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Title: Dagger of the Mind
Author: Fearing, Kenneth (1902-1961)
Date of first publication: 1941
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Random House, 1941
   [first edition]
Date first posted: 3 April 2016
Date last updated: 3 April 2016
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1312

This ebook was produced by
Marcia Brooks, Mark Akrigg, Cindy Beyer
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






                           DAGGER of the MIND




                           By KENNETH FEARING
                              The Hospital




                                 DAGGER

                                 of the

                                  MIND

                                   BY
                            KENNETH FEARING

               "...art thou but
               A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
               Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?"

              R A N D O M   H O U S E    N E W   Y O R K




                             FIRST PRINTING
                 PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN CANADA BY
                   THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.

              MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




                                  _1_


                          _CHRISTOPHER BARTEL_

The fierce glare of the electric light beating against my eyes dragged
me back to consciousness. I reached for the lamp, to switch it off and
fall again into a vague half dream. I couldn't quite place the woman who
was in it, just that she had very black hair, black eyes, very pale
skin, and the scent of Tabac Blonde was very heavy. But I couldn't reach
the lamp and, after a while, I saw that this blaze of light going
through my head like a dentist's drill was not from an electric globe
but really a shaft of the sun pouring in through a window at the foot of
the bed. It was too far to reach the shade. Then I must have stared at
the clock on the end table for a long time, and when I had stared at it
long enough, saw that the hands pointed to nine-thirty. Altogether too
early. Finally, then, I got a connection.

This wasn't Rockville Center. I was at Demarest Hall, the art colony.
Breakfast by ten o'clock or not at all, unless I wanted to drive into
town. I didn't.

I looked around for the liquor that ought to be, had to be standing
somewhere, and saw it on a table beside the easel in the middle of the
studio. I made my way to it across a rug that made me feel as though I
were wading, poured two inches into a glass and put it away. Then I had
another one, and began to feel O.K.

The canvas mounted on the easel, the picture I was now working on,
showed a mermaid sitting on a cliff waving good-bye to somebody on a
steamship already far out at sea. I didn't know whether to call it
"Farewell" or "Grief." It wasn't exactly a masterpiece, I had to admit,
but the colors in it were quite good, the balance was correct, and it
wasn't one of my best things, anyway. On the floor, leaning against the
easel, stood another one, the picture of a Negro woman dancing in a
flaming red gown against a background of band instruments. This one I
called "The Dance." You could feel the movement in it, lots of movement,
which, after all, was my strong point. I shouldn't go in for static
effects like "Farewell." Or perhaps it would be better to call the
picture "Grief."

I crossed the studio to the bathroom and stepped under the shower. That
Tabac Blonde was no dream; it was real, though I couldn't place it. I
had to scrub like hell before it went away. Trying to figure out what
had happened the evening before was like fitting together the pieces of
a jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces missing. The last clear picture
I had showed me practically carrying the writer, Harley Hale, from a
night club somewhere, name and location unknown, out to a taxicab and
from there, presumably, bringing him back to the Hall. I could remember
that Hale had a weeping jag and nothing would do but I must hear all
about his six years in Joliet. Manslaughter, entirely accidental,
according to him. Then what happened before the night club and after we
left it brought in nothing but a jumble of static, and I tried to put it
together from the other end of the evening. Dinner in the main dining
room came through without any trouble. I remembered, in particular, a
nuisance by the name of Connors, said to be a poet, who had made quite a
play for Lucille, and after dinner most of us had taken a dip in the
pool about a quarter of a mile from the Hall. Lucille Nichols. The name
slowed me up. I saw smoldering black eyes, a white, haunted, almost
desperate, subtly sensual and unbelievably beautiful face. And then I
got the Tabac Blonde. Waves and waves of it. Of course. We had finally
gotten rid of Connors and gone to a roadhouse called the Halfway House,
a small group of us, where we'd danced and cooled off some more with a
few drinks. But what happened between the time we left there and I
helped Hale out of the other place was another blank.

Dressed, shaved, combed, my blond and rather pink face seemed, in the
mirror of the studio bathroom, quite fresh. The Bourbon was doing its
stuff, and I felt much better. Generally, though, I don't think it's
such a good thing to drink before breakfast. Along toward three or four
in the afternoon, I've noticed, you're apt to feel like a wreck if you
do. But this was a special occasion, I felt. So I had another one, while
I stuffed cigarettes into the pocket of the silk blazer Geraldine had
given me. The day would be hot later on, but right now it was still
cool.

My studio was one of four in a one-story building at the southern end of
the quadrangle around which most of the buildings of Demarest Hall were
arranged. The Hall itself was a big, rambling architectural accident
housing the kitchen and dining room, the lounge, reading room and
library, a game room, writing room, chapel, music room, two reception
rooms, a canteen, and the director's office and private living quarters.
To reach it, I followed the oval path skirting the drive that led up to
the main entrance of the Hall. The other seven studio buildings around
the quadrangle were about the same as the one in which I had been
placed, and this accounted for most of Demarest Hall except for the five
studios away off in outlying parts of the estate, allocated to
musicians, so that the rest of us wouldn't be disturbed by the racket
they constantly made.

When I stepped into the large lounge of the Hall the first person I saw
was P. C. Cooke, the director of the estate. I should have said that he
was around forty-five. There was a legend about Cooke to the effect that
very little took place in Demarest Hall without his knowing nearly
everything there was to know about it. Clairvoyant, they called him. If
so, he didn't look it. He was stout to the point of fatness, the face
that he seemed to try to compose into an expression of geniality somehow
displayed, instead, perpetual bewilderment and vague annoyance, while
the robust good humor of his voice and manner had the effect, from time
to time, of giving way to something perhaps more fundamental with him,
cynicism and a sort of concentrated, though bottled-up fury.

P. C. Cooke said, with unctuous heartiness, "Good morning, Mr. Bartel.
Just having breakfast?"

"Good morning," I said. "Yes. Join me?"

He showed me a sheaf of the yellow envelopes used for official purposes
by Demarest Hall, and said,

"Just as soon as I give these to the steward to distribute."

He disappeared into the office used as post office, bank, information
bureau and general canteen. Ten yards in the other direction gave
entrance to the main dining hall, over which, in Gothic letters a foot
high, ran the inscription:

               WHILE WINE AND FRIENDSHIP CROWN THE BOARD
                  WE'LL SING THE JOYS THAT BOTH AFFORD

It was a minute to ten when I crossed the threshold, probably the last
to appear for breakfast except for P. C. Cooke. Some seven or eight
other guests of the Hall were still there, although most had finished
long ago, and gone, either back to their studios, or to town, or
somewhere about the estate for tennis or a swim. Breakfast was buffet. I
helped myself to orange juice, onion soup, bacon and eggs and coffee,
and brought the tray to the only remaining table, one of the dining
room's four, still set for service.

I said, "Good morning," to the table in general, but looking at Lucille
Nichols, and sat down. She was as vivid now as she had been in the
dream. Her smile was something personal between us, and things happened
to me.

She said, "Chris, I want you to meet my husband. Walter, this is
Christopher Bartel."

I nodded and said, "How do you do," to the only strange face at the
table. The face, redder and fleshier than raw beef, appeared to nod at
something in the remote distance and, although no sound issued from it,
the eyes behind their shining glasses gave me a prolonged, unwavering
stare. While he was still memorizing me I put away the orange juice and
started on the soup.

Besides the Nicholses there were at the table Connors, Hale, two girls
who would be unobtrusive in any surroundings anywhere, a ghost writer by
the name of Harry Dunn, and a tall, thin, abstracted person, Karl Weiss,
a painter considered of some note among a few critics, and intellectuals
who made a religion of the pseudo-modern and esoteric. And we were
favored, presently, by the appearance of P. C. Cooke, who emerged from
his office to join us at the table with a breakfast comprising one
graham cracker and a glass of cold water. Cooke, reminding me of a
frustrated undertaker, smiled forcefully but unhappily about the group,
then addressed himself to Nichols, whom he evidently knew.

"Pleasant journey, Mr. Nichols?"

The red face slowly lifted itself and spoke, after a while, with hoarse
deliberation. "Rather pleasant," he said. "Yes."

"Find your studio comfortable?"

"Very comfortable, thank you." Nichols, finished with the trout he had
been eating, reached for and ostentatiously removed a bone from his
teeth, forgot to lay it down on the plate as he spoke. "Always a
pleasure to return to the Hall."

"It's a pleasure to have you."

"I like the atmosphere," said Nichols, ignoring Cooke. He waved the
fishbone for emphasis. "It's fascinating, to say the least, to find
myself again among so many fakers." The fishbone, raised like a
conductor's baton, halted P. C. Cooke's conciliatory smile. "Morons,
lotus eaters, drug addicts," Nichols' words grew slower, the pauses
between them longer, but the lifted baton commanded attention,
"drunkards," I gave the guy a hard look and forgot to swallow,
"gangsters and their intimate consorts," the ghost writer, Dunn, had
known and written for a dozen of them, "traitors and renegades," it came
to me that a couple of evenings before, in a heated political
discussion, some such language had been applied to William Glass, a
political journalist present this season, "and murdering jailbirds."
Nichols' fishbone fell to his plate and the tiny sound was like a
rolling crash of thunder. I looked at Harley Hale. Rather pale in the
face, he stared at Nichols, who ignored him and now, still devoting his
entire attention to P. C. Cooke, allowed an ecstatic smile to spread
over his face and gently added, "Yes. It suits me perfectly."

Miss Gregg, a musician, sounded an innocent, melancholy giggle and the
poetess at our table, Miss Attelio, shyly but firmly climbed upon the
stage and spoke her lines.

"You make us all sound so interesting, Mr. Nichols," she said. "If only
it were true, I think it would be simply wonderful."

Nichols' snort of laughter was a Gargantuan shout.

"True? Wonderful? God bless you, that's not the half of it. I forgot to
add the thieving and conniving citizens of the township, who'd rather
lose a crooked dollar than earn an honest one, and who hated the
Demarests when they were living, and who hate the Hall and everyone in
it now." He stopped laughing and shouting long enough to blow his nose
and draw a deep, gurgling breath. "Yes, and I forgot to mention our
perennial plagiarists. Some of them in the past have been truly
fabulous. Any plagiarists this season, Mr. Cooke?" Mr. Cooke attempted
to take refuge behind a meaningless shrug. In the pause that lengthened,
Nichols turned his attention to him, ponderously, once more. "And I
somehow omitted to speak of escaped lunatics," he pointedly added. "Yes,
there's nothing like a maniac at large to give that final touch to an
art colony. Is there, Mr. Cooke?"

P. C. Cooke stared at the other half of his graham cracker as though he
had already dined far beyond his capacity. When he spoke, his smile
radiated benevolence, his eyes were a study in rage.

"Mr. Nichols, you're a pessimist and a scholar," he announced, and the
conversation lapsed as the steward brought round the mail.

Albert Page, formerly of Highgate, moved quickly and quietly with the
distribution. When he reached me he put down four letters, one of them,
I noticed, in the yellow envelope of Demarest Hall.

I stopped him and said, "Albert, if you're going to be in town this
morning..."

"Yes, sir?"

"I'd like to get something through the canteen, if it's not
inconvenient."

"Be glad to do it, Mr. Bartel."

"Well, you can bring back two quarts of Old Granddad..."

"Yes, sir."

"...two bottles of Teachers..."

"Yes, sir."

"...a bottle each of any good gin and dry Vermouth and a bottle of
skin bracer. Got that?"

"Yes, sir, thank you. What was that last, sir?"

"Skin bracer. Any good brand. Mennen's will do," I said.

"Does that come in quarts, sir, or fifths?"

"It comes in small bottles and you get it at any drug store. Think you
can remember?"

"Right, sir, I'm no bargain, sir, but your order will be there at the
canteen by twelve o'clock noon, or would you prefer to have it delivered
to your studio?"

"Better have it delivered."

"Yes, sir, thank you."

Albert moved away and I finished the last of my bacon and eggs. One of
the letters was from Geraldine, I saw, another was from Blanche, and one
was from Joan. And there was, finally, the note from P. C. Cooke. I
couldn't imagine what it would be about, unless the Hall were already
billing me for extras I'd ordered, and that would be odd, since I'd been
here for only four days. While I ran over the first two letters, P. C.
Cooke ate the last half of his graham cracker and excused himself,
followed by the Misses Gregg and Attelio, then Weiss and Harry Dunn. I
realized, after a while, that I'd been the object of Mr. Nichols'
attention for some minutes past. I looked over at him. He said, in that
deep, hoarse voice of his, "I beg your pardon. Your name is Christopher
Bartel?"

I said, "Yes."

"I hadn't realized, at first," he said. "Not _the_ Bartel?"

I smiled and said, "Yes."

He gestured with his forefinger as he had before with the fishbone, and
his booming voice rose, "Not _the_ Christopher Bartel who does those
truly remarkable magazine covers, those luscious likenesses of Hollywood
stars, those marvelous night club murals and delightful hosiery ads?"

I didn't like the way this was shaping up. I said coldly, "This summer
I'm doing something a little different. No commissions at all. My own
things."

Nichols appeared, by now, to be addressing himself to some vast,
invisible audience.

"What sort of things of your own? Like that justly famous mural of yours
in the cocktail lounge of the Traveller's Club, 'Tropical Sub-sea Life'?
What gorgeous colors, Mr. Bartel, what rhythms.... Let me compliment
you. And that marvelous mermaid in the background." He shouted once,
then his voice sank to a hoarse, half-whisper. "Any mermaids this
summer, Mr. Bartel?"

My reaction was without any thought at all, it was purely reflex. When
it was all over, and it was over in a brief moment, I was standing on my
feet holding Nichols' glasses in one hand, the hand with which I'd swept
them off, and watching him struggle to rise from the floor where I'd
knocked him with the other.

Lucille said, "Chris. Don't be a fool." Somebody else, I think it was
Connors the poet, said, "Don't be a fool, jump on the guy while he's
still down." Hale said, rapidly, "What goes on? I didn't even see it
happen."

Nichols, laughing and shouting, got up from the floor, methodically
straightened his chair, took the glasses I mechanically extended.

"You see?" he said. "The congeniality. There's nothing like it anywhere
else. Now, if you'll excuse us, Mr. Bartel? And Mr. Connors? And Mr.
Harley Hale? I'm sure you want to get on with your interesting memoirs,
Mr. Hale."

Lucille gave me a long, helpless, resigned glance as she rose, and left
the room with him. I simply watched them go. It had been stupid of me,
but there was nothing I could do about that now. I sat down again.

Hale babbled, nervous and not entirely coherent, "You hear that? Hear
what he said? What's he got against me, anyway?" I lit a cigarette with
elaborate indifference. "What a heel. Somebody ought to kill that guy."

Connors got up from the table.

"That's an idea," he said, tossing his napkin down and turning to go.
"Why don't you?"

"Me? Say, listen, what's the idea of a crack like that?" But Connors was
already out of hearing, and Hale gave his distressed concern to me. We
were alone at the table. "Think Connors meant anything by that? Anything
special, I mean?" I shrugged and tried to look as bored as possible. "By
God, Bartel, I want to say... I want to say I met some queer people
when I did time in Joliet, plenty queer. But they weren't half as loony
as some of these people around this place."

I didn't say anything. I remembered the note in the Hall envelope, and
opened it. It ran:

    Dear Mr. Bartel,

    Conditions being such as they are at the Hall, what with not
    being too well staffed entirely due to economic reasons, I would
    take it as a personal favor if you would, in the future, not
    make such heavy personal shopping requests of the steward,
    regarding large orders for liquor, etc. etc., as these things
    take his time and much space in the station wagon, let alone to
    be delivered at your studio.

                                        Yours most respectfully,
                                                       P. C. Cooke

I had to read it twice before I could make out exactly what Cooke was
driving at, then I read it a third time with an odd sinking sensation.
There was something wrong there, about that note. I passed it over to
Hale.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"Read it."

While he did so, I checked over the sequence of events. By the time Hale
had finished the note, handed it back and said, "Well?" I had it figured
out. But it was impossible.

"P. C. Cooke brought those into the post office before he came into the
dining room," I explained. "A whole batch of letters, and this was one
of them. But I hadn't even ordered anything from Albert at that time.
You heard me do the ordering, yourself, right here at the table. And
Cooke himself was here all the while."

"It's peculiar," said Hale.

"Peculiar? It's not possible."

"They say," he said, "that fellow Cooke is a mind reader."

I stood up. The Bourbon was wearing off, and I needed another couple of
drinks to think this out.

"How the hell could he read my mind," I asked, "when I didn't know what
was in it, myself, until I saw Albert?"




                                  _2_


                            _WALTER NICHOLS_

Murder is easy, and the majority of murderers, by far, are never brought
to justice.

Most people know and understand one or the other of these two
propositions, but few are able to believe both. That is why the homicide
rate, high as it is, is not still higher. It is easy to kill. And,
according to police statistics, most killings remain on the books as
unsolved. Simple enough.

A few clouds, white and heavy, slipped with immense silence and slowness
across the sky that is always bluer than one can ever remember it. From
the balcony on the fifth and topmost floor of Demarest Hall, overlooking
the quadrangle of studios that from here seemed small, one could look
into the floor of the valley beyond them, where the city of Endor, built
by Demarests and still dominated by them, seemed yet more small and
remote and unreal. Then beyond the valley rose the hills, to form a
bright green crest, and back of them, darker and immeasurably distant,
stood another range of higher and more slowly rolling hills.

In such a scene, always, the mind finds it hard to clutch at the things
of its own concern, tending to relax and let go, to fall and drown in
this impersonal sea. Murder. Something about murder. Back in the
seventies and eighties there were plenty of people in that little
anthill called Endor who would not have hesitated to do away with Clark
Demarest, had they dreamed it was his resolve that the main line of the
railroad should pass, not through this valley, but through the one
beyond. But they had not guessed it, and by the time they knew, it was
too late. Still, there were plenty of people down there today who would
not stop at anything to break the hold that, even in death, the
Demarests had upon their lives. "...provided the executors of this
estate, hereinbefore mentioned," ran the critical clause of the will,
"and the trustees of Demarest Hall, designated in (I), shall at all
times maintain and conduct the affairs of said Demarest Hall in a manner
consonant with public laws, customs and morals..." Then followed a
lengthy but exact definition of these, as a rule, rather intangible
affairs, concluding with: "...failing which, said holdings designated
for this purpose (II) (III) and (IV) shall become the common property of
the city of Endor, to be administered for the public welfare by the
council, trustees, alderman or otherwise duly elected officers of said
city of Endor."

Public officials of Endor, like the majority of its citizens, would have
liked nothing better than to discredit Demarest Hall, through just that
clause concerning laws, customs, and morals, to the end that the
political power of the Hall's trustees, exercised through its huge
holdings, would be broken, and these holdings would revert to the city.
If they could prove in court of law that Demarest Hall was being
conducted contrary to public custom, the politicians of Endor would
vacate the power of the trustees, and open a combined gambling house and
house of prostitution on every street in Endor, the week after said
power had been vacated. There would be millions in it for a few, and
thousands for many. Murder? Murder has been committed for less than a
dollar and sixty-five cents.

From directly beneath me, but sounding flat and faint, came the slam of
the Hall's main door, steps descending the five stone stairs to the walk
and the drive. Presently, the foreshortened figure of Christopher Bartel
came into view, walking rhythmically and steadily away from the Hall,
presumably toward his own studio.

The eye where his fist had landed still smarted somewhat, and no doubt
would soon be a trifle blue, if not quite black. His was a completely
disorganized personality, if a first impression could be trusted, and in
this case there was no reason to think it could not be. The mind of a
child in the body of a man. Nothing very interesting, there are millions
like him in every walk of life.

The expensively costumed figure of Christopher Bartel glanced back once,
but without looking up--people never look up--then disappeared into
Vishnu Lodge, the studio building at the southern end of the quadrangle.
The name itself showed the touch of the last Demarest widow, now long
deceased, who had served on the board of trustees--as did many other
appurtenances about the estate. All of the lodges were similarly
named--Veda, Agni, Vach, Uma, and so on, though no one but the
unfortunate Mr. Cooke, who was obliged to do so, gave formal recognition
of the fact. The structure that housed Mr. Bartel was known, naturally,
as the End Building. Brahma Lodge, at the southeastern corner of the
square, where there had been persistent trouble with the plumbing and
lighting, had long since been known as the Doghouse. To it, because of
these defects, were assigned the lesser celebrities among the guests,
and thus its nickname had become doubly justified.

There reached me, again, the subdued slam of the Hall's front door.
Presently, their steps crunching on the gravel, Miss Claribelle Zorn,
novelist of Omaha City, appeared in the company of Harley Hale,
residence and ultimate destination unknown. It was evident from their
attire and the tennis rackets they carried, however, that Mr. Hale had
no intention of forwarding, at least immediately, his magnum opus, a
study of prison life, a piece of rubbish which I believe he already
alluded to as "Four Gray Walls." And speaking of murder, Hale had very
nearly gotten away with that killing of his, a variation of the
Wanderer, or ragged stranger case. The scheme had been basically
simple--Hale had "accidentally" killed his business partner and a bandit
in frustrating a robbery that he himself had framed. Why he had been let
off with manslaughter, is one of those mysteries at least as profound as
the mystery of life.

There are certain basic murder methods that can never be proven by
direct, but must always rely upon circumstantial, and therefore shaky,
evidence before murder can be proven. The drowned sweetheart method is
one, and no matter how old or well known it is, the technique is still
good and will be good until the end of time. A professional killing, by
hired killers is still another--the familiar gangster method, in which
neither victim nor murderer is personally known to each other, with
consequent lack of direct motive. And still another method is that of
simply pushing the victim off of a high cliff, into the path of a
subway, or out of a high window, balcony, or other inaccessible place.
And there are many more.

And so the subject is again murder. Because it is necessary, or at any
rate desirable, that this murder now quite certainly about to take place
shall be limited in the final result, as closely as possible, to those
parties deserving, justly, to be involved. Naturally, I do not like to
think that my fundamental plans shall miscarry. And then, of course, I
have always loathed loose, illogical thinking, and the utterly
meaningless, irresponsible action that cannot help issuing from it.
Knowing this, I also realize, and must accept the fact that I am
hampered--even in murder--by an alert and hyper-sensitive conscience. I
do not like to think that anyone shall die, through any act of mine, who
does not richly merit death.

But I refuse to hesitate, to hesitate and shrink, as no doubt the
blooming Miss Zorn might, or as even Mr. Hale under most circumstances
would shrink, from passing judgment upon my fellow members of the human
race. If my conscience sits in judgment upon me, then I do not stop in
allowing it to sit in similar judgment upon others. My New England
conscience is not, in short, entirely a liability when it comes to a
matter of murder. It works both ways.

Well, I am old-fashioned, and why deny it? However I may have derided,
in private, the mentality and the purposes of the Demarests, their
unspeakable romanticisms and incredible tastes, they were the builders
and the masters of the only society for which I have ever cared. I know
their world was ridiculous. I know that they pursued the phantom of
gentility on the grand scale as a politician organizes parades and buys
votes. I know that even their philanthropy resembled a bargain-day rush
in a department store--but it was still gentility, and philanthropy,
ideas if nothing more,--civilization, in short, a civilization that is
today dead. And the slight risk I shall run in engineering at least one
death, and possibly more, seems a ridiculous trifle in the face of that
larger doom, which my act will, after all, though in a small way,
avenge. It will be not only a personal, but a symbolic retribution as
well.

All of which may not promote, though it may underlie, the motives of
murder. Surely, no architect in death has ever been as plentifully
supplied as we are today, at Demarest Hall, with deserving victims,
glaring motives, and likely suspects. Among the victims, for example,
who would hesitate to remove that blight and blot Harley Hale? Or Mr.
Christopher Bartel? And why would anyone boggle at Mr. Cooke? Why
shouldn't the ubiquitous hoodlums of whom Mr. Dunn writes so copiously
turn on him, suddenly, and make away with him before he wittingly or
unwittingly blunders into print with some ghost-written truth that might
prove dangerous to them?

As for suspects, the list would be an embarrassment of riches. Half the
guests of the Hall this season deserve jail or worse for the simple fact
of having been born. As the trustee who was more closely in touch than
any other with the invitations issued, I can be sure of that.

I do not know what day or night, nor by what means precisely, the murder
will be committed. But it cannot be long. And I only hope a method can
be devised that is mercifully swift. The accomplice and dupe is all but
ready-made. Perhaps he may even be induced to contribute one or two
practical suggestions towards his own undoing.




                                  _3_


                          _CHRISTOPHER BARTEL_

It was about noon when I decided to quit work, for the time being, on
the new canvas. I'd set the easel near the window that overlooked Endor,
and was doing a view of the valley and the town. I decided to call it
"Cloud Shadows," "Peaceful Valley," or possibly "Eldorado." Then I
noticed the sound of the typewriter in the adjacent studio, occupied by
Nathan Biernbaum, had stopped some time ago. Biernbaum, of course, was
the historical novelist, probably the most successful of the whole
school. When I yelled "Come in," in response to a knock at the door, I
was not surprised to find it was he. He seemed to stop working at about
the same hours I did.

He said, "I beg your pardon for interrupting you, but I've run out of
matches. Got any?"

I handed him a card of them and said, "I was through for the morning
anyway. Sit down and have a drink?"

"Thanks."

He sat down in one of the indestructible Maplewood armchairs with which
most of the Hall's studios were furnished. Biernbaum, in the
neighborhood of forty, did not much resemble what one would think a
famous novelist of his type of work would look like. He was about five
feet one, to begin with, and gave the impression of being a particularly
attentive but not very bright waiter in some obscure businessman's
lunchroom on 50th Street. The perfect symmetry of his small but
unmistakable bald-spot belonged to a man who has at least five children,
though Biernbaum had none, and his clothing might have been the castoffs
of some generous but misguided servant.

He said, while I mixed a highball with the last of the Bourbon:

"Did you hear about the massacre in the dining room this morning?"

"No."

"Seems that some dope--I'm sorry I had an early breakfast and missed
it--seems that some dumbbell hauled off and slugged Nichols, that
poisonous bastard, smack in the puss." When I handed him the highball he
said, again, "Thanks. You didn't see it, by any chance?"

I said, "I was the dope that socked him."

"Really? The maid told me about it, but she didn't say who did it." He
sipped his highball. "She simply said Nichols had been razzing some guy,
and he didn't seem to want to take it."

"What else does the grapevine have to say about it?"

"Oh, just that Nichols was criticizing this man's work--yours,
evidently. I admire your courage, Bartel, but I must say, I damn your
judgment. Nichols, you know, is a very influential person, and he can
make himself most unpleasant."

I said, "It's a pleasure to smack a heel anywhere, any time, under any
circumstances I happen to run across one, and I don't give a damn if he
has a drag with God in person, I'll do it anyway."

Biernbaum, sipping his drink, stared absently across the studio. He
said, presently, "What've you got there, Bartel? What do you call that
thing?"

I followed his gaze, and said, "It's called 'Farewell'."

"My God. Is that a mermaid, sitting on those over-grown dornicks?"

I walked across the studio to the picture, lifted it up, looked at it
carefully, and said, "It was done by a former student of mine. He gave
it to me, and I had to accept it, of course. Not bad composition."

"Frightful," said Biernbaum. "Unless you love geometry."

I put the picture down, this time with the face to the wall, and said,
"I don't think I agree with you." Biernbaum sighed and sipped his
highball. "I have to look at quantities of stuff by younger artists, of
course. Everything from etchings to murals."

Biernbaum set his drink down, lit another cigarette with the card of
matches I had given him.

"Speaking of Nichols," he said. "When do you plan to lay his wife?"

"I beg your pardon?"

He gestured tolerantly.

"It's none of my business, of course. But everyone does. It's a
tradition at the Hall." He exhaled, sampled the drink again. "I might
say, one of the best traditions."

I could see that getting homey with Biernbaum was not going to pan out.
Small as he was, and well-meaning though dumb, as he might be, I had a
strong urge to pick him up and heave him out of the door. Or simply to
sock him one. But I had already smacked one phony this morning, and to
take a poke at another one seemed, somehow, to be overdoing it. I said,
instead, "Are you trying to tell me, in your subtle fashion, that you
have--what shall I say?--observed the traditions of Demarest Hall?"

He gave me the look of a waiter who has brought in a perfectly done
sirloin steak when filet halibut had been ordered.

"No," he said. "Unfortunately, no. But to tell you the truth, I've been
thinking of doing so. Confidentially, Bartel, what do you think of this
current crop of females that our major-domo, Peter Carlyle Cooke has
brought in? I mean, I've been here during three other seasons, and I
realize this is your first visit, but what do you think of the women?"

"The women?"

"The women who are guests. What do you think of them?"

I stopped and thought about them. I went over those whom I had met and
already knew, those whom I had met but knew only slightly. I said,
"Well, to tell you the truth, not so hot. Most of them."

Biernbaum slammed his empty glass down upon the arm of his chair.

"You said it. About five good-looking women among the whole damned lot."
He crushed out his cigarette and lighted another one, from an entirely
different card of matches, I noticed, than the one I had given him. "I
wonder where the committee finds them. Somebody ought to talk to Cooke
about it; you'd think he was trying to run a monastery. Somebody ought
to do something about Cooke, just on general principles. He's got an
entertainment schedule twice as heavy, this year, as it was last."

I said, "I read the announcement, but I didn't pay much attention to
it."

Biernbaum sighed and stood up.

"You will, though. Some hot June afternoon when you find yourself
listening to a violin recital in the music room. Or some hot July night
when you're watching a dance group in the open-air theater, and
wondering why."

"What the hell," I said. "This is still a free country. I don't have to
be there if I don't want to."

Biernbaum turned on a look of superior knowledge.

"No, but Cooke thinks it's good for your soul to be there, and things
have a way of happening to people who tangle with Cooke's sense of
propriety. If you like to go for a swim before breakfast, you're apt to
find that's just the hour they've chosen to drain the pool and repair
the filter system. If Cooke asks you whether there's any special dish
you'd like to request, and you're stupid enough to tell him you like
crab-meat ravigotte, for instance, then that's the one thing we'll never
have. If he knows you have certain favorite radio programs, at the hour
they're on every electric gadget in the place is going to be working and
you'll think your radio's been hit by lightning. Oh, yes, he has ways
and means of winning his arguments." Biernbaum moved to the door. "Fact
is I think P. C. Cooke has a deep, secret grudge against writers and
he's never so happy as he is when he's just thought up something
especially unpleasant to happen to one of his best-hated novelists.
Well, I think I'll have a walk before lunch. Thanks for the matches.
Drop in and have a highball with me soon."

I said, "Thanks, I will," though I didn't think I would, and he went
out. After he'd gone I sat down on the edge of the bed and began to
think. I thought, for a moment, of packing up and leaving Demarest Hall.
Then I decided not to. In the first place, I could keep pretty much away
from Nichols and Connors in the future, and similar pests, and probably
Biernbaum was exaggerating about Cooke, if not lying. And in the second
place, I could imagine what Geraldine would say and what she'd do if I
left here and went someplace else for the spring and summer. After the
fight we had about it, and she told me she didn't believe that I
intended to work, actually to work on the things that I really wanted to
do, no place but Demarest Hall was really safe. I knew, too, that if I
did walk out now it would mean that she had been right. And I'd never
again try to do the serious thing.

There was a knock at the door, this time the steward. He had the things
I ordered, and after he'd put the packages down in the kitchenette I
tried to give him a tip. Embarrassed, he refused it.

He said, "Thank you, sir, just the same. Mr. Cooke doesn't like that
sort of thing, except at the end of the season. But I'll tell you what
you might do, sir. Have you a drop to drink? I might have that."

I had an idea. I said, "Certainly, Albert. What would you like?"

"Bit of Scotch, if you have any, sir. And soda."

I went into the kitchenette and opened up the liquor, mixed two stiff
highballs. If anybody had the lowdown on the people of the Hall, it
ought to be Albert. I came back with them and said, "Sit down, Albert.
You must be pretty hot, running around with the shopping and all."

"Thank you, sir. Terrible hot." He tried the high-ball. "Hits the spot,
this does."

I said, "Mr. Cooke objects, does he, to your receiving tips?"

"Not objects, exactly. But he wants the guests to feel more as if they
were at home, like."

"A very good idea, too. Still," I said, casually, "he wouldn't
necessarily know about it. I mean, this is a large place, and Mr. Cooke
must have his hands too full to check up on every little move the
servants make. I don't mean you, I mean all of them."

"He certainly does have his hands full. It's a job, his."

"Yes, he has to be a combination of diplomat and magician, I imagine. Or
a mind reader, I should say."

Albert winked perceptibly above his highball.

"He's deep, he is."

