Chiffon Scarf (21 page)

There was an almost tangible change in the whole atmosphere of the room. Everyone there, perhaps, sensed that change and the reason for it; certainly every pair of eyes was riveted upon the table and the papers so carefully protecting the note Chango had brought. Certainly there was uneasiness and there was an added tensity of extreme, anxious curiosity. But no one inquired, and what was more important no one volunteered information. It was, however, as Sloane gathered up all the papers and was about to speak that Major Pace stepped forward suddenly.

“Before you go, Mr. Sloane,” he said quite simply, “I want you to clear me of suspicion concerning this truly horrible crime.”

If it took Sloane by surprise then he gave no hint of it. But Noel gave a smothered little exclamation and Averill’s hand went up to clutch the green necklace she wore with tight, nervous fingers.

“Well?” said Sloane.

“I realize,” said Pace, “that I am in a difficult position here. You are all known to each other; I am a stranger. And I came to buy an engine which is beginning to appear to be the crux of the whole affair. But mark you, I came to buy that engine—not to steal it. I came in good faith. I acted, under orders, as a private purchaser. That engine failed and killed two men. I could have had nothing whatever to do with that. But I was induced to believe that the reason for that failure could be corrected and if so the engine still had the advantages which made it of value to—to the government I represent. Well, then. I agreed to wait. I expected the treatment one reputable business firm accords another—if not what one gentleman accords another. Instead of that I—”

His face was gradually empurpling as restrained violence threatened more and more nearly the suave and pleasant manner with which he began his statement. “Instead of that I was brought out here willy-nilly by a crack-brained young fool and plunged into murder. A woman, brutally, cruelly murdered. A woman I did not know. A woman I met for the first time when I came to the Blaine house in St. Louis. A poor, pretty woman in whom I have no interest whatever. But she was murdered. And instantly the finger of suspicion points at me!”

He was breathing heavily. Averill began, “But, Major Pace—”

He did not look at her or listen but went on rapidly and with growing vehemence:

“I feel it. I am a man of sensibility. I don’t like the whispers, the looks, the understanding between you. I feel it here,” he said, clasping his heart. “I realize I would be a welcome scapegoat. But I did not kill her. I had no motive. And I can prove I didn’t kill her. I was in this room, there by the window, the whole time during which she was murdered. You saw me—”

Sloane interrupted.

“I was at the piano. My back was turned toward the window embrasure in which you sat. The windows were open; you could easily have stepped out that long window onto the porch, followed Creda Blaine when she left the lounge, waited your chance, murdered her and returned.”

“But I—” Pace was trembling and purple. “But I tell you I didn’t! I would have been seen. Besides there is the other window—over there—” His short thick hand pointed jerkily toward the end of the room. “Someone else sat there. Someone else could have gone without your seeing it, as you said I did. You can’t prove I killed her because I didn’t do it! I demand that you retract—”

Dorothy Woolen interrupted heavily but with inexpressible conviction: “Mr. Carreaux sat there before the other window. And neither Mr. Carreaux nor Major Pace left the room while you were at the piano, Mr. Sloane. I sat in a chair facing that end of the room. I would have seen either man leave the room.”

Noel looked embarrassed.

“I—well, thanks, Dorothy,” he said. His face brightened. “Now if somebody would explain my revolver—” he said.

Major Pace gave Dorothy a beaming look of gratitude and a sweeping bow.

“You see, Mr. Detective,” he said. “There is my alibi. Perfect. Thank you, Miss Woolen.”

It was oddly exasperating and seemed, that time, to have a kind of official weight. Pace obviously considered himself cleared of any ghost of suspicion; his wrath was gone; he was beaming and smiling and gracious.

No one spoke. And Pace bowed to Dorothy again and said to Sloane: “Whether you acknowledge it or not, you have no shadow of evidence against me. I dare you to find such evidence. I—I defy you, Mr. P. H. Sloane,” concluded Pace in a grand burst of swagger, turned with a sweeping gesture and walked out of the room. It was a curious gesture which suggested the sweep of a cloak. And as he walked away his right hand rested on his hip as if he expected to find a sword. Or a dagger, thought Eden, for there was certainly a hint of medievalism about the man, and about his public somewhat theatrical defiance.

