The nurse hesitated, evidently reckoned against the iron will in the patient, and went. She closed the door after her. The door into the adjoining room was open, and Hiram went in to make sure the door from that room into the hall was closed.

  He had hardly got back when, from where I sat, I saw Bill Jonas slip into the other room and station himself out of our view to the right of the door. I thought I was the only one who had seen him until Patrick got up and shut the door. Bill could apply an ear to the keyhole, I thought, but whatever he heard he’d at least have to work for.

  “There are things I must tell you,” Enid said. “Just in case.”

  I took this down in shorthand. She made no objection.

  Hiram said, “Dear, don’t excite yourself. Nothing is going to happen.”

  “First, I did take the poison myself.”

  I wrote this down.

  “But I think I didn’t take enough. It had such a horrible taste. And I heard Saito coming so I hurried and therefore spilled some.”

  “Darling Enid, why did you do it?” Hiram asked softly.

  “Because I’m such a nuisance. I’m nothing but a burden to you. Everybody hates me. You’ll all be happier when I’m out of the way.”

  “We’ll be happy when you’re well again. And you will be, darling.”

  “No. But I want this written down. It is not Hiram’s fault that I’m a nervous wreck. I have always loved Hiram in spite of …”

  She hesitated. Hiram asked, “In spite of my being such a dead loss?”

  “No, dear. People are what they are, regardless. You have to take them for just what they are.”

  Patrick said, “You wanted to tell us something about Saito, didn’t you, Enid?”

  “Yes.” She seemed to drift away. Oh, dear, I thought: Suppose she dies or something before we get this out of her. “Yes, it was about poor Saito. He was so dear to me. He died for me, even. He came in and heard me in the bathroom when I was about to take the poison. He hurried in and, as I said, I spilled what I had in the spoon. I only took a taste, I think. But he didn’t realize that. He thought I had killed myself so he stabbed himself—right before my eyes—right there where Jean is now.” I squirmed and looked down, but the rug Saito had died on—taken by the police—had been thickly woven and no blood had seeped through to the rich red carpet.

  “It was horrible,” Enid said. “So oriental of him, to do a thing like that, to sacrifice himself because he had neglected me. I—I got up and went to the bathroom and was—sick.”

  “Lucky for you,” Patrick said. “But you did absorb a little of the poison, Enid. There were symptoms. You’ve had us worried.”

  She put her hands together and began feebly to turn the loose handsome rings.

  “I’ve just been a nuisance once again, you mean.”

  “Don’t say that, darling,” Hiram said.

  She smiled at him. “You’re sweet. Whatever else, dear, you’re really sweet.”

  “You feel sleepy, Enid,” Patrick said. “Better tell us anything else before you go to sleep.”

  “But that’s all. I saw it as through a veil, but I saw it happen.”

  “You saw him take the knife and stick it into his abdomen?”

  She said, “Yes. That was how it was. Ever since—all the time—I have felt myself working to—to the surface to tell you this—so nobody else would be blamed.”

  “But who on earth could be blamed, Enid?”

  She said, “Nobody, of course. It was just an idea.”

  “Well, you’re going to pull through all right,” Patrick said. “Thanks so much for your statement, though. It will be useful. You saw the knife, I suppose?”

  “Yes, it was that awful bone-handled pocketknife which Saito always carried in his pocket.”

  My pencil hesitated, then put everything down. Patrick sat motionless. Hiram’s expression didn’t change.

  “Well, it’s a terrible thing, any way you look at it,” Patrick said then. “But are you sure he did it for your sake, Enid?”

  “Would I say so, if I weren’t?” she asked, in a strong clear tone.

  “Of course not,” Patrick said. “I thought, however, that he might have something on his conscience. His features were oriental, but Saito was an American, so he might have had an American conscience.”

  “Why should he have anything on his conscience?” she whipped out.

  “I was asking you,” Patrick said gently. “After all, Enid, since you admit that you were conscious when he died, you are a witness to his death. There might even be people so malicious that they might say you killed him.”

