The jungle crime 6x9 16feb10

The Jungle Crime

By Luke Allan (William Lacey Amy) First published by Arrowsmith, London in March 1931 This edition was digitized by:

Stillwoods, September 2015

Also by this Author: MURDER AT MIDNIGHT. THE MASKED STRANGER. BLUE PETE: HALF BREED. THE BLUE WOLF. THE LONE TRAIL. THE WESTERNER. THE RETURN OF BLUE PETE. THE BEAST. THE PACE. THE SIRE. BLUE PETE: DETECTIVE. etc.

Gordon Muldrew Series The Masked Stranger(1930) Murder at Midnight (1930) The Jungle Crime (1931) The Fourth Dagger (1932) Murder at the Club (1933) Behind the Wire Fence (1935) Beyond the Locked Door (1938)

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Catalogue Information: Title: The Jungle Crime Originally published: 1931 Author: Luke Allan, pseudonym of W. Lacey Amy Keywords: luke allan, lacey amy, gordon muldrew ISBN Canada: 978-0-9938797-7-7 This edition published by: Stillwoods Doug Frizzle, 24 Grant Line, Stillwater Lake, Nova Scotia, Canada, B3Z 1H7.

Available through: Lulu.Com This edition dedicated to Susan and Christina Futter and Brenda Chan, who accepted my distraction as I worked on the transliteration of this rare work.

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I THE JUNGLE II THE WOMAN III THE MURDER IV GORDON MULDREW’S CASE V “YOU WERE HER LOVER” VI IN THE DARKNESS VII FEELING HIS WAY VIII ALIBIS IX MORE ALIBIS X A MIDNIGHT VISIT XI AN OPEN WINDOW XII THE TWO LETTERS XIII TIGER WARNED XIV THE FIRST DISAPPEARANCE XV A ROOM IN DISORDER XVI A THREATENING LETTER XVII A PROFESSIONAL DISCUSSION XVIII A HOLD-UP THAT FAILED XIX MIDNIGHT RAIDERS XX THE SECOND DISAPPEARANCE XXI THE THIRD DISAPPEARANCE XXII THE FOURTH DISAPPEARANCE XXIII AN IMPORTANT LETTER XXIV BUSTER RETURNS XXV THE JEWELLERY—AND ANOTHER DEATH XXVI SOME OF THE STORY XXVII MURDER HIDE MURDER XXVIII BIDWELL ASKS HELP XXIX CANAAN XXX A NIGHT PROWLER XXXI AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR XXXII A BLOW IN THE DARK XXXIII THE TANGLE GROWS—AND THINS XXXIV A CONFESSION XXXV THE GANG’S ALL HERE

1 6 14 23 31 40 49 57 66 74 80 85 91 96 103 108 112 116 123 129 138 142 149 154 160 166 170 177 181 191 195 200 207 211 219

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The Characters: The Gang, five light-hearted, loyal young friends who obtrude themselves into the story and everything else; by name: Tiger Lillie, star reporter of the Evening Star, an amateur detective of more ambition than success.

Louis Bracken, writer of “thrillers,” and therefore helpless in the solving of mystery; incidentally Kolum writer on the Evening Gazette.

Beef Halladay, fat and fussy, butt of The Gang.

Grant McQuigg.

Tishy—that’s all.

Sada Corwyn, formerly Sadie Harrow, fisher of men.

Nat Corwyn, her husband, neither blind nor helpless.

Major Withers, English and mysterious.

Mildred Masters, born Janet Doyle, popular actress and therefore capable of anything.

Gordon Muldrew, of the Homocide Squad, a sentimental detective.

Inspector Armitage, his superior in some things.

Blood Bidwell, proprietor of freak restaurants and of Canaan.

Buster Rawlinson, leader of The Jungle orchestra.

Napier Comstock, a silent but important figure.

Figgis, Stormer, Mrs. James, servants at Canaan.

Jameson and other policemen, heavy of foot.

Mohammed, one of several walnut-stained waiters at The Jungle.

Musicians, and patrons who are guests.

A newspaper photographer who is not a guest.

Landladies and janitors of uneasy roles.

Hotel clerks of both sexes and equal incapacity.

4

I

THE JUNGLE

Around a table in the newest thing in restaurants five young men sat staring about them with the frank effrontery of youth.

Tiger Lillie alone, star reporter of the Star, who had taken the head of the table with his customary impudence, refused to be impressed. With a fatherly, almost supercilious smile he waggled a signal to a broad-shouldered waiter whose walnut-stained body was covered by nothing more concealing than a loin-cloth and turban.

Beef Halladay, fat and effervescent, the butt of The Gang, his flowing-end tie sadly awry, boiled over: “Gee, Tiger, it’s a whizz!

One of the others, a sad-faced, roving-eyed young man, lifted a protesting hand. Louis Bracken always contended disgustedly that The Gang, as they called themselves, had originated in protest against the Spirit of Uplift that afflicted their country, but as yet it had taken no form but shocking diction. But then Louis, producer of “thrillers ” and, on the side, Kolum writer for the Evening Gazette, the Star’s rival newspaper, was sensitive to language—in others. Their attention wandered to the one who sat on Tiger’s left, McQuigg by name. McQuigg, himself a member of The Gang, was guest of honour, having returned only the week before from a short visit to Europe. Uptilting his nose and making a flourish as if adjusting an eyeglass, he drawled: “Beastly topping, old things, don’t y’ know. Quaite clevuh!”

Whereupon Tishy, the fifth member of the party, long and gangling, his jet-black hair plastered tight to his lean head, lifted his hands and howled dismally.

Louis scowled. “We’re not part of the show, boys. . . .

Poor Mac! It’s the taint of foreign travel. It’ll wear off.”

“Mac hasn’t been the same since,” Tiger said with a forced laugh. As Mac dropped his eyes to the table, he continued: “Anyway, we have to thank him for suggesting The Jungle for his own banquet. He has learned a lot about the changes in the old town since he came home.”

“I—I just happened to hear of it,” Mac broke in uneasily.

“I wish you’d heard of the prices,” Beef grumbled.

“Oh, well, it’s worth it. To-morrow that slim-waisted Kolum of Louis’ will exude something biting on ‘The Tendency of Modern Entertainment.’ ” Tiger grinned into Louis’ glowering face. “Yes, sir, the greasy slide that starts so imperceptibly from naughty places like The Jungle.”

Beef snorted comtemptuously. “Naughty? Call this place naughty? Doesn’t it struggle to think so? Nothing really naughty ever happens in these places. No such luck!”

“Think not, Beef?” Tiger pointed. “For instance, see that couple over there—there, under the slimy lizard that would drop in their soup if it weren’t chained—” Beef half rose in his chair. “Holy ravens! You don’t mean that lizard’s alive—not alive! I’ve been watching it—Lord, there it goes!” He dropped back, gripping the edge of the table.

“Nothing but life could be so p’izonously green, Beef.

And there—at your elbow—that sudden-death serpent—” Beef curved his fat body to look behind.

“Nothing between you and extinction but a thin sheet of glass that would smash before a hasty hand in the dark,” Tiger continued calmly.

“My mother and Mary Jane!” Beef shivered. “This is awful!”

“Sh, Beef, my lad!” Tiger touched the bare brown arm of the waiter standing at his side. Don’t annoy the Bedouins.

They’re a bit hasty in their reactions, and they all carry dirks in their loin-cloths. Don’t mind him, Mohammed. In his sheltered life he has known nothing more dangerous than bank bandits, grizzly bears, and wild women. Now, trot out the dragon soup.”

“I always did loathe snakes,” Beef muttered.

Tiger struck his head as if a brilliant idea had come to him. “There you are, Louis: The Jungle a second Garden of Eden.”

“If only there was an Eve!” Tishy pouted.

“The only Eves in Louis’ Kolum are the Awful Examples.”

“Because,” Louis retorted, “the Gazette is a paper of principle.”

2

“But mighty low rate of interest,” Tiger added.

“Why, hello, Abou Ben Adam! Back again.” He grinned into the cold face of the big waiter. “Tell me, is this the gen-u-ine Sahara tan you wear or does it wash off? By the way, convey to the cous-cous concocter my compliments and tell him this soup may have been all right in Arabia, but here—” “Don’t you like it, effendi?”

“Not in this incarnation. Were this the real jungle— Hi there, Mustapha! Say, I’m paying for that soup!” For the plate had been whisked away. Tiger looked pained. “Running but honest comment isn’t popular in The Jungle, I see. Well, let’s make a few remarks about the pibroch, or whatever they call music fitting for a place like this.” He leaned back with a resigned sigh. “They carry out the jungle idea rather well, eh?”

The compliment was deserved. “The Jungle,” latest phase of the effort to titillate feverish appetites, reproduced a jungle scene with surprising and often startling success. The tables were polished cross-sections of trees, the chairs rustic almost to discomfort. The ceiling was a screen of foliage, and the pillars were wrapped with bark and smothered in green branches, through which ran tethered lizards and tree frogs; while here and there, in carefully-disguised glass cages, were snakes and spiders.

Across the floor wound shallow trenches of running water, crossed at intervals by rustic bridges.

Centring one side and surrounded by a wide moat filled with water was the slightly-raised platform on which the orchestra, stained like the waiters and naked, sat cross-legged amidst a jumble of strange instruments, glimpsed only here and there through a concealing cloak of green.

As Tiger Lillie and his friends turned, the lights flickered, sending ripples of reflection over the water in the moat, over the tawny muscles of the musicians; in fleeting shafts it slanted from their oiled hair piled to a stiff peak at the crown.

“And for a few dollars a night they submit to that!” Louis scoffed.

“A munificent few to a reporter,” Tiger told him, eyeing the musicians enviously. “And such hair! It is said—for advertising purposes—that their hair has grown three inches in the fortnight The Jungle has been open. You can prove it for 3

yourself by buying a tin of the grease at the cash wicket for two dollars as you go out.”

“And a hair-cut seventy-five cents!” gasped Beef. “A depilatory, now—” “Also, for advertising purposes, every musician is of good family, a college grad., a total abstainer, and—all the other mythical virtues we admire but avoid adopting. Gentlemen of such standing that they are permitted at times to come down and dance with the guests.”

“So that the fiddler may entertain us with squaring the circle, the trap-drummer will explain Einstein, and the Jew’sharpist—” Tiger’s lip curled. “So Victorian, Louis. The leader of that orchestra was flying wing on his college team, the pianist has the flagpole-sitting record for Maine, the first violin has three suspensions to his credit, and the drummer—” “And not one of them knows anything more of George Washington,” Mac put in, “than that the poor simp failed to grasp the advantages of a lie in passing conversation.”

“Travel,” Tiger grieved, “is so narrowing, my friend.”

“I see another snake!” Beef whispered excitedly. “I see scores of snakes—battalions—armies—and thirty thousand lizards!”

Tishy picked up Beef’s cup and sniffed loudly. “Where do you get that kind, Beef, old boy?”

“And a hairy tarantula with legs like shaving brushes!

And look at the turtles! Jumpin’ Joseph!”

From under the rustic bridge over the trench beside their table five small turtles lumbered into sight. Coloured stones mounted in their shells scintillated in the rays of small lights concealed beneath the floor.

Tiger dropped a piece of bread among them. “Such a naive, bucolic spot! All we lack for a perfect picnic is ants in the jam and squirmy worms hanging from every branch over the lemon pie. Picture, Beef, a vivacious viper curling cozily about your neck, and a ticklish tarantula reposefully reflecting on the choicest spot to nip—” Beef wriggled. “Aw, let up, Tiger!”

“But nothing ever happens in these naughty places. Oh, 4

no. Ask Mac!�

They turned to Grant McQuigg. Mac seemed to have shrunken into himself. Cowering in his chair, head bent, his eyes were fixed wildly on the door. Convulsively his right hand closed and unclosed over the handle of his table-knife.

5

II

THE WOMAN

Mystified and startled by the haggard lines that had suddenly appeared on their friend’s face, they followed the direction of his staring eyes. Beef pursed his lips.

“My eye and Sunday clothes!”

A great black body intruded between Tiger and the door.

“You there, blackie, go chase yourself.”

Whether he heard or not, the waiter slunk into the shadow of one of the green pillars. Tiger could see now.

Just within the bark-covered door stood two women and their escorts, looking curiously about them. At that instant the lighting of the restaurant rearranged itself, so that it seemed to concentrate on the new arrivals. In the front of the group a woman, tall and lithe, beautiful, serene, smiled out over the room.

“Oh, to be on my knees at her feet!” sighed Beef.

Tishy scoffed: “She’d think you a golf hazard and play around you, fatty.”

Mac, crouching low over the table, whispered: “For God’s sake be quiet!”

They did not turn to look at him, they did not need to.

They saw those fevered cheeks, that frantic stare of mingled fear and hunger, of hate and love. It was why they did not turn to look at him. A long silence fell over the table.

The woman who centred the eyes of the room stood half a pace before her companions, calmly adjusting a tenuous shoulder-strap manifestly planned for adjustment rather than for sustaining decently the sheath-like dress beneath. About her and her slow, flowing movements was the lithe grace of a serpent, alluring but monitory. The beauty of her, startling in its vividness, was unsettling, urgent, self-sufficient and selfsatisfied, demanding everything while giving nothing. Not a flutter of self-consciousness afflicted her as, like a queen, she sent that dazzling smile over the room. Her hair, slightly ruddy in tone, was cut evenly about her head and loosely waved, heaping about her face like a slow, spreading flame.

The dress about which she was negligently concerned fitted her so perfectly as to give a disconcerting impression of 6

nakedness. Draping to her ankles, it tightened suggestively below her curving thighs and calves; and the solitary shoulder-strap, crossing her full, bare chest made one think of a toilet catastrophe that had befallen her too late for more than perfunctory repair. To these narrow margins of decency the eye was drawn by flashing jewellery carefully placed, two brooches on the shoulder-strap, one half-way down her left side, a fourth on the right breast. The hand that worked idly at the strap gleamed with diamonds.

Yet, in spite of an indecency too flagrant to be unplanned, a certain irresponsibility, a naïveté that pleaded for her, was attained by two immense and fantastic bracelets on the wrist of the hand that raised to her shoulder. Standing there in that room of untamed jungle, with its dangling foliage and moss, its halfnaked brown waiters, its reptiles and rippling water, she became part of the wild scene, the native woman at home.

Tiger lifted a hand to shade his eyes. “Oh, naughty, naughty! A siren, my brave boys! Bind Ulysses to the mast or we’re doomed!”

Tishy remarked that he felt as if he’d intruded on the harem bath. “I wonder what the Englishman would take to change places?”

Nearest the woman a man of uncertain age, slightly grey, but showing no other sign of age, thin and erect, stood watching his companion with a curious smile. English, of course—that was evident—his detached composure was born of a social experience far beyond that of the others of his party. Where the woman before him was composed enough, it was the composure that comes of self-satisfaction amounting to superiority; the Englishman for the moment was simply unaware of himself.

Tiger’s gaze slid away to the second woman in the group.

“By Jove, Mildred Masters, of The Love Dance! And taking second place to any woman on earth! . . . I wonder what the Capitol is doing without her to-night?”

Mildred Masters, for the moment the city’s idol, who had packed the Capitol Theatre for three months, would have stood out in any other company; but now, uneasy, her pretty forehead lined, she hung back, waiting, it seemed, waiting impatiently and in no good humour, restless, biting one red lip, her frowning glances passing from the Englishman to the woman who had, 7

temporarily at least, ousted her from the centre of the stage.

“Mildred,” Tiger remarked, “isn’t acting to-night, neither here nor at the Capitol. . . . I wonder.”

Louis leaned his chin in his hand. “Hating, as she does, she has forgotten to act. . . . Is it the man—or the woman—or both?”

Tiger whispered dramatically: “Louis’ next thriller! The plot thickens!”

The fourth of the party was a man younger than the others, handsome but weak. Unlike his companions, he seemed conscious of everything—the three with him, the gaping crowd, the enigmatic smile on the Englishman’s face, the spotlight position of the woman in front. He was ill at ease, angry and growing angrier. Disorderly fair hair and a shambling manner of holding his shoulders fought the sensitiveness of eyes and lips.

Stepping abruptly forward, he spoke sharply to the woman who continued to delay their progress. Her reply was a flippant shrug, but she started ahead, still lithe and graceful.

Tishy turned on Mac. “You lucky dog! If I knew her—” “Aw, now, Mac”—Beef leaned his fat arms on the table “I’ve always been a good friend of yours. Such fine discrimination you have in picking your friends, I’ve always maintained. Look at me and that woman, for instance. Lead me to her. Be a sport—” He stopped before the hard glitter of McQuigg’s eyes.

“That woman a friend of mine! If I had a shadow of discrimination I’d never have looked at her.”

“It doesn’t pain me any to look,” Tishy murmured.

“And, ” Louis declared slowly, “it doesn’t pain Mac. Why not be honest with yourself, Mac, old boy?”

“If it hurts to look,” offered Beef, “I’ll change chairs with you. I’m getting a crick in my neck.”

“Why should I change chairs?” The goaded young man glared at his friends. “She’s nothing to me.”

“Now, isn’t that too bad—” Tishy began, when Louis cut in: “Psycho-analysis says you must get it off your chest, Mac. It’s the only cure.”

“But—but I need no cure. I was cured—effectively—two 8

weeks ago.”

Beef made a remark about the danger of relapses, of cures that are worse than diseases, but Mac did not hear. The hand that held the table-knife closed over it spasmodically, so that it resembled a dagger. “I hate her! When I think of what she is, of how near she had me under her feet as she had the others, of what she has done in cold blood—” Abruptly his manner changed—all the fire and fury faded, and he sank limply back in his chair, wiping his forehead.

“There’s a story, boys . . . not a nice one. It started and ended on the Plutonia coming over . . . as far as I’m concerned. The awful part of it, the part that makes me wonder there’s a God to let her go on living, is that for Sada Corwyn, too, I think it has ended.

The story I know I mean, not her loathsome ways.”

For a moment or two he sat with lowered head, his eyes, beneath his frowning brows, fixed on the group advancing among the tables. His friends shifted uneasily. Moments of drama were not in the calendar of The Gang.

“Look at her!” he snarled. “Can you blame me for not being able to keep my eyes off her? That’s the hell of it! That’s what makes me see red. I see her all day, I dream of her at night. . . . And I know I always will until—until one of us is dead. Could you blame me if—” He checked himself and stared with wide, frightened eyes from face to face. “Why doesn’t God punish her?” he asked in a shaking voice.

“If He won’t, then some day one of her many victims will turn on her . . . and nothing less than her life will settle the account. Sada Corwyn will die a violent death, if there’s a God in heaven!”

The venom of it threw the table into an awkward silence.

Beef spoke first.

“Come now, Mac, there are horrors enough in this place. . . . Just the same, I’m curious.”

“I don’t see why. You’ve never seen her before—you know nothing of her—you’ve never made love to her.”

“But you have.” Louis was watching him intently.

“I have . . . fool that I was!”

“And she turned you down,” Louis suggested.

“What the devil—those lights!” It was the first time Tiger 9

had spoken since Mac’s story began to drip from him, and for several moments they sat watching the lights that in some inexplicable way seemed to cling to the woman as she advanced, as if they emerged from within her body. Momentarily, as if conscious herself of the effect, she hesitated, then more quickly came on, for the first time slightly embarrassed. Suddenly she escaped them, and they widened and spread. The big waiter, who had stood with his frowning gaze fixed on the restaurant platform, glided away toward the kitchen.

Mac slid lower in his chair. “They’re coming this way— she’ll see me!”

“Not if I have any luck,” Beef promised. “How’s my tie, boys?”

“There’s only one empty table, and it’s too far away for her to see how you hate her, Mac,” Tiger said with a short laugh.

The group reached the empty table. As they arranged themselves, from the shadowed depths of the orchestra platform broke a weird humming sound, so distant and low at first that it was scarcely distinguishable as melody. But gradually it swelled to a mournful chant, from which emerged as at a great distance the beating of tom-toms and the whine of unfamiliar instruments.

It was haunting, hypnotic. It seemed to envelop the room, to lay tight fingers on racing hearts, to touch taut nerves.

Mysterious, uncouth, overpowering. . . . Tiger Lillie wrenched himself free and turned slowly toward Sada Corwyn. She stood beside her chair, which the Englishman held for her, poised forward on her toes, her hands caught to her breast, staring with wide eyes toward the orchestra. Some strange and unheralded emotion seemed to lift and hold her motionless. Surprise, yes— and some consternation, a consternation approaching dread, Tiger decided. Two parallel furrows had settled between her eyes.

For seconds she stood as if turned to stone. Tiger noticed that her two male companions realized that something was amiss, but failed to understand. Mildred Masters for the moment was conscious only of the strangeness of the music. Then, abruptly, Sada Corwyn’s body relaxed. As she took her seat her eyes flew nervously to the Englishman’s, and were met by a lightlyinquiring quirk of amusement, differing little from the expression of that gaunt face ever since they entered the restaurant. With a 10

forced smile Sada Corwyn leaned across the table to make some laughing remark to the other man.

But as she helped herself from the array of hors-d’oeuvre wheeled to her chair, her eyes lifted inquiringly once more to the thick bower concealing the orchestra.

Mac straightened himself and shrugged. “What,” bitterly, “is Sada Corwyn to me?”

“A deuce of a question to ask rhetorically,” Tishy grumbled.

“But there was a time—” Mac fell suddenly to eating.

“And a fine way to start a story,” Beef encouraged. “Go on. I can eat and listen; I never could eat and wait.”

“I met her on the Plutonia coming over. It wasn’t long to know Sada Corwyn . . . but every moment of it was that much too long.”

“If you don’t wish to speak of it—” Tiger began, but stopped before Louis’ reproving glance.

“Perhaps I’d better. . . It may help me to forget . . . before I do something desperate. I loved her, boys . . . for just two days.

It isn’t much of a story . . . and you’ll think I’m morbid, but . . .

Sada Corwyn is a murderess!” He caught their startled eyes.

“Yes, a murderess! And the law can’t touch her—that’s the hell of it! As sure as I hold this knife Sada Corwyn murdered Napier Comstock.”

Tiger Lillie leaned forward excitedly. “Napier Comstock?

Isn’t that the young fellow who fell off the Plutonia?”

Mac nodded. “Only he didn’t fall!”

“You don’t mean she—that woman—pushed him?” Four startled pairs of eyes directed themselves to the smiling beauty not thirty feet away.

“Sada Corwyn has no need to push any man to death.

Napier Comstock committed suicide. She flirted him to it. He was married . . . and coming home to his wife and little girl. With New York in sight he realized where Sada had led him . . . deliberately.”

“Is she married?” Tiger inquired.

“That’s her husband opposite her. Nat is half a dozen years her junior . . . and blind as trusting husband can be. She married him fresh from Yale. He has money, and he’d won a 11

travelling scholarship. She wanted both. . . . She usually gets what she wants.”

“You mean she never loved him?” Tishy asked.

“Love him? Love anyone?” Mac laughed bitterly. “Sada Corwyn doesn’t know the meaning of the word except as a lure to men. She understands it in others, but she never felt it. She knows the symptoms, the phraseology, the entire formulae, and she watches for it in every man she meets. That’s love to Sada Corwyn.”

“And the Englishman?” Tiger puzzled. “Lover—victim— chaperone—or what?”

Mac shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t know. He flirts with her—they’ve seldom been separated since the Plutonia sailed from Southampton, except as Napier Comstock got her alone . . . or she got Napier alone. . . And that’s another enigma about Major Withers—he was Napier Comstock’s best friend.”

“A double cad—taking advantage of a husband’s weakness, and cutting out his own friend.”

Again Mac shook his head. “If he didn’t hold Sada’s attentions someone else would—someone besides her husband. . . . Pity he couldn’t have cut Napier Comstock out before he thought he couldn’t face his wife. Funny, too, how he treats Sada.

He snubs her sometimes, even ridicules her.”

“That’s how he subdues her,” Tishy mused.

“She used to come down to his cabin. I had the next cabin and I knew. He even snubbed her there. . . . At first I wanted to rush in and beat him up. Now—if only he’d beaten her to death!”

“The cave man,” Tishy suggested.

“Looking back on what I know of her, it’s the one way to treat her. If only I—” He stopped, and a flush showed in his cheeks as he bent over his plate. A moment later he raised pathetic eyes. “I’ll never be myself, I’ll never be free, until I know she’s dead. I—I broke away. . . . Men have left her before—when she was tired of them. She talks of it, with tears in her voice . . . and a great pride in her heart. She sighs over them—so helpless against their wiles, their persistent love! ‘What is it about me, big man’—she’s full of that sort of stuff—‘what is it about me that makes men like me at first and then turn cool?’

And she leans her beautiful chin in her beautiful hand, in the 12

touching pose she has practised, and her beautiful eyes grow misty and pathetic. . . . Mist you simply must kiss away or feel like a brute. Ugh! ‘Love,’ she murmurs, ‘what is it? Yet I know I can love; I know that somewhere in the world is a man to really love me for myself.’ . . . And yet—and yet I believe she has loved. Do I contradict myself? Perhaps, but Sada does that for her victims. I accused her once of having loved, and she laughed. But such a laugh!” He threw out his hand in a quick, nervous movement unlike him. “There were perhaps fifty men on the Plutonia, and all of them fell for Sada, I with the rest.”

“Fell?” Tiger regarded him anxiously.

“So hard, Tiger, I don’t see how I escaped.”

“Thank the Lord you did escape!” Tiger breathed.

13

III

THE MURDER They were plainly relieved but, as usual, they cloaked it in

banter.

Beef remarked reproachfully: “A woman like that doesn’t deserve to be escaped from. What puzzles me is how you ever met her. The girls I follow never drop a handkerchief any more, or ask directions, or give a fellow a chance to go up and say: ‘Didn’t I meet you in Chicago?’ What are the latest means of approach, Mac?” “I didn’t need any. Sada Corwyn—approached me.”

“She married me,” Beef scoffed. “That beats yours.”

“I was watching a game of shuffle-board, and she asked Major Withers to invite me to a game.”

Tishy sighed disappointedly. “And all the time I pictured her as exclusive—” Tiger had not taken his eyes from the other table. In a voice so low that they scarcely heard he murmured, “I’m not so sure, not so sure.”

“Not so sure of what?” Louis asked.

“That Nat Corwyn is the blind husband. Watch them for a minute.”

They did. For some time Nat Corwyn sat unmoved, his face expressionless except for a slightly sullen droop to the corners of his mouth. He had shifted his chair slightly, so that he sat sideways to the table, as if to hear the music better. But as they watched he shot a quick glance at his wife, shifting it to Major Withers, and then back to his plate. Furtive and puzzling, it made them uncomfortable.

“And the other is Mildred Masters,” Louis said musingly.

“With better temper she’d be a beauty. Or is it only indigestion, Tiger? You know her.”

“I’ve interviewed her a couple of times . . . Never saw her act like that. Seems unreasonable to be discontented or unhappy with her success—and her salary. Whatever is wrong with her is on her mind, not on her stomach. Presently she’ll bite someone.”

The actress’s vivid eyes, shaded by frowning brows, kept darting from Major Withers to Sada Corwyn and back. To Nat 14

Corwyn she paid no attention whatever.

The music came to an end, but after a short interval the orchestra struck into a fox-trot.

“Anyway, nothing is enigmatic about the Major’s nerve,” Tiger exclaimed, as the Englishman rose and held out his hand to Sada Corwyn.

“No one ever doubted that,” Mac agreed. “The mystery of the Major is deeper, more baffling, than that.”

“Gee!” Beef breathed, “the ecstasy of being a victim of Sada’s! Look at them.”

For Sada Corwyn had sunk into Major Withers’s arms and floated away on the dancing-floor, her lithe body arched backward, her eyes half-closed so light and clinging that she seemed to melt into her partner’s body.

“Yes, look at them!” Mac shrugged his shoulders. “Sada does the limpness—it’s her eyes that are closed, not the Major’s. . . . Sometimes I think he doesn’t like her.”

“Haw, haw!” Tishy laughed raucously. “Not that guy—or any other with sense. I’m like Beef— I’m all for being a victim.”

A sudden movement at the other table silenced them. Nat Corwyn, after sitting for a time with his eyes riveted on the retreating couple, leaped to his feet and invited Mildred Masters to dance. His manner was feverish, a sudden look of resolution transformed his weak face.

The lights went out, leaving the restaurant in what was by contrast, for a moment, utter darkness. The abruptness of it was startling, disconcerting. But gradually a dim radiance was visible over the dancing-floor, emanating from some invisible source. A sharp rustle on a near-by pillar made Beef start nervously and cower over the table. . . . The light of chill dawn made of the dancers a weaving mist of ghosts. Then, changing, it softened to pale rose, and with the music passed subtly to paler violet and back to dawn. An uncanny atmosphere, born of music and colour, drowned the room in a breathless hush, through which the shuffling feet of the dancers and the weird effects of the instruments came only as accentuation. The ghosts milled on, to a music rhythmically hypnotic. The setting down of a fork was a shock, the rustle of a leaf some hidden terror.

Beef wiped his forehead. “I dunno if it’s just the heat or 15

sheer panic, fellows, but I’d give fifteen cents and the rest of the dinner to be out in the lights of Markham Street right now.”

“And yet,” laughed Tiger, with a quick intake of breath, “nothing ever happens in these naughty places.”

“If this is being naughty I’m all for the regular weekly prayer-meeting once more.” Beef wound his legs around his chair and tried to get hold of himself.

The lights brightened and dimmed, now grey and cold, now mistily flushed. In a curious way they seemed the visible part of the music. The faces of the dancers became more and more unreal, phantom-like. A haunting solemnity, a breathless tenseness, a sense of waiting—waiting hung over the room. It was like some weird native rite, shuddering, shocking, depressing, mad.

Tishy squirmed. “Hell of a place to bring us, Tiger!”

“I told you it was Mac suggested The Jungle,” Tiger protested uncomfortably. . . .

In a blinding blaze the lights returned. The foxtrot ended in the middle of a bar, leaving in its wake a clinging suspense that broke with a nervous laugh over the room. It sounded distinctly foolish. Selfconsciously the dancers streamed from the floor, still slightly bewildered.

From the shuffling throng Sada Corwyn stood out. Her face was dead white, she seemed to sway a little. Major Withers’s arm still encircled her waist, neither seemed quite awake as yet.

But as they passed the bower concealing the orchestra Sada suddenly shrugged free of her escort and, leaning forward, parted the foliage bordering the surrounding moat.

Tiger Lillie, absorbed in the scene, was aware, through an opening in the green, of a sudden commotion among the musicians, and a tall, brown figure dropped swiftly back among the piled instruments.

And Sada Corwyn, letting the green boughs fall into place, smiled as she turned toward her table. That smile Tiger found himself struggling to read. Had Sada found what she expected? Of one thing he was certain—the discovery brought no pleasure. Back of that smile lingered the same suspense and perplexity, the same slight tinge of dread he had read in her face when, about to take her seat after entering the restaurant, the 16

orchestra had struck into that haunting hum. Behind her, as she hastened to her place, Major Withers continued to smile in his maddeningly knowing way.

Nat Corwyn and Mildred Masters had already reached their chairs, and Tiger’s attention turned to them. The husband’s expression baffled him even more than Sada’s. Idolatry and doubt seemed to clash, eagerness and suspense, trust and wonder— even curiosity and a desire not to know. Tiger laughed at his fancies.

Mildred Masters, though an actress, was more transparent.

In hot cheeks and blazing eyes burned hatred and jealousy. And as Sada and the Major approached her expression hardened suddenly, as if with grim and threatening resolution. Just in time the actress intervened, so that she greeted them with a smile and a remark at which all four laughed.

But Sada Corwyn was not comfortable. As she reached the table she hesitated, her eyes fixed on her husband’s face; then, with her sweetest smile, as she passed behind his chair she reached out and patted him gently on the cheek. The caress surprised him, for he drew back slightly at the touch; and then his eyes misted and he clutched at the slender hand. But it eluded him. Tiger, watching now with wide eyes, was aware of another complication in the curious relationship of the quartet: over Nat Corwyn’s boyish face passed a smile more chill than a scowl, to fade before the laugh that greeted Mildred Masters’s remark.

As Sada dropped into the chair Major Withers held for her she looked up at him, and to his slightly inquiring eyes returned a defiant, challenging look.

Louis was speaking, his voice low: “Your story is incomplete, Mac.” McQuigg started, bringing his eyes back from the other table. “That’s about all, I guess.”

“It’s incomplete . . . fragmentary after that little scene.”

“Ah, so you saw?” Mac leaned over the table. “You saw how her husband adores her? In all decency how can another man make love to such a husband’s wife?”

Louis struck his knife sharply against his plate. “Cut the sentiment. This is The Gang.”

“Sure, it’s the gossip we want,” Tishy pleaded. “Spring it, 17

boy. Beef can’t eat till he has the story.”

Beef snorted. “What a catty creature you are, Tishy! . . .

Just the same, Mac, lead us through the filthy dregs. Let’s wallow. I need something pungent to take my mind from that case of snakes at my shoulder. That woman a murderess! There isn’t a jury in the country would convict her—not if I was on it.”

“And that is why one of her victims is one day going to take her case from the hands of a jury and settle it himself—with a gun—or a knife.” Mac had lifted his hand, a hand that clasped a dinner-knife with a wickedly thin, curved blade. Unconsciously his gaze followed it, but in the silence that followed he seemed to waken, and the knife fell with a clatter. With frightened, guilty eyes he glanced at the faces of his companions and laughed shortly. “No, it isn’t the law that will exact the penalty she owes the world. She’s too devilish clever for that. All she seeks, she claims, is love—love. . . . And always she spurns it. ” “What Sada needs,” said Tiger, “is to be beaten up.”

“And what she gets is men to beat each other up for her. It entertains her. Some day they’ll turn on her . . . strangle her. Or a knife in the back.” He picked up the knife and felt its keen edge.

“And that,” Tiger declared, “is the man she’ll love—too late.”

Beef whistled. “Give me that knife, Mac, and lead me to her. Oh, these cavemen ways!”

“And still the story is untold,” Louis insisted.

“Why did you give her up—and how?”

Grant McQuigg rubbed his hands together nervously. “He was very young, very handsome, very rich, this Napier Comstock. For weeks before I met them on the boat he had been travelling with the Corwyns, and the inevitable had happened— he was blindly in love with her. . . . Not till after the poor fellow had drowned his agony in the sea did I realize that she had only used me to spur him on, his fading passion.” He swallowed something that seemed to rise in his throat. “It has made me feel like a murderer myself. That’s why I hate her so . . . hate her and fear her.” He shook his shoulders protestingly. “Let’s talk of something else; I want to forget her.”

“If you had our worries your hair would turn grey.” Tiger picked up the menu. “I’ve been trying ever since we came to 18

figure what this doleful ceremony is going to cost us, but I can only count to four figures.”

“And all for a pot-pourri of snakes and spiders and—and a fanciful story about a poor fool’s suicide—” Beef began.

“And another fool’s morbid maceration,” Tishy added.

Beef grumbled on: “About five dollars each for a couple of hours of squirming and darkness.” He glanced about the room.

“Say, how about breaking into this creepy place some bright day for a bit of big-game hunting? I’m all for action myself, hasty and squashy. It’ll be a nightmare for me to-night, with a houri with snakes for arms kissing me with lizard lips. And I’ve been unkissed so long! Ugh!” Again the tables were emptying for the dance. Nat Corwyn, rising abruptly, disappeared into the gloom of the fading lights. And Sada, blind to the surprise of her companions, watched him go with a puzzled and uneasy frown. For the first time Major Withers seemed uncertain of himself, but presently he leaned across to Mildred Masters who, flushed and bright-eyed, came quickly to her feet.

As they moved away Sada Corwyn, left alone, slowly drew a gold cigarette case from her bag and began absentmindedly to smoke. A man appeared at her side and bent over her, but she shook her head without so much as looking at him.

Whereupon with a furious sidelong glance at her back he retired precipitately. Another would-be partner was treated the same.

From the cigarette she held in her long fingers a thin trail of smoke waved upwards, but after the first two puffs the cigarette never reached her lips.

Tiger Lillie kept his eyes on her. Her immobility mystified him, in a few moments disturbed him. She might have been asleep, or hypnotized, so still she sat. So that when, without warning, she turned directly toward him, he shrank into himself, hoping that the waning light concealed his curiosity.

Suddenly he understood, for while he still looked the hand that held the cigarette made a distinct beckoning movement. Mac was not yet through with Sada Corwyn! In a darkness too deep for detail Tiger rose and strolled away.

Against the lighted dancing-floor Sada was clearly visible as Tiger advanced. Then a pillar intervened, and Tiger crashed 19

into a bare, unyielding human body.

“Pardon, sahib!”

“For a waiter,” Tiger growled, “you contrive to be a nuisance.”

The huge fellow faded soundlessly into the shadows.

Tiger remained where he was. Sada, he could see, still faced the table he had left, and Tiger’s heart pounded uncomfortably. . . .

Returning, he was greeted with a general jeer: “What, the Tiger afraid of a cat?”

“As a lady-killer, Tiger, you miss fire.”

Louis chuckled. “Are they property gems or the real stuff, Tiger. But, no, Tiger was merely getting a close-up for the next front-page crime Mac has predicted.”

Tiger scarcely heard them. From the corner of his eye he saw Mac bent over the table scribbling on a page he had torn from his note-book. Something of Louis’ gibe lingered and he replied lightly: “Working up a plot for your next thriller, Louis: beautiful peri mysteriously murdered in the midst of adoring fellow-diners.

Catch the idea? The darkness—the snakes—the creepy-crawly feeling—” Beef protested under his breath. “Aw, let up on the shivery stuff, Tiger. I’m getting the jim-jams.”

“And,” Tiger continued placidly, “no one is aware of the murder until the lights go on—and there she is, on the floor, all bloody ” He checked himself and sat down weakly. From the darkness on his left Mac had crept noiselessly away.

“Puzzle,” he went on hurriedly, gripping himself to speak calmly, “who did the foul deed? Just suits your inimitable style, Louis. No charge for the plot. I’m off for another stroll—I want a look at those college-lad musicians.”

With a sense of impending tragedy he hurried away. . . .

The restaurant was still in darkness when he returned. He breathed a little hard, but a contented smile creased his face. Mac was there before him, nervously pawing among the cutlery, restless, silent. . . . Slowly the lights were turned on. Mac, Tiger noted, sat with his chin in one hand, his eyes riveted on Sada Corwyn. Tiger smiled, but the smile was troubled now. For some inexplicable reason he wished the evening were over.

20

The music crashed to its conclusion in a wail of massed instruments. The last bulb flashed out. Sada Corwyn stirred and looked about. Her forehead was lined and one lip was caught between her teeth. From the weaving crowd making for the tables her three companions detached themselves, but Sada had eyes only for her husband. But as the three paused beside her table her gaze slid away to Major Withers, speculatively, Tiger fancied.

All four smiled selfconsciously.

A little by-play followed. As Nat Corwyn took his seat he glanced across the table and, as she had done to him a few minutes before, patted his wife’s cheek. But the response was different. As if he had struck her she recoiled, violently, fearfully, tardily covering the movement with a sharp and unnatural laugh.

And as her husband sat down her eyes, wide and staring, shot past him to the orchestra platform. . . .

With the first note of the next dance Nat Corwyn was off again, and taking a vivid young blonde from a neighbouring table, was first on the dancing-floor. Sada watched him with a slow smile about her crimson lips and reached for another cigarette. Major Withers addressed her, but she shook her head, and once more he led Mildred Masters away.

Tiger, watching with all his eyes, feeling vainly for the story that was unfolding before him, saw the slim hand that held the cigarette tremble. The wavering line of smoke must have caught her own attention, for she hastily crushed out the spark in an ash-tray. Then once more the room was dark. So dark this time that the restaurant was a great void from which rose hissing breath and the muted slide of hesitating feet that danced while they listened. Presently the invisible lights about the dancingfloor softened the distant gloom, but among the tables it remained black as night.

A chair scraped.

“God, I hate this!” The table moved slightly as Beef crowded closer. “Why they let them run a hideous joint like this I can’t understand.”

Tishy laughed, but the laugh was short and mirthless. “I can. It’s so you can feel that slimy lizard down your neck. I saw it choosing the spot just before the lights went out. And there’s a hairy-lcgged scarlet spider over your ear, and—” 21

“Stop it, I tell you!” Beef’s voice shook with a terror too real to ridicule. The music wailed and sighed, rising louder and louder, until it reached a frantic pitch. The rhythm intensified.

The dancing-floor was crowded, drawn by the music or driven from the dark tables to the one least dim spot in the room. Tishy whispered uneasily: “Some orchestra, eh? Sort of makes one feel—” Beef clambered to his feet, clutching the table. “So long, boys. I’ve got to get nearer that door or I’ll squeal—the other side of the door it’ll be. Maybe I’ll come back when I make sure Markham Street is there, and something real and solid.” His chair upset as he started away, but he did not stop to pick it up.

Tishy unwound his long legs and clutched Tiger’s arm.

He tried to laugh. “Say, Tiger, let me write this place up for you.

I’ll make it a wow! I’ve got the nerves to feel it. All you have is nerve. A sense of the dramatic is what one wants, even of the tragic—Good—God!” Over the wailing music, over the shuffling feet, a woman’s scream cut through the darkness. A scream of mortal anguish, of mind, rending terror. Scream of death, horrible and fantastic. The outburst of nerves that had broken at last.

Somewhere toward the door a man’s scream answered, an even more awful sound.

With a bound Tiger was on his feet, reaching toward Mac’s chair in the darkness. It was empty!

22

IV

GORDON MULDREW’S CASE

A breathless hush for a moment followed that cry, the hush of taut nerves, of reckless pleasure transformed in a breath to tragedy, of throats constricted by crowding terror. Then, in a distant corner, a woman screamed hysterically—another—half a dozen over the room. Rough voices of men cried out furiously, hoarse with fear.

“The lights! Turn on the lights—the lights!” Chairs rasped harshly, feet shuffled, a table overturned with a crash of dishes.

Moments more of silence, waiting for the lights. In the thick blackness the moving, panic-stricken crowd remembered the snakes and lizards, and crouched, afraid to move.

From somewhere toward the kitchens a great voice boomed: “Buster! Buster! Turn on those lights! Damn you, turn on those lights!”

But in the depths of the same electric darkness Tiger Lillie, feeling his way among the tables, prayed: “Not yet! Oh, God, not yet!”

Smothering his panic, he concentrated to remember the location of tables and chairs as he had seen them before the lights went out, advancing as swiftly as he dare.

A heavy body leaped at him through the darkness, and he staggered but did not fall. Frantically he clutched an arm and hung on.

“Sit down, Mac! For God’s sake, sit here!”

In a staggering blaze the lights flooded the room. They revealed the dancing-floor packed with clinging figures that peered with terrified eyes over their shoulders, afraid to move, afraid to remain. It revealed the few who had not been dancing hugged close to their tables, gripping themselves against the more dreadful horrors of blind flight among those fragile glass cases of snakes.

It revealed two young men seated at an otherwise empty table, one clutching the other’s arm.

“Quiet, Mac, quiet! . . . Oh, you fool, you utter fool!”

The lights revealed something else close to where the 23

young men sat on the edges of their chairs, something that drew every eye in the room. A man rose suddenly from a table and stooped; and Tiger, leaning sideways, saw Sada Corwyn stretched on the floor, her beautiful head caught in Major Withers’s arm.

She lay limp and still, her eyes large and bright, a deep flush on her cheeks. If she was beautiful before, now her beauty was ethereal. All her ebbing life massed to an ecstatic smile. The Major’s greying head bent over her.

“Sada!” he whispered. “Sada!” A whisper that cut across the room and held the crowd tense and still.

The smile on the beautiful face stiffened a little, but it lost none of its rapture. The eyelids flickered! The scarlet lips parted.

“Someone loves me!” A whisper that, too, but it carried to the farthest corner.

The glazing eyes lifted. They fell on the horror-stricken face of Mildred Masters above the corner of the table, and a cloud gathered in them, a pitiful frown of uncertainty brought the clipped eyebrows nearer.

“Or—was it—you?”

One final vengeful, devastating effort, and the beautiful head rolled sideways. Sada Corwyn was dead.

Mildred Masters rose slowly, her lips parted, her eyes round and staring. Suddenly she screamed and started to run. And as she ran her hands rubbed together. Major Withers’s head jerked upward.

“Sit down!” he ordered. “Janet, do you hear me? Sit down!”

As if hypnotized, Mildred Masters stood still—returned slowly to her chair and dropped into it, to bury her face in her arms. Major Withers, one arm still supporting the lifeless body of the woman he had danced with but a moment ago, straightened.

“Sit down, everyone! Someone lock that door!” For a movement toward flight had started.

A big brown body rushed across from the kitchens and braced itself before the door. “Get back!”

Tiger plucked at Mac’s sleeve. “Come on!” Unnoticed, they crept back to their table. Before Tiger’s look no one spoke.

Tishy shuddered.

24

“Beef was lucky,” he murmured. “He got away in time.”

“Not quite in time, Tishy,” Tiger corrected. “That was his scream near the door.” He raised himself the better to see the crowd clustered there. “By Jove, boys, our waiter! Look! Got a head, that lad. He’ll hold ’em. . . . The Jungle must have handpicked its staff.”

They agreed when, at that moment, a man thrust himself angrily through the hesitating mob and tried to brush the waiter aside, only to be hurled back with such violence that he fell over a chair.

“Anyone else who tries that,” the waiter warned, “is going to get badly hurt. No one leaves here until the police arrive. Get back to your places—where you were when the woman screamed.”

Someone whispered: “She’s dead!”

“Dead? The eyes of the waiter widened with horror, the grimness of his poise momentarily wilted, but he braced himself against it. “Buster,” he called over their heads, “hold that door there. Nobody gets out. You understand?”

“Right, I’m holding it.” The reply came from the bower concealing the orchestra.

“That waiter,” Tiger appraised, “is wasted on a job like this.” He pushed his chair back. “I’m going to get Gordon Muldrew.”

He hurried across the restaurant, pushed his way through the slowly-scattering diners, and addressed himself to the big waiter, who hesitated, then pointed to the kitchens. Tiger hurried in that direction.

