The Door Read online

  It took all my courage to fling that door open, and for a moment, after the darkness, the blaze of light almost blinded me. Then I saw, sitting calmly on the floor, Mary Martin. She was looking at me with a half smile, and the light on her red hair was positively dazzling.

  “Good heavens, how you scared me!” she said.

  “What on earth are you doing here?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said, “and I got to worrying about a card. That bunch of orchids and lilies of the valley—the card’s been thrown away.”

  She had emptied one of the trash-cans onto a paper before her. Now she ran her fingers through the debris, the flotsam and jetsam of the day; a chipped cup, bits of string, old envelopes, even sweepings from the floors. And suddenly she picked something up and waved it before me.

  “Here it is,” she said. “Now I can sleep in peace.”

  I do not know why I felt that she was acting. Perhaps the open window had something to do with it; the rain driving in and blowing over her, and that assumption of hers that this was as it should be; that she liked sitting in that chaos and allowing the rain to wet one of those alluring negligees which she affected.

  “Why don’t you close that window?”

  She drew her kimono about her, and got up.

  “I will,” she said. “Not that I suppose it matters here.”

  And then, at the window with her back to me, I saw her release her clutch on the kimono, so that it blew out into the room, and I saw her lower the window with one hand. I knew then that she had dropped something over the sill.

  And I saw another thing. There were no bits of glass among the trash on that paper. If she had thrown them out, as I suspected, the rain would wash them clean of evidence. They were gone.

  But lying in bed later on I was bewildered beyond thought. Had this unfathomable girl lain awake as I had, reached the same conclusion, acted on the same impulse? Or was there something more sinister there, some knowledge I did not possess which she did? And once again I was back in my house at home, hearing that desperate weeping of hers.

  “It’s nothing. I was low in my mind. That’s all.”

  I have rather a confused memory of the next two days. I recall that early the next morning I made an excursion into the courtyard of the building, but without much result. It was still raining, and although here and there I could see very small pieces of glass, there was nothing large enough to be worth salvage. Which was not surprising, considering that if I was right they had had a sheer drop of twelve stories.

  Dick Carter appeared on Thursday. I did not know he had come until I saw him in the library with Judy. I happened to walk in on them, and I saw at once that things were not well between them. He was standing at a window, staring out, and Judy was huddled in a chair.

  “I don’t see what difference it makes,” she was saying.

  “Don’t you? Well, I do.”

  Nevertheless, it was from Dick that I got the first intimation that some one besides myself was suspicious of Howard’s death. Judy had disappeared, but the boy stayed around after she had gone, uncomfortable but apparently determined.

  “I suppose it’s all right?” he said to me. “No chance of anything queer, eh?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. Suppose Blake told him something and the shock killed him; that’s not murder. That is, supposing it was Blake.”

  “Good heavens! Do you think it was some one else?”

  “Well, figure it out for yourself. Blake’s sick, or he says he is. But he comes here in the middle of the night, driving his own car for ninety-odd miles, sees Mr. Somers and gets back, presumably, at daylight or thereabouts. That’s some drive for a sick man. Then all this secrecy. Why? The police couldn’t have stopped him if he’d wanted to take a train and come here. They’ve got nothing on him yet. All he had to do was to pack a bag and come. Or hire an ambulance! He’s coming for the funeral, isn’t he?”

  I sat down. My knees were shaking. Dick looked at his watch.

  “What time does the night watchman come on duty?”

  “I haven’t an idea.”

  “Well, he’s the boy to see.”

  I made up my mind then to tell him about Mary and the glass, and I did so. He listened attentively, but when I told him she had actually found the card, and that I was not certain she had thrown anything from the window, he made rather light of it.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “Now either we’ve got another crime or we haven’t. In the first place, who would want to kill a man who had only a few months to live anyhow? But grant that. Grant that there was poison in the glass. Something quick, like cyanide. First we have to admit that Howard Somers, drinking a highball, is talking to some one he knows, and trusts. He’s not scared. He’s drinking a highball. But you’ve got to go further; you’ve got to figure that Mary Martin knew he was going to be murdered, and how. Yet she warns Judy that he’s not to be left alone at night. Only did she do that?”

  “I haven’t an idea,” I said dismally.

  “I suppose there’s no chance of a post-mortem?”

  “Not unless we told Mrs. Somers; and not then. It’s her brother who is involved.”

  Naturally we said nothing to Judy of all this, and the day passed quietly enough, people coming and going, more flowers, and Mary keeping her neat entries and moving decorously about. Once I caught her eyes on me, a curious speculative look in them, and I thought she was depressed all of that day.

  Late in the afternoon she asked to be allowed to go home for the night, and I told her to go. She remained to dinner and left at nine o’clock, and at nine-fifteen Dick called me on the telephone.

  “Listen,” he said, “I’m at a drug store around the corner. I wanted to tell you; there may be something in what we discussed today.”

  “Yes?”

  “The lady in question—do you get that?”

  “Yes. All right.”

  “She’s been interviewing the night watchman. Interesting, isn’t it? Just thought I’d tell you, so you can keep an eye on things.”

