Читать книгу One of us is a Murderer - Alan Le May - Страница 6

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Jane pulled herself together with the brilliant, vital resilience that was always so surprising to me; though perhaps it was to be expected in the daughter of Dan Corliss, who at fifty-five could outmarch any man I knew, and had in him a driving, questing spirit of perpetual youth. When she had dried her eyes I turned my attention to the others again.

If the situation had been strained before, it was ten times more so now. Before the little feathered dart had disappeared from the table it had still been possible to believe that Harry Blackburn had been killed by the blowgun of a Choco canoe boy, in revenge for some unknown affront. Now, however, we possessed a sequence of facts of such sinister suggestion as to strike horror through us all.

A little after one o’clock one of us had tiptoed out of the house, returning after a few minutes. Shortly thereafter Jane Corliss had heard a strangling sound begin in the clearing; and though she had not then recognized it as the death rattle of a human throat, no doubt remained that that was exactly what she had heard.

A little after two o’clock the strangling sound had abruptly ceased; and immediately thereafter I had myself seen a crouching figure enter the house—or reënter it—through the window of my room. At about two-fifteen Harry Blackburn had been discovered dead near his hammock at the edge of the clearing, with a blowgun dart under his ear. The head of an Indian doll—a meaningless bit of wood—was mysteriously missing. And finally, that blowgun dart had disappeared—stolen by one of us, evidently, from under the noses of the rest.

We knew now, too, that it was Philip Heneshaw who had left the house at one o’clock; and his own tacit denial of this action increased the incriminating significance of this fact.

At first it seemed to me that our man hunt was over before it had begun. Incredible though it appeared, my first thought was that Phil Heneshaw, the fusty, discouraged little master of the mahogany station, stood convicted of murder.

Second thought, however, raised certain objections to this, and I began to doubt. I remained silent, and waited for what time would bring forth.

The disappearance of the dart had diverted attention from Heneshaw for a few moments; but it swiftly returned.

“One thing at a time,” said Walker. His sombre heavy eyes, moving from one to another of us, remained expressionless, as expressionless as his padlike expanse of cheek, or his pouchy, arrogant lips, from which the cigar butt bobbed as he talked. “One thing at a time. You don’t want to forget, you, we just found out who it was sneaked out of this house to-night. All right, Heneshaw—tune in!”

Old Phil Heneshaw, looking at least twice his fifty-odd years, licked dry lips, and his hands shifted jerkily on the arms of the chair in which he slumped. “It’s true,” he said in a voice like rustling paper. He glanced up once at Walker, into whose unpleasant face had come a faintly gloating look; then immediately dropped his eyes again. “I often don’t sleep well, and take a walk, to get a breath of air during the night. Lucretia will tell you that.”

Walker glanced at Lucretia, who, however, chose to tell nothing whatever.

“But to-night,” Heneshaw went on, “there were too many mosquitoes. I never left the gallery at all, but only stood for a little while, looking out through the screen. If only Jane had not turned her face to the wall! She would have been able to tell you that.”

“Then why didn’t you speak up and say so! What’s the idea letting us go to all this work, putting on a show to find that out?”

“I thought—” here Heneshaw’s voice quavered—“I thought that to involve myself would only confuse the issue.”

“Oh, you thought it would confuse the issue, did you? Yeah, you confused it, all right!”

Glancing at Lucretia, I was surprised to find her face hard as marble. Her slightly slanted eyes were narrow, expressionless, like a cat’s.

“We’re getting some place,” said Walker, his voice colorless and low. “Heneshaw sneaks out at one o’clock in the morning—a fact you all saw him hold out on us. After a few minutes he sneaks back. Just then the death rattle comes into Harry Blackburn’s throat. Is it open and shut, you, or do I have to dig up a motive?”

“I never would have believed——” Doc Harmon began, his voice unnatural.

“God help me!” Heneshaw burst out. “I’m being crucified by stupidity!”

“Exactly what,” said Walker, “do you mean by that?”

Heneshaw folded his hands in his lap, and his body relaxed, as if there had come into him a supreme resignation. He said slowly, “Some of you have known me for a long time. And if there’s no one here who can say, with full conviction, beyond any shadow of doubt, that it would have been utterly impossible for me to do this thing—well, what’s the use? Gentlemen, there is nothing I can say.”

Harmon, the fat driller, fidgeted. His bleary face looked even rockier than when he had first been routed out of bed. “Well,” he offered uneasily, “I always thought Phil was a pretty decent sort of——”

“Blah, blah, blah,” Walker mocked him.

“It’s true!” Jane cried. “I’d as soon suspect myself as Mr. Heneshaw!”

“Maybe that,” said Walker softly, “is why you didn’t tell us you knew it was him you saw, all the time?”

“What do you mean?”

