This Is Murder

Chapter Nine

The cab jolted across the tracks on Maplehurst. The cab driver turned to look inquiringly at Moraine.

“This is all right,” Moraine told him, and pushed coins into his hand.

“You want me to wait?” the driver asked dubiously.

Moraine shook his head, tugged at the catch on the door. As the door opened, the force of the wind almost jerked it from his hand. He gathered his coat about him and stepped out into the night.

The driver turned and groped for the edge of the door. He was unable to close it until Moraine leaned his weight against it.

“Hell of a night,” said the driver, and turned once more to stare curiously at Moraine’s wind-whipped figure. Then he slid the car into gear.

Moraine stared over to the left. A three-story house, set slightly back from the street, loomed as a hulk of darkness. An old-fashioned wrought-iron fence circled the place. He leaned against the force of the wind and started toward a gate which was dimly visible in the lights of the street lamp on the far corner.

Moraine surveyed the big mansion in puzzled scrutiny. Here and there, in adjoining houses, lights were visible. But the big house loomed against the murky night sky — three stories of darkness.

Moraine turned in at the gate and was groping his way along the path when he heard the sound of a quick intake of breath. A foot stumbled over an obstruction. He heard his name mentioned in a half-whisper. A slender form stepped toward him from the darkness, and Natalie Rice clung to his arm.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

She clung to him, as a child, frightened in the darkness, might cling to a parent.

“Come on, you poor kid,” he said, “what is it?”

“I can’t tell you,” she half-sobbed. “We’ve got to get away from here.”

He shook her shoulders.

“Snap out of it,” he told her, and stepped back so that he could see the oval blur of her face in the darkness.

She lunged toward him, pressed her face against the lapel of his coat. He could feel her shiver.

Moraine glanced apprehensively up and down the stretch of walk which led toward the house, and could see no one.

He slid his right arm around the girl’s shoulders, pushed his fingers under her chin, pulled her face away from his coat.

“Now listen,” he said, “you’ve got to...”

He felt tears moistening the tips of his fingers.

“He’s dead!” she said. “Murdered!”

“Who is?” Moraine demanded.

“Dixon.”

“How do you know?”

“I was in the room.”

“When?”

“When I telephoned.”

“Who killed him?”

“I don’t know.”

“How long had he been dead?”

“I don’t know, just a little time, I think. It was awful!”

“How did you get in?”

She shuddered and clung tightly to him.

“P-p-p-please,” she sobbed, “can’t we g-g-g-get somewhere? I want to get away from this.”

He stood still, his arm around her waist, holding her tightly to him.

“Now listen,” he said, “snap out of it. You were in the room and the man was murdered. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Did you leave anything there?”

“What do you mean?”

“Anything that you touched, a handkerchief, a purse, a cigarette case — anything?”

“I d-d-d-don’t know.”

“Well, let’s find out. Were you wearing gloves?”

“No.”

“Where’s your purse? Have you got it?”

“I g-g-g-guess so... No, I haven’t either!”

“Where did you leave it?”

“I d-d-don’t know.”

“Why didn’t you telephone the police?”

“Because I didn’t know what to do. I thought y-y-y-you’d know what you wanted to d-d-d-do.”

“Has there been any alarm? Does anyone know he’s murdered?”

“No.”

“Where have you been?”

“Here, w-w-w-waiting for you.”

“Quit that damn crying,” he told her. “Here, sit down.”

He spread his coat and sat down on the edge of the walk, pulled her down to his lap. She pillowed her head on his shoulder, clung to him frantically and sobbed desperately. After a few seconds, she heaved a long, tremulous sigh, sat up and groped around with her left hand, then said, “You’ve got to stake me to a handkerchief. I’m over it now. Hell of a thing to do.”

“That’s better,” he told her, pulling a handkerchief from his coat pocket. He watched her wipe away the tears and blow her nose. “You’re too efficient to give way to this kind of a spell.”

“I couldn’t help it,” she said, more calmly now. “I never wanted anyone as badly in my life as I did you. I thought you’d know what to do. I’ve never seen anything so ghastly.”

