"MR. SHEI"
For a moment longer she leaned against the pillar. Then she heard
laughter--laughter that was low and sibilant and edged with the
insinuating twang that sometimes characterizes the laughter of a
madman. It was soft and gentle, yet she thought it was the most
fearful sound she had ever heard. It gripped and shook her, and she
knew instinctively that it came from the woman in the rear.
Something urged her forward, but her nerves and limbs rebelled. Others
beside herself must have heard that soul-shaking laughter, for the
hush that had fallen over the house ended abruptly in a jumble of loud
sounds. The curtain descended with a rhythmic chugging, there were
exclamations of surprise and horror, and the audience sprang from
their seats as the lights went on. With startled faces they looked to
left and right and rear, and several of them excitedly inquired what
had happened. No one seemed to know, but as if moved by a single
impulse, they scrambled in the direction whence the laughter came.
Then they stopped, huddled in a half circle, and stared.
What they saw seemed all the stranger by contrast with the flowery
scents in the air and the rich and brilliant hues of the surroundings.
All eyes were fixed on the woman whose peculiar demeanor had aroused
Helen's interest. Her extravagant attire and her wild, gypsylike
beauty seemed typical of the oddly assorted characters who made up
Vincent Starr's circle of intimates. A filmy drapery embroidered with
gold-touched flowers hung like an iridescent fog over her gown of
silver tissue. Her bare arm was flung out over the top of the next
seat, and her head had fallen back against the elbow.
Murmurs of awe and consternation fell from the lips of the onlookers.
Before their eyes the pallor of death was creeping into the woman's
face, and her cheeks and forehead were beaded with the perspiration of
the death struggle. Now and then her figure writhed with a slow,
snakelike motion. A film of gray was gradually dimming the luster of
the eyes. Only the lips were still red.
As if to fling a taunt in the face of approaching death, the woman was
laughing. It sounded wildly unreal and fantastic, and the spectators
stood as if gripped by an unearthly enchantment. It seemed as though
the woman's spirit was flitting away on waves of hysterical mirth.
The sounds grew husky, then ceased. The woman's glazing orbs looked
out over the fringe of faces. A fluttering ray struggled with the
blinding film before her eyes, and she seemed to be looking for
someone who was not there. She stirred as if trying to gather her
waning energies. Her lips trembled, a few faint sounds broke on the
tense silence, and again her gaze strayed gropingly over the crowd.
"Mr.--Mr. Shei," she whispered.
Those closest to her recoiled as from a physical blow. The name spoken
by the dying woman had contributed the final touch of weirdness to the
scene. The two words went from mouth to mouth in a succession of
solemn whispers. Faces turned rigid and white, and men and women
looked at one another with mute fear in their eyes.
Then someone with more presence of mind than the others, suggested
calling a physician. A strain of drawling laughter from the dying
woman mocked the proposal. It rose to a shrill pitch, then died
abruptly in a low sing-song moan that was like a chant of death. The
lips were still moving, but the onlookers knew, even without the
sagging of the body and the broken light in the eyes, that the woman
was dead. A spell seemed to have lifted and an oppressive essence
appeared to have gone out of the air.
"Awful!" wailed a woman, edging away from her place in the huddled
throng. "I shall hear that laugh as long as I live. And what was that
she said about Mr. Shei?"
The name and the prefix were all anyone had been able to make out, but
they had been enough to send a thrill of fear and astonishment through
the crowd. Of the mysterious "Mr. Shei" little was known except that
he was a versatile and very elusive criminal, with a penchant for deep
scheming and spectacular tactics, and that so far the police had
matched their wits against him in vain. He flashed in and out like a
meteor, without leaving trace or clew, and his audacity and impudence
were as dumfounding as the magnitude of his exploits.
"Did she mean," inquired someone, "that Mr. Shei was here--that she saw
him?"
"What else could she have meant?" The speaker cast an uncertain glance
at the dead woman. The grayness and the rigidity of her features
clashed bizarrely with the brilliant coloring of her gown. "Likely as
not Mr. Shei murdered her."
"But there is no wound. And she made no outcry. She only laughed. And
such a laugh! I can hear it still!"
"Mr. Shei is diabolically clever," observed another, "and he goes
about his business in his own way. It would be quite in character for
him to kill without inflicting a wound and to let his victim go to her
death laughing."
