The words were scarcely spoken when the air was again split by gunfire.
A very sharp report came from somewhere: the yard, the basement, or the
servant’s wing. It acted as a signal for a pell-mell return of the
others from library to dining-room.
“If that was in the kitchen,” Julian, who led the re-entry by a yard,
said with solemn severity, “it looks to me as if they’d invaded neutral
territory and something _should_ be done about it.”
Sergeant Stebbins, who seemed to have a keener ear for direction,
hurriedly threw up the window on the view, and shouted in the stentorian
accents of the law:
“Say, what’s the shootin’ all about, idiots? Haven’t you no restraints?
What’d you see, a jack-rabbit?”
“We wasn’t shooting, sir,” a distant voice came up as through a funnel.
“There’s somebody way back down in under the porch. Guess they fired
accidental-like.”
“Accidental Hell! Go get ’em.”
Apparently there was an attempt to obey his order to the letter, for it
was only a matter of seconds when, to judge by the firing, a regular
battle was in progress.
“Hi, wait for me!” Sergeant Stebbins, bristling with zealous duty,
turned on the room. “You folks stay where you are if you know what’s
good for you. I guess we’ve grounded him—and sooner than I thought by a
darned sight.”
“Dorn!” Julian exclaimed. “Well, it only goes to show that the first
hunch is generally the right one.”
Joel was leaning weakly against the sideboard and sobbing in little
gasping breaths like a spent runner. She held her head between her hands
to close her ears against the racket.
“I can’t stand any more. I can’t. Oh, I can’t stand it. Turn that
shooting off. Turn it off!” she cried.
“It isn’t the radio, darling,” Julian said quietly, putting his arm
about her shoulders. “Though I admit it sounds like the Colt Revolver
hour or something. What you think is static is being produced off stage
by the housekeeper and that maid Lily who are rapidly losing their
inhibitions in the pantry. Listen, dear, I _do_ want to see what’s going
on.” There was a fresh burst of gunfire. “Please can’t I go to the
lattice and be a Rowena to your Ivanhoe?”
“Oh, go along. Go away. I don’t care what you do. _Julian_, don’t go
near that window. You’ll be killed.”
But Julian had taken her first words at their face value.
“A lot of ammunition used and nothing done,” he announced from a daring
stand in full view of the lawn. “That man Dorn will have time to dig
himself out under the house and make a dash for it by the front gate.
The sergeant has drawn off all his men from the western front to cope
with this unexpected offensive; and I’m sure it’s an un-Sound move. Did
you get that one?”
“_Stop_ it, Julian! If you’re the kind of man that can pun at such a
moment as this you aren’t fit to marry. And I never _will_ marry
you—never, never,—_Come_ away from that window.”
“Don’t worry, the firing’s all in the wrong direction so far. The police
are waiting to see the whites of their eyes. And that’s going to need
television, considering where the enemy is in hiding.”
Sergeant Stebbins apparently thought so too. The disturbance came from
under the porch of the servants’ wing, and from the floor of the porch
to the ground, a drop of eight or ten feet, a fine-meshed lattice
enclosed a garden tool-room and formed a walled passage to the basement.
Its outside door was closed, undoubtedly barricaded. Stebbins had tried
the basement approach and found it closed and sealed. But he had decided
on squeezing tactics. Two of his men, stationed in the cellar, were to
burst through the inner door at the moment of a supporting attack from
the yard.
Without warning Sergeant Stebbins gave his two-shot signal. And the din
was on. Julian, really pale, stepped back and held his hand across his
eyes.
“Shiver my timbers!” he said, with a deep, trembling shudder. “God help
whoever it is. He has pluck.”
The smell of gunpowder had sifted into the room. Underfoot the sounds of
the splintering door were somehow more affecting than the actual shots.
The tensity and misery of the five in the dining-room were reaching an
unbearable pitch. The loss of the restraining influence, though not a
happy restraint, of Belknap and Berry, who had gone to the front as
staff officers, was tending to break down such morale as had existed.
Joel was moaning as if she had been wounded. Sydney Crawford, with
staring eyes, was gripping Neil’s arm between her two hands until every
knuckle showed white. Neil was shivering from head to foot as a man
shivers after too long a swim in cold water.
Suddenly it was the silence, crashing back into place, that seemed
deafening, like lightning-cut cloud meeting in thunder. In it, Nadia
Mdevani, who had appeared to be holding her nerve, lost it. She pointed,
as if at blood.
“Look! In the name of Christ, look there. There’s what spelled Bertrand
Whittaker’s death.”
It was a figure eight in the form of two overlapping holes bored in the
paneling of the wall at the height of a man’s head. Freshly cut: there
was a faint salting of sawdust on the hardwood floor beneath.
It took Joel to break the stillness in the room. With a face like a
death-mask she gazed at the dark spot on the wall.
“I know now,” she said. “I know who killed Colonel Blake and Romany and
Uncle Bertrand. But it can’t be true. It can’t be true that—” Julian
didn’t let her finish. He crushed his hand over her mouth as Belknap
came in from the butler’s pantry, with the sergeant and Berry.
“Hush! you little fool. Don’t go saying things. Don’t _you_ be
responsible for hanging somebody. Let Mr. Belknap take care of that.” He
shook her desperately. “Whatever you know or think, keep it to yourself,
do you hear? _Do_ you? Don’t let ’em get it out of you.”
But Belknap had heard enough.
“What’s this you know, Miss Joel?” he said. “Come now, out with it. No,
don’t cry like that. I’m sorry. What’s the trouble, Miss Mdevani?” He
turned to Nadia as Joel collapsed.
“You should have been barred from detective work on account of your
eyes,” Nadia said. “Look.”
“Aha-a-a? So that’s the way the wind blows? We’ll investigate directly.
We have another matter to deal with right now. All right, Sergeant,
there’s your man.” He indicated Crawford.
Stebbins went to Crawford and touched his arm.
“I place you under arrest, Mr. Crawford, charged with instigating the
murder of Judge Whittaker. Your hired accomplices have confessed.”
Crawford looked dazed. Then he swung on Stebbins.
“They have _not_ confessed,” he said. “For they did not kill Whittaker.
If this is what is meant by third degree, you can do your damnedest.
They are as innocent of this crime as you are. You can do your worst to
me; but not to them.”
“The worst has been done to them I’m afraid,” Berry said quietly. “They
are both dead. They told us to tell you the account is squared. Whatever
that may mean. So I guess you have to go along with us. That gives us
_one_ of our men, Sergeant. Now what’s this hole-in-the-wall business,
Belknap? Neat work on your part, Crawford? You had things ready for
business, I see.”
“There must be some entrance to the space between the wall and the
tapestry of the library,” Belknap said. “We’d better call John.”
John came. He showed them a thin door within a door—a long, narrow,
hinged panel that formed a door jamb in the dining-room-library doorway.
Belknap went through it. No one spoke. When he returned he carried a
Colt twenty-two in his handkerchief. He went directly to Nadia.
“I would offer you this back,” he said in a low voice, “but we shall
need it. I’m truly sorry.”
“Don’t worry in the least.” She looked him straight in the eyes. “It is
mine, yes. I missed it when _I_ needed it last night.”