Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, MFR and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net BY LESLEY FROST Editor of âCOME CHRISTMASâ [Illustration: Decorative border] MURDER AT LARGE [Illustration: Decorative border] PUBLISHED IN NEW YORK BY COWARD-McCANN, INC. COPYRIGHT, 1932, BY COWARD-McCANN, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY THE VAN REES PRESS MURDER AT LARGE I Ordway Belknap, ex-Judge of the Magistrateâs Courts, and for the present a detective of amateur standing, and a semi-professional criminologist, on call at the Homicide Department, leaned comfortably back in an arm-chair in the den of his spacious penthouse apartment on the East Riverâin Gracie Square to be exact. James, the perfect âmanâ that confirmed bachelors dream of one day possessing, entered soundlessly on the deep-napped carpet, and, in a cotton-wool voice, announced Judge Whittaker on the wire. âThank you, James,â murmured Belknap in a tone modulated to the atmosphere of the room; while James, with the smooth precision of the Roxy Orchestra being lowered, sank from view, the den being a floor to itself. Belknap slowly ground out a freshly lit cigarette and meditatively examined the telephone at his elbow. His face gathered seriousness as a window gathers steam. He recalled Whittakerâs remark of a week ago, made as they passed at the Club: âI will give you a ring soon on a matter of life and death. No, I canât go into it nowâIâm running.â And though in the meanwhile the matter had slipped his mind he now unaccountably, even to himself, hesitated to remove the receiver. Belknap was a man of fifty-odd, but didnât look it; tall, handsome, with a firm mouth, burning brown eyes, and thick, lustrous black hair. His muscles were steel-hard; and his skin always deeply bronzed, winter and summer alike, for he was one of those elusive and self-styled members of the Long Beach nature club. He enjoyed motoring down on brilliant days even in January to nurse a driftwood fire in the shelter of a shallow dune, basking himself in fire heat and violet ray. Sun-bathing is the habit of a solitary; but then, Belknap _was_ a solitary in more ways than one. He loved the slow, indolent afternoons, apparently wasted, and with no words spoken. He relished the mingled smell of olive oil, wood smoke and salt; and the sight, through more than half-shut eyes, of gulls, and a ship moving up the horizon like the large hand of a clock, invisibly moving yet seen to have moved. Rodney Drake would periodically rise like an elongated Pict out of the waste of sand and gesticulate against the sky. On the open beach the hardy little Egyptian, name unknown, would squat motionless on his heels over a tin firebox. So it may well have been these lonely watches that fostered the thing in Belknap that his acquaintances, even friends, called âqueer.â The world in general certainly considered him puzzling, enigmatic. It found him definitely uncommunicative, or, when communicative, ironic, which is a turn of speech that leaves the hearer not much the wiser. His friends claimed for him a sensitive, reserved nature that shed humankind with reluctant cynicism for lack of a better method, a cynicism sharpened and brought to a point through years of close association with the evils and corruption, hypocrisy and injustice of the courts. He had a way of never overlooking an opportunity to be bitter at the expense of law and order as practiced in this enlightened twentieth century. And it was the hopelessness of the struggle to keep a modicum of honesty in the legal system that, Belknap said, had driven him out to play a lone wolf game tracking the criminal. Too frequently, he claimed, the innocent paid, or no one paid, while the guilty sat in full view of the Bench. He was at least determined to give the eager public a few real captures, if not convictions. In his two most famous cases he had managed the convictions as well. His first, that of Maria Monroe, strangled in her closed Riverside Drive apartment when it was supposed she herself was in Honolulu, followed immediately on his resignation from office. In fact what he considered the bungling of this case had been the last straw that made him yield to a temptation of long standing. And he was miraculously successful. With every investigating agency in the City against him, and with an apparently impregnable alibi to break down, he saw his man through to the chair. But it was the Stanton-Mowbray affair the next winter that saw Belknapâs amazing and unreasonable technique developed to its greatest power. Stanton was shot at the Villa Bella Night Club in Forty-eighth Street, West, toward the daybreak closing of an exceptionally wild night. No gun was found, although the few remaining guests were searched within a few moments by the police; and even the general direction from which the shot was fired could not be determined. Some said it had come through a window, others from close range. The case had lain dormant for months when Belknap took an interest in it. The chief suspect had been a certain Colonel Blake, a man of great personal magnetism, strong political associations and influential friends. The feeling had become current that he was guilty and that it was being âhushed up,â that the law was once more proving inadequate. But in this instance Belknap was able to give the law a clean slate. Jumping to insane conclusions in the intuitive manner that was his strongest claim to distinction, he put his finger on little Violet Mowbray, a musical comedy dancer, who had had a last-minute invitation as an âextraâ for Stantonâs party. Although it was believed that she and Stanton had thereby met for the first time, Belknap discovered a weird