Chapter 4

"Do you mind," said Michela, "if I spend the night here? There's two beds in there. You see-" she hesitated, her flat dark eyes were furtive-"I'm-afraid."

"Of what?" said Anna after a moment. "Of whom?"

"I don't know who," said Michela, "or what."

After a long pause Anna forced herself to say evenly: "Stay if you are nervous. It's safe here." Was it? Anna continued hurriedly: "Mars will send up dinner."

Michela's thick white hand made an impatient movement.

"Call it nerves-although I've not a nerve in my body. But when Mars comes with dinner-just be sure it is Mars before you open the door, will you? Although as to that-I don't know. But I brought my revolver-loaded." She reached into her pocket, and Anna sat upright, abruptly. Anna, whose knowledge of revolvers had such a wide and peculiar range that any policeman, learning of it, would arrest her on suspicion alone, was nevertheless somewhat uneasy in their immediate vicinity.

"Afraid?" said Michela.

"Not at all," said Anna. "But I don't think a revolver will be necessary."

"I hope not, I'm sure," said Michela somberly and stared at the fire.

After that, as Anna later reflected, there was not much to be said. The only interruption during the whole queer evening was the arrival of Mars and dinner.

Later in the evening Michela spoke again, abruptly. "I didn't kill Joe," she said. And after another long silence she said unexpectedly: "Did Christabel ask you how to kill him and get by with it?"

"No!"

"Oh." Michela looked at her queerly. "I thought maybe she'd got you to plan it for her. You-knowing so much about murders and all."

"She didn't," said Anna forcefully. "And I don't plan murders for my friends, I assure you. I'm going to bed."

Michela, following her, put the revolver on the small table between the two beds.

If the night before had been heavy with apprehension, this was an active nightmare. Anna tossed and turned and was uneasily conscious that Michela was awake and restless too.

Anna must have slept at last, though, for she woke up with a start and sat upright, instantly aware of some movement in the room. Then she saw a figure dimly out-lined against the window. It was Michela.

Anna joined her. "What are you doing?"

"Hush," whispered Michela. Her face was pressed against the glass. Anna looked too, but could see only blackness.

"There's someone out there," whispered Michela. "And if he moves again I'm going to shoot."

Anna was suddenly aware that the ice-cold thing against her arm was the revolver.

"You are not," said Anna and wrenched the thing out of Michela's hand. Michela gasped and whirled, and Anna said grimly: "Go back to bed. Nobody's out there."

"How do you know?" said Michela, her voice sulky.

"I don't," said Anna, very much astonished at herself, but clutching the revolver firmly. "But I do know that you aren't going to start shooting. If there's any shooting to be done," said Anna with aplomb, "I'll do it myself. Go to bed."

But long after Michela was quiet Anna still sat bolt upright, clutching the revolver and listening.

Along toward dawn, out of the melee of confused, unhappy thoughts, the vagrant little recollection came back to tantalize her. Something she'd known and now did not know. This time she returned as completely as she could over the track her thoughts had taken in the hope of capturing it by association. She'd been thinking of the murder and of the possible suspects; if Michela had not murdered Joe, then there were left Randy and Christabel and Tryon Welles. And she didn't want it to be Christabel; it must not be Christabel.

After Michela left, Anna's memory tugged at her, and she wrenched herself out of the arms of sleep to dig for the phantom. It was something trivial-but something she could not project into her consciousness. And it was something she needed. Needed now. Anna drifted off, her mind still working on the problem.

Michela couldn't sleep. She stepped out into the garden, no longer afraid. Whatever it was, she no longer feared it. Perhaps it was a cat, she thought, or the wind. She peered around, tingling with excitement.

"Michela," Randy said.

"It's you! Why didn't you say something? I would've come out before!"

She saw him now, and he shrugged. "I didn't want you to come out," he said thoughtlessly.

Michela stiffened. "In that case," she said, "I'll go back in."

His hand was warm on her arm and she could see that he was smiling. "But as long as you're here ... "he said.

Michela glanced around. "What if someone hears us?" she whispered. "I was just talking to Anna. What if she's awake?"

Randy was still grinning. "Then she can watch," he said. "Learn something. Have a love scene for one of her books. I don't really care one way or the other!"

It was very still in the garden. Michela thought that someone must be watching. "Let's go inside," she whispered urgently. "It's more comfortable!"

"I like it out here," Randy said. "I like to make love in the open-always have. It makes me feel free." His mouth covered hers, wet and warm, and she felt his tongue probing.

