There was a silence. Cy could hear Jean breathing with slow respiration.
"If he did that"—Jean cleared her throat—"why didn't he go away?"
"Ah! Now we're comin' to it. Because he couldn't go away—yet."
"Couldn't?"
"I mean he had an appointment here." H.M. put down the lamp on the marble ledge. "He had an appointment for later in the day."
"An app—, with whom?"
"With somebody from your house," replied H.M.
(It's on the way, thought Cy. You can hear it coming like a flying bomb in the old days: that noise like a demented motorcycle which spurts to a roar or suddenly cuts out.)
"Y'see," H.M. explained patiently, "the person who was to meet your father couldn't follow him straightaway. The D.A. himself would be there, as your father well knew; so the other person's absence would be noticed. The police would be there. They'd be all over the place until late afternoon at least. So this person had to be there on deck for questioning at any given time.
"The only possible time for an appointment here," continued H.M. in the same tone, "would be early evening. There'd be baseball practice, further camouflage if the other person wanted to stroll about And, with all due respect to 'em, the Maralarch Terrors don't usually smack home runs over the fence."
The lamp on the marble ledge threw its white beam just above the waist of Jean's green dress. In the gloom above you could see the frightened, bewildered shine of her eyes.
"This person..." she repeated out of a dry throat. "But why an appointment with Dad here?"
"Two reasons," returned H.M., in a heavy, clear voice. "First, about a matter of an alleged hundred thousand dollars. Second, because this person meant to murder your father. And damned near succeeded."
Dead silence. Horror and shock and incredulity trembled in Jean's face, with incredulity overcoming the rest.
‘—murderer'!" She tested the word as though she had never heard it before.
"Yes."
"In our house last night?"
"Yes. Lemme tell you what I think happened here. The murderer came equipped with that revolver. There was—yes, I think a bit of argument Oh, my eye, wasn't there! The murderer fired point-blank."
"But look here!" Cy intervened. "Manning was stabbed; not shot As you said yourself, that gun
"No," said H.M.; and his voice lifted. "It can't be fired. Because the powder's, been removed from every cartridge case, and the cartridge case fitted back on the bullet with a bit of paper. Manning's work of course. He was treatin' that gun awful casually, to all appearances.
"But in the middle of last night, or whenever it was," H.M. continued, "he plucked the sting, that's all. He might have just pinched the cartridges or substituted blanks. But Manning knew his enemy was goin' to go for him. And the enemy might have discovered the gun wasn't loaded. It's very soothing to know you're facin' a revolver as dead as cinders."
"H.M.," Cy blurted out, "what happened here? Goon!"
H.M. looked sideways at Jean.
"The murderer fired. Maybe a couple of times, to a tune of clicks. Then Manning reached out for that person with his bare hands. Out came a knife, with a thinnish blade about four inches long...."
"Like that knife, you've got in your trousers' pocket not?"
"Oh, son! I don't know what kind of knife. All I know is it wasn't big, or Manning would be a goner now."
"Anyway," Cy insisted, with a shaking sense of relief, "the murderer couldn't have been a woman?"
"I'm not givin' my opinion. But an old-time copper in England would say: oh, ah, probably a woman. Next to poisoning, it's the woman's weapon."
Here H.M. made a sudden ghoulish gesture with his hands. Though he was only a shadow, big and distorted by near darkness, the other two stepped back.
"Suppose I'm Manning," he said, "coming at you with my hands. What are you goin' to do? You won't stab for the chest; here's the hand comin' out to grab your right hand with the knife. You'll make a feint with your left hand, and you'll go under his left arm to stab him in the side. It's happened before, and not with Dagoes either."
"So that's it!" said Jean Manning.
Her yellow hair seemed lifeless, all her understanding of people gone. She groped in a dead world.
"That's the reason for this third degree," she whispered out. Then her voice rose. "You think I tried to kill Dad ..."
"Oh, my dolly! No, no, no! I understand you're fonder of your old man than anybody else is. I know you wouldn't hurt him." H.M.'s voice sounded grotesque in its tenderness, because he was the old man and he wouldn't display such emotions. "That's why this has been so ruddy difficult!"
Jean released her breath in a gasp. Her mind darted out to protect the one she loved best.
"You weren't thinking of—Dave?"
"No again. He hasn't got the guts," said H.M. brutally, "and he hasn't got the brains." Again the voice softened. "But if you want him, my dolly, you can have him."
"He has got brains! He..."
"I've had to tell you all this," H.M. interposed,
"because I want to ask you one particular
question. You won't want to answer it. You think both Cy Norton and I are against you and your father"
"You are."
"You'll also be afraid,'' H.M continued wearily, "that the papers will get hold of the story, which they may, and it'll make you feel still worse. But, lord love a duck, it's vital!"
Jean braced herself. "What question is so vital?"
"Where," asked H.M., "does Irene Stanley really live?"
Jean had turned her head away so that even with the light shining across above the waist of the green dress Cy could tell only that she was trembling. Then the yellow hair whipped round.
"I won't tell you," she answered quietly.
"Listen, my dolly! Since your father's been attacked—and I warn you he may not survive this—everything's changed. I got to find Irene Stanley!"
"Why don't you ask your friends, the police?" "Because I'm protectin' your father, not chasing him!"
"That's the reason, I suppose—and don't deny it, because I was there at the pool!—why you swore you'd get him?"
"I was blazin' mad for a minute, my dolly! Because he hocussed me. I didn't mean it!" ' Jean laughed on a high quavery note near tears.
Cy, though he didn't understand why it was so urgent to find Irene Stanley, tried to help.
"Weren't you there," he asked Jean, "when H.M. gave the District Attorney a fake address and telephone number for Irene Stanley, to try to divert them? Surely that dirty-work is the strongest evidence of good faith?"
"I'm afraid you would say anything, Mr. Norton," Jean informed him with one shoulder lifted. Mercilessly she quoted Cy: "He carefully gathered together and smashed everything he pretended to represent' That's what you said."
"My dolly," said H.M., "we’ve got to find Irene Stanley tonight! Tonight! Where is she?"
"I won't tell you," cried Jean. "And you can't make me!"
Outside, on the front of the bronze door, there was a heavy knocking.
It dragged at nerves by the roots. Now here, it occurred to Cy, was courtesy. Here was delicacy! Who knocks at the door of a cenotaph in a cemetery full of dead bones?
But the illusion was destroyed when he opened the door. Davis, breathing hard from running, and holding a flashlight in his hand, appeared in the doorway.