Читать книгу One of us is a Murderer - Alan Le May - Страница 5

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In that awkward silence it seemed to me that the room was extremely full of people. Only four of us, besides Jane and the Heneshaws, could hardly be called a crowd under ordinary conditions; but at this remote house of mahogany it was an extraordinary assemblage. Fortuitous of course. Or was it?

I checked over the group. Phil Heneshaw and his wife, of course, were always there. Jane had been left with them by her father, a month before, when he had gone into the jungle on an errand known only to himself.

Then there was the group of three who had arrived here two weeks ago on the Laguna launch, which brought supplies fortnightly. These three were Buckner Loftus, that young giant, sent here by an independent company to make an upriver reconnaissance; Doc Harmon, the fat driller, sent here to meet Blackburn, for consultation purposes; and Charley Walker, called Flatfoot, who had come here to look over the rubber situation. Loftus had delayed his plunge into the jungle, wishing to see what tips he could get from Blackburn, whose return had been overdue. Jane’s presence had no doubt influenced Loftus in this. And Walker had remained two weeks because he had to wait for the Laguna launch.

Finally there was myself, who had flown from Cartagena for no reason but to see Jane. I had arrived two days before in the float-rigged Jenny with which I had been doing free-lance aërial photography. Poor Harry Blackburn had been the eighth, arriving last of all, sunburned and weary from his three months’ survey in the untamed interior.

Each of us, I had to admit, had his own valid reason for being here.

Loftus broke the silence. He seemed both impatient and unimpressed. “Well,” he addressed Walker, “come out with it! Are you going to give us your dope or not?”

“Not,” said Walker. “I’m not going to tell you how I know until I can tell you who.”

“You seem to have taken charge here,” said Doc Harmon with irritation.

“Somebody needs to.”

“Just who are you?” the fat driller demanded. “Rubber business teach you to act like a boss cop?”

“There’s all kind of angles,” said Walker, “to rubber buying.”

“I think——” began Phil Heneshaw.

Walker disregarded him. “Now, I want to know this: Who took the head off that wood god there on the shelf?”

Everyone’s eyes turned to the shelf. I know, because mine did not turn. I was looking at the faces of the rest, instead. Loftus’s eyes went to the shelf with a quick flick, Lucretia’s glance was quick and waspish. Heneshaw’s eyes rose a trifle more slowly, and I made a note of that.

One pair of eyes did not turn: Flatfoot Charley Walker was looking about him as was I, and it was on my face that his eyes came to rest.

“You didn’t look to see if I was right,” he said in a flat voice. “You already knew that was gone, huh?”

“Yes, I knew it,” I said.

“Just how long have you known it?” he asked heavily.

“About five minutes.” This was not the time to anger. “I have eyes,” I reminded him; “perhaps not as good as yours—but eyes.”

The glance he laid upon me, before his heavy gaze twitched to Heneshaw, contained nothing I could read.

“Let us not be foolish, gentlemen,” said Phil Heneshaw with patient weariness. “We are too nervous here, all of us. What connection can there be if the house boy stole a——”

“Since midnight?” said Walker sarcastically. “I tell you, I use my eyes. I notice things. And I know damned well that wood gadget had its head on it at midnight, when I blew out the light.”

“You couldn’t have mistaken——”

“Certainly not!”

“No,” I put in, “he’s not mistaken.”

Harmon laughed, a nervous cackle. “Next time you’ll have it that this wood head was hollow, and there was jewels in it—the eye of the idol probably!”

“No, that’s just what’s funny about it,” I said. “I know all about that wood god, because I brought it out of the jungle myself, when I was up the river last year. To begin with, it isn’t a god, but just a common wood doll, such as the Chocos make for their kids. The head was fitted on, so that it would turn; but it was just a solid piece of wood, about half again as big as a golf ball.”

“Someone could have hollowed out——” Harmon speculated.

“Rubbish! I was showing the doll—or god, as you call it—to Miss Corliss to-night, and showed her how the head was fitted on.”

Jane murmured, “That’s true—it wasn’t hollow.”

