Belknap made the distance to Whittaker’s Long Island mansion at Blue
Acres in something under an hour. His Dusenberg, long and low-slung,
colored to please his own eye, and fitted with special gadgets for
defence and utility, was also a demon for speed, and even in traffic had
broken many records, largely its own to be sure. He had always driven
himself, and he had often reflected that if he had not been a lawyer or
a sleuth he would have been ticking off mileage at Daytona. Such was his
love of the power and beauty of line of a splendid machine. And he
admired as much as he admired any work of art his brown, thin, muscular
hand on the wheel, one mahogany, the other coffee.
As he turned into the wide, sweeping drive of Thorngate, he slowed the
car to a crawl, and savored for a moment the view of the Sound, the
lemon and orange sunset beyond it, the peace of the trees and shrubs and
flowers on either side. He listened with one ear to the swish of the
tires in the traprock gravel roadbed, and with the other to the cicadas
making the mad sound of a semi-anæsthetized brain among the oaks.
Black John, alert and loquacious, opened the door to him, and showed him
immediately to a large, luxurious room on the second floor. Belknap
stood at the long windows, looking down, and shedding, with the deafness
characteristic of his general indifference, John’s flow of
well-intentioned chatter as he unpacked and laid out Belknap’s week-end
wardrobe. Belknap was so far removed from it as to be unaware of John’s
withdrawal. Unaware also of Bertrand Whittaker’s entrance.
“You made the trip in short order, I imagine. How are you, Belknap?”
“Splendid, thanks. Yes, I came down fast enough. There is nothing to
warrant a leisurely drive on Long Island—until after Shinnecock Hills
perhaps. Before that the sooner it’s over the better. You know I am
still forever being surprised that there can be such charming and
secluded spots as this within a stone’s throw of these atrocious main
highways. And yours is one of the best, Bertrand.”
“_Isn’t_ it, Belknap!” Whittaker’s face lighted with pleased vanity. But
it died on the instant. “I shall hate to leave it. More than I shall
hate to leave anything else, I assure you.”
Belknap paused with their lighted cigarette match arrested between them,
and quickly met the eyes he had been studiously avoiding.
“Leave? Why, when, and where for? Going abroad?”
Whittaker’s immediate answer was a cold smile. He accepted his light and
crossed to a chair. Belknap regarded him intently through puffs of his
own smoke, and being a keen student of men when he cared to be, or found
it necessary, he remarked a new hardness in the hard grey face.
Whittaker was a grey man: iron-grey hair, granite skin, grey-blue eyes,
gun-metal suits, and plenty of grey matter. He was a man too able, too
willfully brilliant, for the cramped position in which he had to work.
So he put the extra energy into deviltry. “That’s just what he is doing
now,” thought Belknap, “and God help somebody. Somehow I think it’s God
help him for a change.” But he wasn’t prepared for being quite as right
as he proved to be.
“Not exactly abroad. Though perhaps yes, in a very broad sense. Sit
down, Belknap, and we’ll talk, if you don’t mind being serious on an
empty stomach. The drinks will be up shortly.”
“Fire away, man, by all means. You are now making things sound, not only
mysterious, but rather important. What’s it _to_ you?”
“It’s a great deal to me, I’m afraid. It seems I have short shrift,
Belknap. I’m sentenced to death. The doctors have given me six months—or
‘with luck,’ as they put it, an extra one or two.”
“Good Lord! Why I’ve always thought you one of the fittest. What _is_
wrong? Whittaker, I’m sorry—too terribly sorry. Is there a thing I can
do?”
“Yes, there is.” A flare of wicked humor came and went in Whittaker’s
eyes. “But we’ll come to that in a moment. I’m dying of cancer. In a bad
spot. I’m in for pain and a great deal of it; more than I can quite bear
to put up with, I guess. ‘Six months to live.’ It may sound short enough
to you, but to me it sounds an eternity. Six _weeks_, yes; I might have
kept a stiff upper lip for six weeks. But that’s about my limit.”
“You mean—it’s suicide?” Belknap asked, and did his level best, in
respect to the situation, not to show a fierce impatience that he should
have been asked in at the death.
“No-o, not strictly speaking. Though I’ve always contended suicide is
justifiable in such circumstances. And I purchased a very pretty little
Colt last week for the purpose. But I reconsidered. I’ve been a man who
made himself felt going and coming; you can testify to that, Belknap.