The waiter blocking the door called another waiter.

“Call the police and a doctor.” He looked out over the room. “Is there a doctor here?” No one replied.

Major Withers still knelt, supporting the dead woman’s head. On the other side Nat Corwyn bent forward, moaning piteously, clasping and unclasping his hands, calling his wife’s name. Suddenly he dropped to his knees and jealously strove to take the body from the Major’s arms.

“Sada, Sada, my own Sada!”

But Major Withers, with his free arm, warded him off.

“Don’t touch her. Wait for the police. And the doctor,” he added.

25

Only then did Nat Corwyn see the pool of blood on the floor. Horror-stricken, he drew back, then, too swift for the Major to act, he swooped forward and clutched the handle of a dinnerknife beneath the body. Again the Englishman intervened.

“Stop it! Leave it alone! Let the police—or the doctor—” He appealed to a small group that had gathered. “Take him away, the fool!”

Two of them took hold of the frantic husband and lifted him to his feet.

Tishy swore under his breath. “What a brute! And two minutes ago he was hugging her in his arms on the dancingfloor—telling her how he loved her, I bet . . . getting ready to knife her.”

“Who? Major Withers?” Louis frowned thoughtfully.

“Love takes strange slants.”

“In your stories, sure!” Tishy sneered.

“You think—he did it—the Major?” Mac clutched the edge of the table with both hands, and Louis reached out to steady a dish that rattled.

“Major Withers was the only man beside her when the lights came on. And he was not there when they went out. . . .

And the knife—it’s one of the table-knives, like we have—” He checked himself, his horrified eyes moving slowly to Mac’s ghastly face.

But Mac had seen something more. “My God! Don’t you see? Her jewellery is gone!”

They noticed it then. The solitary shoulder-strap, now hanging loose, was bare, the two brooches gone from her waist; even the two barbaric bracelets were on her wrist no longer.

Everything had been wrenched free by a violent hand!

Tishy choked. “Surely a madman!”

“A madman to think he can get away with jewellery in this room when the police take a hand,” Louis growled.

Tiger came hurrying back, and they told him of their discovery.

“Yes, I noticed it. Gordon is coming on the run.”

They waited, watching the tragic group around the other table. Tiger mused aloud: “It might be almost anyone. Three of them came with her 26

and they all look guilty. But in that darkness. It’s a case for Gordon, all right.”

From the corner of his eye he was watching Tishy and Louis, and, having drawn their attention from Mac, he was free for his own speculations. Mac seemed not to have moved since he left to telephone Muldrew. Clutching the sides of the table, his gaze fixed on the pitiful, white face of the dead woman, Tiger noticed a mounting horror behind the wide eyes of his friend.

With a quick movement he brushed an ash-tray to the floor. At the clatter McQuigg started, and his eyes flew guiltily to Tiger’s and fell away.

“They’ll find the jewels,” Louis was saying. “The murderer can’t hope—” “Unless he got away before the lights came on,” Tiger ventured.

Tishy said innocently: “Beef got away.”

Tiger whirled on him. “Don’t you dare mention that Beef was in the place. We don’t want another mess like the Wainwright murder.”1 Tishy fidgeted. “If Gordon Muldrew puts me on the grill I’ll have to tell that Beef wasn’t the only one missing from this table when Sada Corwyn was murdered.”

Under the table Tiger’s toe caught him on the shin. Over the table Tiger snarled: “Gabble, gabble! When you manage to get your mental machinery working all it does is creak. Your grey matter atrophied long ago from disuse.”

“My grey matter warns me not to swear to a lie, that’s all.”

“You needn’t. Anyone would suspect you of lying without swearing to it. Listen, Tishy, my sweet cherub—” His hand darted out and closed over Mac’s wrist as the latter made a sudden move to rise. For one awful moment the imprisoned hand fought. Mac’s face was white and drawn. With a quick look Tiger drew Louis to his assistance and from the other side Mac was held down.

“Mac, Mac, get hold of yourself!” Tiger pleaded in a low voice.

1

Murder at Midnight.

27

“But I must get that note, boys, I must get to her! If the police find it I’m doomed!”

Tiger laughed softly. Beneath the table he slid into Mac’s lap a folded square of paper torn from a note-book. Mac stared, a mist gathered over his eyes.

“I managed to intercept it, Mac. The waiters here have grandiose ideas. It cost me five dollars.”

Mac’s voice shook. “If it was five thousand—” “Pay me to-morrow.” Tiger laughed. “I can learn even from a waiter. But you,” he went on fiercely, “you’re the prize simp of creation. If I hadn’t—” A movement in the screen of foliage about the orchestra platform made him forget what he intended to say. Through the green bower, his sandals dripping with the water from the moat he had crossed, came one of the walnut-stained musicians. His eyes were fixed in a glassy stare on the little group about the murdered woman as, without turning aside for a chair that blocked his way, he made for them.

He had almost crossed the dancing-floor when the outer door jerked open and two policemen entered. In the rear hurried a small man carrying the conventional black bag of the doctor.

Directly in his line of vision, the advancing musician saw them and halted. Then, with the furtive movements of a wild animal, he wheeled and was swallowed in the thicket of green.

One of the policemen, a sergeant, took his stand at the door, while the other, with the doctor, advanced toward the scene of the tragedy. Tiger got up and approached the sergeant.

“Gordon Muldrew is coming. I got him on the ’phone.”

“Good. We got the Inspector. Now go back to your table, please.”

As Tiger turned the door opened with a clatter, and Beef Halladay, smiling proudly, marched in followed by two more policemen. At sight of the two policemen already there his face fell and, dropping unobtrusively to the rear, he faded away through the door.

The sergeant issued a few orders and hurried toward the doctor. “Better leave things as they are,” he advised. “Muldrew is coming.”

A few moments later the outer door opened again and two 28

men stood on the threshold. One, tall and grey and militarylooking, his pointed moustache bristling as his keen eyes ran swiftly over the room, took a step forward. The other, young, as tall as his superior and broader of shoulder, stepped aside to have an uninterrupted view. He might have been a casual visitor, so calmly he looked about, but always that roving inspection had a focus. Unhurried, as if with nothing more in mind than to serve the older man before him, he stood. As if by accident his eyes rested momentarily on Tiger Lillie. They showed no recognition, but Tiger winked flagrantly.

At the entrance of the two detectives an air of briskness filled the place. The policeman at the door saluted. Even the line of waiters standing huddled before the kitchen broke and reformed. They shifted uneasily. One of them, impressed with his nakedness in the face of what had happened, had donned a coat, from beneath which his bare brown legs protruded ridiculously.

The younger of the two detectives spoke to his companion, and the latter regarded the waiters with a heavy frown.

In the far corner of the restaurant Tiger grinned. “Poor Gordy, always seeing the funny, sentimental side at inopportune times. He’s a real hero, ever fighting his instincts, ever narrowly winning. Gee! look at the Inspector!”

Inspector Armitage’s scowl encompassed the room.

“What in the name of Satan is this place?” His gaze fixed itself on a lizard that just then slithered through the foliage veiling a pillar.

One of the policemen replied. “One of the new ones, sir.

The Jungle, they call it. Open only a couple of weeks and doing a land-office business.”

“Fitting name,” the Inspector growled. “And that ‘Twilight Dancing’ sign outside—what does that mean?”

“They dance in the dark—or almost in the dark.”

“The hell they do! And they got a permit for this sort of thing—and then, of course, that!” He pointed to the kneeling doctor.

He started forward, but Muldrew whispered and the two stood while Muldrew, with a scarcely perceptible lift of his brows, brought Tiger Lillie to him.

29

“You were in a position to see, Tiger. Give us the rest of the story. We haven’t time to talk to all these people.”

Tiger talked rapidly—so rapidly that he missed, as he discovered later, much that mattered. But when Muldrew let him go the two detectives were seized of more than they would have learned in an hour’s questioning elsewhere. Tiger, in his capacity as star reporter, as a friend of Gordon Muldrew’s, had worked with the police too often not to have a fair idea of what they wished to know.

Only then did the detectives approach the group about the murdered woman.

30

V

“YOU WERE HER LOVER”

The doctor rose from his knees as they approached, dusting his trousers absent-mindedly.

“A clean job,” he grunted, “and a dirty one. Death almost instantaneous. One of those fancy dinner-knives that will cut a throat as easily as a steak.” Gingerly holding it by the sides of the handle, he handed the knife to Inspector Armitage. “My fingerprints won’t matter,” he replied to the Inspector’s questioning frown. “I was careful.”

“There were others less careful. You’ll find the prints of several of us on that knife.” Major Withers had stepped forward and stood before the detectives.

Muldrew ran his eyes over the Englishman. “Ah—yes.

You were this woman’s—escort.”

He could not quite cover the sneer, and the Major stiffened against it.

“I was one of her—companions,” he replied slowly.

“There were four of us. You see us all here. That is her husband.”

“Who were the others who touched the knife?”

“Nat Corwyn and I . . . and the murderer, of course.”

The brows of the two detectives lifted slightly.

“Perhaps,” said the Inspector, “you can even name thc murderer.”

A cold smile passed over the Englishman’s face. “I see the point. I can’t name him.”

“Too bad, oh, much too bad.”

“How did you happen to leave your finger-prints on the knife?” inquired Muldrew.

“I took hold of it at first—naturally—to pull it out.”

“At first? What do you mean?”

When I knelt beside her after—after she was struck down.”

“But she was murdered in the dark—” “I kept my seat until the lights came on.”

“Even with that scream in your ears—right at your elbow—the death-cry of the woman you—were with?”

Major Withers hesitated. “In the moment before I could 31

move I did some quick thinking. I saw what it would seem to prove if the lights came on and found me kneeling beside her, perhaps with blood on me—” “You have blood on you now.”

The Major lifted his right arm. It was stained from fingertips to elbow. Without haste he drew a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the soiled hand. “I held her head until the doctor arrived,” he explained.

Muldrew regarded him intently. Not once had the man shown fear, or horror, or even concern. The stained handkerchief he dropped on the table. Muldrew noted a small monogram in the corner.

“So you saw in that swift moment what it might mean to be found in the position of a—companion defending the woman murdered at your side, saving her life, perhaps!”

A slight flush showed on the thin face. “I never thought of that.”

“And you’re such a quick thinker,” snapped the Inspector.

The Englishman remained cool. He even smiled.

“In a country whose laws are strange to me—and stranger the more I read your newspapers—I would rather be considered a cad than a murderer.”

“In this country it’s usually the cad who’s the murderer,” retorted the Inspector. He turned to Muldrew. “Go on. I’ve other work to do.” With a quick turn he walked away.

Muldrew understood—Inspector Armitage was losing his temper, and he was wise enough to recognize its danger. All the more firmly he, Muldrew, determined to control his growing dislike of the man before him, a dislike shot with an intense curiosity that was dispelled in no way by what Tiger had told him. Major Withers was speaking. “Nat Corwyn’s finger-prints are there because—” “I see why his finger-prints are certain to be there; it’s the knife from his place that was used.”

He looked down on the bowed head of the man they discussed. “Sada, my Sada!” moaned the bereaved husband, as he had moaned it ever since they had torn him from his dead wife’s side. The Major frowned.

“My God, why does he keep on like that?”

32

“Perhaps because he doesn’t think quickly or at all just now,” Muldrew replied. Temporarily he decided to retreat; the Major could wait. “Miss Masters was the fourth,” he said, nodding to where the actress, her head sunk in her arms over the back of the chair, sobbed softly. “And she, too, was here when the murder was committed?”

The Major merely nodded. Muldrew drew him aside.

“How long have you been in America, Major?”

The Major smiled again. “I see you have my name. I came on the Plutonia—a week ago—a bit more. That was where I met the Corwyns—on the Plutonia.”

“And Miss Masters?”

“She and I are old friends. I scarcely know her as Mildred Masters. Her proper name is Janet Doyle. When I arrived—” Muldrew murmured reflectively. “I don’t see why she need remain—” Instantly the woman was on her feet. “I may go?” she asked eagerly, and started for the door.

On Muldrew’s face a curious expression had gathered. “For one so absorbed in grief—or horror, Miss Masters—” No need to finish the sentence. The actress’s cheeks flamed and a frightened look gathered in her eyes. Major Withers regarded her with frank surprise.

“One moment, Miss—Doyle.” Muldrew lifted a restraining hand.

The face of the actress softened. “Thank you. It will protect me from the papers.”

“I was going to say that you needn’t remain here, not just here. Any other place in the room—” He beckoned to a policeman. “Take Miss Doyle wherever she wishes to sit. I’ll speak to her presently.”

The hand of the actress reached fumblingly to the back of her chair for support, and such a look of terror came to her eyes that Muldrew was forced to turn away.

“You—you don’t mean you’re—arresting me?”

“Certainly not. I merely—” Major Withers broke in, his lip curled a little: “Scarcely as bad as that, Janet. Even an American detective—” It was not the grim lines of Muldrew’s expression that 33

checked him, but the anger that flamed into Janet Doyle’s face.

“You kept me,” she stormed at the Major, “when I might have got away and saved myself this. You didn’t care what happened to me. You never have cared.” Her voice, rising shrilly, revealed how near she was to hysteria. But she pulled herself together. “Thank you, I’m able to look after myself—with the help of the police.” With a last scornful glance she left them, the policeman trudging behind.

The moment she was gone Muldrew seemed to have forgotten her existence. His glance had fallen on the bowed head of Nat Corwyn as he had thrown himself across the table, still moaning and sobbing.

“So that is the murdered woman’s husband?”

Receiving no reply, he turned toward the Major, to find him eyeing the bent form of the groaning man with narrowed eyes. At that moment the Major looked up, one eyebrow lifted, the faint trace of a smile on his lips. Muldrew found himself speculating. He realized that his investigation had taken an unconventional form, and it came to him with more than a little annoyance that Major Withers knew it and derived some entertainment from it. Under the urge of his annoyance he blurted what was on his mind: “And you, Major Withers, were the murdered woman’s lover!”

A slight pallor on the thin face before him was the only visible effect.

“That is a damned lie!” The reply was quite calm. “I take it, of course, that you use the word in its accepted sense. It is not only a damned lie, but a deliberate taunt. Being new to the country, I am uncertain what privileges are permitted a detective—” Muldrew had coloured a little at the cool defiance, the frank challenge of it, but the charge had not been without its purpose, and that much he had gained.

“No privileges whatever,” he broke in. “You’re quite within your rights in giving me the lie. It remains to prove if I deserve it,” he added.

Major Withers bowed stiffly. “Even were I her lover, indeed, especially if I were her lover—” 34

He ended the sentence by pointing to the limp body now outstretched on the floor, over which someone had thrown a table-cloth.

Muldrew’s interest in the cool, defiant Englishman grew.

He realized that Major Withers would be difficult to handle, too cool to goad to recklessness, too clever to be treated carelessly.

Worst of all, he saw that a latent antagonism between them had been, by the Major’s clever manipulation, brought so plainly to the surface that neither could ignore it. Whether from an instinctive national antipathy, unfortunate outcropping in a few citizens of both countries, or from guilt, or from a daring desire to annoy the police or to protect the murderer, Muldrew would not yet permit himself to decide. His role, as a detective, was to see that the Major did not profit from it, a role he realized it would be more and more difficult to maintain. Major Withers would never reveal what he wished to conceal; and he had, Muldrew felt certain, much to conceal. Beneath that calm surface he sensed an untiring alertness, an unremitting vigilance, much anxiety, and a will to impede investigation—all of which would have to be examined more fully at his leisure. And yet, to his trained mind, it proved nothing against the Major in the case in hand.

“Suppose you were not her lover—in that sense.”

He waited, not so much as looking at the Major.

Without hesitation the latter accepted the challenge. “The man does not breathe who could meet Sada Corwyn and not fall in love with her . . . except,” he added deliberately after a pause, “for a definite and compelling reason.” He raised his eyes indolently lo return Muldrew’s straight gaze. “Yes, I made love to her.”

“Ah-h!”

“But that does not mean that I was in love with her. A fine distinction, perhaps, but it doesn’t matter in a case of murder.”

“In this strange country the police form their own conclusions.”

“Certainly.” Major Withers’s manner was easy, almost amused, and Muldrew was aware that almost he had lent himself to the other’s purpose. “I was merely trying to help,” continued the Major. “If you wish I am in a position to tell you much about Sada Corwyn, though, frankly, I would prefer that you get it 35

elsewhere. If it is not impertinent I would suggest that you look for the solution of this crime in Sada’s manner of life. . . . She was, you will discover, somewhat reckless with that dangerous explosive Love. She was inclined to toy with it. It—exploded.”

“You mean one of her victims might have done this?”

“It is not a fantastic conclusion. Murder for love—it occurs even in America, does it not?”

Why, Muldrew wondered, was the man before him so determined to exasperate him? He let the question pass with a nod.

“From your knowledge of men, Major, perhaps you know something of the reactions of love. . . . Speaking of yourself, however, would you have been capable of a crime like this were you one of Sada Corwyn’s victims?”

It was a pointless question, more a back fling of the Major’s irritating manner than a hope for information. The reply startled him: “I gave you the lead, Mr. Muldrew . . . and you don’t lead easily.” He shifted himself to look down on the sheeted figure of the dead woman. “Yes . . . there are conditions under which I could have done even that.”

“Perhaps . . . those conditions were fulfilled to-night?”

The question, flung like a weapon, failed to disconcert the Major. Picking his words, he answered: “The conditions? . . .

Perhaps. The time—the will?” He hesitated so long that Muldrew moved restlessly. “Not quite—yet.” He smiled coldly back at that inquiring stare. “There, I’ve placed all my cards on the table to save you—and myself—trouble. Play them as you will. I made love to Sada Corwyn. Under certain conditions I could have killed her. But it happens I didn’t. Someone else, it seems, had the motive and the will. . . . For instance, while I danced with Miss Doyle Sada refused two men dances, and neither accepted her refusal gracefully. . . . Another instance? Very well. Sada Corwyn did not always have her way with men. On the voyage across on the Plutonia she tasted the bitterness of rebuff, or, at least, rudeness, the treatment she has lightly served so many others. A young man—well, insulted her by not taking his dismissal kindly. In fact, I imagine it may have been that he turned her down.”

36

“Yes?” “If you come over here beside me and turn your eyes where I am looking you will see that young man at a table with three companions. Earlier in the evening there were four others.

His name is McQuigg. Soon after you entered you talked to one of his companions. . . . Sada Corwyn was fond of McQuigg, I believe. I put it no stronger because it is doubtful if Sada was capable of more. She was fonder after—whatever happened. That young man—” He stopped, and Muldrew, who had heard with incredulity at first, then with surprise, had the impression that a new thought had entered the Major’s mind and abruptly sealed his lips.

Muldrew knew that Grant McQuigg had been abroad and just returned. His intimacy with Tiger Lillie, a friendship born of constant association of the two in the crime of the city, one seeking solution, the other news, kept him in touch with the reckless and aberrant habits of The Gang, though only of Tiger did he make a friend. In the Wainwright case he had learned something of the unwavering loyalty of the five young men, and this loyalty, he read at a glance, accounted for Tiger’s careful omission of McQuigg’s connection with the woman in the story the reporter had given him of the night’s events. McQuigg, as he knew him, was the last of the five he would have associated with a woman like Sada Corwyn, indeed with any woman. Normally, Mac, raised in a wealthy home, without responsibility, had developed an indolent way of life that made women a bore.

But the experience of a detective had taught him that the trail least open to suspicion was often the one to follow. Indeed, in crime it offered with disturbing and sometimes disorganizing frequency the quickest road to a solution.

“How,” he asked, “did you know this?”

“I was there. I observed something of it . . . and Sada herself could not keep from talking about it. Mockingly, of course, but the wound was there. . . . One need have few delusions about Sada Corwyn.”

“Yet you made love to her!” Muldrew could not keep from retorting.

“There is,” declared the Major, “a synthetic form of almost everything worth while in these days. But this is no time 37

for academic discussion.”

Muldrew realized that for the moment Major Withers offered little more.

“You knew the murdered woman. Her husband likewise, I take it, was not blind.” He nodded toward where Nat Corwyn still lay across the table, his face shielded by his hands. The moaning had ceased, or recurred only at long intervals.

The Major’s eyebrows lifted. “I see that you are not a detective for nothing. . . . I have no idea how much he knew; I was never, of course, in his confidence. . . . But this I can tell you—no man ever idolized his wife more than Nat Corwyn.

Whether idolatry goes with murder you must decide.”

“Murder,” said Muldrew, “goes with so many motives, so many conditions.”

“And most of them I fulfil. Is it not so? I was beside her at the time, I had access to the knife that killed her, I have confessed that under certain conditions—” “We select our own victims, Major,” Muldrew interrupted coldly. “You heard her scream, of course?”

“Did anyone hear anything else? . . . Certainly no one else could have been more aware of it. You see . . . I was holding her hand under the table when—when it happened.”

“Yet when the lights came on you were still seated in your chair! With Sada Corwyn dying at your feet!”

“I’ve already passed through that taunt,” replied the Major coolly. He frowned down on the uneven lines of the tablecloth that concealed the dead woman. “I had a curious feeling about it all. Even as her cry rang in my ears I found myself feeling about in my memory for the name of the murderer who knew—” “Knew what?” With a thrill of exultation Muldrew saw that for once Major Withers had been off guard, led there by nothing the detective had said, but by his own pictures.

“You would not be interested,” replied the Major, himself again.

Muldrew had no delusions about the uselessless of persisting. “Did you hear anything else—any movement —any suspicious sound?”

“I cannot be certain.” Major Withers’s forehead was lined 38

with thought. Where that thought was directed interested Muldrew most. “I seem to recall a slight but hasty movement a second or two after she fell. . . . I think now it must have been made by the murderer tearing away her jewellery.”

“Think a moment. Was it the tearing of cloth? The shoulder-strap and the dress are torn.”

“I would say yes, but it is probably a guess, induced by facts I know now.”

“You say it was a second or two after she fell?”

The Major made a motion of indecision. “It sounds strange, I know, for the murderer to linger, when the lights might be expected to come on at any moment. Perhaps I am wrong. To tell the truth, I was more concerned with my own position.”

“Though at that moment her hand must have slid from yours as she fell—the hand you had taken in the darkness!”

The Major’s cheeks flushed ever so slightly and he seemed to hesitate for a reply. “If you must have it, it was Sada took my hand in the darkness.”

“Major Withers,” Muldrew said grimly, “you were never in love with the dead woman. You were using her for a purpose.”

“Every man makes love for a purpose.”

“Where was her husband?”

“So far as I know he was dancing. I did not see him for some time after the lights came on.”

“But there was ample time for—” Muldrew’s attention had wandered to the floor about Major Withers’s feet. Now he reached out and thrust him aside.

Bending over the floor, he started away, twisting from side to side. Police and guests made way for him, watching breathlessly.

Inspector Armitage, in another part of the room, aware of the sudden hush, hastened forward. Muldrew advanced, drawing nearer and nearer to the bower of green about the orchestra platform.

Then, as if a sudden end had come to everything, The scene was blotted out in a smother of darkness.

39

VI

IN THE DARKNESS

Nothing in human experience is so revealing as the shock of the unexpected. Contentedly we travel a placid path of forgetfulness, of oblivion, of selfsatisfaction. And in a twinkling by some startling incident our eyes are opened to what we have so lightly ignored. The emergency is like a flash of light on dark places.

Tiger, dismissed by Muldrew when he had told his story, had retired with a muddled memory of what he had said. So much there had been to tell in so little time, and his tongue was confused by the blinding picture of Mac’s peril if all were known.

In addition, so many of his own impressions had been deduction and inference, even imagination. Not until he faced the necessity of speech did he realize the pictures he had been painting for himself from the conduct of the four at the tragic table.

As he watched Muldrew at work, hovering in the back of his mind was the shadow of a vital omission. Mac he was satisfied he had amply protected, though his capacity for maintaining that protection once Muldrew became suspicious he had reason to doubt. Mac’s silence under questioning he knew to be beyond hope. And what he himself knew was sufficient to give Mac something more than worry—as it was giving him.

Much had yet to be explained even to himself. . . . And then he remembered Beef’s empty chair, and that scream of panic from somewhere near the door.

Running over in his mind, as best he remembered, the story he had told Muldrew, he could not see why he felt so keenly that something had been omitted. Mac’s descriptions of the three he had met on the Plutonic, he had covered; and he had added his own observations of Major Withers’s curious watchfulness, of Nat Corwyn’s furtive and inexplicable actions, even of Mildred Masters’s black humour.

As Muldrew thrust Major Withers aside and bent over the floor Tiger had a feeling of impending action, and with the abrupt darkness that ensued he realized with dazzling completeness the important detail of the night’s incidents of which Muldrew must yet be ignorant. Like a lightning flash, before his eyes passed the 40

picture of the murdered woman’s inexplicable interest in the orchestra, of the sudden movement of one of the musicians to hide from her curious eyes, and, most important of all, of the brown-stained man who had pushed his way through foliage and moat after the lights came on and fled so swiftly at sight of the police.

Instantly Tiger was on his feet. It was utterly dark, but the room as it was, the arrangement of chairs and tables, the location of the floor trenches and of police and guests, were stamped so clearly on his mind that without accident he reached the dancingfloor where last he had seen Muldrew.

Scarcely a dozen seconds had passed. A clamour had broken out among the police, over which Inspector Armitage’s voice thundered an order: “Your torches, boys, your torches! Quick!”

But the police, brought in a rush from the stations, carried no lights.

Tiger heard nothing of this. He knew the cause of the darkness, and he saw his own carelessness as responsible. For a moment he stood at the edge of the dancing-floor, poised on his toes, listening so hard that it pained. Suddenly he dived forward.

His arms, reaching out, closed around two sturdy legs.

The feel of them vaguely surprised him, but he hung on. There was nothing else to do, for two equally sturdy arms closed around his body and lifted him, head downward, with a strength that seemed superhuman.

Tiger closed his teeth, locked his hands over his wrists and clung. Should his grasp slip he knew what would happen to him, the raging fury of the man he had baulked. Muldrew would thank him for this—if he came out of it alive to hear. He clung.

With uncanny distinctness he heard the rustle of foliage before the orchestra platform, the splash of water in the moat, some of which struck pleasantly on his heated face. He heard sandalled feet sliding past. Then a bare human body collided violently against him, and he and his assailant crashed to the floor.

A moment later the main door opened and a policeman, rushing in, shot a ray of light across the room.

As if the light itself had worked the miracle, the arms 41

about Tiger Lillie relaxed. Someone rushed past, making for the orchestra bower, splashing through the moat. The next instant the lights came on.

Tiger lay limp across someone’s knees, limp and happy.

He had kept his hold, had brought to the police Sada Corwyn’s murderer! Gee! “What the hell!” A familiar voice, heavy with disgust, sounded close to his ear. “You blithering Idiot!”

Wit h a dizzy ringing in his head he opened his eyes.

Muldrew, squatted on the floor, pushed him angrily aside and leaped to his feet. Tiger sat up.

“Oh, Gordy! Gordy! I—I thought—it was—” He rose, red with shame. “Looks as if I didn’t think enough,” he groaned. “It’s all a mistake.”

“An expensive mistake for me,” Muldrew growled, lighting an inclination to laugh, in spite of the calamity he knew Tiger’s interference to be. Hastily he cleared the dancing-floor.

All around the floor was streaked and splashed with fresh water from the moat. He sighed.

Tiger crept humbly to him. “There’s a lot I haven’t told you, Gordy.”

“There always will be. Go back to your table. I’ll see you when I want you. And stay there till I come.” He turned irritably away. “Where’s the proprietor of this place?”

Through the crowd about the dancing-floor a large man in immaculate evening dress pushed his way. Muldrew stared.

“Ah! Blood Bidwell! I might have known this sort of place was your invention.”

“Years of experience,” returned the man quietly, “have taught me what the public wants.” His voice was full and pleasant, unmarked by the annoyance he might have shown. His manner was inoffensive but dignified. Even the police would be permitted no liberties with Blood Bidwell.

“I hope to-night’s experience,” jerked the Inspector, “has taught you some things the public should not have.”

Bidwell bit his lip, but he held himself in check.

“I have my permit. Policemen have honoured the Jungle with their presence before now—as guests. I regret to-night far more than you can, if only for the loss it will mean to me in 42

dollars and cents, but I cannot foresee every accident.”

“Accident?”

Tiger had started for his table, but as Bidwell began to speak he turned and stared. At a tug on his sleeve Muldrew wheeled about irritably.

“Gordy, that’s the big waiter—our waiter—the one that held the crowd from getting away! You have him to thank for that.” He explained hastily, they were in the heart of the group now, and Bidwell heard with a smile.

“Quick change,” he said. “Even my own staff failed to recognize me when I was one of them. Things were not running smoothly, so I became a waiter to find out why. Under the circumstances it was fortunate I might not have been here to hold them for you. In this room still must be the man who murdered a guest of mine.”

“This is not your first affair with the police.” Muldrew said.

“This is scarcely an affair of mine, as you call it. I happen only to be the owner of the restaurant where it occurred. Nothing I can say or do will undo that. I fail to see how it involves me.”

“No? Perhaps you were not involved in the dope ring that centred in The Tokio, one of your restaurants, in the bandit raid on another, in the loss of a valuable pearl necklace at a third, in— ” He stopped, annoyed at the knowledge that he had completed the list.

Bidwell’s eyes flashed but he spoke quietly enough: “I myself informed you of the dope ring. It was I shot one of the bandits and put you in the way of getting the others. And from my own pocket I made good that necklace. . . . And the police know as well as I how—unnecessary that was. In this business, meeting all grades of society as I must—But why discuss that here? You make me think you scorn my assistance.

Very well, I won’t inflict it on you.”

Muldrew realized that a succession of defeats, of irritating episodes, had left him not quite himself, he pointed to Bidwell’s legs; they were wet to the knees.

“What is that?”

“I ran through the moat to turn on the lights. The switches are there with the orchestra.”

43

Muldrew and Inspector Armitage looked at each other.

“Who turned the lights out?”

Bidwell raised his eyes over the crowd and called, “Buster, come here.”

As they waited, Muldrew inquired: “It was not you ran into me?”

“I ran into no one.” Bidwell was perplexed. But at that moment a stained figure broke through the screen of boughs.

“This is Buster Rawlinson, my orchestra leader. He had charge of the lights.”

The man who came reluctantly forward was naked like the waiters, with the difference that instead of a turban his hair was greased and piled to a point at the crown of his head. As he approached, his gaze flickered from Inspector Armitage to Muldrew and off to Bidwell. His hands were clenched and his jaw was set rigidly. Inspector Armitage began to question him.

“It was you turned off the lights just now. Why did you do it?”

Rawlinson’s rigidity relaxed. He took a handkerchief from his loin-cloth and nervously wiped his face.

“It was all a mistake. I intended to turn off the outside sign lights. I—I turned the wrong switch.”

“But: when you realized that why didn’t you—” Bidwell began angrily.

“I didn’t realize it at all. I thought the power had gone off.

I—I suppose I was excited.” The man’s head hung miserably.

Bidwell laid a kindly hand on his shoulder. “Never mind, Buster. But what the deuce was the matter with you—all evening?”

Rawlinson’s face worked. “This—this awful thing that has happened . . . and then the wrong switch, and the darkness again—” “It was you ran into me in the dark,” Muldrew declared.

The orchestra leader gulped. “I was in a panic. I could hear a struggle out here, and after—after the other I simply couldn’t stay in there alone. I must have run out. I scarcely knew what I was doing.”

“That’s why I had to go in myself and turn the lights on,” Bidwell explained.

44

The Inspector broke in. “So it was you had charge of the lights all the time. It was you delayed turning them on after the murder.”

“It was such a short time—not long,” Rawlinson protested feebly. “Only a few seconds. The switches are clustered on a pillar in there, and I was several feet away, in my place with the boys, when—when that awful scream—” He shivered. “I suppose I lost my head—like everyone else. When I remembered the switches I could scarcely find the light one in my excitement.”

“What surprises me,” the Inspector remarked dryly, “is how easily the staff of a startling place like this is startled.”

Muldrew eyed the thick green of the orchestra platform.

“You spoke of being in there alone. Where is the rest of the orchestra?”

“Why—gone home,” replied Rawlinson, his eyes wide with surprise. “There was no need to keep them, was there?”

Bidwell lifted his hands helplessly. “But don’t you leave until we tell you to.”

A pompous, elderly man in evening dress, who had been whispering among the patrons, approached the Inspector.

“Are we to be kept here all night while this goes on?” he demanded truculently.

The Inspector looked him up and down, his moustache bristling.

“You took chances on a place like this; you should be prepared for what happens. Trouble with you people is you want to feel naughty without paying the penalty.” But as his glance swept over the unhappy crowd his manner altered. “Oh, well, perhaps we can shorten things, so far as you are concerned. But first a little ceremony. Some valuable jewellery has been stolen.

It will be necessary to search you all.” The man broke into a loud protest, but the Inspector cut in: “A police matron will be here right away to attend to the women.” He turned to Muldrew and murmured: “After that we can dispense with the searching. The murderer won’t dare try to carry the stuff away. We’d never have caught him that way anyway: at the first sign of searching the patrons the murderer would have hidden the stuff.”

Muldrew smiled. “No, we wouldn’t have found the jewellery, for I don’t think it’s in the room.”

45

“I—see.” The Inspector’s eyes widened, but he said no more.

“Our one chance is to hide our suspicions—whatever suspicions we may have. The problem we have to solve looks much deeper than it did at first. There are cross-currents that threaten to block us. I feel them everywhere, but as yet I can’t put my finger on them. I don’t even know what they mean—if they’re really serious—and I’m not sure that I know all who are working them. Jameson!” he called.

A big policeman near the door shambled forward.

“Bring Mr. Bidwell here.”

Jameson slouched off. Presently Bidwell appeared.

“It was you held the door, Bidwell. Are you certain no one got away?”

“I was there before the movement to escape started. At first the crowd was too stunned to move. I was in the kitchen when I heard the scream—” “But the murderer would have his wits about him. He could have reached the door before you.”

Bidwell considered. “Then he must have moved quickly.

In two seconds after the scream I was out here. Instinctively I made for the door, even in the darkness. Of course, it was not quite dark. The coloured lights about the dancing-floor—” “Did Rawlinson work them too?”

“All the switches were under his control. He has interesting theories about the relationship of light and music— and colour. I let him try his schemes; they seemed effective. Even I could see that.”

“There may,” said the Inspector, “be reason for all this tomfoolery; there’s no excuse. How long was it between the time the woman screamed and the lights came on?”

“That’s difficult to say with certainty. Under the circumstances it seemed a devil of a time. And yet it couldn’t have been more than seconds. I rushed out immediately I heard the scream.”

“Then you were not stunned, like the others?”

Bidwell smiled uncomfortably. “To tell the truth, I haven’t been happy about the darkness. It was more Buster’s idea than mine. He’ll tell you that I protested—not much, because I 46

saw the public was taken by it—but I was always a little nervous.

As soon as I reached the restaurant out here I called for the lights.

Even then I was on my way to the doors. God!” he added, shivering a little, “if you’d heard that scream, Inspector! . . . I shouted to Buster to turn the lights on. By the time they came on I was near the door. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds.” He shuddered again. “Perhaps the orchestra did not hear it. But, yes, Buster says he did.”

“I want you to think before you answer this one: What did you notice first when the lights came on?”

Bidwell took his time to reply. “First, I think it was the terror among the dancers. They were huddled together, clasped in their pairs but strangely still. Then . . . then I think it was the group about the place there.” He pointed to the table beside which the dead woman still lay beneath the white covering.

“From the kitchen you could place it as accurately as that?”

“Everyone was looking in that direction—I suppose that was why.”

“What did you see?”

“There was really nothing unusual to see for a moment.

Two of the dead woman’s companions sat in their places. The man showed no sign of excitement, though the woman—it’s Mildred Masters, the actress; I know her—her hands were pressed to her cheeks and she was bent across the corner of the table.”

“The other man—he was not in sight?”

“I did not see him.”

“Was there any evidence of other movement—anyone getting away?”

Bidwell thought for a moment. “I recall none. They all seemed too stunned for that. . . . Of course . . . the murderer— must have moved,” he murmured thoughtfully, “but I saw nothing. A moment later the crowd started for the door. There was some screaming before the lights came on. Yes, I remember now.” His face lit up. “Somewhere near the door a man screamed. . . . And perhaps—I cannot be certain there was a little creak, like the inner door makes when opening.”

“Ah! But you’d see by the light outside if it opened.”

47

Bidwell shook his head. “No. The first small lobby darkens with the restaurant. That is so that entering guests, when the room here is dark, will not disturb the effect.”

Inspector Armitage grunted his disappointment. “So that you cannot be sure?”

Bidwell reluctantly admitted it. “Recalling it now, I don’t see how the murderer would have time to get so far. He had to stop long enough to tear away the jewellery. I think I must have been out of the kitchen before he could do that. Whoever it was that screamed—But I can’t be sure.”

Muldrew inquired: “Do you know any of the others at that table, besides Miss Masters?”

Bidwell hesitated, rubbing his chin. “The two men I never saw before one night last week. The same party was here before, except Mildred Masters; this is her first night. The woman that was murdered. . . . I’m not sure—in fact, I must be wrong, for I have heard she was dead—but she resembles curiously a girl from my own home village. Her name was Sadie Harrow. It’s eight years since I saw her. Of course, that will be easy to trace.

Her husband—” Again an idea struck him. “That’s funny, too.

Her husband left the table to dance—I saw him. And the other two, the man and Mildred Masters, they were out on the floor a moment or two later. Yet I distinctly remember that they were at the table when the lights came on. They must have returned in the darkness.”

He was more surprised when the detectives failed to show a like surprise, for Tiger had told them that. “In the dark,” he repeated in a puzzled way. “I don’t see—” Muldrew had whirled about, his empty hands held before him.

“The knife—where’s the knife? Why—why—I had it— Damn that young fool!” He rushed away toward the dancingfloor where he and Tiger Lillie had fought in the dark. But the knife was not to be found!

48

VII

FEELING HIS WAY

Tiger plucked at Muldrew’s arm. He gulped with excitement, having broken through a line of circling policemen to reach his friend.

“There’s something more, Gordy—” “Oh, go away, Tiger.” Muldrew shook him off irritably.

So much had occurred to upset him, and the loss of the knife was the worst.

“But I forgot to tell you—” Muldrew sighed. “As yet what you’ve done is to impede me, and what you haven’t done comes too late. Well, go ahead, spill it. You’re full of afterthoughts.”

“If only you weren’t so darned impatient, Gordy,” Tiger complained. “You never give me time—you discourage me— you—” “Discourage you?” Muldrew glared at the reporter. “Did I discourage you from telling how closely McQuigg is mixed up in this affair? Now go back and tell him to prepare his story. And I want it all.”

Tiger gulped back his anxiety, but he had sense enough not to plead ignorance. “I was going to tell you,” he grumbled, “about that orchestra leader.”

Muldrew’s quick attention almost satisfied him, and for a moment he stood grinning into the detective’s face. “Sure! I know lots about him.”

“Tiger, dear”—Muldrew laid a hand on his shoulder— “I’ve been looking for someone like you for twenty minutes.”

Tiger told what he had seen. “You see, Gordy, if you hadn’t been so hasty and abrupt with me you’d have known why I butted in for our little scuffle. You never did appreciate me.

You’re so headstrong, Gordy, I might even say peevish.”

“If you say a word to McQuigg, if you warn him—” “But you just insisted that I should—” “If you warn him I’ll know it . . . and I’ll arrest him right off the bat. Do you get that?”

Tiger’s expression showed that he had. Muldrew made his way quickly toward the kitchens.

49

“Bidwell,” he demanded, “how many are in your orchestra?”

“Eight, counting Buster. But they make noise enough—” “So that seven had gone before we got here.”

“One can hardly blame Buster,” Bidwell defended. “The boys were all there with him, so they couldn’t—” “Does that moat extend all around the platform?”

“Yes. There is only a plank crossing at the rear toward the side door, the emergency exit.”

Muldrew thought for a moment. “So that the only way to get in and out, without walking through the water, is by that plank at the rear?”

“The boys don’t bother about that.” Bidwell’s eyes were screwed up in a puzzled way. “They walk right through the water—they only wear sandals, same as the waiters, and the water is only two or three inches deep.”

“But why should they walk through the water at all?”

Bidwell smiled. “Those boys are not ordinary musicians, Mr. Muldrew. I permit them to come down at intervals to dance with the guests. They come, indeed, from better families than most of the guests; so they just walk through the water in their sandals, to save time.”

“Get me one of those sandals,” he ordered.

As he waited, while Bidwell disappeared in the kitchens, Muldrew took a position near the door and faced the orchestra platform. From a distance Inspector Armitage watched his subordinate with a slight smile on his lined face. The sandal Bidwell brought Muldrew gave to the care of a policeman and then walked across the restaurant toward the wall of green concealing the orchestra retreat. Watch in hand, he circled the platform and disappeared. It was fully five minutes before he reappeared.

Tiger waylaid him. “Honest, Gordy, I never mentioned it to Mac, but he wants to speak to you—just boiling to talk. He knew Sada Corwyn—rather well.”

“If you’d told us that at first, Tiger, it would have saved all of us trouble and time.” He looked to where McQuigg sat squirming in his chair. “Waiting for trouble is always a strain on a guilty conscience. . . . Don’t you think it might be better to give 50

him time to get hold of himself? Knowing I know will make a difference. Tell him.” As Inspector Armitage approached, he spoke hurriedly to Tiger. “No one but myself knows. Tell McQuigg there’s no need to get in a panic—not yet.”

Tiger pinched his arm. “Gordy, you’re a darned good scout. We’ll wait.”

Inspector Armitage had turned aside at the platform and was peering through the leaves.

“We?” Muldrew’s eyebrows lifted.

“Sure! The Gang stands or falls together. Usually stands. I might give it to you in Latin if your education extended beyond ballistics and obliquity.”

Muldrew sniffed. “The only Latin I know is on the American cent—and Lord knows what that means.”

“Our motto exactly, Gordy—‘e pluribus unum.’ Five of us—count ’em. A unit—” “That has given the police trouble before now,” Muldrew put in.

“Because we beat you to the criminal—sometimes. Hurts, doesn’t it?”

Muldrew looked down on his young friend. “I don’t know what makes me so easy with you young scamps.”

“I do. Because you know we can help you. Ask me another. And, say, don’t trouble to let the morning papers in on this. I’ll do it justice in the EVENING STAR.” “By the way,” Muldrew asked, “where’s the fifth of The Gang. I see an empty chair. I thought no one escaped from the room.”

Tiger was not unprepared, though he had not thought of the tell-tale chair. He laughed. “Poor Beef! Another crime hung about his neck! If it matters, Beef got out before the murder. The snakes and the spiders got his goat.”

“Then it wasn’t he who screamed near the door after the murder . . . I’ll have to look into Beef’s case. Just now I’m busy.”

He strode away.

But Tiger clung to him. “You’ll be a darn sight busier if you try to fasten this thing to Beef or Mac,” he threatened angrily. “Don’t be a goat. You know the sort of woman Sada Corwyn was. Follow that clue.”

51

“I am . . . and it leads me to your friend McQuigg.” He paused long enough to fix his keen eyes on Tiger’s flushed face.

“He knew she was here to-night—and she knew he was.”

Then he broke away. An ambulance had come and taken the body away. Muldrew made toward the table where Major Withers and Nat Corwyn still sat, the latter seemingly absorbed in his grief, the former stiffly erect, his arms folded, calm, but watching closely everything that transpired in the room. About his thin lips something like a smile hovered.

Jameson sidled up to Muldrew. “Say, let me get off my chest a few bright scarlet cusses. If I don’t I’ll bust loose and baste that Englishman in the eye . . . and jobs ain’t too plentiful for a fired policeman.”

Muldrew smiled sympathetically. “He isn’t smiling at you, Jameson. It’s a form of shell-shock—he was in the war.”

“Hell!” Jameson grunted. “That wasn’t anything to the war he’ll be in if somebody don’t cover his face.” Muldrew stopped beside the bent figure of Nat Corwyn and regarded him with narrowing eyes. He started forward as if to speak, but changed his mind and crossed the restaurant to where Mildred Masters sat apart, her back to the room, staring at the wall. Not far away a policeman leaned against a chair teasing the glass front of a case of nasty green snakes that persisted hopefully in striking at his finger.

Muldrew came to a stop behind the actress. She was unaware of his presence; she sat with her back firmly braced against the chair, her shapely hands outstretched before her on the table-top. What little the detective could see of her face was set and hard, even unattractive. She had made no attempt to remove the ravages of her recent tears.

“Come, come, Miss Doyle”—it was the cold official voice—“this is much too serious for thoughts like that.”

She whirled on him guiltily. “What do you mean—what thoughts?”

“Jealousy. This is a cold-blooded, ugly murder . . . whatever the apparent justification.”

The fear he had seen there before mounted to her lovely eyes, but she said nothing. Unconsciously she picked up a tableknife and fumbled it.

52

“There are questions that must be asked, Miss Doyle. It’s one of the unfortunate—” “Even a detective,” she flung at him, “can do that without being rude.”

But Muldrew was not to be turned from his purpose. “I suppose any question would appear rude. But you’ll save me time and yourself trouble by keeping before you that your private worries are outside my duty. I don’t wish to be hard, but you must see that. Murder is always murder, however deserved. And to stab a helpless woman in the dark—yes, even a woman like Mrs. Corwyn!” He bent suddenly over her. “Does this murder satisfy your jealousy, Miss Doyle?” She shrank before him, staring with wide, frightened eyes. But only for a moment.

“It satisfies nothing,” she replied fiercely. “I admit it helps. . . . But there are accomplished facts, things done, that even murder cannot atone for . . . cannot undo.” Her lip quivered.

“Then you have given Major Withers up?”

All her defiance, her pride and decision, vanished.

Sinking forward, she covered her face with her hands. Muldrew seated himself in the chair across the table. The discomfort he felt he hid behind a stern mask.

“Does that clear the way for a frank talk, Miss Doyle? . . .

I fancied your long acquaintance with Major Withers might be something more eagerly concealed. He and you and the murdered woman seem to be inextricably tangled. You will find it simpler to be honest—and frank.”