series of events that put Stanton in the most blasting light and gave poor Violet a dozen motives for murder. Violet took her sentence of from ten to twenty years with a quiet protestation of innocence that moved the courtroom to tears and hysteria. No one seeing her frail figure led away that dull December day would have said she could live to see a year of it served. Since the weeks when he had kept his name and face headlined, together with Stantonâs and Violet Mowbrayâs, Belknap had had several months of comparative quiet. He had given the police some assistance in a few minor matters, but had really fastened his teeth into nothing worth the candle. And at the moment he felt particularly in need of violent distraction. He was surfeited with a week of burning sun; weary of women; stale with an overdose of detective fiction; and disturbed by a tendency on the part of his thoughts to take a gloomier turn than usual. Yet for some odd reason Whittakerâs ring, following the words of their last meeting, gave him pause. He knew Whittaker as a dangerous person, _friend_ or enemy, often even more dangerous as the former. Their relationship had of late been strained. Belknap had all but come to the conclusion that any intercourse between them, kindly or unkindly, had been dropped. Then why this matter of life and death? Oh well, curiosity had killed more than cats. He reached for the receiver. âYes? Oh, Whittaker? Good to hear your voice.â (a little overdone that. Rang false) âOf course, old boy.â (Now why was he calling him âold boyâ?) âIâd be delighted, more than delighted.â (Good God, I donât even mean delighted) âSomething thrilling for me to do? Youâre going to put me wise? Oh, I see: give me an opportunity to _get_ wise. Of course. Any old thing for a change.... No, I donât exactly catch your meaning. Youâre pleasantly mysterious as usual.â (Diabolically so, is what I want to say, and I will say it one of these days.) âA house full of criminals? Since when have you been on week-end terms with Sing Sing? Theyâve never been in Sing Sing? You want me to help you put them there, is that it? You bet your sweet life. Anything to do with what you let fall to my ear last week? It has? When do you want me? Dinner tonight. Thanks most awfully. Iâll be there.â He hung up; but failed to return to the Audubon which lay open on his knees, an original Folio, given him with relief and gratitude by Colonel Blake. Instead he relapsed into a brown study and considered a rather sinister possibility from several angles and in varied lights. II Belknap made the distance to Whittakerâs Long Island mansion at Blue Acres in something under an hour. His Dusenberg, long and low-slung, colored to please his own eye, and fitted with special gadgets for defence and utility, was also a demon for speed, and even in traffic had broken many records, largely its own to be sure. He had always driven himself, and he had often reflected that if he had not been a lawyer or a sleuth he would have been ticking off mileage at Daytona. Such was his love of the power and beauty of line of a splendid machine. And he admired as much as he admired any work of art his brown, thin, muscular hand on the wheel, one mahogany, the other coffee. As he turned into the wide, sweeping drive of Thorngate, he slowed the car to a crawl, and savored for a moment the view of the Sound, the lemon and orange sunset beyond it, the peace of the trees and shrubs and flowers on either side. He listened with one ear to the swish of the tires in the traprock gravel roadbed, and with the other to the cicadas making the mad sound of a semi-anÃ¦sthetized brain among the oaks. Black John, alert and loquacious, opened the door to him, and showed him immediately to a large, luxurious room on the second floor. Belknap stood at the long windows, looking down, and shedding, with the deafness characteristic of his general indifference, Johnâs flow of well-intentioned chatter as he unpacked and laid out Belknapâs week-end wardrobe. Belknap was so far removed from it as to be unaware of Johnâs withdrawal. Unaware also of Bertrand Whittakerâs entrance. âYou made the trip in short order, I imagine. How are you, Belknap?â âSplendid, thanks. Yes, I came down fast enough. There is nothing to warrant a leisurely drive on Long Islandâuntil after Shinnecock Hills perhaps. Before that the sooner itâs over the better. You know I am still forever being surprised that there can be such charming and secluded spots as this within a stoneâs throw of these atrocious main highways. And yours is one of the best, Bertrand.â â_Isnât_ it, Belknap!â Whittakerâs face lighted with pleased vanity. But it died on the instant. âI shall hate to leave it. More than I shall hate to leave anything else, I assure you.â Belknap paused with their lighted cigarette match arrested between them, and quickly met the eyes he had been studiously avoiding. âLeave? Why, when, and where for? Going abroad?â Whittakerâs immediate answer was a cold smile. He accepted his light and crossed to a chair. Belknap regarded him intently through puffs of his own smoke, and being a keen student of men when he cared to be, or found it necessary, he remarked a new hardness in the hard grey face. Whittaker was a grey man: iron-grey hair, granite skin, grey-blue eyes, gun-metal suits, and plenty of grey matter. He was a man too able, too willfully brilliant, for the cramped position in which he had to work. So he put the extra energy into deviltry. âThatâs just what he is doing now,â thought Belknap, âand God help somebody. Somehow I think itâs God help him for a change.