"But you don't believe that nonsense about Mr. Cooke being able to read
anybody's mind, do you?" I asked.

"Certainly not, sir. But he's a fine man, sir. A wonderful gentleman to
work for. And deep. You wouldn't believe it, if I told you how deep."

I said, "Well, how deep?"

"Generous, too." Albert nodded. "Always thinking of others. Puts himself
out a great deal for the guests, sir. More than most people gives him
credit for. If there's anything you want, and it's in reason, just ask
him. Or you could ask me, for that matter. We like to see our guests
happy and comfortable." We finished our highballs in a dead heat. "If
you'd like a few articles of furniture you haven't got in the studio, I
could speak to George, the carpenter, and he'd be glad to get it for you
out of the storeroom."

"No, I don't want any more furniture, thanks."

"Or if there's some special kind of food you're especially fond of, I
could speak to the cook."

"Well, in hot weather I always like..." I rattled the ice cubes in
the glass, and thought.

"Yes, sir?"

"Nothing."

"Something you'd care for in particular, sir?"

"No. I was simply going to say, in hot weather I always like to have
hot-weather dishes."

"That's best, sir. Absolutely right."

Albert stared reflectively into his empty glass. The score was zero so
far, but it might be worth another try. Ordinarily, I don't believe in
hobnobbing with the help, but I was considerably puzzled, not to say
uneasy, by some of the things I'd heard and seen at the Hall. Another
drink or two might prompt Albert's confessional instincts. I said,

"Another one, Albert?"

"If you're sure it's all right, sir. Mr. Cooke might not like it. He
doesn't like the staff to disturb the guests any more than we can help."

"It's all right with me, I'm sure. And as far as Mr. Cooke is concerned,
what he doesn't know won't hurt him. Will it?"

"That's right, sir."

I brought out the Scotch and soda and some ice cubes, and we mixed up
another couple of stiff ones. Albert raised his and said, "Hoping you
have a pleasant summer, Mr. Bartel."

"Thank you, Albert. I'm sure I shall. There's no reason why one
shouldn't, is there?"

"None, none at all."

"I mean, does anyone ever, now and again, for one reason or another,
fail to enjoy a season at Demarest Hall?"

"Not often, sir."

"Sometimes, though?"

"I'd hardly say that. It's as you might say, every summer is a different
summer at the Hall. Some good. Some not the best, if you see what I
mean."

"No, I don't see what you mean."

"Like this, sir. Mr. Cooke, he's tried everything. One whole season he
had the muck-a-mucks that run the Hall invite only gentlemen. Another
time, he tried ladies, exclusively."

"Work out all right?"

"No, sir, it didn't, either way. Mainly, though, he mixes them, like
this year."

"I suppose that's better."

"No, sir, that's not exactly what you'd call better, either. It don't
seem to work out for the best, any way. Some years he has mainly
writers, other years mostly artists, like yourself, sir. Once we had
radicals, there must have been two dozen of them, you couldn't hear
yourself think, and another time Mr. Cooke and the directors invited a
very high society type. They didn't talk so much, but they broke an
awful lot of furniture; we were sweeping up the pieces morning, noon and
night."

"Well, by and large, nothing really unpleasant ever happened, would you
say?"

"Offhand, I can't recall anything." He gave me a significant look. "No,
I can't recall, offhand, any time before now when one of the gentlemen
handed a trustee a black eye. No, that never did happen before." He said
it with a note suggesting regret. "The guests, yes. They've had it out
between themselves. But a trustee, no."

I wasn't surprised that Albert knew all about the argument in the dining
room this morning.

"Has Mr. Nichols got a shiner?"

"A beauty, too."

"Well, that's too bad. But I really think--never mind. Have another
drink, Albert?"

"I wouldn't mind, sir."

We mixed another round. I said, "How would Mr. Cooke take that affair at
breakfast this morning, do you suppose?"

Albert studied his drink.

"Hard to say," he finally decided. "Might not like it. On the other
hand, he might see it your way. Mr. Cooke, he's really deep. Not like
you or I would be, sir, but deep in his own way. He's a very generous
and understanding man. But not worldly. He's more the innocent type,
with his head in the clouds. He'd see things you and I wouldn't, but
again, he wouldn't see things, plain as the nose on your face, that we
would."

Albert tilted the glass, and the phone rang. Answering it, I said,
"Yes?"

"Mr. Bartel?"

I said, "Yes." It was P. C. Cooke. "This is Mr. Bartel."

"This is Mr. Cooke, Mr. Bartel. I was wondering if perhaps Mr. Page was
in your studio?"

"Yes, he's here."

"Well, I wonder if you'd mind seeing to it that he leaves for the
kitchen on time to make the usual lunch basket distributions at the
usual hour we have here of one o'clock? He's sometimes a little lax,
under certain circumstances."

I said, "I'll tell him."

"I don't want to interrupt your conversation, Mr. Bartel. I know you
must be very curious about some of the people and the various
aspirations we have here at the Hall. But at the same time, it's most
important that Albert delivers lunch to the guests at a punctual hour.
And you can talk to him later, of course. You understand, I'm not
criticizing you, Mr. Bartel, it's just that geniuses get hungry, like
everyone else," he sounded a windy, humorless laugh to go with the
banality, "and they hate it when the steward doesn't bring them their
lunches on time."

Inwardly mystified but trying to sound hearty, I said, "Certainly, I'll
tell him."

"He can start with the lunches," said Mr. Cooke, "as soon as he finishes
his drink." I glanced over my shoulder, expecting to see P. C. Cooke,
but I saw, of course, only Albert. He was finishing his drink. "Thank
you, Mr. Bartel, and may I say again I hated to call this way. It's only
that the steward is sometimes not quite as punctual as he might be. Mr.
Page has a cross of immoderate thirst to bear."

I hung up, and when I turned around Albert was on his feet.

"That was Mr. Cooke," he said. "He must have been phoning from the
Valley Club. I drove him to the town and left him there. Was there a
message for me?"

"Mr. Cooke was afraid you might be late with the lunches."

Albert somewhat unsteadily peered at his wrist watch.

"I'm no bargain," he declared. "I'm no bargain, I'll admit, but I do all
right with the lunches. They're supposed to be delivered to the studios
by one o'clock, and here it is, only a quarter after. Takes ten minutes
to get up to the kitchen, five minutes to get the wagon ready, and
twenty minutes to make all the deliveries. I might be a half hour late,
or an hour, but what difference does that make to a bunch of loafers--I
beg your pardon, sir, and present company excepted--who went back to
sleep right after they had breakfast, and they'll go right back to sleep
again the minute they've had lunch?"

I have never swallowed a whole ice cube at one gulp, but I could imagine
how it would feel, and I felt as though I had. I said, "Did you say Mr.
Cooke was in Endor?"

"That's right, sir. I drove him there when I did the shopping this
morning. Left him at the Valley Club in town where he was having lunch
with the mayor."

I stepped to the window where the easel had been set up and looked out.
The valley dropped away sheerly, about a hundred feet from the window,
and showed Endor in the very bottom of it, looking like a cluster of not
very promising fly-specks. Most of the valley was bright with sunlight,
as I'd painted it, but here and there one could see the shadow of a
small cloud, swift and faint. I said, "You don't think Mr. Cooke has a
telescope down there, and maybe he keeps it trained on the studios up
here, when he's away?"

Albert looked blank.

"Of course not, sir. What makes you say that?" I shrugged, and Albert
moved to go. "Thank you for the highballs, sir. Most pleasant. If
there's anything I can do for you. Anything a little extra, Mr. Bartel,
just say the word."

I waved him out and went back to the window. The city was easily fifteen
miles away, in the hollow of the valley, and more likely twenty. I knew
there must be some rational explanation for P. C. Cooke's unholy
accuracy regarding Albert. The only trouble was, that rational
explanation just escaped me. Of course, the studio might be wired. Just
to make sure I went over the whole place rather carefully, looking
behind the curtains, under the rugs, the mattress on my bed, the drawers
of the dresser, the kitchenette and even the icebox. There was nothing,
anywhere, to suggest that a microphone had been installed. By the time
I'd finished, I saw Albert, through one of the studio windows, wheeling
around the wagon that carried the lunch trays. He'd reached the
Doghouse, by then, staggering a little, and my studio would be next. I
poured a stiff drink for myself. There are times, I've noticed, when a
fellow has to be sober and think like lightning, and if you happen to be
drunk, or a little drunk, the only thing to do is take three or four
more shots and, well, to put it simply, drink yourself sober. Then,
after that one, I had another one, hoping I'd be still more
clear-headed.

But I realized, after the last one began to take effect, that it would
be a waste of time to try to rationalize this latest business. In fact,
it would probably be a waste of time to try to explain any of it. I was
sobering up, all right. The soberer I became, the more I realized I was
over my depth. Perhaps, after all, it would be better simply to leave
Demarest Hall.

Then I heard Albert's cart creak past the studio, the wheels crunching
on the gravel of the drive, and I heard a thump as he delivered the
basket at the door of my studio. I went to the door and opened it. As I
did so, I saw Biernbaum in his own doorway, looking at his lunch with
some surprise. He said, "Albert must be drunk again. I got Lucille
Nichols' tray."

I looked down at mine. The card on it said "Claudia Attelio" and what
food it contained I don't know, except that it seemed to consist mainly
of lettuce and whole-wheat bread. Evidently, Miss Attelio was dieting.
If I looked far enough, I didn't doubt, I'd have found ant-eggs and
Swedish bread. I booted the basket across the drive and picked up the
one in Biernbaum's door.

"I'll take this to Miss Nichols," I said.

"Don't put yourself out," he said. "I'll be glad to do it myself."

I didn't answer him. I was halfway across the quadrangle, to the
Fountain house, before he'd finished speaking. What the hell, I felt,
what I really needed was the feminine touch. There might be something,
after all, in that feminine intuition stuff.




                                  _4_


                         _PETER CARLYLE COOKE_

After I'd telephoned to Mr. Bartel I returned to the dining room of the
Valley Club and resumed my seat opposite Mr. Nichols. He presented, with
multiple contusions and hemorrhages of the eye, an extraordinary
spectacle. The eye was blue. Not the same color or shade of blue as Mr.
Nichols' cornea, but a deeper blue. Not black, as people say, but blue.
Really, they should say, to be accurate, "Where did you get that blue
eye of yours?" and not black. Or possibly purple. Or sometimes brown.

Mr. Nichols said, "What are you staring at?"

"That was Mr. Bartel I just phoned," I said. "As I was afraid, Albert
will be a little late with the lunch baskets."

"I didn't ask you who you phoned," said Mr. Nichols. He had finished his
soup, and now put down his spoon and started to wad up bread crumbs into
nasty gray little spitballs, another of his disgusting, or perhaps I
should say, annoying habits, though mannerisms would perhaps be the
better word. "And," he added, "I really don't care whether Albert never
delivers the lunches. That aggregation of fakers and stuffed shirts we
have this season--let them starve. I never saw a drearier collection,
never in all my life."

"Many of them, Walter, received expressly and precisely your strongest,
perhaps I should say your most urgent approval." I peered at Mr.
Nichols, who never failed to surprise me, in some alarm. He seemed to be
on the verge of a serious seizure. "Besides," I said, "there are several
sides to every question, but in the main, I think perhaps on this
occasion, at this particular time, we may have views somewhat in
common."

Walter Nichols waited until the waiter had removed the soup, and then
said, explosively, "For Christ's sake, Cooke, what are you talking
about? Can't you use plain language? I didn't tell you to meet me here
at the Valley Club just because I can't stand the lunches at the Hall.
Nor because I love your company. There was a reason why I wanted to see
you, and you aren't going to evade the issue by laying down a verbal
smokescreen."

How right the Demarests were, when they proclaimed, or perhaps I should
say exemplified, not only by word but by deed, that nothing counts in
this world so much as a sympathetic spirit and a helping hand. And yet,
how strange that they should have become preoccupied with the
troublesome spirit of the creative artist, to the exclusion of equally
needful, though perhaps less worthy, but more deserving, types of
mankind. I said, "I know your eye must hurt, Walter." The waiter brought
our lunches. I'd ordered a sirloin steak, despite the hot weather. A
very light breakfast, then a substantial lunch, followed in turn by a
frugal dinner, and then a substantial snack at eleven o'clock, was doing
wonders for my excess weight. "And I'm sure I know how you must feel
about Mr. Bartel."

"As it happens," he said, positively leering, "I like Mr. Bartel."

"Exactly. I was sure you did."

Walter Nichols appeared to withdraw into the vast reserve of a spirit
that has known much trouble, but that has never been at a loss, and has
never been found wanting in meeting it. He finished his chicken  la
king without speaking. Then he said, casually,

"May I have your attention for a few minutes, Mr. Cooke?" I said,
"Certainly," but he seemed not to hear. "Without interruption?" he
added, emphatically. "And it's no use trying to act like a pixelated
moonbeam with me, you old goldbricker. I know you're as sane as I am,
probably saner, even if you did put in four years at Rockland State
Hospital for the mentally deficient."

I looked around. Fortunately, no one was within earshot. I said, "Mr.
Nichols, Walter I mean, no one realizes more than I do what a truly
wonderful, wonderful helping hand you extended to me in an hour when I
was sorely persecuted and misunderstood. Until the final vindication.
But at the same time, don't you think it might be equally beneficial, if
not more so, to use the better part of audacity? Valor, perhaps I should
say. In short, to be discreet in public?"

Walter Nichols sighed, lit a cigarette, exhaled smoke.

"You've got brains, you old goat," he said, "no matter how hard you try
to conceal the fact."

"The pleasure is all mine, Walter."

"But this is getting us nowhere. I asked you to lunch with me here so
that we could be alone, and talk. I'm planning to commit a murder, and I
shall need your help."

"You'll find me a most sympathetic spirit, Walter." The steak was just a
little too well done, but good. "Anything in reason will find me willing
and anxious to extend you all the help at my command. What was it you
had been planning?"

"Murder."

"Yes, I thought I'd heard you correctly. But it's against the law,
Walter, and I'm sorry, but under the circumstances, I see no reason why
I should commit myself to a course of action that can end only in
disaster, illegal disaster. I'm truly sorry. Will you have strawberry
shortcake, or ice cream for dessert?"

"It won't be a disaster if you're in on it."

"I'm sorry, Walter, but I'm afraid you're overwrought. I won't be, as
you put it, in on it."

"Oh, yes, you will be. Yes, because you've got to be, whether you like
it or not." I looked at him. He seemed perfectly, one might almost say
uncomfortably, sure of himself. "You see, Mr. Cooke, I know some things
about you that you think I don't. Things you think no one, aside from
yourself, knows about. Do you follow me?"

"Perfectly. But I don't believe you."

"You will believe me."

"Naturally. Of course. But I don't think so."

Mr. Nichols sighed, profoundly, and the waiter approached to remove our
plates. Walter ordered the ice cream, and I decided to select the choice
of strawberry shortcake. When the waiter had gone, Walter said,

"Just accept the fact that you will have to go along with me in this
proposition, whether you like it or not. Will you assume that?"

"Certainly. But of course, I won't."

"I understand you, Peter. I know you better than you know yourself. And,
I assure you, I'm not talking through my hat. I can oblige you to help
me carry out my plans, whether you want to or not. Now, pending my
proving to you that you have no choice in the matter--and I shall give
you this proof--are you at any rate willing to discuss the subject of
this murder I'm projecting?"

The waiter brought the dessert. The strawberry shortcake seemed a trifle
on the frugal side. But then, the Valley Club, like every dining room
and restaurant in Endor, could be very disappointing indeed on occasion.

"It's not only illegal," I said, "but dangerous. To society as a whole.
Suppose every man took the law into his own hands, and decided to
redress the supposed wrongs he fancies have been done to him? I will not
participate, Walter, in your hare-brained though perhaps idealistic
schemes."

He eyed me with what I could not help feeling was an expression of
malevolence.

"But you'll talk it over with me?" he said.

"Oh, yes. Talk. Why not?" There was not enough sugar in the shortcake.
Under the circumstances, perhaps it might be best to seem to humor him,
and even to be willing to lend a helping hand and a sympathetic spirit.
"Not in the best of taste, perhaps. Still, people do discuss murder. In
fact, many of our guests at the Hall make a good living by writing about
it. As a matter of fact, Walter, did you have so many of this season's
guests selected from the criminal elements, simply to cover this
proposed step of yours?"

"Certainly."

"Extraordinarily clever, Walter," I said. "I surmised as much. Now, if
you'll excuse me, I'll be getting back to the Hall. I'm not at all sure
about Albert."

Mr. Nichols smiled tolerantly. But when that great red face of his
really smiled, somehow it was a most unpleasant, not to say disturbing,
sight to see.

"When we've talked," he said. "Relax and sit back. Regard this as
something in the realm of fiction. Now, what would be the best method of
committing a murder at the Hall, and to escape detection?"

I ate the last of my shortcake and sipped my iced coffee.

"Naturally, Mr. Nichols, I wouldn't know," I said. "But a knife,
suddenly applied when the killer and the person to be killed are remote
from public observation, has always been partially successful."

"Just what I thought," said Mr. Nichols.

"But, naturally, circumstances alter the case. In this hypothetical
situation you are designing, and in which I refuse to have any part,
pending proof that I should or must have, exactly whom were you disposed
to kill?"

"My wife, of course," said Nichols.

"Oh, surely not. That lovely creature?"

"Lovely to you," said Mr. Nichols. "But a cancerous excrescence to me.
Now, how about it? What would be the best way for us to get rid of her?"

It was my turn to sigh. I was used to having trouble with the guests of
the Hall, and from time to time, with the trustees. But this was just a
little beyond the outermost limit of trouble ever, previously,
experienced by me. I wadded up my napkin and laid it down and said,
stubbornly, "Walter, I wish I could make it clear to you that if anyone
is going to do away with your wife it won't be _us_, it will have to be
_you_. Because I refuse to have any connection with this scatterbrained
and, well, radical plan of yours. May I point out, first, that I
disapprove of murder, and secondly I disapprove of the victim you have
selected--"

"So do I," he said, and grinned in that sarcastic way of his. "That's
why I selected her."

"Beside all that," I pointed out, "You're a brilliant man, Walter.
You're a man with a future. And now, stupidly you want to jeopardize
it." I saw by his smile, which had simply grown wider and more sardonic,
that my argument was having less than no effect. It seemed to me a
different tack, all things considered, might be better. "Still," I said,
"if you simply have to do it, I suppose the best way would be to get her
to come alone and secretly to the balcony of the Hall some night, on the
pretext of making a reconciliation, or some such nonsense, and then
dispose of her. Always, of course, provided you are unobserved by the
other guests. But our guests being what they are, and confound it,
Walter, you are responsible in large part for their being what they are,
I wouldn't put it past them to choose that very night to have a bridge
party on the balcony of the Hall. So I wouldn't do it. In fact, I
won't." I stood up. "I'm going back to the Hall, and I sincerely, indeed
I devoutly, hope you give up this rash plan. Heaven knows, Walter, you
have reasons enough for wishing Lucille were no longer part of your
life. But you have not as yet hit upon a rational, I might even say a
probable, or possible, method of getting her out of it. When you do," I
said, perhaps a trifle carried away, "let me know."

Walter Nichols stood up, too.

"I certainly will," he said. "But I think, all things considered, I
can't do without you. Driving back to the Hall?"

"Yes." We left together. Frankly, I could not imagine why Mr. Walter
Nichols was so anxious to return with me to the Hall. However, we left
the premises of the Valley Club, went out to our cars, got in them, and
drove back to the Hall. We drove into the interior courtyard and got out
at the main entrance. I said, "Well, I'll have to check the day's
accounts."

"Yes," said Walter Nichols, "But first, I want you to accompany me on a
trip downstairs."

"Downstairs?"

"Yes. To the crypt beneath the old wine cellar. You have no objection,
have you?"

I stared. It was a moment before I gave any reply. "Of course not. But
couldn't we postpone it to some other time?"

"No," said Nichols. "I found something very interesting down there. I
think you'll be interested, too. What's the matter, P. C.? You don't
look particularly happy."

"Why on earth should I be particularly happy?"

"Well, stop mopping the perspiration off your face." I hadn't been aware
that I was doing so. "I think you know what I found down there, and
you'd might as well face it."

"No," I said. I'd already undergone far too severe a strain. "Not at
this time. I really, if you'll excuse me, have a great deal to attend to
this afternoon." But he had already turned into the Hall, and I found
myself talking to the back of his head as we made our way through the
lounge, chapel and library toward the back of the building. An alcove
seldom in use, except as a storeroom for tools used in winter time, gave
entrance upon a flight of stairs leading down to the laundry and
boiler-room. The large and furniture-laden vaults that had once been the
wine cellar of the Hall were another flight of stairs beneath them, and
beneath the cellar there was an empty crypt once used for storing ice. I
followed Walter Nichols through this cool, underground maze, all of it
dimly lit by electric lights that he switched on as he went along. I
said, "I hope this won't take long."

"It won't," he said, turning to the narrow stairway leading to the
crypt, and lighting the bulb that illuminated its length from the
doorway at the bottom. "Cooke," he said, "you had a brother-in-law,
didn't you, by the name of Fremont Bryan?"

"Yes, I believe I have. Why?"

"You believe so?" he asked, with heavy sarcasm. "Don't you know you
had?"

"I haven't seen Fremont for years," I said.

"I'm sure you haven't. Not for seven years, to be exact. Not since he
became suspicious as to the way you were administering your
father-in-law's estate." We stepped into the crypt. "But I think you're
going to see him now."

He pointed to a hole dug steeply into the dirt that was today the only
flooring in the crypt. At the bottom of it there was, unmistakably, the
figure of a human skeleton.

"Who found it?" I asked.

"I did," said Nichols. "It took a great deal of searching, and a lot
more of deductive reasoning. But I got the answer last winter, on the
West Coast. And when I returned last night, I found I'd been right. As
you can see."

"Demarest Hall," I pointed out, "was built upon a site reputed to be an
Indian burial ground."

"Did you ever see an Indian with a silver belt buckle on which were
engraved the initials, F. B.?" Nichols sounded that buzz-saw laugh of
his. "Flying Buffalo, maybe? But Flying Buffalo was shot through the
back of the head with a .32 caliber bullet, which is still inside the
skull."

"It's a very disturbing thing to happen. I don't pretend to understand
what you meant by deductive reasoning and so on. No doubt you have your
own reasons. But if you think that this involves anything irregular, I
suppose we had better notify the authorities."

"Nice bluffing," said Nichols. "But, on the other hand, why bother to
notify anyone at all? Why not simply shovel the dirt back and let the
dead past bury the dead? Maybe you're right. Maybe you don't know
anything about this. But on the other hand, my belief is that you do.
And why should I start the troopers to make an investigation into your
past, asking you all sorts of embarrassing questions?"

"It might lead to scandal that the Hall could not afford to have," I
admitted. "It might upset the whole summer, and have even more
far-reaching, well, consequences than you or I could foresee."

Nichols picked up a shovel, and handed me another one.

"Exactly what I thought," he said. "So, I suggest that we just cover
this up and forget about it. Only this time, for God's sake, you might
have the sense to put down a cement floor."

"A new cement floor down here, a place no longer used, would certainly
cause comment," I pointed out.

Nichols laughed, and nodded.

"I knew you had sense. It takes a practical man to do a job of this
sort. We writers are apt to be visionary, and overlook certain
elementary factors." We started to shovel the dirt back into the grave.
"But, regarding that business we were discussing in the city--can I take
it that you'll co-operate?"

"I won't have anything to do with the thing you have in mind, Mr.
Nichols," I said. "But on the other hand, I'm always glad to co-operate.
I'm sure there must be a happy solution."

"Well, that's all I'm asking for. Think of one, and the quicker and
safer, the happier."

We shoveled in silence, in the airless crypt. Nichols, to my way of
thinking, more closely resembled an animal than a human being. But it is
only too true, and pity that it is, that some men are either made, or
become that way. He said, grinning again in that maddening way of his,

"In case you thought of getting rid of me first, P. C."

"Yes, Walter?"

"I have left a communication for the police that will certainly strap
you into the electric chair."

It was uncanny. Silent again, we went on digging.




                                  _5_


                          _CHRISTOPHER BARTEL_

I noticed that her face, framed by waves of jet-black hair, was nearly a
perfect oval. Quite small across the high, white forehead, and quite
round at the firm but narrow chin. Then the line between the breasts and
the knees, the line that always goes like strong drink to a man's head,
was a lazy, unbroken, inverted S.

"So that's how it is," she said. "We have separate studios while we're
here. It's been years since we lived together as man and wife."

I tossed down the brush and came around to the back of the easel. I'd
been touching up "Farewell," or "Grief." I'd changed the mermaid, and
she was now Lucille. Instead of waving good-bye to the steamship, which
I had turned around and now had coming in instead of going out, she was
waving a welcome to it. The picture would be called "Joy." This might
have seemed strange to the average person who does not know the infinity
of corrections and revisions through which an artist must go before the
completion of a creative work. A complete reversal of the original
conception is nothing uncommon. Besides, Walter Nichols' statement about
mermaids had a grain of truth in it. They were out. I would have known
it, myself, except that I'd been absorbed for so many years in the
commercial demand. With the people who are in a position to offer good
commissions, mermaids, South Sea Islands, Harlem dancers, and accurate
likenesses never seem to go out. Sailboats, too, and hunters with dogs.

I said, "Well, I'm really sorry I socked him this morning." I gave
Lucille a dry smile. "But, as you see, he surmised the truth about this
mermaid picture. And the truth hurt."

"Don't worry about it. Walter has been socked by experts. May I smoke?"

I said, "Yes. And let's have a drink. I don't think I'll do any more
with this for a time. It's four o'clock."

She got down off the stand and took off her dressing-gown in which I'd
draped her, to substitute for the actual overcoat in the portrait, a
substitution I'd hit upon as the easiest way in which to remove the
suggestion of a mermaid. The pose was the same, but the feet, of course,
were different.

When I came back with a couple of highballs she said, "Honestly, Chris.
You may think I'm joking. But there are times when I hardly understand
that man."

"Here you are. What man?"

"Walter, you utter fool. There are times when he seems terribly strange
and sinister. As long as I've known him, I still don't understand him.
Chris." She hesitated, and I said, after a try at the highball, "Yes?"
Then, very thoughtfully, she said, "I sometimes think--this may sound
silly. But I sometimes think Walter would stop at nothing."

"What do you mean?"

She gave me a long look out of those jet-black eyes of hers.

"I don't think Walter would stop at anything to get rid of me. I mean,
Chris, just this." She ground out the stub of her cigarette, considering
her words. And looked at me, and seemed to be estimating me. "I mean, I
don't think he'd stop at murdering me."

I snickered. "Why should he? Divorce is so much simpler, so much less
dangerous and expensive, and just as effective. Besides, it's
civilized."

She lit another cigarette, seated upon the studio lounge. She looked at
me through the longest, darkest eyelashes I have ever seen. It was as
though I had suddenly found myself at the bottom of a particularly
high-powered microscope.

"How many people, today, have any interest in being civilized?" she
asked. "Besides, there is the matter of alimony or a settlement he might
have to make, if we were divorced. Then there is the matter of
insurance. We have mutual benefit policies that amount to eighty
thousand. But the real reason would be--well, revenge. Walter feels that
I have somehow hurt him. Terribly. Through my relations with other men,
of course. Although we both agreed when we married that we would live
completely free and independent lives, as civilized people do. When they
can. And if they have the courage to do so."

I found that I'd reached the end of my highball. I said, vaguely,

"Murder is a sucker's racket. Sooner or later they always get tripped
up. Fact is, it just won't work. Another drink?"

"No, thanks. I haven't finished mine. Do you," she said, as I set about
mixing another highball, "always drink so much?"

"I don't drink very much," I explained. "I'm practically a teetotaler
today as a matter of fact."

"Seven or eight drinks this morning, unless I guess completely wrong,"
she said. "And you've had only five so far this afternoon. Is that what
you call temperance?"

"Well, it's not intemperance, either." I mixed myself another one, and
came back with it. "Anyway," I said, "this is the last one for today.
But tell me more about your husband. Are you serious, that you think
he'd like to, well, as you said, kill you?"

She exhaled smoke, rattled the ice cubes in her drink, stared at the
drink, and then at me.

"I've been mortally afraid of him for years," she said. "He's tried to
do whatever damage to me that he could, over that period, in any way
that he could do it. He has wrecked concert engagements of mine. He has
turned my oldest friends against me. He has ruined some of my finest,
most worth-while friendships--and the more that he has done against me,
the more his hatred and his desire for revenge against imagined slights
and insults rises. Frankly, Chris, it's a situation the end of which I
cannot see, and which I cannot cope with."

Suddenly she was in my arms, and crying. I got an admixed aroma of
Scotch, La Tabac Blonde, tobacco, and that indefinable but strong scent
of the purely feminine. I said, "Don't even think about it. You aren't
going to be murdered while you're here at Demarest Hall, at least. There
are plenty of us here who will see to that. Meaning myself, among
others."

She sighed, snuffled, placed her nose, which was small and kittenish, in
the nook of my southwest elbow.

"You don't understand Walter," she said.

"Well, who wants to?" I leaned over and kissed her. It was just as I'd
expected it would be, only better. I said, "God. People waste so much
time talking, don't they? And this is so much more fun. Why didn't we do
it before?"

She said, "But we did, last night, don't you remember?"

"Last night," I said, groping for some positive recollection, "was last
night. Tonight, though, is something different. And for heaven's sake,
stop worrying about him. There are still some sane people left in this
world."

She said, idly, while I kissed her, "What would you think if you'd
awakened twice, in a closed garage with the motor of your car running?"

"I'd think I'd been pretty damn careless."

"No, I mean, not through your own carelessness. And it wasn't any
accident."

"Are you trying to say that husband of yours...?"

She didn't give an immediate reply. She said, finally, in a low,
wondering, abstracted voice, "I don't know. It doesn't seem possible.
And yet, there it was."

I put down the last of the highball and went out to the kitchenette to
mix another. I said, from there, "Well, if there's any question about it
at all, I should think you'd give the guy the air, and not waste any
time about it."

When I came back she said, disturbed and distrait, "But I'm not sure.
And I'd want to be sure. Besides, there are reasons why I can't leave
him. Not just like that."

"Then forget it," I said, and pulled her into my lap. She might have
looked like a Bellini Madonna, but she kissed like a Rubens. It was like
having your arms around a flame. I said, as I experimented, "Darling,
darling."

She said, "No," and sat up, tucking her hair into place. "I don't want
to bore you with my own troubles, Chris."

I had a premonition that I was going to hear some more about Walter
Nichols, but I said, "You aren't."

She gave me one of those long, probing glances. She seemed, somehow,
both incredibly helpless and extremely brave.

"It's just that I feel, oh, sort of, well, afraid. Not only for myself,
but for Walter, too. For what he may do to us. All of us."

"Forget the guy," I said. "Don't be such an idealist."

Suddenly she was in my arms again, in a lightning change of mood.

"Chris," she said, and there was an abyss of despair in her voice. "You
will protect me, won't you?"

"It will be a pleasure."

"I mean." She stopped. "I don't know what I mean. I had no right to say
that."

I sampled the highball. Things were going around a little too fast for
me, and I needed a certain amount of perspective to think them out. I
compromised, finally, by simply kissing her. This time, it was like
trying to take hold of a changing cloud. I'd never known anyone so
variable in her moods as Lucille. It was like staring into a
kaleidoscope, where the patterns are always, always different. I'd met
such women in dreams, but long ago decided they didn't exist in real
life.

There was a knock at the door, and the instant I heard it, I realized
Biernbaum's typewriter had stopped chattering a moment or two before.
Lucille crossed the studio to pick up her glass, and I said, "Come in."

Biernbaum had a bottle in his hand and a look of apology on his face.

"Just say 'scat' if I'm intruding," he said. I didn't say anything, but
made up my mind the next time I drove in to town I'd buy him a supply of
matches that would last him forever. "Got some hundred-year-old brandy,"
he went on, "and I thought perhaps...? Care for some?"

"That would be lovely," said Lucille, and I said, "Santa Claus."

While I was getting fresh glasses, Biernbaum and Lucille speculated on
the weather outlook, and then presently Biernbaum, who must have moved
over to the easel, said, "This is odd. Oh, Bartel," he called. "Didn't I
see this picture this morning, only it was a mermaid instead of
Lucille?"

"I don't know," I said. "I've been retouching a variety of canvases more
or less simultaneously."

"Very odd."

