Danger in the Dark Read online

  It was then about six o’clock. A cold, gray winter twilight with the feeling of impending snow. A twilight like the one twenty-four hours ago when Dennis walked up the road through the shadows of firs and falling snow and—before he came on to the house—climbed that steep little path to the springhouse.

  And Jacob Wait, lounging against a table in the library, with his hat over his eyes, looked up when she hesitated in the doorway and pushed his hat farther back. “Come in,” he said. “Sit down. Tony!”

  The policeman with the shorthand tablet sighed and got up from the divan and came again to the little table and opened his tablet. It was fat now with notes—queer, irregular little lines. He wished Wait would call it a day. After all, they’d talked to everybody in the house from the cook on up, and they had enough material to keep an ordinary man busy for days. He thought rather grimly of some of the things that had come out during the course of those long, grilling interviews.

  He sharpened a pencil meditatively. Queer old place. He didn’t like it. If he had the money these people seemed to have, he’d live somewhere that was bright and cheerful. In town, where there were lights and people and traffic sounds. He didn’t like the way night fell on those snowy, fir-dotted slopes.

  He tried the pencil. Adjusted his long, bony frame to the stiff little chair. It looked as if Wait was going to try to push the thing through that night. It was like Wait, smart of him, to get all the dope he could and then go after the girl with it. The weakest link. The one most likely to break. She looked scared. Looked as if she was about to faint.

  Schmidt, the man in plain clothes, was looking at Wait, too. Looking at him and waiting, as Daphne was waiting, for him to begin. He turned suddenly and fumbled for the curtain and pulled it across the window. The wind was rising and whispering around the house, and chill little drafts were creeping along the floor. You could never get these old houses shut up tight, he reflected and thought of his lumbago. He was due for an attack as sure as the wind shifted to the east. He shivered a little and wished Wait would get on with the job. He knew damn well one of them had killed this Brewer; well, then, why not just take the whole lot of them to jail?

  Pretty girl, he thought. But she looked scared. Well, she’d probably spill the whole thing. They were about due for a break.

  “Sit down,” said Jacob Wait. “In that chair.”

  The chair was directly under the light, and it glared down into her eyes. She sat down, clasping the arms of the chair so her hands would not tremble. She had a curious feeling of being hedged in. Of being the center of a steadily encroaching and advancing circle.

  It was so strong a feeling that she turned and looked behind her. Three other men had come from somewhere and were standing in the shadow by the closed door, watching.

  Her fingers tightened on the arms of the chair. Her heart suddenly was pounding in her throat.

  “All right, Miss Haviland,” said Jacob Wait. “Who was the woman who left this house shortly after midnight last night?”

  Chapter 10

  IT HAD COME.

  All along, during those incredible, packed hours since midnight, she had been waiting, preparing, armoring herself against this hour. Answer him, then; evade; watch for traps.

  She moistened her lips. Someone had seen her leaving the house and told of it. But if he had known it was she, would he have asked her in just that way? It had been dark, and there were no lights in the house. Whoever it was might have seen only her figure wrapped in the coat, veiled by flying snow, obscure in the darkness.

  “My room is on the south,” she said. “It only overlooks the back door.”

  “Don’t evade,” said Jacob Wait. “There’s no sense in it. It just takes time. Shortly after midnight last night a woman left the house, walked down the drive to the gate and took a taxi which was waiting for her into town. The taxi driver left her at Diversey and Central. She paid him and went into the drugstore, and he got a cup of coffee and drove back out to St Germain. Now then, who was the woman?”

  “I—But I don’t know! I know nothing of—” It had given her a queer kind of shock; a surging relief that was, actually, dangerous itself because it threatened the tight guard she had placed on herself, because it was outside all the questions whose answers she had ready. “I don’t know,” she repeated.

  “Come now, Miss Haviland. Think. Who was at dinner last night?”

  “Just—just the family. My aunts. Myself. My cousins, Rowley Shore and Dennis Haviland. And—and Ben Brewer.”

  “All right. Then where did the woman come from?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t any idea. She was not here. I’m sure of that.”

  “Could she have been here without your knowledge?”

  “No,” said Daphne and stopped and thought, This old house. Rooms over the garage. A dozen places where one might hide if it were necessary. “I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose it’s possible.”

  “The telephone call for the taxi came from this telephone,” said the detective. “We traced it. The call was made about eleven o’clock. A man’s voice told the taxi driver to be at the gate at twelve and wait until one or after. That he couldn’t say what time exactly he would have to wait. Do you know who made that telephone call?”

  “No,” said Daphne immediately, sure that she did know. “No.”

  “Well, I know,” said Jacob Wait in a bored way. “It was Dennis Haviland. Why did he want a taxi?”

  “I didn’t know he had called one,” said Daphne. “If he did, I suppose he wanted to go somewhere.”

  “Where?”

