4 “I Don’t Know What Killed Him”
Just when I got up I do not remember, but I was on my feet as the grapplers separated. Without thinking of danger—and surely danger was there in the room—I might have rushed forward; but Susan Gird, lying limp in her chair, hampered me in our mutual shackles. Standing where I was, then, I pawed in my pocket for something I had not mentioned to her or to Zoberg; an electric torch.
It fitted itself into my hand, a compact little cylinder, and I whipped it out with my finger on the switch. A cone of white light spurted across the room, making a pool about and upon the motionless form of Gird. He lay crumpled on one side, his back toward us, and a smudge of black wetness was widening about his slack head and shoulders.
With the beam I swiftly quartered the room, probing it into every corner and shadowed nook. The creature that had attacked Gird had utterly vanished. Susan Gird now gave a soft moan, like a dreamer of dreadful things. I flashed my light her way.
It flooded her face and she quivered under the impact of the glare, but did not open her eyes. Beyond her I saw Zoberg, doubled forward in his bonds. He was staring blackly at the form of Gird, his eyes protruding and his clenched teeth showing through his beard.
“Doctor Zoberg!” I shouted at him, and his face jerked nervously toward me. It was fairly cross-hatched with tense lines, and as white as fresh pipe-clay. He tried to say something, but his voice would not command itself.
Dropping the torch upon the floor, I next dug keys from my pocket and with trembling haste unlocked the irons from Susan Gird’s wrist and ankle on my side. Then, stepping hurriedly to Zoberg, I made him sit up and freed him as speedily as possible. Finally I returned, found my torch again and stepped across to Gird.
My first glance at close quarters was enough; he was stone-dead, with his throat torn brutally out. His cheeks, too, were ripped in parallel gashes, as though by the grasp of claws or nails. Radiance suddenly glowed behind me, and Zoberg moved forward, holding up the carbide lamp.
“I found this beside your chair,” he told me unsteadily. “I found a match and lighted it.” He looked down at Gird, and his lips twitched, as though he would be hysterical.
“Steady, Doctor,” I cautioned him sharply, and took the lamp from him. “See what you can do for Gird.”
He stooped slowly, as though he had grown old. I stepped to one side, putting the lamp on the table. Zoberg spoke again:
“It is absolutely no use, Wills. We can do nothing. Gird has been killed.”
I had turned my attention to the girl. She still sagged in her chair, breathing deeply and rhythmically as if in untroubled slumber.
“Susan,” I called her. “Susan!”
She did not stir, and Doctor Zoberg came back to where I bent above her. “Susan,” he whispered penetratingly, “wake up, child.”
Her eyes unveiled themselves slowly, and looked up at us. “What——” she began drowsily.
“Prepare yourself,” I cautioned her quickly. “Something has happened to your father.”
She stared across at Gird’s body, and then she screamed, tremulously and long. Zoberg caught her in his arms, and she swayed and shuddered against their supporting circle. From her own wrists my irons still dangled, and they clanked as she wrung her hands in aimless distraction.
Going to the dead man once more, I unchained him from the chair and turned him upon his back. Susan’s black cloak lay upon one of the other chairs, and I picked it up and spread it above him. Then I went to each door in turn, and to the windows.
“The seals are unbroken,” I reported. “There isn’t a space through which even a mouse could slip in or out. Yet——”
“I did it!” wailed Susan suddenly. “Oh, my God, what dreadful thing came out of me to murder my father!”
I unfastened the parlor door and opened it. Almost at the same time a loud knock sounded from the front of the house.
Zoberg lifted his head, nodding to me across Susan’s trembling shoulder. His arms were still clasped around her, and I could not help but notice that they seemed thin and ineffectual now. When I had chained them, I had wondered at their steely cording. Had this awful calamity drained him of strength?
“Go,” he said hoarsely. “See who it is.”
I went. Opening the front door, I came face to face with a tall, angular silhouette in a slouch hat with snow on the brim.
“Who are you?” I jerked out, startled.
“O’Bryant,” boomed back an organ-deep bass. “What’s the fuss here?”
“Well——” I began, then hesitated.
“Stranger in town, ain’t you?” was the next question. “I saw you when you stopped at the Luther Inn. I’m O’Bryant—the constable.”
He strode across the door-sill, peered about him in the dark, and then slouched into the lighted dining-room. Following, I made him out as a stern, roughly dressed man of forty or so, with a lean face made strong by a salient chin and a simitar nose. His light blue eyes studied the still form of John Gird, and he stooped to draw away the cloak. Susan gave another agonized cry, and I heard Zoberg gasp as if deeply shocked. The constable, too, flinched and replaced the cloak more quickly than he had taken it up.
“Who done that?” he barked at me.
Again I found it hard to answer. Constable O’Bryant sniffed suspiciously at each of us in turn, took up the lamp and herded us into the parlor. There he made us take seats.
