The Door Between

1

When Karen Leith won the major American prize in literature her grateful publisher surprised everyone, including himself, by successfully wheedling his prima donna into a public appearance.

Even more surprising was Miss Leith’s permission to stage the insubstantial pageant in her own Japanese garden behind the prim house in Washington Square.

A great many important people came, studding the unimportant ones like raisins in a cake; and everybody was happy, none more so than Miss Leith’s publisher, who had never dreamed his most difficult piece of property would consent to put herself on exhibition — and in her own garden, too!

But winning the literary award seemed to do something to the small, shy, still-pretty woman who had come quietly out of Japan in 1927 and sequestered herself behind the opaque walls of the house in Washington Square, from whose sanctuary she sent forth incredibly enameled and beautiful novels; and the handful who had met her before swore they had never seen her so excited and friendly.

But most of the crowd had never seen Karen Leith at all, which made her party more of a début than a triumph. For a woman reputed to be as scary as a bird, she stood the ordeal well. In fact, she seemed to challenge attention, for she had draped her frail figure in a gorgeous Japanese kimono and brushed her blue-black hair back in the loose sleek bulging Nipponese style. Even the more critical gentry present were disarmed, however; Karen carried herself so gracefully in the quaint costume that they knew what seemed a challenge was nothing of the sort and that she was simply more at ease in Japanese garb than she would have been in a Fifth Avenue modiste’s gown. Ivory and jade pins lay in her hair like crown jewels; and indeed Karen was royalty that evening, receiving her guests with that bloodless excitement under disciplined calm of a queen at her coronation.

The celebrated author of Eight-Cloud Rising was a tiny creature of such feathery structure that, as one poetic gentleman remarked, a delicate wind would have rocked her and a gale swept her bodily away. Her cheeks were pale hollows under the curious and careful cosmetics. In fact, she looked ill; and there was a floating quality in her gestures that suggested the fatigue of neurasthenia.

Only her eyes were vivacious: they were gray and Caucasian, aglitter and yet a little masked in their violet settings, as if they had somewhere in her rather mysterious past learned to shrink from blows. The ladies all agreed with unusual magnanimity that she possessed a rather fantastic prettiness, more on the ethereal side and quite ageless; almost like a ceramic of the East or one of her strange ceramic novels.

Karen Leith was what she was, everyone agreed; and what she was nobody knew, for she never went out and she kept to her house and garden like a nun. And since the house was inaccessible and the garden wall high, biographical details were maddeningly scanty: she was the daughter of an obscure American expatriate who until his death had taught comparative literature at the Imperial University in Tokyo, and she had spent most of her life in Japan. And that was nearly all.

Karen was holding court in a small pavilion at the center of the alien garden, preparing tea according to a Japanese ceremony she called Cha no yu. She sing-songed the peculiar sounds with such ease it seemed almost as if English were an acquired language rather than her heritage. Her girlish hands were busy with a whisk stirring powdered green tea in a rather rudely fashioned Korean bowl of thick, aged pottery. A very ancient Oriental woman dressed in Japanese costume stood silently behind her, like a protecting deity.

“Her name is Kinumé,” explained Karen in answer to a question concerning the old woman. “The dearest, gentlest soul. She’s been with me for — oh, centuries.” And for an instant Karen’s pretty, exhausted face darkened unaccountably.

“She looks Japanese and yet she doesn’t,” said one of the group in the pavilion. “Isn’t she tiny!”

Karen hissed something in what they all took to be Japanese, and the old woman bowed and pattered away.

“She understands English quite well,” said Karen apologetically, “although she’s never learned to speak it fluently... She doesn’t come from Japan proper. She comes from the Loo-choo Islands. That’s the group, you know, that lies on the edge of the East China Sea, between Taiwan — Formosa, you know — and the mainland. They’re even a smaller people than the Japanese, but better-proportioned.”

“I thought she didn’t look quite Japanese.”

“There’s some question among ethnologists about the stock. It’s been said that the Loo-chooans have Ainu blood — they’re hairier and have better noses and less flattened cheeks, as you saw. And they’re the gentlest people in the world.”

A tallish young man with pince-nez glasses remarked: “Gentle is as gentle does. How gentle is that, Miss Leith?”

“Well,” said Karen with one of her rare smiles, “I don’t believe there’s been a lethal weapon used in Loo-choo for three hundred years.”

“Then I’m all for Loo-choo,” said the tallish young man ruefully. “A murderless Eden! It sounds incredible.”

“And not exactly typical of the Japanese, I should say,” put in Karen’s publisher.

Karen glanced at him. Then she passed the bowl of tea around. A literary reporter asked a question.

“Taste it... No, I don’t remember Lafcadio Hearn. I was barely seven when he died. But my father knew him well — they taught together at the Imperial University... Isn’t it delicious?”

It was delicious irony, not tea. For the first recipient of the bowl was the tallish young man with the pince-nez glasses, whose name was Queen and who was present unimportantly as a writer of detective stories.

But Mr. Queen could not have been expected to detect the irony then; recognition was to come later, under less pleasant circumstances. At the moment he remarked that the tea was delicious, although privately he thought it a nasty mess, and passed the bowl on to his neighbor, a middle-aged male gorilla with the stoop of a student, who refused it and sent it on its way.

“I’ll share everything with you,” explained the big man pathetically to Karen, “but germs.”

Every one laughed, for it was an open secret that Dr. John MacClure knew more about Karen Leith than any one else in the world, and indeed that he proposed shortly to learn even more. His sharply light blue eyes in their chunky setting rarely left Karen’s face.

“Why, Doctor,” cried a lady who wrote stony, inhibited novels about New England, “you haven’t a spark of poetry in you!”

Dr. MacClure retorted: “Neither have germs,” and even Karen smiled faintly.

Manning of the World, who had been trying to recall the year of Lafcadio Hearn’s death, finally said: “Don’t bite me, Miss Leith. But wouldn’t that make you about forty?”

Karen began to stir another bowl of tea calmly.

“Remarkable,” murmured Mr. Queen. “That’s when life begins, I’m told.”

Karen’s shy and wary glance fixed on Dr. MacClure’s chest. “That’s a coincidence. Life begins at fifty, or fifteen.” She drew a breath very lightly. “Life begins when happiness begins.”

The women looked at one another, knowing what Karen meant; for she had made her mark and won her man. One of them asked Dr. MacClure rather maliciously what he thought.

“I don’t practise obstetrics any more,” he said shortly.

“John,” said Karen.

“Well” He waved his thick arms. “I’m not interested in the beginning of life. I’m interested in its ending.”

And no one had to explain what he meant, for Dr. MacClure was the arch-enemy of death.

For a space they were still; as one who wrestled constantly with death Dr. MacClure gave forth a powerful effluvium that occasionally silenced people. There was something dusty and yet clean about him, as if even mortal dirt became sterilized on contact with him; and people thought of him a little uncomfortably in terms of carbolic acid and white robes, like the high priest of some esoteric cult. Legends had sprung up about him.

Money and fame meant nothing to him; perhaps, as a few envious souls in his profession commented bitterly, because he had plenty of both. Most human beings to him were insects crawling after microscopic values, creatures fit only for laboratory dissection; and when they annoyed him he slapped them down impatiently with his hairy, antiseptic paws.

He was an unkempt, absent man. No one could remember the time when he had not worn a certain ancient brown suit, unpressed, depilated, and edged with fuzz, which clung to his shoulders plaintively. He was a strong man, and a tired man, and while he did not look his age he nevertheless contrived to seem a hundred.

It was a curious paradox that this man, who made people feel like awed children, should himself be a child in everything but his work. He was angry, helpless, and socially timid; and quite unconscious of the effect he had on people.

Now he looked appealingly at Karen, as a child looks at its mother in an emergency, wondering why everyone had stopped talking.

“Where’s Eva, John?” asked Karen quickly. She had a sixth sense for his moments of confusion.

“Eva? I think I saw her—”

“Here I am,” said a tall girl from the step of the pavilion. But she did not come in.

“There she is,” said Dr. MacClure gratefully. “Having a nice time, honey? Have you—”

“Where have you been, dear?” asked Karen. “Do you know everyone? This is Mr. Queen — isn’t it? — Miss MacClure. And this—”

“We’ve all met, I think,” said Eva MacClure with a faint social smile.

“No, we haven’t,” said Mr. Queen truthfully, rising with alacrity.

“Daddy, your tie’s under your ear again,” said Miss MacClure, ignoring Mr. Queen and glancing coldly at the other men.

“Oh,” sighed Karen, “it’s impossible keeping him presentable!”

“I’m all right,” mumbled Dr. MacClure, backing into a corner.

“Do you write, too, Miss MacClure?” asked the poet hungrily.

“I don’t do anything,” said Miss MacClure in a sweet voice. “Oh, will you excuse me, Karen? I think I see someone...”

She went away, leaving a chastened poet behind her, and vanished among groups of noisy people being served outlandish edibles by a corps of Japanese servants recruited for the evening. But she did not speak to anyone and as she made her way to the little bridge at the end of the garden she was frowning very fiercely indeed.

“Your daughter is lovely, Doctor,” panted a Russian lady-writer whose bosom was swathed passionately in tulle. “Such a healthy-looking creature!”

“Ought to be,” said Dr. MacClure, fumbling with his tie. “Perfect specimen. Had proper care.”

“Glorious eyes,” said the poet unpoetically. “A little too distant for me, though.”

“Oh, Eva’s going through a stage,” smiled Karen. “Tea, somebody?”

“I think it’s wonderful how you’ve found time to raise a family, Doctor,” panted the Russian lady.

Dr. MacClure glared from the poet to the Russian lady; they both had poor teeth and, besides, he detested being discussed in public.

“John finds time for everyone but himself,” said Karen hastily. “He’s needed a rest for ages. More tea?”

