Chapter I: Keep My Own Counsel

When I arrived at the big gaudy house, where I had watched Shirley singing last evening, the coroner’s men were filing out; they’d completed their examination. Police were all about the doors, keeping back a crowd; the officers passed me and Fred came down almost immediately and took me into the long, gay room where Shirley had played and sung.

The shades were drawn to-day but as they were white they let in plenty of light; the glass doors to the hall were closed and so, though we could talk without being heard, we could be seen from the hall and we could see most of the lower part of the house and also the stairs.

Fred pointed first to a French window, which opened on the lawn upon the lake side; it had been forced open and now was braced shut, with the catch torn out, the screws hanging.

“Here’s where he came in,” Fred told me.

“Who?” I said.

“Jerry.”

“He was alone?”

“Nobody else was seen. Apparently he went first to the sideboard in the dining room.” Fred gazed across the hall. “He made a noise there.”

When Fred stopped, I commented, “The papers say he made it intentionally.”

Fred nodded. “He wasn’t after silver. That was simply a bluff. He brought a bag with him and emptied two drawers into it. There it is.”

A canvas sack, like a mail pouch, lay in the corner and bulged half full. I didn’t bother to examine it. I was trying to figure out Fred’s attitude towards me: he wasn’t expressing much but keeping hold of himself pretty firm.

“Jerry made the rattle with the silver,” Fred went on, “to draw father downstairs. He did it.

“As father appeared on the landing, Jerry fired from here--from beside this silk hanging. He fired twice; and neither before the shots nor between them nor afterwards did Jerry make any attempt to hide, in spite of the portière right there; and the light was on. He hit father both times; and father’s pistol went off in his hand as he was falling; father fired wild, undoubtedly, but in Jerry’s general direction.” Fred showed the bullet hole near the door. “Jerry wasn’t hit; but he did a complete job with his gun. He hit father first----”

I stopped Fred. “I know from the papers,” I said.

“Well, they had that right. Father lived about five minutes. He fell on the landing and was dead before they carried him up.”

Fred’s voice cracked; and I put my hand on his arm without saying anything. Old Win, if he had played the fool towards the end of his life, at least had showed good nerve at the finish; and when everything else was said, he was Fred’s father. When Fred was a boy, Winton Scofield had been a good father; no one called him a fool then. Every one knows the thousand touches of memories of fondness from a father; and Fred was thinking of them.

He went on telling: “Shirley ran down to him as soon as he fell; she must have been nearly behind him when he got the second bullet. She wasn’t hurt but she certainly took a big chance to help father. Rowan reached him maybe a minute later.”

“Rowan, the butler?” I said.

“That’s right.”

“How long has he been in your family?”

“I can’t remember when he hasn’t been.”

“He saw the actual shooting, as the papers say?”

“Not the firing of the shots. Father was down when Rowan arrived at the top of the stairs; but Jerry wasn’t gone. Rowan saw him plainly. That’s one of the surest things.”

“What is?”

“That Jerry showed himself; he made no effort either to hide when father came down or to get away immediately afterwards.”

“Where was Thurston when he saw Jerry?”

“He’d just come in from the wing through that door.”

“He shot at Jerry, they say.”

“Yes; and missed. Jerry fired once at him and grazed him. Then Jerry got out.”

Fred and I looked each other over. I was thinking, “Jerry didn’t do that but it is no use telling you so.”

Fred said to me, “You ran into Shirley last night.”

I admitted it.

He went on. “After you’d had me to lunch to talk over father’s affairs, Steve. I’ve not mentioned that to the reporters or even to the police yet; but of course I’ve been thinking about it.”

“Mentioning it?” I said.

“I wanted this talk with you first, Steve. Why did you call me yesterday and afterwards smash Shirley’s car? What did you know?”

I stared at him and shook my head.

“Yesterday at lunch,” Fred kept at me, “you asked me particularly about father’s engagements for last night; you asked whether Shirley would drive down to meet him. I told you she would.”

I had nothing to do but to nod at this.

Fred asked directly, “You smashed into her car to stop her?”

I stared at him and kept thinking of Jerry’s “Not a word to any one” and the message Klangenberg brought me from “Kidnapped” and “Westward Ho” which begged me “to stick.” Yet I had to say something here or I might as well, since my actions already had spoken for me.