â But he wasnât prepared for being quite as right as he proved to be. âNot exactly abroad. Though perhaps yes, in a very broad sense. Sit down, Belknap, and weâll talk, if you donât mind being serious on an empty stomach. The drinks will be up shortly.â âFire away, man, by all means. You are now making things sound, not only mysterious, but rather important. Whatâs it _to_ you?â âItâs a great deal to me, Iâm afraid. It seems I have short shrift, Belknap. Iâm sentenced to death. The doctors have given me six monthsâor âwith luck,â as they put it, an extra one or two.â âGood Lord! Why Iâve always thought you one of the fittest. What _is_ wrong? Whittaker, Iâm sorryâtoo terribly sorry. Is there a thing I can do?â âYes, there is.â A flare of wicked humor came and went in Whittakerâs eyes. âBut weâll come to that in a moment. Iâm dying of cancer. In a bad spot. Iâm in for pain and a great deal of it; more than I can quite bear to put up with, I guess. âSix months to live.â It may sound short enough to you, but to me it sounds an eternity. Six _weeks_, yes; I might have kept a stiff upper lip for six weeks. But thatâs about my limit.â âYou meanâitâs suicide?â Belknap asked, and did his level best, in respect to the situation, not to show a fierce impatience that he should have been asked in at the death. âNo-o, not strictly speaking. Though Iâve always contended suicide is justifiable in such circumstances. And I purchased a very pretty little Colt last week for the purpose. But I reconsidered. Iâve been a man who made himself felt going and coming; you can testify to that, Belknap. Then why make this particular exit dull and unromantic, with nothing more said of it than, âMr. Bertrand Whittaker had been suffering from ill health, and it is thoughtâetc., etc.â You know the line. So, as Iâve said, I didnât shoot. For here was the perfect opportunity to go the limit with life and death, nothing to lose that wouldnât be gain. In other words I could leave a bit of a pother behind meâin commemoration. And, my dear fellow, Iâve hit on an idea that I doubt even you could match.â Belknapâs face was a mosaic of varying expression: sympathy of a kind, eager curiosity, distrust and threatening disapprobation. A man of Whittakerâs evil propensities could do considerable damage if he was driven, as now, to turn at bay. âThink twice, Whittaker,â Belknap warned him quietly, âbefore you mention your idea even to me. We can drop it here and now. I promise to ask no questions. Remember a doctorâs judgement has been as often reversed as a judgeâs! Donât be rash under the first shock.â âIâm not being rash. This is a certainty, born witness to by my flesh and bones. The doctors didnât surprise me, to tell you the truth. But I had rather banked on being tabled, so to speak, and dying under the knife. No such luck. So itâs my six months or my week-end, and Iâm going to make it the week-end. If that fails me I can always fall back on the pistol. Putting two and two together, do you begin to get my drift?â âI canât say I do in the least. I suppose Iâm stupid.â âFor a detective I think you are. Well, to call a spade a spade, I intend to be murderedâwith you in attendance to get the murderer. Is that clear enough?â Belknap, without the flicker of an eye-lash, darkly concentrated on a point somewhere between himself and the ceiling. Whittaker examined him secretly and furtively from under overhanging brows. The atmosphere had a tendency to thicken before Belknap drew himself back to the necessities of speech. âThanks most awfully,â he said with a hard, ironic twist of the lips, âfor this amazing opportunity. It quite takes my breath away. Undoubtedly I should make a drastic effort to turn your intention, as one is expected to withhold a man about to leap from the Brooklyn Bridge. But I admit Iâm frankly curious as to details. So before I seize you around the neck, metaphorically speaking, letâs hear more.â Whittakerâs body, from a slight stiffening, yielded to the shape of his chair. âIâm delighted that your first reaction _is_ curiosity, Belknap; for in that case I feel sure I can eventually enlist your interest in the bizarre and dramatic elements of the situation. I feared youâd mount the pulpit, or the bench, or the stand of mere friendship, deliver me a moral lecture, and ring up your pet specialist for an appointment. In which event,â he added with faint mockery, âI should have resorted to your rival, Silas Berry. So you see I _am_ determined. And so far so good. I swear itâs been good fun making arrangements.â âSuch as?â âWell, for one thing, putting in what I call my supply of ammunition. Although I have a fair handful of erstwhile, and therefore potential, murderers on my visiting list, it was another matter to bring enough of the right sort together to insure a pleasant week-end, and a week-end that, as you can see for yourself, may be indefinitely prolongedâfor _them_! Several of my favorite respectable killers are in foreign parts. But Iâve managed at least eight. Do you want a brief synopsis? Of course certain of them are familiar to you.â Belknap tried matching casualness with casualness. He leaned over and lit a table lamp. âMay I enquire how many of them are in the house? And how soon we may expect action? There may easily be a brace of us, Whittaker, before weâre through. A more or less famous detective left floating around on the scene of the crime might be considered rather a serious handicap.â And at that moment John, entering with a tray, was responsible for the startled movement of both men. Whittaker remarked on it as he poured them each a highball. âApparently certain death hasnât yet quenched my instinct of self-preservation. Naturally one canât destroy in a week fifty years of vital energy and will to live.