I came out of the kitchenette, feeling as though I were floating around
in space. I poured us some brandy, which was very good, then Biernbaum
and I had some more. While Biernbaum and Lucille went on with the one
topic of conversation that never appeared to be exhausted here at
Demarest Hall, namely, panning those of the guests who happened not to
be present, I tried to figure out whether I was ahead or behind in my
usual drinking schedule. My arms felt like a pair of feather dusters and
my head felt like the Hayden Planetarium. The feeling was good, and I
decided I was behind the schedule, merely tapering off, as I'd decided I
ought to do.

"That damned correspondence-course Balzac from Boston," Biernbaum was
saying. "He had the colossal nerve to come up to me in the library this
afternoon, while I was looking through _Time_, and demand that I hand it
over to him."

"Did you?"

"Of course not. I told Owen to go jump in the lake. Then he had the gall
to say that he needed it for some information he had to have for his
current novel about the freight yards of Chicago. The freight yards of
Chicago." Biernbaum's reiteration held towering contempt. "Intimating,
mind you, that he was doing an important piece of work, and I, who
didn't amount to very much, was holding him up. The freight yards of
Chicago. Do I have to listen to that flatulent moron, who drinks nothing
but milk, eats nothing but bran, wears nothing but sweat shirts, speaks
nothing but banalities, and sees nothing unless it's right under his
nose and he can't help seeing it--do I have to listen all summer to him
bragging about what a genius he is, and the freight yards of Chicago?" I
realized they were discussing an earnest young novelist by the name of
Frederick Owen who wrote, as many of them did, serious documentary
accounts in fictional form of one or another phase of national life.
Biernbaum said it again, "The freight yards of Chicago. I wouldn't mind
his writing about them, if only he wouldn't tell me about the atrocious
ideas he has for the job."

I poured myself another brandy, feeling very good, and said, "Why,
what's wrong with the freight yards of Chicago? Seems to me it would be
a very interesting subject."

Biernbaum got really excited. He stood up.

"You're right," he said. "It is. But what does Owen know about freight
yards? Did he ever work in them? In Chicago or anywhere else? He did
not. He sold books in a bookstore, that's all that young man ever did.
But I happen to know a little about freight yards. I was a trackwalker
for five years, in the Philadelphia yards. And he has the nerve to try
to tell me."

He sat down again. Lucille finished her drink, and rose. She said,
"Guess I'll powder my nose." She gave me a significant look, which I
didn't get, as she moved toward the door. At the door, still looking at
me, she slid something behind a large ash tray that stood on the tray of
a floor lamp. "See you at supper," she said. "That's only twenty
minutes."

"Is that all?" said Biernbaum.

"Right," I said, and stood up.

She smiled and went out. I poured myself another brandy. With the glass
in my hand I wandered casually across the room. Biernbaum, settled
morosely in his chair, resumed with his monologue.

"I don't know why I put up with it. One of these days some pseudo-genius
is going to start telling me all about art and literature, and I'm going
to take a knife and stick it through his ribs. And plead self-defense."
I looked down in back of the ash tray. It was a key-ring, with "Agni
Lodge, Studio 3" marked upon it. I closed my hand over the ring, and put
the keys away. "And if it isn't one of those quick-order geniuses who's
written one book, which is all that he ever will write," Biernbaum went
on, gloomily, "then it's some bright book-reviewing critic just out of a
girls' finishing school, usually a convent, and no matter how hot she
looks, she has to tell you all about the sociological weakness of
Flaubert's outlook."

"Too bad," I said. "Have some more brandy? After all, it's yours."

He finished his, and wordlessly held up the empty glass. The studio was
going around with a smooth, soothing, reassuring movement, like that of
a heavy and swiftly spinning top. There would be another ten minutes
before supper was served in the dining room. I poured.




                                  _6_


                           _CLAUDIA ATTELIO_

I thought to myself, as I looked around the dining room with its
complement of some thirty-five of America's most distinguished artists,
writers, musicians and sculptors, that even in this field where only the
finest talents win achievement, there were everywhere evident
conspicuous differences in taste. It ranged from the most refined to
that verging upon the vulgar.

I felt fortunate this evening, in that we had seated at our table that
brilliant young novelist, Mr. Frederick Owen, he who had written so
vividly of the teeming places of the world, and yet spoke so well the
innermost thoughts of the heart. I should describe Mr. Owen, in
appearance, as being rather muscular though not quite the athletic type,
possessed of a warm, appealing disposition, yet under the warmth and
simple sincerity of his speech there was a brooding somberness that
belied the twinkle in his eye. Also at this table sat the famous
illustrator, portrait painter and muralist, Mr. Christopher Bartel. Him
I would describe as extraordinarily tall and blonde, an heroic statue of
a man, gifted with piercing blue eyes and a charming smile, as well as
the most charming manners. Not favored as a conversationalist, as had
become evident, Mr. Bartel was this evening exceptionally
uncommunicative. He sat, preoccupied and impeccable, before his empty
cup of consomme, which shortly the waiter would remove.

Miss Gregg was not vis-a-vis across the table this evening, a fact that
I must confess gave me a tiny feeling of relief. Her continued
comradeship, after four days, sincere though she was, sparkling though
she was, had come to seem a trifle oppressive. For one evening, at
least, let her go unshepherded by me. But I did regret being deprived of
the presence of that extraordinary humorist and conversationalist, Mr.
Nichols. He sat at an adjoining table, however, witty as ever, a pair of
sun glasses heavily shading his rubicund features. From time to time I
could hear snatches of the discussion he had under way.

"Did you ever do the confessions of a blackmailer, Mr. Dunn?" I now
heard him say. He was apparently speaking to a Mr. Harry Dunn who wrote
memoirs for prominent, but less gifted personages who were unable to do
so for themselves. I did not catch Mr. Dunn's reply, if indeed he
replied at all, for Mr. Nichols' hearty voice swept through the room
with scarcely a pause. "Blackmail in itself, you know, is really not an
end. It's a means, I should say, to some other end. Would you agree with
me, Mr. Cooke?" Mr. Nichols' voice shook with laughter. "To make it
really profitable, wouldn't you say so?"

"Perhaps, like so many things under the sun, it's a means to a means."

"Exactly."

Miss Hartwig, the concert pianist, was seated at this table, also, a
personality whose enigma I had not as yet solved. And then there was Mr.
Connors, like myself, a poet. But I felt, without wishing to be
invidious, that the turbulent, unrestrained verses which he composed
were not of the type destined to be graved high upon the enduring
granite of literature's immortal annals. In short, I gave this
particular louse, as they say, about one year, and then he'd be
forgotten. He had, besides, the most disturbing mannerisms.

While the waiter silently came and went, removing the consomme cups,
then replacing them with the entree--this evening we had squab--Miss
Hartwig nibbled olives, and Mr. Nathan Biernbaum, the well-known
historical novelist, fifth of the other diners at our table, drummed
with his fingers upon the table cloth. Presently, Mr. Owen said to the
table at large, "Finished another chapter of 'Freight Yards' today."

After a long pause, in which no one else at our table seemed able to
accept this challenge to the creative spirit, or perhaps it was the
heat, or the fatigue at the end of the day's hard work, I said to Mr.
Owen, "Are you using your customary, original technique, Mr. Owen?"

"A bull's-eye," said Mr. Biernbaum, for no reason.

Mr. Owen looked at him, seemingly annoyed, but said to me, "I'm trying
something quite new. I don't think it's ever been tried before in
literature. I've gone from the characters, the human characters, you
understand, to a sort of oversoul that speaks the drama of the actual
machines of this huge freight yard. Boxcars, with a running commentary
on what they've carried and where they've been. Switch engines. And so
on. I think it will be unique."

"One Third of a Nation," said Mr. Biernbaum, and loudly yawned.

"That was quite different," said Mr. Owen, stiffly.

"Would you please pass the radishes, toots," said Mr. Connors, and I saw
that he was looking at me.

"I beg your pardon?"

"The radishes, please."

I shuddered inwardly, but smiled and passed them to him. I said,

"Attelio is the name. Or Claudia, if you prefer."

"Thanks for telling me again," he said. "I'm positive I'll remember."

There had been that about Demarest Hall, from the first day. Although
most of the discussion was upon a high level, and heady discourse it
was, I had been disturbed, not to say amazed, at certain unmistakable
undertones that had become barely audible from time to time. Frankly, I
could not fathom the meaning of them, some times. Something uncouth,
vulgar. But more than that, even. All but brutal, really. Miss Pratt,
for example, the sculptress at our table--she did exquisite work, I'd
been told, now interrupted harshly, by saying,

"How about an armistice on shop talk?"

"Amen," said Mr. Biernbaum. "What do you say, Mr. Bartel?"

"I'd say," Mr. Bartel remarked, after a singularly long pause, and
speaking in a voice that tended to blur, "the Napoleon is wearing off."

To this cryptic remark no one gave reply, and Mr. Owen acidly stated,
"Sorry I strained your powerful mentalities by asking you to try to
think."

At our table, the conversation flagged, which was most unfortunate. I
blamed it on Miss Pratt. I, for one, had certainly been willing and even
anxious to know more about the ideas, the creative thoughts that Mr.
Owen was striving to bring to life and being in his new novel. It might
easily have been an historic moment, in which Mr. Owen first made public
the nexus of his dream-child, a book that perhaps would live as long as
men were filled with unrequited longings and hopes but half defined. I
decided then and there she, too, might be part of the chaff of our
little world here at Demarest Hall.

"What did you do today, Alfred?" said Mr. Biernbaum.

Mr. Connor replied, abruptly, "Swatted flies. The damned things kept me
awake half the day. Seems the screens don't stop them from getting in,
but once they're in, they don't know how to get out again. Cooke ought
to take all the screens down, that's the only solution."

From everywhere about the spacious room with its comfortable furniture,
modern and yet in the best of taste, arose the hum of talk that might,
perhaps, have delighted the ears of the gods and which at times,
nevertheless, displayed anew the truism that genius is also mortal, all
too mortal. Who would have imagined those strident lines that came from
the pen of Mr. Connors were those of a man interested, in reality, in
such mundane a matter as flies? Elsewhere, about the dining room, one
could hear equally revelatory phrases.

"...cannot find anywhere, in the eighteenth century, the concept of
representative democracy like the concept we have of it today..."

"That harpsichord of mine must have traveled fifty thousand miles, at an
average cost of ten cents a mile..."

"...well, who? Where can they get a real match for Louis? Nowhere,
there isn't any match..."

"...introduced the technique of painting into sculpture, precisely as
Michelangelo introduced the technique of sculpture into painting..."

"...don't have to hog all the olives, do you?"

"I'm no bargain, sir." That was Albert, the steward. "But I can
guarantee, sir, you won't have any more trouble with that dripping
faucet. We'll have a plumber at Brahma Lodge the very first thing in the
morning, sir."

"...or did you, Mr. Dunn? Haven't you found it difficult to refrain
from becoming personally involved with the underworld, considering that
you've made so many, and such confidential contacts with it?"

"Precisely what do you mean by that, Mr. Nichols?"

"Really?" This was the high-pitched voice of Miss Zorn, the novelist.
"Then it's the first time since I've known you, Lucille, that your
evenings weren't occupied."

"...the sort of a person who'd stick a knife in your back at the
slightest opportunity..."

"Well, you find a strange automobile parked outside your house, and your
wife won't let you come in the door, what would you think?"

"...not a cent less than two hundred a lecture, and if it's within
airplane distance, plus expenses. There ought to be, really,
a union..."

"Plato had it. Aristotle had it. Dante had it. Goethe had it. Tolstoi
had it. But what American had it?"

"...not today, Mr. Weiss." I was interested that the over-shy and
possibly over-prim Miss Gregg, seated at the table under the portrait of
Clark Demarest, as conceived by Sargent, had found an interested
listener and perhaps interlocutor. "That sort of idealism is quite out
of date. Unless one wishes to sell one's idealism for money, or buy it
with blood."

The waiters had removed our plates everywhere throughout the dining
room, and were now returning with dessert and demi-tasse. The human
animal, replete with food, ought now to be both spiritually and
physically content. I decided to address myself to the seventh and last
diner at our table, a gentleman named Mr. Hale and, if I remembered
correctly, a writer. I said,

"But we haven't heard from you yet, Mr. Hale." It was a fact that during
the entire dinner he hadn't uttered a word. An extremely bashful
individual, he apparently needed encouragement to express his views.
"What do you think of all this?"

He said hastily,

"I didn't hear it. Not all of it. I had my mind on something else, and I
couldn't remember a thing that was said, not if my life depended on it.
And that's the truth, so help me God."

"Preoccupied with your own work, Mr. Hale?" I prompted him.

"That's right. Exactly. How did you guess? I was trying to sum up, in my
own mind, the background of the philosophical implications of my book."

"That's very interesting." I threw Miss Pratt a warning glance. Let her
attempt to smother this interchange of ideas, and she would find herself
confronted with more than her match. "What is the subject of your book,
Mr. Hale, if I may ask?"

"Prison life," he said.

"A tremendous field," I said. "It must have taken much research."

"Six years," he said.

The waiter brought our dessert, canteloupe this evening. I debated with
myself whether to join those in the music room, after dinner, or those
who would engage in archery and other athletics on the lawn, in the
lengthening shadows of the day, or those who would prefer bridge on the
terrace outside the dining room. Both the bridge players and the
music-lovers, I had found, were inclined to be acrimonious. In bridge,
the matter involved either politics or bidding. In music, the issue lay
between the popular dance-orchestra leaders of the day, on the one hand,
and Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms on the other. Perhaps the archery would
be conducted in a more harmonious spirit, though I knew little enough of
the sport.

I said, to Mr. Hale, "I wonder why Mr. Nichols wears sun glasses to
dinner? There isn't any glare in here. None at all."

Mr. Hale gave me a deep, almost passionate glance.

"For good reasons, and if you ask me, well-deserved reasons."

"A brilliant conversationalist, isn't he?" I said. "And a profound
character, I'm sure."

Mr. Hale appeared to swell and bristle and burn for a long moment of
mysterious emotional and intellectual turmoil.

"That man," he finally enunciated. "Do you know who he is?" I didn't,
but Mr. Hale didn't wait for me to enquire. "He's the fellow that headed
the national committee to abolish parole." I looked my surprise. "Yes,"
said Mr. Hale. "The committee set up by Congress to investigate prison
conditions, and then the only recommendation it brought back was that
the parole system should be abolished. He was chairman of the
committee." He scooped out the last of his canteloupe, ate it, and
stared at me. "Somebody," he said, fiercely, "ought to kill that guy."

Mr. Connors tossed down his napkin, pushed back his chair, and stood up.
He smiled down at Mr. Hale with benevolent thoughtfulness.

"Second time today you said that," he remarked. "But I still think it's
a good idea. Why don't you?"

With that he turned, and was gone. Mr. Hale stared at his retreating
figure with somber intensity. It almost seemed as though one could not
utter a single word, however harmless and well-meant, without igniting
obscure explosives. I decided that in future I would be more
circumspect. To Mr. Bartel, still sitting silent and absorbed, I said,
"Perhaps tomorrow I'll wear sun glasses, myself."

He said, with that same mysteriousness that seemed to enwrap the others,
"Perhaps you will."




                                  _7_


                          _CHRISTOPHER BARTEL_

After a long, long while, in which I tried to decide whether I'd had a
dream while I was asleep, and in it Lucille Nichols had given me the
keys to her studio, or whether I'd merely had an afternoon fantasy in
which I hoped she would, or whether she actually had done so in fact, I
heard Miss Attelio say to me, "Perhaps tomorrow I'll wear sun glasses
myself."

It was none of her business that I'd accidentally popped Walter Nichols
this morning, and I failed to see why she should attempt to bring up
that matter again. I said, shortly, "Perhaps you will."

That ought to hold her, I thought, and went on trying to get to the
bottom of the key business. Without much hope, I felt in my trouser
pockets. By the time I found what I was looking for, but hadn't expected
to find, all of the others had left the table. And then there it was. I
brought it out and looked at it. The tag had engraved upon it, "Agni
Lodge, Studio 3." At the same time, a voice murmured in my ear, "After
eleven o'clock." I looked around, nodded slightly, and saw that it was
Lucille Nichols, leaving the dining room.

Nearly everyone had left the dining room, and I was practically alone,
except for the help. I wanted to leave, too, but a curious paralysis of
the legs seemed to anchor me to the chair. Presently, another voice
registered.

"Was everything all right, sir?"

It was Albert Page, the steward.

"Quite," I said.

"The skin bracer, sir? And the prophylactic?"

With an effort, I twisted my head around and looked at him.

"What prophylactic?"

"I merely thought you might be wanting some, sir."

What the hell? There was something here I couldn't quite fathom, but at
the same time, common sense was common sense. I said carefully,

"Yes. I'm glad you brought some this noon with the rest of my order."

"I didn't, sir. I merely wondered if you might not wish some."

Finally, with a tremendous exercise of will power, I concentrated my
gaze upon Albert. His face was just a face. It had nothing in it. Not a
thought, not an emotion, not a single clue. I said, "Yes, I would. Leave
it at the studio."

"Yes, sir. That will be two dollars, sir. Since I can't, naturally,
charge it through the canteen."

I gave Albert the most expressive gaze of which I was capable, though I
doubt that it had much effect upon him. It came to me that Albert must
be an old hand, a very old hand, in this business. I said, "I could get
it, you know, for fifty cents in the city."

"Right, sir. If you prefer to drive in to town, sir, I won't bother
you."

"Wait." The little heel was already moving away when I stopped him and
took two dollars from my billfold. I did not want to drive to Endor, not
even to avoid a holdup. I said, "You will, well, I mean, remember that I
want some recognized standard brand? No second-rate junk I've never
heard about?"

Albert was as one who comes invisibly to attention and swears allegiance
to a king's crown.

"I'm no bargain, sir," he said. He took the two dollars. "But this will
be quite to your order, sir. What is your opinion, sir, of the standards
set by the United States Navy?"

I threw down my napkin and, finally, stood up. I went out of the dining
room, and through the deserted lounge. I was glad that it was empty,
because I decided I'd take a quick walk back to the studio to reinforce
myself with a drink before entering upon the colony's social life of the
evening. I met no one during the two minutes it took to reach my studio.
I had two quick ones there, both Bourbon, and then retraced my steps. On
the way back to the main hall I happened to glance up, and there on the
balcony, I thought I recognized the features of Harry Dunn. There was no
reason why he should not be there, although it was remote from the
Hall's gathering downstairs, and little frequented, and I did not give
it further attention. I entered again through the main door, feeling
considerably braced, passed through the empty lounge, and turned in to
the music hall. Its French windows were open to the terrace; there was a
breeze stirring, and the easy chairs, lounges, and wall seats, all of
Maplewood, seemed inviting. About a dozen people were there, listening
as Miss Gregg did a prelude, very well, too, it seemed to me. Though
personally, I prefer Massenet and Herbert. When she finished there was
considerable applause, and then a man by the name of Janiston, a
literary critic I believe, announced he was going to put the _Eroica_ on
the phonograph. I had seated myself in a chair between two wall seats at
the middle of one end of the ropm. As Janiston filled the rack of the
phonograph with the Beethoven records I heard, from one side of me, "If
I had it to do over again, I think perhaps I would be a musician instead
of a painter." It was the heavily accented voice of Weiss. "Too much
physical appliances to bother with. The canvases to stretch. The brushes
to take care of. The palettes to clean. The models to sit. The easels to
drag everywhere around. With you, though, it's different. Simply you sit
down and make notes, which are not physical, but intangible things."

"Well, I don't know about that." The other voice was that of John
Lawrence. "You take that harpsichord of mine. It's gone wherever I've
gone, and it must have traveled fifty thousand miles, at an average cost
of ten cents a mile, to say nothing of the trouble of crating and
uncrating it, which I have to superintend myself. And then I have to
keep it tuned and in good repair. It's like having to take care of a
temperamental elephant."

Janiston started the _Eroica_, and in the interval before the needle
reached the recording said, loudly, "The mature Beethoven."

Then the symphony began. No one in the room spoke, but from the terrace
one could hear, subduedly, the voices of those engaged in archery.
Occasionally, the voices rose to an audible cry.

"...if you want to lose an eye, Miss Attelio, it's O.K. with me, but
I can't see the target when you stand in front of it."

When the record-holder at the conclusion of the first side of the first
movement began making the change, Janiston announced, gratuitously,

"Beethoven laughing, exultant. It's titanic."

Then the first movement was resumed. Albert entered the room and went
unobtrusively about the job of emptying the ash trays. His face, as he
emptied the tray on the stand beside me, was as vacant, as impersonal as
ever. The first movement drew to an end, and at its conclusion I heard,
from the wall seat on the other side of me,

"That's the effect I want to get in my 'Freight Yards'." The person Mr.
Owen addressed was the red-headed, small, rather good-looking
short-story writer, Edith Wright. "Something massive, you know? A solid
impact of sheer power."

Nathan Biernbaum, alone in a love-seat opposite Mr. Owen, stubbed out a
cigarette in his freshly emptied tray, rose, and tiredly trudged from
the room. Miss Wright said, "That's the thing I've fought for all my
life. But what did the critics say when I produced it? Actually produced
it. One and all, they turned on me like a pack of wolves, as they turned
on Katherine Mansfield, on Keats, and all the rest of them. You'll see.
It's right there in the records, down in black and white, cold print."

The second movement began. From where I sat I could see both the archers
on the terrace, and out into the main lounge, which afforded, also, a
view of the door to Cooke's office. I saw him emerge from that door,
now, and pass out of sight in the direction of the post office and
canteen, another sheaf of yellow envelopes in his hand. Since he had
already told me off for holding up Albert's delivery of the lunch trays,
I began to lay bets with myself as to the likelihood, and the nature, of
any further suggestions I might find from him in the morning mail. I
speculated about this without any interest, until it suddenly occurred
to me that Cooke might take an exception, God alone would know why, to
one or another aspect of my eleven o'clock engagement. Maybe he objected
to that particular hour. Perhaps that particular lodge was out of
bounds. Possibly he would raise hell about my having ordered, again,
through Albert. I experienced a variety of chills and qualms, until I
pulled myself together and reminded myself that not even Albert, who
ought to know after years of service here at the Hall, believed Cooke
had psychic powers of any kind. Janiston announced, between records of
the dirge, "The sublimity of Beethoven's grief. It is Hercules,
weeping."

I stood up. It was only nine-thirty, but I didn't feel like any more
music. Or perhaps it was Janiston. Or the thought of P. C. Cooke. Or
maybe it was the sight of Claudia Attelio, on the terrace, struggling to
string an arrow. I walked out to the lounge, where I heard Albert,
standing in the door of the canteen, speak to Mr. Dunn.

"I'm no bargain, sir, but I can easily arrange it. If you'd prefer not
to have the company of Mr. Nichols, it can be arranged for you to sit at
a different table both in the morning, for breakfast, and in the
evening, for supper." Luncheons, of course, were brought around to the
studios by Albert, and we dined where we pleased, in whatever company we
chose. "That can be easily arranged, sir. Just leave it to me."

"That's fine. Here's something for your trouble."

"I can't accept it, sir. Fact is, Mr. Cooke wouldn't like it."

"Well, what he doesn't know won't hurt him, will it?"

"We like the guests to feel, sir, as though they were in their own
homes. But if you happened to have a bit of Scotch, sir, next time I
came by your studio..."

Floating on air, I went on through the lounge, left it and passed
through the main entrance. It was dusk when I stepped outside. I walked
briskly down the quadrangle toward my studio. The cool evening air
cleared my head. At least, I hoped it did. In my own studio, I poured
myself a drink, and found that Albert had already made his delivery, in
a package placed on the table. I unwrapped it, and the stuff was O.K.

I took my drink and went to one of the windows that looked upon Endor
Valley, and the city of Endor. Its lights, far below, were a cluster of
pin-points. There was a lot of life down there, but up here, all of it
seemed remote. All of life, for that matter, and all of its desires and
aspirations seemed somehow remote. The wind from the valley flowed
softly through the screen, like a benediction. Far to my right there was
a single streak of orange across the gap between the ridges of the
valley, the last vestige of the setting sun, and overhead the stars were
emerging in force. I felt the key-ring in my pocket, and wondered,
briefly, why I was observing this rendezvous, then shrugged, mentally
and even physically. If the stars in their courses had their own
mysterious destinies, then so, of course, did men, and who was I to
argue the matter? Why dispute with the ages? Besides, she was a honey of
a creature, one in a lifetime. Nor did that realization either, somehow,
seem adequate. What right had I to suppose that there could be, in
anyone's life, one real, one outstanding person? All experience seemed
to demonstrate just the opposite.

I turned away from the window, dissatisfied and disturbed. It did not,
this evening's program, quite fit with any experience I had ever known
before. But then, no matter how familiar their patterns, these occasions
never did. I thought of the times I had, under the same circumstances,
shivered with desire, ached with tenderness, burned with a case of
nerves, grown dizzy with ambition, cursed out of sheer boredom, or
prayed that I knew how to pray for the thing that, not knowing what it
was, I really wanted. This time, though, I knew it was exactly what I
wanted. The right and perfect thing. And to hell with Geraldine. And
Joan's predictions. And Marguerite's cynicisms. I turned away from the
window and poured myself another drink, and glanced at my watch.
Ten-thirty. It was always exciting, no matter how sophomoric the basic
appeal, to enter the bedroom of a strange woman. From bath salts to
cosmetics, the setup was always different. From extreme modesty to
outrageous candor. And rather surprisingly one always found himself, in
a different situation, to be a somewhat different person. From
cigarettes and hairpins, to perfume.

La Tabac Blonde, in this case, I recollected. Yes. I looked at my watch.
It was eleven o'clock. Right. I finished my drink, switched off the
lights, stepped out. There, for a moment, it came to me in a burst of
clarity that there was nothing obscure about what men wanted. The
trouble lay in this, that the things we wanted were contradictory and
mutually exclusive of each other. We must have, on the one hand, peace,
stability, and everlasting life. But every man must have, also, danger,
and hardship, and finally death.

Rounding the corner of the lodge, I saw Biernbaum standing in the
doorway of his studio. He waved and said, "Wonderful day tomorrow."

"Certainly will be."

I had stopped beside him. There was some conversation, and I heard him
say, "So you play tennis?"

"Certainly I do."

After awhile, then, in which there was more talk, he finished with, "All
right, if I can borrow your eyeshade."

Then the lodge floated softly away behind me as I progressed across the
quadrangle to the middle lodge on its eastern side. Although it had
officially been named Agni, it was really, because of a small basin of
running water and statuary in back of it, called Fountain Lodge. In
architecture and detail it did not differ much from any of the other
studio structures. I did not need the key for the outer door, nor did I
need that to the door of Studio 3.

I don't know what I had expected. Subconsciously, I suppose, I had
expected the undercurrent of strain that seems to go with a new
situation. But, although the room was obviously arranged, and she
herself was, indefinably, as one gowned for a dramatic occasion, there
was none of this subsurface tension at all. She set a carafe filled with
ice cubes beside bottles that stood on a magazine table beside the
studio lounge, then looked up from it.

"Hello," she said, "you're quite drunk, aren't you?"

"I don't know," I said. "Why, any law against it?"

"None. Which would you prefer, Scotch or rye?"

"Scotch."

I watched her fix up two highballs. When she handed me mine, she said,

"I wonder if you know why you drink so much, Chris? Do you?"

I said, "Yes, of course I do."

"I wonder if you do." She sat down on the lounge beside me, and the air
was filled with the scent of her hair, her perfume, her gown. "I've
known so many men who drank too much, Walter among others. And with
every one of them there was a reason why. But not one of them knew the
real reason."

"I do," I said. I was consciously being more self-assertive than I felt.
With anyone else, I would have been annoyed. But now I wasn't, I didn't
know why. I went on, nevertheless, "You're a darling, Lucille, and I
love you. But I'd rather not hear any more about Walter, and couldn't we
just sort of skip all the other men you've known?"

She laughed, sipped her highball, puffed at a cigarette.

"Do you know who I really am, Chris?"

"You're a lovely lady, and beyond that I don't care about anything at
all."

She said, eyeing me out of those eyes blacker and deeper than buried
coals, "Then you don't remember me?"

I decided this was a question I'd better not try to answer at all. From
the moment I'd known her there had been something vaguely familiar about
her. But that could have been attributed to some psychological affinity.
I decided not to lie, either. I said, "Not clearly, no.

"You were the first man I ever slept with. When you were a senior at
school, home in White Plains during the vacations. Now do you remember?"
My mind plunged backward, groping. Twenty years is a fearful jump. I
couldn't make it. There were half-memories, but nothing positive. "God,"
said Lucille, "what hell I lived through for loving you then. But I
guess I've loved you ever since. And I won't ever stop."

I did not know why I felt as I did. Perhaps it had something to do with
the enormous gap of frustration that looms between the dream of youth,
and the realization of the adult. As though the dream and the
realization, so totally different, had suddenly been revealed as one and
the same.

But how can this be more clearly explained? How can I explain that I,
forty-two years old, twice married and twice divorced, suddenly ceased
to have age, civil condition and social standing, and the woman in my
arms suddenly ceased being a minor riddle, but became, simply, a woman.
Damn a woman who tries to be more than a woman. This one didn't, never
had, and never would. I experienced the feeling that I had forgotten
long ago, but always in dreams remembered, the feeling of being
thoroughly at home in a world where everything proceeded on an epic
scale, and in which everyone's life was directed as swiftly and clearly
toward an inevitable goal as an arrow toward a target.

As I kissed her, and it was dynamite, she said, "It will seem strange,
going to bed with you again. After all these years. Like reaching the
point in a movie where one first came in."

I said, hating myself for the banality, and yet saying it anyway, from
sheer habit of saying the bright thing, "I hope you won't be bored."

"I won't be. But will you, Chris?"

"No," I said.

We weren't.

I had an image, after a while, in which there were two highballs, which
I was mixing, and then we talked. She talked about White Plains, that
summer when we'd known each other before, and we got that partially
straightened out. And then we talked for a while about Walter. And then
it was dark again. And then, after another interval, I was leaving the
studio.

Somewhere, in all of this, I had a dream that amounted, really, to a
nightmare. All that I could see in it was a sort of a judge, mounted
somewhere high up, and he was saying, "Three people will die." I did not
understand, as a spectator at this scene, what he was talking about, but
the pronouncement had terrifying undertones. And then he hammered and
hammered upon the bench with his gavel. The hammering eventually became
unbearable. I opened my eyes. I was in my studio. I called out,

"Cut that out, and come in."

I focused my eyes upon the surrounding scene and upon Nathan Biernbaum,
who walked cheerfully through the door.

"Here I am," he said. "I'm an hour late, but better late than never.
Here I am."

He was dressed in shorts, sneakers, and had a tennis racket in his hand.
I said,

"So I see. But why?"

"Don't you remember? You wanted to play tennis at five o'clock, before
breakfast. It's six, but we've still got lots of time."

"Have we?"

"Come on, get out of bed. This was your idea, not mine. Remember how you
insisted upon it last night?"

"I did?"

"Certainly. You wouldn't let go of me until I promised to keep the date.
And you promised to loan me your eyeshade. Where is it?"

I don't know why I did it. Heaven knows, all I wanted to do was to crawl
back between the covers and pretend to be dead. But I seemed to be
acting under an inner compulsion. I edged my way out of bed, shakily,
and said,

"For God's sake, please stop shouting. The eyeshade is in the right-hand
top drawer of the dresser. And the Scotch should be in the kitchenette.
Please bring it, will you?"

He found both the eyeshade and the Scotch. After a couple of drinks,
straight, I was able to take a shower, and then get into my clothes.
Shorts and sneakers. And then I found my tennis racket, and a set of
balls, and we started toward the courts. Outside, the early morning
seemed to sparkle like something brand new. It was cool and fresh. The
courts were only a quarter mile away, through the woods, and we were
soon there.

We had no sooner reached them, than Biernbaum abruptly tossed my
eyeshade high into the air and flung his racket savagely down upon the
ground.

"Damn that Cooke," he yelled. "What did I tell you? He's got it in for
us." Peter, the gardener, was slowly laying down fresh lines with the
marker. The nets sagged in the middle of the courts, and the marking was
obviously unfinished. "Peter, how soon can we get a court? Whose idea is
this, anyway, to mark the courts at this hour of the day?"

"They have to be marked sometime, Mr. Biernbaum," said Peter, mildly. "I
said as much to Mr. Cooke. So he said to mark them early this morning
before breakfast, like we always do when they have to be marked."

"I suppose," said Biernbaum, "it's hopeless, to expect to use a court?"

"Hopeless," admitted Peter, "until about ten-thirty. After breakfast you
can play fine."

"That's just wonderful," said Biernbaum. He retrieved the eyeshade and
the racket. Personally, I didn't mind. I hadn't cared to play at this
hour of the morning. It was just the feeling that I'd committed myself
to doing so. "What did I tell you?" grumbled Biernbaum, as we retraced
our steps. "Cooke won't stop at anything, if he thinks you've crossed
him in some way. In any way. No matter how fanciful the slight may be."

