The old crackle came into Godfrey’s voice. “From the very beginning? She saw Marco here at once?”
“Yes. I thought she’d... she’d faint when she first saw him. And yet it wasn’t as if she hadn’t known. I got the definite feeling that she had known — that she’d been steeling herself against the meeting — but that with all that she couldn’t help being shocked. Marco was cool and — and mocking. He accepted the introduction as if he’d never met her... But she fell into the deception instantly. Afraid — she’s been deathly afraid.”
Afraid, thought Ellery grimly, of the same thing that has frightened you, Stella Godfrey. And you’re keeping something back even now. At this moment there is something else which so frightens you, Stella Godfrey, that you daren’t tell—
“That fat old hag,” said the millionaire thoughtfully. “Of course, it’s possible that... And the Munns?”
There was appalling weariness in her reply. “They’re queer, too. Mrs. Munn especially. She’s — funny. She’s just a cheap, pushing creature, Walter, the kind you read about in the tabloids, the grasping chorus-girl type. You wouldn’t think a woman like that would be afraid of anything. And yet from the first moment she saw him she was scared to death, too. We — we’ve been three women walking on the edge of an abyss, blindfolded. Each of us has been afraid, afraid to talk, afraid to breathe, afraid to confide in the others—”
“And Munn?” asked Godfrey curtly.
“I... I don’t understand him at all. You can’t make him out, Walter. He’s so crude and coarse, and yet he has strength. And he never shows what he’s thinking about. He’s really acted very nicely up here for a man of his sort. He’s been trying hard to be ‘society.’ Society!”
“How did he treat Marco?”
She laughed a little hysterically. “Oh, Walter, this is almost humorous. I have to tell you how a man living in the same house with you... With contempt. He didn’t like him at all. Never paid any attention to him. Only when the other night Marco took Mrs. Munn for a stroll in the gardens I... I saw something in Mr. Munn’s eyes. It made me shiver.”
There was another interval of silence. Then Godfrey said quietly: “Well, it seems open and shut to me. You’re three women he’s made love to at various times. He had a hold on you, saw a chance to combine a sponging summer with some good, clean, honest fun. The filthy rat! He made you ask the others here... If I’d known. If I’d only known. When I think of what Rosa has escaped. He was making love to Rosa, too, damn his soul! How could a daughter of mine—”
“Walter, no!” Stella Godfrey cried in anguish. “He may have flirted with her... I’m sure the other thing— Not Rosa. Not Rosa, Walter. I was so tied up in knots myself I was blind to what was going on. Earle’s attitude should have told me. The poor boy’s been frantic—”
Ellery heard her sudden sharp intake of breath. He parted the bushes cautiously. A twig snapped, but they did not hear. In the light of the moon they were standing close together in the path, the woman taller than the man. But the man was grasping her wrists, and on his ugly masterful face there was the oddest expression.
“I said I’d help you,” he said clearly. “But you still haven’t told me everything. Was it just fear that I’d find out that made you such a willing tool of that damned gigolo? Just fear — or something else? The same thing that’s petrified the other two?”
But there is a higher power that protects the rights of violated hosts. And eavesdropping is an uncertain business at best.
Some one was coming up the path. Coming slowly, with heavy feet whose drag expressed the most profound and deadly weariness.
Ellery was in the thick of the bushes in a flash. He was destined never to hear Stella Godfrey’s reply that night. He crouched under cover, holding his breath, his eyes fixed on the path he had left so hastily.
The Godfreys heard, too. They became incredibly still.
It was Mrs. Constable. She loomed into view, a pale large ghost dressed in grotesquely jutting organdie, her bare arms fat and marbly in the moonlight. Her feet were still dragging, scuffing the noisy gravel, and her huge face was blank with the blankness of somnambulism. She was alone.
Her vast haunches passed within inches of Ellery’s head as she rounded the curve in the path.
There was a simultaneous outburst of exclamations, as false in its twitterings as the mechanical song of toy birds.
“Mrs. Constable! Where have you been?”
“Good evening, Mrs. Constable.”
“Hello. I... I was just taking a walk... What a horrible day...”
“Yes. We all feel—”
Ellery snarled to himself with bitterness at the vengeful spirit of the fates, crawled out to the path, and very quietly stole away.
Chapter Nine
Night, the Dark-Blue Hunter
Judge Macklin came awake. One moment he had been struggling upward through a black turgid fog; but now he was vitally awake, awake in every sense, listening before he was conscious that he was listening, straining to see through the darkness before even his eyes were open. His old heart, he was startled to feel, was pounding away like a piston. He lay very still, aware of danger.
Some one, he knew, was in his room.
Out of the corner of his eye he glanced at the floor-windows which gave upon the Spanish balcony. The curtains were only half-drawn, and he could make out a star-pricked sky. It must be late, then. How late? He shivered involuntarily, causing the bed-clothes to rustle. He did not care for nocturnal visitors, much less for nocturnal visitors in a house in which murder had been committed.
But gradually his pulse slowed down to normal as nothing happened and common-sense repelled the invader. Whoever it is, he thought grimly, is due for the surprise of his life. He gathered his aged muscles for a leap out of bed. He was not so decrepit that he couldn’t still give a rousing good account of himself in a tussle...
His door clicked suddenly and — his eyes now accustomed to the darkness-he was positive he had seen something white flick out the door. His visitor, then, had left.
“Whew,” he said aloud, swinging his bare feet to the floor.
A cool dry voice said from somewhere nearby: “Oh, so you’re up at last, are you?”
The Judge jumped. “For heaven’s sake! Ellery?”
“In the flesh. I take it you heard our perambulating friend, too? No, no, don’t turn on the lights.”
“Then you were the one,” gasped the Judge, “who just—?”
“Left? By no means. Isn’t it Bode’s Law that two material bodies cannot occupy the same position in space at the same time? Well, no matter; I was always weak on science. No, that was the prowler I’ve been expecting.”
“Expecting!”
“I’ll confess I didn’t anticipate that she’d try this room, but I think that can be easily explained—”
“She?”
“Oh, yes, that was a female. Didn’t you smell the powder? Sorry I can’t give you the maker’s name and odeur; I’ve never been Vance-ish in that direction. As a matter of fact, she was dressed in something long, flowing, and white. I’ve been watching here and there for an hour or more.”
The old gentleman choked. “From here?”
“No. From my room chiefly. But when I saw her try this door I thought I’d slip in through the communicating door in case of... er... emergency. You’re such a sublime old angel. She might have bopped you before you stopped dreaming of that languorous houri.”
“Don’t be ribald!” snapped the Judge, but he kept his voice down. “Why should any one try to assault me? I don’t know any of these people and I certainly haven’t done anything to any of ’em. It must have been a mistake. She got into the wrong room, that’s all.”