3:24 a. m.—On Private Heights
“You wanted to see me, Lieutenant?”
She _had_ been under a strain, and a rather terrible one. There wasn’t
any doubt about that. It was emotion, after all, that brought age, not
years, thought Lieutenant Valcour as he glanced at the dark rings so
clearly visible beneath her tragic eyes.
Roberts hadn’t looked toward the bed—yet—but then he hadn’t really
expected that she would. Perhaps she wouldn’t look for some time, but
eventually she would lose some portion of that really splendid
self-control that she was exerting and then, instead of the expanse of
white sheet she had been expecting, there would be Endicott’s
face. . . .
“I wonder if you could tell me, Miss Roberts, the number of shots that
were fired during the shooting.”
“I’m sure I couldn’t.”
She was pointedly on guard, her eyes held at a level that included his
cravat but went no higher.
“The question isn’t as silly a one as it seems,” Lieutenant Valcour
said. “I don’t suggest for a minute that you counted the shots as they
were being fired, actually, but it’s quite within possibility that
your subconscious mind really did that very thing, and that on
consciously thinking about it the number might come to you. It’s
something along the principle of visualizing sound.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sure that no amount of thinking about it would clear
the rather terrible confusion of that moment.”
“Won’t you sit down?”
“I prefer to stand, thank you.”
“Just as you wish. You were with Mrs. Endicott, weren’t you, when it
happened?”
“Yes.”
Lieutenant Valcour admired the accomplished ease with which the word
had so unhesitatingly been brought out; but then most women, in his
estimation, were natural-born liars. The art formed for him one of
their greatest charms.
“You were sitting down beside the bed?” he went on.
“Yes. Reading.”
Splendid—splendid—she was a Bernhardt—a Duse.
“And Miss Vickers?”
“She was down in the kitchen making some coffee.”
“Did the shooting upset you, Miss Roberts?”
“I’m naturally nervous. The sound of firing has always disturbed me
terribly.” Then she flung at him abruptly, “My brother was killed in
the war.”
Lieutenant Valcour both looked and felt genuinely consoling. He also
felt a selfish measure of irritation. The statement was such a perfect
period mark. When a young woman, no matter how great a criminal,
potentially, announces flatly that her brother has been killed during
the war, one can’t ride over the fact roughshod.
“Was there anyone whom you loved killed in the war, Lieutenant?”
She was determined to hammer at the point, it seemed. He wished that
she would stop.
“There wasn’t, Miss Roberts.”
“Then you don’t know much about soldiers.”
“No, not much, really.”
“I don’t mean soldiers—or the war itself, either. It’s a state of
being—a sort of lucid abnormality. It’s hard to tell you just what I
do mean. But it’s the thing,” she ended fiercely, “that made me
understand Mr. Endicott. He never quite recovered, you see, from being
a soldier.”
“And perhaps it also made you understand why Mrs. Endicott
misunderstood him?”
Things were going better now; the channel was broadening into useful
seas.
“Of course it was,” Roberts said. “She, too, lost no one in the war.”
The fog rolled in again.
“I’m afraid I’m not following you very clearly.”
“It’s quite useless, Lieutenant—simply that in Mr. Endicott I kept
seeing my brother. I suffered for him to the extent I would have
suffered for my brother had my brother been in similar circumstances.”
“Suffered?”
“Yes, suffered. From her damned superiority.”
“You think that Mrs. Endicott overdid the mental?”
He noted that Roberts was slowly losing control. There was a blazing
quality of anger creeping into her eyes.
“Lieutenant, she regarded that man as her tame tiger. You realize how
strong he must have been physically.”
“Very strong.”
“It used to please her to control him—you know the way it’s commonly
expressed—with a ‘word.’”
“I shouldn’t exactly say that she had succeeded.”
“The other women?”
“Yes.”
“She didn’t care about that. If anything, it satisfied her sense of
power. She looked on them as a pack of shoddy substitutes that he
could fool with, kick around, and treat terribly, if he liked. But she
still remained the original—the unapproachable—the happy possessor of
a tame tiger. He was always _hers_, you see, no matter what it was he
had done. She’s had him crying.”