Sloane looked at his watch and said as if dismissing Pace entirely: “I have very little information about you, Strevsky, and very little about the steward.” Strevsky started at the mention of his name and came forward a step or two, wearily. “I had a talk with Wilson,” continued Sloane briefly. “Last night. About two o’clock, I think. He said, and I believed him then, that he knew nothing whatever about the murder. That he had seen Creda Blaine leave her cabin yesterday afternoon for a long walk; she went alone and some time later he saw her return, still alone. When I questioned him he admitted that he had thought she looked frightened but he wasn’t sure. That was all. Miss Blaine, is there any possibility of this missing steward having known Creda Blaine well at any time?”

“No. No, certainly not. I never saw him before—to my knowledge.” She leaned forward, one hand still twisting the green necklace. “Why did he run away?”

“I don’t know. But he’ll be found. He must have food and he must have water.”

“But—perhaps he, too—” began Averill; a faint gray shadow seemed to creep from her dress to her cheeks and she stopped. But Sloane shook his head.

“He is probably merely frightened. Some minor peccadillo in his own life, perhaps, and he dreads police investigation.

We’ll soon know. Now then, Strevsky. You are not a naturalized citizen?”

“Well, and if I’m not,” said Strevsky insolently.

“You were born in—
”

“England.”

“This report says Ragusa.”

“All right, Ragusa, then. Or Athens. Or Petrograd. Anything you like.”

“True cosmopolite,” said Sloane but not unpleasantly. “Look here, Strevsky. Nobody’s going to accuse you of something you didn’t do. You can drop that extremely belligerent manner and tell me the truth.”

“I’m telling you the truth. I don’t know where I was born. I don’t know who my father was. I remember my mother. She worked and slaved and worried, and drank sometimes to forget the worry. She saw to it that Michael and I had food in our stomachs and shoes on our feet. And she died a year after Michael and I got jobs and could take care of her. There was just Michael and me.” The sullen look of defiance changed to something threatening, suggesting barely restrained violence. “Michael and me,” he repeated. “And Michael was murdered. Like that silly, fat women was murdered. Like big Blaine was murdered and he was as good a boss as man ever had.” His great, strong hands were working nervously, his slanted eyes were two gleaming slits. “The woman wasn’t important. Michael—” He stopped there as if his throat had closed on the word and then said with the queerest effect of simple determination: “If I could get my hands on the throat of whoever murdered him I’d strangle him. Like that.” His hands gave a kind of twist, a shadowy gesture which was nevertheless unpleasantly realistic.

Sloane said rather dryly: “Well, you needn’t go that far, Strevsky. At least I trust that if your brother really was murdered—”

“He was murdered.”

“—that the law will relieve you of any—duties in that respect. Can you tell me anything of Wilson, Strevsky?”

“No,” said Strevsky. “I can’t.”

“Thank you.” Sloane glanced at his watch again, took the papers on the table carefully in his hand and said: “By the way, there’s a detail of which the St. Louis police informed me. They say that your house, Miss Blaine, was entered the night you left. Entered and thoroughly ransacked. The police were notified by the servants the next morning but so far have been unable to put their hands on the intruder, whoever it was. Nothing was taken. Did you know that, Miss Blaine?”

“How could I know?” cried Averill. “Who—are they sure nothing was taken?”

“So your servants told the police,” said Sloane and started toward the door.

And Eden thought swiftly: I must see him; I must tell him—alone—about the sealing wax. About Creda and Pace. About my fingerprints on the revolver. About the letter.

And as swiftly she questioned her impulse; the few things she knew or had casually observed might be significant only in her own mind. And it would be so terribly easy—as with Creda’s interrupted note to Jim—to do more harm than good. To tell Sloane of the letter would only prove that Creda. had written it; that she had actually been writing it, probably, when she was killed. The wave of perplexity caught and held her. Almost certainly, however, she would have gone eventually to Sloane with her story (such as it was) of her own will. But as it happened she was soon to be summoned to Sloane’s study for what proved to be a really official inquiry.

For five minutes after Sloane walked out of the lounge, leaving a shaken and rather stunned audience behind him, the sheriff and several of his deputies arrived. Clattered up to the front door in an old but extremely powerful automobile and came in—all of them weary, all of them haggard, all of them hurried.

And they remained.

It was noon when they arrived. It was perhaps midafternoon when (after a long conference between the sheriff and Sloane, while the other three men joined the cowboys in their, thus far, fruitless search for Roy Wilson) the inquiry began again.