“Mark of greatness,” said Karen’s publisher, beaming on everyone. “Why on earth didn’t you go to Stockholm last December, Doctor? Imagine a man snubbing the donors of the international medical award!”

“No time,” barked Dr. MacClure.

“He didn’t snub them,” said Karen. “John couldn’t snub anybody. He’s just a baby.”

“Is that why you’re marrying him, my dear?” asked the Russian lady, panting more than ever.

Karen smiled. “More tea, Mr. Queen?”

“It’s so romantic,” shrilled the New England novelist. ‘Two prize-winners, two geniuses, you might say, combining their heredity for the creation of—”

“More tea?” said Karen quietly.

Dr. MacClure stamped off, glowering at the ladies.

The truth was, life was beginning for the good doctor at fifty-three. He had never thought of himself in terms of age, but neither had he thought of himself in terms of youth; and to have youth pounce upon him from behind both amused and nettled him.

The medical award he could accept without loss of equilibrium; it meant no more than a thickening of the annoyances always besieging him — newspaper interviews, invitations to medical functions, the conferring of honorary degrees. He had shaken the whole business off indifferently. He had not even gone to Stockholm, although he had been notified of the award the previous autumn. A new research had absorbed his attention and May found him still in New York, prowling about his empire at the Cancer Foundation.

But falling in love with Karen Leith so astounded and upset him that for months he had gone about in a resentful silence, plainly arguing with himself; and he was still a little irritable about the whole subject. It was so damned unscientific — a woman he had known for over twenty years! He could remember Karen when she was a sullen sprig of seventeen, annoying her patient father with unanswerable questions about Shakespeare in the Leith house in Tokyo, with Fujiyama towering like ice cream to the southeast.

Dr. MacClure had been young then, in Japan on a wild-goose chase connected with his early cancer researches; but even in those days he had not thought of Karen except in disapproving terms. Her sister Esther, of course, had been different — he often thought of Esther as she was then, with her golden hair and dragging leg, like an earthbound goddess. But Karen — why, between 1918 and 1927 he hadn’t seen her at all! It was infantile. Naturally, for sentimental reasons he had become her physician when she left the East to settle in New York — old times, that sort of thing. Proved something. Bad business, sentiment. Being Karen’s physician should have drawn them apart... the professional relationship...

It had not. Dr. MacClure, cooling off as he idled through the groups in the Japanese garden, chuckled despite himself. He had to admit to himself, now the die was cast, that he rather enjoyed the experience of feeling young again. He even looked up at the moon and for one mad, unscientific moment wished he were alone with Karen in this impossible little garden with its queer, tangy Japanese blooms.

2

The little bridge was convex and snubby; it bulged in absurd fashion, and Eva MacClure stood on the bulge leaning on the rail and staring darkly down.

The tiny water was black except where the moon lay, and there was so little of it that when something hungry came up in the middle of the moon and gulped, the gulp sent circles to the boundaries of the pool in three seconds. Eva knew it was three, because she counted them in one corner of her mind.

Everything was tiny here: the gnarly dwarf trees of ume — plum — with their sweet blossoms in the shadows beyond the bridge, the pool, the voices of Karen’s guests piping thinly out of the clothing gloom, the crinkly Japanese lanterns like miniature accordions strung overhead on invisible wires. Among the meticulous cameos of tsutsuji and shobu and fuji and botan — azalea, iris, wistaria, peony, all the Japanese flowers Karen loved — Eva felt like an overgrown schoolgirl in toyland.

“What’s the matter with me, anyway?” she thought despairingly as she watched a circle widen.

It was a question she had been asking herself for some time. Until recently she had been a healthy young vegetable ripening underground. She had felt no real sense of pain or pleasure; she merely grew.

“Biting people’s heads off!”

It was good soil Dr. MacClure had provided. Eva grew up in a Nantasket paradise, laved by salt winds made pleasanter by the lavish acrid smell of wild flowers. The doctor sent her to the best schools — schools he investigated suspiciously beforehand. He provided money, good times, wardrobe, the care of hand-picked women for her. He had made his motherless house a home for her; and he had inoculated her character against infection with the same sure knowledge with which he supervised the hygiene of her body.

Yet those were formative years and Eva experienced no biting emotion. She knew she was forming — even a plant must have a vague sensibility of its growth: like all growing things she felt life tracing its course through her body, doing extraordinary things to her, shaping and building her, filling her full of meanings too green for expression and destinations too far away to be more than glimpsed. It was an interesting time, even an exciting time; and Eva went about in a glow, happy only as a plant is happy.

But then, suddenly, something went dark about her, as if some monstrous light-organism had swallowed up the sun and bathed the world in evil, unnatural colors.

From a gay and lovely vegetable she became overnight a creature of moods, chiefly black. Food lost its savor. Fashions, which had always been exciting, became dull — she quarreled bitterly with her dressmaker; her friends, whom she had always managed beautifully, became intolerable — she lost two of them forever by telling them some plain truths about themselves.

It was all very mysterious. The theatre, the books she loved, the witcheries of Calloway and Toscanini, cocktail parties, the fascinating quest for bargains in the Boston and New York stores, the gossip, the dancing, the Causes she was always championing — all the interests and activities which had filled in the outline of her pleasant existence inexplicably began to fade together, as if there were a conspiracy against her. She even took it out savagely on Brownie, her favorite horse at the Central Park stables; and Brownie was so outraged that he dumped her unceremoniously into the middle of the bridle-path. It still ached where she had fallen.

All these wonderful symptoms, coming to a head in an unusually insidious spring in New York — Dr. MacClure had long since given up the Nantasket house except for occasional weekends — really reduced themselves to a simple diagnosis, if only Dr. MacClure had been ordinarily observant. But the poor man was too obsessed with his own excursions into romance these days to see farther than the end of his nose.

“Oh, I wish I were dead,” said Eva aloud to the little gulps in the pool; and for the moment she really did.

The bridge creaked, and from the way it trembled underfoot Eva knew a man had come up behind her. She felt herself growing warmer than the warmness of the evening warranted. It would be too silly if he—

“Why?” asked a young man’s voice. It was not only a man’s voice, it was a young man’s voice; and what was more embarrassing, the voice was quite hatefully amused.

“Go away,” said Eva.

“And have you on my conscience for the rest of my life?”

“Don’t be unpleasant, now. Go away.”

“See here,” said the voice, “there’s water right under you and you look pretty desperate. Were you thinking of suicide?”

“Don’t be absurd!” flared Eva, swishing around. “The pool isn’t two feet deep.”

He was a very large young man, almost as large as Dr. MacClure, Eva was chagrined to notice; and he was despicably good-looking. Not only that, he was dressed in dinner clothes, which somehow made matters worse. The same piercing keen-puckered eyes people remarked in Dr. MacClure beamed down at her; and altogether Eva felt like a child.

She decided to snub him, and turned back to the rail.

“Oh, come now,” said the large young man, “we can’t let it go at that. I have a certain social responsibility. If it wasn’t drowning, what was it to be — cyanide by moonlight?”

The obnoxious creature moved up to her side; she felt him. But she kept looking at the water.

“You’re not a writer,” said the young man reflectively. “Although the place is crawling with them. Too young, I’d say, and too desperate. The breed here to-night’s well-fed.”

“No,” said Eva icily, “I’m not a writer. I’m Eva MacClure, and I wish you would go away from here as fast as you can.”

“Eva MacClure! Old John’s daughter? Well!” The young man seemed pleased. “I’m glad you don’t belong to that crowd out there — I really am.”

“Oh, you’re glad,” said Eva, hoping it sounded as nasty as she meant it to sound. “Really!” It was getting worse and worse.

“Detest writers. Mumbo-jumbo artists, the whole crew. And not a good-looker in the crowd.”

“Karen Leith is very beautiful!”

“No woman’s beautiful past thirty. Beauty is youth. After that, make-up. What they call ‘charm’... I’d say you could give your future stepmother cards and spades.”

Eva gasped. “I think you’re the most — the rudest—”

“I see ’em with their clothes off,” said the young man negligently. “Same as the rest of us that way — more so.”

“You... what?” faltered Eva. She thought she had never met a more detestable person.

“Hmm,” he said, studying her profile. “Moon. Water. Pretty girl studying her reflection... Despite the gloomy philosophy, I’d say there was hope.”

“I don’t know why I’m talking to you,” said Eva in a muffled angry voice. “I’ve been watching the goldfish and wondering when the creatures sleep.”

“What!” exclaimed the detestable young man. “Then it’s a worse case than I thought.”

“Really—”

“Looking into a pool under the moon and wondering when goldfish sleep! That’s a worse sign than wishing you were dead.”

Eva turned to give him her most freezing stare. “May I ask just who you are?”

“That’s better,” said the young man with satisfaction. “We always take a positive emotion, like anger, as a good sign in the morbid cases. I’m a man named Scott.”

“Will you go away,” said Eva rudely, “or shall I, Mr. Scott?”

“You needn’t turn that pretty nose of yours up so. It’s the only name I ever had. Scott, Richard Barr. And it’s ‘Doctor,’ although you may call me Dick.”

“Oh,” said Eva in a small voice. “That Scott.”

She had heard of Dr. Richard Barr Scott. She could not have helped hearing about Dr. Richard Barr Scott, unless he had gone off to Patagonia. For some time her friends had been frothing slightly at the mouth over Dr. Richard Barr Scott, and it had become a cunning habit in many feminine quarters to visit Dr. Richard Barr Scott’s luxurious offices on Park Avenue. Even vigorous mothers had been known to come down suddenly with the most complicated ailments although from the way they all dressed for a visit to Dr. Scott’s one would have thought they were going to a cocktail party at the Ritz. The reports which reached Eva’s moody ears had been most enthusiastic.

“So you see,” said Dr. Scott, looming over her, “why I was concerned. Purely professional reaction. Bone-to-a-dog business. Sit down, please.”

“I beg your pardon!”

“Sit down, please.”

