Locke apparently had no intention of asking questions. Gamadge said: "Mrs. G. seems to think more of you than you do of her."

  "Oh—she's told you that she gives Celia and me allowances?"

  "She's left you and Miss Warren all the Gregson money in her will."

  "She'll live forever."

  "Well, let us hope so; but it's a compliment, at least." Gamadge studied him with a certain amusement.

  "Why shouldn't she leave us the money? Celia's her only relative, and she knows Gregson expected her to look out for me—if anything happened to him."

  "You're sure of that?"

  "She told us so. But I appreciate the compliment, as you call it; I go up to see her at that dreary place near Burford—go up two or three times a year in my old wreck of a car. For a busy man like me, that's something."

  "You go up to see her because she's promised to leave you money?"

  "About a hundred thousand; do you know any better reason for paying a visit?" Locke's thin mouth widened. Gamadge also smiled, as he said: "Is that why Miss Warren goes?"

  "I assume that it is."

  "Mrs. Gregson certainly did very little for Miss Warren in a social way, while you were all living in Bellfield."

  "The Gregsons did very little for themselves in a social way. Gregson grubbed for money and played golf; Aunt Vina, as I was supposed to call her, grubbed in the garden and sat in on ladies' charity committees. Neither of them cared for amusement."

  "How did Miss Warren amuse herself?"

  "I'm sure I don't know. She was a lot older than I was, and I never had much to do with her. She was more or less of a sphinx, you know. We just tramped back and forth to and from those damnable trains, and that's all we saw of each other."

  "And she didn't dislike Mr. Gregson, either?"

  "Dislike him? No, I don't think she did. As I said, there was nothing much to dislike about him; we didn't expect him to give us money. Certainly Cecilia didn't expect it; why should he? She was Mrs. Gregson's responsibility, not his."

  "Somebody must have disliked him actively." Gamadge looked at his cigarette, and dropped the ash from it into the brass dish at his feet.

  "Why do you say that?" asked Locke, glancing at Gamadge from half-closed eyes.

  "Well, somebody murdered him."

  "Oh, that wasn't murder."

  Gamadge, admiring the extent of Mr. Locke's preparedness, asked mildly: "Wasn't it?"

  "Certainly not. I never could see what all the fuss was about. It was an accident." He went on, as Gamadge said nothing: "A hell of a defense Applegate put up! I could have done better for the poor woman myself. Gregson was a hypochondriac, always dosing himself. I bet he had morphia for his first earache—why, my grandmother used to give me laudanum for a sore tooth! She'd put a drop on cotton, you know. Nobody thought anything of it."

  "Well, but those tubes of morphia have never been handed out for family use as laudanum used to be."

  "I bet he'd had that tube all his life. I bet he woke up that night—the night he died—with that stomach-ache he'd been having, and got out the old tube, and dumped what he thought was one tablet into the soda glass; but he was in a hurry, and it was dark, and he dumped them all. That's what happened."

  "Most interesting suggestion; why didn't you offer it to the lawyers for the defense?"

  "I told the only lawyer who interviewed me for the defense, and I told the police. Nobody paid the slightest attention."

  "Of course I shouldn't myself expect the jury to swallow all those morphia tablets."

  "Easier to swallow them than to swallow the idea of Mrs. Gregson murdering anybody."

  "Or Miss Warren murdering anybody?"

  "Cecilia Warren is as hard as brass tacks, but not as hard as all that. Did you ever know anything funnier than that story she told about making herself comfortable all those years in the holy of holies—the guest-room, you know? Wish I'd thought of it myself. Did you ever hear why she slept up in the attic instead of in the guest-room?"

  "No, why did she?"

  "Because she smoked, and Gregson said it gave him asthma and headaches. Nobody ever smoked in that house, except in the attic. Nobody ever murdered anybody in that house." He said at last, looking sleepily at Gamadge: "Are you digging into the past for Mrs. Gregson?"

  "Gently poking into the past."

  "Rather late in the day for that. What did you mean by saying that your investigation had something to do with Minnie Stoner? It's the first I ever heard of anybody dragging her into it. She was out of it from the first, absolutely out of it."