She gave up. He lowered her to the grass and stood above her, framed in moonlight.

Michela wanted to be used, and Randy was just the man to do it.

"You feel good," he whispered, as he began to stroke her.

Inside, all slept soundly, unaware, at peace.

Anna awoke and was horrified to discover her cheek pillowed cosily against the revolver. She thrust it away, then dressed quickly.

Michela was still silent and sulky, Anna thought, as she passed her on her way to Christabel's room. Christabel looked years older. She was pathetically willing to answer the few questions that Anna asked. Feeling that Christabel wanted solitude, Anna left. But she went reluctantly. It would not be long before Jim Del Mar returned, and she had nothing to tell him-nothing, except surmise.

Randy was not at breakfast, and it was a dark and uncomfortable meal. Dark because Tryon Welles said something about a headache and turned out the electric light, and uncomfortable because it could not be otherwise. Michela had changed to a thin suit-red again. The teasing ghost of a memory drifted over Anna's mind and away before she could grasp it.

As the meal ended Anna was called to the telephone. It was Jim Del Mar saying that he would be there in an hour.

On the terrace Tryon Welles overtook her again and said: "How's Christabel?"

"I don't know," said Anna slowly. "She looks-stunned."

"I wish I could make it easier for her," he said. "But-I'm caught too. There's nothing I can do, really. I mean about the house, of course. Didn't she tell you?"

"No."

He looked at her, considered, and went on slowly.

"She wouldn't mind you knowing. You see-oh, it's tragically simple. But I can't help myself. It's like this: Randy borrowed money from me-kept on borrowing it, spent it like water. Without Christabel knowing it, he put up the house and grounds as collateral. She knows now, of course.

Now I'm in a pinch in business and have got to take the house over legally in order to borrow enough money on it myself to keep things going for a few months. Do you see?"

Anna nodded. Was it this knowledge, then, that had so stricken Christabel?

"I hate it," said Tryon Welles. "But what can I do? And now Joe's-death-on top of it-" He paused, reached absently for a cigarette case, extracted a cigarette, and the small flame from his lighter flared suddenly clear and bright. "It's-hell," he said, puffing, "for her. But what can I do? I've got my own business to save."

"I see," said Anna slowly.

And quite suddenly, looking at the lighter, she did see. It was simple, as miraculously simple as that. She said, her voice marvelously unshaken and calm to her own ears: "May I have a cigarette?"

He was embarrassed at not having offered it; he fumbled for his cigarette case and then held the flame of the lighter for her. Anna was very deliberate about getting her cigarette lighted. Finally she did so, said

"Thank you," and added, quite as if she had the whole thing planned: "Will you wake Randy, Mr. Welles, and send him to me? Now?"

"Why, of course," he said. "You'll be in the cottage?"

"Yes," said Anna and fled.

She was bent over the yellow paper when Jim Del Mar arrived.

He was fresh and alert and, Anna could see, prepared to be kind. He expected her, then, to fail.

"Well," he said gently, "have you discovered the murderer?"

"Yes," said Anna Simms.

Jim Del Mar sat down quite suddenly.

"I know who killed him," she said simply, "but I don't know why."

Jim Del Mar reached into his pocket for a handkerchief and dabbed it lightly to his forehead. "Suppose," he suggested in a hushed way, "you tell all."

"Randy will be here in a moment," said Anna. "But it's all very simple. You see, the final clue was only the proof. I knew Christabel couldn't have killed him, for two rea sons: one is, she is inherently incapable of killing anything; the other is-she loved him still. And I knew it wasn't Michela, because she is, actually, cowardly; and then, too, Michela had an alibi."

"Alibi?"

"She really was in the pine woods for a long time that morning. Waiting, I think, for Randy, who slept late. I know she was there, because she was simply chewed by jiggers, and they are only in the pine woods."

"Maybe she was there the day before?"

Anna shook her head decidedly.

"No, I know jiggers. If it had been during the previous day they'd have stopped itching by the time she came to me. And it wasn't during the afternoon, for no one went in the pine woods then except the sheriff's men."

"That would leave Randy and Tryon Welles."

"Yes," said Anna. Now that it had come to doing it, she felt ill and weak; would it be her evidence, her words, that would send a fellow creature over that long and ignominious road that ends so tragically?

Jim Del Mar knew what she was thinking.

"Remember Christabel," he said quietly.

"Oh, I know," said Anna sadly. She locked her fingers together, and there were quick footsteps on the porch.

"You want me, Anna?" said Randy.

