Wolf in Man's Clothing (15 page)

“Am I to understand then that your whole theory is based upon a presumption that Miss Cable came here with the purpose of effecting a reconciliation with—with me, and that her purpose was so overwhelmingly strong that she murdered my father because he opposed her?” There was an edge in Craig's voice. He went on. “Because that's out of the question. As a motive that is preposterous. Neither Miss Cable nor I have any desire to remarry. Miss Cable did not come here with any such purpose.”

“Why did she come here?” said Soper.

A flicker of a smile came into Craig's eyes and vanished. “She is a nurse. It was sheer coincidence that she was called when I was injured. She needed the money and, as our divorce was entirely amicable, there was no earthly reason why she shouldn't come.”

“Then why,” said Soper acutely, “did she quarrel with your father?”

Craig lifted his eyebrows. “I'm not sure she did quarrel with my father—but if so I suggest that that was no difficult achievement.”

“Really, Mr. Brent,” said Soper looking shocked. “Your father …”

“I know, I know,” said Craig. “But you are making this an inquiry into murder; there's a duty paid the living, too. However, it is likely that my father asked her to leave and she, professionally, resented being kicked out of the house. In any case, that is neither here nor there. For in the first place, your evidence against her is altogether circumstantial. You can't prove any of it. …”

“There I beg to differ with you,” interrupted Soper. “If we find her hypodermic outfit and it has contained digitalis …” Nugent was looking very glum.

Craig said quickly, “But you haven't. So you have no proof whatever. And even so, you see, she wasn't here the night an attempt was made to murder me. And it isn't likely that there are two murderers floating around in—in this house.” He said it rather lightly and looked gray and terribly grim around the mouth.

“Two—but you told everybody it was accident …” began Soper explosively and Nugent broke in again, driving neatly through implications and repetitions, “Who shot you?”

Craig closed his eyes wearily. “I could have told you all I knew of it yesterday if Chivery hadn't doped me so thoroughly. I understand you were here making an inquiry.”

“The girl had the revolver, too!” cried Soper. “You didn't say anything about that, Nugent.”

“Mr. Brent wasn't shot,” said Nugent.

“You mean Conrad. Craig here was shot and …”

“Miss Cable was not here when I was shot,” said Craig.

Soper paid no attention to that. He said, “How do we know she's telling the truth about the revolver? Sounds much more likely to me that she took Conrad's revolver and threatened him with it. And then changed her mind as she thought of an easier way to get rid of him. Then she thought up this story of finding the revolver in the garden in order to explain why she had it …”

“Why
did
she have it, in that case?” said Craig.

“Why, to—to clean off her fingerprints! Or perhaps she was excited and forgot the revolver. Left it in her room when she went to get the digitalis and forgot it. We found it; she had to explain it. And also she saw a chance to throw dust in our eyes; to suggest that Craig's accident was attempted murder and thus, that the person who shot Craig and the person who killed Conrad were the same, which would let her out inasmuch as she was not here that night.”

“No, no,” cried Drue from the window. “I didn't. I …”

“I can corroborate Miss Cable's story of the revolver,” I broke in hastily. “Or at least part of it.” But when I had told them as convincingly as I could of seeing her return to the house from the direction of the garden they were not very much impressed.

“Could you see what she was carrying?” asked Nugent.

“No. She was wearing her cape.”

“So you didn't see that it was a revolver?”

“Not exactly. It had to be something small.”

“But in fact you are not sure she carried anything.”

“It was my impression …”

“Impressions!” snorted Soper.

Nugent shook his head. Drue turned suddenly back toward the window; suddenly, I thought, to conceal tears.

“Let's get back to your accident,” said Nugent abruptly, addressing Craig. “Did somebody shoot you? If so,
who
?”

