“The police weren’t allowing any newspaper interviews. They didn’t want to run the risk of having Orme start something with the reporters before he’d talked to them. But my position was what you might call strategic.”

  “You have a way of putting yourself in strategic positions,” Dr. Cavanaugh commented with a briefly quizzical glance in Peter’s direction.

  “Oh, it was nothing to crow about,” Peter hastened to assure him. “Only, you see, if I’d chosen to play myself up in the Herald as the intrepid amateur who discovered and caught the man who wrote that threat before the police even got rightly started to search for him, it would have made them look rather silly. It wasn’t like that, of course, really; I just happened to light on a tip and followed it; and capturing Orme was about as heroic as picking up somebody’s strayed kitten. But they couldn’t help seeing the possibilities of the other treatment—when they were tactfully pointed out. I merely turned Orme over to the sheriff and beat it back to the office—giving the police due credit for the arrest in a story that was on the street before the other papers even knew that anybody’d been arrested. That little scoop was quite enough for me, in the way of glory. But, naturally, when I suggested that I’d like a word with my pet tame prisoner, rules or no rules—well, I got it.”

  “Naturally.” Dr. Cavanaugh agreed so suavely that Peter looked up with sharp scrutiny; but the doctor was intent on extinguishing the burning end of his cigar against the side of the ash tray. “And what did he say?” he asked without looking up.

  “I told him I’d see that he had a lawyer, and he said, ‘That’s very kind of you, but you oughtn’t to bother,’ just as if I’d offered to call a taxi. I honestly do think there’s something queer about him—nobody has any call to be as philosophical as all that when he’s about to be tried for murder.”

  “But then, you see, you’ve never been on trial for murder—perhaps you are not in a position to judge,” Dr. Cavanaugh reminded him.

  “Well, I think I’d at least manage to be interested.” Orme’s indifference to the fate of his own neck was becoming a point of acute grievance to Peter despite his part in bringing that neck within reach of danger. “He didn’t look up at all until I told him we were going to try to get you to come and see him. Then he stared, like somebody that’s just been shaken awake. But all he said was, ‘Oh! I’ve heard of him.’ Still, the idea seemed to impress him. Whatever you decide about him, I’m glad you’re going. You haven’t got any advance theory, I suppose—in other words, a hunch?”

  “If I had, it wouldn’t be worth expressing. I’m afraid you’ll have to cultivate a little scientific patience. Still, your impressions are helpful: they give us a little background—a starting point. And I may be your witness, not the district attorney’s, after all, you know.”

  “Whoopee! I’ll bet two doughnuts you will!” Peter beamed. “By the way, I found out how he withstood all that grilling by the detectives. ‘I simply withdraw my attention,’ he said. ‘I just turn my back mentally, and trace out the development of some theme in music—a Beethoven symphony, for instance.’ Just ‘withdraws his attention,’ mind you, while they take turns trying to sweat a confession out of him! Can you beat it?”

  “It’s a good method,” Dr. Cavanaugh said. “But it will never become widely popular because most criminals don’t know enough about Beethoven symphonies. Do you realize that you’ve uncovered the very first objective fact we’ve been able to gather about David Orme? Anybody who can lose himself in mentally following an elaborate musical composition while being subjected to the third degree must take music with more than ordinary seriousness—must, in fact, be a real musician.”

  “Suffering cats!” ejaculated Peter. “That’s so—and he’s lost two fingers off his hand,” he added in a tone of awed sympathy. “No wonder he looks as if he’d been thrown into a world where he can’t find his way. Music was his own particular world, and he was pitched out of it, without money, deprived of the only way he knew of making any—cast into the society of auto-camp bums——”

  “Still,” Dr. Cavanaugh brought him down to earth, “that hardly explains why he should forthwith walk out and murder a rich and beautiful and rather famous lady of the stage.”

  “No,” Peter assented glumly, “it doesn’t.”

  “You have gifts, young man, but you’re too easily disheartened—too mercurial. In the language of psychiatry, if you ever went off your balance, it would be the manic-depressive type of disorder.”

