“My father’s employ?” she questioned.
“Yes. When you and your sister disappeared, he engaged me to find you. We found your sister, and—”
Life came into her face and eyes and voice.
“I didn’t kill Ruth!” she cried. “The papers lied! I didn’t kill her! I didn’t know she had the revolver. I didn’t know it! We were going away to hide from — from everything. We stopped in the woods to burn the — those things. That’s the first time I knew she had the revolver. We had talked about suicide at first, but I had persuaded her — thought I had persuaded her — not to. I tried to take the revolver away from her, but I couldn’t. She shot herself while I was trying to get it away. I tried to stop her. I didn’t kill her!”
This was getting somewhere.
“And then?” I encouraged her.
“And then I went to Sacramento and left the car there, and came back to San Francisco. Ruth told me she had written Raymond Elwood a letter. She told me that before I persuaded her not to kill herself — the first time. I tried to get the letter from Raymond. She had written him she was going to kill herself. I tried to get the letter, but Raymond said he had given it to Hador.
“So I came here this evening to get it. I had just found it when there was a lot of noise upstairs. Then Hador came in and found me. He bolted the door. And... and I shot him with the revolver that was in the safe. I... I shot him when he turned around, before he could say anything. It had to be that way, or I couldn’t.”
“You mean you shot him without being threatened or attacked by him?” Pat asked.
“Yes. I was afraid of him, afraid to let him speak. I hated him! I couldn’t help it. It had to be that way. If he had talked I couldn’t have shot him. He... he wouldn’t have let me!”
“Who was this Hador?” I asked.
She looked away from Pat and me, at the walls, at the ceiling, at the queer little dead man on the floor.
“He was a—” She cleared her throat, and started again, staring down at her feet. “Raymond Elwood brought us here the first time. We thought it was funny. But Hador was a devil. He told you things and you believed them. You couldn’t help it. He told you everything and you believed it. Perhaps we were drugged. There was always a warm bluish wine. It must have been drugged. We couldn’t have done those things if it hadn’t. Nobody would— He called himself a priest — a priest of Alzoa. He taught a freeing of the spirit from the flesh by—”
Her voice broke huskily. She shuddered.
“It was horrible!” she went on presently in the silence Pat and I had left for her. “But you believed him. That is the whole thing. You can’t understand it unless you understand that. The things he taught could not be so. But he said they were, and you believed they were. Or maybe — I don’t know — maybe you pretended you believed them, because you were crazy and drugs were in your blood. We came back again and again, for weeks, months, before the disgust that had to come drove us away.
“We stopped coming, Ruth and I — and Irma. And then we found out what he was. He demanded money, more money than we had been paying while we believed — or pretended belief — in his cult. We couldn’t give him the money he demanded. I told him we wouldn’t. He sent us photographs — of us — taken during the — the times here. They were — pictures — you — couldn’t — explain. And they were true! We knew them true! What could we do? He said he would send copies to our father, every friend, everyone we knew — unless we paid.
“What could we do — except pay? We got the money somehow. We gave him money — more — more — more. And then we had no more — could get no more. We didn’t know what to do! There was nothing to do, except — Ruth and Irma wanted to kill themselves. I thought of that, too. But I persuaded Ruth not to. I said we’d go away. I’d take her away — keep her safe. And then... then... this!”
She stopped talking, went on staring at her feet.
I looked again at the little dead man on the floor, weird in his black cap and clothes. No more blood came from his throat.
It wasn’t hard to put the pieces together. This dead Hador, self-ordained priest of something or other, staging orgies under the alias of religious ceremonies. Elwood, his confederate, bringing women of family and wealth to him. A room lighted for photography, with a concealed camera. Contributions from his converts so long as they were faithful to the cult. Blackmail — with the help of the photographs — afterward.
I looked from Hador to Pat Reddy. He was scowling at the dead man. No sound came from outside the room.
“You have the letter your sister wrote Elwood?” I asked the girl.
Her hand flashed to her bosom, and crinkled paper there.
“Yes.”
“It says plainly she meant to kill herself?”
“Yes.”
“That ought to square her with Contra Costa County,” I said to Pat.
He nodded his battered head.
“It ought to,” he agreed. “It’s not likely that they could prove murder on her even without that letter. With it, they’ll not take her into court. That’s a safe bet. Another is that she won’t have any trouble over this shooting. She’ll come out of court free, and thanked in the bargain.”
Myra Banbrock flinched away from Pat as if he had hit her in the face.
I was her father’s hired man just now. I saw her side of the affair.
I lit a cigarette and studied what I could see of Pat’s face through blood and grime. Pat is a right guy.
“Listen, Pat,” I wheedled him, though with a voice that was as if I were not trying to wheedle him at all. “Miss Banbrock can go into court and come out free and thanked, as you say. But to do it, she’s got to use everything she knows. She’s got to have all the evidence there is. She’s got to use all those photographs Hador took — or all we can find of them.
“Some of those pictures have sent women to suicide, Pat — at least two that we know. If Miss Banbrock goes into court, we’ve got to make the photographs of God knows how many other women public property. We’ve got to advertise things that will put Miss Banbrock — and you can’t say how many other women and girls — in a position that at least two women have killed themselves to escape.”
Pat scowled at me and rubbed his dirty chin with a dirtier thumb.
I took a deep breath and made my play. “Pat, you and I came here to question Raymond Elwood, having traced him here. Maybe we suspected him of being tied up with the mob that knocked over the St. Louis bank last month. Maybe we suspected him of handling the stuff that was taken from the mail cars in that stick-up near Denver week before last. Anyway, we were after him, knowing that he had a lot of money that came from nowhere, and a real estate office that did no real estate business.
“We came here to question him in connection with one of these jobs I’ve mentioned. We were jumped by a couple of the Negroes upstairs when they found we were sleuths. The rest of it grew out of that. This religious cult business was just something we ran into, and didn’t interest us especially. So far as we knew, all these folks jumped us just through friendship for the man we were trying to question. Hador was one of them, and, tussling with you, you shot him with his own gun, which, of course, is the one Miss Banbrock found in the safe.”
Reddy didn’t seem to like my suggestion at all. The eyes with which he regarded me were decidedly sour.
“You’re goofy,” he accused me. “What’ll that get anybody? That won’t keep Miss Banbrock out of it. She’s here, isn’t she, and the rest of it will come out like thread off a spool.”