Rex Stout (11 page)

Mrs. Storrs demanded sharply, “What piece of paper?”

Sherwood gazed at her a moment, hesitating, then turned to the pile on the table and found the promissory note. He leaned forward, extending it in his hand: “This, madam.”

She took it, glanced at it, nodded at it, and handed it back to the attorney. She leveled her eyes at him: “You say Mr. Ranth picked that up from the grass?”

“Yes. Miss Bonner saw him. He put it in his pocket, and Chisholm took it away from him.”

Mrs. Storrs looked at Ranth, who had stood throughout as if waiting for something, and knowing what. Composed, he met her eyes, and said nothing. She asked in a breath,
“Twice, Mr. Ranth?” Still he said nothing. She returned to Sherwood:

“Twice, yesterday, Mr. Ranth had that paper taken from him—as if that could matter, since it is a debt to Siva and I shall pay it. There was a discussion—my husband, Mr. Ranth and me—which ended badly. My husband left the house—you say my daughter saw him go. Mr. Ranth received a demonstration from Siva, which you would not understand. He too left the house, to find my husband, to assert the debt; I agreed to it. Soon he returned, and his rage passed into me, I received the spirit of it, when he told me that my husband had refused all offering to Siva, had kept the paper, had again insulted the principles of the cause. But he did not tell me that Siva had closed the cycle of destruction, that my husband was dead.”

Ranth said in a tone of ice, “I did not tell you that, Mrs. Storrs, because it was not true. Your husband was alive and unhurt.”

Sherwood wheeled on him: “But you did tell her that Storrs had kept the paper?”

“I did.”

“You had seen Storrs at that spot where he was found, and had quarreled with him?”

“I had.”

“You lied when you told us you had not been there, you had not seen him, you had had that paper constantly in your possession, you had not picked it up from the grass, you had not attempted to conceal it? You lied when you told us all that?”

“Yes, I lied.”

Colonel Brissenden licked his lips. There were movements among the others; Sylvia so gripped Dol’s arm with her strong tennis hand that Dol had to pry at her fingers. Len Chisholm stood up and sat down again. Sherwood, with his head sunk into his shoulders, purred at Ranth, “If you want to, you may tell us exactly what happened.”

Ranth looked at Mrs. Storrs and spoke to her: “What I told you yesterday was the truth. I found your husband there in the nook and told him our decision. He would concede nothing. I showed him the note you had signed. He seized it and would not return it. I demanded it. He
became … he would not listen. I left him there. You know that my spirit has forsworn violence.”

Mrs. Storrs retorted to his eyes: “Siva, for his violence, must have instruments. You are the instrument of Siva.”

Ranth raised both his hands and slowly and firmly pressed the palms against his chest. “No. I am a part of Siva, and Siva has many parts. I know you are betrayed by weakness, and I forgive you.” He turned to Sherwood: “Yes, I lied to you to protect the universal principle which I serve. I know that before all unbelievers I am in danger. I knew that you could show that I got money from Mrs. Storrs, and that Storrs was attempting to make that impossible. I knew that you could show that with Storrs dead and Mrs. Storrs in possession of his property, I would benefit. I knew all that yesterday, when Belden told us Storrs had been killed, and when I went to that place and saw him hanging there. I thought I wasn’t a fool, but I was a fool twice, first when I tried to remove that paper without being seen, and second when I failed to foresee that Mrs. Storrs, by the shock to her blood and her nerves, could abandon all the hope I have furnished her and the truth I have taught her. So in that foolishness, I lied to you. I am not an instrument of violence. I could not be.”

Sherwood looked at Brissenden, and at his assistant beside him. The colonel growled, “Charge him!” The man with spectacles pursed up his lips and raised his brows, moving his head slowly in indecision. But Mrs. Storrs was talking:

“… and I could share the guilt if it were mine or if there were guilt to share. But there can be guilt only where it is felt, and while I could feel it I know that Siva could not. I know that the Sakti ritual of Kamakshya, which includes the
pancamakara
, includes also human sacrifice. Siva, the destroyer-god, must fulfill his godship; but I am not Durga or Parvati, I am not ripe. They were pregnant of the world and of life; I am only a woman. Siva should have known that. Mr. Ranth should have known it. The cycle of destruction and restoration is in my spirit, and I would have sacrificed much to its demands, but I could not leave entirely behind me the sphere …”

Sherwood was only half hearing her; he was calculating
shrewdly to himself, “She would be a knockout for a witness, with that cycle of destruction stuff—I could get it in by relating it to Ranth’s tie-up with her and therefore his motive—a jury would eat it up, they’d love it—charge him now, I think—yes, I think so.…”

But Colonel Brissenden was on his feet. He did have velocity. He moved swiftly around the table, around Mrs. Storrs still justifying her personal petty remorse to the cosmos, squared off in front of George Leo Ranth and, red-faced, stuck his chin out:

“Come on, you, cough it up. Get it over. We’ve got you cold. Where’s the gloves you used?”