“And you’re sure you put the head back?”

“He put the head back,” said Jane softly.

“I think you’re all crazy people,” said Doc Harmon. His gray face made mockery of his words.

Walker hoisted himself to a seat on the table. Idly he took a knife from his pocket and began whittling at a match stick.

“Now, Janey—Miss Corliss,” said he, “you were starting to tell us something that you noticed, just after two o’clock.”

Her blue eyes regarded him uncertainly; she was very pale. I got a chair for her, and made her sit down.

“I’m waiting, Miss Corliss!” said Walker sharply.

“It was nothing,” Jane said unsteadily; “except, that noise stopped, just then.”

“What noise?”

“I had been hearing an awful, strangling sort of sound. It didn’t sound a bit human, except—sometimes I thought there were words in it, though I couldn’t understand what they were.”

“You didn’t,” said Walker almost pleadingly, “catch even one word?”

“No, I’m sure of that. That noise—I thought it was some animal—there are so many jungle noises, sometimes, at night. It kept me awake for almost an hour. Then at last it stopped.”

“Died away—huh?”

“No—stopped abruptly, just as if it was choked off.”

“This was just after two o’clock?”

“Yes—Joe and Buck Loftus got up and lit the lamp within five minutes after that. I saw the line of light under my door. And their voices sounded as if something had happened, so I got up.”

Turning my eyes to the others as she finished, I was struck by a sudden disgust with them all. Of the seven of us in the house of mahogany, Jane alone looked cleanly and beautifully made, so that she made all the others look cheap, and gross.

“You’ll notice,” I said, “that that final choke-off was timed exactly to fit what I saw—the crouching man that came in through the window of my room.”

“If any,” Harmon grumbled under his breath.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean it sounds pretty impossible,” he said aloud. “That’s what I mean!”

“If a search of the house would do any good——” Heneshaw began.

“It would not,” said Walker through his ragged cigar. “Blackburn’s murderer is in this room. One of us went out of this house after midnight—and returned after the death of Blackburn. Macgregor’s story seems to be true—so far as it goes.”

“You mean one of us went out and——”

“I can go further than that,” said Walker. “I heard the man leave the house; and it was about one o’clock in the morning. Now, if one of you wants to admit going out of here at one, and try an alibi on top of it, this is the time for it! Speak up, whoever you are, if you’re going to!”

No one did. In the silence Buck Loftus drummed heavy fingers on the table, his nails making a clicking tattoo.

“Now, Miss Corliss,” our officious rubber buyer went on after a moment: “your window opens on the front gallery. You say you wasn’t sleeping so good. Maybe you heard him, when he went out.”

“I heard him,” said Jane almost inaudibly.

“Maybe—you saw him.”

Jane’s eyes were wide, and fixed almost hypnotically on Walker’s expressionless face. We could hardly hear her as she said: “Yes—I saw him.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know!” The words seemed to burst from her, as if the horror of the night had gripped her by the throat.

“You go easy,” I growled at Walker.

He flicked me a glance, and his manner changed. He spoke gently, for him, and his eyes studied his cigar, instead of boring into her face.

“You saw him, and yet you don’t know who he was?”

“I only saw the outline of a shoulder and a head, as he tiptoed across the porch,” said Jane jerkily; and I would have given everything I owned to have had her a thousand miles out of that jungle, and that night.

“And then?” Walker persisted.

“I turned my face to the wall.”

Heneshaw broke in unexpectedly. “Then you don’t know whether or not that man left the gallery?” he asked.

“No.”

“Did you hear the man come back in?” Walker asked.

“I—I think I did. That is, I heard someone tiptoeing back across the gallery and into the house.”

“Personally,” Walker explained, “I went to sleep, I suppose. I never heard him come back. How much later was it?”

“Perhaps two minutes—perhaps longer.”

“And all this was after that strangling sound began, or before?”

“Before—or maybe it was almost the same time.”

“And that,” said Walker, “seems to be the time this murder was begun. Now, Miss Corliss——”

“Meantime,” I snapped at the rubber buyer, “you want us to believe you went sound asleep in the course of two minutes!”

