His voice held a note of banter as, making the motions of pulling up his sleeves, he said, “Observe, I have nothing in either hand and nothing up my sleeves. Now then, no later than last week you mentioned that Vera was going on a vacation and that you were going to water the plants in her window boxes. This would indicate Vera had left you a key. Therefore, when I learned that you were not in any of your usual haunts, I surmised...”
“Oh,” she interrupted, “that was it, was it?”
He shook his head mournfully. “Magicians should never give their tricks away,” he proclaimed. “Now, if I had only pretended it was mind-reading, you’d have held me in awe. As it is, I’m just an intruder, and you’ll tell me to get out.”
“The trouble with you, Terry,” she said, “that is, one of the troubles with you, is that you never forget anything. And I strongly suspect your habit of facetiousness is a mask which covers your moves towards a very definite objective.”
“Wrong,” he announced. “Pretending to make moves towards a very definite objective is the mask which covers my facetiousness. What are you doing? Busy?”
She hesitated a moment before saying, “Not unless watering flowers is being busy.” But her eyes involuntarily shifted towards a closed door.
Clane snapped open his cigarette case, extended it to her with an elaborately casual manner. “Where’d you go after I left you last night?” he asked.
“To bed, silly. It was after one o’clock. What do you think I am, a sleepwalker?”
Terry shook his head as she accepted a cigarette. “Your natural temperament, Alma, is that of a rather serious young lady with responsibilities. When you become flippant, it’s a very definite symptom.”
“What do you mean, Terry?”
“Every time you try to conceal something,” he said, “you unconsciously try to change your personality and imitate Cynthia’s happy-go-lucky attitude.”
She frowned thoughtfully. “It’s not deception, Terry, it’s just rebellion at being the balance wheel of the family. Cynthia never bothers to get a serious thought in her head. She’s always getting into scrapes and someone’s always getting her out... What made you think I was trying to conceal some thing, Terry?”
She placed one of his cigarettes between her lips. He struck a match, held the flame to the cigarette. As she leaned forward, every detail of her features illuminated by the flame of the match, Terry said, “The district attorney told me your bed hadn’t been slept in.”
Involuntarily, she jerked backward, then, controlling herself, leaned once more towards the match. She raised her hand to his, the better to guide the flame, and he noticed that the tips of her fingers were cold. “You’re joking, Terry,” she said.
As he gravely shook his head, she added hastily, “I got up early.”
“About five o’clock?” he asked.
Her face flushed indignantly. Before she could speak, he said, “Don’t think I’m unduly curious. I mentioned it because I think that’s when the district attorney’s men investigated. It might be well for you to know — in case you’re questioned.”
She had now recovered from the surprise. Her acting, he decided, if it was acting, was flawless.
“Terry Clane,” she said, her voice showing surprised incredulity, “will you kindly tell me why the district attorney should be interested in where I slept?”
He puffed complacently at his cigarette and said, “He’s a funny chap, the district attorney. Likes to lull you into a false sense of security with a pleasant smile. If he questions you, Alma, remember that an atmosphere of cold, precise formality gets his goat. He’s grown to place so much reliance on that disarming smile of his that when it doesn’t work it leaves him up in the air.”
“He questioned you, Terry?”
“At length.”
“What about?”
“About you and about Mandra.”
“Mandra?”
“Yes, Jacob Mandra. Know him?”
“No, but I’ve heard of him — a bail broker, isn’t he?”
“Yes. Rather mysterious. Some said he was part Chinese, others that he was a gipsy. An interesting character, wealthy, and crooked as a corkscrew. He was murdered early this morning — about three o’clock.”
“Murdered!”
He nodded.
“Did you know him, Terry?”
“I’d met him. He wanted me to get him a sleeve gun. I had one I could have given him, but I thought I’d look him over first. So I ran up and had tea with him.”
“And didn’t give him the sleeve gun?”
He grinned at her and said, “Stay with it, Alma, you’re doing fine. You and the district attorney think of exactly the same questions.”
She walked half-way across the room, to seat herself on the arm of a chair. Her face showed only an expression of puzzled interest, but she seated herself abruptly, as though her quivering knees were glad to be relieved of strain.
“How... how was he killed?” she asked.
“With a sleeve gun,” Terry said, his voice cheerfully unconcerned.
“Terry!”
He waved his hand airily. “Oh, you don’t know the half of it yet, Alma. The district attorney’s ominously mysterious. He’s full of quick questions and dark hints, and... Oh, yes, I nearly forgot the handkerchief.”
“What handkerchief?”
“The one with the initial ‘R’ embroidered in the corner. It has rather a distinctive perfume. The district attorney was quite dramatic about it.”
She kept her eyes averted. “Did you identify it?” she asked, and this time her voice sounded thin and strained.
“Certainly not,” he told her. “There are many elements which enter into the identification of a handkerchief: the size, the material, the mesh, the border, the weave, the...”
“Terry, be serious! Was it my handkerchief?”
“The perfume was similar to that used by your sister.”
“Cynthia wouldn’t know him,” Alma said positively.
Terry looked at the ceiling and said casually: “Weren’t you wearing a smock when I sounded the buzzer?”
“A flower-watering smock, Terry?”
He nodded.
“Don’t be silly.”
“There’s paint on your fingers.”
She stared at her hands.
“Not definite smears,” he told her, “just a faint stain as though you’d wiped your hands with a turpentine rag when you heard my ring.”
Before she realized what he had in mind, he was striding towards the closed door. She flung herself at him, clutching at his arm.
“No! No! Terry,” she screamed. “Don’t. Please don’t! Stop!”
He twisted the knob of the door just as the weight of her body lurched against him. The opening door threw them both off balance. They staggered into the room.
Daylight filtered through a huge window of ground glass, disclosing a large room, the walls hung with canvases. An easel, standing near the centre of the room, supported a canvas across which a black cloth had been drawn so that it was totally covered. A palette lay on a table near a stool. A smock had been thrown over the back of a chair.
Terry, the first to recover his balance, eluded her clutching hand, reached for the black cloth and pulled it to one side.
The canvas was some three feet in length by two and one-half in width. From it, a face stared at them in coldly cynical appraisal.
It was a face which, once seen, could never be forgotten. And the treatment skilfully accentuated its individuality.
Against a subdued background, the head dissolved into shadows. The features emerged Into highlights, to take definite form. The face was swarthy, its expression a strange combination of sneering cynicism and wistful yearning. The nose was long and slightly curved. The mouth was thin and definitely cruel. The eyes dominated the face. They were a silvery-green in color, and they stood out from the sombre canvas with attention-compelling power, as clearly conspicuous as patches of coral water against the shore line of a tropical isle.