer’s death. One thing was clear: if the Barcleys had the letters—and this went for Waring, too—they might have summoned the girl down here to propose a bargain. The meeting in the district attorney’s office was over, the case apparently closed. But they could never feel quite safe as long as they weren’t sure of two things: first, whether Judith Pierce, crossing the space beyond the mahogany barrier in which Archer was standing just prior to Rita’s death, had seen anything incriminating; then, secondly, if she had, whether she would keep still about it permanently.
All this was beside the point at the moment. She had been alone in the house for a full half-hour after the Barcleys had left it, while they were down in the boathouse trying to start the launch. And where was Gair? There was one thing McKee could do and do immediately: ask the Barcleys and Colonel Waring some questions. They didn’t know they had been closely watched, might deny even now that they had seen anything of the girl at all that night.
Telfair could have taken a lesson in composure from the group of people who presently filed into the room. Archer had been dressed and pulled back to some semblance of normality. He looked weak and ill as he came in between Waring and George Buckley, but that was all. Barcley held his wife tightly by the arm, supported her to a chair. They all sat down.
And at once McKee’s vague hope of trapping them in a lie died stillborn. Claire Barcley, putting her husband aside, admitted everything: “I telephoned Miss Pierce. I asked her to come down here. I suggested this place because we had been—rather annoyed by the police in New York.”
“Why did she come, Mrs. Barcley?”
Did a glance flash from one to the other? He couldn’t be sure. She said languidly: “We have all been subjected to anxiety and annoyance over this case. My husband and I are going away. We wanted to have everything cleared up with the most absolute certainty before we went, thought that Miss. Pierce would feel the same way.”
“She was still in the house when you left it to go down to the shore?”
“Yes. We telephoned to a garage in Manasquan for a car to take her back to the station. There was no car in. They said they would send one as soon as they could. She said she would wait.” She was still explaining this when a detective came into the room and announced that a car from a local garage had just driven through the gate.
Telfair, who had been listening, absolutely motionless, to this drive of questions that didn’t lead anywhere, got up on that and made his way stumblingly to an open French window and through it out into the air. He had no plan of any kind, was scarcely conscious of where he was going or what he meant to do—but he had to do something.
Darkness and the roar of the surf. The night was full of the sea, smelt of seaweed and sand and fish and slime and salt. Far off to the left, where the garages were, lights shot to and fro and voices were faint and echoing across the gardens. Men were beating about the tangle of shrubbery near the lodge. Within its walls McKee was still asking those people questions. The grounds in front were being gone over. The shore then. He turned towards it blindly and curiously, after a minute or two, found himself going uphill instead of down.
The sky had been steadily breaking up after the storm, and at this moment the slow moon sailed out from behind a fling of clouds and made painted magic of the landscape. In its sharp and sudden light, objects were almost discernable as in day. Telfair stood still. Far out, the sea; behind him and to the left, the house; ahead, the water was a wide curve biting into the hilly shore. He stood at its highest point. Everything but this narrow strip on the extreme right had been already explored. There didn’t seem to be anything here to … He stared down steadily at the precipitous drop clothed with pines and running in a sharp point out into the ocean.
Then he saw a lot of things all at once: broken branches and trampled shrubs, as though someone had gone down what was almost a small precipice at his feet; but more than that, buried in pines at the bottom on the edge of the shore, the roof alone betraying it, there was some sort of house.
Telfair didn’t stop to think. No time for thinking. He followed the faint trail, sliding down ground tilted at a forty-five degree angle, slippery with needles between small tree trunks at which he grasped with his hands to break his fall. He reached the bottom abruptly, fetched up against a boulder, barked his shins, went down on a loose pebble, fell headlong, got a gash along his jaw, wiped blood away, and continued to race forward. The pines fell back now; dead ahead, in a frame of bright ripples that was the moon on the water, a low octangular building, some sort of ornamental summerhouse, reared a dark bulk.
As he ran the remaining twenty feet he had the sense to shout, sent cry after cry ringing into the darkness. From somewhere far off there was an answering shout as he reached the building, banged furiously and without result on a small stout door. The door was locked. He was hammering on it with bleeding fists when help arrived. Telfair didn’t even recognize the Scotsman at the head of a little army. They broke down the door, were in a cement chamber smelling of damp, with a spiral stair leading to the room above. The troopers leaped for the staircase. Telfair started to follow and stood still. Because McKee was standing still, sending his torch slowly around the basement of the really beautiful and secluded pagoda among the pines. There was very little in it, some folding chairs, faded with age, an old canvas hammock flung against the wall, and, standing near the hammock, a lawnmower, very bright and new, with its green paint and glistening blades. The Scotsman started to walk towards this slowly. He didn’t say anything until he stood directly above the canvas hammock; then he did say in a muffled voice: “Stand where you are, Telfair.” He dropped down on his knees, pulled a flap of canvas aside, and his voice changed.