“What happened?”

“He was lying on the floor, dead.”

“How was he killed?”

“I don’t know.”

“Wasn’t there any weapon or anything?”

“The place was dark. I only got glimpses by lighting matches.”

“Where did you get the matches?”

“From my purse.”

“A box of matches or a folder.”

“No, a folder. One that came from the restaurant where I ate lunch.”

“Why did you have to strike matches?”

“Because the place was dark. The lights are all out.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did you get in?”

“The door was open.”

He frowned irritably.

“Now, listen,” he said, “begin at the beginning and give me this whole story. Put your lips over close to my ear, because I don’t want you shouting, and there’s so much wind I can’t hear unless you do. Now go ahead and tell me the story.”

She blew her nose once more, wiped her eyes, and apparently became conscious for the first time that she was seated on his lap.

She got to her feet. The wind whipped her skirt and she held it with her hand, wrapped it around her. She sat down beside Moraine, leaned forward and placed her lips close to his ear.

“I came out here in a cab. I went to the door and rang the bell. A butler came to the door. He was carrying a candle. The wind blew it out, but not until after he’d had a look at me and I’d had a look at him. I told him I was a newspaper reporter and that I had to see Mr. Dixon at once about some charges that had been made against him in connection with the Hartwell kidnapping.”

“What happened?”

“Well, the candle went out. The house seemed to be in darkness. The butler asked me if I’d mind standing in the reception corridor. He said something had happened to the lights. I came in. He closed the door and lit the candle again, and started up a flight of stairs. I knew Dixon wouldn’t want to see me. As a newspaper woman, I figured I could do the unexpected and get by with it, so I started tip-toeing up the stairs behind the butler. He turned his head once but couldn’t see me. He was carrying a candle, and I was behind him in the shadows.”

“So you followed him down the corridor,” Moraine prompted, as she hesitated.

“Yes, I was pretty close behind him. He stepped into a room and I heard him telling Mr. Dixon that a young woman from one of the newspapers wanted to see him about a kidnapping. Dixon wanted to know which newspaper I represented. The butler said he hadn’t found out, and Dixon cursed him, told him he was a bungler, and to tell me to come back tomorrow.”

“So you went on in anyway?” Moraine asked.

“No,” she said, “Dixon kept on talking to the butler. I listened. He told the butler that he had an appointment with a young woman; that she was to come in by the side door and the butler was to leave the side door open, and then go on to bed and not to sit up.”

“There was a candle in the room?” Moraine asked.

“Yes.”

“And the butler was carrying a candle?”

“Yes.”

“So what did you do?”

“I figured it would, be better to go in the side door after the butler had gone to bed. If Dixon had a date with some girl and I broke in while the butler was there, he’d simply say, ‘James, show the woman out’ or something like that. But if I waited until the butler had gone to bed and then went in, Dixon would hardly try to throw me out himself.”

“So what did you do?” Moraine asked.

“So I groped my way back as they talked, and was standing in the dark reception room when the butler came back and said he was sorry that Mr. Dixon couldn’t see me, but I should telephone the next day and make an appointment through Mr. Dixon’s secretary at the office. Then he set the candle down, out of the wind, and opened the door for me. I went out and prowled around the house until I found the side door. It was open. I hung around for a while to make sure the butler was in bed.”

“Anyone see you there?” asked Moraine.

“I don’t know. A train came down the track. The headlight showed me pretty plainly. Someone on the engine might have seen me.”

“Not likely,” Moraine said. “What was it, a passenger car or freight?”

“A freight.”

“How long did you stay there?”

“Quite a little while. I was waiting for things to quiet down, and thought perhaps the other woman would show up.”

“Did she show up?”

“Not that I could see.”

“Do you know why the house was in darkness?”

“No. I think something must have gone wrong with the electricity. There wasn’t a light in the whole house. They were using candles.”

“How long did you wait?”

“I don’t know. Until about five minutes before I telephoned you.”

“Go ahead. What did you do?”