  He hung up the receiver, and I was left to make of that what I could.

  I remember that Alex Davis was there that night. Howard’s attorney. He was settled comfortably in the library with a glass of old port at his elbow, and what with the port and probably an excellent dinner tucked away, he was unusually talkative. A fat man, Alex Davis, with small sharp black eyes set in a broad expanse of face.

  “I suppose you know,” he said, “that there will be a great deal of money. More, I fancy, than any one realizes. Poor Howard was a secretive man.”

  “I suppose he left a will?”

  “Yes. A very fair one, I think. He’s taken care of the servants and certain charities, and there is provision too for Mrs. Somers’ brother.”

  “And Wallie?” I asked.

  He cleared his throat.

  “He has already done a good bit for Wallie. Certain businesses which failed, and last summer certain notes to be paid. But there is a very fair arrangement; a trust fund with a substantial income. Not large. Substantial. Of course this is in confidence. I am one of the executors.”

  And I saw that this last pleased him; that it was a vote of confidence, as well as providing certain emoluments; that already he saw his name in the press everywhere; the size of the estate, the inheritance tax royalty calculated. “Mr. Alexander Davis and the Guaranty Trust Company, executors.”

  He leaned back and patted his substantial abdomen.

  “Howard was a money maker,” he said. “A lot of people are going to be surprised.”

  I was not listening very attentively. I was thinking of Mary and of that conversation with the night watchman, and after Alex Davis had taken his complacent departure I wandered into Katherine’s study and looked about me.

  The desk was cleared. There was no sign of those small personal belongings which she was wont to keep by her. Nor were they in the drawers of the desk, or any place els
e.

  It came to me with a shock of surprise that Mary Martin had gone, and gone for good.

  Jim arrived at noon the next day, for the funeral. Save for a certain pallor—he had been in the house for over three weeks—he seemed much as usual; impeccably dressed, with a black tie and a black band on the left sleeve of his coat.

  I had no chance whatever to talk to him. He went at once to Katherine’s room, and their luncheon was served to them there.

  Only during the solemn process of carrying Howard’s body downstairs was he seen at all until after the services. But that seems to have been sufficient. Some time in that slow and affecting progress Jim came face to face with an individual whom I was later to know as Charles Parrott, a man of middle age, with a cap drawn low over his face. This Parrott was carrying in the chairs usually provided for such occasions, and was opening them and placing them in rows, and as Jim passed him he gave him a long steady look. Jim did not notice him, apparently.

  I was not there at the time. The name Charles Parrott meant nothing to me. But in due time Charles Parrott was to play his own part in our tragedy, to make his own contribution to the tragic dénouement which was to follow. For Charles Parrott, introduced by Dick by methods of which I have no knowledge, was the night watchman of the building. And he identified Jim Blake as being of the same build and general appearance as that visitor to Howard whom he had admitted two nights before.

  True, he stubbornly refused under oath to make a positive statement.

  “He’s the same build. He looks like him. But that’s as far as I go.”

  So Jim moved about, unsuspicious, changing the flowers, softening the lights, and Parrott watched him. He disappeared when Jim had gone upstairs again, to remain with Katherine and Judy during the services. Wallie was not asked to join them. He was left to sit alone, where he chose. A cruel thing, perhaps; a stupid thing certainly. Katherine had taken the strongest affection he had ever felt, the deepest grief, and flung them back in his face.

  So he sat alone, rigid and cold during the services, and stood alone at his father’s grave. However he had wavered before, some time then he made his decision. He went that night to call on Alex Davis, sitting complacent and smug in his library, and slammed out only a half hour later, leaving Alex in a state bordering on apoplexy.

  Half an hour later Alex Davis was frenziedly ringing the bell of the apartment and demanding to see Katherine. He was admitted and taken up to her, but Judy and I knew nothing of all this until later.

  Judy had determined to talk to Jim, and asked me to be present in the library.

  “I can’t stand it any longer,” she said. “He was here. Why doesn’t he speak up? He must know that watchman saw him. Even if father was—was alive when he left, why doesn’t he say something?”

  But Jim’s reaction to her first question was a surprise to both of us. He denied, immediately, categorically, and almost violently, that he had made any visit to Howard Somers on the night of his death.

  “Here?” he said. “Why, it’s madness. Why should I have come like that? You’ve lost your good common sense, Judy.”

  “Some one was here and used your name. He telephoned on the way, from somewhere in the country.”

  When she had told her story, however, he looked ghastly. Not only was there the implication that Howard had been murdered, but there was the terrible possibility which the situation held for himself. What was he to do, where to turn? To go to Katherine and demand that the body be exhumed? And that with the police watching him, and maybe poison to be found? All that he must have thought of, sitting there so neat and dapper in his chair.

  “It’s terrible,” he said. “It’s all terrible. And this night watchman? He says he recognized me?”

  “He says the man was your height and build.”

  Suddenly he was savagely angry. “And so this fellow, this Parrott—he’s in the secret, is he? He’s been brought here to look me over! Good God, Judy, do you want to send me to the chair? I wasn’t here. How the hell could I get here? I’ve been sick for weeks. If somebody came here that night, using my name and impersonating me, he was a liar and an impostor, and before God I believe he was a murderer too. Why should I have come here in the night? I could come at any time.”

