There is No Return (10 page)

“You’ve got to help me, Miss Adams,” said Chet Keith, brushing past me into the room.

“Young man,” I began in my most intimidating manner, which as a rule is no laughing matter, but he was neither intimidated nor abashed.

“I know I called you a snapping turtle and an old fuss-budget,” he interrupted with a grin which was definitely meant to be disarming, “but I’m at my wit’s end and I need somebody whose head is screwed on tight.” For the second time I admired his grasp of feminine psychology.

“I recognize this as a sample of your skill in getting around the female of the genus,” I remarked rather weakly. “Nevertheless I am prepared to listen to your request, though I can promise nothing else.”

So far from being disheartened by my lukewarm reception of his dramatic appeal, he had the impudence to place me upon the defensive.

“For heaven’s sake,” he exclaimed, “stop trying to shove that switch or whatever it is out of sight! Do you think I’ve been a newspaperman for ten years without knowing that most women keep their beauty secrets in the dresser drawer at night?”

I was for one of the few times in my life at a complete loss for words, but I assume that my gaze was eloquent enough as I thrust my false hair out of view.

“Sorry,” he said, looking like an embarrassed small boy.

“I imagine your mother believed in sparing the rod and spoiling the child,” I said loftily.

Again his grin was disarming. “I do not remember my mother, Miss Adams. I came up like a weed, selling newspapers in New York, then office boy for a big daily, promoted, if you care to call it that, to leg man for one of the tabloids, later taken on as feature writer on a Chicago paper. Not much of a career perhaps – a poor thing, but my own. What I’m trying to get over is that I’ve never had a leg up from anybody. I’ve never asked one till now.”

His face was quite red. I imagined, as no doubt I was meant to, that Mr Chet Keith had been a lone wolf all his life and that it went decidedly against his grain to be anything else. I was also aware that I was succumbing to his charm and that he knew it.

“What precisely do you want me to do?” I inquired.

“Help me engineer an interview with that girl next door,” he said promptly.

For the second time his audacity reduced me to speechlessness, but he pretended not to notice. “They’re having the inquest in the morning,” he said. “I’ve got to talk to her first.”

“If I heard correctly the sheriff left orders that she and her accomplice were to be held strictly incommunicado,” I said, eying him severely, “and unless my eyes deceive me a deputy is stationed in the hall outside for that express purpose.”

“I don’t imagine your eyes deceive you very often,” he said with his flippant though ingratiating smile.

“Are you suggesting that I help you compound a felony?” I demanded.

He grinned. “What’s a little felony between friends?”

“Aside from the fact that we are not friends,” I said haughtily, “I happen to be a law-abiding citizen. And anyway, the door between my room and that unfortunate girl’s is locked. I’ve tried it.”

“I bet you have,” chuckled Mr Chet Keith.

He then proceeded to produce a slender, sinister-looking object which I instinctively recognized as a skeleton key, though I had never seen one before.

“You never know when one of these is going to come in handy in my business,” he murmured and strolled over to the door which connected my room with Sheila Kelly’s.

“You actually propose with my connivance to talk to that girl against the sheriffs orders?”

He grinned. “And how!” he said and placed the key in the lock.

“Of course you realize,” I said sternly, “that it is my duty to report you to Sheriff Latham before this goes any farther.”

“Sure, only you won’t. Come on.”

“Come on?” I stammered.

“I told you I had to have help,” he said. “She wouldn’t see me alone.”

I stared at him and he smiled ruefully. “Miss Sheila Kelly unfortunately formed the opinion, when I met her some months ago, that no woman was quite safe in my presence from more or less dishonourable proposals.”

“So you propositioned her that time she was arrested?” I suggested.

“If you must know,” he said, “I did and got the worst turning down in my experience.”

“I suppose you thought a fan dancer who had been arrested in a raided night club was easy game,” I remarked scornfully.

“At that time,” said Chet Keith with a grimace, “I thought all women were easy.”

He again laid his hand upon the door, but once more I stopped him.

“Just how do you propose to account to the deputy in the hall outside for your prolonged presence in my room?” I inquired.

