Persons Unknown

  CHAPTER IV

  HERRICK IS SURE OF ONE THING

  There was something at once commonplace and incredible about it--aboutthe stupid ghastliness of the face and about the horrid, sticky smear inthe muss of the finely tucked shirt. That gross, silly sprawl of thelimbs!--was it those hands that had called forth angelic music? The deadman was splendidly handsome and this somehow accentuated Herrick'srevulsion. McGarrigle bent over the body. After a moment he said to thesuperintendent, "No use for a doctor. But if you got one, get him."

  "He's dead!" said the superintendent. "It's suicide!" He spoke quietly,but with a dreadfully repressed and labored breath. "Officer, can't yousee it's suicide?" He called up the doctor, and then to the silent grouphe again insisted, "It's him shot himself. The door was bolted on theinside. He had to shoot himself!"

  McGarrigle was at the 'phone, calling up the station. Turning his headhe responded, "Where's the weapon?"

  They had got the closet open now; no one there. No one in the bedroomcloset. No one under the big brass bed, in the folds of the portieres,behind the piano, under the couch. No one anywhere. Nor any weapon,either.

  Herrick and Clancy began to examine the fastening of the door. It was anordinary little brass catch--a slip-catch, the engineer called it--whichshot its bolt by being turned like a Yale lock. "If this door shutbehind any one with a bang, could the catch slip of itself?" Theengineer shook his head.

  The hall was long since full again, though the adventurers were ready topop back at a moment's notice; pushing through them came the doctor.Herrick did not follow him into the bedroom. The room he stood in had apersonality it seemed to challenge him to penetrate.

  His most pervasive impression was of cool coloring. The portieres wereof a tapestry which struck Herrick as probably genuine Gobelin, but withtheir famous blue faded to a refreshing dullness and he now rememberedthat in handling them he had found them lined with a soft but very heavysatin of the same shade, as if to give them all possible substance. Thestretched silk, figured in tapestry, which covered the walls, had beendyed a dull blue, washed with gray, to match them; and, to Herrick, thistint, sober as it was, somehow seemed a strange one for a man's room. Incouch and rugs and lampshades these notes of gray and blue continued topredominate, greatly enhanced by all the woodwork, which, evidentlysupplied by the tenant, was of black walnut.

  He had been no anchorite, that tenant. In the corner between the bedroomand the court window the surface of a seventeenth century sideboardglimmered under bright liquids, under crystal and silver. Beyond thatwindow all sorts of rich lusters shone from the bindings of the booksthat thronged shelves built into the wall until they reached the greatdesk standing in the farthest right hand corner to catch the frontwindow's light. A lamp stood on this desk, unlighted. At present all theillumination in the room came from three other lamps; one that squattedatop of the grand piano, between the now flameless old silvercandelabra; one, almost veiled by its heavy shade, in the middle of thelibrary table; and one, of the standing sort, that rose up tall from asea of newspapers at the head of the couch. All these lamps, worked bythe same switch, were electric, and the ordinary electric fixtures hadbeen dispensed with; the light was abundant, but very soft and thrownlow, with outlying stretches of shadow. It was not remarkable that ithad failed to show them the murdered man until the electricity in thebedroom itself had been evoked.

  Herrick looked again at the couch. Its cushions had lately been rumpledand lounged upon; at its head, under the tall lamp, stood a teakwoodtabouret, set with smoking materials on a Benares tray. At its foot, asif for the convenience of the musician, a little ebony table bore adecanter and a bowl of ice; the ice in a tall glass, half-empty, wasstill melting into the whiskey; in a shallow Wedgewood saucer ahalf-smoked cigarette was smoldering still.

  "McGarrigle!" said Herrick, in a low voice.

  "Hallo!"

  "He was shot in here, after all. I was sure of it." And he pointed tothe foot of the piano stool. Still well above the surface of thehardwood flooring was a little puddle of blood.

  McGarrigle contemplated this with a kind of sour bewilderment. "Well,the coroner's notified. You'll be wanted, y'know, to the inquest."

  "What's this?" asked somebody.

  It was a long chiffon scarf and it lay on the library table under thelamp. Clancy lifted it and its whiteness creamed down from his fingersin the tender lights and folds which lately it had taken around awoman's throat. Just above the long silk fringe, a sort of cloudyarabesque was embroidered in a dim wave of lucent silk. And Herricknoticed that the color of this border was blue-gray, like the blue-grayroom. As they all grimly stared at it, the superintendent exclaimed, "Inever saw it before!"

  McGarrigle looked from him to the scarf and commanded, in deference tothe coming coroner, "You leave that lay, now, Clancy!"

  Clancy left it. But something in the thing's frail softness affectedHerrick more painfully than the blood of the dead man. In no nightmare,then, had he imagined that shadow of a woman! She had been here; she wasgone. And, on the floor in there, was that her work?

  Now that the interest of rescue had failed, he wanted to get away fromthat place. He wanted to dress and go down to the river and think thewhole thing over alone. He had now heard the doctor's verdict of instantdeath; and McGarrigle, again reminding him that he would be wanted atthe inquest, made no objection to his withdrawal.

  On his own curb stood a line of men, staring at the windows of 4-B as ifthey expected the tragedy to be reenacted for their benefit. They allturned their attention greedily to Herrick as he came up, and thenearest man said, "Have they got him?"

  "Him?"

  "Why, the murderer!"

  "Oh!" Herrick said. Even in the crude excitement of the question theman's voice was so pleasant and his enunciation so agreeably clear thatHerrick, constitutionally sensitive to voices and rather weary for thesound of cultivated speech, replied familiarly, "I'm afraid, strictlyspeaking, that there isn't any murderer. It's supposed to be a woman."

  "Indeed! Well, have they caught her?"

  "They've caught no one. And, after all, there seems to be some hope thatit's a suicide."

  "Oh!" said the other, with a smile. "Then you found him in eveningdress! I've noticed that bodies found in evening dress are alwayssupposed to be suicides!"

  The note of laughter jarred. "I see nothing remarkable," Herrick rebukedhim, with considerable state, "in his having on dinner clothes."

  "Nothing whatever! 'Dinner clothes'--I accept the correction. Any poorfellow having them on, a night like this, might well commitsuicide!--I'm obliged to you," he nodded. And, humming, went slowly downthe street.

  Herrick suddenly hated him; and then he saw how sore and savage he wasfrom the whole affair. The same automobile still waited, not far fromhis own door, and he longed to leap into it and send it rapid as furythrough the night, leaving all this doubt and horror behind him in thecramped town. His troubled apprehension did not believe in thatsuicide.--What sort of a woman was she? And what deviltry or whatdespair had driven her to a deed like that? Where and how--in God'sname, how!--had she fled? He, too, looked up at that window where he hadseen the lights go out. It was brightly enough lighted, now. But thistime there was no blind drawn and no shadow. The bare front of the housebaulked the curiosity on fire in him. "How the devil and all did she getout?" It was more than curiosity; it was interest, a kind of personalexcitement. That strange, imperial, and passionate gesture! The womanwho made it had killed that man. Of one thing he was sure. "If ever Isee it again, I shall know her," he said, "among ten thousand!"