She slid her limbs into the white trousers, reached for a shirt.
“You’re all wet underneath!” exclaimed Vera Thurmond.
“They’ll dry out. Go ahead. Get the police and let’s get it over with.”
Vera Thurmond shook her head.
“We don’t call the police — not from this yacht.”
“What?”
Sidney Zoom replied to the girl’s startled question.
“I’m tired of civilization. I hate the routine, the whole damned money-grubbing machine of treadmill existence! The police be damned! I sympathize with the unfortunate. I avoid the prosperous. Some day, I hope, there’ll be a change. In the meantime I spend much of my life on the water. There, at least, I’m comparatively free — on the high seas.”
The girl’s left eye had widened in wonder. The swelling on the right had gone down sufficiently so there showed a little glittering slit beneath a circle of livid black.
“You mean — I’m not arrested?”
Zoom waved his hand toward the dark windows of the pilot house.
“Take dry clothes and go — out into the night. Or stay, and tell me your troubles. Perhaps I can help.”
She sat, white, shaken, startled.
Sidney Zoom motioned with his hand.
“Go to her, Rip, old boy. She’s afraid of you.”
The dog arose from his crouching position, stalked toward the girl, sank to the floor and thrust his muzzle against the cold fingers.
She patted his head, stroked his ears, and the dog, moved by some intuitive understanding which is the heritage of well bred dogs, thrust his head upon her lap, snuggled down and thumped the floor with his tail.
She grasped the shaggy neck and began to cry, suddenly straightened and stared at the others with moist eyes.
Chapter III
Wanted — For Murder
“I’m not a cry-baby. I’ll take my medicine. I’ve been through hell the last twenty-four hours. I’m Eve Bendley.”
Vera Thurmond gasped.
“Not the Eve Bendley?”
The moist eyes regarded Sidney Zoom’s secretary with smoldering hostility.
“Yes, the Eve Bendley. I’m the one that the police want for murder. You should have guessed it sooner.”
Sidney Zoom nodded.
“Would you care,” he asked, “to tell us the details?”
She shrugged her shoulders, hugged the dog’s head to her breast.
“Why not? They’ll be all over the newspapers. You wouldn’t dare to protect me — not one wanted for murder. And I’m tired of hiding.
“I guess you know all the preliminaries. I was confidential secretary to Ralph C. Ames for five years. I believe I’m related to him by marriage. He was an old man, lovable when you understood him, but a bit of a tyrant at times.
“He didn’t have any natural heirs, and he left a will that was to have given me rather a large sum of money. I don’t know how much. The bulk of his fortune was left to charity; but I understood there was more than two hundred thousand left me under the will.
“Then this adventuress came along. The old man fell head over heels in love with her. That is, he fell for her line of talk. You know the one I mean, Nettie Pease.
“I tried to warn him against her. She was nothing but a peroxide adventuress. That made a scene. He threatened to discharge me, leave me without a cent and all that. And then he went out in a rage, came back and announced he had married the woman.
“She was with him, leering at me. He left the room and she told me where we stood — quick. She said I was out of sympathy with her, and that I could get out and stay out. You see Mr. Ames had his office in his house, and I was treated as one of the family, living under the same roof, handling his mail, helping the housekeeper run the house.
“When Mr. Ames came back he explained to me I was discharged, that I could take two weeks’ salary and leave.”
The young woman made these recitals in a flat, expressionless tone of voice, her fingers digging into the dog’s fur, her arms straining the head to her.
“There was to be a bonus?” prompted Sidney Zoom.
She nodded.
“Yes. There was a bonus paid me every year. My year was up and I’d figured the bonus. It amounted to over three thousand dollars. I asked Mr. Ames about it. He said he’d changed his mind. That adventuress had him entirely under her thumb. She simpered at him, leered at me. Damn her, I wish I’d killed her!”
Vera Thurmond winced at the savagery of the girl’s tone. Sidney Zoom’s eyes glowed with a sudden sympathy, an admiration of a kindred spirit.
“Go ahead,” he said, quietly.
She sighed and resumed her story.
“Gravy, he’s the butler, was my only friend. He knew I’d been treated shamefully, and he suggested that I should take what was due me — the bonus.
“I had the combination to the safe, but Mr. Ames didn’t know it. Gravy had found a paper that had it written on some weeks before and had brought it to me. When I saw it I knew it was some sort of a safe combination, and tried it out on the safe in the library. It worked.
“Then Gravy was afraid Mr. Ames would fire us both if he knew what we’d done, so he swore me to secrecy. You see, Mr. Ames was a most peculiar character, and that safe was sort of sacred with him. He loved to pop things in there and put them under lock.
“So Gravy got me to dress in some of his clothes and furnished me with a mask, just in case anything should happen. And it happened all right.
“Ames and the woman had been to some sort of a reception. They were to stay until midnight, but they came popping in, with a couple of people who were strangers to me, just as I was getting the money out of the safe. There I was, caught red-handed, as they say in the newspapers, the safe open, the money in my hands. But I was wearing men’s clothes and a mask. I thought that would keep ’em from recognizing me.
“Of course, I started to run toward the servants’ quarters. And Mr. Ames let out a bellow and started after me. I heard a shot and thought some one was firing at me. But there were a lot of screams and something fell to the floor.
“When I got to where I’d left my own clothes, I saw Gravy running after me. He was all excited. He said some one had shot Mr. Ames while I was running. He thought it was the woman who had fired the shot, but couldn’t be sure. He said I’d better keep right on going because the woman had sworn she’d recognized my figure, even in the man’s clothes, and was insisting that my room be thoroughly searched.
“So I just kept on going. I had the money in a money belt I’d purchased especially for that purpose. I went to a rooming house and went to sleep. Next morning I read of the murder. It seems the two people with him swear that Mr. Ames was running after a masked figure, that the masked man turned and shot him down, then made his escape.
“Personally, I’m satisfied it was the woman who fired the shot. She’ll get all his estate now. That was what she wanted. Believe me, she was a fast worker. Married and kills her husband within forty-eight hours!”
Sidney Zoom studied the girl through narrowed eyes.
“The two people with Mr. Ames and his newly made bride were people of unquestioned integrity,” he said. “They swear they saw the masked figure run toward a passage, suddenly turn and fire the fatal shot.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“I don’t suppose my word or that of Gravy will amount to anything, but Gravy swears he heard the woman say, ‘Let him have it,’ just before the shot was fired. He thinks that it was the adventuress herself who fired the shot, but he wasn’t where he could see. But he swears the shot sounded from behind Ames rather than in front.”
Zoom gravely shook his head.