The House without the Door (22 page)

Mr. Bulliter's relief at having at last made some sense out of Gamadge was so great that he released his breath audibly. He even laughed.

"You can imagine," continued Gamadge, "what a fool I feel. I absolutely couldn't bring myself to explain to the maid!"

Mr. Bulliter said: "Tee hee. Don't blame you."

"Or to the people downstairs," said Gamadge. "I simply came up to throw myself on your mercy. I should have waited until tomorrow, or telephoned, or something; but it looks like rain."

Mr. Bulliter glanced at the long glass door, and back at Gamadge. He was entertained. "You really must let me tell my wife," he said. "Agnes, my dear."

Mrs. Bulliter came in from an adjoining parlour. She was taller than her husband, but her handsome dress compressed a figure as opulent as his own.

"Mr. Gamadge, my dear," said Bulliter.

Mrs. Bulliter, smiling and curious, asked how he did, and Gamadge asked how she did. Mr. Bulliter explained Gamadge's antics with his cigarette case, and their sequel; Mrs. Bulliter laughed very much.

"I can't tell you how I feel about this," said Gamadge plaintively. "I've interrupted your coffee."

"Have some, and have a drink," said Bulliter, his hand on a bell.

"Absolutely not, thank you all the same. I'm in the dickens of a hurry to get home. If you'll just let me go out on your balcony," said Gamadge, "I'll find it in no time." His skin crawled at Bulliter's expected and dreaded reply:

"Very dirty out there, I'm sure. Let me call the houseman."

"Or Mabel," said Mrs. Bulliter.

"No, really, I shouldn't think of it. I know just where the thing fell." Gamadge's hand lightened on the brim of his hat.

"Well, at least you've kept your coat on." Mr. Bulliter suddenly started forward. "Good heavens, are we all dreaming? Let me have your hat, and take your coat off, do. Agnes, my dear, in the excitement Mabel never took Mr. Gamadge's coat and hat."

Mrs. Bulliter looked absolutely lost. She said: "I never heard of such a thing."

Gamadge laid down the hat on a table. He said: "I'll just keep the coat, if you don't mind. Now confess, Mrs. Bulliter; you were standing out there in the other room with your lips glued to the house telephone."

Mrs. Bulliter laughed gleefully, and said no. "I wasn't a bit frightened, because Mabel told us there was only one of you."

"Well, there'll be none of me in two minutes." Gamadge sidled in the direction of the balcony doors. Mr. Bulliter reached them first, and began to struggle with a stiff handle. Gamadge assisted him, and the heavy door swung inwards. Gamadge stepped with alacrity over the sill and down into a stone trough. He said: "Do step away, it's pretty cold."

Mr. Bulliter stepped away, but not far. Lamplight poured out over dusty shrubs in earthen pots, and Gamadge, squeezing himself between them and the wall of the building, could only hope that he made an effectual screen for his own activities. These consisted in feeling wildly among prickly branches and along a stone floor. He thought he would never find the things; but at last his hand closed on the pistol, and he ran his fingers along the cord attached to it, and seized the ball of string. He rewound it hastily, and pushed it into one pocket, and the gun into another. He got hold of his cigarette case, turned, and stepped back into the room.

"Found it!" He held it up in triumph, while Mr. Bulliter pushed the door shut. "Just where I thought it was." Relief flooded him, cooling as a fan; he realized that he had been bathed in the sweat of terror.

The Bulliters politely studied his battered old silver case; it had originally been a snuff-box, and eighteenth-century fingers had tapped away much of the fine chasing from the lid of it. Gamadge would almost as soon have parted with his house, but neither of the Bulliters showed enthusiasm over the relic.

"Very nice." Mr. Bulliter got out his own dull-gold affair, and Mrs. Bulliter extracted an onyx and platinum trinket from her bag. These, they civilly didn't say,
were
cigarette cases. Gamadge admired them from all angles; he felt a sudden hideous temptation to produce the object which was pulling his right-hand coat pocket out of shape, and ask the Bulliters to admire
that
. He could not help wondering what on earth would then happen to the Bulliters' pink faces.

The mad fancy died even as it was born. Mrs. Bulliter said: "I do wish you'd change your mind and have a cup of coffee with us, and some kümmel."

"You're awfully good, I mustn't stay." He picked up his hat.

