I picked a door, turned the knob, and saw moonlight filtering in, brushing Hannibal Constan’s sleeping face. As gentle as his fairy godmother I laid a couple feet of Hannibal’s covers back. He wore purple pajamas that someday would give a wife cause for colored glasses or divorce. He never knew I’d been there.
Back in the hall, I chose another door. I heard a man’s breathing when I entered the room. I eased his covers back. I had found him. He hadn’t had time to do anything else; so he’d jumped in bed with his clothes on, feigning sleep. He might have been counting on my peeping in each room, but he hadn’t counted on my going one step further and pulling the covers off every man in the house-hold if need be.
But he was still a couple jumps ahead of me. He told me quietly, “I’ve got a gun, Martin. I can see your shadow clearly, and you’ve sampled my marksmanship once tonight — at Cole Delanard’s farm.”
The voice belonged to Ansel Mace.
“At the slightest move, Martin,” he told me, “I’ll start shooting. I’ve got your silence — everything — to gain and nothing to lose that I haven’t gambled already.” He snapped on the light, sat up in bed. The flesh between my eyes knotted. I was looking straight down the bore of his gun.
“You were a pretty smart man,” I said. “You and Doctor Cole Delanard. Old Theron — your father — died early this morning, or yesterday, didn’t he? He died without making a new will, leaving you with only the legal dollar.
“But Cole Delanard, with an unsavory past of his own that had run him out of New Orleans, knew you’d fall right in with the plan that occurred to his rotten mind. He called you, told you the old man was dead, but that he could cover the death, not allowing anybody in the room. Then you could sneak up here, take the old man’s place in bed, while Delanard would hide Theron’s body in the closet of his room, or some other place he’d think of. Then in bed, posing as your father, you would dictate a new will, leaving yourself millions, Delanard a half million for his trouble, a house you didn’t want to Jeannie Dupree and a few thousand to servants — to make the will look good.
“The room was practically dark. You favor your own father. No one ever got close to the bed — Delanard even saw to it the witnesses stayed back against the wall. A little make-up to add lines and a few contours was all that was needed in that bad lighting. Your father’s habit of wearing an old-fashioned nightcap that came to his ears helped — it further hid you and you didn’t even need a wig.”
“Keep talking, Martin.”
“I will,” I said. “You had it all set — then I popped in your office, unknowingly throwing myself smack in the middle of your plans, ruining them by telling you flatly that I was going to camp on your doorstep until I collected the Fields’ bill. Above all you couldn’t have anyone know you were leaving New Orleans, coming up here — except in such a way so it would look as if you’d arrived after your father had died. And you’d dipped to the bottom. You hadn’t even enough money to cover a check and get rid of me that way. You saw me throwing a kink in all your plans — a measly bill costing you millions. So you had to get me out of the way. You sent me up here, planning at the same time to use me for an alibi, asking me to phone you in New Orleans as soon as I arrived here, which would establish your presence hundreds of miles from here just two short hours before the will was made.”
“And how did I get up here, Martin?” His eyes were satanic.
“From your country place outside of New Orleans — by plane. You said yourself your wife was away with one of your cars. You managed the servants, giving them a night off, probably. No one saw you leave; neither did anyone see you land in the broad, dark field at Cole Delanard’s place. Then you ran the plane out of sight in his barn — and made the slip of letting a few drops of oil leak on the ground. I knew Delanard didn’t farm any by the looks of the land; so he wouldn’t have any kind of farm machinery dripping oil that led to the ham.
“Then you slipped over here, climbed a trellis, entering the upstairs through Jean Dupree’s room. Everyone — you thought — was downstairs. And you definitely couldn’t afford to be seen. At that moment everyone thought your father asleep; actually he was dead in his bed and you were all set to pose as him and make a new will.
“But Jeddrath Sloan, bating Jean, hunting something to use against her, slipped in the room, found you there. And right then you really got your feet wet — you snatched up her nail file and murdered a man, very quietly. You dumped him out the window, put him in my car later, thinking that Jean and I might be dangerous enough to throw to the law. With her nail file in Jed’s throat, and his body in my car, it wouldn’t have looked so good for us. I found the corpse, dumped it, and later, Hannibal Constan, seeing me come around from the garage and sensing something was wrong, got curious. He found Jed there, and our noble Hannibal, thinking to protect Jean, took the file which he recognized as hers, and tried to make Jed’s death look like an accident. I think I’m pretty close to being right. Hannibal will spill the truth about Jeddrath’s corpse being moved when he knows Jean is in no danger.”
“And you think alter I killed Jeddrath,” Mace said, “that I slipped in my father’s room, posed as him. and made the new will?”
“It’s the only logical thing to assume,” I told him, watching that gun until my eyes were crossed. “Then you went back to Maceton, got a cab and finally came here from the bus terminal. That left — you thought — only the detail of the old will in the safe, and you also wanted to make a thorough search of the contents of the safe, not knowing what old Theron might have put there relating to you.”
“And you’ll prove all this, Martin?”
“Delanard will crack under police pressure like a dead tree in a hurricane,” I said. “He’s that type.”
“And maybe you’re right,” Mace agreed, swinging out of bed. “So when I finish with you, I might have to take care of Delanard. A half million is too much for him anyway, but he held out for that.”
I saw the sweat on his face, the glitter in his eyes. I knew it was coming. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it, either. He was too far from me to jump him.
Then somebody in the doorway behind me started screaming. Mace jerked his head, his gun, that way. He squeezed the trigger and Jeannie Dupree just missed dying by inches.
Mace didn’t have the chance to shoot again. I had my hands on the gun. I hit him three times in the face. The second one would have been enough. His eyes rolling up in his head, he crumpled to the floor.
Jeannie Dupree came into the room, trembling. “I’d left my bedroom door open. I couldn’t sleep. I heard you crash into the hall tree downstairs, Allan. Then I heard your voices — yours and Ansel Mace’s.”
“I was hoping somebody would hear them,” I said.
“I knew the police would never get here in time. I couldn’t think. So I started screaming to give you a break.”
I dragged Mace out in the hallway, phoned the sheriff’s office. The house was coming alive from the sound of the shot. The sheriff assured me that Cole Delanard would be picked up in minutes.
Hannibal Constan, throwing a robe over his purple pajamas, and all the servants gathered around Ansel Mace’s unconscious form. They hurled questions in shrill voices.
It was too noisy, decidedly.
So I led Jeannie Dupree down the stairs, out on the veranda. The moonlight was soft now; the fog was clearing.
“Hannibal Constan thinks a lot of you,” I said.
“I’m flattered that he should,” her face was impish. “But heavens, did you glimpse those pajamas?”