“Sit down?” murmured Eva, wondering how her hair looked. “What for?”

Dr. Scott cocked an eye about. But except for the myriad fireflies and the tiny dinning voices, they were alone in that part of the Japanese garden. He placed a hard cool hand on Eva’s bare hand, and she was annoyed to feel goose-pimples. She rarely felt goose-pimples. So she froze him again and snatched her hand away.

“Don’t be a child,” he said soothingly. “Sit down and take off your shoes and stockings.”

“I’ll do nothing of the kind!” gasped Eva, surprised out of her dignity.

“Take ’em off!” growled the large young man with sudden menace.

Eva found herself the next moment deposited on the stone lip of the pool beside the little bridge, obeying instructions. She thought she must be dreaming.

“Now,” said Dr. Scott briskly, squatting beside her. “Let’s see. Ah! Lovely legs. Lovely feet. Lovely arches — I see they haven’t fallen yet. They will... Put ’em in the pool please.”

For all her secret misery and confusion Eva began to enjoy the situation; it was mad and romantic, like something out of a fluffy book. He was a rather unusual doctor, she admitted grudgingly to herself; the reports hadn’t at all exaggerated.

“Lovely,” repeated Dr. Scott thoughtfully.

Eva was astounded to feel a jealous pang. He had done this sort of nonsensical thing before, that was it; that was most definitely it. It was part of his professional technique. A society doctor! Eva sniffed, losing some of the enjoyment. She knew all about them from Dr. MacClure. Clever young men who got by on personality, the bedside manner. Parasites, Dr. MacClure called them. Handsome, of course, preying on the weaknesses of silly females. They were a menace to society; Eva felt that quite beyond argument.

She would show him. Thought he’d caught another fish, did he? Dr. MacClure’s daughter! No doubt it would be good advertising, hanging in his office like a — like a pelt... Eva was just about to snatch up her stockings when she was shocked to feel him grasp her ankles firmly and splash them into the pool.

“Lovely,” said Dr. Scott again, absently.

The coolness of the water enveloped her bare feet, spreading up her legs over her heated skin.

“Cool?” asked Dr. Scott, still absently.

Eva was outraged at herself. All that came out of her mouth was a meek: “Well... yes.”

Dr. Scott roused himself, shaking off what seemed to be a thought. “That’s fine! Now, young woman, you answer some personal questions.”

Eva stiffened instantly; but the water felt so pleasant she relaxed the next moment, furious with herself.

He nodded, quite as if he had expected it. “Hot feet, short tempers. And vice-versa. Infallible remedy in warm weather.”

“Is this the usual preparation for an examination, Dr. Scott?” asked Eva tartly.

“What?”

“I mean — do you have a pool in your office, too? What do you do for a moon?”

“Oh,” said Dr. Scott, a little blankly.

“I suppose,” sighed Eva, wriggling her toes with pleasure, “this is what comes of eating suki-yaki, or whatever it is.”

Dr. Scott gazed at her oddly. Then he roused himself again and said: “You see, we must suspect many causes when a young female gets suicidal impulses.” He sat down beside her on the cement. “How old are you?”

“No chart?” asked Eva.

“What?”

“Twenty,” said Eva docilely.

“Digestion?”

“Quite.”

“Appetite?”

“Until recently,” said Eva darkly, “I ate like a sow.”

Dr. Scott surveyed her straight back, smooth arms, and cleanly moulded figure, a little lambent with moonlight. “Hmm,” he said. “That’s refreshing. Most refreshing.”

Eva smiled in the silver darkness. Most of her friends warred constantly on the common enemy of appetite, keeping two worried eyes on their scales.

“How much do you weigh?” continued Dr. Scott, still surveying.

“One-eighteen,” said Eva, adding wickedly, “stripped.”

“Well, Well Get plenty of exercise?”

“Only the horse gets more.”

“Any faintness on rising in the morning — ache in your bones?”

“Goodness, no.”

“Notice any lapses of memory — difficulty in concentrating?”

“Not a bit,” said Eva demurely, and the next instant she was angry with herself again. Being demure! What was the matter with her? She compressed her lips.

“Nothing wrong with your metabolism, apparently. Sleep well?”

Eva yelped, snatching her feet from the pool. A goldfish had nibbled, not unnaturally, at the bait of a wriggling toe. Eva steeled herself and slipped her feet back in the water.

“Like the dead,” she said firmly.

“Dream much?” asked Dr. Scott, pretending not to have noticed.

“A good deal,” said Eva. “But don’t ask me what I dream about because I won’t tell you.”

“You have already,” said Dr. Scott dryly. “Well, let’s see. Get the patient’s own diagnosis. Often helpful in psychiatric cases — can’t see anything physical at the moment. What do you think’s the matter with you?”

Eva drew her legs out of the pool definitely, tucking them in and inspecting the young man with frigidity.

“Now, please, don’t be difficult. You misunderstood. I was rehearsing the lines of a... a play I’m giving next week for my settlement children.”

“‘I wish I were dead,’” repeated Dr. Scott reflectively. “A little morbid for the tots, I should think.”

Their eyes locked; and after a while Eva turned back to the hungry little gullets in the pool, feeling hot and cold in alarmingly rapid alternations.

“All this piffle about when goldfish sleep,” drawled the large young man. “Don’t give me that. Have you any women-friends to speak of?”

“Mobs,” said Eva stiffly.

“For instance? I think I know some of your crowd.”

“Well, there’s Karen,” said Eva, desperately trying to think of someone different.

“Nonsense. She’s not a woman. She’s a cloud! And twice as old as you, too.”

“I don’t like women any more.”

“How about men?”

“I hate men!”

Dr. Scott whistled, as if a great light had fallen. He lay back on the grass skirting the lip of the pool, resting his head on his palms. “Restless, eh?” he remarked to the dappled sky.

“Sometimes.”

“Cramps in your legs occasionally, as if you’d like to kick somebody?”

“Why—!”

“Kids at the settlement suddenly get on your nerves?”

“I didn’t say—”

“Dream things you’re ashamed of? Yes, I know that.”

“I never said—”

“Moony over picture-stars — Howard, the Gable menace?”

“Dr. Scott!”

“And of course,” said Dr. Scott, nodding at the moon, “you inspect yourself in the mirror rather oftener than usual these days, too.”

Eva was so startled she began to cry: “How did you—?” but then bit her lip and felt terribly ashamed, really undressed. How could any one ever marry a doctor? she asked herself fiercely. It must be horrible living with a... with a human stethoscope who knew what made you tick. It was true. Everything he had said was true. It was all so true and so embarrassing Eva hated him. She had never thought she could hate anyone quite so much as she hated him. It was bad enough having an old doctor strip your sacred secrets from you, but a young one... She had heard he was only a little past thirty. How could he have any respect...

“How did I know?” said Dr. Scott dreamily from the grass; she felt his eyes burn on her naked shoulders — at least, one spot between her shoulder-blades tingled. “Why, it’s just biology. It’s what makes babies possible.”

“You’re — simply — horrid!” cried Eva.

“A stunner like you. Spring — twenty — she hates men she says... Oh, my aunt!”

Eva furtively inspected herself in the water. Something was happening to her inside — a little boiling area in the region of the diaphragm, hot and jumpy.

“Never been in love, of course,” murmured Dr. Scott.

Eva sprang to her bare feet. “Now I am going!”

“Ah, touched the nerve. Sit down.” Eva sat down. That boiling was the most curious thing. She knew she was miserable, and naturally he was the most insufferable creature; yet the area was spreading to her chest and it was beginning to make breathing difficult. “Well, that’s what you need. That’s what you want. Dr. Scott’s prescription for young females. Love, or whatever it is you women call it. Do you good.”

“Goodbye,” said Eva, almost in tears. But she did not go.

“Trouble with you,” said Dr. Scott, and in the queerest way she knew he was looking at the back of her head, “is that you’ve been smothered by your environment. Brains, genius, fame — all around you, keeping you down. Get yourself a couple of thousand dollars’ worth of new duds and a husband, and you’ll never feel another ache or pain.”

The most stifling silence fell. It was not at all the kind of silence that falls between physicians and patients. But then physicians rarely conduct moonlight examinations of young females in Japanese gardens near water.

What was even more peculiar was Eva’s sudden feeling that she was no longer a patient. As if his self-assurance had passed over to her, leaving her full of strength and him a little empty... It came like a stroke of lightning. One moment the Japanese cicadas had been scratching away, and the next the world turned upside down. Inside the despair of months was magically gone, dissolved in the boiling spot that now churned her whole body.

It was peculiar, too, that now the young man was silent she wished she might hear his voice again; and at the same time she was conscious of a wonderful power that said he might speak, but because of her it would be a different tone.

Eva had never experienced a dangerous moment before. But she knew instinctively that this was such a moment, and that danger was the pleasantest thing she had ever tasted.

She heard him breathing on the grass behind her, breathing rather harder than a physician should. And she was glad; and all at once in a freeing gush happy, for she knew that the wonderful power was a power women feel at certain moments with certain men, a power she had never felt with any one before.

And she held him in the palm of her hand; she knew that calmly, although he lay beside her and her back was straight and inscrutable to him. She knew that she had only to turn around to make something sweet and impossible happen.

But now that she had her moment, she felt an irresistible urge to hold it at bay. She began slowly and deliberately, back still turned to him, to pull her discarded stockings on to her legs. He did not move. Then she slipped her shoes on, concentrating on the task. The fireflies flickered in and out of sight. The voices were planets away. The gulps in the pool punctuated everything — the silence, the strain, the sweet hostility.

Physician!

And Eva rose lazily and only then did she turn and look at him, knowing how nice she must appear with her slender figure twisted at the waist in its sheath of voile. But now she was above him, and he had to look up at her slim height, cool and amused and inwardly trembling. Eva felt like a lady-knight triumphant over the body of a dragon; and she suppressed a giggle and an impulse to put her foot on his chest.