  “Great Scott!” Peter looked very blank indeed.

  Dr. Cavanaugh leaned back and abandoned himself to one of his rare and hearty laughs. It seemed to shake itself upward from his toes, rumbled mightily in his diaphragm, and ended in a series of throaty chortles that left his eyes suffused with tears.

  “You see how easy it is to terrify mere normal folk,” he chuckled. “All insanity is only an intensification of normal impulses, so you needn’t worry.”

  Peter still eyed the doctor with some discomfort.

  “I shouldn’t have teased you.” Dr. Cavanaugh’s face had resumed its customary gravity. “You must have noticed one thing: though Orme was making every conscious effort not to give himself away in any particular, he did reveal something significant without knowing it. All of us are likely to do the same thing. He hasn’t given us a motive for killing Sheila O’Shay, but we have at least the suggestion that he has come to regard the loss of life—his own or anybody else’s—as a mere scratch compared with something else which he has already lost.”

  Chapter XXXIV

  PETER CLOSED Dr. Cavanaugh’s office door behind him in a state of unaccustomed mental turbulence. He loafed along the hedge-bordered path which led from the separate side entrance of the office to the front driveway, chewing a twig which he had absent-mindedly plucked from the closely woven leaves of box.

  There is something intimidating to ordinary folk about the detachment of science, the impersonal clarity of knowledge. Peter no longer thought of the doctor merely as an expert in a field which interested Peter only as a source of copy on occasion. The psychiatrist loomed before his distorted mental vision as a marionette master pulling a hundred invisible wires. There had been a disturbing quality in his laughter: something Olympian and aloof, as if he alone knew what hidden paths they were following, as if they were all acting out a plot with the involuntary jerks of puppets while he sat behind the screen and held the script that gave meaning to their actions—held it by the power that came from understanding the mysterious springs of human conduct.

  Peter shook his head impatiently and tossed the twig away.

  “I’d better go to bed and get about forty-eight hours of sleep,” he muttered. “The pursuit of crime is beginning to tell on me.”

  Nevertheless, he continued to loiter by the side of the hedge. Were all the people in the world more or less cracked, needing only a push to knock them off the narrow wall of normality, like Humpty Dumpty? True, Orme might have killed Sheila O’Shay without being insane; and he might, on the other hand, be unbalanced without having killed Sheila O’Shay. They were no nearer to finding out why he had written that threatening letter, why he had changed his name and fled, why that flight had been so inconclusive, so easily abandoned, than they had been on the night when the letter was first found. And whatever Orme’s relations with the dead woman might have been, they did not explain Ellsworth’s unwillingness to have her disappearance made public, his purloining of the evidence of the contemplated breach-of-promise suit, nor Mrs. Kane’s effort to prevent the identification of the body.

  Despite weeks of headlines and front-page stories, thousands of words thrown into type and out again, investigations and suspicions, the tule marsh mystery was as much a mystery as on the day when Jimmy first dubbed it “the best murder of the year.” Motive! The doctor was right. Without understanding what pulled the wires in people’s heads, clues were nothing but a meaningless jumble. And motives themselves were a queer mixture—even Peter’s own.

  What these people did and why they did it was, strictly speaking, none of his business. A month ago he did not know any of them, unless Sheila O’Shay’s frequently published photograph in rotogravure sections and news pages constituted acquaintance. Yet here he was, losing sleep, forgetting meals, working uncounted hours of overtime in the attempt to find out who had killed Sheila O’Shay, and why. It was partly sheer human curiosity and pride, and unwillingness to confess himself baffled; partly the desire, not only that a solution be found, but that the Herald have a hand in finding it—and partly the need of setting Barbara somewhere in clear sunlight, of brushing aside from her, always, anxiety and doubt and trouble and folly. It was because he cared so much for Barbara that Orme must have a fair show. There must be no lingering shadows, no thrusting of guilt upon a possibly innocent man. If there were any chance of that, Barbara, he knew as surely as if he had known her all her life, would throw caution to the winds, even to her own mortal hurt.