"Well," I said, "I haven't done anything he might not approve of." Then
I amended the statement. "That is, nothing outrageous. Not that he knows
of, at least. Nothing that I know that he knows of, I mean."

We reached the lodge and went in to our separate studios. In mine, I had
a drink, then decided to have another and a shower. After the shower, I
would decide whether to get dressed, or to go back to bed.

While I was in the middle of the shower, though, there was a knock at
the door. I yelled, "Come in," but no one appeared, and the knock was
repeated. I hastily dried myself, found a dressing-gown, went to the
door. A uniformed state trooper, spic-and-span, stood there.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said. "But Captain Wessex would like to see
you in the main hall."

I said, vacantly, "Captain Wessex?"

"Yes, sir. It's the state police."

"So I gathered. What's happened?"

"Captain Wessex will tell you when you get there."

I shrugged and said, "O.K."

I went back to put on my clothes, and I heard the trooper knocking at
Biernbaum's door. I caught overtones of much the same conversation I had
had with him, then I heard the trooper repeat at the door of Karl Weiss.
When I had dressed, I went on up to the Main Hall. There were a
considerable number of people about, many of them on the lawn before
Demarest Hall, most of them gazing upward. On the balcony of the fifth
floor I discerned something, I didn't know what, wrapped in a white
cloth that was probably a sheet. I went on in to the Hall and asked
another trooper for Captain Wessex. I was confronted, finally, by a
solid piece of animated granite who said, "I'm Captain Wessex. What's
your name?"

"Christopher Bartel. What seems to be the trouble?"

"A man was murdered here in the early hours of this morning. We're
investigating it."

I said, "Who?"

Captain Wessex looked me up and down and through and through.

"The dead man's name is Walter Nichols," he said. "The man whom you
knocked down, I understand, in the dining room of the main hall
yesterday morning at breakfast. Would you know anything about this?"

I shook my head. I said, "I knocked him down because he had it coming to
him. But as to who shot the heel, I wouldn't know."

"What made you think he was shot?" said Captain Wessex. He gave me again
that X-ray eye and I could only shrug. "As a matter of fact," he
relented, "he was stabbed in the back with a knife." He paused for a
moment, sighed, murmured almost as though to himself, "And it had to
happen at a place like this. Tell me," he said, more briskly, "was there
any particular reason why Mr. Cooke, the director of Demarest Hall,
should wish to kill this fellow Mr. Nichols? Any reason that you know
of?"

Again I had to shake my head.

"None that I know of," I said. "Why?"

"All right, Mr.--the name was Bartel, wasn't it? How do you spell that?"
I spelled it. "All right, Mr. Bartel, I'll want to speak to all of you
later. Naturally, I'm going to check on your movements during the early
hours of the morning." He looked at me. "What's the matter? If you've
got anything to say, say it now."

I said, "I want some sleep, some breakfast, and a stiff drink. After
that I'm your man."

Captain Wessex sounded a faint sort of a laugh, although, somehow, I
didn't like its general overtones.

"O.K. for now," he said. "But I'm going to go over the whole place with
a fine tooth comb. I don't suppose I have to tell you, but I'll tell you
anyhow--don't try to leave these grounds. And you can't think of any
reason why your little director, Mr. Peter Cooke, should have killed Mr.
Nichols?"

"No," I said, turning away. "But it would be all right with me. No
matter who did it."




                                  _8_


                            _CAPTAIN WESSEX_

As soon as the note from the dead man exploded into thin air I saw that
a quick pinch was out of the question. The note had been conspicuously
displayed among Nichols' personal effects in an apartment allotted to
him in a building called Vach. Its envelope had been labeled "For the
Police," and its contents were:

    To the Police,

    "In the event of my death under circumstances that may seem
    obscure, or that suggest the possibility of violence..."

Had the victim seen the meat-skewer used to do the business, he would
not have worried about that point. It had gone clear through. The note
went on:

    "...the murder will have been done by Mr. P. C. Cooke, a
    former inmate of Rockland State Hospital for the insane, and a
    gentleman of homicidal obsessions.

    "Further evidence of Mr. Cooke's tendencies may be found buried
    in the crypt of Demarest Hall. There is a strong suspicion that
    the remains are those of Fremont Bryan, Cooke's brother-in-law."

                                                 Walter J. Nichols

Trooper Kearns had found the note fifteen minutes after I reached the
place of call. It had certainly seemed promising, if not conclusive. But
now, after I'd wasted four hours following up that note, it was
definitely out. I could have kicked myself in the pants, too, for
limiting the preliminary investigation to the men living on the grounds,
and that to a cursory, hit-or-miss questioning. Now all the guests had
had breakfast in the main restaurant, and they'd talked the whole thing
over until God himself would never get a straight, let alone an honest,
answer out of the whole lot of them.

But the facts about P. C. Cooke were, the bones which we had no trouble
finding in that basement were those of a person about fifteen years old,
at the most; Cooke's brother-in-law was definitely alive; his name was
not Fremont Bryan, but Ryan, and the bones seemed actually to be those
of a young fellow killed about 1876 in a hunting accident and buried
somewhere near the site on which Demarest Hall was subsequently erected.
Records in Endor City gave the name of the young fellow who had been
shot as Frank Peters. The belt-buckle in the grave was so corroded as to
fit, offhand, almost any set of initials one wished to give them. There
was something fishy in the way the case had been disposed of at that
time, but this made no difference as far as P. C. Cooke was concerned.
But, worst of all, it seems that Cooke had sat up most of the night in
the third-floor lounge of the main building playing poker with a painter
by the name of Karl Weiss, a musician by the name of John Lawrence, and
some kind of a writer by the name of Harold Janiston. They all alibi'd
each other; so far, at least, their stories hung together; and that was
that. While I waited for my long-distance call to go through to Col.
Herrick, I went over the main points again with Mr. Cooke. We sat in his
office, next door to a room he said was used as a post office and
canteen.

I asked him, "And Mr. Nichols showed you those bones downstairs, which
you say he found?" Cooke nodded. "Why did he do that, did he say?"

"He was very much disturbed," said Cooke, looking at me intently through
a couple of shoe-button eyes buried away back in a fleshy face. "He had
the good of the Hall at heart, and I imagine discovering such a gruesome
relic made him fear it would reflect upon all of us."

"And he told you he thought they were the bones of your brother-in-law?"
Cooke nodded. "Who he thought you'd killed?" Another nod. "And what did
you say to that?"

"Nothing. I knew they weren't, and in his disturbed condition, I thought
it best to say nothing that might only excite him further."

"What did he expect you to do about your brother-in-law's skeleton,
simply shovel it back? Just like that?"

"I offered to lay the matter before the authorities, if that would allay
his over-anxiety and misapprehension under which he was laboring, as I
tried to intimate to him that he was. But he preferred that we simply
re-inter the remains which he still inferred were those of my
brother-in-law."

"Why?"

Cooke shrugged in vast bewilderment.

"Who knows what mysterious processes go on in an unbalanced mind?"

"Well, you might know, for one."

"I can prove to you, Captain Wessex, that I was regularly discharged,
paroled, and ultimately cleared of my Rockland County tragedy."

"All right, I've already checked that. But what about yourself? Did you,
also, simply decide it would be best to shovel that stuff back into a
hole in the ground, and keep quiet about it?"

"Yes. As I told you, I'm most familiar with the history and background,
not only of Demarest Hall, but with much of the past of Demarest County,
and I was long familiar with this particular shooting tragedy. I
surmised that this relic was related to the other."

"Why? Why were you so familiar with this particular affair?"

He gave me a steady stare.

"Because it occurred on the Demarest estate, and the body was also
buried here near a site said to be that of an Indian burying ground."

"Well, after you and Nichols planted the stuff again, was he satisfied?"

"Thoroughly."

"Still believing it was your brother-in-law, and that you'd bumped him
off?"

"Perhaps he began to accept a more rational view."

I didn't know whether the fellow was lying or not. Everything checked,
so far. But that way he had of talking had me continually guessing.
Every statement was somehow foggy.

"Did you tell Nichols that your brother-in-law was still living, and
that you could produce him?"

"Not exactly. I just let him talk. But I tried to intimate to him,
without contradicting him, that he was alive."

"Was there any secret around this what-do-you-call-it, this place or
institution, about your brother-in-law, whether he was alive or dead?"

"None. Not that I know of."

"What do you mean, that you know of? Was he ever discussed?"

"Not exactly, no."

"Why not? Any reason why he should be discussed, or should not be
discussed?"

Cooke plainly hesitated.

"Well. A man in my position might be oversensitive about such a complete
trifle. But..."

"But what? We've already located him at the address you gave us, so that
part of it's all right. It was reported back that he's an unemployed
artist, with no police or any other known record. There's nothing on
him."

"Well," said Cooke, and almost blushed. "That's just it."

"What, that he has no police record?"

"No. That he's an artist. A rather inferior one. And a man holding a
position such as mine, at an important institution such as this, is not
situated favorably to have a brother-in-law whose artistic talents are
not commensurate with those of the artists more or less entrusted to my
personal care here at Demarest Hall. Financially commensurate, I mean.
And then, there have been other difficulties." I waited, and Cooke
displayed an air of peevishness, if not anger. "The fact is, Captain
Wessex, my brother-in-law and I have quarreled on many occasions.
Chiefly about that--the fact that he persisted in pursuing what is
generally referred to as an artistic career."

"You don't approve?"

"It is not for me, in my position, either to approve, or disapprove. No
one holds the artistic professions in higher esteem than I do. But for a
member of my own family, no, I do not approve."

"All right. And you played poker with these people you mentioned until
about five o'clock in the morning?" Cooke nodded. I said, "Who won?"

"I won, consistently and steadily, from the time we started. At one
time," Cooke abundantly explained, "I was ahead as much as seventy-five
dollars. At no time after the game had been under way more than an hour
were my winnings less than fifty dollars. Until the last half hour. At
that time, a change in fortune took place, and a series of inadequate
hands, coupled with increasing fatigue, and finally an error in
estimating the possibility that Mr. Janiston had somehow managed to
acquire a full house on a three-card draw, wiped out my winnings and
left me a trifle behind. Twenty-five dollars, or so."

"In other words, you didn't win. You lost."

"By and large, no, but in the end, yes."

"And you have no idea why Mr. Nichols should have singled you out as his
potential murderer?"

"Perhaps it could be traced to his hallucination that I was responsible
for the death of the unfortunate Frank Peters, whose pathetic mortal
remains, once he had found them, unbalanced an otherwise sturdy mind."

"All right," I said. "We'll go over this later. But that will be all for
now."

I asked Cooke if it would be all right for me to use his office as
headquarters while I questioned the other persons residing on the
estate. He said, "I'm always glad to co-operate. I'm sure there must be
a happy solution."

After he'd gone, I started to interview the people who were here, as I
got it, as non-paying guests of Demarest Hall on the grounds that they
were said to have unusual ability in their various lines of artistic
activity. The first person I drew was a small red-headed female, not bad
at all, who said her name was Edith Wright. She sat down in the chair
vacated by Cooke.

I said, "Where are your quarters, Miss Wright?"

"The Doghouse."

"Where?"

"Brahma Lodge, although everybody knows it's the one they give to people
who aren't popular and recognized and fashionable and best-sellers."

"All right."

"They put me there, all of them, simply because they like to kowtow to
people like Harry Dunn, who hasn't got an ounce of the creative spirit
in him. Not an ounce. Just because he's written a few flashy books a lot
of morons like to read. And then forget. And people like Christopher
Bartel."

"Well," I said. "We'll come to that later."

"Who's just a social climber and a souse. And people like Harold
Janiston, a reactionary critic, really a literary snob. And Claribelle
Zorn, because Nathan Biernbaum used to be her boy friend. You
understand, I'm not saying this because I care in the least. Just that
it's a fact. Cold fact."

"Yes, but that's not what I wanted to ask you, Miss Wright. I suppose
you were in your apartment, or studio as they call it, all evening?"

"I was. From twelve o'clock until eight. Then I was awakened, after a
very restless night, by a plumber hammering in one of the other studios.
Something is always wrong with the pipes in the Doghouse. That's why
they put us there. Not that I'm complaining, you understand. Just that
it's a..."

"Yes. But have you any knowledge that might contribute to clearing up
this murder of Mr. Nichols? Did you see anything or hear anything that
would possibly bear on the murder? Do you know anything that might help
us?"

"Just that Walter Nichols was a talented writer, truly a great spirit,
and they were glad to see him, yes, they rejoiced to see him dead,
actually rejoiced, because it cut short a brilliant career."

"Who rejoiced?"

"The same people that hounded Keats to his grave, and Katherine
Mansfield and Stephen Crane. The critics."

"Well, what critics, for instance? You don't mean this Harold Janiston,
do you?"

"Oh, boy," she said pointedly. "Will he rejoice! He'll be tickled to
death."

"For any special reason?"

"You bet there's a special reason. Because Walter Nichols never lost a
chance to point out to the world what a fraud Janiston was, what a
hypocrite and a faker, and how stupid and snobbish and old-fashioned his
whole critical attitude was. His whole approach to literature was pure
snobbism, nothing else. And Walter Nichols was courageous enough to say
so."

"Would you say that Mr. John Lawrence, too," I referred to my notes
concerning Cooke's alibi, "and Karl Weiss, and Mr. Cooke, and Harold
Janiston, all had a grudge against this Nichols fellow?"

"As to that," she said, losing interest, "I wouldn't know. They seem to
be quite harmless, unimportant people. I have nothing against any of
them. For that matter, I have nothing against Harold, you understand?
Really, as a person, Harold Janiston is a friend of mine."

I asked her what her particular line of art was, and she said she wrote
short stories. She gave me the titles of her books: _Blue Monday_,
_Black Friday_, and _I Must Cross the Old River_. They were all in the
main library and reading room, she said. I said that if I had time I'd
be sure to look them up. When she went out, the open door disclosed a
number of people congregated in the general store they called a canteen.
I heard Cooke make an uneasy but firm reply to a mild-appearing fellow
who had just then buttonholed him with equal firmness.

"I'm afraid it wouldn't be in the best of taste, Mr. Biernbaum, to admit
the reporters and photographers. Not at a time like this. Besides, the
other guests might object to being disturbed."

"Well, _I_ wouldn't object. I've got a book coming out in six weeks, and
I could use the publicity."

"I understand, but..."

"If you could arrange it, too, that I became a sort of a suspect, that
wouldn't be so bad either. Temporarily, I mean."

"I'm afraid that is up to the proper authorities, Mr. Biernbaum."

Trooper Kearns sent in a sort of average, nice, respectable-appearing
girl who said her name was Claudia Attelio, then closed the door behind
her. I asked her what studio she had.

"No. 2 in Brahma Lodge," she told me.

I smiled and said, "The Doghouse, as some of them call it?"

"I believe some of them do, but there's no reason why they should."

It quickly developed she'd spent the night in her quarters, hadn't heard
or seen anything unusual during the early hours of the morning, and had
no idea why anyone should wish to put the skids under Walter Nichols.
When I reached the end of my questions, however, she hesitated for a
moment or two before leaving.

"If there's anything else you'd care to say," I urged, "please do."

"It may be nothing," she said. "And yet, I'm sure I actually heard it,
and it might be extremely important. It happened last evening in the
dining room. During the entree, I heard some one, seated at a table
elsewhere in the room, clearly and distinctly say, 'He's the type of man
who'd be overjoyed to thrust a knife into one's back at the earliest
opportunity.' Those may not be the exact words, but something like
that."

I wrote the statement down, and tried to make her remember whose voice
had said it, but she couldn't remember. She left the office and for a
moment, then, I thought of turning the whole job over to Col. Herrick
when I reached him by phone.

The door opened and Kearns said, in a hushed voice, "Go right in, Mrs.
Nichols."

I stood up and went to the door. I said, "Mrs. Nichols? I'm Captain
Wessex of the state police. I hate to trouble you at a time like this.
But I'm sure you understand." She seemed perfectly calm as she sat down
in the chair I held for her, but you never could tell for sure about a
dame at a time like this. One minute they could be chatting away about
the dead guy, as though they were talking about the weather, and the
next minute they'd fold. "There are just a few questions I'd like to ask
you, if you don't mind, and if you feel able to answer them. It would
help both of us a great deal."

"Of course."

She had a low, clear, perfectly controlled voice. I decided to go
straight to the most important points.

                 *        *        *        *        *

"Did your husband have any particular enemy, or enemies?" I asked.

"A great many people disliked Walter," she said, after thinking for a
moment, and speaking with care. "Many others feared him. But no one, as
far as I know, hated or feared him to the point of murder. I'm sure no
one did."

I pointed out, no less carefully,

"And yet, Mrs. Nichols, some one most certainly did." She accepted this
contradiction with the same detached and haunting thoughtfulness she
seemed to give every word she said and every gesture she made. The
general impression I got was very high class. The Wright woman I had
marked as a nut, and the Attelio dame as run-of-the-mill. But this one
was neither. With black hair, black eyes, fair complexion, height about
five-four, weight one twenty-five or thirty, teeth perfect, white sport
costume, no birthmarks or blemishes visible, she was not the most
beautiful woman in the world, but what the reporters would soon start to
call a striking brunette. I said, when she didn't reply, "When did you
last see Mr. Nichols alive?"

"I would say at about half-past nine in the evening. We had played
bridge in the game room for perhaps a little more than an hour. Then he
said he didn't care to play any more, said good night, and left us
sitting there."

"You didn't see him after that?"

"No. You know, I suppose, that we had separate studios?"

"So I understand." I hated to do this, no matter how many times I'd had
to do it before. "As a matter of routine, Mrs. Nichols, what time did
you return to your own studio?"

"At about ten."

"And you were there, of course, for the rest of the night."

"Of course."

"Didn't hear anything, I suppose, or see anything out of the ordinary?"

"Nothing."

Another blank. My eyes went over the sketchy notes I'd taken, my mind
went over the persons I'd met, the stories I'd heard. I said,

"Your husband seemed to have an especial, well, suspicion of Mr. Cooke.
Can you think of any reason why he should?"

"Walter had as many unreasonable likes and dislikes as he stirred up,
sometimes, in other people. But I'd always thought his feeling toward
Mr. Cooke was rather warm."

"Your own relations with Mr. Nichols," I slipped in, casually as
possible, "were happy, I suppose?"

"Not happy. But not unhappy."

I glanced at the notes again, and the name of Bartel stuck out. I said,

"Your husband had a fight in the dining room yesterday morning with Mr.
Christopher Bartel. You were present, I understand. What was it all
about?"

"Nothing. Just a trivial remark of Walter's that Mr. Bartel resented.
Mr. Bartel regretted the incident, the moment it was over."

"You're sure this Bartel fellow had no grudge against your husband?"

She said, "Quite sure." She thought about it for a moment, in which she
studied her fingernails, then looked straight at me and said, simply,
"In any case, Mr. Bartel could not have killed Walter. You'd find out
about this, anyway, so I may as well tell you now. You see, Mr. Bartel
spent the evening with me."




                                  _9_


                           _CONSTANCE GREGG_

We musicians invariably received our lunch baskets from twenty minutes
to half an hour later than those who lived and worked in the studios of
the quadrangle. Although we had rooms and slept in the main Hall itself,
when it came to practice or composition we were exiled to the outer
regions of the estate, remote from sensitive ears.

Today, it was twenty-five minutes past one when I saw, through the
window of my cottage, my basket being borne down the slope by George,
the carpenter and general handyman. He had already left a basket for
Susan Hartwig, whose cottage was nearer the kitchen than mine on the
winding path that led back to the Hall. Had I not known she had already
been served, from the fact that George had but one remaining basket,
mine, direct evidence would have clinched the circumstantial. For, no
sooner had George rung my bell and put down my lunch on the cottage
doorstep, than Susan, basket in hand, emerged from the woods at the top
of the slope, and came hurrying toward me. I quickly washed, pinned back
a few stray locks of hair, and hurried up the slope, with my own lunch
on my arm, to meet her. Halfway down the slope she slowed, seeing me,
then stopped and waited. She said, disappointedly, when I came up to
her, "Oh, are you going to eat somewhere else? I wanted some one to talk
to this noon."

"I imagine a lot of us do," I said. "Let's go to the Grotto."

She turned and picked her way with precise but fragile limbs up the path
ahead of me.

"I wanted to talk about what happened last night," she said, over her
shoulder. "And this morning."

"So do I."

"Have you been interviewed yet by that..." she started to say.

"Not yet. Have you?"

"Yes. But I didn't have anything to tell him. Not a thing. And I was so
afraid I'd be visited again this noon by that dreadful John Lawrence.
Really, Constance, if he fixes me just once more with those soulful,
lecherous eyes, I'm going to shriek. What on earth did I do to attract
him, and how on earth can I ever get rid of him?"

I'd like to know, myself, what she did to attract him. Not Lawrence,
personally, but all of them. Any of them. What do they do, some of them
like Susan, that wherever they go and whatever the circumstances, they
are magnets attracting men? Five days ago we had, most of us, started at
scratch. Few of the men and women had been better than slightly, if at
all acquainted. But already, after five days, it was clear which women
counted, and which did not. Nor were appearances the only factor. Susan
was not at all what anyone would call ravishing. She was just as plain
as I was, to be truthful about it, or even plainer. That Zorn female,
when it came to looks, was a perfect fright. And yet they each had a
coterie of males--none of them remarkable, of course, but the list of
guests was small. How, indeed, had Susan done it? Then and there I
determined that no matter how long it took, or what methods I used, I'd
have a male following before this season was over. Not a large one; I
knew my limitations. But not a small one, either. After all, I'd had
this experience before. It sometimes took as much as a month to make a
man notice I was there. But I'd done it. I said to Susan, impersonally,
"I don't know what you did, and I'm afraid there's nothing you can do
about it. Those things usually just work themselves out."

We reached the quadrangle, made our way around it past the kitchen of
the Hall whence our lunch baskets had been brought thirty minutes
before, and then proceeded on a path that ran in a northwestern
direction from the opposite corner of the quadrangle toward the Grotto.
The Grotto was on a little knoll, enclosed by maple, elm, and poplar
trees, only slightly less high than the ground on which stood the Hall
itself. In the clearing between the trees a bare wooden table had been
placed, with wooden benches rather the worse for rain and wear, much as
one sees in picnic sites.

Ordinarily, the place was deserted, except in the evening. At noon, one
would not expect to see here more than two or three residents of the
Hall, and these, usually, residents who had visitors from outside. Mr.
Cooke had made it plain that visitors, while heartily welcome, would at
best be no more than tolerated. Such, at any rate, had been his rather
involved fiat. In consequence, friends who visited the artists in
residence were promptly hustled from the central places of activity to
nooks and crannies of the estate presumably invisible to Mr. Cooke's
all-seeing eyes.

Today, however, all this was changed, as I'd imagined it would be. A
babble of voices issuing from the clump of woods fell mysteriously
silent as we approached. Then, where the path led between the crossed
limbs of two maple trees, the unmistakable voice of Karl Weiss,
somewhere in the foliage, could be heard. He hissed rather than said,
"O.K. It's Susan and Miss Gregg."

We threaded our way between the hanging twigs and entered the clearing.
I had known that on this particular noon a number of the residents of
Demarest Hall would, inevitably, congregate here to discuss the unusual
events of the morning and the incredible event of the late hours of the
night before. But I had not guessed that so many would be present. In
fact, it seemed as though the whole roster of guests, anxious to be rid
at once of the state troopers and of Mr. Cooke had, as though drawn by
some primitive instinct, selected the Grotto for the scene of lunch.
They were not all here, but the majority of them were. Indeed, as Susan
and I made our way toward the picnic table, we saw that it was fully
occupied, and that there would be little or no room for us. Mr. Nathan
Biernbaum pushed his tray and then inched himself to one side as far as
possible, and said, "Here's room for one of you." I saw that Mr.
Frederick Owen was similarly making room for Susan, and wedged myself in
between Mr. Biernbaum and Mr. Dunn. Mr. Biernbaum went on, "Have you had
a talk, yet..."

"Not yet," I said. "But Susan has been interviewed by Captain
What's-his-name. I have mine this afternoon."

"I haven't been able to speak to Captain Wessex yet," said Mr.
Biernbaum. "I have some information regarding that tragedy last night,
some information I have reason to believe may illuminate the whole
affair. But for some reason or other, although I made several requests
to speak to him about it, he has been putting me off. May not be able to
hear my story until tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, he says. In a
murder case, can you imagine that? By then, of course, it may be too
late."

I said, naturally curious, "Too late for what?"

"For what?" He seemed disconcerted. "Too late to supply helpful
information, of course. The whole case may be broken and done with, by
then. By tomorrow or the day after, the whole murder story may be a
thing of the past. I should think this Captain Wessex would be
interested in hearing the account of a person who, even though he might
not be the most promising suspect at hand, is at least an important
material witness."

"What did you witness?" I asked.

"I think I can safely say," said Mr. Biernbaum, "that I was the last
person to see Mr. Nichols alive."

Lunch, today, had been a choice between chicken salad and lobster salad.
I had not expressed preference for either, and had drawn the latter. It
was good, but warm, I said. "Only the murderer, Mr. Biernbaum, can say
he was the last person to see Mr. Nichols alive."

"What? Well, yes, of course. Naturally. For that matter, how does
Captain Wessex know I'm not the murderer? Could he prove I wasn't? I
doubt it. I think he'd have a hard time."

From the end of the table I heard Catherine Pratt say, loudly, to Mr.
Connors the poet, "Of course they have to arrest somebody. But did you
know that the sheriff of Demarest County was threatening to close up the
Hall? And send us all home?"

"They can't do that," said Mr. Connors.

"I should say not. Not to me," Miss Pratt went on. "Not after I went to
the trouble and expense of having a five-hundred-pound stone shipped
here. I'm sorry about Mr. Nichols, but after all, granite is granite."

"Yes," said Mr. Connors, "but what I mean is, they can't let us leave.
We have to stay here, don't you see, until they solve the case. All of
us. In a way, we're all in on it. Get the point?"

Miss Wright, the short-story writer, dreamily queried, "We have to stay
here until they find out who did it, no matter how long it takes?"

"Exactly."

"Even if they don't find out by the end of the season, and they still
don't know next autumn? You mean we'd have to stay here after the season
ended, all through the winter?"

"You get the idea," said Mr. Connor, "And somebody would have to feed
us, too."

"Oh, boy. But I wouldn't like to spend the winter in the Doghouse. Maybe
I could wangle my way into Walter's studio. Poor Walter," Miss Wright
rhapsodized. "I feel so sorry for him. He had the south room in Vach,
didn't he? Funny thing about that studio, it's cool in summer, and
awfully warm, I imagine, in winter."

"Well," said Mr. Connors to Catherine Pratt, "that's the setup. Neither
the sheriff nor anybody else can kick us out of here until they get a
pretty good line on the case. No matter what happens. Not even if
there's another murder, or two of them."

Practical, Miss Pratt pointed out, "More deaths would simply complicate
the whole business, I think."

"Sure. The more the... But what I mean is, we ought to insist, as
taxpayers, that the police get to the bottom of this Nichols affair. If
they try to make us go home, we should simply point out that they
haven't investigated all the possibilities of the case and, as friends
of the dead man, we demand a thorough inquiry into the whole affair. No
matter how much time or inconvenience it may mean to some of us. What
the hell," Mr. Connors concluded, "I like the grub here, I don't have to
pay any rent for the shambles I live in at Brahma Lodge, and so long as
they send P. C. Cooke to the chair in the end, which is where he
belongs, I'd just as soon stay here forever. What we ought to do, in
other words, is just see to it that the case this Wessex guy has to
break becomes more and more complicated every day. Get the point?"

Miss Pratt said she did, perfectly, and I reminded Mr. Biernbaum, "You
said you were an important material witness? As one of the last,
possibly, to see Mr. Nichols alive?"

"Oh, yes. The fact is, I sat there on the balcony talking to him from
midnight until about one o'clock in the morning."

"Not very incriminating," I pointed out, "since it's believed the actual
murder took place sometime between three and four. A lot of people could
have stepped out on the balcony in the two or three hours after you left
him."

"Well, it's not the time that's so important. What's more important is
the things we talked about, and what Walter said to me. Most revealing,
in the light of what was about to happen." Mr. Biernbaum, as the last
known person to see Mr. Nichols alive, had captured the center of
attention. "Nichols seemed rather moody at first and impatient at my
intrusion. Then he muttered something like, 'Cooke was right about this
confounded balcony and these confounded guests.' But after a while he
began to loosen up and talk. As you know, he was a member of the
invitations committee, responsible in large part for the guests present
at the Hall this season. He confessed to me certain doubts he was
beginning to entertain as to the wisdom of having issued invitations to
some of those present this summer. I'd rather not mention names. But it
seems he'd about decided he'd made several serious mistakes. In short,
he was filled with the most ominous forebodings, evidently, regarding
his fate on the balcony that night, misgivings which he freely confided
to me."

"Strange," I said, murmuring absently at the remains of my lobster
salad. "I'd never have guessed it, from the talk I had with him."

"Nothing strange about it, at all," said Mr. Biernbaum. "I think I knew
Nichols better than any of the other guests. Why, when did you talk to
him?"

"I found it terribly hard to get to sleep last night," I said, pushing
aside the salad and trying my specially ordered non-fattening cup
custard. "So I went out on the balcony for a breath of fresh air. I
found Mr. Nichols there, smoking. We had quite a chat. About you, too,
Mr. Biernbaum."

Mr. Biernbaum gave me his concentrated interest.

"About me?"

"Among others. But I gathered the impression that Mr. Nichols, although
inclined to be cynical about some of us, was on the whole rather pleased
with the selections made by the invitations committee this year."

"What time were you talking to him?" asked Mr. Biernbaum.

"It was a wonderful night," I said. "The moon was out, and it was almost
as bright as day. You could see people coming and going all over the
quadrangle, and recognize them by certain peculiarities of clothing, or
gait, or by their voices."

"What time was this?" said Mr. Dunn.

"It seemed to me," I went on, "that Mr. Nichols was in a very
exhilarated frame of mind. He particularly enjoyed a violent argument
that took place downstairs in the smoking room. A sort of sadistic
enjoyment, I suppose it could be called. It seems that Mr. Janiston had
drawn a full house in a poker game, under circumstances that some of the
other players, Mr. Cooke especially, bitterly resented and viewed with
suspicion."

Mr. Janiston put down the cup of coffee he had been drinking, to survey
me with truly superb condescension.

"Suspicion?" he said.

"Perhaps suspicion is not the best word. Downright disbelief, I should
say."

"I remember that hand. But it was Cooke who held it, not me."

"What time did you say you were talking to the old pirate?" asked Mr.
Connors.

"That's no way to talk about the dead," complained Mr. Hale, the
advocate of prison reform. "No matter what you thought about him when he
was alive, that's no way to talk."

"Who are you to complain?" Connors acidly asked. "As far as I know, you
were the only person to threaten Nichols' life, and not just once, but
twice. 'That guy ought to be killed,' you said. Twice in the same day."

Mr. Hale started to make an explosive reply, but I managed to get in
ahead of him.

"The night was not only moonlit, but calm as well. Voices carried across
the quadrangle as clearly as they carry across water."

Mr. Hale, hastily gulping the last of a lemon meringue pie, transferred
his attention from Mr. Connors to me.

"I wonder if you heard the argument I had with Albert?" he asked. "It
didn't amount to much. It was just that he sort of blew up and went into
a blind rage when I asked him to do something, after hours. Raved and
swore like a madman."

"Yes," I said. "Very interesting, too."

"What time was this, about?" asked Mr. Janiston. "I mean, when you heard
the row in the smoking room? Were you up there on the balcony with
Nichols for very long after that?"

"Much longer," I said.

"Personally," said Frederick Owen, "I went for a brief stroll at about
two in the morning. Nothing like a last minute walk to rest the body and
relax the nerves. I plotted the next chapter of 'Freight Yards.' I can
think better if I take a walk late at night."

"Yes," I said.

"You saw me?" he asked. "I believe I dropped in at Nichols' studio,
thinking we might have a chat before I went to bed. Naturally, though,
he wasn't there, poor chap. Wish he had been. I suppose he must have
been up there on the balcony, unconsciously waiting his rendezvous with
destiny."

"Really?" I said. "He told me that he had expected you to be looking for
him, and he seemed pleased at not being found. Do you consider yourself
destiny, Mr. Owen?"

"Oh. He said something of that sort? Well, I had told him I might look
him up later in the evening. But, unfortunately, I didn't see him again.
Not alive. What else did he say about me?"

