There is No Return (20 page)

He was getting around me again, and we both knew it.

“If I had told about the door earlier, the professor might still be alive,” I said with a shiver, “to say nothing of the alley cat.”

He frowned. “Of course you realize what part the cat played?”

“I’m afraid I don’t realize anything except that I have let my sympathies betray me into acting remarkably like a maudlin idiot.”

“The cat was killed to furnish a diversion. In other words to draw off the guard from the professor’s door long enough to permit the murderer to get at him.”

“Granted,” I sighed, “but that doesn’t prove it wasn’t Sheila Kelly who left my room just before I discovered the body of the cat.”

“The girl is innocent,” he told me angrily. “The whole thing is a frame-up.”

I paid no attention to his interruption. “The deputy admits he had his back turned to my door,” I said, “and that upstairs corridor is dimly lit. It was also practically deserted at the time. After she killed the cat there are a dozen empty rooms into which the girl could have dodged and hid herself until my screams drew the deputy away from the professor’s door.”

He was pretty white. “I don’t doubt that you have described the murderer’s actions accurately. He did hide somewhere on the second floor until the excitement in your room gave him his chance to do in the professor. I admit all that and still I say Sheila Kelly is innocent.”

“Just saying it doesn’t make it so. You’re in love with her.”

He coloured. “Don’t be silly!” he protested, then added lamely, “All right, maybe I am, maybe that’s what’s been the matter with me for a year and I didn’t know it. But that’s not why I am certain she didn’t kill Thomas Canby or the professor.”

“No?”

“You’re a highly intelligent woman,” he said. “You ought to be able to recognize a frame-up as well as I do.”

I glanced at him sharply, but his face was perfectly bland.

“There is a limit to the amount of flattery which I can absorb,” I cautioned him.

His grin was wry. “I’m not flattering you, or only a little. If Sheila Kelly is saved from this devilish business it’s up to you and me.”

“Fiddlesticks!” I protested. “Quite likely, as that sheik Hogan Brewster pointed out, a good defence lawyer aided by Dora Canby’s fortune will get the girl off.”

He gave me a look which made me catch my breath. “I’m not afraid that Sheila Kelly will go to the electric chair or even to the penitentiary. You are too clever a woman, Miss Adams, not to guess what it is I fear for Sheila in her present state.”

My voice trembled a little. “You’re afraid she-she will —” To save my life I could not go on, but he nodded.

“That’s what makes this affair so diabolical,” he groaned. “The girl is desperate. She believes she cut Thomas Canby’s throat, also the professor’s. She even believes she has been mutilating cats and canary birds for the fiendish fun of it. Neither Judy Oliver nor Jeff Wayne is so afraid of Sheila Kelly as she is of herself.”

There was a lump in my throat. “Yes.”

“Don’t you realize that nothing would suit the murderer better than for Sheila Kelly to kill herself?” he continued quietly.

“How horrible!”

“It would be taken as an admission of guilt, closing the case forever.”

I felt a little sick. “You think he is trying to drive her to-to suicide?”

“And so far,” he reminded me bleakly, “he or she has had everything his own way.”

“She?” I echoed faintly.

“Everybody at the séance last night had an opportunity to kill Canby, and every member of his family, including his wife, had a motive. They all hated him, to say nothing of the money.”

“I know,” I said in a husky voice.

“One of them did it, but Sheila Kelly will pay the price unless you and I interfere.”

“Interfere?”

He grinned ruefully. “All I’m asking you, Miss Adams, is to play a passive role for a while about the door from your room to hers.”

My mouth felt dry. “Do you realize that I’ll never feel comfortable again about my responsibility for the professor’s death?” I demanded. “Don’t you know that it will haunt me for the rest of my life that I didn’t call the deputy and tell him that Sheila Kelly was in my room when I went upstairs this afternoon?” I shuddered. “If I don’t tell the sheriff about that door, somebody else may be murdered. Had you thought of that, young man?”

His face was very sober. “I’ve thought of nothing else since this afternoon,” he said. “The door is locked now, Miss Adams, and the key is on your side. I told you there was one point in Sheila Kelly’s favour which you haven’t considered. It is possible, as you demonstrated, for the murderer to have hidden in one of the empty rooms on the second floor after he killed the cat. It is possible for him to have taken advantage of the excitement in your room to kill the professor. But the sheriff and I checked up on Sheila Kelly immediately after the professor’s body was discovered and found her in her room with the key turned in the lock on your side.”

