“Yes?”
“Yes. And it is quite within the range of possibility that if you didn’t make them, then Mrs. Endicott did.”
Hollander looked very worried, very tired.
“You’re bluffing, Lieutenant,” he said.
“And you’re a very frightened man, Mr. Hollander.”
“Are you going to arrest Mrs. Endicott?”
“That depends.”
“Because she didn’t do it.”
“Why didn’t she, Mr. Hollander?”
“Because she loved her husband.”
“I wish you would explain to me how it is that she loved him so much that she wanted either to commit suicide or else kill him.”
“Pride, Lieutenant.”
Lieutenant Valcour tested the possibility of that angle. It could not, he felt, be ignored. As many outrages were yearly committed under the goadings of pride as there were committed because of jealousy and hate.
“You believe, Mr. Hollander, that the other women whom her husband played around with hurt her pride so keenly that her love became coloured with hate?”
“Why not?” A certain fierceness crept into Hollander’s voice. His eyes were shining very brightly. “People don’t know her as I know her. Nobody knows her the way I know her.”
Lieutenant Valcour shrugged. “She made you hate your friend—a man you’d been through the war with—whose life you had saved.”
“That’s the bunk, Lieutenant.”
“But you did, didn’t you?”
“Oh, sure, it’s all true enough, about it happening—but that stuff doesn’t last.”
“Friendship?”
“Among men? Hell, no.” Hollander jerked his head fretfully. “Gratitude gets damned tiresome, Lieutenant, not only to give it but to get it.”
“Especially,” Lieutenant Valcour said gently, “if a woman comes between.”
“No—no—no.”
There was a complete and very convincing finality in the three negations.
“But you do love Mrs. Endicott.”
“I worship her.”
“And she?”
“I don’t know.” There was nothing obscure in Hollander’s expression now, and his eyes were frankly, genuinely sincere. “Why should she? I’m nothing. Herbert was everything.”
Lieutenant Valcour almost regretted having to do so when he said, “Then why, Mr. Hollander, does she address you in her notes as ‘Tom, darling’?”
Hollander didn’t answer for a minute. He considered the question quite seriously. “I guess it’s just because she’s sorry for me,” he said.
“And I, personally, think that that’s a pretty bum guess.”
“No—listen here, Lieutenant …”
Hollander’s voice began to wander. His sentences became broken—meaningless. It was with a sense of relief that Lieutenant Valcour saw the door open and two stretcher carriers come in followed by Dr. Worth and the ambulance surgeon. Hollander, as they carried him out, was unconscious again.
Lieutenant Valcour detained Dr. Worth at the door.
“There is something I should like to ask you,” he said.
XIX
3:15 a.m.—The Properties of Horror
“Doctor,” Lieutenant Valcour said, “our immediate concern is to find out who fired that shot. The principal reason is quite academic: we want to catch and arrest the person who did it. A secondary reason is that many people who reach the state of mental unbalance where they are impelled to commit murder don’t stop with the crime. They’ve tasted blood. They are in a state of abnormal acuteness, and are driven by a new fear: that of discovery and capture. To prevent being captured, they reason, why not kill again? There is nothing to be lost. You see, they can only be electrocuted once. I am presupposing, of course, that the criminal is an outsider—some person at present hidden in the house, who will make some desperate effort at escape. It is a supposition that must be entertained, even though it is not a very good one. I believe that the facts will eventually prove the criminal to be a legitimate inmate.”
“That narrows the field, doesn’t it, Lieutenant, to whoever was in Mrs. Endicott’s room?”
“It does, unless somebody dropped a rope ladder from an upstairs window and got onto the balcony in that way. But I don’t put much stock in those tricks, Doctor, any more than I do in sliding panels and trapdoors. Outside of the badger game I’ve never come across a sliding panel in my life, and I don’t ever expect to, either.”
Dr. Worth was inclined to take the idea more seriously. “But a rope ladder—there might very well be one around the house for an emergency fire escape.”
“All right, who was in the room just above this one? You. Did you come down a rope ladder and shoot Endicott?”
“God’s truth—my dear man—”
“Oh, be sensible, Doctor, of course you didn’t. And who had the room across the hall from you, which also is above the balcony? Mrs. Siddons, the housekeeper. If you saw her, you’d scarcely picture her as hurrying up and down a rope ladder. No, Doctor, whoever was on that balcony came from Mrs. Endicott’s room. We’re back to the same three people: Mrs. Endicott, her maid, and her nurse.”
“But Mrs. Endicott is out of the question, Lieutenant. She is still under the influence of the narcotic I gave her.”
“How about the nurse, Doctor? Have you known her long?”
“Known her? Only for the several cases she has worked on with me. But she comes from the most reputable agency in the city. How about the maid?”
“I don’t know.”
“She is just as good a candidate for suspicion as Miss Vickers, isn’t she? Why under the sun should Miss Vickers want to shoot Endicott?”
“I’m not seriously considering Miss Vickers at all. It’s perfectly obvious that whoever did shoot Endicott was either directly responsible for the earlier attack during the evening or else involved in it as an accomplice.”
“That might still include the maid.”
“It certainly might. I wonder if you’d mind asking Miss Vickers to come in here. I’d like to question her first.”
Dr. Worth nodded toward Endicott’s body, covered with a sheet on the bed. “Miss Vickers, Lieutenant, being a nurse is naturally accustomed to seeing the dead, but it will be rather gruesome for the maid if you question her in here, too.”
“Very gruesome, Doctor.”
“Well, you know best. You’re liable to have a fine case of hysterics on your hands.”
“I’ll risk it.”
Dr. Worth left and closed the door. There again swept over Lieutenant Valcour, with the solitude, that