â âListen, old timer, are you sure even now that this is the best way out for you? What about repentance and the Church? Go in for it thoroughly, I mean, and try for the Heavenly Choir. Youâre too good a tenor to waste.â Whittaker laughed. âToo good a devil to waste, Belknap. Better devil than tenor I think. No, Iâm going out in a sputter of fire and brimstoneâno candles for me.... Aha! I hear someone arriving. Possibly Blake. He was motoring in from Southampton.â III Standing at the windows, Belknap looking over Whittakerâs shoulder, they saw Blake spring lightly from the seat of his Ford convertible, throw out his bags from the rumble, spring back, and âzoomâ around the corner to the garage. Putting a hand on Whittakerâs arm, Belknap brought him roughly about. âWhy ring Blake in on this?â he asked, and his voice took a deadly level. His lips also leveled to a straight line, and his teeth showed white in the slit between. âAfter all heâs _too_ good a friend, isnât he, of yours, _and_ mine? Whatâs the big idea?â âHe _is_ a friend, old man, true enough.â Whittaker quietly brushed Belknapâs hand from his sleeve, and turned away. âBut what are friends, true or false, to me now? âLess than the dust.â Besides, Blake is a crack shotâand a sportsman to boot. Even though you proved so brilliantly that he didnât shoot Stanton, it was just the kind of shooting he might have done, you know that. He gives no quarter to men who run out on debts, or dishonor women. Sort of a knight errantâgoes about saving situations in the nick of time. That he finds it convenient to use a gun in most cases is not _his_ fault. I can even see him doing me what he would call âa good turn,â taking me out after a whiskey and soda, and putting a hole through me against the garden wall with a Sorrell-and-Son generosity, âWe mustnât let the poor devil suffer.â Yes, Belknap, you must admit heâs a splendid prospect from my point of view. I canât help it that you have scruples against sleuthing him.â âBy all thatâs holy, you are beyond me, Whittaker.â âIf you mean by that that I am beyond the pale, I am. And beyond caring. There may or may not be a life in death, but that there is death in life Iâm finding out. So what the Hell!â âEnough said, Whittaker. Weâll leave it at that. I begin to see that it _is_ âwhat the Hellâ and then some.â Belknap was pacing the floor, his hands thrust deep in his pockets. He stopped before Whittaker to ask, âI have a question before we go further. Whatâs the match, that lights the fuse, that blows up the house that Bertrand built?â âA good match, Ordway, soaked in tar, pitch, and turpentine. I publish my Diary. Itâs a substantial, well-filled, truthful Diary, packed with sensations. In a period when confessions and revelations are in such demand, it seemed a pity not to keep abreast of the times. Hearst gives me a small fortune for mine, sight unseen, and it goes, in my will, with whatever else I possess, to my niece Joelâunless, of course, this week-end makes it useless to her; in which caseââ âJoel Lacey! See here, Whittaker, youâre insane! Iâve cared for Joel, and you know it, since she was too young to know the meaning of the word love. She is incapable of murder. But if she _had_ committed a crime, and you were letting her down, you would have me to reckon with.â âHear, hear! The first threat, and that from my bodyguard. Check it for Berryâs benefit. It happens, my dear fellow, that your estimate of Joelâs character, like that of all true lovers, is mistaken. Joel is a murderess. Her husband wasnât a suicide. Oh, she had incentive enough, I guess. And it was hardly a murder in one sense: she challenged him to a duel but he scoffed at the very idea. So she fired anyway, and came to me to give herself up. I silenced her. As for letting her in for all thisâwell, I needed her. I was short of women for the dinner table. Otherwise, I wouldnât have bothered with her, for my hopes donât lean very heavily on her, I can assure you.â âI should have thought you _might_ be short of women. Who are the others, by the way?â âRomany Monte Video for one. The accident in _The Renegade Lover_, in which she killed her husband (who was not her husband in private) with a folding dagger which didnât collapse was not an accident. The dagger that night was not intended to fold.â âBertrand, youâre a cad. When did you desert Romany?â âYears ago. I didnât desert her. She left me forâ Oh, I canât even remember, there have been so many.â âThatâs no excuse for such betrayal as this. Who else?â âNadia Mdevani. Youâve met her here once or twice, I think; and of course know of her in a professional way. Not that there has ever been anything proved against her, quite the contrary, and yet where there has been a political murder, here or abroad, during the past ten years, she has almost invariably been questioned. I should say offhand that she is probably the tool of a powerful international ring of Governmental murderers. But her social distinction is unquestioned, her culture and wit are superlative, and her beauty is a thing to be dreamed of. I can say to you now, what I would not have said under any other circumstances, that she and I have beenâcall it friends, yet I have not breathed a word to her of what I instinctively know to be true: that she is a murderer twenty times over.â Belknap shrugged to cover a strong, irrepressible shudder. âYou are a braver man than I am, Gunga Din. But then, in a pinch, Iâve always known you were. Is that the toll of women?