Yellow Room (27 page)

T
HAT WAS ON SATURDAY.
For two days Greg had been in a police cell at the county seat. It was not too bad. He had a narrow bed, a chair, and a chest of drawers. He could order food brought in, but he ate very little. He had no knowledge of the excitement his arrest had caused, of the consultations in Washington, or of the reporters milling about the town. One of them even managed to be arrested, to find himself no nearer Greg than before.

He found the lack of action hard to bear. He spent hours smoking and pacing the brief bit of floor space, and in trying to think things out. Thinking, however, was not his long suit. That they were calling a special session of the Grand Jury he knew. Hart had gone, and a famous criminal lawyer was on his way up.

But his real longing was to get out of the mess and join his squadron again. He never doubted that he would, and even his love for Virginia faded beside that. He had wanted to marry her. God, yes. But more even than that he wanted the air again, to be with his own gang, to go out and give the dirty bastards hell, and then to come back, report, eat, and sleep, so as to be ready for the next mission.

He had no idea that Virginia had arrived at Bayside. Nor for that matter had Dane, drinking his before-lunch highball at the desk in what he called his study, and waiting for Alex to return from an errand. The first warning he had was a sort of volcanic eruption, when one of the porch chairs fell over and the front door slammed. The next moment he was confronted by a young and pretty redheaded girl.

“So that’s the way you work to help Greg!” she said. “Sitting here and sopping up liquor while these damned fools try to send him to the chair!”

“Not the chair. No chair in this State.”

His calmness and his grin stopped her cold. She stared at him.

“I see. It’s not your neck, is that it?”

“Why not sit down? How much do you think you help by acting like a ten-year-old, Miss Demarist? I suppose that’s who you are.”

She subsided into a chair, but she still looked like a frightened willful child. Dane grinned at her.

“That’s better,” he said, “and just for your enlightenment, more crimes are solved at desks—with or without liquor—than by leg work. It takes both, of course. I might add that Carol Spencer has had enough to bear, without hysteria added to it.”

“I’m not hysterical.”

“Then behave like it.”

He gave her a cigarette, and taking one himself, told her the essential facts; his own belief in Greg’s innocence, the fact that he still had a few things up his sleeve, without explaining, and also the fact that if the Grand Jury brought in an indictment it was not fatal or even final.

“The cards are stacked against him at the hearing, of course,” he said. “The district attorney calls his witnesses. The defense hasn’t a chance. But, as I say, that means nothing.”

She herself, completely subdued by that time, could tell him nothing. She knew Greg drank “when he was unhappy.” She knew there were girls who married soldiers to get their allotments. But she was in the hell of a mess, to use her own words. She wasn’t sending back her wedding presents. She still loved Greg, and she meant to marry him if it had to be in a prison cell. Whereupon she began to cry, produced a handkerchief, said tearfully that she had been an idiot, and departed more quietly than she had arrived.

He went back to his desk and his drink, thinking over the widening circle of every crime, the emotions involved, the people who were hurt, the lives that were blasted. War was different. You killed or were killed, but you left behind you only clean grief, without shame.

After some thought he added to his notes Marcia’s report on the telephone call from San Francisco.

(15) Everything is okay. Mr. Ward is not to worry.

Alex found him still there, the ash tray filled with cigarette stubs, one of them stained with lipstick which he saw immediately and ignored.

“I got Hank Miller alone all right, sir,” he said. “Not easy on Saturday morning. I don’t think he suspected anything.”

“Extra canned goods, eh?”

“Plenty. All sorts. Cheese, sardines when Hank could get them, baked beans, anything that didn’t have to be cooked. I said I’d heard it was black market stuff, and Hank showed me his slips.”

“Still doing it?”

“Not for a week or so, sir.”

“Well, it ought to be easy to find out where it went.”

Dane took Carol with him for a drive that afternoon, both to get her away from Virginia and to have a little time with her himself. He had not yet retrieved his error on the mountain. She was too distressed about Greg, and he told himself philosophically that it could wait. But he did not take her to the mountain again. Instead, he circled around until he reached Pine Hill. Here he stopped the car and looked at her, smiling.

“How would you like to look for clues?” he inquired.