  "She lived with the Gregsons then, and she lives with Mrs. Gregson now."

  "I wish she didn't. Celia and I are always trying to get them both to come out of that hole of a place up there and live some kind of life. Paul Belden could get a place for Mrs. Gregson."

  "Paul Belden?"

  "He's the fellow Cecilia Warren is going to marry, if they can ever afford to get married."

  "If Mrs. Gregson dies, perhaps?"

  Locke slowly raised himself to a sitting position. He asked: "What does that mean?"

  "From what Mrs. Gregson tells me, it means something. She has told me a very curious story, which begins with grease on the cellar stairs."

  "Grease?" Locke, gazing fixedly at him, frowned. "Grease?"

  "And then poison in a mackerel."

  Locke's ice-blue eyes remained steadily on Gamadge's greenish-grey ones. He said: "Oh." And after a moment: "Those accidents last summer. I don't know what you mean by poison—the mackerel was bad."

  "Very bad. Now she says that her gas oven was turned on one night, since she came to New York; and last week somebody sent her a fruit cake that had been seasoned with arsenic."

  "What the devil are you talking about?"

  'About the four attempts to murder her that Mrs. Gregson seems to think have been made since last August."

  "I never heard such nonsense. Those things in August were just happenings, and the gas oven, whatever you mean by it, sounds like a happening too."

  "The cake was analysed; it contained at least six grains of arsenic."

  There was a long pause. Locke sat forward on the couch, his hands hanging between his knees and a cigarette burning unregarded in the fingers of his left one. At last he said: "It's crazy."

  "You can see that Mrs. Stoner has had the best opportunity to engineer such attempts."

  "That poor old soul." Suddenly the young man rose to his feet, towering above Gamadge like a colossus. He asked loudly: "Has Vina Gregson hired you to try to scrape up evidence against the three of us?"

  "I didn't scrape arsenic out of that cake; it was done in a laboratory, by a toxicologist. For goodness' sake sit down," said Gamadge irritably. "What would you have done if these things had happened to you? Laughed them off?"

  Locke hesitated. "I feel like throwing you out of here," he growled. "Minnie Stoner!"

  "Do use your head," begged Gamadge. "I'm not police; I'm not trying to do worse than prevent a crime. You three are the only people who were on hand at Pine Lots last August; I want you to think back to those two days—the 15th and the 16th."

  Locke sat down again on the studio couch. He said: "I don't remember much about them."

  "Do you remember when you left New York that afternoon—Friday, the 15th?"

  "We started soon after lunch, about two."

  "We?"

  "I took a friend along with me for the ride. We stopped at a tavern near White Plains, and had drinks. I don't use alcohol myself—I had a lime squash, and my friend had a gin and lime fizz. Does that interest you?"

  "Everything interests me, even the name of your friend."

  "Her name's Prady. We've done a little dancing at resorts, but she isn't much good yet. We sat under the trees a while, and then we went on up to Burford. The mileage from New York to Burford is about thirty-five miles along the route, no detours. We got to Burford too late for my friend to catch the train she meant to take back to town, I think it was the six-forty."

  "Your memory is excellent."

  "For trifles, it is. She had the deuce of a long wait, until nearly eight o'clock, I think; I had to leave her at the station. I drove to Pine Lots—got there about seven."

  "You must have taken plenty of time out at White Plains."

  "We did. We let the time go by—you know how it is. A hot day, and there didn't seem to be any rush. I don't use the trains back and forth, so I don't know 'em; she ought to have kept me reminded."

  "Three hours for refreshments; well, as you say, the time goes by. Could I check up on this with Miss Prady?"

  "If you care to waste your time on it. She lives here."

  "In this house?"

  "In this house. She used to work in Bellfield, but she quit when I got her a small dancing job."

  "You say you reached Pine Lots about seven?"

  "And found Aunt Vina nursing her bruises. She looked pretty green, and Minnie was all of a twitter over the accident. I took a look at the cellar stairs, but by that time Minnie had of course wiped up the grease—if there ever was any grease. I thought Aunt V. had probably caught her foot, or stumbled, or something. People don't like to admit that they stumble for nothing, so I thought she had imagined the grease for reasons of pride."