“Thank God,” he said simply. And then Telfair was beside him down on the floor. It was Judith beneath the canvas hammock, crowded close against the wall, and Judith was alive. He made sure of that first in one desperate heartbeat, then lifted her into his arms, smoothing her face, her hair, listened to her slow breathing, while a deep and shuddering joy shook him from head to foot.
Broken planes of nightmare fell away. It was all very simple for Telfair after that. They got Judith into the upper room, a beautifully furnished apartment with wide windows opening on the sea. McKee went away, came back. Telfair was oblivious of the passage of time, of various reports made to the inspector. Gerald Gair’s car had been found parked in a deserted lane a half-mile away. There was no sign of him. After a while Judith was able to talk. (It was late then; the moon had sailed a perceptible distance up into the sky.)
Her story merely deepened the Scotsman’s frown, for it confirmed Claire Barcley’s. Judith had come down here for a conference. They hadn’t threatened her in any way. Had told her they were leaving, that the house would be empty. But she knew the car for which the Barcley’s had telephoned would be there soon. She was watching for it at the window when something frightened her, some sound. She turned too late. The door of the room was opening. Somebody leaped at her from behind, pinioned her arms, pressed a cloth over her mouth. She knew the cloth was saturated with chloroform because she had had an anesthetic once before … and that was all she could tell them. She hadn’t caught even a glimpse of——
A detective interrupted her at this point, springing quickly up the staircase. All he said was, “Donaher, Inspector. Just drove over here from the Newark airport. Got your call.” McKee, who had been going to ask Judith about the all-important letters, turned abruptly and vanished. Telfair didn’t care. He was perfectly willing to obey orders now. They were all to go up to the house. There was a less difficult route than that by which he had approached the pagoda, along the shore fifty feet and up through the gardens. Judith was able to walk now. His happiness was scarcely even dimmed by a faint withdrawal on her part as she gathered strength. It was as though during that brief journey she was bracing herself.
And then they were back in the big room lined with books. Their arrival didn’t even create a stir. On the couch Archer had fallen asleep. Claire Barcley sat almost as she had been sitting when Telfair left the room. Her husband was beside her. Waring drowsed in a big chair beside the empty fireplace, and Buckley sat stolid and unwinking in the face of events for which he didn’t even try to find explanation or excuse.
Telfair was completely immersed in Judith. She was still suffering from shock and the dose of chloroform, but had pulled herself together marvelously. Her hands were folded in her lap, and she stared straight ahead at a lovely piece of Ming porcelain on a table under a window. It was a long time before there was any interruption, but the cartoonist was quite content. People did get tangled up in these bad dreams sometimes, but it was all over now. Death was like that. Almost any death that was close to one. It took months to get over it.
The opening of the door found them all strangely immobile. He himself didn’t feel any particular interest. McKee came in slowly, as though he were tired. He didn’t sit down, stood there just inside the room, his shoulder against a bookcase, holding some papers in his hand. Behind him two detectives were dimly visible in the hall.
“I’m not”—his glance passed over them all in turn, lingering on Claire Barcley—“going to bother you now with a long resume leading up to the murder of Rita Rodriguez and the subsequent killing of Carlos Silva in the hospital in the Bronx. I have felt from the beginning that the solution was intimately bound up with the emerald robbery perpetrated by Silva in Colombia. And the moment I came on the box containing the three toes amputated from Silva’s foot in a fight, I knew that he had been double-crossed and that a brain more nimble than his had planned the theft. The possessor of this brain managed to have Silva caught and imprisoned down in Colombia. This unknown man was a lover of the dancer’s. He got away with the emeralds, leaving her behind—not, however, before she managed to get hold of one stone, probably in a final scene between them before he departed to the new life this wealth opened up. He vanished. But Rita was shrewd. The moment she heard that Silva had been captured at Costa de Muerte, she put two and two together. After that she started a leisurely pursuit of this man.
“And at last in New York she found Gregory Archer.—Wait!” He threw up his hand, for Claire Barcley was on her feet, her eyes wild. In the single instant of silence the noise of the surf on the shore below came clearly into the room. There was another movement: two big sturdy men stepped over the threshold, ranged themselves beside the inspector. He went on slowly: “Just when or where she saw the man she was in search of with Gregory Archer in New York, I cannot tell you. At any rate she did.” And then McKee turned. His voice sounded tired. “Barcley, I arrest you for the murder of——” Claire Barcley’s scream cut across the mechanical formula. She stumbled, would have fallen, only that McKee, who had been expecting this, caught her in his arms. And over the uproar that surged up and filled the room, he cried—it was the only thing he could think of in that frightful moment: “At any rate, your son is innocent.”
