Skeleton Key (18 page)

She remembered something else, and frowned. “When I went in to telephone, Hollister's door was closed but not locked. If the—the person had gone in that way, wouldn't I have heard the door open and close again?—Or no, maybe not, because by the time I'd felt that—the body by my foot, I wasn't in any state to hear small things.”

“You're sure you didn't hear the door open?”

“Sure. And yet—you know, it seems to me that there was some other noise. I couldn't tell you what. It didn't seem—important, so maybe it wasn't unnatural; might simply have been the wind, or something like that.” She put a palm to her forehead, pressing hard. “It can't mean much, but I wish I could think of it.”

“Maybe it'll come to you,” said Nelsing hopefully. “And tell me one more thing. Two persons came down, through the dark, to help you when you called. Did the footsteps of either one sound like the ones that stopped when you called out?”

She closed her eyes again. “I can't think,” she said presently. “How could one tell, if the first ones had been on tiptoe? I couldn't be sure. I could never—”

She stopped, and her eyes went past Nelsing, up the road to the curve of the eucalyptus lot. Someone was standing there—surely too far away to have heard this low-voiced colloquy? As she watched, the figure moved away from behind a tree. It was John Devlin. Without another look he went toward his own house. A moment later the sound of a car's engine, starting in a garage, came down the hill.

Georgine looked at Nelsing. He stood with the level light full in his face, casting his shadow on the thick greenery of the Carmichaels' garden hedge. She thought, I suppose I'll always remember him this way, those eyes under the soft gray hat looking out at me with no more expression than a judge's eyes… He can't think I'm lying? Suppose I were guilty, how easy it would have been to lie about the footsteps, the dying words, everything.

“Let's go in and talk to Professor Paev,” said Nelsing abruptly, “You too, Slater, if you please.”

The young man said, “I'm right with you, Inspector,” in a rumbling basso that surprised Georgine into a foolish impulse to giggle. She had almost expected him to go on, “So be-ware; so beee-ware.”

The door of Professor Paev's house opened, and in the gloom of the blacked-out hallway stood the Professor.

“You are late, gentlemen,” he said testily. “Was your conversation in the street so important?”

Nelsing said, “May we all sit down, Professor?” He waited in the hall until Alexis Paev, his high naked head moving like a dull moon in the twilight, had grudgingly flung open the door to the living-room.

“You want light, I presume?” the old man said harshly, and pushed a button. The overhead globe sprang into brilliance, its inverted shade reflecting coldly white against the ceiling; and all the colorless, expensive discomfort of the room was illuminated. Georgine sat down in the corner of a carved settee, and at once regretted her choice.

“It was good of you to receive us, Professor,' said Nelsing formally. “There are a few points to be followed up in connection with the death of your neighbor last Friday.”

“I know nothing about it. I told you on Saturday afternoon that I could contribute nothing.”

“We understand that at the time of the accident you were in San Francisco, and didn't reach home until after the blackout.”

“That is quite correct.”

“You weren't caught on the train? Which one did you catch from the Terminal?”

“The, uh, nine thirty-four.”

“That got you to Berkeley station about five minutes before the siren sounded. Did you take a cab home?”

“Young man,” said Professor Paev with deliberation, “if it is any business of yours, I did not. The Euclid Avenue streetcar connected with the train, for once, and I rode past the campus on that. I debarked when the blackout began, hoping I'd be allowed to walk the rest of the way home. I am accustomed to the dark, and I carry a pocket torch. Do you think those officious sons of—I beg your pardon Mrs. Wyeth, those officious gentlemen in the white tin hats would let me proceed? They insisted that I must seek shelter. I sat on a stranger's porch, which was as near cover as I wished to get, for an interminable time.”

“Thank you,” said Nelsing. “That's very clear. And you walked home across the canyon after the all-clear sounded.”

“I did.”

“Now, Mrs. Wyeth; how long have you been acting as Professor Paev's secretary?”