But she felt like doing a mad thing. She had never felt quite so strong and irresponsible before.

“Well, you’re the doctor,” she said, looking down at him.

He stared up at her with wide-open man’s eyes, curiously a little angry. The moment stood still; she could almost feel his arms hard and convulsed about her, with the garden spinning and sound and life and darkness dropped off the edge of consciousness. She even relished the taste of his anger, joyful in her knowledge that she had surprised his defenses... She could see his body contract, getting ready to spring up from the grass.

“Eva!” roared Dr. MacClure’s voice.

Eva went cold all over. Dr. Scott scrambled to his feet and began brushing himself off in a futile, powerful way.

“Oh, there you are,” growled Dr. MacClure, stamping across the bridge. Then he caught sight of the young man and stopped short. Eva stood between them, clutching her handkerchief.

The coldness vanished and the happiness with its boiling returned. Eva could have laughed aloud between the two men looking each other over, the middle-aged one inspecting the young one with his remarkable sharp light blue eyes, and the young one returning the inspection half-truculently.

“This is Dr. Richard Barr Scott, daddy,” said Eva composedly.

“Ha,” said Dr. MacClure.

Dr. Scott mumbled: “’Dyado,” and put his hands into his pockets. Eva knew that he was very angry indeed, and was very glad.

“Heard of you,” grunted Dr. MacClure.

“Good of you,” scowled Dr. Scott.

And already they measured each other, potential antagonists, and Eva was so happy she felt faint.

3

And so, if life began for Karen Leith at forty, and for Dr. MacClure at fifty-three, it began for Eva MacClure at twenty, in the romantic setting of Karen Leith’s garden-party in May.

Eva grew, she burgeoned; she became a woman fulfilled overnight, complete and self-assured. All her problems dropped away like useless leaves.

The joy of the hunt obsessed her. She threw herself into the ancient game as if she had been playing it for years — a game in which the huntress stood still, and the prey came seeking its doom, helplessly. Dr. MacClure was not the only physician in New York to be confused; young Dr. Scott actually grew haggard.

They were engaged in June.

“There’s only one thing, daddy,” said Eva to Dr. MacClure shortly after. It was a sweltering night, and they were in Karen’s garden. “It’s about me and Richard.”

“What’s the matter?” demanded Dr. MacClure.

Eva stared at her hands. “I wonder if I ought to tell him — you know, that you and I...”

Dr. MacClure looked heavily at her; he seemed more than usually tired these days, and he had aged considerably. Then he said: “Yes, Eva?”

Eva was troubled. “That you’re not really my father. It doesn’t seem right not to tell him, but—”

Dr. MacClure sat still. Karen, beside him, murmured: “Don’t be a fool, Eva. What good can it do?” Somehow, in her flowered frock, with her hair combed tightly back, Karen seemed older, her advice sounder.

“I don’t know, Karen. It just doesn’t—”

“Eva,” said Dr. MacClure in the gentle voice no one but his two women had ever heard. He took her hands in his own, engulfing them. “You know, darling, that I couldn’t love you more if you were my own daughter.”

“Oh, daddy, I didn’t mean—”

“Forget it,” said Karen a little sharply. “Don’t tell him, Eva.”

Eva sighed. The event had taken place in her childhood, to her a blank prehistoric time. Years later Dr. MacClure had sensibly told her about her adoption, and the vague trouble it had caused her had never entirely disappeared.

“I won’t if you say so,” she said doubtfully, for it seemed to her that silence was wrong; and yet she was glad to be advised to keep silent — afraid of anything, no matter how slight, which might threaten her new-found happiness.

Dr. MacClure lay back on the bench, closing his eyes. “It’s better that way,” he said.

“Have you fixed the date?” asked Karen quickly, glancing at the doctor.

“Not definitely,” said Eva, shaking off her dismal mood. “I suppose I’ve been acting like an idiot — all one grin — but I do wish we were married. I get the queerest feeling sometimes — as if...”

“You’re the strangest child,” murmured Karen. “Almost as if it were never going to happen?”

“Yes,” said Eva with a little shiver. “I... I don’t think I could stand that, after all the... Marrying Dick is the only thing in the world I want.”

“Where is he?” asked Dr. MacClure dryly.

“Oh, at some hospital. There’s a bad case of—”

“Tonsils?” said the doctor.

“Daddy!”

“Aw, now, honey,” he said instantly, opening his eyes, “don’t mind me. But I want to prepare you for the life of a doctor’s wife. I want—”

“I don’t care,” said Eva defiantly. “It’s Dick I’m interested in, not his work. I’ll attend to that when I get around to it.”

“I’ll bet you will,” chuckled Dr. MacClure, but his chuckle died very quickly and he closed his eyes again.

“Sometimes I think,” said Eva desperately, “that we’ll never be married. That’s what I meant by a feeling. It’s... it’s really appalling.”

“For heaven’s sake, Eva,” cried Karen, “don’t act like a silly girl! If you want so much to marry him, marry him and have it over with!”

Eva was silent. Then she said: “I’m sorry, Karen, if my thoughts seem silly to you.” She rose.

“Sit down darling,” said Dr. MacClure quietly. “Karen didn’t mean anything by what she said.”

“I’m sorry,” murmured Karen. “I... It’s nerves, Eva.”

Eva sat down. “I... I guess I’m not myself either these last few days. Richard seems to think we ought to wait a while. He’s right, too! There’s no sense in rushing things. A man can’t change his whole life overnight, can he?”

“No,” said Dr. MacClure. “You’re a wise girl to have found that out so soon.”

“Dick’s so... I don’t know, comfortable. He makes me feel good all over.” Eva laughed happily. “We’ll go to all the funny little places in Paris and do all the crazy things people do on honeymoons.”

“You’re sure of yourself, aren’t you Eva?” asked Karen, resting her dark head on Dr. MacClure’s shoulder.

Eva wriggled ecstatically. “Sure? If what I feel isn’t sureness... It’s the most blessed thing! I dream about him now. He’s so big and strong, so much of a baby...”

Karen smiled in the darkness, twisting her small head to look up at Dr. MacClure. The doctor sat up and, with a sigh, buried his face in his hands. Karen’s smile faded, her eyes becoming more than usually veiled; there was anxiety in them, and something else on her pretty and ageless face that Eva had seen rather frequently of late.

“Here I am,” said Eva briskly, “talking about myself while you two... Do you know you both look simply awful? Don’t you feel well, either, Karen?”

“Oh, I feel quite as usual. But I think John’s badly in need of a vacation. Maybe you can talk him into one.”

“You do look dreadfully peaked, daddy,” scolded Eva. “Why don’t you close up that dungeon of yours and go abroad? Goodness knows I’m not a doctor, but an ocean voyage would do you a world of good.”

“I suppose it would,” said the doctor suddenly. He got up and began to patrol the grass.

“And you ought to go with him, Karen,” said Eva decisively.

Karen shook her head, smiling faintly. “I could never leave this place, dear. I’m made with deep roots. But John ought to go.”

“Will you, daddy?”

Dr. MacClure stopped short. “Look here, honey, you go ahead with your young man and be happy and stop worrying about me. You are happy, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” said Eva.

Dr. MacClure kissed her while Karen looked on, still faintly smiling, as if all the time she were thinking of something else.

At the end of June Dr. MacClure yielded to the determined campaign against him and dropped his work for a vacation in Europe. He had lost weight and his suit had begun to hang on him in a despairing sort of way.

“Be sensible, Doctor,” said Eva’s fiancé rather brusquely. “You can’t go on this way. You’ll keel over one of these days. You’re not made of iron, you know.”

“I’m finding that out,” said Dr. MacClure with a wry smile. “All right, Dick, you win. I’ll go.”

Richard and Eva saw him off; Karen, whose lassitude kept her chained to her house, did not come, and Dr. MacClure said his good-byes to her privately in the garden in Washington Square.

“Take good care of Eva,” said the big man to Richard, while the gong was clamoring on shipboard.

“Don’t worry about us. You take care of yourself, sir.”

“Daddy! You will?”

“All right, all right,” said Dr. MacClure grumpily. “Lord, you’d think I was eighty! Good-bye, Eva.”

Eva threw her arms about him and he hugged her with some of his old simian strength. Then he shook hands with Richard and they hurried off the boat.

He stood waving at them from the rail until the liner straightened out in the river. Eva suddenly felt funny. It was the first time they had ever been separated by more than a few miles; and somehow it seemed significant. She cried a little on Richard’s shoulder in the taxi.

August came and went. Eva heard from Dr. MacClure sporadically, although she wrote him every day. But the doctor was not a writing man, and the few letters he sent were like himself — precise in detail and strictly impersonal. He wrote from Rome, Vienna, Berlin, Paris.

“He’s visiting all the cancer men in the world,” said Eva indignantly to Richard. “Someone should have gone with him!”

“He’s probably having the time of his life,” grinned Dr. Scott. “It’s the change that’s important. Nothing wrong with him physically — I went over him with a fine comb. Let him alone.”

They were busy days for Eva. She strode about in the smothering summer, cool as a vernal deity, engaged in the fascinating business of gathering her trousseau. There were teas given by friends, and week-end jaunts with Richard to the seashore, and much gracious queening over females who were still a little dazed at the suddenness and thoroughness of her conquest. She saw Karen infrequently and felt a little ashamed of herself.

Dr. Scott was inclined to be gloomy. “Practice fell off this month. I know what’s done it, too.”

“Well, doesn’t it always in the summer?”

“Ye-es, but—”

A horrible suspicion flashed across Eva’s mind. “Richard Scott, don’t tell me it’s because of you and me!”

“Frankly, I think so.”

“You... you gigolo!” cried Eva. “Attracting all those — all those creatures! And just because you’re engaged to me they’ve stopped coming. I know ’em — cats, all of them! And you’re as bad as they are. Sorry because...”