“Well, finally I went in and groped my way around. I had some matches in my purse. I didn’t want to strike them. I found the upper floor and went down the corridor. I kept listening for some sound. There wasn’t any. There was a window open somewhere, and a lot of air was blowing down the corridor. I could hear papers blowing around in the wind. Then I came to the room. The door was open. I slipped in it and said, ‘Good evening, Mr. Dixon.’ No one said anything. I struck a match.

“The room was a wreck. The window was broken. Dixon lay on the floor, dead. There was blood on the floor. Wind was rushing in through the broken window and papers were blowing all over the room. I got a quick glimpse, and then the wind blew the match out.”

“Did you strike another match?” he asked.

“Not just then. I groped my way around until I found the secretarial desk that had the telephone on it. I picked up the telephone. I lit a match then, because I had to see to dial your number. I was nervous. I tried it twice, got rattled and didn’t get the right number. The third time I got you at the office.”

“You were pretty frightened by that time?” he asked.

“I was crazy,” she said, “but I knew I had to tell you what had happened.”

“Why didn’t you notify the police?”

“Because I didn’t know how I could explain my presence there. I was afraid it would put you in an awful spot. I didn’t know what you wanted me to do, so I called you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me something about what the trouble was?”

“I was afraid to over the telephone. I thought it was Barney Morden who answered when I called. I might have told you some more, but another one of those trains came roaring through. You can’t hear yourself think in that room when a train goes through.”

“I see,” he said. “That’s why you told me you couldn’t hear a word I was saying? Is that it?”

“Yes. I wanted you to come at once.”

He frowned and stared thoughtfully into the darkness. After a moment, Natalie Rice said, “Did I do right?”

“Yes,” he told her, “you did all right. But what about your purse?”

“I must have put it down when I dialed the telephone number. You see, I had to hold the match and dial the number.”

“And then you held the receiver with one hand while you talked with me?”

“Yes.”

“You came away and left your purse there in that room, is that right?”

“I guess I must have.”

Moraine got to his feet.

“Come on,” he said, “were going back.”

“Oh, but we can’t. I couldn’t.”

“You’ve got to,” he insisted. “We’re going back and get that stuff out of there. You’re in a spot. Phil Duncan and Barney Morden were in my office when you telephoned. Morden is a damned traitor. He’d as soon turn on me as not. He may have recognized your voice over the telephone. It’s too late to call the police now. They’d figure we’d waited too long. We’ll have to go back, telephone the police and pretend that we’ve just discovered the body, or else clean out everything of yours that’s in that room and wait for the body to be discovered by some of the servants.”

“How could I explain being there in the room?” she asked.

“That,” Moraine said grimly, “is the rub.”

“Do I have to go?” she asked. “Couldn’t you go alone?”

“No,” he told her, “you’d better come with me. I want you to show me which room it is and how to get there.”

She got to her feet, leaned against the wind, silently gathering her courage, then said, “Very well, it’s this way, Mr. Moraine.”

She ceased to be hysterical, and became the competent, self-poised secretary. Her heels clicked down the cement walk. She turned to the left, around the massive bulk of the dark building, and tip-toed up a flight of steps to a porch. She crossed the porch and indicated the door.

“Just a minute,” Moraine muttered.

He stepped forward, took his handkerchief and carefully polished the knob of the door. He twisted it, holding the handkerchief between his fingers and the knob. The door opened. Moraine stepped inside and polished the inside of the knob in the same manner as he had polished the outside.

“Can you find your way in the dark?” he whispered.

“I think so. Have you got any matches?”

“Yes.”

“If you could strike a match I could get my bearings.”

He closed the door, and scraped a match along the side of the box. By its fight, the girl stepped swiftly forward.

“Careful,” Moraine warned. “Don’t touch anything.”

He followed along behind her for a few steps.

“You’ve got to strike another match,” she said, “if I mustn’t feel my way along here with my fingers.”

He struck another match and the flickering flame disclosed a flight of stairs leading up into the darkness. She went up them upon light, silent feet. Moraine followed, walking on tip-toe. In the upper corridor he struck another match.