“Yes, Fred; I smashed into her to stop her from meeting your father.”

“I was sure of it. You had reason to think, yesterday, that something was going to happen to him?”

There was nothing for it but another nod at this.

“Where did you get your reason?”

I might as well have told him; he told me that he knew I got it from Jerry. He held the police theory with this variation; I had been having some sort of communication with Jerry through which I had stumbled upon the idea that something was going to happen to Winton Scofield. I had got the notion that it was going to happen through his wife, and so, in my stupid way, I’d driven up to the house deliberately to smash into her car and scare her out of whatever plan she had in her mind.

Fred was emotionally worked up, of course, he believed that I meant well by what I tried to do; he didn’t doubt I meant well now. He didn’t blame me for having supposed when I found something was planned against his father that Shirley was in it.

“That’s what I thought,” he told me, “when Rowan ’phoned me this morning and got me out of bed to tell me, ‘Mr. Fred, your father’s shot.’

“The family--Kenyon and I--always figured, naturally, that money was what Shirley was after. That’s why we fixed his affairs so she could never get much, even if father had wanted to give it to her. He didn’t have it to give; we had him on an allowance. The only big sum she could get in a lump was his life insurance, which he made over to her. He carried it from the old days, nearly half a million.”

Here was some of the stuff I’d come for. All morning my mind had been reaching for a motive, you see,--why old Win Scofield had found a place on Keeban’s board and why his number had come to the top just now. Fred talked on and made it perfectly plain to me.

While he talked, I put myself in Keeban’s place for a while and tried to take things from his point of view. I went back a bit to do this--back a few months to the time when old Win, divorced once more and rejuvenated, had arrived again at the cabarets and resumed beau-ing about with the girls. I thought that when Shirley--or Christina--had met him, she talked him over with Keeban and they’d marked him down between them for easy meat. She married him to get away with the big money old Win was supposed to have but hadn’t; for Fred and Kenyon had seen to that, as I’ve mentioned. Win took her to Paris and brought her back to live with him on an allowance.

Maybe from the first she had had her eyes on the old man’s insurance; but I didn’t think so. I thought, “She got into this marriage with an idea of an easy get-away with a pile; and when Ken and Fred fooled her, she decided to fool them; she saw Keeban again and they decided to get that insurance money. But they had a big difficulty with that; they had to do more than merely ‘croak’ old Win; they had to do it so Shirley would not possibly be connected and so the insurance money would be paid over to her and she could get away with it.”

There, surely, was a job for them when the family and friends thought what they did of Shirley.

Fred was saying to me, “Ken and I got bothered about that insurance. In the first place, we didn’t want Shirley to have the money, half a million for marrying father; then it was costing us over thirty thousand a year to pay the premiums; and, also, we figured it might be dangerous as a temptation.

“Not that we thought Shirley’d kill father directly, Steve; but there’s many a way to shorten a man’s life, indirectly. Father played he was young again. Well, all she’d have to do would be to over-encourage him with her eye on that half million. Anyway, Ken and I decided to stop paying the premiums on that insurance--save ourselves about thirty thousand a year and make father a little safer.”

Of course, this told me why old Win’s number had jumped to the top of the board just now; the sons were stopping his insurance. Fred continued:

“But since the insurance was still in force, I couldn’t help thinking of that when Rowan called me; I couldn’t help thinking Shirley was mixed up in that murder. Then Rowan told me it was Jerry Fanneal who’d shot father and I knew Shirley couldn’t have anything to do with it.”

Fred talked on; but I didn’t pay much attention for a few minutes; for now I could see through the rest of Keeban’s scheme; I could see not only why he had shot Win Scofield, but why he had done it himself and why he had shown himself in the doing, making no attempt to hide.

For he wanted to be seen; he wanted to be identified, particularly by Rowan. For Rowan would identify him, as Rowan did, for Jerry Fanneal; and, so identified, no one would connect Shirley with the murder. Who was Jerry Fanneal, in these days? A wild, irresponsible criminal, a man from nowhere who had betrayed the breeding bestowed upon him and had “reverted.” As he had attacked and robbed Dorothy Crewe, now he had entered Win Scofield’s house and shot him either wantonly or for some old, brooded-over pique; that was what the newspapers assumed and the police and even Win Scofield’s sons who had most hated and doubted Shirley.

