The Spanish Cape Mystery

Chapter Nine Night, the Dark-Blue Hunter

Judge Macklin came awake. One moment he had been struggling upward through a black turgid fog; but now he was vitally awake, awake in every sense, listening before he was conscious that he was listening, straining to see through the darkness before even his eyes were open. His old heart, he was startled to feel, was pounding away like a piston. He lay very still, aware of danger.

Some one, he knew, was in his room.

Out of the corner of his eye he glanced at the floor-windows which gave upon the Spanish balcony. The curtains were only half-drawn, and he could make out a star-pricked sky. It must be late, then. How late? He shivered involuntarily, causing the bed-clothes to rustle. He did not care for nocturnal visitors, much less for nocturnal visitors in a house in which murder had been committed.

But gradually his pulse slowed down to normal as nothing happened and common-sense repelled the invader. Whoever it is, he thought grimly, is due for the surprise of his life. He gathered his aged muscles for a leap out of bed. He was not so decrepit that he couldn’t still give a rousing good account of himself in a tussle...

His door clicked suddenly and — his eyes now accustomed to the darkness-he was positive he had seen something white flick out the door. His visitor, then, had left.

“Whew,” he said aloud, swinging his bare feet to the floor.

A cool dry voice said from somewhere nearby: “Oh, so you’re up at last, are you?”

The Judge jumped. “For heaven’s sake! Ellery?”

“In the flesh. I take it you heard our perambulating friend, too? No, no, don’t turn on the lights.”

“Then you were the one,” gasped the Judge, “who just—?”

“Left? By no means. Isn’t it Bode’s Law that two material bodies cannot occupy the same position in space at the same time? Well, no matter; I was always weak on science. No, that was the prowler I’ve been expecting.”

“Expecting!”

“I’ll confess I didn’t anticipate that she’d try this room, but I think that can be easily explained—”

“She?”

“Oh, yes, that was a female. Didn’t you smell the powder? Sorry I can’t give you the maker’s name and odeur; I’ve never been Vance-ish in that direction. As a matter of fact, she was dressed in something long, flowing, and white. I’ve been watching here and there for an hour or more.”

The old gentleman choked. “From here?”

“No. From my room chiefly. But when I saw her try this door I thought I’d slip in through the communicating door in case of... er... emergency. You’re such a sublime old angel. She might have bopped you before you stopped dreaming of that languorous houri.”

“Don’t be ribald!” snapped the Judge, but he kept his voice down. “Why should any one try to assault me? I don’t know any of these people and I certainly haven’t done anything to any of ’em. It must have been a mistake. She got into the wrong room, that’s all.”

“Oh, undoubtedly. I was just ribbing you.” The Judge, still on the bed, heard nothing at all, and yet when Ellery’s voice came again it proceeded from a different part of the chamber — from the door. “Hmm. She’s beaten a strategic retreat temporarily. I’m afraid we’ll have to wait. Your noisy preparations for getting out of bed scared her off. What were you going to do,” chuckled Ellery, “leap at her throat like Tarzan?”

“Didn’t know it was a woman,” said the Judge sheepishly. “But I wasn’t going to lie here and be made mince-meat of. Who the devil was the creature?”

“Blessed if I know. Might have been any of ’em.”

Judge Macklin lay back, propped on one elbow. He kept his eyes fixed on the spot where he knew the door to be; he could just make out Ellery’s motionless figure. “Well,” he snapped at last, “aren’t you going to talk? What’s been happening here? Why were you waiting? How’d you come to suspect? How long have I slept? You’re the most exasperating young—”

“Whoa. One at a time. By my wrist-watch it’s almost two-thirty. You must have a singularly easy conscience.”

“I’d be sleeping yet if not for that confounded woman. Just beginning to feel the ache in my bones again. Well, well?”

“It’s a long story.” Ellery opened the door to pop his head out; it was back and the door closed in an instant. “Nothing doing yet. I didn’t wake up until ten myself. You must be hungry, eh? Tiller fetched the most delicious—”

“Bother Tiller! And I’m not hungry. Answer me, you idiot! What made you suspect some one would go prowling tonight, and what are you watching for?”

“I’m watching,” said Ellery, “for some one to go into the room next door.”

“The room next—! That’s yours, isn’t it?”

