Martha opened her eyes slowly and blinked at me, her lips curving into a slow, languorous smile.
“Why did you stop?” she asked softly. “Just to tease me, Danny?”
“You laughed,” I said hoarsely.
The arrogant contempt showed in her eyes for a moment. “Don’t be so sensitive, darling!” she said coldly. “I always laugh, I can’t help it. It’s part of it, don’t you see?”
“I heard that laugh once before,” I said. “In the barn —it came from the hayloft. I thought it was Pete Rinkman who laughed, I never heard such an obscene sound in my whole life. I climbed the ladder up into the hay-lot sweating that I’d be in time to save you from him. But it wasn’t Pete who laughed—it was you.”
She sat upright on the couch, her eyes like dark bruises against the whiteness of her face.
“Damn you!” I said savagely. “You were enjoying it!”
She stared up at me for a little while longer, then suddenly her face relaxed, and she let herself fall back onto the couch again.
“All right, Danny,” she said with a faint sneer in her voice. “Now you know all my girlish secrets! Sorry I spoiled your Galahad memory!” She looked down at her body complacently. “But now I’m giving you the chance to make up for it!”
“You and Pete,” I said. My throat tightened until it hurt. “You didn’t go out there to accuse him of being mixed up with Houston in the murders. . . . You went out there because it was the psychological moment for you to make an exit. All the groundwork was finished then—once I’d found out Houston controlled the trust fund and not your father, you knew I’d figure it out from there. You even knew it would have to include Pete. Is that why you went into the hayloft with him—because you knew it was your last chance to appreciate his talents?”
She opened her eyes again reluctantly. “All right!” she said irritably. “What does it matter now!”
“You must have known Houston had been milking that fund,” I said. “How did you know?”
“I cultivated his senior clerk!” she flashed the words at me with incredible speed. “He had the same talents Pete had—only in a little more refined way, of course. After one night with me, he’d have cut his head off if I asked him. I got him to check into the fund accounts— I’d heard stories about the oil well losing Houston a fortune. My little clerk couldn’t tell for sure that Greg was milking the trust, but he thought he was. It was almost a sure thing.”
“So you planned it from there?” I said. “With Houston as the ultimate fall guy. Pete appreciated your talents even more than the clerk did—and I guess you promised him a large cut of the trust when you inherited?”
“I promised him much more that,” she said gleefully. “I said I’d marry him!”
“You needed me as an outsider to believe in your innocence—give you an alibi in a sense,” I was almost talking to myself. “What about Tolvar and the idea of 125
killing me with Philip’s body in the trunk of my car?” “That was Tolvar’s own idea,” Martha said lightly. “With an assist from Houston. Houston was in a panic to get rid of the body because of that phone call you made to the police, giving his name. He thought you were trying to frame him for the murder. Pete had to go along with it, because Houston had employed him in the first place, and he couldn’t tell Greg that he was working for me right then, it would have been—inconvenient.”
“Why did you have to kill Philip and Clemmie?” I asked hoarsely.
“I didn’t know how much of the trust money was left after Houston had been at it.” She pouted. “I was sure there wasn’t enough for the three of us.” She looked up and saw the expression on my face. “Well—don’t look at me like that. I had to do something about it!”
“You’re mad!” I whispered. “Stark, raving mad! Sylvia West wasn’t lying about you when she said you were a homicidal paranoiac.”
“Don’t say that!” She jumped up on her feet, facing me in a crouching position. “Don’t you ever say that again!” There was a hissing sound in her throat. She made an effort to smile and her face contorted into an evil imitation of it. “Darling!” The tone of her voice wasn’t right but she was trying hard to make it right. “Don’t make a fuss—if you want some money I’ll give you some. It’s all finished and Houston—”
“Houston!” I jumped. “My God! I’d forgotten all about him.”
I looked frantically at my watch, then ran for the phone.
“What are you going to do?” she asked sharply.
“It’s four minutes to twelve!” I said. “I’ve just got time!”
I grabbed the phone off the hook and dialed the operator.
“Put it down, Danny!” she said thinJy and I heard a sudden clinking noise of glass against glass.
The operator didn’t answer right away. There was a sudden explosive noise of glass shattering. I looked up and saw Martha swaying slightly on her feet and holding a broken bottle by the neck.
“Hang up, Danny!” she hissed. “Hang up or I’ll cut your throat out with this!” She waved the broken bottle menacingly at me, and the jagged edge glittered in the light.
“You keep away from me or I’U kill you, you maniac!” I said thickly.
She made a gobbling sound in her throat. “I told you not to say that!” she snarled and then she came at me with the bottle. She ran with surprising speed across the room toward me, the bottle held out in front of her like a lance.
Ten feet away from me, her bare toes caught in the edge of the rug and she tripped heavily. She screamed once as she fell. The arm holding the broken bottle twisted up under her and I saw the momentary flash as the jagged edge came upward; then her whole body hit the floor, and her soft, unprotected throat was smashed down against the jagged edge. It must have severed the jugular vein instantly on impact. I turned my head away, wanting to be sick, and heard a faint voice saying impatiently, “Operator! Operator!”
I lifted the phone back to my ear and said slowly, “This is a matter of life and death. I must speak to the Chief Warden at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining!”
“Have you a priority code number?” the voice asked efficiently.
I twisted my wrist to see the watch. “No,” I said wildly. “There’s no time to argue with me! It’s exactly four minutes to twelve now, and at midnight it’ll be too—”
“The correct time is three minutes after twelve, sir,” 127
the tinny voice said brightly. “Three minutes after
twelve.”
“You’re sure?”
‘Three minutes and ten seconds after twelve precisely,” she said in a firm voice. “Hold the line, I’ll connect you at once.”
I listened dully to a succession of clicks and then a weary voice rasped in my ear, “Warden’s Office, Sing Sing Penitentiary!”
“Listen,” I said desperately. “This is an emergency, I—”
“Sure!” the guy said in an angry voice. “You newspaper guys are all alike—always got an emergency! Gregory Houston went to the chair at midnight—he was pronounced officially dead at one minute past. He didn’t make any last statement. That’s all we’re allowed to say, brother. O.K.?”
I put the phone back gently on the hook.
There were a couple of things I should do, so I did them without hurrying. I wiped the phone clean of my prints—I threw my glass into the fireplace so it shattered into minute fragments as the others had; then I collected my topcoat from the chair and put it on.
Just before I left, I took one last look at Martha Hazelton. I still felt sore at her—she’d played me for a sucker right down the line and smart guy Boyd had fallen for it all the way. It’s that kind of thing which really hurts—shakes your self-confidence a little.