Wolf in Man’s Clothing

17

THE BREATH SIMPLY WENT out of my lungs, so I couldn’t say a word.

“Oh, yes, it’s perfectly true,” said Craig quietly. “She loved him. There’s no other explanation for it. I didn’t blame her. How could I? It’s nothing you can help or do anything about. Love, I mean. I knew Drue. No cheap emotion would have made her do it. It was the real thing.”

“But Nicky!” I gasped, incredulous.

He smiled a little. “That’s another thing about love; you don’t choose. If you’re in love and it’s the wrong man or the wrong woman, still you can’t help it.”

“N-nonsense,” I exclaimed, rallying a little. “Of course you can help it! You can nip it in the bud! You can-why, that’s a very immoral statement!”

He shook his head a little. “They went away together. Only a little while after she became my wife. It’s been Nicky all along; only he wouldn’t marry her because of the money. My father was grateful enough to Nicky for breaking up our-the marriage…” He said it swiftly. “He paid Nicky regularly for that, all this time. That is, I’m sure, the explanation of those checks to Nicky. But my father wouldn’t have given Nicky a cent if he’d married Drue.”

I wanted to shake him. Stupid, blind young idiot. I said, “She is in love with you. She always has been. She…”

He interrupted sharply, “There’s no use talking of that, Miss Keate. She went away with Nicky while I was in Washington, shortly after our marriage. She asked for a divorce through a lawyer. She never tried to communicate with me.”

“She wrote to you.”

“No.”

“Yes, she did. She told me.”

“She…” He looked slowly at me. “I never got it. Are you sure? My father wouldn’t have…”

“Your father would have tampered with St. Peter’s mail if he wanted to. But it’s too late now. What happened then?”

“But I can’t believe… Well, then I went into training. She had gone with Nicky; she didn’t even just go away and then meet him later; she actually left the house with him. My father told me. She didn’t write to me…”

“Look here,” I said in exasperation. “Five minutes talk with Drue would clear up everything.”

“No,” he said stubbornly. “All that’s in the past and done with. Drue wanted a divorce…”

“You wanted a divorce.”

“No, it was Drue…”

“Nonsense. She only wanted it so you could get into training.”

“She…” He stopped and gave me a long look and then said very slowly, “Exactly what do you mean?”

“Are you trying to make me believe that you know nothing about that?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea as to what you’re driving at. What do you mean?”

“Now, see here,” I began incredulously and then, at the look in his face, gave up. “Oh, all right. Drue said that your father explained to her why you wanted her to ask for a divorce.”

“But I didn’t…” Again he checked himself and said, “For God’s sake go on. Why would I want a divorce?”

“To get into the training school, of course. Your father told her they wouldn’t take married men.”

“They wouldn’t at the time. But I could have gone to another…” He broke off again to question me. “He told her that?”

“Yes. He said it was the thing above everything else that you wanted to do-or at least he succeeded in making her think that. He convinced her so thoroughly that she consented to ask for a divorce-believing that you didn’t want to ask her for it yourself. And that once the training was over you would come back and marry her again. He told her,” I added, quoting, “that it would be merely a long engagement.”

Craig’s eyes were very intent and very bright-and a little sad. He looked at me for a long moment or two as if to test the things I had said and measure them in his mind against what he had formerly believed. “So,” he said at last, “he did that. And then I suppose if she wrote to me, he…”

“Obviously,” I said, seeing that he was reluctant to say it. “Obviously your father got the letters. And Drue being the kind of girl she is, I don’t think she would write very many letters without a reply.”

“No,” he said slowly, staring at the mound his feet made under the eiderdown. “No, she wouldn’t write very many times without a reply.”

I said, “I’m going to get Drue. I think I can manage somehow to get her past the guard; perhaps I can’t but…”

“Wait a minute,” he said sharply. And stared at his feet, frowning. And finally said, “No.”