“About ten days. I hoped to be through with the work before this, but what with murders, and having to stop work to go to inquests, I don't know when I can finish.”

This was a sore subject with Georgine, and she saw no harm in letting Nelsing know it.

“What were your qualifications? Or rather, of what does your work consist?”

Georgine looked doubtfully at her employer. He had one long thin hand clasped about his chin, and over it his black eyes regarded her unwinkingly.

“I'm copying a—a sort of manuscript. It seems to have been worked up from notes about some sort of scientific process.”

“What is the process?”

“Not you too, Inspector Nelsing! Everyone's asked me that, and I can't answer it. I don't know the first thing about science, only how to copy words.”

“The Professor hired you in spite of this ignorance?”

“Because of it,” Georgine said, and saw his eyes narrow.

“Why was that?” Nelsing asked the old man.

“Obvious, don't you think?” Professor Paev seemed almost to be enjoying himself.

“That's very interesting,” said Nelsing. “Perhaps you felt it might be dangerous for your secretary to know too much?”

“Dangerous?” The black eyes snapped. “God help me, Inspector, you hadn't heard that story about the Death Ray?”

“I heard that,” said Nelsing calmly, “but I also heard a much more arresting story. One of your neighbors, Professor, suggested that we find out what you were concocting in your laboratory that would be important enough to cause a man's death.”

For a moment nobody said anything. Slater, in the background, bent his head over a notebook. Georgine found herself pressed back against the hard stuffing of the settee. From the ceiling, white light poured down on the glistening bald head, the smooth dark one.

Then Alexis Paev began slowly to lean forward, his eyes on Nelsing's face. “Hollister?” he said in a low voice. “You have found—some connection between Hollister and my laboratory?”

Nelsing smiled, with his lips alone, and the Professor sat back abruptly. “We don't often guess, Professor Paev,” he said, “but we guessed at this. There was no other household in Grettry Road that was as tightly locked as yours. That laboratory is probably the only place to which Hollister, as a warden, wouldn't have had natural access. Did you ever show him through it?”

“Never,” Alex Paev barked. “Though not for lack of asking.”

“And you heard about the keys Hollister was carrying—an unusually heavy collection for a man to have with him.”

“I heard nothing about them. I do not join in the gossip of this community.”

“He had skeleton keys on his ring, Professor.”

Before anyone could say anything to soothe him, the Professor was up out of his chair like a jack-in-the-box. He was raising his fists toward heaven and yelling, “Spies! I knew it! I am surrounded by spies! And this man, this Hollister, I trusted because he was recommended by the city. Everyone, the city officials, the University—spying on—”

“Easy, Professor,” said Nelsing, his calm voice cutting into the old man's incoherent shouts. “The CD office isn't responsible for the private lives of wardens. The officials try to be careful, but they're not infallible. They've made some mistakes in appointments. But suppose they hadn't, in this case? Suppose Hollister had been an official investigator?” He leaned back comfortably, his forefinger gently tapping the chair-arm. “Some of the neighborhood gossip is reasonably well founded. I've heard it suggested that your research is secret, because when you've finished work you mean to sell the result to the highest bidder—whether he comes from the United Nations or the Axis! If it were a new and deadly gas, for example…”

“Ga-ah,” said Professor Paev contemptuously. He had lowered himself slowly into his chair, and was watching Nelsing with unwinking eyes. “Gas, indeed! And as for selling, sir, I would die before I'd allow my discovery to be commercialized.”

“What is it, Professor Paev? Can't you see this must be cleared up before we can go on?”

The Professor clamped his mouth shut.

“What is it, Mrs. Wyeth?”

Georgine jumped. “I don't know, I tell you.”

“The Professor keeps it a dead secret, I can see. I wonder how he would feel if he thought someone was trying to find out what he was keeping so private. You suspected Hollister of that, didn't you, Professor?”

“I suspect everyone.”

“Are you sure you didn't take an earlier train from the City? Your whole trip over there was on false pretenses. You never saw Mr. Wadsworth. Perhaps you never intended to see him. Who answered the telephone? Who took the call that purported to be from the Regent?”

