Footprints on the Ceiling

Chapter Four: THE FIRE

Merlini took his hand from the woman’s arm and slowly straightened up. His eyes were still intent on the quiet figure. Then, finally, as if my words had just reached him, he looked up. “What?” he said sharply.

Colonel Watrous ran toward the window.

“Fire,” I repeated. “Cellar. I think. Come on.”

I took the stairs two at a time. As I turned on the second-floor landing, I looked back and saw Watrous come out, running. Merlini appeared behind him and I heard the door slam. I went on. There was a faint smoke haze beginning in the lower hall, and the acrid smell of fire.

In the kitchen I pulled at the cellar door. Smoke rolled out at the top of the opening, blurring the beam from my torch; down behind it was a wavering reddish glow and the crackle of flame. I ducked low and went in. I heard the others close behind me. “Watch these steps, Colonel,” I shouted.

The door that led to the boat landing was dark, but the one opposite was bright. In there, directly beneath the living-room, a pile of debris — rags and wood and the torn pages of old books — burned fiercely.

Merlini’s voice came, quick and steady, assuming command. “In the corner there, Ross!” His light indicated dusty old rugs, rolled and stacked. He stooped, picked a piece of two-by-four from the floor, and attacked the blaze, scattering it.

I hauled at one of the rugs, pulling it clear of the pile, and kicked at it so that it unrolled. I took one corner and Watrous grabbed at the one opposite. We lifted and ran forward, pulling the rug up and over the flames. The smoke, belching suddenly from beneath, drove us back, coughing.

I saw Merlini come from the door in through the smoke. He carried a battered coal scuttle that dripped. He swung it quickly, and the water gushed in a long arc across the rug. I followed him out and found a pail lying in a litter of broken bottles and tinware. Its bottom was rusted through, but by hurrying I managed each time to get about half the water in and onto the rug. The Colonel was beating at the stray, scattered bits of flame with an old broom.

The smoke drove us out eventually, but the flames were done. We had pulled a second rug onto the heap and soaked that. Then, coughing and with smarting eyes, we made for the open air.

I soaked my handkerchief in the cold river water and swabbed my face. Merlini pulled the door to after him to kill the draft.

“That should hold it,” he said. “For a while at least. We’ll have to watch it. In the meantime, there’s some unfinished business.”

He walked out on the narrow stone walk that ran just above the water along the back of the house, and turned his torch upward to where, three and a half stories above, the open shutter still moved monotonously in the rising breeze.

We followed him up a short flight of steps to ground level and around the house toward the front door. Merlini walked quickly, his light searching the ground. A curl of smoke still came through the broken panes of a barred cellar window at the side of the porch.

When we stood before the door of the room on the top floor again, I saw Merlini kneel down and pick up a long, bright yellow pencil that lay on the floor close to the door.

“That wasn’t there before,” I said, wondering. “What—”

It’s mine, he replied, rising and pushing at the door. “I must have dropped it. You two wait here a moment.” He made a rapid examination of the floor and the grimy faded carpet. “All right. Come on.”

I moved mechanically toward the armchair knowing that I had not the slightest desire to look again at what lay there, at the fixed stare and the glazed, wide-open dark eyes that sent back no answering sparkle as the light touched them. Death had brought no peace, no limp quietness to the body. The jaw was tightly clamped, the muscles on either side rigid, the hands clenched desperately in an agonized grip on nothing. The whole figure had a tight, tense look as if time had stopped suddenly and caught it suspended part way in a painful convulsive action. A strange, dusky violet hue suffused the face and neck and made the paper-white hair seem whiter.

As my light moved down over the bare throat and over the blue woolen dress, I bent closer, wondering why the simple V-shaped neckline seemed so oddly severe, almost unfinished in appearance, and why the upper part of the dress appeared to be pulled out of shape. Then I saw the short torn ends of threads and knew that the dress had had a collar which had been forcibly ripped away.

As my hand brushed accidentally against the dead arm, I also knew the meaning of the intent look that had been on Merlini’s face and the reason my announcement of the fire had gone for a moment unheard. I knew what he had known then: that this woman couldn’t have been the eavesdropper who had listened and dropped the flashlight. Linda Skelton had not been the person we had followed up and into this room. She had not swallowed the poison just before we came in. The body was cold, much too cold.