â âThereâs one other. She is not a murderess, but she is a potential one, for I think she knows that her husband killed a man years ago. Until lately, when, I am sorry to say, Romany has been having her innings with him, Neil and Sydney Crawford were hand and glove in a marriage that I liked to call a marriage. He is a banker;âlives out here at Blue Acres; respected, indeed loved, by everyone who knows him; and the same can be said of Sydney. He got inadvertently mixed up with a gang of boys on the streets of New York, when he was a youngster, and they later proved to be a gang in good earnest. So when Crawford was sowing his wild oats, and had run up a card debt far beyond anything he knew his father could pay, he accepted an honorarium for cutting short the career of a drug smuggler. It was his wildest oat. He turned over to a very clean leaf; but I think he would go to any lengths now to save his name for Sydney and the children. And she would do the same by him.â âSplendid! Go on. This is too good to be true. It is really such a sweet reversal of formâexpecting the bad eggs to hatch. Isnât that Julian Prentice out there with Joel? Who did _he_ killâhis crippled grandmother or something?â âNot so bad as thatâor I wouldnât have let him engage himself to Joel. No, he merely drowned a boy who was all but drowning him during the hazing of freshmen at the University. He pretended cramp to do it. Everything appeared accidental, and of course sympathy was with Julian anyway. There is one other, who makes the fourth manâirrespective of ourselves, and we donât count. Milton Dorn I doubt whether you know. He is an able surgeon; but he also has a secret laboratory, or operating room, where he experiments on the conscious flesh to the point, but not beyond the point, where life still lingers. I should imagine that would be all you need know about him.â âAbsolutely! My only wonder is that you didnât apply directly to him for release.â âI thought of that. But then, as Iâve said, itâs a long row he hoes and Iâm looking for a short one. There, Belknap, I guess that tells the tale in brief, doesnât it?â âNo, not altogether, Judge. There is a point on which I need to be enlightened, with a bright, bright light. Where do I come in?â âI thought I had made that clear. You are here to find good sport, but to be a spoil-sport.â âI donât mean that, Whittaker.â âYou mean the Diaryâwhy, man alive, it makes something like a hero of you. My admiration is written all over it. Perhaps it shouldnât be. _Have_ you committed murder?â Belknap laughed. âItâs not the time to admit it exactly, is it?â A silence fell between them. Belknap broke it with another question. âWhen do you spring it?â âI thought I might bring it up at dinner. Unobtrusively. Casualness will at first bewilder them. The horror of the situation will dawn on them gradually.â âHas anyone an inkling?â âNo one. Except perhaps Nadia. I mentioned to her the other day that it would be fun to publish my Diary verbatim seeing what a number of things it contains. Her answer was, that if I proposed doing so I would probably never live to see it in print. That sounds hopeful. Oh, of course nothing at all may happen. They may decide to take their medicine for the old rather than be on with the new. I think that would be my solution provided I was in their shoes. And then again anything may happen. Psychologically itâs a pretty how-de-do. To throw half a dozen killers together, even civilized ones (in fact the more civilized the more interesting), makes for a strange medley.â âStranger than you know, Iâm afraid. There is an interrelation of secret currents between your protagonists that is likely to be devastating. You may not even be the only casualty. What about the police?â âCall them in at the drop of the hat of course. The Homicide Department would be delighted to send Berry along to help you if you suggested it, Iâm sure. Wellâwhat about dressing for dinner?â âSuits me.â Belknap put a hand on Whittakerâs shoulder as they parted at the door. âWhittaker,â he said gently, âI donât know what to say exactly. Iâll have to reserve my judgement until later. But again let me say I sincerely regret the circumstances that have brought us to the present precarious position. For even I canât see my way to withdrawing now. I canât forego the chance of so much excitement, if nothing else,â he added, with the flicker of a smile. â_Thought_ ye couldnât, boy.â Whittaker stressed the shrewd, cunning accents of his Yankee ancestors. IV The luxurious ease, and quiet, well-oiled machinery of service at Thorngate gave no slightest indication of the worm at its heart. Up the long, winding, carpeted stairs the servants glided on their errands, and, in turn, the guests themselves came softly down by ones and twos, with a gleam of jewels, of colored silk, of white shirt-fronts in the halls dimly lit with candles. Belknap had hastened his dressing in order to be first in the drawing-room. He felt that at any moment he might be needed in the front line, and that no time should be wasted under a shower or before a mirror. His trust in Whittaker was not so perfect as to assure him that he had been honest in saying no one was in the least aware of impending trouble. And there was just the chance that someone, being forehanded, would get away with murder! Although he had been in the receiving room, which was also library and den, fifty times over, Belknap looked it over with awakened interest. Whittaker, it was apparent, had a leaning toward panelings and oil portraits, medieval tapestries and deep-napped carpets. Here tapestries formed the wall covering from floor to ceiling: none of exceptional value except the Gobelin over the mantel, but all equally lovely in colors and texture. An impulse, not so odd perhaps under the circumstances, prompted Belknap to test what lay immediately behind the surface of woven cloth and, as far as its stretching would yield to his hand, he found space. He tried it at various points and discovered it everywhere the same; and he