The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes & Impossible Mysteries (79 page)

Sandra sprang up. She was already at the telephone before De Saules cried:

“What are you doing?”

“I will call up Captain Corrigan at once.”

De Saules was across like the crack of a whip. He snatched the telephone from her.

“No. I do not think so.” His voice was low, staccato. “If you do not make it easy for me, you will make it hard. If you will not go as I suggest, you will stay – here – and see no one.”

Sandra hurled the words in his face. “Until after the appointment at half past nine, is that it?”

“Perhaps.” His eyes were very narrow. “Perhaps much longer.”

Sandra laughed in his face. “How will you keep me?”

There was nothing cool or composed about De Saules’ face now. Everything had been wiped off it but the elementals – a savage locked bleakness like a bird of prey. “You are dealing with someone much more intelligent than you, Miss Grey. One who has thought of every contingency. I would hardly have come up here without being prepared for your refusal.”

Sandra should have screamed then. The next moment she could not. One supple movement and his arm snaked under hers, a grip had her by the neck such as she had never felt before in her life. It was like two points of fire-freezing fire at the base of her brain-two closing, clamping points of a vice that flooded paralysis through her whole muscular system. She knew then. The man was a jujitsu expert. She felt herself crumpling, as weak as a doll. His topcoat was half over her head. From it his free hand had snatched a glass atomizer with a long, thin nose.

His breath was close to her ear. “Cycloprophane is a relatively new anesthetic. Mixed with oxygen, it induces a very sound sleep. You will rest very quietly, quietly be carried downstairs, out of the house.”

He had her over the chair back, crushing her down, the coat tented over her head. Fumes were pouring in her face, sickening, suffocating fumes. She tried to hit, kick, whirl, felt the strength suck out of her with each gasp of that sickening flood. The cold nose of the atomizer was between her teeth. He had to shift his hand for that. His thumb slued down across her mouth, keeping her lips open. With every last ounce of strength she bit his thumb. He gave a cry, dropped the atomizer on the front of her dress. She snatched it, blind, wild, smashed it into his face. She saw the bulb burst, the contents splash starwise over his face.

It was like the long, slow, incredibly endless movements of a nightmare. The room was reeling around her; the space to the door seemed to stretch out to infinity. He was there on the floor, gasping, clawing weakly, no longer able to make coordinated movements. She blundered into the table, sent it crashing. Her bag was there on the floor, spinning like a top before the door. She caught it up, plunged sobbing, gasping, through the door.

The taxi driver stared at Sandra. She was very pale.

“You feel all right, lady?”

“Yes! Yes!” She gasped out the Delaunay address. “Please hurry! Hurry!”

The cab buzzed like a hornet through early morning traffic. Sandra sat in the window corner, gulped in great mouthfuls of fresh air. Her head was steadying; if the nausea would only subside— The appointment! Dow and Marceline! Sandra glanced for the twentieth time at her watch, watched the minutes crawl across the dial. 9:39 . . . 9:40 . . . Would she be too late? Too late?

The cab swung into the sweeping lawns, the rippling trees of the Delaunay street. She rapped hard on the glass partition.

“Pull over to the side behind those trees.”

She was out the door almost before the cab reached the curb. “Wait here!” She was gone between the massed shrubbery of the Delaunay drive.

Before her the big house stood quiet, dappled with sun and shade. She darted around the side, in the service door. Bulky packages from market were lying, still unretrieved, within – that told her Marceline had dismissed the servants. As Sandra’s feet sounded in the kitchen, she heard Marceline’s startled voice:

“Who’s there?”

Sandra whirled through the kitchen, down the hall, straight into the library.

Marceline was standing bolt upright against the very casement Dow had used for his ghoul’s visit. She was alone. In the blaze of yellow light behind her, her face looked extraordinarily white, her black eyes feverishly brilliant. Whatever movements she had had time to make between Sandra’s entrance and Sandra’s appearance in the library were few and brief. She wore an ornate house coat, whose gorgeous flowers of scarlet and gold emphasized her frightful pallor, the brilliance of her eyes. She let her hands drop from behind her back as she exclaimed:

“You!”

