Steve bolted out of his corner and up the steps three at a time, pivoted into the second-floor corridor on the newel, and came face to face with David Brackett, the banker.
Brackett’s thick legs were far apart, and he swayed on them. His face was a pallid agony above his beard. Big spots of beard were gone, as if torn out or burned away. From his writhing lips thin wisps of vapor issued.
“They’ve poisoned me, the damned—”
He came suddenly up on the tips of his toes, his body arched, and he fell stiffly backward, as dead things fall.
Steve dropped on a knee beside him, but he knew nothing could be done — knew Brackett had died while still on his feet. For a moment, as he crouched there over the dead man, something akin to panic swept Steve Threefall’s mind clean of reason. Was there never to be an end to this piling of mystery upon mystery, of violence upon violence? He had the sensation of being caught in a monstrous net — a net without beginning or end, and whose meshes were slimy with blood. Nausea — spiritual and physical — gripped him, held him impotent. Then a shot crashed.
He jerked erect — sprang down the corridor toward the sound; seeking in a frenzy of physical activity escape from the sickness that had filled him.
At the end of the corridor a door was labeled ORMSBY NITER CORPORATION, W. W. ORMSBY, PRESIDENT. There was no need for hesitancy before deciding that the shot had come from behind that label. Even as he dashed toward it, another shot rattled the door and a falling body thudded behind it.
Steve flung the door open — and jumped aside to avoid stepping on the man who lay just inside. Over by a window, Larry Ormsby stood facing the door, a black automatic in his hand. His eyes danced with wild merriment, and his lips curled in a tight-lipped smile. “Hello, Threefall,” he said. “I see you’re still keeping close to the storm centers.”
Steve looked down at the man on the floor — W. W. Ormsby. Two bullet-holes were in the upper left-hand pocket of his vest. The holes, less than an inch apart, had been placed with a precision that left no room for doubting that the man was dead. Steve remembered Larry’s threat to his father: “I’ll spoil your vest!”
He looked up from killed to killer. Larry Ormsby’s eyes were hard and bright; the pistol in his hand was held lightly, with the loose alertness peculiar to professional gunmen.
“This isn’t a — ah — personal matter with you, is it?” he asked.
Steve shook his head; and heard the trampling of feet and a confusion of excited voices in the corridor behind him.
“That’s nice,” the killer was saying; “and I’d suggest that you—”
He broke off as men came into the office. Grant Fernie, the marshal, was one of them.
“Dead?” he asked, with a bare glance at the man on the floor.
“Rather,” Larry replied.
“How come?”
Larry Ormsby moistened his lips, not nervously, but thoughtfully. Then he smiled at Steve, and told his story.
“Threefall and I were standing down near the front door talking, when we heard a shot. I thought it had been fired up here, but he said it came from across the street. Anyhow, we came up here to make sure — making a bet on it first; so Threefall owes me a dollar. We came up here, and just as we got to the head of the steps we heard another shot, and Brackett came running out of here with this gun in his hand.”
He gave the automatic to the marshal, and went on: “He took a few steps from the door, yelled, and fell down. Did you see him out there?”
“I did,” Fernie said.
“Well, Threefall stopped to look at him while I came on in here to see if my father was all right — and found him dead. That’s all there is to it.”
Steve went slowly down to the street after the gathering in the dead man’s office had broken up, without having either contradicted or corroborated Larry Ormsby’s fiction. No one had questioned him. At first he had been too astonished by the killer’s boldness to say anything; and when his wits had resumed their functions, he had decided to hold his tongue for a while.
Suppose he had told the truth? Would it have helped justice? Would anything help justice in Izzard? If he had known what lay behind this piling-up of crime, he could have decided what to do; but he did not know — did not even know that there was anything behind it. So he had kept silent. The inquest would not be held until the following day — time enough to talk then, after a night’s consideration.
He could not grasp more than a fragment of the affair at a time now; disconnected memories made a whirl of meaningless images in his brain. Elder and Mrs. MacPhail going up the stairs — to where? What had become of them? What had become of the man with the bandages on throat and jaw? Had those three any part in the double murder? Had Larry killed the banker as well as his father? By what chance did the marshal appear on the scene immediately after murder had been done?
Steve carried his jumbled thoughts back to the hotel, and lay across his bed for perhaps an hour. Then he got up and went to the Bank of Izzard, drew out the money he had there, put it carefully in his pocket, and returned to his hotel room to lie across the bed again.
Nova Vallance, nebulous in yellow crêpe, was sitting on the lower step of the MacPhails’ porch when Steve went up the flowered walk that evening. She welcomed him warmly, concealing none of the impatience with which she had been waiting for him. He sat on the step beside her, twisting around a little for a better view of the dusky oval of her face.
“How is your arm?” she asked.
“Fine!” He opened and shut his left hand briskly. “I suppose you heard all about to-day’s excitement?”
“Oh, yes! About Mr. Brackett’s shooting Mr. Ormsby, and then dying with one of his heart attacks.”
“Huh?” Steve demanded.
“But weren’t you there?” she asked in surprise.
“I was, but suppose you tell me just what you heard.”
“Oh, I’ve heard all sorts of things about it! But all I really know is what Dr. MacPhail, who examined both of them, said.”
“And what was that?”
“That Mr. Brackett killed Mr. Ormsby — shot him — though nobody seems to know why; and then, before he could get out of the building, his heart failed him and he died.”
“And he was supposed to have a bad heart?”
“Yes. Dr. MacPhail told him a year ago that he would have to be careful, that the least excitement might be fatal.”
Steve caught her wrist in his hand.
“Think now,” he commanded. “Did you ever hear Dr. MacPhail speak of Brackett’s heart trouble until to-day?”
She looked curiously into his face, and a little pucker of bewilderment came between her eyes.
“No,” she replied slowly. “I don’t think so; but, of course, there was never any reason why he should have mentioned it. Why do you ask?”
“Because,” he told her, “Brackett did not shoot Ormsby; and any heart attack that killed Brackett was caused by poison — some poison that burned his face and beard.”
She gave a little cry of horror.
“You think—” She stopped, glanced furtively over her shoulder at the front door of the house, and leaned close to him to whisper: “Didn’t... didn’t you say that the man who was killed in the fight last night was named Kamp?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the report, or whatever it was that Dr. MacPhail made of his examination, reads Henry Cumberpatch.”
“You sure? Sure it’s the same man?”
“Yes. The wind blew it off the doctor’s desk, and when I handed it back to him, he made some joke” — she colored with a little laugh — “some joke about it nearly being your death certificate instead of your companion’s. I glanced down at it then, and saw that it was for a man named Henry Cumberpatch. What does it all mean? What is—”
The front gate clattered open, and a man swayed up the walk. Steve got up, picked up his black stick, and stepped between the girl and the advancing man. The man’s face came out of the dark. It was Larry Ormsby; and when he spoke his words had a drunken thickness to match the unsteadiness — not quite a stagger, but nearly so — of his walk.