3:00 a. m.—Thin Haze of Dread
Dr. Worth, too, was staring at the black, impenetrable rectangle left
by the opened window. It was a passageway for air, but infinitely more
so was it a passageway leading to obscure recesses of the night:
recesses that seemed to offer a maleficent sanctuary to hell-born
secrets of distorted souls.
Who had crept along that balcony and fired that shot?
The apparent improbability of anyone from Mrs. Endicott’s room having
done so transplanted the problem from clear fields of logic and of
simple facts into vague regions of absurd conjecturings which stared
wanly out at Lieutenant Valcour through baffling curtains of darkness
and of fog.
He felt a definite sense of uncertainty, and—as one does when
confronted by a suggestion of the unknown—an impalpable dread. It was
nothing that he could put his finger on; it seemed, absurdly, some
emanation from the outer night creeping in through that rectangle of
black to hang in thin hazes about the room.
“What would you suggest doing with Hollander, Doctor?” he said.
Dr. Worth, whose own thoughts had been warily browsing in disagreeable
pastures, sought relief in professional preciseness.
“He would be better off in a hospital, Lieutenant. I consider his
constitution to be more than sufficiently strong to obviate any danger
in moving him. Are you going to arrest him?”
Lieutenant Valcour smiled faintly. “He is under arrest now, Doctor. I
should like to get a few things straightened out, though, before
booking him on any definite charge. Would it hurt him very much to
talk with me before he is taken to the hospital?”
“Not if it weren’t for too long.”
“Could you give him something to revive him—to brace him up?”
“Certainly.”
“Then I will have a man send for an ambulance, and I’ll just talk with
Hollander until it gets here.”
“That will be all right.”
“And if you don’t mind, Doctor, I should like to be alone with him.
Just he and I and—Endicott.”
Dr. Worth was already busied with restoratives. “Certainly,” he said.
“Miss Murrow and I will be outside, if you want to call us.”
“Cassidy,” Lieutenant Valcour said, “wait outside in the hall, and
you, Hansen, go downstairs and telephone for an ambulance. Let me know
as soon as it gets here.”
And in a moment Lieutenant Valcour found himself alone in the room
with Endicott, with Hollander, and with those curious mists that
hinted at unnamed dreads.
The restoratives were effective, and Hollander opened his eyes upon a
stranger who was sitting on a chair beside the mahogany chest. He
wondered idly who the stranger was. The drug which Dr. Worth had given
him made him feel rather alert and smart. Any sense of pain was
completely deadened. His eyes travelled leisurely about the room and
hesitated at a sheet-covered object on the bed. That would be his
friend called Endicott. His lids closed sharply as a reaction to some
wound that was not physical.
Lieutenant Valcour stared thoughtfully down at Hollander’s pale face.
“What did you do with Endicott’s hat?” he said.
Hollander opened his eyes again in bewilderment. “I don’t know what
you’re talking about,” he said. “And who are you, anyhow?”
“I’m Lieutenant Valcour, Mr. Hollander. We’ve talked together over the
telephone. The hat I’m referring to is the one that Endicott must have
been wearing, or carrying in his hand, or that was some place near him
when you attacked him shortly after seven this evening.”
“I didn’t attack him, Lieutenant.” Hollander’s lips were
peaked-looking and didn’t move very much when he talked. “I wasn’t in
this house until a little after one-thirty this morning—after you had
called me up.”
“Which did you think Mrs. Endicott would really do, Mr. Hollander?”
Hollander tried painfully to concentrate. He felt the need of being
very careful of his footing: they were on dangerous ground.
“Do?”
“Yes—when she told you during tea at the Ritz that she had about
reached the end and was either going to kill Mr. Endicott or commit
suicide. Or didn’t you really believe either?”
It seemed impossible that Hollander’s face could grow any paler.
“You’re crazy, Lieutenant.”
“All sorts of people tell me so lots of times, Mr. Hollander. Did you
have to wear Endicott’s hat when you went out because you had lost
your own?”
Hollander sighed fretfully. “You must think I’m awfully dumb,” he
said.
“Oh, not at all—well, in a few things, yes. Your choice of friends,
for example. And I don’t mean the Endicotts.”
“Whom do you mean, Lieutenant?”
“That dark-eyed child, for one—Mr. Smith. But perhaps you don’t know
that his name is not Smith. I imagine that when you left him in the
apartment he was still either Jack Perry or Larry Nevins. He shows
great versatility, really, in his adoption of names. I was just a
little surprised and disappointed at his present selection of Smith.”
“You’ve been to my apartment, Lieutenant?”
“Yes. I had quite an enlightening talk with the present Mr. Smith.
Where did you leave Endicott’s hat?”
Hollander, after one peevish glare, shut his eyes.
“I can tell you pretty well what happened, you see, except for that,”
Lieutenant Valcour went on. “You _did_ believe Mrs. Endicott this
afternoon when she told you her intention. That much is fact. And now
for a little fiction: either at the Ritz, or just as you were handing
her into her car, you stole her purse.”