The group fell silent. Helen, who had remained in the background,
trying to control her sense of horror while she pondered what she had
seen, touched the arm of the woman in front.
"Who is she?" she inquired.
"Don't you know?" The woman, busying herself with a vial of smelling
salts, gave Helen a puzzled look. "Why, she is Virginia Darrow. Never
attend her studio parties? That's strange. But I forget that you are
something of a stranger among us, Miss Hardwick."
Helen smiled faintly, and the next moment her attention was attracted
to her father. Mr. Hardwick had joined his daughter shortly after the
lights went on, and until now he had been a silent spectator. With
difficulty he elbowed his way through the crowd to the dead woman's
side, and regarded her closely. Presently he raised her right arm,
which had hung limply at her side. Just above the elbow was a small,
faint discoloration, not unlike the puncture made by a hypodermic
syringe. He nodded thoughtfully and seemed about to speak, but just
then Vincent Starr, followed by several members of his company, came
up the aisle and wedged a path through the huddled spectators.
He seemed to take in everything at a single comprehensive glance. He
was pale, and his fingers trembled, but Helen noticed that he had
taken pains to arrange his attire before coming out to ascertain the
cause of the commotion. His long and glossy hair was neatly combed,
his cravat was carefully adjusted, and just the proper width of cuff
showed beyond the edge of his sleeve. She watched him narrowly while
he questioned those about him. Somehow she sensed that it was in
keeping with Vincent Starr's character to be squeamish about the minor
details of his appearance even when face to face with a tragedy.
Suddenly, as she heard him issue orders to right and left, she
remembered the note Virginia Darrow had sent him, and she wondered,
without knowing exactly why, whether he would say anything about it.
At the same time she was forced to admire his quickness of wits and
the ease with which he mastered his feelings. In an incredibly short
time the police had been notified of the occurrence and the
doorkeepers had been given orders to allow no one to leave the
building. Starr, in his habitually suave tones, asked his guests to be
seated and expressed his regrets that such an unpleasant affair should
have taken place under the roof of the Thelma. There would be an
investigation and a great deal of questioning, he explained, but it
would be only a formality. If the mysterious Mr. Shei--he smiled
queerly as he spoke the name--had invaded the Thelma, he would
undoubtedly be caught.
The crowd scattered among the seats in the auditorium and lapsed into
the small talk with which one sometimes masks an inward turbulence.
Helen, seated beside her father on a lounge in a corner, let her
glance roam aimlessly over the scene. She supposed she would be
questioned along with the others, and she wondered how much or how
little she would be able to tell. Now that she tried to clarify the
confusion in her mind, she saw that during the evening she had
received two sets of impressions. Both had been equally strong at the
time, but now they seemed to clash and quarrel with each other, and
one of them had all but vanished with the drop of the curtain. Yet she
felt it was the more important one of the two. The other had to do
with the face she had glimpsed in the shadows. With the varicolored
lights glowing on all sides, her recollection of it seemed unreal and
fanciful. It appeared to be a thing of darkness and dreams. Her one
remaining impression of it was a sense of malignity and horror. She
felt words were inadequate to describe it.
She shrugged her shoulders slightly, as if to banish harassing
thoughts, and turned to her father. His face was drawn and a trifle
pale, and she remembered the family physician had once said something
about an incipient heart ailment and the necessity of avoiding
excitement. She tilted her face close to his.
"I'm sorry I got you into this, dad," she said.
Mr. Hardwick drew himself up. His face brightened with affection and
the pride of parenthood as he gazed at his daughter's figure, straight
and slender and strong as the trunk of a young birch. Her simple frock
of white taffeta with touches of coral at the waist possessed that
subtle individual charm which fashion designers can only imitate. Her
dark, loosely coiled hair, with stray wisps caressing her healthily
tanned cheeks, seemed in constant mutiny against the petty tyrannies
of hairdressers.
"I might have known something was to happen." Mr. Hardwick's tones
were gently playful, as if he were anxious to turn his daughter's
thoughts from the tragedy. "Something always happens where you are.
You are a storm petrel, my dear."
"I was born under Uranus, you know. That explains everything." She
smiled whimsically. There was a touch of the child in the firm oval of
her face and the smooth curves of mouth and nose, but the deep-brown
eyes held a surprising store of worldly wisdom. She quite baffled her
father at times. The impulses of April and June seemed to be
constantly clashing within her, and they filled his autumnal days with
a never-ending round of surprises.
