The explanation had the desired impression on Captain Jacobsen. “Where did you find them?” he asked.
“In the grass outside,” Sabina said. “Cast away after they were no longer needed.”
“And when was that?”
“That I found them? After you left yesterday morning, Captain.”
“Why were they used in the first place?”
“To permit surreptitious access in the middle of the night.”
“By whom? And for what purpose?”
“By Miss Earlene Thurmond.”
The secretary said with feigned outrage, “Poppycock! How dare you accuse me!”
“It couldn’t be anyone else but you,” Sabina said. “I saw you on the beach Sunday, searching among the driftwood cast up by Saturday night’s storm. You picked up something small and dark — this black wedge-shaped piece.”
“No. I picked up a shell, not a piece of driftwood.”
Sabina ignored the denial. “It was the storm damage to the shutter that gave you the idea, wasn’t it? That is why you acted when you did. You spent much of your time in this room each day, surely not every minute in the company of Mr. Pettibone. It was easy enough for you to unbolt the window when left alone that day, then to go outside and wedge these pieces into the frames.
“Late that night you slipped out, removed the wedges, and climbed in here. Mr. Pettibone caught you and locked the door after entering, then opened the drapes to confirm your method of access. In some fashion during the confrontation you managed to gain possession of his pistol and shot him. Afterward you climbed back out through the window, reinserted the driftwood pieces, rushed to the back stairs and up to your room, and threw on a robe to hide the fact that you were fully dressed — a process that took several minutes. That is why you didn’t appear until after Mr. Oakes broke down the door.”
“You have no proof of any of that.”
Captain Jacobsen fixed the woman with a stern eye. “You deny these accusations, Miss Thurmond?”
“Of course I deny them. What possible purpose could I have for such... such chicanery?”
Sabina said, “The rifling of Mr. Pettibone’s safe.”
Oakes, who had been staring at Miss Thurmond with an admixture of loathing and awe, emitted a bleat of surprise. “What’s that? Safe? There is no safe in here.”
“Yes there is, a well hidden one. Your uncle must have had it installed when the house was built, long before you and Miss Thurmond came to live here. Either she discovered it by accident, or he made the mistake of revealing its presence for reasons of his own. In any event she knew about it and was desperate for something locked inside.”
His eyes roamed the room. “Where the devil is this safe?”
“Pick up sticks,” Sabina said.
“What? What?”
“The safe’s existence and location was what your uncle was trying to convey with his dying words; that is the reason he crawled to where he was found and thrust out his arm — an effort to point, not to rise. He must have spoken as he did, instead of simply naming Miss Thurmond, because whatever she was after in the safe will prove her guilt beyond any doubt. I believe we’ll find that it is still there. She hadn’t enough time to remove it that night, and while she could have done so sometime during the past two days, with all the activity and the fact that the library door can no longer be locked, it would have been an unnecessarily risky undertaking. Neither you nor Cheng knew of the safe, and she didn’t expect that I had discovered it; she could afford to wait until things settled down and she was alone in the house.”
Earlene Thurmond had nothing more to say, but if her eyes had had claws, they would have torn Sabina’s throat out.
Oakes said to Sabina, “I still don’t understand the meaning of ‘pick up sticks.’”
“You told me that your uncle spoke those words with a pause between the last two. If he had lived long enough, there would have been a fourth word. ‘Pick up... sticks... wood.’”
“Wood? What wood?”
Sabina went to the fireplace hearth. “The half-dozen sticks of firewood stacked here — stacked loosely, not placed in a container of any kind, and never used because no fire was ever laid on this pristine hearth. I noticed them yesterday but it was not until this morning that I realized that their purpose was not decoration but concealment.”
As she had done earlier, Oakes and Captain Jacobsen moved the sticks of firewood to the center of the hearth. Access to the safe was a two-foot-square opening camouflaged by a cover snugly fitted into the surrounding bricks; a layer of matching brick-and-mortar had been skillfully affixed to a thin metal plate, thus rendering it undetectable except on close inspection. A finger hole on one end allowed the cover to be lifted and then removed. The safe imbedded beneath was a small Mosler with a combination dial.
Oakes said, “It can’t be opened without the combination.”
“I have the combination,” Sabina said. “I found it in the same place Miss Thurmond must have, on a card in the Bible shelved with the Oriental history books.” She produced the envelope on which she’d copied the line of letters and numbers. “RL462618359. That is the combination, coded by the letters RL for right and left rotations and the numbers run together in order: right to 46, left to 26, right to 18, left to 35, right to 9. I unlocked the safe earlier to make sure that was the correct rotation, then locked it again. I did not feel I had the right to look inside without a witness present.”
She handed the envelope to Oakes, who proceeded to rotate the dial accordingly. The safe opened easily to his upward lift. Inside, along with Gordon Pettibone’s will and a small amount of cash, was what Earlene Thurmond had been after — an envelope containing documented proof that she had embezzled the sum of two thousand dollars during her employment at the Honolulu branch of the Great Orient Import-Export Company, proof that could have sent her to prison if revealed.
“He was a blackmailer and a sadist!” she cried when confronted with it. Her outrage now was genuine, all pretense at innocence gone. “He forced me to move in here with him, made me work for a pittance, shared my bed at night whenever he felt like it. That’s how he caught me Tuesday night — snuck into my room and found me gone. He once told me where the documents were, to torment me because he believed I’d never be able to open the safe. I would have destroyed the evidence if I’d had time to get it, then left here and gone back to San Francisco. But I’m not sorry he caught me, not sorry he was careless with the pistol and it went off when I snatched it out of his hand. I’m glad he’s dead. Glad!”
Not one villain but two, Sabina thought as Captain Jacobsen placed Earlene Thurmond under arrest. Or two and a half, counting Philip Oakes. As John was fond of saying, a pox on criminals of every stripe.
22
Quincannon
The rainsquall had been brief, having blown itself out by the time Quincannon reached the Millay ranch. Small comfort — he was bedraggled and damp, his hair, beard, and clothing steaming perceptibly in the afternoon heat. And he was still furious, though an effort of will had tamped the fury down to a controlled simmer.
He found Grace Millay in the stable, helping one of the paniolos tend to a newborn colt. Her surprise at seeing him might or might not have been genuine. He drew her outside, out of earshot of any of the ranch hands.
She showed little emotion while he gave her a terse account of what he’d found in the heiau’s burial chamber and what had transpired afterward, but the news of Sam Opaka’s death struck her like a blow. She wavered, then steadied herself against the stable wall with her eyes squeezed shut. It took half a minute for her to regain her equilibrium. When she opened her eyes again, it was as if she had never lost control at all.