Wind was blowing down through the corridor. Occasionally, papers rattled around the inside of the room through which the wind was blowing. Moraine struck another match. Its light disclosed the stretch of a corridor, an open door, papers that had blown out into the corridor.

“That the room?” he asked.

She shuddered and clung to him.

He pushed her away and said in a low voice, “Snap out of it. Keep your head. We’re in a spot.”

He took the lead.

The window was on the north. It had been broken, and wind poured in through the shattered pane. The wind was blowing papers from the desk, and, occasionally, the wind stirred up loose sheets from the floor, sent them whirling and fluttering against wall or bookcase. The room was filled with a disagreeable odor.

Moraine stepped to one side, out of the wind, and struck a match.

The flame of the match illuminated the broken window, showed the jagged prongs of glass sticking from the edges of the sash. Just below the window, sprawled on his back, lay a man of perhaps forty-eight, the hair thin on his forehead, but carefully trained so as to cover an incipient baldness. A waxed mustache, twisted to stubby points, had no streak of gray, and made the face seem slightly younger in appearance.

Moraine gave an exclamation and bent forward. His motion brought the match within the path of the wind. It snuffed out.

Natalie Rice, standing behind him, said in a thin, frightened voice, “There’s a candle there on the desk.”

Moraine stepped back, struck another match, held it between his cupped hands so that he could look around him at the room. Natalie Rice reached toward the candle.

“Wait a minute,” Moraine cautioned, his eyes fastened on the candle, “that may be important.”

“Why?”

“You can see,” he said, “that it was blown out when the window was broken. Probably someone knows when that candle was lit. That may fix the time of the murder.”

She seemed puzzled, but Moraine didn’t bother to make any further explanation.

“Keep your hands off everything in the room,” he said. “There’s your purse over there by the telephone. Take it. Take this handkerchief and wipe off the telephone. Wipe off the receiver. Scrub off the glass top of the stand where the telephone is. Look around for anything you may have dropped.”

He struck another match, held it, likewise, between his cupped hands. He inspected the candle carefully. It was an orange tinted candle some five inches in length, and less than an inch in diameter. Moraine turned from the candle to inspect the room.

“There’s something underneath the desk. It looks as thought it were your handkerchief. Pick it up.”

His eyes moved rapidly, making a swift, efficient scrutiny of the room.

“Don’t touch anything,” he ordered. “Keep your hands covered. Get fingerprints off of anything you may have left them on... My God, you certainly did leave enough stuff scattered around! What were you trying to do — advertise to the police that you’d been here? You don’t usually lose your head in an emergency.”

“It was dark,” she explained, “and I was frightened — I’m still frightened.”

He nodded.

“Never mind that. Get busy. Pick up those things from the floor. Pick up those paper matches.”

“What are you doing with your matches?” she asked.

“Putting them in my pocket when they go out,” he told her, speaking rapidly. “Never mind all that stuff. Get busy. We’ve got to get out of here. Hello, that safe’s open! Was it open when you were here?”

“I guess so,” she said. “I didn’t notice.”

“Looks like some of those papers may have been taken from the safe... No, no, don’t touch them! Get your things together.”

“Can we telephone the police and pretend we just found the body?” she asked.

“Not now. We can’t explain being here. It’s a mess. I can’t understand why you called me from this room.”

“I’m sorry,” she said humbly. “It seemed to be the wisest course at the time. I felt all at sea. I wanted you.”

“Well, there’s nothing more we can do here. Let’s get out.”

“He’s dead?” she asked. “You’re certain of that?”

“Sure he’s dead. Shot twice. You can see the bullet holes — one in the chest and one in the temple. Looks like that one in the temple was fired while he was lying there on the floor. Those look like powder bums at the base of the hair. He smashed the window as he fell. See, there’s a long sliver of glass underneath the body, with just an edge sticking out, and there are some little bits of glass on the front of his coat. He must have gone down with glass falling all around him... No, don’t go over there, there’s no need to. I’ve only got a few matches left. We’ve got to work fast.”

