“Do you remember Browning’s reference in The Ring and the Book,” murmured Ellery, “to ‘the great right of an excessive wrong’?”
She grew quiet at that, and moved over to finger a jonquil, and then sighed and sat down in the basketwork chair. “I think I see what you mean. Perhaps this wrong was right. I thought it was. I had to think so. Now,” she whispered, “I don’t know. I don’t know anything surely any more. I’m dizzy with thinking about it. Now I’m just... afraid.”
“Afraid?” asked Ellery quietly. “Yes, I should think you would be afraid, Andrea. Because of that fear, won’t you understand that we want to help you, to help poor Lucy Wilson? Don’t you see that with a united front we may palliate this fear of yours and fight off the danger?”
“You know?” she said in a panting voice.
“Not everything. Not half enough. I know that on the night you visited the shack near the Delaware something happened. Something happened to you. I think, Andrea, that those match-stubs and that charred cork were correctly evaluated during Lucy’s trial. The murderess wrote a note using that cork as a pencil; the note is gone; but so were you, you see. The note, then, must have been meant for you. And your subsequent actions showed clearly that the note threatened you.” His hand lifted and impatiently brushed away the drifting smoke from his pipe. “But these are conjectures. I want the facts, the truth, from you as the only person besides the murderess who can establish the truth.”
“But it won’t do you any good,” she whispered across the barrier of dusk. “It can’t possibly. Oh, don’t you think I’ve been all through that with my conscience? Despite everything, don’t you think I would have told if I’d thought it would help Lucy?”
“Why not let me be the judge of that, Andrea?”
Her sigh was surrender. “Most of what I told you before was true. Not all. But I did receive that telegram, and I did borrow Burke’s roadster and drive out that Saturday afternoon to Trenton.”
“Yes?” said Ellery.
“It was eight o’clock when I got there. I mean when I drove up. I honked the horn; no one came out. So I went in. The shack was empty. I saw the man’s suits hanging on the wall, the table, everything — it struck me as terribly queer, and I began to feel... funny. Something told me that a dreadful thing had happened or was about to happen. I ran out, jumped into the car, and drove off toward Camden to think things out.” She paused and they were silent. In the gathering darkness Bill strained his eyes to see her, a quiet, pale curve on a shadowy chair. His own face was as colorless as her gown.
“And then you returned,” murmured Ellery. “And it wasn’t at nine as you told us, was it, Andrea? It was considerably before nine.”
“It was eight thirty-five by the clock on the dashboard.”
Bill said hoarsely: “You’re sure? God, Andrea, don’t make a mistake this time! You’re sure?”
“Oh, Bill,” she wailed, and to their consternation she began to sob. Bill stiffened, then he kicked over his chair and bounded across the glade. “Andrea.” The words tumbled out. “I don’t care any more. About anything. Please don’t cry. I’ve treated you so shabbily. Just don’t cry. But I didn’t know. You see that, don’t you? I was frantic about my sister. If only—”
Her hand crept into his. He held it timidly, scarcely breathing, as if it were something incredibly precious. And he stood that way for ever so long, while she began to talk again. It was quite dark now and only the glow from Ellery’s motionless pipe-bowl was visible. “When I’d come at eight,” she said with a curious tremor in her voice, “the shack was rather dim inside. I’d turned on the lamp — the lamp on that table. When I returned at a little after eight-thirty the lamp was still burning. I saw the light shining through the front windows.”
Abruptly, Ellery asked, “There was a Ford in that semicircular driveway when you got there the second time, wasn’t there?”
“Yes. I parked just behind it. I remember wondering whose it was. It was an old Ford coupé and no one was in it. Later—” She bit her lip. “Later I knew it was Lucy’s. But then I didn’t know. I went into the shack, expecting to see Joe.”
“Yes?” said Ellery. “Yes?”
She laughed, a bitter little laugh. “I was disturbed, but I never expected to see... what I saw. I pushed open the front door and stopped on the threshold. All I could see was that table, the plate on it, the glowing lamp. I think I was scared to death even then. Something told me — I took a few steps into the room, and then...”
“Andrea,” muttered Bill. Her hand fluttered in his.
“I saw two legs on the floor behind the table. They were so still. I put my hand to my mouth — I couldn’t think for a moment... Then everything exploded. Went absolutely black. All I was conscious of was a sharp pain at the back of my head, and that I was falling.”
“She hit you?” shouted Bill.
The echo died away before anyone spoke. Then Ellery said: “Whoever it was who heard your car drive up knew someone was coming. She might have escaped by the side door, but she wanted to drive that Ford away; that was part of her plan to implicate Lucy. So she lay in wait behind the front door. When you came in she struck you on the back of the head. I should have seen that. The note... Go on, Andrea.”
“I was lucky I was wearing a hat,” replied Andrea with a half-hysterical giggle. “Or perhaps she — she didn’t strike me hard. I came to at a few minute past nine; I remember looking at my wristwatch in a daze. The place was empty again. I thought it was empty, at first. I was on the floor in front of the table, where I’d been struck down. My head was aching hideously. My mouth felt like flannel. I got to my feet and leaned on the table, still weak and stunned. Then I became conscious that there was something in my hand...”
“Which hand?” asked Ellery quickly.
“The right. My gloved hand. It was a scrap of paper, wrapping-paper. Like the paper I’d seen on the mantelpiece above the fireplace. Ripped off.”
“What a bungler I am! I should have examined that wrapping-paper more carefully. But it was so torn... I’m sorry, Andrea. Go on.”
“Still dazed, I looked at it. It had marks on it. I was at the table, by the lamp. I read what was written on the note.”
“Andrea,” said Ellery softly. “If only... Where is that note? Lord, be good to us! Did you save that note, Andrea?”
He could not see in the dark. But Bill, still holding her hand as if it were a lifeline stretched wonderfully across an abyss, sensed her eagerness, the swiftness with which her other hand went to the bosom of her gown, vanished, and reappeared.
“I knew some day... Despite everything,” she said simply, “I saved it.”
“Bill!” snapped Ellery. He was out of his chair and before them so quickly that they drew back a little in alarm. “A light. Dig that box of matches out of my pocket. I must have a light. Heavens, man, you can do your hand-holding later! Give me light.”
There was a confused scuffling; and after a while a match fizzed. Bill’s cheeks were dark with blood. Andrea closed her eyes to the tiny blob of illumination. But Ellery was bent over the note, swallowing every mark, every letter, every word as if the torn and crumpled scrap of paper were an ancient and blessed holograph.
The match sputtered out. Bill struck another. And another. He used up most of the box before Ellery straightened, still studying the crudely printed capitals with a detached puzzlement, a frown, the faintest disappointment.
“Well?” said Bill, safe in darkness again. “What does it say?”