She started to cry. It was their first quarrel and Eva took it very hard. As for Dr. Scott, he looked as if he had just stepped on something squashy.

“Darling! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean — I’m mad about you! You’ve ruined me! But I love you just the same, and if those damned hypochondriacs won’t come, the devil with ’em.”

“Oh, Dick,” she sobbed in his arms. “I’ll slave with you, I’ll do anything!”

And after that Eva was very happy again, because he kissed her in a special place and then took her to the corner drugstore for a chocolate ice-cream soda, which she loved.

In early September Dr. MacClure wrote from Stockholm that he was coming home. Eva went flying to her fiancé’s office with the letter.

“Hmm,” said Richard critically, scanning the neat chirography. “About as informative as a mummy about himself.”

“Do you think the trip’s done him good?” asked Eva anxiously, as if Dr. Scott could see across four thousand miles.

“Must have, darling. Now don’t worry. If he’s not all right we’ll fix him up as soon as he lands. He’s at sea now.”

“I wonder if Karen knows,” said Eva excitedly. “I suppose she does. Daddy must have written her.”

“I’d think so. After all, she’s his future wife.”

“And that reminds me, Richard Scott.” Eva plucked at a flower on his desk. “Talking about future wives...”

“Yes?” he said blankly.

“Oh, Dickie, don’t be stupid!” Eva blushed. “Can’t you see... I’m—”

“Oh,” said Richard.

Eva faced him. “Dick, when are we going to be married?”

“Now, angel—” he began, laughing and pulling at her.

“No, Dick,” said Eva quietly. “I’m serious.”

They faced each other over the desk for a long time. Then Dr. Scott sighed and sat limply down in his swivel-chair. “All right,” he said irritably. “I’m licked. I thought — I’ve got to the point where I’m eating you for breakfast and seeing you in every chest I poke at with my ’scope.”

“Dick!”

“I never thought I’d get to saying to a woman, ‘I can’t live without you,’ but I’m there, all right. Damn you, Eva, I’ll marry you the minute old John comes home!”

“Oh, Dick,” whispered Eva, for her throat was too full. She came around the desk and dropped tiredly into his lap, as if after a great struggle...

After a while Eva kissed Richard’s handsome nose on the tip, slapped his hand, wriggled off his lap. “Stop that! I’m going right down to Washington Square and see Karen.”

“Give me a break, will you?” he growled. “You can see Karen any time.”

“No. I’ve been neglecting her dreadfully and besides—”

“Me, too,” he grumbled, pressing a button on his desk. His nurse came in. “No more patients to-day, Miss Harrigan.” As the nurse went out he said: “Now come here.”

“No!”

“Do you want me to make a fool of myself and chase you all around the office?”

“Oh, Dickie darling, please,” said Eva, busily powdering her nose. “I’ve got to see Karen.”

“Why all this love for Karen?”

“Let me go! I want to tell her, you fool. I’ve got to tell somebody.”

“Then I guess I’ll take a nap,” he said disconsolately. “I know you when your chin sticks out! I was up all night holding Mrs Maarten’s hand and convincing her having a baby was like having a tooth pulled.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” crooned Eva, kissing him again. “She’s very pretty, isn’t she? Have a nice nap.”

“Will I see you to-night? After all, we ought to celebrate—”

“Dick! Don’t! Dick— Yes,” said Eva, and fled.

Eva emerged into the Park Avenue sunshine looking exactly like a girl who has just been well-kissed and the date of her marriage set. She was so full of happiness that the doorman grinned and the taxicab driver threw away his toothpick to open the door for her.

She gave Karen’s address and leaned back in the cab, closing her eyes. So here it was at last. Marriage — just around the corner. Not any old marriage, but marriage to Richard. There would be a lot of gossip, of course — how she had thrown herself at him and practically hogtied him; but let them talk. They were all envious. And the more envious they were, she thought blissfully, the happier she would be. It was awful thinking such a thing, but she wanted every woman in the world to be jealous of her. She felt a little stifled under her jacket. Mrs Richard Barr Scott... It sounded nice. It did sound nice.

When the cab stopped in front of Karen’s Eva got out and paid the man off and paused on the stoop to look over the Square. The park was brilliant in the four o’clock sunshine, brilliant and beautiful with its geometrical grasses and the fountain and the nurses wheeling baby carriages. Watching the carriages, Eva felt herself flush; she had been thinking of babies recently rather more than was decent. And then she thought that if she and Richard could not live in Westchester or Long Island after they were married, nothing would be sweeter than to live in a house like Karen’s. It was quite the nicest house she knew in New York. With a really livable series of bedrooms — the drapes—

She rang the bell.

Their own place in the East Sixties was just an apartment. Despite all the fussing Eva had lavished on it, it had never been anything but an apartment. But Dr. MacClure had refused to move farther than a whistle’s blast from his Cancer Foundation, and it was true that a whole house would have been a useless luxury, since Eva was never at home and the doctor, of course, virtually lived in his laboratory. The doctor... For a secret moment Eva was gladder than she had ever been that Karen and Dr. MacClure would some time be married. She felt a little guilty, thinking of going away and leaving him all alone in that awful apartment. Perhaps they could—

A strange maid opened the door.

Eva was surprised. But she went through the vestibule and asked: “Is Miss Leith home?” — a silly question, but one you always asked, somehow.

“Yes, Miss. Who’s calling?” The maid was a sullen young creature, as yet apparently untrained.

“Eva MacClure. Oh, you don’t have to announce me — I’m not company,” said Eva. “What happened to Elsie?”

“Oh, she must have got fired,” said the maid with a trace of animation.

“Then you’re new here?”

“Yes’m.” She had empty, stupid eyes. “Three weeks, it is.”

“Heavens!” said Eva in dismay. “Is it that long? Where’s Miss Leith? In the garden?”

“No’m. Upstairs.”

“Then I’ll go right up.” Eva mounted the wide stairway lightly, leaving the new maid to stare after her.

Downstairs and in the basement servants’ quarters Karen Leith’s house was as Western as the interior decorator could make it; but upstairs Karen and the East had had their way. All the bedrooms were Japanese, full of furniture and gewgaws Karen had brought back with her from her father’s house in Tokyo. It was a pity, thought Eva as she went up, that so few people had ever seen Karen’s bedrooms; for they were as quaint and absurd as specimen rooms in a museum.

She thought she saw a kimono-clad figure going through the doorway of Karen’s sitting-room as she turned into the upstairs corridor; and Eva hurried after.

Sure enough, it was Kinumé, Karen’s ancient maid, and Eva saw the tiny alien creature quite clearly, just going into Karen’s bedroom through the sitting-room and closing the bedroom door behind her. Eva also saw, before Kinumé disappeared, that the old woman was carrying a single blank sheet of deckle-edged Japanese stationery and an envelope, very delicate with their faint rose-on-ivory pattern of chrysanthemums.

Eva was about to knock on Karen’s door when it opened a little and Kinumé’s tiny figure backed out, without the stationery, saying something in her sibilant speech.

“Oi! Damaré!” Eva heard Karen say petulantly from inside the room.

“Go men nasai, okaasan,” lisped Kinumé hastily, shutting the bedroom door and turning around.

The old Japanese woman expressed surprise in the only way Eva had ever detected in her — by a slight widening of the ellipses of her eyes. “’Lo, Eva. You no coming see Missie long time.”

“Hello, Kinumé,” said Eva. “No, I haven’t, and I’m terribly ashamed. How are you, and how’s Karen?”

“Me good,” said Kinumé, but she stood her ground by the door. “Missie no good.”

“Is Karen—” began Eva, perplexed.

The wrinkled mouth set firmly. “You no see Missie now,” Kinumé announced in her polite, hissing little voice. “Missie liting. She finish soon.”

Eva laughed. “I wouldn’t disturb her for the world. A major novelist! I’ll wait.”

“I go tell Missie you here.” Kinumé turned back to the door.

“Don’t bother. I haven’t anything to do, anyway. I’ll read a book or something.”

Kinumé bowed and, folding her tiny hands in her sleeves, pattered off, closing the sitting-room door behind her. Eva, left to herself, took off her hat and jacket and went to the odd mirror to primp herself. She poked at her hair and wondered if she would have time to-morrow for a permanent. And her hair did need a good washing. Then she opened her bag and took out her compact and wondered while she opened the lipstick whether Dr. MacClure would bring her back one like Susie Hotchkiss’s. Mr. Hotchkiss had brought her quite the most fascinating gadget from Paris. She dabbed with her little finger three times at her lips, and then stroked the rouge on rather critically. Dick had kissed them a little out of shape and he hadn’t let her do a really good job before she left his office. The stuff wasn’t supposed to smudge, but it did. Eva made a mental note to get another lipstick like the peach-coral at home.

And after a while she went to the window to look out at the garden, patchy in the late afternoon sun.

The window was barred. Poor Karen! The way she had had her sitting-room and bedroom windows hemmed in iron when she bought the Washington Square house! It was absurd in a grown woman. New York would always be a terrifying place to her. Why on earth had she ever left Japan?

Eva flung herself down on one of Karen’s queer little couches. The room was so peaceful; it was a lovely place to think. Birds were chirruping in the garden — Karen’s sitting-room and bedroom occupied the entire back of the house, overlooking the garden — and the shouts of children in the Square were very far away... To think of Richard, and of being married... Eva wished for an instant that Richard — darling Dick — might be with her, in her arms. Poor Dick! He’d looked so surly — like a child denied its candy...

There was no sound from the bedroom next door, no sound at all. Eva picked up a book from a little teakwood table and idly flapped its pages.

4

At five-thirty by the ship’s New York chronometer the Panthia was slashing through a pleasant sea. It was growing dark beyond the eastern horizon, and Dr. MacClure lay in a deck-chair staring at the thin hazy line behind, where sky touched water fantastically.

