Footprints on the Ceiling

Chapter Five: THE AGORAPHOBE

A window across the room was open at the top, and the night outside suddenly exploded in a brilliant flash of light that flared and vanished, swallowed in the deep reverberations of the thunder. The rain came swiftly, streaming down the panes. The window shade began to flap noisily. Brooke crossed the room and pushed the window up.

“Any other phones?” I asked, knowing the answer.

Sigrid shook her head. “One in Linda’s room, but it’s only an extension of this. The Doctor doesn’t have one.” She moved quickly, opened a coat cupboard near the door, and took out a raincoat. “Here.” She tossed it toward me. “We’ll get Henderson. Servants’ quarter’s in back. He’ll have to go in.” She took down another coat and started to get into it.

I knew from the clipped, brisk way she spoke, and from the hurried yet deliberate way in which she buttoned the coat, that she was using all the self-control she had.

“I can find him,” I said. “You’d better stick here.”

“No.” She pulled a hat over the blond curls. “Come on.”

I followed her toward the rear of the house through a dining-room and kitchen. Brooke, busy releasing Rappourt, watched us go without speaking.

Sigrid took a flashlight from a shelf in the kitchen. “You were at Merlini’s shop this afternoon. He’s up there at the old house?”

“Yes, but wait. You can’t—”

She opened the door, hesitated a moment as the flying wash of rain drove in, then, lowering her head, ran out. I followed, slamming the door behind me. A graveled path led toward a small house nearly hidden among the trees. She pounded with the butt of her torch against the door. A light shone out almost at once; soft footsteps inside hurried; and then Henderson, a small bony little man with gray hair and sleepy eyes, stood in the doorway in a white nightshirt, peering out.

Sigrid cried, “You’ve got to go into town at once. The phone’s dead. You must get the police—”

The sound that we heard then, off behind the storm, was not thunder, nor wind, nor rain. It came again — the short explosive crack of a gun — and then more of them. I counted six, three close together and then three more, in rapid succession.

Sigrid’s hand grabbed at my arm, gripped it tightly. “The boathouse!” There was fear in her voice now for the first time, but she started past me toward the sound.

I caught her. “No, you don’t.” I took her flashlight. “There’s a murderer out there! You head for the house. Get some clothes on, Henderson, and hurry. Gun, too, if you’ve got it.” I ran. The wind threw hard bullets of rain against my face and even seemed to be trying to push back the light from the flash. High up on my right I caught a faint glimmer of light where the old house lay beyond the rain.

Behind me Sigrid’s voice came, desperately, “Wait!” I heard her footsteps running.

I stopped. “Okay, sister,” I growled as she stumbled into me. “But don’t say I didn’t tell you.”

I took her arm and we ran together, heads lowered, following the feeble, watery gleam of the light. We stopped, breathless, at the head of a wooden stair that led down toward boathouse and landing. A heavy figure ran up at us. It was Lamb, swearing expertly. There was a gun in his hand.

He snatched at Sigrid’s torch and turned it down toward the water. “Someone’s cut loose all the boats! He got away. Up the beach.”

The landing was empty of boats, but out on the black, tossing water something white moved. A lightning flash zigzagged and gave us a sharp, quick glimpse: the white hull of a speedboat and the dark smaller outline of a rowboat 30 feet or more out beyond reach. When the second flash came a moment later, the rowboat had vanished and the larger boat was listing and rolling heavily.

“He’s sunk them!” Lamb roared. “I saw him when the lightning flashed just as he pushed the last one out. I fired in the air once and yelled at him. When he ran I let him have it, but I was only shooting at the sound. He never stopped and we’ll have a hell of a time hunting him in this.”

“Where’s Arnold and the Doctor?” I asked.

“I don’t know. They must have cut cross lots. I came this way because I saw a light. Supposed it was Henderson. Thought I’d get him. The guy had a flash. But he doused it when I fired.”

“And those,” I said helplessly, “are the only boats?”

“Yes,” Sigrid replied. “It — it begins to look as if someone didn’t want the police.”

Lamb turned on her. “What—” he started and then glanced sharply at me. “You phoned them, didn’t you?”