"Yes, Randy," said Anna. "I want you to tell me if you owed Joe Bromfel anything. Money-or-or anything."

"How did you know?" said Randy.

"Did you give him a note-anything?"

"Yes."

"What was your collateral?"

"The house-it's all mine-"

"When was it dated? Answer me, Randy."

He flung up his head.

"I suppose you've been talking to Tryon," he said defiantly. "Well, it was dated before Tryon got his note. I couldn't help it. I'd got some stocks on margin. I had to have-"

"So the house actually belonged to Joe Bromfel?" Anna was curiously cold. Christabel's house. Christabel's brother.

"Well, yes-if you want to put it like that."

Jim Del Mar had risen quietly.

"And after Joe Bromfel, to Michela, if she knows of this and claims it?" pressed Anna.

"I don't know," said Randy. "I never thought of that."

Jim Del Mar started to speak, but Anna silenced him.

"No, he really didn't think of it," she said wearily. "And I knew it wasn't Randy who killed him because he didn't, really, care enough for Michela to do that. It was-Tryon Welles who killed Joe Bromfel. He had to. For he had to silence Joe and then secure the note and probably destroy it, in order to have a clear title to the house himself. Randy-did Joe have the note here with him?"

"Yes."

"It was not found upon his body?"

It was Jim Del Mar who answered: "Nothing of the kind was found anywhere."

"Then," said Anna, "after the murder was discovered and before the sheriff arrived and the search began, only you and Tryon Welles were upstairs and had the opportunity to search Joe's room and find the note and destroy it. Was it you who did that, Randy?"

"No-no!" The color rose in his face.

"Then it must have been then that Tryon Welles found and destroyed it." She frowned. "Somehow, he must have known it was there. I don't know how-perhaps he had had words with Joe about it before he shot him and Joe inadvertently told him where it was. There was no time for him to search the body. But he knew-"

"Maybe," said Randy reluctantly, "I told him. You see-I knew Joe had it in his letter case. He-he told me. But I never thought of taking it."

"It was not on record?" asked Jim Del Mar.

"No," said Randy, flushing. "I-asked him to keep it quiet."

"I wonder," said Anna, looking away from Randy's miserable young face, "just how Tryon Welles expected to silence you."

"Well," said Randy dully, after a moment, "it was not exactly to my credit.

But you needn't rub it in. I never thought of this-I was thinking of-Michela. That she did have it. I've had my lesson. And if he destroyed the note, how are you going to prove all this?"

"By your testimony," said Anna. "And besides-there's the ring."

"Ring," said Randy. Jim Del Mar leaned forward intently.

"Yes," said Anna. "I'd forgotten. But I remembered that Joe had been reading the newspaper when he was killed. The curtains were pulled together back of him, so, in order to see the paper, he must have had the light turned on above his chair. It wasn't burning when I entered the library, or I should have noted it. So the murderer had pulled the cord of the lamp before he escaped. And ever since then he had been very careful to avoid any artificial light."

"What are you talking about?" cried Randy.

"Yet he had to keep on wearing the ring," said Anna. "Fortunately for him he didn't have it on the first night-I suppose the color at night would have been wrong with his green tie. But this morning he lit a cigarette and I saw."

"Saw what, in God's name?" Randy exploded.

"That the stone isn't an emerald at all," replied Anna. "It's an Alexandrite. It changed color under the flare of the lighter."

"Alexandrite!" cried Randy impatiently. "What's that?"

"It's a stone that's a kind of red-purple under artificial light and green in daylight," said Jim Del Mar shortly. "I had forgotten there was such a thing-I don't think I've ever happened to see one. They are rare-and costly. Costly," repeated Jim Del Mar slowly. "This one has cost a life-"

Randy interrupted: "But if Michela knows about the note, why, Tryon may kill her-" He stopped abruptly, thought for a second or two, then got out a cigarette. "Let him," he said airily.

It had been Tryon Welles, then, prowling about during the night-if it had been anyone. He had been uncertain, perhaps, of the extent of Michela's knowledge, but certain of his ability to deal with her and with Randy, who was so heavily in his debt.

"Michela doesn't know now," said Anna slowly. "And when you tell her, Randy-she might settle for a cash consideration. And, Randy Frame, somehow you've got to recover this house for Christabel and do it honestly."

"But right now," said Jim Del Mar cheerily, "for the sheriff. And my story."

At the doorway he paused to look at Anna. "May I come back later," he said, "and use your typewriter?"

"Yes," said Anna Simms.