“What have we here—a séance?” Belknap asked from the door.
Nadia quivered and shrank back against the wall as she turned to face
Belknap. Her hands, with spread fingers, formed a spidery white pattern
against the room’s daring modernistic wall-paper of black shot with
gold. Her eyes wavered, and Belknap saw them consider the open window
leading to the roof of the porte-cochère.
“Mr. Belknap!” she breathed.
“Your humble servant.” Belknap closed the door, turned its key and
pocketed the key, and crossed to the bed.
“What’s ailing our friend Crawford?”
He thrust Sydney Crawford aside with an arm that would have brooked no
interference had there been any. He looked down at Crawford; then bent
over him; and then, quickly, felt for the heart. His face darkened.
“This man is dead,” he said, straightening and turning toward Nadia
Mdevani.
“Thank God!” Sydney cried, and Belknap swung to her.
“Another Strange Death of President Harding, is that it?”
“That’s for you to say, Mr. Detective,” Sydney answered with unexpected
fire. “But this is the second time today you have accused me of murder;
and I should have thought, unless you can make your point better than
you made it this morning, you might exercise a greater professional
restraint.”
By a blazing light in Sydney’s transparent face it was clear things no
longer mattered a tinker’s dam: life, death, love, hatred were all one
to her, which was nothing. Belknap regarded her with merciless, puckered
eyes, and turned again to her husband. He touched a light forefinger to
the powder on Crawford’s corroded lips.
“Poison is my guess,” he said. “We’ll find out where it came from soon
enough. You’ve run it too close, Miss Mdevani. I shall have to examine
the remainder of that sleeping drug you so kindly offered. _If_ it’s
still in your possession. Hmmm! No you don’t, lady—stand where you are.”
“I’m sorry to have frightened you,” Nadia drew back and spoke with slow
venom. “I merely thought to assist you. You’ll find it in the middle
compartment of my handbag.” With her eyes she indicated the bag on the
dresser. “Are you—alone?” she added.
“Quite alone, Miss Mdevani. But not for long I assure you.” Belknap went
to the telephone: (“Operator, give me 40. Thanks. Police Headquarters?
Give me Sergeant Stebbins. Oh, that you, Stebbins? You’d better come up.
Your catch has gone the way of all flesh—which, in this house, means he
has been murdered. But I have a good substitute. So come along and help
me. Right.”) He hung up.
“Where is Mr. Berry?” Nadia asked.
“Doing research work.”
“I should like to see him, if I may.”
“You should? Why? My opinion is that I make a better father confessor.”
“I’m sure of it. I prefer a layman that’s all—as safer in the long run.”
How he admired her Custer stand. He knew, if she didn’t, that she was
literally at the end of her rope. He hadn’t a doubt in his mind that her
bag contained the poison. This poisoning business was always such a
risky affair. He felt convinced that in the excitement she had neglected
to exchange the contents of the bottle. Yet she was boldly facing it out
to the last ditch. It was proving a gallant fight, if a criminal’s fight
can be called gallant. And, admiring her, he wanted her more than ever.
His eyes absorbed her as she stood there slim and taut, outlined in the
light that, being shielded from Crawford, fell directly upon her. She
wore a clinging dress of bitter-sweet red. It shaped her narrow hips,
her lovely forward drooping shoulders. There were slippers to match the
dress; coral in her ears; a half dozen barbaric coral bracelets high on
her arm; a large bloodstone ring on her index finger. She seemed not so
much savage as heathen, a descendant of Attila. It was a thousand
pities, Belknap thought, to have her broken in this sordid fashion: law
courts, disgrace, and, short of death, a prison. How much more fun to
break her himself, in a man’s way. But it was too late now. The cards
were stacked against her, and he didn’t need her enough to follow her
lead to Hell. He drew a breath and relinquished her.
“That’s quite possible. Safety is not a term you and I have conjured
with.”
“Hardly. We have never pretended to be anything but dangerous to each
other. And this was scarcely the moment to have drawn in our horns. But
that shouldn’t destroy our relationship, should it? For I believe it was
you who first made a claim to courage. You put it rather neatly, I
remember, calling it the coin of our realm.”