She removed her hands and a bitter smile twisted her tearstained face. “It is your own dishonesty that has stood between us, Mr. Muldrew. You know well that I did not murder Sada Corwyn.”

“Whatever I know, Miss Doyle, I see that you are not concerned to find who did. . . . And your studied little speech fails in its effect. Please dispense with the actress. The murderer who does not deny his guilt is no worse than criminally insane.”

Janet Doyle’s cheeks were red with anger. “Do you mean to insinuate that—that—” “I insinuate nothing worse than that you can’t help acting, even under conditions like these. I wish you would forget Mildred Masters for a time and be Miss Doyle. I want to know all 53

you can tell me about Major Withers.”

For several seconds she faced him, her colour coming and going. Her shaking hands she dropped beneath the table.

“What do you wish to know?” she asked in a choking voice.

“Just tell the story—about him.”

“I—I have known Major Withers since I was a child. . . .

It is six years now since I saw him last.”

“Six years of fidelity to a memory,” Muldrew put in softly.

The rosy colour that flamed for a moment in her cheeks vanished before a sudden coldness. Her lip curled. “Yes, I was faithful. But he!” The moment of bitterness passed. “Back home in England we were engaged. . . . Then I had my chance, and I came to America.”

“Yes, your chance—you had it . . . and the Major lost his.

But that did not stop you. You left a lover tingling with sentiment, sailing a dangerous sea alone, while you had the lure of the footlights . . . your chance. Do you wonder he shipwrecked? Do you wonder he was less faithful than you? . . .

And then too late you discovered that love is more dazzling than your name in flashing letters before a theatre. So you became that public peril, a woman spurned. Someone had to pay for it. It was Major Withers or—” He had chanced to glance across the restaurant. “Ah, yes, Major Withers. The Major has prejudices, hatreds he cannot hide . . . and Sada Corwyn was one of them!”

She had dropped her eyes before the challenge in his voice. Now she lifted them, with a look Muldrew was at a loss to understand, so mixed was it. Was there, with her other emotions, regret? Before he could decide she had dropped a veil before the chamber that had momentarily opened behind.

“And you too hated her . . . but you did not know your friend the Major hated her even worse. And so—You hated her as only one woman can hate another who has robbed her of her lover. Reconstructing the crime from what we know now—” Janet Doyle waved him to silence. “Add this to what you know, if you will. I would have no compunctions about killing Sada Corwyn. . . . No compunctions, that is, beyond a general 54

antipathy to liking human life. Her death—yes, even her murder—leaves me cold. For I don’t believe Jack hated her. My tears, they were little better than acting—nothing but shock and excitement—and dread, if you will . . . and relief that she was dead. Even had I killed her I would have acted the same. . . . But surely you see that Sada Corwyn lived a life that takes a detective far beyond the table at which she sat when she was murdered!

Many a woman, for instance, had equal reason with me for wishing her dead. And they would have equal will.”

“But the opportunity. There is only one dark restaurant in this city.”

“The last place one of her known and public companions would use to get rid of her.”

“Murderers are clever enough even for that,” Muldrew replied thoughtfully.

“And do you think I have the strength to drive that knife like that?” She shuddered.

“A child might have done it—with those knives— especially with that knife. In the moment I had it in my hand I saw that—well, never mind; we’re getting away from the point.

When Sada Corwyn screamed you were sitting at her table?”

“Yes.” “Did you hear any movement, any sound, you would not connect with her?”

Janet Doyle’s forehead puckered. “I seem to recall—I can scarcely be certain after the excitement and horror of it—you’ll think me hysterical if I tell you that before the—the tragedy I had a curious feeling. I was frightened. . . . I fancied someone passed close behind me. It wasn’t a sound—perhaps only a breath of air—but someone, I thought, went across behind me toward where Mrs. Corwyn sat—” Muldrew’s short laugh checked her. “So it wasn’t jealousy that occupied your mind when I came on you? No, you were preparing that story as an alibi for Major Withers. Since he sat across the table from you, it could not be he who passed behind you. Good enough . . . only it happens that—” Suddenly Janet Doyle drooped over the table and commenced to sob. Muldrew rose hurriedly in surprise and consternation, stammering to silence. Across the room he was 55

aware of a swift movement, and then Major Withers stood behind the actress’s chair, his hand on her shoulder, glaring at the detective.

56

VIII

ALIBIS

Muldrew, facing an emergency he understood better, returned the glare.

“So you, too, stoop to third degree methods with women?

I’ve heard it was popular in America, a common resort to cover police incompetence.”

“Oh?” Muldrew ached to strike out, but managed to restrain himself. “And so you hastened to her defence—the lover who was unfaithful, who stooped to making love to another woman in the face of his fiancee. You thrust yourself in when she has no need of you, does not wish you. You will not understand when I tell you that she is stronger without you . . . that, of the many connected with this crime, it is you who are most in need of defence.”

“Then why do you not arrest me—now. It will at least free those who are above suspicion, like Miss Doyle. But the police dare not expose themselves to the ridicule of sweeping arrests for what must have been the work of one alone. But if you must be brutal, try it on me. Legalized brutality is so impressive in a crowd, so soothing when you feel so helpless, so far from a solution.”

The Major seemed really angry now, and Muldrew found himself studying him with interest. It did not take him long to reach the conclusion that what anger the Major felt was being deliberately whipped and goaded with some fixed plan in mind; but he was not angry enough to forget himself. A murderer Major Withers might be, but he was far too clever to give the police a clue that would avail them when it came to the test. Guilty or innocent, the police were not by any means through with the man before him. Muldrew did not permit himself to reply in kind.

“If Miss Doyle chooses to meet my questions in this way, questions directly in the course of duty, neither you nor I can help it. But if it is any satisfaction to you, any excuse for withdrawing from a scene where you are distinctly an interloper, I might say that if Miss Doyle would only forget her profession you might save yourself this scene. Why don’t you make sure that her tears even now are genuine. . . . If they are it is not from any brutality 57

of mine but from anger and fear—” “Why need she be afraid?”

Muldrew smiled. “Do I need to specify? Miss Doyle has just admitted that she would have no compunctions about killing Sada Corwyn.”

Major Withers took a step backward and laid a hand on a chair. Janet Doyle heard the movement and lifted her head sharply.

“It’s a lie! I said no compunctions beyond a general one against taking human life. Is it impossible for you to be honest, Mr. Muldrew?”

Muldrew’s eyes were fixed on Major Withers’s with a significant smile. Major Withers shifted uneasily, staring at the actress’s face, for on it showed no traces of recent tears.

“You see the difficulty, Major? That is what I have had to fight all the time. Miss Doyle insists on being Mildred Masters. I have a task, and I assure you I’m going through with it. The murderer of Sada Corwyn is going to be found.”

He walked around the table to face the Major, towering four or five inches above him.

“And now may I remind you of the part you have played?

I can read your record in your face—a life of hard travelling— ruthless even to murder—and you hated Sada Corwyn enough to murder her. Why, I don’t yet know.” He made a long shot: “You even hated her enough to do your best to conceal the murderer, whatever part you played in it yourself. Is that enough?”

He turned his back, interposing his body between the Major and Janet Doyle. For a long moment Major Withers glowered at the broad back, then, with a military wheel, he walked away. Muldrew shifted his head to watch him go. He was puzzled, though he did not know what he had expected. When he turned to Janet Doyle he found her regarding him with a taunting smile. Muldrew threw out his hands.

“Yes, the Major has a knack of emerging from scenes with dignity—leaving the other fellow to hold the baby. Rather a wonderful man, I should say. . . . But I am not one of those who insist that taking human life is always murder—under all conditions. Indeed, in my time I have let a murderer escape.

Unofficially, of course, and strictly between ourselves. Mrs. 58

Corwyn, I know, was the sort of woman whose extinction benefits a long-suffering world. There are murders like that—” Before the smile growing about Janet Doyle’s attentive eyes he stammered. The smile became scornful.

“Something of a Thespian yourself, aren’t you, Mr. Muldrew? But why waste our time. Neither of us is enjoying it.”

“We’re far too clever for each other, aren’t we?” he grinned.

Unprepared for the admission, it only made her suspicious, and she glanced at him with the old fear. Muldrew reseated himself “Miss Doyle, you were at the table when Mrs. Corwyn was murdered, yet you were not there when the lights went out.”

“Major Withers and I were dancing, yes,” she admitted uneasily, “but—but the music did not suit us, so we returned to our table.”

“At whose suggestion—which of you noticed the music first?”

The quick glance she gave him warned him that the reply she made would be according to her own plan and not necessarily the truth.

“I—I don’t recall. I know I was tired. You see, we had danced late the night before at another restaurant, and—and it has been a couple of days of intense feeling to me. I’m desperately tired now,” she moaned, sinking her chin in her hand.

“This is your first visit to The Jungle?”

She nodded.

“Who invited you to-night?”

“Why—why—I believe I suggested it myself—last night.”

Muldrew regarded her with a rising impatience.

“At any rate, you were Major Withers’s guest. It was, I suppose, his party?” But she refused to be drawn. “So you found your way back in a darkness that must have made it difficult to find your way—” “It was not entirely dark,” she protested. “The light from the dancing-floor—” “But it was so dark that neither you nor Major Withers saw anything that happened about you.”

59

Janet Doyle hesitated. “This is cross-examination, Mr. Muldrew. Just what are you aiming at?”

“The truth, and nothing but the truth. You’ll find it pays.”

“Very well, we found our way back, how does not matter, does it?”

“How long would that be before Mrs. Corwyn screamed? ” “That is difficult to say. It can be nothing more than a guess—not more than a minute, I should say.”

“Did Mrs. Corwyn know you were back—did anyone speak?”

“I don’t remember—I don’t think anyone spoke. But, of course—of course, I’d think she knew. We didn’t try to conceal our presence.”

“And yet, returning in the dark—unexpectedly, it would be—nothing was said, by her or by you? Doesn’t that strike you as strange?”

In real distress Janet Doyle clasped her hands together.

“Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know.”

“You don’t know,” Muldrew retorted sharply, “what I am aiming at—that is the trouble. Now, if it was so dark, of course, you can have no idea where Major Withers was—he didn’t even speak, you don’t even know he was in his chair. He may even have gone around the table and passed behind you—” Her face lit up. “But I’m sure he didn’t—I know exactly where he was.”

“How could you?”

“Because—because he had his foot on mine—under the table—his foot—on mine.”

Muldrew’s face broadened slowly to an incredulous smile. “So that when he tells me that he had his foot against Mrs. Corwyn’s—” “He didn’t—say that?” Her hands rose to her throat. “He wasn’t—that—that intimate with her?”

Muldrew rose. He had learned what he wanted.

The actress, her eyes wide with a new dread, all the greater because she did not see how she could have made a mistake, rose with him.

“What have I said? Oh, what have I said? I’m not 60

myself—I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“Miss Doyle, you know only too well what you’re saying . . . but elaborating a concocted story is always dangerous. At least no one can doubt your fidelity; you take great risks for Major Withers.”

“But—but—” “You may go now. . . . A policeman will walk home with you.”

“Thank you, I’m accustomed to going home alone—at later hours than this.”

“The longer we talk the more I’m convinced you’re quite capable of that. . . . That’s one reason why we propose to keep in touch with you.”

She straightened against a crowding fear. “I’m not likely to try to escape. Why should I? Mildred Masters is far too well known to hide herself. My address is the Washington Hotel.”

Muldrew left her. But he had taken only a few steps when she hurried after him.

“Please, Mr. Muldrew, you won’t—tell—the Major?”

He looked down on her pityingly. “An actress and so blind!”

With an angry fling she started toward the door, walking very stiffly, staring straight ahead. At a sign from Muldrew a policeman lounged after her.

As he crossed the restaurant, Muldrew saw Inspector Armitage at the table where The Gang sat. With an anxious frown he hurried toward them.

With the bearing away of the lifeless body of Sada Corwyn Grant McQuigg’s attention returned to his own more immediate troubles. Gripping himself against a rising panic, he watched the two detectives at work.

“Oh, why doesn’t he come?” he wailed to Tiger. “I want to get it off my mind.”

Tiger laughed reassuringly. “He doesn’t worry about what you have to tell him. Anyway, I’ve told him everything.”

“Then why is he keeping us when all the others are gone?”

“I’m waiting to get more news.” But it was unconvincing.

61

More so as at that moment the ominous figure of Inspector Armitage made its way among the tables toward them. McQuigg took a long breath.

“Steady’s the word, Mac,” Tiger whispered. “We stick together.”

Tiger was uncertain about the Inspector. Muldrew had assured him that his superior knew nothing, yet there was real curiosity in the Inspector’s purpose as he approached. Even from Muldrew’s eyes there was much to be concealed; the Inspector must learn nothing to make him suspicious. Mac, Tiger knew, would never be able to face a cross-examination from that cold official without divulging things that would surely involve him, that, in fact, puzzled Tiger himself.

“Well, Tiger?” Inspector Armitage stood over them, regarding them in turn. “Hanging about for the crumbs, I suppose? You thrive in an atmosphere of crime, don’t you?”

“Any other atmosphere,” Tiger replied lightly “is too rare for me.” “‘Rare’?” The Inspector scowled.

“I mean, it’s what I thrive on, as you say. It’s my bread and butter, my new Lincoln, my summer in the Adirondacks, my estate on Long Island, my full cellar, and the rest of the luxuries that attach themselves to a successful reporter to whom the police drop the newspaper scoops—that happen too late for the morning papers.”

The Inspector did not smile. “There are no scoops tonight, though you’ll beat the Morning Times to it; they’ll be to press now. . . . But I don’t see how you escaped the general exodus. Did Muldrew ask you to stay?”

“Yes. I suppose he knows I’m likely to think of lots that I forgot to tell him. It has been an unfortunate evening for my reputation as an observer and reporter”—he grinned, speaking slowly, for he saw Muldrew hurrying up—“but the best of us was rather badly knocked up by what happened.”

Muldrew spoke over the Inspector’s shoulder: “I asked them to wait, Inspector. Tiger has been useful.”

“Well, it’s your job.” The Inspector walked away.

Muldrew dropped into Beef’s empty chair. “Now hurry and let’s have it, McQuigg. You’ll feel more comfortable.”

62

Mac was anything but hopeful. Faced with the necessity of speaking, of telling only enough, he gulped and was silent.

Tiger came to fill the breach.

“Mac, poor lad, hasn’t had time to regain his pristine nonchalance since the dissipations of the Boulevards. These lads reared in placid homes always fall hard in Paris.”

“Some fall on the voyage home,” Muldrew suggested . . . “and harder afterwards. Women like Sada Corwyn are apt to leave a fever that’s hard to cure.”

“Bah!” Tiger snapped his fingers. “So far as Mac is concerned Sada Corwyn burned herself out before they landed at New York.”

“But the embers of the fire she lit may refuse to die.”

Muldrew swung to face McQuigg. “You do him an injustice, Tiger. As long as she lived he could never forget her. Tell me, Mac, are the ashes of those embers indifference . . . or did they linger as the smouldering coals of hate?”

Mac, at grips with the issue, felt strangely calm. “There’s another sort of embers,” he said.

“Exactly. There’s love that will never die . . . and when baulked it becomes dangerous.”

“If ever I loved Sada Corwyn—” Mac began, and stopped, biting his lip.

Tiger said: “It will save the preliminaries, Gordy, if you know that Sada fell for his peerless pulchritude, his obvious opulence, his magnificent manner. Make the most you can of that. Sada was no ingenue, as you may have heard. It was simply a case of a fool and his money—” “If you’d let Mac tell his own story,” Muldrew broke in sharply.

“You’d arrive nowhere. Mac’s love of the limelight would be misleading. Why, his name has never been in the papers yet! Picture the poor simp with a chance like this before him!”

Muldrew ignored it. “Did you dance with Sada Corwyn to-night?” he asked.

“No.” Again Tiger interrupted. He saw the dangerous trend of the question. “Mac may be a moneyed fool but his friends have 63

sense. We wouldn’t have let him.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“No-o.”

“Did you communicate with her in any way?”

“One and all,” Tiger assured him earnestly, “The Gang swears that in no way did Mac get in touch with Sada Corwyn.

I’m telling you.”

“He refused even to introduce us,” Tishy complained.

“Beef was so mad he . . . left.” The last word came weakly. “I mean—” Tiger lifted despairing hands. “Don’t let Tishy start to explain what he means or we’re here for the rest of the night— with a nightmare to follow. He has the tiresome faculty of deluding himself into thinking he means anything, at any time.”

Muldrew understood—their anxiety for Mac, their eagerness to intrude nonsense to distract him from his purpose.

Mac, too anxious and concerned to prepare a case for himself, was to be relieved of replying, and Tiger, the quick-witted, reckless, bantering one was to bear the brunt. Muldrew knew how to deal with it. Leaning across the table, he pointed a finger at McQuigg.

“Sada Corwyn knew you were here—she saw you and attracted your attention.”

“Are you—sure—she saw me? Are you certain—” At the quick pressure of Tiger’s foot beneath the table he shrank back in his chair. “I—I didn’t know—I wasn’t sure.”

Tiger made a sound of disgust. “Gordy, after all you know Mac better than I. He didn’t forget her. But, hang it, none of us is likely to do that. What does it matter? I swear to you that Mac was never in touch with her, directly or indirectly, to-night. I was on guard for just that bit of folly. I too saw how the ground lay.”

Muldrew had no more time for them; there was much still to do before his night was over. A certain activity had broken out among the dozen policemen in the room. At Inspector Armitage’s orders they were searching for the jewellery. “And don’t let a nook or cranny escape you,” he had said. They didn’t. And not all the snakes and lizards and spiders and turtles in the world were going to stop them.

Muldrew rose. Suddenly he darted a final question at 64

McQuigg.

“Where were you when Mrs. Corwyn screamed?”

Tiger snorted indignantly. He was prepared for these sudden questions of Muldrew’s—indeed, for just this very one.

He took refuge in sarcasm: “I can tell you. He was slinking behind her chair, trying to hold a knife so it would hurt, and thinking what a pleasant evening it all was. Yeah, sure! Look here, Gordy, you’re not insinuating that—” Muldrew looked bored. “It might be a phonograph record.

That’s exactly what Major Withers and Mildred Masters said.

“To insinuate that anyone murdered Mrs. Corwyn is preposterous.”

“If you try to ring Mac in—” “The evening is crammed with preposterous things, Tiger, some of which are going to lead me to the murderer. Too bad; but you have made a brave effort. I know now that Mac was— somewhere that makes you uneasy. And, by the way, I’ll be talking to Beef, the one man who escaped after the murder.”

Tiger smiled. “Beef isn’t on your mind. It’s Mac. Well—” he lifted his five feet ten in Muldrew’s face—“all right. But it means another fight between us, Gordy. I’m not going to help you; I’m going to block you. I’m going to make you look silly.”

Muldrew looked down in the flushed face. “How?” “I’m going to prove that Mac had nothing to do with it.”

“How?” “Why—why, by finding out who really did murder Sada Corwyn.”

“Fine, fine! Then the police may sit back and leave it to you, Tiger. Good luck, go to it! ”

65

IX

MORE ALIBIS

Gordon Muldrew, in his career as a detective, had never ceased to puzzle at the cleverness and ease, amounting almost to uncanniness, with which criminals covered their trails in the first moments following a crime. No matter how clearly he came to see on later investigation the signs he might have noted, leading directly to a solution, he was always oppressed at first with a feeling that might have grown to panic that the criminal had the best of it. Charitably appraising a crime like murder as the result of some sudden, driving urge, he could never understand how even the most shocking of murderers contrived to frustrate or embarrass pursuit.

His ponderings over this, added to which was a disconcerting eagerness to pry into motives, the mental attitude that led to the crime—paths that were too often blind—might well have handicapped him, ever discouraged him, but a native resolution, a keen sense of duty, and a persistent feeling for the victim, kept him on the trail. This irreconcilable sympathy for both victim and murderer, until the truth was bared, warned him, fortunately, of the perils of his attitude; so that, while the personal side of him reacted to every revelation, to every discovery, the professional side never relented.

After the first flush of the search he had always found it profitable to retire with the clues he had collected and to free himself of prejudices that were sure to have arisen. He realized the folly of prejudices.

Standing there while Janet Doyle made her imperious exit, he felt suddenly weary, overburdened with impressions. He knew that soon he must get away by himself and sort out what he had unearthed, discarding to the inner recesses of his mind for future consideration the unessential, tabulating what promised to be useful, freeing himself of a litter of impeding reflections.

The sight of Inspector Armitage beside Tiger Lillie’s table had broken in, and he had hurried across.

Now, free for a moment, he felt limp, miserable, depressed. He dropped into a chair. A distressing feeling of inadequacy, of bafflement, weighed him down. The very 66

abundance of clues confused him, and he saw at a glance how difficult it would be to sort them, to distinguish the unimportant from the vital. From what he knew any one of the three at Sada Corwyn’s table might have committed the crime, and all the more cleverly that they would be under immediate suspicion. But, beyond that, half a hundred in that room might have been guilty, with sufficient motive to murder a woman who had played fast and loose with every man on whom she set her mind. Sooner or later a woman like that was bound to come to a violent end. And in that darkness, that continued darkness, the murderer might have taken refuge in any part of the room before the lights came on to expose him. The stealing of the jewellery after the crime, the delay it seemed to foresee, puzzled him most of all, and he had a feeling that it must, for the moment, be set aside.

Looking across at the table where Sada Corwyn had fallen, he saw her as she was when he entered the room, startling in her beauty, her bloodless face childlike in its innocence. It had touched his heart painfully.

Was this, he wondered, to be another case where sympathy and duty clashed? Was Sada Corwyn’s tragic death so well deserved that to punish her murderer would be the greater crime? Was his heart to be torn again, his professional probity endangered, by running down a murderer he could not condemn?

Was Inspector Armitage to be scandalized once more by his dangerously-divided sympathies? Gordon Muldrew was more uncertain of himself than was warranted, because he was more keenly alive to his own emotions than to anything else.

Of all the suspects so far not one would he convict with satisfaction.

He found himself repeating the murdered woman’s last words: “Someone—loves me.” Tiger had dwelt clumsily on that, the experienced reporter’s grasp of the human-interest touch, but he had managed to convey some picture of the ecstasy of the dying woman’s expression. Where, Muldrew wondered, did that rapturous cry lead him? Was it but the rambling vision, the irresponsible wanderings, of one on the threshold of death? Or was it an essential part of the knot he must untie? . . . How, in the darkness, did the murdered woman know who had struck her down? That she did not know was proven by her uncertainty— 67

“someone”—and the look she had given Mildred Masters’s terrified face above the table.

Somewhere woven into the mystery, too, was Sada Corwyn’s interest in the orchestra, an interest justified by the events that had come under his own observation.

Something slithered through the low-hanging leaves of a pillar close to his head, and he started back as a vivid green lizard scurried out of sight, its gold chain looping behind it like an abnormal tail. Muldrew shuddered. What a place! So this was the sort of monstrosity the public demanded! Against it could the ordinary methods of detection hope to cope?

He beckoned to Jameson. “Has anyone searched there?” he inquired wearily, pointing to the visible inch of chain gleaming in the light.

Jameson winked—struck at something—whistled an unmusical, but happy bar.

“Nothing there, Muldrew. . . . Say, what a dead loss The Jungle will be when we make it respectable!”

With a sigh Muldrew rose. His eye fell on Tiger Lillie and his friends, and he motioned them to go. As he returned to his task a dusky, almost naked figure near the orchestra-platform caught his attention, and he moved wonderingly toward it.

“Let’s see—who are you?”

“I’m the orchestra leader—Rawlinson. You asked me to stay.”

“Did I? There’s no need; you may go.”

Blood Bidwell addressed him from behind. “Are you about through, Mr. Muldrew?”

“I thought I told you to go.”

“I’m waiting to lock up.”

“You may trust the police for that.”

“From what I have seen the police seem more concerned about unessentials,” Bidwell retorted, but without anger. He waved a hand at the disorder in the restaurant.

“We were searching for the jewellery,” Muldrew explained weakly. “The police will take charge now.”

Rawlinson asked: “What about to-morrow night, Blood?

Will we come as usual?”

Bidwell passed the question on to Muldrew with a shrug.

68

“Of course,” Muldrew replied irritably. “The Jungle will be more popular than ever.”

The orchestra leader paled a little and hurried away.

Bidwell started after him—turned.

“You know where I live,” he said. “Up the river— Canaan. If for any reason you want me, I’ll be there until eleven to-morrow morning.”

Muldrew seemed to be thinking of something else.

“This Rawlinson—where does he live?”

“At the Burlington, 1316 Ninth Avenue. He has an apartment there.”

Muldrew pursed his lips. “The Burlington? Pretty swell for a jazz tinkler.”

“Buster is something more than that. I pay him well, too.

Goodnight.”

Muldrew continued his task. Inspector Armitage, he had felt for some time, was growing impatient; and he hated to be rushed. As he made his way back toward where Major Withers and Nat Corwyn still sat waiting to be dismissed the Inspector stopped him.

“This is your job, Muldrew, but you’re going a strange way about it.”

“I feel as if I never knew what overwork was before, Inspector,” Muldrew groaned. “If I don’t lay up soon I’ll have a bad attack of mental indigestion.”

“Huh! . . . You’ve lost that knife!”

“It would not help. Major Withers attended to that.”

“If you think he has it—” “I don’t—he wouldn’t be so foolish. But the Major is going to be no help. . . . The contempt of the upper-class English mind for the American official as exposed in our own Press.”

They had reached the table. Muldrew inquired Major Withers’s address.

“The Iroquois Hotel. Room three eighty-four. I’ll probably be there for some time.”

“You probably will,” agreed the Inspector unamiably.

“It’s really quite a good hotel,” complacently.

“And every room with bath, I bet.”

“Of course, mine has. And now may I go?”

69

With a bow to the two detectives he made for the door, without hurry, without self-consciousness, though every policeman in the room ceased what he was at to regard him with none too friendly eyes. With another bow to the two policemen before the door he disappeared. In a moment he was back, searching the room with troubled eyes. He approached Muldrew.

“But I haven’t paid my bill. The others were my guests.”

The two detectives stared. “Come to-morrow night—and pay double,” the Inspector advised acidly. “We aren’t a collecting agency.”

“Pardon. My mistake. Of course you’re not—you’re only the police.” With a bland smile the Major departed.

The Inspector swore under his breath. “Notorious debtpayers, those English. A bit of swagger. . . . And he nearly put it over, too. Thought he’d goad us to do something foolish. Well, Mr. Major, we’ll see that you do nothing foolish.” He called a policeman.

“Follow that man. Don’t let him out of your sight till he reaches his hotel. It’s the Iroquois. Hang about till morning. I’ll send someone to relieve you then. Now, Muldrew!”

Muldrew hated the next step, but he seated himself in the chair Major Withers had vacated. Nat Corwyn was quiet now, leaning stiffly back in his chair, his fists clenched on the table before him, apparently unconscious of what went on around him.

Muldrew studied him in silence for several seconds. If only he could read the thoughts behind that fixed stare! Pushing a plate noisily back, he began: “Mr. Corwyn, who is this Major Withers?”

Nat Corwyn’s eyes hardened as they turned to the detective. “I know nothing about him—next to nothing. We met on the Plutonia coming out—less than three weeks ago.”

“How did you come to meet him on the boat?”

“He was a passenger. A friend, a mutual friend, introduced us.”

“Who was the friend?”

Nat Corwyn lowered his eyes and hesitated. It was—Mr. Comstock, Napier Comstock of New York.” Something about the name seemed familiar to Muldrew, but he did not pause to run it down.

70

“Was that the first you heard of him—Major Withers, I mean?”

“Napier had often spoken of him. Mr. Comstock travelled with us for a time in Europe. The Major joined us at Southampton.”

“You have seen much of him since?”

A flash of anger, swiftly concealed, came to Nat Corwyn’s eyes. He nodded, as if not trusting himself to speak.

Muldrew seized it.

“You do not like him?”

But the other was not to be drawn. “Sada liked him.”

“Ah!” “The Major was—popular on the boat,” Corwyn said. “He was anxious to see American night life . . . Sada liked that too.”

“So that these nightly amusements were at Major Withers’s suggestion?”

“Always. I hate it. He insisted on acting the host; we were his guides. We have played about ever since we landed.”

Muldrew sat thinking. Then: “Had your wife enemies—that you know of?”

Corwyn looked straight into the detective’s eyes. “I’m not in the best position to answer that . . . Sada was popular with men. Often they—misunderstood.”

“Did the Major belong to that class?”

Nat Corwyn’s jaw set. “Major Withers—made love to Sada. I’ve known it for some time.”

Muldrew chose another channel of approach. “You say men sometimes misunderstood. That would mean their wives— and sweethearts—would misunderstand as well.”

“I’ve always feared them more than the men,” burst from Corwyn’s lips. He leaned forward and covered his face with one hand. “Is all this necessary—now? Can’t you wait? To-morrow— ” “I’m sorry, but in the interests of justice—” “Justice? Justice?” The man glared at the two detectives.

“Do you hope for justice—now? Can any punishment atone for— for what has happened? It’s too late, too late!”

Muldrew’s next question came in a gentler tone: “Apart from those at your own table, did you see anyone 71

here to-night who knew your wife, who would be interested in her?”

Nat Corwyn started, and a savage look stiffened his face.

“There was one. There may have been many—I didn’t look about much—we hadn’t been in long. But over there—at that third table—sat a young man who tried to flirt with Sada on the boat. McQuigg is his name. He used to pester her, to trot about at her heels. And when she turned on him at last he— started the story . . . a terrible story.”

“Yes?” “He—he said that Sada as good as murdered Napier Comstock. Napier was missed from the boat. Everyone knew he just fell overboard.”

“Did anyone see it?”

“No-o. But—but—Oh, it’s too ridiculous. He, this McQuigg, said Napier committed suicide because of Sada. Why, Napier was my friend as well as hers. Why should he commit suicide?” He glared at them, defying them to contradict. Nat Corwyn was struggling to convince himself.

“Did this McQuigg speak to your wife to-night, communicate with her in any way?”

“Not that I saw—I should say not. Sada turned him down cold, I told you.”

Muldrew drummed on the table. “By the way, where were you when—when it happened?”

“On the dancing-floor.”

“Who was your partner?”

“Why—why—I don’t know her name. But that’s not unusual,” he answered hastily to Muldrew’s look of surprise. “In these places a man doesn’t wait to be introduced. The girl I was with—she sat at that table there. I—I just liked her looks and asked her.”

“Did you dance with your wife at all?”

Nat Corwyn flushed. “No-o. You see, I fancied she preferred to dance with Major Withers. He’s a wonderful dancer.

I didn’t wish Sada to see—to see that I cared. I wanted to show her—” “I understand. . . . So this pretty girl you danced with—” “But I wasn’t dancing with her when my wife screamed. I 72

had cut in on another couple.”

The eyes of the two detectives met.

“Who was she?”

“Of course I have no idea. It was too dark to recognize faces. Besides, I—I was unsettled.”

“About the Major?”

Corwyn nodded.

“Did you know it was your wife who screamed?”

A moment’s pause. “Yes—something seemed to tell me—I was terribly frightened.” His face worked.

“Yet it was some seconds after the lights came on before you returned to your table!”

“At first—” Nat Corwyn swallowed nervously—“at first everyone was too startled to move. I think I remember my partner clinging to me in the dark. After the dreaminess of the dance— the dances here grip you like that—everything was so—so chaotic, so unreal. And then it was too dark to move. I don’t know—I scarcely know what I did.”

He fell to an uncomfortable silence.

“And then?”

“I don’t know—I must have run over here. That is all.”

His jaw set again, and he dropped back stiffly in the chair.

Muldrew rose. “That is all for the time being, Mr. Corwyn. But you’d better go with a policeman to-night. I may wish to question you later.”

Nat Corwyn came slowly to his feet, his face ghastly pale.

“You’re—you’re arresting me? You—you can’t mean that?”

“I don’t think it will be necessary,” Muldrew replied noncommittally.

73

X

A MIDNIGHT VISIT

Ninth Avenue, a street of former grandeur that had gradually degenerated into high-class boarding-houses, had, during the last three years started to climb again. In a mile between Markham Street and Twentieth Street a dozen apartment buildings of modern magnificence had raised their lofty roofs to invite the wealthy from the trials of housekeeping. Among these the Burlington stood high in favour.

The Burlington was a fourteen-story building of dignified appearance, planned—successfully—to snub the showier structures of gilded fagades and gimcrack decoration.

Muldrew knew it well, but only from the outside. More than once, passing, he had wondered idly when he would be called to duty in that expensive home of the quietly opulent.

Entering the avenue from Brock Street, he stopped to look curiously about in the still night. Straight before him three apartment buildings were more or less plentifully speckled with lighted windows, though it was now after midnight, two of them strikingly outlined in the gleam of invisible searchlights. But the Burlington, needing no advertisement, showed only a dozen lighted windows on that side.

Muldrew looked it over. “Can’t afford it myself,” he muttered enviously.

The policeman Muldrew had brought along planted his big feet solidly. “Too damned honest!” he growled.

“That’s the worst of our job in a city like this. I’m going to Chicago.” Jameson might be a notorious grumbler, but Muldrew had found him comfortingly reliable.

He had chosen Jameson deliberately as, leaving The Jungle, he had started out on a job of his own. Jameson could talk a lot without saying a thing; it was not necessary to warn him. . . .

There had been an anxious moment as they left The Jungle.

Muldrew had his plan before him for the rest of the night, and Inspector Armitage was not in it. But the Inspector had waited in the official car.

“Take the wheel, Muldrew. I’m fagged. These late hours and an old man don’t pull together.”

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“You’ll be home and sound asleep in fifteen minutes, Inspector. I’m taking the night air.”

The Inspector scowled through the open window as he slid behind the wheel. “What the hell are you up to at this hour?

Look here, Muldrew, I’m going to be sending flowers to your bedside at some cheap hospital if you don’t let up. There isn’t a thing you can do to-night that won’t keep. . . . And now tomorrow you’ll be too tired to think.”

“Then I’ll sleep in my chair in the office,” Muldrew had laughed. “I’ve done it before when you weren’t about.” With a wave of his hand he walked away.

As he went he beckoned to Jameson. The big policeman responded jubilantly.

“Good for another hour or two, Jameson?”

Jameson’s immediate reply was to throw out his enormous chest and strike it a blow that would have felled an ordinary man. “If it wasn’t for me and you, Muldrew, this city would be a second Chicago, eh? Good for another hour or two? I always was. Even my sainted step-mother, who married dad for his money and got fooled, used to say I was too good to last.

Well, I outlasted her—and dad had left his money in trust, so I got it. Thirty-eight dollars and sixteen cents, when debts and lawyers were paid. Lead on to the riot.”

“You have your gun—and a torch?”

“I’d be lopsided without them at night. I borrowed Harry’s torch.”

“Good . . . and we won’t require either.” Jameson groaned. “Well,” he said more cheerily, “you never know. Let’s hope for the best.”

Now as they stood looking up at the lighted windows of the Burlington he asked: “What’s the idea?”

Muldrew did not reply. His attention was riveted on a lighted window on the tenth floor. Two figures crossed hurriedly between the light and the window-blind. Muldrew clutched his companion.

“Come on!” ' They ran up the broad steps. Before them was a tall, revolving door. They tried it and found it locked, and they could not find a bell. Jameson, poking about, peered through the glass, 75

and exclaimed: “Here, here, Muldrew! I see a foot!”

Muldrew had seen it at the same time. Protruding through a doorway to the right a human foot was visible. It twitched, kicked spasmodically, ever creeping outward.

“Get a stone, Jameson, or kick the window in.”

But Jameson, continuing his prowlings, had found a small unlocked door at the other side. They rushed in.

The foot, they discovered, belonged to a man, bound and gagged, lying in the janitor’s tiny office. He was fully dressed.

One foot he had worked loose from the rope. When he was freed he clambered dizzily to his feet and stared at his rescuers with a dazed expression.

Muldrew shook him. “We’re policemen. What does this mean? Are you the janitor?”

The man nodded and found a chair. “The night watchman.” He lifted a hand to his head. “I don’t know quite what happened. I sit here at nights and keep guard of the front door, going the rounds every hour. I guess I must have dozed.

First thing I knew I was tied up. Before I could shout they slid that gag in my mouth.”

“But you saw who it was?” Muldrew was stowing in his pockets the ends of rope and the gag, a round piece of wood about which a man’s sock had been tied.

“I didn’t rightly see them. They had turned off all the lights but that dim one over the desk. They kept their backs to that. I managed to kick the switch a few minutes ago when I got one leg free.”

“Did they lock the doors?” Muldrew asked.

“Were they locked? I leave them open when I’m here.”

“Never was a criminal,” Jameson muttered, “that didn’t miss something. You’d have busted in without me, Muldrew.

Don’t see why they don’t promote me to your department.”

Muldrew looked about the small office. “What were they after? Did they take anything here?”

The night watchman shook his head. “They went right out. Made toward the elevator. I heard it go up.”

“What about your keys? You have keys for every apartment, I suppose?”

76

The man, paling, felt his pockets. “My God, that’s it!

They frisked me. With them keys they can get in anywhere.”

“Where’s the list of tenants?” Muldrew asked excitedly.

“Quick!”

The night watchman pointed to a card tacked to the end of a row of pigeon-holes. Muldrew glanced down it and caught Jameson by the arm.

“You stay here,” he ordered the night watchman. “Don’t say a word of this to anyone who enters. Did you see these men go out?”

“They haven’t gone. I’m sure—I’d have seen them.”

Muldrew hurried to the hall. “Jameson, you climb the stairs. If I can get that elevator down.” But there was no response to the button. “Ah, they’ve attended to that—left the door open so we can’t budge it from here.”

“Then,” whispered Jameson excitedly, “all we got to do is to locate that elevator and nab ’em.”

Muldrew smiled. “I’ll recommend you to the Inspector, Jameson.”

“Well, you see if I ain’t right.”

They climbed the marble stairs as quietly as Jameson’s heavy body in heavy boots would permit. At the fifth floor his breathing began to be audible.

“Huh! They’ve run the damned thing through the roof, they have! Why didn’t we send that lazy night watchman up for it?”

“Because we’re to nab the villains where we find the elevator, didn’t you say?”

“I could forgo that pleasure—” “Think of the good mark on your sheet when you prove you’re right.”

“I’d rather have a good lift for the next dozen stories or so,” the policeman grunted, wiping his forehead.

They reached the tenth floor. Muldrew, standing close to the elevator shaft, looked upward.

“Two more floors, Jameson—for you. Give me your torch.”

“But—but if they’re up there!”

“They aren’t. Sorry to disappoint you. These lads are far 77

too clever to leave the elevator where they’re at work.”

“Muldrew,” Jameson chided, “you’d make a maze of a straight line. You’re trying to make a mystery of that murder tonight. Well, have it your own way here goes. But when I catch ’em I’m going to take this hundred stories of steep stairs out on their hides if it means dismissal.”

He resumed the ascent, panting and puffing. “The last sixty stories are always the worst. Is this a slimming stunt of yours, Muldrew?”

Jameson out of sight, Muldrew went quickly to work.

Hastily examining the numbers on the doorways, he passed along the corridor. Before the third door he paused and, stooping, applied his ear to the keyhole. A slow smile dawned on his face as he listened. For a time he examined the door from top to bottom. It was a heavy oaken affair, plain and stout.

Again he bent to the keyhole, and an uneasy frown gathered on his forehead. Lifting his hand, he hesitated, then, lips stiff and grimly set, he knocked loudly.

From within the room a quick movement was audible, followed by silence. Muldrew, about to knock once more, was aware of someone ascending the stairs. Presently the night watchman came running along the corridor.

“I found them, I found them.” He held up a bunch of keys. “They were in my drawer all the time. If that’s the door you want, here’s the key.”

Muldrew grabbed the keys. “Get back to your office.”

“But—but, I’ll be able to identify them—maybe!”

“You never saw them. Anyway, it’s too late. They’ve escaped.”

“They didn’t go out—” “Of course they did. You missed them, that’s all. Now go back and wait.”

When the night watchman’s footsteps had faded away Muldrew inserted the key. Then he did a curious thing. Taking out his handkerchief, he wiped the door-knob carefully before turning it and throwing the door open.

The apartment was in darkness, and for a moment he 78

stood, crouched against the wall just inside the door. Turning on his torch, he advanced into the room and, reaching to the centre lights, felt them. They were warm.

79

XI AN OPEN WINDOW Muldrew directed the torch about the room, and a low breath of surprise escaped him. Finding the switch, he flooded the room with light and without moving gazed around.

It was an unusual room, expensively furnished, artistically arranged, yet lacking the homelike touch of a woman’s hand.

Intuitively Muldrew recognized the furniture that belonged to the building and what had been added by its owner. The former was chosen for comfort, the latter to satisfy a personal taste, to feed aspirations above mere comfort. The three old oil paintings on the walls were not only excellent art but their mellowed tones and uneccentric style added a touch, a quiet grace, impossible to modern pictures. A pair of brilliant wine-coloured vases on the mantel Muldrew recognized as exquisite Venetian glass, of a shade to match the silk window curtains. In one corner stood a beautiful baby grand piano, over which, as well as on a low couch beside it, were strewn an assortment of musical instruments.

Muldrew’s gaze fastened on those instruments. Their disarray was the one careless spot in an otherwise immaculate room; and even there the confusion was incomplete. An open violin case lay on its side on the floor before the couch, three saxophones were piled recklessly together, and a cluster of smaller instruments on the piano seemed to have been tossed about. But more than half the couch was tidily arranged, with the care of one who loved his instruments.

The detective puzzled over it, his mind stubbornly refusing to concentrate, so many other things milled about his head. Was it, he wondered, the end of an evening of emotion, this disarray, a reckless flinging down that told of bared nerves, or was it—something more immediately interesting? He approached the couch and stood looking down on it.

A window curtain fluttered and he faced it swiftly. The light silk bellied into the room, revealing an open window. It revealed also what was more surprising—the screen behind cut away on three sides and flapping loose.

Muldrew nodded understandingly, then, moving along the 80

walls, he searched the room, working his way around to the open window. Far below, almost a hundred feet, a paved drive-way led back beside the buildings to the apartment garage before which a bright light burned. Over the roofs of adjacent buildings he could see the lane of light that was Ninth Avenue, and far off the brighter corner of Markham Street. Muldrew, his head thrust through, turned and looked upward. A rope dangled before his face!

“Great Scott! What a risk to take!”

As he bent to examine the window-ledge, a slight noise from the corridor reached him. Almost before he thought he had unhooked the torn window-screen and let it drop free to the drive-way below. Then he slid the window down and, stepping quickly across the room, passed through the curtain concealing a doorway at his right.

The quick ray of his torch revealed a luxurious bedroom.

But almost before that registered in his mind he had seen something else, something that sent the blood pounding to his head. On the bed lay a man in bright silk pyjamas, hands and feet bound together, a towel drawn tightly into his mouth, another towel over his eyes. A stifled groan, more of anger than of pain, showed that the man was very much alive. Muldrew picked him up and carried him through to the living-room.

In the centre of the room stood Inspector Armitage.

“Ah! So this is where—Muldrew, what does this mean?”

“I’m just finding out.” Muldrew laid the man on the floor and swiftly released him. “Why—Buster Rawlinson!”

The Inspector took a quick step nearer, and the two detectives stood looking down on the leader of The Jungle orchestra as he raised himself and sat upright. The Inspector frowned at his subordinate.

“You expected this?”

Muldrew shook his head innocently. “Last thing I did expect.”

“Then what are you doing here? I thought you were up to something, so I did a bit of trailing on my own account.”

“Just a random thought, Inspector. I had an idea Rawlinson was somehow mixed up in the affair to-night at The Jungle.” He spoke in a low voice. “At least, his explanation of the 81

lights was unconvincing. I wanted to have a talk with him.” He bent and pulled Rawlinson to his feet. “Now, what’s the story?”

The orchestra leader seemed scarcely to be aware of them.

He stood, shaking a little, staring at the untidy array of instruments on couch and piano.

“Who did that?” He made a furious step toward them.

Then he pulled up, and a look of something like terror chased the anger from his face.

“Tell us what happened, and we might be able to help,” Muldrew ordered.

“I—I scarcely know.” Rawlinson shook his head in a muzzy way. “I was asleep, and the first I knew a gag was pressing into my mouth and I couldn’t move.”

“You were asleep?” Muldrew’s eyes bored into the man.

“Then how is it the bed is undisturbed?”

Rawlinson’s confusion was almost pitiful, his fingers twined and untwined.

“The fact is,” Muldrew said harshly, “you were not asleep. . . . You were not likely to sleep easily after what happened at The Jungle, were you?”

Rawlinson cringed away, his hands to his face. “That— that! My God!” Inspector Armitage spoke sharply: “Go on, Rawlinson, we want the truth.”

“It’s been an awful night to me, Inspector. I can’t stand these things. I’m—I’m upset; I can’t think. . . . No, I wasn’t asleep. I was lying on the bed . . . in the dark. I heard a noise out here and came out. They jumped me in the dark.”

“How many?”

“There were two at least. They did not speak. One held me while the other tied me up. They carried me to the bed. I was blindfolded when the lights came on—I saw nothing. They had a torch to light themselves before.”

“How long ago was it?”

“Not long—couldn’t be more than twenty minutes.”

“What were they after?”

“I—can’t—think.—I could hear them moving about out here.”

“Do you keep much money about?” asked the Inspector.

82

Rawlinson shook his head. “Only a few dollars.”

“Jewellery, perhaps,” Muldrew suggested.

Rawlinson laughed hysterically. “Not likely. This is a bachelor apartment.”

The Inspector went to the door and examined it. “Did they get in this way?”

“The door was slightly open when I reached it,” Muldrew lied. “They must have a master-key.”

“There are no signs of picking the lock,” the Inspector puzzled.

Muldrew had moved to the couch and now stood with his back to it. “There may be finger-prints,” he suggested. “I barely touched the knob.”

The Inspector took a magnifying glass from his pocket. “I think not. This knob has been wiped clean or I’m mistaken.”

“They wore gloves,” Rawlinson offered. “I felt that.”

The Inspector sighed. “Too easy to beat us, Muldrew. But I’ll send a man here in the morning. Don’t leave, Rawlinson, till he comes. And don’t touch a thing.” He turned to Muldrew.

