There is No Return (24 page)

“Actually,” Chet Keith pointed out, “you weren’t on the job when your employer was killed, Stuart.”

The man flushed. “I wasn’t at the séance, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s exactly what I mean. Why weren’t you?”

“Why wasn’t I what?” demanded Stuart with a scowl.

“At the séance. After all, you were employed to see that Thomas Canby came to no harm. You couldn’t very well do that on the other side of a locked door.”

Stuart gave him a badgered look. “It was the boss’s orders,” he said sullenly.

“Thomas Canby ordered you to stay away from the séance!” I exclaimed.

He glared at me as if he were disposed to question my right to interfere, but he thought better of it when I glared back.

“He ordered me to do something else at that time. A man can’t be two places at once,” he said as grudgingly as if I had drawn the information from him with a corkscrew.

“True,” assented Chet Keith cheerfully, “only if Thomas Canby considered a bodyguard necessary at all, why didn’t he feel such a necessity at the séance?”

The chauffeur glanced contemptuously at Sheila Kelly’s bowed head. “The boss wasn’t scared of that crooked professor or the girl,” he said, “and he wasn’t scared of no spook either, if you want to know.”

Chet Keith’s mouth tightened. “What was Thomas Canby afraid of, Stuart?”

“What are rich men always afraid of?” muttered the man.

“Threatening letters? Cranks after their money? Kidnappers? How should I know?”

“You are trying to intimate that Canby employed you because of the usual vague dangers which surround a wealthy man?”

“I guess he made some enemies when he was piling up his wad. His kind usually does.”

“So he waited till three months ago to hire a bodyguard.”

“Yep.”

I frowned. “Thomas Canby had been receiving threatening letters for years without paying any attention to them,” I protested.

“Had he?” inquired the chauffeur with a faint sneer.

“I saw an interview from him once,” I explained, “in which he mentioned that he received an average of two a week. They did not seem to disturb him in the least.”

Chet Keith nodded. “That’s why I investigated you, Stuart. I knew you were a bodyguard the moment I set eyes on you.”

“Maybe it sticks out or something,” sneered the man.

“No, but the gun does, which you were wearing the first time I saw you, and Canby was the last man in the world to get panicky without cause.”

“He had nerve all right,” admitted the chauffeur with the first flicker of animation which he had displayed.

“And yet all at once, three months ago, he decides for no special reason to hire a bodyguard.”

“Looks like it.”

Chet Keith leaned closer to the other man. “What was Canby afraid of, Stuart?”

The chauffeur’s face closed up as if he had pulled a screen over it. “How should I know?” he demanded. “He didn’t pay me to pry into his secrets.”

“No?”

“No!”

“You don’t know why Thomas Canby suddenly decided that his life was in danger? In enough danger to justify his hiring a professional bodyguard?”

“I told you I didn’t draw a salary for prying into his business.”

Chet Keith’s eyes narrowed. “You won’t be drawing a salary from Canby much longer.”

“I was hired to the first of the month.”

“No doubt you have cause to believe that it pays to keep your mouth shut.”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” said the man sulkily.

“I think,” murmured Chet Keith, “that since Thomas Canby’s death you have acquired a new employer.”

The man turned a little yellow. “Oh yes?” he muttered.

“Somebody who is making it worth your while to keep Canby’s secrets.”

“You can’t be arrested for thinking,” muttered the chauffeur, although I thought he looked uneasy.

Evidently Chet Keith thought so too, for he pressed his advantage.

“You know what Canby was afraid of, Stuart. You know of whom he stood in terror of his life and why. If you’ve struck a bargain to keep your knowledge to yourself, let me warn you that you can’t get away with it.”

“Says you!”

“Says I!” retorted Chet Keith and, leaning over suddenly, he snatched a wallet out of the man’s breast pocket.

It was a very fat wallet. Jay Stuart made a spring at it, but Chet Keith was too quick for him. He dumped the contents on the table before him. The wallet was stuffed with crisp new greenbacks.

“In this state,” said Chet Keith, “an accessory after the fact is equally guilty. You don’t want to hang, do you, Stuart?”

The man was positively livid. “You ain’t got nothing on me.”

“Nothing except that you were broke this morning. I heard you say so. You said you lost all your money in a crap game night before last. You said you had one dollar to run you to payday. Then, a while ago, I observed you with interest, out behind the inn, counting off green backs like a millionaire.”