Walker went to Heneshaw’s cot, and let himself down on it gently. Once again the springs squawked and snapped, after their habit.

“You can hear this thing a mile,” said Walker, “and not only that, but it’s the only noisy one in the house. If you heard him sneak back, you heard him hit this bed, and you can’t tell me different.”

“I did hear it,” Jane retorted hotly. “But I knew that Mr. Heneshaw couldn’t be guilty—so I supposed he just happened to turn over or something, while someone else was coming in.”

Heneshaw spoke wearily. “If I tried to be quiet, it was to avoid disturbing my guests. But it’s a wonder that outrageous spring did not wake you all. I try to keep everything oiled against the damp; but we are crowded here, gentlemen, and this cot, having just come from the storeroom——”

His mind seemed to be wandering, as if the past hour had levied too great a tax. Flatfoot Walker let a faint grin replace the visible satisfaction with which he had prodded at Heneshaw; and he now sat down, sprawled his legs out lazily, and locked his hands behind his head.

“All right, you birds. We won’t fan the old guy any more. I got to admit, I was real disappointed when Miss Corliss picked him.”

“You mean——” wavered Heneshaw.

“We haven’t got much on you, Professor, and that’s a fact. You’ve slipped through our fingers—for now.”

“He’s done better than that,” I said. “He’s completely freed himself of suspicion.”

“And how do you figure that out?”

“He went blundering out onto the gallery, letting himself be heard and seen. Do you think he would have done that if he’d had the least suspicion of to-night’s crime? Do you think, for that matter, that he would have left Blackburn making audible noises—his job half done?”

“Somebody,” said Walker, “left a job half done—and then went back.”

“Compare Heneshaw’s movements with those of the murderer, who came in through my room,” I insisted. “The man who reëntered the house at two o’clock was even able to walk soundlessly on these squeaking floors. Moreover—and this is conclusive: there was no sound of any squeaking, popping bed after the black figure moved through my room. And Loftus will tell you that Heneshaw was immediately seen getting out of his bed.”

“In short,” yawned Walker, “we know darned well he was in bed all the time. You can’t get out of a bed without first being in it, that’s a cinch. Yeah, I figured that out myself, half an hour ago.”

“Then why in heaven’s name have you been hammering this old man?”

“To see him squirm,” said Walker complacently. “I didn’t think he knew anything—and he don’t.”

“You are satisfied,” said Heneshaw distinctly, leaning forward, “that the murderer was with Harry at the time of his death? That is, when Miss Corliss heard those strangling noises cease?”

“Yeah, Professor, he was there all right. I know that much.”

“You have only my word for it,” I said bluntly. “I was the only one who saw——”

“No,” said Walker, “I’m not billiarding on your word, either, Macgregor.” From his position on his shoulder blades he regarded me insolently.

“It seems to me it’s time,” I said, “we heard some of these things that you seem to know.”

“Not just yet; there’s plenty other stuff to go into,” he said with relish. “There’s the disappearing weapon, for instance. You were all hopped up about that, a minute ago.” Heneshaw cleared his throat, and Walker turned on him leisurely. I had not known until to-night that Walker so greatly disliked Phil Heneshaw. “You seem to be feeling a little safer, Professor.”

“I was just going to say,” said Heneshaw, “that perhaps when we know who—who removed that dart, we will know who has done this terrible thing.”

“Oh—you guess it was an inside-job after all, do you?”

“It seems—it seems——” Heneshaw wavered. “Gentlemen, this is horrible! I don’t know what to think.”

“Glad you mentioned it,” said Walker heartily. “He says”—he turned to us weightily—“that he don’t know what to think.”

“Let him alone,” growled Buck Loftus. “He’s right, at that. We’ve got to find that poison thumb tack, next thing we do.”

“And a big chance you got,” Walker retorted. “It was maybe three inches long, and slim. It could be shoved behind one of these warped boards, or hid in one of them cigars in that box. You’d have to tear the house down.”

“We can try, can’t we?” boomed Buck belligerently.

“Go ahead,” Walker invited him.

Nobody moved to carry out this suggestion.

“And now,” I rammed in again, “my friend Flatfoot, I’d like to hear what you were doing, about two o’clock.”

“Lying awake in bed,” he said promptly.

“Oh, something woke you, did it?”

“How about it, Doc?” asked Walker with a malicious grin at Harmon. “What woke me?”

“Well,” said the fat driller nervously, “the fact is, I wasn’t sleeping any too well myself, and I got up and went to the window for a breath of air, and stood looking out the window, and lighting a cigarette——”

“Say,” demanded Buck Loftus, “wasn’t anyone asleep in this house to-night?”

“It isn’t so much the heat,” complained Harmon querulously, “as the——”

“Oh, get on with your lie,” Walker prodded him. “You were crashing about the room, and lit a lot of matches—then what?”

