“Haven’t made them holler yet” said Darius slowly, “but maybe I’ve got something. Look, Fergus, on an eclipsing binary the maximum separation of the spectral lines when they are double determines the relative velocity of the stars in their orbits.”
“Obviously.”
“Therefore—” said Darius, and went on with it. At the fourth cosine, I quit listening and reached for a ham sandwich.
As I ate, I looked at the faces of the men around me. Charlie Lightfoot, Eric Andressen, Rex Parker, Fergus Fillmore, Darius Hill… Was one of these men, I wondered, a murderer? Was one of these men even now planning further murders?
It seemed impossible, as I studied their faces. The Indian’s haggard and worried, Hill and Fillmore eager on their abstruse discussion with Andressen listening intently and Rex looking bored.
Charlie was the first to leave, then Parker and Andressen together. When I stood up, Darius Hill stood also. He asked:
“Play chess, Wunderly?”
“A little,” I admitted.
“Let’s play a game before we turn in.”
When we reached his room, he produced a beautiful set of ivory chessmen. He said apologetically, “Don’t judge my game by these men, Wunderly. They were given to me. I’m just a dub.”
He wasn’t, by a long shot. But I managed to hold him to a close game that resolved itself finally into a draw when I traded my last piece for his final pawn.
“Good game,” he said. “Another?”
But I excused myself and left.
My slippers made no sound along the carpeted hallway. Possibly if I’d been noisy I’d have never seen that crack of faint light under the edge of Paul Bailey’s door. Maybe it would have been turned off, in time.
But I saw it and stood there outside the door wondering whether it meant anything. If Bailey had awakened and turned on a lamp, certainly I’d make a fool of myself turning in an alarm.
Chapter 7
Death Before Dawn
YET IF an intruder—the murderer—was in there, I’d warn him if I knocked on the door. There seemed only one way of finding out. I stooped down and looked into the keyhole.
All I could see was the desk at the far side of the room. The lamp on the desk wasn’t on and the light that shone on the desk came from the right and couldn’t be from the overhead bulb.
A flashlight? Someone standing still on the right side of the room, holding a flashlight pointing at the desk. But why would anyone be standing there?
Something else caught my eye; there was a lot of chemical equipment shoved back under the desk itself. Bottles, a rack of test tubes, a retort—and a DeWar flask.
I’m no chemist, but I do know what a DeWar flask is. And the moment I saw it, I knew how Elsie Willis had been killed. Knew, rather, why we had heard the sound of her fall downstairs when we heard it, just after Paul Bailey had walked into the living room.
As I straightened up from the keyhole I lost my balance.
Instinctively my hand grasped the doorknob to regain my equilibrium. And the doorknob rattled!
That ended the advantage of secrecy, and I hurled myself through the doorway.
The flashlight was there, but it was not being held. It was lying flat on the bureau.
There was no one in sight. The killer, then, was behind me on the same side of the room as the bed! I tried to turn around—too late. I didn’t even feel the blow that felled me…
Charlie Lightfoot was bending over me, and past him I could see a blur of other faces. Then my eyes came more nearly to focus and I could make out Annabel among them.
Charlie was saying, “Bill, are you all right?”
I sat up and put my hand back of my head. It hurt like hell. I took my hand away again.
“Bill!” It was Annabel’s voice this time. “Are you all right?”
“I—I guess so,” I said. And then, quite unnecessarily, “Somebody conked me. I—”
“You don’t know who it was, Wunderly?” It was Darius Hill’s voice.
I started to shake my head, but that hurt, so I answered verbally instead. Then, because I was beginning to wonder how long I’d been out, I asked Darius:
“How—how long has it been since I left your room?”
“About half an hour. Did this happen right after that?”
“Yes, only a minute or two after. I saw a light under Bailey’s door. I busted in and turned the wrong way.”
I tried to stand up. Charlie gave me a hand on one side and Annabel on the other. I made it, all right, but leaned back against the wall for a moment until I got over the slight dizziness.
Other people were talking excitedly and I had time to take inventory. Eric Andressen and Fergus Fillmore were both still fully dressed. Darius had a lounging robe and slippers on but still wore trousers and shirt under the robe. Paul Bailey, looking sleepy and as though he was suffering from a bad hangover, was sitting on the edge of the bed, a bathrobe thrown across his shoulders over pajamas. Annabel wore a dressing gown.
Charlie Lightfoot and Rex Parker, who was standing in the doorway, were both fully dressed.
I said, “Charlie, who found me?”
“I did, on my way down from the roof. You groaned as I was going by the door. I thought it was Paul groaning but I came in.”
Fillmore asked, “What was the yell that brought us all running? I heard it downstairs.”
Charlie grunted. “That was Paul. He must’ve been having a nightmare. When I shook him he let out a yowl like a steam engine before he woke up.”
Bailey said, “I thought—
“Hell, I don’t know what I thought. I don’t remember yelling—but if Charlie says I did, I guess I did.”
“Lecky,” said Darius Hill. “We’ll have to let Lecky know.”
“He can’t get over here before dawn,” Fillmore pointed out, “unless he wants to run the gauntlet of rattlesnakes. We’d just wake him up.”
Charlie said, “Darius is right. Something else has happened. We ought to let Lecky know. What time is it?”
“Four-thirty,” Hill said.
“Then it’ll be light in less than an hour. I’ll go find those other snakes. But if I don’t find them all right away, I’ll escort Lecky over here—beat trail for him. I can take Fergus too, if he wants to get back home.”
Darius Hill had walked over to the window and looked out. “There’s a light over at Lecky’s house. I’m going to phone now. Let’s all go downstairs to the living room.”
We went down in more or less of a group, Darius going ahead. He went into the room where the house telephone was, and the rest of us herded into the living room. All of us were quiet and subdued; none seemed able or willing to offer much comment on the situation we were in.
Darius would probably have been verbose enough, if he’d been there, but Darius wasn’t there. He was taking an unconscionably long time at the telephone. For some reason, it worried me.
I strolled to the door of the hall without attracting attention and went down the hall and into the room which Darius had entered.
He was at the phone, listening, and I could see from the whiteness of his face that something was wrong.
“…Yes, Mrs. Lecky,” he said. Then a long pause. “You’re sure you don’t want one of us to come over right away? I know it’s almost dawn but—”
He talked a minute longer, then put down the phone and looked at me.
He said, slowly, “Lecky’s dead, Wunderly. Good old Lecky. She found him at his desk just now with a knife in his back.”
Then suddenly the words were tumbling out of him so fast that they were hardly coherent. “Good Lord! I thought I knew something about criminology and detection. What a damn fool I was! This is my fault, Wunderly, for pretending to be so damn smart about something.