“Oh, undoubtedly. I was just ribbing you.” The Judge, still on the bed, heard nothing at all, and yet when Ellery’s voice came again it proceeded from a different part of the chamber — from the door. “Hmm. She’s beaten a strategic retreat temporarily. I’m afraid we’ll have to wait. Your noisy preparations for getting out of bed scared her off. What were you going to do,” chuckled Ellery, “leap at her throat like Tarzan?”
“Didn’t know it was a woman,” said the Judge sheepishly. “But I wasn’t going to lie here and be made mince-meat of. Who the devil was the creature?”
“Blessed if I know. Might have been any of ’em.”
Judge Macklin lay back, propped on one elbow. He kept his eyes fixed on the spot where he knew the door to be; he could just make out Ellery’s motionless figure. “Well,” he snapped at last, “aren’t you going to talk? What’s been happening here? Why were you waiting? How’d you come to suspect? How long have I slept? You’re the most exasperating young—”
“Whoa. One at a time. By my wrist-watch it’s almost two-thirty. You must have a singularly easy conscience.”
“I’d be sleeping yet if not for that confounded woman. Just beginning to feel the ache in my bones again. Well, well?”
“It’s a long story.” Ellery opened the door to pop his head out; it was back and the door closed in an instant. “Nothing doing yet. I didn’t wake up until ten myself. You must be hungry, eh? Tiller fetched the most delicious—”
“Bother Tiller! And I’m not hungry. Answer me, you idiot! What made you suspect some one would go prowling tonight, and what are you watching for?”
“I’m watching,” said Ellery, “for some one to go into the room next door.”
“The room next—! That’s yours, isn’t it?”
“On the other side. The end-room.”
“Marco’s,” said the old gentleman, and he was silent for a moment. “But isn’t it under guard? I thought that Roush boy—”
“Oddly enough, that Roush boy is stretched out on a cot in Tiller’s bedroom taking a well-earned nap.”
“But Moley will be furious!”
“I think not. At least, not with Roush. You see, Roush left the room unguarded on orders. Er... mine.”
The Judge stared into the darkness with open mouth. “Yours! It’s beyond me. Or is it a trap?”
Ellery peered out into the corridor again. “She must have been properly scared. I suppose she thought you were a ghost... Quite so; a trap. Most of them turned in before midnight. Poor souls! They were very tired. Nevertheless, I carelessly let them know — en masse — that there wasn’t any sense in keeping watch by a dead man’s door, especially since we’d already looked the place over; and I informed them that Roush was off in slumberland.”
“I see,” muttered the Judge. “And what made you think some one would fall into your trap?”
“That,” said Ellery softly, “is another story... Quiet!”
The Judge held his breath, his scalp prickling. Then Ellery’s mouth was at his ear. “She’s back. Don’t make a sound. I’m off on a little spying expedition. For God’s sake, Solon, don’t crab this act!” And he was gone. The curtains of the floor-window fluttered a little, soundlessly, and a shadow drifted out and vanished. The Judge saw the stars again, cold and remote.
He shivered.
When fifteen minutes had passed and his ears had told him nothing except that waves were breaking against rock below and that a frosty wind blew in from the sea through his windows, Judge Macklin crept noiselessly out of bed, wrapped his gaunt pajama-clad body in a silk quilt from the bed, dug his toes into carpet-slippers, and stole to the window. With his hair standing on end at the top of his head, forming a tuft resembling a scalp-lock, and the quilt draped about his shoulders, he was grotesquely like an ancient Indian scout on the warpath. Nevertheless, his humorous appearance did not prevent him from stealing out onto the long shallow iron-grilled balcony in the best Indian tradition and gaining Ellery’s side at a window several yards away... one of the windows of the late John Marco’s bedchamber.
Ellery was sprawled on his side in an uncomfortable position, his eyes glued to a plinth of light. The Venetian blind had not been completely drawn — a careless oversight on the marauder’s part, since the space left unguarded at the bottom afforded a complete view of the room. Ellery saw the Judge coming, shook his head in warning, moved a little.
The old gentleman calmly spread his quilt, squatted on his lean hams, and peered into the room by Ellery’s side, almost doubled over.
The huge Spanish bedroom was in violent disorder. The door of the closet stood open and every one of the dead man’s garments lay on the floor outside, tumbled and in some cases torn. A trunk had been lugged into the center of the room; its drawers sagged, empty. Several valises and suitcases had been hurled away by a disappointed hand. The bed had been attacked in ruthless fashion; a knife had slashed at the mattress, which lay exposed and half off the box-spring. The spring itself had been assailed. The drapes had been jerked off the tester. All the drawers in the room had been pulled out and their contents strewed the floor in a tangle of confusion. Even the paintings on the wall had been examined, for they hung awry.
The Judge felt his cheeks grow hot. “Where’s the damned ghoul,” he growled sotto voce, “responsible for this desecration? I’d cheerfully throttle her!”
“No irreparable harm done,” murmured Ellery, without removing his eyes from the plinth of light. “Looks worse than it is. She’s in the bathroom now, no doubt making kindred whoopee. Has a knife with her. You should have seen her fly at the walls! Just as if she thought there was one of those secret passageways here you read about in Oppenheim and Wallace... Silence. The lady enters. Beauty, isn’t she?”
The Judge glared. It was Cecilia Munn.
It was Cecilia Munn standing in the doorway from the lavatory, her mask peeled off. Apparently the countenance she presented to the everyday world was only as deep as her cosmetics. Beneath it lay something appallingly different, now shamelessly revealed. Something raw and naked and nasty, a thing of writhing lips, taut blue skin, and tigrish eyes. One of her hands was clawing empty air, the other brandished a common bread-knife which she had probably filched from the kitchens. Her robe lay open, half-revealing small panting breasts.
She made the most sharply etched picture of human rage, bafflement, despair and terror that either man had ever seen. Even her blonde hair was infected by it, standing hideously on end like a dried mop. The bristling, vivid unloveliness of her made them both feel sick.
“Good lord,” breathed the old gentleman. “She’s... she’s animal. I’ve never seen...”
“She’s afraid,” muttered Ellery. “Afraid. They’re all afraid. In his own way that man must have been Machiavelli and Beelzebub rolled into one. He hammered the fear of—”
The blonde woman soared like a cat — straight for the light-switch. Then there was only blackest darkness.
They lay frozen. Only one thing could have caused such an instantaneous muscular reflex. She had heard some one coming.
It seemed an age. In reality it was only a few ticks of Ellery’s wrist-watch. Then light flooded on again. The door was closed once more and Mrs. Constable stood with her back to it, one hand still on the switch near the jamb. Mrs. Munn had vanished.
The stout woman was all jellied, hanging flesh and eyes. Her eyes bulged; her bosom bulged; she bulged all over. But it was her eyes that fascinated them, taking in the mutilation of the bed, the untidy mess on the floor, the sagging drawers. It was like watching a slow-motion film. They could detect every thought as it was reflected in her eyes and on her slack features. She was no longer wooden and expressionless. Beneath her satin wrapper she was trembling violently, shaking in every cell of her fat flesh. Amazement. Horror. Realization. Disappointment. And finally fear, the solvent. She melted into fear like an enormous candle into hot tallow.