There is No Return (27 page)

There had been in my missing book a clever expose of a so-called ectoplasm. It was effected by means of a toy yellow balloon on which a face had been painted.

I knew why Thomas Canby had been killed. It was to cover up a murder nearly a year old. I also knew how Gloria Canby’s spirit had been made to seem to materialize that night in the parlour. For my own conviction I needed only the fact that a toy yellow balloon had disappeared from the showcase in the lobby. It was thoroughly explained in my book on pseudo-spiritualism. I recalled the page as distinctly as if I had it before me. There was even a photograph, showing the medium inflating the balloon under cover of her voluminous robes. It had been treated with phosphorus, the features first painted on, then traced over with wet matches, so as to shed a sepulchral glow when the balloon was released. Naturally the operator always insisted on holding the séance in the dark. It was a simple matter to puncture the thing at the proper moment, leaving only a few pieces of yellow rubber which could easily be disposed of.

I even fancied I could recall, during the confusion of that hectic scene in the parlour, having heard a tiny pop such as a punctured balloon might make. Proving my contention was another question, as I realized at once. Allan Atwood had done nothing so obvious as to purchase the yellow balloon. It had been filched from the showcase in the lobby. I felt positive that by this time any scraps of yellow rubber which might have been found in the parlour had disappeared. Certainly I had no hopes of finding them at that late date upon the murderer’s person.

“I’ve got to confer with Chet Keith,” I told myself nervously.

However, when I called downstairs, Miss Maurine Smith informed me that Mr Keith had not returned to the inn. “Do you think he has run away?” she inquired with her usual naiveté. “Mrs Parrish is certain of it.”

“I suppose nothing of the sort,” I snapped and hung up.

If I was convinced of anything, it was that Chet Keith was not the kind to run away. He was persuaded that Sheila Kelly was the victim of a diabolical plot. He would never give up the fight so long as there was a remote chance of saving that unfortunate girl. I glanced at the door between her room and mine. What was she doing, shut up there alone with her horror and despair? I shivered and when somebody knocked I started so violently I barked my elbow on the table.

However, the knock was at the corridor door. “Miss Adams?” a voice called out.

It was Hogan Brewster, of all people, which did not improve my temper. I had never liked him and, knowing how much embarrassment he had caused Lila Atwood, I liked him less than ever. Nevertheless I opened the door, although neither my tone nor my glance was friendly.

“Well?” I demanded.

He grinned. “The sheriff asked me to bring you this,” he said and handed me with his customary flippant smile the book which was responsible for my ever going to Lebeau Inn in the first place.

Sheriff Latham had taken the trouble to wrap it in a newspaper and tie a string about it, and although Hogan Brewster stared at the bundle curiously I did not gratify his inquisitiveness by unwrapping it in his presence.

“Thanks for the favour,” I said in grudging accents.

He grinned. “Don’t mention it. The sheriff pressed me into service because he is short a deputy.”

“Short a deputy?”

“One of the cast seems to have taken a vanishing powder.”

“Would you mind speaking English?” I inquired coldly.

He chuckled. “Your friend, Mr Chet Keith, has been missing for an hour, and the sheriff has sent out a searching party.”

“They think something has happened to him!”

It had not until that moment dawned upon me to feel uneasy about the reporter’s prolonged absence.

Hogan Brewster shrugged his shoulders. “I think myself the fellow has beat it, for reasons best known to himself, but that porter Jake, or whatever his name is, came in a while ago with a cock-and-bull story which has the sheriff all worked up.”

“What sort of story?” I demanded in an agitated voice.

Hogan Brewster laughed. “You know how these ignorant fellows are about ghosts.”

“Ghosts! What has that to do with Chet Keith?”

“Nothing, I feel sure, but it seems that Jake claims to have seen Keith go into a shack across from that old deserted cemetery down the road over an hour ago, and according to Jake nothing has come out except a huge black bat.”

“A bat!” I repeated, catching my breath. “In the hut by the cemetery!”

He nodded. “The sheriff has sent a deputy to investigate.”