recalled having heard that it was the safest way to hang tapestries against the rear attack of insects and dampness. Convenient to know, he thought. He was engaged in trying to locate the servantsâ entrance to this interstitial passage when he became gradually aware that someone else had come into the room. He turned about with elaborate sang-froid and met the gaze of a tall, strikingly handsome woman, who stood quizzically regarding him. She wore a black sheath gown with crimson accessories that included the oval nails of tapering fingers and the clear-cut lips of a willful mouth. The crimson handkerchief tied to her garnet bracelets floated lightly up and back at every slightest movement of her arm. The cigarette case of scarlet enamel which she opened with a deft flick of one hand to help herself with the other, gleamed like smoldering coal. He had met Nadia Mdevani several times with Whittaker; and he had vaguely realized the relationship between them, but had given it little consideration; except that once he had instinctively withdrawn from a case in which her name had figured more or less conspicuously. The sense of her guilt had been conveyed to him on the wings of one of what he called his wild guesses, and he paid Whittaker the courtesy of letting well enough alone. As it happened, she had cleared herself easily. Looking at her now he realized that she was inwardly disturbed at sight of him. Perhaps she saw in his mere presence a confirmation of the faint doubts she might be entertaining with respect to the week-end. But her poise held perfectlyâin fact it was by a shade of its over-emphasis that he caught the inner tremor at all. âAh, Mr. Belknap!â she exclaimed, in her slow, husky contralto. âHow ni-ice to see you here. Or should I call you Judge Belknapâor Detective Ordway Belknap? I am never sure of the term to your face. Behind your back I call you Belknap for short.â âLetâs discard them, all four, and make it simply Ordway, to my face, as you put it, _and_ behind my back. And may I make it Nadia? Remember Bertrand is an equally dear friend to us both. You are looking divinely, Miss Nadia. Black is your color. Although I have seen you when I should have said the same of red, or white for the matter of that. Red and white are your contrasts. Tonight you are fused into a single vivid figure of black. Whistler would have liked you. You have a way, which most women have not, of lending distinction to a color instead of letting it create you. You have a like faculty with situations I am told.â âI am not quite certain what you may mean by that, or whether it should entirely please me. But I have sufficient vanity to be flattered by your recollection of my gowns in view of how little attention you seemed to give them. Will you have one?â She proffered her exquisite box and on his âThank you, no,â crossed to the hearth where she lifted a crimson-slippered foot to the side bar of the fender, and for graceful balance (pose, Belknap thought it) laid a hand against the tapestried wall. It yielded enough to mar her picture. âI had forgotten these tapestries are but the semblance of walls,â she murmured. âWhat a cosy place for rats. Although I suppose it was for the very purpose of perpetrating the Hamlet act against rats that the space was originally reserved.â Belknap was pouring himself a thimbleful of Scotch at the tray standing in readiness on the divan table. He tossed it off, and turned over the after flavor on his tongue, as his mind turned over the possible subtleties of Nadiaâs remark. She had made it piquant by a twist of inflection. A Polonius as well as a ratâor so the tone implied. âWe were speaking of Bertrand,â she continued abruptly. âDo you not consider him a little secretive about the week-end, conveying that there is a _reason_ why we are here? Why should there need be a reason?â âThere _should_ be none, Nadia, except our enjoyment of his unbounded hospitality. But I feel myself, now that you mention it,â Belknap pursued, willing to test where her guards were raised, âthat Bertrand has something up his sleeve. Possibly an announcement; he likes to make any news impressive. He may have lost his shirt in the Market, or been left a fortune by his great-aunt Emma in Vermont. You know Bertrand well enough to know heâd celebrate either with equal pomp.â He heard the little whispering sigh that Nadia suddenly drew. âI hope itâs nothing serious,â she said, more to herself than Belknap. Then, quickly: âIs it the Diary?â she asked. Belknap hesitated by the fraction of a second. By all accounts Nadia Mdevani was dangerous. Her intelligence, fearlessness and beauty were things that might throw dust in any manâs eyes. Her ability to âclinch,â as she was doing now, with a power greater than her own, and cut her way free from within, had won her many a hand-to-hand encounter that if taken blow for blow would have seen her downed long ago. However, Belknap could see no better way at the moment than to close with her. âYes, it is the Diary,â he said quietly; and stood spellbound by the extreme beauty of her face as the color mounted under the ivory skin, accentuating the high, molded contours of the bones beneath it. He could not have said whether she were more angered or hurt. âWhen?â Her low voice held its ground; not by a shade did it show disquiet. âHow much time is granted us to deal with it?â He was smitten with admiration at the serenity and ease of her apparent candor. With veteran coolness she took him on. He could do no less than to match her play for play. âHe intends letting the cat out of the bag tonight. But there will be nothing published for several days.â âThank you. I donât know why, Mr. Detective, you are being so kind and telling me tales out of school.