The open upper deck was deserted near the dinner-hour. But one young man, tallish and wearing pince-nez glasses under his linen cap, was weaving his way along the deck, occasionally stopping to elbow the rail and gaze accusingly at the placid sea. As he passed Dr. MacClure his face lightened from green to yellow.

“Dr. MacClure!”

The doctor’s head rolled around and he studied the young man’s face blankly for a moment.

“Probably don’t remember me,” said the young man. “Name’s Queen. I met you in May, at your fiancée’s garden-party in Washington Square.”

“Oh, yes,” said Dr. MacClure, smiling briefly. “How are you? Enjoying the trip?”

“Well...”

“Had the most wretched time myself. Seasick since Southampton. Never have been able to stomach the ocean.”

Mr. Queen grinned under his greenish mask. “You know, I’m the same way. Suffer the tortures of the damned. If I look as badly as you do, Doctor—”

“Haven’t been well,” grumbled Dr. MacClure. “It’s not all mal de mer. My folks packed me off to Europe. Can’t say I feel any better for it.”

Mr. Queen clucked. “Father in my case. Practically had me shanghaied. Inspector Queen of the New York police department. If I did feel any better, this westward passage has taken it all out of me again.”

“Say! You’re the detective-story fellow. I remember now. Sit down, Mr. Queen, sit down. Haven’t read any of your stories — can’t stand the damned things — but all my friends...”

“Have probably written me letters of complaint,” sighed Ellery Queen, dropping into the next chair.

“I mean,” said Dr. MacClure hastily, “I don’t like detective stories. Not yours especially. Scientific information always garbled. No offence, you understand.”

“That’s what I meant,” said Mr. Queen gloomily.

He was rather shocked at the change in the doctor’s appearance. The chunky, powerful face was gaunt and the clothes looked pitifully loose.

“Haven’t noticed you before,” said the doctor. “But then I’ve practically lived in this chair.”

“I’ve been too sick to do anything but groan in my cabin and munch at dry chicken sandwiches. Been abroad long, Doctor?”

“Couple of months. Poking around the capitals, seeing what was being done. Stopped over at Stockholm for a visit to the prize people. Had to apologize for forgetting to come, and all that. They were pretty decent about it, considering the size of the check.”

“I read somewhere,” smiled Ellery, “that you donated it to your Foundation.”

Dr. MacClure nodded. They sat in silence for some time, gazing out to sea. Finally Ellery asked: “Is Miss Leith with you?” He had to repeat the question.

“Eh? I beg your pardon,” said the doctor. “Why, no, Karen’s in New York.”

“I should think a sea jaunt would have done her good,” said Ellery. “She looked rather done in in May.”

“She’s run down,” said the big man. “Yes.”

“Post-novel fatigue,” sighed Ellery. “You scientific fellows don’t know what hard work it is. And Eight-Cloud Rising! It’s like a piece of perfect jade.”

“I wouldn’t know,” murmured the doctor with a tired smile. “I’m just a pathologist.”

“Her grasp of Oriental psychology is simply uncanny. And that glittering prose!” Ellery shook his head. “No wonder she’s feeling it. Lost weight, I’ll wager.”

“She’s a little anaemic.”

“And high-strung, eh? Comes of a delicate strain, no doubt.”

“Mostly nerves,” said the doctor.

“Then why on earth didn’t she come with you?”

“Eh?” Dr. MacClure flushed. “Oh, I’m sorry. I—”

“I think,” smiled Ellery, “you’d rather be alone, Doctor.”

“No, no, sit right down. Little tired, that’s all... No secret about it. Karen’s extremely timid. Damned near a phobia with her. Afraid of burglars — that sort of thing.”

“I noticed her windows were barred,” nodded Ellery. “Funny how a notion like that will get you down. Result of her life in Japan, I suppose. Completely out of tune with her American environment.”

“Maladjusted.”

“I’ve been told she never leaves her house even for an overnight visit — spends all her time either indoors or in her garden.”

“Yes.”

“Reminds me of Emily Dickinson. In fact, one would almost say there had been some tragedy in Miss Leith’s life.”

Dr. MacClure turned deliberately around in the deck-chair and stared at Ellery. “And what makes you say that?” he asked.

“Why... was there?”

The doctor sank back and lit a cigar. “Well... there was something. Years ago.”

“Family?” suggested Ellery, who had an insatiable curiosity about everything.

“A sister. Esther.” The doctor was silent for a while. “I knew them both in Japan in ‘13, just before the War.”

“A tragedy of some sort, no doubt?” said Ellery encouragingly.

Dr. MacClure put his cigar in his mouth with an abrupt gesture. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Queen... I’d rather not discuss it.”

“Oh, sorry.” After a while, Ellery said: “Just what was it you got the award for, Doctor? I never could get scientific details straight.”

The doctor brightened visibly. “Proves what I said. You fellows are all the same.”

“But what was it?”

“Oh, a lot of foolishness, as usual premature. I happened to be fooling around with enzymes, probing into the oxidation process in living cells — the fermentation process involved in respiration... following up the work Warburg of Berlin did. I didn’t strike it there, but I got off on a tangent... well.” He shrugged. “I don’t really know yet. But it looks encouraging.”

“That sort of thing in cancer research? I thought doctors were generally agreed cancer is a germ disease.”

“Good God, no!’ shouted Dr. MacClure, bouncing up in the chair. “Where the devil’d you hear that? Germ disease!”

Ellery felt squelched. “Er... it isn’t?”

“Oh, come now, Queen,” said the doctor irritably. “We discarded the germ theory of cancer twenty years ago, when I was a squirt with delusions of grandeur. A lot of men are working with hormones — there’s definitely a basic hydrocarbon connection. I have a hunch we’re all going to come out at the same place—”

A steward stopped before them. “Dr. MacClure? There’s a New York call for you on the telephone, sir.”

Dr. MacClure got hurriedly out of the deck-chair, his face heavy again. “’Scuse me,” he muttered. “That may be my daughter.”

“Mind if I trail along?” said Ellery, also rising. “I’ve got to see the purser.”

They followed the steward in an odd silence to the A-deck lounge, where Dr. MacClure entered the ship-to-shore telephone room with a quick step. Ellery, waiting for the purser to placate a florid woman passionate about something, sat down and rather thoughtfully eyed the doctor through the glass walls. There was something bothering the big man — something which might possibly explain, he thought, more than the convenient excuse of “overwork” Mr. MacClure’s poor health...

He sprang out of the chair the next moment, and then stood still.

As the connection was made and Dr. MacClure spoke into the instrument, something happened to him. Ellery saw the big man stiffen in his seat beyond the glass walls, clutching the telephone convulsively, his craggy features drained of blood. The shoulders sagged then and the whole man seemed to cave in.

Ellery’s first thought was that the doctor had suffered a heart-attack. But he instantly realized that the expression on Dr. MacClure’s face was not caused by physical pain; the pale lips twisted with shock, the shock of immense and horrified surprise.

Then Dr. MacClure was at the door of the cubicle, fumbling with his collar as if he wanted air.

“Queen,” he said in an unrecognizable voice. “Queen. When do we dock?”

“Wednesday. Before noon.” Ellery reached out to steady the man; the iron arm was shaking.

“My God,” said Dr. MacClure hoarsely. “A day and a half.”

“Doctor! What’s happened? Has your daughter—?”

Dr. MacClure braced himself and with an effort walked to the leather chair Ellery had vacated and sat down, staring at the glass walls. His eyeballs were yellow, speckled with red darts. Ellery motioned violently to a steward, whispered to him to bring a long drink, and the man left running. The purser was already hurrying across the lounge, followed by the florid woman.

The big man suddenly shook through the length and thickness of his body. And his face screwed up in the queerest expression of pain, as if he were wincing at a terrible thought that refused to leave his brain.

“An awful thing,” he mumbled. “An awful thing. I can’t understand it. An awful thing.”

Ellery shook him. “For God’s sake, Doctor, what’s happened? Who was that?”

“Eh?” The red-speckled eyes gazed up at him unseeingly.

“Who was it?”

“Oh,” said Dr. MacClure. “Oh. Oh, yes. The New York police.”

5

Eva sat up on the couch at half past four and yawned, stretching her arms. The book she had picked up from the inlaid table she dropped, wrinkling her nose; it was dull. Or perhaps that wasn’t fair — she’d really not been able to put two consecutive sentences together. There were so many things to think about — the wedding, the honeymoon, the house, where to live, the furniture...

If Karen didn’t finish what she was doing soon, she thought, she would curl up and go to sleep. There was still plenty of time before the six o’clock call she contemplated to Dr. MacClure in mid-ocean, although she could hardly wait. She did wish Karen would come out, or something. They’d call the Panthia together! Or should she keep the news as a surprise for Dr. MacClure when the Panthia docked Wednesday morning?

The telephone rang in Karen’s bedroom.

Eva sank back on the silk pillows, not listening, half-smiling. But the telephone rang again. It stopped. It rang.

That was funny, thought Eva, staring at the closed door. The telephone was on Karen’s writing-desk in front of the oriel windows overlooking the garden, and that was where Karen sometimes did her work. She had only to reach over... There it was again!

Could Karen have lain down for a nap? But surely that shrill signal would have awakened her. Was she in that funny, mysterious old attic of hers? But... Another ring.

Perhaps she was deliberately ignoring it. Karen was a queer person — nervous, temperamental — she might be so annoyed at the ’phone that she wouldn’t answer it out of pique. It was an army rule in the house that she wasn’t to be disturbed for any reason whatever while she was in her quarters working. So the telephone... Eva relaxed on the pillows as the bell rang once more.

But she sat up very quickly a moment later. There must be something wrong! Kinumé had said Karen was ‘liting’ — but what was she writing? Kinumé had brought her stationery and envelope! Then she wasn’t working on her new novel at all she was writing a letter. But if she was writing a letter, why didn’t she answer her telephone?

The telephone rang for the last time, gave up.

