Chapter XIII: Will-O’-The-Wisp

The love of drama which lay back of Margot’s histrionic talent, and which had always made her create situations out of material from which the unimaginative could weave nothing, now made her eyes shine with the sheer delight of the artist who first creates and then interprets. The scientist was in the background for the moment; only the actress stood smiling and looking from one mystified face to another.

Gene’s puzzled frown changed suddenly to a smile of encouragement and understanding. He caught her mood and threw it back to her, with a humorous sympathy that quickened a tenderness for him which flashed in her eyes and curled the corners of her mouth. It was rather thrilling to have such an absorbed audience, inclusive of Gene with his adoring belief in her powers of analysis, and cleverness in general.

“If it won’t bore any of you,” she began, her smile broadening at their eager denials, “I’ll tell you just what my process of deduction has been in this case, up to this point. Mr. Hart, what puzzles you most of all?”

“The matter of the lights on the carpet,” he said quickly.

“Isn’t that funny,” she said, her smile solely for Hart. “That’s just where I was going to begin my explanation. Well--first of all, the flame _I_ saw was my own match, of course. But the one Boyle saw was of a very different character--a most singular character, in fact. Moreover, if there had been witnesses here at favorable moments, both before and after, I believe they would have seen it too.”

“Sure, it was just like me own poor luck. I’ll be thinking, that it was meself was seein’ the quare lights!” Boyle was far too engrossed with his subject to be conscious of Hart’s glance of disapproval.

“That _was_ a question of luck, you’re right.” Margot smiled at Boyle. “It was the merest chance that others didn’t see the same thing. Have any of you ever heard of what is called in Latin the _ignis fatuus_?”

Gene nodded his head, and Hart said: “You mean what’s commonly called the will-o’-the-wisp?”

“Glory be!” It was Boyle again, irrepressible and oblivious of his superior’s scowl. “It’s what you’ll be seein’ in graveyards of a dark night!”

“Some call it a ‘corpse-candle,’” contributed Quinlan, not to be outshone by his comrade. “There’s many in the auld country that’s seen it, I’m tellin’ you, Miss.”

“Surely,” agreed Margot. “Millions of people in all quarters of the world believe in it, and many have seen the thing called will-o’-the-wisp, but not necessarily in graveyards. I saw it once myself. I was riding a horse through a dark patch of woods, and the weird thing came out from the underbrush and shot across the road right in front of my horse. He shied horribly and almost threw me.”

“What did it look like, Margot?” Gene was trying vainly to make his own deductions.

“Like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was like a small, live thing, made of fire, or charged with electricity. It rolled and danced its way along, keeping close to the ground. The encyclopedias admit that dead animal and vegetable matter exhales a phosphorescent glow under certain conditions. They are not sure that it ever seeps up from a coffin, through several feet of tightly-packed earth, but they don’t deny the possibility.”

“Anything’s possible, I suppose,” muttered Hart. “I’m just coming to that conclusion. Well, go on, Miss Anstruther. You’ve certainly got me guessing.”

“A great French writer once said that ‘he who pronounces a thing impossible, commits an imprudence,’ so you’re playing safe, Mr. Hart,” she said with a laugh. “Of course, all great mysteries raise the question, ‘Can such things be?’ I fully believe that, within the bounds of physical law, unproved and amazing phenomena may occur. And I believe that the light that flickered on this floor--the one Boyle saw--was a will-o’-the-wisp, from the severed arm of Stella Ball.”

Everyone stared at her, and Boyle heaved a great sigh of relief. It was as if her explanation had dispelled the shadow of the supernatural, which was all that concerned or interested him. Then Quinlan, as superstitious as Boyle, but with a quicker mind, or a more practical one, asked a question which Margot had expected to come from Hart.

“What about the hand that doused the flame, Miss?”

“Oh, that’s quite simple. It was the hand of a person very much alive and, I believe, dangerous.”

“Came to that conclusion myself,” said Hart. Well, well, she thought, for the third time, Hart wasn’t at all a fool. Then he asked her sharply: “Whose hand? Have you got that far?”

“Sure, if she could tell you that, Chief, the Mayor ought to make her Police Commissioner!” Quinlan’s sarcasm was heavy, but it amused Margot.

“The hand,” she began solemnly, “was the hand of the man Murchison, who stole the radium in the first place, and who is, in my opinion, the only major criminal in the whole affair.”