“But…”

“No, don’t. You’ve forgotten Nicky.”

“Nicky!” I cried. “Drue’s not in love with Nicky and never was! You’re as stubborn as your father!”

“He had to finish what he’d begun. He couldn’t help being the way he was.”

Nor you the way you are, I thought in furious exasperation.

“Oh, Good Heavens! Can’t you see she’s in love with you? That’s why she came here. She wanted to find out what had happened, why you demanded a divorce without even seeing her again. They drove her away-your father and Alexia and Nicky. Your father planned the whole thing. He paid Nicky for whatever he did to help.”

He stopped my headlong flight into conjecture-yet, knowing Drue, knowing something of Nicky, it seemed to me reasonable conjecture. But he said, “So she went away with Nicky. Willingly.”

“But she-there’s an explanation for it. Give her a chance and give yourself one. That-why, that’s why your father meant to send her away. The night he died. She told him, I heard her; she warned him. She said she was going to find out the truth about the divorce.”

There was a little silence, then he shook his head slowly and deliberately. And I lost my temper. “All right,” I snapped, “think as you please. It’s your loss. You can fix your own pillows and dress your own wound, too, because I’m through with you. I wash my hands of you. If you’d even tell the truth about the things you know it would help. You know who shot you, don’t you? And you knew there’d be another murder. And you know about the yellow glove-the glove that they found beside Claud Chivery. And I think you know why he was killed.”

“If I knew anything I could tell the police I would do so. But you see, Miss Keate, that’s the trouble. If I tell who shot me, it’ll make it that much the worse for Drue. It wasn’t the same person. The person that shot me, I mean, was not the person that killed my father-or Claud Chivery. If I tell the police that they’ll say she murdered my father.”

After a moment I said heavily, “Was it your father, then? Why? Was it a quarrel over-well, was he jealous of Alexia?”

I couldn’t read his eyes. He drew up his knees and clasped his unbandaged arm around them. “Forget that, Miss Keate,” he said decisively. “The thing for us to do is to insist upon Drue’s alibi for that night when I was shot.”

“You said ‘There’ll be murder done.’ You said that the afternoon before your father was murdered.”

“I remember, vaguely. I wasn’t sure-I’m not sure now exactly why I was shot. But I had a vague notion that I ought to tell Claud that it was an attempt at murder.”

“But that isn’t what you said. You didn’t say ‘There was an attempt at murder.’ It was in the future, as you put it. You said ‘There’ll be murder…’ ”

“I know. You see, I had sense enough to know that since the first attempt had failed another attempt might be made.”

“Do you mean you wanted protection?”

“In a sense. Yes. I wanted someone to know. I wasn’t clear in my head. I only knew there was danger-everywhere.”

“Why?” I demanded.

“Because,” he said.

Which was not exactly illuminating. “Why Claud?” I persisted, getting nowhere fast.

“Because Claud was Claud. He wasn’t much in the way of force. Yet he-he knew all about us; he smoothed things over, he could always manage my father; he was in the queerest way devoted to him. I think,” said Craig slowly, “it was partly because of Maud; she thought there was no one like my father. In many ways Maud has a much stronger character than Claud had; he gave in to her about everything but money. Maud’s a little overfond of money and would have been a sucker for get-rich-quick schemes if Claud had let her!”

“Oh, she wouldn’t have murdered Claud on account of the will,” said Craig quickly. “They did have a quarrel lately about money. Claud told me. But it was only about some money they had invested, twenty thousand or so; Maud wanted the cash in order to make another investment. Claud didn’t know-or at least didn’t tell me what it was.”

“I suppose,” I said on a wave of astuteness, “that Claud knew who shot you. And got rid of the bullet so it couldn’t be traced.” (As he would have done, I thought, for Conrad, to keep a family secret.)