“That’s a little hard to believe.”
“It’s the truth. He took her in his hands one night and twisted
her—just like that! She didn’t say a thing to him. For a month
afterward he went around the house like a whipped cat. Then she said
something kind to him, and he cried. I wish she was in hell.”
“Perhaps she is, Miss Roberts—just that.”
“She won’t stay in it long. Her kind doesn’t.”
Lieutenant Valcour held his eyes thoughtfully directed toward the bed.
“Tell me, Miss Roberts, do you think that Mr. Endicott is happier
dead? Let me put it in this fashion: if Mr. Endicott had really been
your brother, would you rather have seen him dead than living in the
emotional hell you picture Mr. Endicott as having lived in?”
His gaze retained its determined fixity.
“No,” she said. “There is always a way out.” It was irresistible. She
found herself having to look, too. Against every advice of instinct
her eyes were drawn toward the bed in company with Lieutenant
Valcour’s . . . peace—there _was_ peace—greater than she had ever seen
when he had been living—peace to a tired heart—a plain, normal, happy
human heart that had been broken on the wheel of too much
complexity. . . . “Oh, I’m lying, Lieutenant! I would—I would—a
million times rather.”
He worked very fast now, having captured the mood. “Were you thinking
of all that when you stood outside on the balcony and watched him
through the window?”
Her eyes clung immovably to the cold closed lids, the mouth, carved in
gentle shadows; her very being seemed withdrawn on private heights. “I
wasn’t on the balcony.”
“And I’d like to know what you did with the gun.”
. . . Perhaps he was laughing at it all now, if people laugh in
heaven. He and her brother. They would have met and be laughing at it
all together. But they wouldn’t be laughing at her. . . . “There
wasn’t any need to use the gun, Lieutenant.”
“Then what did you do with it?”
“Put it back in the bottom of my trunk.” . . . He’d know, now, the
exact reason why she had done the things that she had done. People
know everything in heaven—sort of an enveloping awareness—like
lightning darting brilliantly to immediate comprehension at its
target—target—gun?—_gun_. Her face was bleak ivory. “What did you say,
Lieutenant?”
“I had just asked you, Miss Roberts, what you did with the gun, and
you told me that you put it back again in the bottom of your trunk.”
Her eyes, as she looked at him, were strangely devoid of fear.
“Then if I told you that, you’ll find it there.”
“It wasn’t the wisest place to put it, Miss Roberts.”
“It doesn’t matter much.”
“You mean you don’t care?”
“Not just that. I’m speaking about the gun. I never fired it.”
“Then why did you hide it?”
“Because it’s illegal to have a gun.”
“Then why did you have one, Miss Roberts?”
“It’s one my brother gave me over twelve years ago. I’ve always kept
it with me.”
“What calibre is it?”
“A Colt .38.”
The bullet in Lieutenant Valcour’s pocket had been fired from a
Colt .38.
“And to-night you were going to use it to save Mr. Endicott by
shooting him.”
“No, Lieutenant. I was going to use it to shoot Mrs. Endicott if she
attempted to get near him again.”
“Again?”
“Why, yes, Lieutenant. She went out of the room last night right after
he had knocked and said good-bye.”
“Out into the hallway?”
“Yes.”
“When did she come back?”
“She didn’t come back.”
“Then when was the next time you saw her?”
“When you rang for me—after you had found Mr. Endicott in the
cupboard.”
“And you think it was Mrs. Endicott who put him there.” Lieutenant
Valcour thought for a moment of the broken finger nail of Mrs.
Endicott’s otherwise immaculate hand. “But why, Miss Roberts, should
she kill her—tiger?”
“Perhaps Mr. Hollander could tell you that better than I.”
“And why did you get a gun to prevent Mrs. Endicott from going again
to her husband, when you knew she was under the influence of a
narcotic, that she was unconscious, and couldn’t possibly move?”
“Because, Lieutenant, she never drank the narcotic.”