Ranth moved back a step. Brissenden followed him, chest to chest, towering: “Come on, let’s have it. Where’s the gloves? We’ve got you! You realize that? Get it over—”

“Wait a minute!”

Everybody turned. Brissenden halted, glaring. Len Chrisholm, with no haste but with purpose evident in his face, arose from his chair and repeated gruffly: “Wait a minute with that stuff.” He abandoned Brissenden and addressed Sherwood:

“You said Ranth left the house around four o’clock and returned twenty minutes later. Is that right?”

But the colonel had steamed up. He exploded, “You sit down and we’ll tell you what’s right when we get to you! There’s been enough of this damned—”

“Okay.” Chisholm waved him off. “Go ahead and put your foot in it, and if you break a leg I can stand it. I’m only telling you something.”

Sherwood put in, “Please, Colonel. Just a minute.” To Chisholm: “Go ahead.”

Len growled at him, “This makes me a princess. I know that. But if I get the idea right, that Ranth got back to the house at 4:20, and he is supposed to have killed Storrs before that, there’s nothing doing. Storrs was in that place alive at 4:40. I saw him there, on that bench.”

Brissenden glared. There were murmurs. Sherwood snapped: “You told us you looked for Storrs and couldn’t find him.”

“Yeah, I know.” Len grimaced. “I lied too. That may give you a lot of exercise, but the real point is that I saw Storrs asleep on that bench at twenty minutes to five.”

As George Leo Ranth had previously exhibited no despair in his peril, he now displayed no exultation in his relief. All he did was sit down, for the first time since entering the room. He gazed a moment at Chisholm’s determined and truculent face, then retreated in good order to a chair behind Foltz and Zimmerman. An exclamation of surprise had come from Dol Bonner, from the others only an astonished silence. Brissenden frowned at Ranth’s retreating back as a hawk at a rabbit that had reached the brush. Then he wheeled on the attorney and demanded:

“Get ’em all out of here but this bird Chisholm. We can handle him better alone.”

Sherwood shook his head. “Not yet.” To Chisholm his tone was not friendly: “You got the jump on us, didn’t you?”

Len walked to him. “I don’t get you. I’m just telling you—”

“Yes, I heard you. Sit down.—Will you please sit down?”

Len shrugged, moved to the chair Dol Bonner had previously vacated, and sat. Sherwood was speaking to the room:

“I’d like to tell you folks something. All of you. I believe in frankness. That’s the way I like to work. I don’t set traps. You are all welcome to know anything I have found out about this. If one of you is guilty it won’t help him any in the end, and it would be no advantage to me to try to be slick with the rest of you. Nor will it help you any to try to be slick with me. It won’t get you anywhere.” He turned sharply to Chisholm: “Where has it got you? Last night you
told me you looked for Storrs and couldn’t find him. Since then you’ve remembered that the assistant gardener saw you coming from the direction of the fish pool between 4:30 and 5 o’clock, and you know I’ve questioned him, so you decided to get the jump on me by telling me calmly that you lied. So I’m going to believe you now. Am I?”

“I don’t suppose so.” Len sounded morose. “I don’t know anything about any assistant gardener. I spoke up because I had reason to know you were pulling a foul on Ranth. Little as I love Ranth.”

“You didn’t know the gardener saw you yesterday?”

“No.”

“You didn’t see him?”

“I wasn’t looking for gardeners. I was too mad to look for gardeners.”

“Mad at who? Storrs?”

“No. Oh, I suppose him too. Everybody. At 4:40 yesterday afternoon my anger was universal.”

“But you were mad enough at Storrs to threaten yesterday morning, in the presence of three people, to come out here and strangle him.”

