The Devil Loves Me

12

George Revel had gone up to his room shortly after Dinah retired, but at one o’clock he rapped on Prye’s door.

Prye groaned, yawned, and turned on the light. When he opened the door he said bitterly, “Don’t I see enough of you in the daytime? Do you have to stalk me at night? Come in.”

Revel came in and sat down on the edge of the bed. His face looked very pale in contrast with his bright red-plaid pajamas and bathrobe. When he lit a cigarette Prye saw that his hands were shaking.

He can’t sleep, Prye thought, and he’s cracking. Our smooth friend Revel is cracking.

“You’re not a policeman,” Revel said in his even, emotionless voice. “How much can I tell you without telling Sands?”

“That depends,” Prye said, “on the tale. If you’re going to confess to two murders, don’t.”

“I’m not going to confess to anything,” Revel said dryly.

“Then go away and let me sleep. Why in hell people pick me as an audience for their life stories—”

“But I might give you a chance to add two and two on the condition that when you get four you do not tell Sands that I helped you. Let him think you’re an intuitive genius. Leave me out of it.”

“I see,” Prye said. “You want to help the investigation along. Anonymously, of course. And the motive behind this good deed?”

“I want Dinah to get out of this house and go some place where she’ll be happy.”

Prye looked at him. “Very noble, but useless, I assure you. Dinah will never be happy. Why didn’t you have some children, Revel?”

“Dinah didn’t want them.”

Prye nodded. “Naturally she didn’t. I’ve known very few women who didn’t throw a fit when they learned they were pregnant, especially the first time. After all, it’s a big job. You can’t expect a woman to assume it without some misgivings.”

“It’s too late now,” Revel said. “There’s barely enough time to save our skins.”

“Your skin?”

“My skin especially,” Revel said with a thin smile. “As it stands now I’m safe enough. Sands has nothing against me but a vast suspicion.”

“And a letter.”

“A letter, but not necessarily to me. There are thousands of Georges in the world. But suppose the letter was to me and suppose I told you what it meant, could you convince Sands you figured it out for yourself?”

“I can convince most of the people most of the time,” Prye said modestly. “Besides, whatever you tell me in this room will not be witnessed. If you wanted to deny everything afterward, it would be my word against yours.”

Revel stubbed his cigarette carefully.

“Yes,” he said. “Duncan did a lot of traveling. Have you found that out?”

“No.”

“He did. Keep that in mind. I want you to realize this too: neither Duncan nor I stood to gain much by this deal, almost nothing, in fact. But a third person, any third person, stood to gain a hell of a lot. Remember that, too.”

“Why were you in it?”

Revel shrugged. “Excitement, perhaps. Motives mean nothing. I’m a realist, and only romantics take motives into consideration.”

“You’re confusing enough without dragging in romanticism,” Prye said wearily. “What was the deal?”

“I said I wouldn’t tell you outright.”

“All right. Was it the first?”

“The second. I’ve given you your clue, that neither Duncan nor I had much to gain. It was Duncan’s idea in the first place. He was a little batty, I think, and very bored.”

Prye said, “Dry up. I’m thinking.”

After five minutes he raised his head and glanced at Revel. “You’d go to prison if it were found out?”

“Undoubtedly,” Revel said. “If you’d like to think it over I’ll go back to bed.”

“Hell, yes,” Prye said. “You can’t sleep so you come in here and unload your problems on me so I can’t sleep.”

Revel smiled. “It’s all quite simple,” he said, and walked out and closed the door behind him.

Prye sat in a chair until two o’clock, smoking. When he woke up he was still in the chair and the sun was streaming in on his face. He sat up and discovered that he had a stiff neck and a sore throat. Cursing Revel roundly, he went down the hall to the bathroom.

While he was shaving he began to whistle “Yankee Doodle.” He laid down his razor, interested. Why “Yankee Doodle”? he wondered.

Prye believed that the songs people whistled or sang were not chosen haphazardly. There was always a reason, a chain of circumstances behind the choice. Sometimes the reason was a simple one: whenever he and Nora quarreled Prye found himself whistling “Stormy Weather” with monotonous regularity.

But why “Yankee Doodle”? The tune kept running through his head long after he had forced himself to stop whistling it.

When he went into the dining room he found that he was the last to arrive. He greeted the others and took his place beside Nora, who was having a cigarette with her coffee.

