I
Lynn MacDonald’s reaching fingertips touched smooth wood. She glanced
at the page in her hand. After all, it was the ending; fiction could
scarcely have improved upon it. What was it that Lucy had said in one
of her letters—something about life permitting where literature
refused? She returned the page in her hand to its fraying creases and
its envelope. “Poor loving brother Neal,” she murmured, and shook her
head, and for a relaxing second drooped with a sigh.
She straightened, stood, jerking impatiently at stiffness, walked
across the room to her bookshelves, and stooped to the row of fat
encyclopedias. “Har to Hur,” she pulled from the shelf, and added “Sai
to Shu” to it.
A knock, demand nicely moderated by deference, tapped on her door.
“Shall I have your car brought around, Miss MacDonald, or shall I
order your breakfast?”
“Sai to Shu” sprawled on the floor. Miss MacDonald said: “Heavens on
earth! What time is it?”
“It is seven o’clock, Miss MacDonald. I came early this morning.”
“But, but,” stuttered the crime analyst, “the charwoman hasn’t been
in. She didn’t come in, last night. I was going home whenever she
came. How stupid!”
“I am sorry, Miss MacDonald. I met her as I was leaving last evening,
and warned her not to disturb you.”
Miss Kingsbury, surely an intentionally impudent fanfare of warm
water, sudsy with soap and bath salts, of pinking cold showers, of
vigorous Turkish towels, of stiff toothbrushes pungent with creamy
paste, of tingling scalps, of the benison of eye cups, of the rewards
of rest, sanity, and intelligent living, rescued “Sai to Shu” from the
floor.
“May I find something for you in this, Miss MacDonald?”
“Put it in its place, if you will. I have finished with it.”
“Har to Hur” stopped a gap in the shelves.
“And now, please, do telephone to the garage for my car.”
Fingers, brisk with weariness, folded letters and slipped them into
tired old envelopes. Grapefruit, coffee, bacon and eggs. Naughty Uncle
Phineas; Olympe with a lifted chin. A bath—first of all, a bath.
Lovely Aunt Gracia. Handsome Gibson man, Chris. Coffee, and a
crunching roll, and coffee. Your loving brother, Neal. Poor
supersentimentalist, fighting mere homely sentiment—poor, loving
brother Neal. Blue-eyed, blonde and fuzzy Stanlaws lady. Love, and
Lucy. Pansy-faced children of Reginald Birch. A very warm bath, and
green bath salts. Grandfather. Pan——
“They are sending your car at once. May I help you with these, Miss
MacDonald?”
“Thank you. And lock them in the safe, if you will.”
A list of the notes she had begun to make in case, toward the end,
things should go astray.
1. Accident
Neal blamed.
2. Richard _offers_ to exchange rooms with Irene.
After accident.
3. Baptism.
4. Murder committed after missionaries and Chinaman had
left the ranch.
5. Dying words.
Red mask.
6. Locked doors. Unlocked doors.
Keys under lamp.
7. Rope.
Bed moved.
8. Olympe’s revolver, .32 Colt’s.
9. Revolver used for murder, .38 Colt’s.
Absurd, all of it. She tore the paper into bits and tossed them into
her wastebasket.
“And now, please, Miss Kingsbury, get this hotel on the telephone—here
is the card—and make an appointment for me with a Dr. Joseph Elm who
is staying there. This afternoon—let me see; yes, for three o’clock.”
II
Dr. Joseph Elm failed, wretchedly, with his attempt to put a smile
across the trouble of his face.
Lynn MacDonald insisted, “But the lady, Olympe, is dead, Dr. Elm?”
He nodded at some woebegone thing a mile or two away in the distance.
“Then, why won’t that do? Lucy worked it out very cleverly. A .32
calibre Colt’s. A .38 calibre. You falsified about the size of the
bullet to save Olympe? No one will remember. Yours was the only
testimony concerning the size of the bullet. It does leave us with the
rope, of course; but the rope may easily remain mysterious in the
light of your confession. Surely caring about this thing as you care,
you are not going to be thwarted because of one helpful lie?”
Dr. Elm’s broad chest rose high, fell deep. “Look; what do I care
about a lie, one way or the other? I can do it all right. Easy.
Trouble is, when it comes to lies, I’ve been kind of choosey about
them. I can lie as well as my neighbour; but I like to like my lies.
There is something about this one that—that kind of stirs my fur. I
don’t know. Olympe was a nice lady, and a good friend of mine. Well,
of course, if that’s the best we can do, we’ll do it—or try to.”
“I am sorry, Dr. Elm, to disappoint you. That did seem the most usable
theory. But, since you dislike it so much, let me think. A case
against Irene——”
“No! Look. Irene’s alive—she’s got babies.”
“I meant, of course, merely that she should have got rid of the gun,
after suicide. But you won’t have that, either—not suicide, of course.
Olympe would do so well—— But it has to be an outsider, is that it?
The snow is going to make it difficult, frightfully difficult, to be
convincing.”
