“Shall I go?”
“If you will be so kind. Later, perhaps, we will go into greater details concerning this poor girl’s husband.”
Mrs. Siddons feasted her eyes for one parting, blinding instinct on the bed. She stopped at the door and said, “You will never get them from me, Lieutenant. And I am the only person who knows; who even knows that she was married at all. She confided in me, and if it was her husband who did this thing you will never drag his name from my lips even if my silence should mean—” Her eyes became clouded and her thoughts confused. She wanted to say something magnificent, something splendidly fitting to the occasion which she interpreted quite sincerely as a divine act on the part of God, with that poor, frail little Maizie’s husband as His instrument on earth. Even if her silence were to mean what? The words wouldn’t form. They rattled around in her tired head meaninglessly: bar of justice—herself in the dock—oh, it was cruel—life was cruel, and living was crueler still. Only death was kind, sleep and peace beneath the shelter of His sweet omnipotence. She stumbled a little as she crossed the threshold and made her way, sobbing futilely, back upstairs.
XXVII
5:46 a.m.—Mrs. Endicott Cannot Be Found
Lieutenant Valcour stepped across the corridor and rapped on the door of Mrs. Endicott’s room. There was no response. He rapped again, and still there was no response. He turned the knob and the door swung inward.
The room was empty.
He closed the door and called to Cassidy, who was at the other end of the corridor.
“Sir?” said Cassidy, when he had joined him.
“You’ve been out here all the while, haven’t you, Cassidy?”
“Except when I went upstairs to get the housekeeper, sir.”
“That’s right, you did. Come inside here for a minute with me. There are some questions I want to ask you.”
They went into Endicott’s room.
“Sure, it’s good to see the daylight again, Lieutenant. Will we be cleared up here soon?”
“I have a feeling that we’ll be finished pretty soon now. Tell me, Cassidy, was it you or Hansen fired first at Hollander?”
“Lieutenant, Hansen and I have been disputing that very point. We all but came to blows over it, we did.”
“Why so?”
“Because I claim it was him who fired the first shot, and he still has the audacity to say it was me who not only shot first, but shot two times before he so much as pulled the trigger.”
“That,” said Lieutenant Valcour, “is exactly what I wanted to know. You were both right and both wrong.”
“Now, how can that be, Lieutenant?”
“Neither of you fired the first shot, because it was fired by the murderer over there at the window. You heard it, and thought Hansen had fired. Hansen heard it, and then heard your following shot, and thought that you had fired twice.”
“That must have been it at that, Lieutenant.”
“It was. The second thing I wanted to ask you about is Mrs. Endicott. She isn’t in her room. Have you seen her about the corridor, or anywhere else?”
“No, sir.”
“Then go and look her up. Ask the men downstairs if they’ve seen her, and if they haven’t, look through the rooms on this floor and up above. When you do come across her, ask her if she will please come in here and see me.”
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
Cassidy went out and closed the door.
Lieutenant Valcour was beginning to feel very, very tired. He yawned elaborately, stared out of the window for a minute or two, and then sat down again at the desk. There was something that he had intended to do there when he had been interrupted by the arrival of Madame Velasquez.
What was it?
It wasn’t connected with that wretched premonition of danger which was nagging at him with increasing insistence. But it was something just as intangible …
Elusive as a shadow …
Yes, that was it—the thing that he had forgotten: he had intended to trace to its source that faint scent which was so curiously reminiscent of some place—some thing. It had come, he remembered, from the aperture from which he had taken the drawer. He shoved a hand inside and felt around. Wedged far in the back was a crumpled letter written on heavy notepaper. He pulled it out, and the scent became more penetrating.
It came back to him quite clearly now. It was the same perfume that had drenched the note left by Marge for Madame Velasquez up at the apartment. He took the letter from its envelope, smoothed it, and then turned to the signature. Yes, it was signed “Marge.”
A knock on the hall door interrupted him, and he placed the letter on the desk. Hansen came in.
“Yes, Hansen?”
“I have searched all the yards you told me to, sir.”
“Well?”
“There wasn’t any gun, Lieutenant, that I could see.”
“Did you look through all the shrubbery? There are some evergreens down there that I noticed.”
“Yes, sir, I looked through and beneath every one of them.”
“All right, Hansen.” Lieutenant Valcour studied the young man facing him for a curious moment. “You were at sea for a while, weren’t you?”
“Yes, sir. I was with the navy during the war, and after that on merchant ships for a year or two.”
“Would it be possible for a sailor to climb up onto the balcony outside this window from the garden?”
“I couldn’t say offhand, Lieutenant. I didn’t notice much about the balcony when I was down there.”
“Then go down again and see what you think. Let me know whether it would be an easy job, difficult, or impossible.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hansen went out, and Lieutenant Valcour had barely returned his attention to the letter from Marge Myles when there was another rapping on the door. This time it was Cassidy who came in. Lieutenant Valcour dropped the letter back upon the desk and turned to him.
“Did you find Mrs. Endicott all right, Cassidy?”
“No, sir, I didn’t.”
Lieutenant Valcour felt strangely disturbed. He had half expected Cassidy to answer in just that way;