I felt shaky and upset. I remember reaching out to steady myself against a chair and then the commotion broke out downstairs. A great many people appeared to be shouting and running around. Hogan Brewster and I stared at each other and as if by common consent turned to the door which I had left slightly ajar. Butch was standing right outside peering toward the stairs.

“What’s the matter down there?” he yelled.

“They’ve found Chet Keith,” somebody called up, I think it was Captain French, “and he’s been knocked in the head.”

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Butch, and I remember Hogan Brewster making some similar exclamation.

They both started for the head of the steps, and I was right behind them when I recalled that newspaper-wrapped bundle which I had placed on my bedside table when Hogan Brewster handed it to me. I still contend, no matter what Ella says, that I had no choice except to go back for it. It is true that I nearly paid for my foresight with my life. Nevertheless I went back and in spite of those dreadful ten minutes which followed I would do the same thing all over again if the same circumstances arose. That, I suppose, is what Ella means when she says that I cannot be trusted to mind my own business, even if there is a murder going on at the moment.

At any rate the tumult downstairs was still proceeding in fine style when I re-entered my room. I did not close the door behind me. I intended to seize the book and be back in the hall within a minute. I did not expect to be more than a few steps behind Butch, whose hoarse voice I could hear bellowing out from the top of the stairs. I could even distinguish his progress as far as the landing halfway down, where he seemed to be hanging over the banisters, carrying on a loud and incoherent conversation with Sheriff Latham.

“Is he hurt bad?” was one of the things he shouted.

“Got a crack on the head, knocked him out,” came the reply.

I remember saying, “Tut! Tut!” to myself and feeling a little sick. Although I had not stopped to take it into account until that minute, I seemed to have grown quite fond of Chet Keith. I distinctly recall picking up the newspaper-wrapped parcel off the table and thrusting it under my arm. I even remember noting absent-mindedly that the string was carelessly tied, so that a bit of the book cover showed. I was in the act of turning to the door when it happened, that grating sound which was the bolt sliding back between my room and Sheila Kelly’s. It stopped me dead in my tracks. I stared at the connecting door. The key was on my side. The sight of it steadied me. I recall drawing a long breath, then I went rigid again.

The disturbance downstairs was still going on. I could hear the rumble of voices, but they sounded very far away. The blood left my heart. For a minute I could not move. I could scarcely breathe. The door to the hall was no longer open. I knew it, though to save my life I could not bring myself to turn around and look. Somebody had stealthily closed the door behind me. Somebody was standing at my back, breathing hard. I can’t tell how I knew it was the killer, but I did.

In my panic I must have made some small involuntary sound, although I failed to hear it because of the frantic pounding of my heart. Maybe I merely stiffened and so warned him that I was aware of his presence. I shall never know. I dare say he was afraid I would scream and arouse the house, which was not part of his horrible plan. At least I was given no chance to scream. He struck like a spitting cobra. One moment I was standing there, paralyzed with horror. The next moment his hands were about my neck, choking me into unconsciousness.

The wonder is that he did not kill me then and there, except of course strangulation was not part of his plan either. When I knew anything again I was lying on my bed, trussed up like a fowl for market. My wrists and ankles were securely bound with towels from the bathroom. My eyeballs felt as if they were about to burst from the pressure which he had exerted upon my windpipe. There was a washrag thrust between my teeth, so that I could only gag and mouth inarticulately as I watched Hogan Brewster turn the key between my room and Sheila Kelly’s.

“Come,” he said and opened the door.

She had her hands before her, feeling her way. Her eyes were dazed, her face ghastly. She lurched a little as she walked into the room.

“You are going to kill yourself,” he said softly.

It was then I saw the knife in his hand, an ordinary silver table knife, but even at that distance I could see that the blade had been filed to a sharp edge.

“After I have cut Miss Adams’ throat, you are going to lock the door behind me and wake up,” he said. “Understand?”

His voice was perfectly expressionless, a monotone. He kept his gaze fixed upon the girl. Her eyes were wide open but they had the blurred look of somebody walking in his sleep. Nevertheless she slowly nodded her head.