Hollander’s eyes snapped open and glared viciously.
“Because,” Lieutenant Valcour continued, “you wanted her keys—the keys
to this house. You were a little hazy as to just what it was you
intended to do, but you did know that you were going to kill Endicott,
and that you were going to do it before his wife either committed
suicide or killed him herself. You went to your apartment and got the
stiletto. Then you came back here, let yourself in with Mrs.
Endicott’s keys, came up to this floor and into this room. You may
have been in several of the other rooms first: I don’t know. Nor do I
know just what you were searching for while you waited in here,
either. Mrs. Endicott herself will tell me all about that later. At
any rate, you were going through Endicott’s clothes in that cupboard
when you heard him coming. You closed the cupboard door. You were
naturally nervous and upset—everyone is when contemplating or
committing a crime. You were afraid there would be some slip, so you
disguised yourself with dust smeared on your face. Then, either
because you made some noise or else because he wanted to get something
Endicott opened the cupboard door and saw you. You must have had the
stiletto all ready in your hand and have looked pretty horrible
altogether, because the shock of seeing you stopped his heart and he
crumpled to the floor.”
Hollander’s eyes began to look feverish.
“His falling like that startled you,” went on Lieutenant Valcour. “You
felt his heart, and in pulling open his overcoat so that you could get
your hand inside you ripped off the top button. What did you do with
it?”
Hollander grinned faintly. “Swallowed it,” he said.
Lieutenant Valcour flushed a little. “You probably put it in your
pocket. You were satisfied that Endicott was dead—miraculously
dead—and that you hadn’t had to stab him. But he _was_ dead, and you
experienced the natural panic of all murderers. I don’t mean that you
went wild, or anything. But your mind didn’t function correctly. You
may have been quite calm, but it wasn’t a calmness based on
intelligence. You dragged Endicott into the cupboard and closed the
door. You washed the dirt from your hands and face in the bathroom,
combed and brushed your hair, wiped the silver clean, and then printed
that curious note which Mrs. Endicott found, and which contained no
significance other than to direct suspicion to some outside agency in
order to shield her from becoming a suspect herself. But why did you
take Endicott’s hat, and where did you put it?”
“You’re talking bunk, Lieutenant.”
“On the contrary, Mr. Hollander, those were the moves which were made
here to-night—whether you were the person who made them or not.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. And it is quite within the range of possibility that if you
didn’t make them, then Mrs. Endicott did.”
Hollander looked very worried, very tired.
“You’re bluffing, Lieutenant,” he said.
“And you’re a very frightened man, Mr. Hollander.”
“Are you going to arrest Mrs. Endicott?”
“That depends.”
“Because she didn’t do it.”
“Why didn’t she, Mr. Hollander?”
“Because she loved her husband.”
“I wish you would explain to me how it is that she loved him so much
that she wanted either to commit suicide or else kill him.”
“Pride, Lieutenant.”
Lieutenant Valcour tested the possibility of that angle. It could not,
he felt, be ignored. As many outrages were yearly committed under the
goadings of pride as there were committed because of jealousy and
hate.
“You believe, Mr. Hollander, that the other women whom her husband
played around with hurt her pride so keenly that her love became
coloured with hate?”
“Why not?” A certain fierceness crept into Hollander’s voice. His eyes
were shining very brightly. “People don’t know her as I know her.
_Nobody_ knows her the way I know her.”
Lieutenant Valcour shrugged. “She made you hate your friend—a man
you’d been through the war with—whose life you had saved.”
“That’s the bunk, Lieutenant.”
“But you did, didn’t you?”
“Oh, sure, it’s all true enough, about it happening—but that stuff
doesn’t last.”
“Friendship?”
“Among men? Hell, no.” Hollander jerked his head fretfully. “Gratitude
gets damned tiresome, Lieutenant, not only to give it but to get it.”
“Especially,” Lieutenant Valcour said gently, “if a woman comes
between.”
“No—no—no.”
There was a complete and very convincing finality in the three
negations.
“But you do love Mrs. Endicott.”
“I worship her.”
“And she?”
“I don’t know.” There was nothing obscure in Hollander’s expression
now, and his eyes were frankly, genuinely sincere. “Why should she?
I’m nothing. Herbert was everything.”
Lieutenant Valcour almost regretted having to do so when he said,
“Then why, Mr. Hollander, does she address you in her notes as ‘Tom,
darling’?”
Hollander didn’t answer for a minute. He considered the question quite
seriously. “I guess it’s just because she’s sorry for me,” he said.
“And I, personally, think that that’s a pretty bum guess.”
“No—listen here, Lieutenant . . .”
Hollander’s voice began to wander. His sentences became
broken—meaningless. It was with a sense of relief that Lieutenant
Valcour saw the door open and two stretcher carriers come in followed
by Dr. Worth and the ambulance surgeon. Hollander, as they carried him
out, was unconscious again.
Lieutenant Valcour detained Dr. Worth at the door.
“There is something I should like to ask you,” he said.