I stared at him and he made an impatient gesture.

“She may have got out to kill Matthews, but if so how did she get back into a locked room? Locked with the key outside, you understand?”

“I have only your word for that,” I reminded him.

He winced. “I deceived the sheriff about that key in the first place, so I might be deceiving you now, only I’m not. I give you my word of honour, Miss Adams, for whatever it may be worth, that the key was exactly as I left it. I did not touch it and both the sheriff and I can swear that he had to unlock the door when he went into Sheila Kelly’s room.”

“She was there?” I asked.

His face darkened. “Sitting in a daze, staring straight before her. I had to shake her to arouse her.”

I stared at him. “In a hypnotic daze?”

“Yes.”

“But the professor is dead!”

He gave me a very odd look. “Yes, the professor is dead.”

Not until that moment did I look the implications of the second crime full in the face. I had been determined to believe in Sheila Kelly’s innocence. I had persuaded myself that she was Professor Matthews’ victim. Now all my theories crumbled to dust. The professor himself had been killed and Sheila Kelly had been found immediately afterward, apparently in a hypnotic trance.

My spine had a crawling sensation. “Is it possible he was not-not responsible for the Gloria manifestations, just as he said? Is it possible that-that Gloria Canby does come back from the grave to-to-”

“Good Lord!” interrupted Chet Keith. “Hang onto your common sense! It’s our only hope.”

I drew a long breath. “All right,” I said. “There is nothing supernatural about this business.” My throat felt as dry as dust. “If Gloria Canby had returned from the grave she wouldn’t have cut the professor’s throat to silence him. She had nothing to lose, no matter what he told.”

“Of course not,” he snapped.

I swallowed painfully. “So it’s human, whatever it is.”

“You can bet on it,” he said in a grim voice. “The girl has been framed. So far the murderer has taken every trick, everything except that key which I slipped into the lock in your room.”

I nodded. “No,” I said, “he didn’t figure on that.”

He gave me a pleading glance. “I can count on you to keep still about the door?” he asked.

I hesitated and he immediately clapped me upon the shoulder.

“Attagirl!” he exclaimed and walked swiftly away, leaving me, as I realized at once, hopelessly committed, however dubious I may have felt. It has always been my nature when in a quandary to take steps. I did so now, but the sheriff, whom I first approached, was disposed to fob me off in no uncertain manner.

“Listen, lady, I ain’t in no humour to argue with you,” he said in a goaded voice and added with exasperation, “I never seen so many bossy females in one place, tending to everybody else’s business.”

I drew myself up to my full height. “If you are referring to my friends, Mrs Trotter and Mrs Parrish, let me inform you —”

However, the sheriff, making a weary gesture, had moved away, muttering something about, “Just as soon have fleas in my pants,” by which I judged, not without satisfaction, that I had got somewhat upon his nerves.

At any rate, having done my duty and offered Sheriff Latham the benefit of my co-operation, I no longer felt bound to consider him and so I marched off up the stairs. Practically everybody else was at dinner. Once more I found the second floor deserted, except for Butch, who stared at me with a sour expression.

“Back again, eh?” he murmured.

I frowned. “This afternoon when I lay down to take a nap I left my door unlocked,” I said. “It was my impression that, with a guard right outside in the hall, it was safer. Not to lock my door, I mean. We both know now how mistaken I was.”

“Listen,” he said in an injured voice, “I’m just a man, just a common ordinary man. Can I help it if that girl” — he gestured toward Sheila Kelly’s room — “can go through locked doors like a-”

“Ghost?” I suggested.

He regarded me sullenly and then glanced over his shoulder.

“There is something up here,” he whispered, “something that ain’t natural.”

“You seem to have changed your mind about ghosts and the like,” I said with a sniff.

He leaned nearer. “I saw it,” he whispered hoarsely. “Right down there at the end of the hall.”

“Saw what?” I asked, turning quickly because it seemed to me I felt a movement behind me in the shadows toward which he pointed.

“A bat,” he said. “A big black bat.”