  She sat up. “How dare you?”

  “Calm yourself, darling,” Hiram said. He ran around and lowered her onto her pillows. “Do be careful, Pat.”

  “Nobody is accusing you of anything, Enid,” Patrick said. He picked up her hand and held it, one finger stealing over to find her pulse. “I am giving you a preview of what will happen when the police come around to ask questions. You had better listen to me, if you are able. Do you think you are?”

  She said more evenly, “Yes.”

  “All right. Now let’s go back seven years. I want your own story of what happened the day Eberle took your sister and her husband out and ran that car over the cliff.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” she said sullenly.

  “Eberle has turned up,” Patrick said. “Perhaps they will, too.”

  “No!” she cried. “No.”

  “How can you be so definite? Was there then a witness?”

  She made no answer. Hiram said, “Really, Pat; she is in no condition to be given the third degree like this.”

  Patrick said, “Her heart is steady as a clock, Hiram. If any of you know anything pertinent to that murder seven years ago, speak up. The murderer is one of you.”

  “Tut, tut,” said Hiram.

  “One of you killed Sieger. He hired Sieger to kill Eberle in New Orleans so he couldn’t go back to Honolulu. He paid Eberle to run that car over the cliff.”

  “My, dear fellow,” Hiram said, spreading his hands. “Eberle could not have deliberately murdered the Reynoldses because they went with him at the last moment, quite of their own accord. Enid, you know that is true.”

  “Yes,” she muttered, as if reluctantly.

  Patrick let it pass. “There were two people among you who knew who came into this house last night, or rather this morning, just after Sieger’s throat was cut and he was tossed over the cliff. They were Saito and Enid Stryker. Saito is now dead and Enid has had—shall we say—a very narrow escape.”

  “I tell you, I took the poison myself!”

  Patrick gave her a deep look. “Of course you did, Enid,” he said.

  22

  Of course she had taken the poison. She had taken it all right, but she hadn’t taken-enough. She’d been careful not to take enough.

  Setting everything down, my pencil probably made a few extra pothooks because I felt so excited. Now I knew for sure who was doing the dirty work. Enid, herself. With Hiram conniving to help her! There it was, simple as that!

  However, at this moment, when the solution seemed right at hand, what did Enid do but paralyze. There she went, dead to all sensation from her neck down. And apparently unconscious, because she didn’t answer any more questions.

  This time it was Patrick who did the pricking. Deliberately he drove a sterilized hypodermic needle into her forearm. The blood oozed out gently but there wasn’t a quiver of any kind to indicate she had felt any pain.

  “Call the nurse, Hiram,” he said.

  Hiram darted to the door and the nurse buzzed in and started asking Patrick what had been in the hypo.

  “Nothing,” Patrick said. He called out, “Bill?”

  Bill Jonas, looking sheepish, opened the door from the bedroom. “You call me, Pat?”

  The police-detective, though pretending not to, took stock of the woman on the bed, the nurse, the hypo, my note-pad, Hiram, and Patrick. Quickly I handed Patrick my notes.

  “I suppose you heard what was said, Bill?”

  “Well, I couldn’t help hearing some.”

  “What kind of knife killed Saito?”

  “You saw it, Pat. Why ask me?”

  “I thought maybe I might be mistaken, Bill.”

  Bill said stiffly. “It was one of that set of kitchen knives, with wood handles, and fine beveled steel blades. Wonderful knife. Blade was eight inches long and one and one-fourth inches wide.”

  “You’re sure it wasn’t a bone-handled pocketknife? With a blade that folded into the handle?”

  Hiram interrupted. “Saito’s knife was almost too big to be called a pocketknife. However, the blade did fold into the handle. Saito had had it a long time. I didn’t know he carried it on him, though.”

  “A knife of that kind wasn’t found on the body,” Bill said.

  “How many knives were there in that kitchen set, Hiram?”

  “Originally eight, I think.”