“On the other side. The end-room.”

“Marco’s,” said the old gentleman, and he was silent for a moment. “But isn’t it under guard? I thought that Roush boy—”

“Oddly enough, that Roush boy is stretched out on a cot in Tiller’s bedroom taking a well-earned nap.”

“But Moley will be furious!”

“I think not. At least, not with Roush. You see, Roush left the room unguarded on orders. Er... mine.”

The Judge stared into the darkness with open mouth. “Yours! It’s beyond me. Or is it a trap?”

Ellery peered out into the corridor again. “She must have been properly scared. I suppose she thought you were a ghost... Quite so; a trap. Most of them turned in before midnight. Poor souls! They were very tired. Nevertheless, I carelessly let them know — en masse — that there wasn’t any sense in keeping watch by a dead man’s door, especially since we’d already looked the place over; and I informed them that Roush was off in slumberland.”

“I see,” muttered the Judge. “And what made you think some one would fall into your trap?”

“That,” said Ellery softly, “is another story... Quiet!”

The Judge held his breath, his scalp prickling. Then Ellery’s mouth was at his ear. “She’s back. Don’t make a sound. I’m off on a little spying expedition. For God’s sake, Solon, don’t crab this act!” And he was gone. The curtains of the floor-window fluttered a little, soundlessly, and a shadow drifted out and vanished. The Judge saw the stars again, cold and remote.

He shivered.

When fifteen minutes had passed and his ears had told him nothing except that waves were breaking against rock below and that a frosty wind blew in from the sea through his windows, Judge Macklin crept noiselessly out of bed, wrapped his gaunt pajama-clad body in a silk quilt from the bed, dug his toes into carpet-slippers, and stole to the window. With his hair standing on end at the top of his head, forming a tuft resembling a scalp-lock, and the quilt draped about his shoulders, he was grotesquely like an ancient Indian scout on the warpath. Nevertheless, his humorous appearance did not prevent him from stealing out onto the long shallow iron-grilled balcony in the best Indian tradition and gaining Ellery’s side at a window several yards away... one of the windows of the late John Marco’s bedchamber.

Ellery was sprawled on his side in an uncomfortable position, his eyes glued to a plinth of light. The Venetian blind had not been completely drawn — a careless oversight on the marauder’s part, since the space left unguarded at the bottom afforded a complete view of the room. Ellery saw the Judge coming, shook his head in warning, moved a little.

The old gentleman calmly spread his quilt, squatted on his lean hams, and peered into the room by Ellery’s side, almost doubled over.

The huge Spanish bedroom was in violent disorder. The door of the closet stood open and every one of the dead man’s garments lay on the floor outside, tumbled and in some cases torn. A trunk had been lugged into the center of the room; its drawers sagged, empty. Several valises and suitcases had been hurled away by a disappointed hand. The bed had been attacked in ruthless fashion; a knife had slashed at the mattress, which lay exposed and half off the box-spring. The spring itself had been assailed. The drapes had been jerked off the tester. All the drawers in the room had been pulled out and their contents strewed the floor in a tangle of confusion. Even the paintings on the wall had been examined, for they hung awry.

The Judge felt his cheeks grow hot. “Where’s the damned ghoul,” he growled sotto voce, “responsible for this desecration? I’d cheerfully throttle her!”

“No irreparable harm done,” murmured Ellery, without removing his eyes from the plinth of light. “Looks worse than it is. She’s in the bathroom now, no doubt making kindred whoopee. Has a knife with her. You should have seen her fly at the walls! Just as if she thought there was one of those secret passageways here you read about in Oppenheim and Wallace... Silence. The lady enters. Beauty, isn’t she?”

The Judge glared. It was Cecilia Munn.

It was Cecilia Munn standing in the doorway from the lavatory, her mask peeled off. Apparently the countenance she presented to the everyday world was only as deep as her cosmetics. Beneath it lay something appallingly different, now shamelessly revealed. Something raw and naked and nasty, a thing of writhing lips, taut blue skin, and tigrish eyes. One of her hands was clawing empty air, the other brandished a common bread-knife which she had probably filched from the kitchens. Her robe lay open, half-revealing small panting breasts.

She made the most sharply etched picture of human rage, bafflement, despair and terror that either man had ever seen. Even her blonde hair was infected by it, standing hideously on end like a dried mop. The bristling, vivid unloveliness of her made them both feel sick.