"I wonder," he said, eyeing her curiously as a new thought came to
him, "whether Uranus had anything to do with your leaving the box just
before--before it happened."
"It's always safe to blame Uranus," she parried. "He is such a
convenient scapegoat. I don't know what I would do if----"
She was grateful for the interruption that came just then. The law was
already at work, and she sat back and watched the swift precision of
its mechanism. Two policemen, one heavy and red-faced, the other lean
and sharp-visaged, walked into the theater and stationed themselves
beside the body with the air of zealots guarding the coffin of
Mohammed. She gathered from the few words they exchanged with Starr
that a cordon had been thrown around the building a minute and a half
after the call reached the precinct station. They were followed
shortly by a puffy little man who let it be known that he was a deputy
from the office of the chief medical examiner. The latter had barely
begun the usual inspection of the body when two other men entered the
auditorium.
One of them, barrel-chested and somewhat pompous in his manners,
seemed to be a representative of the district attorney's office. The
other, angular and as loose-jointed as a marionette, with lazy,
cinnamon-colored eyes and a complexion that seemed to indicate that he
drank too much coffee and smoked too many cigars, was recognized by
Helen at first glance. Uranus had brought them together once before.
She remembered that his name was Lieutenant Culligore, and that he was
attached to the homicide squad of the detective bureau. As his glance
flitted slowly over the room, his mind seemed to register each detail
without slightest effort. Helen noticed that he gazed at her a trifle
longer than on the others, but his face betrayed no recognition.
Then began the questioning, conducted by the stout man from the
district attorney's office, while Lieutenant Culligore made an
occasional jotting in his notebook. The members of the audience were
interrogated briefly and pointedly, and each one in turn was permitted
to depart after leaving his or her name and address. Helen marveled at
the matter-of-factness of it all. It seemed almost ruthless, this
volleying of questions over a body which was scarcely cold, but she
recognized the brisk efficiency with which the procedure was carried
out. None of the witnesses had much to tell that was significant, and
the only important points brought out were the dying woman's strange
laugh and her mention of Mr. Shei.
Culligore, as was his habit when impressed, curled up his lip under
the tip of his nose when these facts were stated, and the stout man
raised his brows and nodded grimly.
"Looks as though Mr. Shei had been up to another of his little
tricks," he muttered.
Culligore pursed his lips and chewed a dead cigar. There was a slow
twinkle in his eyes which seemed to say that life wasn't quite so
serious as it seemed, despite the sordid and ugly affairs with which
he came in daily touch.
Helen did not know how it happened, but the house was almost empty
when her turn to be questioned came. Her face showed no sign of the
trepidation she felt as she stepped forward. She knew, as she turned
her face toward the stout man, that three pairs of eyes were watching
her with more than ordinary intentness--her father's, Lieutenant
Culligore's, and Vincent Starr's.
The stout man gave her a listless look as he inquired her name and
address. She fancied he was sniffing inwardly, and that after looking
her over he had decided that she probably could give no information
beside what had already been brought out. At any rate, his questions
were few and perfunctory and gave her no opportunity to practice the
evasions she had mentally rehearsed while the others were being
questioned. As she turned away, she saw a mildly reproachful look in
her father's face and one of amused understanding in Culligore's.
"Well, doctor?" The stout man turned on the medical examiner, whose
rubicund face wore a puzzled scowl. "What do you make of it?"
The examiner wagged his head. Being a man of science, he was strongly
averse to forming hasty conclusions.
"There is an abrasion on the right arm that might have been caused by
a hypodermic syringe," he announced.
"And the laugh--how do you account for that?"
"I am not accounting for it, but there are certain drugs that produce
exhilaration and laughter. Most of them have to be taken into the
system by inhalation, however, in order to produce such an effect."
"I see." The stout man looked a bit impatient. "In plain words, then,
it's a case of murder?"
"I wouldn't say that. It might prove a far-fetched guess."
"All quibbling aside, don't the scratch on her arm look as though
somebody had shot a dose of poison into her with a needle?"
