She said suddenly, "I'm sorry about the way I—I acted. I mean offering you money to leave me alone. I know it was the wrong approach, but I didn't want to give anything away until I had had a chance to find out what kind of man you are. The fact is I want your help. I'm in a mess, and I don't know how to get out of it. I've been an awful fool, and I'm scared. I'm scared out of my wits."
She didn't look scared, but I didn't tell her so.
"I wish I knew for certain if he knows of this place," she went on, as if talking to herself. "If he does he's certain to come here."
"Suppose we take this nice and slow?" I said mildly. "We have all the time in the world. Why was it important I shouldn't answer the telephone? Let's start with that one."
"Because he would know where you were, and he's looking for you," she said, as if she
were talking to a dim-witted child.
"You haven't told me who he is. Is it Sherrill?"
"Of course," she said shortly.
"Why is he looking for me?"
"He doesn't want trouble, and you're making trouble. He's determined to get rid of you. I heard him tell Francini to do it."
"Is Francini a little Wop with pock-marks on his face?"
"Yes."
"And he works for Sherrill?"
"Yes."
"So it was Sherrill who engineered Stevens' kidnapping?"
"Yes. That settled it for me. When I heard the poor old man had died I came straight to you."
"Does Sherrill know you have this place?"
She shook her head.
"I don't think so. I've never talked about it, and he hasn't ever been here. But he might know. There's very little he doesn't know."
"All right, now we have got that ironed out, suppose we begin at the beginning?"
"I want to ask you something first," she said. "Why did you come to Crestways, asking for me? Why did you go and talk to Dr. Bewley? Has anyone hired you to find out what I have been doing?"
"Yes," I said.
"Who?"
"Your sister, Janet," I told her.
If I had hit her across the face she wouldn't have reacted more violently. She reared back in the seat as if she had trodden on a snake, making the swing rock violently.
"Janet?" The word came out in a horrified whisper. "But Janet's dead. What do you mean? How can you say such a thing!"
I took out my wallet, found Janet's letter and held it out to her.
"Read this."
"What is it?" she asked, and seemed afraid to look at it.
"Read it, and look at the date. It was mislaid for fourteen months. I only read it myself for the first time a day or so ago."
She took the letter. Her face stiffened and the pupils of her eyes contracted at the sight of the handwriting. After she had read it she sat still for several minutes, staring at it. I didn't hurry her. Fear, real and undisguised, was plain to see on her face.
"And this—this started you making inquiries?" she asked at last.
"Your sister sent me five hundred dollars. I felt bound to earn it. I came out to Crestways to see you and talk it over. If you had been there and had explained the letter I should have returned the money and dropped the inquiry. But you weren't there. Then all kinds of things started to happen, so I continued the investigation."
"I see."
I waited for her to say something else, hut she didn't. She sat still, staring at the letter; her face white and her eyes hard.
"Were you being blackmailed?" I asked.
"No. I don't know why she wrote to you. I suppose she was trying to make trouble. She was always trying to make trouble for me. She hated me."
"Why did she hate you?"
She stared down at the garden for a long time without saying anything. I drank some of the whisky and smoked. If she was going to tell me she would in her own time. She wasn't the type to be rushed.
"I don't know what to do," she said. "If I tell you why she hated me I'll be putting myself entirely at your mercy. You could ruin me."
I didn't have anything to say to that. "But if I don't tell you," she went on, clenching her fists, "I don't know how I'm going to get out of this mess. I must have someone I can trust."
"Haven't you a lawyer?" I said, for something to say.
"He would be worse than useless. He's my trustee. By the terms of my father's will if I get involved in a scandal I lose everything. And I'm up to my ears in what would be a horrific scandal if it got out."
"You mean with Sherrill?" I said. "Did you finance the Dream
Ship
?"
She stiffened, turned, stared at me. "You know that?"
"I don't know it. I'm making a guess. If it got out you were behind the Dream
Ship it woul
d make a scandal."