"At least let us explain why we were a little nervous when you came," said Bulliter. "The police were in the house this morning."

"No; were they?"

"I thought you might be a plain-clothes man," continued Bulliter. 'That was my second thought, you know—before I saw you."

"What were police doing here?"

"Oh, not
here
; the elevator man said they were up in Mrs. Smiles' apartment," said Mrs. Bulliter. "I don't know whether you know who she is—Mrs. Joseph Smiles?"

Bulliter winked at Gamadge. "Old Smiling Joe's widow. In the old days none of us would have been much surprised to hear that the police had visited old Joe."

"I should have been surprised," said Gamadge, "very much surprised. From what I hear, the police never had the slightest chance of catching up with him. But why should they call on his widow?"

"Perhaps he left her that oil stock nobody could ever find," tittered Mr. Bulliter.

"Perhaps burglars got some of those enormous diamonds she wears," said his wife.

Gamadge said, "Perhaps," shook hands, and told the Bulliters once more how sorry he was to have disturbed them, and how grateful he was. A smiling Mabel let him out of the apartment, and he went down in the elevator with his hat pulled rather low, and his hand on the gun in his pocket.

He got into his car, drove round the block, and headed south.

E
VERY NIGHT, AFTER THE LAST
patient had gone up to bed, Mrs. Tully or Miss Lukes went round below-stairs, put up chains and shot bolts, locked doors with her special key, and retired, confident that Five Acres was secure without and within. Harold could have told her that it was not; he had found a window in the new east wing—a pantry window— which could be operated on with a pen-knife. He used it to make his own late entrance for his private tour of inspection, and departed afterwards by the same way. He was impelled to this course of conduct not only by a scientifically thorough turn of mind, but by a heavy sense of responsibility; this was the first time that Gamadge had left a matter of real importance entirely in his hands.

But strangers would not know about the lock on the pantry window; moreover, the east wing, which contained the dining-room, the kitchen, pantries, storerooms, and a laundry, was on his end of the house. He could take care of it, and of the roof that sheltered the outside cubicles, and that ran under Mrs. Gregson's window and along the back of the place. The front upper windows were all locked at night; they belonged to empty bedrooms, a sun parlour, a little infirmary and the doctor's office. Harold was obliged to hope that the occupied bedrooms could not be entered at night with impunity.

On Friday, at about half-past eleven, he left the house by the pantry window, snapped the bolt, and retired to his terrace room. He left the door wide open, rolled himself in blankets, and lay down on his cot. It was early for possible marauders, but soon he would make another patrol of the grounds. He wished that he were back in his room at the top of the Gamadges' house in New York, with noises in the street outside; there were noises here, plenty of them, but they were veiled and ambiguous. He had investigated several of them the night before—rustlings and scrabblings, sounds like footsteps on the terrace, a creak and a thumping near the garage. They might have been caused by wind in the shrubbery, squirrels, bats, cats; they might have been his imagination; but at least no human being had produced them.

The night was very dark; there had been a leaden sky since dusk. He couldn't see the line of hills to the north-east, he couldn't see much of anything, now that the patients' lights were out. Darkness like this seemed to make night noises even more vague and numerous, but for a while he heard nothing at all. Then there was a faint, a very faint sound not far beyond his open doorway; it might be coming from just round the corner of the house. It sounded like footsteps on grass, but Harold took no stock in it. However, he got up, pushed his feet into rubber-soled shoes, and buttoned his sweater. When he reached the terrace he looked up; Mrs. Gregson's north window was closed and dark.

He was actually at the angle of the house wall, had actually peeped round it, before he heard the voice. It was only a whisper, but he caught the words: "…won't go without seeing you. Can't I come up?"

A figure, curiously hunched, stood ten paces away from him; under Mrs. Gregson's east window, looking up. It was hatless, but something shrouded its head and obscured the shape of it. To a being so shadowy among shadows, so absorbed, Harold felt invisible; but he withdrew until—clinging against brickwork—he was just able to see round the corner.

Mrs. Gregson was at her open window. She leaned out to murmur: "I tell you you can't get in. I'll come down."

The figure moved back, melting into the dark of the shrubbery. Mrs. Gregson came out of the window backwards, found a foothold on the coping beneath, lowered herself to the sill of the lower window—it belonged to the lounge—and jumped to the ground. A sweater was round her shoulders, fastened at the neck, and her handbag was on her arm.