“Where’s Jameson? I saw you take him.”

“Jameson,” Muldrew explained, “is making fame for himself by laying in wait for the ruffians up beside the elevator.

I’ll stick around for a while and take a look over things. No need for you to stay, Inspector.”

They stood near the door, the three of them.

“How exactly did you find the door, Muldrew?” the Inspector asked.

Muldrew, in the rear, stepped through to the corridor, urging the others ahead.

“Like that.” He drew the door to a narrow opening. “It doesn’t creak, you notice. Rawlinson would never hear them enter.” He opened the door and drew it toward him, listening. It closed with a click.

Rawlinson exclaimed, “You’ve locked us out. It’s a spring lock. My key is in my clothes.”

Muldrew looked foolish. “Oh, well, we can get the night watchman.” He moved along the corridor at the Inspector’s side, Rawlinson, in bare feet, following. “What isn’t clear, Rawlinson, is whether they chose your apartment deliberately or by 83

accident—common hotel thieves, perhaps.”

Jameson, two floors higher, heard their voices up the elevator shaft and hurried down.

“Want me, Muldrew?”

“Yes, shoot down in that elevator and get the keys from the night watchman.” Jameson climbed grumblingly. As he entered the elevator Muldrew started and felt his pockets. “Say, here are the keys. I forgot. The man left them with me. All right, bring the elevator down for the Inspector. He’s going.”

The elevator glided down to them and Jameson stepped out. The Inspector took his place and: “Might as well trot along too, Jameson,” Muldrew said.

“I’ve only a few minutes’ work here.”

The elevator dropped out of sight. Muldrew yawned, fumbled with his keys and, sauntering noisily down the corridor, fumbled some more at the lock before throwing the door open.

His eyes flew to the window. It was open again!

84

XII THE TWO LETTERS Beef Halladay stretched his fat legs before him and stared at the loud check of his purple and red socks.

“It’s this shrinking, sensitive nature of mine,” he wailed.

“Always getting in the way. Five minutes longer in that crawly, slimy place and I’d have gone shrieking mad. This hang-over from the Garden of Eden is unfortunate, but no fault of mine. . . .

But if I’d been able to stick it out there’d have been a master mind to get Mac out of this hole. As it is, it’s up to you guys. All I can do—” “Oh, sure!” Tishy spat out the unconsumed end of a cigarette. “Sure—sure! If we hadn’t your exquisite, impressionable mentality in The Gang we’d miss all the thrill of living—and most of its worries. D’ye know what you did, you yellow-hearted ninny?”

Beef regarded his friend with insulting calmness. “Was there ever a time when I didn’t know what I did? You never saw me run amok and have to depend on my friends to tell me afterwards what I did. When I go into battle—” “When you go into battle, Beef, we’re more convinced than ever that but for the modifying action of the ages on your ears you’d be wearing harness and braying. You may think you know what you did, but I’m going to tell you the truth. You skidooed with your tail between your legs. All you thought of was the great, wide open spaces where the running was good.

You didn’t think of the rest of us, oh, no!”

“Who brought the police?” Beef demanded proudly.

“And who sneaked away a second time with his tail between his legs?”

“If the rest of you could think quickly enough you could all have got away. Trouble with you boys is your mental cogs are gummed up, your gas is watery, your carburettor is out of adjustment, your distributor badly timed, your oil—” “Don’t talk like a garage,” snapped Tishy. He turned melancholy eyes on Mac, who, chin on chest, sat staring at the floor. “We may be out of order inside, but our brakes are good.

You barge ahead and—bang! everything goes smash. That’s what 85

you ran The Gang into to-night. Listen, Beef, what your crazy flight did was to direct police suspicion against yourself. Yes, sir, against yourself!”

Beef gaped. “Against—myself? Oh, Lord, again!2 I’m getting to be an epidemic with the police.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. All you are is The Gang’s organic disease. . . . Fortunately, Muldrew knows no nit-wit could have murdered Sada Corwyn. But—well, it drew attention to us.

There’s the result.” He pointed to their depressed friend.

Mac raised bloodshot eyes. “Do you think they really think I—I could have done it, Tishy?”

“Well,” Tishy hedged, “I wouldn’t say that, but they’ve not finished with you.”

“But—but anyone must know—” “The Gang knows, of course, Mac, that you haven’t the guts to kill a malaria mosquito, but Muldrew must have a victim.”

“But you boys can swear I wasn’t near her—” “If they put me on the stand, Mac,” Tishy groaned, “I’d never be able to lie enough to do you any good. I’m so sensitive to the police that some day I’m going to murder one with my own hands to shake off the obsession.”

Beef guffawed coarsely. “All you’re sensitive to, Tishy, is whisky and hives.”

“Anyway,” Tishy snarled back, “I didn’t squeal and run because somebody slid a knife into a woman’s ribs—” “Aw, cut it out!” Beef shuddered. “Why the gory details?

I was running for the police—” “I wonder what’s keeping Tiger and Louis. What the blazes did they give us the slip for? I’m jumpy enough without them gum-shoeing about the place and ’sh-sh’-ing behind their hands.”

“I hate to think of the mess they’re sure to get into without us,” Beef groaned.

Tishy, not certain whether Beef was his own contented 2

Midnight.

86

Beef refers to the Wainwright case in Murder at

self or sarcastic, said nothing. For several minutes they sat in silence, a fever of uncertainty eating at their patience. . . . The familiar Gang signal from the street brought Mac quickly to his feet. Finger to lip, he crossed the room, turned off the lights and went into the hall.

A few seconds later the door opened softly—closed softly. Someone ’sh-sh’-ed into the silence.

The light came on. Tiger and Louis dropped wearily into the nearest chairs, wiping pale faces. Beef glared at them.

“Yes, I see. You’ve got into a pickle as usual and come to us to pull you out.”

Tiger frowned. “Don’t talk, Beef. . . . And don’t ever try to do anything else.” He turned on Mac eyes so full of distress that Beef was frightened.

“What’s happened?”

Tiger wiped his face again and thrust the handkerchief into the wrong pocket. Such absent-mindedness made Beef shiver with dread.

Tishy, too. “You’ve been getting into trouble. . . . No,” he burst out petulantly, “you won’t tell us what it is, but we’re the ones that’ll have to drag you out of it, Beef and I.” Tiger shook his head gloomily. “No use, boys. We can’t tell you. You’re prize liars about your own hearths, but you couldn’t deceive the police if you talked only in Sanskrit.”

“So that all Beef and I will have to confess is that you two gave us the slip after we left The Jungle, and you came back a couple of hours later looking like murderers yourselves. They’re sure to nab Beef and put on the screws. Anybody that wears clothes like his must be guilty. I can stand a murder or two, Beef and I, but mystery beats me every time.”

Tiger yawned elaborately. “Good boys! You’ve done your day’s good deed. All Louis and I had in mind coming here at such an hour was to get our thoughts distracted, to realize once more that life is frivolous. . . . But now to business. Mac, there’s a plain-clothes man on guard outside!”

Mac leaped to his feet. “I thought Muldrew suspected me!

Oh, my God!” He dropped back and covered his face with his hands.

“Mac, buck up.” Though he spoke harshly, even brutally, 87

Tiger’s eyes were gentle and anxious. “If he saw you now he’d be sure. All the evidence the police can work against you, if you watch yourself—” “There’s more evidence than you know, boys,” Mac groaned. “They’ll be sure to find my letters.”

Tiger was on him instantly. “What letters?”

“I—I wrote one to Major Withers . . . about The Jungle.”

“What do you mean?”

“I had promised on the boat to let him know the high spots in the night life of the city.”

“And—you mentioned—The Jungle? When—why?”

“When I knew we were going there to-night.”

“But,” Tiger puzzled, “I don’t see—what’s the connection, anyway?”

Mac looked miserably about. “I suggested The Jungle because—because I knew he’d be sure to take Sada Corwyn. I hate her—before God I hate her . . . but I longed to see her again.”

Tiger groaned. “What a mess! If the police find that note, Mac! . . . And all we’ve been through for you to-night!” He searched their faces scornfully. “Seems as if I’ve gathered around me the world’s prize dunderheads. No wonder I’m losing my reputation with intelligent people like Gordon Muldrew!”

A snort of protest broke over the room. “Stick to us,” Tishy sniffed, “and there’s some hope for your reputation. Any reputation you lose is hopeful, Tiger, my lad. . . . But I don’t see how Mac’s letter could injure him.”

“The curiousest curiosity in nature,” Tiger mused, “is the density of the human mind in spots.” He addressed himself anxiously to Mac. “Now, Mac, tell us the worst—any more fool stunts you’ve been up to. I suppose you kept up a blue-and-gory correspondence with the murdered woman, telling her how you were going to do it—” “I—I wrote her, too,” Mac confessed despairingly.

“You—wrote—Sada Corwyn?”

Mac nodded. “She wrote me. It was only decent to reply.

What else could I do?”

“You might,” Tiger suggested scornfully, “have warned her that you would be there to-night with a nice, sharp table-knife 88

and an unholy thirst for her blood.”

“I—almost did—just that.”

Tiger lifted horrified hands. “The social conscience of some of my friends is a devastating virtue. Give us the convicting details of that letter, Mac. Was it a love letter or a hate one— though it makes little difference.”

“I didn’t love her; I hated her,” Mac protested indignantly. “I—I forget what I said . . . except how she deserved a fate as awful as Napier Comstock’s, and no one would mourn when it overtook her.”

“And you told her the rib you would select, the occasion—” “I—did—not!”

Tiger dropped his face in his hands and sat for a time motionless. His friends watched him anxiously. Presently he rose, weary and depressed.

“This is too awful, too awful! It’s a dangerous, almost a hopeless task you’ve given us, Mac. I must have sleep to think it out. But”—he strode forward and shook his fist in McQuigg’s face—“if you touch pen to paper in the next month I wash my hands of you. If you answer a police question without me to hold you down there’s nothing left but to order your headstone. . . .

And if you can scare up an aspect of offended dignity every time Muldrew looks at you, lay it on heavy—heavy. . . . You’d look foolish enough trying it to convince him you haven’t the brains for that murder to-night. Come along, Louis, it’s up to us—our work has just started. But first I must have sleep.”

The four friends departed, leaving Mac somewhat comforted by Tiger’s last words: “Buck up, old boy. You may be simple, but I’m hanged if they can prove you vicious.”

Not a word was spoken until they reached the door of Louis’s boarding-house.

“Louis,” said Tiger solemnly, “sleep hard for the next four hours. I’m going to need you then.”

“And when you find it’s us you need,” Tishy said coldly, “we’ll try to forget how snifty you’ve been and come to the rescue.”

Tiger waved him away. “You interrupt my thoughts, 89

Tishy. . . . And—The Gang is broken up for a few days.” He started on.

Beef watched him go. “Tishy and I are going to have to work hard if The Gang isn’t to be broken up for ever,” he muttered. “Poor old Mac!” . . .

Wearily, his feet dragging, Tiger climbed the stairs of his own boarding-house. Tishy, who roomed on the same floor, strode morosely away and left Tiger feeling in the dark for his own door. Tiger’s mind worked stiffly—and he knew he had never so much need to be alert. Wherever he looked a blank wall seemed to face him. Mac, in his carelessness, in his foolish infatuation for Sada Corwyn, had laid a trail his friends could never hope to cover. Muldrew would strike it—and then! What could they hope to do? Those letters, Mac’s mysterious actions in the restaurant, his whereabouts at the moment of the murder it all massed to force even on Tiger an uncomfortable questioning. He could imagine what Mac, in his abhorrence of Sada’s habits, had written—all the more crudely defiant and threatening because he almost blamed himself for Napier Comstock’s death, and because in his heart he knew himself to be still attracted to her. . . .

Muldrew would be relentless.

Those letters! Something must be done about them . . . two of them . . . one the Major would have, the other . . . what was the address where Nat Corwyn and his wife put up in the city? Tiger felt his veins tingle. Here was work for him, real work. . . .

Staggering along the hall, mentally and physically all in, he found the knob of his door and threw the door open. Then he started back. The room was lighted, and beside the table, in the centre of the room, sat Gordon Muldrew!

90

XIII TIGER WARNED They stared at each other, the weary reporter and the watchful detective; and slowly, in the silence that ensued, limp lines of defeat gathered on Tiger Lillie’s face. Muldrew smiled. A disarming smile behind which, at any other time, Tiger would have read the sympathy of a friend and not the smirk of a satisfied official.

Muldrew regarded the cigarette he was smoking. “Fair cigarettes, these, Tiger.” Though it was halfpast three, he was, in appearance, fresh as the morning. Concentration would sustain him thus without sleep for three days, and then he would sleep the clock around.

“Glad you found them, Gordy.” Tiger was struggling with his fears. Muldrew, he knew, paid no visits without a deep purpose. Indeed, he paid few visits at any time. “No time,” he usually replied to Tiger’s invitations. “And, anyway, you and I see enough of each other in the course of business. Let’s not get tired of each other. I’ve only two close friends, Tiger, you and Toni Hartford.3 I need you both.”

Tiger had never pressed. He appreciated the value Muldrew attached to his limited friendships, the sacrifices he made for them, and, to some extent, how uncomfortably, how dangerously, he had permitted those friendships to infringe on his duty. He had no wish to test his friendship too far. Already, in the course of his newspaper work, he had made demands on it, and his affection for Muldrew was too real to accept favours for which the detective would suffer.

Tiger took hold of himself.

“Such an unexpected pleasure!” He looked pointedly at the cheap alarm clock on the dresser.

“Unexpected, yes . . . and undesired.” Muldrew pinched the spark from his cigarette and laid it carefully on the saucer Tiger used for a ash-tray.

“It is a bit late,” Tiger agreed. “I never contradict a guest.”

3

The Masked Stranger

91

Muldrew helped himself to another cigarette from the pile before him. “But neither of us works by the clock, do we? At the same time, I agree that an apology is due you . . . or an explanation.”

“Let’s have the apology. I’m far too sleepy to grasp an explanation. Can you wonder?”

“Nevertheless it’s the explanation you’ll hear first. I got in by hanging about until a fellow-boarder of yours came along. We learn little tricks like that in my profession.”

“What you learn in your profession, Gordy,” said Tiger lazily, “is only to be discussed between close friends. Thanks for not waking Mrs. Altomen. She’d have been scandalized. She never could understand my friendship for a cop. A bit snobbish, I think myself. Still, it’s always well to be considered a perfect gentleman by one’s landlady. A week or two’s delay in the settlement isn’t so condemning then.”

“It’s a wonder she stands for such late hours—in a gentleman.” Muldrew was alive to the strain under which Tiger laboured.

“Mrs. Altomen,” Tiger declared, “thinks it’s midnight oil I burn for the Star.”

“Whereas it’s often someone else’s midnight oil— someone who does not invite you. To-night, for instance. I’ve spent a fussy hour wondering what you were after.”

Tiger disappeared in the clothes closet to dispose of his hat. Presently he returned and seated himself across the table from Muldrew.

“I’ve been at McQuigg’s with The Gang.”

“We can easily check up on that.”

“Yes, I saw your man outside Mac’s. . . . We haven’t been there all the time since we left The Jungle. But it wouldn’t interest you. We’re a bit erratic in our ways—The Gang.”

“You’re wrong, Tiger.” Muldrew regarded his friend intently. “The movements of The Gang are of absorbing interest—especially to-night.”

“Basically The Gang is constitutional in its conduct,” Tiger replied ponderously, playing for time, “fundamentally it is unimpeachable.”

“But, above all,”—Muldrew’s tone was accusing—“The 92

Gang is loyal . . . and reckless.” “‘Selon les regies,’ that’s our motto.”

“But you make your own rules, Tiger.”

He dropped into the tray the cigarette that had burned half-way without so much as a puff, and absently picked up and lit another. Tiger watched the operation with absorption.

“I’m afraid, Gordy, you’ll die of tobacco heart before we agree on the righteousness of The Gang’s principles.” He pointed to the heaped saucer. . . “They’re not all mine. What do you carry them in—a valise?” He glanced quickly to a package that lay on the dresser top. It was still almost full.

“Sometimes,” Muldrew replied lightly, “I uncover a friend’s cache. I’m a wonderful pryer. That’s something more we learn in my job. In that second drawer there. I hope you don’t demand a search warrant, Tiger. . . . At any rate, more explanation is due you after that. All right. An hour or so ago I came on a strange, a disturbing scene.”

“You’re always doing that, Gordy.” Tiger’s heart pounded. “You break in on ’em; I make ’em stranger still for the Star readers. What’s this one? It’s too late for the Morning Times” “It may not be surprising to you. . . . It won’t even be of professional interest to you when I bind you not to speak of it without my consent. Is that agreed?”

Tiger shrugged. “I’m at your mercy.”

“It was a man, bound and gagged, lying in his pyjamas in his own room at the Burlington Apartments . . . and nothing stolen that we could trace.”

“Gosh, this is more in Louis’ line than mine. It’s a mystery. Go on. What’s the answer?”

Muldrew leaned fiercely over the table “Tiger stop playing with fire.”

Tiger did not flinch. The night’s affair was out now, or almost out—but he could never give Muldrew the satisfaction of confessing.

“Anything that smells of copy, Gordy, isn’t going to frighten me off.”

“I’m warning you.”

“As friend or official?”

93

“Both.”

“Thanks. . . . So it’s the police I’m to beware of?”

“The police,” Muldrew replied gravely, “are the least danger. . . . And yet—keep this before you—in the Sada Corwyn crime we’re ruthless. The Jungle murder is far from the simple crime it seemed. It isn’t—it never was—a hit-and-run affair. The murderer of Sada Corwyn will stop at nothing. . . . And he’s clever . . . just yet too clever for the police. We can’t protect you if you interfere. He got Sada. He’s prepared to get anyone in his way. . . . And he isn’t running away.”

Tiger had lit a second cigarette, though the last still rested, less than half-consumed, on the saucer. He held one now absentmindedly and picked up the other. He knew Muldrew was not one to waste time on needless warnings.

“Why did you come to tell me this, Gordy?”

Muldrew reached into his pocket and laid on the table an old sock. Neither spoke.

“I still fail to understand,” Tiger murmured.

“Recklessness doesn’t always pull through, Tiger. A rope from an eleventh-story window is reckless to foolishness, but two young men to-night took even greater risks than that—for something I can’t work out. That sock was wound around the gag in the man’s mouth. Its mate I found—you amateurs are so careless on your bed there. You were in a hurry.”

Tiger smiled. “Oh, you found its mate?” He smothered the life from both cigarettes and rose. “You’re as bad as a careless nurse in a maternity ward, Gordy: you’re mixing families. Sorry to wreck such a spectacular case.” He commenced to rummage in a drawer, his back to the detective. “One must admire your deductions, Gordy, but the premise was wrong. I’ve always been your most ardent admirer no questioning your cleverness in certain cases; and I’m not going to tell on you this time—but this is one occasion when cleverness oversteps itself.

I’m sorry, but that giddy sock is no monopoly of mine. Maxon had a window full of them last month. Must have sold hundreds.

It’s a showy design. But just because it attracted me—” He talked and talked as he rummaged—talked against time.

“There!” Triumphantly he threw on the table another sock 94

that matched the one Muldrew had so dramatically exposed. “The one on the bed I had out to mend. You’ll find the place in the toe, if you care to look. . . . Don’t take it too badly Gordy.”

For Muldrew’s face was a picture of chagrin and disappointment as he bent over the three socks.

“I hope you see the danger of jumping to conclusions.

That’s something you should learn in your profession, not all these tiddly things you spoke of. If I hadn’t been able to produce the mate to that sock on the bed I suppose I’d be spending the night in jail. Gee! when I think of the innocents you must have stowed away there in your time! Never mind, I won’t tell . . . and I forgive you.”

Muldrew laughed foolishly. “It looked so—so certain.

That’s one on me, all right. You see, the man Inspector Armitage and I found bound was Buster Rawlinson, the orchestra-leader at The Jungle. You were interested. . . . I remembered, too, once seeing those socks on you. I’m awfully sorry.”

Tiger waved a magnificently forgiving hand. “Doesn’t matter, Gordy. Between friends. If it gives the police a keener sense of their responsibilities it has not been wasted.” He grinned.

“But seriously, two such awful mistakes in one night, at our expense, is a bit thick, isn’t it? Poor old Mac!” Muldrew returned the sock to his pocket without a word.

“Anyway, Gordy, let’s drink to our continued friendship.”

Ten minutes later Tiger Lillie closed the outer door softly behind Muldrew and staggered back against the wall, a hand to his forehead. He felt limp and weak. But as he dragged his weary legs up the stairs he grinned happily.

“That beat him. But, ye gods, if I hadn’t had that second pair of socks of the same pattern! Oh, well,” as he let himself into his room and looked about, “it all goes to show the superior mentality of a reporter over a detective.”

He commenced thoughtfully to undress. Suddenly he remembered. Muldrew had been into that second drawer for those cigarettes! Tiger worried.

He would have worried more had he been able to look in on Muldrew as he drew a sheet over his shoulders and settled himself to think things out. A sly smile tugged at his lips. For Muldrew had found that second pair of socks.

95

XIV THE FIRST DISAPPEARANCE Tiger’s sleep, sound though it was, broke promptly at half-past seven in accordance with his overnight plan, and at a few minutes past eight he was on the street. By half-past he and Louis Bracken, in Tiger’s new Pontiac, were scurrying at a reckless pace along an unfrequented country road. On the back seat rested Tiger’s best leather suit-case, presented him by a grateful police for information that led to the timely rescue of a sergeant captured by a band of counterfeiters.

The smoke of a slow passenger train was visible in the distance as they drew up at a deserted station platform. Tiger leaped out.

“Wish me luck, old man.”

Louis shook his head dolefully. “It doesn’t look good to me, Tiger. We scraped through one narrow squeak by the skin of our teeth—and didn’t gain a thing. Luck can’t stay with you always.”

“Well, I’ve just got to take the chance. Gordy doesn’t seriously think Mac did it—not now—not yet—but goodness knows what will happen when the police find out what we know.” Tiger braced his shoulders. “Anyway, the risk is mine.

You’re safe enough. All you have to do—” Louis struck at him savagely. “Oh, go to hell! I’ll be there.”

The train puffed in. Tiger climbed aboard, his natty new suit-case, almost empty, waving recklessly from the rear platform to his depressed friend.

“But bon voyage!” Louis shouted, trying to sound cheerful. But there was no cheeriness about him as he ran the Pontiac back to the city and parked it in Tiger’s garage.

The day clerk of the Iroquois ran his eye over a handful of letters that had just come in and commenced to distribute them into the pigeon-holes at his back. He did it carefully, ponderously. A “Johnson” went thoughtfully into the pigeon-hole of Room 824, where a Makroyd would presently find it and sigh at the ways of hotel clerks whose training progresses no farther 96

than nerve and clean finger-nails. A “Genesee” would later be returned by Mrs. Arthurs, who had been unable to resist the temptation to open it “by mistake.”

About the time it began to dawn on the clerk’s last-night mind that he was in no condition for such a momentous job without further sleep, the front door opened and a uniformed porter thrust his head through. Three bell-boys scuttled away in response and raced to the street.

Last of the line of entering guests from the 10.03 was a leisurely young man who carried his own suit-case, a bright yellow affair bearing the initials in black, “A. L. L.” The clerk noted those letters. He had learned something of the art of fitting guests to rooms. He knew these yellow-outfitted fellows—flashy, but calling for care to remind them of their bill.

The clerk extended the pen, an immaculate finger pointing to the line on the register. The young man hesitated, still clinging to his valise.

“I’m not sure I will be here to-night. I’m to meet a friend.

He was to be here.” He turned the pages over as he spoke.

“What name might it be?”

“It might be—” Tiger remembered that he had embarked on an affair too serious for smartness. A tardy realization that to give his suit-case into the care of a bell-boy would surely give him away had sobered him considerably since boarding the train.

“It might be Gorman,” he went on lamely, “Jasper Gorman . . . but he may have sent his secretary.” The pages flipped back.

“Gorman—Gorman? No one of that name here. What’s the secretary’s name?”

“Oh . . . the secretary’s name—yes, the secretary.” He was maddeningly absent-minded as he turned the pages.

Suddenly his face brightened and he stepped back. “Yes, the secretary. Brown Alfred Brown.—But I may as well register.”

He took the pen. “I want a room on the third floor.”

“Certainly, sir.” The traveller with a definite taste was worth attention. “Most of our guests try to get higher—less noise and dust, a better view.”

“I’m here on business. Could you send a bell-boy with me so I can pick a room?”

“Certainly, sir.” He beckoned to a bell-boy. “Take this 97

gentleman to the floor clerk on the third floor. The floor clerk will show them to you, sir.” His glance wandered from the register to the initials on the suit-case. Tiger Lillie flushed.

“Borrowed—not stolen. My—my brother-in-law’s.” He clutched the suit-case against the bell-boy’s insistent hand.

At his back someone cried out: “Well, what the blazes!

Tiger, what—” Tiger whirled. “Oh, hullo, Brown! Glad you turned up so promptly.” His back to the clerk, he winked broadly at Tishy.

“They told me you weren’t here.”

“I’m—I’m staying with a friend,” Tishy managed vaguely.

“I see. Well, come on up to my room.” He seized Tishy’s arm and dragged him toward the elevator.

In the car Tishy whispered: “Say, what are you doing here?”

Tiger only smiled. They stepped into the corridor of the third floor. The bell-boy led them to a desk behind which sat a none-too-young, none-too-pretty girl who welcomed them with a smile. Tiger looked her over, hat lifted, his famous smile turned on.

“Sorry to trouble you like this, my dear, but I’m a bit of a crank in rooms. I want to pick. Something along this way.” He had seen the arrow and numbers on the wall opposite the elevator shaft.

The girl consulted a register. “With or without bath?”

“Oh-ah, it doesn’t matter.”

Glancing at herself in a convenient mirror, the girl came out from behind the desk, smiling sweetly, and led along the corridor. She started to open a door.

“No, not that one. Farther along.”

They reached another door. The girl unlocked it. “Three eighty-six—faces the court—quiet and all that.” " Tiger looked about. “That door—is it the bathroom?”

“The gentleman in three eight-four has the bathroom. If you wish a bathroom—” “Thanks, this will do. Its one disadvantage, my dear,” he grinned fatuously, “is that it’s out of sight of your desk.”

The girl shook her head to fluff the remains of a five98

months’-old permanent. “That sounds fine.” At the door she threw Tiger a parting smile.

When the door closed Tishy dropped into a chair. “What the—” “Tishy, my son, did you look her over? As one friend to another, what do you think of my chances with that lass? Would she fall to my charms—just for an hour or two?”

Tishy snorted. “I don’t know what the devil you’re up to, but if it depends on that lady’s s. a., she’s ready to drop into the arms of the first pair of pants that offers. Yes, even you.”

“So reassuring!” Tiger grinned. “Well, watch me. . . .

Only watch from a distance. Clear out. This is my busy morning.”

“And,” Tishy threw back from the door, “don’t look to me for bail.”

Gordon Muldrew stood uncertainly on the wide front step of the Washington Hotel, an expensive, ultra-apartment hotel on Fourth Avenue. He was not himself, indeed he was almost agitated. Something had happened to throw his thoughts out of stride, something so utterly unanticipated as to catch him momentarily with mask removed. Returning to the lobby, he stood for a moment looking idly about on the half-filled easychairs that dotted the room. Then he was gone.

A moment later one of the occupants of the chairs rose and lounged to the street. At the next corner he strolled up beside Muldrew.

“Morganson, you’re not in a hurry for promotion, are you?” The words were brittle and cold.

The other started back. “Why—what, what’s the matter now? I’ve done just what you told me to do. I’ve never taken an eye off the elevators. She hasn’t showed up since she went to her room last night.”

Muldrew seemed not to hear; he was staring at the freshly-painted cap of a nearby hydrant. “Well, anyway, hang about till further orders. You might as well be there—” He broke off and started hurriedly across the traffic-filled street, leaving Morganson staring. A great Cadillac, swinging in from Markham Street, swerved aside with shrieking brakes and 99

the stifled oaths of an irate chauffeur who could not do himself justice with ladies in the back seat. The detective hurried on, making diagonally for the other side. He reached it safely, dodged a porter laden with suit-cases, and, almost running, slowed down presently behind a figure of military bearing walking leisurely eastward.

The traffic signal blocked them at the next corner.

The man in the lead pulled up and, without turning, beckoned behind him. Muldrew moved up to his side.

“Ah, Major, I see you keep your eyes about you.”

The lean face of the Major twisted. “I’m getting crosseyed watching all the policemen who are watching me. One in the hotel lobby, another to dog me on the street, and now you.

This bright city of yours, Mr. Muldrew, is straining to entertain me.”

“The sophisticated foreigner in our midst,” said Muldrew, “strains our resources badly. But that should not surprise you.

The American police, as depicted in your English newspapers, must be beneath contempt to a man like you. We admit a certain fallibility. That’s the main difference between us and Scotland Yard.”

Major Withers turned his head to regard the detective with amused eyes. “At least you cut the ground from under my feet. I feel keenly that you have robbed me of the pleasure of ridicule.”

“Of course,” Muldrew declared ruminatively, “we can always remedy that:—we might arrest you.”

“In which case you would rob yourself of the pleasure of robbing me of the pleasure of ridiculing the American police. . . .

But, really, I find sufficient to amuse me without the police.”

From the corner of his eye Muldrew studied the Englishman. He knew Major Withers was aware of it, but he did not desist.

“As yet I see no obstacle to your continued enjoyment of us, Major. I hope no one has interfered with your liberty.”

“In this country of the free—with half a dozen policemen tagging the footsteps of the defenceless foreigner!”

“Not defenceless, I believe. . . . Not a policeman now but myself. I’ve signalled them away. . . . Still, even this country of 100

the free grants no freedom to murder.”

“Ah!” The Major turned a complete circle, his bright eyes peering everywhere. “That explains the battalion at my heels. . . .

And may I inquire the explanation of your change of tactics?

Have you discovered the real murderer?”

Muldrew did not reply directly. “I’m alone with you now because I do not wish the interview, long overdue, to be interrupted.”

Major Withers chuckled. “A purely personal wish of yours. When you find how dull I am you’ll lose interest in it yourself. Is this to be a newspaper interview—what impresses me most in America, what think of prohibition, and all that—or is it confined to the recent deplorable event at The Jungle? My views on America, reserved for my return to my native land, will, of course, touch on the methods of the American police.”

“Perhaps it is waste of time to assure you that there are no American police methods. We each have our own. We lack a national force like Scotland Yard, and we miss it, I confess.

But—we have flexibility! A heavy discussion, but perhaps not uninteresting to one so concerned with the police as yourself.

Still it can wait.”

“Then what justifies this intrusion?” the Major inquired.

“Or it would be an intrusion were I not interested.”

“Major Withers”—Muldrew blocked the way, though the signal was clear—“I want to know where Miss Doyle is.”

“Janet Doyle?” Muldrew was not satisfied that the surprise was genuine. “Her address, the last I knew, was the Washington Hotel—just across the street.”

“That was her address. It is so no longer. She has evaded the police and fled.”

“Fled? . . . And why should she flee?”

“I wish I knew—for sure.”

Major Withers pointed. “May we go on now? I see the lights are right. I would feel more comfortable. A camera might catch us, and a couple of weeks from now I’d see myself in one of our ravenous illustrated weeklies held up by an American detective. It would be—disconcerting to my friends. . . . Your traffic, may I say, is well handled. Your problems are both greater and less than in London. . . . And so you think I can tell 101

you were Janet Doyle is.”

“You can if anyone can—if Miss Doyle has the say of it.”

“My last impression of Janet fails to support your assurance. . . . Suppose I knew where she is—do you think I’d tell?”

“We might force you to tell.”

The Major shook his head. “Oh, no. And you read character rather well as a rule, I should say. As a matter of fact, I don’t propose even to speak of Miss Doyle’s disappearance. Am I wrong in thinking that all law, even in America, holds a man innocent until he’s proven guilty? But it will save you the services of a host of policemen to know that, if I knew where Janet Doyle is, I would never lead your hounds in her direction.

But here we are at the Iroquois. Won’t you come in and talk of other things? If our interview is unfinished, you need no invitation.”

Muldrew smiled. “Let’s call it an invitation.”

102

XV A ROOM IN DISORDER They had reached the revolving door of the Iroquois. Both hesitated, waiting for the other to precede.

The Major bowed. “My guest.” Muldrew returned the bow and passed through. “I hope,” smiled the Major, as they came together inside, “that I will never be your guest— officially.”

Muldrew pulled up before a news stand immediately inside the door and considered the other reflectively. “I can almost find it in me to echo that hope.” He ran a hand across a row of the latest editions of the daily newspapers, each with its terrific two-inch headings. “They treat us rather roughly, don’t they?”

“Another difference between the two countries,” Major Withers reflected. “Your papers dilate on the crime, ours on the capture and the trial. Our respect is for our laws, yours for the man who successfully or dramatically breaks them. You admire action, surprises, thrills; we admire tradition. Unfortunately, tradition is too often stagnation.”

“A case,” Muldrew laughed, “of choosing between dying in bed or by a possé’s bullet. In one case the deceased figures on a nice tombstone, in the other in the newspaper head-lines.”

“And in the reckless minds of imitative youth,” added the Major slyly. “Your troubles are indigenous—and congenital. And now, if you’ve had time to take in the lobby, let’s continue the triumphal progress of law enforcement to my room.” He let his eyes wander slowly about the large lobby. “I confess I see nothing interesting here.”

But Muldrew had seen it. At his entrance he had been aware of an abrupt movement in one corner. Someone had slipped into an elevator and the door had closed quickly behind him. Movement of that kind always registered. If Major Withers was concerned Muldrew decided that the part of wisdom was to delay where he was until he had figured it out.

From a settee across the lobby a big figure rose and approached.

“Ah, Major Withers, I was beginning to think something 103

had happened to you.” Blood Bidwell laughed easily at the Major’s cold stare. “You don’t recognize me, of course. Mr. Muldrew does. That’s his business. I have the misfortune to be your host last night at The Jungle. My name is Bidwell.”

The face of the Major remained expressionless “Yes?” Bidwell’s embarrassment was plain now; then, a little stiffly, he went on: “I hope my mission will justify what may appear to you an intrusion. This is not presumption. . . . I thought I might be of service to a patron.” He spoke in a deep, not unpleasant voice appealingly tinged with dignity and concern. “Mr. Muldrew will tell you that nothing like that ever happened in a restaurant of mine before. Naturally it distresses me.”

“Yes?” The frigid question was repeated.

Bidwell’s big face flushed with a shadow of anger, but he controlled himself. “I have set aside much time to-day to satisfy myself that my other guests of last night are inconvenienced as little as possible by what happened. If anything I can do will save them suffering—Of course, Mr. Corwyn’s grief is another matter—” Muldrew broke in sharply: “Have you seen Nat Corwyn?”

“I have just come from his sister’s apartment. He tells me you held him last night. . . . I could see that he continues under police surveillance yet,” he ended indignantly.

“And the others—whom else have you seen?”

“I called on Miss Masters, but she was out.” A sudden thought seemed to strike him, for he faced Muldrew suspiciously, his eyes hard and reproving. “I hope you haven’t let your common sense run away with you to the extent of arresting her?”

“Miss Doyle is not in the hands of the police. Why should she be?”

“A great many people would ask that. . . . But I do not pretend to be able to follow the workings of the official mind. It is, I suppose, your business to suspect everyone. . . . I saw also Buster Rawlinson.” One hand idly flipped a brightly-coloured magazine that lay in the row on the stand.

“I suppose you know of my visit to Rawlinson last night—rather this morning?”

“Of course . . . Rather opportune—your turning up when 104

you did. What in the world were the burglars after? The thing that worries me is the effect on Buster—everything that happened last night, I mean. He’s on the verge of a breakdown.”

“Why should he be? He hasn’t suffered from it. In fact, the burglars treated him with astonishing, even inexplicable, gentleness. I can’t see why it should disturb him unduly.”

Bidwell’s eyes had opened in surprise as he listened.

“You don’t mean you don’t know?”

“Know what?”

For a moment Bidwell did not reply. “Buster thought you must know. Of course, it would be useless for him to try to hide anything, even if he wished to. Buster is Sada Corwyn’s divorced husband.” Of the two men who heard only Major Withers showed surprise. But his low “Ah!” was almost inaudible. Yet it brought Muldrew’s attention sharply from Blood Bidwell. It was something startling, indeed, that would break down that cold exterior, that grim self-control, of the Major’s.

To Muldrew the relationship between Buster Rawlinson and the murdered woman appeared the one clue worth following, the first ray of brightness in a puzzling crime. Buster he had left for a freer hour.

“Still,” Bidwell continued, “that does not explain my visit here; and I see that Major Withers is puzzled. The fact is, I wished my guests of last night to feel that anything I can do for them I will gladly do. Don’t credit me with something not my due. In the first place, conditions at my restaurant unfortunately lent themselves to the crime, and I feel that it is only reasonable that I should do my utmost to protect my guests. In the next place,” he smiled, “it’s mighty good publicity for me, and publicity is the very lifeblood of my business. If there should be arrests—well, I will gladly furnish bail—” Major Withers had stood stroking his chin as Bidwell spoke.

“That is kind of you, Mr. Bidwell,” he murmured, “but I believe I could induce the British Consul to stand sponsor. . . .

Although, on second thoughts, I might prefer the privacy of a less public security. Publicity is of no value to me . . . and I have an antipathy to iron bars. I was a prisoner of war. If I may, Mr. Bidwell, I’ll keep in touch with you. I’m grateful.”

105

Bidwell’s face flushed with boyish pleasure.

“I don’t mind admitting that you owe me nothing. Since last night I have made inquiries. I have assured myself from her husband that Mrs. Corwyn is a girl I used to know. I told you, Mr. Muldrew, that I thought I recognized her. She’s Sadie Harrow all right. . . . I know something of her character—at least, up to eight years ago—and I’d hate to think anyone but her murderer suffered for last night. . . I don’t mind admitting that I don’t find it difficult even to feel for her murderer. From what I gathered I don’t imagine her conduct has altered much since I saw her last. She always left a slimy trail.”

Muldrew’s attention was riveted on Major Withers. He was grateful to Bidwell for proving a thought he had had in his mind. The Major listened, showing no resentment, and Muldrew was satisfied. The way seemed less dark.

“The police are aware of all that, Bidwell,” he said. “But it really has no bearing on the murder. Our task is—” “Please don’t get the idea that I have any intention of embarrassing your search,” Bidwell pleaded. “Anything I can do for my patrons cannot affect that. I want to say that, though I can understand to some extent the end that has come to Sadie Harrow, the fact that it came in my restaurant makes me as keen as you to run down the man who did it.” He hesitated, frowning on a magazine he had lifted from the counter. “I don’t know if this is important, but there were five young men seated at a table not far from the Corwyns and Major Withers. I myself waited on them, and I could not help noticing that they were vastly interested in your table, Major, then this morning one of my waiters tells me that one of those young men sent Mrs. Corwyn a note. It was—” Muldrew interrupted impatiently. “These things that you tell us are not for now, Bidwell. The Major and I have other things to discuss. I’ll be in my office at five this afternoon, at the police station.” Without waiting for a reply he laid his hand on Major Withers’s arm and propelled him toward the elevators.

As they ascended the Major whispered: “I’d give quite a bit to be in your office at five this afternoon.”

As they stepped out into the corridor Muldrew replied; “There were more thrilling moments, and you did not appear 106

interested.”

“You’re observant, Mr. Muldrew. And so is Mr. Bidwell.

But I suppose running popular restaurants tends to develop that.”

“Especially joints like The Jungle.”

“But I would not call The Jungle a joint. I found it amusing—until—that happened. I’m all for public entertainment.

By the way”—he drew a key from his pocket and stooped to insert it in the door of his room—“that McQuigg—I mentioned him to you last night—an interesting chap.”

Muldrew watched the key turn. “I see you carry your key with you.”

Major Withers threw a quick glance at the detective. “I learned that in France and Italy—where you collect nothing but abuse in case of robbery, especially in France, where to rob the foreigner is a national duty.” He gently urged Muldrew ahead and stepped inside.

“God!” It was more a gasp than an exclamation.

They stood side by side, staring about a room in chaotic disorder. Every drawer that was not pulled to the floor was open, its contents tossed about. Three suit-cases lay gaping, and from the clothes-closet a line of clothing extended to the centre table.

The Englishman started forward, but Muldrew gripped him by the shoulder. He smiled. “Amusing place, The Jungle.

No, nothing wrong with The Jungle—so long as it doesn’t tread on one’s own toes. . . . This, you may be interested to know, is the second disordered room I’ve visited in the last dozen hours.

You and Buster Rawlinson should compare notes on the respectability of The Jungle.”

107

XVI A THREATENING LETTER Inspector Armitage, telescoped in his tilting leather-seated chair, frowned across the desk at Muldrew.

“Well, I hope your friend Blood Bidwell has cleared up the mystery.”

Muldrew’s attention was fixed vacantly on a distant corner of the ceiling. “I can’t say he has—entirely. But I’ll say this for him—he talked freely—told me much we knew before, to be sure, though he couldn’t be aware of that. Several items of his information save me a lot of wearisome work. I’m running out tomorrow morning to Sada Corwyn’s home village, and with what Bidwell told me my task there should be simple.”

“Humph! That’s good. I fancy you’ll find every clue to her murderer in her life since she left the old home. Calf love isn’t murderous.”

Muldrew agreed absent-mindedly that he wasn’t counting much on it; but it was not his way to neglect anything. “Sadie Harrow,” he told the Inspector, “seems to have been the village beauty . . . and I’m inclined to think possibly the village fille de joie. . . With limitations, of course; Sadie seems to have been choosey in those days.”

“Then why did she choose that ninny, her husband?”

“Nat’s folks have money, and there was a year of foreign travel immediately before her. Nat had a travelling scholarship. . . . I’m going to try to discover if there were other, more pressing, reasons why she wished to get out of the country for a time.

Bidwell tells me that it is hinted that she had a baby—that she left home just before it came. Of course, that was years before she married Nat. If she had one it has disappeared.”

“And still,” mused the Inspector, “we must find her murderer among the patrons of The Jungle last night. By the way, when the lights went out—when you were following that trail on the floor—was it traces of water you saw?”

Muldrew nodded. “Someone had come through that moat not so very long before. Tiger Lillie told me it was Buster Rawlinson—after the murder. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time.—” 108

“That does not prove that he—or someone—did not come out of that orchestra place before—in the darkness. By the way, you might have traced it by their sandals, if the tracks were more than drippings.”

“I saw to that. On a chance, to see what sort of track a sandal leaves, I got one from Bidwell. There were sandal tracks all right, but when they were made I could not tell. . . . Buster Rawlinson is interesting enough not to waste time on those water stains.”

The Inspector’s grey head nodded reflectively. “There’s that McQuigg. He seemed a bit upset last night. Nothing in it, of course, but I hope you’re following that up.”

Muldrew thought quickly. “I’m not through with McQuigg yet. He’s concerned more than a little.” He told what he knew most favourable to McQuigg, of that young man’s association with Sada Corwyn. “Sada isn’t accustomed to being kicked off. It hurt her. I’m inclined to think it frightened her— showed her that her power was—well, waning, certainly not so absolute as she imagined.”

“Or maybe Sada’s story was the true one—that she kicked McQuigg off. Isn’t that what the Major said? McQuigg’s side makes a fine-sounding story . . . prepared, I suspect, under Tiger Lillie’s careful eye.”

“I believe every word of it.”

“You would,” growled the Inspector. . . . He drummed the heavy blue pencil against his teeth for a moment. “By the way, what about that knife? Would a search of any of these people’s things be worth while?”

“That knife will turn up some day,” Muldrew declared, “but it won’t be by looking for it. It was taken for a deep purpose, and it won’t be exposed lightly again.”

“Has it ever struck you that Tiger Lillie’s attack on you in the dark may have been to secure that knife—afraid it might show McQuigg’s finger-prints?”

Muldrew shook his head. “I’ve thought of that. It leads nowhere. Still—this!”

He drew, with plain reluctance, a much-abused leather note-book from his pocket and extracted an envelope, which he laid before the Inspector. The latter withdrew the letter and, 109

glancing at the signature, whistled.

“By Heavens, Muldrew, this is important! McQuigg—to Sada Corwyn! . . . . And he calls her, ‘Mrs. Corwyn!’ ” He read aloud: “ ‘I have your letter of yesterday. It is difficult to answer one who does not, who will not, understand. I make no attempt to justify my conduct. If you consider it boorish I think I can bear up under the charge. It should be sufficient explanation—I am not concerned with justification—to say that I can think of nothing connected with the voyage but the awful end of Napier Comstock, and the part you made me play in it. I know why he committed suicide. I know why you made so much of me when he tried to break from you. I’m never apt to forget all that. I need say no more. Apparently you can bring yourself to ignore your share in his death. I cannot. That makes you more horrible to me.

How Major Withers, his best friend, can also be your friend, puzzles me. “‘I wonder you do not see ahead of you a fate as terrible as the one you drove him to. I learn of you that your callous treatment of him is no new role; I saw something of the sort of woman you are during the trip. My cabin was next to Major Withers’s. “‘I can only say that your ways may attract a certain class of man; they repel me. Perhaps some day the punishment due you will overtake you. It is the only hope for decency.’ ” Inspector Armitage folded the letter thoughtfully and returned it to the envelope.

“And how far was McQuigg prepared to go to hasten that punishment? . . . The silly boy still loves her—a blood-thirsty love ashamed of itself and, therefore, capable of almost anything in disgust at itself. . . . Still, it seems to prove that it was he turned Sada down . . . if this letter is not a plant. Who the devil is Napier Comstock?”

Muldrew told him.

“And after that—No wonder McQuigg is disgusted that Comstock’s best friend could go on making love to Sada Corwyn.”

110

“Making love.” Muldrew looked worried. “That’s how Major Withers put it. He would not admit that he was in love. In fact, I’m convinced that he hated her. The worthy Major is the puzzle of this case. He’s a sealed book. He tells nothing without a purpose—and I believe his purpose is to defend the murderer, himself or another. I always come back to that. We must be careful of the Major.”

