The Cases of Susan Dare (22 page)

“Jim—Jim,” she said. “It’s Susan. Listen. Get into a white tie and come as fast as you can to the Dycke Hotel. The Chandelier Room.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Well,” said Susan in a small voice. “I’ve set something going that—that I’m afraid is going to be more than I meant—”

“You’re good at stirring up things, Sue,” he said “What’s the trouble now?”

“Hurry, Jim,” said Susan. “I mean it.” She caught her breath. “I—I’m afraid,” she said.

His voice changed.

“I’ll be right there. Watch for me at the door.” The telephone clicked, and Susan leaned rather weakly against the wall of the telephone booth.

She went back to the Chandelier Room. Idabelle Lasher, pink and worried-looking, and Major Briggs and the two younger men made a little group standing together, talking. She breathed a little sigh of relief. So long as they remained together, and remained in that room surrounded by hundreds of witnesses, it was all right. Surely it was all right. People didn’t murder in cold blood when other people were looking on.

It was Idabelle who remembered her duties as hostess and suggested the fortune teller.

“She’s very good, they say,” said Idabelle. “She’s a professional, not just doing it for a stunt, you know. She’s got a booth in one of the rooms.”

“By all means, my dear,” said Major Briggs at once. “This way?” She put her hand on his arm and, with Duane at her other side, moved away, and Dixon and Susan followed. Susan cast a worried look toward the entrance. But Jim couldn’t possibly get there in less than thirty minutes, and by that time they would have returned.

Dixon said: “Was it the Major that convinced Idabelle that Duane is her son?”

Susan hesitated.

“I don’t know,” she said cautiously, “how strong the Major’s influence has been.”

Her caution was not successful. As they left the ballroom and turned down a corridor, he whirled toward her.

“This thing isn’t over yet,” he said with the sudden savagery that had blazed out in him while they were dancing.

She said nothing, however, for Major Briggs was beckoning jauntily from a doorway.

“Here it is,” he said in a stage whisper as they approached him. “Idabelle has already gone in. And would you believe it, the fortune teller charges twenty dollars a throw!”

The room was small: a dining room, probably, for small parties. Across the end of it a kind of tent had been arranged with many gayly striped curtains.

Possibly due to her fees, the fortune teller did not appear to be very popular; at least, there were no others waiting, and no one came to the door except a bellboy with a tray in his hand who looked them over searchingly, murmured something that sounded very much like Mr. Haymow, and wandered away. Duane sat nonchalantly on the small of his back, smoking. The Major seemed a bit nervous and moved restlessly about. Dixon stood just behind Susan. Odd that she could feel his hatred for the man lolling there in the armchair almost as if it were a palpable, living thing flowing outward in waves. Susan’s sense of danger was growing sharper. But surely it was safe—so long as they were together.

The draperies of the tent moved confusedly and opened, and Idabelle stood there, smiling and beckoning to Susan.

“Come inside, my dear,” she said. “She wants you, too.”

Susan hesitated. But, after all, so long as the three men were together, nothing could happen. Dixon gave her a sharp look, and Susan moved across the room. She felt a slight added qualm when she discovered that in an effort probably to add mystery to the fortune teller’s trade, the swathing curtains had been arranged so that one entered a kind of narrow passage among them, which one followed with several turns before arriving at the looped-up curtain which made an entrance to the center of the maze and faced the fortune teller herself.

Susan stifled her uneasiness and sat down on some cushions beside Idabelle. The fortune teller, in Egyptian costume, with French accent and a Sibylline manner began to talk. Beyond the curtains and the drone of her voice Susan could hear little, although once she thought there were voices.

But the thing, when it happened, gave no warning.

There was only, suddenly, a great dull shock of sound that brought Susan taut and upright and left the fortune teller gasping and still and turned Idabelle Lasher’s broad pinkness to a queer pale mauve.

“
What was that
?” whispered Idabelle in a choked way.

And the fortune teller cried: “It’s a gunshot—out there!”

Susan stumbled and groped through the folds of draperies, trying to find the way through the entangling maze of curtains and out of the tent. Then all at once they were outside the curtains and staring at a figure that lay huddled on the floor, and there were people pouring in the door from the hall, and confusion everywhere.

