The music grew louder as I went up the stairs. I saw that it was coming from the room at the rear in which I had seen the light from outside. A thin yellow line marked the bottom of the closed door. I knocked on the door and waited, but there was no response beyond it except the continuation of that terrible musical sorrow. I turned the knob and pushed, and the thin line fanned into its source. Symphonic damnation swelled up around me.
The record player stood against a wall, its top braced open. From where I stood in the doorway, I could see the arm of the machine rise and fall smoothly above the platter that spun beneath it. Dr. Cross sat in a heavy leather chair facing the player. I could see no part of him except his left arm and hand, which trailed over the arm of the chair, the fingers of the hand curved slightly, almost touching the worn pile of the rug. I didn’t speak to him. I knew, even then, that there was no use. He was beyond hearing. My voice or Tschaikowsky’s, no matter to this old man. His senses were tuned only to silence and night and whatever comes with death.
I went over and looked down at him and saw without surprise the brutal marks on his throat. The glaring eyes, the swollen tongue. The strangler’s identification. For a time I looked, and then I turned and went out of the room and down the stairs and out of the house. The black music of death faded behind me, ending abruptly with the shutting of the front door, and I stood alone in the cold street, wondering what I should do. Wondering if there would ever again be anything worth the doing.
I didn’t call the police. A little time would make no difference now to the old librarian, and I couldn’t bear the thought of Muller so soon again. I found a stone bench behind the Museum of Natural History and waited there for day.
When the east began to wash a little with light, I had made up my mind about two things. The Stoneman library must somehow have been the link between a girl, an old man, and death. And I would find the strangler. Somehow I would find him, even if it brought his fingers to my own throat.
Before the campus came to life for early classes, I went back to my room on Wadlow Street. I shaved and changed my shirt and put on my other suit. I thought for a moment of the classes I should teach and the studying I should do. Then I went out on the job that had become bigger than all the others together. On the corner below the house, I caught an eight o’clock bus into the city.
The Stoneman residence was on Stoneman Place, a private street in a section that had once been exclusive. Stoneman Place itself still retained its distinction, but the surrounding area, with little consideration for the rich elbow it rubbed, had slipped with time into ungraceful decay. I carried the sense of its hopelessness with me up to the massive door of the Stoneman mansion.
A maid admitted me and put me into a room off the hall. It was a large room, and it could have been light if someone had drawn the drapes back from the windows. Apparently they preferred shadows in this house. The only sunlight came from windows at the end of the room that looked out on a rear lawn. A piano stood before the windows, and a man sat at the piano. He was playing, but nothing in particular. Just scales — and chords. I walked toward him, but he didn’t stop playing. The only concession he made to conversation was to reduce the volume of the piano a little. With the light behind him, I couldn’t get a clear view of his face, but I got an impression of gaunt somberness behind horn-rimmed glasses.
“My name’s Norman Grieg,” I said. “I’ve come to see Miss Stoneman.”
His voice, rising above the chords, still managed to carry the timbre of softness, almost dreaminess.
“I’m Oliver Moon,” he said. “I was the old man’s secretary. My present status is that of fiancé to Miss Stoneman. Perhaps I can do something for you.”
“Perhaps. I’m interested in the library that was left to the University.”
“Yes? Are you from the University?”
“I work there. I’m not acting officially in this matter.”
He shrugged, turning his head so that the light behind him struck a sudden flash from his glasses.
“Then I can’t see why I should talk to you about the matter.”
“Maybe Miss Stoneman will see it differently.”
“Maybe. Marion is usually very generous about impositions. Shall we wait and see?”
We waited through three chords and a scale, and Marion Stoneman came into the room. She was tall and heavily built, and none of the things that money buys had made her anything but plain. Her hand in mine was strong and firm but icy cold.
“Mr. Norman Grieg,” Oliver Moon said. “Or is it Doctor? One never knows with University people. He’s come about the books, my dear.”
Marion Stoneman’s eyebrows lifted a trifle.
“A Miss Hadley and a Dr. Cross have been here. I thought they were handling the library.”
“They were. Not now. They’re dead.”
Oliver Moon’s hands hung suspended over the keys for a moment, and then dropped to sound another chord. Marion Stoneman’s breath eased past her lips with a sigh.
“Dead? Both of them? That’s very tragic, of course, but I can’t see how I am concerned.”
“Miss Hadley and Dr. Cross were murdered. Strangled. There’s always a reason for murder. I’ve been thinking it might lie among the books your father left to the University.”
She turned, moving to the piano.
“How fantastic! They’re just books. Volumes my father gathered over many years. Are you connected with the police?”
“No. Miss Hadley and I were engaged to be married.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. But I’m sure you’re mistaken in thinking the books may be involved. Why should they be?”
Something oppressive lay against my ear drums, and I realized suddenly that it was silence. Oliver Moon had given up his finger exercises. From the piano, he said, “I worked with the books quite a lot. It was one of my duties. If you’re thinking of a rare volume valuable enough to induce murder, you’re wasting your time. Take it from me, there was no such book in the library.”
“It could have been a volume whose value was unknown,” I said. “Except to someone who was willing to kill to keep it from becoming known. Old Cross was an expert on such things.”
Oliver Moon laughed.
“I see. Someone, perhaps, who planned to recover the book from the University stacks after it was cataloged. A place it would never have reached if your Dr. Cross or Miss Hadley recognized its value.”
“That’s the general idea. It makes some kind of sense. Nothing else does.”
He laughed again, resuming his soft chords.
“My friend, the rare book motive is trite even in fiction. Besides, the old man was a scholar, not a collector. You better start over.”
On the polished surface of the grand, Marion Stoneman traced invisible designs with a long index finger. The sunlight touched her hair, and for a moment she possessed a beauty that was not her own.
“I’ve such an odd feeling,” she said. “About Miss Hadley. She was to see me this afternoon. Probably she told you.”
“No. She didn’t tell me.”
“She called yesterday for the appointment. Thinking hack, I seem to remember that she sounded rather distressed.”
Oliver Moon’s fingers were in the low keys, working lightly.
“My dear, your imagination is busy after the fact. You didn’t mention her distress at the time.”
“Sometimes it’s only after the fact that you see the significance of things,” I said. “Did she tell you what she wanted?”
“No. I suppose now that I shall always wonder.”