“I heard what you said just now. But I knew before that. At least I guessed.”
“When?”
“When I found a piece of paper with notes about digitalis written on one side of it and a few sentences on the other side which Maud had written. Peter Huber over-reached himself. He had told Maud Chivery about some Spanish jewels…”
Alexia smiled thinly, “There were no Spanish jewels. He told me. It amused him.”
“Really. I think he meant to fleece Maud; and then changed his mind. I don’t know why…”
“He was after more money,” cried Anna from her corner. “He was going to get money from Mrs. Chivery. But then he knew that he could get more from Mrs. Brent. He said she’d give him money…”
“Anna,” I said sharply, “was that why he killed Mr. Brent? Was it because Mrs. Brent would then be very rich, and he thought that she would give him money?”
“No, no,” cried Anna. “It was because Mr. Brent found out about him. He found out that Peter was making love to Mrs. Brent. He found out that Mrs. Brent liked Peter. And he found out what Peter was-and he said he would turn him over to the police. Then Peter made Mrs. Brent get out the checks. He told Mr. Brent he had the checks, you see, and Mr. Brent was half crazy. Mr. Brent was like that. He shot Mr. Craig. He thought Mr. Craig was Peter; that was because Mr. Craig was in the garden with Mrs. Brent. Mr. Brent was going to shoot Peter, maybe kill him, maybe only wound him. He was going to get the checks back and then call the police and tell them who Peter was and that he had shot Peter in self-defense. Only he made a terrible mistake; he shot Mr. Craig instead of Peter. And then Peter knew that Mr. Brent meant what he’d said. He knew the checks-having them, I mean, in Mrs. Brent’s possession where Peter knew he could get them at any time because Mrs. Brent would do anything he told her to do, she was so crazy about him…”
“He’ll know now whether I’m in love with him or not. He’ll know now,” said Alexia in that deadly, soft voice, her face white and suddenly venomous and no longer beautiful. Anna went on as if she had not heard: “Peter knew that Mr. Brent would kill him or turn him over to the police. He knew that Mr. Brent was past caring about the checks-or soon would be; that’s what he said. He said, ‘Old Brent has gone further than I intended. He’s reached the place where it’s kill or be killed.’ He said, ‘I can’t count on the checks to hold him. I’ve got to act.’ And I said, ‘No, no, Peter. No.’ For you see, I knew what he meant. He was always like that,” said Anna, suddenly whispering, staring into space with horror in her blank blue eyes. “He was always cruel. He always laughed and smiled and was wicked and terrible in his heart.”
Even Alexia was struck with her look. Drue had turned too and was listening, and I felt her hand go out to mine. Anna said, whispering, “Yes. Always.” Then my beads on a string, my knots on a rope became real knots on a rope.
I said, “Anna-” sharply again, to compel her attention. She turned her eyes rather dazedly and slowly to me. I said, “Anna, listen. He came from that German submarine, didn’t he? The one that was torpedoed off the New England coast about a month ago?”
Alexia hadn’t known that. I saw her stiffen. Anna nodded slowly. I said, “He hadn’t lost his baggage. He didn’t have any. Isn’t that right?”
Again Anna nodded. I said, “Why did he come here? Why do you know so much? How could he make you keep his secret? How could he make you pick up that broken vase? How could he…?”
“He was my brother,” whispered Anna, twisting her hands together. “He changed his name from Haub to Huber. He came to America after I came. He worked and went to school. He learned American ways. But he was always a German at heart. And he was always like a-like a wolf. We had wolves at home, in the forests, watching and killing and”-she stopped and stared into space and whispered-“so I was afraid. I knew him. I was afraid.”
Then Craig came down the stairs and into the room and Nugent followed him. Nugent closed the door behind him, so we only heard sounds of other men on the stairs and crossing the little hall; they walked heavily, as if something walked between them at the end of a chain. Like a beast.
It was, though, a man, handcuffed.
The door closed and there were footsteps across the porch and then the roar of an automobile.
That was all, really. The facts were there, inherent in what we then knew. But I listened while they wrapped the fabric of implication and circumstance around the facts. And when the time came I said my own little say and gave them a clipping, a piece of paper, and an empty medicine box. The box was really unimportant. Drue looked at it almost absently. “It was in the pocket of Craig’s dressing-gown, that night,” she said. “I found it and hid it.”
“It was probably planted,” said Nugent.
“Then it was Peter Huber that knocked me out?” said Craig.
Nugent nodded. “He was very busy just then; he had counted on your staying inside your room, in bed. It must have given him a shock to come upon you wandering around the hall. He knocked you out and dragged you in there to get rid of you. And somehow had the empty box in his pocket, perhaps intending to plant it on you all along. At any rate, he must have done so then. The medicine box, like the bloodstained gloves, was planted. They were false clues, intended to mislead us. Although the gloves had been used, all right,” added Nugent, looking very grim.
They looked then at the clipping; and the paper with Maud’s note to Peter Huber on one side, and the notes about digitalis he had made on the other side. It was, of course, a definite link. Not proof but a link.
“When did you begin to believe it was Huber?” asked Craig. He was leaning back in Dr. Chivery’s chair. He looked better when he ought to have looked worse; part of it excitement but part of it was just general toughness, I suppose. Drue, of course, was sitting on the floor beside him, and his hand brushed her shoulder, so that may have accounted for some of it.
I replied, “Just before he came to the cottage. He must have heard Alexia and me talking; he must have guessed finally that Anna had brought Drue here, and he must have been afraid that Anna had told Drue…”
Drue’s hand went up quickly and I stopped to note with some satisfaction that Craig’s hand closed firmly over Drue’s small fingers. I went on quickly, “It was when I came back for the paper with the notes about digitalis on it. I read Maud’s note then, realized (in view of what Peter had told us, trying to cover himself in case Maud told it) that she must have written it to Peter. All at once that, and the clipping and the account of the submarine on the back of it, linked themselves together. It occurred to me that it wasn’t the account of the arrest of some Bund members that Conrad Brent had wanted somebody in the room to know that he knew about. It was the torpedoed submarine. And I remembered, of course, about the stories of Germans from submarines reaching our coast; like the three saboteurs, who reached Long Island. That seemed for an instant, too far-fetched. But then I remembered Peter Huber speaking to the clerk at the little haberdashery in the village. The clerk had laughed at the recollection of how Huber had looked when he came to his shop and bought some clothes. He got rid of his German clothing near where he reached land, probably stealing pants and a shirt from a cottage somewhere along the beach. Once in Balifold he made up a story to account for his appearance, got some money from Anna” (Anna nodded violently here) “and bought himself some clothes. The clerk remembered the way he was dressed. That linked up, too, you see. In the same breath it suddenly occurred to me that it was only Anna who had said that Peter Huber was an old school friend; it was only Anna who had given me the impression that he had often been at the house and was an old friend of yours.” I looked at Craig and, holding Drue’s hand tightly, he nodded. He started to speak however, so I continued hurriedly before I could be interrupted. “But I had also got an impression from Craig Brent that he hadn’t really known Huber long; and later Alexia said that ‘none of us knew him.’ So somehow, I felt that in spite of all this talk of school friends…”