  "You are a sceptical turn of mind, Mr. Locke."

  "Oh, I am."

  "And you mended the balustrade for them?"

  "You ought to be telling me the story; I'd forgotten that. I mended it—by sticking the splinter down with adhesive tape."

  "Do you think that anyone could enter that house up there, and put grease on the top cellar stair, without being seen or heard by Mrs. Stoner or Mrs. Gregson?"

  Locke considered. "They could, if Minnie and Mrs. G. had been in the kitchen or upstairs."

  "How about a secret approach in a car?"

  "You can approach as far as a belt of trees—it screens the road from the house. You can scoot across the side yard, I suppose; the upper windows are curtained, and they belong to the guest-room."

  "Would you take such a chance?"

  Locke's mouth widened in a smile. "In an emergency I should."

  "Then, as I understand it, Miss Warren came along—in a station taxi."

  "Yes; she hasn't the use of the old lady's car for personal trips. It's a big affair with a chauffeur attached. Poor old Cecilia is still in the parasite class, you know."

  "I know. Next morning came the mackerel episode; I suppose you can't help me by remembering who was left alone with Mrs. Gregson's individual mackerel before she came downstairs?"

  Locke scowled at him. "Minnie had it in the kitchen, keeping it warm, I suppose. We were all back and forth, in and out of the kitchen; self-service, you know. Nobody can pin it on Minnie, if there's anything to pin."

  "You don't admit the seriousness of the situation, Mr. Locke?"

  "It's damn serious, but it's also grotesque."

  "Did you wonder at all what could have caused Mrs. Gregson's illness? Did you immediately attribute it to fish poisoning?"

  "I attributed it to the fact that Minnie's as blind as a bat, and I thought that she'd got bug powder or cleaning fluid or something into the cooking."

  "Into Mrs. Gregson's portion only?"

  "That didn't worry me at the time. Minnie Stoner wasn't born to be a cook, you know—she was born to rock gently back and forth and crochet tidies. She's too old for the job now, anyway."

  "To sum up: these occurrences were accidents to you, and have remained accidents in your mind ever since?"

  "Certainly."

  "Now we come down to New York, to Mrs. Gregson's flat."

  "These hide-holes of hers are unspeakably dreary."

  "Perhaps because they're hide-holes."

  "I suppose you're right. Extraordinary thing, human justice. The law sends a man or woman out into the world without a blemish on his or her reputation, and the miserable creature is ruined for life."

  "Not always; don't lose hope."

  "Me? The question doesn't bother me much. Well, we're back in New York, thank goodness."

  "With Mrs. Stoner sleeping at a boarding-house, and spending the rest of her time with Mrs. Gregson or at the moving pictures. Mrs. Gregson says that she saw you all the very day she arrived."

  "She saw me the day she arrived. As I explained, I owe her civility."

  "She saw Miss Warren and Mr. Paul Belden; and then she had what sounds like a nearly fatal accident with her gas stove."

  "Did she or Minnie Stoner leave a tap on and almost suffocate her?"

  "The pilot light would have caught before she died of suffocation."

  "Oh."

  "And the tap—the oven tap—has to be pushed before it can be turned."

  "I see. Was Minnie Stoner in the flat all this time?"

  "She had gone for the evening."

  Locke said thoughtfully: "That's a trifle grim, I must say."

  "It all comes down to the problem of who had an extra key to the flat—besides Mrs. Stoner, of course. If there had been an extra key cut—"

  Locke said drily: "Don't labour the point. Somebody could get in if they had an extra key, and turn on the gas. Minnie Stoner didn't need an extra key."

  "But Mrs. Stoner called Mrs. Gregson's attention to the fact that an anonymous present of fruit cake had been doctored."

  Locke sat fingering his cigarette. Presently he said: "The cake's the pay-off, and it lets Minnie out; why do you consider her at all, then?"

