Bill thought bitterly, This is what comes of weakness with a woman. Is this cleverness, or desperation? And he said in a low voice: “I haven’t had time to think. I don’t trust women — as a rule. But I suppose...”
He felt her slender body straining against him, and her voice floated with odd cadence into his consciousness. “I’ve no right at all, Bill Angell — whoever you are. But you won’t say anything? You’ll protect me? Oh, it would be so easy for — for them to misunderstand!” She was trembling as if she had just emerged from cold water.
“Well,” he said at last, “well... no, I won’t say anything.”
The glad little cry was music. For a stunned instant he felt the pressure of her arms about his neck and her lips, fumbling and then sure, against his own. Then she had slipped out of his shadow, and he felt so curiously alone that his own body shivered, and he stepped back into the shack and ugly reality.
Ellery said quietly from an adjoining shadow: “I think, De Jong, you could defer all this until later.”
Her mother, the tall man, De Jong, had not missed her. They fell silent, and then De Jong led the way into the house.
Lucy Wilson was sitting where they had left her. It might have been the instant before, she was so still and pale and changeless. Bill was in a corner, gazing at the floor. Something kept him from looking at the girl in the ermine wrap. Every fiber inside him demanded refreshment in this full, bold light. She must be pretty, he thought. No, beautiful. What had he done?
“Where is—” began the sabled woman, hesitating near the doorway. Her old eyes, older than they should have been, went from one face to another, uncertainly, and then settled with a slow horror on the stiff legs behind the table.
Andrea Gimball murmured, “Mother. Please. Please don’t.”
Then Bill looked at her. In the light of the lamp he saw grace and youth and beauty — and something else which made the unrelaxed pressure against his lips burn a little with remembrance. This was so futile, he thought, and so ill-timed. This girl represented everything he had always held in contempt. A young débutante. Society. Wealth. The snobbishness of blood. Idleness. The antithesis of what he and Lucy were and stood for. His duty was clear. There was more than duty to the law; there was something else. He glanced at his sister, so deathly still in her chair. She was beautiful, too — but in a different way. And she was his sister. How could he be thinking such thoughts at such a time... And now two things burned: his lips and fingers in his pocket closed about the diamond he had picked up from the rug.
“Mrs. Gimball,” came Ellery’s cool, remote voice, “will you please identify the body?”
The blood was sucked out of Lucy Wilson’s face. The sight of her increasing pallor brought Bill Angell sharply to himself.
“I still don’t see,” said Chief De Jong in a puzzled tone, “what the devil you’re driving at, Mr. Queen.”
But the woman in the sable coat was floating across the fawn rug like a somnambulist. Her thin figure, erect and regal and dehydrated, was steel. The girl remained where she was, and the silk-hatted man put out a hand and steadied her. De Jong’s nostrils were oscillating; he darted behind the table and snatched the newspaper from Joseph Wilson’s face.
“That is—” began the woman, and she stopped. “He is—” She groped with one heavily jeweled hand for the table behind her.
“You’re sure? There’s no possibility of error?” asked Ellery calmly from the door.
“None... whatever. He was hurt in an automobile accident fifteen years ago. You can still see the permanent scar over his left eyebrow.”
Lucy Wilson uttered an inchoate scream and leaped to her feet. Her control was gone; under the plain dress her breasts heaved wildly. She sprang forward as if she meant to tear the other woman to pieces. “What do you mean?” she cried. “What do you mean? What do you mean coming here like this? Who are you?”
The tall woman turned her head slowly. Their eyes touched — hot young black eyes and the brittle blue of age.
Mrs. Gimball drew her sable coat more closely about her in a gesture almost insulting. “And who are you?”
“I? I?” Luck shrieked. “I’m Lucy Wilson. That’s Joe Wilson, of Philadelphia. That’s my husband!”
For an instant the woman in evening clothes looked bewildered. Then her eyes sought Ellery’s at the door and she said coldly, “What nonsense. I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mr. Queen. What sort of game is this?”
“Mother,” said Andrea Gimball in an anguished voice. “Please, Mother.”
“Tell Mrs. Wilson,” said Ellery without moving, “precisely who the man on the floor is, Mrs. Gimball.”
The cold woman said, “This is Joseph Kent Gimball of Park Avenue, New York. My husband. My husband.”
Ella Amity screamed “Oh, my God!” and sprang like a cat for the door.
II
The Trail
“...the trail of the serpent is over them all.”
“If that doesn’t beat all hell,” said De Jong. “Cheese!” With a brutal gesture he tore the cigar from his mouth and hurled it to the floor. And then he sprang after the Amity woman.
Lucy Wilson stood gripping her throat as if she were afraid it might burst. Her black eyes were groping from Mrs. Gimball to the man on the floor in helpless agony. Andrea Gimball was shivering and biting her lips.
“Gimball,” said Bill in a shocked voice. “Good Lord, Mrs. Gimball, do you realize what you’re saying?”
The society woman made an imperious gesture with her fine thin white veined hands. The jewels sparkled under the lamp. “This is insanity. Who are these people, Mr. Queen? And why am I subjected to this ridiculous scene when my husband is... lying here dead?”
Lucy’s nostrils expanded like sails in a storm. “Your husband? Yours? This is Joe Wilson, I tell you. Maybe your husband just looks like my Joe. Oh, please go away, won’t you?”
“I refuse to discuss my personal affairs with you,” said the woman in sables haughtily. “Where is that man who’s in charge? Of all the disgraceful exhibitions—”
“Jessica,” said the tall midle-aged man patiently. “Perhaps you had better sit down and permit Mr. Queen and me to handle this matter. It’s obvious that a shocking error’s occurred, but it won’t be helped by nerves or a brawl.” He spoke as if he were addressing a child. The angry line between his brows had vanished. “Jessica?”
Her lips were bitter parallel lines. She sat down.
“Did I understand you to say,” asked the man with the silk hat in a courteous voice, “that you are Mrs. Lucy Wilson of Fairmount Park, Philadelphia?”
“Yes. Yes!” cried Lucy.
“I see.” The glance he gave her was cold, rather calculating, as if he were weighing in his deliberate way how much of her was real and how much false. “I see,” he said again, and this time the line reappeared between his brows.
“I don’t believe,” said Bill wearily, “I caught the name.”
The tall man made a wry face. “Grosvenor Finch, and I’ve been an intimate friend of the Borden and Gimball families for more years than I care to count. I came here tonight only because Mr. Jasper Borden, Mrs. Gimball’s father, is an invalid and requested me to take his place by his daughter’s side.” Finch placed his silk hat carefully on the table. “I came, as I say,” he continued in his quiet way, “as a friend of Mrs. Gimball’s. It begins to appear that I shall have to stay in quite a different capacity.”
“And what,” said Bill softly, “do you mean by that?”