“Hello,” she said. “You’ve been thinking again. You’re all wan and haggard.”

“I shaved,” Prye said. “Jackson, two boiled eggs, four minutes.”

Mrs. Shane said, “I’m glad you’ve come, Paul. We still haven’t decided what to do about the wedding presents. I’ve phoned everyone, of course, but it is a problem. Now if we could set another definite date—”

“We’ve gone into that,” Nora said.

“Not thoroughly,” Mrs. Shane protested. “Suppose the case is never solved?”

Dinah glanced at Prye and said smoothly, “That possibility doesn’t worry Paul. Does it, Paul? I shouldn’t be surprised if Paul has already solved it and is simply keeping us in suspense like the enigmatic detectives of fiction.”

“Don’t be silly, Dinah,” Nora said sharply.

The others were silent. Dinah was gazing into her coffee cup as if she were trying to see into the future. Revel was sitting across from her, not looking at her but knowing how she looked and what she wore.

Jackson came in again very quietly. Dinah’s head jerked up.

“I wish you wouldn’t creep, Jackson!”

“Sorry, Mrs. Revel,” Jackson said politely. “Inspector Sands is here and wants to see you.”

“Me?” Dinah said.

“Yes, madam.”

Dinah rose and waved an apology to Mrs. Shane. “Here I go.”

She went out into the hall. Sands was standing by the front door holding his hat in his hands. He still wore his topcoat and he looked pale and rather uncertain, Dinah thought.

“Hello,” she said cheerfully. “Won’t you come in?”

He didn’t move, but stood regarding her soberly.

“What were you doing in Stevens’ room on Sunday night?” he said. “I saw you.”

“You didn’t actually see me, Inspector.” She stood facing him, smiling. “The curtains were drawn.”

“The door was locked,” Sands said. “I locked it.”

“I unlocked it,” she said dryly. “Not hard. I was looking for something.”

“Find it?”

“No.”

“Know what it was?”

“No. But it would be a parcel, wouldn’t it? And I knew Duncan. He was too suspicious and sly to hide anything where he couldn’t watch it. Therefore I searched his room.”

“I was in Boston yesterday,” Sands said.

“The home of the bean and the cod,” Dinah said. “So what?”

“Stevens was a crook.”

“Of course,” Dinah said. “He hadn’t enough space between his eyes. Therefore, he was a crook.”

“Why?”

“For the hell of it. He had enough money.”

“Had he?” Sands paused. “He leaves his sister barely enough to keep her.”

“Keep her in mink, you mean.”

“I mean, keep her in food,” Sands said, frowning. “He had a dollar in his bank account.”

“You’re crazy.” She was staring at him in disbelief. “Or you’ve been taken for a ride. I’m charitable. I vote for the ride.”

“Neither. He had no money. He spent forty-two thousand dollars in the past month. I want to know what he spent it on.”

Dinah smiled. “On himself. Or buying off one of the hepatica’s men. Anything at all.”

“You can’t help me?”

“No, sorry. You might try asking Revel.”

“I have. That’s all I want to ask you now, Mrs. Revel. If you’re going back to the dining room you might tell Sammy Twist I want to see him.”

She looked at him for a moment and said, “You are crazy. Who’s Sammy Twist?”

Sands said, “A young man who’s disappeared.”

“Disappeared? Well?”

“His landlady reported this morning that he went out around ten last night and he never came back.”

“He never came back,” Dinah repeated slowly. “I think I’m rather envious of your Sammy Twist.”

“His landlady said he had a telephone call about seven o’clock. He told her he was going out and he asked her to remember an address for him. She wrote it down.”

“This address?” Dinah said. “Yes, it would be this address, of course, or you wouldn’t be here. The port of missing men.”

“I think he’s dead.”

“Of course,” Dinah said. “Of course he’s dead.”

She kept nodding her head, her eyes half closed and glassy. “Duncan and Dennis. Why not Sammy?”

“You’d better go up to your room, Mrs. Revel.”