"Yes." She suddenly moved along the seat so she was close to me. "Janet was in love with Douglas. I was crazy about him, too. I stole him from her. She tried to shoot me, but father saved me. He was shot instead of me," she blurted out and hid her face in her hands.
I sat as still as a stone man, waiting. I wasn't expecting this, and I was startled.
"It was hushed up," she went on after a long pause. "Never mind how. But it preyed on Janet's mind. She— she poisoned herself. That was hushed up, too. We were afraid it would come out why she killed herself. It was easy enough to hush up. The doctor was old. He thought it was heart failure. Then, when I came into the money, and there was a lot of it, Douglas showed himself for what he is. He said unless I gave him the money to buy Drea
m
Ship he would
circulate the story that I had stolen him from Janet and she had tried to kill me, but killed father, and had poisoned herself: all because of me. You can imagine what the papers would have made of that, and I should have lost everything. So I gave him the money for his beastly ship, but that didn't satisfy him. He keeps coming to me for more money, and he watches every move I make. He found out you had started to make inquiries. He was afraid you would uncover the story, and, of course, if you did, he would lose his hold on me. He did everything he could to stop you. When he heard Stevens was meeting you, he kidnapped him. And now he's going to wipe you out. I don't know what to do! I've got to go somewhere and hide. I want you to help me. Will you help me? Will you?" She was clutching my hands now. "Will you promise you won't give me away? I'll do anything for you in return. I mean it! Will you help me?"
There was a slight sound behind us, and we both turned. A tall, powerfully-built man with dark curly hair, dressed in a scarlet sleeveless sweat-shirt and dark blue slacks stood just behind us. He held a .38 automatic in his hand and it pointed directly at me. There was a cheerful, patronizing smile on his tanned face as if he was enjoying a private joke that was a little too deep for the average intelligence.
"She tells a pretty tale, doesn't she?" he said in one of those ultra-masculine voices. "So she wants to run away and hide? Well, so she shall. She'll be hidden all right, where no one will ever find her, and that goes for you, too, my inquisitive friend."
I was calculating the distance between us, wondering if I could get up and reach him before he fired, when I heard the all too familiar swish of a descending cosh and the inside of my head seemed to explode.
The last sound I heard was Maureen's wild, terrified scream.
Chapter IV
I
The room was big and airy, and the walls and ceiling were a dead Chinese white. Cold, white plastic curtains were drawn across the windows, and a shaded lamp made a pool of light over the opposite bed.
There was a man sitting up in the bed. He was reading. His small-boned face with its high, wide forehead gave the impression of a young student reading for an examination.
I watched him through half-closed eyes for some minutes, wondering in a vague, detached sort of way who he was and what he was doing in this room with me. There was something odd about the book he was reading. It was a big volume, and the print was close set and small. It was only when he turned a page and I saw a chapter heading that I realized he was holding the book upside down.
I wasn't surprised to find myself in this room. I had a vague idea I had been in it for some time: perhaps days, perhaps weeks. The feel of the narrow high bed I was lying in was familiar: almost as familiar as the feel of my own bed in my beach cabin which now seemed as remote as last year's snow.
I knew in an instinctive kind of way—I was quite sure I hadn't been told—that I was in hospital, and I tried to remember if I had been knocked down by a car, but my mind was working badly. It refused to concentrate, and kept jumping across the room to the man in the opposite bed. Its only interest was to find out why he was holding his book the wrong way up, for it seemed to me the book looked dry and complicated enough without adding to the difficulty of reading it.
The man in the bed was young; not more than twenty-four or so, and his thick fair hair was over long and silky-looking. He had very deep-set eyes, and the lamp cast shadows in them so they seemed to be two dark holes in his face.
I suddenly became aware that he was also watching me, although he pretended to be reading; watching furtively from under his eyelids; watching as he turned a page slowly with a concentrated frown on his face.
"You'll find it easier if you turn the book the right way up," I said, and was surprised how far away my voice sounded, as if I were speaking in another room.
He glanced up and smiled. He was a nice-looking youngster : a typical collegian, more at home with a baseball bat than a book.