"When were you talking to the old s.o.b.?" queried Mr. Connors.

"What time did you leave him?" asked Mr. Dunn.

"Tell me, Miss Gregg," said Mr. Biernbaum, speaking with immense warmth
and kindliness, "just what did Mr. Nichols have to say about me? Simply
to satisfy my personal curiosity."

"Thank God I was in the smoking room all the time," said Mr. John
Lawrence. "Playing poker."

"So was I," said Mr. Janiston.

"Oh, were you?" Mr. Lawrence seemed reflective and sceptical. "Seems to
me, you were out of the room once or twice, for quite a while. Missed
five or six hands, didn't you?"

"One or two," said Mr. Janiston. "Mr. Cooke missed several, though.
Where was he, I wonder?"

"Did I understand you, Miss Gregg, that you heard the argument in the
smoking room, about the cards?" It was Mr. Karl Weiss, emerged from his
vantage point as sentry among the trees about the Grotto. "Is nobody
coming," he announced to the rest of the table. "Is all clear, the
coast." Upon me, he bestowed a benevolent smile. "If you heard, then you
recognized my voice. I was there, all the time. Before the blow-up, and
afterward. Both."

"Look, Miss Gregg," said Mr. Dunn, at my elbow. "I mean, Connie. You
know I have the north studio in Fountain Lodge, don't you? Well, did you
see me, by any chance, with some friends of mine, sort of staggering in
at about two in the morning? I put in a hectic evening at the Halfway
House--and it certainly must have looked strange, to anyone who saw me,
when I got back to the Hall."

"Connie," said Mr. Biernbaum, "I don't suppose Walter told you anything
I don't already know, but go ahead and tell me--I won't mind--what did
he say about me? Did he mention any financial transactions we've had,
either in the past or the present?"

I pushed back the synthetic cup custard and unscrewed the thermos bottle
that was supposed to contain the iced tea I'd ordered. I couldn't make
out whether it had been delivered as hot, or merely lukewarm. Or, for
that matter, whether it was tea, coffee, or cocoa.

"Come on, Connie," urged Mr. Connors. "Just when did you have your
tte--tte with that cultured mountebank? Two weeks ago?"

"Con. Oh, Con," called Claudia Attelio, "He didn't mention me, too, did
he?"

"Come on, Con," said Mr. Dunn, rather gruffly. "Give out. What did he
say, and when did you see him, and what did you see, yourself?"

I made a face over the stirred-up mud that was supposed to pass for iced
tea. Or warmed-over coffee. I said, "Mr. Nichols and I were having a
conversation until about two o'clock this morning. Then I left him on
the balcony, and tried for a while to sleep. But I couldn't, and I
returned to the writing room adjoining the balcony. For more than an
hour I sat at the desk at the head of the stairs." The entire table
focused upon me eyes that displayed a curious mixture of awe,
apprehension, disbelief, sympathy and hostility. "For a long time I was
aware that Mr. Nichols must still be on the balcony, because from time
to time I saw the flare of a match against the blackness of the sky. At
one time I thought I even heard his voice, an involuntary exclamation
over some idea that had occurred to him, I thought. Then after a while I
didn't see anything at all, or hear anything. Of course, there is no
other way to leave the balcony, except through the writing room. And Mr.
Nichols hadn't gone past me. So I wondered. Before I went back to my
room again, I decided I'd look out on the balcony again. I did so."

"And what did you see, Con?" breathed Mr. Biernbaum.

"I saw you coming back from the bathing pool, Mr. Biernbaum. You were a
tiny speck down in the quadrangle, but I saw you turn in at your studio
door. And I saw Mr. Nichols. He'd been murdered. It was I who first
found him. Didn't you know? Yes, I found him there with that knife
through his back. I called Mr. Cooke's office, told him what I'd found,
and then I called the police. I was the one who found the body, and
notified the police."




                                  _10_


                            _CAPTAIN WESSEX_

My interview with Constance Gregg, concert pianist, Nathan Biernbaum,
novelist, and William Glass, a free-lance journalist who described
himself as a philosopher, rounded out my general picture of the
situation and the case, and completed the entire list of those on the
estate during the night of the killing. I'd talked with all of them at
least once, and with many of them, like the steward, P. C. Cooke,
Janiston, Bartel, Hale, Dunn, I'd had discussions two or three times.
There was nothing obscure about the immediate details. But I began to
see that the general background of Demarest Hall, its guests and its
staff, might be most important in breaking the case.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon when I gathered together my notes
and left Mr. Cooke's office, making my way to the library and reading
room on the third floor of the Hall. I had no trouble in locating _New
Olympus_, the official history of Demarest Hall, of which Mr. Cooke had
told me. It had been written by Margaret Churchwood Ramsay, a name
unknown to me, but of whom Cooke had said, "Famous in her day, the
subject of international scandals that rocked at least one county to its
foundation." And he had added, "The style is a trifle post-Victorian,
but you'll find all the necessary data in the appendices, which she had
someone else compile."

I took the volume down off the reference shelf where it stood with the
dictionary, a Bible, and several _Who's Who's_. Dust covered it, and
rose from it in a faint cloud when I opened the pages. The date of
publication was given as 1912. The foreword began:

"Unto the earthborn spirit of man, seldom indeed is vouchsafed both
Godlike vision and the heroic capacity for overcoming practical
obstacles by which, alone, the dream may become a dazzling, irradiant
reality. But seldom had Nature more lavishly endowed this two-fold
perquisite upon any beings than she bestowed upon the brothers Clark,
Lawrence and John Demarest... Theirs was a vision of a New Olympus in
the New World... Through its austere halls, furbished even more by
thoughtful dignity and that purposeful repose which marks the daily life
of the truly great princes, philosophers, and poets, than by its
decorous drapes, soothing panels, stimulating brooks and pathways
leading to Sylvan cloisters such as Brahma Lodge (an exact replica in
miniature of Prince Albrecht's hunting lodge high in the Austrian Alps),
were to wander the younger, though perhaps equally gifted spirits of
this New Athens some day to rise in the West... And lo, the vision
slowly took shape in velvet and marble, in flesh and blood... Opened
for the first season on a gala evening twenty long years ago, in 1892,
an occasion attended by many notables of both continents, Demarest Hall
has steadily grown, in traditions and physical appurtenances, until
today, with three more Lodges added..."

I skipped the rest of the Foreword and quickly leafed through the
history of the Demarests, the date and construction of the buildings,
the fires that had destroyed some of the buildings, now rebuilt,
statements and brief biographies of a few of the celebrated artists and
writers who had lived as guests of Demarest Hall prior to 1912. I had
never heard of any of the names, although according to the Ramsay woman,
I should have. In the appendix I found, and studied, the provisions of
the trust on which the Hall was founded and by which it was sustained.
The facts were essentially as Cooke had given them to me.

I put the book away and turned, next, to the magazine racks. Nichols had
been a contributing editor to _The New Age_, while Janiston and Glass
wrote frequent articles, I had been told, for _The New Review_, both of
them liberal magazines well thought of among serious minded people, but
far above the heads of the general public. I had, myself, read both of
them during my year at M.I.T., but not since then. I located recent
copies of both magazines. They did not seem to have changed. I sat down
for a few quick glances through these issues hoping, but not expecting,
that I would find indirect suggestions, angles to put it simply, of the
type of mentality and character possessed by the dead man, and possibly
by the other people with whom he had been associated here at Demarest
Hall. During the day I had learned that Lucille Nichols had been
divorced from William Glass in 1932, marrying Walter Nichols in the year
following. William Glass was married, for the present at least, to
Harold Janiston's sister, Fanya, not currently a guest, while Harry Dunn
had been briefly married to the second wife of the musician, John
Lawrence. Although it had seemed complicated when I first became aware
of this domestic shuffling and re-shuffling, by now I had the history
fixed clearly and firmly in mind, and it seemed, though probably
unimportant, best to keep it there.

Alfred Connors, the poet, came into the library, selected a magazine
from the rack, then sat down opposite me at the table and gave me a look
which said clearly something was eating him. I immediately looked away
and started reading the magazines. My talk with Connors had been a
headache, to put it mildly. He had put the finger on practically
everyone in the place, and every lead had been phony. If I were to
investigate every angle he had given me, I'd be busy with this case from
now on.

The first issue of _The New Review_ had a long article by William Glass
which ran: "Four years ago, in _Society at the Crossroads_, Harold
Janiston posed socio-political questions so incisive and reached
conclusions so logical that not one proponent of the status quo could
advance valid answers or successfully challenge the accuracy of his
summations. No one, indeed, but Harold Janiston could have done so, and
in _Detour_ he has done just that--successfully answered his own
questions and capped them with fresh interrogations that lead,
inexorably, to quite opposite conclusions..." I skipped the rest of
that and turned to a book review by Harold Janiston: "_Slightly
Courageous_, Harriet Momson's third novel in as many years, although its
grain of truth may be liberally coated with sugar, is unquestionably the
season's outstanding novel to deal with the difficult problem of the
maladjusted middle-class young woman, alone in the business world, who
finds too late that love is not enough..." There was nothing in this
for me, and I tried another one by Janiston: "Five years ago Dirk
Blanchard gave us an epochal novel of the Old South. Now, in _Course of
Empire_, he has given us what will undoubtedly prove to be the most
significant novel of the season dealing with the Old West as it really
was, and done with super-abundant vitality it is, on a large canvas and
with superb colors..." Very interesting, but it did not seem to have
any bearing on things pertinent to my particular problem. I tried
another one: "With _The Twelfth Hour_, his fourth novel, Millard Reilley
has leaped, full-fledged, into the top-rank of novelists who choose to
handle the difficult theme of the problem confronting men and women who
are endeavoring to revive handcrafts and primitive arts in an industrial
era. Myra, the central character, is unforgettable as wife, mother and
sweetheart. It is she who, seeking to restore the lost art of
hand-weaving in the New England village of Putnam, first discovers and
then explores the teeming ant-life of peonized labor in the large
factories by whom her very existence is at first ignored... A
first-rate labor novel... Has shortcomings, it must be admitted,
but... However... And nevertheless... Widespread of canvas is
nothing less than heroic..."

I put down _The New Review_, lit a cigarette, and tried _The New Age_.
In the three issues before me, only one contained an article by Walter
Nichols. It was entitled "Toward a New Literature," and began: "How are
we to account for the amazingly low standards, influence, and vitality
of the creative literature with which the '40s have been ushered in? May
the fact be attributed to the incredible but widespread acceptance of
doctrines disseminated by Harold Janiston, Henry Ramsay-Downes, William
Glass, Elizabeth Churchwood, and other apostles of the good, though
disembodied and mentally disorganized life? Hardly, though the factors
they have contributed should not be overlooked. The current discovery of
Mr. Janiston, for instance, is one Millard Reilley. About the best that
can be said for Mr. Reilley, and this may be advanced for Mr. Janiston
as well, is to say that here mediocrity reaches a peak, vulgarity
outdoes itself, and ignorance fairly dazzles..."

I could see what Miss Edith Wright meant when she said that no love had
been lost between Janiston and Nichols. I set aside the magazines, and
turned to a shelf labeled "Current Fiction." I was looking for one of
Miss Wright's novels. I did not find any, but found, instead, _The
Twelfth Hour_ by Millard Reilley. It was interesting to note that its
cover displayed an advertisement that ran: "About the best... reaches
a peak... outdoes itself... fairly dazzles--Walter Nichols." And
also: "With _The Twelfth Hour_... Millard Reilley has leaped,
full-fledged, into the top-rank of novelists--Harold Janiston."

I put the volume back and went on to the other shelves. Behind me I
heard a voice say, "Would you mind letting me have a look at that copy
of _Fortune_, old man?"

"Why?" This was the voice of Alfred Connors. I cautiously glanced
around, and saw that a fellow by the name of Frederick Owen had joined
us. "You can have it when I'm through with it."

Mr. Owen patiently explained, "I happen to need it for some research I'm
doing."

"So what?"

"I want it for only fifteen or twenty minutes. There's an article in
there on transportation I simply must see before I finish the next
chapter of my novel about the..."

"You told me what it's about."

"Well, be a good scout, will you, and loan the copy to me for just a few
minutes?"

"Go to hell."

"Why, you little louse." Mr. Owen seemed to have difficulty enunciating.
"I've got a good idea to wring that neck of yours."

"More threats?" said Connors, loudly. "What did you tell Nichols you'd
do to him? You can wring my neck but all I ask is that you don't stick a
knife in my back."

I slammed a back copy of _The New Age in the Graphic Arts_ and turned
around. I pointed to a sign, conspicuously placed, which read:
WILL GUESTS WHO ARE USING THE LIBRARY KINDLY OBSERVE ABSOLUTE
SILENCE, PLEASE, WHILE DOING SO? I said,

"Can't you guys read?"

"O.K., Captain," said Connors. "I just thought, if I hadn't told you
before, you might like to know about Owen now."

I felt that my face was growing red, and I knew that I was breathing
fast.

"I know about Owen, and I know all I want to know about you," I said,
which was the literal truth. "Why don't you let the guy have the
magazine, for Christ's sake? You people up here at the Hall are supposed
to be scholars and philosophers. Why can't you be gentlemen, too?"

Connors folded his arms across the magazine clutching it to his breast.

"Every hour, every minute I can delay Owen's next novel," he said, "is
just so much gravy for civilization."

Owen, white in the face, gave me a bleak smile and a nod.

"I'm sorry I troubled you, Captain."

He turned and walked out. I glared hard at Connors, who beamed
seraphically and tried, but failed, to toss the disputed copy of
_Fortune_ back into the magazine rack. He yawned and stretched loudly,
rose, went to the regular book shelves. I saw him take down a volume
from the section labeled "Music." Aware of my scrutiny, and evidently
pleased by it, Connors held up the volume.

"A treatise on technique, by the brand-new widow of our recent friend,"
he announced. "See? _New Structures in Harmony_, by Lucille Nichols. You
must read it sometime. When I'm through with it, of course."

I turned my back on him and found what I had been looking for. _Blue
Monday_, a collection of short stories by Edith Wright. It had been
published in 1932 and was dedicated to "Pongo," which must have been a
nickname. I read the first story, which turned out to be about two
pansies and one Lizzie, the second, about two Lizzies and one pansy, the
third about three Lizzies taking a hitch-hiking trip through the South,
and the fourth about three pansies on a holiday in prewar Paris. I liked
the snappy gags that Wright had gotten off from time to time, but it did
take a little time in each case to get the point of her story. While I
was still reading them, Christopher Bartel, the artist, walked into the
library. He went straight to the music shelf, glanced through the
volumes there, and seemingly not finding what he wanted, started to
search among the stray books left on the tables. When he came to Connors
he looked casually at the book the poet sat reading, then looked again.

"Mind if I borrow this, guy?" he said.

Connors lifted his face and said, "Why? You can have it when I'm through
with it."

Bartel said, "Thanks," took the book with one hand and shoved Connors
with the other. The book, of course, went one way, and Connors,
naturally, went the other. Striding from the room, Bartel, over his
shoulder, glanced backward and said, "You can have the book this
evening." With the volume under his arm he disappeared and Connors got
up from the floor where the shove had tilted him and his chair. He said,
accusingly, "Look, Captain, those books are for use in the library only.
They can't be taken out of here, not out of the reading room. But you
saw what he did. Practically stole the book."

It gave me a laugh. I said, "I'm concerned with a homicide, not petty
larceny."

"Are you?" said Connors, again showing that something-is-eating-me face,
but speaking in that try-and-guess-what voice. "Well, if you are, you
might like to know where Bartel spent the evening, last night."

I couldn't resist the opportunity. I said, "I know where. About the same
place where you had wanted to, I expect."

Connors sighed and stood up. He gave me a final look, half resigned and
half denunciatory, then left the library. Alone, I replaced _Blue
Monday_ and selected _New Arts--A Handbook of Tomorrow_, by Walter
Nichols. I cannot explain the slight shudder that ran through me at the
simple adjective "new" in the title, but in reading it, I forgot all my
misgivings."

"In an era of decay, demoralization, and disintegration... when all
that was healthy and strong and decent... crumbles about our ears, as
it seems inescapably destined to do... When, as today, the individual
repudiates every personal responsibility, either through indifference or
through cowardice... and there is no longer any thought of collective
responsibility such as animated the issues of the nineteenth century...
complete abandonment of the idea of salvation, either through
works, sacrifice, prayer, or hedonism..."

I read on, and it seemed to present a picture of the other Walter
Nichols, a quite different side than that I had gathered second-hand
from those who knew him at all well here at the Hall. To most of them,
he had been a bore when not a nuisance. Yet they had seemed to regard
him as an erratic, self-centered nuisance, whereas his own work showed
him to be anything but erratic and, though he was undoubtedly
self-centered, he had been so in a far more sinister spirit than they
had generally supposed--possessed, that is, by a fanatic's unshakable
faith in his own strength and right.

I had finished Nichols' book, glanced through a volume of poetry by
Alfred Connors, and checked the list of guests against the data supplied
about several of them in the current _Who's Who_, when Col. Herrick
arrived. It was about eight-thirty. He sat down, chucking his panama
across the table, and rattled off, with his usual machine-gun
brusqueness,

"My God, it's hot. Made any progress? The director, or whatever they
call him, said he would have us served in the library. I hope the grub
is decent. Who did it? Have you seen the newspapers? My God, I hope we
break this in the next couple of days. If we don't there's going to be
all hell to pay. Political angles. Seems the mayor and the sheriff of
Endor want to close up the place. Should we? Do you think that would
help?"

I said, "No. Worst thing we could do."

"All right, we won't. When do they serve dinner here? I'm starved. My
God, it's too hot to live. What kind of a farm is this, anyway? Never
saw anything like it before. What do they raise? Why are there so many
artists around the place? When are you going to make a pinch? I could
hardly get what you were driving at, Steve, over the phone. What do you
mean this is a difficult case? Since when have you started talking like
a God damn high school English teacher? If you're behind the eight-ball,
why in hell can't you say so? What's the matter? Come on, for God's
sake, loosen up. Why did you ask me to come up to this Godforsaken farm
to begin with? Must be, you can't make a pinch. Well, say something."

I said, "In the first place, Joe, I want you to get one thing straight.
This is not a farm. It will save us lots of time and trouble if you can
remember that one thing, just to begin with. Demarest Hall is certainly
not a farm."

"O.K.," he said. "I know it's not a farm. It's some kind of an
institution. I've heard about it. I get around, you know. It's a public
institution that takes care of geniuses."

"And the next thing to remember," I said, "is that it's not a
sanitarium, or a booby-hatch, and it does take care of geniuses, but not
exactly in that way."

"Well, what way, then?"

"It simply feeds and houses them, and gives them ideal conditions under
which they can carry on their work."

"What work? None of these artists ever did a lick of work in their whole
lives. You know that as well as I do. What's gotten into you, Steve?"

I could hardly believe it was only two days ago that I'd arrived here
and started the investigation in the Nichols case. I didn't know how to
explain to the Colonel. I said, "Joe, you're my boss. Up till now you've
never had any complaint about the way I handled a case, have you?"

"Never," he said, heartily, "and I've got every confidence in you now,
Steve. I know you're going to crack this. Why?"

"Why? Well, there are some things you'll have to take my word for. At
least for a while. Until I can prove it to you. See what I mean?"

"Sure. I'll back everything you do. I always did, didn't I? So what is
it about these artistic ladies and gents of leisure that seems to be
getting you down, Steve?"

I could see this would be tough to explain. Col. Herrick had always, all
his life, been a cop.

"That's it, Colonel. You have to take my word for it that these
cluckaroos are not ladies and gentlemen of leisure. They work, and hard.
Damn hard. And you must take my word for it that, although they may be
screwballs on the surface, underneath all of that, there's a real
reason, a perfectly sensible reason, for every crazy move they make."

Albert Page appeared with a tray, and laid places for us on the library
table. He put down a dish of hors d'oeuvres and two plates of cold
borscht.

"For instance?" said Col. Herrick.

"Well, for instance," I said, knowing it was lame, "I could have a
confession any time I wanted one."

Col. Herrick dropped his spoon into the borscht.

"Well, for God's sake, why don't you get it? Did you read the
newspapers? Do you know what they'll do to us if we don't break this
case right off the bat? They'll crucify us, like they did New Jersey in
the Lindbergh kidnapping."

I said, quickly, "This particular confession wouldn't be any good,
because the guy that would like to make it didn't slip the knife into
Nichols' ribs." I went on, still more rapidly, "You see, he writes
books, and he figures that a murder trial would make his books sell like
hot-cakes. But, also, of course, he'd beat the rap, no matter what he
confessed to, since, as I said, he didn't do the job."

"Well, who did?"

"Beg your pardon, sir. What would you like for your main course?"

We looked up at Albert Page, the steward.

"I'll take a steak," Col. Herrick said. "Unless I have to eat meatballs
and spaghetti."

"Meatballs and spaghetti, sir?" said Albert, aghast. "We never serve
that."

"Well, what have you got?"

"Cold squab, sir. Or iced lobster and salad. Or you could have pheasant
baked in champagne, or just a snack of rattlesnake steak broiled over
charcoal and a sip of burgundy. Or cold baked sailfish, tuna fish, or
dolphin, if you wish. Or some barracuda, hot or cold, whichever you
prefer."

Col. Herrick sighed.

"A champagne cocktail to begin with, I suppose?"

"Naturally, sir. If you wish."

"I do. But I'll still have a steak, if that's on the menu."

"Yes, sir."

Albert departed and Col. Herrick indicated him with a nod of the head.

"Who's he?"

"Albert Page, the steward," I explained. "Small-time blackmailer,
pickpocket, swindler, and all-around chiseler. Did time in England,
Easton, and Sing Sing, but nothing that amounts to much."

"You're sure?"

"Positive."

"I must say," said Col. Herrick, finishing his borscht, "they feed you
well here."

"The place grows on you," I guardedly offered.

"Does it? I expect, the next thing, you'll be painting pictures and
composing music, yourself."

"As a matter of fact," I said, "I'm going to start to learn how to paint
pictures tomorrow. A Mr. Christopher Bartel, very famous as an
illustrator and muralist, has..."

"Now what?" said Col. Herrick.

"Well, he's invited me to watch him paint, and he says, he'll give me a
few tips on the business."

Col. Herrick sat back, as Albert reappeared with the Colonel's champagne
cocktail and our meat dishes. I could feel his amazed stare as I felt
with my knife and fork very deliberately for the joints of the roast
pork I had ordered. I cut and ate, and finally Albert departed. Col.
Herrick lifted his champagne cocktail. Set it down.

"Very good," he said. "Now, Steve, let's come to cases. I hope you
aren't going to take to cutting out paper dolls, too?"

"Not a chance, Joe," I said, and laughed. "I know what I'm doing. And I
hope to God you know I know what I'm doing."

"I'd like to think so," he said. "About Nichols. The guy that got a
knife in his heart. What sort of a person was he?"

"I can tell you this," I said carefully, "he was a completely
misunderstood person. If he hadn't been, he'd be alive today. He had a
real humanitarian approach to social, economic and literary problems.
Pessimistic, but truly humanitarian. That was the one thing his
contemporaries could not understand. And, not understanding, the one
thing they could not forgive."

Col. Herrick laid down his knife and fork and this time really stared.
He said, "Have you gone nuts, Steve?"

"I don't think so. No, Joe, I think not. But that kind of an approach is
the only kind that can be made in a case like this case."

"To hell with your riddles," said Col. Herrick. He picked up his knife
and fork, resumed eating. "Who killed the guy, that's all I want to
know. Find the guy, that's your job. And after that you can take up
painting, philosophy, or basket-weaving. Who did it, that's all we want
to know."

I said, "I know who did it, Colonel."

"You do?" he bellowed.

"Of course. I've known ever since I phoned you."

"Well, why don't you pinch the guy, and call the case off?"

I shrugged.

"That would be a waste of time. First place, I have no evidence against
him, either direct or circumstantial. The whole murder was carried out
in the smartest way possible, with no witnesses, and no substantial
clues left, nothing that would stand up in a court of law. We have
nothing to go on that would definitely convict."

"Get the guy and stick him in the cooler," said Col. Herrick, knifing
his steak, "and we'll sweat him, and he'll confess."

"Not this one," I patiently explained. "As a matter of fact, this one
has nothing to confess that would really help us. If we stick him in the
jug now, and sweat him, we lose our case, that's all. In fact, we have
only one reliable witness against him."

Col. Herrick laid down his knife and fork, wiped his lips, glared at me,
and said, "Let's have it. Who is the only reliable witness against the
killer?"

"The killer himself," I explained.

"I knew you were going to say that. By God, I knew it. It's in the
atmosphere of this place. Are you sure you're able to see this through,
Steve?"

"No," I admitted. "But I can do it better than anyone else. I have found
out a few things about this place that must be known before the case is
broken."

"And you'll break this case," he persisted, "but you can't do it without
the help of the murderer?"

I said, "I feel sure he will be glad to help." Col. Herrick buttered a
bun, glanced at me with a look he hoped was shrewd but which I knew was
one of resignation. To reassure him, I said, "Yes, I know who killed
Nichols, and my only problem is to get the co-operation, in solving the
case, of the person who did it. Simple, isn't it?"

Col. Herrick moved his head above a forkful of steak. Whether he was
shaking or nodding his head, I couldn't tell.




                                  _11_


                          _CHRISTOPHER BARTEL_

There is no feeling on earth like it--when the fresh white oblong of
canvas is stretched and set up on the easel and then, well, then it is
up to you. The feeling is not entirely pleasant. One always imagines
that it will be, but at the last moment, before starting, there is apt
to be a sort of sinking sensation, the feeling that perhaps the original
idea was not so good after all, maybe one should stop and think for a
moment and perhaps decide upon a better one, and finally, of course, the
baffling realization that the whole affair is a struggle with
intangibles in which the outcome, since there is so little one can grasp
in a physical sense, will probably turn out badly. This time, though, I
still thought my original idea, a self-portrait, was a good one. I
readjusted the big three-quarters mirror I'd taken from the bathroom
door, to get a better light, and then I shifted the easel to catch the
new angle of the mirror. After that I went out to the kitchenette, mixed
myself another Scotch highball, a stiff one this time, came back to the
canvas and looked again into the mirror. The highlight on the glass in
my hand might provide a focal point for the general composition, I
thought, and then discarded the idea as too tricky. I started to sketch
in the larger masses as they would look in the pose I wanted to use, and
then there was a knock at the door. It was Captain Wessex.

He said, "Mind if I come in and talk, or will that disturb you?"

"Not at all. Care for a drink?"

"No, thanks."

I went ahead with the sketching and Wessex wandered bulkily around the
studio. I heard him stop before a stack of my canvases in back of me.

"Getting anywhere with this murder stuff, Captain?" I asked.

"Yes. I think so."

"Who did it, or is that a state secret?"

"I think I know who did it, but we aren't quite certain enough to make
an arrest and, naturally, I can't say much about it." I heard him moving
some of the canvases. "Do you care if I look at some of these?"

I said, "That's what they're there for, to be looked at."

"By the way, Mr. Bartel," he said, presently, "I don't believe you ever
did tell me just what was back of that row you had with Nichols."

"Something purely personal," I said. "It had nothing to do with anything
even distantly connected with the case."

I heard Wessex sound a sort of croak meant to be a laugh.

"How do I know that? But, in fact, you poked him because he was ribbing
you about your pictures, I understand."

"He got too damned smart for his own good, yes, and I socked him."

"I understand it was something about a picture of a mermaid you'd
painted, that touched off the fight."

"Do you?"

"But I don't see it here."

"There never was any."

"That's strange," said the cop. "Mr. Biernbaum said there was, and he
saw it."

"He did, did he?" But I realized there was no point in being childish
about the business. I resigned myself to the fact that I'd never hear
the last of it. "As a matter of fact, there was a picture of a mermaid,
but I burned it."

"You did? That's funny, too. Because there's no place to burn it, except
in the fireplace, which is absolutely clean, or one of the wire baskets
back of the Hall, and in that case there'd be sure to be some traces of
it, some fragments of unburned canvas. But we've gone through every bit
of rubbish from one end of the Hall to the other, and nothing like that
has ever turned up."

I drank off the rest of the highball.

"O.K., Captain, the picture just took wings and vanished. I used it to
wipe the bloodstains off my hands, and then I ate it. Does that satisfy
you?"

Captain Wessex chuckled.

"O.K.," he said. "And I must say, you did a wonderful picture here of
Lucille Nichols. Her feet seem a little cockeyed, under that robe, but
the face is a perfectly accurate resemblance, you couldn't mistake it."

I made another highball and went back to the easel. I'd put away about a
pint so far this morning, but didn't feel it, perhaps because of the
heat. Wessex had left off sitting in judgment on my pictures, and came
around to the side of the easel. He declined another invitation to have
a drink, and sat there in the large chair watching me outline the
central details of the self-portrait. The work started off easily
enough, though of course this was nothing but groundwork, and my mind
was already on the exact tone of the finished product. I felt that this
time I might really go to town. I meant to give the picture a sort of
autumnal quality, to suggest a person who has undoubtedly been
successful in most of the things he has struggled for, but who is
nevertheless disillusioned with the so-called rewards of life.

I heard Wessex reiterate, "Does it?"

"Does it what?"

"Does it bother you to have someone sit here and watch you paint?"

I said, "No. I wouldn't have invited you to, if it did. Pull your feet
back, will you? They cut across the mirror."

"I wondered what you were painting," said Wessex, moving ponderously
back. "But I'm damned if I see the point in painting a picture of a
looking-glass."

It gave me a bigger lift than the highball. I explained the business
with the mirror, and the cop seemed genuinely interested. From there, we
got on to the subject of art in general.

"What do you think of a fellow like Henry Mallett?" asked Captain
Wessex. "Confidentially?"

"Publicly or privately, I think he ought to be painting picture
postcards."

"I think I see what you mean," said Captain Wessex. "Sort of
sentimental, and not much to it, is that it?"

"Nothing to it at all, except cows, brooks, pastures, and occasionally a
very wistful silo." I handed the cop my empty glass. "Mind doing the
honors? Have one yourself, while you're at it."

"No, thanks," he said, and got heavily to his feet. From the kitchenette
he called, "How much of this stuff does your prescription call for?"

"About an inch and a half."

I heard him getting the ice cubes, and presently he was back.

"Karl Weiss?" he asked. "What kind of work does he do?"

"Great stuff," I said, "if you happen to be a Swiss watchmaker. There
are some, you know. But most of us don't know one end of a scrambled
mainspring from the other, and don't care to. Jesus Christ, you forgot
the soda."

"I'm sorry." He took the glass and went back to the kitchenette. When he
returned he said, "You mean, he's super-impressionistic?"

"Your meaning is vague but I'd say your intention was clear, Captain,
and perfectly correct." The drink was O.K. this time. "By the way,
what's your first name? I'd might as well use it, if you're going to
hang around the Hall for a while. Maybe I'll do a picture of you, if
you'll pose."

"Steve's my name."

"All right, mine's Chris. But I forgot, you already know."

"Yes. Well, I wouldn't mind posing for a portrait. If I get the time,
that is." He sat watching me for a while, then said, "How much, about,
do you think you'll get for this self-portrait when you're finished with
it?"

"Not a dime, Steve."

"Nothing?"

"Not for this one. It comes under the heading of personal satisfaction,
and it's all for the sweet sake of art, which has the same reward as
virtue."

"Holy smoke. You don't paint them all for nothing, do you? They told me
you got big money for your work."

"Who's 'they'?" Steve's face showed reluctance. "All right, skip it.
Weiss, and Mallett, and Cooke told you. Yes, it's true that I have
gotten pretty good prices for most of my work. But most of it was what
I'd consider commercial stuff, no matter what fancy name I gave it at
the time. And after a while, when you know you can do better, but still
you don't or don't even try to, it begins to get on your nerves. See
what I mean, Steve? And then suddenly you realize it's too late. Or
almost too late." I put down the rest of the highball, realizing from
the way I talked that I must be slightly drunk, even though I didn't
feel it. "From a thousand to ten thousand has been my usual commission,
depending somewhat on the circumstances. But what the hell did I get out
of it, personally? Once I got as much as twenty-five thousand for a
single portrait. And so what?" I handed him the empty glass. "Fill her
up, will you, Steve? When you come back I'll tell you all about that
time."

I had the pleasant but heavy sensation of being in a slow motion
picture, or as though I were moving under water. It was hot, but I
didn't mind the heat. This afternoon, or tomorrow morning at the latest,
I thought, I should be able to tackle the real body of the canvas.

"Here," said Steve, and handed me a highball. "What were you going to
tell me?"

"Tell you?"

"About a picture you once sold for twenty-five thousand dollars."