“Why?” she asked. “Why should I go up to my room? I want to follow you. I want to see that you don’t find Sammy. Maybe Sammy never went back because he didn’t want to go back, see? Maybe Sammy was like me, not giving a damn, only wanting to be left in peace. Maybe he doesn’t want to be found—”

“You’re hysterical, Mrs. Revel. Please—”

“O God! There are things so much worse than death. You say I’m hysterical because you don’t want to admit it. I know about you, Sands. You haven’t the faintest respect for human life. I can see it in your eyes, contempt for weakness. Why are you a policeman, Sands? For a laugh? Guilty conscience, maybe?” She drew a long, deep breath that ended in a sob. “Sammy’s all right, and Duncan, and Dennis—”

“Guilty conscience, I think,” Sands said quietly. “You’d better go and rest. Perhaps Dr. Prye will give you a sedative.”

“To hell with Prye.” She straightened up and threw back her head. “To hell with sedatives. I’m going to get roaring drunk. I’m going to get so drunk I’ll think you are the Dionne quintuplets. You wait there. I’ll be back.”

She swung round and walked quickly and unsteadily toward the drawing room. Sands made a feeble noise of protest. He was a little uncomfortable with Dinah Revel even when she was cold sober.

He went into the library, laid his hat on the desk, and began to reread the notes he had taken in Boston. He was still there when Prye came in.

“You don’t get handwriting samples by playing charades,” Prye said. “Let’s get that straight.”

Sands looked up in surprise. “Don’t you? Sit down.”

Prye tossed an envelope on the desk. “But there they are.” He walked over to the windows. A police car was just stopping on the driveway. Six men climbed out of it, armed with a strange assortment of implements — spades, pickaxes, a camera, and an iron-toothed rake.

Prye raised his eyebrows. “Friends of yours?”

Sands said, “We’re looking for something that may be under ground.”

“The fifty brunettes?”

“No, a young man, one young man.”

Prye froze.

“The young man came here last night,” Sands said. “I think he is still here.”

“Who was he?”

Sands told him.

“I see,” Prye said. “You think he came here and never got away. Why?”

“He knew something, too much perhaps. He was an elevator boy at the Royal York. I examined his locker about an hour ago and found his betting book. On Saturday afternoon he played fifty dollars on Iron Man. That’s an unusual bet for an elevator boy accustomed to two-dollar bets. On Saturday morning Miss Stevens was poisoned, on Saturday afternoon an elevator boy conjured up fifty dollars, and on Saturday night Duncan Stevens was killed. Problem: who gave Sammy the fifty dollars, and why?”

“For services rendered,” Prye said.

“Exactly. And what particular service do you think of? Remember that Sammy was young, that he was not a crook, that he liked to play the horses.”

“He could dial a number,” Prye said.

Sands said, “Yes. I think he did dial a number. He called the hospital on Saturday at noon.”

He paused, running his finger over his upper lip, smoothing it out like crepe paper.

“So the people I’m interested in right now are the people who have alibis for that phone call. We have assumed that the person who made the call was the person who poisoned Jane by mistake and later killed Duncan, and that whoever had an alibi for the phone call was not the murderer. Now we’ll have to turn that around. If the murderer paid Sammy fifty dollars to make that call, he or she will certainly have an alibi for that time.”

He flicked over the pages of his notebook.

“Here they are. Dr. Prye, when that phone call was made you were talking to Sergeant Bannister in the hall outside this room. That gives you and Miss Stevens, who was in the hospital, the strongest alibis for that time. Mrs. Revel was in the taproom of the King Edward Hotel tossing pretzels into the air and trying to catch them in her mouth. Two waiters remember her very well. Mrs. Shane had just arrived home from the church with Dennis Williams and they were together in the drawing room. Mrs. Hogan and Hilda were in the kitchen. Jackson was talking to me in the library. That leaves Miss Shane and Miss O’Shaughnessy with no alibis for the time of the phone call, as well as Duncan Stevens, who no longer counts.”

He drew a breath and went on in a different tone: “But perhaps Sammy isn’t dead at all. If he is, we’ll find him.”

Prye nodded. “Meanwhile, do we tell Mrs. Shane what the squad is looking for and why?”

“I’ll tell them,” Sands said.

It wasn’t the kind of news any of them could be expected to like.

Except for Aspasia, who fainted, they took it calmly enough. They sat around the drawing room sipping the hot, strong tea which Mrs. Hogan believed to be an antidote for emotional upsets. Dinah went on slowly and methodically getting drunk. Revel sat apart from the others, watching them with an air of detached interest like a turtle peering out from his impregnable shell.

