Walking unhurriedly on bare feet that must have found the tiled floor chilly, she led us straight to a square grayish shape that loomed up ahead. When she halted close to it and said, “There,” I clicked on my light.
The light glittered and glistened on a wide altar of brilliant white, crystal, and silver.
On the lowest of the three altar steps Doctor Riese lay dead on his back.
His face was composed, as if he were sleeping. His arms were straight down at his sides. His clothes were not rumpled, though his coat and vest were unbuttoned. His shirt was all blood. There were four holes in his shirtfront, all alike, all the size and shape that the weapon the girl had given me would have made. No blood was coming from his wounds now, but when I put a hand on his forehead I found it not quite cold. There was blood on the altar steps, and on the floor below, where his noseglasses, unbroken, on the end of their black ribbon, lay.
I straightened up and swung the beam of my light into the girl’s face. She blinked and squinted, but her face showed nothing except that physical discomfort.
“You killed him?” I asked.
Young Collinson came out of his trance to bawl: “No.”
“Shut up,” I told him, stepping closer to the girl, so he couldn’t wedge himself between us. “Did you?” I asked her again.
“Are you surprised?” she inquired quietly. “You were there when my stepmother told of the cursed Dain blood in me, and of what it had done and would do to me and those who touched me. Is this,” she asked, pointing at the dead man, “anything you should not have expected?”
“Don’t be silly,” I said while I tried to figure out her calmness. I had seen her coked to the ears before, but this wasn’t that. I didn’t know what this was. “Why did you kill him?”
Collinson grabbed my arm and yanked me around to face him. He was all on fire.
“We can’t stand here talking,” he cried. “We’ve got to get her out of here, away from this. We’ve got to hide the body, or put it some place where they’ll think somebody else did it. You know how those things are done. I’ll take her home. You fix it.”
“Yeah?” I asked. “What’ll I do? Frame it on one of the Filipino boys, so they’ll hang him instead of her?”
“Yes, that’s it. You know how to—”
“Like hell that’s it,” I said. “You’ve got nice ideas.”
His face got redder. He stammered: “I didn’t—didn’t mean so they’ll hang anybody, really. I wouldn’t want you to do that. But couldn’t it be fixed for him to get away? I—I’d make it worth his while. He could—”
“Turn it off,” I growled. “You’re wasting our time.”
“But you’ve got to,” he insisted. “You came here to see that nothing happened to Gabrielle and you’ve got to go through with it.”
“Yeah? You’re a smart boy.”
“I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’ll pay—”
“Stop it.” I took my arm out of his hands and turned to the girl again, asking: “Who else was here when it happened?”
“No one.”
I played my light around, on the corpse and altar, all over the floor, on the walls, and saw nothing I hadn’t seen before. The walls were white, smooth, and unbroken except for the door we had come through and another, exactly like it, on the other side. These four straight whitewashed walls, undecorated, rose six stories to the sky.
I put the dagger beside Riese’s body, snapped off the light, and told Collinson: “We’ll take Miss Leggett up to her room.”
“For God’s sake let’s get her out of here—out of this house—now, while there’s time!”
I said she’d look swell running through the streets barefooted and with nothing on but a bloodstained nightie.
I turned on the light again when I heard him making noises. He was jerking his arms out of his overcoat. He said: “I’ve got the car at the corner, and I can carry her to it,” and started towards her with the coat held out.
She ran around to the other side of me, moaning: “Oh, don’t let him touch me.”
I put out an arm to stop him. It wasn’t strong enough. The girl got behind me. Collinson pursued her and she came around in front. I felt like the center of a merry-go-round, and didn’t like the feel of it. When Collinson came in front of me, I drove my shoulder into his side, sending him staggering over against the side of the altar. Following him, I planted myself in front of the big sap and blew off steam: “Stop it. If you want to play with us you’ve got to stop cutting up, and do what you’re told, and let her alone. Yes or no?”
He straightened his legs under him and began: “But, man, you can’t—”
“Let her alone,” I said. “Let me alone. The next break you make I’m going to sock your jaw with the flat of a gun. If you want it now, say so. Will you behave?”
He muttered: “All right.”
I turned around to see the girl, a gray shadow, running towards the open door, her bare feet making little noise on the tiles. My shoes made an ungodly racket as I went after her. Just inside the door I caught her with an arm around her waist. The next moment my arm was jerked away, and I was flung aside, smacking into the wall, slipping down on one knee. Collinson, looking eight feet tall in the darkness, stood close to me, storming down at me, but all I