The examiner pondered. "It could mean that, but it doesn't necessarily
follow. An autopsy will be necessary to establish the exact cause of
death. Why should a murderer use a hypodermic injection when there are
so many simpler and easier ways of accomplishing the same result?"
The stout man guffawed. "Mr. Shei never picks the simple and easy way.
When he wants to pull off a crime, he always dresses it up in flossy
trimmings. And he always plays safe. Now, my idea is that the safest
thing in the world to kill a person with is a hypodermic syringe. It
makes no noise, there's no smoke, no bullet, no powder marks, no
anything, and it don't leave any clews behind."
The examiner smiled skeptically, as if he had his own views on the
subject. "The autopsy will tell. What I fail to understand is why you
seem so certain that Mr. Shei, as he calls himself, has had a hand in
this affair."
"Miss Darrow saw him, didn't she?"
"She called out his name, if I understood the witnesses correctly, but
she did not say she had seen him. It's possible she imagined she saw
him. The same drugs that produce exhilaration and laughter also
produce hallucinations. However," and he pulled a cigar from his
pocket and lighted it carefully, "whether Miss Darrow did or did not
see Mr. Shei is for you gentlemen to decide. Good-night."
He strode out. The stout man made a wry face and stroked his chin.
Evidently the medical man had given him something to think about.
Helen, too, had found food for reflection in the doctor's statement.
She stood beside her father a few feet from the others. She had
remained for no other reason than a feeling that Culligore, who had
been watching her covertly from time to time, might try to detain her
if she made a move to go. She believed the lieutenant had rightly
guessed that she had not told all she knew.
Starr, who had unobtrusively slipped out of the building while the
late colloquy was in progress, returned with the report that he had
questioned the doorkeepers and the watchman, and that they had seen no
suspicious looking characters about the place. They were positive no
one had entered or left the building either before or after Miss
Darrow's death. Starr ended by inquiring whether it were not possible
that the murderer, granting that Miss Darrow had been murdered, was
still hiding in the building.
The stout man rather scouted the suggestion, but he instructed the two
uniformed officers to make a thorough search.
"If this is Mr. Shei's job, you can bet your sweet life he's made a
safe get-away," he grumbled. "He probably sneaked out through one of
the fire exits."
The two policemen withdrew. Starr, gliding about with the softness of
a panther, found a piece of drapery and covered the body. Helen's lids
contracted as she followed his movements. It struck her as odd that
during the entire questioning he had made no reference to the
communication Miss Darrow had sent him a few minutes before her death.
She wondered whether he had forgotten it or was deliberately
withholding it. In the latter case, what could be his reason?
"How about the motive?" suggested Lieutenant Culligore. It was one of
the few times he had spoken since the investigation began. "Know of
anybody who could have had a reason for getting Miss Darrow out of the
way, Mr. Starr?"
Starr stood for a moment with head lowered, deep in thought. Then he
slowly shook his finely proportioned head. "No, I don't. I knew Miss
Darrow quite well. As far as I am aware, she had no enemies. I can't
imagine why----"
He checked himself. Then he gaped, and his eyes widened, and he looked
as though an important matter had just occurred to him. Finally, with
a sheepish smile, he began to search his pockets.
"This dreadful affair has upset me completely," he murmured; and then,
as if in answer to the question that had flashed through Helen's mind
a few moments before, he produced a crumpled piece of paper. "If I had
not been so flustered I should have shown you this at once," he added.
He smoothed out the message and handed it to the stout man. The
latter's face clouded as he read it aloud:
Mr. Shei, like a fool, rushes in where angels might fear to tread.
V. D.
A pause followed the reading. Culligore's upper lip brushed the tip of
his nose, a sign that he had found a problem to ponder. A blank
expression came into the stout man's face. He looked bewilderedly at
Starr.
"What do you suppose she meant by that?" he asked.
"That's just what I wondered when the note was brought me," explained
Starr, a blend of sadness and self-reproach in his tones. "Miss Darrow
was a strange woman, full of subtleties and queer whims. The note
startled me at first; then I decided it was only a jest. At any rate,
it was time for the curtain, and I dismissed the matter from my mind.
Now, in the light of what has happened, I can see it was meant as a
warning."
"Warning?" echoed the stout man.
"Undoubtedly." Starr gazed regretfully into space. "In some manner
Miss Darrow must have become aware that Mr. Shei was in the house, and
she chose this method of warning me of his presence. I was a fool not
to see it."
