But this was a different sound, quicker and somehow more urgent. Under it and behind it, I could hear the longer lapses of the surf. Somebody was breathing at me through the french door. I sat up in bed and made out his shadowy outline through the blind. His trench coat and snap-brim hat were vaguely familiar.
I got out of bed and opened the glass door:
“Colonel Ferguson?”
“I hesitated to wake you. I’ve been standing here in the corner for some time, trying to decide…” He let the sentence trail off.
“Decide to do what?”
“Ask your advice. It hardly seems fair to ask you to share my burden. But I’m very badly in need of advice from someone. I know hardly anyone in California, and you mentioned the other day that you had had some experience in crim – in these matters.”
“Criminal matters?”
His head dropped like a tired horse’s. “I’m afraid that is the case.”
I looked him over, putting together the few things I knew about him. I’d met him on the beach two days before. I think I spoke to him because he looked out of place. In fact, he looked totally lost, too civilized for the landscape and at the same time too provincial. He told me that he was a Canadian army officer visiting California for the first time, a colonel with the Canadian division of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. I asked him in for a drink, because it seemed the pukka thing to do. Over Scotch on the rocks, he became quite interesting, in a solemn way. He told a story well.
There was nothing amusing about Ferguson now. His long homely face had sunk on its bones. Under their heavy black brows, his eyes looked stunned. And he was shivering. It was a misty dawn in February, but it was hardly cold enough to make a Canadian shiver.
“Come in,” I said. “I’ll make some coffee and you can tell me about it.”
He sidled through the door, tentatively, as if he thought I might change my mind and kick him out into the cold again. For a man of his rank and background, he seemed very uncertain of himself. His feet dragged as if he’d been hamstrung.
“What happened, Colonel?”
“I killed a man. I shot him.”
“Why?”
“I hardly know. I’d never seen the man before.” He turned to face me and the growing light. His small eyes glared with pain. “I’ve killed a man, and wrecked my own life, without any clear reason.”
He wept dry-eyed, gasping and shuddering, then covered his ugly face with ten hooked fingers. Partly to spare his pride, I carried my clothes into the kitchen, dressed there, and made coffee. I took him a mug of it, heavily spiked with Bushmills. He was standing at the glass door, stiff and calm-faced. His eyes were on the breaking line of the surf.
I handed him his coffee. “Compliments of the management.” But neither of us succeeded in cracking a smile.
He took the cup and held it without a tremor. His face was like granite. His voice was like granite speaking:
“I made you an ugly scene there. I have to apologize. I had no idea I had such weakness in me.”
“People do, you know. You look as though you’ve had a rough night.”
“I have had rougher, but I’ve never before killed a man, in civilian life. It came as rather a shock to me, that I was capable of it.”
“Do you want to go into it now?”
“I must.” He sipped from his mug, still standing up, and watching me over the rim. “I do owe it to myself to say one thing at the start. I did have a reason for killing him. It seemed adequate at the time. He was threatening a woman – threatening to maltreat her.”
“What woman?”
“An actress, Molly Day. At least she claimed that that was her name. It’s rather an unlikely name.”
“She’s an unlikely woman.”
“Have you heard of her?”
“Everybody in the United States has heard of her.”
“I’m not a filmgoer.”
“So I gather. How did you get mixed up with Molly Day?”
Ferguson sat down and told me.
He’d had trouble going to sleep the night before. After he’d turned out the light in the studio, he’d noticed a light on the far side of the canyon. It shouldn’t have been there, because his friends the Trumbulls owned the entire canyon, and so far as he knew they were still in Europe.
He explained about the Trumbulls. He’d met them in London through their son George, the painter. Ferguson himself was an art collector in a small way. When he’d completed his recent tour as attaché at Canada House, George and his parents had insisted that he spend at least part of his leave at their place in California. If he didn’t want the trouble of opening up the big house, he was welcome to use George’s studio on the other side of the canyon.
Having taken up the Trumbulls’ suggestion, Ferguson naturally felt an obligation to see that their house had not been invaded by vandals. The possibility wouldn’t let him sleep. He got up and pulled back the drapes over the window. The light he’d seen, or thought he’d seen, was no longer visible. The Trumbull house was a black bulk diminished by distance, half hidden by trees, unbroken by any light.
It had probably been a trick of the eye, or a flash of moonlight reflected from a window. There was a moon in the sky, enlarged and blurred by clouds. Its light fell on the trees that filled the deep canyon, and lent their leaves a silvery aspen appearance. Ferguson was struck by the beauty and peace of the night. It was so still that the gurgle of the creek came up from a quarter of a mile below, as clearly as though it was lapping at the cantilevers of the studio.
George Trumbull had left a deer rifle hanging above the studio fireplace, and Ferguson had noticed that it had a telescopic sight. When he trained it on the Trumbull house, he saw the light again, a thin spillage of brightness from a blinded window on the second-floor level. The brightness was white and steady: at least the place wasn’t burning. But somebody was in it who had no right to be there.
Carefully drawing the drapes again, so as not to alarm the housebreakers, Ferguson turned on the light and looked up the emergency number of the county police. Then he changed his mind. Perhaps the Trumbulls had come back unexpectedly by plane. His own jet flight from London had whisked him to Los Angeles in what seemed no time at all. If the Trumbulls had come home, they wouldn’t thank him for inviting the authorities to their homecoming.
He dialed their number instead of the police number. A man answered immediately, as if he had been waiting with his hand on the receiver:
“Hello.”
“May I speak to Mr. Trumbull?”
“Sorry, but there’s no such person here.”
“Are you the Trumbull caretaker?”
“Hardly. I don’t know the Trumbulls, whoever they are. I’m afraid you have the wrong number.”
The man’s voice was persuasive, and cultivated, as American voices went. Ferguson hung up, checked the number in the telephone directory, and called it again. The same voice answered, as quickly and more sharply:
“Yes?”
“There seems to be something out of kilter,” Ferguson said. “I keep calling the Trumbulls’ number and getting you.”
“So you do. Would you mind stopping, please? I’m expecting a call.”
There was a whining note of impatience in the man’s voice. It irked Ferguson, for some reason. He said brusquely:
“Who am I talking to?”
“I was about to ask you the same question.”
Ferguson gave his name, prefixed by his rank. The voice at the other end of the line became more geniaclass="underline"
“I’m afraid I can’t explain the mixup, Colonel. What number are you calling, anyway?”
“23799.”
“This is 23788,” the man said. “Evidently your dialing system is faulty. If I were you, I’d report it to the telephone company in the morning.”