Again her irony, and he flushed.
“I was flattered, my dear, when you challenged me to catch you at one
murder.” (God, he thought to himself, what kind of a grip has this woman
got on me that I should stand here arguing, with a corpse on the bed
between us!) “I have ceased to be flattered. Four is far too simple a
problem; particularly when you let yourself be tripped up in the fourth
act.” Belknap was opening her bag. He held up the little red bottle for
reflections. “Your stop-light,” he said with his cruel, side-wise smile.
“Your play on words, sir, is one of the most delightful things about
you. I see it doesn’t fail you under trying circumstances.” Nadia’s
color was up. She was positively enjoying this linguistic sword play.
Belknap hated himself for having let himself be snared into it. She was
playing for time. Exactly what good it would do her he failed to see.
But the furtive half-eye she gave to the door, the furtive half-ear she
gave to what might be happening outside, meant she was biding an
opportunity. And something was at last happening outside. Suddenly the
door of the lower hall was opened and closed repeatedly and vehemently.
There were loud voices, and someone in a querulous rage was insistently
keeping the upper hand. There was a scuffle on the stairs. Belknap went
to the door, and paused with the key in his hand. He looked quickly at
Sydney’s quiescent figure lying curled up at Crawford’s feet—she had
fallen into a deep sleep, or perhaps a faint, at some moment of the
conversation; how little attention had been paid her!—and then back at
Nadia.
“Quick, dearest,” he whispered, “go by the window! Forgive me, it’s the
best I can do.” He was surprised at his own words. But her shuddering
tremor at the approach of the others had been the last straw. He
couldn’t go with her but he could let her off.
“Thank you,” she answered gently. “I am not running away. I have never
run even when guilty. Is it likely I should try it now?”
Without replying, and with an angry twist of his arm, he turned the key
in the lock and flung the door wide.
“Come in, Stebbins. You too, Berry. I want one of you. And Miss Mdevani,
I understand, wants the other.”
“I do, Mr. Berry.” Nadia stepped forward and stood near him. “I hereby
place myself wholly in your charge. Whether I am guilty or innocent of
all of which I am accused has yet to be determined. Until it is
determined I am confident you will extend me fair play. Mr. Belknap, I
regret to say, is now as assured of my guilt as he recently claimed to
be of my innocence. Such variable winds cannot fail but be ill winds for
one in my delicate position.”
“Cool and tricky!” thought Berry, putting the room to a quizzical
scrutiny. “What a perfectly worded appeal. No male could resist it.”
Aloud he said, “I promise you will receive every consideration justified
by the circumstances.” And, to Belknap, “I see we _did_ leave them too
long alone. The tally mounts! But I take it we have reached the end of
the trail. My congratulations. I _thought_ you would come across, and
I’m sincerely glad—”
The disturbance on the stairs had moved up and now suddenly intruded
itself. Julian Prentice proved to be at its center—pale, disheveled, his
tie twisted, his hair up-ended, Julian struggled feverishly with a
veritable regiment of cops. His captors were so intent on their prize
and on his retention that it would have taken a dozen murders to have
shaken their concentration; such is the Force’s strength of character!
In spite of everything, even his own nature, Belknap had to smile.
“Who’s this you’ve got? I figured the least you could be doing was
bringing in Milton Dorn. What’s Prentice been at to so rouse your
righteous wrath?”
“Tryin’ to escape, sir. Ran his car right off’n the premises. We did
have a chase, sir! He was doin’ seventy in the fog. It was as good as
suicide, sir.”
“A verdict of suicide would be a relief. Come, come, boys, hands off.
Can’t you see you’re bothering him? Where were you heading, Prentice,
for Times Square?”
Julian, standing free at last, shifted his gaze distractedly from the
vibrant, defiant figure of Nadia Mdevani, to Silas Berry standing like
an off-stage critic, to Ordway Belknap who looked a general with the
puppets at his disposal, to Sydney Crawford lying crumpled and
desperately pathetic across the feet of the still form on the bed, and
suddenly he trembled uncontrollably from head to foot.
“Where is Joel?” he cried in a high, piercing voice that froze the room.