CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Silver Triangle
For a part of that noise there was no name: a rather horrible gobbling sound that might have been a strangled cry, a choke, or even suppressed mirth. You could not tell whether it came from near or far away, but a sort of muffled bump followed it. Bennett felt his skin go hot despite the chill room.
Motor-gears ground under the porte-cochere, but it was no part of that. He went to the door and threw it open.
"Was it-?" said Katharine. "Don't go out!"
The gallery was dark now. He saw it with the same eerie sense of close tragedy growing again.
"Shouldn't be dark," he said. "There were lights on a moment ago. I had a crazy idea that somebody, you know who, might be standing outside listening to us. So I looked out… What do you mean, don't go out? This is your own home, isn't it? Nothing to be afraid of in your own home."
No movement, no creaking, in the dense shadow: as though the gallery itself were holding its breath. A window-frame rattled in the rising wind. Somebody had turned those lights out very recently. He had that feeling which sometimes comes to those who sit in old houses with darkness beyond the door: a feeling that the darkness shut him off from human kind, and that he must not venture beyond the light of his own fire lest there should be things he would not like to see. And always, irrationally, his mind would go back to the door of King Charles's Room just across the way. He had been standing here, in this spot, almost in this attitude, when he heard this morning the sound that had brought about his first meeting with Katharine Bohun. This morning, when Louise Carewe in her delirium had tried to strangle…
It was something like that sound, yet with a different quality. Somebody's words came back to his mind in describing the scene last night when X had tried to push Marcia Tait down the steep dangerous staircase of King Charles's Room: "A sound like a giggle," when the candle went out. You had only to think of the insensate fury with which the murderer had smashed in Marcia Tait's skull to walk warily when unexpected darkness came. For there grew on him an irrational conviction that the murderer was prowling now. Who was it? Who…?
He stepped across the gallery, touched the door of the King's Room, and almost jumped out of a crawling skin when heavy footsteps creaked far down the gallery.
"Who's been turnin' all the lights out?" sounded H. M.'s reassuring growl. "Man can't see the edge of his glasses in front of his, face. Hey! See if you can find a switch, Masters."
Something clicked, and a dull glow sprang up. H. M. and the chief inspector stopped as they saw him.
"Hullo!" said H. M. He lumbered down and blinked sourly on his nephew. "What's the matter with you, hey? Burn me, you got a funny look on your face!" He craned his neck round and saw Katharine in the doorway. "You and the little gal playin' games? Evenin', Miss."
"Did you hear anything?"
"Hear anything? You got the wind up, son. I've been hearin' queer noises all day, and most of 'em come from my own head. I'm tired and I want a large brandy and nobody under the Almighty's canopy could get me into tails tonight even if I had 'em along. But there's something I've got to do. "
"We'll see," said Bennett. He opened the door of the room, reached quickly round to switch on the lights, and braced himself as he stepped inside.
Nothing. King Charles's Room, John Bohun's room, lay heavy and swept clean now: the clothes put away, the gray carpet significantly scrubbed at one spot near the big center table. The heavy black velvet draperies were drawn back from the windows, and moved slightly in a strong draught.
"Thanks. No bogies? That's where I was goin'," volunteered H. M. "I got to see something, and I want to issue a couple of orders if I see what I think I will. Masters here has been holdin' out on me. Why don't you tell me about all the evidence? You find John Bohun with a bullet in his chest and a funny-lookin' little piece of silver held tight in his hand; but nobody bothers to tell me about that piece of silver. Where'd you put it, Masters?"
Masters shifted from one foot to the other. He had his hat and overcoat on, and was presumably on his way back to Inspector Potter's for a much belated tea.
"But we don't know it's important, sir!" he protested. "Some keepsake, perhaps. He'd got nothing to do with the murder, and it wasn't likely he'd be holding in his hand a clue to something he didn't do-especially as he'd just written a suicide note saying he didn't do it. It had some sentimental value, probably. I put it in the drawer of the table."
"Sentimental value, hey? Well, we'll find out. Mind comin' in, Miss Bohun? Shut the door, Jimmy my boy."
H. M. pulled out a large oak chair and lowered himself into it. He pulled open the drawer of the table.
Now, as any poker-player at the Diogenes Club could have told him, Bennett had discovered that any attempt to read H. M.'s thoughts was a highly unprofitable occupation. His face retained the same massively dull expression. From the table drawer he fished the same small triangular bit of silver, with its curious scrollwork, which Bennett had last seen when Masters held it out for inspection that morning. H. M. did not scowl or start or give any sign. But there was a perceptible pause before he spoke, as though he had heard rather than seen something.
He weighed the silver in his hand.
"Humph. No. Looks as though it's busted off something. This mean anything to you, Miss Bohun? Anything of sentimental value, that he'd be likely to want in his hand when he took the Interestin' Step? Now, now, don't worry; I know he's goin' to be all right."
She shook her head. "N — no. I never saw it before." There was a clink as H. M. dropped the bit of silver back into the drawer.
"I'll tell you what, Masters. I'm goin' up to London tomorrow mornin'. I know a silversmith, feller I did a good turn for once, lives in a funny shop back of Lincoln's Inn Fields. He'll tell me what this thing is in a second. I'll pick it up tomorrow and take it to show him. That is — if it's necessary. May be, may not be. Depends. I was thinkin' of somethin' else." He hauled out his watch and blinked at it. "It is now seven o'clock. We're goin' to dine at half-past… Miss Bohun, what time was it last night when you went on your sight-seein' tour by moonlight, and you came to this room, and somebody tried to shove La Tait down those stairs over there?"
"Close to eleven o'clock, as I remember it."
"Oh, make it earlier," said H. M. in a plaintive tone. "Burn me, I got to get some sleep! I'd like to stick to the poetic rules, but I got to think of my constitution. Say-well, all right. Eleven o'clock it is. It'll give Masters time to eat and take a nap before he comes back. And a little after eleven it's just possible I may be able to introduce you to the murderer… We're goin' to have another moonlight tour of this room. We're goin' to reproduce the scene of the attempted pushin' down the stairs. I've got high hopes of my little playlet."
Masters, who had been shifting meditatively from one foot to the other, stiffened. H. M. had spoken so casually that it was a second before they reaized the meaning of his words.
"Is this another joke, sir?" said the Chief Inspector quickly. "Or do you really mean-'
"Sure I mean it."
"And the person who finally killed Miss Tait is one of that group of five who went with her to look at the staircase last night?"
"Uh-huh. That's what I mean."
Bennett, who was enumerating the group in his own mind with a greater sense of uneasiness than he had yet felt, looked round at Katharine. She made a gesture as though to protest. They all jumped a little as the last of the newspaper-men's cars ground into gear with a protesting squawk, and Inspector Potter's parting bellow sounded from the drive below. H. M., who was scowlingly tapping one finger against the end of his nose, seemed to be struck with an idea. He got up and lumbered to the far window in the side wall, which overlooked the end of the porte-cochere. A blast of freezing air rattled papers on the table as H. M. unlocked the leaves of the window and pushed them open.