I lifted gently on the arm and the whole body started to tip. Rigor mortis was complete. She had been dead for hours.

Merlini stood in the center of the room, turning slowly, his light searching the walls. There was no furniture except the armchair, the table, and the disreputable couch, low to the floor. No hiding place and no exits save the door through which we had come and the one window that was open at the top. Merlini examined the window seat and then stepped up on it, looking out. Colonel Watrous and I watched him silently.

Suddenly he turned and stepped down. “Job for you, Ross,” he said quickly. “This is rapidly getting out of hand. I have an overwhelming desire for policemen, detectives, law, order, authority — lots of them. Particularly Inspector Gavigan & Company. You get on a phone and get him — out of bed if necessary — but be sure you get him. No substitutes will do. I want to keep my seat for the rest of this performance, and if Bronx or Queens dicks show up — I don’t know whose territory we’re in — we won’t know any more about it after tonight than what we read in the papers. And you might—”

Colonel Watrous broke in, his words clipped and tight. “Wait. I’d better go and get back in at my window. Rappourt’s going to think it queer if I’m missing down there and turn up in your company.”

“No,” Merlini objected. “You stick here. I may need a witness. Your story can be that you saw lights up here and came out to investigate. That’s true enough, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But — but how are you going to explain your presence here? She’s going to wonder about that.”

“We can’t help that. We’re up against something more important than exposing her. Besides, Miss Verrill invited me out tonight, too. We’ll let her take the responsibility.”

“Sigrid invited — but how? I didn’t know—”

“She likes Rappourt’s séances even less than you do. Her father’s an old friend of mine. She and Arnold sent me, an S O S. By the way, how many people are there on this island? Who else besides yourself, Madame Rappourt, Arnold and Floyd Skelton, and Miss Verrill?”

“There are two other guests. A man named Lamb, a retired broker, and an inventor, Ira Brooke. There’s a servant couple, the Hendersons. And week-ends there’s a Dr. Gail who rents the cottage on the east shore. That’s all.”

“All right, Ross. Get going. And keep your eyes peeled.

It’ll be interesting to know where they’ve all been during the last half hour.”

“And which of them,” I added, “is shy a flashlight.”

I started out, then on second thought, turned and asked, “What’ll I tell Gavigan? Suicide or — murder?”

Merlini’s voice was overly matter-of-fact. “What do you think?”

“The worst,” I said simply.

“Yes, you would. Just say, ‘Cyanide, corpse, fire,’ and let him draw his own conclusions. But see he gets a move on.”

Outside, the high wind whipped at the trees, and the moon threw a cold light that grew bright, wavered, and was eclipsed by the swift procession of angry clouds moving across its face. I tried to run but quickly had to give it up.

The path underfoot was old and little used, choked with undergrowth and fallen branches. Several times I tripped and nearly fell.

All at once I came out from under the low-hanging trees onto the edge of a broad lawn that stretched out to meet me. The path, wider and well kept here, turned abruptly left and right, while directly ahead I saw the low white house set in a semicircle of trees and shining dimly with what seemed to be a faint phosphorescence of its own. Now that I could run, I didn’t. Something about the quietly deserted air, the darkened windows of the house, made me uneasy. I moved forward, walking quickly, but quietly, my flashlight dark.

This house was in the modern manner, its severe, clean-cut lines in complete contrast to the Grecian ornament on the house behind me. A metal ladder-like flight of steps ascended sharply to the sun deck that projected without supports from the second-floor level, and, toward the river, wide French windows opened out on a low terrace of flagged stone.

I had just reached the terrace and was about to step up and cross toward the door when I stopped and stood motionless, listening.

A small sound that was not the wind or the trees came from the opposite side of the house. The slow crunch of feet on a gravel path — coming softly toward me, almost at the corner of the house. I couldn’t make the door in time, so I took four long careful steps toward the window and flattened against it, back within the deeper shadow cast by the sun deck overhead. The footsteps stopped briefly and then came on again.