“Sure, it was the old devil,” Stella agreed eagerly. “Just like the old crook to come snoopin’ round. He couldn’t bear to lose it. But how the hell did he get in here without your seein’ him?”

No one objected to the girl’s swearing. It seemed rather to give vent to the general sentiment.

“Yes, how?” Hart was frowning again. “You don’t mean you think he was in the room while you were in bed, and while Boyle was watching later? Where could he have hidden, I’d like to know?”

“Just a _minute_!” Margot couldn’t control a low laugh at Hart’s impatience. “Murchison was _not_ in this room. If he _had_ been he’d have been caught. But his _hand_ was! Look! I’ll show you.”

She pointed to the small register with its iron grill-work, a few inches above the level of the floor, in the wall against which the head of the bed had stood. Mrs. Bellew, up to that moment obediently silent and motionless in her corner, came across the room with dilated eyes. She stood, as did the others, staring at the spot indicated by Margot, who was asking Hart to test it and telling him that he would find it loose. Murchison, she asserted, had loosened it.

“Do you see?” she said eagerly. “The hole’s big enough to let through a hand and arm. It would be quite possible for a long arm to reach to the spot where the lights appeared.”

“And it’s a long arm he had. I remember it well!” Mrs. Bellew could no longer keep silent.

Hart fumbled with the grill-work. It gave way under his fingers and slid to one side. A dark hole gaped in the wall.

“I’ll be damned if you’re not right!” Hart exploded. “But I still don’t get the part about the lights.” He stood up and stared at Margot inquiringly.

“It’s like this, Mr. Hart. Murchison has been tunneling through from the adjoining house. I calculate that he’d almost finished his job the night the trouble started--trouble for me, I mean,” she added with a laugh. “Of course it’s been awfully slow work. Once he got the grill loosened, he was able to reach in and suppress the lights on the rug--over and over again. He must have thought that the light from my match was like the others he’d seen. The point is, he couldn’t risk letting _any_ flame or light, call attention to the secret chamber underneath.”

“Fine!” Hart’s thin face glowed with satisfaction and understanding. “But there’s just one thing, Miss Anstruther, which I don’t get. Why didn’t Murchison pick some quiet afternoon when he could have felt fairly sure the room wasn’t occupied, and sneak in by the roof, the way the girl did?”

“I think I’ve checked up on that,” Margot said quietly. She turned to the landlady. “Isn’t it a fact, Mrs. Bellew, that between Stella’s tenancy and mine, this room was occupied by two women?”

“Yes, dearie, a couple of cranky old maids they were, hipped on the subject of thieves breaking in and stealing their valuables, although I never could see what they had that anybody’d want.”

“So one or the other of these women was always in the room? Is that right?”

“You’re right, Miss Anstruther. It was that roof they were most scared of. They wouldn’t trust no locks or bars.”

Margot turned shining eyes to Hart. “Isn’t that your answer?” she asked him eagerly. “Aren’t you convinced?”

“I sure am.” His dry, inexpressive face showed a degree of enthusiasm that flattered Margot more subtly than his admiring: “There aren’t many detectives on the Force as good as you are, Miss Anstruther. I’m here to tell the world that!”

“I don’t believe, Hart, that you’ve got one quite so good!” Gene’s eulogy was accompanied by a glance of such mute admiration that Margot had to stifle a mad desire to run to him and throw her arms around his neck, regardless of her audience.

Then the natural-born pessimist in Hart came to the front.

“It’s too bad,” he said gloomily, “that we didn’t have this information three days ago. The old fellow’s had plenty of time to make his getaway. He won’t be easy to find.”

“You may be right, but my opinion of Murchison is that he simply couldn’t tear himself away and leave that radium behind.”

“You’re right, Miss!” Stella once more became articulate.

“I’m almost sure he’s still living right next door. He wouldn’t start tunneling till late at night. I suggest that you go and take a look.” She pointed to the wall.

“Ask whoever owns the house next door to let you examine the room corresponding to this one.”

Hart, full of doubts, but ready by now to follow any lead suggested by Margot, marshaled his men, and departed, taking Stella with him. Before they left the room, Margot went up to Stella, and put her hand with a kindly pressure on the girl’s thin shoulder.