“You will not remember that I was here,” he said. “You will find yourself alone in a locked room with a murdered woman. You will believe you killed her. You won’t be able to go on living. Understand?”

Again she nodded and I tried to throw myself off the bed, succeeding merely in wrenching my thigh almost out of its socket.

Hogan Brewster looked at me. “You would nose into things that don’t concern you,” he said and glanced at that newspaper-bound parcel upon the table, “you and Chet Keith. He doesn’t have to die because I didn’t give him time to discover anything incriminating in the hut, but you are different. The Parrish woman caught me disposing of some scraps of yellow rubber tonight. She didn’t know what they meant. With you gone, she never will know.”

It was maddening to lie there helpless and listen to him. Like a drowning man, I lived an eternity in a minute. All the events of the past two days whirled through my mind like a kaleidoscope with vertigo. It was Hogan Brewster who had killed Thomas Canby and the professor and Jay Stuart, and now he was preparing to kill Adelaide Adams and Sheila Kelly.

I should have known Brewster was the murderer the moment I saw the face upon the yellow balloon. It was a work of art, however gruesome, and I had been told that he boasted artistic talents. Two things had kept me from connecting him with the plot. Since he was not at the inn when the Gloria manifestations started, I had supposed he could not be responsible for them, and I had not been able to supply him with a motive. I knew now that he had the most powerful motive in the world — self-preservation.

It was Hogan Brewster who killed Gloria Canby.

He killed her to make way for his infatuation with Lila Atwood and tried to pass his crime off as suicide, but her father was not deceived. He was determined to bring his daughter’s murderer to justice, and Hogan Brewster did not want to die in the electric chair. He had lied about the time of his arrival on the mountain. It was he who had been hiding out in the hut across from the cemetery.

Patrick Oliver had admitted that he was in the habit of meeting Professor Matthews down the road every night for a surreptitious conference in connection with the hoax which they were playing upon Dora Canby. Brewster had undoubtedly eavesdropped upon these conferences and that is how his own desperate plan came into being. Having waylaid Sheila Kelly near the hut, he succeeded in hypnotizing her. Too late I recalled that, when I questioned her about the first unauthorized trance, she spoke of seeing tombstones and remembering nothing else, poor child. She had been no match for Hogan Brewster. The man was a rabid egoist and a killer. He had taken complete possession of the girl’s mind and he had been directing her ever since, like a puppet, toward her own destruction.

He must have read the horror in my eyes, for he laughed softly. “Strange as it seems,” he said, “it isn’t going to be as hard to slit your throat as it was to mutilate those cats. I rather like cats. Kindred spirits, I suppose.”

There was something feline in his movements as he came toward me, something of the padded grace of a huge and lecherous tomcat. I had not realized before how swiftly and noiselessly he could move when he pleased. He was still smiling. I wondered how I could ever have thought that smirk was flippant.

I tried to writhe away from the hand which he put out toward me, and the girl Sheila Kelly stirred and moaned.

“Keep still,” he said to her.

For a moment I thought she was going to be able to throw off the stupor which he exercised over her will. There was a flicker of intelligence in her eyes as she tried to free her gaze from his, but he made a weaving motion with his hands in front of her face.

“You are going to do as I say,” he murmured. “It is useless to struggle. You will lock the door of this room behind me when I go out and you will forget I was ever here. Understand?”

I recall trying to project my mind in opposition to his. I remember frantically attempting to suggest to Sheila Kelly that she scream for help before it was too late for either of us, but I have never had any hypnotic powers and I might as well have saved myself the strain. With a heavy sigh the girl’s shoulders dropped. Her face took on a dulled apathetic look, and I sank back upon the bed, cold sweat standing out on my brow.

Hogan Brewster laughed. “Wonderful thing, this mental suggestion business, Miss Adams,” he said. “My only regret is that I didn’t discover the knack sooner and that Lila Atwood doesn’t seem receptive, at least not to my brand of mesmerism.”

I glared at him. No, in spite of all he had done, Hogan Brewster had not been able to win the woman he loved away from her husband. It was then I realized that Brewster had planted my book in Allan Atwood’s travelling bag.