“Was I?” Len’s brows lifted. “Maybe I did that. But the ratio of murders threatened to murders accomplished is probably a million to one, so look at the odds against your getting anything out of that. Anyway, I’m admitting that you’ve got a legitimate complaint against me; I told you a lie last night, and I shouldn’t have done it. Now I’ve got to explain, I realize that, and my explanation is no good. I mean, there’s nothing creditable about it, and nothing discreditable either. I was just too lazy to tell the truth.”

Brissenden emitted a sound that was half snort and half snarl. Sherwood asked, “You’re being slick, Chisholm? Don’t do it.”

“I’m not being slick. Yesterday, when I met Miss Raffray here at the tennis court and she asked me if I had talked with Storrs, I didn’t happen to feel like explaining that I had found him sound asleep and hadn’t disturbed him, so I just said I hadn’t found him. Later, when Miss Bonner asked me the same question, naturally I told her the same thing, and others heard me. And when you asked me last night, it didn’t seem worth while contradicting myself and
doing a lot of explaining. I wouldn’t call that slick—the fact is, it was pretty dumb—look at me now, yelling for you to let me up.”

“And that is the only reason you give, that flimsy excuse, for telling a deliberate lie, on a vital point, to the authorities investigating the murder of a man whose life you had threatened on the very day he was killed?”

Len nodded. “Yeah, that’s the only one. You framed that question swell. I told you it wasn’t much good.”

“You have nothing to add to it?”

“Not a thing. I’ll play it like that.”

“And your story now is, that you saw Storrs there, in that spot where he was found dead, and he was on the bench asleep?”

“That’s it. What I told you yesterday was correct, except for seeing Storrs. I left Foltz’s place a little before 4:30 and came here by the path through the woods. I intended to find Storrs and smooth him down and maybe get the job back which he had got me fired from. The butler told me he had left the house. I looked around the front gardens and then remembered Miss Raffray had told me that he often took a nap in that place down by the fish pool, and I went there. He was there on the bench, dead to the world—I mean he was asleep. I went up within a few feet of him, and decided not to wake him up because he would probably be in a bad humor if I did. I looked at my watch because I was thinking vaguely of getting someone to drive me to Ogowoc, to catch a train to New York, and it was twenty minutes to five. I came back up the hill and around the front of the house and met Miss Raffray—she had just come over from Foltz’s—and she suggested some tennis.”

Sherwood was studying him. “Storrs lying there asleep—was he in such a position that you could have passed a wire under his neck without disturbing him?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t try.”

“Did you have any gloves with you?”

“No.”

“Did you go to the garden house?”

“No.”

“Did you know there was a reel of trellis wire in the garden house?”
“I didn’t know anything about the garden house, or if I did, I wasn’t thinking about it. I don’t know this place very well; I’ve only been here a few times.”

“Which way was Storrs’ head pointing?”

“To the right—my right as I faced the bench.”

“Did you see the piece of paper on the grass?”

“Huh?—Oh. No, you wouldn’t set a trap, would you? Anyway, I didn’t see it.”

“I wasn’t setting a trap. Was the paper in his hand?”

“I didn’t see it.”

“Did you see anything else—notice anything? Is this your whole story this time?”

“That’s it. You’ve got it all. This time and any other time.”

“Not last night.”

“Okay. I asked for that one.”

Sherwood sat a moment, pulling at the lobe of his ear, without taking his eyes from Chisholm. At length he resumed, “About that threat of yours yesterday morning against Storrs. You’re pretty hot-tempered?”

Len said drily, “Yeah, I’m emotional. I get worked up. You mean I might get mad enough at a man to kill him? Not if he was asleep. He’d have to wake up first.”

“I suppose he would. But about that threat. I’m aware that men talk like that all the time, but this time there was a curious coincidence. You didn’t say you would kill Storrs, or shoot him, or poison him; you said you’d strangle him. Would you care to account for that?”

“I would if I could.” Len frowned. “Maybe it was because I did strangle a man once—in a play I was in at college. Only I didn’t use wire, I did it with my fingers.—Look here—your name’s Sherwood? There’s no sense in going on with this till you get me sore. This junk about me threatening Storrs. If you get me sore and I blow up, what good does that do you? I walk out on you, and then what?”

The attorney purred at him. “You won’t walk far, Chisholm. No one here will leave these grounds, for the present. That’s understood. As for your getting sore, I’m investigating a murder, you did utter that threat, you did lie to me last night, and you were, by your own statement, the last person to see Storrs alive. I’m not prepared to
accuse you of murder; if I were, I would be advising you to get an attorney. But I don’t believe you want to refuse to answer questions. Do you?”