“My dear,” she said softly, “I don’t know anything about you; where you came from, or what. But I do believe that you’ve been more sinned against than sinning, from the very beginning--whatever that beginning was. Perhaps you’ll tell me some day. In the meantime, my dear, try to believe in my sincere sympathy. I’m going to stand by you and see that you get a square deal, first and last. I don’t mean merely the trial which I’m afraid you’ll have to stand. I mean _after_ that. I’m going to help you every way I can--a good job, a decent home, all the rest of it.”

She took Stella’s left hand in hers and gave it a little squeeze. She smiled into her eyes--eyes as naturally distrustful as a cat’s, but into which came a quivering light of gratitude and animal affection such as a child feels for those who give it tenderness and love. The beauty of trust and tenderness in Margot’s lovely face, had conquered the girl’s ugly spirit.

Margot dismissed or rather escaped the landlady and her inevitable bombardment of questions and excited conjectures by telling her that her head ached from the long strain, and that she must rest, then go for a walk and fresh air. In her room upstairs, to which she had beckoned Gene, she dropped wearily into an armchair, let him light a cigarette for her, and closed her eyes, slowly inhaling and blowing the smoke out from her parted lips. Gene sat quite still, smoking and watching her, but venturing no word nor caress. It was the most complete demonstration he could have made, of unity with her, and intelligent devotion.

When Margot finally opened her eyes and looked at him, she said softly:

“Gene, dear, I didn’t realize what a brick you are--just the _kind_ of a brick I like best,” she added with one of her humorous twists to commonplace things, and a twinkle in her gray eyes.

“You flatter me,” he said smiling, but not moving from his chair. Again she was astonished at his understanding of her. She wasn’t quite ready for any demonstrative expression of his feeling for her, and he knew it. Suddenly she felt that she would be ready for it sooner than she had supposed possible.

“The thing I like best,” she went on, “is that you’ve let me rest here, and haven’t asked me a single question, and all the time I know you’ve just been seething with a desire to ask one _particular_ question, ‘ain’t it the truth?’” She laughed at the surprised widening of his eyes.

“If you know that much, I won’t have to ask it,” he said, his smile warming to a grin of appreciation of her quick wit.

“Question and answer--I’ll supply both. You’re wondering if I have the least idea, or rather an _opinion_, as to who the man was who came with Murchison the night Stella was injured. Well, my dear old scout, I certainly have--more than either an idea or an opinion. I’ve got a life-sized conviction--otherwise known as a _hunch_!”

“And _I’m_ thinking,” Gene said quickly, “that either I’m reading your mind with uncanny ease, or else I’m more of a sleuth than I supposed, for I know whom you mean--your mystery-man, with the pale eyes--your Superfilm director, Frederick Stoner.”

“By jove!” she said with boyish eagerness. “You certainly are getting on! I’m thrilled, I’m proud of you, Gene!”

“Well, I’ve gotten that far, but I’m damned if I see just how he’s been actually mixed up in it, except that I’ve followed your deductions pretty closely, and perhaps thought transference had something to do with it. I knew you meant Stoner, and that’s all I do know.”

“Didn’t his picture, _The Masque of Life_, give you a clue--I mean something more than your first wrong guess about the powers of radium?”

“Certainly! The impression was vague at first, but afterwards, when I listened to some of the things you brought out, I made sense out of two things: Stoner’s evident knowledge, superficial though it might be--of radium, and his attitude from the beginning, of being so eager to have you drop the mystery. Those two things seem to join up in my mind to indicate that Stoner must have had some connection with the theft of the radium. Is that what you mean, Margot?”

“No, not that he was involved in the theft of it. He would be too cautious for anything like that, and besides, impossible as he is in some ways, he’s _not_ a crook, whether from lack of nerve or inclination, I don’t know. I’ll give you another guess,” she challenged him.

“My mind’s a blank. Go on, dear. My curiosity threatens to overpower me.”

“Well--here’s the dope, as Stella Ball would put it. For days my suspicion regarding Stoner has been growing. That picture merely confirmed it. I felt instinctively that his _blah_ about publicity was just that--blah--bunk. I knew that he was afraid of _something_. It was for his own sake, not mine, that he wanted me to drop the case. That meant he had something to conceal. And then, don’t forget that queer look I used to see in his eyes, every now and then. The look I first noticed when I gave this house as my address. But still I was vague as to the real motive back of it all.”

“And that picture supplied the missing link of cause and effect?” Gene asked with quick grasp of her chain of thought.

