Mignon Eberhart - Wolf in Man’s Clothing

Twelve o’clock and twelve-ten, and still she was not there.

At twelve-fifteen two things happened. Delphine opened his eyes, opened them all at once without blinking, sat up and stared fixedly at the blank panels of the door to the hall. Just stared at it, for a long time. Then something bumped, hard and sharp, against the door.

A long silence followed. I must have got up, for I remember standing very still, listening. There was no other sound, no retreating footsteps, no movement, no voice.

Because of this, or because of something less easily accountable, a moment (perhaps two or three) elapsed before I went to the door and opened it. No one was in the hall; it stretched emptily away on either hand with the chairs here and there making heavy shadows. But no one was there.

I believe-indeed I know-that several moments passed, while I stood there. Long enough, at least, for me to discover the rather queer thing I did discover and that was a kind of dent, small and not deep but still a dent, in the waxed gleaming surface of one of the panels of the door I still held open.

It was as if someone had been carrying something (a ladder, fireplace tongs, perhaps a hammer) along the hall and had accidentally bumped it against the door. But people don’t carry hammers, or ladders, through sleeping houses after midnight.

But I was looking at that little dent, touching it with my finger, when a woman somewhere screamed. It was a short, breathless little scream, cut off before it was more than begun. But I knew somehow that it was Drue.

I knew too that it came from downstairs. But I don’t remember moving, although I do have a dim memory of clutching at the bannister on the stairs and of the slipperiness of the marble floor in the hall.

The door to Conrad Brent’s library was open and there was a light. Drue was there, her face as white as her cap. She had something in her hand and she was bending over Conrad Brent, who lay half on the floor, half on the red leather couch.

He was dead; I saw that. Drue said in a strange, faraway voice, “ Sarah-Sarah, I’ve killed him !”

Then there were footsteps running heavily across the marble floor, toward us and toward the dead man. Drue heard them, too, and turned and the bright thing in her hand caught the light and glittered.

IN A TIME OF shattering emergency and haste one’s action is altogether instinctive. It’s only afterward that you question that action and then it’s too late because it is already accomplished-for good or bad but certainly forever. I reached out and took the shining thing from Drue’s hand. It was a hypodermic syringe; the barrel was empty and a needle was in place.

Drue was staring down at Conrad Brent, her eyes wide and dark in her white face. She said, in that queer, faraway voice, “I didn’t mean to kill him. I was trying to help him. But he-he died…”

I couldn’t put my hand over her mouth, for it would have been seen; the sound of the footsteps had abruptly stopped at the door. I thrust the hypodermic syringe into my pocket and said loudly, to cover whatever Drue was trying to say, “Don’t be frightened; we’ll get the doctor…” and turned around. It was Peter Huber who stood there; at least, it wasn’t Alexia who might have heard what Drue said, or Nicky which would be the same thing.

Drue shrank into silence; I hoped it was prudence but was afraid it was not. Peter Huber uttered an exclamation and came quickly into the room.

“Sick?” he cried. “Good heavens! He looks horrible…” He stopped beside me, clutching his red dressing gown over vividly striped pajamas. “He’s dead-isn’t he?”

Well, I’ve been a nurse for a long time; I know death when I see it. But I made sure while he watched me.

“Yes, he’s dead,” I said at last.

“What was it? Heart?”

“I don’t know. Yes, I suppose so.” All three of us stood there for an indecisive moment, staring down at Conrad Brent’s body-sprawled there awkwardly, with his face sunk over one shoulder and his mouth a little open. I remember feeling that I ought to get a towel and tie that square, but no longer formidable, jaw before rigor mortis set in. And then instantly I thought the police wouldn’t like it; I must touch nothing. Police ? But Drue’s wild words hadn’t meant that she had murdered him. I’d thought of murder and police only because Craig had said, there’ll be murder done.

Craig ! I’d forgotten him.

“I’ve got to go back to my patient! I believe Mr. Brent is dead, but call Dr. Chivery!” I reached the door and thought of Drue. I couldn’t leave her there in that room beside Conrad Brent, to be questioned by this young Huber or by anyone else. Not just then. I went quickly back to her. “You go up to Craig,” I said. “Stay there with him.”

“But I…” she began. I interrupted, “ Hurry !”

I hoped Peter Huber would not notice how urgent it sounded. However, Drue gave the sagging thing on the couch another long look, blank with shock, and went. I made sure she was on the way upstairs then said again, sharply, to Peter Huber, “Get the doctor. I’ll stay here.”

“Wouldn’t you rather I would stay with him? I don’t mind. You can call the doctor.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t know the number…”

“But the telephone operator…”

I said again, “ Hurry ,” and must have sounded as if I meant it, for he gave me a startled look and went away. I closed the door behind him and went to Conrad Brent.

“I’ve killed him,” Drue had said, clutching a hypodermic syringe. Presently I found the mark. It was a tiny red spot on his left arm-so very small-yet, if they found it, what would they say? Everyone in that house knew that the man who lay there, dead, had come between Drue and her young husband, and now that she had come back he was still determined to give her no quarter. “I’ve only tonight,” she’d said.

Well, perhaps Claud Chivery wouldn’t see that tiny red mark. I rolled down the cuff, fastened it and adjusted the brown velvet sleeve of his lounge coat; then I looked around the room.

Nothing much was changed since my interview in that room during the late afternoon. The desk lamp was still lighted; the fire had burned down to gray ashes with crimson undertones; the decanter of brandy still stood on the desk-not, however, on the tray but on the edge of the desk. The room was warm and so still that everything in it seemed to have a quiet, intensely observant life of its own, as if the chairs and books, the coat of arms over the mantel, the objects on the desk, things intimately associated with the life of Conrad Brent, were all watching me-me and that forever silent figure, gray-faced and inert on the couch.

Craig had said murder and now Conrad Brent was dead.

It was not a comfortable thought. Even so, I was a little taken aback to find my hand had gone out toward the brandy decanter. I was, indeed, in the very act of lifting it and reaching for a glass when I stopped. Having been a practicing teetotaler all my life, I withdrew my hand quickly, although, as to that, there was not enough brandy in the decanter to make a very black mark on my record. I had, however, already touched the decanter-but I thought nothing of it, then, and looked again about the room. I don’t say I was looking for clues; still, there weren’t any. Not even a cigarette or cigar ashes. A cuff link would have come in handy just then, I thought, or burned papers in the fireplace. But there was nothing.

Nothing but Conrad Brent, and the only thing I could be fairly sure of was that however he had died, it was due in the end to an acute heart block. His face was ashy gray, with a tinge of blue in the lips-what is called cyanosis. He still wore dinner clothes, except he had taken off his dinner jacket and replaced it with a short, brown velvet lounge coat; his black tie hung in strings, and his collar was open. I was looking at that when without any warning at all the entire Japanese army began to drop bombs on the house.