Fred was feeling badly over how he’d ridiculed his father the last time he’d talked with me and how he’d mistaken Shirley. “She was right there beside father and she never thought of herself, Rowan says,” Fred repeated to me. “She held him while he died and----”

“How’s she now?” I asked.

“Nearly collapsed. She gave her evidence to the police and afterwards to the coroner. She’s in bed now.”

“Can I see her?”

“You?” said Fred. “Why?”

“She’s accused Jerry.”

“So has Rowan; why don’t you talk to him?”

“I will,” I said, “afterwards. Do you mind asking her if she’ll see me?”

He went up himself and came down with her excuses. But I had expected them and I’d written on one of my cards “Bulls and Beefers”; just that and I’d put it in an envelope unsealed. I knew Fred wouldn’t look in it when he took it up to her.

“She’ll see you,” said Fred when he came down again.

VIII

A LADY DISCREDITS ME.

She was not in bed but was lying upon it in a negligee--a silk and lace, pink and white creation which was originally no garment of grief. She was pink and white herself, except for her bobbed hair of bronze and for her big eyes which were blue. She displayed a good deal of herself, especially the beauty of her bosom; she did this not with any evident design of the moment but probably upon the general principle that it was never a disadvantageous thing for her to do.

She was alone in the room when I entered and Fred Scofield, who came up with me, dropped back at the door. She gazed at me, making hardly a motion, and waited for me to open the meeting.

I did it formally, with that door open behind me; I said the stupid tosh I felt expected to say.

“Shut the door and sit down,” said Shirley.

The first part was important, so I did it; then I strolled to the foot of her bed and stood. She lay looking at me, one hand holding a cigarette box which she tapped with her fingers; but she wasn’t smoking.

I was realizing I had never met up with a murderess before--at least not with a girl who’d done her bit in a bump off for money.

Of course since I had, in my own right, a normal list of acquaintances of fair size, I knew a woman or two who’d shot friend husband; but the moving impulse was not financial. The widow--I mean the woman who immediately made herself the widow--in one case happened upon husband with another lady on the wrong landing; in the other case, she’d become peeved about something purely private and so highly sensational when sobbed out on the witness stand, and followed by an effective faint, that the jury not only justified her but acquitted her with cheers.

The widow Scofield, lying here on the bed before me, failed to fall in that same class in my mind. I doubted if she would in the emotions of any jury; and some doubt of this nature seemed to flit across the eyes of blue which kept watching me. She was gambling, if not with her life itself, at least with her liberty for life; and her stake, if she won, was the neat little sum of five hundred thousand dollars to enhance her joys of freedom.

Elsewhere in this house the aged youth, her husband, lay dead; and whatever was to happen, her chapter with him was concluded and she could not contrive to conceal from me a certain relief at that. Perhaps I imagined it, with my picture of her at her piano last night still haunting my mind; yet I’m not imaginative. I felt her saying to herself, as she gazed at me, “Well, whatever’s to come next, _that’s_ over. Twenty-two with sixty-seven, rejuvenated!”

She said aloud to me, “What did you mean by the words on your card?”

“If you don’t know,” I said, “why did you change your mind, after you had the card, and send for me?”

She didn’t respond; she lay waiting, watchfully, and let me look her over and think her over with all the deliberation I wanted. She seemed to me not so slight as that Christina who’d met me at the river ledge with Keeban; but I knew enough about the effect of negligee, and of a figure loosed from a girdle, to allow for more fullness now. Her hair was bronze; but yellow over that bronze would have been easy enough to manage, especially in the dim light of that dock room. Her manner of speech had changed; yet I was wholly sure she was Christina.

At the next moment, she admitted it. “I know what you meant, Steve,” she said, speaking my name as she had in that room by the river. “You think you have something on me, do you?”

“You’re Christina,” I said.

“Right! Call in my step-son Fred and whoever else you care to; I’ve something to confess which I should have told the police this morning--but I didn’t. Yet it didn’t hurt anything to hold it back. Call him in!”

She sat straight and raised an arm and pointed to the door in some cabaret imitation of a grand gesture. “Open the door,” she ordered me.

I opened it and went out and found Fred. “She’s something to say to us,” I told him. I decided to include nobody else just then, though there were police enough everywhere and all keen to listen. Fred and I went into her room and closed the door. She motioned us to seats beside the bed as though she might be Madame Récamier on her couch receiving a couple of her lesser courtiers.