“I want to know everything about this business,” he said harshly. “You,” he flung at me, “you seem to be the closest to sensible. Give me the story, and don’t leave out a single bit of it.”
Thus commanded, I made shift to describe the séance and what had led up to it. I was as uneasy as most innocent people are when unexpectedly questioned by peace officers. O’Bryant interrupted twice with a guttural “Huh!” and once with a credulous whistle.
“And this killing happened in the dark?” he asked when I had finished. “Well, which of you dressed up like a devil and done it?”
Susan whimpered and bowed her head. Zoberg, outraged, sprang to his feet.
“It was a creature from another world,” he protested angrily. “None of us had a reason to kill Mr. Gird.”
O’Bryant emitted a sharp, equine laugh. “Don’t go to tell me any ghost stories, Doctor Zoberg. We folks have heard a lot about the hocus-pocus you’ve pulled off here from time to time. Looks like it might have been to cover up some kind of rough stuff.”
“How could it be?” demanded Zoberg. “Look here, Constable, these handcuffs.” He held out one pair of them. “We were all confined with them, fastened to chairs that were sealed to the floor. Mr. Gird was also chained, and his chair made fast out of our reach. Go into the next room and look for yourself.”
“Let me see them irons,” grunted O’Bryant, snatching them.
He turned them over and over in his hands, snapped them shut, tugged and pressed, then held out a hand for my keys. Unlocking the cuffs, he peered into the clamping mechanism.
“These are regulation bracelets,” he pronounced. “You were all chained up, then?”
“We were,” replied Zoberg, and both Susan and I nodded.
Into the constable’s blue eyes came a sudden shrewd light. “I guess you must have been, at that. But did you stay that way?” He whipped suddenly around, bending above my chair to fix his gaze upon me. “How about you, Mr. Wills?”
“Of course we stayed that way,” I replied.
“Yeh? Look here, ain’t you a professional magician?”
“How did you know that?” I asked.
He grinned widely and without warmth. “The whole town’s been talking about you, Mr. Wills. A stranger can’t be here all day without his whole record coming out.” The grin vanished. “You’re a magician, all right, and you can get out of handcuffs. Ain’t that so?”
“Of course it’s so,” Zoberg answered for me. “But why should that mean that my friend has killed Mr. Gird?”
O’Bryant wagged his head in triumph. “That’s what we’ll find out later. Right now it adds up very simple. Gird was killed, in a room that was all sealed up. Three other folks was in with him, all handcuffed to their chairs. Which of them got loose without the others catching on?” He nodded brightly at me, as if in answer to his own question.
Zoberg gave me a brief, penetrating glance, then seemed to shrivel up in his own chair. He looked almost as exhausted as Susan. I, too, was feeling near to collapse.
“You want to own up, Mr. Wills?” invited O’Bryant.
“I certainly do not,” I snapped at him. “You’ve got the wrong man.”
“I thought,” he made answer, as though catching me in a damaging admission, “that it was a devil, not a man, who killed Gird.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what killed him.”
“Maybe you’ll remember after a while.” He turned toward the door, “You come along with me. I’m going to lock you up.”
I rose with a sigh of resignation, but paused for a moment to address Zoberg. “Get hold of yourself,” I urged him. “Get somebody in here to look after Miss Susan, and then clarify in your mind what happened. You can help me prove that it wasn’t I.”
Zoberg nodded very wearily, but did not look up.
“Don’t neither of you go into that room where the body is,” O’Bryant warned them. “Mr. Wills, get your coat and hat.”
I did so, and we left the house. The snow was inches deep and still falling. O’Bryant led me across the street and knocked on the door of a peak-roofed house. A swarthy little man opened to us.
“There’s been a murder, Jim,” said O’Bryant importantly. “Over at Gird’s. You’re deputized—go and keep watch. Better take the missus along, to look after Susan. She’s bad cut up about it.”
We left the new deputy in charge and walked down the street, then turned into the square. Two or three men standing in front of the “Pharmacy” stared curiously, then whispered as we passed. Another figure paused to give me a searching glance. I was not too stunned to be irritated.
“Who are those?” I asked the constable.
“Town fellows,” he informed me. “They’re mighty interested to see what a killer looks like.”
“How do they know about the case?” I almost groaned.
He achieved his short, hard laugh.
“Didn’t I say that news travels fast in a town like this? Half the folks are talking about the killing this minute.”
“You’ll find you made a mistake,” I assured him.
“If I have, I’ll beg your pardon handsome. Meanwhile, I’ll do my duty.”
We were at the red brick town hall by now. At O’Bryant’s side I mounted the granite steps and waited while he unlocked the big double door with a key the size of a can-opener.
“We’re a kind of small town,” he observed, half apologetically, “but there’s a cell upstairs for you. Take off your hat and overcoat—you’re staying inside till further notice.”