He grinned. “Didn’t I tell you? I’m supposed to be interviewing you for a feature article on ‘How to Live Alone and Like It,”’ he said impudently and took advantage of my outraged stare to open the door into Sheila Kelly’s room.

She was lying face downward across her bed, still wearing that bedraggled white evening gown, and her eyes were red with weeping, but she sprang to her feet when I entered and stood staring at me, her gaze quite frantic. To my relief there was no connecting door between her room and the professor’s. That was the first thing of which I made certain. The available space was taken up by two bathrooms, as in the case of the wall between my room and Ella’s.

Somewhat to my surprise Chet Keith had not followed me, seeming at the last minute to be overcome by the first sign of shyness which I had seen him betray. “If she isn’t dressed tell her to put on something in a hurry,” he called out.

The girl flushed. “What do you want?” she demanded.

“To talk to you of course.” He sounded cross. “Come in here where the deputy can’t hear our voices.”

“There’s nothing to say,” she protested bitterly. “I’m done for.”

“You’ve always been too hard-headed for your own good,” he snapped.

“Because I didn’t fall for your line?” she said.

“Do we have to go into that again?” he asked. “I thought we agreed the day you walked out on me that I was a heel. Can’t we let it go at that?”

“I saw you tonight,” she said, “kissing that girl at the desk before you hardly set foot in the house.”

“Sure,” he admitted with a scowl, “I said I was a heel.”

I glanced nervously at the door. “Don’t you think we had better transfer this discussion to my room?”

I had no desire to be caught by Sheriff Latham’s man in the act of talking to his prisoner behind his back. Sheila Kelly looked at me.

“You are Mrs Trotter’s friend?” she asked. “The one who was bringing the book?”

“So you knew about that,” I murmured, eyeing her sharply. “Apparently everybody knew about it.”

“Mrs Trotter told Mrs Parrish,” said the girl, as if that were sufficient explanation. Which it was, so far as I was concerned.

“Fortunately, although the book is missing, I have all the information in my head,” I said.

Not until later did I realize what a dangerous admission that was and how close it came to signing my death warrant. It might have been different if Chet Keith had not been too busy herding us into the other room to listen to that brief byplay between Sheila Kelly and me. On the other hand, probably nothing could have stopped the malignant spirit which was at work in Lebeau Inn, not until it had played out its tragic hand.

“Well,” murmured the girl, “you’ve had your way. Where do we go from here?”

It seemed to me that young Mr Keith was rather put to it to answer that question, though it may have been the truculent manner in which she stared at him that threw him momentarily off his stride.

“What on earth possessed you to walk into a racket like this?” he demanded.

“I told you. I was starving. I had to have work and-and the professor isn’t a bad old duck.”

“Letting him hypnotize you! You must have been crazy!”

“No, just hungry and desperate. You’d be surprised at what even you might do if you hadn’t eaten in three days.”

“I’ve been hungry and desperate too,” he said grimly.

“And at first hypnotism didn’t enter into the contract,” she went on.

He stared at her. “No?”

“When I signed on the hypnotism stuff was supposed to be all fake, part of the racket, you know. I was just-just to pretend to be in a trance. I don’t know when-when it ceased to be like that. I don’t even know when I realized that I wasn’t pretending any more.”

“The old bastard!” growled Chet Keith.

I nodded. “In the beginning they often make the subject think he is faking a hypnosis, in order to break down his resistance to mental suggestion,” I said, “or so I’ve been told.”

Her eyes were curiously dull. “At first I was horrified. I think” – she drew her hand confusedly across her brow – “I think I threatened to quit but-but I didn’t, did I? Lately I-I don’t seem to have worried about it. You can get used to anything. I think I decided it was-was easier than trying to fake a trance. It’s just like going to sleep, you know, and waking up tired and limp but without any responsibility for how good or how rotten you were in the act.”

Chet Keith glanced at me. We both had the same thought, I feel sure. The girl had played into the professor’s hand. She had permitted him to gain control of her willpower and now she could not throw off his influence if she tried. Worse still, or so it appeared to me, she had been robbed of the desire to try.

“And then,” said Chet Keith in a tight voice, “our friend Dora Canby entered the picture.”

She turned very white. “Yes.”

“Did you know she was in the audience that first afternoon?”