“You damned snoop!” snarled the chauffeur. “I found that money. If you don’t believe me, try to prove I didn’t.”

“That’s your story, is it?”

“Yes.”

Chet Keith smiled unpleasantly. “The professor thought it would pay to keep his mouth shut. Now he’s dead. I warned him and I am warning you, it isn’t healthy to put your trust in murderers.”

The man wet his lips as if they were parched. His eyes flickered furtively about the room, and suddenly I knew he was frightened.

I think Chet Keith knew it too.

“Come clean, Stuart,” he said softly.

“I told you the truth,” muttered the man. “I wasn’t hired to pry into the boss’s affairs, and I didn’t. If I prefer to keep what I suspected to myself, that’s my business.”

“So you did suspect something?” asked Chet Keith.

The chauffeur scowled. “I ain’t deaf and I ain’t blind. Sure I suspected something. I suspected a lot. Just the same, the business Canby had me on didn’t have nothing to do with his being killed.”

“You think not?”

“Didn’t I tell you? The girl bumped Canby off, but he didn’t hire me because of her.”

“No?”

“She didn’t come into the picture till about two months after he took me on.”

“Exactly,” said Chet Keith with a triumphant glance at Sheriff Latham, who merely shook his head and looked baffled.

“The boss was expecting somebody to try to get him, but he didn’t think he had anything to fear from a quack professor and that girl,” said the chauffeur scornfully. “That’s why he didn’t have me at the séance last night.”

I leaned forward quickly. “What were you doing while we were all in here at the séance?”

He scowled at me. “Searching the mountain,” he said. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

“Searching the mountain!” I repeated incredulously.

“The boss wanted to make sure nobody was hiding out up here.”

Even Chet Keith looked baffled at this. “Thomas Canby suspected that somebody was concealed on the mountain?”

“Yep.”

“He believed the danger to himself lay outside, not inside the inn?” demanded Chet Keith in a disconcerted voice.

“Looks like it, doesn’t it?” snarled Jay Stuart.

“And did you find traces of somebody’s having been concealed on Mount Lebeau?”

The chauffeur hesitated and again his eyes flickered uneasily about the room. “Nope,” he said.

An interruption came from an unexpected quarter “The man’s lying,” said Jeff Wayne.

Everybody stared at him, and there was a dogged, unhappy look upon his face as he went on. “I heard him report to Mr Canby just before the séance started last night. He said he hadn’t finished searching the mountain, but he had discovered a hut down the road. He said it was supposed to be unoccupied, but the floor was littered with cigarette butts and there were car tracks back of the hut, coming and going and overlapping, as well as oil drippings on the ground, as if a machine had been parked from time to time behind the trees.”

Chet Keith eyed the chauffeur with a scowl. “So somebody had been hiding on the mountain.”

“First I’ve heard of it,” said Jay Stuart with what I can describe only as a leer.

The man’s insolence provoked me into an outburst. “Sheriff Latham, aren’t there ways to make a witness speak when he is deliberately impeding justice in a murder case?” I demanded. “This man has plainly accepted a bribe to withhold evidence. That is a penitentiary offence.”

The sheriff grinned. “I might let Butch here take him out and work him over,” he suggested with what I regarded as extremely misplaced humour.

Butch scratched his ear and looked embarrassed, and Jay Stuart shot him a contemptuous glance. “I’ve been manhandled by experts,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “You’ve got nothing on me. I found that thousand dollars. Understand? I found it and try to get anything else out of me.”

Chet Keith’s face was scarlet, and so, I feel sure, was mine. I had heard of seeing red, but I had supposed the expression was a figure of speech until I stared at Jay Stuart’s mean, tight face.

“You know what Thomas Canby was afraid of!” I cried.

I am afraid I flourished my clenched fist under his nose. At any rate he flinched, but his lips only buttoned up the tighter. I remember realizing that we had reached an impasse and being perfectly furious about it. I glared at Patrick Oliver.

“It’s all your fault,” I said bitterly. “But for you and your sister none of this would have happened.”

Jeff Wayne moved closer to Judy and gave me an irate look. To this day Chet Keith persists in saying that young Wayne would never have come to the front as he proceeded to do if I had not goaded him into it.

“At the same time Mr Canby hired this man,” he volunteered with a miserable but defiant glance at Allan Atwood, “he employed a private detective.”