“Righto! That first, then Stella’s story about the mysterious ‘fat man,’ who didn’t want to buy the radium but only _rent_ it. Now _why_ would a movie director want to rent radium from a crook? Again, answer and question, both supplied while you wait.” Her laugh was infectious. “Now listen carefully, old dear. Stoner’s of the old school--full of notions about impressing the poor, long-suffering public, with the wildest sort of hoakum. And he’s rather ignorant, outside of his business. What he knew about things such as radium, you could stuff into a thimble.”

“I get you,” Gene interrupted eagerly. “That radium machine in the picture! He must have been working on that picture just at the time Stella disappeared. He got to a certain point, then he was stumped,--couldn’t get the effects he wanted, so he decided to try to get hold of some radium. Must have read about the theft from the Fellowe Institute, but how the devil did he tie up with Murchison?”

“That’s something we may or may not find out. All depends on what we _do_ with Stoner.” Again she laughed, overcome with humor at remembrance of Stoner’s weak attempts to fake radium. “Wasn’t it _funny_ the way he made that diabolical machine glow in the dark, and shoot out rays like forked lightning? He must have thought that it had those properties. About as much like _radium_ as mud! But how sore he must have been, with his bug about realism, when events forced him to get his effects by hoakum, and rotten hoakum at that!”

“Speaking of ‘hoakum,’ may I be permitted, my dear girl, to outrage your feelings by applying just that word to most of your eloquence on the subject of ‘ignis fatuus’--‘corpse candle’--‘will-o’-the-wisp’--whatever it’s called?” Gene grinned at her teasingly.

“You’d outrage my _intelligence_--and your own--if you didn’t regard my eloquence on the subject in just that light. Of course there’s more than a grain of truth as to the unproved yet undeniable possibilities regarding the phosphorescence from dead animal and vegetable matter. But in this case I skimmed lightly over thin ice--weak logic--in certain places.”

“Notably,” Gene interjected quickly, “in your ignoring of the fact that if the desiccated arm had been preserved from decay by heat and dryness, no exhaling of phosphorescence would be possible. I had to laugh at the way Hart swallowed whole all you said.”

“Perhaps he didn’t, really, but he seemed to. He’d been so darn skeptical, that when finally I got him on the run in my exposition of events, and he was eating right out of my hand, I couldn’t resist the temptation to see how far I could go. Besides, Gene, I think my imagination took the bit in its teeth. I almost believed what I was saying, once I’d started.”

“Briefly, as I see it, Margot, the light you saw was a match, and Boyle, with his superstitious fears, might have seen anything, and you don’t actually _know_ that there _were_ any lights at any time, for Murchison to tap out. Isn’t that it?”

“Certainly. The night I got the scare, undoubtedly he saw my match and thought it safer to put it out while waiting for a propitious moment for what he planned to do.”

“Well, to return to Stoner. I can’t see why you’re in doubt as to what to do with _that_ bird.”

“Just because, dear, Stoner’s more of a fool than a knave, in my humble opinion. If Murchison is caught--which I’m sure he’ll be--and if Murchison squeals, as they call it, on Stoner--which I’m not so sure of, for rogues sometimes have strange spasms of honor--then of course he could be punished for trafficking in stolen goods. But _I’m_ not going to be the one to denounce him to the police. After all, he hasn’t committed a _crime_.”

“Good Lord! You’re not going to let him go scot free!”

“No--not exactly.” The smile on Margot’s lips was a trifle feline in quality. “I have a subtle revenge and punishment planned, which I’m going to start going to-morrow. My unseen weapon is to be Corinne Delamar. Can’t you picture the rumpus she’ll start? First a personal one with her quondam lover, then one staged on a larger scale with the entire Superfilm organization as props, actors and camera men.”

“By George, Margot! You’d have been invaluable to the subtle gentlemen at the time of the Inquisition!”

“Not quite so bad as that, am I?” She asked, laughing.

She read his answer in his eyes, and his sudden spring from his chair, as he came toward her. At that most inopportune moment--her heart said it was inopportune--the telephone rang. She had had a connection put in her new quarters. She ran to the instrument, brushing by Gene’s outstretched arms, and took up the receiver.

“Hello! Yes… yes… Fine! All right!” He heard her call into the mouthpiece, then she turned to him, and seized his arm excitedly.

“They’ve arrested Murchison!”