“Well, damn it, I was looking out the window. Someone was prowling around out back, and I knew it was one of those sneak-thief Choco servants; and I was watching to see if he would make a try at the cooler box. There was a couple of chops left over from dinner, and I thought——”

“And what with stamping about and wheezing, and banging the screen up and down, you woke me up,” finished Walker. “Only—how did you know it was a Chocoman you saw, way out there in the dark? Saw his face in the moonlight, I suppose, and can tell us which——”

“Well, no—— Say, damn it, I don’t know it was a Chocoman. By gosh, I hadn’t thought of——”

“And he went back into the huts?”

“No, I think he saw the light of my match; because he stopped, and kind of eased back, and I lost him round the corner of the house.”

“Round the corner to Blackburn’s side of the house?”

“Say, come to think of it, it was. That was how I happened to open the screen—I leaned out to see if I could keep him in sight. And I guess it was the screen shutting woke you up, huh?”

“Blackburn’s side of the house is the side where Joe and I slept,” said Buck Loftus. “Joe’s already told you somebody came in through our room.”

Loftus seemed to be edging onto my side of the fence—probably out of dislike for Flatfoot Walker. Walker, however, made helpless waving motions with his hands, and when he spoke it was through a spasm of chuckles.

“Very nice—if Doc wasn’t lying.”

“Say, damn it——” began Harmon irritably.

“You saw him at the window, didn’t you?” Loftus thundered at Walker.

“Yeah, and what about it? How do I know where he was before that? Maybe he was out on the gallery, seeing about them chops personal. Maybe,” he added more grimly, “he was out other places.”

“If you don’t believe anybody, what are you asking questions for?” Loftus demanded.

“You want me to believe,” said Walker, “that fat old Doc Harmon saw somebody prowling around the clearing at the time of the murder—at the exact time of the murder—and never thought a thing about it, or that it was worth mentioning, until just this minute?”

“The fact is——” began Doc steamily.

“It says in the book,” said Walker, “that when a guy begins by saying, ‘The fact is,’ why it ain’t a fact but a lie.”

“All right,” Harmon exploded, “I’ll tell you the truth!” His face was purple, his jowls quivered, and his watery faded eyes popped angrily. “I was going to mention it first off; then when you began to pull this inside-job stuff I figured I wouldn’t say anything about being up just then. How the hell was I to know you saw me up?”

“And you thought,” supplied Walker, “that dragging yourself into it would just confuse the issue, as the professor says.”

“Put it that way if you want to, damn it!”

“Well, now,” said Walker lazily, “the fat boy begins to sound like he’s telling the truth, once. All this holding out on us was just an afterthought on Doc’s part, fellows—he didn’t mean no harm. If he’d meant business at the time, or had any notion what was going on, he wouldn’t have stamped around there lighting matches and advertising himself, would he? See now? Trust Papa. I’m not trying to frame nobody.”

“This business seems to amuse you, Mr. Walker,” said Phil Heneshaw acidly.

“Yeah, I’m having a fairly whoopee night,” agreed Walker. “What with you guys all being so big-hearted about keeping the issue so unconfused. But I’ll learn you. Well, this brings us somewheres else. Now we’ll smoke out some of these sneak-thief bushmen that Doc was mentioning.”

“The servants are peace-abiding Christian Chocomen,” mumbled Heneshaw.

“All right, Buck my lad,” suggested Walker, “suppose you take a shotgun, or whatever you think you’ll need, and go round up a few peace-abiding Christians. Bring ’em right in. I want to see which ones are missing, if some.”

Buckner Loftus hardly troubled to answer him. “Get ’em yourself, if you want ’em,” he recommended.

Flatfoot Charley Walker stopped chewing his cigar to try Buck with one of those heavy slow stares; but a halfway, one-sided grin was all the effort netted him, and after a minute or two he seemed to change his mind. He got up leisurely.

“Fair enough,” he agreed unexpectedly. “Anyone want to come? Think I may have the dart on me, and might hide it while I’m out? No? All right, get me right onto the pan, fellows, because I’ll be back in a minute.”

He sauntered out by way of the rear gallery.

The setting of the moon had turned what was left of the night very black; and when Flatfoot Charley had disappeared into the darkness a silence fell upon us. Walker had taken advantage of a ticklish situation to amuse himself, deliberately affronting each of us in turn, and this had not endeared him to us. But we did not yet know what manner of madness was in that house, or, perhaps, outside in the night; we knew only what was now in the bed in which Buck had slept. In that uncertainty I think we were all of us reluctant to see one of our number walk into the shrouding jungle dark, which, for all we knew, might not yield him up to us again.

All of us, that is, but one, whom we could not at that time name.