“I don’t like him,” the Inspector said bluntly.

“He doesn’t wish us to. . . . All I’m concerned about is what he is hiding from us.”

The Inspector leaned across the desk. “Is he the murderer?”

“Major Withers,” said Muldrew carefully, “is quite capable of it. He confessed that, coolly, almost nonchalantly . . . almost defiantly. He’s clever enough to use that attitude as a screen. He’s rather sure of himself.”

“Are you? . . . And this McQuigg—we’ll get him in here and put him through his paces.” He glared at Muldrew. “Oh, I know, I know! You’re trying to protect those young scamps. . . .

Muldrew, you give me a devil of a time. Some day you’ll come a cropper. When that happens, don’t count on me.”

Muldrew moved uneasily in his chair. “There’s more about McQuigg . . . but I don’t want to colour your impressions. . . . I wish,” he said suddenly, “we could lock up The Jungle. It’s a gold mine to Bidwell. It’ll be a bonanza now. Just the same, he’s a staunch friend.”

“He can afford to be,” scoffed the Inspector.

“Look at the money he’s made. Look at that place of his—Canaan, isn’t it? Must cost a fortune to keep it up.

‘Canaan!’ Clever hit. Land flowing with milk and honey, I suppose. . . . But I can’t move about The Jungle; the Chief won’t agree to close it. Now, what about Janet Doyle?”

111

XVII A PROFESSIONAL DISCUSSION Muldrew rose and paced the room, a stormy frown on his forehead.

“How she managed to give Morganson the slip I don’t know. He’s the best man we have. . . . Of course, under the conditions—But what beats me is why she went to such pains as she must have to get away. The theatre people tell me she telephoned them this morning to put on her understudy—she was going to take a short holiday. And that understudy is so good that Janet Doyle will never get back to The Love Dance! The manager is hopping mad, too. He told her what he thought of her.”

“What’s at the back of it? Guilt—or fear?”

“I wish I knew.” Muldrew pinched his chin. “The suspects in this case are so damnably frank. Janet Doyle, too, confessed that she would have no compunctions about killing Sada Corwyn—apart, that is, from a general antipathy to taking human life. . . . The difference between her admission and Major Withers’s is that in her case we know all the conditions were fulfilled. She is desperately in love with the Major, and she was forced to sit and see Sada Corwyn steal him from her . . . and such a woman as Sada! Why, in killing her, Janet Doyle would not only be ridding herself of a rival, but saving her lover from a devil. Anything is possible to a woman like Janet Doyle at such a time.”

The Inspector watched his subordinate closely, but said nothing. Muldrew continued: “I don’t remember a case with two such difficult characters as Miss Doyle and Major Withers. . . . I’m never sure where Mildred Masters ends and Janet Doyle begins.”

“And so,” the Inspector remarked, “you’re not quite sure whether it is Mildred Masters, seeking publicity, or Janet Doyle, seeking refuge, who fled the police.”

“It’s Janet has fled . . . but whether from guilt or fear is yet to discover. The thought behind her flight was Janet Doyle’s fear that Mildred Masters would fail to play her part. And that does not necessarily mean guilt. If she is not guilty Janet is fearful that, her will being what it was, her hate so overwhelming, 112

and her position at the time of the murder so accusing, all the evidence is against her.”

“Is she physically capable of the crime? That knife—” “Undoubtedly. . . . I wish I’d hung on to that knife. I noticed immediately its peculiar sharpness and the thinness of the point. I left further investigation to a more convenient time.”

The Inspector asked: “Would it have been possible for a guest of a previous night to have carried a knife away with him and had it sharpened, covering his tracks after the murder by carrying away Nat Corwyn’s knife in the dark. Or he might have substituted it for Nat’s during an earlier dance. Of course, he would take pains to leave no finger-prints. . . . We should have checked up on the knives in the room, Muldrew, but we can’t think of everything at once.”

“As a matter of fact,” Muldrew told him, “I have satisfied myself than any of those Jungle knives might have made such a wound.”

The Inspector tapped the letter before him. “How did you get this?”

“Blood Bidwell’s visit this afternoon was not entirely voluntary. This is the story—it has a bearing on that letter.” He told of the meeting in the lobby of the Iroquois Hotel with more detail than he had given before. “And, to do Bidwell justice, I’m convinced he was seriously concerned that his guests should not suffer more than he could help for the murder of Sada Corwyn.

But what I was coming to is this: When we reached Major Withers’s room we found someone had been there and made a search—as in Buster Rawlinson’s last night.”

The Inspector pursed his lips. “Two rooms—in half a day!

Say, what are they after? What the devil is the connection between Rawlinson and Major Withers? I didn’t know they knew each other.”

“They don’t. . . . In fact, I’m trying to avoid confusing the two events, for they may have no connection. At least, it may not be the same thing sought in the two rooms. That it is not common burglary—hotel thieves—I’m convinced. . . . I'm working hard on that.”

“Did the Major miss anything?”

“Nothing—absolutely nothing. I waited to make sure. He 113

even went through a bundle of letters he had in a suit-case. With care and calmness he made a good job of it. He was as puzzled as I. There wasn’t a clue, either,” The Inspector’s brows contracted.

“Muldrew, I have yet to understand much of what happened at the Rawlinson apartment this morning. I don’t hold my job without an eye in my head. I’m not butting in, but for the millionth time I warn you. That silly Irish sentiment of yours, mixed with Scotch loyalty, is going to get you in wrong some day. Huh! Loyalty to everything but your duty. Now take it from me, the same gang committed both those robberies. And they were after something connected with The Jungle crime. It’s your job to uncover what that is. Were they after evidence. That’s our job. No, they were trying to destroy it.”

“Why not both?” asked Muldrew.

The Inspector did not seem to hear. “Bidwell was there— at the Iroquois, I mean. What about him?”

“I checked up on Bidwell. He never got farther than the lobby. Never tried to. All he wished was to see the Major.

There’s no mystery in his presence there.”

“And still you haven’t come to this letter of McQuigg’s.

This is all part of the story, you said.”

Muldrew nodded. “The two raids so close together put a thought in my head, and I shot straight away for the place where Nat Corwyn is staying with his sister. Twenty-fourth Street, it is.”

“You didn’t—find him gone, too?”

“No, Nat was there all right . . . I don’t think he has a thought of disappearing. Either his alibi is complete or he realizes that to disappear would tear to shreds any alibi he might offer. . . .

Nat Corwyn would be difficult to hide. A great many people know him and his family. At Harvard he made quite a name for himself, too—strangely enough, educationally. No, Nat was at home.”

“If I had any fear he wouldn’t be,” the Inspector growled, “I’d arrest him this minute. With half an excuse I’d do it anyway.

I don’t like him. Those slinky, silent, furtive, introspective chaps are up to anything. Half his slobbering last night was assumed.

No agonized husband there, no sir. If he didn’t murder Sada Corwyn himself it was no surprise to him.”

114

“And the knowledge that you and I think so is what frightens Nat Corwyn most. He knows he failed to pull it off last night. Deep in his heart is a feeling of guilt—even if he is not the murderer. . . . He was so self-conscious while talking to me he could scarcely answer intelligently. Nat Corwyn is vastly uneasy . . . about something. But as I was saying: I hustled across and called on him. I didn’t want to be too late there, too.”

“Too late?” puzzled the Inspector. “But you said he has no thought of escaping us.”

“I didn’t want to be too late for the third raid.”

“Ah!” “I worked it out that, since raids on two rooms of those concerned in The Jungle crime had failed, the searchers, whoever they are, would go farther. They’re reckless. Well, I was in time . . . or almost in time.”

The Inspector snorted. “Almost? What do you mean?”

“I arrived in time to forestall them. I got something. But there was evidence of a raid, just the same. Sada Corwyn’s effects had been gone through with a fine-toothed comb—far more carefully than Buster Rawlinson’s or Major Withers’s.

Nat’s sister had given over to Nat and Sada during their visit the rear three rooms of her apartment in the upper floor of a duplex.

All the time I searched—” The Inspector inquired: “Did you have a warrant?”

“I didn’t need one. Nat Corwyn was afraid to refuse— afraid even to question my right. In fact, he helped me. I had a feeling he was afraid I would arrest him on the spot if he so much as delayed me.”

“Well, well”—impatiently—“what are you coming to?”

“I found that letter. But Nat Corwyn had gone through his wife’s things. He admitted it. I found nothing else worth taking.”

“But this is something—this is a lot.”

“I was intended to find that,” Muldrew said gravely.

“That’s why only that letter remained of a correspondence that must have been large. Sada Corwyn had no reason for keeping only that one letter about her. Nat Corwyn planted it though it’s genuine enough.”

“And McQuigg must explain it,” the Inspector promised grimly.

115

XVIII A HOLD-UP THAT FAILED The lobby of the Iroquois was crowded. The usual evening loungers, not all by any means guests of the hotel, filled the soft chairs beneath the bright lights, smoking idly, reading the evening papers. Waiting, as the radio in a corner gallery jazzed to the orchestra of a great hotel. They were waiting for “Amos ’n’ Andy.”

It was eleven o’clock. The time chimed from the radio.

The crowd shifted expectantly in their chairs, a look of anticipation on their faces. A silence fell over the room, broken only by the abrupt rustle of papers dropped hastily to the floor.

Cigars went out, cigarettes lay smoking in ash-trays. The introductory music started, the wearisome ramble on the virtues of a toothpaste. A pseudo-negro voice came wearily on the air.

Close to a marble pillar Major Withers sat so deep in his chair that his case seemed desperate. At intervals, as the voices droned on, a cigarette rose to his lips and fell. His bright eyes moved about the lobby, settling on a face, passing on to another, and another. All about him gusts of laughter broke out and silenced as the pair of black-face artists wrangled and worried. Not a muscle of the Major’s face so much as twitched.

A girl across the rug, who had watched him idly for a minute or two with unfocused eyes, giggled at an unmirthful spot.

Several reproving eyes jerked toward her—and slid off to where she stared. Two men on a couch nudged each other and smiled.

An old man with a face built for laughter and fulfilling its purpose leaned across to the Major.

“Nothing like that in old Lunnun, eh?”

The Major rose stiffly, conscious of a score of eyes.

“Thank God!” “Yeah!” The old man snorted loudly. “Everyone knows you English have no sense of humour.”

“Excuse me,” the Major returned softly, “what we lack is imagination. We don’t find humour in poverty and ignorance and bombast, even on the lips of negroes.”

“You don’t understand negro dialect, that’s what’s the trouble.”

116

The Major smiled, as if the old man were his best friend.

“Unfortunately for our broadcasting company we demand something more than dialect. I confess often we don’t get even that. May I make a test suggestion: Write down in good English these sidesplitting moments of Amos ’n’ Andy and read them over afterwards. If you laugh more than once a night I’ll sit the pair through every night I’m in America. Good night!”

He stalked off and disappeared in an elevator, while nine otherwise tolerant listeners scoffed loudly and angrily.

The third-floor clerk was just closing her desk for the night when he passed her without so much as a glance, stifling on her lips the cheery greeting she had for him.

The Major did not so much as know she was there. “if I stay in this country long,” he was saying to himself, “I’ll get real friendly and loquacious . . . and pervert my sense of humour, such as it is. Amos ’n’ Andy are really amusing—if you consider their audiences. I’m getting damned lonesome—and I don’t need to be, in this friendly country. . . . Well, Jack, old boy, better stay English and stiff till that detective chap becomes less inquisitive.”

He let himself into his room and, after a brief but inclusive glance, undressed. A hot bath and, in a modest but expensive silk gown, he approached the bed. As he stood beside it he seemed to alter his plans, for he began to pace the room, one thin hand rubbing a thin cheek, the other gripped tightly at his back. At the door he paused, listened, opened the door and listened along the corridor, closed it and tried it several times.

Still unsatisfied, he selected a chair and carefully braced it beneath the knob. Parting the window curtain, he smiled contentedly through to a drop of forty feet.

From a shelf in the clothes closet he lifted a pile of railway folders, from which he selected a map of the United States and sat down to study it. Next a railway folder, which he ran through with the eye of an experienced traveller. In five minutes, with some notes on a slip of paper at his elbow, he rose and replaced the folders.

Once more he started for the bed. Once more at its edge he pulled up, his eyes on the floor, and a slow, scarcely perceptible smile creased the corners of his thin lips. Leaning over the bed, he drew from the pockets of his dressing-gown an 117

electric torch and a small automatic and slipped them beneath one of the pillows. With a loud yawn he tossed aside the gown, climbed into bed, switched off the lights, and in two minutes was breathing with the regularity of sleep.

Not many minutes later another noise came furtively from the darkness of the room. Came and ceased—came again.

Something brushed over the carpet beneath the bed, and a moment later a shape slightly darker than the room lifted itself beside the bed. After a pause it started toward the door.

It had gone no farther than the table in the heart of the room when a ray of light shot from the bed. Major Withers drawled: “I’m awfully puzzled, you know. What is the game, anyway?”

The hand of the midnight visitor reached out to the table.

He turned. Something round and black pointed straight at the bed.

Something rounder and blacker pointed back.

“Put down that fountain pen,” ordered the Major. “Now what’s the game?”

“Do you call this a game?” wailed a voice behind a black mask.

“Sit down. Take off that mask.” The Major switched on the lights.

The other sat down—he flopped down. The mask fell to the floor and revealed the perspiring, chagrined face of Tiger Lillie.

“Gee!” he sighed comfortably, “this is the first moment’s relief since before noon. You’ve no idea how burgling weighs on the spirits of a tyro. And that mask!” He kicked it viciously.

Major Withers studied him with narrowing eyes. “I’m never quite sure I understand you Americans—I don’t know yet when you’re pulling my leg.”

Tiger waved a weary hand. “You understand me. I’m awfully simple. Never felt so simple in my life. After this I’m going to take to honest toil. Or do you think they’d give me the dole in England?”

“How did you get in here?”

Tiger frowned. “Why bring that up? That was almost as bad as a dozen hours without a bite to eat—like I’ve had. I forgot 118

to get Louis to bring me some eats at meal-time. How did I get in? Say, you cast your eye at that floor clerk out there, just one eye, and you’re in for it. She’s so easy I could have walked into any room on the floor. Trouble was getting rid of her. Thought once I’d have to jump out of a window.”

A low knock sounded on the door and the knob turned softly.

Tiger clambered to his feet. “That’s Louis now. Heard us talking, I guess. Thinks I’m pulling it off alone, and he’s jealous.

You’ll like Louis.”

“One moment.”

Tiger pulled up sharply at the command. “But you can’t be afraid of Louis. He’s only an author and a column-writer. I’m the dangerous one. I’m a crime reporter. That’s why I’m here.”

He looked down lugubriously on the fountain pen he had fondly hoped would look like a gun. “Don’t you ever believe the pen is mightier than the sword.”

A laugh from the bed made Tiger stare. “Gee! I didn’t think you could do it!”

“My apologies,” said the Major. “I’ve just been ridiculing American humour. Now tell me: wouldn’t it be foolish of me to admit a confederate if he’s as cool as you are? There are limitations, even with a gun.”

“Not in them clothes!” Tiger added, seeing the Major’s perplexity: “I mean, you’re not frightened. It would be a crime to keep Louis out; he’s always looking for novel scenes, and this beats anything.”

“What are you doing here?”

Tiger smiled wanly. “What I’m doing isn’t interesting even to myself; it’s what I foolishly thought I could do. And I won’t tell you that without my friend.”

“Then let him in, by all means.”

Tiger hurried away, lifted the chair from the door, and admitted Louis.

“Meet Major Withers, Louis. Major, this is the smaller half of a dreadful plot.”

“Won’t you both sit down?” invited the Major, settling his back more comfortably into his pillow, and slipping the gun out of sight beneath it. “Now what’s the story?”

119

Tiger came to the point immediately: “We want something we think you have, and we want it so badly we were ready to risk your gun and arrest. In fact, we’re willing to risk them still. You couldn’t shoot more than one of us before we got to you, you know.”

“If your paper pays you by the word your fortune is made in a week,” said the Major wearily.

Tiger groaned. “He means I talk too darned much, Louis.

Fact is, Major, I’ve been making time to concoct a story that might pass, but my customary facility of prevarication evades me. So here goes. We raided this room once before to-day. Or I did. All Louis is expected to do is to hang around and claim the body. We failed to find what we want, so I lay doggo—I mean, I remained in the chamber, if that’s good English—to murder you in your sleep, or anything else that was necessary to get what we want.”

For several moments the Major studied their agitated faces. “Yes, I remember now. You’re two of the five who sat at that other table at The Jungle.”

“More or less,” Tiger admitted uneasily. “Let’s forget that. What we want is a letter you have.”

“A letter?”

“Hit it first guess. . . . And when we get that letter we’re starting out to find who really did murder Sada Corwyn.”

Except for a slight hardening about the jaws Major Withers’s expression did not change. “I—see. Ambitious, aren’t you? . . . Both about getting that letter and—about the other?”

“Ambition’s The Gang’s watchword. We fasten our Pontiac to a star—and drag the star after us. And, as the unvarnished truth, the letter we want is one written you the other day by a fellow-passenger of yours on the Plutonia. McQuigg’s his name, Grant McQuigg. Such a nice, inoffensive—” “I thought so.” The Major’s brows lifted. “I certainly remember Mr. McQuigg. . . . But—inoffensive? I’m not so sure of that. I seem to recall that he offended Sada Corwyn rather outrageously. . . . What is more, your friend loved Sada Corwyn.”

Tiger, who trembled beneath his banter, sat back stiffly.

“Loved her? Why, Mac threw her down, trampled on her.”

“I said so . . . and continued to love her. . . . And now you 120

wonder if he loved her enough to knife her.”

“We—do—not!” they cried indignantly.

“Well, the police do—which is more important. . . . Yes, I have that letter, an important letter it is too. In it your friend suggests The Jungle as the most entertaining night life in the city . . . especially last night. . . . And last night Sada Corwyn was murdered there. That’s the letter you want.”

Tiger agreed enthusiastically. “It’s no use to you, and it might get Mac into trouble.”

“You’re right—it might—get McQuigg—into trouble.”

He brought his eyes down from the ceiling.

“It might, indeed! Especially if the police know that it was not so dark that I failed to see your friend hovering about Sada Corwyn’s chair just before she screamed. I see rather well in the dark, and I don’t think I was mistaken.” His teeth snapped together. “No, you can’t have that letter!”

“But—but—” “If you persist I’ll call the police—and tell them things that would interest them and concern you and your friend. If that letter is useless to me, why did you break into my room for it?

Ah, no, that letter—and what else I know—seriously incriminates your friend. And to the extent that someone else is incriminated I’m relieved of suspicion. And I do not take kindly to police surveillance. No, I’m not giving that letter up.”

Louis sighed. “I knew it was useless, Tiger.”

“If we go without trouble,” Tiger pleaded, “you won’t tell—what you saw?”

“I don’t make promises like that. . . . But I can tell you that I’m not bestirring myself to help the police. Now, the letter stays with me—and this serviceable gun.” He drew it from beneath the pillow. “Clear out!”

They slunk miserably to the door. Tiger turned for a final appeal.

“But if we tell Muldrew you couldn’t have murdered Sada Corwyn?”

Major Withers laughed. “I wish you could prove it. I’m sleepy—good night—if you hurry.” His hand fell on the bell.

They went. The Major rose, closed the door, and replaced the chair carefully beneath the knob. Then he climbed into bed 121

and turned off the light. But he did not fall to sleep for an hour.

122

XIX MIDNIGHT RAIDERS Out in the corridor Tiger and Louis stood and scowled at each other. Louis made a derisive sound with his tongue.

“Once you let your imagination loose, Tiger, you certainly hash things up.”

Tiger growled: “If you know a better ’ole, go to it.” Then he flamed: “You had a chance to improve on my imagination. I didn’t hear any brilliant suggestions from you. As a carper you’re a howling success; as a strategist you’re a wash-out. You’re The Gang raven. . . . Well, there were ravens in history—or was it in the Bible?—that did their bit. But you? Oh, no. You’re a nice friend! A little rebuff and you crawl—” “We’ve had nothing but rebuffs.”

“All right, you bald-headed cormorant, I’ll drop you and hunt up Beef or Tishy for the rest of the night’s work—” Louis grabbed him by the arm and jerked him toward the stairs. “Aw, stow the gab! You’d waste the rest of the night gassing. As Major Withers so truthfully remarks—” “Oh, damn Major Withers!” * * * * * Twenty-fourth Street was not the choicest part of the city; it did not stand in sufficient repute even to encourage apartment building. Its residents were confined to—confined in—duplexes, albeit duplexes of a certain exclusiveness. The upper floor of one of the most impressive of these duplexes was occupied by Nat Corwyn’s sister and her husband, a childless couple who had chosen their home with an eye to the future and so far had been disappointed. Thus they could afford to set aside the three rear rooms for the exclusive use of Nat and his wife during the period of their visit.

But that did not satisfy Sada. She hated the apartment, the rooms, the district. But Nat, wife-ridden in matters of real importance, had a stubborn streak that concentrated on unessentials. To remain at his sister’s apartment, despite Sada’s objections, was less trouble than to explain to his sister why he could not.

The three rooms allotted them looked out over a confined 123

back-yard, the four windows opening directly on the roof of an enclosed verandah belonging to the apartment below. This verandah had been enclosed by its occupant in the first days of his occupancy with the firm idea of using it for a sleeping porch.

Naturally, therefore, it became nothing more than a storeroom for the refrigerator, the vacuum cleaner, the lawn mower, the washing machine, and an invalid couch that had gone at a bargain at a sale and might some day be useful.

But it was never slept in.

It was half-past one when Tiger Lillie and Louis Bracken crept into the paved drive-way that led to a garage common to the adjoining duplexes. Tiger went first, the picture of filibustering and predacity.

Louis, close at his heels, tried to look four ways at once.

He grumbled, of course. “Another fool’s errand. . . . How the deuce are you going to get in?”

Tiger set his teeth against a growing depression. “And, as Beef once so eloquently propounded in a general treatise on burglary, how the deuce get out when once in? Well—keep your eye on your friend. I know these houses. They all have a sleeping porch at the rear of the ground floor, and the roof reaches to the windows of the second floor. Nat Corwyn’s rooms are there.”

Louis clutched his arm. “A sleeping porch—and this two in the morning! Say, let’s go while the going’s good. . . . Or let me go and prepare bail for you—or a doctor.”

Tiger, alive to the wisdom of retreat, but repudiating it because someone else suggested it, dragged on.

“I’m going to have a look, anyway.” A bright idea struck him. “I’ve got it. You go and ring the bell. They’ll get out of bed to answer it, and while they’re away I’ll get on the roof—” “Say, does this family do things en masse?” Louis asked cynically. “Oh, well, take your look if you must, so we can get home for a bit of sleep. And if the man in there happens to shoot wild, don’t tell mother how I died. We have a family tradition against housebreaking.”

But Tiger had drawn away. He cowered now beneath the sill of the porch window, and Louis crept to his side.

“If there’s anyone in there they must be dead,” Tiger 124

whispered hopefully, after a moment’s silence.

“Why add solecism to tragedy?” grumbled Louis.

Tiger brushed him away. “Huh! You’d growl about a missing comma in your own obituary. Here goes!” He caught the sill and raised himself to look through. “Empty!” he announced happily. “I always felt I was destined to save The Gang. Now, come around here to the back and give me a leg.”

“And while you’re aloft what will I do?”

“If you wish to be useful you might keep an eye out for cops. If one happens to come nosing about knock twice on this post. I’ll hear.”

“And I,” Louis groaned, “will faint.”

“Or you might duck for the fence and draw pursuit away from me.”

“A complete evening’s entertainment.” But Louis stooped, caught Tiger’s knee, and boosted him to the windowsill.

The climb presented no difficulties. Tiger had removed his shoes, and in half a minute stood in stockinged feet on the verandah roof, scanning the four open windows before him. On the ground Louis stood watching. Envious, for Tiger had the thrill of action, at least, while he could only wait—wait.

Presently Tiger crept close to one of the dark squares that were windows, listened for a moment, and climbed through.

Louis’ knees shook. Seating himself on the low curb edging the cement drive-way, he caught his hands tight between his knees. His thoughts were with Tiger in that dark, unfamiliar house, feeling about in search of a letter they did not even know was there. In fancy he heard him stumble—a shot—Tiger’s dying scream. His hair crept, an icy chill ran down his spine. There wasn’t much Tiger wouldn’t risk for The Gang.

He was roused from his torturing thoughts by the scraping of a stealthy foot at the street end of the drive-way. Forthwith he tumbled back out of sight and crawled on hands and knees to the deeper shadow at the far corner of the sleeping porch.

His hand was raised to give the warning knock Tiger would expect, when two dark forms slunk around the corner! He dare not knock now! Clinging close to the house, he waited, almost staring his eyes out. He could do nothing else. The two 125

out there moving stealthily nearer were not policemen—he was certain of that; but there was no reassurance in that. Their movements were furtive, mysterious, cautious to the point of absurdity. A faint whisper reached Louis, and one of the pair breathed heavily.

Suddenly they darted toward him. Louis straightened. He would put up a fight for it. The noise would warn Tiger. But as he stepped away from the house to give himself room to strike out, around the corner from the drive-way came another sound.

The foremost of the advancing pair had lifted his hands high in token of surrender. The one behind was not slow to imitate him. Louis almost cried aloud.

“Beef! Tishy! Here, drop down beside me! Quick!”

They dropped, Beef’s fat body almost smothering Louis.

Prone and still, they waited.

The footsteps in the drive-way came nearer. They too were stealthy. They reached the corner of the verandah. Louis wriggled his head free, but whoever it was came no farther.

Certain mysterious sounds ensued—and suddenly Louis’s heart leaped into his mouth. Someone was up there on the roof!— With a heave he freed himself. Was it Tiger coming down? If so, it meant certain capture. And then Louis knew that it was the new-comer he heard feeling his way over the shingles toward one of the open windows! Crawling back, he was in time to see a dim form disappear through the very window where Tiger had gone. Frantically he whispered: “Get out of here, you two, fast as you can go!” Beef steadied himself against the verandah. “Tiger’s up there. The Gang stands or falls together.”

Louis had no time to argue. Catching hold of the projecting sill, he drew himself to the roof.

He was still on hands and knees when a furious clamour broke out in the room before him. As he knelt, momentarily paralyzed, someone tumbled through the window and, rolling and clawing, swept him downward. He tried to save himself, but failed, and, fearful of the crash, but making no sound, he dropped over the edge. Beef’s big arms received him and set him on his feet.

Louis lifted terrified eyes to the window above. A light 126

had come on and, blinking helpless in it, a red mark on his cheek, Tiger Lillie stood with a mirthless grin twisting his face. From an open doorway Muldrew glowered into the room.

Tiger shrugged his coat more comfortably on his shoulders.

“You win, Gordy. But you needn’t have been so rough about it.”

“I never touched you!” Muldrew leaped past Tiger to the window and thrust his head through, sending a torch ray into the back-yard. It fell directly on the gaping faces of the three friends.

Tishy pointed to the drive-way. “There—there! He went that way!”

But it was too late now.

“And you let him go!” Muldrew fumed. . . .

“Or is this a trick to save a losing plot?”

“Honest, Gordy—” A distant door could be heard opening, and a moment later Nat Corwyn, fully dressed, entered the room and stood scowling into the light. He pointed furiously at Tiger.

“Ah, so you got him! That’s good!”

Muldrew had swung about at the first sound. He laughed.

“I only wish we had. The fellow managed to break away from Fraser here before I could give him a hand. Pretty desperate struggle, too, while it lasted.” He smiled charitably on Tiger.

Behind his back he signalled with one hand to the three staring faces below.

Louis dragged his friends under cover of the verandah.

“Good old Muldrew!”

Beef leaned weakly against the wall. “If I fainted I’d miss all the fun. But, oh, Lord, I’m too fat for this sort of thing between meals!”

“There’s no place like home,” Tishy hummed.

But he did not go.

Over their heads voices continued for a few minutes, then a door closed. . . . Tiger appeared at the corner of the verandah in the drive-way and beckoned. Without a word he put on his shoes.

On the street Muldrew waited.

“Well?” he snapped, looking them over. Without saying more he wheeled and struck away toward Markham Street. Tiger 127

tagged at his heels. At Tiger’s heels tagged the other three. No one spoke. Presently Muldrew threw over his shoulder: “Tiger is coming with me. The rest of you clear out.”

128

XX THE SECOND DISAPPEARANCE Tiger was uneasy. Even the prospect of a visit to The Jungle with Muldrew failed to quiet his fears. He was more uneasy when Muldrew, after a long silence, hurled at him an order: “Now talk.”

Tiger had had an idea that that was what he wished most, but when the order came things looked different.

“You’re wondering, of course, what I was doing there, aren’t you, Gordy?”

Muldrew’s reply did not help. “Not a bit. What I’m wondering about is the other fellow. Who was he?”

Tiger shook his head. “If I knew I’d lay for him with a brick. Gee! he was peevish. I was poking about the next room wondering why the dickens I’d thought I could find anything in the dark in a strange house when I heard him. I’d have tumbled out the window where I was, only there was a screen in it. So I thought, when whoever it was didn’t turn on a light, if I sneaked back I might make a dash for the window there in the dark. I sneaked in my very best form—and I’ve been getting practice at it lately, too—and that’s about all I remember, except a strong breeze as I was waved about that room like a mop. And then the light came on, and I thought you’d gone and been dirty to a friend. And, if you don’t mind, I could talk more brilliantly at a slower pace.”

Muldrew strode on. “If I’d reached you in time, Tiger, you’d have had some real news to-day for the Star.”

“Oh, the Star’s never lacking for news,” Tiger said brightly. “When you prove Mac murdered Sada Corwyn there won’t be anything else in that day’s issue. . . . And if you don’t hurry somebody else is going to find out who really did it. Way I figure about that fellow to-night is this: it may have been an ordinary midnight porch-climber—those open windows are an unfair temptation, and a chap like that is sure to be violent—or it may have been the murderer of Sada Corwyn—though what the deuce he wants to emulate The Gang for beats me.”

“The police,” Muldrew declared, “might like to know 129

which of the two you and your friends were.”

Tiger protested. “Oh, look here, now. Nobody but The Gang would be out to destroy evidence—” Muldrew clapped him on the shoulder none too gently.

“Keep your confessions to a more convenient time. I don’t wish to know more. I’ve all the evidence I need against McQuigg, and it’s a job hiding it from the Inspector. . . . Every time you move to save him you help to damn him.”

“Then,” said Tiger, “you must have found the letter he wrote to Sada Corwyn.”

“Oh? Did Mac write a letter to Sada?” Muldrew inquired innocently. “More evidence. What was it about?”

“The usual twaddle—high-souled ass to low-souled vamp, disgusted with himself for being brutal to her and getting more brutal because of his disgust.”

Muldrew laughed shortly. “What a devil of a time those two letters are giving The Gang!” Tiger opened his lips and started to speak, but the detective ignored him. “Where does Buster Rawlinson’s apartment come in?”

“Gordy,” Tiger whispered, “that’s where my native brilliance shone—even if it was a flop because you butted in before we’d finished. I was on the trail of that jewellery, the jewellery the murderer of Sada Corwyn tore from her dress when she was dying in the dark.”

Muldrew pulled up sharply and stood staring down at Tiger. Then he resumed his pace, taking longer strides than ever.

“Oh!” he said, and it might have meant anything.

Tiger waited, expecting approval. When Muldrew remained silent he became peevish.

“Gordy, you’re as excitable as a porcupine. I present you with a clue and you yawn. You may not know it, but I tell you when we run down that jewellery we have the murderer of Sada Corwyn.”

“Oh?” Muldrew repeated indifferently.

Tiger snarled. “Stop it, or I’ll bite you on the leg. Even a crime reporter has ideas at long intervals. You sound like a squeaking doll.”

“Sorry, Tiger. I was—thinking . . . of more important things.” Muldrew pinched his arm companionably. “I’m trying to 130

work fast to-night. . . . Because the tangle grows more bewildering.”

“I don’t see why—” “Tiger, the mystery that commenced with the murder of Sada Corwyn is running its course, and I’m trying to keep pace with it. The tragedy of The Jungle is the first of a series . . . and I don’t see how I can prevent it. Indeed, I’m not certain that it did not start with the suicide of Napier Comstock.” He rested a hand on Tiger’s shoulder. “I wish you’d stay out of this.”

Tiger laughed excitedly. “Gosh, that clinches it! I’m in it now to the bitter end. A table-knife in a dark restaurant, two bedroom raids, a gun poking in my ribs, an unknown in a strange room—and only the beginning! Gordy, you’re the best treatment I know for the dog-days.”

“And if there are more knives, more guns, more savage strangers, and your luck fails you, Tiger, then Gordon Muldrew will never forgive himself for not throwing you over his knee and spanking you as you deserve. . . . Really, I should run you in right now for house-breaking.”

Tiger grinned. “You haven’t heard half yet. Not two hours ago I was in Major Withers’s room for the second time to-day— no, yesterday. Result: I know what the dark hole of an automatic looks like when it points at your heart. Mine did Swedish drill.

The Major’s jaw goes fine with a gun. I just had to turn my eyes away.”

“Are you telling me you were in Major Withers’s room again to-night?”

Tiger nodded. “How graphically I must talk. It’s my newspaper training.”

“So . . . the Major has another letter of Mac’s that you wish to destroy? I fancied so.”

“You see how frank I am.”

“The Major and I will have a little conversation about it.

In the meantime you’d better be kept where you’re safe.”

“It isn’t necessary. I’ll tell you about the letter. Mac described it almost too clearly. . . . No, on second thoughts, I’ll leave it to the Major and I don’t believe you’ll get a thing out of him that he doesn’t wish to tell. You already have the letter Mac sent to Sada Corwyn—I know that. And you suspected we were 131

after it. That’s why you waylaid us to-night. All I’m trying to do is to prevent Major Withers covering his own trail. The trouble to-night was that he couldn’t see eye to eye with me; he refused to give that letter up. Being only a private detective, so to speak, I had no authority to demand it. . . . . And the Major had a gun against my fountain pen. And that pen cost me ninety-eight cents at a drug store.”

“Ah!” Muldrew chuckled. “So it’s Major Withers now?”

“Don’t you think so yourself?”

“I always like to give a man a chance.” He chuckled again. “It doesn’t matter whom we suspect, does it, Tiger, if only it isn’t McQuigg? I find The Gang diverting.”

“We’ve diverted your suspicions from Mac. . . . But The Gang doesn’t figure in this—it’s only Louis and I.” “Then what were Beef and Louis doing there just now?”

Tiger sighed. “The Gangs one fault is its silly loyalty.

Louis and I decided unanimously that Beef and Tishy are temperamentally unfitted for the hectic pursuit of detectiving.

But, it seems, Beef and Tishy decided by the same overwhelming majority that Louis and I are bound to get into trouble without them—that, in fact, they can do better themselves. Beef and Tishy, too, were there after that letter. If Louis and I hadn’t forestalled them there’d have been another murder mystery, I suppose. Tishy would have climbed on that verandah and have fallen over himself—and been nabbed; and Beef would have stuck pig-headedly about and crashed the first policeman to show up. Or else Tishy would be dead of fright and Beef of flight.

About two hundred yards at Beef’s weight would be the end of him. But here’s The Jungle. Thank Heaven! Trying to talk against time and keep up with your long legs isn’t part of a reporter’s job as I see it. . . . But I say this for you, Gordy, you’re a great listener—when you don’t know a fellow’s talking. . . . And this, Gordy, is my treat. Night-club dissipation is not in your line; in mine it’s one of the perquisites. Keep your soul unsullied. To lose that air of innocence would be a crime. In Rome you’d be a tribune. Your immediate parents may have been Scotch and Irish, but, oh, those old Romans when they tired of Goth and Hun women and made for the great untouched harems of England! To look at the fruit stores you’d never suspect it of them, would 132

you?” . . .

Even for The Jungle they were late for the thickest of the crowd, but at that the room was well filled. The usual mob of hyenas had come to gnaw the corpse. As reporter and detective entered the lights were just coming on at the end of a dance.

Tiger addressed himself to the attendant at the door, a great figure in streaming white burnous, who bowed low to them: “Mohammed, a table near the orchestra. That one over there, by preference.”

The man hesitated. “But that one, effendi, it’s reserved.

You see—the chairs are turned up.”

“Reserved at two in the morning? No, Ben Adam, that’s not good enough. Lead on.” The man did not budge. “Very well, you may go to a warmer place. We take that table. My friend is a policeman.”

“But—but that is where—” “We know. We’re not frightened of ghosts. Do you lead or do we?”

They fell in behind the flowing burnous. Tiger whispered to Muldrew: “Intuition, Gordy. I knew you’d like that table.

Going to work the French scheme, eh—reconstruct the crime? . . . Poor Sada! She had lots of victims, but for once she was too tender with them. A Spanish lady of spirit would have used the table-knife first. That chair, Gordy. Muldrew dropped into the chair Sada Corwyn had occupied. He grinned.

“So now it’s Buster Rawlinson did it, eh, Tiger?

“I never give up,” said Tiger. “I daren’t leave a stone unturned.”

“And some time you may uncover a snake . . . and it’ll bite you. . . . But why Rawlinson?” He leaned his elbows on the table and studied his companion with flattering attention.

“You’ve worked fast since the crime. It was only by accident that I myself heard of Buster’s divorce.”

“Buster was a Columbia man—my own university. His Rugby fame is still fresh among the boys. It wasn’t hard to trace him— But, hang it, Gordy, you’re not listening.”

Muldrew had turned toward the door and beckoned. The attendant in the white burnous came hastily.

“Ask Mr. Bidwell to come here,” Muldrew ordered.

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“Mr. Bidwell is out.”

“You’re certain?”

“Someone asked for him a few minutes ago.”

“All right, when he comes tell him I’d like to speak to him.”

A waiter stood beside the table. “Bring me,” Tiger ordered, “a welsh rarebit.” Muldrew doubled the order. “Nothing so fitting for a place like this,” Tiger said, when the waiter was gone, “something indigestible and obscene.”

The waiter again stood at Tiger’s elbow, for Tiger had beckoned.

“You’ve changed things here, blackie. Looks a bit different.”

The waiter winked, glanced toward the kitchen, and bent over the table as if adjusting something. In a throaty Irish brogue he murmured: “It’s shure a crime wot th’ p’lice did to the place. Ye oughta seen the mess this marnin’ afther the cops got through. If ivery corpse in this room had a wake I’d be dhrunk for the rist o’ me days. It’s shure su’prisin’ wot a squash a little lizard makes under a cop’s number twilves. I hear say the boss is makin’ out a bill as long as his face whin he saw wot they did.”

“I hope he collects it,” Muldrew said dryly.

The lights went out. Tiger fancied he heard the click. He shivered. Muldrew was talking easily: “Think of this for the public taste! Jammed all night! And yet not one but feels shivers down his spine. . . . Frightened that nothing more will happen, frightened that it may.”

Tiger fumbled over the table. “Hold still, Gordy. I’m feeling for your right hand. I want to save you from suspicion when this knife I feel at my back does its deadly work. . . . You know, every time I mix in a murder I question my qualifications.

I lack the thick-headedness of a detective. I can stand the Sherlock Holmes part, but—Gordy, Gordy, where the blazes are you?”

Tiger had risen, one hand clawing frantically into the vacant chair across the table. His veins tingled, his hair crinkled uncomfortably. The weird wailing of the orchestra recalled too vividly that awful scream. In the panic of the moment he took 134

another chair, and, feeling about, collected the table-knives, counting them again and again to make sure the number was complete. His back he sank deep into the chair, while he waited, wondering, angry.

At a table somewhere toward the orchestra a chair scraped, and a man cried out nervously. Not a loud cry, but the lights came on instantly. Tiger stared. Three huge waiters were on their way across the restaurant, and from the foliage about the orchestra platform an anxious face peered. On the dancing-floor the dancers, dazed and alarmed, self-conscious, clung together, staring over their shoulders.

The nerves of The Jungle patrons were certainly on edge.

Plainly too—Tiger smiled understandingly. Blood Bidwell’s staff knew how to make the most of it.

Then his smile vanished. He had remembered Muldrew.

Now he beheld him slinking back toward the table, embarrassed and tremendously surprised. His watch was in his hand.

“I’ll say this for Bidwell,” Muldrew murmured as he took his seat, “he takes no more chances.” His forehead wrinkled.

“What are you doing there—in that chair?”

“I didn’t notice that you stayed where you were put either,” Tiger complained. “I was starting out to find you. As my guest I’m sort of responsible for you. You see, I collected all the knives as a safety first measure. . . . Suppose I’d run into you again in the dark, like the time we fought out there—” Muldrew was not listening. “Damn that fellow!” He scowled toward the orchestra, and the scowl was returned with interest. “Another second or two—I made a mis-step. Thought I had that passage clear in my mind.”

Leaning over, Tiger saw that Muldrew’s watch was a chronograph.

A heavy voice dropped over them, and they looked up into Blood Bidwell’s inquiring face.

“You were asking for me, Mr. Muldrew?”

“Yes—yes, Bidwell. . . . But it wasn’t important.” For a moment Muldrew seemed embarrassed. “I merely wished you to know I was here, and to ask if you had further news for us.”

Bidwell shook his head. “Nothing.” He seated himself in one of the vacant chairs. “I tried to keep this table clear for a few 135

nights. I’d remove it, only every other table in this part of the room would be afraid it was the one where—where it happened.

One moment, please; they wish to dance.” He made a movement with his hands and the lights went out.

Muldrew spoke into the darkness. “You have things better organized now, I see.”

“I’m trying to satisfy the police. By the way,”—he spoke in a low voice, leaning nearer Muldrew—“I’ve been out searching for Buster Rawlinson. What have you done with him?”

Muldrew did not reply until the silence became almost unendurable to Tiger.

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m not a fool!” Bidwell’s voice was low but angry.

“You’ve arrested him. . . . And you didn’t let me know. It’s a dirty trick.”

“Why, may I ask?”

“Because you know Buster did not kill Sada Corwyn. But you police must have a victim. You think it will look clever: Sada’s divorced husband. Oh, very clever!”

Muldrew inquired: “Are you so certain—about Rawlinson, I mean?”

“You have no evidence. I was here last night while you questioned him. I saw you wanted someone to throw to the wolves, to the public that ever slobbers for a victim.”

“The public,” Muldrew said quietly, “that you spend so much time and money to understand, to entertain. The public you defended so stoutly when Inspector Armitage told you what he thought of The Jungle. Tell me, did Rawlinson know we suspected him?”

“Buster is no fool.” Bidwell drummed angrily on the table. “I suppose someone told you Buster was on his way to this table after the murder when the police came in, and then he turned back. There’s nothing in that. Sada had been his wife; he saw how bad it would look for him.”

“Did Rawlinson tell you this?”

Bidwell did not reply immediately. Then: “What are you getting at, Mr. Muldrew? Are you trying to goad me to say something that will tell against Buster? You can’t. . . . But I’ve had the satisfaction of telling you what I think of your methods.”

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“I suppose,” Muldrew said pleasantly, “another scene at The Jungle would prolong its popularity. You’ve a great eye for publicity, Blood.”

Tiger had listened with all his ears. What was Muldrew after? What had happened to Buster Rawlinson? Bidwell was a daring friend—The table moved sharply. The next instant a fork clattered to the floor with a noise to Tiger like a thunderclap. The lights snapped on. Tiger looked about in amazement, for both Muldrew and Bidwell were standing. Tiger saw them smile confusedly at each other as they sat down. What an atmosphere pervaded The Jungle! Even Muldrew and its proprietor were nervous!

“Because Buster was a friend of yours, Bidwell, we can’t be supposed to favour him,” Muldrew said.

“No, you’d be more likely to make things unpleasant for him. To rob me of my orchestra leader delights you, no doubt.

The Jungle and I will pay for it, because no one can take Buster’s place. The orchestra is hopeless without him. . . . It means I have to fire the whole crowd and get a new lot. And I hate that; they’re a fine lot of boys.”

“I’m sorry for them.” Muldrew turned toward the orchestra screen. “By the way, did you make inquiries of the police for Rawlinson?”

“I am now. I’ve just come from his apartment. I suppose I’ll learn the truth first from the newspapers.” His voice softened.

“I wish you’d tell me what you’ve done with him. I’ve given you every assistance I can, but if you’re going to act like this I don’t see why I should bestir myself. . . . I’m desperately anxious about Buster, Mr. Muldrew. It would break his heart to have a charge like that against him.”

Muldrew’s face was grave. “Bidwell,” he said slowly, “when we arrest Buster Rawlinson there’ll be no bail for you to put up. . . . But the fact is, Rawlinson has not been arrested. He has—fled! Can you guess why?”

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XXI THE THIRD DISAPPEARANCE “I'm sorry to butt in, Muldrew, but our hands are being forced. We must hustle this case. The District Attorney, that political drag on the law, is bawling us out. Less than three days, yet the mob demands a clean-up. It’s always the same.”

Inspector Armitage expressed his disgust by viciously stabbing a paper-knife at his blotter.

“I’ve given myself a week to clean up the case,” Muldrew told him.

“Why so much time?”

“Because to hasten it will lose the scent, will confuse us with a jumble of fresh misleading clues. Because, Inspector, I’m very much afraid that to act hastily might be costly to several innocent people. The moment we make an arrest we play into the hands of the real murderer . . . and we can’t yet arrest the real murderer or we lose our case.”

The Inspector growled into his moustache. “We might do it as a blind. There are three or four offer sufficient excuse . . . and it would perhaps make the murderer less canny.”

“When I make an arrest in The Jungle crime,” Muldrew retorted grimly, “I’m going to have complete proof.”

“You know who did it?”

“I have more than a suspicion. But it’s a conviction we want. A fake arrest will accomplish nothing.”

“1 have a suspicion myself,” said the Inspector. “I’m leaving you to prove I’m right. Who’s your man?”

Muldrew uttered a name. The Inspector only smiled.

“Your evidence?”

Muldrew shook his head. “Nothing more that I’m counting on than a hunch at the moment. Wrong or right, we have an exceptionally clever, an exceptionally dangerous, rogue to deal with—a real actor. Evidence? Sure I have heaps of it—for a Grand Jury. But that doesn’t satisfy us. I’m trying to keep an open mind; I don’t want suspicion to lead me into error. . . . What worries me most is what will happen next, how much more will happen, before I nail my man. Sada Corwyn was only the beginning.”

