“No, I can’t remember that.”
“Were they placed in piles or...?”
“No, just in a scramble, as though someone had pushed them over to one side.”
“As though Mandra had pushed them to one side to clear a space on the table?”
“Either that or as though someone had been looking for something and pulled them over to the corner to get away from Mandra’s body.”
“Was there anyone in the room except Mandra?”
“No... that is, I don’t think so. Of course, I didn’t look under the desk or in the closet, or in any of the adjoining rooms.”
“What did you do?”
“I had a mad desire to get out. But, frightened as I was, I realized I mustn’t let the guard see me, and know what time I had left. I felt all tight in my throat, the sensation you have when something’s suffocating you and you want to fight your way through to the air. I’ve always been like that, Owl. If I’m putting a dress on over my head and it catches and covers my face, I want to tear the thing to pieces.”
“I know how you felt,” he said. “What I want to know is what you did.”
“Well, I was there alone with Mandra. He’d been murdered. Someone else had killed him but I didn’t know if I could prove that — and I wanted to keep my name from being dragged into the thing. It was all foolish — just the blind panic which grips you sometimes and makes you want to run. I knew about this corridor door. Of course, it could be opened from the inside. Mandra had the only key which would open it from the outside. So I opened this door and ran out.”
“Now, what time was that?”
“Just about three o’clock. I didn’t look at my watch until after I got to Alma’s apartment.”
“Did you close this corridor door behind you?”
“No, I left it open.”
“Why didn’t you close it?”
“To tell you the truth, Owl, I thought I had, but I must have been mistaken. I don’t remember clearly about what happened when I was getting out of there. I remember fighting with the bolts on the door and ripping the door open, and then being in the corridor and racing down the stairs. The natural thing for me to do was to close the door, but I guess I didn’t.”
“But you don’t remember positively?”
“No. Why, Owl — does it make any difference?”
“It might,” he told her. “Everything makes a difference. Now, did you notice whether the portrait you had painted was there?”
“No, Owl, I didn’t notice — not then.”
“So you ran down the stairs to the street. Did you meet anyone?”
“No.”
“And what did you do?”
“I stopped in at an all-night drug store and telephoned Alma, to see if she was home. She was. George Levering was there with her. I told Alma to wait for me. I found a cab and rushed out there. I dragged Alma into the bedroom and told her all about it. It was her suggestion that we should take George into our confidence and let him see what he could do.”
“How long had Levering been there?” Terry asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
“Wasn’t that an unusual time for him to be calling on Alma?”
“He wanted money,” she said, “and you know George. He can want money any time.”
Terry nodded and said, “Go ahead, Cynthia, what happened after that?”
“Well, George suggested that he’d better go out on a trip of reconnaissance and see if the police had discovered the murder. He told us to wait for him and he went out and jumped in his car. He came back and told us about what had happened. This man had gone out to get something to eat and came back and found the door open, and looked inside and found Mandra’s body. The police had arrived and there was a crowd around the place, not a big crowd, because of the hour, but big enough so that George could circulate around and ask questions without attracting too much attention. He found some newspaper man whom he knew, and the newspaper man had found this Jack Winton who had met the woman on the stairs carrying a portrait, so George knew all about that, and he came racing back to tell us that Winton had seen this woman leaving the apartment at two o’clock in the morning, but hadn’t been able to see her face clearly enough to identify her because of the way she’d been holding the portrait. So George suggested that if we could duplicate that portrait, I could claim that I was the woman who had left at two o’clock.
“I had my original sketches in my apartment and some photographs that I’d taken when the portrait was about two-thirds completed, so with my sketches and the photograph, Alma insisted she could make a passable duplicate of the portrait and have it ready by nine or ten o’clock in the morning. Of course, it wouldn’t be a finished piece of work, but I’m not a finished artist, and Alma’s a very rapid worker. It was George’s idea that Alma could dash off another portrait and that this would give me a perfect alibi.”
“Didn’t you consider the possibility that the other woman might show up with the real portrait?”
“It was a possibility, all right, but we figured she’d want to keep in the background. Of course, Owl, we were rattled, and it sounded like a good scheme at the time. You know George Levering. He’s played so many crooked horse races that he figures nothing’s on the level and anything can be fixed. He said this was iron-clad.”
Terry started pacing the floor, his head bowed in thought.
Suddenly he whirled to Cynthia.
“If anything happens,” he told her, “don’t tell anyone anything. Just sit tight until you can talk with your lawyer.”
Cynthia’s eyes were uneasy as she stared across at Terry.
“I want to get a little bit tight, Owl. When I get home Alma will be waiting for me, and Stubby will be parked on the doorstep. Oh, Owl, I don’t want to see Stubby! He’s so damn possessive. And he got me that lawyer, so I’ll have to be grateful. I don’t want to be grateful to Stubby. He’s a damn nuisance.
“Gee, it’s been an awful day! Owl, dear, you don’t know what it means to have the reputation of being a good sport, and having to stand up and take it on the chin all by yourself. Alma doesn’t understand me, Owl. She thinks I never have a serious moment. She loves me all right, but she feels responsible for me. She thinks that I’m just a little butterfly... that I waste my opportunities, squander my talents, and dissipate my life.”
He said, “You won’t be seeing Alma for a while, Cynthia.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, straightening in the chair.
“Inspector Malloy took Alma down to headquarters with him.”
“How long ago?”
“Shortly before I drove up and met you. They were watching Alma’s apartment. They found the portrait and took it down to headquarters. This witness, Jack Winton, evidently identified it. About that time, your lawyer was making a kick, and they thought, in view of Winton’s testimony, they wouldn’t have anything to hold you on.
“But shortly after that they managed to track that portrait and found out Alma was staying at Vera Matthews’s. They wanted to talk with Alma, just on general principles.”
“Owl,” she cried, “you don’t mean George Levering sold us out... Oh, no, it couldn’t have been that. He wouldn’t do that... but he might have blundered somehow. Tell me, Owl, will they get rough with her?”
“Not now they won’t. That will come later.”
“How much later?”
“When they find the other painting,” he said.
“But they mustn’t find it! Don’t let them, Owl! There’s something we can do. There must be something.”
He stared at her with fixed intensity.
“Don’t look at me like that, Owl,” she said impatiently, and then suddenly realized that he hadn’t heard her. He was concentrating so intently for the moment he seemed to have lost all animation, while every bit of his mental energy was centred in a white-hot spot of concentration.