He paced back and forth, running his fingers through his thick hair
and muttering self-reproaches. The stout man looked as if he were
trying to untangle a mental knot. Again he read the note.
"If Miss Darrow wanted to tip you off that Mr. Shei was in the house,
why didn't she say so in plain words?"
"Facetiousness," said Starr grimly. "Virginia Darrow was the kind of
woman you would expect to be facetious at her own funeral. Why didn't
I realize that she was trying to warn me? I remember now that she
behaved in a peculiar manner all evening. Whenever I happened to look
in her direction, I found her gazing at me in a strange way. I didn't
understand then, but I suppose now that she was trying to send me an
ocular message. When that failed, she sent me the note. Oh, why didn't
I----"
He made a gesture of distress and self-disgust. Helen, watching his
every movement, remembered that it was Miss Darrow's odd way of
staring at Starr that had first attracted her attention to the woman.
The recollection started a train of new thoughts, but Culligore's
voice interrupted it.
"If Miss Darrow was right and Mr. Shei was in the house," he told the
fat man, "then you and I might as well hand in our badges and look for
new jobs."
The other jerked up his head. "You don't think that----" he began in
startled tones, then broke off and grinned complacently. "Not a chance
of that. Mr. Shei couldn't have been in the audience. I gave all of
them a pretty stiff quiz, and every one gave a good account of
himself. Anyhow, they're the kind that get their names and pictures
into the society columns of the Sunday papers. A bunch of harmless
nuts--that's all."
He looked at Starr, as if realizing that the epithet had been a trifle
brusque, but the manager seemed amused rather than offended.
"I think you are right," he murmured. "The audience was composed of
invited guests. I am willing to vouch for every one of them.
Furthermore, you have their names and addresses, and you can
communicate with them whenever you wish. If Mr. Shei was really in the
theater, he came here as an unbidden guest. In all likelihood he stole
in while the house was dark during the first scene of the last act,
and departed as soon as he had accomplished his purpose."
It sounded plausible enough, Helen thought; yet her mind was heavy
with a giddying whirl of suspicions and contradictions. She slanted a
reluctant glance toward the chair containing the body. With a shiver
she turned away, and a look at her father's drawn and tired face
warned her that he should be in bed. Then she glanced at the man from
the district attorney's office, and finally at Culligore. His face was
a mask, but his occasional glances in her direction troubled her. The
two uniformed officers had not yet returned from their search, and she
wondered what they would have to report.
Once more her eyes flitted over the little group, and then, with a
suddenness that choked a cry in her throat, everything was blotted
from sight. In a twinkling impenetrable darkness had descended upon
the house. Somewhere a door banged. She felt her father's tightening
clutch on her arm. The stout man swore. Dark shapes were darting
hither and thither. She heard a fragmentary cry, followed by a crash
and a succession of thuds. A thrust sent her sprawling to the floor,
and her mind drifted into a state of semi-stupor during which she was
conscious of nothing but the swift and silent movements of the shadowy
shapes.
Voices and the return of light jolted her mind back to consciousness.
She struggled to her feet and blinked her eyes at the strange scene.
Her father, dazed but apparently unharmed, sat a short distance away,
with his back to the wall. The stout man, seemingly unconscious, lay
in a twisted heap on the floor. Culligore was staring about him
groggily and muttering something about a blow on the head. A
policeman, one of the pair who had been sent off to search the house,
was helping Starr to his feet.
With the attention to detail that comes in moments of great
bewilderment, Helen noticed that Starr made a ludicrous picture. His
attire, so faultless and immaculate a few minutes ago, was now in a
sorry state of disorder. A streak of crimson stained his shirt front,
and he held a handkerchief to his nose. He wabbled drunkenly across
the floor, but all at once his figure stiffened and a blank look came
into his face. His lips formed unspoken words as he raised a finger
and pointed toward a seat in the last tier.
As she followed the pointing finger, things swam in confusion before
Helen's eyes. Starr, speechless and crestfallen, was indicating the
chair where the body of Virginia Darrow had been. As she stared
stonily toward the empty chair, Helen felt an impulse to cry out. She
came a few steps closer, then stopped with a shudder and dazedly swept
her hand across her forehead.
"It's--it's gone!" she cried huskily.