“Good lord,” breathed the old gentleman. “She’s... she’s animal. I’ve never seen...”

“She’s afraid,” muttered Ellery. “Afraid. They’re all afraid. In his own way that man must have been Machiavelli and Beelzebub rolled into one. He hammered the fear of—”

The blonde woman soared like a cat — straight for the light-switch. Then there was only blackest darkness.

They lay frozen. Only one thing could have caused such an instantaneous muscular reflex. She had heard some one coming.

It seemed an age. In reality it was only a few ticks of Ellery’s wrist-watch. Then light flooded on again. The door was closed once more and Mrs. Constable stood with her back to it, one hand still on the switch near the jamb. Mrs. Munn had vanished.

The stout woman was all jellied, hanging flesh and eyes. Her eyes bulged; her bosom bulged; she bulged all over. But it was her eyes that fascinated them, taking in the mutilation of the bed, the untidy mess on the floor, the sagging drawers. It was like watching a slow-motion film. They could detect every thought as it was reflected in her eyes and on her slack features. She was no longer wooden and expressionless. Beneath her satin wrapper she was trembling violently, shaking in every cell of her fat flesh. Amazement. Horror. Realization. Disappointment. And finally fear, the solvent. She melted into fear like an enormous candle into hot tallow.

She sank to the floor in a tumble of wrapper and flesh, weeping as if her heart were breaking. She wept soundlessly, which made her grief even more hideous. They could see the red cavern of her throat as she opened her mouth, the large beads of tears snaking down her face. On her knees, her huge wattled legs nakedly protruding from the wrapper, she rocked to and fro in a very ecstasy of bitter sorrow.

Mrs. Munn stepped cat-like from behind the bed and looked down at the gross, sobbing creature on the floor. The bestial expression had vanished from her hard, beautiful face. There was almost pity in her contemptuous gaze. The knife was still clutched, forgotten, in her hand.

“You poor slob,” she said to the woman on the floor.

They heard clearly.

Mrs. Constable stopped rocking. Very slowly she raised her eyes. And on the instant she scrambled to her feet, all swirling satin, holding her vast breast and staring at the blonde woman.

“I... I—” Then her stricken gaze went to the knife in Mrs. Munn’s hand and what color there was in her flabby cheeks ebbed away. She tried twice to speak; twice her vocal cords failed her. Then she babbled: “You... knife...”

Mrs. Munn looked startled. But when she saw what was frightening the fat woman she smiled and tossed the knife on the bed. “That! You needn’t be scared, Mrs. Constable. I’d forgotten I still had it.”

“Oh.” It was half a groan. Mrs. Constable began to fumble with the hem of her wrapper, her eyes nearly closed. “I guess I... must have walked... in my sleep.”

“You can cut the baloney with little Cecilia, dearie,” said Mrs. Munn dryly. “I’m one of the girls, too. So he took you over the hurdles, did he? Who’d have thought it?”

The fat woman moistened her lips. “I— What do you mean?”

“I should have known. You’re no more in her class than I am. Did he write to you, too?” Her hard eyes swept over the ugly, misshapen, middle-aged figure with the same mingled pity and contempt.

Mrs. Constable drew her wrapper more tightly about her. Their eyes clashed. Then she said with a sob: “Yes.”

“Told you to come up here pronto, hey? Pronto. That’s one of my dear husband’s favorite words.” Unaccountably, she shivered. “Said you’d get an invitation from Mrs. Godfrey, I’ll bet, and then sure enough it came. Just like that. Just as if she’d known you all her life, just as if you’d lapped charlotte russes together in pigtails... I know. That’s what happened to me, too. And you came. Boy, how you came! You were afraid not to.”

“Yes,” whispered Mrs. Constable. “I was afraid — not to.”

Mrs. Munn’s lips curled, her eyes flaming. “The damned...”

“You,” began Mrs. Constable, and paused. Her hand described an arc, mutely. “Did you do-all this?”

“Sure I did!” snarled the blonde. “Did you think I’d take it layin’ down? He made me suffer enough, the oily son-of-a-bitch! I figured it was my only chance. The copper’d gone to sleep...” Her shoulders sagged. “But it’s no use. They’re not here.”