  “Then two are missing?” Patrick turned to Bill. “One is in our car. I’ll tell you why later on.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Hiram said, “about the knives. One doesn’t pay much attention to that kind of thing, really. Perhaps one was lost or something? After all, I wouldn’t notice a thing like that, as a rule.”

  “Two are missing,” Bill Jonas said, firmly. “We found one in Tim Ryan’s bag along with the white coat and the ring which belonged to Sieger, and one in the corpse, and—see here, these people had all better be searched. Chances are somebody is running around carrying that extra kitchen knife. Maybe Saito’s, too. Two deadly weapons in the hands of somebody who knows how to use them.”

  “Where is Tim Ryan?” Patrick asked.

  “Oh, my God!” Bill said. He lunged out, saying, “Not that it matters, he won’t do anything.”

  The nurse said primly, “If I may say so, I don’t think the doctor would approve of this kind of talk in the presence of a patient.”

  “Of course not,” Patrick said. He apologized and the nurse smirked because she had said her piece, and we left the room.

  In the hall Bill was coming back up the stairs from the kitchen. Saying “He’s faded,” he loped towards the front entrance to look for Tim, and Patrick and I went into the living room.

  The doors were indeed soundproof. When we opened the door from the hall the record-player was playing again the “Pavane for a Dead Infanta.”

  “How creepy, Pat!”

  There was no one at all in the room. The fire leaped in the fireplace and as we entered the door the stately tune ended, the mechanism gave a little cluck as it moved back and the Pavane started all over again. I made a move to stop the thing but Patrick said, “Let it go.” He had gone to a window on the terrace.

  The fog pressed tight against all the windows and the French doors were securely closed but not locked on the inside. Patrick examined one door and said, without saying why, “They went out this way. Stay inside, Jean. Go back and stay in Enid’s room, with that nurse.”

  “With Hiram lurking? And a knife missing?” Two knives missing. “I will not!” I declared.

  “Jonas will look after you, dear. Or Gonzalez.”

  “Bill is outside, and you know it. He’s after Tim. And goodness knows what happened to Sergeant Gonzalez.’"

  “Okay,” Pat said, exasperated. “Come on. But hang onto my hand, in this stuff.”

  He opened the door. We were on the terrace.

  Voices carry in fog. At once we heard calling and laughter all over the place.

  “What goes on?” Patrick called out.

  "Fun in the fog,” said a mocking voice nearby. Kenneth West’s.

  “Must be kind of damp,” Pat said, casually.

  “Rather,” West said, and already he was further away, in the direction of the cottage. We heard a soft laugh, Clarinda’s.

  We heard other voices. Ron’s. Bill’s, bawling out to Timothy Ryan, telling him to stop this foolishness and give himself up. It should have been amusing, but wasn’t.

  A car snuffled somewhere, and came to a stop. Where was it? Sounds are distorted in a fog, magnified, displaced.

  The ocean throbbed steadily, sullenly.

  Patrick’s hand tightened on mine, and there was an edge in his voice as he called, “All of you go down to the cottage. I’ve got news.”

  “What?” I whispered.

  “Don’t be silly. I want to round them up, if possible. Chances are they won’t round up, though. I wonder where Molly is?” He lifted his voice and called her name. There was no answer.

  “Maybe some of them have gone away in a car?”

  Patrick still made no answer. He dragged me after him over the fog-slick grass. The damp entered my bones and weighted my hair and a gloom closed around me, relieved only by the warm pressure of Patrick’s hand.

  Moving away from the direction of the throbbing sea till we found the ragged line of the shrubbery, we proceeded cautiously along it in the general direction of the cottage. After we would reach the exit from the path, the flagstones would guide us. The fog grew thicker, became a solid smothering wet mass. I shivered and longed for a coat.

  Suddenly we heard a curious sound, a sort of loud gasp, brief enough, and then a kind of fussing, then silence.

  “It’s Murphy!” Patrick muttered. He dragged me after him.

  “Where is she?”

  “In the path, I think. Don’t talk.”

  “Then it was her car we heard?”

  Patrick made no answer. We had found the entrance to the path. The leaf-mold sank under our feet and its musty smell was stronger than the fishy smell of the fog.