“I was wondering, Miss MacDonald. Now suppose you could come up with
me to Q 2. We’d work you in as a close, warm friend of Lucy’s. You
said you’d like to know her. The folks would be right glad to have you
as a guest. And money doesn’t matter to them; anything you’d care to
ask, they’d care to double——”
“No, Dr. Elm. There’d be no purpose in that. I can think as well here
in my office as I could think there. I’ll do my best, I promise you.
Perhaps I may have some inspiration, later, about the outsider. After
all, when one tries, there is almost nothing that one can’t do with
circumstantial evidence, except to prove any theory that is founded
upon it.”
“I thought, maybe,” Dr. Elm persisted, “that the folks at the ranch
could give you some bits of evidence that weren’t in the letters.
Trouble is, I got another wire from Judy this morning. I ’phoned her
last night—but she couldn’t talk. Neal isn’t getting any better.
Jehoshaphat, what wouldn’t I give for the truth!”
Lynn MacDonald’s pleasant features twisted. “The—truth! But, Dr. Elm,
you of all people know the truth. You have read the letters.”
Dr. Elm merely grasped more tightly the arms of his chair; but Lynn
MacDonald drew back, and widened her eyes and dipped her chin to a
question.
“Look. We need a fresh start, my girl. A straight one, this time. Do
you mean to say that you know the truth about who murdered Dick
Quilter?”
“Dr. Elm, do you mean to sit there, glaring at me, and tell me that
you—you of all people on earth—don’t know who killed Dick Quilter?
Don’t know, and do need me to tell you?”
“God bless my soul to glory! Are you trying to say that you think I
did it?”
Her laugh winged out, but its flight was short. “I am sorry, Dr. Elm.
Forgive me.”
“Certainly. Certainly. Don’t mention it. But when you get all good and
ready—— You see, I’m roasted nicely; I’m all ready to turn, and take
up and eat.”
“I am sorry. I——”
“Look. Do you know who murdered Dick Quilter?”
“I do, Dr. Elm. That is, I know it as well as anything can be known
that has not been accurately proved. However, I think we can get the
proof, the positive proof, later.”
“Who did murder Dick Quilter?”
“Dr. Elm, since you really don’t know, and since I have to tell you, I
believe I would better begin at the very start, if you don’t mind. For
one thing, perhaps your ignorance has taken a bit from my surety. Will
you answer a question or two for me, first?”
“Do you mean that Olympe Quilter really did murder her nephew? By Gad,
I don’t believe it!”
“See here, Dr. Elm. I told you that I thought I knew the truth. I told
you that I had no proofs. Now your ignorance has changed certain
aspects of the case. If you will furnish me with the proofs I need—not
all of them, the end must come later, with a confession, but with some
of them—and if your proofs fit my theory, I’ll tell you what I have
decided. If your proofs should happen to ruin my theory—I’ll not tell
you. That is positive, Dr. Elm. And, though you will hate me, you
should be grateful to me for it.
“Now then: Has Neal Quilter recently fallen in love?”
“Heavens, yes, if you want to know. And if three years can be called
recent. Fine, good, strong woman. She loves him. He loves her. Plenty
of money, plenty of interests in common, plenty of time for babies,
plenty of everything, and nothing but this fool notion of Neal’s is
keeping them apart.”
“Good! Now, then: what was the nature of the disease from which
Richard Quilter was suffering?”
“You know, it said in the letters, chronic stomach trouble.”
“Is that all you are willing to give me, Dr. Elm?”
“Look. Isn’t that enough? You’d think so, if you’d ever had it.”
“You are asking for the truth from me, Dr. Elm. And yet you won’t give
it to me. Was Richard Quilter’s trouble cancer? And did you promise
him, because of—what was it—‘ten generations of clean-bodied men and
women’ never to let any of his family know that this was, or would
have been, the cause of his death?”
“Adeno carcinoma of the liver. Lot of people thought it could be
inherited in those days. We didn’t want to scare the children—that was
it, chiefly: afraid of marrying; afraid of babies. It was better
untold.”
“Your autopsy, performed largely in the interest of science,
completely verified your original diagnosis, Dr. Elm?”
“Yes. I was cold-blooded. We didn’t have the X-rays in those days.”
“No, no. I understand. The medicine you gave him contained a strong
opiate of some sort, of course. Had he taken any of it that night, or
could you tell, from the autopsy?”
“I could tell. He had not taken a drop of it.”
“Good. Now, then: about the footprints——”
“I don’t know one dang thing about any footprints. I thought there
weren’t any.”
“I shouldn’t have said that. You see, the letters made such a point of
the absence of footprints that, while I was reading, last night, I
thought rather fancifully to myself of the disclosures as footprints.
Step by step, almost from the first one of Lucy’s letters, the whole
thing was so absolutely evident, the intangible footprints were so
sure and so straight, that an unimportant thing like actual footprints
in the snow being necessary for a solution seemed—well, perfectly
absurd.”
Dr. Elm said, “‘Sands of time.’ McGuffey, I guess. All the poetry I
ever knew I got from McGuffey, ‘Make our lives sublime, and departing,
leave behind us footprints on the sands of time.’”
“Precisely,” said Lynn MacDonald.
“Now,” said Dr. Elm, “that’s over with. Who murdered Dick Quilter?”