Then Sandra knew what she had been doing with her hands. She had been closing the casement. That told her the story; that and the faint but unmistakable reek of violet in the air. Dow had just gone; Sandra had caught her almost in the act of receiving what Dow had brought; she had not had time to dispose of it. The crisis of the whole affair swung like a pendulum in the quiet room. Sandra felt strangely cool, knife-hard. It was woman against woman, and it was going to be fought out with women’s weapons.

Her velvety eyes were as soft as Irish honey. “Why, darling, how upset you look! Did I frighten you by running in?”

Marceline sat down on the sofa. It was a quick, crouching movement. Sandra could see the pulse beat in her throat. Her voice was unkeyed.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’ve the most wonderful thing to tell you!” Sandra’s voice rippled with excitement.
That
wasn’t hard. Under that locked coolness she had never been so excited in her life. She crossed to the sofa, sat quickly by Marceline. “Mr de Saules has just made me the most wonderful gift for my welfare work!”

Marceline stared at her. It could be seen from her wild, uncollected eyes just how unready this sidelong shot caught her. Their brilliant depths had almost a stupid blankness. She was in the position of one who cannot estimate her antagonist, has no idea what she knows, and is so caught by the jeopardy of her own position that she cannot collect herself to fence. Sandra didn’t give her time to marshal herself. She burst out:

“I’m so excited, darling! I just
had
to rush over! May I have one of your cigarettes?”

With quick, hard hands she patted the pockets of Marceline’s house coat. It had only two pockets; its zippered length was otherwise unrelieved. The two pockets were empty.

“Oh, you’ve got them here, of course.” Sandra picked up Marceline’s bag, unsnapped it, raked inside. A compact, lipstick, gold pencil, rolled away beneath her fingers. Nothing else. Her eyes darted around the room. That damning bit of evidence was here somewhere. Where had she put it? Where? The room was singularly bare of places of quick concealment. The books lining three walls were packed solid, behind glass. There was only a cloisonne jar on the mantel, a tabouret with a red drawer, and the massive bulk of a combination radio and victrola.

Marceline said harshly: “What are you doing here, if you took the gift?”

Sandra crossed to the mantel. “I
had
to thank you.” She took the cover off the cloisonne jar. It was empty. That left only the tabouret drawer and the radio combination. Once she lifted the lid of the radio, the game was up.

“Thank me? What do you mean?”

“I
knew
it came from you.” Sandra snapped open the tabouret drawer, looked at blank red wood. Her voice rippled, flute-soft. “You
do
keep your cigarettes in the most outlandish places.” She crossed to the radio, lifted the lid, saw nothing inside whatever.

Marceline sprang up. The buttons were off the foils now. She cried:

“What are you doing?”

Then Sandra saw it. The sight gave her such a rush of relief she felt for an instant free and giddy as if swept into mountain air. She crossed, almost in a run, to the far end of the sofa. She knelt on the cushions. She leaned over the arm. She said, in the same dulcet, flute-soft voice:

“Why, darling, the fish are all dead.”

The goldfish in the bowl were floating bellies up. Around the little ornamental castle that had been their home the water was colorless, the green fernlike fronds of bladder-wort undisturbed. Only in the sand before the castle something half immersed was gleaming that might have been the polished side of a small shell.

Sandra murmured:
“What
could have killed them? Poison, do you suppose? Poison, on something that’s been dropped in?”

She lifted her hand to dip into the bowl. Marceline took two wild, darting movements toward a wing chair and came up with a gun from beneath the cushion.

“Put your hand in that bowl and I swear I’ll kill you.”

Her brilliant eyes were like a leopard’s. Sandra took one look at them and knew that she meant exactly what she said. Slowly she let her hand drop by her side, slowly sat down on the sofa.