"Oh, yes." A view slightly better than three-quarters, I decided, would
offer the most possibilities. "It was a picture of Louis Schneider's
daughter. You know who he is, of course."

"Sure. That crowd never operated up here, but naturally I've heard. You
painted a picture of Schneider's daughter?"

"No less. She was just back from a finishing school in Europe. Schneider
wanted this portrait so much I was practically kidnapped. Money was no
object he said, so I said twenty-five thousand. We agreed on the terms,
half to start with and half on delivery, and I went ahead. Maybe you
read about it at Schneider's trial three or four years ago. The
daughter, her name was Geraldine, came to the sitting with two
bodyguards. I did some pretty interesting sketches of the bodyguards,
too, while I was about it, but naturally they didn't know that, and it's
beside the point anyway. I finally finished the picture, sent it around
to Schneider, and he must have thought it was satisfactory because he
didn't send it back and I learned he'd had it hung in his library. But
he wouldn't come across with the second half of the payment, and he
wouldn't answer my letters. Finally, I managed to see him personally. He
was pretty slick. He pointed out that our contract had not been made
between us, which was the literal truth, it hadn't, but between myself
and a stooge of his whom he called his purchasing agent, from whom he'd
agreed to buy the portrait for twelve and a half thousand, and if I
didn't like it, I could sue him."

"You should've known that rat would chisel on the deal."

"I did know he would try to. So I told him it would take too long to
sue, and I went ahead and beat the ears off him then and there. I had to
poke one of his gorillas, too. Oh, Jesus, it was a mess. That library
looked like a junk dealers' paradise when we got through. Then I took
the picture down off the wall and told him he could have it any time he
paid me twelve thousand five hundred dollars, and in case he didn't pay
me I was going to re-touch it into a nude and hang it over the biggest
bar in New York. I had his check the next day. It turned out to be good,
too."

"You're pretty handy with those mitts of yours, Mr. Bartel."

"Call me, Chris, Steve, and mix up another drink, will you?"

"Too handy, if you ask me, Chris."

"Maybe. I was damn near heavyweight champ of the coast guard, once. And
I would have made the grade, except I happened to be in jail the week of
the finals. By the time I got out, they decided to fire me out of the
service and I wasn't eligible."

"What did they jug you up for, Chris?"

"Nothing serious. You know how it was in those days. If we nabbed a
boatload of hooch, a little of the stuff was turned over for evidence,
but most of it was sold back to the syndicate that was supposed to have
gotten it in the first place, and the money went into a kitty divided
between some of the officers and the crew. Well, to make a long story
short, I drank up too much of the stuff we were supposed to sell, out of
one pinch we made, and the chief petty officer who was in on our racket
got sore and squawked that I'd stolen some of the evidence. But I didn't
much care. I was tired of the service, by then, and wanted to get busy
and start painting. That chief was a heel, but actually, come right down
to it, I guess he did me a favor."

"Here you are, Chris."

It was the cop, with a drink. I must have been talking to myself, while
he'd been mixing it. Or maybe I'd only imagined I'd been talking. Or
perhaps it was part of a dream I might be having. I took the drink and,
in the dream, said, "Thanks, Steve."

"One other point I'd like to clear up, Chris. It's this." The cop
settled back into the chair. "What time was your appointment for tennis
with Mr. Biernbaum?"

"What time?"

"Yes, what time? That morning Nichols got knifed."

It hurt so much to concentrate, trying to remember, I decided it was no
dream, but real. I said, "When he came in, he said he was a little
late."

"I know. He's already taken pains to point that out to me. But what time
was your appointment for, originally?"

"What time?"

"Yes, that night, or morning Nichols got stabbed, and you went out to
play tennis. Before the police got here. Before it became generally
known anyone had been killed."

"Before it was when?"

"Jesus Christ, Chris, pull yourself together. You don't look drunk, but
you certainly sound like it. Think hard. What time did you and Biernbaum
fix it up to play tennis that morning?"

"Quarter after six. A God damn headache. I can't imagine why I ever
agreed."

"Chris, think hard, this is important. It was quarter after six when
Biernbaum called for you. Is that right?"

"If you call that right, you're crazy, but I'd say the idea was all
wrong. Quarter after six, I'm sure that's right."

"How do you know it was a quarter after six? Did you look at a watch, or
a clock, or did Biernbaum tell you it was a quarter after six?"

"I didn't look," I said, after thinking hard. "He said."

"He said it was a quarter after six, and you simply took his word for
it?"

"I said, that's what he said."

"But he said he was late?"

"He was late."

"Then what time was your appointment supposed to be for? What time was
this tennis match supposed to take place? It must have been some time
before a quarter past six. What time?"

"What time?"

"Look here, Mr. Bartel, a murder has been committed, I'm here to
investigate it, and I don't intend to waste my time clowning around with
anyone, drunk or sober." Steve was standing up. He looked sore. "And the
better you co-operate with the state police, the better for yourself and
all concerned."

I found I had put my hands on his shoulders and shoved him back into the
chair.

"Don't get excited, Captain Wessex," I said. "Ask me any question you
want, you'll find me co-operative in the extreme. Nichols had it coming
to him, but that's beside the point, you've got a job to finish. Now,
what can I do to help you? What you need, son of a gun, is a drink.
Clear up your mind, help you to think."

Steve was grinning.

"I don't want a drink. All I want is a simple answer to my question.
What time did you and Biernbaum fix it up between yourselves, the night
before the murder, to meet and play tennis in the morning?"

"Well, why in hell didn't you ask me?" My mind went back to that meeting
outside the door of his studio. _Certainly I play tennis_, I'd said. No,
not quite that. _So you play tennis?_ That was Biernbaum. _Certainly I
do_, that was me. And then something about _Well, if I can borrow your
eyeshade_. Out loud, I said, "Eyeshade."

"Eyeshade? What about it?"

"Don't bother me. I'm getting it." But that was that. Nothing more, not
a thing. There were images and wisps of ideas, but they had might as
well be trying to cross some Chinese Wall. The next thing I got was, _I
wonder if you know why you drink so much, Chris?_ That wasn't Biernbaum,
that was Lucille. It had nothing to do with tennis. And after that a lot
more of the same, but still nothing about tennis. And then I was saying
to Constance Gregg, on the top floor of Demarest Hall, _No one seems to
be able to sleep in this heat. It's an ideal time for writing letters._
And then I'd turned and gone from the writing room, leaving her there,
to walk down the five flights of stairs. "Say, Captain," I said. "By the
way."

"Yes?"

"I don't believe I told you before, but I happened to be on the top
floor of Demarest Hall in the early hours of that morning."

"No, you didn't."

"Well, I was. I just remembered. Damned funny, I hadn't remembered it
before."

"I know. Constance Gregg told me."

"Yes, we had a little talk. But I don't know what time it was."

"Never mind that now. She said you walked up to the writing room, talked
to her, then went downstairs again, after writing a note. Who did you
write to?"

"I don't know."

"Well, right now all I want to know is about that tennis engagement.
What time did you and Biernbaum fix it up to play tennis?"

"I think I'm remembering it. Give me a little time." I put down the last
of the highball, and handed the empty glass to Steve. "Get me another
one, and I'll have the answer." He gave me a sour look, but took the
glass and went out to the kitchenette. _I'm an hour late, but better
late than never. Here I am._ That was Biernbaum, it was early in the
morning, he had a tennis racket in his hand. _You wanted to play tennis
at five o'clock, before breakfast. It's six, but we can have lots of
time_, or words to that effect. When Steve came back with the highball I
took it and said, "I can't remember what time we may have originally
decided on, but when he came in that morning, he said our date was for
five o'clock, and here he was, an hour late, but better late than
never."

"You're sure of this?"

"Positive."

"It was Biernbaum who told you what hour you'd agreed to play at, five
o'clock, and it was Biernbaum who told you what hour it actually was,
six o'clock?"

"That's right."

"But you can't remember whether it was actually six o'clock then, or
what hour you had decided to play at, yourself?"

"Beg your pardon, Steve, what hour was what?"

He looked and sounded exasperated.

"You don't know of your own knowledge either the time you had agreed to
play, or the time Biernbaum arrived. In other words, all you can
remember is what he told you, and you have no personal information on
the subject aside from what he told you?"

"That's right. I couldn't swear to the actual time, in either case, but
I could swear to the hour, in each case, that Biernbaum mentioned on the
morning when he came in and we were supposed to play. Does that answer
all your questions?"

"It answers that question," the cop admitted.

"Why? Has Biernbaum made the grade as a suspect, at last?"

Steve said, sourly, "So you know about that, do you?"

"About what? I only hope I've hung a rope around Biernbaum's neck, is
all, considering what a pest he turned out to be, blabbing God knows
what about me and my personal affairs and my financial earnings. I
merely point out, Steve, that when Biernbaum is hung..."

"We don't hang in this state," said Steve. "They get the chair."

"I was speaking figuratively. When Biernbaum is hung, or broiled as you
point out, the state will execute a man who is innocent of just one
thing in the whole almanac of moral turpitude--murder. Fact is,
Biernbaum isn't strong enough to stick a knife as deeply as Nichols was
spiked."

"I've thought of that. But you never can tell."

"Not that I give a damn one way or the other. Would you pour another
one, Steve, while I put in the last touches of this morning's work,
before I knock off?"

Steve stood up.

"I was just going," he said. "Thanks for answering my questions, and I
hope I didn't prevent you from working."

"Not at all."

"I want you to know I appreciate all you've said."

"A pleasure."

"Mind if I have a drink?"

"Certainly not. Help yourself."

"Thanks. Fact is, I've been under a considerable strain."

"Sure, we all have."

"What I mean is, for reasons of publicity I thought it wouldn't hurt if
I were mentioned, sort of casually, in the newspapers, as a suspect. But
one thing or another came to light, and I saw that it might turn out to
be serious, so I decided against it. Thanks for telling the trooper I
was innocent."

I put down my charcoal and looked around. It was the damndest thing. I
could have sworn I'd been talking to Steve Wessex. But no, it was Nathan
Biernbaum. He was sitting in back of me, with a glass in his hand, and
he looked like a person who has been there for several hours and plans
to stay for several more. No question, it was a dream. In the dream I
said, casually,

"Well, I honestly think you're innocent."

"I am innocent," said Biernbaum, too urgently. I looked around for
Wessex, but he'd simply vanished, as people do in dreams. Just as I'd
begun to grow fond of the guy, too. But no doubt he'd crop up again in
some other one. Biernbaum went on, earnestly, "You needn't have laid it
on so thick about that moral turpitude bologney, and I'm sorry if I said
too much to Captain Wessex about your personal affairs. But he asked me,
you know, and the law is the law."

"That's all right. And stupidity is stupidity. Would you mind mixing me
a drink, old man?" What difference does it make how much you drink, if
it's just a dream? No difference, I'd might as well have twenty or
thirty more. The craziest thing I ever did was when somebody, in a
dream, handed me a certified check for thirty thousand dollars. I wanted
to rent the biggest penthouse on the highest building in the city but
instead of that I deposited the money--also in the dream--in a bank. And
then the bank went broke. I've wondered, ever since, what the rest of
the dream would have been if I'd had myself a penthouse instead of a
nightmare. Biernbaum came back with a glass. I said, "Thanks. Seen
Wessex this morning, yourself?"

He gave me a glassy look.

"Not since five minutes ago, right here in this room, as he was leaving.
Why?"

"Oh, nothing." I sighed, sipped the highball. What the hell, what the
hell. It didn't matter in the least. By the time you've found out,
definitely and finally, whether or not you're playing for keeps, it's
too late to do anything about it. And therefore why not refuse to worry
about it in the first place? If it's real, you're too dumb to know it,
and if it isn't, it doesn't matter. I said, "If it's real, O.K., and if
not, to hell with it."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Nothing."

"I didn't mean to interfere with your work."

"Work? What work?"

Biernbaum tasted his highball and gave me a remote look.

"Why, the--well..."

"You mean my reconditioned mermaid? Or my view of the pastoral valley of
Demarest County, County seat Endor? Or the great flop I am about to
commit? Which?"

Biernbaum finished his highball and stood up. He said, "I think you're
due for a nap."

"I happen to be waiting for my lunch, if it's all the same to you. Do
you mind?"

"Thanks again for telling Captain Wessex what you thought about his
suspicions. Of me, I mean."

"To hell with Captain Wessex."

"I really think you should take a nap, old man. You're a little drunk,
you know, whether you know it or not."

"Did I ask you?"

"Well, O.K. I'll be seeing you."

I said, "I'm afraid so," and then saw that I was alone. I looked with
great care at my wrist watch. It said: 12:48. I glanced out of the
window toward the Hall, but there was no sign of Page. Until he arrived,
it might not be such a bad idea at that, I decided, to take a brief nap.

I had scarcely lain down before Albert was asking me, in his polite
voice, "What will it be, sir? Some cold squab, with potato salad and
iced caviar? Or would you prefer something hot? We have bouillabaise,
and capon, or schnitzel, or shaslik. There's cold borscht, too, of
course, if you'd prefer that."

I said, rubbing my head, "Don't ask me riddles. I want some borscht,
shaslik, and about two quarts of iced coffee."

"Yes, sir. The iced coffee will be two dollars extra."

"No, it won't. You get out of here and bring me some iced coffee before
I break you into two extra pieces."

"I don't know, sir, but I'll try."

When I'd finished the luncheon I felt much better and decided to go
visiting. I hadn't seen much of the other guests at the Hall, although
God knows they had used my studio, dozens of them, for everything but a
badminton court. On the way out, I met Connors, the poet. He said, "I've
been looking for you everywhere, Bartel. I thought you might be at the
Grotto, but you weren't there. I wonder if you'd do me another small
favor."

"What is it?"

"Could you loan me ten bucks?"

"What the hell is this?" I said. "I loaned you ten dollars yesterday."

"I know, but I lost it."

"Well, go look for it."

"Oh, I know where it is, all right. It's in P. C. Cooke's billfold. What
I mean is, I lost it in a game of poker. He won. See?"

I saw. Feeling as though my mouth were full of pickled pigeon-droppings,
I came across. I said, firmly, "All right, but listen. Either you
improve your poker, or your alibis."

"Thanks, guy. If you're looking for Lucille, by the way, you'll find her
in Nichols' studio. The one he had, I mean."

"She's there?"

"Yes. Looking through some of the guy's effects."

"Well, much obliged for telling me." I felt as though there might be
some decency left in humanity, no matter how low. "I was looking for
her, as a matter of fact. Thank you, Connors."

"By the way," he said, "about P. C. Cooke."

"What about him?"

"Well, if they grab the guy at last, and cook him in the chair, what's
the legal status of I.O.U.s made out in his favor? Can his estate
collect, or can I just tell them to go jump?"

"Tell them to go jump, of course. But you're a little ahead of yourself.
He hasn't been convicted yet, nor even accused."

Connors shook his head, gave me a cigarette and a light, and
disappeared. It was very strange. I went on to Walter Nichols' studio,
that is, the one he had occupied in life. It was open, but instead of
Lucille, I found Captain Wessex. He smiled cheerfully and said, "Hello
Chris, come in and make yourself at home. I'm re-checking the personal
possessions of Nichols. Nothing important. But I wanted to see you. A
couple of questions I wanted to ask you."

"Shoot."

"I understand you took a poke at Nichols because he was ribbing you
about a mermaid picture you were painting. Is that right?"

"You asked me that before, and I told you before, and yes, it's
substantially right. Still right."

"Don't be so quick to get sore at these questions, Mr. Bartel, they're
necessary. Would you like a drink?"

I said, "Yes. And I'm not sore."

"You were having Scotch, weren't you? Here you are." I found a drink in
my hand. "But there's another thing I'd like to clear up, Chris. It's
this. What time did you have an appointment to play tennis with Mr.
Biernbaum, on the morning of the murder?"

"At five. But he was an hour late."

"He got there, at your studio, when?"

"At six. We were to play at five, but he arrived at six."

"I see. Anything else?"

"He wanted to borrow an eyeshade. So I loaned him one."

"Anything else?"

"My belt, too. I used it, I don't remember how, exactly, but I did."

"I see. Anything else?"

"Well, it was chilly. So I had to have another drink. Have you got one,
by the way?"

"Certainly."

Almost at once Steve handed me another drink, smiling as he did so, and
I took it. I said, "Where's Lucille? Someone, Connors, Alfred Connors,
you know, the poet--he said she'd be here."

"You'll see her soon," said Wessex.

"Why isn't she here now?"

"Well, you know how it is. Nichols left her a few thousand in insurance
and she has to sign a few papers, and observe a few regulations, and
then the money is hers. You knew that, didn't you?"

"No, I didn't. Except in a general way."

"But naturally you wouldn't care. Would you?"

"No."

"Quite sure?"

"Positive."

"And she never suggested to you, who were in love with her--or so they
say around here at the Hall--that her husband was a menace to her life,
and she believed he had already tried to kill her once or twice, and
would try again?"

I was rubbing at my forehead and my throat. I said,

"Yes. She did say something about that. He had tried to kill her."

"And naturally, Mr. Bartel--do you mind if I don't call you Chris?--you
were most sympathetic."

"What would you be, under the circumstances?"

"Human, I guess. There's nothing new under the sun, you know. Did you
ever read a full account of the Ruth Snyder--Judd Gray case? What's that
knocking? Why don't you answer the door?"

I woke up, soaked with perspiration. I was in my own studio, on the bed.
Someone was knocking at the door. I got to my feet, feeling groggy, my
head spinning with pieces of ideas. I went to the door. It was Captain
Wessex again. Was it for the second time this morning, or the third
time? He said, "Sorry to bother you again, but I believe I dropped my
cigarette case in your studio." I said nothing, and he passed inside. On
the step beside the door was my lunch basket. I picked it up and looked
at the food. Cold consomme, cold cuts and potato salad. I'd thought I'd
already had lunch, but evidently not. Either I'd dreamed I had, or I'd
been thinking about yesterday's. I went back into the studio. "Here it
is," said Wessex cheerfully. "Ordinarily, I wouldn't use one of these,
but it's the wife's idea of a birthday present. What's the matter,
Chris, not feeling well?"

"I feel all right."

"Better take it easy," he said. "You know, that tonic you've been using
isn't made out of water." He moved toward the door, eyeing me
uncertainly. "You aren't sick, are you? If there's anything I can get
you, let me know."

I went over to the easel. There was the canvas, with the outlines of the
self-portrait blocked in. I'd done quite a bit of work this morning, I
saw. And this, at least, was real. Not bad, either. I said, "No thanks.
I don't need anything, and there's nothing you can do."




                                  _12_


                             _ALBERT PAGE_

"There you are, miss," I said. "I'm no bargain, but you won't have no
more trouble with that window rod." I pulled the window shut, and then
opened it again, and tightened the thumbscrew that locked it there.
"See?"

Miss Wright said, "I hope I won't. But tomorrow it's bound to be
something else. What do people think I am, anyway? A self-respecting
hottentot wouldn't live in a studio like this."

God's own nobility, that's what she thinks she is, like all the rest of
them. I said, "If there's anything else goes wrong, just let me know."

"I will, Albert." Not even a thank-you for fixing her bloody window for
her. Not even a glass of good, cold beer. "Who does Mr. Cooke plan to
give Mr. Nichols' studio to, do you know, Albert?"

"That I couldn't say, Miss."

"I wonder if it would do any good to speak to him about it. This is the
worst studio in the entire Hall. Seems a pity somebody can't have the
use of Mr. Nichols' studio."

"I couldn't say about that, Miss."

"Well, perhaps I'll speak to Mr. Cooke, myself, and see if I can arrange
it."

"Yes, Miss." I packed up the oilcan, screwdriver and monkey-wrench.
_Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house._ Not half. Commandment ten
smashed like billy-o. And him not cold in his grave. His ashes, I mean,
not yet settled in his widow's urn. "If anything else goes wrong, just
call on yours truly."

"Thank you, Albert."

I went out. If she'd be good for the usual, even that, at the end of the
season, it would be a pleasant surprise. More likely P. C. C. would hand
me an envelope from Miss Wright, after she'd left in September, and in
it would be a dollar. God's own nobility, that's what they thought they
were, but what were they in fact? Common clay. All the psychology in the
outside world put together is not half as bad as the psychology to be
found here, right here in this temple of fame surrounded by topless
towers of ivory and bottomless moats of shame. Every commandment in the
calendar I've seen broken right here in this Hall. And now this year,
even the Sixth. _Thou shalt not kill._ The pay-off, I call it. As if all
the rest weren't enough.

I went past Mr. Bartel's studio, since it was almost directly in the
path back to the main hall, and he was probably late with his lunch
basket. No sign of it outside the door. I knocked, and heard him say,
"Come in."

He was standing before a big picture he was painting, squinting at the
looking-glass he'd taken from his bathroom, which he was not supposed to
do, and hung up there in front of him. He looked at me as though he'd
never seen me before, and didn't know me from Adam. But _I_ knew _him_,
all right, all right. I said, "Beg your pardon, sir. But I thought
perhaps you'd like to have me save you the trouble of returning your
basket to the Hall."

He pointed with the brush in his hand.

"Fine. There it is."

"Sometimes the guests forget." He didn't say anything, and I picked up
the basket. "Always like to be of service, if I can." He still didn't
say anything. "Although Mr. Cooke, he's a great one for rules and
regulations. He likes to have the guests bring back the baskets by three
P. M. at the latest, so the kitchen won't have to bother with them while
supper's being prepared. A lot of nonsense, if you ask me." All I got
was a sour smile that would have frozen the blood of the devil himself.
Usually, Mr. Bartel could be relied upon for something in the way of
stimulation, if nothing more. But this afternoon he seemed to be in a
touchy mood. "Well, thank you, sir. If I can be of service, glad to.
Good afternoon, sir."

He didn't say anything at all, and I went on my way. There was a
nobleman for you, I don't think. As though I couldn't see right through
him and his deep ways like a window of glass. Broke the Seventh before
he'd been a guest at the Hall hardly long enough to hang up his hat, and
never drew a sober breath from the day he was born. A genius, oh, yes,
they don't fool me. Not that one. Ahead of me I saw Mr. Connors, walking
so slowly that I'd be sure to catch up with him if I went on at my usual
m.p.h. I turned down a footpath that led, by a different route, to the
kitchen of the Hall. Cost me two dollars in touches before I found out
Mr. Connors didn't have a copper in the world. Which two dollars I
hadn't seen yet, and wouldn't, if you ask me, not this side of Kingdom
Come. No use throwing good money after bad.

Passing the next lodge, Fountain, it occurred to me that I hadn't as yet
seriously offered my services to Mr. Dunn. There was a one for you, or I
missed my guess by a mile. Always ordering through the canteen, always
asking for extras and offering to tip well, and always in a pleasant
frame of mind. Many and many's the blood-and-thunder story I'd read by
famous executioners and murderers, with the help of Mr. Dunn. When I'd
dropped Mr. Bartel's basket at the kitchen, and no signs of P. C. C.,
who most likely was up in his own lodgings sleeping off a gluttonous
lunch, I went back to Fountain Lodge and knocked at Mr. Dunn's door. I
heard his typewriter stop, and then he opened the door.

"Yes, Albert?"

"Beg your pardon, sir, I hope I wasn't disturbing you."

I hesitated, but all he said was, "Yes?"

"I thought perhaps you'd forgotten to take your lunch basket back to the
kitchen. Or perhaps it was too much trouble. If I could be of service,
I'd be glad to do it for you."

"I took it back an hour ago," he said, and started to close the door.

I like that for you. Not even a thank-you. Altogether too high and
mighty, if you ask me. And looking, all the time, as if butter wouldn't
melt in his mouth. I said, "Then that's all right, sir. I merely thought
perhaps I could do you a small favor. But what I wanted to ask you, Mr.
Dunn, was about that arrangement we made concerning seating you. At
breakfast and for supper."

"Seating me?" He was the wise one, acting so surprised and all that. As
if he didn't know--plenty. "What do you mean?"

I dropped my voice to a more confidential pitch. Never can tell, at the
Hall, who might be listening. Old P. C. C., he's got ears stuck out all
over him like sprouts on a potato.

"I mean, sir, I didn't mention to Captain Wessex that you especially
requested me, on the night before he was murdered, sir, I was to see to
it that you and he was never put together again at the same table.
Peculiar, I thought at the time. But I didn't say nothing about it, sir.
And won't, if you say the word. I just thought perhaps you ought to
know."

If ever I saw homicide, it was in that face. I thought for a minute the
gentleman might even be contemplating physical violence. But after a
while, when he seemed to be thinking it over, he stepped aside and said,
"Come in. Let's talk this over."

So help me, I was almost afraid to go through that door. Knowing what I
knew about this particular one, for all his high-and-mighty airs and
pleasant smiles and handsome offers and all, for a minute I thought I'd
better think twice and think the better of it. But I'd seen them come
and go at the Hall before, and I wasn't the one to back down, neither
now nor ever. I came in. Mr. Dunn slammed the door after me, and said,
"All right. What's your proposition?"

"Proposition, sir?"

"You wouldn't be here if you didn't know more than you've told me. What
else do you know, or think you know, and how much do you want to keep
your mouth shut?"

There was no use beating around the bush. Mr. Dunn looked as though he
was a character that meant business. Just the same as I could have sworn
he'd meant business with Mr. Nichols. And maybe I would, too, even if
they'd acquit him afterwards, as might easily happen. Only, why should
I? Why go to all that trouble for nothing? When he might, just for
revenge, make a lot of trouble for me, considering it would only be my
testimony against his. I think he'd be too smart for that, though. He'd
see there was nothing in that for either of us. He'd look at it the same
as I do. The way I feel, why go to the trouble of leading with my chin
in the first place, duty or no duty? Let the law take care of itself,
what I say. A man's got to look out for his own self. I said, "I've got
no proposition to make, as you call it. I wanted it understood, strictly
between us, sir, about that seating matter. I didn't mention it to
Captain Wessex, and I have no intention of saying anything about it, if
that's the way you want it. My attitude in such a case would be, if you
were to tell him, yourself, about what you told me, where would that put
me with Captain Wessex? In a fine fix, that's where I'd be." A wonderful
thing, words. If a man's quick-witted, like, and puts enough of them
together fast enough, and mixes them up a little, he's got the other
fellow in the hollow of his hand. "Captain Wessex, he'd say to me, 'See
here, Albert Page, why didn't you tell me Mr. Dunn especially requested
you never to seat him next to Mr. Nichols, not at the same table, even?
Why didn't you speak up?' he'd say. 'Might not seem important to you,
but you never can tell, might be you were holding back important
evidence.' So that's why I'd better speak to you about it, I thought.
Just to make sure our stories came out of the same cloth."

"I see," said Mr. Dunn, but looking down his nose to do it. "Is that
all?"

I sort of studied him for a second. He didn't look the dangerous type.
Not now, knowing who had the upper hand in this proposition, as he
called it. I decided to lay my cards on the table.

"Then there's the matter of the knife."

"Yes, Albert?"

"I know you took it for perfectly harmless private reasons of your own,
sir. But there it is. You did take it, and I saw you take it. That very
night, when the kitchen was closed. Or really, that morning. At two
o'clock."

"Well?"

"Well, that's it, Mr. Dunn. I didn't know what Captain Wessex might make
of such a thing, if he knew. So I thought to myself, of course Mr. Dunn
has some perfectly legitimate excuse why he wanted a carving knife out
of the kitchen at that particular hour, and I'd better speak to him
first before I mentioned it to anyone else. I mean purely as a personal
favor to you."

"And?"

"And, sir?"

A graven image, that was the way his face looked. And deep. Whatever
went on in the mental steps he was taking, he was doing his best not to
show it. But he knew it was no good trying that upstage stuff on your
humble servant. He said, at last, quietly, "I want to show you
something, Albert. Some photographs I was able to get through police
records made in some of the cases I wrote up as articles and stories.
Ever read any of them?"

"I have that. Made my hair stand on end, some of them. I like to read a
bit of blood-and-thunder, when I read anything at all. Helps me to go to
sleep."

"Does it?"

"_Murder Is a Business_, there's one of yours I liked." He had opened
the drawer of a filing cabinet he'd brought with him to the Hall, and
was going through a lot of papers in it, taking some of them out. "Then
there was another one of yours, _Death Insurance_, I think you called
it. I'll never forget that. Most entertaining, that was. I often
wondered, sir, how you managed to meet so many famous criminals, and how
you get them to tell you their stories, if they aren't mainly moonshine,
as I expect they are."

He said, giving me a black look, "They aren't moonshine. Some of them I
met because they were in jail and needed to raise money for their
defense, and the only way they could do it was through syndicating the
stories of their lives, and no one else wrote them as successfully as I
did. Others I met because it was known I never betrayed a criminal's
confidence in such a way that details about his actions could be used as
courtroom evidence against him. Still others confided their peccadilloes
to me, Albert, because they had to. That is, it was better to have me as
a friend than as an enemy. Understand?

"Not exactly, but I catch the drift, sir."

"Of the dozen or so killers whose lives I wrote up, those still living
as well as those dead, all of them regarded themselves as friends of
mine. This applies, too, to the hundreds of minor gunmen and gangsters,
most of them still alive and at liberty, who figured in one way or
another in these stories, but whose actual identities I concealed.
They're all obligated to me, and none of them would hesitate to do a
favor for me if I should ask for one."

"Not exactly a pleasant circle of friends, if you ask me, sir. But then,
everyone to his taste, as the old lady said when she..."

"Exactly. Not pleasant, no. Do you remember the New York vice-probe,
Albert?"

"In a way, yes. They got them, didn't they? Put them all away about ten
years ago."

"Some of them, but not all of them. Want to see a picture of the state's
principal witness against the ring? Here he is, six months after the
trial."

I took the photo he handed me and looked at it, and then turned it
sideways and upside down, but it didn't make sense. He turned it around
the way I had it in the first place and said, "This way. Look at it
carefully."

I looked at it close and what I saw was enough to turn a man's stomach.
It was the back seat of an automobile that had caught on fire, most
likely. The fellow that was lying there had part of a face, all right,
but it was burned to a crisp and all shriveled like overdone bacon.

"Blimey, he certainly met with an accident, that one did."

"Look more closely, you'll see that he'd been bound with wire. See? I'm
afraid that was no accident. Did you ever hear of a small-time gang
leader in Buffalo named Vince Truri? You wouldn't have, I suppose. He
got picked up and indicted during a minor reform wave, decided to talk,
and gave evidence before the grand jury against some of the city's
really bigshot racket guys. He made it so hot for them they had to go
out of business for a year or two. Here's a photograph of Truri, the
last time he made a public appearance."

It was a picture of a room somewhere with what looked like a grease-spot
on the floor. But I saw the grease-spot had arms and a head.

"That's what a sawed-off shotgun does at close range," Mr. Dunn
explained.

"Who did it?" I asked.

Mr. Dunn looked at me, and almost smiled.

"And here's another one," he went on, just as if I hadn't said anything.
"A beauty. It's generally supposed he was a minor policy maker in New
York who'd agreed to play ball with the D. A.'s office, in a drive
against the bigger bankers. He testified--if this is him--in two trials,
and then just disappeared. It isn't very often that they turn up again
after they've been dropped into the bay, but this fellow was dredged up
by accident." He showed me the thing. There wasn't much to the top of it
except rags and meat. "That's cement around his feet," explained Mr.
Dunn. "He must have been in the water about a month before they found
him."

I put the photograph away.

"Didn't they ever catch the ones who did it, sir?"

Mr. Dunn almost laughed.

"No. I imagine that right now, at this minute, they're having an
argument about the Yanks or the Dodgers in the back room of a
neighborhood saloon on Forty-eighth street. I could reach a couple of
them by long-distance phone inside of five minutes, I imagine." I didn't
say anything, and Mr. Dunn followed me to the door. "And I'll tell you
something else, Albert. As long as you already know so much about me,
I'll tell you something more."

"Me, sir? I don't know a thing about you."

"It was I who shoved that knife through Mr. Nichols' back. Perhaps you
thought I wanted that knife to slice some sandwiches, or maybe do a
little whittling in my spare time?"

"Yes, sir. I knew it was quite harmless."

"Well, you're wrong. I knocked him off. Does that satisfy your
curiosity?"

Sweat like ice broke out all over me. At the door, I gave him a
perfectly friendly grin and said, "You're joking, sir."

"If I am, then I have the damndest sense of humor you ever saw."

"What I mean, Mr. Dunn, it's just another one of those blood-curdlers
you're always doing for the magazines."

Standing there, he looked and sounded about as friendly as a butcher's
hacksaw going through a side of beef. He said, "I thought I explained I
don't write any blood-curdlers, as you call them. I write the truth."