Under the impetus of his commands, she snapped into rapid action, moving with mechanical swiftness.

“All right, polish off the knob of the door... Come on, let’s go.”

“Perhaps,” she said, “we could...”

“Get busy with the knob of that door,” he interrupted. “We can speculate later. Scrub it well with a handkerchief and come on.”

He led the way down the corridor, walking cautiously.

“Do we get a taxicab?” she asked in the lower corridor.

“Not here,” he told her. “We’ve left too broad a trail as it is.”

They paused in the shadows, near the outer door, watching and listening, then tip-toed to the gate in the wrought-iron fence.

Moraine took her arm, turned to the left. They walked briskly down the sidewalk.

“Tell me,” she asked, after half a block, “how did you know that the candle was put out by the wind that came in through the open window?”

“Because,” he said, “the wax was evenly distributed around the base of the candle. If the wind hadn’t blown the candle out immediately, it would have blown the flame over toward the far side of the candle and the wax would have melted and run down that side.”

“I see,” she muttered, “and the time of the murder may be, important?”

“You can never tell. We can fix the time that you called me, I think.”

“How?”

“By the fact that the train went through on the track as you were telephoning. There’s not a great deal of traffic through here at night. I’ll find out to-morrow just how those trains do run.”

“Why should the time I called you be important?”

“Because, if the officers should find out you were calling me from Dixon’s place, our only possible defense would be to prove that he was dead when you entered the room.”

“Could we show that?”

“I think so. The candle may be valuable evidence, and then there are other ways by which an expert can fix the time of death. I would think they could fix an exact time from an examination of the body — probably within an hour or so at the most. But they could tell how long the candle had been burning. I didn’t make a very complete examination because I wanted to get out of there before we were discovered?”

She clutched at his arm. “I’ve made you a frightful lot of trouble, haven’t I?”

“I don’t know. I hope not. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Looking back on it,” she said, “I’m not so sure. I wanted to be a competent secretary. I know that excuses don’t amount to anything; it’s results that count. As soon as I heard Mr. Dixon say he wouldn’t see me, I thought I must seem him at any cost.”

Moraine caught her arm. They were now under a street light. He spun her about so that he could look into her face.

“Look here,” he said, “are you telling me the truth about this?”

“Of course I am. What makes you think I’m not?”

“I don’t know,” he told her, “there’s something in your manner that doesn’t ring true. You’re not the sort to have hysterics and turn on the weeps. Even considering that you blundered into a room where a man had been murdered, you’re still too nervous, too hysterical. You act as though you were trying to keep me from finding out something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. There’s no one you’re trying to shield, is there?”

She gasped, and said, “Why, what makes you think anything like that?”

“Oh, well,” he told her, pulling a wallet from his pocket and thrusting a bill into her hand, “skip it. You’ve got to get out of here. There’s a main boulevard a block down; we mustn’t be seen together. You walk on down there to the boulevard. I’ll follow along about half a block behind. Sooner or later, a cab will come along the boulevard. Flag it down. Take it to die Union Depot. Mix around with the crowd for a while, then pick up another cab and take it to your house. Forget what’s happened. Leave all the explaining to me. If anyone asks you where you went when you left my office, say you were going to see Frank Macon about an advertising appropriation. Say Macon wasn’t at his club.”

“But suppose he was?”

Moraine chuckled. “I happen to know that he wasn’t. He had a date with a young lady. I’ll ring him up in the morning and cuss him for not keeping his appointment, make him think that 1 thought we had an appointment with him. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

He stared searchingly at her eyes once more.

“Damn it,” he said, “that story of yours still doesn’t make sense.”

She started to cry.

“Oh, forget it,” he said, “and get started.”

She turned silently from him, forced her way against the wind, her skirt and coat whipping about her legs as she walked.

Moraine, his hands thrust into the side pockets of his overcoat, his hat brim pulled down low on his forehead, pushed along about half a block behind her. His forehead was puckered into frowning concentration.