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The Inspector nodded.

“I wish to God,” Muldrew continued, “that I knew where Janet Doyle is—what has happened to her. Three of our best men on her track, and not a sign since breakfast was served to her at the Washington that morning. She had her mail, the waiter said. I can’t help thinking her flight was arranged by letter. . . . And now Buster Rawlinson! Then there’s that midnight visitor to Nat Corwyn’s rooms. If only I’d been a few seconds quicker!”

The Inspector eyed his subordinate gloomily. “Muldrew, I want the whole story of that. You do tax my patience sometimes.”

“There’s nothing to hide,” Muldrew assured him. He told the details of the night’s events, not even omitting Tiger’s confession. As he talked the grey, official face now and then creased in a grin, and at the end the official body wriggled with stifled laughter.

“The young devils! That’s loyalty for you. Just the same ”—he scowled at his own levity—“The Gang is going to run into trouble some day. Their escapades are diverting at times, as long as they don’t get in our way—But trying to destroy evidence— we can’t stand for that. . . . That stranger who got away from Nat Corwyn’s rooms.” He leaned suddenly across the desk. “Could it have been Nat himself—getting into his own rooms while you were there to divert suspicion from himself? Not a bad trick. Had he time?”

“Lots of time to get around and in by the front door before he appeared in the room. I thought of that too late to do anything to test it. I left him before midnight apparently getting ready for bed, yet he was fully dressed when he came on us at two o’clock.”

“If you hadn’t tried to hog the excitement—” the Inspector began.

“If I’d had a man on the watch outside nothing would have happened. What did happen may be of use to us later. . . . I may say it was from that visit that my suspicions took more definite shape.”

“We mustn’t neglect Nat Corwyn. He knew the life his wife led. A thing like that rankles till it sends a husband mad.”

“I’ve found the girl he danced with,” Muldrew said. “She 139

talks freely enough—a bit sore on Nat for dropping her in the middle of the dance. There never was a chance of discovering the girl he took next. . . . It was then the murder was committed.”

The Inspector remarked that the position of Nat Corwyn when the lights came on was valueless as an alibi, owing to the time that elapsed. “Rawlinson admits the delay, and he had control of the switches. And now Rawlinson is gone! We didn’t get from him half what we should.”

“Nor from Nat Corwyn either,” Muldrew said uneasily.

“If he’s the murderer it explains a lot that puzzles me. . . . But they’re all hiding something—Corwyn, Janet Doyle, and Major Withers. The trouble is that I don’t know why they’re all combined to do it.”

“And that bunch that calls itself The Gang. Right now McQuigg is a mighty anxious lad—and it won’t hurt to give him something more to be anxious about. Lillie could help if he wished. We must get after all these people. Never know what they might let slip that would help. . . . Why not have Nat Corwyn down here and draw him out? You have his address. I suppose they have a telephone?”

Muldrew gave an order to the station switchboard. As they waited the Inspector beat out a tune on his teeth with the blue pencil.

“This McQuigg puzzles me. What an ass to send such letters. Of course, he can’t have had any sinister plans. . . . Yet if he hated her and threw her over, as he says—” “Infatuation, chagrin at the use he thinks she made of him, and the decent instincts of the lad all fighting together. He broke with her all right . . . and Sada was badly hit.”

“And we might argue that infatuation and chagrin would blind him to the results of a mad act. Anyway, we must have a private talk with him about those letters. Might as well give him the idea we suspect him. . . . And the Major—we’ll let him know we’re aware of that letter he has—” The telephone tinkled and Muldrew pulled the extension arm to him.

“Is that Main 3726? . . . Is that you, Mrs. Lambert? . . .

Will you tell Mr. Corwyn, please, that Gordon Muldrew wants to speak to him?”

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Suddenly he straightened.

“Not—there? You don’t mean you—you don’t know where he is? . . . But he had distinct orders from me not to leave the house.” He listened for several moments, his face working— asking questions. At the end he jammed the receiver back and sat glowering at the instrument.

The harsh voice of the Inspector roused him: “So you’ve lost him too? Muldrew, you give too much rope. You’re too polite, my dear Alphonse. . . . Flittings are popular in The Jungle crime—and we need every one of those people.”

Muldrew leaped to his feet, his jaw set.

“Damn it, Inspector, I daren’t hurry! One false step and we lose everything. . . . And yet,” miserably, “we lose by waiting—lose sources of information, and our suspects. I put two men on Corwyn’s house last night . . . and he knew it. He has disappeared in broad daylight. His sister went to call him to lunch and he was gone. She tells me he received a letter this morning that seemed to upset him.”

The Inspector rose and stormed about the room.

“We want no more disappearances in this case, Muldrew,” he grated, pausing before his subordinate.

Muldrew did not seem to hear. A curious light showed in his eyes.

“I’m not sure it isn’t playing our game, Inspector. The thing is being overdone. Complications may complicate themselves. The evidence is piling up.”

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XXII THE FOURTH DISAPPEARANCE Muldrew, more worried than he cared to expose to the exacting eye of the Inspector, feeling that his better judgment was more or less helpless before the driving exigence of recent events, lost no time. He telephoned McQuigg to meet him at his office. The Inspector's plan could do no harm—to frighten McQuigg into divulging what The Gang was, for some reason, concealing from the police.

It did not, therefore, lend itself to Muldrew’s plans when Tiger Lillie turned up with McQuigg at the appointed time.

“T h e rest of The Gang is within call,” Tiger informed the detective brightly. “Might as well let us all in. These mysterious murders are meat for us.”

Muldrew heard him with a scowl—and reached for his bell.

“All right.” Tiger rose and, taking McQuigg by the arm, started for the door. “Go ahead! Put us out. But Mac goes with us.”

“I fancy not.” Muldrew pressed the bell.

McQuigg’s face was white and set. “You may arrest me, but that won’t make me talk,” he warned.

Tiger reseated himself and stretched his legs impudently before him. “Any man under suspicion has a right to the presence of his counsel. I’m Mac’s counsel. In fact, he has four. . . . Of course, you may prefer to arrest him and sit listening to his dumbness—and getting madder all the time till you do something foolish. Take your choice, Gordy, I or nothing. Honest,” he wheedled, as Muldrew’s face seemed to relent, “Mac has nothing serious to hide. Nothing, that is, with me at his side. . . . And you know you couldn’t make use of anything he says without witnesses. Besides, Beef and Tishy are bursting to make a confession.”

The sergeant appeared at the door. Muldrew sat pinching his chin.

“Oh—ah—yes, sergeant. You might throw those three rowdies out there—in here. You’ll find them in the hall somewhere.”

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Louis, Beef and Tishy entered and seated themselves selfconsciously, waiting for someone to speak.

Tiger waved a laughing hand. “Hail, hail! The Gang’s all here. Go to it, Gordy. We’ve a dull hour on our hands, Louis and I. The other two are just ballast.”

“And Lord knows you need it,” Beef growled. He turned to Muldrew. “I want to explain that affair at Twenty-fourth Street night before last. Tiger and Louis got an idea—” “Thanks,” Tiger broke in. “But how the dickens do you know? You’d never recognize an idea if it hit you in the eye.”

Mac squirmed. “Can’t we get along?” he pleaded.

“I was just trying to liven up the funeral,” Tiger explained, “to decorate the undertaker’s chapel, so to speak. All right, Gordy, fire your biggest guns.”

Muldrew fired a battery of them, but they all more or less missed the target. He understood why, and was not greatly annoyed. The Gang set themselves to fill the dingy room with such an air of irrelevancy, of thistledown levity, of playing a game, that Muldrew’s only recourse was to feign helplessness.

The interview gave him all he hoped for—further proof that Nat Corwyn was not unaware of his wife’s habits, that Major Withers had a purpose he was determined to conceal, and that The Gang was uncomfortable owing to the part Mac had played in the events of the tragic night. He closed the interview.

“All right, that’ll do.”

“And Mac,” Tiger trilled, “emerges as white as the driven snow, stainless as chromium. The first Congressional medal for probity—” “Get out. But McQuigg will hold himself at the disposal of the police. . . . And next time I’ll see him alone. The Gang won’t always have its way.”

Dusk of the same day. Street lights coming on, dim as yet in the delaying daylight. The roar of the city lulled for the dinnerhour. A flight of aeroplanes dived across the sky toward the landing-field.

Tiger and Louis paused at the gate of the McQuigg home and for several seconds watched the dim shapes in the sky grow dimmer. Tiger motioned toward them.

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“Airy existence. Think of being able to leave this trying old earth any time it gets on your nerves. High-minded lot of men, too, these pilots, superior fellows. Oh, ever so high.” He slapped Louis on the back. “That’s the stuff to give ’em, Louis, in your Kolum, profound and provocative.”

Louis looked his friend over with curling scorn.

“And all the time you’re scared stiff. . . . Muldrew is going to ask us questions about Mac that we daren’t answer. If he puts us on oath—” Tiger made an angry pass at him, but Louis continued stolidly: “Why kid ourselves? We can’t prove Mac innocent except by finding who’s guilty. We’re wasting time doing anything else.

Offence is the best defence.” Tiger groaned. “You can afford to moralize. It’s more serious to me than that. Jerry Inkerley had me on the carpet to-day about my irregularity and the character of my work. The Star, they almost admit, depends on Tiger Lillie. If I were inclined to be boastful—The Star, Jerry says in his trenchant way, expects Tiger Lillie to do his best.”

“Anything less would disqualify you for a job in a garage. . . . But, honestly, Tiger, where do you think Mac stands?”

“Square as the four winds of heaven—whatever that means. Mac couldn’t spell murder, let alone commit it. He doesn’t know how to hold a knife to cut anything stiffer than jelly.”

“I saw the way he held that knife at The Jungle.”

“Mac hasn’t it in him to murder a fly.”

“I was hoping you’d think that,” Louis said plaintively.

“It all goes to prove that—that appearances—” “Appearances?” Tiger stared. “What the blazes do you mean—appearances? You feather-brained, ravenish Gloomy Gus!” “If he’s so innocent why does he act so guiltily?” Louis demanded irritably. “It wears on a fellow to have to look innocent for his friends.”

“Sure it does—on you. Mark my words, Gustavus, Mac is—Oh, pshaw! You watch, Mac was naturally upset at first—a woman he had flirted with, and then to be suspected. But he’s stiffening, he’s stiffening.”

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“I hadn’t noticed it.”

Tiger wiped his forehead. “I—I hoped you had. . . . But it doesn’t matter, Louis, we stand by him. Now, let’s go in with a grin and brighten him up.” He sent a searching look along the street in both directions. “Not a single policeman in sight. You see? They’ve changed their minds about Mac. Now, mind— grin.”

He rang the bell. A maid admitted them, and they went straight upstairs to Mac’s suite at the back of the house. From the gloom of the darkening room they were greeted by Beef and Tishy.

“Where’s Mac?” Tiger demanded.

“Oh, where?” Beef threw out his hands. “We thought he was with you. We rushed through dinner to come and brighten him up.”

Tiger was already at the door. “Does his mother know where he is?”

“We couldn’t ask her. She doesn’t know Muldrew accuses him of murder.”

“He doesn’t, you ass. Mac isn’t capable of anything worse than eating biscuits in bed.” He had the door open.

At that moment the strident peel of the doorbell through the house made them all jump. They listened. From the hall below came Muldrew’s voice, sharp and penetrating. In a few moments Mrs. McQuigg ushered him into the room with a friendly smile.

“I’m sure Grant will be here soon,” she told them pleasantly, and went.

For several seconds Muldrew glowered about on them.

“Well?”

Beef wailed: “I knew The Gang would come to a bad end.

But,” he added curiously, “what’s all the fuss about, Muldrew?

All I’ve done for two days is fret. I’m losing weight. I’m tingling like an overcharged battery struck by lightning.”

Muldrew strode into the centre of the room and took a stand beside the table.

“Stop it! Turn on those lights. I’m in no mood for levity.”

Tiger drew his chair nearer. His face was pale and anxious. “Drop the drama, Gordy, and tell us what it’s about.”

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“What have you done with McQuigg?”

Tiger’s lips parted. “What—have we done—with him?”

He laid an entreating hand on Muldrew’s arm. “For God’s sake, Gordy, tell us the worst!”

“You thought this the way to save him,” Muldrew accused fiercely.

Tiger ignored the charge. “Are you telling us that Mac has disappeared—Mac, too?”

“I am. On your honour, Tiger, do you know anything about it?”

“On my honour, Gordy, we were waiting to cheer him up.

Can’t you see,” he moaned, “it’s worse for us than for you. All you have to do is to find him. We have to add to our other worries an excuse for this flight. Life is just one problem chasing another.”

Muldrew glared at the other three. “You boys—do you know anything about this? Did you suspect such a thing?”

Two voices replied energetically: “No!” Muldrew fixed his eyes on Louis. “So you’re not surprised? You knew?”

Louis twisted miserably. “I—I—expected it.”

“What did you know about it?”

“Me? Me know? I didn’t know anything about it. But I couldn’t see any other way out for Mac. In fact, I was going to propose it—” Tiger stormed at him: “Get it out. Say it in single syllables. Did—you—know—anything about Mac going to disappear?”

“Of course not. I said I didn’t. I only—” Tiger shrugged. “Literary verbosity. So-much-a-word sort of fellow, Louis is. Native honesty combined with imbecility.

Louis, my lad, this is the official mind you address. Speak in monosyllables. Gordy thinks you’re a kidnapper. Gordy, Louis is not himself to-day. Usually he’s as loquacious as a fish.”

“This, Muldrew,” Louis said stiffly, “is the Star gabbling as usual. I tell you I knew nothing of Mac’s flight. I only rather expected it.”

“Tell us, Gordy,” Tiger pleaded.

Muldrew told them. Jameson had been set to watch 146

McQuigg. The latter had left the house not an hour ago, Jameson at his heels, keeping a keen eye on him because Mac was evidently up to something.

At the busiest part of Markham Street a large closed car pulled in to the curb beside McQuigg and someone must have addressed him from inside, for McQuigg stopped and talked through the open window. Jameson strolled past, noting only that the car number was an Ohio one. Inside the car he could see nothing, for the opposite curtain was down. Jameson, walking on a few paces, turned in time to see McQuigg leap into the car which, swerving out from the curb, dashed into the thick of the traffic before the policeman could intercept.

As Jameson plunged in pursuit someone collided with him so violently as to knock him from his feet and send him sprawling into the roadway. Jameson realized that the escape was carefully planned, that the collision was part of the get-away. But by the time he untangled himself from the traffic and regained the curb everything was over.

The Gang stared, incredulous, unhappy, fidelity to Mac struggling with annoyance and dread.

Tishy broke the silence. “Good old Mac! I mean—who’d expect it of him?”

Muldrew’s expression relaxed. Beef shook his head ruefully.

“How times change! No thrills like this when the police were after me. 4 It was just plain dodging then and shivering, and praying that my friends would die quick and complete and give me a chance. That’s why I’m through butting in on poor Mac’s chances. Every time Tiger moves he drives another nail into someone’s coffin.”

Tiger was not listening. “Gordy, this is getting exciting.

Four of ’em gone now! What a head-line for the Star: ‘Mystery of The Jungle Murder Deepens! Police Helpless! All Suspects Disappear!’ Gee, think of that to-morrow night!”

Muldrew’s eyes bored into Tiger’s. “Four? How did you know of the other three?”

“Sleuthing, Gordy, sleuthing on my own account. I’m not 4

Murder at Midnight.

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star reporter for nothing. I know a heap more than that, too. I’ll bet a year’s subscription to the one newspaper in town that the disappearances are incomplete even now. All you have to do is to suspect. Presto!—bird flown!” He rubbed his hands together.

“Say, this is going to be the greatest mystery I ever untangled for the police. You ought to put me—” But Muldrew was in no mood to frivol. He left them.

Louis sneered: “Go to it, Tiger. Where Muldrew ought to put you is in chains. You know a heap more, do you? Go ahead and spill it. We’ve a spare second to hear all you ever did know.”

But Tiger was beyond sarcasm, beyond their goading. He was crouched over his knees, his head in his hands. A groan burst from him.

148

XXIII AN IMPORTANT LETTER In the large, dingy office sacred to Inspector Armitage’s reflections the two detectives sat fuming over The Jungle crime.

The Inspector was angry—and he lacked the satisfaction of someone to blame.

Muldrew, bending beneath the storm, was not so certain of his own blamelessness. He saw that much might have been done to forestall these mysterious disappearances, much that now looked reasonable. Each escape had further handicapped him, each threatened to mislead him in his search for Sada Corwyn’s murderer. For not all the four could be guilty. They could not even, he felt certain, have connived in this wholesale flight. Some strange influence was at work.

Into a growling silence the night sergeant intruded.

“Letter for you, sir.” He dropped a letter on the Inspector’s desk and hurried away.

The Inspector recalled him. “How did you get this? There isn’t a delivery at this hour.”

“It was delivered by hand, sir.”

“To whom? Did you detain the messenger—or have him followed?”

The sergeant shifted from one foot to the other. “Someone dropped it inside the door. Matthews had gone to the toilet.

Nobody saw—” The Inspector’s eyes hardened. “Matthews will answer for this later. Close the door after you.”

He slit the envelope and drew out the sheet. As he read his eyebrows moved together.

“This is really yours, Muldrew. It’s The Jungle case.

Listen—the covering letter for another enclosed: ‘To the Police. If you receive this letter put “Received” in Personal Column to-morrow’s Times. Sign last syllable of name of detective on case.’ . . . Hm-m! Another mystery, Muldrew, something more for you to run down. This fellow takes no chances of the enclosed letter falling into the wrong hands. . . .

Now, let’s see this other letter. Must be important.”

He unfolded a second sheet, read it through and, with a 149

low whistle, passed it across to his subordinate.

“That’s something. I don’t grasp it all, but I bet a dime it’s vital. Give me a line on it, Muldrew.” Muldrew examined the letter carefully. For a time after he had finished reading it he sat pinching his chin. Suddenly his face brightened.

“That’s it!”

“Who sent that letter?” demanded the Inspector. Muldrew shook his head.

“Then who’s the enclosed letter from?”

Again Muldrew shook his head.

“Then what do you mean by grinning?”

Muldrew continued to grin. “‘Little Petrel,’ he calls her.

She was that—stormy petrel, all right.”

“Does that mean Sada Corwyn?”

“I’m sure of it.” Muldrew sat nodding at the letter. “This is a letter sent to Sada Corwyn by someone signing himself ‘Teddy Bear.’ Start with that. Now, listen: “‘I suppose you have almost forgotten me in the triumphant course of your other conquests. Perhaps even the signature means nothing now; you may have given the pet name to a score since I delighted to hear it on your lips. It may be one of the ropes with which you bind your victims. “‘So much has happened since we met and passed on—or you did the passing. I wonder if you know that the days we spent together are branded on my memory, on my very soul. I ought to hate you, but I never can. Long ago I accepted that. Nothing you could do would make me think you anything but the most beautiful, the most desirable, woman in the world, even if the most wicked. Once upon a time you said I was the handsomest man. Pardon a nagging memory. “‘I have never forgotten. Ever since we loved I have had but one object in mind—to make you love me again, to make it seem worth your while to return to me. I have tried to build up for you a fortune you could not refuse. If you will but see me once again, if only for five minutes, I think I can convince you that the struggle has not been in vain. “‘I can’t think that you will refuse me this. I can’t think of anything but refusal that would alter my love for you. Once I must have failed to satisfy you. Now I know it would be 150

different. I have never lost touch with you. Through your wanderings, through your wild search for love, I have known where you were, what you did. “‘To meet me once again, if only fleetingly, can do neither of us harm. May I offer a safe and uncompromising plan?

The Jungle, latest of the city’s dance restaurants, is amusing— and dark. Introductions there are unnecessary. All this week I will be there. You will see me. I will await a signal from you.

Perhaps, then, I may have an opportunity of offering you The Promised Land. Listen for my step, for my voice, wait for my touch in the dark, my little Petrel. “‘Teddy Bear.’ ” The two detectives stared at each other, groping for hidden meanings, reaching out for clues. The Jungle! Teddy Bear’s touch in the dark!

“It helps, Muldrew, it all helps,” muttered the Inspector.

“But first it confuses,” Muldrew returned thoughtfully, “if we aren’t careful. I never knew a case where so much was done to mislead us. . . . Not so much to mislead us as to confuse us.

This”—he frowned at the letter—“fits so well into something I have in mind that it makes me suspicious of its value.” He jumped to his feet. “Wait a moment.”

He disappeared into his own room and presently returned with a torn scrap of paper in his hand which he laid beside the covering letter with a short laugh.

“I wanted it badly, so I stole it from his pocket the other night.”

The Inspector bent over the two papers.

“The same,” he declared. “Whose is this?” He tapped the smaller piece.

“Nat Corwyn’s.”

The Inspector leaned back and gazed thoughtfully at the ceiling. “But what does that tell us? Nat Corwyn sent us this letter . . . sent it when and how . . . and why? . . . And why is he so concerned in hiding his trail even in this?”

Muldrew seated himself on the corner of the desk. “The letter is sent us for some important purpose. It is probably a genuine letter. . . . Or let’s suppose it is. Some former lover of Sada Corwyn wishes to meet her again. No date to the letter, no 151

envelope, but we know it was sent in the last two weeks, since The Jungle was opened. Nat must have found it among his wife’s effects.”

“But the purpose, Muldrew, the purpose? He is trying to throw suspicion on someone. But if so, why doesn’t he tell us who Teddy Bear is?”

“Perhaps because he doesn’t know. He leaves it to us to find out. . . . But what interests me is the mere fact of this letter.

It has been sent since Nat disappeared. At least he is not a prisoner,” he ended with a laugh.

“And if Nat Corwyn murdered his wife he’s a clever villain.” The Inspector examined the letter again. “By Jove! What was it Sada said just before she died—‘Someone loves me’? Are we getting on the scent at last, Muldrew?”

“It fits so perfectly,” Muldrew fretted, “that I begin to question it.”

They fell into a long silence. The Inspector broke it.

“It clears away some things. McQuigg, for instance.”

“What I’m trying to get down to,” Muldrew mused, “is the spirit behind this appealing letter. Is it the cry of a love-sick man who could never think ill enough of her to kill her? ‘I can’t think of anything but refusal that would alter my love for you.’

Sounds like a threat, doesn’t it?”

The grey head nodded. “And keep this in mind: whether Nat Corwyn knows who Teddy Bear is or not, he knows this letter will momentarily divert suspicion from himself, send us on another trail.”

“Anyway, I’m going to put that word in the Times.”

Muldrew pulled the telephone to him. “The important thing to me,” he went on, “is that Nat Corwyn is somewhere within reach, that he evaded us deliberately and remains hidden of his own free will? So far as we know all four have done that, yet it can’t mean guilt in them all. You see—it makes us question every clue. And that’s what the real murderer aims at. Someone is at the back of all this—” The telephone tinkled through the silence of the almost deserted building. The Inspector glared at it.

“Wrong number, I bet. No one knows I’m here. We’re connected with Central at night. I won’t answer it.”

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But who was ever strong-minded enough to ignore a ringing telephone—except telephone exchanges, railway stations, and government offices? He grabbed the instrument to him.

“Hullo, hullo! . . . Yes, the police station—Inspector Armitage speaking. . . . Mr. Muldrew? Ye—es, he’s here.” He thrust the extension arm across the desk.

A heavy voice from the other end: “That Mr. Muldrew?”

“Yes—speaking.”

“I’ve been trying to find you for half an hour. This is Bidwell speaking. Can you spare a few minutes right away to run around to The Jungle. I’ve something to tell you.”

“Can’t you tell it over the 'phone?”

Bidwell laughed. “This is a public wire. Don’t begrudge me the time—it will pay you. It’s something connected with the—the case you’re working on.”

“I’ll be over right away.”

“Thank you. My guest.”

“May I bring Inspector Armitage—my guest?”

“Not unless you bring him as mine. Glad to see you both. . . . And any other help you think you need,” he added with a laugh, and hung up.

153

XXIV BUSTER RETURNS The Jungle was doing well, no question of that. Its popularity, growing even before the murder, had leaped until tables were reserved for days ahead. The public is the world's greatest mystery. Circus-men, publishers, fashion creators say so.

But, more convincing, ask the great public itself. Emotions that are most general, likes and dislikes that are shared by the world, are the most difficult to foresee. An entertainment attracts or repels, and who can tell why? A book sells to half a million copies, and no one is more surprised than the author and the publisher. The most hideous crime often makes a hero of the criminal; the greatest of the earth’s saints are unknown. Yet the public insists that it deprecates crime and reveres saintliness.

At eleven o’clock The Jungle was on the threshold of its busiest hour. In a few minutes the theatres would let loose a horde of eager patrons. Those who had had forethought enough to reserve tables were in the best locations, the rest in the order of their arrival. Bidwell permitted no favouritism. When the two detectives arrived there were still several empty tables, but the printed table-cards showed that most of them were reserved.

Blood Bidwell himself received them at the door, a sly twinkle in his eye. Dancing was in full swing, the room drowned in music, but the lights were on and not a few patrons sulked. The Inspector looked about approvingly.

“This is better, Blood. They’ll dance just as long and just as ardently if they can see their partners.”

Bidwell cast a knowing look at Muldrew, as if the younger man would understand. “I was expecting you, Inspector.

I haven’t given the signal for the lights to go out. We’ll find a table first.”

“Doing rather well, aren’t you?” the Inspector suggested, as he fell in at Bidwell’s heels.

“You may not be pleased to hear it, Inspector, but I have the police to thank for much of that. No, I don’t mean the—the murder,” he explained hastily, “but your forbearance in not closing The Jungle after what happened. I’m trying to satisfy your wishes a little better: the periods of darkness are short. I’m 154

forced to cater to some extent to public demand. But I don’t mind admitting that the rush since the tragedy rather nauseates me. I know why they come—I’m not blind . . . and I’m not proud of my success, but I’m not strong enough to refuse the profit it offers. If you had any idea what this place cost to start, Inspector.”

“All I’m interested in is that it cost a human life,” replied the Inspector brusquely.

Bidwell winced. The Inspector took hold of an empty chair.

“Let’s sit here. No ‘reserved’ card here.”

“I—I was keeping this table unoccupied, Inspector,” Bidwell stammered. “You may remember it’s where Mrs. Corwyn sat. Mr. Muldrew and his friend are the only ones to occupy it since—since that happened.”

“I’m not squeamish. I don’t want anything to eat. Just a cup of strong black coffee to make me sleep. I’m tired to-night.”

Bidwell beckoned to a waiter. “Yours, Mr. Muldrew?”

“Same—only weaker, and white.”

“You deprive me of the pleasure of showing you the fare The Jungle provides its patrons,” Bidwell protested. “Whatever you think of us, Inspector, we try to give value. May I join you?”

“It’s the best opportunity you’ll have to tell us what you have to tell.” The Inspector noted Bidwell’s quick, inquiring glance at the surrounding tables. “Ashamed of your guests, Bidwell?”

Bidwell frowned. “Please try to be fair, Inspector. The fact is, I feel—I’ve felt for some days—as if I’m being watched. I can’t imagine why. These strange disappearances—well, it looks as if there’s someone at work who’ll stop at nothing.”

“Why are you concerned about them?”

“Well, I want that affair cleared up.” He laughed uncomfortably. “Don’t think it’s all indignation, or even curiosity. But I’ve been in this business too long to over-estimate the duration of The Jungle’s popularity under the present circumstances. With the clearing of that mystery it will have a period of renewed popularity.”

“Buster Rawlinson’s disappearance, I suppose, hurts you a lot?” said the Inspector.

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A fine masculine voice broke out from behind the orchestra screen, and Bidwell lifted his hand. Almost immediately the restaurant seemed to rouse to a new life, a new eagerness. Several who had not yet danced rose and made for the floor.

“Do you wonder I’m happier to-night?” Bidwell beamed on them. “The Jungle is its old smooth, thrilling self again. The inspiration has returned, the old vim, the gaiety and lightheartedness, the air of fellowship—” Muldrew said quietly: “Buster Rawlinson is back!”

Bidwell nodded. Inspector Armitage made a sound of disgust. “And you brought us here to tell us that? Hell, we’re busy!”

“But—but I thought the police—Only a night or two ago Mr. Muldrew was disturbed—” “You’re wrong, Bidwell.” Muldrew sipped his coffee. “I was only surprised.”

For a moment or two Bidwell seemed bewildered, then he laughed delightedly. “Then you admit that your suspicions of Buster were groundless.”

“We didn’t come to be questioned, Bidwell,” the Inspector told him shortly. “If we had wished Rawlinson I fancy we could have laid our hands on him.”

“Oh? Well, if you’re convinced of what I told you at the beginning, that Buster is incapable of such a crime, even if he had a chance to commit it—and he didn’t—” He made a motion and the lights went out.

“Your opinion is not valueless, Bidwell, but . . . suppose we told you that we have enough evidence against Buster Rawlinson to give him a bad time before an intelligent Grand Jury—if there is such a thing. But we have evidence against others as well; and we don’t get into a fever when one of them disappears. The law has a long arm. And now, let’s have a word with Rawlinson.”

Bidwell could be heard across the table, stirring uneasily.

“You don’t mean you’re going to grab him now and take him away, when I brought you here to tell you he was back? Why— why, it would break up The Jungle—just at this time. I need Buster—” 156

“Blood Bidwell,” the Inspector rasped, “I’d do anything to break up this place. I hate it and all it stands for. I hate the idea on which its success is based—the darkness, the murder, the filthy taste of a public ravenous for excitement—” He was speaking in low tones, steady and controlled, as if he had but started. But at that moment a dish across the table rattled sharply.

Instantly the lights came on. The Inspector started back, frowning heavily. Bidwell looked about with startled eyes. Half-way to the orchestra platform Muldrew had pulled up, to look foolishly about. Bidwell leaped to his feet and hastened toward him.

“Please, Mr. Muldrew, please don’t do anything yet. Wait a few minutes. I promise the lights won’t go out again until I’ve told you about it. I promise Buster will be there when you want him. In fact, I myself have the key of the door there behind the orchestra platform. I’m not taking any more chances.”

Muldrew permitted a look of hard decision to vanish slowly. Together they returned to their table.

“I merely wished to ask,” Bidwell pleaded, “that you let me keep Buster for a week. Then I give you my word The Jungle will close for ever. I wish only to clear what it cost me. . . . That murder—it hangs over me so I can scarcely sleep. I hear that scream in my dream.” He shaded his eyes with one hand. “I’ve run some rather shady places, but never before—anything like that.”

The Inspector’s face softened. “Candidly, I’m glad to hear it, Bidwell. One doesn’t look for sentiment in places like this. As for Rawlinson, we promise nothing . . . except that we wait no week for the explanation of his flight. Whether The Jungle pays or goes bankrupt, Rawlinson faces the music this very night.”

Bidwell bit his lip. “I’ve helped all I can,” he said slowly, “and I have a feeling that I take some personal risk in doing it. I can’t tell why, but I know someone is at work to block us. Will you let Buster finish the evening first? I can tell you that he returned solely to give you valuable information, so there’s no question of escaping again.”

“Then why did you lock that door?”

“I’m taking no chances,” Bidwell explained uneasily.

“Buster—isn’t himself. You’ll see what I mean when you talk to him—” 157

He was looking straight at the screen that hid the orchestra. As the words died on his lips the two detectives turned.

The foliage about the platform had parted, and Buster Rawlinson, his eyes fixed on them, stumbled through the moat and wound among the tables. Bidwell swore under his breath.

“So much for his best friend!”

Rawlinson came on. His eyes were riveted on Inspector Armitage’s still face. He staggered once and put out his hand blindly to save himself. It fell on the bare shoulder of a woman, who shrank from the touch. Rawlinson stopped beside the Inspector, and for a moment stood looking appealingly down on him. His lips twitched, one hand opened and closed, while the other felt for the table to steady himself. He looked as if he had not slept for days, as if he was on the verge of collapse.

In a voice as hollow as his cheeks he murmured: “You knew—I was back? May I sit down?” Without waiting for permission he dropped into the empty chair and leaned his head in his hands. “I’m —almost in. I didn’t want to see you until tomorrow. I told Blood I didn’t. . To-morrow. . . . I feel as if I might sleep to-night. I must.” His eyes glazed, but he jerked himself awake. “I was—foolish—to go.” His lips worked pitifully.

Inspector Armitage said gently: “You’d better tell us all about it now, Rawlinson. You’ll sleep better for it.”

Rawlinson turned appealing eyes on Bidwell, but the latter, looking quickly away, said nothing.

“To-morrow, Inspector, for God’s sake give me till tomorrow. I’m fighting through to-night on my nerve. I’m— cracking. I’m doing it for the boys. Blood will have to let them go if I fail him. Oh, can’t you see?” he wailed, drooping over the table.

Bidwell make a quick signal, and the room was plunged in darkness.

“Pardon,” he apologized. “People were watching.”

Rawlinson’s trembling voice continued: “I came back to—to give myself up.”

“Buster! Buster!” Bidwell turned anxiously to the Inspector. “Can’t you see he’s not himself?”

Inspector Armitage jerked an order across the table.

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“Bidwell, if you don’t keep out of this! Rawlinson, are you making a confession?”

“Yes—a confession.”

The orchestra crashed into a jazz that was scattered plentifully with the thud of tom-toms. Rawlinson cried out—his chair creaked.

“Sit down!” It was the Inspector spoke. “That’s my hand.

I want you right there for a few minutes—until the lights come on. No, not yet, Bidwell. Buster, get hold of yourself or there’ll be a panic here. Boy, you need sleep—sleep.”

“The hell I’ve been through!” Buster moaned.

“All right, Buster, all right. Tell them all about it tomorrow,” Bidwell murmured soothingly.

The lights came on. Inspector Armitage eyed the trembling man for a time in silence.

“All right. Go home and sleep. To-morrow at eleven we’ll see you at your apartment.”

They watched him grip himself to cross the floor to his place among the orchestra.

“Poor old Buster!” Bidwell’s eyes were moist. “His nerve is gone. . . . It’s decent of you not to press him to-night. But what he has to tell—He’s so sensitive—I have to handle him like a prima donna. He broods. But a confession? Of course, he hadn’t that confession to make, not dear old Buster.”

“There’s much to explain,” the Inspector declared grimly.

Now that Rawlinson was gone the official was uneasy, not a little ashamed of his pity. “And I’ve a feeling that he has something to tell us worth hearing. And now, Muldrew, let’s get out in the open air.”

159

XXV THE JEWELLERY—AND ANOTHER DEATH They wrangled about it as they walked along Markham Street, upbraiding themselves for soft-heartedness, each taking the blame, both uneasy and irritable.

“And all we can do is wait—and try to sleep,” the Inspector grumbled. “And I have a genius for doing both together—I don’t think. Muldrew, we should have pumped him to the last drop when we had him, but I couldn’t face that awful exhaustion, that trembling misery. More fool me. . . . But Buster Rawlinson is on the verge of a break-down; he might crack while we talk to him.”

Muldrew puzzled as to the cause of it. “If Rawlinson murdered Sada Corwyn I’ve got to go back to the beginning and reorganize the search. I’d hate to fall down like that. . . . But he has something important to tell us, something that has robbed him of his nerve. And I’ve a hunch that it is going to lead us to a solution of the crime. One thing—I’m staking my reputation that he loved Sada Corwyn enough to murder her.” He sighed. “I suppose I’d better be prepared for a flattener when we know the truth.”

Inspector Armitage struck away into his own street.

“Good-bye, until eleven in the morning. You’ve certainly queered any chance I had of sleep.”

At nine next morning Muldrew hurried to the office, and at that he was driven to loafing about outside for several minutes so that Inspector Armitage might not suspect how anxious he was. When he entered and looked through into the Inspector’s office he beheld his superior engaged on nothing more energetic than staring at the ceiling, his feet raised to the desk before him.

The Inspector growled over his shoulder: “Come in, come in. Longest night I ever spent. . . .

Biggest fool I ever made of myself. I’m black and blue kicking myself. Why”—he banged his feet to the floor—“we have to wait for two hours yet, two whole hours!” He leaped up and strode about the room. “No, I’m damned if I will! I’ve some routine business to attend to, then you and I’ll get this thing cleared up, 160

even if it does rob that fellow of an hour’s sleep he’s been counting on. It won’t kill him, and waiting an extra hour will drive me mad. Hang about to be ready.” He rang the bell, and the desk sergeant brought the morning routine.

It had just struck ten when the two detectives entered the revolving doors of the Burlington. As they stood in the hall the place seemed deserted, strangely still, but in a moment a woman hummed softly from the janitor’s office. Muldrew was starting toward the sound, when the Inspector stopped him with a glance.

“Come along,” he whispered. “We don’t need anyone.”

They picked their way noiselessly along the thicklyrugged hall to the elevator and, stepping in, pressed the button for the tenth floor. Emerging there, they paused beside the shaft. A greater hush than ever had fallen over the building, a heavy, brooding silence that weighed on them, held them almost literally on tiptoes, breathless and intent, eyeing each other in a puzzled, startled way. The Inspector laughed harshly.

“We’re getting silly, Muldrew. Rawlinson has passed his panic on to us. Only I can’t help thinking it’s a guilty police conscience—if there is such a thing. Baldly, we failed in our duty last night in letting him go. Lead on. This way, isn’t it?”

They hastened along the corridor and stopped before Rawlinson’s door. There they stood listening. Not a sound reached them from anywhere within the building. These great floors of rooms might have been empty for all the signs of life they heard. Abruptly the Inspector knocked—a restrained, furtive rapping that made him frown at himself. Beyond the door nothing moved. The Inspector pounded. Still no response. He thundered at the door. A scowling face appeared farther down the hall and disappeared. Twice more the two detectives attacked the door.

As they were planning drastic measures, the elevator they had left at the floor clicked sharply and began to descend. They watched it, empty, drop out of sight. The customary way of an automatic elevator, but to the two detectives there was something uncanny about it. The Inspector scowled at the closed door before them.

“Of course, he’d sleep like a log. It’ll do him good.

Bedroom door closed, too, I suppose. Poor fellow!” He took a 161

thoughtful turn along the hall and back.

The elevator was on its way up—they could hear the slight creak, the click at each floor. They turned toward it. It stopped and a weak-eyed, stoop-shouldered man got out and trotted toward them.

“Say,” he demanded truculently, “whachu think you’re doing? How’d you get here? Who d’yu want?”

The Inspector took a threatening step forward.

“If you attended to your business strangers would have no chance to walk past you as we did. Here, give me the key to this apartment.”

The janitor retreated, terrified. “Who—who are you?”

Inspector Armitage pulled back the lapel of his coat.

“Those keys, quick!”

The janitor produced a bunch of keys. “It’s—this one,” he stammered.

“Thanks. Now go back to your office. We don’t want you.”

The man fled. Muldrew inserted the key, the door opened, and they rushed in. With only a glance about the living-room they passed through to the bedroom. It was dark, the heavy blinds drawn tight. Muldrew flung one up with a snap that sent it to the top. He faced about.

Beside the bed stood Inspector Armitage, his face white and working, fists clenched. On the bed lay the lifeless body of Buster Rawlinson!

He was in his pyjamas, lying across the blankets. His head hung sickeningly over the outer edge of the bed, one limp hand drooping. Almost within touch of that pitiful white hand an automatic lay on the floor.

The two detectives said nothing, but their eyes roved over the bed and the body of the man they had let go before they had his story—his confession. A pillow was black with partly congealed blood, and a great hole gaped in the dead man’s temple. They glanced at each other, ashamed, chagrined, selfcondemning.

Into the silence broke the jangle of the telephone in the sitting-room. Muldrew went to answer it.

“Hullo!”

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A heavy voice at the other end laughed apologetically. “I think I must have the wrong number. I asked for Plymouth 2364.”

Muldrew glanced at the labelled mouthpiece. “Yes, yes, this is the number.”

“Plymouth—2364?” the voice repeated distinctly.

“I said so, Blood Bidwell. This is Mr. Rawlinson’s apartment, at the Burlington.”

A slight pause. “That’s not you, Buster?”

“This is Muldrew, of the Homocide Squad,” the detective snapped, and hung up.

They made a hasty inspection of the bedroom, of the body.

“Dead five or six hours,” the Inspector decided. “Maybe more. Look at that blood. Get the doctor, the photographer, and tell Jasper to hurry over. There’ll surely be finger-prints.”

The Inspector leaned over the body for several tense moments, then he began a round of the room, breathing heavily.

Muldrew wandered through to the living-room.

Presently he heard the Inspector make an exclamation and, hurrying back, found him with a sheet of paper in his hand.

“It was under the pillow. Stained with blood but legible enough.” He sagged into the nearest chair and began to read.

“Good God, listen to this! ‘The police know it was you murdered Sada Corwyn. They are just waiting for the final proofs. And I can give them. For I was at The Jungle that night. I can see well in the dark, and I saw you come out from the orchestra and strike her. Signed ’ ”—the Inspector whistled slowly—“‘Teddy Bear!’”

They stared at each other, bewildered and beaten.

Muldrew bit his lip. The Inspector sat drumming on the arm of his chair.

“And so lifts the veil of The Jungle crime!” He scowled at his subordinate.

Muldrew paced the room. “What I want most to know is who is Teddy Bear. This is his second letter—” “We know he planned to be at The Jungle, and he would be interested enough to watch—to be near her when she was murdered.”

“We know, too, that he was one of Sada Corwyn’s 163

lovers.”

The Inspector looked up sharply. “What of it?”

Muldrew did not reply directly. “If this explains everything, what of the other disappearances? There is every reason to suppose that none of the other three even knew of Buster Rawlinson.”

“Damn it, Muldrew, how would you explain any part of it! . . . What concerns me now is that we have to explain to a jeering public why we let Rawlinson out of our hands last night before he made his confession. . . . There is, you will notice, a slight stain of powder on his face.” He jumped up and stormed about the room.

“However we look at it, we’re in for a bad time. Let’s get into the next room. That dead face seems to accuse me.”

They passed through the curtain. Muldrew commenced to prowl. On the couch and the piano the dozen and more instruments he had seen on his visit a few nights before were now neatly arranged. He stopped before them, staring at them in a puzzled way. One by one, so deliberately that he seemed to be in a trance, he picked them up, opening each case, turning them over curiously. The Inspector looked on with a scowl.

“Used to fool a bit myself with these things,” Muldrew muttered, as he handled a saxophone. “C Melody, eh? Never tried one like this. Rawlinson must have been something of a genius.

Wonder if it handles same as an E Flat Tenor. I was only a dabbler.” He put it to his lips. It emitted only a choked squeal.

Muldrew turned it over and over. “It isn’t a bit the same. I don’t see—” Suddenly he dived a hand into the horn and withdrew a tissue-paper parcel.

Inspector Armitage hurried to him. “What is it, Muldrew?”

A curious, satisfied smile dawned on Muldrew’s face as he tore the paper away. A stream of jewellery poured into his hand!

“God! And I might have found this four days ago if I hadn’t been a dumb-bell—unless—” He carried the jewellery to the window. A sound from the door made both detectives look up. Blood Bidwell stood there, staring at the ornaments in Muldrew’s hand. He pointed.

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“I’ve seen that bracelet before!” he exclaimed, his eyes narrowing. “Yes, I remember. Sadie Harrow wore it the night she was murdered!”

165

XXVI SOME OF THE STORY But Muldrew and Inspector Armitage had already guessed it. This was the jewellery stolen by the murderer from Sada Corwyn’s body!

Bidwell came into the room, looking eagerly about.

“Where did you find it? Not here? Where’s Buster? I’ve been trying off and on for an hour to get him on the telephone. I thought he might need a friend.”

Without waiting for a reply he started for the bedroom.

The Inspector stopped him.

“You could not get Rawlinson. You’ll never get him on the ’phone again—or anywhere else. He’s dead.”

Bidwell staggered back against the piano. His heavy lips hung apart, an incredulous stare widened his eyes.

“Dead? Buster—dead?”

“Read this.” The Inspector handed the letter to Bidwell.

The latter read it through, read it again and again, his face working, as if will and reason fought. Suddenly tears welled into his eyes and he turned quickly away.

“I—I don’t—understand,” he murmured weakly.

“Isn’t it plain enough? Your friend Buster, whose innocence you proclaimed so loudly, committed suicide rather than face exposure.”

Bidwell straightened, his eyes flashing. The letter was crushed in one big fist.

“If Buster did it he had good reason. I know something of what he has suffered at the hands of that woman. She married him for nothing but to escape the old home town, to get his name, and to lay her soiled hands on his money. She brought him in return nothing but a thirst for excitement, a reckless extravagance, and a lust for men and more men. I knew her well enough in the old days for that. And when she got him she robbed him of everything he had—his money, his peace of mind, his faith in women . . . And now at the end she has robbed him of his good name. She took his money, and when he had no more to give she laughed in his face. . . . But the crowning treachery, the dirtiest thing she ever did, was to refuse to return his mother’s 166

jewellery—that you hold in your hand, I suppose. When he pleaded for it she snapped her fingers in his face.” He gritted his teeth. “Can you wonder he had to do something? Buster adored his mother; he couldn’t sit still and see her jewellery flaunted by a vixen like Sadie. If he saw but one way out, can you blame him? It avenged a terrible insult to the memory of his mother, and recovered for him the only thing left to remember her by. Buster is still my friend. But you police—oh, no, you make no allowances, do you? But Buster has fooled you. Good old Buster!

Dear old boy!”

He went on tiptoes to the bedroom and the two detectives followed. At the bedside Bidwell stood for a long time in silence, his head bowed, the pearl-grey hat he affected crushed in his hands.

“Sorry, old chap,” he murmured. “Too bad, too bad!” His voice caught. “She was never worth it . . . not even murder.” He turned to Muldrew. “The finest lad in the world, the best friend.

And Sadie was the worst of her sex.”

“Was her right name Sadie?”

Bidwell’s lip curled. “She was christened Sarah. When she grew to an age to be ambitious it became Sadie. I never knew her when it was Sada, but that would be the next step. She dragged down everyone she favoured. . . . It was because Buster refused to drag that she divorced him. This is what happened.