“Fred, I can tell more about the shooting last night; I’m going to do it,” she said, looking at Fred, not at me. “You can decide how much to give out to the police--to the ‘bulls,’” she added, deliberately blunting her speech and gazing at me. She swung back to Fred.

“I come from the cabarets, you know; maybe you’ve thought sometimes that I come from worse. Anyway, you treated me like you did.”

“I’m sorry,” said Fred and waited.

“That I didn’t come from worse wasn’t any fault of Jerry Fanneal. He was hot after me--hot after me.”

Here was the start of a counter-attack on me; I felt it and demanded, “When was that?”

“Oh, before I married; long before the big surprise to his swell friends and family when he threw Dorothy Crewe into the street. He was comin’ down to the cabarets for a long time. Didn’t you know it, Mr. Steve Fanneal?”

“Yes;” I said. “Often I went with him.”

“But often not; isn’t that so? Tell the truth!” This was a straight challenge.

“Sometimes not,” I granted.

“I guess not! Well, you should’ve seen some of those ‘sometimes.’ The boy was crazy; I seen it!” In her excitement, she was forgetting her “g’s” and the tenses she could speak correctly when she tried to; she was a cabaret Récamier now. “Clean crazy. He kept it under when he was back with his swells and you; but when he was down with us, he blew the lid some distance off, I’m telling you. I made him crazier than most, for he couldn’t get me. He thought I’d fall for money. Not me!

“I was glad to get married to a decent man, if he was a bit old; and glad to get away, believe me! Then we made the mistake of comin’ back. I didn’t want to, as you know; but the boys wanted father and me to cut down expenses. So we had to come. Anyway, with me married and Jerry mixed up with another skirt--and a swell one, too--I figured he’d forget his old grief about me. But you know what he did to his lady friend; well, when he’d made himself all lonely again, he seems to have got me back on his busted brain. Anyway, he sent word to me to come meet him.”

“How did he send word?” This was from me.

“Telephoned.”

“Why didn’t you inform the police?” That was another interjection of mine; and she came back at me through the wide, wide opening I’d left her. “Why didn’t you, when he slipped word to you to meet him?”

Fred failed to interrupt; he was too busy looking and listening. I reserved my reply and she went on:

“He mentioned to me that, if I set a squeal, I’d hear from it; also that I’d better meet him. He wanted money to get away. Of course he couldn’t sell those Crewe diamonds at any sort of price now; there was too much danger in handling them, with everybody watching for ’em; and too much loss if he had ’em cut. He wanted cash money and he thought I could bring it. Remember, a couple a weeks ago,” she said to Fred, “I tried to get some considerable cash from you?”

Fred admitted that.

She said, “That was to give to Jerry Fanneal. I got afraid of him. I wanted him to get out. When I couldn’t raise the cash, I said I’d help him get it from his own family; and so I put up the talk for him to Steve Fanneal.”

“What?” said Fred.

She had to tell him again and when she was through she referred Fred to me. “Let him tell it now.”

She had me in the hole; and she knew it; and Fred saw it. I had no chance at all of convincing Fred that the man I met with her was not Jerry but Keeban. Here was she denying, like everyone else, that Keeban could exist; here was she explaining how Jerry had come to do this murder. I knew better than to try to tell my story.

Shirley carried on. “Jerry and I met him and he got the money. Ten thousand in cash, wasn’t it?” she examined me. “If he denies it, Fred, ask the teller in his bank--last week Thursday he got it.”

“Did you?” asked Fred.

“I did,” I said.

He nodded to Shirley. “Go on.”

“He gave it to Jerry to go away.”

“That’s right?” Fred asked me.

“That’s right,” I had to admit.

Shirley continued, “Then Jerry wanted me. He’s crazy, you see. Sometimes he’s all right, like anybody else; then he’s like when he took that necklace from Dorothy Crewe and tossed her into the street. He said he’d get my husband and then me. Isn’t that true? Didn’t you know Win was in danger?” Again she was at me.

“Yes; but----”

“But you tried to stop it, of course; with wonderful success! Well, I’ve nothing on you there, I tried to stop it too!”

Then she broke into crying; and a great chance I had. There she was, a girl all white and pink in her negligee; and tears, real tears! I got out and was lucky to be able to get.

IX