  Then he quieted, although he was still shaking.

  “Does your mother know anything of all this?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then keep it from her. You can do that much. She is in great trouble.”

  “So am I in great trouble,” said Judy bitterly. “But I suppose that doesn’t matter.”

  He looked at her.

  “You believed it, did you? Do you still believe it?”

  “I don’t know. No, of course not.”

  “Judy,” he said, more gently, “what motive could I have? What possible reason? Your father was my friend. To put the thing boldly, what could I possibly gain by his death? By any of these deaths?”

  And as if in answer to his question a footman knocked at the door and said that Katherine wanted to see him in her room.

  I have no picture of that scene, but I can see it: Katherine frozen in her chair and Alex Davis walking the floor, and after a habit of his snapping his fingers as he walked. Into that scene Jim was projected, and in the forcible language he was told what Wallie had said.

  Briefly, Wallie had claimed that, during his illness the summer before, his father had made a second will. That this will was in Howard’s safe deposit box at the bank in New York, and the copy in the hands of Waite and Henderson, Mr. Waite having personally drawn it, here in my own city.

  By this will, Wallie received no trust fund and no annuity, but a full half of the estate, and the previous will had been revoked. The new will made no provision whatever, either for Sarah or for Jim.

  “He may be lying,” said Jim, still apparently confused.

  But Alex Davis snapped his fingers with excitement, and said that if so it was fairly circumstantial lying.

  “He’s even got the names of the witnesses,” he said, and drawing a slip of paper from his pocket he read them aloud. “Sarah Gittings and Florence Gunther.”

  I believe it was then that Jim collapsed.

  Naturally I knew nothing of this at the time, nor did Judy. Both Katherine and Jim were still shut in their rooms when I left early the next morning.

  But I was sufficiently dismayed and confused. If we were to believe Jim—and I did—then the possibility of a third murder was very real. And once more, sitting in the train, I endeavored to fit together the fragments of that puzzle. I saw Howard, that night, waiting in his room, settled in his bed, the highball beside him, a book in his hand. Getting up to admit his visitor, finding it was not Jim, but making no outcry. Still calm, putting on his dressing gown and slippers, talking. Judy had heard them talking.

  Some one he knew, then; knew and trusted. Was it Wallie? Wallie was not unlike Jim in build, although taller and slimmer. Might not that be the answer, and no poison, no third murder. A talk between father and son, and then Wallie going and the heart attack after he had gone.

  I admit that this comforted me. I sat back and tried to read.

  Shortly before the train drew in to the station Dick Carter came through the car. He looked depressed, but he forced a smile when he saw me.

  “Well,” he said, “I’m back on the job! Even funerals can’t last forever.”

  He sat down in the empty chair next to mine, and said that Judy had telephoned him of Jim’s denial.

  “She believes him,” he said. “In that case—this Martin girl seems to be fairly vital. It begins to look as though she’s the key, doesn’t it? Take that glass, for instance. She thought fast that morning and she was still thinking that night. It’s not coincidence, all that glass stuff. Get why she did that, and we’ve got somewhere. Where does she come in in all this, anyhow?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “Tell me something about her,” he said, leaning forward. “Who is
she? What do you know about her?”

  “Nothing, really. She answered an advertisement last fall. I tried her out, and she was efficient. Very. She had no local references.”

  “And on that you took her into the house? To live?”

  “Not at first. But she was really very capable, and sometimes I work at night. I rather drifted into it.”

  He was silent for some time. Then he made a circle on a piece of paper and marked it around with perhaps a dozen dots. It bore a rough relation to a clock-face, but without the hands, when he held it out to me.

  “This dial thing,” he said. “It may not refer to a clock, you know. It might be a safe. You haven’t a safe in the house, have you?”

  “No.”

  “A safe, or something resembling a clock, but not necessarily a clock. Something round. Would that mean anything to you? A picture, maybe? Have you any round pictures, with nails at the back?”

  “One or two. I can examine them.”

  The train was drawing in. He helped me into my wraps, and we sat down again while we were being slowly moved into the station.

  “I suppose,” he said, not looking directly at me, “that you realize what all this has done to me?”

  “To you!”

  “About Judy. I’ll be nobody’s kept husband, and Judy’s got a couple of millions or so. I fade, that’s all.”

  “Judy has a right to a vote on that, hasn’t she?”

  “She’s voted. She’ll keep the money.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Well, the equivalent of that. She says I’m a poor mean-spirited creature to refuse to let her support me in luxury. She says it takes a strong man to marry money, and I’m weak or I’d do it.”

  Then the train stopped.

  I was glad to get home, to find Robert at the station and Joseph at the open door. I like my servants; I have to live with them, and so when I do not like them they must go. And the house was cool and quiet, after New York. I relaxed at once under Joseph’s care; the well-laid tea table, the small hot rolls, the very smoothness and greenness of the lawns outside the windows. For the first time since Sarah’s death I felt secure. Surely now it was over; we had had our three tragedies, according to the old superstition.