  "Mrs. Gregson also got an anonymous letter—the third, so she tells me, of a series. Would you like to see it?"

  Locke silently took the letter from Gamadge, and silently handed it back; his face had become profoundly thoughtful.

  "This letter," continued Gamadge, "is a threat; or that is what it seems to be on the face of it. What if all those other happenings could also be interpreted as threats? Might we ask ourselves whether they could be attempts to frighten Mrs. Gregson into suspecting one of her immediate circle?"

  Locke met Gamadge's eyes. He said: "Which one?"

  "The one most open to suspicion, naturally. At any rate, the letter and the following occurrences are not to be ignored or taken humorously; you'll agree with me on that. In the light of what you have learned this evening, are you willing to confide to me any incident, no matter how trifling, which seems significant to you? Don't worry too much about incriminating anyone; I won't make irresponsible use of the information, and unless I'm forced to use it, I'll keep it to myself."

  "I could make a story up, you know." Locke smiled.

  "You could; but sometimes there's no better evidence than false testimony."

  "I don't agree with you there; and you'll have to give me time to concoct something, true or false."

  "There is no time."

  Locke, startled, glanced quickly at him. He asked: "Are you trying to make my flesh creep? You sound very sure of yourself…"

  "Glad to give the impression."

  "Tell you what; I'll go over to the flat tomorrow and confer with Aunt V. and Minnie Stoner."

  "You can't."

  "Why not?" His face was again lowering.

  "Mrs. Stoner is driving up to Pine Lots, and Mrs. Gregson is about to disappear. Tonight, if she has any sense at all, she will be incommunicado."

  Locke, regarding Gamadge with a strange smile, said that caution did seem to be indicated.

  "I've recommended another precaution; Mrs. Gregson is thinking of changing her will."

  "Change her—" Locke drew his feet under him.

  "Leave her money to cats, or some other deserving charity; temporarily, she hopes."

  Locke sprang up. This time his face was so convulsed with fury, and his attitude so threatening, that Gamadge rose too; but a possible crisis was averted by a knock at the door. Locke paid no attention to the timid rap; he was still glaring at Gamadge when it was repeated. He said, without turning his head: "Come in, come in; what are you waiting for?"

  A tall, thin girl entered, and hesitated meekly on the threshold. She had a plain face, ardent dark eyes, and a mass of curly brown hair. She wore a pullover sweater of once violent but now faded pink, and pink cotton shorts; the laundress had creased these sharply at the sides, so that they stood out like an inverted Japanese fan. Her long, bare legs ended in socks and tennis shoes.

  She said in a tinny voice: "I'm sorry."

  "All right, Mr. Gamadge is going." He added, with a grin: "I think he has some questions to ask you, though."

  She turned large, timid eyes on Gamadge. "Ask me?"

  "You are Miss Arline Prady?" Gamadge spoke gently, but she did not do more than glance at him; her eyes, eager and worshipful, were again on Locke. She said: "Yes. Are we going over those steps, Benny?"

  "When Mr. Gamadge gets through with us." Locke went with long, noiseless strides to the radiogram, and turned a switch; the room was instantly filled with an odd, halting tune.

  Gamadge said, laughing, "I won't interrupt the lesson."

  She looked wonderingly at him. "Did you want to ask me something?"

  "No; as Mr. Locke said, it would be a waste of time."

  He went without more ado out of the room, and down the crimson stairs.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Hobby of Mrs. Smiles

  WHEN GAMADGE REACHED HOME he found his wife and Mr. Robert Schenck playing chess. Clara was gazing at the board and biting a finger; Mr. Schenck's rather foxy face had a thin smile on it as he watched her.

  "Go ahead and take it," he said.

  "You have to give me fifteen minutes; I'm entitled to fifteen minutes," mumbled Clara. Mr. Schenck was not the kind of person she had been brought up with, but she did not seem to be aware of the fact; she liked him very much.

  "Whatever man he's offering you," said Gamadge from the doorway, "take any piece on the board but that one."

  Schenck rose. "You better look out," he said, "leaving Mrs. Gamadge home for young fellers like Harold and me to entertain."

 

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