Behind me one hand found the handle and felt it turn. The window moved inward, easily and silently. I stepped, backward into the dark. The window was, on the inside, completely curtained with long heavy, drapes. I stood behind them, and, with the window ajar an inch or two, peered out watching the black elongated shadow that moved across the grass as someone turned the corner of the house.

The shadow had a crouching, sinister shape. I felt for my gun.

And then I kicked myself mentally. I’d put myself in a lovely spot! I should have simply called out, hailed the guy, and had done with it. But the events of the past hour had shaped all my reactions into suspicious, stealthy ones; the memory of that quiet figure in the armchair, and of that even stranger something that went into a room and yet was not there, was all too recent. At any rate, I now had the glass and metal and curtains of the window between myself and whoever it was that—

Behind me in the room there was a sudden crash!

Someone jumped toward me through the dark. There was a small, sharp click — and I blinked, blinded by the light.

Five people were in the room, five motionless dummies transfixed in suspended action like a wax tableau. Four of them around a table in the center of the room, and the fifth — the man who had plunged toward me through the dark — close beside me by the wall, his hand still on the light switch. A chair lay overturned on the floor.

I saw this much. Then my attention froze on one small detail. The half-raised right arm of the heavy man behind the table, the fat hand, and the cold steady highlight on the gun it held. His mouth moved and words came, hard as bullets.

“Take your hand from your pocket!”

I did so, slowly. Then he spoke again.

“Frisk him, Arnold.”

The man at my side took his hand from the wall switch and spoke quietly, his voice cutting evenly through the tension.

“You’re a quick one with a gun, I must say, Lamb.” He regarded me suspiciously. “Just who the devil are you?”

Arnold was about my height and definitely handsome, with an almost classic regularity of feature and a matinee, idol’s wave in his dark hair. But there was something oddly wrong with his face, something that blurred all the good looks. His skin had a queer flat paleness as if all the blood had gone deep within; the highlights on the cheekbone and the square line of the jaw had a smooth, greasy feel. And when he spoke I wasn’t quite sure at first where the deep pleasant voice came from; his lips barely moved.

“There’s someone prowling about outside,” I said quickly, my eyes returning to the gun. “Thought you should know.”

He hesitated a moment, scowling. Then, with sudden decision, “Give me that.” He reached for my flashlight. I let it go. He pulled the window open.

The fat man growled, “I wouldn’t move if I were you.” His black little eyes were too small for his big face and they stared at me with puzzled concentration. A roll of fat surrounded his neck, bulging over the tight, blue and white striped collar.

Arnold went out. A chair scraped on the floor and the girl stood up. Burt had been right; I did see her again. It was Sigrid Verrill. The nervous strain in her face was even more pronounced now. She recognized me and her eyes moved sideways toward the end of the table.

A large mountain of a woman sat there in a great, curiously shaped chair. Wide metal bands curved up from the chair arms and locked tightly about her wrists. I recognized the swarthy, almost masculine, Slavic features and the thick mound of jet-black hair. Madame Rappourt. She was the only person in the room who hadn’t stared at me as the lights came on, the only person who hadn’t looked at me yet. Her eyes were tightly closed, face tilted toward the ceiling, her body tensed in that same strained convulsive posture I had seen once before tonight. The fleshy hands were clenched with spasmodic force, the jaw muscles rigid, white teeth showing between the grim-stretched lips. She was breathing heavily.

The fifth person, a solidly built man who wore round gold-rimmed spectacles, rose and crossed with a catlike, soundless movement toward Rappourt. He bent above her and felt at her wrist for the pulse.

“Oh, it’s you, Dr. Gail,” Arnold’s voice came from outside. “Come in.”

Footsteps hurried across the terrace. “What’s wrong?” a calm, matter-of-fact voice asked. “I saw the light and, through the window, Lamb with a gun. Catch a burglar?”

Arnold said, “I don’t know.”

A hatless young man wearing a belted gabardine raincoat with turned-up collar followed Arnold into the room. He was in his thirties but with a manner that seemed older. He had a pleasant, easygoing face and a brisk, competent air. There was humor and a quick intelligence in his gray eyes. He regarded me expectantly.