Eva scrambled off the couch, skirt flying, and ran across the sitting-room to the bedroom door. Something had happened to Karen. She was ill — Kinumé had said so — she had looked poorly the last time Eva saw her — perhaps Karen had fainted or had an attack of something. That was it!

She burst into Karen’s bedroom so precipitately that the door banged against the wall and swung back, bumping into her. And Eva stared, her heart hammering, hardly knowing what to expect.

At first she thought the room was empty. There was no one in the low funny little Japanese bed and the writing-desk in front of the oriel windows was untenanted. In fact, the chair behind the desk, facing her, was pushed neatly into the knee-hole on the farther side, for Karen’s desk and chair were so placed as to catch the light from the triple window over her shoulder when she worked.

Eva crossed to the far side of the room, looking around, puzzled. Everything was in place — the beautiful Japanese screen beyond the bed against the wall; the water-colors; the large empty bird-cage hanging beside the bed; the Kakémono by the great Japanese painter Oguri Sōtan, which Karen prized so dearly; the delicate bric-à-brac — everything was in place except Karen herself. Where was she? She had certainly been in the bedroom a half-hour before; Eva had heard her voice. Unless she was upstairs in the attic no one had ever seen...

Then Eva spied two tiny Japanese shoes, toes down, hanging over the steps of the little dais behind the desk, where the floor of the oriel was raised above the level of the bedroom. And Karen’s feet were in the shoes, clad in white Japanese stockings, and there was a scrap of kimono visible...

Eva felt her heart contract. Poor Karen! She had merely fainted after all. Eva ran around the desk. There was Karen lying face down on the dais, stretched along the step of the dais, her kimono almost fastidiously draped about her little form... Eva opened her mouth to call Kinumé.

But her mouth closed again. She blinked and blinked and blinked, in a futile, dazed way, everything in her paralysed but her eyes.

There was blood on the dais.

There was blood on the dais. Eva kept blinking, so stunned her brain could think nothing but that. Blood!

Karen’s face was twisted sideways to Eva, resting on the polished dais, and the blood was staining the floor near her white throat. There was so much of it, as if it had gushed out of that hideous slit, that red-lipped wound in the soft front of Karen’s throat... Eva covered her eyes with a little animal whimper.

When she put her hands down one part of her numbed brain was already functioning weakly. Karen was so still, her exhausted cheeks were so white, so bluish-white, her lids so marbly and veined — Karen was dead, Karen was dead of a stab-wound in her neck. Karen was... was murdered.

The thought repeated itself, ringing in her head like the telephone bell that had rung and rung. Only the telephone bell had stopped, and the thought would not. Eva’s hand groped for the desk; she felt she must hold on to something.

Her hand touched something cold, and instinctively she jerked away and looked. It was a piece of metal, a long piece of metal tapering to a point and with a bow on the other end. Scarcely conscious of what she was doing, Eva picked the thing up. It was — that was queer! she thought dully — half a pair of scissors. She could even see the little hole at the base of the blade, between the table and the finger bow, where the screw which held the two halves together had once dropped out. But it was the oddest-looking scissors she...

Eva almost screamed this time. That blade, that sharp wicked point... the weapon, the weapon that had killed Karen! Someone had killed Karen with half a scissors and wiped the blade off and... and left it! Her hand jerked again, and the metal thing fell, striking the edge of the writing-desk and slithering off into a little waste-basket half-full of paper debris to the right of the chair. Unconsciously Eva passed her fingers over her skirt, but the cold and evil feel of the thing remained.

She tottered around the desk and dropped to her knees on the dais beside Karen’s body. Karen, Karen, she thought wildly; such a queer and pretty thing, so terribly happy after so many shut-in years, and now so horribly dead. Eva felt herself go weak and put out her hand to steady herself on the dais floor. And this time her fingers touched something like tepid jelly, and she did scream — a formless, almost voiceless scream that whispered in the silent room.

It was Karen’s coagulating blood, and it was all over her hand.

She jumped to her feet and retreated blindly, half-mad with nausea and horror. Her handkerchief, she must wipe... She fumbled in the waistband of her skirt, ridiculously careful not to get a spot of the sticky red stuff on her skirt or waist. She found the handkerchief and wiped and wiped, as if she could never get herself clean; wiped her fingers and smeared the handkerchief with jelly-red smears and kept staring blindly at Karen’s bluing face.

Then her heart stopped beating. Someone was chuckling without amusement, dryly, behind her.

Eva whirled so fast she almost fell. She did fall back against the desk, the bloody handkerchief clutched to her breast.

A man was leaning in the open doorway of the bedroom, leaning and chuckling in that dry and humorless way.

But his eyes were not chuckling at all. They were very cold gray eyes, and they were watching not her face but her hands.

And the man said in a low, slow voice: “Stand still, gorgeous.”

6

The man heaved against the jamb, came straight, and walked into the room on the balls of his feet. He walked so carefully that Eva felt a hysterical impulse to laugh. But she did not, for it struck her remotely that there was grace in the way he walked on the balls of his feet, as if he had done it many times before.

The man refused to look at her face; all his attention coldly persisted in centering on her hands. The bloody handkerchief, thought Eva in a dim horror... She dropped the hateful thing on the floor and started to push away from the desk.

“I said stand still.”

She stood still. The man stopped, his eyes flickered, and still looking at her he walked backwards until he came to the door, and then he found it by groping for it.

“I... She’s—” began Eva, gesturing in a fluttery way over her shoulder. But her mouth was so dry she had to stop.

“Shut up.”

He was a young man with a bleak brown face, as crisp and seared as autumn leaves. The words came out of his mouth like drops of ice-water through lips that barely parted.

“Park it right where you are. Against the desk. And keep those hands of yours where I can see them.”

The room spun. Eva closed her eyes, dizzy. Keep those hands of yours... Her legs were frozen, but her brain was going like a machine. The words didn’t make sense. Keep those hands of yours...

When she looked again he was standing in front of her with a trace of puzzlement in the gray diamonds of his eyes. And now he was not looking at her hands, which were spread beside her on the desk, but at her face. He was reading her face. He was taking it in, feature by feature — her brow, her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her chin — going over them one by one, like an accountant taking inventory. Eva tried to make sense out of chaos, but nothing clicked into place. She thought it might be a dream, then hoped it might be a dream. She almost convinced herself it was a dream and closed her eyes again to make it so.

She did not hear him move, which proved it was a dream. For when she next opened her eyes he was gone.

But then she turned her head and there he was behind the desk, in the oriel, resting on one knee beside Karen’s body, not touching Karen, not touching the blood, almost not touching the floor he was kneeling on.

Eva could see his hard brown young face clearly, intent on the body. It was like no face she had ever seen; none of the men she knew — not Dr. MacClure, nor Richard Scott — had a face like this. It was perfectly smooth in its brownness, almost hairless, like a mask one molecule thick. Eva would have said it was the face of a boy if not for the hardness, the expressionlessness of it. It was as if a grown man had kept himself alive in a world of enemies by putting up an impenetrable brown shield. He had broad shoulders and large clean brown hands. As he leaned over, Eva could see no trace of wrinkled belly; he was flat and hard there, too, where Richard — where Richard was a little soft. Where Richard... Oh, Richard!.. And his big body was clothed a little too nattily in a gray Palm Beach suit with a dark blue shirt and white silk tie, and he wore a hat a little too rakish — a white leghorn pulled down over one gray eye.

The brown man came to his feet in a bound and began to stalk. From object to object in the room, stalking. That was it, thought Eva; stalking like a hunter. He was looking the place over without touching anything, looking it over and looking for something at the same time. And always he managed to keep her in full view, turning and walking and stopping with a delicate nervous energy that reminded her of a race-horse.

Who was he? Eva thought. Who was he? Once the thought came, it flooded her with panic. Who was he? She had never seen him before. It was inconceivable that he was a friend of Karen’s or of anyone Eva knew — she knew no men like him. He was different even from the race-track gamblers he vaguely resembled, or the strange men who lounged about Times Square.

Who was he? How had he got into the house? Could he have been in the bedroom all the time? But Eva knew it was empty except for Karen when she had burst in. Then why had he come? What was his business? Was he a — gangster? There was what might have been a bulge... Had... he—

Eva’s breath caught, and he was in front of her before she could move. He caught up her two hands and held them in one of his with an easy clutch that hurt her. With the other he gripped her chin and shook her head a little; but her teeth rattled and tears came to her eyes.

“Talk fast, sweetheart.” He spoke like a machine-gun now. “What’s your name?”

She was surprised to hear herself say, in a fascinated way: “Eva. Eva MacClure,” like a child.

From the slightest constriction of his hands she knew that he recognized the name; but his eyes gave no sign.

“What time did you blow in here?”

“Four. About four o’clock.”

“Who spotted you?”

“The maids.”

She wondered idly why she was answering this stranger’s questions, but all the will had gone out of her and she could only respond to stimuli like a jellyfish being poked.

“Jap?”

“Kinumé was up here giving Karen some stationery. I heard Karen’s voice from the sitting-room but didn’t see her. She didn’t know I was here. Kinumé came out and told me Karen was writing. I sent her away and waited.”

“What for?”

“I wanted to talk over — something — something with Karen.”

“How long did you wait?”

“It was four-thirty when the telephone rang in here,” said Eva mechanically. “It kept ringing and finally stopped.” Somehow she knew he knew all about the telephone call; but how he knew it, or how she knew he knew it, she could not have said. “I was frightened and came in here and found — her.”

Her voice somehow got to the end of the sentence. The man was weighing her again, again puzzled. It was remarkable how those gray eyes could hold you...

“What were you doing with the bloody handkerchief?” The handkerchief was at their feet; he kicked it.

“I... I went over to look at Karen and got some blood on my hands from the floor. I wiped it off.”

He released her hands and chin slowly; she felt the blood seep back into the grooves his fingers had made.