  “I—I don’t know.” (A taxi; waiting to take her away with Dennis—away to the station, into the Loop and trains; where? And she must not permit herself to think of it for fear her thought would become telepathic and would transfer itself to the ready consciousness of the man questioning her.)

  “Dennis Haviland arrived yesterday, I believe.”

  (He meant that he knew; that he’d inquired.)

  “Yes.”

  “About what time?”

  (About this time of day, wasn’t it? And she’d been sitting in the very chair where Jacob Wait sat now. She’d been looking into the fire and thinking of her marriage and of Dennis …)

  “About what time?” said the detective again, his voice suddenly a little deeper and richer, as if in spite of his hatred of it there were moments of deep, instinctive excitement about this business of catching a murderer.

  “About—about this time, I think,” said Daphne. “I’m not sure.”

  “Did you see him when he arrived?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Why—why, that he’d come back and—just the usual things.”

  “Did he say there was any particular reason for his coming?”

  “No,” said Daphne faintly, closing her mind to the thing Dennis had said.

  “Did he know that you were to be married today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who told him of it?”

  “I think—I think Aunt Amelia wrote to him about it some time ago.” (He hadn’t got the letter, she remembered suddenly. But Amelia had written.)

  “Then he came from South America to attend the wedding?”

  “I don’t know. No, I don’t think so. I think he was ready to come home. He’d been traveling for nearly a year.”

  “Why did he take a plane from New York?”

  “I suppose he preferred it to taking the train.”

  “A train would have brought him here this morning. In plenty of time for the wedding.”

  (No need to reply to that; there wasn’t any reply.)

  “The plane brought him here last night. And at midnight Ben Brewer was murdered.”

  (No reply to that, either.)

  “What is your feeling about Dennis Haviland? Are you in love with him?”

  “My—Why, I—He’s my cousin. We’ve grown up together.”

  �
�Were you ever engaged to him to be married?” said Jacob Wait coolly.

  “No.”

  “Did you love Ben Brewer?” There was a curious, brutal impatience about the question; murder was a brutal, ugly affair, said Jacob Wait’s manner; therefore, why scruple about the tools of detection one used?

  “I was going to marry him,” said Daphne.

  “Look here, Miss Haviland,” he said with a kind of bored disgust. “Several times you have tried to evade my questions. Why do you do that? It only takes more time. There are things I know. I know that Dennis Haviland had been making a leisurely trip home from South America. I know that in New York, quite suddenly, he decided to get home yesterday. I know that in one of his pockets there was a picture of you, taken from the New York edition of a Chicago paper. A picture of you and a notice of the wedding. I know that he got hold of that picture in New York. I know that immediately he took a plane for Chicago and came straight out to St Germain. I know he saw you last night. I know that he telephoned for a taxi, telling the driver to be at the gate at midnight and wait. This in itself argues indecision—not so much indecision, perhaps, as, for some reason, that he did not know exactly what time he would be leaving. Well then, why didn’t he know? If he wanted to get a train, he would have known the time. If he had some engagement, he would have known the time. Why didn’t he know exactly what time he would leave?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  He looked scornful.

  “And when a passenger came to the taxi, why wasn’t it Dennis Haviland? What had happened to change his plans? And who was the woman who finally came?”

  “I don’t know,” said Daphne again, feeling as if her voice were remote and distant from her body.

  He looked at her and, suddenly, went back to her marriage.

  “Did your family approve of your marriage to Ben Brewer?”

  “Yes,” said Daphne. “That is—yes.”

  “There were altogether friendly relations between your aunts and your father and Ben Brewer?”

  “I—No, not exactly.”

  “You mean they objected to the marriage?”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  “My aunts and Ben—Well, they have never been—friendly. But my aunts approved of the wedding. They—they made all the arrangements. They did everything.”

  “Everything,” said Jacob Wait. “Except that the wedding didn’t take place.”

  (No answer to that, either; suddenly she saw again—as she had seen so many times—the sprawled bulk of blackness on the floor of the springhouse. No, the wedding hadn’t taken place. A little wave of sickness and faintness caught her. Perhaps she would faint, she thought, and did not know then that the merciless tension of inquiry had barely begun. She tried not to think of the moments in the springhouse.)

  “Why were your aunts opposed to Ben Brewer?”

  “There were—business reasons.”

  “Ben Brewer was president of the Haviland Bridge Company, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.” (He knows all this, thought Daphne. Probably everybody in Chicago knows.)

  “He was made president and general manager by the will of your grandfather, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your aunts did not approve of this provision of your grandfather’s will?”

  “No.”

  “They have been, in fact, trying in every possible way to get him out of his office?”

  “I—”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know. You do know.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “They—they think his methods of management are all wrong. They think that he will—he would have done a great deal of harm. They thought the provisions of the will were unwise; that Grandfather was too much under Ben’s influence.”

  “Do you know the provisions of the will, Miss Haviland?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course. There is no secret about it. There was quite a lot of talk of it at the time he died, and when his will was probated. I’m not just sure about the exact figures of the blocks of stock held by my father and my aunts. I think, roughly, the stockholders have nearly half of the stock and the family the other half, divided equally between Aunt Gertrude, my father and Aunt Amelia. Except, that is, for the stock that Ben owned.”

