Oliver thought that he had never been quite so sure of anything as
he was that he must be insane. He was insane. Very shortly some heavy
person in uniform would walk into the tidy kitchen where he and Ted were
crouching like moving-picture husbands and remark with a kind smile that
the Ahkoond of Whilom was giving a tea-party in the Mountains of the
Moon that afternoon and that unless Oliver (or, as he was probable
better known) St. Oliver, came back at once in the nice private car
with the wire netting over its windows, everybody from God the Father
Almighty to Carrie Chapman Catt would be highly displeased. For a moment
Oliver thought of lunatic asylums almost lovingly--they had such fine
high walls and smooth green lawns and you were so perfectly safe there
from anything ever happening that was real. Then he jumped--that must be
Mrs. Severance opening the door.
“What are we going to _do_?” he said to Ted in a fierce whisper.
Ted looked at him stupidly. “Do? When I don't know whether I'm on my
feet or my head?” he said. His drugged passiveness showed Oliver with
desolating clarity that anything that could be done would have to be
done by himself. He crept over toward the window with a wild wish that
black magic were included in a Yale curriculum--the only really sensible
thing he could think of doing would be for both of them to vanish
through the wall.
“Look! Fire-escape!”
“What?”
“_Fire-escape_!”
“All right. You take it.”
Oliver had been sliding the window up all the while, cursing softly and
horribly at each damnatory creak. Yes--there it was--and people thought
fire-escapes ugly. Personally, Oliver had seldom seen anything in his
life which combined concrete utility with abstract beauty so ideally
as that little flight of iron steps leading down the entry outside the
window into blackness.
“You first, Ted.”
“Can't.” The word seemed to come despairingly out of the bottom of his
stomach.
“Came here. Own accord. Got to see it through. Take my medicine.”
“You fool, she doesn't want you here! Think of Elinor!” For a moment
Oliver thought Ted was going to blaze into more blind rage. Then he
checked himself.
“I am. But listen to that.”
The voices that came to them from the living-room were certainly both
high and excited--and the second that Oliver heard one of them he knew
that all his most preposterous suppositions on the drive down from
Southampton had come preposterously and rather ghastly true.
“Well, _listen_ to it! Do you know who the man is now? And will you get
out on the fire-escape, you _fool_?”
Ted listened intently for the space of a dozen seconds. Then “Oh my
God!” he said and his head went into his hands. Oliver crept over to
him.
“Ted, listen--oh listen, damn you! What's the use of acting the
chivalrous fool, _now_? Don't you see? Don't you understand? Don't you
get it that if you leave she can explain it some way or other--that all
you're doing by staying is ruining yourself and Elinor for a point of
honor that hasn't any honor _to_ it?”
“Oh sure. Sure. But listen to him--why great God, Ollie, if he has a gun
he might kill her--probably will--Don't you see it's just because I hate
the whole business now--and her--and myself--th'at I've got to stick it
out? You go, Ollie, it's none of your business--”
“You go. You blessed idiot, there's no use of both of us smashing. If
anybody's got to stay--I can bluff it out a good deal better than you
can--trust me--”
“Oh rats. Not that it isn't very decent of you, Ollie, it is--and you'd
do it--but I wouldn't even be a _person_ to let you--”
They were both on their feet, talking in jerks, ears strained for every
sound from that other room.
“It's _perfectly_ simple--nobody's going to pull any gunplay--good
Lord, imagine poor old Mr. Piper--” said Oliver uncertainly, and then as
noises came to them that meant more than just talking, “_Get down that
fire-escape_!”
“I can't. Let go of me, Ollie. I mustn't Listen--something's
up--something bad! Get out of the way there, Ollie, I've got to go in!
It _isn't_ your funeral!”