Then why make this particular exit dull and unromantic, with nothing
more said of it than, ‘Mr. Bertrand Whittaker had been suffering from
ill health, and it is thought—etc., etc.’ You know the line. So, as I’ve
said, I didn’t shoot. For here was the perfect opportunity to go the
limit with life and death, nothing to lose that wouldn’t be gain. In
other words I could leave a bit of a pother behind me—in commemoration.
And, my dear fellow, I’ve hit on an idea that I doubt even you could
match.”
Belknap’s face was a mosaic of varying expression: sympathy of a kind,
eager curiosity, distrust and threatening disapprobation. A man of
Whittaker’s evil propensities could do considerable damage if he was
driven, as now, to turn at bay.
“Think twice, Whittaker,” Belknap warned him quietly, “before you
mention your idea even to me. We can drop it here and now. I promise to
ask no questions. Remember a doctor’s judgement has been as often
reversed as a judge’s! Don’t be rash under the first shock.”
“I’m not being rash. This is a certainty, born witness to by my flesh
and bones. The doctors didn’t surprise me, to tell you the truth. But I
had rather banked on being tabled, so to speak, and dying under the
knife. No such luck. So it’s my six months or my week-end, and I’m going
to make it the week-end. If that fails me I can always fall back on the
pistol. Putting two and two together, do you begin to get my drift?”
“I can’t say I do in the least. I suppose I’m stupid.”
“For a detective I think you are. Well, to call a spade a spade, I
intend to be murdered—with you in attendance to get the murderer. Is
that clear enough?” Belknap, without the flicker of an eye-lash, darkly
concentrated on a point somewhere between himself and the ceiling.
Whittaker examined him secretly and furtively from under overhanging
brows. The atmosphere had a tendency to thicken before Belknap drew
himself back to the necessities of speech.
“Thanks most awfully,” he said with a hard, ironic twist of the lips,
“for this amazing opportunity. It quite takes my breath away.
Undoubtedly I should make a drastic effort to turn your intention, as
one is expected to withhold a man about to leap from the Brooklyn
Bridge. But I admit I’m frankly curious as to details. So before I seize
you around the neck, metaphorically speaking, let’s hear more.”
Whittaker’s body, from a slight stiffening, yielded to the shape of his
chair.
“I’m delighted that your first reaction _is_ curiosity, Belknap; for in
that case I feel sure I can eventually enlist your interest in the
bizarre and dramatic elements of the situation. I feared you’d mount the
pulpit, or the bench, or the stand of mere friendship, deliver me a
moral lecture, and ring up your pet specialist for an appointment. In
which event,” he added with faint mockery, “I should have resorted to
your rival, Silas Berry. So you see I _am_ determined. And so far so
good. I swear it’s been good fun making arrangements.”
“Such as?”
“Well, for one thing, putting in what I call my supply of ammunition.
Although I have a fair handful of erstwhile, and therefore potential,
murderers on my visiting list, it was another matter to bring enough of
the right sort together to insure a pleasant week-end, and a week-end
that, as you can see for yourself, may be indefinitely prolonged—for
_them_! Several of my favorite respectable killers are in foreign parts.
But I’ve managed at least eight. Do you want a brief synopsis? Of course
certain of them are familiar to you.”
Belknap tried matching casualness with casualness. He leaned over and
lit a table lamp.
“May I enquire how many of them are in the house? And how soon we may
expect action? There may easily be a brace of us, Whittaker, before
we’re through. A more or less famous detective left floating around on
the scene of the crime might be considered rather a serious handicap.”
And at that moment John, entering with a tray, was responsible for the
startled movement of both men. Whittaker remarked on it as he poured
them each a highball.
“Apparently certain death hasn’t yet quenched my instinct of
self-preservation. Naturally one can’t destroy in a week fifty years of
vital energy and will to live.”
“Listen, old timer, are you sure even now that this is the best way out
for you? What about repentance and the Church? Go in for it thoroughly,
I mean, and try for the Heavenly Choir. You’re too good a tenor to
waste.”
Whittaker laughed.
“Too good a devil to waste, Belknap. Better devil than tenor I think.
No, I’m going out in a sputter of fire and brimstone—no candles for
me.... Aha! I hear someone arriving. Possibly Blake. He was motoring in
from Southampton.”