  “Stockholders, forty-five per cent. Benjamin Brewer ten per cent, and a deciding vote in matters of general management. The remaining forty-five per cent divided equally between Mrs Shore, your father and Miss Haviland. Cash bequests to servants; cash bequests of five thousand dollars apiece to Rowley Shore and Dennis Haviland and to yourself. Personal property and real estate divided between your father and your aunts.” He said it all rapidly, with half-closed eyes. “Did you think this fair, Miss Haviland?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was everyone concerned satisfied with it?”

  “It was my grandfather’s wish. He felt he had made the best possible arrangements. He only wanted to protect us all.”

  “Yes. He seems to have wanted to do that and to have felt he was successful.” He quoted rapidly, with his eyes half closed, as if the will itself were written on his eyelids: “… ‘with the knowledge that in case of a future period of economic depression and financial need the said company and corporation is amply protected and duly provided for under the now existing agreements and provisions.’ Sounds smug,” remarked the detective, opening his eyes again. “However, he, at least, was satisfied with what he had done. Or do you think he referred more specifically to Brewer?”

  “I don’t know. I never thought of it. I only remember the main provisions of the will.”

  “And your aunts did not think it fair?”

  “They were afraid that—that Ben would wreck the company. They didn’t like his methods—the things he did. I’m not exactly sure about the details.”

  “You needn’t be. The main thing is that your aunts were determined to get Ben Brewer out of the company. Why, then, did they permit you to marry him? If they wanted to get rid of him, it wasn’t a good plan to tie him into the family by marriage. Or did they hope to influence him through you?”

  “No. I couldn’t have done that. I mean—”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I never tried to influence him. He told me—”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “That—that I couldn’t,” said Daphne. “That there was no use—”

  “No use?”

  “No use—trying.”

  “Had you tried to change him or influence him in any way?”

  “No,” she said faintly, perceiving the entangled threads around her feet too late.

  “Then why did he say that? Why did he warn you?”

  “I—don’t—”

  “When did he say that to you?”

  “Yesterday,” she said huskily.

  “At what time?”

  “After—dinner.”

  “Exactly what did he say?”

  “I—That is all.”

  He knew it wasn’t all. She could see it in his eyes, his whole expression, the shrug he gave, as if her resistance mattered so little, was so slight that he could break through it any time he wished. He drew a small, shining object from an inner pocket and held it in his hands.

  “Ben Brewer was not murdered by burglars,” he said. “He was killed by somebody in this house. This whole setup was arranged afterwards—and not too skillfully arranged. He was not killed in the house: the bullet came from a thirty-two caliber revolver, and the sound of the shot would have been heard. His dress coat was hanging in the wardrobe off his bedroom, and there are dust marks and what look like cigarette ashes on the back of it; around the shoulders. The coat has been sent to the Northwestern Laboratory. I’ll soon know the story it has to tell. There is no dress shirt and collar and no white waistcoat in his room which shows any signs of wear. Those he wore when he was killed have disappeared; but we’ll find them. There would have been bloodsta
ins on them. Powder burns. He was killed probably shortly after midnight. Yet at two o’clock Mrs Shore heard him walking about in his bedroom, which was next to her own. Dead men can’t walk, you know. Who was it, then, in his bedroom; who was it who crept up and down stairs arranging all this? Putting a bathrobe on that heavy, dead body; arranging footmarks on the rugs near the window. Disposing of the telltale dress shirt and waistcoat, hanging that coat up in the wardrobe. Heaping up wedding gifts. Opening—too late—the windows of the drawing room. Who did all this?”

  Her heart had quite literally stopped beating. She watched with a kind of still, fascinated horror while he tossed the small object upward so it flashed, and caught it again.

  “To whom was Ben Brewer so great an obstacle that he had to be removed? There are many to whom his death conceivably would be a boon. But why should he have been killed the night before his marriage to you? Why was his marriage to you a crisis? Why did he become, only then, so great a menace that he had to be killed? What did he do—where did he go? I think you know the answers, Miss Haviland.”

  He was very near her now: so near she could see the small, ruby glow away back in his eyes. No one else moved: it was so still that, in spite of that hedge of listeners, it was as if she were alone with the detective.

  “Is this your wedding ring?” he said.

  She looked then at the delicate circle of gold in his palm. She recognized it immediately. Ben had shown it to her, holding it in his thick fingers for her admiration, calling attention to its exquisite simplicity.

  “It—was to be.”

  “A thing of immemorial symbolism,” said the detective, his voice suddenly rich and musical. “Hope and love; devotion, deception; death. The whole gamut of human emotions are bound up in a wedding ring. This one was in Dennis Haviland’s possession. The bullet that killed Brewer came from Dennis Haviland’s revolver. Will you tell me, now, what you know?”