"I always read books this way up," he said; his voice was unexpectedly high pitched. "It's more fun, and it's just as easy once you get the knack of it, but it does take a lot of practice." He laid the book down. "Well, how do you feel, Mr. Seabright? I'm afraid you have had a pretty rotten time. How's the head?"
It was a funny thing, but now he mentioned it I discovered my head ached and an artery was pounding in my temple.
"It aches," I said. "Is this a hospital?"
"Well, not exactly a hospital. I think they call it a sanitarium."
"You mean a sanatorium, don't you? A sanitarium is a nut foundry."
He smiled and nodded his blond head.
"That's it exactly: a nut foundry."
I closed my eyes. Thinking was difficult, but I made the effort. It took me several minutes to remember the swish of a descending cosh, the man in the scarlet sweat-shirt, and Maureen's wild, terrified scream. A sanitarium. I felt a little prickle of apprehension run up my spine like spider's legs. A sanitarium!
I sat up abruptly. Something held my left wrist, pinning it to the bed. I turned to see what it was. A bright nickle-plated, rubber-lined handcuff gripped my wrist. The other cuff was fastened to the rail of the bed.
The blond man was watching me with mild interest.
"They think it's safer for us to be chained up like that," he said. "Ridiculous, really, but I have no doubt they mean well."
"Yes," I said and lay back. More spider's legs ran up my spine. "Who runs this place?"
"Why, Dr. Salzer, of course. Haven't you met him? He's quite charming. You'll like him. Everyone does."
Then I remembered the man in the scarlet sweat-shirt had said he would hide me away where no one would ever find me. An asylum, of course, was a pretty fool-proof hidingplace. But Salzer didn't run an asylum. His place was a retreat for the over-fed: Nurse Gurney had said so.
"But I thought Salzer ran a kind of Nature Cure racket," I said carefully. "Not a nut foundry."
"So he does, but there's a wing set aside for the mentally sick," the blond man explained. He walked two fingers along the edge of the night table. "It is not usually talked about." He walked his fingers back again. "It's so much more pleasant for relatives to say you are having a health cure than that you're locked up in a padded cell."
"Is that where we are?" I asked.
"Oh, yes. The walls are padded. They don't look like it, but try punching them. It's quite fun." He leaned out of bed and hit the wall. His fist made no sound. "It's rubber, I think. By the way, my name's Duncan Hopper. You may have heard of my father: Dwight Hopper."
As far as I could remember, Dwight Hopper was something big in the paint and distemper trade. I didn't know he had a son.
"I'm Malloy," I said. "Victor Malloy."
He cocked his head on one side and regarded me fixedly.
"Who?"
"Malloy."
"Are you sure?" He smiled slyly now. "They tell me your name is Edmund Seabright."
"No; Malloy," I said, again feeling spider's legs run up my spine.
"I see." He began once more to walk his fingers along the edge of the night table. He seemed to like doing that. "I wonder if you would mind if I called you Seabright? Bland calls you Seabright. Dr. Salzer calls you Seabright. Seabright is the name on your papers. I know, because I persuaded Bland to let me look at them. You are described as a manic depressive. Did you know?"
My mouth suddenly went dry.
"A—what?"
"Manic depressive. I dare say it's nonsense."
"Yes, it's nonsense." I found it increasingly difficult to speak and think calmly.
"I'm so glad. Depressives can be so tiresome. I didn't think you were, and I told Bland so. But Bland is very stupid; a very uneducated person. He never listens to what I say. I'm afraid you won't like him. He says I am a paranoiac, but that's complete nonsense. We had a terrific argument about it this morning, and he lent me this book. It tells you about paranoia. Really quite interesting. But I haven't one single symptom. There's quite an interesting chapter on manic depressives." He walked his fingers along the table edge before saying, "Do you have hallucinations?"
I said I didn't have hallucinations.
"I'm so glad." He seemed genuinely pleased. "But it is odd you think your name is Malloy, isn't it? Or perhaps you don't think so?"