He didn’t go on with that brief summary until Claire Barcley had been taken away. Barcley himself, alias Mr. Philip Hamilton, sat on quite easily next to the empty chair his wife had occupied. There was no evidence of strain about his easy posture, no attempt at denial, scarcely even any fear. It was as though he, instead of the others—instead of Waring, for instance, his face flushed, with hands balled into fists, staring incredulously, torn between rage and disbelief—might, have been the spectator rather than the principal in this final moment.
In fact, when he spoke it was in the voice of a man who has played a game of billiards and who has lost every cent in his pocket but whose only emotion is one of physical fatigue. His eyes were fastened on the papers McKee still held in his hand. The Scotsman nodded impersonally.
“Yes, your handwriting. We sent a detective down to Colombia. He got the story of a Mr. Hamilton’s infatuation with the dancer, got Mr. Hamilton’s signatures, six years old, for food and drink at the clubhouse outside Bogota. Hamilton vanished just after the theft was committed. Have you anything to say?”
Barcley’s eyes met his. He spoke slowly: “I don’t suppose it would do any good. Besides, I’m too tired now. Perhaps—later?” And stifling a yawn, he got up deliberately, almost before the detectives either side of him made a move, and with that easy graceful stride walked between them out of the room. A quick finish then. Orders issued. Archer, who had viewed all this with the stupid gaze of a puzzled child, was taken away to bed by his henchman; Waring, who wanted to ask a lot of questions, was dismissed with a shrug, and the Cadillac was ordered round.
It wasn’t until they were alone, the three of them, Judith Pierce, Telfair, and the Scotsman, that McKee said: “And now, Miss Pierce, what about those letters?” The girl glanced up at him, looked away and didn’t move. And then he spoke again, and his voice was stern: “Barcley gave them to you, didn’t he, here, tonight? He picked them up in Rita’s apartment after he killed her, picked up also the pistol with which Gerald Gair threatened Rita on the afternoon of her death when he went to her apartment to get the letters. Gair left the pistol behind him. You’ve all been very stupid and have caused us a great deal of trouble. You and Mr. and Mrs. Gair, running around watching each other—on the night of Silva’s murder, for instance. Think of how Barcley used you and the knowledge he had. He read the letters, kept the gun and used it to kill the waiter. But he didn’t throw it away at once. Because it was valuable and might be of assistance in incriminating someone else. When he went to the Gaits’ house on Sunday afternoon to bargain with Gair about testimony given in the Sanctuary, he took occasion to drop it somewhere.
“The papers were full of descriptions of the pistol. Susan Gair knew her husband had one like it. She found the pistol. What happened then? When she went up to Harlem to visit an old colored cook who had been employed by her mother, she threw it away in the alley.”
Judith Pierce fell back against the cushions with a long breath and covered her face with her hands. But the inspector was not yet through with her. “Mrs. Barcley telephoned you to come down here, offering the bait of these letters which her husband told her he had found in Archer’s apartment. But it was Barcley who called Gair at his office, who told Gair to drive to that deserted amusement park above Manasquan and wait there until someone turned the extremely incriminating documents over to him.
“Do you know what they intended to do in the end? No? I’ll tell you. But first you had to be wiped out. Because, you see, you were the only witness to the actual murder.”
The girl took her hands away and stared at him whitely. “But … I wasn’t!”
McKee’s smile was thin. “He thought you were—which comes to the same thing in the end. I am in doubt about a good many things still, but not as to what happened that night in the speakeasy. When Barcley walked in there in pursuit of his wife, he hadn’t the slightest idea in the world of who Rita was. He recognized her while he was still seated at the table and understood everything at a glance. She was striking at him through Archer; was about to have an interview with his wife. That would have been the end. He was confronted with two alternatives. Either to lose the life of security he had built up or to kill her. Knowing his past, I believe that he went constantly armed, always fearful of the emergency which confronted him then. What took place? He walked the length of the room and stepped behind the barrier. There was no one there. He was alone, to all intents and purposes, the restaurant beyond, crowded and in the shadow, except for Rita in the middle of the dance floor, her body a bright shaft in the spotlight. He drew the gun and fired. When he turned round he was no longer alone. Archer had come in, and you yourself were crossing towards the aisle at the far side.