“What sort? I’m no good at that kind of thing, Jerry.”

“Well, you have good eyes, as well as very lovely ones. Let’s see what you can find. Suppose you wanted to hide a lot of tin cans somewhere. How would you go about it?”

“Hide them? You mean bury them?”

“I hardly think so, with all this undergrowth. Still, they might shine, I suppose. Maybe they’re covered. Let’s look, shall we?”

“Wait a minute,” she said, as he started to get out of the car. “Do you mean someone’s been living here?”

“There’s a chance. That’s what we’re here to find out.”

He did not need to explain further, and it was Carol herself who found them, hidden neatly under an old box near the deserted stable. She stood looking down at them, with Dane beside her.

“Then this means—”

“It may be one thing to help Greg,” he told her. “Don’t count on it too much, my darling. There’s still a lot to be done, but this is the first real step. And it’s yours.”

When they got back into the car his face was set and so absent that she thought he had already forgotten her.

“I’m going to see Floyd,” he told her. “I’ll drop you off in the lane. And don’t speak of what we’ve found. Not to anyone. It might be dangerous.”

After he left her he drove smartly into the village, to find Colonel Richardson entering Floyd’s office, with Floyd at his usual place and Mason with his chair tilted back in a corner. Neither man rose, and the colonel remained standing before the desk. None of them noticed Dane.

“Well, colonel,” Floyd said, “anything I can do for you?”

“I have something to tell you,” said the colonel, standing with his hat in his hand and his white hair blowing softly in the breeze from an open window. “It will, I hope, save Captain Spencer from an indictment next week. He is innocent, but these things stick, sir.”

The chief gave Dane a quick glance but did not greet him.

“You’ll be good if you can save Spencer, colonel,” he observed casually. “We have enough to convict him two or three times. He was married to the Barbour woman, he was engaged to a redhead—she’s here, and a good excuse for murder any time—and he has no alibi for the night the girl was killed. I think he was here and we can prove it. What more do you want?”

The colonel sat down, carefully placing his hat on his knee.

“I can prove he did not shoot his sister, sir,” he said stiffly.

“What’s that got to do with it? We’ve never claimed he did.”

The colonel flushed.

“You think that we have more than one murderer in this vicinity? That’s nonsense, Floyd.”

“Why more than one?”

“I’m not alone in the conviction that Gregory Spencer has committed no crime,” he said slowly. “Perhaps I should have spoken sooner, but things have been moving fast. But with Mrs. Ward having a stroke, and Nathaniel carrying a gun even last night when I distinctly saw it in his dressing gown pocket—”

Floyd was looking astonished.

“See here,” he said, “you’re not accusing old Mr. Ward of shooting anybody, are you?”

“Certainly not. The man who shot Elinor Hilliard was taller than Nathaniel.”

“For God’s sweet sake!” Floyd shouted. “Are you saying you saw him?”

“I did. Not close enough to recognize him, but I certainly saw him.”

Sheer amazement kept Floyd silent. Mason’s jaw had dropped. Neither one paid any attention to Dane or interrupted as the colonel told his story.

On the night Elinor had been shot, he said, he had unfortunately taken coffee after dinner, with the result that he could not sleep. He had gone downstairs about one o’clock to get a magazine, and was at the table in the center of the room when he saw a face at the window. It was raining hard. The pane was wet, and it was merely a flash, but there was no mistake about it.

He had put out the light at once and gone outside. There was no one there, but he heard someone running. He could see that it was a man, fairly tall and in a dark overcoat or raincoat, but that was all.

However, several suspicious things had been happening, the colonel explained, including Dane now in his glance, “so I thought it best to follow him. He went up the lane between Rockhill, the Ward place, and Crestview. I tried to follow him to see who it was, but I was in bedroom slippers and I’m not so young as I was. That was when I heard the shot.”

“Why haven’t you reported this sooner?” Floyd asked angrily.

“I would not be here at all,” the colonel said simply, “but an old and dear friend passed away an hour ago. Mrs. Ward is dead. This cannot hurt her now.”

“What does that mean?”

The colonel drew a long breath. His color was bad, Dane noticed.

“The fellow turned in at the Ward place,” he said, and was silent.

It was a moment before Floyd spoke.