She was not the first person to be called into the study. And no one was sent for until after the sheriff and Sloane had made a long, slow detour of the cabin in which Creda Blaine died and had spent some time inside the cabin itself. And had followed this tour (which was witnessed rather uneasily by the little cluster of those waiting on the porch) by another long conference again in Sloane’s study.

It was not pleasant, waiting while Sloane, apparently, acquainted the sheriff with every detail of which he had possessed himself.

Dorothy Woolen perhaps was the only calm and unmoved one among them; she got out a great piece of cross-stitch embroidery and worked on it, slowly, painstakingly all that afternoon. Her blonde head and pale face was bent constantly over the fine stitches she took; yet Eden was curiously certain that her mind went right on recording, and her eyes—somehow—seeing every look and gesture and motion on the part of the rest of them.

But there was nothing to do but wait. They smoked a great deal and talked very little and watched the changing light on the distant rim of mountains. Averill wrote a note or two, seated at the long table in the lounge. Later she and Jim walked out along the path, walked slowly, talking in low voices. Eden watched them go, Averill’s sleek black head so near Jim’s shoulder, her slender figure graceful in every demure, gentle movement under the sleekly fitting gray linen.

Eden watched and tried not to watch. They reached the cluster of pines and walked on and at last turned onto the road leading to the mile-distant gate and disappeared in the dip of the arroyo. She was not conscious of her face betraying anything of her thoughts until Noel, lounging on the porch railing near her, said in an odd voice: “Eden.”

She turned with a quick movement, reminded only then of his presence. He was sitting on the broad railing, his knees drawn up and his arms around them, looking very boyish in spite of the touch of gray at his temples and the fine lines around his blue eyes.

“Noel! I’d forgotten you were there.”

“So I thought,” said Noel gently. “Eden dear, may I say something?”

“Of course, Noel.”

He dropped the end of his cigarette over the porch railing, glanced toward the blue shadow of the arroyo where Averill and Jim, walking so slowly, talking so intimately, had disappeared, and then looked at Eden. Dorothy was at the other end of the porch, some distance from them, her blonde head still bent over her embroidery; Pace and Strevsky were not in sight. Noel said in a low voice so Dorothy could not hear:

“Eden, my dear—you are not just a little taken with Jim, are you?”

Eden tried to reply evasively.

“What a question! Jim is to marry Averill.”

“That’s it,” said Noel earnestly, blue eyes still watching her anxiously. “It would be no good, you know—I mean, you’d just be letting yourself in for trouble. Averill would never give him up, especially to you. Averill,” said Noel simply, “can hate longer and better and—and meaner than anybody I know.”

“I know,” said Eden slowly. “Let’s not talk, Noel. I keep thinking of Creda. What do you suppose will be the end of this?”

“God knows,” said Noel, sighing.

Brilliant sunshine poured down from a bright sky; the shadows under the pines and under the great cottonwoods were blue as the haze over the mountains. Through the cluster of pines at the south end of the porch Eden caught a glimpse of the cabin where Creda had died—quietly, because she was unable to scream for help, bound in that bloodstained chiffon scarf.

Again, as she had done already many times, Eden searched her mind and memory about the scarf, her own scarf, once clean and delicate and softly scented. Now an ugly thing, sinister, a silent witness reposing, had she but known it, on a shelf in Sloane’s study along with a revolver and a note. Touched once, exploringly, by the sheriff’s thick fingers. Speculated upon endlessly.

Somewhere under that brilliant, hot sun the little steward took his secret way; all that day they searched for him. Little Roy Wilson with his childish mouth and his curly blond hair. And they searched, too, because Chango insisted upon it, for a hatchet. A newly sharpened hatchet, he told them; with a notch on it to show it belonged in the lean-to storeroom where he kept stove wood.

After a long time Averill and Jim, still strolling, still talking quietly with an appearance of the utmost mutual understanding, returned. Jim saw the three on the veranda, glanced once at Eden and went directly into the house and did not return. She had no chance to warn him of the note Creda had written, even if she hadn’t persuaded herself, by that time, that she had been mistaken; that the crumpled paper Chango had given Sloane had not been, after all, the curious letter Creda had inexplicably begun to write, and had failed, not so inexplicably, to finish. And for that letter Jim must have an explanation. There could have been, in spite of the suggestion in Creda’s letter, no league, no understanding between Jim and Creda.