“Archer was drunk. He had a pistol in his hand. In the grip of a jealous rage he had gone to the Sanctuary either to shoot the dancer or to threaten to shoot himself. Barcley was an opportunist. He was quick to see the chance this afforded him—could easily deal with his stepson. He had taken good care to keep him under the combined influence of drink and an opiate ever since, while passing him from hand to hand, playing on his mother’s fear and the colonel’s self-interest. You were another kettle of fish. You hadn’t spoken, but you might. Very well, we return to my point. You had to be eliminated before he could feel really safe.
“After leaving you here in the house, he returned while his wife and the colonel were trying to get the launch started, chloroformed you, and (it was a comparatively simple matter) carried you down to the pagoda. Desperate people will take long chances. He hadn’t time to dispose of you then, would have returned later. But there was an added element of safety then that he couldn’t bring himself to pass up. And there he overstepped himself.
“If you were dead and your body rose to the surface within a reasonable length of time, those letters would have been found in your pocket. And Gair, waiting to keep the appointment with a man who never came, would have had some difficulty explaining his whereabouts when you disappeared. Miss Pierce, hadn’t you better give me the letters now?”
And then when she still didn’t move but sat there like a little figurine carved in ivory, McKee walked to the fireplace, where logs were laid, bent down and put a match to the kindling beneath. He turned away, blew out the match, walked to the window. And suddenly Telfair knew.
It was Gerald Gair the dancer was blackmailing all the time, Gair who had gone to the Sanctuary that night to get his letters. Susan Gair followed him, and after the murder was committed, Gair, finding himself in a tough spot and afraid of his wife, told Judith the truth and appealed to her for help. The dancer had not brought the letters with her to the Sanctuary; therefore they must be in her apartment, because she had told him that afternoon after he paid that she was going to get them from the bank. Judith had stolen the purse in order to gain admittance there. Not finding the letters, she had regained possession of it again to see whether the purse contained any further clue to their whereabouts. Could as peaceful an emotion as friendship have sent her plunging into the whole adventure?
Telfair’s new-found peace receded, leaving him very cold and detached. All of it couldn’t quite go. For Judith was safe. Had he found her only to lose her again? And to a man like Gerald Gair! He understood Gair’s character as he had never done before. The man was charming, easily attracted, unreliable, without even strength.
Telfair stood looking at the girl fixedly. She got up out of the chair, walked with little steps to the hearth, stood there for a moment looking down into the flames, put her hand into the pocket of the tweed coat, stained with moisture and crushed leaves, took two folded sheets of paper out and tossed them straight into the middle of the blaze. Then she turned round. Her eyes met his. There was a question in her eyes.
Telfair said very slowly and distinctly: “I don’t want to worry you now. You’ve had enough. After all, — have no right——” He stopped. For the Scotsman, without looking at them, was walking out of the room, and over his shoulder, as he went, he said in a tired voice: “Don’t be a damn fool, Telfair. The car will be around in ten minutes. I’ll wait for you at the door.”
On an afternoon in late August almost three months to a day since the alarm announcing Rita’s death had come blurred and breathless into the golden bowl at the top of Police Headquarters, McKee sat at his desk and watched a flight of pigeons alight on a roof in sunlight across the street. His brow suddenly cleared, and he sank back in his chair. There was beauty in the world, although sometimes it was difficult to find. He had had a long and tiring week in court. That morning the jury had brought in a verdict of wilful murder against Philip Hamilton, alias Philip Barcley. He had just been working on the last notes, supplementary evidence that had been brought out during the trial. Now as the door opened he pushed a sheaf of papers into an envelope and pressed down the fastener. It was the sergeant who came in. McKee said: “Don’t sit down. We’re taking a little trip.” Tannin looked resigned. “Where to?”
“Pier Number 59, North River, for the purpose of seeing Mr. and Mrs. James Telfair off on a trip to the Continent.”
“A ship?” the sergeant frowned, then a grin ran all over his freckled face. “Well, so’s I don’t have to stay on it that’s O.K.”
Before he went, McKee pulled the envelope labeled Sanctuary Murder towards him. Below Sanctuary Murder, Hamilton’s name was written in full and the words, Indicted May Thirty-first; brought to trial, August Eighth, then Verdict. He scribbled, Guilty, first degree after Verdict, threw the pen aside. There were two other items to be filled in later. They consisted of Sentenced in Superior Court by Judge McDermott, with the month and day left blank, and a still further word, Executed … The answer to this was not yet forthcoming.
McKee dropped the envelope into the drawer and closed it with a bang. Finished business—or almost. At the moment he had other, pleasanter things to do.
THE END