She pressed back against the pillows; her hands shoving hard on the bed. “Mr. Queen has already...”
“Well, maybe I can take it a little further, you see.” The Inspector rubbed his jaw. “I’m going to be brutal, Mrs. Xavier. Women of your age—”
“What about women of my age?” she demanded her nostrils flaring.
“Tch, tch, there’s a female for you! I was going to say that women of your age will make the greatest personal sacrifices for one of two reasons — love or passion.”
She laughed hysterically. “You distinguish between them, I see.”
“I certainly do. I had a definite difference in mind. By love, I mean the highest kind of spiritual — ah — feeling...”
“Oh, rubbish!” She half turned away.
“You say that as if you mean it,” muttered the Inspector. “No, I suppose you would be capable of sacrificing yourself for, say, your children—”
“My children!”
“But you haven’t any, and that’s why I’ve come to the conclusion, Mrs. Xavier,” his voice crisped, “that you’re protecting a — lover!”
She bit her lip and began to pluck at the sheet.
“I’m sorry if I have to make a speech about it,” continued the old gentleman calmly, “but as an old bull with plenty of experience I’d sort of bet on it. Who is he, Mrs. Xavier?”
She glared at him as if she would gladly strangle him with her own white hands. “You’re the most despicable old man I’ve ever met!” she cried. “For God’s sake, let me alone!”
“You refuse to talk?”
“Get out, all of you?”
“That’s your last word?”
She was working herself up to a pitch of empurpling passion. “Mort’ dieu,” she whispered, “if you don’t get out...”
“Duse,” said Ellery with a scowl and, turning on his heel, stalked out of the room.
They stifled in the evening heat. From the terrace, to which they had repaired by common consent after a dinner of tinned salmon and silence, the whole of the visible sky was peculiarly red, a rubaceous backdrop framing the mountainous scene and made dull and illusory by the clouds of smoke which soared from the invisible burning world below. It was a little difficult to breathe. Mrs. Carreau’s mouth and nose were muffled by the flimsiest of gray veils, and the twins succumbed to a depressing tendency to cough. Specks of orange light whirled into the sky from below on the wings of the updraught of wind, and their clothes were grimy with cinders.
Mrs. Xavier, marvelously restored to health, sat by herself, a deposed empress, at the far western end of the terrace. Swathed in black satin, she merged with the evening and became a disturbing presence felt rather than seen.
“Good deal like old Pompeii, I should imagine,” remarked Dr. Holmes at last, after the steepest of silences.
“Except,” said Ellery savagely, swinging his leg against the terrace rail, “that it and we and the whole world are slightly cockeyed. The crater of Vesuvius is where the town ought to be, and the Pompeiians — meaning this brilliantly conversational company — are where the crater ought to be. Quite a spectacle! Lava flowing upward: I think I shall write to the National Geographic Society about it when I get back to New York.” He paused; he was in the bitterest of moods. “If,” he added with a dry smile, “I ever do. I’m beginning seriously to doubt it.”
“So,” said Miss Forrest with a quiver of her capable shoulders, “am I.”
“Oh, there’s really no danger, I’m sure,” said Dr. Holmes quickly, hurling an irritated glance at Ellery.
“No?” drawled Ellery. “And what shall we do if the fire gets worse? Take wing and fly away, like good little pigeons?”
“You’re making a mountain out of a molehill, Mr. Queen!”
“I’m making a fire — which is already burning satisfactorily — out of a mountain... Come, come. This is stupid. No sense in arguing. I’m sorry, Doctor. We’ll be frightening the ladies half to death,”
“I’ve known it now,” said Mrs. Carreau quietly, “for hours.”
“Known what?” muttered the Inspector.
“That we’re really in the most frightful position, Inspector.”
“Oh, nonsense, Mrs. Carreau.”
“It’s chivalrous of you to say so,” she smiled, “but there’s no sense trying to disguise our predicament, now, is there? We’re trapped like — like flies in a bottle.” Her voice was a little tremulous.
“Now, now, it isn’t as bad as all that,” said the Inspector with a hearty attempt at raillery. “Just a matter of time, Mrs. Carreau. This is a pretty tough old mountain.”
“Covered by singularly inflammable trees,” said Mark Xavier in mocking tones. “After all, maybe there’s such a thing as divine justice. Maybe this entire affair has been arranged from on high for the express purpose of smoking out a murderer.”
The Inspector flung him a sharp glance. “There’s a thought,” he growled, and turned to stare out upon the gray-red sky.
Mr. Smith, who had not uttered a word all afternoon, kicked back his chair suddenly, startling them. His elephantine bulk loomed disgustingly in shadows against the white walls. He thundered to the edge of the steps, descended a step, hesitated, and turned his huge head toward the Inspector.
“I suppose there’s no harm in my walking around the grounds for a while?” he rumbled.
“If you want to break a leg over these stones in the dark, that’s up to you,” said the old, gentleman disagreeably. “I don’t care a whoop. You can’t get away, Smith, and that’s all that concerns me.”
The fat man began to say something, smacked his thin lips together, and tramped heavily down the steps. They heard his large feet crunching against the gravel on the drive long after he was no longer visible.
Ellery, in the act of lighting a cigarette, by chance caught a glimpse of Mrs. Carreau’s face in the glow that fell upon the terrace through the foyer doorway. Its expression froze him into immobility. She was staring, straining, after the vast back of the fat man, a humid terror in her soft eyes. Mrs. Carreau and the unknown quantity, Smith!... The match burned down to his fingertips and he dropped it, swearing beneath his breath. He thought he had noticed something there in the kitchen... And yet he would have sworn that Smith had been afraid of this charming petite dame from Washington. Why should there be terror in her eyes? It was preposterous to believe that they were afraid of each other! This gross hostile creature with the trace of a lost culture in his manner and speech, and this gentlewoman from the land of misfortune... Not impossible, to be sure. Strange lives mingled in the waters of the past. He wondered, with a certain rising excitement, what the secret might be. Did the others—? But the most searching scrutiny of the faces about him failed to detect an expression of recognition or secrecy. Except perhaps in the case of Miss Forrest. Peculiar young woman. Her eyes fluttered as she tried to avoid looking at Mrs. Carreau’s set face. Did she know too, then?
They heard Smith’s ponderous step on the gravel, returning. He mounted the steps and sat down in the same chair, his froggy eyes inscrutable.
“Find what you were looking for?” grunted the Inspector.