The Waxworks Murder

above all that the doors were numbered. Wait! Another snag. We had supposed that none of the room doors were locked. It now seemed that you had to push one of those buttons downstairs in order to release the catch. On the other hand, if they pressed the button as soon as you got there to avoid embarrassment later, Galant's door might now be unlocked. The door and window of the ground-floor private rooms were both in the same wall; but up here, according to the plan, each room had two windows looking out on the court, with the door in the wall opposite. Here it was. Eighteen. For a moment I could hardly bring myself to try the knob. But the door was open. I slid into Galant's room and closed it behind me.

It was dark. But I could see a glimmer of light through one window, whose leaves were open. Heavy draperies there trembled in a cold wind. The noise of the orchestra floated up faintly. Where the devil was the light-switch? No, hold on! - it wouldn't do to risk a light up here. There might be watchers in the court who knew Galant was still downstairs. But I had to find a place to hide. Clever lad! Walk straight into a devilish dangerous situation like this, volunteer to get evidence without even knowing whether there might be a place of concealment. I strained my eyes in the gloom; but the lashes would catch uncomfortably in the eyeholes of the mask, and my vision was hampered. Lifting it up on my forehead, I hurried over to the open window and peered out. The glass was opaque and dark red. (Dark red glass-slivers found in Odette Duchene's face, and a smashed window in the room next to this.) I breathed deeply, the cold air grateful on my hot face, and looked out. Once free of that strangling heat downstairs, you could at least think sanely. ... All around, in a vast oblong, dark walls rose against the starlight, their windows glimmering. It was a good twenty-foot drop from this window to the stone court below. Eight or nine feet away from the walls rose the domed glass roof of the main hall. It rose somewhat higher than the window where I stood, so I was unable to see the court except immediately below; but at my right now, I knew, must be the passage from the lounge, and, far down to the left, the passage leading to what were fantastically called the manager's quarters. From my position, the glass roof was too high for me to see down into the main hall; I saw only dim light through grimy panes, and heard the orchestra playing.

Then the moon came out. Its bluish pallor slid across the roof-tops, silvering them, and then probed into the narrow court below. The air chilled my breast through a soggy shirt-front, for I saw there a motionless figure in a white mask, staring up at this window. The mask looked blue and hideous. I heard faintly the throb of traffic from the boulevards. . ..

They were watching. I jerked back from the window, and looked round rather wildly. Moonlight lay in a broad bar across the carpet; it touched heavy chairs of carven oak, and a Chinese screen, woven in silver filigree, shook glimmering patterns mockingly. Still I could make out no distinct outline; but with white-mask standing down there in the court, gloating on the windows, there could be no light. I took a step forward, to blunder into a chair. It would be madness to get behind that screen — the first place anybody would look. Then the orchestra stopped playing. Absolute stillness fell like pinioning arms, but for a wind creaking on the windows; it added a last sinister closing of doors to this prison. Was the whole damned thing a trap ?

A lock clicked, and across the floor shot a narrow line of light. O God! here they come!

There was only one thing to do. The Chinese screen was not more than two feet from the window; I dodged behind it, with a cold feeling of suffocation and dizziness. Silence. I stood there listening to the bump of my heart....

'My dear Gina,' said the voice of Galant, 'I was just beginning to wonder what had happened to you. A moment till I get the lights on.'

Footsteps on the thick rug. The scrape of a lamp chain. A barred circle of brightness sprang up on the ceiling. It hardly smudged the darkness; my screen was still entirely in shadow. Then - he still did not know? The tone of his voice was lazy, soothing, undisturbed. Wait! More footfalls, coming in my direction. His elbow knocked against the screen... .

'We'll just close this window,' he remarked. Then, lovingly: 'Here, Mariette! Here, girl! Curl up here!'

So he had the cat along with him. I heard a sort of snuffling; then the casement leaves of the window closed with a scrape and bang, and I heard the heavy catch twisted into place. Then I saw a small vertical brightness extend from the top to the bottom of my screen, at the joining of two panels. By putting my eye to it I had a view of a small segment of the room.

Gina Prevost sat with her back to me on a cushioned lounge, leaning back as though unutterably tired. The lamplight lay on her brown-gold hair, and on the black fur of an evening wrap. Two tulip glasses stood on the lamp table, and beyond them a tripod holding a champagne-cooler with the gilt foil of a bottle gleaming over it. (I could not imagine by what miracle I had failed to knock the whole thing over when I crossed the room in the dark.) Then Galant moved into my line of vision. His mask was off. On the big face was again that expression of complacency like thin oil. He touched his nose, as seemed to be a habit with him; his yellow-green eyes were full of solicitude, but his mouth seemed pleased. For a moment he stood studying her.

'You look unwell, my dear,' he murmured.

'Is it surprising?' Her voice was cold, rather monotonous; she seemed to be holding herself in. She lifted her hand with a cigarette, and a deep gust of smoke was blown across the light.

'There's a friend of yours here to-night, my dear.' 'Oh?'

'I think you'll be interested,' deprecatingly. 'Young Robiquet.'

She did not comment. He studied her again, his eyelids flickering slightly, as though he examined a safe door which would not open to the usual combination. He went on:

'We told him that one of his windows had been broken - by a cleaning-woman. The bloodstains, of course, have been cleaned up.'

A pause. Then she crushed out her cigarette, slowly, on an ash-tray.

'Etienne' - a note of command - 'Etienne, pour me a glass of champagne. And then sit down here beside me.'

He opened the bottle and poured out two glasses. All the time he was watching her, with an ugly look, as though wondering what it meant. As he sat down beside her, she turned. I saw the full lovely face, the moist pink Hps, and the sudden steady blankness of her look at him....

'Etienne, I am going to the police.'

'Ah! – About what?'

'About Odette Duchene's death. ... It came to me this afternoon. I have never had a genuine emotion in my life. No, don't interrupt! Did I ever say I loved you? I look at you now' - she surveyed him in a rather puzzled way, and it was like a lash - 'and all I can see is an unpleasant-looking man with a red nose.' All of a sudden she laughed. 'That I ever felt anything! All I ever knew was how to sing, I poured so much of emotion into that, do you hear, I was so strung up always, I conceived of everything in terms of grand passion - I was a neurotic, grabbing fool - and so. ... ' She made a gesture, spilling the champagne. 'What are you driving at?'

'And last night! Last night I saw my fearless gentleman. I went to the club to meet Claudine, and I walked into the passage when the murderer stabbed her. ... And then, Etienne?'

'Well?' His voice was rising, dangerous and hoarse.

'I was sick with fright. What else? I ran out of that club, up the boulevard - and met you coming out of your car. You were safety, support, and I threw myself at you when I could hardly stand. ... And what does my Titan of strength do when he hears?' She leaned forward, smiling fixedly. 'He puts me into his car and tells me to wait for him. Is he going back to the club to see what has happened? Is he going to shield me? - No, Etienne. He runs straight to a convenient night club, where he can sit down openly and establish an alibi for himself in case anybody questions him! And he stays there while I am lying insensible in the back of his car.'

I had disliked Galant before that. But I had not felt the surge of murderous rage which overcame me when I heard this. I had no longer any fear of discovery. To smash that nose into a deeper red pulp against his face ... there would be sheer pleasure. Evil which possesses courage you can respect, like Richard Humpback's; but this! His hard face was swelling as he turned it to her.

'What else have you to say?' he asked, with an effort.

'Don't,' she said.

Her breast was heaving, and a glassiness had crept into her eyes when she saw his big hand move up along the back of the lounge.

'Don't do it, fitienne. Let me tell you something. Just before I left the theatre to-night I sent a