It was Major Briggs. And he’d been shot and was dead, and there was no revolver anywhere.

Susan felt ill and faint and after one long look backed away to the window. Idabelle was weeping, her faced blotched. Dixon was beside her, and then suddenly someone from the hotel had closed the door into the corridor. And a bellboy’s voice, the one who’d wandered into the room looking for Mr. Haymow, rose shrilly above the tumult.

“Nobody at all,” he was saying. “Nobody came out of the room. I was at the end of the corridor when I heard the shot and this is the only room on this side that’s unlocked and in use tonight. So I ran down here, and I can swear that nobody came out of the room after the shot was fired. Not before I reached it.”

“Was anybody here when you came in? What did you see?” It was the manager, fat, worried, but competently keeping the door behind him closed against further intrusion.

“Just this man on the floor. He was dead already.”

“And nobody in the room?”

“Nobody. Nobody then. But I’d hardly got to him before there was people running into the room. And these three women came out of this tent.”

The manager looked at Idabelle—at Susan.

“He was with you?” he asked Idabelle.

“Oh, yes, yes,” sobbed Idabelle. “It’s Major Briggs.”

The manager started to speak, stopped, began again:

“I’ve sent for the police,” he said. “You folks that were in his party—how many of you are there?”

“Just Miss Dare and me,” sobbed Idabelle. “And—” she singled out Dixon and Duane—“these two men.”

“All right. You folks stay right here, will you? And you, too, miss—” indicating the fortune teller—“and the bellboy. The rest of you will go to a room across the hall. Sorry, but I’ll have to hold you till the police get here.”

It was not well received. There were murmurs of outrage and horrified looks over slender bare backs and the indignant rustle of trailing gowns, but the scattered groups that had pressed into the room did file slowly out again under the firm look of the manager.

The manager closed the door and said briskly:

“Now, if you folks will be good enough to stay right here, it won’t be long till the police arrive.”

“A doctor,” faltered Idabelle. “Can’t we have a doctor?”

The manager looked at the sodden, lifeless body.

“You don’t want a doctor, ma’am,” he said. “What you want is an under—” He stopped abruptly and reverted to his professional suavity. “We’ll do everything in our power to save your feelings, Mrs. Lasher,” he said. “At the same time we would much appreciate your—er—assistance. You see, the Charity Ball being what it is, we’ve got to keep this thing quiet.” He was obviously distressed but still suave and competent. “Now then,” he said, “I’ve got to make some arrangements—if you’ll just stay here.” He put his hand on the door knob and then turned toward them again and said quite definitely, looking at the floor: “It would be just as well if none of you were to try to leave.”

With that he was gone.

The fortune teller sank down into a chair and said, “Good gracious me,” with some emphasis and a Middle-Western accent. The bellboy retired nonchalantly to a corner and stood there, looking very childish in his smart white uniform, but very knowing. And Idabelle Lasher looked at the man at her feet and began to sob again, and Duane tried to comfort her, while Dixon shoved his hands in his pockets and glowered at nothing.

“But I don’t see,” wailed Idabelle, “how it could have happened!” Odd, thought Susan, that she didn’t ask who did it. That would be the natural question. Or why? Why had a man who was—as she had said, like a brother to her—been murdered?

Duane patted Idabelle’s heaving bare shoulders and said something soothing, and Idabelle wrung her hands and cried again: “How could it have happened! We were all together—he was not alone a moment—”

Dixon stirred.

“Oh, yes, he was alone,” he said. “He wanted a drink, and I’d gone to hunt a waiter.”

“And you forget to mention,” said Duane icily, “that I had gone with you.”

“You left this room at the same time, but that’s all I know.”

“I went at the same time you did. I stopped to buy cigarettes, and you vanished. I don’t know where you went, but I didn’t see you again. Not till I came back with the crowd into this room. Came back to find you already here.”

“What do you mean by that?” Dixon’s eyes were blazing in his white face, and his hands were working. “If you are accusing me of murder, say so straight out like a man instead of an insolent little puppy.”

Duane was white, too, but composed.

“All right,” he said. “You know whether you murdered him or not. All I know is when I got back I found him dead and you already here.”