“Ridiculous.”

“But when I got there it was gone. Gone up in smoke.”

“Fiddlesticks!” I protested. “You probably stood here and gawked, scared to move, till the thing flew away, provided it was a bat and you actually saw it.”

“I saw it all right,” he insisted, “and it was a bat.”

I left him muttering to himself and staring uneasily first over one shoulder and then the other. It was very quiet in my room.

The cat was gone and I had been provided with a fresh counterpane. Nevertheless I had to set my teeth before I could force myself to close the door behind me. I went over to the window and stood for some minutes, staring out. It was only seven o’clock, but with the fog and the low-hanging clouds it was impossible to see a foot beyond the blackness of the windowpane. Realizing that I was merely temporizing with the difficult task before me, I crossed the room and slowly turned the key in Sheila Kelly’s door.

“Who is it?” she faltered.

“I want to talk to you,” I said.

I heard the bolt slide back, but she did not open the door. I had to do that myself. She looked at me with eyes in which I read complete despair. She did not stir or speak.

“Come in here where we can’t be overheard,” I said.

She shivered. “It isn’t safe,” she whispered. “Don’t you realize it isn’t any safer to let me loose than a — than a mad dog?”

“Nonsense,” I said weakly.

Her hands were twisting together. “Tell me one thing,” she said. “Was this door locked on your side when the professor was murdered?”

I suppose my eyes gave me away, for she uttered a stricken cry.

“It’s true then! I did kill that cat! I killed the professor! Oh, God!”

I realized that Chet Keith had been right. Nobody was as terrified of Sheila Kelly as she was of herself. She was shaking from head to foot.

“You mustn’t let go like this,” I said as sternly as possible.

She stared at me as if she did not see me. “They took away my manicure scissors and my nail file,” she whispered. “They took everything out of my room with which I might-might injure somebody. The fools, as if I want to do away with anyone except myself!”

So Chet Keith had been right about that, too, I thought, not far from hysteria myself. If Sheila Kelly committed suicide, the case would be closed, as he said. They would write her off as guilty and that would be an end of it. I remember suddenly feeling entirely unequal to the emergency, which is unlike me.

“I have no doubt,” I said, “that it would please the murderer to have you remove yourself from the scene.”

She caught her breath. “The murderer! I am the murderer!”

“I don’t believe it,” I declared, wishing I could be certain.

She shook her head. “You said the professor framed me. You said he hypnotized me into talking and acting like Gloria Canby. You said he did it to put me on the spot, but the professor is dead and-and-” Her voice faltered.

“And what?” I prompted her.

“Just now, just a while ago,” she whispered, “I came to there in my room. I was sitting in my chair and I was-was as limp as a rag, the way I always am after a trance.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know what I had been doing. I don’t know how long I’d been out.”

“Yes?” I said again, my lips feeling stiff.

“Don’t you see?” she cried. “I was in a trance, but the professor is dead!”

I remember holding on tightly to the sides of my chair. “You were hypnotized,” I stammered, “but the professor couldn’t have done it?”

“It was that other?” she wailed.

“Impossible!”

“Just as it has been that other all this week!” she cried. “I told you it wasn’t the professor. I told you. I’m cursed! Don’t you understand, cursed! That fiend has got hold of me. She takes possession of me whenever she likes!”

“Impossible!” I said again.

“She made me steal the scissors. She made me steal your book.”

“My book?”

She shivered. “It was hidden in my laundry bag. I found it this afternoon. I don’t know when I took it or why. Think of that! I don’t know when I took the scissors, either, or what I did with them. The book was gone when I woke up from the trance a while ago.”

“Gone?”

“And the window had been opened.”

“You had opened it!” I exclaimed.

“I must have,” she said. “It was bolted on the inside, but the ledge was all wet and there was a cord tied to the bolt. The cord was wet too.”

“You think you let the book down from the window by the cord?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “That’s what makes it so horrible. I don’t know anything I do when she-she takes possession of me.”

I shrugged my shoulder to throw off the weight which seemed to have settled upon me. “If, as you suppose, there is anything supernatural in these visitations,” I said sternly, “why should Gloria Canby’s ghost go to all the trouble of having you lower a book out a window upon a string, of all things?”