Aaronia Haldorn arrived just before dark, in a Lincoln limousine driven by a Negro who turned the siren loose when he brought the car into the drive. I was in Gabrielle's room when the thing howled. She all but jumped out of bed, utterly terrorized by what must have been an ungodly racket to her too sensitive ears.
"What was it? What was it?" she kept crying between rattling teeth, her body shaking the bed.
"Sh-h-h," I soothed her. I was acquiring a pretty fair bedside manner. "Just an automobile horn. Visitors. I'll go down and head them off."
"You won't let anybody see me?" she begged.
"No. Be a good girl till I get back."
Aaronia Haldorn was standing beside the limousine talking to MacMan when I came out. In the dim light, her face was a dusky oval mask between black hat and black fur coat-but her luminous eyes were real enough.
"How do you do?" she said, holding out a hand. Her voice was a thing to make warm waves run up your back. "I'm glad for Mrs. Collinson's sake that you're here. She and I have had excellent proof of your protective ability, both owing our lives to it."
That was all right, but it had been said before. I made a gesture that was supposed to indicate modest distaste for the subject, and beat her to the first tap with:
"I'm sorry she can't see you. She isn't well."
"Oh, but I should so like to see her, if only for a moment. Don't you think it might be good for her?"
I said I was sorry. She seemed to accept that as final, though she said: "I came all the way from the city to see her."
I tried that opening with:
"Didn't Mr. Andrews tell you . . . ?" letting it ravel out.
She didn't say whether he had. She turned and began walking slowly across the grass. There was nothing for me to do but walk along beside her. Full darkness was only a few minutes away. Presently, when we had gone thirty or forty feet from the car, she said:
"Mr. Andrews thinks you suspect him."
"He's right."
"Of what do you suspect him?"
"Juggling the estate. Mind, I don't know, but I do suspect him."
"Really?"
"Really," I said; "and not of anything else."
"Oh, I should suppose that was quite enough."
"It's enough for me. I didn't think it was enough for you."
"I beg your pardon?"
I didn't like the ground I was on with this woman. I was afraid of her. I piled up what facts I had, put some guesses on them, and took a jump from the top of the heap into space:
"When you got out of prison, you sent for Andrews, pumped him for all he knew, and then, when you learned he was playing with the girl's pennies, you saw what looked to you like a chance to confuse things by throwing suspicion on him. The old boy's woman-crazy: he'd be ducksoup for a woman like you. I don't know what you're planning to do with him, but you've got him started, and have got the papers started after him. I take it you gave them the tip-off on his high financing? It's no good, Mrs. Haldorn. Chuck it. It won't work. You can stir him up, all right, and make him do something criminal, get him into a swell jam: he's desperate enough now that he's being poked at. But whatever he does now won't hide what somebody else did in the past. He's promised to get the estate in order and hand it over. Let him alone. It won't work."
She didn't say anything while we took another dozen steps. A path came under our feet. I said:
"This is the path that runs up the cliff, the one Eric Collinson was pushed from. Did you know him?"
She drew in her breath sharply, with almost a sob in her throat, but her voice was steady, quiet and musical, when she replied:
"You know I did. Why should you ask?"
"Detectives like questions they already know the answers to. Why did you come down here, Mrs. Haldorn?"
"Is that another whose answer you know?"
"I know you came for one or both of two reasons."
"Yes?"
"First, to learn how chose we were to our riddle's answer. Right?"
"I've my share of curiosity, naturally," she confessed.
"I don't mind making that much of your trip a success. I know the answer."
She stopped in the path, facing me, her eyes phosphorescent in the deep twilight. She put a hand on my shoulder: she was taller than I. The other hand was in her coat-pocket. She put her face nearer mine. She spoke very slowly, as if taking great pains to be understood:
"Tell me truthfully. Don't pretend. I don't want to do an unnecessary wrong. Wait, wait-think before you speak-and believe me when I say this isn't the time for pretending, for lying, for bluffing. Now tell me the truth: do you know the answer?"
"Yeah."
She smiled faintly, taking her hand from my shoulder, saying:
"Then there's no use of our fencing."
I jumped at her. If she had fired from her pocket she might have plugged me. But she tried to get the gun out. By then I had a hand on her wrist. The bullet went into the ground between our feet. The nails of her free hand put three red ribbons down the side of my face. I tucked my head under her chin, turned my hip to her before her knee came up, brought her body hard against mine with one arm around her, and bent her gun-hand behind her. She dropped the gun as we fell. I was on top. I stayed there until I had found the gun. I was getting up when MacMan arrived.
"Everything's eggs in the coffee," I told him, having trouble with my voice.
"Have to plug her?" he asked, looking at the woman lying still on the ground.
"No, she's all right. See that the chauffeur's behaving."
MacMan went away. The woman sat up, tucked her legs under her, and rubbed her wrist. I said:
"That's the second reason for your coming, though I thought you meant it for Mrs. Collinson."
She got up, not saying anything. I didn't help her up, not wanting her to know how shaky I was. I said:
"Since we've gone this far, it won't do any harm and it might do some good to talk,"
"I don't think anything will do any good now." She set her hat straight. "You say you know. Then lies are worthless, and only lies would help." She shrugged. "Well, what now?"
"Nothing now, if you'll promise to remember that the time for being desperate is past. This kind of thing splits up in three parts-being caught, being convicted, and being punished. Admit it's too late to do anything about the first, and-well, you know what California courts and prison boards are."
She looked curiously at me and asked: "Why do you tell me this?"
"Because being shot at's no treat to me, and because when a job's done I like to get it cleaned up and over with. I'm not interested in trying to convict you for your part in the racket, and it's a nuisance having you horning in now, trying to muddy things up. Go home and behave."
Neither of us said anything more until we had walked back to the limousine. Then she turned, put out her hand to me, and said:
"I think-I don't know yet-I think I owe you even more now than before."
I didn't say anything and I didn't take her hand. Perhaps it was because she was holding her hand out that she asked:
"May I have my pistol now?"
"No."
"Will you give my best wishes to Mrs. Collinson, and tell her I'm so sorry I couldn't see her?"
"Yeah."
She said, "Goodbye," and got into the car; I took off my hat and she rode away.
XXII.Confessional
Mickey Linehan opened the front door for me. He looked at my scratched face and laughed:
"You do have one hell of a time with your women. Why don't you ask them instead of trying to take it away from them? It'd save you a lot of skin." He poked a thumb at the ceiling. "Better go up and negotiate with that one. She's been raising hell."
I went up to Gabrielle's room. She was sitting in the middle of the wallowed-up bed. Her hands were in her hair, tugging at it. Her soggy face was thirty-five years old. She was making hurt-animal noises in her throat.
"It's a fight, huh?" I said from the door.