She shook her head. “I never heard her name until the professor told me we were coming up here to give private readings for her.”

He was watching her intently. “Nevertheless Little Blue Eyes delivered a message from Gloria to her mother that first day.”

She flushed. “The professor was Little Blue Eyes,” she said with a trace of defiance. “I never remember what I say in a trance.”

“Or do?”

She flung him an agonized glance. “But I didn’t kill Thomas Canby! I couldn’t have!”

“Whatever you said or did in a trance the professor suggested to you?” I put in quickly.

She hesitated. “It was like that until-until ...”

“Go on, until what?” asked Chet Keith in a sharp voice.

She glanced over her shoulder. “I’m sure the professor didn’t know about the canary,” she whispered.

He frowned. “What canary?”

“Dora Canby’s pet canary,” said the girl in a stifled voice. “The professor would never have suggested anything like that to me. He may be crooked but he isn’t vicious. He’s been square with me. I mean, kind and considerate, almost fatherly. And he-he likes birds.”

Chet Keith scowled. “What happened to Mrs Canby’s canary?”

She shuddered. “It was strangled.”

“Strangled!”

“I came to in my room. I felt tired and limp, just as I do after I’ve been in a trance, only I was not supposed to have been in one. I-I had the canary in my hands and it had been — it was dead!” Her voice rose to a wail and I shivered.

Chet Keith leaned forward and laid his hand over her trembling fingers. “Take it easy,” he said more gently than I would have believed possible. “So you weren’t supposed to be in a trance?”

“No.”

“Has it happened before or since? Your going off like that out of office hours?” he asked.

“Never until-until lately.”

“But it has happened before?”

“Yes,” she said, her face stark with fear.

“You’ve come to yourself unable to account for your actions during a period of time?”

“Yes.”

She stared at him and her eyes were dreadful. “That’s what makes it so horrible!” she cried. “I just come to and I don’t know how I got where I am or what-what I’ve been doing.”

“This afternoon, for instance?” I inquired.

She looked at me and I saw the panic in her eyes. “Yes,” she said.

“Where were you when you woke up?” I demanded.

“Down on the road,” she whispered. “On the road where Thomas Canby was nearly killed and my-my hands were covered with dirt as if-as if I had been digging in the ground.”

I am certain she heard me gasp, but not a muscle in Chet Keith’s face moved.

“Then later tonight in the dining room,” she went on hysterically, “I was quietly eating my dinner. Only all at once, I don’t know how, I found myself clear across the room and the professor was shaking me.”

“Yes?” said Chet Keith softly.

“There was a man there I had never seen before, but the professor said I called him by name.”

“The man was Hogan Brewster,” I explained. “You called him Shot. It seems Gloria Canby was in the habit of calling him that.”

“How did I know?” she cried, wringing her hands. “How could I have known?”

“I imagine the professor collected that piece of information, as he collected all the rest, to add verisimilitude to the act,” murmured Chet Keith, his lip curling.

“But the professor was furious with me,” protested Sheila Kelly.

“And Hogan Brewster was under the impression that no one except himself knew Gloria Canby’s nickname for him,” I volunteered and bitterly regretted it, for the girl went all to pieces at my remark.

“I told you I was done for!” she cried. “Nothing can save me.”

“Stop it,” said Chet Keith brusquely. “We haven’t time for hysterics.”

“But don’t you see?” she asked with a sob. “It’s true, what Dora Canby thinks. It’s true!”

He grasped her wrists. “Hush!”

She was past listening. “I killed him,” she announced in a voice that horrified me. “Or rather Gloria Canby killed him with my hands, just as she strangled the canary. She has taken possession of me, body and soul. Oh, God!”

“You’ve got to get hold of yourself,” said Chet Keith sternly. “You mustn’t fall for that stuff.”

“I speak with her voice,” she whispered. “They all say so. When I first came they showed me her picture. There was some resemblance. She was a blonde and very thin. But I look more like her today than I did a week ago, or even-even yesterday.”

“Listen,” said Chet Keith. “Get this and hang onto it for dear life. The dead don’t come back. Not even anybody as devilish as Gloria Canby can return from the grave to torture the living.”