“Have you planned just what you will do?”
“With a woman like Mrs. Endicott there wouldn’t be any use in planning anything. All that I can do in advance is to create an atmosphere and then do whatever occurs to me as being best when the proper time comes. There won’t be anything complicated about it.”
“Just what sort of an atmosphere, Lieutenant?”
“Well, in the first place I’ll call the nurse outside into the corridor and you can tell her not to go back in again until I say so. You might suggest to her that she go down to the kitchen and make some coffee—she seems a little dippy about coffee—or something. Then we’ll leave Mrs. Endicott quite alone in her room for a minute or two. If she’s really faking, she’ll begin to worry about what is going on. Then the door will open again and, instead of the nurse, I’ll come in. She’ll be pretty certain to suspect that I’ve found the slipper, but will be all the more careful to keep up her pretence of being under the influence of the narcotic. If she gets away with that, you know, she can always claim that Roberts herself must have dropped the slipper onto the balcony as a plant. The main thing is that Mrs. Endicott won’t know just what’s up, and when a woman of her temperament can’t figure a thing out mentally, it about drives her crazy.”
“Then I suppose, Lieutenant, that when you get her into this receptive state you’ll speak to her?”
Lieutenant Valcour laughed. “On the contrary, Doctor, I haven’t the slightest intention of saying a single word. Shall we go now? After you’ve arranged things with Nurse Vickers you can come back in here again and start watching from the bathroom.”
They went outside, and Lieutenant Valcour rapped softly on Mrs. Endicott’s door. It opened a bit, and Nurse Vickers looked out. She saw Dr. Worth and came outside, shutting the door behind her.
“You wanted to see me, Doctor?”
“Yes, Miss Vickers. How is Mrs. Endicott?”
“Quite comfortable, Doctor. She’s breathing as peacefully as a child.”
“There haven’t been any signs of restlessness?”
“Oh, no, Doctor. She hasn’t budged since I’ve been watching her.”
Dr. Worth mildly raised his eyebrows. “That in itself is rather curious,” he said.
“Curious, Doctor?”
“Oh, nothing to be alarmed at, Miss Vickers. You look a little tired. Run downstairs and drink some coffee. The lieutenant, here, will stay with Mrs. Endicott, and you’re not to go back into her room again until he says so.”
“Help!” thought Lieutenant Valcour. As a detective Dr. Worth was a darned fine doctor. Miss Vickers, as he had expected, was instantly curious.
“Something more wrong, Doctor?”
“No Miss Vickers,” Lieutenant Valcour said coldly. “Please do as the doctor instructed, and at once.”
“Oh.”
Nurse Vickers, feeling a little outraged, vanished toward the stairs.
“Shall I go and stand by the bathroom door now?” said Dr. Worth.
“If you wish. Don’t make the slightest sound when you’re opening it, and don’t open it more than an inch at the most, please.”
“I won’t, Lieutenant.”
Dr. Worth, feeling very much like one of those fabulous characters he had read about in Fenimore Cooper when a child, went back into Endicott’s room.
Lieutenant Valcour waited another full minute before he opened the door and went inside. He did not look at Mrs. Endicott, but walked softly over to a chair, lifted it, and placed it close beside the bed. He drew the slipper from his pocket and sat down.
There was an utter and complete hush. For three minutes—he timed himself with his wrist watch—he sat motionless and stared at the closed lids of Mrs. Endicott’s eyes.
Then he began to tap the slipper quite softly, but quite persistently and with a rhythmic regularity, upon an arm of the chair.
Tap—tap—tap—tap—tap—
Mrs. Endicott’s face retained the smooth expressionlessness of slumber.
Tap—tap—tap—
Her breathing held the steady depths of sleep.
Tap—tap—tap—tap—
“If you do that much longer,” she said quietly, “I shall go insane.”
XXIII
4:29 a.m.—A Turn of the Screw
“You needn’t say anything you don’t care to, Mrs. Endicott.”
“I’m glad you didn’t use the stereotyped formula, Lieutenant. It would have disappointed me if you had. Get me a cigarette, please; there are some over there on the dresser.”
Lieutenant Valcour stood up. He got the cigarettes and lighted one for Mrs. Endicott and one for himself.
“You shouldn’t have dropped your slipper outside of the window,” he said.
“You shouldn’t have found it.”
Her eyes, now that they were opened, were admirably guarded, and her fingers, as they held the cigarette, showed no trace of nervousness.
“The slipper is of no great consequence, Mrs. Endicott. There are so many other things, too, you see.”
“Sort of a wholesale strewing of clues? I never imagined you as bothering very much with clues. It’s people you’re more interested in: reading their minds.”
Her eyes offered an almost impudent invitation that he read hers.
“Whom were you aiming at when you fired, Mrs. Endicott, at your husband or at Mr. Hollander?”
Mrs. Endicott blew smoke rings elaborately.
“At neither, Lieutenant. I didn’t have a gun.”
“Then it was just curiosity?”
“What was?”
“Your going out on the balcony.”
“I didn’t go out on the balcony. I’ve never been on it in my life.”
“I am not stupid, Mrs. Endicott.”
“Nor very credulous, either.”
“No, nor credulous.”
“That’s the trouble with truth: it often sounds so silly.”
“Surely you realize how things look against you, Mrs. Endicott.”
“Black.”
“The worst of all is your not having taken the narcotic, and then having pretended to be in a state of unconsciousness.”
Her eyes became stupefyingly innocent. “Is it illegal to decide not to take medicine, Lieutenant?”
His respect for her as an adversary began to mount by leaps and bounds. “No, Mrs. Endicott. But in the present case it was purposefully deceptive.”
“Why, I simply disliked hurting Dr. Worth’s feelings; that was all.”
Lieutenant Valcour pictured her maintaining that attitude—smartly dressed in becomingly plain black, very innocent, very beautiful-looking—before
