Free The Door by Mary Roberts Rinehart Page A

when he came back from the garage. He planted himself in front of me, like a man who had made a resolution.
    “See here,” he said. “How fond are you of Jim Blake?”
    “I like him. I don’t know that it’s any more than that.”
    “What time was it when he telephoned here that night?”
    “About a quarter past seven.”
    “And he asked for Sarah?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why did he do that? Was he in the habit of calling Sarah? Of course he wasn’t. How do you know that when she left the house that night it wasn’t to see Jim Blake? To meet him somewhere?”
    “I don’t believe it,” I said sharply. “Why would she meet him? I don’t believe they’ve exchanged two dozen words in twenty years.”
    “She went out to meet him,” he insisted. “I know that. I’ve made it my business to know it. I’ve been talking to that darky of his. You know his habits; you know he dines late and dresses for dinner. Well, that night he didn’t. He dined early and he put on a golf suit. And he left the house at seven o’clock.”
    “Good heavens, Wallie! If a man may not eat when he’s hungry and dress as he likes—”
    “Listen,” he said doggedly. “That’s not all. He carried with him that sword-stick you gave him.”
    “Even then—”
    “Let me finish, Elizabeth Jane. That cane or stick or whatever you call it, has disappeared. It’s not in the house. It stood in the hall with his other sticks until Sarah’s body was found. Then it went.”
    He was looking at me with his tired sunken eyes, but there was no doubting his earnestness or his conviction.
    “What does that look like?” he demanded. “He has an appointment with Sarah. He goes to meet her, armed. And then—”
    “Wallie, I implore you not to give that to the police.”
    “No,” he said somberly. “Not yet. But some day I may have to.”
    This then was our situation, during the few days which remained before the first of May. Sarah was dead; dead of two stab wounds four and a quarter inches deep, inflicted after she had been stunned by a blow on the back of the head. Judy had been attacked by the same method, a blow on the head from the rear, but no further attempt on her life had been made. Wallie suspected Jim Blake, apparently only because the sword-cane was missing, and my household was in a state of nerves so extreme that the back-firing of automobiles as they coasted down the long hill which terminates at my drive was enough to make the women turn pale.
    Of clues we had none whatever.
    Because of the sensational nature of the crime the press was clamoring for an arrest, and the Inspector was annoyed and irritated.
    “What do they want, anyhow?” he said. “I can’t make clues, can I? And if you’d listen to the District Attorney’s office you’d think all I had to do was to walk out and arrest the first man I met on the street. Lot of old women, getting nervous the minute the papers begin to yap at them!”
    He must have broken up hundreds of toothpicks that week. We would find small scattered bits of wood all over the place.
    By Sunday, the first of May, Judy was still in bed, but fully convalescent. She had ordered a number of books on crime to read, and flanked by those on one side and her cigarettes on the other, managed to put in the days comfortably enough.
    The evenings were reserved for Dick. Their first meeting after Judy’s injury had defined the situation between them with entire clarity. He was on his knees beside the bed in an instant.
    “My darling! My poor little darling!” he said.
    She lay there, looking perfectly happy, with one hand on his head.
    “Your poor little darling has made a damned fool of herself,” she said sweetly. “And you’ll give me hell when you hear about it. Go on out, Elizabeth Jane; he wants to kiss me.”
    Which, Katherine or no Katherine, I promptly did.
    It was then on Sunday afternoon that there occurred another of those apparently small matters on which later such grave events were