  And she had need of caution—that much was abundantly clear. It flashed upon Peter with the force of complete conviction that though Barbara might conceivably have killed Mrs. Ellsworth—because anyone might conceivably do almost anything, perhaps by a fatal accident in circumstances that would not bear explanation—she could not have taken that body to the marsh and burned it. With a sigh of audible relief Peter seized firmly on the supposition that she was protecting someone else with her quixotic loyalty. She might even have known, or suspected, what was going to happen. But in either case, neither quixotism nor loyalty would wipe out the ugly, hard legality of the phrase, “accessory after the fact.”

  Peter’s whirring thoughts stopped short, as suddenly as the cutting off of a motor. He had drifted to the corner where the side path joined the main driveway, and saw Barbara herself at the curb, getting out of her car. He stood and watched her with sheer, unthinking delight—delight in the sunshine that made of her hair a gleaming cap on her uncovered head; delight in the childlike unconsciousness and swift, agile grace of her movements. He smiled as he noted that she had evidently forgotten her handbag. She leaned far forward into the car, poised with one foot on the curb, and groped in the crevice between the seat cushion and the back upholstery.

  Slowly she withdrew her hand and stood staring with bent head—not at a handbag, but at something that gleamed and flashed with a row of tiny green lights that caught the sun. It was a large amber comb of the Spanish type, flaring fan-shaped to the double row of emeralds that curved, fully six inches from end to end, across the top.

  Peter thought that he had cried out, that he had run toward her; but there was only a slight choking sound in his throat. His hand reached out automatically and clutched the hedge for support. That comb was famous from a hundred descriptions, familiar from a hundred photographs. The story had been reprinted times without number—how a headstrong Balkan prince had stolen it from his family’s royal collection for a woman’s whim, and had been sequestered under guard for three years to keep him out of reach of his enchantress when the theft and its motive were discovered; how the woman had worn it triumphantly ever since in her tawny, unbobbed hair, declaring that if they wouldn’t let her have the prince she’d at least have the emeralds, and leaving the royal relatives to sputter helplessly.

  It was the emerald comb of Sheila O’Shay.

  Barbara held the huge, glittering ornament in her hand for a moment, her head drooping lower and lower. Then her face lifted. Peter saw her gaze dart from side to side, up and down the deserted, sun-drenched street. He had never seen such utter, trapped terror on a human countenance. Her fingers wrenched frantically at the comb, breaking it tooth by tooth, jewel by jewel, into fragments. Some of them dropped to the pavement, but she stooped to pick them up. Then she ran, her two laden hands pressed tightly against her breast, to the sewer opening at the corner.

  “Don’t!” Peter cried out hoarsely, but she did not hear him. He could not himself have told whether he was protesting against her act or against the whole world in which such things could be—an instinctive, horrified denial of his senses.

  He saw her kneel in the dry rubbish of the gutter and thrust her hands through the storm grating that covered the entrance to the sewer pipe. When she withdrew them, they were empty. She turned then, and ran back to the house as swiftly as she had come. Her skirt and her light-coloured stockings were streaked with grime from the gutter, but she made no effort to brush off the dust; she did not even look down. With that white tortured face, staring straight ahead, she fled up the driveway, passed within three feet of Peter without seeing him, and dashed into the house.

  Chapter XXXV

  SHEILA O’SHAY’S body had been driven to the marsh in Barbara’s car—the one thing Peter had held to be inconceivable had happened. He saw the jaunty little sport coupé nosing its way through the night with its burden of death, Barbara’s white face of terror above the wheel. Had she searched with frenzied fingers for the missing comb, not daring to strike a light? Had she, in the horror of those dark hours, not even noticed that it had slipped from the gleaming copper of Sheila’s hair—perhaps not even known that it had ever been there?

  A groan broke from Peter’s lips. He was dully aware that something was pressing sharply against his forehead. The pain brought him slowly from the clutch of that imagined scene to a consciousness of his surroundings, like one who has plunged into deep water and rises, by no effort of his own, to the surface. He found that he was leaning against the trunk of a tree, his face pressed close to its rough bark. His breath came in sobbing gasps, as if he had been running to the point of exhaustion.