But Craig’s face was instantly blank and hard. “Do you?” he said flatly. So I got nowhere with that. And, as I lifted my arm to look at my watch, something rustled in my pocket and I remembered what, actually, I’d forgotten, the Frederic Miller checks. I gave them to him at once. “They were in Alexia’s room, in the cupboard…”

He snatched them out of my hand; he looked at them and examined them and questioned me and then lay for a long time staring at the sprawling gilt figures on the dark wall paper, a queer look in his eyes, his fingers tapping the checks, an expression in his face that I couldn’t read. I tried to question him.

“Do you know who Frederic Miller is, is that it?”

“No-no-that is, perhaps I do. I’m not sure. Let me think…”

But he didn’t want to think any longer, for almost at once he turned quickly to me, excitedly. “Look here, Miss Keate. Will I be able to get out tomorrow?”

“You may be able to get out of bed and walk around the room-that’s about all,” I said slowly. “You’ve done extremely well, as a matter of fact.”

“Can I get to the Chivery cottage?”

“No.”

“But I’ve got to.”

“All right. You’re free, white and twenty-one. Go ahead and kill yourself.”

“I’ll keep these checks.”

“Are you going to give them to the police?”

He hesitated. “I don’t know. I’ve got to think. If they arrest Drue, I’ll do anything-everything…”

I gave as jeering and mean a laugh as I could contrive-and succeeded so well that it startled even me. Craig jumped and stared at me. I said, “Anything, yes! Except tell her you still love her. And use your common sense about Nicky.”

“If she loves me,” he said slowly, “that’s enough.”

“I’ll bring her here,” I cried again. Practically with eagerness. “I’ll get rid of the trooper on guard-I don’t know how. But I’ll get her…”

“No,” he said again and firmly. “You’ll bring Alexia here. Now. If you please, Miss Keate.”

“Alexia! What on earth for?”

The queer look of speculation was in his face again. He said quite coolly, looking remarkably like his father in his more unpleasant moments, “Because I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

“Marry Alexia! But, good heavens…” I broke off. “If you think you’ll keep her from giving them the hypodermic that way…”

“Please go, Miss Keate.”

“But I…”

He lifted himself on his elbow; his eyes flashed and his chin and nose seemed to grow hawkier, if you understand me. He snapped crisply as a drill sergeant, “Do as I tell you! Bring her here!”

Well, I did it. I’ve never met a man yet that could make me change my mind; I obeyed him only because-oh, because I did. I was furious, too. I caught a glimpse of myself marching back out of the room with my red hair flaming and two bright spots of anger on my cheeks. But I got Alexia. She was in her room, undressing, and I had to watch her select a diaphanous creamy lace garment that set my teeth on edge and not because it courted pneumonia and, as to that, every possible rheumatic ailment. I only hoped, following her lovely figure and noting how seductively the creamy soft folds of lace and chiffon melted into it, that she would be thus attacked and succumb quickly. In fact, before she reached Craig’s room.

It was a wild hope. The trooper down at the end of the hall saw us and even at that distance I could see him snap to interested attention when his gaze fell upon Alexia. We reached Craig’s room and she swept straight to the bed and Craig said, “Alexia, did you give the police the hypodermic?”

“Why, I…” She settled down on the bed, sitting very close to him, her short, dark hair cloudlike and beautiful about her pointed, delicate face. “Yes, I did, Craig,” she said softly. She shot a glance toward me. “I thought I ought to. It was my duty. I gave it to Nugent tonight. He’s taking it to be fingerprinted. And to have the sediment inside the barrel tested for digitalis. I’m sorry, Craig, but I had to do it.”

“Yes,” said Craig slowly. “I suppose you had to. Well, you’ve done it now. Alexia, there’s something I want to ask you.”

“Yes, Craig.”

“Will you marry me?”

I shut my teeth so hard that I bit my tongue and uttered a stifled ejaculation which turned out, after I’d said it, to be highly profane. Alexia didn’t hear it, not that I would have been anything but pleased if she had, but she was leaning over toward Craig as if she couldn’t believe her ears. “Why, Craig!” she cried.