“Or maybe, as she says, it was longer,” he answered imperturbably. “Now look here, Miss Corliss: I mean to know——”

“I think,” I interrupted him, “some coffee will do us good, now. You’ve pushed this far enough for now, Flatfoot!”

“There’s one thing,” he said, “that we must do to-night—at once; because we will never be able to do it as well again. Miss Corliss, I am going to ask you to go to your room, and take the position you were in when you saw that man. You had better go with her, Mrs. Heneshaw—I want no hysterics when we put out the lights.”

“Put out the lights?”

“I am going to ask,” said Walker, “that each of you men pussyfoot across that porch in the dark, while Miss Corliss watches. Maybe then she’ll catch which one it was.”

Astonishingly, Doc Harmon rapped the table with his knuckles. “A good idea!” he exclaimed. It was the first time he had shown anything but antagonism toward the rubber buyer who had shared his room, and Walker looked at him curiously.

“A very good plan,” said Buckner Loftus more slowly.

“Oh, please——” began Jane.

“You look here,” I demanded, angering. “You’ve bothered Jane Corliss enough, you hear?”

Walker snapped shut his knife and put it away.

“You have a reason,” said he, “for not wanting to make this investigation?”

“I certainly have!”

“In that case,” said Walker, “perhaps after all it ain’t necessary to——”

“I’ll do it,” said Jane unexpectedly.

Walker said to me, slowly, “You’re a lucky man, in a way, Macgregor; but you’re smart, and you’re right about something: that there’d be no protection at all in any concealment of the facts by a woman.”

“You mean——” I began, swaying forward in spite of myself.

Jane cried out, “Joe, don’t!” and the steam went out of me.

“Are there any other objections?” Walker asked.

“We’re ready, I think,” I said.

Just before the lamps were put out in that musty room my eyes once more took in every detail: the positions of the chairs, the lamps, the thousand little things that any lived-in room contains—for I was looking to see if a weapon was ready to hand, a weapon that someone in that room might seize and use in the dark.

Jane turned to her room; and after a moment’s hesitation Lucretia Heneshaw followed her.

“Are you ready, Miss Corliss?”

From the room at the corner of the house where she had slept, or tried to sleep, we heard Jane murmur something; then Lucretia’s creaky voice called out, “Yes, go ahead!”

“Gentlemen,” said Walker harshly, “let’s stand together, over here by the door. No shenanigans, now, you! I’ll go first; then one of you after another—plenty slow, too! You get that? Or we’ll do it over, that’s all. Set?”

He blew out two of the lamps; the other was in his hand.

Loftus, Heneshaw, Harmon, and I gathered rather sheepishly in a group by the door. I was scowling from one to another of them, well out of patience with the trial Jane was being put through to what I was sure was no purpose. The others did not meet my eye, nor one another’s. It is a curious thing to stand in a group of five men, and think: “Perhaps one of us here has killed a man, to-night....”

Walker set the lamp on the talking machine, which was handy to the door. “Ready?” He blew out the light.

A smell of smoldery kerosene wick assailed our nostrils, and slowly we became partly visible to each other again as our eyes adjusted to the indirect radiance of the moon. Instinctively, as the darkness closed upon us, I drew a little apart from the others. A hard ugly suspicion was upon me that Walker was entirely right, and there was no man there whose company I preferred to my own in that sudden dark. Some such feeling must have been upon the others, for they stirred uneasily, drawing apart. As the group lost its unity the individual figures became indistinct, dimly shifting in the obscurity of the shadows. Later I could not swear who had stood where, nor for how long, during those minutes that the lamps were extinguished.

“Here we go,” Walker mumbled through his cigar.

“I still don’t see any sense——” said Heneshaw fretfully.

“Shut up, you!”

Walker tiptoed clumsily across the front gallery, his hands in his pockets. At the edge of the gallery he paused, and swung his shoulders slowly, conscientiously duplicating the probable silhouetted angles of the unknown one among us whom Jane Corliss was trying to identify. Then he turned, and came back.