“Well, it isn't going to be yours!” said Oliver through shut
teeth--Ted's last remark had, somehow been a little too irritating. He
thought savagely that there was only one way of dealing with completely
honorable fools--Ted shouldn't, by the Lord!---Oliver had gone to just
a little too much trouble in the last dozen hours to build Ted a happy
home to let any of Ted's personal wishes in the matter interrupt him
now. He stepped back with a gesture of defeat but his feet gripped at
the floor like a boxer's and his eyes fixed burningly on the point of
Ted's jaw. Wait a split-second--he wasn't near enough--now--_there_!
His fist landed exactly where he had meant it to and for an instant he
felt as if he had broken all the bones in his hand. Ted was back against
the wall, his mouth dropping open, his whole face frozen like a face
caught in a snapshot unawares to a sudden glare of immense and ludicrous
astonishment. Then he began to give at the knees like a man who has
been smitten with pie in a custard-comedy and Oliver recovered from his
surprise at both of them sufficiently to step in and catch him as he
slumped, face forward.
He laid him carefully down on the floor, trying feverishly to remember
how long a knockout lasted. Not nearly long enough, anyway. Ropes. A
gag. His eyes roved frantically about the kitchen. _Towels_!
He was filling Ted's mouth with clean dish-rag and thinking dully that
it was just like handling a man in the last stages of alcohol--the body
had the same limp refractory heaviness all over--when he heard something
that sounded like the bursting of a large blown-up paper bag from the
other room. He accepted the fact with neither surprise nor curiosity.
Mr. Piper had shot Mrs. Severance. Or Mrs. Severance had shot Mr. Piper.
That was all.
As soon as he had safely disposed of Ted--for an eery moment he
had actually considered stowing him away in a drawer of the
kitchen-cabinet--it might be well to go in and investigate the murder.
And then either Mrs. Severance or Mr. Piper--whichever it was of the two
that remained alive--might very well shoot him unless he or she had
shot himself or herself first. It seemed to Oliver that the latter event
would save everyone a great deal of trouble.
He did not relish the idea of being left alone in a perfectly strange
apartment with two corpses and one gagged, bound and unconscious best
friend--but he liked the picture of himself trying to make explanations
to either his hostess or Mr. Piper when, in either case, the other party
to the argument would be in possession of a loaded revolver, still
less. He hoped that if Mrs. Severance were the survivor she had had a
sufficiently Western upbringing at least to know how to shoot. He had no
particular wish to die--but anything was better than being mangled--and
a reminiscence of Hedda Gabler's poet's technique with firearms caused
his stomach to contract quite painfully as he tightened the knots
around Ted's ankles. Ted was the devil and all to get out on the
fire-escape--and then you had to tie him so that he wouldn't roll off.
He crawled back through the window, dusted his trousers, and settled his
necktie as carefully as if he were going to be married. Married. And
he had hoped, he thought rather pitiably, that even though Nancy had
so firmly decided to blight him forever she might have a few pleasant
memories of their engagement at least. Instead--well, he could see the
headlines now. “Big Financier, Youth and Mystery Woman Die in Triple
Slaying.” “_Dead_--Oliver Crowe, Yale 1917, of Melgrove, L. I.”
It hadn't been his job, damn it, it hadn't been his job at all. It was
now, though, with Ted perfectly helpless on the fire-escape where any
crazy person could take pot-shots at him as if he were a plaster pipe
in a shooting gallery. The idea of escape had somehow never seriously
occurred to him--what had happened in the evening already had impressed
him so with a sense of inane fatality that he could not even conceive of
the possibility of any-thing's coming right. In any event, Ted, tied
up the way he was, was too heavy and clumsy to carry down even the most
ordinary flight of stairs--and if he were going to be shot, he somehow
preferred to gasp his last breaths out on a comfortably carpeted floor
rather than clinging like a disreputable spider to the iron web of a
fire-escape.
Oliver sighed--Nancy's firmness had admittedly quite ruined all the
better things in life--but even the merest sort of mere existence had
got to be, at times, a rather pleasant convention--how pleasant, he
felt, he had never quite realized somehow until just now. Then, with a
vague idea of getting whatever was to happen over with as quickly and
decently as possible, he settled his tie once more and trotted meekly
through the dining-room and beyond the curtains.