“All right,” said Craig. “This is what happened. I was walking in the garden; no reason for it—just walking. It was dark; there's no moon. There was a rustle in some shrubs. I turned around, thinking it was the dog. I stepped a little nearer the shrubs; anyway, I could see a hand. Barely see it, the rest was in the shadow; I think there were outlines of a figure. And then something hit my shoulder, as if somebody had given me a kind of hard slap. Then I realized I'd been shot. I think I started for the shrub; I must have called for help. I remember stumbling and then that was all until they were carrying me upstairs. Beevens and Pete. Then Chivery came. But I didn't see anybody clearly in the shrub; I just knew somebody was there. I didn't even really see the revolver,” he said. “But I imagine that Miss Cable found it and that that is the revolver she had in her room. I asked her to try to find it; I had a kind of lucid moment, the way you do when you're drugged. She was here and I asked her to look for it. Naturally I wanted to know who shot me; I wanted the evidence.”

Soper's cold little eyes practically lost themselves in suspicious wrinkles. “That's not Miss Cable's story. She didn't say you sent her to look for the revolver.”

Craig shot a glance at Drue. “Didn't she?” he said imperturbably. “Well, that's the way it was.”

Nugent said, “The revolver belonged to your father. Mrs. Brent and Mr. Senour have identified it.”

“He kept it,” said Craig, accepting the fact of the revolver's ownership without question, “in the desk in the library. He never locked the desk; anything valuable he put in the safe. The safe is behind one of those panels in the library.”

“You mean anybody might have taken the revolver,” said Soper.

“Obviously.”

Nugent was looking thoughtful. He said, “Was the hand you saw wearing a glove?”

Craig's pulse gave a leap and began to race like an accelerated motor. But he said coolly enough, looking straight at Nugent, “I haven't the faintest idea. It was dark. There was only a kind of whitish outline.”

“But you knew it was a hand?”

“Why—yes.”

There was a little silence and I looked at my watch in a marked manner. Soper said, “So you think the same person that killed your father tried first to kill you?”

“I don't know,” said Craig. “But I do know Miss Cable was in New York when I was shot.”

“How do you know that?” interposed Soper.

Craig lifted his eyebrows. “Obviously she wasn't here.”

Nugent said abruptly, “It's all right, Mr. Soper. She was in New York; I checked that and the telephone call to the Nurses' Registry office.”

Soper looked annoyed. Craig went on quickly, “In any case, it isn't likely that she would take a pot shot at me one night and the next night poison my father because she wanted to see me and he opposed it. The motives seem a little mixed.”

Soper said, “Now look here, Brent, we are only trying to get at the truth. You needn't take that tone.”

“I know,” said Craig soberly and with the edge gone from his voice, so it was only weary and honest. “I understand your position and I appreciate what you are trying to do. I'll do everything I can to help you. But I really do think you are wasting time making out a case against Miss Cable; she was not anywhere near, the night I was shot. And she had no motive to kill my father. She doesn't want to marry me any more than I want to marry her. Our marriage is absolutely finished and neither of us regrets it.”

“Do you mean to say,” said Soper, glancing covertly in Drue's direction, “do you mean to say that if Drue Cable—your former wife, came to you and suggested that you remarry, you would refuse her?”

I didn't look at Drue; no one did but Soper. Craig's pulse was as steady as a clock. “At the risk of sounding unchivalrous,” he said coolly and distinctly, “yes.”

I
SAID, “TIME IS
up. I'll have to ask you to go.”

I must have sounded a little vigorous about it, for instantly Nugent turned around and stalked toward the door. But Soper said, “Your father was a rich man, Brent. Who benefits by his death? I mean to say, what are the main provisions of his will?”

“You'll have to ask his lawyer. John Wells. In Balifold. Are you going to release Miss Cable?”

Nugent jerked around to look at Soper; Soper turned a fine magenta. “Release her! By God, no! She stays here under guard or in jail.”

“But I need her,” I said quickly, essaying a rally. “I need her to help me nurse Mr. Brent.”

“You can get another nurse out from New York,” snapped Soper. “She stays under guard or in jail.”

Well, I didn't want another nurse bothering around. Anna could give me any help I needed. Soper waddled out of the room like an enraged and vicious duck. Nugent, however, drew me into the hall. “Miss Keate,” he said in a low voice, “Who was here in the hall last night? When something bumped against the door and you went to look?”