â She turned fully toward him and gave him one of her rare smiles, lifting her drooped eyelids enough to show two burning high-lights, like two stars under an edge of cloud. âI had to know how swift the sands were running away. Even you canât speed them or retard them. And you wouldnât if you couldâfor you have really seen me tonight for the first time,â she said, with the faint irony he was beginning to adore because in a more subtle and whimsical way, it counterbalanced his own. âMay I?â She took a flower from a bowl on the table and broke it short for his buttonhole. At that moment he had regretfully to turn from her. Whittaker, at his elbow, was presenting the Crawfords. V ORDWAY BELKNAP O NADIA MDEVANI O O ROMANY MONTE VIDEO NEIL CRAWFORD O O MILTON DORN JULIAN PRENTICE O O HARTLEY BLAKE JOEL LACEY O O SYDNEY CRAWFORD O BERTRAND WHITTAKER was the way they sat at dinner. Belknap regretted Miss Video on his left. He was one of the few who had never been properly infatuated with the Romany patteran, as he privately named her for her continuous flow of inconsequential chatter, and had therefore never liked her. It was one thing or the other with Romany. She was a sylph-like creature with enormous eyes, an auburn Viennese bob, and a disingenuous manner. She âneededâ them, was the way men put it, first their friendship, then their protection, finally their passion. You couldnât somehow let her down by disappointing her. They said she was weak and easily swayed, and each in turn flattered himself he could strengthen her philosophy against a bitter world (a world he helped to embitter, if he could but see it that way), and help her get on her feet. Yet somehow she had never mastered this art of walking alone! Belknap, always irritated by willowy natures, now wished her in Kingdom Come. He wanted to renew the dangerous but charming intimacies that had swiftly and strangely sprung up between himself and Nadia Mdevani; and here would have been his opportunity, with Nadia beside him sending odd disturbing currents up the arm that almost brushed hers. He felt her mind being restive and wild, puzzled and angry, and above all keenly intent on a loophole of escape. If anyone else should succeed in silencing Whittaker forever it would not be because Nadia had yielded her designs but because she had delayed long enough to be cunning and intricate in their workmanship. She even seemed, now that the die was cast, rather to relish the added risk of having Belknap in the arena with her. Whittaker, asked for a description of Nadia, would have said the obvious things about raven locks and snowdrift skin, with eyes too revealing to go revealed. Belknap, after this evening, would have spoken of her in terms of a banked fire with a scent of brimstone. With less than half his exasperated attention given to Romanyâs innumerable reasons, centering in jealousy, why she had not been assigned to lead in _After Midnight_, he glanced surreptitiously at Nadia. Her face, ivory white and immobile, signified nothing. He wondered whether he might be mistaken in thinking the atmosphere so heavily charged between them. His appraising eye passed down the table, appreciating beauty and distinction where he found it, and paused at Joelâdear Joel, not beautiful perhaps, but dear looking. Belknap, in his fashion, had loved her; but for his own bachelorâs sake (he was not an unselfish man), as well as for her youthâs sake, he had never spoken of it to her. Looking unwaveringly ahead into a night that might well be terrible for them all, he felt a particular pang for her. She was talking _sotto voce_ with Julian: âHush, dear, people are listening.â âThen darling, more darling, most darling.â âDonât, _please_!â âI want to see your amber eyes, not the back of a leaf-brown head.â âDonât say things like that at the table. Speak when you are spoken to.â âCanât you say something nice to me?â She looked around at him, half tearful, half laughing, under her lashes. âOh, my dearest one, is it as bad as all that?â âWorse, Joel, much worse.â Of course it must be a dream, and a very bad one, that Whittaker had been saying things about cancer and murder and murderers. The more so when one looked at Whittaker himself, sitting genially, though perhaps with an extra dash of grey pallor, at the head of his board, lifting his champagne to touch glasses with Sydney Crawford: âTo the lips, to the eyes.â The Stein song again! Would its revival never die? Yet it quite applied at Whittakerâs table tonight. Every woman in her way was as fair, as vital, as more than willing to play up, as any man could ask. Even Sydney, with a flash of challenging laughter at her husband, was returning Hartley Blakeâs sallies in kind. Sydney was obviously fey tonight, with a heightened color, brighter eyes, and a recklessness of sentiment that might mean trouble. Had Neil and Romany failed in discretion? Blake was in his usual excellent form; and it was plain to see thought his wit of too good a flavor to be entirely spent on a woman, even the excited Sydney. So he was tossing it by means of a slightly lifted voice up over his right shoulder at Dorn. Dorn however looked darkly unresponsive, and, being a man of few words, it seemed probable Blake would never know whether his delightful flippancies and exaggerations were being appreciated. Then, suddenly, he knew: âAs for myself,â Dorn remarked to his side-partners in particular, and to the table tangentially, âI have recently resolved to remain silent unless I feel that I can definitely contribute something worth while to the conversation. Time and energy are indiscriminately wasted in the futile, the repetitive, and the platitudinous. If we could hold our tongues until they were loosed by the real idea, the absolute necessity of speech, there would at least be a deal less noise, and quite possibly a return to the art of thinking which at present is a lost one.