“It was my impression…”
“Impressions!” snorted Soper.
Nugent shook his head. Drue turned suddenly back toward the window; suddenly, I thought, to conceal tears.
“Let’s get back to your accident,” said Nugent abruptly, addressing Craig. “Did somebody shoot you? If so, who?”
“All right,” said Craig. “This is what happened. I was walking in the garden; no reason for it-just walking. It was dark; there’s no moon. There was a rustle in some shrubs. I turned around, thinking it was the dog. I stepped a little nearer the shrubs; anyway, I could see a hand. Barely see it, the rest was in the shadow; I think there were outlines of a figure. And then something hit my shoulder, as if somebody had given me a kind of hard slap. Then I realized I’d been shot. I think I started for the shrub; I must have called for help. I remember stumbling and then that was all until they were carrying me upstairs. Beevens and Pete. Then Chivery came. But I didn’t see anybody clearly in the shrub; I just knew somebody was there. I didn’t even really see the revolver,” he said. “But I imagine that Miss Cable found it and that that is the revolver she had in her room. I asked her to try to find it; I had a kind of lucid moment, the way you do when you’re drugged. She was here and I asked her to look for it. Naturally I wanted to know who shot me; I wanted the evidence.”
Soper’s cold little eyes practically lost themselves in suspicious wrinkles. “That’s not Miss Cable’s story. She didn’t say you sent her to look for the revolver.”
Craig shot a glance at Drue. “Didn’t she?” he said imperturbably. “Well, that’s the way it was.”
Nugent said, “The revolver belonged to your father. Mrs. Brent and Mr. Senour have identified it.”
“He kept it,” said Craig, accepting the fact of the revolver’s ownership without question, “in the desk in the library. He never locked the desk; anything valuable he put in the safe. The safe is behind one of those panels in the library.”
“You mean anybody might have taken the revolver,” said Soper.
“Obviously.”
Nugent was looking thoughtful. He said, “Was the hand you saw wearing a glove?”
Craig’s pulse gave a leap and began to race like an accelerated motor. But he said coolly enough, looking straight at Nugent, “I haven’t the faintest idea. It was dark. There was only a kind of whitish outline.”
“But you knew it was a hand?”
“Why-yes.”
There was a little silence and I looked at my watch in a marked manner. Soper said, “So you think the same person that killed your father tried first to kill you?”
“I don’t know,” said Craig. “But I do know Miss Cable was in New York when I was shot.”
“How do you know that?” interposed Soper.
Craig lifted his eyebrows. “Obviously she wasn’t here.”
Nugent said abruptly, “It’s all right, Mr. Soper. She was in New York; I checked that and the telephone call to the Nurses’ Registry office.”
Soper looked annoyed. Craig went on quickly, “In any case, it isn’t likely that she would take a pot shot at me one night and the next night poison my father because she wanted to see me and he opposed it. The motives seem a little mixed.”
Soper said, “Now look here, Brent, we are only trying to get at the truth. You needn’t take that tone.”
“I know,” said Craig soberly and with the edge gone from his voice, so it was only weary and honest. “I understand your position and I appreciate what you are trying to do. I’ll do everything I can to help you. But I really do think you are wasting time making out a case against Miss Cable; she was not anywhere near, the night I was shot. And she had no motive to kill my father. She doesn’t want to marry me any more than I want to marry her. Our marriage is absolutely finished and neither of us regrets it.”
“Do you mean to say,” said Soper, glancing covertly in Drue’s direction, “do you mean to say that if Drue Cable-your former wife, came to you and suggested that you remarry, you would refuse her?”
I didn’t look at Drue; no one did but Soper. Craig’s pulse was as steady as a clock. “At the risk of sounding unchivalrous,” he said coolly and distinctly, “yes.”
11
I SAID, “TIME IS up. I’ll have to ask you to go.”
I must have sounded a little vigorous about it, for instantly Nugent turned around and stalked toward the door. But Soper said, “Your father was a rich man, Brent. Who benefits by his death? I mean to say, what are the main provisions of his will?”
“You’ll have to ask his lawyer. John Wells. In Balifold. Are you going to release Miss Cable?”
Nugent jerked around to look at Soper; Soper turned a fine magenta. “Release her! By God, no! She stays here under guard or in jail.”
“But I need her,” I said quickly, essaying a rally. “I need her to help me nurse Mr. Brent.”
“You can get another nurse out from New York,” snapped Soper. “She stays under guard or in jail.”
Well, I didn’t want another nurse bothering around. Anna could give me any help I needed. Soper waddled out of the room like an enraged and vicious duck. Nugent, however, drew me into the hall. “Miss Keate,” he said in a low voice, “Who was here in the hall last night? When something bumped against the door and you went to look?”
“Why-why, no one! That is, oh, some time (perhaps half an hour before) I saw Nicky in the hall. But not after the bump on the door. There’s a dent-here,” I put my finger on it and he looked at it, his face as inexpressive as a Red Indian’s. “But it’s as I told you,” I added. “After the bump against the door I didn’t see anybody in the hall.”
Something very queer in his eyes stopped me. But he said only, “I advise you to tell me. Think it over,” and went away. Leaving me a little perplexed, for if I had seen anyone or anything I should have been only too glad to tell him and shift the burden of suspicion from Drue.
When I entered his room again, Craig was lying with his eyes closed. Wilkins advanced a little, tentatively, toward Drue, who was still at the window. “Wait outside,” I told him, and with an uncertain look at me he did so and I closed the door after him. But if I had had, as I don’t think I had really, any vague notion of a word of understanding between Craig and Drue I was disappointed.
Drue had turned so I could see only her back, slim and erect, and her lifted, white-capped head.
“Are they gone?” Craig said to me.
“Yes,” I said. And then because I had to, I said slowly, “There was a glove on the hand, wasn’t there? You couldn’t have seen the color in the dark. Why did you think it was yellow?”
His eyes flared open. He looked very straight at me for a long moment. Then he said definitely, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Which was about what I might have expected.
“All right. I can’t make you tell me. But there’s one thing you’ll have to explain, if not to me, then to the police. You said-half asleep yesterday-‘there’ll be murder done. Tell Claud.’ What did you mean?”
He just lay and looked at me through half-shut eyes whose expression I couldn’t read. And he denied it flatly.
“I don’t remember it. I could have meant anything. Unless I was referring to the attack upon me. Go ahead and tell the police.”
“I will,” I said. And Drue whirled around then. Her hands were doubled up, her crimson mouth tight. “Craig, you needn’t have lied for me!” she cried.
“I didn’t,” he said briefly.
“You didn’t send me for the revolver…”
“Oh,” said Craig, “that. But the rest of it was the truth, wasn’t it? I mean, you didn’t come here with the intention of-of”-he smiled a little, though his eyes were very intent-“of a reconciliation? I’m sure you didn’t.” The smile left his lips, but his eyes were still very intent, watching Drue. “It’s something neither of us wants. That’s why I told them…”