“Marceline, the game’s up. You don’t think I took that bribe from De Saules, do you?” Sandra talked very rapidly. She held Marceline’s eyes, not letting that dilated gaze escape for a second. She didn’t dare. “I left him lying in my apartment. I called the police before I left the apartment lobby. You see, I was in the Mohican Building last night.”

It was hard to tell, from the wildness of those eyes, whether she heard or not. Sandra drove the words in hard.

“Do you love him very much?”

A quiver went over that face. The brilliant eyes seemed stricken to their depths. Sandra slipped her compact from her pocket. Now her voice was low, soothing, as one speaks to a child.

“Did your father have great hopes for you, Marceline? Would he have disinherited you if he knew what you had done? Is that why you kept the marriage a secret?”

Marceline began to shake. She could not control it. It was all over her body, from her lips to the elbow of the arm holding the gun. The words seemed to jerk out without her volition.

“Marriage? How did you know?”

“It had to be, Marceline. He
had
to be your husband to have a motive. I know how you feel. You love him. You want to protect him at all costs. He’s going to kill you, Marceline. He has to, now. Because you know. Marceline, he’s standing right behind you in the door.”

Marceline whirled. Sandra was across like a flash, smashed at the gun with her hand. It exploded point-blank into the floor; the recoil knocked it from Marceline’s hand.

Sandra snatched it up, flung it to the far end of the room. She whirled toward the fishbowl. She was too centered, going too headlong, to see the casement swing open. Even the fan of sunlight, leaping like a spear across her path, didn’t warm her. She was two steps from the bowl. She never reached it. Something crashed down on her head. That fan of sunlight seemed to leap up, swallow the whole room in a bursting yellow star.

It didn’t knock her out. She could thank her shako hat, her thick hair, for that. She felt herself hit the sofa, go headlong into its cushions. Strong hands twisted her on her back. Whipsaws of sound were whanging and snapping in her brain. She was staring as through the wrong end of a telescope at the yellow face of Dow.

“Very lucky, dear lady, I remained to overhear.” His voice poured like thin oil from far away. “It would do for the proper party to have it, but never for you. In that case I will take it back.”

She saw Marceline spring at him, a screaming, clawing form. She saw the yellow man tear her from him like a kitten, fling her across the room. He hardly stopped talking to Sandra.

“I see you are not the naïve, child-like little lady I took you for. It was you, then, who were in the Mohican Building last night. I made a mistake not to kill you the last time. This time I most certainly shall.”

Sandra tried to roll off the sofa. She could not. The fishbowl was above her. Dow was holding it, staring into it. She would always see his face, distorted through the curved glass like the flat, prodigiously wide face of a sting ray.

Then he dipped in his yellow hand, took out the bright object.

“So,” he said, “the little item returns to me. The little item that places the murder so exactly. This time it will not leave me.”

The shot seemed to come from nowhere. Dow was still holding the fishbowl. He jammed it into his own face with a convulsive jerk, smashing a great half-moon out of it. He whirled on his heels with a surprised look, cast the bowl like a shot-put at the floor. He kept revolving, his face a horrible gray and stretched with surprise, plunged headlong over Sandra on the sofa.

Sandra did not know if she was screaming or not. Her mind was like a black blind space riven by two forked bolts. One of them was: the murderer! The murderer was in the room! The other was: under the form quivering convulsively above her, the bright object was there on the cushions beside her!

It was a moment of such hideous chaos nothing seemed coherent – not the yellow head, batting blindly at the sofa back, not her own hand jammed into her face, not her frantic animal convulsions to throw off that shuddering body.

Then Marceline’s scream cut through everything.

“Oh, no! Not me! You’re not going to kill
me
!”

The gun crashed again. She heard Marceline’s scream. Sandra seemed sucked out of reality, her soul yawing and heeling over in blackness. She was free of that twitching form. She was half off the sofa. A new bedlam was awake – a bedlam that was not in her mind. Voices. Pounding feet. Batterings. Yells.