I shook my head. “No. Sorry. The phone’s been cut.”

“Oh, so.” He took a step toward me. His thick jaw stuck out. “I’d like to know just who the hell you are.”

“Maybe I’m a G-Man,” I said, watching him. “And I’d like to know why you go so well heeled. You gave Brooke a gun back there. Now you’ve got another. Lend me a couple, will you?”

Sigrid broke it up. “He’s all right, Lamb. Forget it. Friend of mine. Stop spitting at each other and take me out of this rain, I want to see what — what’s happened up there.”

We turned and ran inland following the thin, wet shine of my flash. We’d gone 100 yards or so when Sigrid said, “This way,” and I recognized the old tangled path I’d traveled earlier. I held her arm and we plunged in. She tripped once and nearly pulled us both down. Lamb, behind, cursed as the branches whipped at our faces. After what seemed an interminable, stumbling march we reached the house.

Just as we hurried out of the downpour up onto the porch, I heard the coughing start, and then the steady put-put of a motorboat not far away. I turned, and felt Sigrid’s grasp tighten on my arm. The wind took the sound for a moment and then brought it back, but fainter. As we stood there listening, it died away behind the storm. I could feel the tense stillness of the others, and when I turned again, my light caught the gun in Lamb’s fist, half raised, motionless.

No one spoke. I pointed the light at the open door and moved in, Sigrid with me. Then Lamb turned and followed.

Voices came down faintly from above. As we climbed the last flight of stairs, I saw Watrous and Arnold looking down at us from just inside the door, and, beyond them within the room, Merlini’s figure holding a flashlight on the chair. The Doctor was bending over what lay there. His voice said:

“It’s impossible. There’s no alternative. It can’t be—”

As we crowded in at the door he stopped and looked up.

Sigrid said, “Arnold. What—? Is it—?”

Arnold moved toward her and put his hands on her shoulders. “You shouldn’t have come. Yes. It’s Linda.”

Merlini’s voice came across the room. “Ross, come here. The rest of you please stay back by the door.”

As I went forward I saw the inquisitive glance he threw at Lamb, and when I came close his whisper asked, “Who’s that?”

“Two-Gun Lamb,” I replied. “The Terror of the Plains. Merlini, have you ever been marooned before?”

“What?”

“Marooned. In the East River, a stone’s throw from Manhattan. It’s one for the book. I didn’t get Gavigan. The phone’s dead. Cut I think. Someone’s scuttled the boats and—” The Doctor looked at me sharply. “Someone’s what?”

“Scuttled all the boats. Lamb there says he caught someone pushing them out and he laid down a barrage. He has trigger-finger itch. Been pointing a gun at me all evening, and Ira Brooke filled in a few minutes doing the same. I backed into the séance in the dark. Someone was prowling around outside the house when I got there and—”

“Ross,” Merlini said sternly, “are you making this up as you go along? This is no time for—”

“I wish I were,” I said with feeling. “I’d go back and rewrite some of it. There are whole pages I don’t like.”

“I seem to have missed some installments. Synopsis please, fast.”

I gave it to him, all the high spots. The Doctor listened intently, but his eyes watched the body which, with its steady faraway stare, seemed to be listening too. A hushed, excited murmur of voices came from behind me by the door, Lamb and Sigrid telling a similar story. Twice I thought Merlini was about to interrupt, but he heard me out, his eyes moving now and then from my face to the group by the door, and then sideways toward the Doctor — alert, quick movements, alive with suspicion. Which was exactly how I felt.

“And whoever just cleared out in that motorboat,” I finished, “wasn’t going after the cops. I’ll put a stack of blue chips on that. That’s all.”

“All?” Merlini said slowly. “No, that’s not all. But it’s more than enough.” Then he turned to the Doctor. “And you were saying — just as these people came in — that something was impossible. That it couldn’t be — what?”

The Doctor looked at him a moment and then, turning, watched the rest of us as he spoke. “This” —his hand made a nervous gesture indicating the body—“it’s not — it can’t be suicide.”

“Why not?” Merlini asked.

“Because,” Dr. Gail spoke slowly, precisely. “If Linda Skelton ever did commit suicide, which I doubt, she’d have done it here in this house just about as soon as — well, as on the moon. She had agoraphobia. Mean anything?”