“A private detective!” exclaimed Chet Keith.

Young Wayne flushed. “I am supposed to be fifth vice-president in charge of personnel,” he said. “I-I make out the payroll. That is how I know.”

I stared at him. “What on earth did Thomas Canby want with a private detective?”

Jeff Wayne’s face was ashen. “He was investigating Gloria’s death,” he said in a voice scarcely louder than a whisper.

“Her suicide, you mean?” I asked sharply.

“If it was suicide,” he whispered.

There was an electric silence in which I think we all caught our breath, and when I looked at Chet Keith his eyes were like gimlets.

“Are you suggesting that Gloria Canby did not commit suicide?” he asked.

“Of course she committed suicide,” said Allan Atwood, but his face belied him.

“So,” murmured Chet Keith, “Gloria Canby was supposed to have opened her wrists with a razor blade because her father was going to have her put away in an institution, only Thomas Canby didn’t believe it.”

“You see,” said Jeff Wayne, hesitating painfully over his words, “there was a note.”

“A note?”

“A note from her father, enclosing a doctor’s certificate, saying she wasn’t crazy and couldn’t be put away.”

“Gloria never read the note,” expostulated Dora Canby. “They found it beside her unopened.”

Jeff Wayne drew his hand across his brow. “That’s why Thomas Canby employed the detective. The note was found by Gloria’s body unopened. Only it-it had been opened, opened and resealed.”

“Good God!” breathed Chet Keith.

“Thomas Canby believed that Gloria did read the note!” I deduced excitedly. “He believed she was murdered and the murderer resealed the note to provide a motive for suicide!”

“It isn’t true,” whispered Dora Canby. “You heard Gloria last night. Her father drove her to her death. She said so, didn’t you, darling?”

Allan Atwood glared at young Wayne. “Everybody knows that.”

“Then there was the razor blade,” said Jeff Wayne, looking unhappy.

“What about the razor blade?” demanded Chet Keith.

“Nobody in the house used that brand. They never knew where she got it. The detective has been unable to find any record of Gloria’s ever having had that kind of blade.”

I was too intoxicated with my own mental gymnastics to keep still. “That’s why Thomas Canby hired a bodyguard!” I announced triumphantly. “He was determined to trap his daughter’s murderer, but he knew he was dealing with a killer, a killer who had already killed once and who, as Canby knew, would not hesitate to kill again to save himself.”

“It’s preposterous!” protested Allan Atwood, again glaring at young Wayne. “Gloria killed herself. Jeff knows it, Uncle Thomas knew it.”

Young Wayne returned his scowl with one equally violent. “I warned you, Allan,” he said rebelliously. “It’s all very well for you to insist that we shouldn’t wash our dirty linen in public. The truth is the truth, and when it narrows down to blaming Judy for this mess, I refuse to keep what I know to myself. Thomas Canby did believe that Gloria was murdered. He told me so and I think he told you too.”

“Thomas Canby discovered that his daughter was murdered!” cried Chet Keith and turned with blazing eyes upon the sheriff.

“He was about to expose the murderer, so Canby had to die, and Sheila Kelly was framed for the crime.”

“We ain’t got no reason to think that Canby knew who murdered his daughter, if she was murdered,” protested Sheriff Latham cynically.

Chet Keith looked slightly dashed. “Canby did know who killed his daughter, didn’t he, Wayne?”

Young Wayne shook his head. “Whatever suspicions he had he kept to himself, but it’s my belief that, although he refused to give up the idea, he was unable to make out a case against anybody.”

“There you are,” murmured the sheriff with maddening complacence.

Once more I was provoked into snatching up the gauntlet. “Thomas Canby was a ruthless individualist,” I said. “If he started a line of action, he never abandoned it, short of success. Knowing this, the slayer was bound to realize that he would always be in danger while Canby was alive to pursue his investigations.”

“Exactly,” snapped Chet Keith, again bearding the sheriff. “There is your motive. As soon as Canby arrived at the inn last night he sent for you. His daughter’s murderer did not know how much Canby had found out. He probably believed that Canby had finally secured the evidence for which he had been looking or, as Miss Adams says, the killer may simply have realized that he would never be safe while Canby was alive. At any rate he took advantage of Sheila Kelly’s manifestation at the séance to dispose of Canby for ever.”