  And then, as suddenly as the turning on of a light in a dark room, he was roused from the numbness of nightmare by a flash of absolute certitude. Barbara’s hand might have held a knife or jerked a trigger, but Barbara could not have flung the body of Sheila O’Shay into the marsh and set fire to the grass. She could not have done it, simply because she was Barbara. If he had seen with his own eyes her figure at the wheel with that other huddled figure beside it, he would still have known that she did not do it—because she was Barbara. He had believed without evidence that this one thing she could not do. The physically impossible—or what looked like it—was often enough accomplished, but there were impossibilities that struck deeper. He had the evidence now, and he defied it. Evidence was as nothing, because no outer facts could give the lie to the central fact that was Barbara.

  With a deep, tremulous sigh Peter moved away from the tree and walked slowly up the driveway where Barbara had run a few minutes—or was it hours?—before. Barbara needed saving far more than he had dreamed. He had admitted, fleetingly, the idea that she herself was responsible for Sheila’s death, but he knew now that he had never believed it. It had taken the flash of emeralds in the sun to bring that idea into the light where he must face it—face it with all its implications.

  His mouth set in a hard, straight line. He knew exactly what he was doing. There was no ignorance of the law to blind him. He knew that he was going to suppress his knowledge of material evidence of a crime. If Barbara was guilty, no wrangling lawyers, no avid press, no stolid jury should tear that bright and gallant spirit to shreds. If she was a murderess, she was still Barbara! He forced himself to say the word with dry, stiff lips: “Murderess!” And he heard, as clearly as if he sat in the courtroom, as he had heard it many times from his seat in the press row, the voice of the judge solemnly intone, “And may God have mercy on your soul.” Never that—never that—for Barbara! He fought his way back to self-control, his nails forcing tiny red drops of blood from the palms of his clenched hands. If Barbara was guilty, he would share her guilt. He squared his shoulders as if against the wind. He was accessory after the fact of murder.

  This time there was no hesitation on the doorstep before he rang the bell. Peter’s training stood him in good stead; the black-and-white automaton who answered the door saw only a tall and rather pale young man whose clothes were badly in need of brushing—several twigs and bits of leaf were clinging to them—but who showed no evidence of excitement. She looked up at him with a tentative half smile of recognition, but he had evidently forgotten her. He fished a Herald card from his pocket and scribbled a message on the back.

  “Please let me see you at once—it is most important.” He paused a moment, and then added: “I am counting on you—we are friends, remember.”

  He looked up, as if he had just become aware of the figure in the open door.

  “Oh, it’s you! I hope you found the two bits—though you didn’t deserve them that time. Will you cake this to Miss Cavanaugh, and tell her I’ll wait in the room with the marigolds?”

  “There aren’t any marigolds—the season’s past, sir,” the automaton explained meticulously.

  “Never mind—we know what we mean. You just cut along.”

  The automaton obediently “cut,” wondering as she mounted the stairs how Miss Barbara had ever discovered such a very nice young man who obviously did not belong in her own social circle.

  “He can’t have any money—his clothes are a sight—but he does have a way with him. And Miss Barbara can afford to like whoever she pleases,” she reflected enviously.

  Peter stood anxiously waiting in the small room where daffodils had replaced the marigolds, but where a little fire still twinkled in the grate. He wished he had warned her to take off that dust-streaked dress before she came down. She might meet any number of servants, and they’d be sure to notice it and wonder. He wished he had told her to destroy his card—but, then, the girl might already have read it on her way up. He had thought only of Barbara while he was writing it—he strove now to remember the wording. It was noncommittal enough; still, it was better out of the way. His brain felt paralyzed with the sense of his own incompetence. There were so many things to think of—so many things that he had never had to consider before. Peter found himself wishing that he had committed any number of crimes so that he would have been practised in technic, would know exactly what ought to be done. Suppose he made some horrible blunder. Suppose he could not save her. Suppose——