“Oh,” whispered Mrs. Constable. “They’re not? I thought— But they must be! Oh, it’s unthinkable that they shouldn’t be! I couldn’t live — I thought at first you’d come and found them.” She seized Mrs. Munn’s shoulders, her eyes glazed with ferocity. “You’re not lying?” she croaked. “You’re not holding out on me? Please, please. I have a daughter of marriageable age. My son’s just been married. My children are grown. I’ve always been respectable. I... I don’t know what happened. I’d always dreamed of some one like — like him... Please tell me... Tell me you found them — tell me, tell me!” Her voice rose to a scream.

Mrs. Munn slapped the woman’s face, sharply. Her scream choked off and she staggered back, holding her cheek. “Sorry,” said Mrs. Munn. “You’d be raising the dead with that squeal of yours. The old guy is sleeping just next door — I got into his bedroom by mistake a while ago... Come on, sister, pull yourself together. We’re getting out of here.”

Mrs. Constable permitted her arm to be taken. She was crying naturally now. “But what am I going to do?” she moaned. “What am I going to do?”

“Sit tight and keep your trap shut.” Mrs. Munn surveyed the wreck, shrugging. “There’ll be hell to pay tomorrow morning when that copper comes up here and finds this mess. We don’t know anything about it; understand? Not a thing. We slept like little lambs.”

“But your husband—”

“Yeah. My husband.” The blonde woman’s eyes hardened. Then she said abruptly: “He’s snoring his head off down the hall. Come on, Mrs. Constable. This room ain’t — isn’t healthy.”

She reached for the switch. The lights blinked out. A moment later the men at the window heard the door click.

“Show’s over,” said Ellery, getting to his feet with some difficulty. “Here, you get back to that bed of yours, young man. Do you want to catch pneumonia?”

Judge Macklin picked up his quilt and without a word made his way along the narrow balcony to the window of his room. Ellery followed him through and went directly to the door, which he opened a little. Then he closed it and unconcernedly turned on the lights.

The old gentleman was perched on the edge of his bed, deep in thought. Ellery lit a cigaret and with relief sank into a chair.

“Well,” he murmured at last, eying the still figure of his companion quizzically, “what’s the verdict, your honor?”

The Judge stirred. “If you’ll tell me what’s happened since I’ve been out of circulation, my son, I’ll be able to rationalize a little more clearly.”

“Very little. The big news is that Mrs. Godfrey has told all.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Wife confesses infidelity to husband in moonlit garden. Detective gets sore ears listening in.” Ellery shrugged. “At that, it was illuminating. I knew she’d crack eventually, but I didn’t think it would be to Godfrey. Amazing chap, Godfrey; he’s got something. Took the news beautifully, all things considered... She confirmed what we had discussed earlier — had never met either Mrs. Constable or the Munns, she said, before inviting them to Spanish Cape. Moreover, it appears that it was Marco who forced her to tender the invitations.”

“Ah,” said the Judge.

“And Mrs. Constable and the Munns — at least Mrs. Munn — were apparently as embarrassed by the situation as she.”

The old gentleman nodded absently. “Yes, yes. I see.”

“However, the really critical revelation was cut off by the unexpected intrusion of Mrs. Constable. Not,” sighed Ellery, “that it mattered. But I should have enjoyed hearing it from Mrs. Godfrey’s own lips.”

“Hmm. You mean that she had been holding something back above and beyond these other revelations?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“But you know what she meant to tell Godfrey?”

“I believe,” said Ellery, “I do.”

The Judge unwound his long legs and went into the bathroom. When he emerged his face was buried in a towel. “Now,” he said in a muffled voice, “that I’ve witnessed that little drama next door, I believe I do, too.”

“Bully! Let’s collaborate. Your diagnosis?”

“I think I understand Stella Godfrey’s type.” Judge Macklin hurled the towel away and lay down on the bed. “No matter what Godfrey may be as a sociological specimen, his wife at least is a victim of that well-known disease of the bluer blood known as ‘pride of caste.’ She’s a Ruysdael, you know, by birth. You’ve never read any scandal about one of them. First-family-of-Manhattan business; the genuine article. Not especially favored in worldly goods, modern economic conditions being what they are, but veritable nabobs when it comes to Rembrandts, Van Dycks, Dutch antiques, and tradition. It’s in her blood.”