“And that’s all? You didn’t investigate further?”

Colonel Richardson looked at him bleakly.

“I found Elinor Hilliard,” he said. “I pulled her up on the hillside, away from where some late car might run over her. She was lying in the lane. Then I ran back to my house and telephoned the doctor. His line was busy, and I was trying to get the hospital when I heard people running about and calling. I knew then she had been found. After that I—well, I just kept quiet. If she had been killed I’d have had to tell what I know, of course.”

Floyd was watching him intently, his eyes hard and suspicious.

“Why are you telling it now?” he inquired.

“Because it was not Gregory Spencer. I’ve know Greg all his life, and this man was not so tall. I’ve a hard decision to make, but I can’t allow an innocent man to be tried for his life.”

“Who was it? You know, don’t you?”

“I’m not sure, but I’m afraid it was Terry Ward.” He drew a long breath. “Remember, I’m making no accusation. And I don’t think the shooting was deliberate. I was after him and Mrs. Hilliard got in his way. But he’s had a long, grueling experience as a fighter pilot. He may be suffering from combat fatigue. I don’t know.”

Dane spoke for the first time.

“Does Mrs. Hilliard know you moved her?” he asked.

“I don’t think so. She was completely unconscious. Shock, of course.”

“Have you any idea why she was out in the rain that night?”

The colonel stirred unhappily.

“She must have been on her way to the Wards’,” he said. “That’s obvious. She had followed the path to the lane and was crossing it. He may not have meant to kill her or even shoot her. He wanted to scare her, probably.”

“And have you told the Wards this story?” Floyd demanded curiously.

“No. I would not have come at all, but I cannot allow Carol Spencer’s brother to be crucified without a protest.”

He turned quietly and went out, closing the door behind him.

D
ANE REMAINED BEHIND WHEN
the colonel left. Floyd sat staring at the door, his mouth partly open, and Jim Mason let his chair down with a thump. Floyd’s eyes turned to Dane.

“What brings you here?” he inquired. “Were you in that lane too when the Hilliard woman was shot? Looks like the whole summer colony gets around in the middle of the night. Maybe you did the shooting,” he added. “You are quite a shot, aren’t you?”

“I haven’t been camping out at Pine Hill for two weeks or so.”

“And who has? We searched that place. Nothing there but the blankets.”

“If you’ll look again you’ll find a number of fresh tin cans there, by the garage.”

“And what would that mean?” Floyd roared. “What’s the idea anyhow. Are you all in cahoots to try to save Greg Spencer. Some hobo camps out in an empty house, and all at once he kills a girl, shoots a woman, and scares Lucy Norton to death! The colonel says he sees him, you find where he’s been staying, and there’s your killer!”

Having done his duty, Dane drove slowly home. One part of the colonel’s story had struck him as distinctly odd. He was still thinking it over when he saw him on the street ahead, walking slowly and dejectedly home. He stopped the car.

“Care for a lift?” he asked.

The colonel roused himself.

“Thanks. Yes, I would, I’m not as young as I like to think I am, major.”

When they started again Dane reverted at once to the colonel’s experience the night Elinor was shot.

“I can see you were in a difficult position,” he said. “You’re not sure it was Terry Ward, are you?”

“What am I to think? It was someone who knew his way around, and war does strange things to men. I know that.”

“Would Mr. Ward go armed against his own grandson?”

The colonel’s color rose. He looked goaded and unhappy.

“I’m afraid he’s going armed against me. He hasn’t been the same for some time. He may have seen me moving Elinor, you know. May have heard the shot and come out.” He tried to light a cigarette with uncertain hands. “He’s been different since then. We used to play a good bit of chess together. We haven’t for some time.”

The picture of the two elderly men, each suspecting the other, was rather pathetic. It was the old story, Dane thought, no one being entirely frank. It was the same with every crime.

“Just what do you know about Terry Ward, Colonel Richardson? Known him a long time?”

“Since he was born. Knew his father before him. Fine Boston family, you know. His grandmother’s death will be a blow to the boy. Only thing is”—the colonel cleared his throat—“he’d never shoot Elinor. There may have been some reason for the other. God knows I judge nobody. But why Elinor?”