At least, he thought he was alone. He thought he was alone until he came upon a bend of the shell-garnished path and heard a woman sob. The garden was luxuriant here, the bushes tall; he was quite invisible in their shadows. Then a man spoke, and Ellery knew that the unpredictable Godfreys, husband and wife, were beyond the bend.
Godfrey was saying in a low voice from which, even now, he could not banish the whip-note: “Stella, I must talk to you. It’s high time some one laid the law down. You’re going to give me the truth of this business or I’ll know the reason why; d’ye understand?”
Ellery was perched on the horns for a trice only; and then he was listening very closely indeed.
“Oh, Walter,” Stella Godfrey was sobbing, “I... I’m so glad. I’ve got to talk to somebody. I never thought you...”
It was a time for confession: the moon was melting and the gardens an invitation to burdened souls.
The millionaire grunted, but it was a softer grunt than usual. “By God, Stella, I can’t make you out. What are you crying for? It seems to me that you’ve done nothing but cry ever since I married you. The Lord knows I’ve given you everything you’ve wanted; and you know that there’s never been another woman with me. Is it this Marco tripe?”
Her voice was muffled and unsteady. “You’ve given me everything but attention, Walter. You’ve ignored me. You were romantic enough when I married you and you — you weren’t so fat. A woman wants romance, Walter...”
“Romance!” he snorted. “Poppycock. You’re not a child any more, Stella. That stuff is all right for Rosa and this Cort boy. But you and I — we’re past that. I am. And you ought to be. Trouble with you is that you’ve never grown up. Do you realize that you might very easily be a grandmother by now?” But there was an uncertain note in his voice.
“I’ll never be past that,” cried Stella Godfrey. “That’s what you can’t seem to understand. And it isn’t only that.” Her voice became calmer. “It’s not merely that you’ve stopped loving me. It’s that you’ve put me out of your life altogether. Walter, if you paid me one-tenth the attention you pay that dirty old man Jorum, I... I’d be happy!”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Stella!”
“I’ve never known why you... Walter, I swear! You — you drove me to it—”
“To what?”
“To — all this. This terrible mess. Marco...”
He was silent for so long that Ellery began to wonder if he had not gone away. But then Godfrey said hoarsely: “I see it now. Just a fool. I’m supposed to be smart. You mean to tell me — Stella, I could kill you!”
She whispered: “I could kill myself.”
A rising wind slithered through the gardens, leaving a trail of curious music. Ellery stood still in the midst of it and thanked the fates which had awakened him in time. There were revelations in the air. And one never knew—
The millionaire asked quietly: “How long, Stella?”
“Walter, don’t look at me that way... Since... since spring.”
“Just after you met him, eh? What a sucker I’ve been. Didn’t have much trouble picking Walter Godfrey’s prize plum, did he? Just a sucker. Blind as a damn’ bat. Under my nose...”
“It — it wouldn’t have happened at all, I think,” she choked, “if he hadn’t... Oh, Walter, that night you’d been beastly to me — so cold, so indifferent. I— He took me home. He began to take me home. He — he made love to me. I tried to resist, but... Somehow, he got me to take a drink from his flask. And another. And after that — I don’t know. Oh, Walter — he took me to his apartment... I came to there. I—”
“How many others have there been, Stella?” The little man’s voice was like chilled steel.
“Walter!” The tone rose in alarm. “I swear... He was the first! The only one. I just couldn’t stand it any longer. Oh, I had to tell you, now that he’s... he’s...” Ellery could almost see her youthful shoulders quiver.
The fat little man was apparently pacing up and down in the path; his shoes crunched against the gravel in short, quick bursts of sound. Ellery started; the Napoleonic little creature was actually sighing! “Well, Stella, I suppose it was as much my fault as yours. I’ve often wondered how a man feels when he learns that his wife has been unfaithful to him. You read about it in the papers — he takes a revolver, he beats her head in, he commits suicide...” Godfrey paused. “But it hurts. Damn it all, it hurts, Stella.”
She whispered: “I tell you, Walter, I never really loved him. It was just — you know what I mean. As soon as I’d done it I could have killed myself, even though he — he’d got me drunk. I was sorrier than you’ll ever know. But I was trapped and he — oh, he was horrible.”
“So that’s how you came to invite him here,” muttered Godfrey. “I did wonder, in my dumb-animal way. You’ve asked crumby people in your time, but he was unique. And your lover!”
“No, Walter, I didn’t want him! It was all over for me long before then. But he — he forced himself on me, made me accept him as my guest...”
The crunching on the gravel stopped. “You mean to sit there and say he invited himself?”
“Yes. Oh, Walter...”
“Lovely.” His voice was bitter. “He invited himself, he ate my food, he rode my horses, he picked my flowers, drank my liquor, made love to my wife. Pretty soft for him!.. And those others? That Munn couple, that blowsy old Constable frump — where do they come in? The usual scenery, or what? You may as well tell me, Stella. Maybe you don’t realize it, but you’ve got us into one hell of a jam. If the police find out that you and he—”
There was a swish of feminine clothing, sharp and precipitate, and Ellery knew that she had flung herself into her husband’s arms.
He winced. It was decidedly unpleasant. It was like sitting in at the dissection of a cadaver. But he set his lips and listened even more intently.
“Walter,” she whispered, “hold me right. I’m afraid.”
“All right, Stella, all right, all right,” said Godfrey, over and over, softly and mechanically. “I’ll see you through. But you’ve got to tell me the whole truth. How about the others? Where do they come in?”
She was silent for a long time. A cricket chirped maddeningly in the bushes. Then she said, so huskily that the words were deep breaths: “Walter, I never saw any of them in my life before they came here.”
Ellery could feel Godfrey’s astonishment. It filled the sweet air in impalpable gusts. Godfrey was choking; it took him some time to utter coherent words. “Stella!” he spluttered at last. “How can that be? Does Rosa know them? Or did David?”
“No,” she moaned. “No.”
“But how did they—”
“I invited them.”
“Stella, talk sense! Get your chin up, now. This is damned serious. How could you invite them if you didn’t—” Even then he did not see the truth.
“Marco told me to invite them,” she said drearily.
“He told you—! He gave you their names, their addresses out of a clear sky?”
“Yes, Walter.”
“No explanations?”
“No.”
“What happened when they came? After all, they couldn’t have taken it for granted that an invitation—”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I really don’t. It’s been so strange — such an awful, awful nightmare. Mrs. Constable’s been the strangest of all. From the very beginning she pretended. Just as if I’d known her all my life...”