“And all this spells what?”

“To the Ruysdaels there is only one cardinal sin: getting into the clutches of the yellow press. If you must have a scandal, have it quietly. That’s all there is to it. Her fears have been dominated by something tangible, my boy. She tangled with a scoundrel. The scoundrel possessed proofs. I believe it’s as simple as that.”

“Bravo,” chuckled Ellery. “A wabbly dissertation in social psychology. And not especially original. Conclusion doesn’t follow naturally from the facts. However, the scoundrel did have proofs. Once you visualized him as a scoundrel, you see, it almost inevitably followed that he would have proofs. I tackled it that way and saved myself a lot of fancywork. Working on the theory that he had proofs, everything fell patly into place. Mrs. Godfrey’s frantic perturbation and stubborn unwillingness to talk — that, I grant you, is probably a sign of her inheritance — Mrs. Constable’s frozen funk, Mrs. Munn’s watchfulness and crude deceptions... When I realized that both Mrs. Constable and Mrs. Munn had been commanded to come here — that was an elementary deduction — it followed that they, too, had somewhere along the line fallen prey to Marco’s genius for feminine entanglements. And if they were so prompt in obeying his commands, they were afraid, too.

Afraid, obviously, of his proofs. All three of them were afraid of his proofs.”

“Letters, of course,” muttered the Judge.

Ellery waved his hand. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever they are, these women consider them frightfully important. But there’s something even more interesting about the situation. Has it occurred to you to wonder why Marco wanted Mrs. Constable and Mrs. Munn here?”

“The sadistic impulse, I suppose. But no— With a man of Marco’s calibre...”

“There, you see?” said Ellery sadly. “That’s the sort of mess psychology gets you into. Sadism! No, no, Solon; something much less subtle than that... Blackmail.”

Judge Macklin stared. “Thunder, yes! I’m fogged tonight. Love-letters-blackmail. They go together, true enough.”

“Precisely. And getting the three victims together suggests that the gentleman was setting himself for — what?”

“The ‘clean-up’ he began to write about to Penfield in that letter when he was murdered!”

Ellery frowned. “From that point, it was child’s play. These women have been desperate, the three of them. Marco would not be a piker; not he, from what we’ve been able to piece together about him. If he demanded blackmail, it must have run into money. He may have been too greedy; probably was. The result was a temporary stalemate, during which some one obligingly snuffed out his worthless life. But the proofs — the letters, whatever they are — still existed. Where were they?” Ellery lit another cigaret. “I saw then that these women would take any chance to get them back. They would move heaven and earth to find them. The most logical place to search would be Marco’s room. Consequently,” he sighed, “I suggested that friend Roush indulge his need for slumber.”

“I hadn’t thought of blackmail,” confessed the old gentleman, “but I did see — after the event — what these women must have been looking for in Marco’s room. Good heavens!” He sat up suddenly in bed.

“What’s the matter?”

“Mrs. Godfrey! Certainly she wouldn’t allow an opportunity like this one, tonight, to pass! Was she present when you dropped the hint about the room’s being left unguarded?”

“She was.”

“Then she’ll be looking—”

“She has, Oscar, she has,” said Ellery mildly. He rose and stretched his arms. “Lord, I’m fagged! I believe I’ll go back to bed. And you’d better do the same.”

“You mean,” cried the Judge, “that Mrs. Godfrey has already searched the room next door tonight?”

“At exactly one o’clock this morning, my dear sir. Odd — just twenty-four hours after her most prominent guest departed this life. Oh, well, that’s just a delicate touch of Mother Coincidence’s. I was at that convenient balcony-window. I will say that she was more scrupulous about it than the impetuous Mrs. Munn. Left the place neat as whisky.”

“Then she’s found them!”

“No,” said Ellery, going to the communicating door, “she has not.”

“But that means—”

“That means they aren’t there.”

The Judge gnawed his upper lip in exasperation. “But how in the name of the thousand devils can you know that so positively?”

“Because,” said Ellery with a sweet smile, opening the door, “at twelve-thirty precisely I searched the room myself. Now, now, Solon, you’ll work yourself into a fever. Off to sleep with you! You’ll need all the rest you can get. I have the feeling that tomorrow will bring a celestial display of fireworks.”