“Will you?” he demanded, his eyes holding her own intently and his profile exactly at that moment like a belligerent young hawk’s.

“Why, I-oh, Craig darling.” She hesitated. Then she seemed to get a kind of hold on herself and leaned over nearer him, lace and chiffon and all. “Oh, my darling,” she breathed. “At last…”

He pushed her away, rather abruptly, so I hoped she’d fall off the bed, but she didn’t. He said, “I don’t mean just sometime in the future. I mean now. Right away. Tomorrow.”

“But your father-Conrad-what will people say?”

“It doesn’t matter. They’ll not know. I can fix everything. Will you, Alexia?”

Which was just exactly more than I could bear. I whirled out of the door and gave it such a good hard bang behind me that the trooper away down at the end of the hall jumped three feet in the air, and came down facing my way and running, with his revolver in his hand.

We met at the stairway.

“Don’t hurt yourself with your revolver,” I said waspishly. “It was only a door.” And sat down on the top step to brood. Which was an unwise move because the more I brooded the more discouraged I got about it, and the more suspicious the trooper, eyeing me distrustfully from before Drue’s door, looked.

But it wasn’t long that I had to wait; in fact in a surprisingly short time Alexia came swirling out of Craig’s room, gave me the fraction of a glance and went quickly to her own room. I couldn’t see the look on her face very distinctly because of the distance between us and the dimness of the night lights. But it did strike me then that there was something surprised, yes, and a little disorganized in her usually poised and self-possessed manner;

I didn’t go to see Drue, then, either; I didn’t want to have to tell her anything. Morning would be all too soon for it to break over her head.

Well, I went back to Craig’s room because it was my duty as a nurse. And neither one of us actually spoke another word that night. I arranged his pillows, gave him one of the pills poor, dead Claud Chivery had left for him, and turned out the light beside his bed. He watched me-the queer, thoughtful look still in his eyes. He didn’t give me back the Miller checks, and I didn’t ask for them. I had enough clues on my mind-or rather, pinned to my anatomy-that I didn’t know what to do with without adding to them.

Again I folded up like an accordion on the couch. But not to sleep for a long time. Craig didn’t sleep either; I could tell by the way he turned and twisted. But I wouldn’t have given him an alcohol rub for all the emeralds in Barranquilla.

About three, Delphine turned up and yelled at the door, so I had to let him in. He created an unwelcome diversion by bringing in what looked like and was a newly deceased mouse. Before I could bring myself to dispose of the creature, Delphine did it for me with really horrid zeal and sat there licking his chops and enormous whiskers while Craig grinned from the pillows and looked all at once young and boyish and rather nice. Which paradoxically made me crosser than ever.

I went back to my couch without a word and eventually I slept. I neither knew nor cared about my patient’s slumbers, except I hoped they were troubled.

And in the morning early, just after Beevens brought in a breakfast tray for each of us, the police came.

It was as I had feared and known it would be. They came directly to Craig’s room and told him. The hypodermic had Drue’s fingerprints on it and mine. There was a very small residue of digitalis in the barrel-but enough to identify. They had informed the District Attorney of it and of her fingerprints on the drawer of the desk where Conrad had been accustomed to keep the missing medicine box (the medicine box that to me was anything but missing; I only wished it had been). Soper, over the telephone, demanded an immediate and formal arrest on a murder charge. But that wasn’t all. For it was then, when they sent a trooper to bring Drue into the room to be questioned (Craig, looking terribly white and drawn insisted upon hearing them question her), it was then that they found she was gone.

She had disappeared during the night; nobody knew when or how. In her cape and without her shoes.

I knew that, for it was I that counted the row of slender, sturdy little pumps and oxfords. She’d brought four pair, including some stub-toed red bedroom slippers. They were all there in a row.

You don’t go out into the night on purpose without shoes.