The Rawlinsons, too, came from our village. They were rich and respected. Buster was left well off. Foolishly he settled half his fortune on her at marriage. The rest she wheedled from him. I never saw them after they married, but back home we heard a little of the life she led him after they came to the city. . . . Buster was four years younger than she and incapable of dealing with a situation like that. Buster has told me that much.”

“Has he been with you long?”

“Not as orchestra leader. I’ve been seeing quite a bit of him for two years. . . . I was able to help him a little. Sadie left him down and out, not only penniless, but drifting. That was when I was trying to make something of ‘Tokio,’ and I remembered Buster’s wizardry with instruments. I suggested that he form an orchestra. In the half-dozen restaurants I own there is always a place for a real musician. He jumped at the idea—but he 167

refused to try it on me—wanted to make good first. He was afraid I’d keep him for friendship’s sake. Then when I started The Jungle he had his chance with me. . . . That jewellery always haunted him. He never lost track of Sadie, though after he told me everything he would seldom speak of it. But I could see it working in his mind.” Inspector Armitage's face was like a mask.

Bidwell cried out against it.

“I’m not trying to justify poor old Buster. He needs no justification with me. The world was well rid of Sadie Harrow. . . . The crime of it is that Buster saw no escape except by death.”

He touched the cold, bloodless face reverently with his fingertips; it was like a caress, Blood Bidwell’s assurance to his old friend that he was still his friend.

Muldrew said gently: “I’m trying to account for Buster’s agitation last right. If he planned to confess, why commit suicide at a threat of exposure?”

Bidwell considered it and gave it up. “Unless,” he ventured, “it was a straight case of nerves . . . remorse . . . and a pride that would not see a Rawlinson go to the electric chair.

Buster must have passed through purgatory. That hand of his, his sensitive soul, would never lose their stain.” He shivered and ran a hand inside his collar. “But I’m not going to think him guilty of anything—always he’ll be innocent to me. The Buster I knew could never commit such a crime. He was far too fine for violence. . . . What puzzles me is, if he had a confession to make, why did he withhold it from me, his best friend. He knew I’d stand by him.”

“He has had no chance to confess to you since the murder; he disappeared the next day.”

Bidwell straightened his shoulders and faced Muldrew squarely. “He had every chance, Mr. Muldrew. Buster, my friend, in these days of his concealment, was safe in one of my restaurants!”

Inspector Armitage came slowly to his feet, his thin face a thunder-cloud. “Do you stand there and admit that you hid him, that you harboured a suspect, a criminal the police were after?”

“I did not know him as a criminal. I do not know him as that even now. I did not even know him as a suspect. I had no reason to know you wanted him. Buster Rawlinson, my friend, 168

came to me for refuge, for privacy. It delighted me that he turned to me in his trouble.”

“But you knew he had orders—” “I knew nothing. At any rate, orders to him are not orders to me. If the law can punish me for what I did I must pay the penalty. I’ll admit more than that: Buster returned yesterday against my wishes. Had I been aware of it in time I would even have prevented it by force. He was half mad—” “You say he made no confession to you?”

“Absolutely none. . . . But if he had I would never have told you. I can tell you that I noticed his anxiety, his dangerous nervous condition, and I told him Sadie Harrow must never be mentioned between us. I don’t care to carry the secrets of my friends.” He faced the dead body for some time in silence. “I’m going to go on thinking Buster innocent—I don’t care what that letter says. . . . And I have certain suspicions—” “Then how did he come by that jewellery?” Muldrew demanded.

Bidwell shook his head stubbornly. “You can’t do it. I don’t try to explain. That’s your job.” He turned on them an appealing look. “Can’t you see I don’t want to think of it? Why should you persist?”

“Who is this Teddy Bear?” Muldrew recovered the crushed letter from Bidwell’s hand.

“I can’t tell you—I can’t even guess. Just a signature, maybe. He seems to have no fear the police will run him down.”

“But that,” Muldrew said grimly, “is what we intend to do.”

Three men entered, the doctor, the photographer, and the finger-print expert. And a moment later Tiger Lillie rushed in, note-book in hand. Twenty seconds later he was rushed out by the Inspector.

“I’m just the luckiest dog,” Tiger grinned, as he shot along the corridor, propelled by the Inspector’s inconsiderate hand.

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XXVII MURDER HIDE MURDER Though they tried, the police were unable to hide from the public the details of the latest incident. From the moment when Inspector Armitage started him energetically down the stairs of the Burlington Tiger Lillie was not to be found. Muldrew telephoned, he even called on Jerry Inkerley, news editor of the Star, but a news editor is difficult to convince of the wisdom of ignoring a scoop.

Buster Rawlinson, divorced husband of Sada Corwyn, was dead! Tiger Lillie, working in a closed office in the Star building, his whereabouts lost, seized it, worked it into a twocolumn story. The Evening Star that day created a sensation, contained a story that set the city humming.

For Tiger Lillie made it plain that Buster had not committed suicide!

Tiger, slumped in the chair beside Jerry Inkerley’s desk, passed a weary hand across his forehead.

“I’m in for a peck of trouble,” he wailed. “I know Inspector Armitage. And I know Gordy. They’d give their hats to make it a suicide to the public—to keep these two crimes separate. That,” he grumbled, “is the sort of newspapermen they are.”

Inkerley clapped him on the shoulder. “It’s a fine story, Tiger. It was worth more space. Now we’ve started, go to it.

Work up something more for us, something lurid and shivery.

There’s some public hair yet to raise, and The Jungle crime can be made to do it. Rout out more thrills—imagine them, if you must. Take your time—you’ve a free hand.” He crushed an exchange and tossed it on the floor. “Give ’em theories—get ’em thinking, questioning, hinting. . . . How about a dig at Major Withers? We’ve been neglecting him and Nat Corwyn. And there’s Mildred Masters. Great chance there. Yes, that’s the line—work her in. The whole city is wondering what has happened to her. Perhaps she, too, is murdered. Think of that!

Big stuff there for the Star, Tiger, and it’s up to you.”

But Tiger did not enthuse. He sat hunched miserably in his chair, his head shaking.

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“Cuts me all up to hold down, Mr. Inkerley, but I know far too much to risk writing about it. Say, I could give you pages about that murder. . . And then when the next crime came along I’d be on the outside looking in, so far as the police could fix it.

And then I’d lose my job—and a friend— because the Gazette and the Times would get the scoops. Sorry, can’t do it.” At Inkerley’s angry surprise he hurried on: “I’ve taken a desperate risk as it is. The Star will get more, of course, a lot more . . . but perhaps not for a day or two.”

“You have a theory who committed the murder?”

“Sure—several. I’m chuck full of theories. On any jury that heard the evidence I have against half a dozen or so I’d vote for conviction. But only one did it, and it’s that one I'm trying to run down before the police do foolish things.” He rose and stretched. “Yes, the Star will have some hot stuff before this case is cleared up.”

The prospect of thrilling the readers of the Star was less attractive when, on the street, a heavy hand dropped on his shoulder and Tiger wheeled to look into the hard face of Muldrew.

“I suppose that splurge of yours this afternoon added a cipher to your pay cheque?”

“On the contrary, Gordy,” Tiger replied sadly, “they threatened to fire me for telling so little of what I know.”

Muldrew held him in a clutch of iron. “What more could you tell?”

“Well—I didn’t tell everything I know about Buster. I didn’t give ’em any more than a guess that he was murdered. I didn’t say that he couldn’t have shot himself in the left temple because he isn’t left-handed, that he wouldn’t carefully arrange himself across the bed after a hole like that in his head, when the blood on the pillow showed he had been shot while lying there.

You told Inkerley about the letter, but Buster wouldn’t have left that letter to be found if he was so frightened of exposure, so proud of the Rawlinson reputation. Oh, I could have told a lot more than that. Just the same, it was a dandy idea of Teddy Bear’s. Only it didn’t fool Tiger Lillie.”

“Tiger,” Muldrew said gravely, “we were trying to hide the fact that we knew from the start that Buster Rawlinson’s 171

death was murder. By giving it away you’ve done us a nasty trick. You’re in bad with the police now. You were let in on some inside stuff because we thought we could trust you.”

Tiger bridled. “Not a word of inside stuff in that little thing to-day that I didn’t dig up for myself. I’m not in the habit of betraying confidences, and you know it. You’re sore because I saw so much. I’m sorry if it hampered you, but my first job is my newspaper. Yours seems to be professional pride. Well, I’ve some professional pride myself—and the Star gets the benefit.

You’re peeved because you’ve got nowhere in solving this Sada Corwyn murder and then a second murder on that—and connected like glue. And you don’t know how or why. Hurts, doesn’t it? You’ve spent days pottering about, and what have you accomplished? Got yourself so tangled you want me to pay for it.

You’re so mixed you’re dizzy.”

Muldrew’s face creased to a slow smile. “Why don’t you put it all in the Star, boy? You specialize in piffle.”

“Yeah! You like to look wise yourself, don’t you?

Anyway,” he added weakly, “if you’ve accomplished anything I don’t know it.”

“And not likely to—now.”

Tiger flushed with angry disappointment. “All right, I’m going out stronger than ever to beat you to it. I’ve been worried about Mac, but now he’s got away from you I’m free to show you detective fellows a thing or two. My compliments to Inspector Armitage, and tell him from me to go to hell—if you dare. From now on our paths part . . . until I hand you the murderer of Sada Corwyn. And see here, Gordy, put this in your pipe: the Star is going in for thrills. It’s going to have something every day about The Jungle crime, even if I have to use my imagination. And don’t you go away thinking for a moment that I care a cuss for your dignity. Not when it interferes with my job, anyway. So long!”

Tiger went straight to Louis Bracken’s room. Louis was absorbed in covering the trail of a murder of his own in his new thriller, and scarcely looked up. Tiger gave a snort and bounced in his chair, kicking his feet about. Louis looked pained.

“In the corner there you’ll find a steel golf club. Worry it.

And when you’ve had enough, disappear—disappear. I’m busy.”

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Tiger glared. “Huh, you are, are you? All right, I’ll go and confide in Tishy.”

“All right, you have his address.”

Tiger rushed to the corner and bit the golf club, snarling like a dog. Louis grinned and thrust his typewriter back.

“All right, go on with the story. I’m listening. What’s the trouble? The Star found you out, or is there a new law against muck-raking?”

“Gordy Muldrew and I have quarrelled!”

“And I suppose Jerry Inkerley doesn’t think it worth a column in his frivolous sheet?”

“Inkerley doesn’t know—he never will. The Star thinks I stand in with the police. That’s why I’m the white-haired boy around there. You saw my scoop in the Star this afternoon?”

Louis yawned. “I saw the Star. Your gift of imagination, Tiger—” “It wasn’t imagination, not a word of it. Rawlinson did not commit suicide.”

“Yes, I gathered that was what your thesis aimed at. So that if the police insist he did—” “They don’t.” Tiger glanced about the room and whispered: “That’s why Muldrew is so mad—I cut the ground from under his feet.”

“Brilliant brilliant!” Louis guffawed. “Greatest idea yet for getting Mac out of a hole—to make it difficult for the police to find out who really did murder Sada Corwyn!”

“But I’m not doing that. Oh, go to the hottest place, you croaker! Come on, knock off and call it a day. You and I are going to pay another friendly visit to Major Withers.”

“Looks like sponging to me. Let’s see—three visits in four days. Shall we take our bedding?”

Tiger grinned. “But since our first two failures the Major and I have become real chummy. I find him entertaining; he says so little I’m always wondering when he’ll say anything.”

“The Major has brains,” Louis declared.

“So have I. He says nothing—I hang on hoping to catch him in a garrulous moment and discover what breakfast food he prefers. Think of a front-pager on that: ‘Major Withers, murder suspect in the Sada Corwyn case, learned to talk on Corn Flakes.’

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Oh, I’m hanging on—the Boston bull to the English bull.”

“He probably sees you only as a flea,” Louis sniffed.

“Now what do you expect from the Major?”

Tiger slid to the edge of his chair and said in a low voice: “I’ve threatened Muldrew with a Jungle growth in the Star each day. The police don’t know a thing about Major Withers. I’ll tell them in the Star something about him. You’d be surprised how they rely on me for vital facts.”

“And you’ll re-lie those vital facts day after day, I suppose. I’ve often wondered why people take the Star. I see now. It’s the cheapest fiction they can buy. Two cents—” The door burst open and Tishy and Beef rushed in.

Together they started to speak, breathless and gasping: “Gone—he’s gone—skipped out!”

Tiger leaped at Tishy, who happened to be nearest, and caught him roughly by the shoulder.

“Who’s gone?”

Beef clapped a hand over Tishy’s mouth.

“I knew,” he said stiffly, “you’d never learn the truth if Tishy started to tell it. Now—do you lads want to know who murdered Sada Corwyn?”

Louis yawned. “Sada Corwyn? Who is she? Sounds like a cigarette.”

Tiger dropped into his chair and stretched out his legs.

“Why all this excitement, laddies? Didn’t we tell you who murdered her? We knew long ago. Pass on, pass on. Now, Louis, after this irrelevant interruption, to return to the dire effects of aspirin on the permanent curl of the hair of Abyssinian natives. It was Abyssinia, wasn’t it?”

“The Soudan,” Louis corrected. “On my latest visit to The jungle—” “The Jungle!” Beef seized it. “Yah, you can’t get away from it.” He threw himself on Louis, knocking him from his chair and proceeding to sit on him. “Tishy, wrench off that table leg and bat Tiger over the coco. They have to know who murdered Sada Corwyn. It’s on the books. You know who did it?” He let it fall heavily on the helpless man beneath him. “Well, forget what you knew. Because you’re wrong. Tishy and I have been at work.

We—know—who murdered—Sada Corwyn. If you don’t believe 174

it I’m prepared to sit here all night.”

“All right, you know.” Louis wriggled hopelessly, and Beef released him.

“Now listen, you fellows. Tishy, all together. Who— murdered—Sada Corwyn?”

Together they replied in a shout: “Major Withers!”

Tiger slid limply to the floor and called for water. Louis made an elaborate note on the pad before him. “For the police,” he explained. “They might like to know.” They were like that, these young men, covering their emotions in foolish chatter.

Tiger shook a solemn finger at Beef. “Honest, Beef, it knocks me out. I had all the evidence against Gordy Muldrew.

We were starting out to claim the reward. And how are you sure it was the worthy Major?”

“The Major has disappeared.”

Tiger’s face lost its bantering smirk. “You’re sure?”

“So sure,” said Tishy, “that you two owe us seventy-five cents for the taxi we took from the Iroquois to break the news to you.”

“If you’re no surer of the Major than of that seventy-five cents—” Beef elaborated: “Muldrew was there himself. He was frightfully peeved.”

“I thought he was going to search Beef’s pockets for the missing man,” Tishy added. “Beef always looks guilty.”

Tiger whooped with delight. “Keep it dark, boys. It’s worth a million to me.” He sobered. “But I’ll bet Muldrew is dirty and gives it to the Times. Just because he’s mad—” Someone knocked. A woman s voice called: “Is Mr. Lillie there?”

“All here, Mrs. Lannigan.”

“You’re wanted on the ’phone.”

Tiger rushed away to the little office under the stairs.

“Hullo, Lillie speaking! . . . Oh, hullo, Gordy. Decent of you to swallow your fury so quickly. Must be a strain on a proud man.”

Muldrew chuckled. “I never hold a spite. I always find a way to relieve it—by getting even. I suppose your two friends told you Major Withers has disappeared?”

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“They hinted at something like that. Great stuff for the Star. Now be reasonable, Gordy—” “I just thought I’d be a friend. I didn’t want you to make a bloomer in to-morrow’s paper. Major Withers has not disappeared. In fact, he has just now left me. We’re keeping him—” “Gordy, Gordy, you must join The Gang and learn to lie credibly. Yes, Major Withers is gone. Why? Because he is the murderer of Sada Corwyn, and he knew you knew it!”

To his surprise Muldrew did not seem disturbed. “All right, Tiger, have it your own way. Make a story of it. . . . Only you’ll be about six hours late. I’m telling the Times. You’ll read all about it in the morning papers.”

Tiger swore into the dead telephone.

176

XXVIII BIDWELL ASKS HELP The Times played the story big. Annoyed by the sensation caused by Tiger Lillie’s story in the previous day’s Star, their Sunday edition opened a world of conjecture to the public. There were pictures of the Iroquois Hotel, of the very room the Major had occupied, still littered with suitcases, of the head clerk in his freshest suit, of The Jungle Saturday night crowd taken by flashlight. It contained a story of how Bidwell had thrown the photographer out, but the plate had been passed to a confederate and Bidwell’s strong arm had not reached it; of how Bidwell had himself stood in the doorway prepared to land another good right on the impudent photographer, when a policeman had rushed up and saved the smaller man.

It did not tell of the snappy conversation that ensued.

“But—but,” puzzled the astonished photographer, “think of the advertising.”

“I am,” Bidwell snapped. “Get out.” He made a movement to pick up the camera. “I’m prepared to pay for what advertising I want. Get to blazes out of here! I’m sick of the whole affair.”

The policeman helped the discomfited photographer retrieve the camera and case. Bidwell turned back and slammed the door. The photographer stared after him.

“Say, what’s got into Bidwell? That picture will be worth a fortune to The Jungle. Better stick around, if you haven’t anything better to do. A pal has the plate inside. If Bidwell finds it out there’ll be another Jungle murder.”

The policeman shook his head. “I sure don’t get Bidwell.

Got a decent side we don’t often see, I guess. Now run along home. I’m here to discourage trouble.”

“A man to see you, Muldrew.” Sergeant Klein stood in the doorway of Inspector Armitage’s office.

Muldrew demanded impatiently who it was.

“Never saw him before. Seems a bit upset. Says he’s in a hurry.”

The Inspector jerked a thumb toward his subordinate’s 177

office. “Better see him.”

Muldrew had scarcely taken his seat behind his own desk when Blood Bidwell was ushered in.

“It looked,” he began, half-seriously, half-bantering, “as if I was to be denied a few moments of the time of a clever detective.”

“They didn’t recognize you, Bidwell, as the most famous host in the city. I suppose you raised prices last night at The Jungle. Another couple of weeks and you’ll be able to buy up the river-bank on both sides and make Canaan a state, that was certainly a lucky murder of yours.”

For several seconds Bidwell stared into the detective’s eyes, his face set, struggling to control his anger.

“I suppose,” he said at last, “it would waste our time to assure you that I’d forgo every cent of profit, I’d willingly lose all The Jungle cost me, to undo that awful affair.” He shuddered with a spasmodic violence strange in such a man. . . . “I’d give most of what I have to speak to Buster again.” He shook his wide shoulders as if ridding himself of an unpleasant subject. “But that is not what I came to speak about.”

“Go on.”

“You spoke just now of Canaan, my place up the river.

I’ve a large property there, Mr. Muldrew, and I’ve been careful to leave it wild as I found it, wherever possible. I never knew the joy of living until I found a spot to which I can retire at nights and wipe the city, my business, from my mind. There I can rest, apart from the world. Or I could—” Muldrew’s gaze returned from a corner of the ceiling.

“Where did you get the name Canaan?”

Bidwell smiled. “I scarcely remember. A fancy, I suppose. Someone suggested it, if I remember. . . . I don’t like it so much now—I’m thinking of altering it.”

“Land flowing with milk and honey—that it?” Bidwell admitted, not boastfully, that he lived rather well. “I have my pick of chefs, of course, with all these restaurants of mine. . . . I think I’ve earned an easy life. Sixteen hours a day of the worry of entertaining the public—you can’t guess what a strain it is. I think it merits luxury—luxury and peace. . . . It’s the peace that is threatened now. That’s why I’ve come to you. Until the last three 178

days I’ve had it—peace, I mean. Canaan is a big place, about two hundred acres—bit more—and the house is five hundred yards from a road that’s seldom used. It looked a sure thing for peace for years to come.”

“Your peace—it has been disturbed?”

Bidwell nodded. He leaned across the desk. “It’s this way.

I keep a man at the gate lodge. All along the front is an unscalable iron fence, so the only entrance is by the lodge— unless a person—Well, a person might get in, of course, though it would not be easy. Someone has managed it, at any rate. Figgis tells me he heard someone moving about in the dark inside the grounds last night and the night before. And I myself heard movement in the shrubs last night before the house. It isn’t the police, is it, Mr. Muldrew, just because of this trouble and what I did for Buster?”

Muldrew assured him it was not the police.

“I had the servants out last night to comb the grounds,” Bidwell went on, “but they found nothing, not even tracks. . . .

But Figgis and I could scarcely both be wrong.”

Muldrew considered. “This is not in my department, Bidwell. It’s a matter for the regular police until something serious happens. You’re a citizen of this city; I don’t suppose the police out there would object to the city police protecting you, if necessary. Do you keep much money about the place?”

“Sometimes I haven’t enough to pay for my gasoline.”

Bidwell laughed. . . . “Besides, I think I have every protection there is against burglars; and half a dozen husky servants who would take only too much pleasure in catching a prowler. I came to you because I don’t wish any more fuss. I’m sick of the publicity The Jungle has had. These damned newspapers! The Jungle is going to pay for itself without that. I wondered”—he hesitated—“I wondered if you’d come out yourself and take a look around the place. These night visits get on my nerves. I don’t want any more to happen.”

“You say Figgis heard this prowler?”

“He even says he saw a dim shape. I doubt that, though he would not fancy he heard a noise that wasn’t there.”

“Can you imagine what anyone would hang about Canaan for?”

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Bidwell hesitated, uncomfortable and awkward. “Well, it might be—I don’t know, but I’ve had a strange feeling—as if I was being watched. Do you think,” he asked suddenly, “this—this murderer might be after me for helping you run him down? I’ve tried to make it appear as if—” “What about Buster being the murderer?” Bidwell shook his head. “I told you he would always seem innocent to me.

And that article in the Star proves I was right. Buster himself was murdered. That letter was a trick.”

Muldrew made no comment and Bidwell continued: “That’s what makes me a trifle more anxious. Perhaps Buster knew who committed the murder, and that was what he was going to confess. But the murderer got ahead of him and you.

He may have heard us discussing it that night at The Jungle. I don’t think I’m a coward, but those two murders are so mysterious. A man hasn’t any chance to protect himself against a thing like that. Of course, you may think I’m foolish.

Perhaps I am. . . . I’ve been wondering if this fellow we heard out at Canaan may not be a reporter, one of those newspaper fellows. There’s that Lillie I’ve never been clear about him.

Say, if I caught one of those chaps out there!” His eyes flashed. “If the fellow planned to rob the house he’d be more careful. But the noise he makes seems so unnecessary sometimes. . . . Tell me, would I have a right to shoot on my own property?”

“You’d better consult your lawyer about that.” Muldrew rose to end the interview. Bidwell accepted the hint immediately.

“My advice, Bidwell, is not to shoot. . . . Very well, I’ll send someone out—perhaps to-night . . . or I may go myself.”

Blood Bidwell’s face lit up. “Thanks! That suits me.” At the door he turned. “By the way, that Withers chap has disappeared, has he not? Funny, isn’t it? They can’t all have the murder on their consciences.”

“Lots of murderers disappear,” Muldrew replied. When Bidwell was gone Muldrew strolled into the Inspector’s office.

“I’m getting into society, Inspector. Blood Bidwell has invited me out to Canaan.”

“Can you take a friend? My wife would like—” “He’s very exclusive. I haven’t the nerve.”

180

XXIX CANAAN Canaan, Blood Bidwell’s property a dozen miles up the river, was a rich man’s folly, one of those amazing sink-holes so popular with the rich, into which a fortune can be thrown with no visible results except in the blather of street-corner Communists.

One of the most scarlet offences of the rich is their extravagance on toys to flaunt in the eyes of the less fortunate, sop to their struggle for superiority, persistent reminder of their opulence ubiquitous evidence of the demoralization of money.

Race-horses or yachts, thoroughbred farms, or even philanthropy, it’s all the same. The underlying, the driving force is the same.

Our cities are ringed with magnificent estates—“Farms” they love to call them, that can never add an atom to the world’s knowledge of farming or to their owner’s comfort. They feed no craving, but love of display, a qualification for the Sunday papers. The cost of a Jersey calf raised on such a farm, of a bushel of wheat, of the house lighting, the sanitation, the driveway, the front park, of the working staff, would make the profits of any half-dozen ordinary farmers look like the Sunday collection of a Scotch miser.

But Blood Bidwell was not one of these feverish wealthy.

Canaan was not a show-place, it was not a farm; it was on a road seldom travelled, the main road, the “rich estates,” being on the opposite side of the river and the wide valley that edged it.

Gordon Muldrew, scudding along the unfrequented road, brooded over those distant estates. The Inspector had seen him start, had grinned.

“And when you come back you’ll turn up your nose at the old man and maybe put window-boxes around the police station.

But if you get the chance, bring back some of the milk and honey.”

For the first six miles the way to Canaan was ugly, with the repellent ugliness of struggling factories built on inadequate funds and surrounded by the unsightly houses of foreign workmen inadequately paid. Beyond lay miles more of flat, swampy land unsuitable for building of any pretensions. It was this doorway to Canaan that had left that side of the river to go 181

wild. And Bidwell had stepped in and bought up almost all that was capable of being fitted for the sort of place he had in mind.

The early miles did not trouble him. Travelling them shortly after midnight, as he usually did, when they were cloaked in darkness, returning in late forenoon too busy with the day’s plans to notice, he scarcely realized what lay about the speeding car.

But after a time the road skirted closer to the river, dodging in and out of the trees which made one side a thick bush, the other an irregular curtain through which gleamed at intervals the water and, beyond the river, the beautiful homes of others of the city’s wealthy. There the beauties of a secretive countryside, of untamed woods, amply repaid the wanderer who braved that first stretch of unsightliness.

Muldrew succumbed to it, marvelling that Blood Bidwell was the one, of all men, who alone seemed to appreciate it. Then, in the distance, above the tall weeds beside the road, against the black background of a forest, appeared the eight-foot iron fence surrounding Canaan. Three hundred yards farther he pulled up before the great iron gates and pressed the horn.

In answer a huge, broad-shouldered man, sleeves rolled above his elbows, revealing a pair of ape-like arms, emerged from the stone-pillared porch of a quaint lodge and stood, arms akimbo, peering beneath heavy brows through the great gates.

Motionless, grotesque as one of those foolish gnomes that litter German gardens, he remained in that position. Muldrew could almost hear his mental machinery creak. He laughed.

“Taking no chances, Figgis, eh? Well, think it over. I’m in no hurry.”

Something seemed to click in the clumsy brain, for the man descended the stone steps with a brisk movement and, swaying like a bear walking erect, came to the gate and stared through, for all the world, Muldrew thought, like an animal in a zoo.

“And who may you be?”

Muldrew almost felt in his pockets for something edible to toss to the creature. The voice was low and hoarse and toneless, the hands that gripped the bars were brown and hairy.

“Didn’t Mr. Bidwell tell you I was coming? I’m a friend.”

Figgis’s eyes squinted. “Not all them as calls themselves 182

friends is.”

Muldrew wondered what the password was. “I suppose you have a telephone? Why don’t you call your master up? Tell him Gordon Muldrew is here. In the meantime I’m comfortable.

But, tell me, should I turn the engine off?”

Figgis was unmoved. “If you’re that detective man—” “You’ve guessed it, Figgis. I’m the one.”

“Then why didn’t you say so at first?”

Without opening the gate he climbed the lodge steps and pressed a button in the wall of the lodge. A moment’s pause, and at a tinkle from somewhere inside the building he faced about and returned to the gate, fumbling in his pocket to produce an enormous key. This he inserted in the lock and slowly and laboriously turned it. The gates swung open.

Muldrew shot through. Figgis watched him go.

“Steady on, there!”

Muldrew brought the car to a sudden halt not two feet from a heavy chain that stretched across the drive-way between thick stone posts. Behind him he could hear Figgis taking his time relocking the gate. Presently he lounged up beside the car.

“Good you didn’t try no monkey-tricks with that chain.

It’s got some points a tire ain’t got much chance against.” With a second key he unfastened a padlock and allowed the chain to drop to the gravel drive.

Muldrew had turned off his engine. He looked interestedly about.

“Is Mr. Bidwell afraid someone will smash the gate and steal the house?”

“Mr. Bidwell ain’t got nothin’ to do with that chain. My idea.”

Figgis swayed back to the car and leaned his hairy arms on the ledge of the open window.

“I got my job here, mister, and I’m doin’ it—mostly my own way. Boss knows he can leave it to Figgis.”

His voice, rumbling as a bear’s, was not unfriendly.

Muldrew saw that his lonely life at the lodge made anyone welcome who would stop and talk.

“A responsible job, too,” Muldrew said. “Mr. Bidwell has spoken of you. He says if anyone can get hold of this fellow 183

that’s prying about here at midnight it will be you.”

Figgis shifted his face sufficiently for a gush of tobacco juice that narrowly missed the running-board.

“Midnight nothin’! It was just gone dark both times I heard the guy. Gum-shoein’, he was. And quiet? Say, that boy must walk on his hands sometimes, he’s that quiet. And then again he seems to crash through everything. More’n once I just about had my hands on him, and then he wasn’t there at all. It wasn’t natural. Sort o’ made me creepy-like. I ain’t skeered o’ anythin’ livin’, I ain’t, but this—” He spat again.

Muldrew spat through the opposite window; he wished to be friendly.

“You’ll get him yet, Figgis.”

“If he’s human I will,” said Figgis, with a wide grin that exposed a double row of firm but black teeth. “I got traps out now,” he whispered, leaning through the window.

Muldrew shook his head. “That’s dangerous. It’s against the law, too. If you break a leg or something—” “It won’t break no legs. Boss says none o’ that. Won’t even let me have a gun, he won’t. I don’t see what he’s so easy for. All I done is stretch strings between trees, with bells and old tins and things so they’ll make a noise. I guess nobody can go snoopin’ around Canaan now without flyin’.”

Muldrew beamed his admiration. “That’s fine. A bright idea. Let’s see these traps, Figgis.”

“Come along. Only take you a minute. There ain’t no hurry for the house.”

The two passed into the shrubbery. In a few minutes they were back.

“That ought to get them, Figgis. By the way, keep them right there. I may want to come out some night and take a look around in the dark.” He looked the man over admiringly. “And if you get the fellow you’ll sure be able to handle him, eh?”

“I’ll say so. How about this?” Figgis’s long arms shot out and encircled the detective. Muldrew did not move. “I don’t need no help once I get these arms on a guy—” He leaped and, falling backward, lay on his back, his great legs pawing the air.

“Sa-ay, boss, howja do that?”

184

Muldrew caught an arm and hauled him to his feet.

“A trick you should learn, Figgis—trick and a bit of muscle. Jiu-jitsu, they call it.”

Figgis looked down discontentedly on his hairy arms. “I got the muscle, but if I’d hung on something would ’a’ broke.

That Jew stuff beat me. Always did hate them. That’s circus stuff, that is . . . and I don’t remember no Jews in circuses.”

Muldrew laughed. “There isn’t much they can’t do, Figgis.” He climbed into the car. As he pressed the self-starter a figure loomed at the curve of the drive ahead. Figgis saw it.

“The boss!” he whispered.

Bidwell hurried nearer, eyeing Figgis inquiringly.

“It’s you, Mr. Muldrew? I scarcely expected you so soon.

But it’s all right. Come up to the house.” His eye fell on the chain. “One of Figgis’s precautions.” He laughed.

“He’s been showing me others. They ought to serve.”

Bidwell chuckled and poked Figgis in the ribs with a playful energy that made the man stagger.

“Figgis wanted to carry a gun, but I vetoed that. That prowler has to do something worse than poke about among the trees before I’ll face an inquest for him.” He stepped in beside Muldrew. “With half a dozen like Figgis about the place I shouldn’t worry.”

Dusk was falling softly. In among the trees the shadows deepened; the more open lawn on their left lay like a velvet carpet among the ornamental shrubs. A late robin sang from a spruce-top, and somewhere deep in the forest a wood-thrush warbled his flute-like notes. The two birds only accentuated the peace.

Muldrew drew the car to a crawl. “Wonderful! This is heaven after the city.”

His companion's face lighted up. “I knew you’d like it. I don’t have many friends . . . and the few I have are chosen by their feeling for this. I’ve been almost happy here—happier than I thought I ever could be. . . . And then that awful affair at The Jungle.” He laughed awkwardly. “I can’t seem to get it off my mind. Out here, with all this solitude and beauty, it haunts me worse. . . . I’m thinking of closing The Jungle. Perhaps Canaan will look sweeter then.” He let his eyes wander fondly over the 185

scene.

Muldrew brought his thoughts back to the purpose of his visit. “This stranger you’ve heard—I suppose he helps to spoil Canaan for you?”

“I don’t know.” Bidwell laughed shamefacedly. “That’s the funny part of it—the thing that happened in the city haunts me out here; the prowler sneaking about Canaan bothers me more when I’m in the city. Out here it doesn’t seem possible that anyone can trouble me. . . . Indeed, I have to confess that I sometimes think Figgis and I must have imagined the interloper.

Figgis is stupid—you’d see that. But it won’t do any harm for you to look about. I can’t tell you how I appreciate your coming yourself. . . . I won’t say I’m not a bit proud to show you my place. There!”

The shrubbery cloaking the drive-way had suddenly opened. Before him Muldrew saw, dim in detail in the fading light, a curious structure of ungainly proportions and design. In front a low, two-storied building of great area, and behind, connected by a covered passage, a more pretentious house of three stories extending into the trees that rose at the back like a solid curtain. . . Bidwell, a smile on his face, watched his companion eagerly.

“Modest, you think, eh? That front part not much, eh?

And that behind is the servants’ quarters. The stables are around the curve, among the trees. I keep two riding-horses, though I never ride outside the grounds. I find riding keeps my weight down and my liver clear.”

Muldrew stopped the car and sat looking about.

“Two hundred acres, you say?”

“Two hundred and twenty-seven, to be exact. Half a mile deep and almost three-quarters of a mile across the front. All this back part I’ve left as it was. Except from the riding trail I’ve scarcely seen it myself. I like to remember that there’s something fresh and unbroken before me.” He started to get out. “Come and look in on my staff; they’ll be eating now. I’d like an outsider to size them up. Myself I think they’re pretty fair. This way.”

He led around the corner of the building, the servants’ quarters, though connected by a covered passage to his own part, was a separate building, plain but substantial, with few and small 186

windows and a high, peaked roof. A row of windows on the ground floor was alight. Bidwell paused before the door.

“The stables are that way, and the garage. Every member of my staff has a car. I have to keep a new Lincoln all the time to hold my place, and I’m always afraid my butler will turn up with a Rolls-Royce.” He chuckled. “You’ll see what an ambitious lot they are. Trouble is, I pay them too well.”

He threw open the door. Muldrew looked into an immense room, down the centre of which extended a long table laid for a meal. About the table, large enough for three times their number, sat, widely spaced, five men and four women. A brave assortment of able-bodied men they were. At the head of the table, largest of them all, a man rose at their entrance, scowling across the room. Seeing who it was, he sat down with a promptness almost insulting. At the foot, her back to the door, a grey-haired woman, very prim and severe, swung about. She gave no sign that she recognized her master. Bidwell ran his eye over them coldly. After a minute of utter silence he withdrew, closing the door behind him.

“Not a bad lot,” he commented. “Stormer—that’s the butler—he sat at the other end of the table—he’s a jewel. Sullenmannered and all that, but he’d die for me. Mrs. James, the housekeeper, rules the maids with an iron hand. Things run smoothly enough. In many ways I know how lucky I am, Mr. Muldrew.”

They returned to the front, where a circular, open porch with tremendous stone pillars covered the front door. As they climbed the steps Bidwell reached to a pillar and pressed a button. At the top he turned and with a boyish smile lifted a hand for silence.

“See how peaceful it is? Not a sound, but now and then from across the river. . . . And now the inside.”

He took a key from his pocket in a leisurely way, inserted it, and slowly pushed the door open.

Muldrew, curiously eager, stepped inside. What, he wondered, would be revealed in that strange house? What was this rough fellow’s taste? Was the standard of his staff a fair criterion? He believed not.

As he stepped through the doorway he fancied a 187

movement deep in the shadows at the rear. Instinctively he looked away. Bidwell must have noticed it, for he laughed a little foolishly.

“Of course, I don’t live quite alone . . . though I’m not married.”

Muldrew understood. What he did not understand was that Bidwell’s companion had not taken warning from the bell he pressed as he climbed the front steps.

The room they entered was more than a hall. It was arranged as a cosy lounging-room, with deep-piled Oriental rugs, tremendous easy-chairs, and a great stone fire-place, with a fire now burning brightly behind an intricate iron grill. The walls, finished in a ruddy brown tone, were bare in the upper half save for a large piece of tapestry on each side of the entrance. The lower half was heavily panelled in some rich red wood. Muldrew longed to throw himself in one of those easy-chairs beside the grate and take out his pipe—it was that sort of room.

A servant, still adjusting his livery, came hurrying through a door at the far end and, without appearing to see them, added a log to the fire. Still they stood, Muldrew waiting to be invited to sit down. But presently Bidwell approached a door on the left and threw it open, standing aside with an enigmatic smile on his lips. Muldrew passed through.

So striking was the change of scene that the detective murmured his surprise. At first sight cold and formal, the room, even as he stood, seemed to reach out and take friendly hold of him, whispering a welcome. In here, as in the outer room, the light was soft, but Muldrew realized, inexperienced as he was in modern decoration, that Bidwell had done a big, a strikingly effective thing.

The walls were of shaded cream, lightening toward the ceiling, with a sheen like silk, but softer and finer. On each wall were two etchings and nothing more except a single, old gilded sconce. Against the deepening tone of the walls the furniture projected itself into the room, each piece claiming attention, each worthy of it. All mahogany, it added the warmth and depth the room required, the plainness and perfect proportions of each piece restful and attractive.

Along the walls at both ends extended book-cases to 188

within two feet of the corners, the remaining space being filled with inviting wall seats piled with cushions. Straight ahead of Muldrew stood a huge mahogany desk with a closed back. Desk and table combined, it dominated the room. Facing the door, the chair on the far side seemed even when empty to be the heart of the room. Six feet behind it, angling slightly out from the wall, was a tall mahogany cabinet through whose glass front showed a neatly-arranged array of special bric-a-brac.

“I like it.” Muldrew scarcely knew he spoke. The silent appeal of the man at his side had reached him.

Bidwell laughed like a boy. “I wanted to know what you thought. I sort of felt you’d be honest. My friends—I never know if they’re just saying what they know I want. Won’t you sit down? There. That’s a chair I recommend.” He pointed to a chair near the desk, facing across it the swivel desk-chair. “I always sit here.” He walked around the desk and sat down. Opening a drawer, he shoved forward a box of cigars.

Muldrew shook his head. “Never smoke them. I wish I did,” he added regretfully. “I bet they’re good.” Before Bidwell could substitute a box of cigarettes Muldrew had his own case out.

Bidwell lit one of the cigars. “I have these put up specially. It helps to fool me into thinking they’re good.” He dropped the match into a mahogany stand at his side and, as Muldrew hesitated with his own match, pointed to a similar piece of furniture beyond the desk. “Drop it there. . . . Had those stands made on my own design. I hate the untidiness of ash-trays.”

For half an hour they talked and smoked, Muldrew frankly admiring his host’s cigarettes. His daily limit of five was a strain he had not felt for years. Not a word did either utter of the purpose of his visit. As he rose to go he remembered.

“I don’t see that I can do anything about that prowler, Bidwell. There would be little difficulty getting in, and there is too much territory to run him down unless you get on his trail by hearing or seeing him. I can’t imagine why—” Bidwell grinned in a confused way. “It always looks silly to me when I’m out here. There’s really nothing of value he can hope to get away with, and I can trust my staff to protect the place. But Buster’s death has alarmed me. I don’t see why his 189

murderer—and Sadie Harrow’s—should be after me—and probably it’s only my nerves. I can’t get that scream out of my ears. I’m awfully glad you came. I’d like you to feel that I'd be delighted to see you any time I’m home. . . . If I thought I might call on you in an emergency—if this fellow gets too impudent—it would make me feel better.”

“Certainly. It doesn’t do to neglect these little precautions.

Well, good-bye. Thanks for a pleasant break in a dull round of prying of my own. Sometimes I get fed up. You’re lucky to be able to get out here and forget the city.”

Bidwell beamed. Reaching under the desk before him, a distant bell rang. When they came out into the hall the butler was waiting at the door, stiff and formal.

As Muldrew turned to take his leave, Bidwell moved up beside him.

“I’ll run down to the lodge with you. . . . I’ll give Figgis orders to let you in any time.”

190

XXX A NIGHT PROWLER Emerging into the night, they stood in the wide doorway.

An ornamental iron lantern in the centre of the arched porch shut the semi-circle from the darkness beyond. Bidwell reached inside the door and turned the light off and, moving to the outer edge of the porch, waited for Muldrew to join him. Without speaking he pointed.

The night had closed round them, a soft, limpid darkness like a thin veil. The lawn before them was dimly spotted with shade trees and shrubbery. Over all hung a sky of brilliant stars.

But as their eyes became accustomed to the darkness it thinned and the full beauty of the night fell over them. It was very still, with no whisper of breeze. The lawn crept gently toward them. A hundred yards of dotted grass, and beyond that, toward the road, a curtain of growth that hid the lodge and the road. But out over it, across the road, rose the narrow line of elms that margined the river, through which peeped the lights of distant estates. From the travelled road across the river came the honk of a horn, the indolent barking of a dog.

Muldrew lost track of time. He was startled when Bidwell, at his elbow, chuckled.

“It got you, didn’t it? You don’t know how this evening delights me. The view from the balcony over the porch is grand.

Next time I’ll take you up there. . . . Sort of soothes a fellow’s conscience, this.”

“A daily taste of this,” said Muldrew fervently, “should make it unnecessary to soothe any conscience.”

With gentle touch Bidwell guided Muldrew to his car. On the incline Muldrew shut off the engine and coasted silently toward the gate. Neither spoke. Muldrew had not turned on the lights, hating to blot out the beauties of the night. Like a ghost they glided, scarcely making a sound on the firm track.

Muldrew became aware of Bidwell at his side leaning anxiously forward.

“Why—where’s Figgis?” They were nearing the gate.

“He should have—” With a quick flip of his thumb Muldrew switched on the 191

headlights. At the same instant, from the trees on their left came a sudden clatter of tins and the jangle of a bell. Muldrew had no more than grasped its meaning when Bidwell, without waiting for the car to stop, leaped out. The detective brought the car to a halt and himself climbed out. Bidwell was crouched close to the car, staring toward the alarm.

“Figgis—Figgis!” he shouted, his heavy voice booming into the night.

From the trees the reply came quickly—a great volley of coarse oaths. A few moments later Figgis stumbled up to them.

“Damn them traps! If I hadn’t tripped on one myself I’d ’a’ nabbed him.” He leaned over to brush his knees, grunting curses.

Bidwell brought him erect with a slap on the shoulder.

“You mean—you really heard someone— this time?”

“Sure I did. Ain’t I told you there’s someone most every night? I heard him plain as I hear you. He was crawlin’ along beside the lilacs near the lodge. Next I hears he was over there. I off after him. I bin trailin’ him for ten minutes, I have.”

With a growl like a wild animal’s Bidwell dashed away in the direction Figgis pointed. The two left behind stared at each other in the light of the car lamps. Figgis jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

“Him, he’s all worked up, he is. Never seen him like that before. And, say, if ever he lays hands on that guy—” A roar of mingled fury and triumph from the trees seemed to indicate that Bidwell considered the chances good of laying hands on the guy. Muldrew and Figgis called out and started away to help.

“Head him off there! Get him! There—over that way!”

Muldrew dived away from his companion, twisted sharply to the left—back around a tree—off at another tangent to the shadow of a shrub. There he stood listening. Not ten feet away the bushes rustled softly. Muldrew crept toward the sound. . . .

Twenty minutes later they stood panting beside the car.

Two of them empty-handed, boiling with anger and chagrin.

Muldrew, apparently no more successful, smiled into the darkness.

Bidwell growled: “Then there is someone.”

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“You were sure enough of it to get me to come out,” Muldrew reminded him, climbing into the car.

“I thought maybe—Well, there’s no mistake now.”

Bidwell laughed abruptly. “Oh, well, what does it matter? The only thing the fellow can do is annoy me. I’ll tack a notice on the gate—and it’s God’s truth—that I never have more than twenty dollars on the place. . . . He takes a mighty big risk for that,” he ended grimly.

Muldrew shrugged. “Maybe just some homeless wanderer looking for a place to roost—or an admirer of one of your pretty maids.”

Bidwell shook his head. “I’ve a man for every girl on the place. Except old Mrs. James. I always treat my employees considerately. . . . Well,” he added lightly, “it has given me my daily dozen. We’ve had some excitement as a send-off for a prized guest. But, really, it isn’t worth the time of a busy detective.” He leaned companionably through the open window as Muldrew started the engine. “Forget all about this little scare, Mr. Muldrew. Just remember that you’ve had a change from the noise and dust of the city. And any time you want another, telephone me. I could get off almost any night.”

Muldrew settled into the seat. “Thanks, Blood. And if you need us we’ll be glad to do what we can. That’s what the police are for.”

He shifted the lever, but Bidwell did not move.

“Funny, isn’t it,” he commented, “how that nasty affair at The Jungle has altered my relations with the police? I used to think of them as my enemies—they never had much sympathy with my schemes—but I find you’re not a bad lot, after all.” He laughed in his boyish way and stepped back. “Keep Canaan in mind when you want to relax,” he called after the slowly-moving car.

Figgis had released the chain, but the gate remained locked. As he passed the car on his way to the gate he paused, a wide grin on his face.

“You missed a nice evening of sport, us not gettin’ that guy.” As Muldrew slid out on the road, Figgis grunted: “I’ll get him yet, I will.”

“Lord, I hope not,” Muldrew muttered into the night as he 193

picked up speed.

At the edge of Bidwell’s property a sudden swish in the dry grass at the side of the road brought his foot down hard on the brake. As the car slowed, two figures leaped from the ditch and swarmed over the low stone fence beyond Canaan. Muldrew chuckled.

