“Why?” the fat man said after a moment, flatly.
The film began again, slowly.
“I’ve got a fire to report and”—I thought I’d go easy—“a suicide.”
Beyond a doorway at the foot of the stairs I saw the book-lined walls of a library and, on a small table just inside, the phone. I started for it.
Lamb’s voice, flat and cold as an ice rink, caught me. “Keep your hands off that phone!”
The man was impossible. There was less emotion in his voice than in a table of logarithms and about the same amount of cold fact. The melodrama was too thick, and I’d had my share for the evening. I thought that if I’d calm down and start talking sensibly perhaps everyone else would do the same.
“All right. Jesse James,” I said lightly, “have it your own way. Arnold, where is your sister?”
“Lamb,” he said, “put that gun away.” He turned to me. “Why do you ask? What do you know about my sister?”
“Do you know where she is?” I insisted.
“Yes. She’s upstairs in her room. But—”
“I’d make sure of that if I were you.”
He looked at me narrowly and then very slowly he said, “What have you found?”
“Your sister.” I said. “She’s up there at the old house. She’s dead. Do I use that phone?”
They all stared at me except Arnold, who seemed to be watching the others, and Rappourt, whose eyes had not yet opened but in whose rapid breathing I detected a momentary halt.
“No!” It was Sigrid’s voice, incredulous, horror-stricken. “No, that can’t be. Linda couldn’t—”
The Doctor took a quick step toward me. “What makes you think it’s Miss Skelton?”
“Colonel Watrous. He saw our lights and came up to investigate. He was with me when we found the body.”
“We? Lamo said. “You and who else?”
The Doctor turned sharply. “Maybe you’d better look, Arnold.”
But Arnold was halfway up the stairs. And then Lamb moved. The spectacled man was working at the metal fastening that curved up from the chair arm around Rappourt’s wrist. He glanced up now and then, his head moving with a quick, birdlike motion. Lamb handed him the gun.
“Keep him covered, Brooke.” Lamb pounded up the stairs after Arnold.
Brooke had a great shock of iron-gray hair and a bland, absent-minded face. His brown eyes seemed frank and guileless, though they had an odd habit of never looking quite where you expected them to, peering instead sideways from behind the glasses. He regarded the gun somewhat timidly. He looked harmless enough so I started once more for the phone.
He spoke then, his voice easy, careless, without exclamation points. “I should advise you not to touch that phone.” Harmless or not, I had the distinctly unsettling impression that he almost hoped I would touch it so he could shoot.
Rappourt, whose body now lay suddenly limp and exhausted in the chair, opened her eyes slowly. The deep masculine voice that I remembered said gently, “I wouldn’t, Ira.” There was recognition in her eyes.
Brooke lowered the gun perceptibly, hesitating. I reached out and took the phone. He made no move. I began dialing.
Arnold came running down the stairs. At their foot he stopped; his dark eyes moved, looking at each of us in turn. “She’s not there!”
My statement that she was dead had been a respectable bombshell, but this was worse. His words, somehow, acted on the others with an explosive force I didn’t understand.
Arnold ran heavily toward the door. “Come on, Doctor!”
The latter scowled at me. “You’re sure about this?”
I nodded, wondering. “Yes. She’s in that little room on the third floor. There’s a bottle of cyanide in her hand. She’s been dead some time.”
Arnold and the Doctor vanished through the door.
Then Lamb came down the stairs, his weight pounding on the steps. He glared at me for an instant and, without speaking, hurried out. The door slammed violently behind him.
I put the, phone receiver back on its rest.
Sigrid looked at me with round eyes. “But I thought — you were going to report—”
“I was,” I said bluntly. “But not on this phone. It’s dead.”
Chapter Five:
THE AGORAPHOBE
A window across the room was open at the top, and the night outside suddenly exploded in a brilliant flash of light that flared and vanished, swallowed in the deep reverberations of the thunder. The rain came swiftly, streaming down the panes. The window shade began to flap noisily. Brooke crossed the room and pushed the window up.
“Any other phones?” I asked, knowing the answer.
Sigrid shook her head. “One in Linda’s room, but it’s only an extension of this. The Doctor doesn’t have one.” She moved quickly, opened a coat cupboard near the door, and took out a raincoat. “Here.” She tossed it toward me. “We’ll get Henderson. Servants’ quarter’s in back. He’ll have to go in.” She took down another coat and started to get into it.
I knew from the clipped, brisk way she spoke, and from the hurried yet deliberate way in which she buttoned the coat, that she was using all the self-control she had.
“I can find him,” I said. “You’d better stick here.”
“No.” She pulled a hat over the blond curls. “Come on.”
I followed her toward the rear of the house through a dining-room and kitchen. Brooke, busy releasing Rappourt, watched us go without speaking.
Sigrid took a flashlight from a shelf in the kitchen. “You were at Merlini’s shop this afternoon. He’s up there at the old house?”
“Yes, but wait. You can’t—”
She opened the door, hesitated a moment as the flying wash of rain drove in, then, lowering her head, ran out. I followed, slamming the door behind me. A graveled path led toward a small house nearly hidden among the trees. She pounded with the butt of her torch against the door. A light shone out almost at once; soft footsteps inside hurried; and then Henderson, a small bony little man with gray hair and sleepy eyes, stood in the doorway in a white nightshirt, peering out.
Sigrid cried, “You’ve got to go into town at once. The phone’s dead. You must get the police—”
The sound that we heard then, off behind the storm, was not thunder, nor wind, nor rain. It came again — the short explosive crack of a gun — and then more of them. I counted six, three close together and then three more, in rapid succession.
Sigrid’s hand grabbed at my arm, gripped it tightly. “The boathouse!” There was fear in her voice now for the first time, but she started past me toward the sound.
I caught her. “No, you don’t.” I took her flashlight. “There’s a murderer out there! You head for the house. Get some clothes on, Henderson, and hurry. Gun, too, if you’ve got it.” I ran. The wind threw hard bullets of rain against my face and even seemed to be trying to push back the light from the flash. High up on my right I caught a faint glimmer of light where the old house lay beyond the rain.
Behind me Sigrid’s voice came, desperately, “Wait!” I heard her footsteps running.
I stopped. “Okay, sister,” I growled as she stumbled into me. “But don’t say I didn’t tell you.”
I took her arm and we ran together, heads lowered, following the feeble, watery gleam of the light. We stopped, breathless, at the head of a wooden stair that led down toward boathouse and landing. A heavy figure ran up at us. It was Lamb, swearing expertly. There was a gun in his hand.
He snatched at Sigrid’s torch and turned it down toward the water. “Someone’s cut loose all the boats! He got away. Up the beach.”