"Darned fool woman," thought Harold angrily. But she seemed not to have lost all her common sense; she remained where she was. The figure came out from among bushes, and stopped too. "I brought your car," it said. "We can sit in it."

It moved off, towards the front of the house, and Mrs. Gregson followed. There were at least four yards between them; Harold, as he stalked them along the wall, knew suddenly what the leading figure reminded him of. He had seen a coyote in the zoo, and he remembered the way it had cringed along, afraid yet menacing, ready for defence or safe attack.

It went straight past the house, diagonally across the lawn, and to the highway; glancing up once at the dark front windows, and then plodding on, its head down, as if it were on a trail. Mrs. Gregson kept steadily on behind; a determined look about her, too; determined and cautious. "She thinks she can handle it," thought Harold. "She wouldn't like it if she thought Mr. Thompson was following her around, all ready to jump into her business."

The little procession went down the highway, a black tunnel under its interlacing tree branches; not so black, though, as the pocket of darkness that seemed to open on the right. The women turned into it. Harold, muttering, put on speed; a car stood within the lane, its rear towards him, its lights off. He was up behind it as Mrs. Gregson got into the right-hand front seat, and had gained the running-board below the left-hand window as the other closed that door and slid under the wheel.

He craned up; the strange woman was bending forward, her profile a dim enigma; Mrs. Gregson sat back, watching her, her face set and stern. It was in a kind of incredulous stupor that he saw Mrs. Gregson's left arm come up, and saw the knife in her hand.

He heard himself shout as he plunged. He would have received the long blade in his arm if another hand had not come from the dark rear of the car to grasp her wrist. For a second he had a glimpse of her face as the lights came on—an unforgettable and frozen mask; then, as Gamadge's appeared behind it, he ceased to look at Mrs. Gregson.

"For goodness' sake," said Gamadge, "drop the thing."

The knife fell from her fingers. Harold caught it—a kitchen knife, sharp and pointed. He stared at it, stared at Gamadge, and turned to look at the other woman; she lay forward over the wheel, and he wondered vaguely whether she had fainted.

"All right, Miss Prady," said Gamadge. "Harold, see if Miss Prady's all right, I shouldn't blame her if she'd collapsed."

Miss Prady raised herself to say in a gasping voice: "It's just that I was too scared."

"Slide out of the car and get in here with me."

Harold opened the door for her, and helped her to the road. Her face, framed by the silk scarf she wore round her head, looked greenish in the car lights. Her shoulders were still hunched as if against an expected blow.

"I was afraid every minute that she'd do something." Miss Prady's breathing was still uncertain as she climbed into the back of the car.

"You were a magnificent sport. But you knew she wouldn't try anything till she had you in the car; and if I hadn't seen my friend here come out after you I'd have stuck by you myself. As it was, I ran round the house and cut across lots to get here ahead of you. Harold, will you get in there under the wheel?"

Harold got into the seat beside Mrs. Gregson. She had not moved in any way since she released her weapon; she sat with fixed eyes, hardly seeming to draw breath. Gamadge held her wrist lightly. He said: "Miss Prady and I are here to make a deal with you, Mrs. Gregson."

She might not have heard him; Gamadge went on:

"It's good of Miss Prady, you know, since you killed her best friend; but she's obliged to me for clearing up the situation. It's good of me, too; if you'll forgive me for taking a personal view of the matter. You made a catspaw of my friend Colby, you tried to make one of me, and you did in fact make an awful fool of me on Wednesday when you walked away from Five Acres—before I'd even finished my lunch—and met Benton Locke, perhaps here in this very lane. I'm sure you got a good deal of amusement out of it; and if the case had been less serious, and Miss Warren's danger from you less great, your own sublime ignorance of the fact that I had already begun my campaign against you would have diverted
me
."

Mrs. Gregson's imprisoned wrist moved a little; then it was still again.

"I knew almost from the first," continued Gamadge, "that there had been no attempts against your life, and that you had written yourself that anonymous letter. I knew it when you refused to change your will. A woman in terror of her life would have changed it, if only as a temporary measure; but you couldn't; you had to retain your suspect, and to do that you had to keep her supplied with a motive. Money could have been Miss Warren's only reason for trying to kill you; you hoped to convince the world that it had been her motive for killing Gregson.