This fellow was so deep and blackhearted, even if he told the truth he'd
still be lying. And what's more, be able to prove it.

"Yes, sir, of course." But I saw where that led to. "I mean, no, sir."

"Well, which?"

"I mean, with me mum's the word. Your business is nobody's business but
your own. If you want to joke, sir, that's entirely your privilege. I
never saw anything, and I never heard anything."

"Oh, but you have heard something, and you have seen something."

It was a nightmare.

"Yes, sir. But, well..."

"Yes?"

"I mean, sir, what are you going to do?"

"Do? I plan to work for the rest of the afternoon. Then I expect to make
a few long-distance phone calls. And after that I'll go to dinner."




                                  _13_


                           _LUCILLE NICHOLS_

It is strange, a little frightening, but still more sad, how clearly I
have been hearing Walter's voice in these last few days since he died.
Not cynically rasping, or bellowing with that contemptuous laugh of his,
but as he was years ago. He had been human once, something I had
completely forgotten. And now the memory keeps coming back, again and
again, always more vividly. There can certainly be happier
relationships, even closer ones than those between a husband and a wife,
but not many that remain so stubbornly alive in spite of all reason. In
life, Walter would have said, _Disembodied and disorganized sentiment is
the cheapest luxury on earth._ Now, however, he said, _My God, I loved
you, Lucille_, and I gave an involuntary jump.

It was that idiot Albert, dropping and shattering another glass on the
kitchenette floor. I went out there. He was hastily sweeping up the
fragments, this time of a shattered cocktail glass.

He said, rather pathetically, "I'm sorry, ma'm."

"What's gotten into you, Albert? I never saw you so clumsy before. You
aren't drunk, are you?"

"No, ma'm, not a drop all day. It must be my nerves, that's all. A touch
of the willies."

"Well, I wish you wouldn't take it out on my glassware. It was nice of
you to offer to give the kitchenette a thorough going over, but perhaps
you'd better do it some other time."

He deposited the last of the pieces in the garbage pail, and put down
the brush and the dustpan, but showed no sign that he intended to leave.
He'd turned up at the studio at six o'clock, looking rather like a lost
dog, and practically pleaded to be allowed to do a few odd jobs. The
maids habitually skimped on the kitchenette so badly that I'd set him to
work there.

"Perhaps," he said, "you'd like your icebox thorough-cleaned?"

"It doesn't need it. You'll have to be serving at the Hall in another
hour or so, why don't you just go and rest until then? I should think
your day is long enough as it is, without extra work."

"It's no trouble, Mrs. Nichols. I like to keep my thoughts occupied."

Albert was a hard worker, but I'd never known him to be quite so
zealously tireless.

"Is anything the matter, Albert? If there is, and I can help you, I'll
be glad to do what I can."

"I know that, ma'm. You're regular, Mrs. Nichols, if I might say so. No
one else here I'd really trust. Not but what they'd be all right. What I
mean is, I've had you and your husband here at the Hall for so many
seasons, now, I couldn't recall how many. And it was always O.K."

"I--we always felt the same way, Albert. What's worrying you?"

He looked thoroughly miserable as he appeared to be considering the
question.

"It's this," he said, at last. "I'm thinking about my last will and
testimony."

"Why, Albert, you shouldn't even think about that. You're too young to
be worrying about a last will and testament."

"Last will, ma'm, _and_ last testimony," he said, with that odd cockney
obliqueness. "Two different things, altogether. Yes, I'm young, but not
too young to be cut down in my prime." He lowered his voice. "It's about
the tragedy, Mrs. Nichols. They say that death comes in threes. Then why
not murder in threes?"

"Come now, Albert," I said, sharply, "you really do know better than
that, don't you?"

"Yes, ma'm. But not if you're unlucky enough to know what I happen to
know." He hesitated, looking at me, caution and intolerable wisdom
written all over his face. "I mean, if you happen to know who did it.
What I want to say, Mrs. Nichols, if I should turn up missing one of
these days, or what-have-you, look for a ghost."

"What on earth are you talking about? If you have any definite
information about the murder of my husband, Albert, you'll have to speak
up."

"No, ma'm. That wouldn't do."

"You could tell me."

"It's nothing I could prove, ma'm."

"Then you ought to tell Captain Wessex."

"Worse. In fact, out of the question. No, I've thought and thought, and
that's the best I can do. If I should happen to cop it, just remember
what I said, look for the ghost."

"Look for the ghost? I don't understand."

"No, ma'm, but there are those who will. Otherwise, if nothing should
happen, just forget it, and greatly oblige yours truly."

He eyed me stubbornly, and I realized Albert had, temporarily at least,
resolved to his own satisfaction whatever was troubling him, and that
nothing more could be gotten out of him. If, indeed, anything had, in
his few cryptic remarks.

I said, "All right, Albert. I'll remember."

"And you'll remember, also, to forget, in case I should turn out to be
talking moonshine? A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

"Good heavens, Albert, you aren't threatening me, or something, are
you?"

He was genuinely surprised.

"You, ma'm? Never, God strike me. I had reference to him who thinks he
may be threatening me, because of a little knowledge I may have."

"Well," I said, and couldn't help smiling, "now that we share a little
of this dangerous and dubious knowledge, we're partners, aren't we, and
we'll have to look out for each other?"

"Yes, ma'm," said Albert, missing the point. "I knew you'd be a sport
and I could trust you." He seemed, now, to have lost all interest in
extra-curricular housecleaning. "I expect you're right, I'd might as
well have some rest before the evening crush."

He went gloomily away, and I returned to my correspondence, comprised in
the main of letters of condolence from mine and Walter's friends.
Fortunately, in the will Walter had specifically requested that there be
no funeral ceremony, other than the minimum and meager rites connected
with prompt cremation, which had duly taken place in Endor. Fortunately,
I think, for I could not have endured the senseless hypocrisy of long
drawn-out ceremonies and an elaborate funeral. Even the correspondence
seemed, no matter how sincere, intolerably ironic, and my replies a
pointlessly formal and empty gesture. The sober truth was that Walter,
in spite of unusual accomplishments, a certain amount of intellectual
brilliance and a charming personality when he chose to exercise it upon
others--usually for an ulterior motive--had nevertheless turned a whole
host of friends and opportunities into a literal waste. He could not
have done more damage to his own life if he had taken a machine-gun in
one hand and a torch in the other. And why? Simply because he could not
face reality. The world had to match his sentimental dream of what the
world should be--something conceived by Galsworthy, as nearly as I could
understand it--or he would pull it all down and perish himself in the
ruins. And the less the world matched this dream of his, the more bitter
and finally the more vicious he became. And yet his presence, which
seemed to come and go, obstinately showed other characteristics that
also had been his. Here, I reread a letter from a friend of Walter's
since they had been in college together. I had met the man only once--he
hadn't seemed quite possible, to me, as only a person from the past can
seem--and it must be years since Walter had last seen him. It was plain
this man had the most extraordinary conception of Walter; one would
think, from the letter, that neither of them had ever really graduated.

I tied my poor brain into a bowknot, undid the knot and cut a few
paper-dolls out of it, trying to think of a suitable reply to make this
man that would not spoil the picture he had of this boyish Walter who
had never, really, existed. But it would have been beyond my powers.
Instead, I dashed off something as stereotyped as a rent receipt. If it
lacked the intimate touch, neither would it hurt the ghostly image this
friend had of Walter. It occurred to me that Walter's ghost would walk
for quite some time in the minds of quite a number of people, and then I
thought, perversely, of Albert's ghost. He could not actually have meant
Walter? He could not have meant that Walter, himself, had somehow
contrived his own murder--for heaven alone could guess what motive?
There was a certain amount of plausibility in this, I had to admit. But
it was, of course, impossible. And, familiar as I was with a wide streak
of daffiness in Albert--almost as wide as P. C. C.'s for that matter--I
did not think it possible his imagination could be as vivid as all that,
or his mind so weak. No, some other notion, not altogether lunatic but
not very well balanced, either, must have been disturbing him. The
ghost. A ghost. Any ghost? If there were really anything in it, and
Albert actually became a casualty, I'd never forgive myself for having
missed the clue.

I started to read another letter, this one from one of Walter's
co-editors on _The New Review_, when the doorbell rang. I'd been doing
these floral wreaths all afternoon, and felt glad of the interruption.
It was Chris. He said, very earnestly,

"I don't know whether I should be here. But here I am."

"Why shouldn't you be, Chris?" Except for a few quick and strained
exchanges of words, we hadn't been alone together since that evening.
"Come in."

"Are you sure it will be all right?"

"Of course. Why not?"

"Oh, the conventions and all that."

"Don't be stupid. I've wanted to see you so badly. Now, of all times.
But this, of all times, is the time you decided to stay away."

He came in, very tall and straight, somehow aloof, like something wild
that has become, temporarily, completely civilized. I closed the door.
Rather tentatively, he bent and lowered himself to the lounge before my
writing desk. Feeling like Act I out of Pinero, I took the other end of
it.

"Letters?" he said, glancing at the desk.

"Yes. By the scores." He offered me a cigarette and I said, "No,
thanks."

A second went by, marching slowly with fixed bayonets and even steps,
followed by another, this one with flags and bugles and strewn flowers,
and then another moment passed with muffled drums beating a dirge as the
coffin came slowly into sight and then disappeared, followed by an
interval when there was nothing. Chris looked at me.

"I didn't know," he said, "how you would feel."

"I feel the same."

I tried to look a question as I said it, but Chris, staring at me and
reaching absently for matches, missed the cue.

"It must have been tough."

"Yes. In a way, it still is. I feel sorry for Walter. But I had made up
my mind about ourselves long ago. And feeling sorry for him, or what I'd
decided to do, can't do him any good now, and it can't do anything but
harm to me."

Chris lit his cigarette.

"That's logical," he said, blowing out the match. He leaned forward,
dropping the burned match in an ash tray on the desk. His face, in
complete repose, had the tranquillity of moonlight on a tropical
jungle--everything peaceful on the surface, but who could guess what raw
hunger and sudden rape went on beneath that innocent canopy of cool
moonlight and motionless trees? "It's logical for you to feel sorry for
him, because he provided for you while he was alive, allowed you
complete freedom, and took care of you when he died." I nodded. He was,
really, almost as bad as Walter when it came to delivering learned
lectures. Or any man, for that matter. "Naturally, though, you do have
your own life to live." I smiled at him. "He had his own life to live,
for that matter, and I don't imagine he ever let you interfere with it.
Did he?"

"Walter?" I was genuinely amused at the question. "He was the most
self-centered person I ever knew. I've never known him to give a thought
to anyone but himself."

"Well, that's what I mean. It evens up, you see, and there is no reason
why you should reproach yourself, is there?"

I said, still smiling, "I knew you'd understand, Chris. And that's
exactly what I did feel, and just the way I did reason it out. I suppose
most people would have thought and felt about as I did, but they'd never
forgive it, in someone else. Thank you for understanding. I can't tell
you, Chris, how much that really means." He smiled, and the next moment
went by like a regiment of school children out for a picnic. "But I am
sorry, really sorry, you got mixed up in a murder case through me. It
must have been tough for you, too."

He blew a perfect smoke ring.

"I got mixed up," he grumbled, half to himself, "in my adolescent
dreams."

"You mean that football dance at Schuyler Grove?" He looked at me with
what appeared to be acquiescence. "No, but I am sorry, Chris, you came
back into my life just now, when this had to happen. I never before," I
said, and looked at him straight, "involved any lover of mine with the
state police, in a murder case. It had to be you, evidently."

He said, "It doesn't matter. Nothing else does, right now, but this."

Love always seems so unimportant and overrated, until you actually have
it again. When Chris held me in his arms, when I felt his lips, which I
had almost forgotten, and his hands searched for me, the wave after wave
that went through and over me was like something that happened in an
altogether different life, a life that was always there in the
background, asleep, but ready to wake and wrap the ordinary life in
those tides of endless fire and burn it to nothingness.

"Chris, this will all be over some time."

"Some time, yes."

"I mean the investigation. All the talk, and trouble that put barriers
between us. There's bound to be a tomorrow for us."

"Tomorrow?"

"I don't mean tomorrow morning, or the next morning. But some morning,
some tomorrow."

"Yes."

"And then it will be altogether changed. Won't it?"

"Altogether."

"There will never have been two people as happy as that since the world
began. Will there, Chris?"

"What people? There are no other people."

"That's right. No one has had this, before. Have they, Chris? My God,
don't do that, someone might--and besides, supper."

"Tomorrow is a long way off."

"You barbarian."

"You fallen angel."

"Oh, Chris. Don't joke."

"All right. Everything's all right."

"Am I nice, Chris?"

"Oh, God."

"Chris, Chris, Chris, Chris."

"Sugar and spice, that's what they always said."

"Chris."

The waves that had been waves were not waves any more, but one
continuous wave. The seconds that had gone so slowly were an avalanche.
Somewhere, far out in space and far away in time, I had been sitting
before a writing desk, answering the letters of strangers. It isn't what
the world should be, but what it is, and can be. Can be, what it can be.
Something to remember forever. Forever, and over and over. Chris said,
"You'll be at the Hall tonight?"

I said, "I think so. I didn't want to have dinner there before, but
tonight I believe I'd might as well."

"Fine. Then I'll see you there."

After I'd kissed him and he'd gone and, figuratively, I'd sunned myself
on the wide beach where the tide had gone out and I was alone again, but
not at all alone like before, and then the sun went down, slowly, and
the stars came out, and a brisk wind blew up, after a while it was
something like the other life once more, the ordinary one. I showered,
and started to dress. I wanted, really, to wear something crimson red.
But I felt too lazy. Instead, I chose a simple dark blue travel affair,
so blue that in electric light it might be considered almost black.
Chris, I suspected, had far more respect for customs and taboos than I
did, and why offend his sensibilities?

It was exactly eight o'clock when I reached the Hall, and entered the
dining room. Nearly everyone else had already arrived. Seeing all of
them again, like this, as I hadn't since Walter's death, I wondered
again as I had so many times before which of them, for it must surely be
one of them, had committed the crime. It was a thing I wondered about
with interest rather than passion. Those who had hated Walter had reason
to do so. But to go beyond hate and translate the impulse into the act
of murder, that could be done only by a person, one person among them,
singularly bold, skillful, and brutal. It seemed that such a character
would, inevitably, make itself somehow self-evident. And yet it wasn't
self-evident. Not one among them outwardly fitted the description.

At my table were John Lawrence, Constance Gregg, Henry Mallett, Harry
Dunn, Captain Wessex, Claudia Attelio and Harold Janiston. The men stood
up, inarticulately respectful and sympathetic. Captain Wessex drew out
my chair. Mr. Dunn moved it to the table as I sat down. Claudia Attelio
said, "I think it's wonderful, Mrs. Nichols, the way you've born up
under your ordeal."

"Thank you."

There was an embarrassed pause after the stupid remark, during which
Albert brought my bouillon. I noticed that he served me, ineptly, which
was not like him, from my right, over Captain Wessex' shoulder. From the
table in back of me I heard Mr. Biernbaum say, wearily, "At any rate,
Owen, I won't have to read your book when it's published. You've already
told me so much about it I feel as though I'd written it myself."

"Still fighting the good old glamorous Civil War, aren't you?" That was
Mr. Owen's voice. "But not doing much of anything about the wars of
today. What's the matter, too hot for you?"

"...the sort of a fellow, you ask me, who'd stick a knife in the back
of his own mother if it would get him a good review."

Captain Wessex looked up and identified the last speaker, with something
like lively interest that promptly died, when he ascertained the voice
had been that of Mr. Connors.

"Well," said Mr. Lawrence, to Constance Gregg, "Susan is a most
interesting type. But after all, not many men are interested in types as
types. No matter how gorgeous, as she certainly is. See what I mean?"

"I wouldn't know much about that. Only very sophisticated people would,
I imagine. And I suppose you are. You've certainly traveled, if that
makes for sophistication."

"Well, of course it doesn't, Constance. But I have traveled, yes. With
my European trips, the total must run above half a million miles. All
told. In the States alone, I'd say a quarter of a million miles."

"Really? That much?"

"At least ten thousand miles with that harpsichord of mine. At a cost of
ten cents a mile for the harpsichord alone."

"Oh, really?"

"And don't forget the cost of crating and uncrating it," said Captain
Wessex, unexpectedly, with surprising acerbity.

"Beg your pardon?" said Mr. Lawrence, blankly.

"You forgot a phrase. I like your speech so well I hate to have you omit
any of it."

"Speech?" said Mr. Lawrence. "I wasn't aware of making any speech."

"Don't mind Captain Wessex," said Miss Gregg. "He's decided he can be as
temperamental as anyone else. You were saying? About your travels?"

Which of them, I wondered, as the conversation went on around me. John
Lawrence? Of course not. Harold Janiston? Impossible. Mr. Connors, whose
favorite metaphor was, apparently, something about a knife in somebody
else's back? Out of the question. Nathan Biernbaum, who'd always had a
lot of interest in me, and had always hated Walter? Not likely. Henry
Mallett said, "I found an absolutely gorgeous spot. I don't think it has
ever been visited, except by the family of farmers who've been there
from before the revolutionary war, since the Indians who used to camp
there. Marvelous maples, and a perfectly scrumptious brook. Absolutely
primitive and virginal. I sketched there all afternoon, and I'm going
back there tomorrow."

Harold Janiston said, "Yes, I know the place well. The crowd from
Newport ran it into the ground, the Greenwich Villagers turned it into a
Coney Island, and the left-wingers wrecked it completely. Johnson's
Grove, you mean?"

"Well, yes."

"Used to be beautiful. Too bad."

"Don't you find that sort of work fascinating?" This was Claudia Attelio
speaking to Mr. Dunn. "I mean, interviewing all those different types of
people?"

"Yes, very. At first. Now, though, they rather bore me."

And then from the table in front of me, where Chris sat, I heard Miss
Pratt, in a voice rather muted, for her, "Yes, it's fortunate he took
care of her. The insurance will be considerable, I understand."

"...married him only for his money, in the first place." That was the
vitriolic Edith Wright. "That, and the chance to steal his brilliant
ideas. The same sort of people who killed Keats, and Katherine
Mansfield, and Shelley..."

It didn't bother me. Much. Whenever there is an untimely death, there
are fifty people with fifty axes to grind who will give you fifty
different reasons why the deceased was the victim of fifty different
enemies.

"But it must give you a sort of odd feeling, Mr. Dunn." That was Claudia
Attelio. "After a while, I mean."

"How so?"

"Why, when you've ghost-written the biographies of so many other people,
you must begin to wonder who you are, yourself. I should think a
ghost-writer would begin to have a kind of a ghostly feeling that he was
a ghost, more or less, himself."

Albert, removing plates that had held the entree, dropped one, and I
laid down my salad fork.

"Oh, not at all, Miss Attelio. I assure you I feel perfectly normal,
like anyone else. It's just rather dull, that's all." Mr. Dunn stood up,
looked at me as I rose. "Not leaving without dessert are you, Mrs.
Nichols?"

"Yes. I--yes. A headache."

"I'm sorry."

Somehow I was out of the dining room and out in the quadrangle. And then
back in my studio. I switched on the radio and then I mixed myself a rye
highball. It couldn't be, of course. But that was, after all, a logical
answer to Albert's cryptic talk about a ghost. But why should it be Mr.
Harry Dunn? No reason. He had absolutely no motive. Nothing against
Walter, and nothing to gain by his death. It was crazy.

I made another highball, and decided I would have to compel Albert to
speak to Captain Wessex tomorrow, in full. I should never have allowed
him to leave this afternoon without divulging the rest of his
half-truths, half-ideas, and half-hints. I should lay the whole matter
before Captain Wessex myself, I thought. Or before Cooke.

Or before Chris. Deductive reasoning would not be his strong point in a
situation like this, but he would never be at a loss for a course of
action, his strongest point. Or speak to Harold Janiston about it. He
and Walter had been no worse than friendly enemies. Or talk it over with
Nathan Biernbaum who was, after all, intelligent. Or even go directly to
Mr. Dunn himself.

I finished the second highball and felt much better and was debating
whether to have another one or to go to bed when there was a knock at
the door. I opened it. I said, rather breathlessly,

"You. I was just thinking about you."

"I don't doubt it."

"Come in. I want to talk about something that's just happened. It might
be trivial. Or it might be important."

"I don't want to talk." He was already in, and the door was closed. "The
time for talking has gone by, a long time ago."

I read my death in his eyes. As I looked into them I knew that this was
the last thing I would ever see on this earth. I tried to scream, to
protest, to explain, to postpone the moment that would be my last. But
his hand over my mouth shut off all sound. I knew that he would get away
with this one, as he had with the other one. But why? There was no
reason. Bewildered, I watched the knife.




                                  _14_


                          _CHRISTOPHER BARTEL_

The canvas now showed both the self-portrait, and the canvas itself on
which the artist worked, and within the image of the canvas there was,
of course, a secondary image of the artist, the canvas, and again the
mirror. One of those pictures that, theoretically, repeat to infinity.
Not a bad idea, I thought, and it was working out rather well.

I'd gotten out of bed at six o'clock this morning and I felt fine. The
light was very good. Breakfast had been a tumbler of bourbon. My head
had never been clearer. In another three or four hours I should be
finished with this, by the grace of fast work and intense concentration.
Regulation breakfast at ten o'clock in the dining room. There wasn't
much time left.

I was so absorbed in the work I was hardly aware of it when Steve Wessex
came in. But at any rate, there he was, and I heard him saying, "I got
up early, and I happened to hear you moving around when I went past the
studio. So I thought I'd stop for a minute or two. If you don't mind."
The real problem now was to get real balance between the first, or life
image, and the second, or reflected image. I debated whether to have
also a second life image, really a third portrait, on the image of the
canvas, but abandoned the idea. A sound balance between the first and
second images would be enough. Highlight or shadow would end the series
of pictures-within-pictures at this point and suggest the rest.
"Certainly seem to be getting ahead with it. I wouldn't recognize it for
the same picture I saw before." A balance of color, mass, and general
outline. "Reminds me of the ads you see for breakfast cereals and silver
polish."

I looked around.

"Another gag like that, and I'll toss you out on your ear."

"I'm not trying to kid you, Chris."

"I'm not trying to kid you, either."

"I meant..."

"I know what you meant."

"I think it's great stuff. You got something there. Gives you a creepy
feeling. Holy mackerel, the guy in the little picture is the same as the
guy in the big picture, but it isn't the same guy at all. It's the same
face all right, but he looks like a different guy."

"Yes?" This was more to the point. "Different in what way?"

"Well, the big guy there looks, well."

"Well?"

"You won't get sore?"

"I won't. Just this once."

"Well, I tell you this, Chris. He don't look very much like you. A
little, but not much."

"Yes? How does he look?"

"Like one tough baby, see what I mean? In fact, a mean bastard, if I
ever saw one. Boy, he could be booked for his looks alone."

"Yes? And the other one?"

"Well, the other one, the little guy in the mirror, that's different.
But to tell you the truth, he doesn't look like you, either. He looks
too good to be true."

"He is too good to be true."

"Well, I don't get it. What do those two guys represent, anyway? Who are
they?"

"Hearts," I said, "and Flowers."

"All right, all right. But I thought you told me you were painting a
self-portrait. If so, it seems to me they both ought to look alike, and
they both ought to look like you."

"Why me? I'm painting a picture, that's all. Just a picture. And when
this is stored away in an attic somewhere, or hung up in the library of
a wealthy collector, or nailed over the ceiling in some one's bedroom to
keep out the rain, or placed before the public in the Metropolitan, I'm
not going to be there, standing around so that people can check up on
whether or not this looks like me."

"I suppose not," said Steve. "All right, I'm dumb."

"Not at all. Without half trying you've already got a glimmering of the
truth that most people never dream about--that a picture is a picture,
and life is life."

"Sounds easy. But I think I'll stick to the cops. Unless they pass a law
that we have to graduate from an art school." He watched me at work for
a while, and then said, "What's your honest-to-God opinion of Walter
Nichols?"

I poured myself another glass of bourbon.

"As I told you, it was a pleasure to sock the guy."

"Yeah, I know you told me. But you didn't really know the guy, did you?"

"No."

"In fact, you never had more than about five minutes conversation with
him, all told, did you?"

"I wouldn't say that. But it's true, I'd never known him before he
showed up at breakfast, that morning. At the same time--it's curious you
should ask--I've been thinking about it, since then, and I've reached
the conclusion that my first impression of Nichols was probably wrong.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he should prove to have been not as
big a heel as most people thought he was. Does that help you any?"

"No. But you think, if I get you, he was O.K.?"

"Yes, probably."

"It's the damnedest thing in the whole case. That fellow."

"Well, I had one idea about him to begin with. But that fight was just
an accident, I realize now. And I've revised my opinion of him.
Completely."

"I don't mean that. I mean, for instance, you were probably right in the
first place. But he was a screw-ball, if there ever was one."

"What do you mean, I was probably right?"

"Well, we know, for instance, the guy made at least two attempts to rub
out that wife of his. We've checked the facts, there. And we have a
strong hunch he was getting ready to try again. He was simply waiting
for the right time and place."

I drank off the rest of the bourbon and poured some more.

"Actually?"

"We think so. Holy mackerel, first you drank breakfast, what're you
drinking now, lunch?"

"It's the light. Relaxes the certain amount of eye-strain that goes with
this sort of work."

Steve watched me pick up the brush again, found a cigarette, lit it,
exhaled, and said, rather reflectively,

"That's another thing I want to ask you about. How are your eyes?"

"They're fine. Why?"

"Your friends don't seem to think so." He waited for me to hook myself,
but I passed up the bait. "In fact, the report we have from some of the
magazines you used to do covers for is that they haven't taken any of
your illustrations for nearly a year now. Bad drawing and coloring, they
say. They think your eyes must have been injured in an automobile
accident they say you had a couple of years ago." There was another long
wait. Steve added, still fishing. "Must be tough to have trouble with
your eyes, especially for a painter. Particularly if he was used to
being in the chips, and then couldn't turn out the same grade of stuff
any more, nobody would buy his illustrations, and all he could see ahead
of him was peddling pencils in a tin cup." He exhaled slowly. "What
d'you say?"

"I say I'm getting hungry. What time is it?"

"Nine o'clock. Going to breakfast?"

"Not yet."

Steve tamped out his cigarette and stood up.

"Don't think I'm butting into your business just for the fun of it. We
have to know everything there is to know about everyone here. That's
just routine, and it goes for everybody. You never can tell what might
be important."

"Important to whom?"

"To me," he said, heavily. "And my job as a cop." He moved toward the
door. "Well, I'll probably see you at breakfast."

"I'll be there at ten."

I had myself another glass of bourbon and went back to the canvas. There
was another hour in which to work, a whole hour. Nothing remained to be
done, of any importance, except a touch or two to the background, and
then the highlight in which the picture vanished. Next door, as I
worked, I heard the steady tapping of Biernbaum's typewriter. Through
the open window came the sound of birds in the valley below and a
near-by woodpecker also, I suppose, tapping out something of great
importance.

And then, almost at once, the canvas was finished and the hour was gone.
If I'd spent every hour of my life like that one, today I'd be--well,
what? But, on the other hand, I'd never have known that I'd lived. I
washed, finished the bourbon, and went on up to the Hall. After I'd
helped myself to orange juice, broiled bass, toast and coffee I sat down
next to P. C. Cooke, devouring, crumb at a time, his graham cracker. We
all said good morning and I drank my orange juice. Nothing like it for a
bracer, after a pint of bourbon. Constance Gregg brought over a poached
egg on toast and sat down between Connors and Frederick Owen. Owen said,

"I went for an early walk this morning. There's something sublime about
the hills and rivers at this hour, just at dawn."

"I know what you mean," said Constance Gregg. "And I thought I was the
only early riser in these parts."

"Is that so," said Owen. "Let me tell you, I'm the original inventor of
early rising. Did you ever visit the Grotto, just at daybreak?"

"No, but it must be wonderful."

"Wonderful? You innocent young thing, that's pure libel--it's sublime,
it's majestic, it's magnificence in the flesh. You must let me show
you."

"I'd love it."

Captain Wessex sat down in the chair to my left, and a moment later
Biernbaum arrived at the table, bringing grape juice, onion soup,
sausages with fried potatoes, strawberries and cream, toast and coffee.
Claudia Attelio said, "Goodness, Mr. Biernbaum, your breakfast is the
ordinary person's Thanksgiving dinner."

"I'm hungry," said Biernbaum. "I've been working on my book for three
solid hours."

Frederick Owen loudly declaimed, "Nothing like purely physical exercise
to give a man a good appetite."

"I hate to disappoint you," said Biernbaum, "but my typewriter happens
to be electrically driven. No physical exercise is involved."

Connors looked up from his oatmeal with interest.

"What do you mean, electrically driven?"

"Why, just that. It's got an electric motor." Connors laid down his
spoon and stared, fascinated, at Biernbaum. "There are only a dozen or
so writers using them, I understand, in this country."

Connors said, "Well, what does it do?"

"Do? Why, it returns the carriage for you, drives the keys, and so
forth. In short, it does everything for you."

"Everything? You mean it even picks out the right words for you?"

"Well, hardly. Not that."

"Hell," said Connors. "For a minute I thought you had something. Pass
the salt, will you please, Victoria?"

"If you are referring to me, the name is Miss Attelio. Or, Claudia, if
you prefer."

"Jeze," said Connors, "that's one thing I'll never forget as long as I
live."

Albert Page went about the table distributing the morning mail, and with
it the daily notes from P. C. Cooke. I was not surprised to see, when
Albert reached me, that I was the recipient of another utterance from
the Delphic Oracle. But this day, I had sworn, I would even my score
with Cooke. I held the envelope, bearing the Hall's lettering,
practically under his nose, then without reading or otherwise opening
the letter I tore it in half, tore the halves into quarters, the
quarters into eighths. I dropped the pieces upon the empty plate that
had borne Cooke's graham cracker to the table, lit a cigarette and
looked at him. He was a picture of frozen rage, but he said nothing. I
picked up the only outside letter I had received, a note from Geraldine.
Before I opened it, however, I saw the expression on Cooke's face change
to one of surprise. Among the letters Albert had placed beside him there
was one of the Hall's unmistakable envelopes. The inscription on it
plainly read: _Mr. P. C. Cooke_.

Evidently mesmerized, Cooke singled out the letter and opened it,
unfolded the enclosed note. After he had read it once, and I was glad
that he was obliged to read it more than once, minute drops of sweat
stood out all over his fat face, and his fingers palpably trembled. He
must have read it three times before, silently, he folded the note
again, and started to thrust it back into the envelope. I reached out
and took it away from him. I said,

"One moment, Mr. Cooke. Don't you think Captain Wessex should see this?"
I turned to Steve Wessex on my left and unfolded the letter. Steve laid
down his fork and turned. Cooke's mouth was opening and closing, but he
must have been talking goldfish language. "Seems rather important, if
true, doesn't it?"

Steve bent to read, as I held the note, and we silently went through the
note together.

    Dear Mr. Cooke,

    I hope, in future, it would not be too much of me to ask,
    please, if you would kindly refrain from further murders while
    you are in residence at Demarest Hall. With the killing of
    Lucille Nichols last night between the hours of eleven and
    twelve, when most guests were at work, or more probably playing
    cards, it seems to me you needlessly interrupted regular work
    schedules, and in addition subjected the Hall to what may
    eventuate in a certain overwhelming amount of adverse scandal.

                                                  Yours truly,
                                                       P. C. Cooke

Steve looked quickly around the dining room. He said, "Where is Mrs.
Nichols?" Lucille was not there, and no one answered him. I didn't feel
so good, any more. "Has any one seen her this morning?" Still no answer.
Steve turned to Cooke. "Did you?"

Cooke made fluffing sounds, and pointed at the signature, which was
typewritten.

"How could I?" he finally enunciated. "When I wrote the note, but I
didn't, and it was sent to me, but it wasn't?"

Steve said, savagely, "It wasn't sent to Santa Claus." He stood up. "And
it wasn't signed by the Governor of the State. You come with me." Cooke
hesitantly rose from the table. "We'll get the keys to her studio and
find out about this." At the door he stopped and turned. "Has anyone,"
he asked, "seen Mrs. Nichols since dinner in the Hall last night?"

There was no answer. All the bourbon seemed to have been drained from
me, and all the pleasure of that last hour of work. The others at the
table were getting up. I stood up, too. Constance Gregg, I saw, looked
at me with an expression of quick, instantly guarded sympathy.

Let her look. She was not real, this was not real, and not one of them
had the faintest conception of what was real. Maybe there is nothing
that is real. Either that, or I'd taken a wrong turn, somewhere, away
back.