  “Murphy?” Patrick called.

  “Here,” Murphy said softly. “Take it easy, Pat.”

  Lulu was kneeling in the path beside the stricken form of Molly Reynolds. We could not see her very clearly even when Lulu turned her pencil flashlight on her.

  “I stumbled right over her,” Murphy said.

  Patrick scooped the girl up in his arms and Lulu lighted our way as well as she could in the fog to the cottage. The living room itself was hazy with the fog, but the doors and windows were closed in the bedroom and bath, and the air was clear. Patrick laid the girl on his bed. Her raincoat was covered with leaf-mold and there was blood in her heavy dark hair.

  “Moral, wear a hat,” Patrick said grimly, with a look at Murphy’s, which was square on her head but wilting from the weather. “Get towels and water, one of you.” Lulu rushed towards the bathroom so I stuck around, and then Molly opened her eyes.

  “Hello,” she said, and closed them again.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Obviously she got conked,” Patrick said, when Molly made no reply.

  “Who did it, Pat?”

  “One of two people.” Lulu had come with towels wrung out of cold water. “What made you come here again, Murphy?” Patrick asked, as he laid a towel across Molly’s forehead. “And in this fog?”

  Lulu said, “There wasn’t any on the highway. It’s lying across this point and I didn’t get into a thick patch of it till I got to the circle by the house. I heard you tell Bill Jonas at lunch how to get to the cottage, so when you called out for people to meet you here, I found the path and then the girl.”

  “Did you meet anybody?”

  “No. I almost stepped on her and then I sort of screeched and I stooped down, and after—a minute you came. Want another damp towel?”

  “This Will do, I think. She’s okay. Why did you come back?”

  “You know that slip of paper I gave you?”

  “Yes. I passed it along to Bill Jonas.”

  “Well, he’s been collecting that money for almost seven years. Blackmail’s the reason, probably. They’re about stripped of anything you’d call liquid assets. The son has to marry Molly, or they’re done for in a financial way.”

  “What do you make of it, Murphy?”

  “I figure they hired Eberle to drive the car over the cliff and murder that poor couple and that that skunk somehow found out about it and started his own racket. That Kenneth West is now a rich man.”

  “Then why doesn’t he marry Clarinda?” I said.

  “He doesn’t have to. He’s got her where he wants her without marrying her,” Lulu said. She spoke primly. “Sorry as I am to repeat such talk, however.”

  “What a heel!” I said. “Why, never in this world have I ever heard of such a heel!”

  Molly moaned and said, “Tim—I want Tim—”

  “I’ll get him in a minute, dear,” Patrick said. “Murphy, how did West find out that Frederick Eberle was planning to return to Honolulu?”

  “I do not know.”

  “He wouldn’t want him back., That would spoil his racket,” Patrick said. “Well, maybe Hiram told him about Eberle. Or Enid, when he made his last touch. If a deposit of a hundred grand was made in their bank—well, that can wait.”

  “I never trusted West one inch,” I said. “People who come from Texas and try to talk like Boston!”

  “West didn’t do the murders,” Patrick said.

  “No.” Molly spoke up, and a queer crawling feeling went through me because I wondered if she had registered all we said. “No. But promise me you won’t try to find out who did, Pat. Promise me that and—everything will be all right.”

  “You know then who the murderer is?”

  “I did not say that,” Molly said. “I—I just don’t want this to go any further. If you’ll keep out of it, Pat, everything will be all right. The police won’t get much further and everything will be fine.”

  23

  What a girl to let things slide, or what have you! Again I was in a state of doubt on the subject of Molly Reynolds.

  People were coming into the living room. Patrick left Molly’s side and opened the door and said, “Bill, let Tim come here a minute.” Bill said sure, but not without himself, since he had given him the slip before, so they both came into the bedroom, and Tim halted for the flick of an eyelash, and a look of anguish came on his face, and then he went and knelt beside Molly. She put her hand on his hair.

  “What happened?” he asked huskily.

 

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