By twelve o’clock Dinah was drunk enough to be getting quarrelsome. Hoping to avoid another scene, Prye offered to take her for a drive to sober her up.

“Sober me up?” Dinah said. “What in hell do you get drunk for if you’re going to sober up? Prye, you’re a louse.”

Prye agreed.

“All men are lice,” Dinah said. “Especially Revel. Revel is the great king louse almighty.”

“I’d awfully like a drive,” Jane said faintly. “I’m not at all well. Couldn’t we—?”

“I’d be delighted,” Prye said. “Anyone else want to come?”

Nora said “Yes.” Dinah said if Nora and Jane went she would have to come along to protect them from the lice which all men were.

Nora went upstairs and brought down her coat and Dinah’s, and Prye went out to get his car from the garage. He ran into two men who were probing with spades in the earth beside the garage. They stopped work to glance at him curiously.

“Finding things?” Prye asked pleasantly.

They both said “Yeah,” and went on with their work. Halfway up the driveway a small man was scooping bits of earth into a bottle. A man with a camera was standing beside him.

Prye went up to them. “Could I get my car past here?” he said.

“In a hurry?” the small man said dryly. “Look again and you’ll see that I’m busy.”

“That’s no answer,” Prye said. “Can I get my car through here? Or not?”

“Not.”

“When will—”

“Go away!”

The man with the camera grinned and said, “Joe is temperamental. He doesn’t like people. His mother used to take him on shopping tours.”

“I don’t like big people,” Joe corrected him. “I got the damnedest inferiority complex you ever saw. Watch this, gentlemen.”

He removed a bottle from his pocket, poured some of the liquid into the bottle of earth, and held it up to Prye. The earth had turned a deep blue.

“I’d be staggered,” Prye said, “if I didn’t know that was the benzedrine-hydrogen peroxide test for bloodstains.”

“Oh, go away,” Joe said gloomily. “Get your bloody car through. I should care.”

Prye went back to the garage. The three women were standing in the driveway waiting for him. Dinah was swaying somewhat but she looked sober enough.

“I’ll ride in the rumble seat with Dinah,” Nora suggested. “The more air the better.”

“What’s all this about air?” Dinah said. “What are those men doing?”

One of the men looked up and said he was planting petunias.

“I hate petunias,” Dinah said. “Reminds me of a guy I knew once. He was a petunia.”

“Can’t you get your mind off men?” Jane cried irritably. “Come on.”

Prye backed the car out of the garage. Dinah poised on the back fender and tugged at the handle of the rumble seat.

“Let me,” Prye said, getting out of the car. “I think it’s locked.”

“Locked hell,” Dinah said. “Easy as rolling off a log—”

The seat opened up and Dinah said “Locked hell,” again in a strange voice. The next instant she had fallen headfirst into the rumble seat.

“I’m sick of drunks,” Prye said. “Dinab! Come out of there!” He went over and grabbed her leg. “Dinah!”

Dinah didn’t move. Prye climbed up and looked into the rumble seat.

Sammy Twist was in there. His eyes were wide open, as if he were surprised that a strange woman had fallen on top of him. The blood had dried on his hair and his forehead.

“I do wish—” Jane began.

“Go away,” Prye said curtly. “Nora, go too.”

Nora put out her hand and grasped Jane’s arm. “Paul. It’s not — it couldn’t possibly be—”

Prye said grimly, “It is.”

“Is what?” Jane said. “I thought we were going for a drive.”

The two men beside the garage had put down their spades and come up to the car.

One of them looked in and said, “Holy cats.”

He moved aside politely and let the other one look in too.

“Help me get this woman out of here,” Prye yelled. “She’s fainted.”

“Don’t disturb the body,” one of the men said.

Jane let out a feeble bleat and started running to the house, holding her hands to her ears. Nora sat down quietly on the driveway and closed her eyes.

Prye had grasped the front of Dinah’s coat and was pulling her out of the seat.

Sammy didn’t blink an eye.

He was quiet and cold and brittle. His bloody head rested against the blue leather seat and his knees were bent up against his chest like a baby’s in the womb.

The two policemen carried Dinah into the house. Prye went back to Sammy and stood looking down at him with angry eyes.

“Like a baby,” he said. “Like a damn little baby. Like a damn bloody baby you are, Sammy.”

Sammy’s eyes, wide, innocent, knowing, surprised, looked back at him.