“Go on. Someone turned the key.”
“I–I was frightened. I didn’t know who — or what it might be. I–I switched off the light, and then — the door opened.”
She stopped. Flint said nothing, waiting.
There was a mounting tenseness in her voice when she continued. “Someone fumbled at the switch. The light came on. It was Dudley. He wanted to know what I was doing there and how I had got in. He was angry. He didn’t believe me at first and he started to accuse me of taking one of the study keys that he’d just discovered missing from his key ring. And then, in mid-sentence, he stopped. He stared past me over my shoulder. I heard a movement behind me. I started to turn. Then—”
Her voice slowed. She seemed to be trying to make an effort to remember.
“And then?” Flint prompted impatiently.
“Something struck me on the head. That’s all I can remember. What happened? Is Dudley all right? Who—”
Flint cut in, his voice grim. “You’re positive there was someone else in that room with you and your husband?”
“Yes. I heard someone move. The desk was behind me. He must have been hiding behind that.”
“But you didn’t see him?”
“No, but I—”
She stopped uncertainly. Flint urged her on. “But you what?”
“I think I know who it was. I remember now. Just as I turned I–I heard Dudley whisper, ‘The ghost!’”
That tore it. Flint forgot himself and swore heavily.
Then Mrs. Wolff’s voice, frightened, demanded, “Why are you here? What happened to my husband? What—”
Flint told her. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Wolff. Your husband was shot.”
“He — he’s dead?”
“Yes.”
The silence that followed was complete. Then, after a moment, Haggard’s voice said quickly, “You’d better let me handle this, Lieutenant.”
I heard Flint turn and cross the room. And then I made my mistake. I started to retreat too soon, before Merlini had quite closed the door. Flint’s footsteps stopped abruptly, Merlini gave me a hopeless glance, dropped quickly to his knees, and, when the lieutenant jerked the door open and came in, was busily investigating the underside of a bath mat.
“I’m positive that half dollar rolled in here when I dropped it,” he said. He turned his head, saw Flint’s feet and, without looking up, tapped the latter’s shoe. “Would you mind stepping back just—”
The lieutenant moved involuntarily. And Merlini’s hand came up holding the coin at his finger tips. “Here it is. Clumsy of me—”
“Yes,” Flint agreed in a tone that was anything but reassuring. Very clumsy. I hope you two heard everything?”
Merlini nodded, calmly closed his fingers over the coin and then opened them to find a cigarette in its place. He got to his feet. “We heard enough,” he admitted brightly, “to indicate that Mrs. Wolff’s story was no great help.”
“Not to your friend Harte, it wasn’t,” Flint said quite uncharitably.
“Nor to you. You were hoping to get a witness who’d put Ross in the room at the time the shots were fired. What you got was a statement that the ghost—”
“So what? He’s a guy with a beard. Maybe it came off out there in the Sound. Maybe — yes, Tucker?”
I turned. The fingerprint man stood in the doorway.
“I had something else to report,” he said, “but you ran out on me. I found a couple of other prints in the study — prints that do match one of the persons in this house.”
He held out a fingerprint card. Flint’s grab at it went far toward proving that the hand is quicker than the eye.
I took a step forward and sneaked a hasty look over his shoulder.
The name written across the card’s top above the ten black ink smudges was: Doctor Sydney Haggard.
I needed time to reorient myself after that one. But I didn’t get it. The doctor himself, in person, picked precisely that moment to open the door of Mrs. Wolff’s room. He stepped in, saw the look on Flint’s face, and stopped dead.
A collection of discarded store-window dummies would have presented a gayer, more animated appearance than we did for the next second or two. Finally the lieutenant opened his mouth to speak — then closed it again promptly.
The burglar alarm clanged furiously and, behind Haggard, out beyond the windows of Mrs. Wolff’s room, hell popped. A car motor burst with a lion’s roar into sudden violent action. The angry rush of sound swelled, drowned out a shouted command to stop, and began to diminish as the car swept on down the drive away from the house. A frantic fusillade of shots followed.
Flint zoomed cometlike toward the hall, leaving half a dozen words floating in his wake.
“Tucker! Haggard’s under arrest. Watch him!”
More gunfire came from outside, and the roar of a second car.
Tucker tried to stop Merlini and myself as we raced after Flint, but the orders concerning Haggard handicapped him. Just as we started down the stairs the front door opened and a uniformed policeman stepped in. He had his gun in his hand.
“A car came out of the garage like a bat out of hell,” he reported quickly. “I jumped out to stop it and the bastard tried to run me down. Lovejoy and Newman went after him in the squad car.”
Flint, shooting past him, snapped, “Who was driving?”
“I couldn’t see. He was hunched down over the wheel and he went past too damned fast. It was a blue Cadillac convertible. License 9V1–315.”
I grabbed for the stair rail when I heard that, and nearly lost my covering of blankets. The car was Kay’s!
Flint took one look outside the door, then came back. “Phone!” he ordered. “Get an alarm out. And keep the line open. I’ll get you a description. I’m going to count noses.”
That didn’t take him long. Galt and Phillips were already in the hall below. Doctor Haggard and Tucker appeared, and then as I started toward Kay’s door she hurried out, still tying the blue dressing-gown she’d drawn on hastily over her pajamas.
Three minutes later Flint was at the phone rattling off a description of the one person who had not answered the roll call — Albert Dunning.
Chapter Thirteen:
The Secret of the Grave
Lieutenant Flint looked as if he wished he had never heard of police work. I could sympathize with him. From his viewpoint, a grossly materialistic one that brooked no nether-world suspects, the only person who could have possibly made an exit from that study after the shooting was myself. Then, hot on the heels of that conclusion, Doctor Haggard’s fingerprints place him in the study, and Dunning takes a powder. It was enough to give the whole Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover included, a sick headache.
And, although I knew I was innocent, that was no advantage. My outlook, on the contrary, was even darker — a dank, gloomy, Gothic blackness filled with flitting spectral shapes. I didn’t like the critters any better than Flint did; yet my sole possible suspect was an airy wraith whom no one would identify, who oozed through solid walls with all the ease of something conjured up by a Hollywood Special Effects Department, and, at the same time, was substantial enough to commit assault and battery, attempted drowning, and murder.
How Haggard and Dunning fitted in, I hadn’t the faintest notion, nor did it look as if I’d have a chance at one very soon. Flint was ordering Tucker to take Haggard to the library for questioning.
“I’ll see him there in just a minute.” He gave Merlini and myself a scowl which said plainly that no passes were being issued, not even eavesdropping permits.
I went back up the stairs toward where Kay stood looking down over the balcony rail. But, as I approached, she gave me a look that was at least as cold as any Flint had thrown my way and twice as disconcerting. Abruptly, she turned on her heel and hurried past me toward her room.