Allan paused in his pacing. “The voice! I knew there was a flaw somewhere in your reasoning! What about Payne’s voice? It isn’t harsh and rasping.”
“That’s why I came here tonight, Allan. There must be some explanation. You’re a doctor. Think. Isn’t there something physical a man can take to change his voice? Some drug or irritant?”
“Wait!” said Allan sharply. “Payne had no reason to disguise his voice when you first heard him over the telephone because he didn’t know then that he was going to be overheard. And you can’t believe he’s been disguising his voice since then without Curtis noticing the difference. Curtis has known Payne ever since Curtis married Esther. He told me so himself.”
“Then it must have been a piece of pure gambler’s luck that Payne’s voice was different when I first heard it over the telephone. Is there any disease that makes a voice harsh for only an hour or so?”
“And then restores it to normal a few hours later?” There was relief in Allan’s smile, as well as amusement. “It’s no use, Amy. That voice is one thing you just can’t get around.”
Amy was reaching for the cigarette box, when she halted suddenly, looking down at one of the medical magazines on the table. “Allan, I have it! This word on the cover!”
“What word?”
“Allergy! That’s something that comes and goes suddenly, capriciously. I once had a skin allergy to nail polish, and I know. Suppose Payne has a throat allergy. Suppose he was exposed to the stimulus, whatever it may be, just before I heard him talking to Esther that first time. He would know that if he could get his voice back to normal before he met me at dinner, I would never identify it. Aren’t there new ways of controlling allergic symptoms? Antihistamine drugs? Bacteriophage? Sedatives? Even throat lozenges and inhalants can clear up hoarseness in a couple of hours.”
“It usually takes longer,” insisted Allan.
“But not always. Allan, don’t be so skeptical! If we look up the case histories—”
Allan grinned. “Have you forgotten I have patients waiting for me now?”
“Then let me look through these medical books while you see your patients. When you get back I may have found something.”
He looked at her dubiously, brows bunched together, mouth a thin line. “All right, but it happens to be Mrs. Adams’ night off.”
“The housekeeper? Then you can come home with me when you get back, and we’ll have dinner there.”
“Hasn’t this affected your appetite?”
“What do you mean?”
“The bloodhound act. It’s a job for the police. I want no part of it.”
“But—”
“You think I’m thinking of Esther. I’m not. I’m thinking of that poor devil, Payne. Suppose he did fall for Esther and all the rest of it. Do you think you’ll be very happy if he and Esther are arrested for murder because of you?”
“Do you think you’ll be very happy if you pick up your paper some morning and find they have killed Curtis because we did nothing to stop them?”
“All right, Amy. You win.”
After he had gone Amy drew a Venetian blind across the picture window, switched on a table lamp, and began to read. When she shut the book and looked up, night had closed in upon her. She was alone. There were not even any traffic noises now from the side road at the foot of the drive. She looked at the clock. Quarter of 8. What was keeping Allan?
She went out into the hall and turned on the lamp there. Houri, the Siamese cat, came toward her, pausing to dig claws into the rug, daintily and precisely. “You’re company, anyway.” Amy spoke largely to hear the sound of her own voice, and — the lights went out.
One moment she had been contemplating the sinuous ripple of the cat’s tail in the lamplight. Then there was no cat, no lamp, no light, nothing but impenetrable darkness, as if she were suddenly struck blind. That meant the light in the waiting-room had gone out, too, for she had left the door open behind her. A short circuit? A fuse blown? She had no idea where the fuse box was.
She would talk to Allan tomorrow. At the moment she wanted nothing so much as the reassuring brightness of her car’s headlights.
She opened the front door. Something brushed her ankles. Houri slipping out for a late prowl. Had she left her car on the right or the left? Night and mist together made it impossible to see. She groped her way toward the car.
Something hard caught her neck. Under a rough cloth sleeve she felt the pressure of an arm constricting her throat. A leather-gloved palm clasped nose and mouth, choking off breath. She struggled, but her feet slipped. She could not turn, for there was a knee against her spine. Blood began to beat and sing in her temples. Her head seemed to swell as her throat contracted. Somewhere a hard heel scraped gravel and a blow thudded close to her ear. She was thrown to the ground.
Her palms burned as they grazed the stones but she was scarcely conscious of the sting. She crouched, drawing cool sea air into her lungs in snatches, hardly aware of sore throat or pounding pulses. Somewhere in the distance someone was running.
“All right?” A pale beam of light crossed the gravel beside her hands. Someone was lifting her. She pushed tangled hair from her eyes with the back of her hand, and felt something cool and wet her hand left there — blood or mud, or both. She tried to stop panting, and looked up at the face in the dim glow of a flashlight.
“You!”
Matthew Payne sat back on one heel, the other knee upright, like a cowboy crouching before a campfire. A smile touched one corner of his mouth. “Whom did you expect?”
“But— Who ran away?”
“Someone who just tried to kill you. I would have followed him if I had known you were not injured.”
“Did you see who it was?”
“No. Did you think it was I?”
She tried to study his face in the faint light. “I... I’m afraid I did.”
The smile widened. “So much pleasanter to believe a murderer isn’t someone you’ve known all your life, isn’t it?”
“But why would anyone try to kill me?”
“Perhaps you’ve been asking too many questions. Or perhaps—”
“What?”
“Perhaps you were mistaken for someone else. It was very dark. You’re tall for a girl, and one trench coat is much like another... Let me help you to your car. I’ll drive you home.”
“You came here on foot?”
“There’s a short cut by foot. And I like walking.”
“In the mist?”
“Good cover if you’re watching somebody else.”
“Whom were you watching?”
“You. How else do you suppose I turned up in the nick of time? I heard you tell Esther where you were going when you bolted so unceremoniously. I saw the look on Esther’s face and I thought there might be trouble, so I trailed along. Just before the lights went out I thought I heard footsteps at the back of the house. I went around there to investigate, and came front again when I heard the noise of a scuffle here. That’s how I missed seeing whoever it was monkeying with the electric wires.”
Amy sank into the front seat of the car, with a shudder.
“Tell me,” said Payne. “Why are you so sure I’m a murderer? Aside from my being a stranger?”
“It wasn’t here at Allan’s that they were talking when I overheard them — Esther and the man. It was at the Gregorys’.” She told him how she knew. “You were alone with Esther at the Gregorys’ house that afternoon.”
“I was at the Gregorys’. But I wasn’t with Esther. I was upstairs, in my own room. She could have talked to anyone in her living-room.”
“Then why did you look at Esther so intensely this afternoon? I was sure you were the lover then!”
Payne chuckled. “Hate is intense as well as love. I told you I don’t like Esther.”