“It’s a long way back to town,” he called. “I’ve an empty seat.”

The answer came in the shape of a heavy stone striking the road before him. Muldrew stepped on the accelerator.

“I wonder,” he muttered, “if that stone fell where it was aimed.”

194

XXXI AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR On occasion Gordon Muldrew was a heavy sleeper. In his own bed, with a night of clear sleep before him, only the unusual reached his understanding. Or the sound he ever listened for. That sound was the telephone on the table at the side of his bed. It had been installed by his superior, but it was seldom used for the purpose the Inspector always had before him.

On the night of the day following his visit to Canaan Muldrew, weary and disappointed after a fruitless day, undressed quickly and promptly fell asleep. In the midst of a dream of a successful end to the chase the telephone rang. Still muzzy with sleep, he reached out and drew the instrument to him, “Hullo!” No need to be wide awake for that.

A boy’s voice replied, the impudent twang of the street arab, more impudent because of the safety of distance. Yet underneath ran a current of excitement.

“Say, you Mr. Muldrew?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, tha’s a guy out here wants to see you.”

“Who are you, and where are you speaking from?” He was wide awake now, every sense on the alert.

“Wait. That’s coming. He says, this guy does, he’s going right over to your place. He’s out here in a car—a bit looney, strikes me—and he says to tell you he’ll be there in five minutes.”

“Why doesn’t he telephone himself?”

“He says—And, say, you’re to gimme fi’ dollars.”

“That’s interesting. Now, what does he say?”

“He says for you to have your door open for him.”

Muldrew stifled his excitement. “Why doesn’t he do his own telephoning?”

The boy giggled. “Say, you wait till you lay blinkers on him. He’s a sight for sore eyes, he is. Lunatic, or I’m a cop.

Anyway, you’re to gimme fi’ dollars. And you’re to gimme a word to take back so he’ll know I’m not double-crossing him, and so he’ll know you’ll be ready when he comes. I was to say ‘Withers’ to you.”

195

Muldrew gripped the telephone more tightly. “Say that again.” “‘Withers,’ that’s what I’m to say. I’d say it a billion times for fi’ dollars. Now what am I to say to him?”

Muldrew hesitated only a moment. “Say ‘Janet.’ And come along to-morrow morning for the money.” “‘Janet,’ ‘Janet.’ ” The boy chuckled. “Might ’a’ knowed it was a skirt.—Oh, us boys is all the same, eh? ‘Janet.’ ‘Jan—’” He hung up.

Muldrew threw on a dressing-gown and crept down to the door, electric torch in hand. In the pocket of the gown lay his gun. His watch told him the time was half-past one. The sounds of the city had died down after the theatre crowds and were reviving to the homeward trend of the late restaurant patrons. A sound of roistering reached him from down the street as he stood in the front hall with the door ajar.

A light blue sedan slid along the opposite side of the street, turned and came back. Muldrew widened the opening in the door and shot a quick flash across the pavement. A late pedestrian hurried past. The sedan had pulled up and stood, apparently, unoccupied. Muldrew, retired out of the line of the door, waited.

Suddenly the door of the car jerked open and a pyjamaclad figure leaped out and raced up the steps. Muldrew, gun in hand, watched every movement.

Within the shadow of the open door the visitor whispered: “You there, Mr. Muldrew?”

“Major Withers!” Muldrew came close, the ray of his torch passing swiftly over the strangely-clad man in the doorway.

“Come this way.”

Noiselessly Muldrew picked his way up the stairs. At his back Major Withers’s bare feet made no sound. Inside his room Muldrew closed the door and snapped on the light.

Major Withers was a strange sight. The pyjamas were disguising enough, but in addition the man’s face was haggard and drawn. Yet back of those marks of recent and prolonged strain the look of resolution and self-confidence had not faded.

With a sigh he sank into a chair. As Muldrew continued to stare, the grave, thin face broke into a smile.

196

“One thing I can commend your country for, Mr. Muldrew—it hates a dull moment.”

Muldrew shoved across the table a package of cigarettes.

“Try one. You look as if you’d enjoy it.”

The Major seized one and lit it feverishly, straining to steady the hand that held the match.

“Enjoy it? Um-m-m!” He removed it from his lips and regarded it with an amused twinkle. “Cheap brand, too . . . and I’ve been smoking something special for the last three days.

Pampered, in fact . . . that way. Yet I feel like a new man with this between my lips. After all, it isn’t the cigarette so much as the surroundings.”

He puffed hard, inhaling luxuriously. Muldrew said nothing. A whimsical twist gathered about his guest’s eyes.

“You don’t arrest me, Mr. Muldrew. . . . And the police want me more than ever.”

“You ran away, Major, when you knew we wanted you— not to.”

“How do you know I went willingly?”

“Kidnapping in gross lots hasn’t yet developed among us.

There were five of you.”

Major Withers tapped the ash from his cigarette thoughtfully “Yes. . . . I went willingly . . . and I’m going back where I came from. Two crimes there. Then, within the hour I waylaid a car on a lonely road, threw the driver into the ditch, and stole his nice blue Chrysler. Robbery with violence. Also, I appear in indecent garb for the public eye.”

“And yet,” Muldrew mused, “you feel certain I won’t arrest you.”

“I’m not a betting man, but somewhere in the clothes I wish I had are a few pounds to bet you won’t . . . when I’ve told my story.” He lit a second cigarette and lay back. “Fact is, I’ve been spending my time in good company. Well, not exactly in it but near it. I’ve been with Janet Doyle.”

Muldrew smoked calmly on. “The police,” he admitted, “were getting a little anxious. After Buster Rawlinson’s murder—” Major Withers leaped to his feet in a single movement.

“Rawlinson murdered? Wasn’t that the leader of The Jungle 197

orchestra?”

“And Sada Corwyn’s divorced husband. . . . Also, we found her jewellery in his rooms.”

“And yet”—the Major nodded thoughtfully—“we’re rather satisfied that Rawlinson did not murder her. . . . And the same hand murdered them both. So, you see, it couldn’t have been me.”

“I don’t follow, but go on.”

The Major seemed not to hear. “Yet I could have murdered her. I hated her as I never hated a snake . . . as a man hates the woman who has ruined his best friend and then driven him to suicide. Napier Comstock was my best friend. I returned with him from England for no other purpose than to get between him and Sada Corwyn. I was too late to save him. And so I set out to break her heart. . . . But someone with less patience forestalled me.”

Muldrew nodded thoughtfully. “There was always a chance that you had gone the same way as Rawlinson. There were so many things I failed to understand until the last two or three days. Even now I’m working against time. The murderer of Sada Corwyn, whoever he is, is a brute at large—a cunning brute.”

The Major started about the room, smoking nervously.

“Let me walk. I can tell you my story in five minutes. I must, for I have to hurry back. . . .”

It was three times five minutes before the Major’s story was told, and even then more than one hiatus remained.

“I never planned to murder Sada Corwyn,” he said, as he prepared to go. “That end was much too good for her. And now I must take care of myself. . . . And in these clothes! as our newspaper friend once said under interesting circumstances. I might almost look back on this evening with pleasure if a pair of trousers went with it. But I suppose I must take things as they are. . . . It’s your turn now to face a problem. You can’t have any idea how lighthearted I feel shifting the responsibility. I wish I could give you something more definite to work on. . . . Of course, you may think this another attempt to mislead you. If you think that, at least you must give me credit for imagination. It’s a good story, don’t you think?”

198

“Suppose,” said Muldrew, after a moment’s consideration, “suppose I disbelieve your story, what do you propose to do?”

Major Withers tapped his thin chin. “I’ve had that in mind. If you disbelieve me, why . . . there’ll be another murder, perhaps three.” He moved toward the door, adjusting the shoulders of his pyjamas. I can’t think of any prospect brighter than remaining to smoke another of those cheap cigarettes.

You’re not uncompanionable, Mr. Muldrew.”

“One moment.” Muldrew went to a drawer and took from it a small automatic. You may find this useful.”

The Major bowed, plainly surprised. “An AngloAmerican entente. . . . I confess I prefer it to the one-sided Anglo-French.”

Muldrew opened the door and peered into the hall. As he turned back he smiled sheepishly. “Your story makes me suspicious even of my own room. And now, if you’ll avoid that second step we may get you out without rousing Mrs. Crosby.

My off hours are busy convincing my landlady that I’m respectable.”

They stood for a moment in the darkness of the lower hall. Muldrew’s hand lay lightly on the Major’s arm.

“Every bit of good luck to you, Major. I prefer my task to yours.”

“You must meet Janet Doyle under other conditions,” was the Majors crisp reply.

The streets were almost deserted as they emerged into the lighter shadow of the doorway. At the foot of the steps the light-blue sedan hugged up against the curb. Major Withers, after a glance up and down the street and a tug at his pyjama legs, dashed across the sidewalk and opened the car door.

“Cheerio!” he called back, and closed the door. As the car shot out into the roadway Muldrew returned to the hall.

He did not hear the stifled cry that came from the interior of the car as it faltered, swayed crazily, then spun up the street at a dangerous pace.

199

XXXII A BLOW IN THE DARK Slowly and heavily Muldrew climbed the stairs, so absent-minded that he forgot the second top step and its tell-tale creak. A door at the end of the hall opened and the light over the detective’s head flashed out. A peevish voice demanded why he was wandering all over the place all night long. “I heard your telephone, too,” accusingly.

Muldrew smiled soothingly. “So did I, Mrs. Crosby. It wakened me so I can’t sleep. I was down trying a little fresh air. I feel better now.”

The woman grunted. “Fresh air! And all your windows open day and night!”

“Good night, Mrs. Crosby. You’ll be more forgiving in the morning.”

He closed himself in with his problem.

Turning off the light, he lay on the bed, his hands clasped beneath his head, staring into the darkness. Remarkable man, Major Withers. Incredible sort of fellow. Believe his story or not.

If it was false, he had nerve beyond even what Muldrew had given him credit for. To bring such a story in such garb to the police of a strange country was surely the plan of a fool or a daredevil. And Major Withers was certainly not a fool. . . . If his story was true—God! And all the time he, Muldrew, had been straining to unearth exactly such a story as that. His task now—” The telephone beside his bed tinkled, making him leap with something like fright. With the movement he had the instrument to his ear. His hands were trembling.

“Is that Mr. Muldrew?”

“Yes . . . Bidwell.”

“I must see you immediately—I must. May I come right over? I’m at The Jungle. We’re just closing.”

“Won’t it keep till to-morrow?” Muldrew yawned.

“I’m sorry, but it most decidedly won’t. You won’t feel you’ve wasted your time when you hear what I have to tell you.”

For a moment Muldrew did not reply, then grudgingly: “All right, come along. Don’t ring the bell—I’ll be at the door.”

A few seconds later he twisted a number from the 200

telephone dial. As he waited for a reply his eyes glittered with excitement.

“That you, Coddling?” Two or three sharp orders passed along the wire, and Muldrew hung up.

He had no more than reached the lower hall when the sound of a rushing car made him open the door hastily. Bidwell’s big Lincoln slid to the curb and stopped with a jerk, and Bidwell was out and up the steps before the chauffeur could reach back and open the door.

“Muldrew!” Bidwell whispered into the dark hall.

“Sh-sh!” Muldrew waited.

“Figgis has just called up. They’ve caught a man in the grounds. He claims to be a friend of yours.

They had a fight—he laid out two of my men with a loaded billy. From what Figgis tells me I think they’ve used him roughly. They were sure to. If you aren’t dressed, get your things on and come with me. I’m alarmed. Figgis wouldn’t admit they’ve killed the fellow, but—but I can guess how they’d go for him, especially when he fought back.”

Muldrew did not speak, did not move. He was thinking.

Bidwell reached out in the dark and caught hold of the detective’s arm.

“Why don’t you hurry?” His voice shook with anxiety.

“That’s not all you have to tell me, Bidwell.”

Bidwell thrust him angrily away. “Damn you, Muldrew, isn’t it enough? But I’ve lots more. I’ll tell you in the car. For God’s sake—” He swung about and made for the door. “All right.

I thought you’d be interested. I thought you might like to face this fellow that’s been prowling about Canaan, who says he’s a friend of yours. If you’re not, then you can go to hell before I’ll tell you the rest. I’m fed up.”

“All right, I’ll go.”

Bidwell returned to the hall. He laughed uneasily.

“Muldrew, I’m in too bad with the police now, after that Jungle affair, to want to face alone what I fear awaits me at Canaan. I don’t wish to have to explain another murder. . . . I’ll tell you everything as we’re going.”

Muldrew started for the stairs. “I’ll be down in eight minutes.”

201

But Bidwell would not wait. At Muldrew’s heels he climbed. “I’m too nervous to wait down here,” he explained foolishly. “I’m sitting on the job till I get the police to help; and I don’t mind if you scoff at me for it.”

In less than eight minutes they were speeding along almost deserted streets, Bidwell slumped in his corner, breathing heavily. Against the street lights Muldrew saw the chauffeur crouched over his wheel, driving easily at full speed. For a time no one spoke. The ugly factory section spun past—the low land beyond. The river came into view.

“What else, Bidwell?”

Bidwell roused himself and laughed uneasily. “It’s something more to queer me with the police, the worst yet. But I can only hope that you’ll understand. Major Withers has been in hiding out at Canaan!” Muldrew choked back a curse half-way.

Bidwell went on: “Another bit of private sleuthing. I was impatient, you see. Yes, I know it all mounts up. Buster first, poor old Buster, but I couldn’t deny him refuge, could I? And now the Major?”

“Why do you tell me this now?”

“Because—because he has escaped. I wouldn’t have confessed otherwise.”

“Escaped?”

“Let me talk,” Bidwell pleaded. “Buster gave me an idea. . . . He was the second to take refuge with me, for already Janet Doyle was with me!” He waited a moment, as if to let it sink home. “She’s out there now. I know it looks bad for me, but I simply couldn’t stand by and let my patrons suffer undeservedly for a woman like Sadie Harrow.”

“Did Miss Doyle come to you for refuge?”

“No. Her case is more serious against me. I wrote suggesting it. I already knew her—as Mildred Masters, of course.

It pleased me that she accepted the invitation. Mrs. James, my housekeeper, you know, went for her. . . . In fact, you narrowly missed seeing her last night when you came out to Canaan. We almost quarrelled because she delayed so long getting out of sight when I rang the bell on the front porch. She didn’t realize the trouble discovery would bring about my ears.”

From the other corner of the car Muldrew said quietly: 202

“You’ve taken great risks all through.”

“I realize some of it now. I didn’t—quite—until Major Withers got away from me.”

“Why did he need to—escape, as you put it first?”

Bidwell cleared his throat. “That is the worst. The dear Major was in a slightly different position from the others. . . . He was more or less a prisoner. You see, I was not a friend—in fact, I don’t think he liked me—” “So you kidnapped him?”

“Not as bad as that. Miss Doyle—well, it wasn’t quite wise for her to be out there alone with me—except for Mrs. James, of course—so I suggested that she get the Major to come.

Besides, she knew the Major was under suspicion, and he’s pigheaded enough to make things worse for himself. Of course, he came in reply to her request. . . . And I never had any intention of letting him get away.”

“Why?” “Because Major Withers is the murderer of Sadie Harrow and Buster Rawlinson!”

In spite of himself Muldrew gave a start. Bidwell was so confident. The detective felt there was much yet for him to learn.

“What proofs have you?”

“Proofs?” Bidwell paused. “I can satisfy you . . . but you’ll have to satisfy a jury; and I don’t think it will be difficult.”

“I need to be satisfied, Bidwell.”

“Very well. I arranged that Janet Doyle should be in a room next to where I kept the Major. It was not long before they got in communication with each other. I had told Janet that I was holding the Major for his own good, that he was fool enough to get into real trouble with the police if he was free; that as soon as he would give me his word to get out of the country—into Canada, perhaps—I would let him go. I knew you had no real evidence against him.”

“Would you have let him go?”

Bidwell snapped his teeth together. “Not likely. I told you I’d help you find the murderer of Sadie Harrow, and I keep my word. That’s why I was holding him—to get the evidence for you.”

“Go on.”

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“When they got talking from the windows of their rooms I was listening. She accused him of the murder. I had put it into her head, though it wasn’t necessary. No, she scarcely accused him— she was just awfully upset, shocked and all that. Major Withers it was who gave it away. He admitted it frankly. But he explained why he had done it. Some fellow by the name of Comstock, a great friend of his had fallen in love with Sadie and committed suicide over it. The Major said he couldn’t live in the same world with Comstock’s murderer, as he called Sadie.”

“When you knew that why did you not hand him over to the police?”

“Because that proof is only on my own word. I thought I would get more. Besides, I hadn’t yet worked out a way to clear myself of the things I’ve done to handicap you police. Janet Doyle thinks he is guilty, and she should know. . . . You won’t forgive me, perhaps, for interfering, but that murder has haunted me. No guest of mine ever before suffered for being my guest.

You know I’ve always cleared things up for them—I’ve been straight with my public.”

Muldrew said nothing. He was thinking. The car had reached the loneliest part of the river road. Glancing through the window, Muldrew estimated that they had less than a mile to go.

“Does that explain—everything, Mr. Muldrew?”

“No, it does not.”

Bidwell exhibited no surprise or irritation. “All right, I want to be entirely frank, though some things are difficult to tell.

I loved Sadie Harrow. The man who murdered her I would spend my last cent to punish. Yes . . . I loved her.” He had grown suddenly calm, his voice low. Muscles that had been taut since he leaped up the stairs to the dark hall where Muldrew awaited him seemed to relax only now.

“So many loved her,” Muldrew said. “Yet one who loved her killed her.”

“I loved her as few men love—as no other man ever loved her. Yet I told the truth when I said I was not certain at first that it was she. Eight years had wrought great changes in her.”

“You loved her like that? . . . Did she return your love?”

“Did she ever love anyone but herself?”

Bidwell’s laugh was harsh. “Who knows? . . . Yet I 204

believe she loved me once as well as was in her to love. You see, I was her first—her first love. . . . And it was something more than a boy-and-girl affair, for Sadie Harrow was the mother of my child!”

From the confusing, surprising confession that fell so calmly from the lips of his companion Muldrew struggled to detach what was most immediately vital. The rest might well wait.

“So you hid Janet Doyle, and Buster Rawlinson, and Major Withers? Why not complete your confession by admitting that you have at Canaan Nat Corwyn and Grant McQuigg?”

Bidwell jerked about. “What do you mean? Have they, too, disappeared? Nat—Corwyn?” He whistled through his teeth.

“I knew nothing of that. What a mess it has made for the police! . . . I had thought of Nat, too, but he scarcely seemed in danger and not worth the trouble. Why should he disappear? He wasn’t near his wife when she was murdered. I told you that. And this other—McQuigg? He’s one of those young fellows—By Jove, he’s the one sent her the note, isn’t he? In my wildest plans I never thought of him.”

He leaned forward and slid back the dividing glass. “Stop here, Fleming.”

The car pulled up. On their right Muldrew saw the high iron fence before Canaan. Across the road the sky was cut off by a thick line of tall trees skirting the river. Bidwell was speaking: “We’ll get down here. There’s a small gate we can get in by. I want to see how things are before my men know I’m here. I gave orders to Figgis to hold the man till I came—not to hurt him but I’m none too sure of their tempers. There are times when I’d sooner have men of gentler ways about me.

He had stepped out on the road and now stood holding the door open for Muldrew. The detective followed. One quick glance of practised appraisal he shot about him. They must, he decided, be near the edge of Bidwell’s property. Bidwell had gone forward to give orders to the chauffeur. Fleming, Muldrew heard, was to remain where he was, merely pulling the car farther to the side of the road. Then Bidwell returned, took him by the arm, and guided him across the ditch to a small gate which he opened with a key.

205

Inside the grounds thick undergrowth swallowed them immediately. Without Bidwell’s guiding hand Muldrew would have been blind, but presently, as Bidwell felt his way along, the wild growth thinned and the trunks of trees were dimly visible.

Bidwell, dropping his arm then, moved ahead, now and then whispering back reassuringly. After a time they pulled up in a clump of cedar.

“I’m going on alone,” Bidwell whispered. I’m not quite certain where we’ve got to, but I think the garage is over in that direction, and not very far. Stay here till I return. I won’t be long.”

He crept away so soundlessly that Muldrew had no idea what direction he took. Through the tops of the trees a faint breeze hissed. From across the river the same dog he had heard the night before barked idly, ending in a wail like a wolf’s. The night was eerie, the silence and darkness depressing. Tiny thrills ran up and down Muldrew’s spine as he waited, impatient and uneasy. The events of the night had followed each other so rapidly that it all seemed a dream. . . . He wondered what time it was, how long he had waited. His watch he had forgotten to bring, but he thought it must be about half-past two. In another couple of hours daylight would begin to show.

He fell to considering the two stories told him by Major Withers and Bidwell. They were, in many ways, like two films taken from different angles. Much of what they had told him he knew already, but much more he would have to examine— A sound in the darkness at the edge of the clump of cedar where he stood brought him back sharply.

“All right, Bidwell,” he whispered, “here I am—” A heavy weight crashed on his head, a glancing blow that would have crushed his skull had not his muscles acted automatically to a fleeting instant’s warning. As it was, without so much as a groan he dropped and lay still.

206

XXXIII THE TANGLE GROWS—AND THINS When his senses returned Muldrew found himself lying on a rug-covered couch in a room that somehow seemed not unfamiliar to him, but try as he might his muddled wits refused to locate it. He closed his eyes, wondering if he was not dreaming.

As his head cleared he tried to raise himself to look about—and discovered that hands and feet were bound.

The discovery roused every instinct of secrecy, and for a time he lay still, eyes closed, ears straining to the slightest sound.

The room appeared empty, but a fire crackled somewhere, and presently he opened his eyes narrowly.

In a huge fire-place, behind intricate iron grillwork, logs blazed cheerily. Ranged invitingly about the fire-place were several enormous easy-chairs. Over the mantel hung a long red board bearing in gilt lettering: “All things come to those who hustle while they wait.”

Muldrew let his gaze wander about the walls. They were brown in colour, with a warm, restful tint of red, bare of pictures, the lower half heavily panelled in red wood. Shifting his head slightly he saw, on either side of a wide door at the upper end, a hanging tapestry. The corners of his lips twitched slightly as he settled back to wait.

Somewhere deep in the shadows at the end of the room a door creaked softly. Muldrew, peering through his lashes, made no move. After a time he made out dimly the shape of a darker doorway, and in it someone standing. Seconds passed. Neither the bound detective nor the other whose shape alone he could distinguish made a move. And then the stranger advanced a step—another—two more, waiting between each movement. The light was still too dim back there to be of use to Muldrew. He could not even guess the identity of his visitor, though, by a certain tenseness, a shifting of his head from side to side, the detective was convinced that the other feared something more than to be seen by him. He waited.

Then into the light of the broad hall of Canaan walked Nat Corwyn!

Muldrew jerked up his head.

207

“Ah! So you’re here too, Nat Corwyn! Quite a collection!”

At the first word Corwyn started back. Then, finger to lip, he tiptoed swiftly back into the shadows and was gone.

He had but disappeared when a second door, in the side wall beyond the protruding grate, where Muldrew could not see, opened and four men entered. They were an evil-looking quartet, big, burly, rough, sinister. Muldrew wriggled to a position against the back of the couch and let his eyes range over them. He smiled sardonically.

“My compliments to your master, and tell him I’m surprised he has such little confidence in his army that he had to stun me in the dark and then truss me up.”

One of the four men, whom Muldrew recognized as the butler, advanced and sneered down on him.

“You ain’t half as much surprised as Mr. Bidwell will be when he finds who the sneak is that’s been poking around Canaan. You come as his friend, and then—” “I came to-night with your master himself. I came only once before, and that time by the main gate.”

The four burst into coarse laughter. The butler lifted a foot and kicked the prostrate, helpless man.

“You and that other guy! Well, we got you this time, and you won’t get away like he did. But I guess he’ll keep away from Canaan after this—anyways, till the hospital fixes him up.”

Muldrew was bewildered. His wits, none too clear as yet after the blow, felt about for the meaning, but he did not get far.

“The other guy? Who do you mean?”

The butler swore. “We thought we had him cold—nearly done for, he seemed. But the moment we turned our backs he beat it.”

The hall, the ruffians before him, the cozy fire—all these at least were real, Muldrew knew. But after that? That bang on the head must have injured him more than he yet realized.

“Who was that came in here a moment ago?” he inquired weakly.

The four men regarded each other. “In here? Why— nobody can get in here.” The butler tapped his head significantly and winked at his companions.

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Muldrew cried out. “I tell you I saw someone. Right there under the lights. And,” he added cunningly, “I saw who it was.”

“Then why the devil did you ask us? . . . Maybe,” the butler puzzled, “it was the other one, that friend of yours. Tall was he, thin and stoop-shouldered?”

Muldrew, with all the information he was likely to get in that quarter, struggled to untangle things. So Nat Corwyn was the man they had caught prowling about Canaan? What could he have had in mind? Was he hiding from the police to leave himself free for some deep purpose of his own? . . . Had he learned of Bidwell’s associations with his wife and laid a plot to punish him? An incident like that in her earlier life would stay with him, a thing to brood over, to grow and grow until it became a crime to avenge. . . . A crime, perhaps, to follow the murder of his wife!

He fixed his eyes on the butler. “I tell you your master is somewhere in the grounds right now. He brought me in his car, and we came in through a small gate down the road. You’ll find the car there now.”

“And why,” asked the butler contemptuously, “should Mr. Bidwell come into his own grounds that way?”

Muldrew made no reply. Until he got things straight further questions were useless.

An idea seemed to strike the butler, for a look of alarm appeared on his flat face.

“By damn, boys! I wonder if that other fellow that got away has got at Mr. Bidwell and done for him. We’d better take a look—” A slight noise outside the front door sent three of the servants on the rush towards it. With a furious shout they crowded through. The butler remained behind, his gaze fixed fearfully on the open door. The sound of a struggle outside reached them, and the butler started for the other end of the hall, glancing back over his shoulder. But just then a crowd of men, with much grunting and cursing, tumbled through from the porch.

Muldrew twisted about to see. What he saw was Beef Halladay and Tishy, torn and dishevelled and still resisting hopelessly, in the clutches of the three servants. The butler, with a great show of going to the assistance of his men, rushed forward. The door closed. With a nasty laugh the butler returned 209

to Muldrew.

“Some more of your friends, eh?”

Muldrew shook his head wearily. “I’m sure I don’t know.”

Beef ran forward, goggle-eyed. “Well, I’m swiggered!

They got you, too? Oh, my Sunday suit!”

Muldrew blinked. “I’m sure I don’t know—I don’t think I know anything. Tell me, Halladay, do I see you and Tishy in the front hall of Bidwell’s place, and is that a fire there, and are these four brutes real?”

“Four of the ugliest mugs,” Beef agreed fervently, “I ever set eyes on.”

Tishy broke in protestingly: “Beef and I were out for a walk and we lost our way. We saw the light, so we came in to ask the way—” The four men guffawed. Muldrew shook his head.

“That’s not quite worthy of The Gang, Tishy. You can’t see these lights from the road, and you can’t get in without a deal of climbing.”

Tishy struck his head. “I’m not at my best. It was all rather sudden. You can’t fight these big brutes and think at the same time.” He addressed Beef. “Beef, turn your guileless tongue on them. They couldn’t look in your baby eyes and think you could lie.”

Beef solemnly seated himself on the arm of the nearest chair, straightened his fat shoulders, and raised a dramatic hand.

“Listen all. It was this way.” He gulped. “Hang it, if I can lie! We were watching your little game. Savez? That’s all.”

The door at the end of the hall burst open and the four servants whirled to face it. Down the long room rushed Janet Doyle!

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XXXIV A CONFESSION At sight of Muldrew, bound and helpless, she stopped short, and a sharp cry burst from her.

“You—you! And we counted on you!”

The butler rushed at her, but like a shadow she sidestepped. Fighting for her very life, she shoved a chair in his way and he crashed over it. With an oath he picked himself up and made for her again. Again she dodged, taking a stand behind another chair.

“Major Withers!” she shouted, her wide eyes fixed on Muldrew. “They’ll kill him! They’ll kill him!”

Muldrew stared at her.

“They’ll kill him!” she repeated wildly. “They were in the car when he left your house. They’ll kill him!”

The butler had her cornered now behind a couch. A leer of inhuman rage twisted his face as he lurched at her. But Beef Halladay threw himself in the way and they fell together, upsetting a small table. The butler came out on top. With hideous fury he seized Beef’s head and crashed it back on the floor.

Janet Doyle’s eye bulged with horror. Twice she screamed. The shrill cry seemed to reach out and out, the accumulated terror of days. Muldrew strained at his bonds till his bones creaked, but they were too much for him.

It was Tishy came to the rescue. With a flying tackle he struck the butler squarely in the side and sent him hurtling into the wall, where he dropped, stunned and twitching. Beef raised himself weakly and sat holding his head.

Tishy was quickly subdued by the other men. As they fought, Janet Doyle seized a poker from the fire-irons and lifted it high to strike.

“Stop!”

A great voice thundered the order from the rear of the hall, and Blood Bidwell strode into the light!

They stared—Janet Doyle flushed and still defiant, Tishy helpless but showing fight, Beef nursing his dizzy head, Muldrew bound and helpless on the couch; and the four big servants who had beaten them all.

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Janet Doyle was the first to move. Facing Bidwell, she backed toward the front door, still grasping the poker. Bidwell ignored her. Hurrying to the twitching butler, he bent over him.

“Who did this?”

Tishy, released, backed against the wall, glaring at Bidwell.

“I did it—and I hope to God his neck is broken!” He threw back a lock of hair that fell savagely over one eye.

“Who are these two boys?” Bidwell demanded of his men.

The men explained nervously what had happened.

Bidwell stepped before Tishy and thrust his bull head forward.

“I see! One of The Gang, eh? And a damned nuisance you’ve been, the lot of you! Where are the others?”

Tishy snarled back: “Go to blazes! I wouldn’t tell you if I knew.”

He made a quick movement to rid himself of the torn sleeve of his coat, but Bidwell was too quick. His great fist shot out. It caught Tishy on the chin and he crumpled like a rag and lay still. Beef staggered to his feet and reached for a chair.

Bidwell turned his back. “Tie them up. And, Mildred, nothing doing there. Every exit is locked.” For Janet Doyle was tugging at the door. “Bring them in here,” Bidwell snapped and passed through a doorway.

Muldrew gnashed his teeth. He cursed himself for his folly, since others, as well as himself, were paying the penalty.

His face was purple by this time with the effort to break loose, though he had convinced himself long since that expert hands had bound him. . . . The butler, revived, took charge. Tishy and Beef they bound. To Janet Doyle they paid no attention.

Then the butler and another picked Muldrew up and carried him after Bidwell. They entered the large, amazing room where Muldrew had sat talking and admiring only the night before. The room was exactly as he had seen it then—even to Bidwell seated in the mahogany chair beyond the great, dominating desk.

Bidwell welcomed him with a friendly smile that brought Muldrew’s brows together.

“That chair.” He indicated the chair where Muldrew had 212

sat before and smoked his cigarettes. Now his host sat tapping the polished surface of the desk. “Bring the others.” He smiled across at Muldrew. “Neat little game, wasn’t it? Had you guessing, didn’t it . . . as I’ve had you guessing all the time? I hope you’re not too uncomfortable. I wish I could release you. My orders to my men were to handle you with care.”

Muldrew scorned to reply.

“I have my humane moments,” Bidwell went on softly.

“This is not the time for you to suffer. . . . ” But he tapped the desk with a spasm of nervousness—“unforeseen events have complicated things. . . . You might think I would be delighted with my extra victims. Really I’m not.” He continued musingly: “How murder grows! I had planned you alone, but Buster insisted on leaving me when my back was turned. What else could I do but finish him? Then the worthy Major. I’d have let him go if I could have thought of a safe way to do it. I admire a brave man.

We might have become friendly if he hadn’t been so maddeningly cold. . . . And so rashly fond of Mildred Masters.

When he climbed from that third story window where I thought I had him safe—he made a rope of his bedding and the broken parts of his bed—ingenious fellow—the cards were arranged for his fate. My men discovered he was gone. It didn’t take long to pick up his trail I suspected where he would make for. Let’s see—that’s three of you.” He ticked them off on his fingers.

They were all in the room now. Beef, squirming and protesting, they had dropped on the floor like a sack of potatoes.

Tishy followed. His wits had returned but, bound hand and foot, he made no resistance, though his eyes roved the room appraisingly.

Janet Doyle entered hurriedly, herded before the servants.

As she turned to face Bidwell the butler leaped at her and wrenched the poker from her grasp.

Bidwell smiled. “That’s ever so much better, Miss Masters—or Miss Doyle. You don’t know how unbecoming a poker is to you. This is no crime play. I dislike treating a lady roughly . . . unless I must. I was just telling Muldrew, this distressing spectacle of a detective who was out to get me, I was telling him a story he found interesting. I was counting my victims. There’s Buster Rawlinson, then himself, then your friend 213

the Major. That makes four.”

“Four?” It was Janet Doyle who spoke.

“Four—yes. Of course, I needn’t mention Sada Corwyn.

It was I who murdered her!”

A horrified silence fell over the room. Even the four servants gaped. It was not the confession but the light way it was made. Janet Doyle’s hand rose trembingly to her lips as if to stifle a scream. Bidwell grinned.

“Surprised, Miss Doyle? Yet you’d have done it yourself if you’d had the courage. I’ve beaten even you in play-acting.

Don’t you think the stage lost a great actor when I saw more money and excitement in running freak restaurants? Even the police will agree with you, for I’ve fooled them as well.”

One of the servants moved, and the sound rasped through the room. Bidwell glared.

“Get out! Stormer, stay within call. I’ll ring for you presently.”

The men slunk away. As the door closed, Bidwell sank easily back in his chair.

“Four, wasn’t it? Then there’s Janet Doyle. I had other uses for her, but her temper stands in the way . . . and she has seen too much—and heard too much now. That’s five. Tell me if my count is wrong.”

He looked at Beef and Tishy, shaking his head.

“These two young fools—I’ve little against them, though The Gang has been a nuisance. It’s they who have been hanging about Canaan, I believe, at night. I can admire grit and loyalty. If they hadn’t butted in to-night so inopportunely—but it can’t be helped now. . . . Still, I don’t like it, I don’t like it.”

He looked the group over with growing elation. “Many a time I’ve pictured a scene like this—helpless victims, perfect safety for myself. Don’t you think I’ve played my cards cleverly, Muldrew?”

His eyes were wide and eager, and his great hands rubbed together gloatingly. For a moment Muldrew’s heart sank. Under conditions even approaching these he had never before seen a madman. In every line, in every smirk of his large face, the disordered brain behind gripped to a breathless silence the four helpless ones who watched. Bidwell, Muldrew knew now, had 214

told the truth. He loved Sada Corwyn—had always loved her.

Had loved her so well that to see her pass to another had driven him insane. The haunting, brooding love he had lost had twisted his mind to make of him a relentless animal.

Bidwell was speaking: “Yes, I killed Sada Corwyn. . . . I might have let her live had she not first been a murderess herself.

She killed our child.”

A sudden light dawned on Muldrew. “You were Teddy Bear.”

Bidwell chuckled. “Nat Corwyn told me he sent that letter to you. Of course, he doesn’t know I’m the one who wrote it. He will,” he ended grimly. “And that, as I count it, makes eight. I told you, Muldrew, how murder grew. . . . And all so simple, so easy!”

“And it was you sent that threatening letter to Rawlinson—or you put it under his pillow after you murdered him.” Muldrew spoke easily, conversationally.

“That was my narrowest escape. At that time I did not know Corwyn had sent you that other letter. It was the first name I thought of. As it turned out it served my purpose well enough.”

He tilted his head to look Muldrew over scornfully. “You wonder how those jewels came to be in Buster’s apartment. No, I didn’t plant them, too. Buster told me about them. He was within a few feet of Sadie when I struck her. The sight of his mother’s jewellery had driven him mad. Without any definite thought of how he could accomplish it he had crept out from the orchestra in the dark to get the jewellery. Perhaps he would have killed her himself—I don’t know. I beat him to it. Anyway, when she screamed he saw his chance. He tore the jewellery from her and raced back to his place. He knew he was safe, for he had control of the lights.”

“And,” Muldrew added, “he sent the jewels away in one of the instruments carried off by one of the other musicians.” He raised his eyes to the ormolu clock on the big cabinet at Bidwell’s back. “And it was you who climbed that night into Nat Corwyn’s room. You were after the Teddy Bear letter he sent us. . . . I see now—Canaan, The Promised Land! That’s what you had to offer her. . . . And when Buster left you you were clever enough to anticipate his confession by informing us he was back in the 215

orchestra.”

Bidwell smiled. “I didn’t dare let Buster confess anything.

I believe he suspected me of the murder. I had a gun in my pocket as you and Inspector Armitage and I sat there in the dark talking to him. I would have shot him. But there was no need.

How easy it all has been!”

Muldrew smiled, and Bidwell’s face purpled with anger.

“Yes, you smile,” he shouted. “You smile—because you feel silly about it now. All along I’ve fooled you. I got you out here to chase a prowler who didn’t exist at that time. It was I who did the prowling. And you thought I was afraid of the murderer of Sadie Harrow—and of Buster.”

“Yes, I’ve been easy,” Muldrew admitted; and again his eyes lifted to the clock.

“That’s more reasonable. Remember, Muldrew, I’m not getting rid of you because I dislike you personally, though you’ve hounded me a little, you’ve made yourself dangerous. That explains why I got all these people out here. Whether you believe it or not, it was not my original plan to kill them all. But I saw a way to get back at the police. I owe them a grudge. It must have made a mess of things for you.” He chortled with delight. “And even if you’d found out all about it, there would have been no evidence to connect me with either of the murders. I have always insisted on my concern for my patrons. Ha! Ha! You must have been dizzy following so many clues, Muldrew. By the way, there’s McQuigg, too. A young ass. . . . I may decide to let him go. He thinks I’m his best friend. I have him safely concealed in a shack back in the bush—so scared of the police that he ran into my arms when I offered him a hiding-place. How I did laugh!”

Muldrew scowled. “You’re boastful, Bidwell. It scarcely sounds like a man who has done all you claim to have done, who will do—” “You doubt me?” Bidwell opened a drawer beside him and threw on the desk a rusty table-knife with a curved blade.

“That’s the knife that killed Sada Corwyn. Neat little souvenir, isn’t it? I had it sharpened, and in the dark I took Nat Corwyn’s knife so you’d have no idea where to look for its source. I got this one back when you and that young fool Lillie were fighting in the dark.”

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“You’ve been far too clever for us, Bidwell.” Once more Muldrew glanced at the clock, a slight frown on his forehead.

“Your admiration, Muldrew, is more than I could expect.

Too bad I must lose an admirer so soon. But I have a grudge against life, and someone must settle it. . . . I was good to Sadie. I gave her all I had, I offered her all this. . . . And I was always straight with her. But she—she couldn’t be straight with anyone.

And then—the game spread beyond my—hopes. This lot of crazy young fellows, for instance.” He fixed puzzled eyes on Beef, who returned it with an assumed nonchalance that, under less ominous circumstances, would have been ludicrous.

“It’s a long story,” Beef said. “And I never could talk trussed-up like a thanksgiving turkey.”

“That’s a pity, because when you’re freed you won’t be able to talk.”

“And that, too, is a pity, Bidwell, because the story is worth telling. And to no one more than to you. You see, The Gang knew it was you murdered Sada Corwyn!”

Bidwell half rose in his chair, his cheeks paling.

“What’s that you say?”

“Sure we knew. Tiger Lillie is a great detective. That’s his job on the Star—chasing mysteries down. He knew it so well that he told the police.”

Bidwell stared. “You mean, the—the police—know—I did it?”

“That’s what I said. Canaan is surrounded at this moment.

Inspector Armitage has a score of his best men ready to pounce the first move you make.” He hummed under his breath and stared at the ceiling.

For a moment Bidwell glared about the room like a hunted animal. But slowly the old cunning look returned.

“That’s a good one.” He laughed raucously. “If the police knew, would Muldrew have risked coming out here alone with me. Oh, no, you can’t frighten me. Why, I could have done for you all half an hour ago.” But he failed to sustain the part.

Leaning across the desk, he fired a question at Muldrew. “Is that so, Muldrew—did you know—does Inspector Armitage know?”

Muldrew was in a dilemma. He decided to play safe, and so he contented himself with a slow smile. But again his eyes 217

flew anxiously to the clock. For the first time Bidwell noticed it.

Glancing over his shoulder, he reached beneath his desk and somewhere far away a bell rang.

“We’ll put an end to this,” he snarled, “and then not all the police in the world can prove a thing. Suspect or not, they can’t have proof. . . . This knife ”—he picked it up tenderly and ran a finger along its rusted blade—“I’ll bury it with Muldrew.

Fitting tribute to an indefatigable sleuth.”

The bell had not been answered, and Bidwell scowled toward the door.

“Stormer! Stormer! . . . You know, Muldrew, I hate to do this.” His eyes bored into the detective’s. The door opened quietly. Without looking up he snapped: “Why the hell don’t you come more promptly when I ring, Stormer? Say your prayers, all of you. I’ve half a dozen men like Stormer here. They revel in a job like this. Here, Stormer, the detective first—” From the door no sound had been heard since the first slight creak it made on opening. Bidwell lifted his head. Muldrew saw him stiffen, shiver, and his jaw fell open. The detective twisted.

In the doorway, a cold smile on his thin lips, stood Inspector Armitage!

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XXXV THE GANG’S ALL HERE For several seconds no one moved, no one spoke. Only Janet Doyle gasped, and Tishy made a sound like a snort. Every eye was fixed on the grim smile that creased the face of the Inspector. Beef broke in peevishly: “There are things you might do, Inspector. I’ve been trying myself for half an hour to look important, but it don’t seem to do a thing with these ropes. A Boy Scout knife seems to be indicated.”

No one replied. “That,” sighed Beef, “is what comes of being fat and comfortable looking.”

Inspector Armitage advanced into the room.

“It was a hard chase, Blood Bidwell,” he said, his voice cutting ominously into the silence. “Muldrew took long chances with you, but he felt he had to, though I warned him. Go on, ring all the bells in the house,” as Bidwell reached under the desk.

“Every man of yours is in the hands of the police. But don’t touch a gun.”

Drawing a knife from his pocket, he cut Muldrew free. A sharp sound at his back made him turn. The door had snapped shut. Bidwell smiled.

“I don’t need to shoot, Inspector. I have only to touch another button and the room is filled with a gas that will kill us all. If you lift that gun in this direction—if Muldrew moves from that chair—we’re all dead. Ah!” A heavy pounding on the door brought a fiendish grin to his big face. “It will take them fifteen minutes to chop through. You see, I’m prepared for every emergency. You may have noted that.”

Inspector Armitage turned slowly to face the madman across the desk. And as he moved his keen eyes flashed about the room. He knew Bidwell was utterly reckless, of his own life as well as of theirs, that unless something happened he would never let them escape.

Like a spring trap he leaped and fired. But the instant before the shot the lights went out. Above the ear-crashing din a sharp click sounded, something scraped along the floor—and a gust of maniacal laughter seemed to come from every corner of 219

the room.

Again the Inspector fired, but there was no answering shot. The only reply was a howl of terror, and, suddenly as they had gone out, the lights came on again. Over the top of the desk Tiger Lillie’s red head appeared, his eyes bulging.

“For the love of Mike, Inspector, don’t shoot.”

From behind the tall cabinet that stood at an angle against the wall beyond the great desk Louis Bracken and McQuigg rushed out, bent forward, and disappeared. With a shout Tiger followed. Muldrew and the Inspector leaped around the desk.

At their feet a hole in the floor three feet square gaped at them. Through it came the clamour of a terrific struggle.

“Help! Help! Bat him on the head, Mac! Kick him, Louis, kick, for the love of Mike! . . . Well, that’s that!” And then Tiger singing jubilantly.

The detectives dropped through.

They brought Bidwell up, badly battered, a long wound bleeding in his forehead from the club Mac had wielded without mercy. Louis climbed back with a monkey-wrench in his hand.

Tiger, his lip swelling, came last.

With a great shout Beef and Tishy welcomed them. “Hail, hail, The Gang’s all here!” they sang, sadly out of tune.

“These ropes have put a kink in my voice,” Beef complained.

They tied Bidwell to his own desk-chair with the ropes that had bound the others. Beyond the door the battering increased. Tiger crawled under the desk.

“See here, Gordy, look. This is where I had to squeeze myself with that fellow’s knees, and all these switches and buttons. Anyway, I learned how to use them. This is the one to open the door.”

He pressed and the door creaked open. The police, herding their captives, flooded in. Tiger seated himself impudently on the corner of the desk.

The Inspector glared. “How the devil did you get here?”

“Business—my daily bread.” Tiger waved a deprecating hand. “I was chasing the dope for the stuff I warned Muldrew would be in the Star every day till we ran down Sada Corwyn’s murderer. I planned a series of articles on ‘Leading Characters in 220

The Jungle Crime,’ or words to that effect. That’s how Louis and I ran across the shack where Mac was hiding. All we had to do then was to add one and one or, at least, it led us to sneak in here.

Just in time, too. The Gang to the rescue!”

Tishy snorted. “And Beef and I tagged along behind. Oh, you didn’t know it, but we knew we’d have to keep you fellows out of trouble. We’re glad to say we’re not reporters, but we’re the true stuff in trailing. And our work is sheer altruism.”

Bidwell seemed to be unaware of anything but the sullen group that had been his servants. He shook his head ruefully.

“Sorry, lads, awfully sorry. Thing’s didn’t run right. But they can’t do much to you. I’m the one to pay. Well—so long!”

Before anyone could move he had kicked the light switch under the desk. In the darkness they heard a crash and then silence. Tiger found the switch, but Bidwell had disappeared.

Beside the hole in the floor Inspector Armitage dropped to his knees and shot the lay from his torch into the darkness below.

There, seven feet below, still bound to the chair, lay Blood Bidwell, doubled in a heap. He had pitched backward, chair and all, into the hole. They found that his neck was broken.

Camp Chemong, Magnetawan, Ontario, Canada.

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