He nodded.
“And you brought some out?”
He shook his head.
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he told her. “That is, I do know, but that’s what’s so difficult to explain. I became interested in a theory of life.”
“Something they taught you in the monastery?”
“Yes.”
“What was it, Terry?”
“It had to do with what we were talking about just now,” he said. “It’s the thing one picks in life as the measure of success. Everything in life is relative. Financial success is relative. That which is big enough to be really desired is only for the favored few. To be one of that charmed circle, one must either be smiled upon by luck or willing to outstrip his competitors by paying life a greater price.
“But if one puts a financial goal out of his mind and chooses only to develop his own individuality, he finds that he has no outside competitors. His struggle comes from within, rather than from without. And, incidentally, as he achieves some measure of success, he finds that he’s not only increased his enjoyment of life but he finds that financial success is usually thrown in for good measure.”
“But how about me?” she asked.
“Money,” he said, “is a false God. People worship it and it betrays them. They fight for it, get it, and in the getting of it, become selfish and arrogant. They lose health and happiness getting wealth, and then it mocks them. It’s like giving gold to a starving man in the desert. He can’t eat it, nor...”
He broke off as a vague noise of feet in the corridor resolved itself into the ominous pound of authoritative steps.
“I’m afraid, Alma, the police have tracked that portrait,” he said, almost casually.
The spots of make-up on her face flared into garish brilliance as her skin went dead-white.
“Terry!” she asked in a whisper, “what shall I say?”
His arm circled her waist as peremptory knuckles pounded on the door. “Say nothing,” he told her cheerfully, “but say it as loquaciously as possible.”
Her quivering lips sought his, clung hungrily as another knock banged on the panels of the outer door.
“Coming!” Terry called, crushing her to him in one last quick embrace; then, freeing her, he opened the door, to confront Inspector Malloy, flanked by two plain-clothes officers.
“Well, well, well!” Malloy exclaimed, unsuccessfully trying to conceal his irritation, “fancy meeting you here! You certainly do get around.”
“Come in,” Clane invited. “There are ice cubes, Scotch, and soda over there on the sideboard. Alma will get you some glasses... Oh, by the way, I guess you haven’t met her. Miss Renton, may I present Inspector Malloy?”
Malloy’s fingers groped for his hat brim, removed it. “Glad to know you,” he said. “Come in, boys.” The two plain-clothes men didn’t take off their hats.
Terry said, “Perhaps, Inspector, you’d like to know how I happened to stumble on to Miss Renton here.”
Malloy said breezily, “Oh, that’s all right, Clane, quite all right. So far as I’m concerned, I don’t care, but, of course, the district attorney might want to know. He’s rather cold-blooded about business matters, you know. Didn’t he tell you he was looking for Miss Renton, that she wasn’t at her apartment, and her bed hadn’t been slept in? And didn’t you tell him you didn’t have the slightest idea...?”
“As a matter of fact,” Terry interrupted smoothly, “it was that very statement which gave me my clue. Knowing that she wasn’t in any of her usual haunts, I happened to remember that Vera Matthews had left town on a vacation, that she’d probably asked Alma to drop in and look after her plants and things.
“And, of course, Alma, being a painter, and the studio here being equipped with everything, it was only natural that she’d dabble around here with a few odds and ends. You see, Alma is successful and popular, and, in creative work, success and popularity make rather a bad combination. So Alma was taking advantage of an opportunity to get away from her friends. She hadn’t seen the papers, and of course, didn’t know anything about Mandra’s death, and didn’t have the faintest idea that the police were looking for her. When I told her just now what had happened, and that the district attorney was looking for her, she was thunder-struck. She was just starting for the telephone to call him when...”
“She speaks English, doesn’t she?” Malloy interrupted, his veneer of good humor cracking under the pressure of inward irritation.
“Why certainly,” Clane said.
“Well, then,” Malloy snapped, “we can get along without an interpreter. I’m sorry to interrupt your tête-a-tête, Clane, but it just happens that the district attorney has rather definite ideas about what he wants, and one of the things he wants right now is Miss Alma Renton, and one of the things neither of us wants is to have the interview colored by your pleasing personality. So we’ll excuse you right now.”
He nodded to one of the men, who held the door open for Terry.
Terry picked up his hat and said with dignity, “I appreciate your position, Inspector, but let me assure you that Miss Renton has nothing to conceal. Cynthia, as you know, had painted a portrait of Jacob Mandra, and it was only natural...”
Inspector Malloy’s heavy hand clapped down on Clane’s shoulder. He was once more his boisterously genial self as his booming voice drowned Clane’s remarks. “Not at all, Clane, my boy, not at all! Don’t worry about it in the least! Miss Renton is absolutely all right. The district attorney only wanted to ask her a few questions. Don’t try to explain, because there’s nothing to explain.”
And Clane found himself spun round by Inspector Malloy’s arm, felt the weight of Malloy’s broad shoulders pushing him towards the door.
“Awfully sorry to interrupt your chat, Clane, but this is business, and you know how business is. You can talk with her any time when the district attorney gets finished, but he’s waiting for her now, and we don’t want to keep him waiting.”
And Clane found himself propelled out into the corridor. He turned long enough to smile a reassuring good-bye to Alma, and then his view was blocked by one of the plainclothes men who reached for the knob and swung the door. Inspector Malloy’s voice reached Terry’s ears through the diminishing crack in the door. “The first thing I said when the district attorney told me to bring you in, Miss Renton, was that it was just too bad...”
The slam of the door shut off the rest of Inspector Malloy’s speech.
9
When he was half a dozen blocks from the apartment house where Vera Matthews had her studio, Terry pulled his car into the curb and shut off the motor. Various disjointed bits of information were flying around loose in his brain like the detached views which are thrown on a picture screen when the film suddenly breaks and the loose ends fly in front of the projecting lens before the mechanism is shut off. Terry wanted time to correlate those detached impressions.
Seated there in his car, with the motor running, Terry fixed his eyes on the lighted speedometer, and brought his mind to focus upon the facts in his possession.
As patiently as a trout fisherman unraveling a badly tangled fine, Terry went over the events of the day, only to convince himself in the end that some important fact was being withheld from him.
Cynthia Renton had painted Mandra’s portrait. A combination of blackmail and fascination had bound her to Mandra. But, regardless of the tie, Cynthia would only go so far, and then she would fight free.
And that turning point had evidently been reached at two o’clock in the morning, when Cynthia had taken her portrait and left Mandra’s apartment, doubtless defying him to do his worst. She had been seen on the stairs by a witness... but had she been seen? The witness had observed only a woman carrying a portrait. Yet the portrait was distinctive enough, and it was only natural that Cynthia should have taken it to Alma, for appraisal.