“Yes.” Merlini faced the group by the door, but he still spoke to the Doctor. “Colonel Watrous mentioned it just now. How many people on this island knew that?”

“They all did. There was no secret about it.”

Merlini nodded slowly. “I was afraid of that.” His eyes came back to the doctor. “Your patient?”

“Yes.”

“And you mean to tell me that there are no circumstances under which she might have come up to this house?”

“None.” He was emphatic. “You see the color of her hair? The phobia did that. In the acute form that she had it, it is an uncontrollable, unreasoning fear — greater almost than any normal person can imagine — a terror of open spaces. It has kept her a prisoner in that house down there more securely than if she had been locked in a cell. She couldn’t possibly, short of a miracle, have gone more than a hundred yards from that house — alive!”

So that was it then. The thought that had been moving in all their minds, the reason no one had quite believed me.

During the Doctor’s last words I had heard the running rush of footsteps up the stairs. Henderson burst through the door, excitement written large on his face. “The boats—” he began, but the sight of the body stopped him.

“Yes, we know,” Arnold said. “You get a lantern from the boathouse and bring it up here. Try and raise someone on North Brother. We’ve got to get the police somehow.”

Henderson turned and looked at us to see who was there.

“Where’s Brooke?” he asked. “Who pushed out in that motorboat? Just as I got down to the landing—”

“Did you see it?” Merlini interrupted.

“Yes, once when the lightning flashed. Going like a bat out of hell.”

“Could you see the driver?”

“Yes. A man. Small boat. And he didn’t handle it so well, either. In this storm, maybe he’ll make it, maybe not.”

“You’d better get that lantern, Henderson. Anyone here know Morse code?”

No one replied.

“Well, do the best you can with it. And is there a cot or something of the sort down there, Arnold?”

“A cot? Yes, I think so. Why?”

“We’ll take the body down. With this storm we won’t connect with mainland before daylight. We can’t leave it here very well, unless someone stays with it — too many rats.”

“Taking a lot of responsibility, aren’t you?” Dr. Gail asked with a surprised lift to his eyebrows. “Moving the body before the medical examiner sees it?”

“Yes. That’s why I asked you to look at it. Ross, you get that camera of yours and start using it. You’ve seen the homicide squad in action. You know what they’ll want. Front, top, all sides, full shots of the room from each corner. Get going, Henderson. Lantern, cot, and a tarpaulin of some sort to cover the body. Some slickers too if you have them. The storm’s slacking a bit, but there’s still lots of water.”

Henderson and I went down together. I got the suitcase from the living-room where I’d left it and hurried back. Merlini stood on the upper landing shooing the others down the stairs. He came back with me into the room. I changed my film, substituting the Super-XX for the Infra-D, and got busy. I didn’t fuss with any trick lighting or fancy angles on those shots, either. I stopped down to keep them sharp and let fly.

As the third flash exploded in a white burst of light, I heard Merlini give a small, surprised grunt and saw him hurry over to the window seat, climb up and examine the top of the window frame. I finished off my pictures.

“I think that does it,’” I said then. “Anything else?”

“Yes,” he said watching me with that familiar impish twinkle in his eyes. “I think you’d better do a shot of the ceiling.”

“The ceiling?”

He held his flashlight with the nonchalant air of the conjurer who is about to exhibit the girl in two parts. Its light made a circle on the wall behind and to one side of the table before which the body sat. There, a good five feet from the floor, on eye level, I saw two faint, darkish smudges, a rounded smudge and, just above, a larger oval one. I didn’t realize what it was until his light moved higher and picked out a similar discoloration on the grayed plaster three feet above the first and slightly to the left. I still wasn’t sure I believed it. Their shape was that of the prints a man’s shoes make in walking.

Steadily the light climbed the wall and moved across the ceiling, finding one uncanny, inexplicable footprint after another — an upside-down procession of surrealist impossibilities. The prints stopped directly above the open window and the sheer 40-foot drop outside.

“The top edge of that window sash, Ross, shows definite traces in the grime. Traces that someone — or something — has crawled out. You’d better get a shot of that too.”