“Why—why, no one! That is, oh, some time (perhaps half an hour before) I saw Nicky in the hall. But not after the bump on the door. There's a dent—here,” I put my finger on it and he looked at it, his face as inexpressive as a Red Indian's. “But it's as I told you,” I added. “After the bump against the door I didn't see anybody in the hall.”

Something very queer in his eyes stopped me. But he said only, “I advise you to tell me. Think it over,” and went away. Leaving me a little perplexed, for if I had seen anyone or anything I should have been only too glad to tell him and shift the burden of suspicion from Drue.

When I entered his room again, Craig was lying with his eyes closed. Wilkins advanced a little, tentatively, toward Drue, who was still at the window. “Wait outside,” I told him, and with an uncertain look at me he did so and I closed the door after him. But if I had had, as I don't think I had really, any vague notion of a word of understanding between Craig and Drue I was disappointed.

Drue had turned so I could see only her back, slim and erect, and her lifted, white-capped head.

“Are they gone?” Craig said to me.

“Yes,” I said. And then because I had to, I said slowly, “There was a glove on the hand, wasn't there? You couldn't have seen the color in the dark. Why did you think it was yellow?”

His eyes flared open. He looked very straight at me for a long moment. Then he said definitely, “I don't know what you're talking about.”

Which was about what I might have expected.

“All right. I can't make you tell me. But there's one thing you'll have to explain, if not to me, then to the police. You said—half asleep yesterday—‘there'll be murder done. Tell Claud.' What did you mean?”

He just lay and looked at me through half-shut eyes whose expression I couldn't read. And he denied it flatly.

“I don't remember it. I could have meant anything. Unless I was referring to the attack upon me. Go ahead and tell the police.”

“I will,” I said. And Drue whirled around then. Her hands were doubled up, her crimson mouth tight. “Craig, you needn't have lied for me!” she cried.

“I didn't,” he said briefly.

“You didn't send me for the revolver …”

“Oh,” said Craig, “that. But the rest of it was the truth, wasn't it? I mean, you didn't come here with the intention of—of”—he smiled a little, though his eyes were very intent—“of a reconciliation? I'm sure you didn't.” The smile left his lips, but his eyes were still very intent, watching Drue. “It's something neither of us wants. That's why I told them …”

And at that instant the trooper, Wilkins, knocked on the door. He looked apologetic when I opened it. But Drue had to go with him all the same.

When the door closed behind her, Craig closed his eyes and lay there, very quiet, with a gray look around his mouth for a long time.

Well, after that the day settled into a smoldering kind of quiet. Eventually I bestirred myself to my duties. Craig was really on the mend, in spite of occurrences which, certainly, were not exactly conducive to convalescence. He must have been thinking hard, for he was unexpectedly docile, while I gave him a quick sponge bath and an alcohol rub, got him into fresh pajamas and took a look at the dressing on his wound.

“Such a fuss about nothing,” he said, but winced nevertheless as I worked. “If it had been a Jap bullet I'd feel as if I deserved some of this fuss.”

“You'll be dodging Jap bullets soon enough,” I said tartly. “Hold still.”

“So long as I dodge them,” he said, and grinned. While I thought of youth and war and the hideous waste of it.

I said, “When do you go?”

“I don't know. The end of this week sometime.”

“With this? Nonsense!”

“I feel fine. I'd get up now if you'd let me.”

“Certainly. Just try it. And start your wound bleeding.”

“Would it?”

“Listen, young man, you just escaped with your life. Do you want to get well enough to leave or do you want to be an invalid for several weeks?”

“Okay, okay,” he said but looked rebellious, so I realized I'd have to watch him. I said, “If you want to spend the spring at home or in a hospital, all right, get up. If you want to fight, do as I tell you. Stay in bed. I'll get you well.”

For the first time he looked rather approving and pleased. “In time to leave when the orders come through?”

“It depends. I'll try. Do you know where you will be sent?”