â It was an insulting and uncalled for remark under the circumstances. Romany, who looked positively crestfallen for a change, perhaps needed a blunt rebuke (she wasnât suppressed in a day), but Blake, though an inveterate talker, was a brilliant one. His high color showed such anger that the control of his first words was surprising. âI should not only hold it, Dorn, I should bite it if I were you.â The silence that fell in the room was deep and ominous. But in it was Whittakerâs opportunity, not only to distract Dorn and Blake, but to call attention to himself. Here, like Jason, he could cast his stone among the dragonâs teeth. âI believe I _have_ a contribution to make to the conversation, to the eveningâs pastime, and I hope to posterity.â Belknap, without looking her way, knew that Nadia stiffened and straightened at the words. As for the others, their eyes turned to Whittaker expectantly, but with no premonitory awakening. âI had planned letting you learn of what I intend when it had ceased to be an intention and become an actuality. In other words, you were only to know of the publication of my memoirs when you saw them in print. But I really canât resist a little boasting in advance, and I thought I might read scraps of them after dinner to the assembled gathering, before we get down to bridge.â âOh, how wonderful of you, Uncle Bertrand,â Joel exclaimed, eager to help him, as she thought, tide over the embarrassing moment. âI didnât know you were writing. You have so many irons in the fire, how _did_ you find time to do a book? But it must have been pretty good fun, so much has happened to you.â âIt isnât recent, Joel; itâs been written at odd moments over a period of twenty years. In other words, itâs my Diary. But it _is_ packed full of material, and all sorts of things. Everybodyâs in it. Oh yes, you are all there, my dears.â âYou talk like Red Riding Hoodâs wolf, Bertrand,â Nadia said with cold acidity, and at her tone the first chill, like the first autumn frost, fell on them all. âJust what do you mean when you say we are in it?â âExactly that, Nadia darling. I hope you are in it to the life, as Iâm sure I am.â âYou mean it is a character portrayal of your friends and foes as well as a revelation of your own natureâyou sinner,â she added with bitter lightness. âYou express it in a nutshell.â Blake spoke. âBy what right does one betray oneâs friendsâeven in the cause of literature; and you will excuse me, Whittaker, if I doubt the literary merits of your pen.â âBy the modern right of giving the public what it craves and pays for: the revelation of evil, the worse the merrier. It used to be how I found the true light; now it is how I went plumb to Hell.â âHow you did perhaps, but not how I did.â âIn most instances one touches close upon the other, Iâm afraid. It is a platitude of course (I ask your pardon, Dorn) to remark that we none of us can sin alone, but it is true nevertheless. Even the person that hears the tale of a crime is somehow affected. I feel the need of clearing my decks, of things heard and committed.â âI doubt it would earn you a free pass through the pearly gates, supposing your proposed act comes off. Mark I say proposed.â âIs that your glove, Blake? You must be able to get gloves at a discount.â âMy glove, yes, but not concealing the dagger beneath.â âIâll meet you where and when you please.â âWith Ordway Belknap as your second, I suppose? No, thank you; there are safer ways.â âThen make it fast, man,â Whittaker cried in a suddenly broken voice as the dew of intense pain stood out on his forehead and he drooped a little forward over the table. âThe time is short for both of us.â âQuick, Mr. Belknap,â Nadia exclaimed, âRomany is fainting.â It _would_ be Romany who took things the hardest. VI Half an hour later found the atmosphere of the library anything but comfortableâindeed strained almost to the breaking point. Whittakerâs slow poison was beginning to take effect. Ignoring the ominous rolling up of clouds, he had quietly but firmly gone ahead with the plan to read aloud a few pages of the Diary. With malicious casualness he had suggested the withdrawal of anyone who felt more in the mood for billiards or bridge: âYou know the billiard room, Blake. Do get up a game if it suits you. Thereâs nothing particularly thrilling about an old man mumbling over his memories of other days. I merely thought one or two of you might prefer a momentâs pause in the dayâs occupation that I could beguile, even if I put you asleep.â But, aside from Dorn who had excused himself directly after dinner with, âDoctors, you know, Whittaker. Frightfully sorry. Iâll try to get back tomorrow,â there was not one that had had the strength to keep away from the spiderâs parlor. Though for a moment it had appeared that Belknap might follow Dornâs example: âCome now, donât tell me youâre off, too?â Whittakerâs tone half-mocked, half-threatened him as he stood indecisively in the hall toying with the door-latch. âOh no,â Belknap had answered with impatient asperity. âHardly that! I have a small contribution to make to the eveningâs pleasure. Itâs in the car. Iâll be back.â He was, in a jiffy, with several bottles of what he said was â11 champagne, and which, as Whittaker knew, came from one of the finest cellars in New York. But no one else turned even an attentive eye to the gift which Belknap was arranging with exaggerated care on the tray of crystal-bright
{'title': 'Murder at Large by Lesley Frost', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}