“All right, sweetheart,” he said slowly. “I guess you’re too dumb to lie.”

Eva’s knees gave way and she sank to the floor, leaning against the desk and crying and crying, like a fool. The brown man stood over her wide-legged, looking down, still puzzled. Then his legs moved away, and although she could not hear him she knew he was restlessly prowling again.

Richard... If only Richard were here. In his arms she would be safe... safe from this brown man with his terrifying eyes. Oh, if she were only his — for always, married, safe, safe forever. She wished fiercely that she could stop crying, but try as she would she could not. Richard... And her father. But the instant she thought of Dr. MacClure she shut the thought up in a locked closet of her mind. She refused to think of the huge tired man on the high seas.

Glass exploded behind her and something flew over her head to thud in front of her on the floor.

The stranger, who was just about to step on the dais behind her, almost got the missile in his face. His arms went up in a blur to shield his eyes from the spattering glass of the oriel’s central window; and then he and Eva from opposite sides were looking down into the garden from which the missile had come. How she had got up from the floor Eva had no idea. All she remembered was the crash of glass, and then she was in the oriel with the brown man. The blood, the little quiet figure... She found herself pressed against the brown man’s hardness.

But the garden was empty; whoever had broken the window was gone.

Eva began to laugh so hard she thought she would never stop. She rocked against the brown man in little convulsions of mirth, feeling him hard against her, not feeling him at all. Then she stepped down from the dais and swayed against the desk and laughed and laughed until the tears flowed again.

“Throwing stones,” she gasped. “Throwing stones — with Karen... with Karen...”

He slapped her so hard with his open palm that she squealed with pain and shrank away from him, on the edge of collapse.

“I told you to shut up,” he said frowning; but it sounded in the oddest way like an apology.

He turned away from her at once, as if he were ashamed. Not, thought Eva wildly, for having slapped her, but for having been apologetic about it. She watched him, feeling so stupid and empty that unconsciousness would have been a relief.

The stranger looked briefly at the broken window. It was the center window which had been shattered — both panes, for the window was open from the bottom. He stared thoughtfully at the thick vertical iron bars, uniformly six inches apart, which protected all three windows on the outside. Then he went over to look at the rock. On the way he glanced at his wrist watch.

The rock was lying in the middle of the bedroom. It was the most ordinary rock imaginable. Its underside was uppermost, black with bits of loam, some of which was scattered over the floor, and damp-looking, as if it had just been picked up in the garden. It was an oval five inches thick in its long diameter. He prodded it with his foot and turned it over; the other side was clean. And that was all.

“Screwy,” he said after a moment; and Eva knew he had reached a decision. “Some kid.” His light shrug dismissed the incident. “Miss MacClure.”

“Yes?” said Eva.

He straddled the rock and looked at her. “You sure you heard Karen Leith’s voice when the Jap gave her the stationery?”

“I’m sure.”

“That the stationery — that wad of paper on the desk?”

Eva looked. There was the deckle-edged sheet with its faint rose-on-ivory pattern of chrysanthemums. But it was crumpled into a ball. The blank envelope lay near it.

“It looks the same,” said Eva in a lifeless voice.

He moved then, towards her, and taking out a handkerchief picked up the crumpled sheet with it, smoothing the sheet out. Something was written on it — Eva read the words, but her mind refused to function normally, and the words remained meaningless. The word “Morel” did sink in — that was Karen’s lawyer. It was apparently the beginning of a letter to Morel which had never ended. It stopped in the middle of a sentence.

“That her handwriting?”

“Yes.”

He crumpled the paper carefully and dropped it back on the desk in the exact spot on which he had found it. Then he went around the desk and looked through all the drawers.

“No other stationery,” he muttered, and stood musing a moment, pulling at his upper lip. “Look, sister. The Jap woman’s out. She gave Leith the sheet of paper and left. It was blank when you saw it in the Jap’s hand?”

“Yes.”

“Then she couldn’t have done it. Leith woman wrote on it after the Jap left. Proves Karen was alive after the Jap left. All right.’ He glanced at his wrist watch.

“Kinumé,” said Eva. “Kinumé wouldn’t do a thing — like this.”

“I said she didn’t, didn’t I?” He was growing angry. “You were in that sitting-room all the time. Leave it at all?”

“No.”

“Who went in and came out while you were waiting in there?”

“Nobody.”

“Nobody!” He seemed startled. The old puzzlement came back into his eyes as he searched her face. She wondered why. No, she didn’t. Nothing mattered, really, with Karen... with Karen dead. All she wanted was Dick...

The brown man ran to the door, listened, yanked it noiselessly open, stood on the threshold looking over the sitting-room. There were two doors in the sitting-room — the one from the corridor and the one in which he stood. He rasped without turning around: “You’re sure, now. You didn’t fall asleep?”

“Nobody went in or out.”

He came back, clenching his hands lightly. “The Jap again. How long was she in this bedroom?”

“Not ten seconds.”

“Nuts!” His face reddened with anger. “Karen was knifed while you were sitting in that room. You say nobody passed through it. Then how the hell did the killer get in? Even supposing the killer was in here hiding before the Jap maid brought the paper, how the hell did he get out? Tell me that. Well, tell me!”

“I don’t know,” said Eva. Her head ached and it was hard to think. It didn’t seem important.

He was growing angrier. Why was he so angry? “All right. Killer didn’t get out through the sitting-room.” It was as if he were debating it with himself. “But he must have got out — he’s not here now. How? Through these windows? They’re all barred. Let’s get crazy. Let’s say he never got in at all — was outside all the time, hanging from a rope from the roof or some cockeyed thing, and threw the knife at her through the bars. Then why isn’t the knife still sticking in her neck? No dice... And there’s no door in this room to the hall — there’s just this one door from the sitting-room. God damn it!”

“That’s not so,” said Eva dully. “There is another door.”

“Where?” He whirled around, stabbing the room with his eyes.

“But don’t touch it, please, please don’t.”

“Where is it?”

“Karen... Karen never allowed anyone to touch it. No one... no one ever went near it. Not the servants or anyone.”

He was over her now, so furious she could feel his hot breath on her forehead. “Where is it?” he muttered.

Eva whimpered: “Behind the Japanese screen. The screen is hiding it.”

He was there in two leaps, flipping the screen aside. “Where’s it go? Quick!”

“To... to the attic. Where Karen used to do most of her writing. No one’s ever been up there — not even my father. Oh, please don’t...”

It was an ordinary door set in an ell of the room. His fever drained off, leaving him colder than before. He did not move, did not touch the door. He stared. Then he turned around. “It’s got a bolt. The bolt is in the socket. On this side of the door.” He was not angry at all now, just watchful — watchful as he had been when he had first come into the room. His shoulders were hunched a little. “Did you touch this bolt?”

“I haven’t been near it. Why... what—?”

He chuckled again, that same dry humorless chuckle.

“I... I don’t understand,” whispered Eva.

“It sure looks bad for you, beautiful,” he said. “It sure looks like curtains for you.”

There was the ghostliest sound from the dais. It froze them both. Eva’s hair — she could feel each hair rise — tickled her scalp. It was a gurgle, a faint thick gurgle, a horrible gurgle, but human and... alive.

“Oh, my God,” whispered Eva. “She’s... she’s—”

He was past her before she could move; and when she found the strength in her legs to move, he was already kneeling.

Karen’s eyes were open and they were glaring at Eva with such intensity that Eva closed her own eyes to shut off the glare. But she opened them again, because she could still hear the gurgle which came from that torn throat without the least flutter of the bloodless lips.

The man said harshly: “Miss Leith. Who stab—”

He never finished. The glare glazed over, never moving; and something red gushed out of Karen’s wry mouth — Eva saw it before she turned her head blindly, her own breath coming in gusts.

The man rose. “Could have sworn she was dead. Damn it! She hung on like...” Then he took out a cigaret and very slowly lit it, putting the burnt match in his pocket and not looking at Karen any more.

When he spoke, the words dribbled with the smoke out of his hard young mouth. “What have you got to say for yourself?”

Eva could only look at him; she scarcely heard his voice.

“Haven’t even got the brains to alibi yourself,” he said bitterly. “What the hell brought me here to-day? I’m going soft.”

“You said—” began Eva in a cracked voice. “You said I—”

“Gorgeous, you’re on one tough spot. Either you’re the dumbest jane I ever met, or the smartest.’ His cold eyes brooded on her, still weighing, still puzzled.

“What do you mean?” she faltered. “I don’t—”

“She was alive when you got here. Between the time the Jap left and the time the ’phone rang, nobody could have got in or out of this bedroom through the sitting-room, because you said so yourself. Nobody could have got out through these barred windows. Nobody could have got out through the only other door in this room — that one going up to the attic... because it’s bolted from the inside. So what? There’s just no other way to get out. Figure it out for yourself.”

She shivered suddenly, rubbing her eyes. “I’m dreadfully sorry,” she said in a quiet tone. “I guess I’m a little... a little... the shock of Karen’s... You can’t mean—”

He pulled her to him with his free arm and twisted her about until she was staring into his troubled gray eyes. “I mean,” he said savagely, “that no one did get out, because no one could have got out. I mean you’re the only one in this whole God-damned world who could possibly have bumped her off.”

His face swam before her, the brown oval darkening, fading, going out before her eyes. Richard, Richard, Richard, please. Please come, Dick. Dick...

“And not only that,” she heard his voice going on, in the same savage troubled way, “in just about two shakes of a lamb’s tail the New York police department is going to come into your life. Karen Leith had an appointment with a headquarters dick for five o’clock this afternoon in this room. And it’s two minutes to five now.”

Then she heard her own voice, remote and unrecognizable, screaming thinly: “No! I didn’t do it! Oh, please, you’ve got to believe me! I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!”

But all the time another voice was saying inside her brain that everything had come down with a crash, that there could be nothing more — no Dick, no marriage, no happiness... no life.