Terry Ring then stepped into the bedroom without looking back and shut the door; and through her sobs Eva heard the exclamation of the man Guilfoyle and the clatter of the telephone being snatched from Karen’s writing-desk.
8
Things happened after that. Eva watched them without really seeing them or hearing their meaningless sounds. Time must have passed, but Eva sat on the couch unconscious of it, suspended in haze.
The sitting-room was suddenly overrun, she was conscious of that; as if it had been a caterpillar’s nest one moment sleek and white and still and the next eruptive with crawling larvae.
There were men, many men, only men. First two uniformed officers from a radio car; she saw their insignia. Then two plain-clothes men from some precinct. Then a big man, bigger than Terry Ring, with the biggest shoulders Eva had ever seen; the man’s name was Sergeant Velie and although he seemed to know Terry Ring they did not speak. Then there was a little gray man, littler and grayer than Guilfoyle, with an air of authority and a mild voice and very, very sharp eyes, whom everyone greeted respectfully and whose name seemed to be Inspector Breen, or Queen — Eva didn’t quite catch it. There were also men with cameras and men who went about like women with little brushes and bottles. The two rooms filled with smoke. It was like Saturday night at a men’s political club.
Finally there was a man named Prouty with a black cigar and a doctor’s bag, who went into the bedroom and shut the door. When he came out two men in uniform brought in a basket and went into the bedroom and shut the door. Then the two men came out with the basket, and it seemed heavier than before, because Eva could see the effort with which they carried it.
Eva wondered what they would be carrying in a basket, like a side of beef.
There were questions, too, while Terry Ring jeered at the busy men about him and contrived always to be near Eva with a word, a glance, an air.
Inspector Queen asked some questions himself, speaking very mildly to Kinumé and the new maid, whose name Eva discovered was Geneva O’Mara; and in a most fatherly and sympathetic tone to Eva herself, asking his little questions and smiling and saying things in undertones to men named Flint and Piggott and Hagstrom and Ritter.
And all the while men wandered about without the least semblance of plan, and others crawled up and down the attic stairs and shouted for help and called encouragement to one another and made jokes that Eva felt dimly were in bad taste.
Once Eva felt a hand on her shoulder and she turned to find little Kinumé standing brokenly by the couch, the wrinkled old face contorted with pain, the slanted eyes red with weeping. She groped for Kinumé’s hand and pressed it, feeling very motherly towards the old Japanese woman. That was not long after the two men carried the basket out.
She made Kinumé sit beside her; and the old woman rocked a little in her grief, hiding her face in the folds of her kimono sleeves. Eva was surprised at that; somehow she had never thought of a Japanese as capable of emotion. It struck her suddenly that just because their eyes were shaped differently was no sign they possessed no tear-ducts. The discovery so warmed Eva’s heart that she embraced the old, fragile shoulders.
There was talk about the brown man, too — a bit here, some scraps there — hilarious references to his past, present, and probable future, and some cruel comments on his paternity. Eva found herself ignored and almost pleasantly listening in the ferment; nothing was real, anyway, and all this, while it had undoubtedly happened, couldn’t possibly have happened. All the rules of human conduct were suspended: one could eavesdrop, laugh, die, murder, do anything at all while one’s head swam in the hurly-burly and smoke and questions and merriment.
It seemed Terry Ring was one of those strange creatures known as a “private detective”. He knew all the regular police and they all knew him; but there was animosity between them. The gibes were thinly sheathed and barbed.
He was a “self-made man,” it appeared, rising out of the miasma of the East Side where, despite all better fortune, he still lived. He was twenty-eight — “a mere broth.” In the past he had been circus barker and sandhog, race-track gambler and checker in a meat-packing house, hobo, professional baseball player, pool shark, and, for a short time, Hollywood extra. Eva thought it odd a man so young should have been all these things; he must have begun early, she thought; she felt a spasm of pity for him. She knew instinctively that he was an orphan, a product of the streets, one of the very children she contended with daily at her settlement house. How he had drifted into his present occupation did not clearly come out; someone said it was “the breaks,” and there was reference to a notorious jewel-robbery in Hollywood, a grateful motion-picture star, innuendoes that Terry Ring tossed off lightly, while his eyes remained, unrelaxing, on Eva.
But always Inspector Queen came back with some pertinent little question — when Terry Ring had got there — how it was neither Kinumé nor Geneva O’Mara had heard him come into the house — how it was there were no footprints in the soft earth below the ell-roof, where the “killer” had “undoubtedly” dropped in making his escape — what Terry was doing there at all.
“Be a good boy, now, Terry,” said Inspector Queen good-naturedly. “I’ve always been a friend of yours. What were you doing here to-day?”
“I had a date with Karen.”
“The O’Mara girl says you were here last week, too.”
“I had a date with her then, too,” said Terry with a wink at the Inspector; and they both chuckled and the Inspector nodded in a pleased way, quite as if this were gospel truth, but all the while his sharp, sharp eyes went from Eva to Terry and then to Kinumé and finally back to Eva.
“And you, Miss MacClure — didn’t you hear anything at all in the twenty minutes you sat here — a gasp, a cry, a word, any sound at all?”
Eva shook her head; she saw Terry Ring behind the Inspector, tall as a tree, looking at her. “I was reading a book. And... and thinking.”
“Not really reading, then, eh?” beamed the old man.
“I... I’d just got myself engaged to be married, you see,” sighed Eva. “So—”
“Oh! I see. Naturally. Naturally you’d be thinking. Deaf as a post, I’ll bet. It’s too bad. There must have been some sound.”
He moved away and Eva saw Terry Ring move with him, turning abruptly on his heel and going into the bedroom... The bedroom. The bedroom.
Panic seized her. That waste-paper basket... the half-scissors had fallen into the basket when she had dropped it. Were there papers in the basket? It seemed — yes, there were. Perhaps they wouldn’t find... But they would. Eva knew they would. The police always found everything. They’d know it was the weapon in a minute. They had been looking for it for some time. Of course. Karen had been stabbed. There was always the chance the murderer had left his weapon behind. They’d look until they found it. If only she dared follow them...
Terry Ring had gone into the bedroom and no one had stopped him. They tolerated him, that was it. He was a privileged character. Not even a reporter had been admitted — she heard them all over the house downstairs clamoring angrily. But Terry Ring stalked about like a — well, like some sort of minor god with a special dispensation from the police department. They must know him very well. They must have confidence in his integrity, or they wouldn’t... Or would they? Perhaps they suspected him! Perhaps they were watching him, giving him rope... Eva shivered.
All he had told them was that he had had an appointment with Karen for five — that seemed significant to the funny little Inspector — and that he had come in, finding the downstairs door open (which Geneva O’Mara denied) just before Guilfoyle, who stood about now watching his mates’ activity with a grieved expression. He had found the body and Miss MacClure over it in a state of near-collapse. He had tried to telephone Headquarters. And that was all... Eva had fitted her story to his. She had come to call on Karen, Kinumé had told her Karen was writing, she had waited in the sitting-room, and then when the telephone rang and went unanswered she had gone into the bedroom, thinking something had happened to Karen. She had been there only a moment when Terry Ring had come in and found her.