“
You—”

“
Dixon
!” cried Idabelle sharply, her laces swirling as she moved hurriedly between the two men. “Stop this! I won’t have it. There’ll be time enough for questions when the police come. When the police—” She dabbed at her mouth, which was still trembling, and at her chin, and her fingers went on to her throat, groped, closed convulsively, and she screamed: “
My pearls
!”

“Pearls?” said Dixon staring, and Duane darted forward.

“Pearls—they’re gone!”

The fortune teller had started upward defensively, and the bellboy’s eyes were like two saucers. Susan said:

“They are certainly somewhere in the room, Mrs. Lasher. And the police will find them for you. There’s no need to search for them, now.”

Susan pushed a chair toward her, and she sank helplessly into it.

“Tom murdered—and now my pearls gone—and I don’t know which is Derek, and I—
I don’t know what to do
—” Her shoulders heaved, and her face was hidden in her handkerchief, and her corseted fat body collapsed into lines of utter despair.

Susan said deliberately:

“The room will be searched, Mrs. Lasher, every square inch of it—ourselves included. There is nothing,” said Susan with soft emphasis. “Nothing that they will miss.”

Then Dixon stepped forward. His face was set, and there was an ominous flare of light in his eyes.

He put his hand upon Idabelle’s shoulder to force her to look up into his face, and brushed aside Duane, who had moved quickly forward, too, as if his defeated rival had threatened Idabelle.

“Why—why, Dixon,” faltered Idabelle Lasher, “you look so strange. What is it? Don’t, my dear, you are hurting my shoulder—”

Duane cried: “Let her alone. Let her alone.” And then to Idabelle: “Don’t pay any attention to him. He’s out of his mind. He’s—” He clutched at Dixon’s arm, but Dixon turned, gave him one black look, and thrust him away so forcefully that Duane staggered backward against the walls of the tent and clutched at the curtains to save himself from falling.

“Look here,” said Dixon grimly to Idabelle, “what do you mean when you say as you did just now, that you don’t know which is Derek? What do you mean? You must tell me. It isn’t fair.
What do you mean
?”

His fingers sank into her bulging flesh. She stared upward as if hypnotized, choking. “I meant just that, Dixon. I don’t know yet. I only said I had decided in order to—”

“In order to what?” said Dixon inexorably.

A queer little tingle ran along Susan’s nerves, and she edged toward the door. She must get help. Duane’s eyes were strange and terribly bright. He still clutched the garishly striped curtains behind him. Susan took another silent step and another toward the door without removing her gaze from the tableau, and Idabelle Lasher looked up into Dixon’s face, and her lips moved flabbily, and she said the strangest thing:

“
How like your father you are, Derek.
”

Susan’s heart got up into her throat and left a very curious empty place in the pit of her stomach. She probably moved a little farther toward the door, but was never sure, for all at once, while mother and son stared revealingly and certainly at each other, Duane’s white face and queer bright eyes vanished.

Susan was going to run. She was going to fling herself out the door and shriek for help. For there was going to be another murder in that room. There was going to be another murder, and she couldn’t stop it, she couldn’t do anything, she couldn’t even scream a warning. Then Duane’s black figure was outlined against the tent again. And he held a revolver in his hand. The fortune teller said: “Oh, my God” and the white streak that had been the bellboy dissolved rapidly behind a chair.

‘Call him your son if you want to,” Duane said in an odd jerky way, addressing Mrs. Lasher and Derek confusedly. “Then your son’s a murderer. He killed Briggs. He hid in the folds of this curtain till—the room was full of people—and then he came out again. He left his revolver there. And here it is.
Don’t move.
One word or move out of any of you, and I’ll shoot.” He stopped to take a breath. He was smiling a little and panting. “Don’t move,” he said again sharply. “I’m going to hand you over to the police, Mr.
Derek.
You won’t be so anxious to say he s your son then, perhaps. It’s his revolver. He killed Briggs with it because Briggs favored me. He knew it, and he did it for revenge.”

He was crossing the room with smooth steps; holding the revolver poised threateningly, and his eyes were rapidly shifting from one to another. Susan hadn’t the slightest doubt that the smallest move would bring a revolver shot crashing through someone’s brain. He’s going to escape, she thought, he’s going to escape. I can’t do a thing. And he’s mad with rage. Mad with the terrible excitement of having already killed once.