“I did,” said the Professor in a sulphurous voice.

“Was there ever such a call? Did you go to San Francisco at all?”

“God help me,” said the Professor with a mighty effort at control. “Did I go—did I go!
She
knows!” He swiveled round and pointed at Georgine.

“Mrs. Wyeth?”

“I—I saw him start off in a taxi, but of course I don't know about the rest. And he told me there'd been a telephone call, he was elated about the news. But—Professor Paev, didn't you come back early?”

“What makes you think he did?” Nelsing asked.

“I said something about it,” Georgine began, “and he looked terribly angry. Of course I don't mean to accuse—”

“Accuse?” The Professor was out of his chair again, thrusting a shaking hand toward her. “
You
accuse anyone? You've played your part well, I'll grant you, from the first minute; pretending ignorance of science, coming here by chance—by
chance!
ha!—to take this job. I see it now. You were in league with Hollister.”

Georgine's voice came out in an outraged squeak. “
I
was? Are you crazy? I never spoke three sentences to him in my life!”

“Sure you didn't know him, Mrs. Wyeth?” Nelsing asked.

“Of course I'm sure. He asked me what the Professor was working on, and I told him I didn't know.”

Nelsing's head turned, and the cold blue eyes rested full on her. She had never seen him look so remote and formidable.

“What did you talk about,” Nelsing inquired, “when he called on you at your home?”

CHAPTER NINE

H
ER FIRST COHERENT
thought was,
He expected me to be good and flustered by that remark. Well, I won't be
.

“What makes you think he was there?” she said evenly.

“I went to talk to your landlords this afternoon. It was a routine check-up; I scarcely expected to hear anything interesting, but that's where we get our information—in the course of routine. The landlords looked at photographs, and picked out one of them. It was Hollister's. They identified him as the man who'd gone up the walk to your cottage, one evening last week while it was still light.”

“What night?”

“Thursday, they thought.”

“Did they happen to say I wasn't home?”

“They weren't sure but they mentioned the fact that he didn't come out again before they went to the movies, so they took it for granted you were there.”

“I was up here Thursday, working. You know that, Professor Paev.”

“Do I?” said the Professor, smiling. “I was in the laboratory, and you let yourself out.”

Georgine realized she'd had that coming. “Inspector Nelsing,” she said, “it was last Thursday when my house was searched. I found out about it when I went home, late. Harry Gillespie drove me to the door, so I can prove I didn't meet Hollister.”

“Your house was searched,” said Nelsing, meditating. “It's the first I've heard of that.”

“It happened before the murder, so I didn't think to tell you about it. The desk sergeant convinced me it didn't mean anything, because nothing was taken. He's probably got the report filed under ‘Hysterical Women.'”

Professor Paev walked across to her, exactly as he'd done on the first day she saw him, and bent threateningly over her chair. “That won't do,” he said harshly. “It's a thin story you trumped up, when you knew you were caught. You were spies together, and you were the one to work from the inside. How many copies of my notes did you make? I should have had you searched every night. The whole thing is plain. He told you, foolishly, trusting to your look of innocence, that my secret was valuable. And you planned to have it all to yourself, you led him on until the last minute, and then—”

“You old coot,” said Georgine furiously, “take your face out of mine. Get back, there. You—you dare to think up a ridiculous story like that about me, and say it out loud! Trying to turn attention away from yourself, that's what you're doing. You're afraid to have anyone get into that lab of yours, or look in the file cabinet. You'd be even more afraid to have the police look into that grave under your bathroom window!”

“That what?” Nelsing said incredulously. And then, seeing the look on the old man's face, he got slowly to his feet and moved forward with an ominous quietness.

Georgine turned to him. “He's got something buried there. Ask him what happened to the secretary he tried for one day, two weeks ago! He didn't keep her because she couldn't spell his name—he
said
. Did anyone ever see her again?”