“How does he know that?”
“Because he knows people and he knows how much I’m in love with you, and he knows that in the condition I’m in I’m about as murderous as a butterfly, unless it was someone between you and me — Yes, Bellows?”
“Mrs. Pemberton sent me, sir. The gong sounded some minutes ago.”
“I didn’t hear it.” Jeffrey got off the bench and faced Nancy. “If you’d rather not go in with me, follow Bellows. I’ll be in in a minute.”
Before the cold consommé had been finished, Miranda was feeling that it had been a mistake to tell Bellows that her father’s chair should be left in its accustomed place, vacant. Not that she had any idea that without it the occasion might have been one of merriment, but after all people eating at one’s table are one’s guests, no matter what circumstances collected them, and the ostentatious broad back of that empty chair seemed a calculated reproach to them and a deliberate solicitation of gloom. As the cold meats were being served, she murmured something of that sort to Andrew Grant on her right and to her astonishment he replied that he hadn’t noticed it.
The meal dragged along under the buzz of the electric fans. Certainly no one was endeavoring to prolong it for the sake of conviviality, but then no one was in a hurry to finish in order to do something else. There was nothing to do. The continued presence of the authorities made it probable that another campaign of questioning was in preparation; they all knew that the famous Inspector Damon of the New York police had arrived and was in the library. Dusk deepened in the room and, as the sherbet and raspberries were served, Bellows switched on the lights. The desultory and intermittent mutterings of conversation continued; there was nothing to talk about, since no one tried to talk of the only thing in their minds. The state of their nerves, their readiness to be startled by any incident whatever, was displayed when Tecumseh Fox addressed Miranda across the table, necessarily raising his voice above the fans:
“May I say something, Mrs. Pemberton? I’d like to play a game.”
Eight pairs of eyes jerked to him. Miranda raised her brows: “A game?”
“Yes. Call it that.” Fox signaled to Bellows, and the butler got something from a buffet and approached with it. “I’m going to ask you all to join in, if you don’t mind.” He took the tray from Bellows and nodded thanks and sent a swift glance around the table: Miranda and Grant, Jeffrey and McElroy, Kester and Fuller, Nancy and Henry Jordan. “This may seem frivolous to you, but it won’t hurt you any. I have here eight pads of paper and eight pencils. I’m going to pass them around and ask each of you to write something, all of you the same thing, which I’ll dictate, and sign your names for identification. I hope you’ll have no objection, Mrs. Pemberton, since—”
“Whether I sign my name or not,” put in Fuller dryly, “depends on what you ask me to write.”
“Perfectly harmless.” Fox smiled at him. “Just a pledge of our forefathers, a sentence of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. Bellows, if you will please hand the pads and pencils around—”
The butler took them, but instead of distributing them, he suddenly stiffened and stood rigid as the sound of peremptory shouts came in at the windows, apparently at some distance, and then jerked around as the explosion of a gunshot shattered the air. Everybody else jerked with him; and Redmond, crossing with a tray of iced tea, let it drop to the floor without even making a grab, and pierced the already offended air with a bloodcurdling scream.
Chapter 20
When, two seconds later, men came running in from the west hall, Redmond was sitting on the floor in a puddle of iced tea and broken glass, still screaming, every one had got to their feet, Jeffrey overturning his chair, Henry Jordan was white and trembling all over, Miranda was clutching Andrew Grant’s arm, McElroy the multiple director was backing to the wall...
“What... who—” Colonel Brissenden was yelling.
Fox yelled back, to top the screams, “Outdoors! Nobody’s hurt in here! Outdoors!”
Brissenden barked an order and two troopers whirled and disappeared. He barked again and the muscular giant from the hall picked up Redmond, still screaming hysterically, like a bag of cotton, and carried her out. Derwin was gesticulating and trying to say something to a man with a prize-fighter’s jaw and the morose eyes of a pessimistic poet, who, instead of listening, was looking. He strode across:
“Hello, Fox. Shot fired outdoors?”
“Hello, Inspector. Yes.”
“Bullet didn’t come in here?”
“Nobody saw it or felt it.”
Inspector Damon nodded. “We were in the library, the other side of the house, and couldn’t tell.” He turned. “Here’s something coming—”
The something was bellicose voices, upraised, from the darkness outdoors. They became fainter rounding the corner of the house. Brissenden trotted out. The voices, mingling with others, were heard again from the hall and at the sound of one of them Tecumseh Fox started for the door. But before he reached it the influx arrived. Two troopers entered, one on each side of a broad-shouldered square-faced man who was holding his left arm tight against his side and with his right hand grasping it above the elbow. He saw Fox, faced him and announced in a bass rumble that quivered without raged indignation:
“The double-breasted bastard shot me!”
Fox was by him. “Where, Dan? Let’s see. Better sit down. Thanks, Inspector. Take your hand away so I can slit the sleeve—”
“Wouldn’t it be better to—”
“No. Hold still. There. You’re nice and bloody. Hold still, you don’t have to look at it! No, thank you, Mrs. Pemberton. I won’t need a tourniquet. Please stand back, Miss Grant.” Fox glanced sharply at Nancy’s white face. “You’d better sit down — put her in a chair, Andy. It’s only flesh and skin... we ought to move into a bathroom—”
“I want to get you something first.”
“Go ahead. Hold still.”
“I’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon. They wouldn’t let me in. They wouldn’t call you on the phone. I had to get to you because I know who murdered Thorpe.”
“You do?”
“Yes. As soon as it got dark enough, or I thought it was, I climbed the wall and started for the house. Who would have thought one of those apes would actually shoot? And not only that, he hit me.”
“It’s not bad. Thank you, Inspector. Go on and tell us who killed Thorpe.”
“His son did. Jeffrey.”
“Did he?” Fox disregarded movements and ejaculations. “How could you see him from that distance?”
“I didn’t see him. But I know the double-breasted—”
“Save that one till we get to the bathroom. I don’t think I ever saw you this mad before— Don’t push, Colonel, you’ll get it. Two double-breasted’s in three minutes. What is it you know?”
“I know he had my gun, because I gave it to him last night and if it’s the one that shot Thorpe—”
“You mean my gun? One of my Dowseys?”
“All right, your gun. The one I was carrying.”
Fox’s eyes blazed. “You gave that gun to Jeffrey Thorpe?”
“I lent it to him. When he was there last night — when he came downstairs to go home. I was sitting on the porch aiming with it—”
“What were you aiming at?”
“At the bug lamp.”
“Do you mean the insect trap?”
“Yes. I was showing Wallenstein how to pull it down and allow for the jump. The young ape came out and saw me and said he was going to buy a gun and wished he had one, but he couldn’t buy one until morning. I asked him what for and he said for protection. Pokorny overheard it and suggested I should lend him mine—”