“All right, you—next! Do just like I done.”

He nudged Buck Loftus, and Buck imitated the rubber buyer’s actions with such exact mimicry that it might have been the same man again, somewhat increased in size.

“Funny, ain’t you?” Walker growled at him when he was back.

“A real screech,” Loftus agreed.

“Next.”

Not in my life have I watched a stranger performance than the one we gave as we tiptoed one after another across that shadowy gallery. Our movements were stiff and unnatural, as if we were mechanical men. I had a feeling that we were being badgered and mocked by something bigger than ourselves, something of and from the jungle, which was amusing itself by putting us through paces unnatural and insane.

I went next to last, and Heneshaw last of all. More than one deep breath was drawn as the kerosene lamps once more swelled into light.

“All right, ladies,” said Walker peremptorily.

Lucretia Heneshaw reappeared from Jane’s room, looking detached and contemptuous, as she so well knew how to do. It occurred to me that this waspish, heat-wrung woman hated us all.

Jane followed her, and I was stirred immeasurably as I saw how tremulous she had become, during those moments in the dark.

“Sit down,” said Walker.

Jane obeyed, and folded her hands tight in her lap. Almost I dropped to my knees beside her to put my arms around her, so white and scared she looked, with her eyes turned so dark a blue that they looked nearly black. Her dark wavy bobbed hair was in beloved disorder, and I wanted to smooth it with my fingers, and tell her everything was all right. But it was Buck Loftus, that great swaggering lion of a man, who lounged over to her chair and leaned on the back of it, looking almighty competent and protective, and staring back at us all with a patronizing mockery in his eyes.

“Who was it, Janey?” asked Walker, slipping back into that familiarity that I loathed. “Did you get him?”

She nodded faintly, almost imperceptibly. Doc Harmon fidgeted, and Lucretia, who sat down rigidly on the edge of a chair, was watching her with the lean intensity of a she-cat on the stalk.

“Who?” demanded Walker, his eyes bearing hard against her face.

She seemed unable to speak; but her tormented eyes turned, as if drawn irresistibly, and all our eyes followed hers. The look in her eyes was indictment, as surely as if she had spoken a name.

“Phil Heneshaw, huh?” said Walker.

No oral confirmation was needed, nor did she offer it.

Phil Heneshaw had sat down, and was now slumped in one of those frowsy wicker chairs, his hands shakily gripping the arms. That evening he had looked what he was—a man in his fifties, worn somewhat beyond his age. Now a stranger would have said that he might be ninety, or a hundred, so haggard, so gray and withered, was his face. His eyes were dark sick pools; they looked at no one, yet perpetually shifted their gaze, here and there about the musty grass matting of the floor.

In the weight of the silence I found one glance at that crumpled figure enough. Once more my eyes were running instinctively over the thousand details of that ill-starred house under the jungle.

Walker stirred; he was about to speak.

“Wait!” I snapped. The metallic click of my own voice surprised me. “Who took that dart off the table?”

“Who took what?” fumbled Doc Harmon dimly.

“The blowgun dart—the weapon that killed Harry Blackburn. It’s been taken from the table,” I said. “I know that it was there when Walker blew out the light.”

“If this is some more,” Doc Harmon gibbered—“some more of your infernal imaginings——”

“No,” said Walker in his slow flat voice, “he’s right. It was there. I know.”

Nothing yet had brought home to us so forcibly that something was definitely, unbelievably wrong within the house in which we stood. Then I heard Jane’s breath catch in her throat, and for the moment I forgot the black tension that had come upon us, forgot Blackburn and the jungle.

Now I want you to understand that Jane Corliss was no weakling, but a courageous and clear-witted girl of that splendid athletic type which has so changed the whole course of American thought and manners. But there is a limit to all endurance, and I think Jane Corliss could have been something less than a woman if she had not found the horror of that night more than enough for her.

I dropped to one knee beside her and took both her hands. Suddenly she hid her face in the crook of my elbow, where it rested on the arm of her chair; and her tears burned my arm as she tried to steady the spasmodic trembling that shook all of her slender frame.