                                  _15_


                            _CAPTAIN WESSEX_

By the time we got to Mrs. Nichols' studio I knew what had happened. I'd
been fooled again. And I was sore. A note about Cooke had thrown me off
when Walter Nichols had been bumped off, and now I was supposed to be
thrown off the right pinch again by another note implicating Cooke. To
hell with that stuff. I took the keys away from P. C. Cooke, opened the
door with one hand, and shoved him back with the other.

There she was, all right, just as the note said she was. Another
knife--there were a dozen just like them at the Hall--this time from the
front instead of the back, but with the same force. No overturned chair,
no broken crockery, no signs of a fight. I could imagine what the
newspapers would do with this one, the second, and I didn't have to
imagine what the Colonel would say--I already knew that one by heart.
Unless a miracle happened and I got a detailed confession this very day.
Fat chance, since the guy didn't even know that he'd done it, let alone
how. I wondered what kind of an insurance salesman I'd make, and
decided--lousy.

I put through a call for Col. Herrick and started to look around the
studio. There might be fingerprints on the handle of the knife, but I
doubted it. There hadn't been any on the other one, and there was no
reason to suppose that slick, crazy bastard would have slipped this
time. It was the damndest thing. She'd fallen right where she'd been
knifed, within two feet of the door and not five feet from the window
where, in the seam of a curtain, we'd slid the mike. This was one of a
dozen studios we'd bugged on the first day we got here, but none of them
had gotten us anything, nothing but a liberal education for Troopers
Kearns and Koslo. Maybe Koslo had been listening in on this particular
studio the moment it happened. If so, there had been no significant
conversation and no sound, or he would have reported it last night when
it happened.

I found a diary, which she had called a "Journal," kept in the small,
square handwriting I knew to be Lucille Nichols'. I glanced through some
of the recent entries, not expecting to find much. An entry on the day
she'd arrived at Demarest Hall ran: _Where do Walter and P. C. Cooke
find them? Two English instructors from somewhere in Dakota, one
pop-eyed poet, Biernbaum again, and three pansies. My God, my God! Two
possibles, however._ I wondered who the other possible had been. The
instructors referred to must be Owens, on the staff of a small college
in Ohio, and Glass, an instructor from a university on the West Coast.
The poet would be Connors. The pansies, as I knew, would be Mallett,
Weiss and Janiston. The next entry: _Why is it, inscrutable Fate, that a
man never regards a woman as made out of flesh and blood, but either as
something too ethereal for words, or as sawdust to be trampled
underfoot? Hale just another bore._ Well, well. And another one: _It's a
mistake to think that men are wholly irrational. Everything they say and
do means something, no matter how obscure it might seem at first sight.
Chris really very simple, much to my surprise. Always thought he was
just the opposite._ Then another one: _P. C. C. crazier than ever, but
nice. I expect in another five years he'll grow a nice green shell and
talk only the language of turtles. Wonder why no one, not even Walter,
knows he's an addict, and Albert keeps him supplied._ I wasn't so sure.
Nichols must have known that was why he'd been put away, years ago. Only
a fool would think he'd been cured and gone off the stuff permanently.
Then the last entry, dated the day before Nichols was killed: _Why does
Walter want to see me at that ungodly hour? Why all the secrecy? Chris
laughs and says that murder is a sucker's racket. But I'm afraid._
They'd been a pair, the two Nicholses. Hard to say which of them had it
coming more than the other. So they'd both gotten it. But, tough as they
were, that still left the guy who did it, a bad actor who made them seem
tame by comparison. And likable, too.

I put the journal in my pocket and got Koslo on the wire and told him to
keep on the bug in Bartel's studio, and then I went out and down the
quadrangle. I knew exactly what had happened, and I thought I knew
exactly why. She had been an accomplice, in the first kill, and then
he'd become afraid she'd spill her guts, and that explained the second
one. Simple. That would take the sting out of the newspaper stories, if
I could make it stick. ACCOMPLICES FALL OUT AS STATE POLICE CLINCH
EVIDENCE. PLOTTER SLAIN AT DEMAREST HALL. Something like that.
Anything but the way things now stood. I could imagine something like
ANOTHER MURDER UNDER NOSES OF THE STATE COPS. WHO'S NEXT?
Or worse. COPS SLEEP THROUGH SECOND MURDER AT DEMAREST
HALL. I'd be lucky if I could get a job selling encyclopedias. It
gave me goose pimples. There was nothing left to do but force a quick
show-down.

And it gave me the willies to see that guy again. How can you handle a
guy like that? If I tried to sweat him, he'd forget the little he
already knew. If I tried to use soft soap and strategy, as I had before,
I'd get nowhere and most likely wind up with another corpse. The way I
figured it, only a gypsy reading tea-leaves and palms could get the
truth out of the guy.

I found him sitting in front of that picture of his, with a highball in
his hand, as usual. I wondered whether it would be a help or a
hindrance, if he were tanked, but there was nothing I could do about
that now. He said in the slow, deep, carefully spaced speech he used
whenever he was high, "Well, Steve. Did you find Lucille?"

I swallowed some of the ripest adjectives in my vocabulary and said,
instead, "Yes, I found her. She's dead, knifed the same as Nichols. She
was your girl friend. Would you know anything about it?"

He sighed, drank, waved me toward a chair, which I did not take.

"Yes, I would. It's bad, Steve. Incredibly bad. You'll never believe
it's possible anything as bad as that could happen to three people.
Never. You wouldn't believe it."

"What wouldn't I believe? What do you know?"

"I know who did it."

"Who?"

"I did. Both of them."

I breathed, not too loudly, feeling I'd passed a miracle.

"You're in your right mind, and you know what you're saying?"

"I know what I'm saying."

"Do I understand that you're willing to make a confession?" This was for
the benefit of Koslo. If Bartel changed his mind and refused to sign a
statement, I'd show him the mike. "Go ahead. From the beginning."

Bartel shrugged, drank some more, stared at the canvas.

"Not so bad, is it?"

"What?"

"That." He nodded toward the picture. "The self-portrait."

"It's fine, Chris," I intoned. "Just fine. Now, you were going to tell
me...?"

"First, I killed Nichols. I killed him when I was in a blank. This
stuff," he said, tapping his glass, and then finishing the drink. "When
I sobered up I didn't know anything about it. Do you believe that's
possible?"

I knew damn well it was possible. I said, "I'll believe it, if you prove
it."

"I can't prove it, Steve. But I know I did it."

"How do you know?"

"I figured it out for myself. Bits of it came back to me, a flash here
and a fragment there. I began to close in on it when I was trying to
figure out the hour of my tennis date with Biernbaum. I remembered I'd
had a dream about Nichols and he said that three of us would die. But it
wasn't a dream. He'd said it just before I killed him. And then, what
was I doing in the main hall at a little after three o'clock in the
morning? Everyone else who was there had a good reason to be. But I
didn't. That's what I still can't figure out. Why was I there, in the
first place?"

He poured himself another drink. Trying to sound casual, I said,
"Perhaps Lucille told you he expected her to meet him there, on the top
floor of the Hall, at three o'clock that morning. Perhaps she said she
was afraid to go, and you went, instead."

He stared at me across the top of his glass.

"I think that's right. Yes. He'd already made a couple of attempts to
kill her, and this time, if he got the chance, he meant to finish the
job. You understand, this is purely guesswork on my part. But this is
what happened, the way I put it together. I appeared instead of Lucille.
I found him with the knife. I took it away from him and killed him."

"Why? What was your motive, Chris?"

He paused for so long, studying me, I was afraid he'd gone into another
blank. Finally, he said, "Because I was plenty mad, finding him with
that knife. Is that enough? If it isn't," he shrugged again. "Well, you
could say that I was simply doing a favor for a friend. And it was so
easy."

"All right, that's that. But how does it happen the Gregg woman saw you
up there in the writing room, and you never left it. That is, she saw
you come upstairs to the fifth floor, she saw you write a note, then you
talked to her and she saw you turn around and go downstairs again. And
the poker players corroborate that."

I almost added that if I'd had the answer to this one, I would have put
the cuffs on him days ago. But I didn't, and Bartel replied, "I've
figured that out, too. Connie wasn't there at all, when I went to keep
the appointment with Nichols. I don't know how long we talked before I
discovered the knife--I presume--and killed him, but it must have been
fifteen minutes or so. Then, when I turned to go inside, and escape, I
saw Connie Gregg sitting before the writing desk at the head of the
stairs. I was trapped. At that point a person can see the entire top
floor of Demarest Hall, also clear to the bottom of the stairshaft, and
even the fire-escape, if I had wanted to climb to the roof and cross
over to it, passes within five feet of the window nearest the desk. And
I must have realized, too, that a group of people were playing cards on
the third floor, and that somebody else was in the office on the first
floor. So I removed Nichols' belt, and my own belt and buckled them
together. I doubled this length, which would give me about four feet
extra, looped it over the flagpole that projects from the balcony, and
slid down it to the ledge of the fourth floor window that opens on the
game room."

I said, "Some slide. That ledge can't be eight inches wide, and if you
dropped there wouldn't be enough left to collect with a vacuum cleaner."

"I couldn't have done it, if I had been sober. But I was drunk."

"All right. Then what?"

"I pulled in the belt, of course. Then I shuttled to the opposite side
of the building and took the fire-escape down to the second floor, and
then I doubled back into the building. But here I was stuck. The
distance is too high to jump, there was nothing I could loop the belts
over on this floor, and the stairs, as I said, are visible from top to
bottom. Yet I had to use them; there was no other way. And there was
only one way to do it. Simply, to appear on the second floor landing and
walk up, instead of down, making it appear that I was just coming in,
not going out. That is what I must have done. I stopped and talked to
the card players on the third floor, walked on up and made myself
evident to Connie on the fifth, and then after a few moments turned
around and walked straight down again and back to my studio."

"Smart. Too smart."

"I'm pretty damned bright, Steve, when I'm drunk."

"O.K., that's that. Now about Lucille. I suppose you were in a blank
that time, too?"

He said, soberly, in spite of the booze, "No. I remember the whole
thing. I thought it over for several hours, went to her studio last
night at about eleven-thirty, and killed her. I knew what I was doing. I
could swear to it."

"What did you do it for?"

"God knows," he said, slowly. "I thought I had reasons."

"In fact," I said, not using kid gloves any more, "she planned Walter
Nichols' murder for her own reasons, played you for a sucker and got you
to do the job, and then you got cold feet. You were afraid she'd turn
you over unless you shut her mouth permanently."

He poured himself another drink, and thought it over.

"No," he said. "She had nothing to do with the death of Nichols."

"The hell she didn't. She planned it, instigated it, and then you
realized you were simply a stooge."

He gave me a thin smile.

"I have a different version."

The conceited bastard. I gave it to him cold. "Don't give me that stuff,
who do you think you're kidding? We've got your confession, and that's
all we want." I stood up. "We'll prove it later. O.K., Koslo. Bring
Kearns with you."

Bartel stared at his drink, tried a sizable sample of it.

"My story is, Lucille knew nothing of her husband's murder."

I said, with a rasp, "Boy, did she play you for a sap. Come on, guy,
take your last drink, and let's go. I've wasted enough time on this
screwy case and listened to enough screwy talk to last me forever."

Bartel grinned, put down the rest of his highball, and poured himself
another one. He took his time about dropping in the ice cubes and
shooting in the soda. I wondered what had become of Koslo and Kearns.

"No drinks in the pen, I suppose?"

I said, "Sure. I'll send around a case of champagne every day. With
arsenic in every bottle. You'll love it, guy. Come on, stand up and take
it."

He looked at me as though I were some kind of a bug. He said, "I ought
to bat your ears off for that, Steve. You cheap louse, you haven't got
any confession, you only think you have." He reached into the breast
pocket of his shirt and tossed something at me. Automatically, I caught
it. It was a disconnected mike. "I found it the day you put it in.
Waiting for your friends?"

I sat down again, and that maniac went on with his highball. I tried to
bluff it through.

"We don't need any confession; we've got all we want."

"You have? Where's the evidence? What did I do with Nichols' belt? I
know what I did with it, because a hazy recollection about it came back
to me two or three days later, and I found it. But would you know? Who
saw me enter or leave Lucille's studio? You had a man on the wire in her
studio, but what did he hear? You've got nothing. You'd better be nice,
Steve, and let me have it the way I want it."

It was tough to take, having it all sewed up one minute, and then as far
away as ever the next. I spent thirty seconds thinking it over, most of
the time uselessly damning those microphones, which had brought us
nothing but trouble--not only our own, but everyone else's besides.
Dunn's confession to the steward had thrown Kearns into an uproar, when
it came over the wire, until I checked the story. It was true he'd taken
that knife on the morning of the murder. But it was also true, just as
he'd told the steward, he'd used it to slice up some sandwiches for
himself and some out-of-town broads he wasn't supposed to have on the
premises. Their accounts all checked. And Bartel must have known about
our wiring job from the first. I said, "O.K. What do you want?"

"Get a stenographer down here and I'll dictate a full confession the way
I'd prefer to have it."

I went to the phone, put through a call to Koslo, and told him to pick
up Kearns and bring P. C. Cooke's secretary. I said to Bartel, and I
meant it, "Damned if I don't think you'll beat the chair, on the grounds
of insanity." Then I remembered something else. "What about that note
from P. C. Cooke, to P. C. Cooke? Where does that fit into this?"

Bartel looked up from the umpteenth highball he was mixing for himself,
and sighed.

"You wouldn't understand. I wrote it myself, to settle a grudge against
a miracle that was too perfect." He squirted soda. "I think it was a
success."

And that was about all. Kearns and Koslo arrived, and the secretary. She
opened her notebook, Bartel helped himself to his highball and, speaking
slowly, began: "I killed Walter Nichols because I was insanely jealous
of him, and then I killed Lucille Nichols because she became frightened
and suspicious of my actions and refused to consent to marry me,
although previously I had led myself to believe that she would. No one
aided me in either murder, and no one but myself had any knowledge of
either. I am making this statement of my own free will, as I wish to
clear my conscience, and also I realize that the excellent police work
of Captain Steven Wessex has already enabled him to penetrate to the
truth of the matter." Bartel silently jeered at me when he came to this.
Although, God knows, it was the gospel truth. "I learned that Walter
Nichols had an appointment at three o'clock on the morning of June 15th
with Mrs. Nichols and, under a pretext, I arranged that she would not
keep it, but instead went myself to the balcony of Demarest Hall, with a
knife I had procured, and when I met him, after some conversation, I
took the knife from my pocket and..."




                                  _16_


                          _CHRISTOPHER BARTEL_

I have been in jams before, plenty of them, but never one as bad as
this. Up to this time there has always been a way out. This time,
though, I don't think so. It is a new feeling, and the feeling is so
much worse than anything I have ever imagined, so strange and immense.
It is all the more terrifying since I have rediscovered, in these last
months, a world I had left behind twenty years ago and had completely
forgotten existed--the strange, exciting, colorful world of the
perfectly sober. Even here, when they brought us breakfast in the
morning, or removed the supper dishes at night, even in this dull and
horrible routine there was something fascinating in the sound of the
rattling trays, the sharp smell of coffee, something exhilarating in the
matter-of-fact scrape of feet upon the cement floor, something always
new and mysterious in the small talk of the death house, no matter how
humdrum, no matter how casual, no matter how often repeated.

But that is not what I wanted to get at. Something else, this jam. Why I
confessed, I don't know. It doesn't matter, now. It's altogether too
late now to recall and undo the fatalistic, tired, and confused spirit
with which I helped the State speed me on my way to the chair. It was
not as though this were the first time I had killed. The first, a
hit-and-run accident when I was a kid, had given me a bad month, but
that had blown over. It gave me a turn to think about it now, what a
scatterbrained fool I'd been, but it was too late now to change that,
and anyway I'd been lucky. In the service during probi days I'd
machine-gunned a couple of runners who'd tried to cross up the insiders
among the crew, but that was official, and I didn't give it a second
thought. Why I had to start confessing at this late date is beyond me.
But it's too late to worry about that. It's this jam, right now. And I'm
afraid it's altogether too late to do anything about that, either.

It's too late to do anything but count the bars on the door, nine, and
the steps across the floor, five, and the hours that are left, six. The
PK went by, but he didn't even stop. That meant, nothing new as yet.
Christ, what was that high-powered lawyer of mine doing? He was supposed
to be seeing the governor, to get a stay. In the bag, he'd said. Maybe
so, but he should have added it was a bag I was left holding.

At the gate of the cell-block I heard George get to his feet, his chair
scraping the floor of the dance hall. Other steps, that would be
Richman, came toward him.

"Eleven to six," he said. "End of the fifth."

George said, "Jeepers. Sounds like a football game."

John Williamson came to the door of his cell and asked, "Who's ahead?"

"The Yanks, fathead. Who d'you think?"

"What's the score?"

"Eleven to six," George patiently repeated. "Going into the sixth."

"Who they playing?"

"The Sox."

"Where at they playing today?"

"Yankee Stadium," said George, and loudly spat. "Jesus Christ, you got a
radio, why don't you tune in on the game?"

"I can't find the station."

"Want me to get it for you, John?"

"Tell you the truth, George, I'm getting hungry. That's what I want."

"You got another hour to wait. You're always hungry."

Before Williamson, who had the mind of a four-year-old child and should
not be here, there had been Jan Varka. He had done a lot of swearing
before his execution, but most of it had been in Finnish, and even
Williamson was an improvement. Besides Williamson and myself there was
only one other man in the block, a farmer named Toby Birch. Toby never
talked at all, ate little and seldom moved. He was a man already dead.
Only the officials of this Godforsaken state would be ignorant of the
fact that he was an imbecile. The voice of Richman dropped away to a
whisper. Nevertheless, I could hear him, "Think the guy's going to
crack?"

If George gave any vocal reply I could not hear it. A wink or a shrug.
When I got out of this jam, I made up my mind, I'd tie Richman to a keg
of powder, light a long fuse, and ask him if he thought he'd crack. But
I'd forgotten, Richman was just a sadistic nobody in the ranks with a
lot of other nobodies, doing nothing that amounted to anything, and
would never be worth the powder of doing it. And I'd forgotten, also, I
wasn't going to get out of this jam. Not this one. Strange, how
difficult it was to remember that. I would have thought it would be the
other way around. But my mind, the moment I let it wander, instantly
escaped.

I heard Richman go away, and then I heard George begin a slow pacing of
the dance hall. What minutes, I wondered, what hours, days, what years
were being dragged out of him again as they had been before, what scenes
and what fears were awake again in every nerve and bone and fiber, every
second of them alive and immense, that could be as alive and as immense
as these odds-and-ends of the years now being dragged, moment by moment,
from me? I waited for Geraldine, or my lawyer. For whom did George, a
guard at eighty some dollars a month, for whom or for what did he wait?
What the hell could the seconds mean to George, that they did not mean a
thousand times as much to me? One of them, or both of them would be
here. That much was certain. I could not die this way, with only a few
indifferent guards and witnesses, a half-wit and a moron, to whom I
would ever speak again. One of them or both of them would be here. I was
a man with a future. The news they had to bring would be good. And even
if it were not, which was incredible, I still had those visits to look
forward to. I was a man with a future, still.

I thought of slugging or strangling George and getting out of my cell.
This would not be difficult. But beyond that there was no way of escape
even remotely feasible. I'd been over it and over it. God damn that
confession. But it was a waste of time to think of that now. What, I
wondered, did George have on his mind that seemed to be eating him
alive? He was completely phlegmatic, as a rule. The only time I'd known
him to pace the floor and show signs of nervousness, before, had been
the afternoon and evening before Varka went. Whatever fire was eating up
his mind, I could have told him it was kid stuff compared to the flame
that was eating mine. If he were hoping and planning to make a financial
killing, if he were dreaming about some big moment he expected to have,
or if he were frantically scheming to avert some threatened disaster, or
it was a woman whose image would not let go of him, or an enemy who
blinded him with fury, I could have told him--well? What? I could have
told him it was nothing to this. I could have told him those little
fevers didn't amount to a damn, weren't really worth a second thought. I
could have told him the enormous pleasure it would be, if he wanted and
understood it, to cool off and forget, simply forget whatever it was
that consumed him, and go and watch some clouds, or look at a clump of
grass. It must be good advice, couldn't help but be good, since I'd
never tried it, myself.

Why did I kill Nichols? For the same reason that Birch stuck a pitchfork
through the farmer who had hired him, for the same reason Varka had shot
a bus driver to death, and taken eight or nine dollars, for the same
reason John Williamson had strangled his wife, pregnant with a child he
became convinced was not his--for no reason that occurs to any of us
now. Ask us, we don't know. For that matter, ask the State what good it
will do anyone to put us to death. I killed Nichols because he seemed to
me, at that particular moment, the most vicious bastard I had ever
encountered, because I was drunk, and because it was so easy. _You're
pretty handy with those mitts of yours, Mr. Bartel_, Steve said. _Too
handy, if you ask me._ Did the thought of the insurance on his life
influence me? I don't think so, though it may possibly have crossed my
mind.

Why, though, did I kill Lucille? I have thought of a thousand answers to
that question. And they all make sense. The only trouble is, they
contradict each other. First I had developed fantastic illusions about
her and then, when I came to understand it was I who had killed Nichols,
I evolved a set of counter-illusions about her, in which I imagined she
had adroitly rigged and suggested the first killing, regarding me as no
more than an instrument toward that end. There is no doubt that Steve's
rather elementary analysis, in this respect, was part of the truth. _She
planned Walter Nichols' murder for her own reasons_, he'd said, _played
you for a sucker and got you to do the job, and then you got cold feet.
You were afraid she'd turn you over unless you shut her mouth
permanently._ Yes, but it was only part of the truth. For it is also
true that she bored me, from the very beginning, and I regarded her as
an essentially simple person. To be deceived and tricked by a clever
person is bad enough. But to become the dupe of an innocent, that is
intolerable. Psychologically, then, I killed three people wrapped in
one: The woman I loved, the woman I feared and the woman I hated.

But the facts, I cannot help admitting, do not square now, in point of
logic, with my motives at the time. It is an established fact that
Nichols had made two or three feeble attempts to kill Lucille; she could
not have calculated with any assurance that in a fit of drunken rage I
would, instead, take care of him myself; and although she may have
guessed that I kept her appointment with him, she had remained silent
about it either out of a childish faith in my innocence, or a blind
loyalty toward me. And so I had murdered her. Through approximately the
same unpredictable clash of circumstances that brought John Williamson,
Varka and Toby Birch to the death house; or brought them, as far as that
goes, into life. Not that any of this mattered now. The amazing thing is
that one person, myself, could have guessed wrong so consistently. One
learns everything too late.

I heard Richman's steps again, and I heard him say to George,

"Visitor for Bartel."

A rocket burst somewhere inside my head. I heard the bolt of the
cell-block door drawn open, and then both of them coming toward my cell.
George said, "You got a visitor, Chris. How you doing?"

"O.K."

"You tell'm, guy."

With one of them holding each arm we paraded across the dance hall, out
of the cell-block, and into the small chamber for visitors that adjoined
the death house. They sat me down on the chair that faced the
intervening screen, and then moved away. Real close, I could see
Geraldine's face pretty plain. We kissed through the screen, and even if
I hadn't been able to see the tears, I could have felt and heard that
she was crying. I could touch the tips of her fingers, where they came
through the netting, with my own. I said, "Anything from Gorse?"

"Not yet."

So that was that. I knew by the way she said it, and by the fact that
she said nothing more, there was no use hoping Gorse could do anything.
What the hell was he doing? Regaling the governor with a few anecdotes,
after it was settled that my reprieve had been turned down? I said, "I
guess he did the best that he could."

"Chris, don't talk like that. He's still at the Capitol. They're having
another hearing at ten o'clock. You'll hear from him. Don't give up
hope, Chris. Chris, say something."

"I'm trying to look at you."

"Oh, Chris, poor, blind Chris. Can't you see me, darling?"

"I can see you all right."

"Look hard, Chris. Look at me."

"I can see you. But who else is in the room besides Richman and George,
the guards that brought me in here?"

"Who else?"

"Yes. What other guards?"

"Why, there's a man in the next room with a shotgun, and two men at the
door--Chris." I could tell by her silence I'd horrified her again, and
it was no soap anyway. Too damned many of them, and certainly too many
for a guy that was half blind. "You weren't going to try to...? Oh,
Chris, no. Don't think of that. We'll hear from Gorse. And I've got good
news." She talked rapidly and soothingly, as though she were distracting
a child from some mild aberration. But she needn't have. I knew a break
was out of the picture. "Guess what. The gallery sold your picture to A.
J. Keck, the president of Keck Steel, for how much do you think?"

"What picture?"

"The Self-Portrait, darling."

"That's fine."

"And how much do you think he paid for it?"

"Who?"

"A. J. Keck, darling. He's the president of a big steel company. He paid
thirty thousand dollars for it. Thirty thousand, Chris." Suddenly, I had
to laugh. Loudly. "Isn't it wonderful, Chris? That will pay for Gorse's
next appeal. Isn't that the most you ever got for a single canvas?"

I said, "That's the most, yes."

"Well, what are you laughing at? We were so worried about money, and now
we have enough. Haven't we? Chris, why don't you say something? Don't
look like that. You aren't to give up hope, darling." I had that bastard
Wessex to thank for all the extra guards they'd posted at the prison, I
felt certain. I could imagine him telling the Warden and the PK all
about how tough and dangerous I was. "Will you, darling?"

"No."

"Gorse was absolutely sure he could get another stay. Janiston's
testimony that he saw you walk out on the landing of the stairway on the
second floor of the Hall is absolutely contrary to every previous
statement he gave to the police, Gorse says. He says it's just the same
as perjury."

Perjury is right. If Janiston really had seen me, he'd have had
something to talk about. It had come back to me, during the trial, that
I'd stopped for a split second on that landing to wipe a few drops of
blood from my fingers.

"All right, Geraldine. Don't worry about me."

"I won't, Chris, and you aren't to, either."

"You've had tough luck with your men, lady." Her old man was out of
prison now, but he was a wreck. "See if you can't do better, in the
future."

"I wouldn't change anything, Chris. In the past, I mean. And this will
all be over, some time."

I had the feeling, as one often does, that this was a scene I'd lived
through before, perhaps in a dream or another life. Automatically, I
said, "Some time, yes."

"We aren't through yet, Chris. There is a lot ahead of us."

"Yes."

I heard Richman and George approach, and George said, "Sorry. Time's
up."

"I'll see you tomorrow, Chris, or the day after that."

"O.K., darling. Good-bye."

"You'll have a telegram from Gorse tonight. You aren't to give up hope.
Kiss me, darling."

Then they took me back to my cell. For a while I lay on my cot staring
at the patch of light gray, which was the light of the setting sun,
streaking across and contrasting with the muddy darkness of the prison
wall over my head. It was not too late. There must be a way out of this
mess. But I couldn't think of the way, if there was one.

Then at seven o'clock they brought in my supper. George brought it in,
while Richman and the PK stood outside. George said, "Something special.
I wish I had this kind of grub waiting for me every night." Since they'd
invited me to shoot the works, I'd decided to make it tough for them,
and ordered grouse. George put the tray down on the table. Under his
breath, he said, quickly, "And you've got a present from Steve." I
looked at him, and he indicated a quart bottle of ginger ale, which I
did not recall having asked for. I removed the cap, which had already
been loosened, and smelled the stuff. It had the odor of Scotch whisky.
"He said you could handle it, and not make any trouble."

I poured some and had a drink. It was the finest Scotch I'd ever tasted.
I said, "O.K. Have some, George?"

He glanced at Richman and the PK and, without saying anything, held out
his hand. When I looked at George close, I could have sworn his face was
green. I poured a stiff one into my coffee cup and shoved it into his
hand. He drank it off in a single quick gulp.

"Thanks. I needed that."

"What the hell are you worried about? I'm the guy that's starred for
tonight, not you."

He gave me a glassy smile and went out. The PK, a man named Frank
Gangelin, said, "How are you doing, Bartel?"

I tried some more of the Scotch, and then some grouse.

"Fine."

From the opposite side of the cell-block I heard John Williamson.

"They going to put you in the electric chair tonight, Mr. Bartel?"

"I guess so, John."

"They oughtn't to do that. You ain't doing anything to them."

The grouse, I should say, had been fresh about two years ago, and in
cold storage since. Still, it was a miracle they'd gotten any at all.
But there was nothing wrong with the Scotch. I had another slug from the
ginger-ale bottle, a stiff one. If there were any way out of this, at
all, it would take a brain like a razor to find it. With a couple more
drinks, I felt, I'd have the solution. In the meantime, though, I felt
sort of lazy and numb. There was a plate of grouse and a quart of
Scotch. While it lasted, I was a man with a future. And by the time it
was gone I'd have the answer to this present jam, an answer that would
be perfectly simple. The only reason I didn't have the answer right now
was that it was too glaringly simple, too obvious. One can never see the
thing that lies directly under his nose, although he can see everything
else. Escape would be equally easy.

And then after I'd decided that, I had another drink, and realized I'd
been kidding myself. All the way along, not only today, but during the
last months, and in fact, all of my life. The minute a person is born,
any person, he is in the middle of a jam, and there is no way out of it
except through death. That left me with a blatantly simple solution, and
I shrank away from it. But there it was. Right there under my nose.

It was George again, and Chi-chi, the prison barber. Chi-chi shaved a
part of my head. I offered him a drink, but he said, "I drink only wine.
No ginger ale. Sometimes whisky, sometimes wine. Ginger ale, not so
good."

I didn't press the point, and George, having another slug of Scotch,
didn't either. What the hell is the difference, I wanted to ask him,
between three hours, three years, and three decades? But I didn't. _I'll
see you tomorrow, or the day after_, she'd said. And she would, too. But
I wouldn't see her.

Then I was alone again, except for the prison chaplain, a well-meaning
chap, but not for me. I wanted to offer him a drink, but I thought of
Steve and George, and decided it would be better not to.

All the sunlight was gone by now, and the electric lights were on. They
had been on for some time, how long I didn't know. I saw that there was
still half a bottle of Scotch left, and had another steep drink, and
when I'd had it, I felt more sober than I'd ever been in my whole life.
I thought: _All right, I've made every mistake it's possible for a man
to make. But what other life would I have liked to have had?_ And I
couldn't think of any other. I thought of my trial, of Biernbaum,
Janiston, P. C. Cooke, Connors, Claudia Attelio, Constance Gregg, Albert
Page, and all the others who had testified at the trial. Would I now
trade the life I have had for the lives they have had, any of them? I
don't think so. To me, most of those lives are, in fact, living death.
And yet, that is not to say that I could not have done far better with
this life of mine than I did do.

I poured another drink, knowing that the answer to all of my troubles
and all of my questions was right there, within sight, within my reach,
right there at the bottom of the glass. And when I had put it away I
knew that I had been almost right. The answer was only a hairsbreadth
away. For a moment, then, I was able to breathe in peace, and then I had
a different picture. It was a picture of all the people who had believed
in me, loved me, placed faith in me. This was intolerable, and I had
another drink, this time a strong one.

There were a lot of people in my cell, so many the place seemed crowded.
I was on my feet. It seemed a shame to leave nearly a third of a bottle
of Scotch. Especially so, when I had been so close to a final answer. I
tipped the ginger-ale bottle for the last time. A queer look came over
the PK's face, but he said nothing. Maybe the heel was human, after all.
He said, "Any last requests, Bartel?"

"None."

Then time and space faded away and we were all somewhere else, in a room
I'd never seen before, filled with a lot of people I didn't know. This,
I realized, was the works. But the last three or four drinks were taking
hold, and I didn't care very much. Maybe this was the best way out of
this last nightmare I'd gotten myself into, after all. In any case, they
hadn't strapped me into the chair as yet, there was still time to slug a
couple of guards and try for an escape.

But I didn't, I don't know why. I couldn't. Perhaps I was slated to go
on making mistakes right up until the moment I died. Before I knew what
was happening, they'd strapped me down. Harry Dunn, who'd written up my
original confession, and whose writings had helped to pay for the trial
expenses, might have explained it. But he didn't seem to be here.
Someone said, "Does that hurt?"

I looked down, and saw there was an electrode attached to my foot. I
said, "No."

Terror filled me, and peace. I could never describe it. No answer could
have been possible other than this, although at the same time I knew
this was no answer, either. While they slid a mask over my face, I heard
someone in front, among the witnesses, fall from his seat on a bench to
the cement floor, in a dead faint. Amazing. It was an amazing thing to
do, for him, whoever he was, because he was a man with a future, no
matter what his situation might be. All around me there was, now, a
complete and enormous silence. My lips, beneath the mask they had placed
over my face, opened and started to speak. I said, "The truth is simple.
The truth is..."






[End of Dagger of the Mind, by Kenneth Fearing]