Arnold demanded, “What are you doing on this island? Who are you?”

“Sorry,” I said, “I seem to have put my foot in it. But — well, I stopped in to use your phone.” Then, as an experiment directed at the man behind the gun, I added slowly and distinctly, “I want to call the police.”

I got my reaction. All the movement in the room, what there was of it, stopped — like a moving picture that suddenly slips a cog and goes dead.

“Why?” the fat man said after a moment, flatly.

The film began again, slowly.

“I’ve got a fire to report and”—I thought I’d go easy—“a suicide.”

Beyond a doorway at the foot of the stairs I saw the book-lined walls of a library and, on a small table just inside, the phone. I started for it.

Lamb’s voice, flat and cold as an ice rink, caught me. “Keep your hands off that phone!”

The man was impossible. There was less emotion in his voice than in a table of logarithms and about the same amount of cold fact. The melodrama was too thick, and I’d had my share for the evening. I thought that if I’d calm down and start talking sensibly perhaps everyone else would do the same.

“All right. Jesse James,” I said lightly, “have it your own way. Arnold, where is your sister?”

“Lamb,” he said, “put that gun away.” He turned to me. “Why do you ask? What do you know about my sister?”

“Do you know where she is?” I insisted.

“Yes. She’s upstairs in her room. But—”

“I’d make sure of that if I were you.”

He looked at me narrowly and then very slowly he said, “What have you found?”

“Your sister.” I said. “She’s up there at the old house. She’s dead. Do I use that phone?”

They all stared at me except Arnold, who seemed to be watching the others, and Rappourt, whose eyes had not yet opened but in whose rapid breathing I detected a momentary halt.

“No!” It was Sigrid’s voice, incredulous, horror-stricken. “No, that can’t be. Linda couldn’t—”

The Doctor took a quick step toward me. “What makes you think it’s Miss Skelton?”

“Colonel Watrous. He saw our lights and came up to investigate. He was with me when we found the body.”

“We? Lamo said. “You and who else?”

The Doctor turned sharply. “Maybe you’d better look, Arnold.”

But Arnold was halfway up the stairs. And then Lamb moved. The spectacled man was working at the metal fastening that curved up from the chair arm around Rappourt’s wrist. He glanced up now and then, his head moving with a quick, birdlike motion. Lamb handed him the gun.

“Keep him covered, Brooke.” Lamb pounded up the stairs after Arnold.

Brooke had a great shock of iron-gray hair and a bland, absent-minded face. His brown eyes seemed frank and guileless, though they had an odd habit of never looking quite where you expected them to, peering instead sideways from behind the glasses. He regarded the gun somewhat timidly. He looked harmless enough so I started once more for the phone.

He spoke then, his voice easy, careless, without exclamation points. “I should advise you not to touch that phone.” Harmless or not, I had the distinctly unsettling impression that he almost hoped I would touch it so he could shoot.

Rappourt, whose body now lay suddenly limp and exhausted in the chair, opened her eyes slowly. The deep masculine voice that I remembered said gently, “I wouldn’t, Ira.” There was recognition in her eyes.

Brooke lowered the gun perceptibly, hesitating. I reached out and took the phone. He made no move. I began dialing.

Arnold came running down the stairs. At their foot he stopped; his dark eyes moved, looking at each of us in turn. “She’s not there!”

My statement that she was dead had been a respectable bombshell, but this was worse. His words, somehow, acted on the others with an explosive force I didn’t understand.

Arnold ran heavily toward the door. “Come on, Doctor!”

The latter scowled at me. “You’re sure about this?”

I nodded, wondering. “Yes. She’s in that little room on the third floor. There’s a bottle of cyanide in her hand. She’s been dead some time.”

Arnold and the Doctor vanished through the door.

Then Lamb came down the stairs, his weight pounding on the steps. He glared at me for an instant and, without speaking, hurried out. The door slammed violently behind him.

I put the, phone receiver back on its rest.

Sigrid looked at me with round eyes. “But I thought — you were going to report—”

“I was,” I said bluntly. “But not on this phone. It’s dead.”