The Silver Leopard Page 7

  He looked anxiously at Catherine, went to her, put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right? Did they—?” His handsome blue eyes transferred themselves to McKee. “You know she didn’t kill Michael, don’t you, Inspector? She’s not going to be—You’re not going to do anything to her?”

  McKee said, “We don’t know who killed Mr. Nye, Captain. What were you doing today—do you mind?—from say, twelve o’clock on?”

  “Twelve o’clock?” Nicky frowned. “Oh, that thing.” He glanced with disfavor at the shining silver toy on which all the light in the room seemed to be concentrated. “If you mean did I take it out of here, I didn’t. For the simple reason that I couldn’t get in. I came here at around a quarter of three to see Catherine, hoping to catch her before she started over for my hotel, but when I got to the door, I found I’d forgot my key. I didn’t know she was with Angela—Mrs. Wardwell. When she didn’t answer the bell, I went away.”

  Broad daylight and witnesses, the Scotsman reflected. Bray might have done what he said he did. He might also have retrieved his key and come back again later under more favorable circumstances. Dusk came early these November days, and it would have been dark at half past five.

  He said mildly, “After that, from half-past two on—?” The arm around Catherine’s shoulders loosened. Nicky got up, lighted a cigarette, and began to pace the hearth with short jerky steps. “I’m trying to think. It’s a bit muddled—” His smile was open, disarming. “I’m afraid I had one or two over the eight.”

  There had never, in McKee’s experience, been an investigation into homicide where at least one witness didn’t plead a blank as an excuse for a memory lapse. His expression remained bland. “Surely you must have some recollection—”

  Nicky agreed. “Too much—” he said fervently. “I was abused, mistreated, living was a mess, Catherine didn’t care anything about me. The usual tears in the beer sort of thing, only I was drinking bourbon. Let’s see, I went back to my hotel from here. After that, a succession of bars, good, bad, and indifferent. Then I had a brain wave and phoned the Wardwell house—” he continued with the account he had already given Catherine.

  Listening to him, her heart sank, and fright, all the more pressing because it was formless, gathered heavily in her. Nicky wasn’t telling the truth—or at least not all of it. She knew when he was being disingenuous, under a fan of plausible words. What was he concealing, keeping back, this man she was going to marry, with whom she was going to spend the rest of her life? It had nothing to do with Mike; Nicky hadn’t killed Mike. He wouldn’t—She put the thought from her with loathing. But he was hiding something—

  All at once she didn’t care. She was too tired. Weariness filled her to the brim. She wanted Nicky and the inspector to go, so that she could sleep. There were pills somewhere that the doctor had given her after her mother’s death. She never touched them, but tonight she would.

  At the end of another ten minutes, both men did go, Nicky reluctantly. “I don’t like to leave you here alone, Catherine.”

  McKee said, “Miss Lister will be perfectly safe; there will be a detective on the premises.”

  To see that she didn’t run off? She had no intention of running anywhere. Catherine went to the door with the two men. Good nights; Nicky kissed her tenderly. “I’ll be around first thing in the morning,” he said.

  The inspector took the leopard away with him. Catherine was glad. She never wanted to see it again. She closed the door, put on the chain, listened to the sound of their retreating footsteps, went back into the living-room and looked at the spot where the sleek gleaming silver body had stood, poised on its heavy pedestal, the eyes wary and mournful, savage and secretive.

  Something was knocking at the gates of her memory. What was it? Not the leopard—It was another animal, a live one. Oh. The kitten, the poor wretched half-starved kitten she had picked up in the town lot in Brookfield and taken home to her cottage at the far end of the Wardwell estate, on Roseville Road The kitten had disappeared out of a locked house in a completely mysterious manner. It was March and every window was closed. She had dropped in at a tea party somewhere after packing stuff she wanted in New York and taking the box to the freight station. When she got back, the kitten was gone.

  The leopard was one of the things she had sent off. She had thought at the time that the kitten had managed to get out through a hole in the foundations; the house was very old. There had been no sign of an intruder and the money in her desk was untouched. Now, without proof, she was convinced that there had been an intruder, and that what was being sought was her uncle’s Christmas gift.

  Shadows moved up through lamplight, banked themselves in solid phalanxes around her. She fought them back. Why should anyone want the leopard? It was valuable, but not intrinsically worth enough to attract an ordinary thief. The thief wasn’t ordinary. As here, in this apartment, it was someone who knew she had the silver statuette.

  She turned with a sharp movement, throwing aside thought that was as frightening as it was unproductive and that led no place. The thing to do now was to get undressed, take a shower, and try to get to sleep.

  The ash trays were full, chairs were out of place, and magazines and books askew. The room looked as though it had been struck by a miniature cyclone. Outside, in the dark of the November night, the city that never slept was falling into a doze. It was after two o’clock. A north wind was beginning to blow. Except for the wind, there was no sound. Darkness beneath her, darkness above, darkness outside the windows, pressing up against them. Leave the room as it was till morning.

  It was an effort to cross to the far end of the couch in order to switch off the lamp there. The lamp was at the foot of the three steps leading up to the door that opened on the terrace. The door was locked. One of the detectives had gone out there earlier to examine the terrace, locking the door when he came back. The windows were closed. Lock them, she thought, and started to put out a hand to the lamp cord—and didn’t.

  She was standing sideways to the three-leafed window and facing the wall, so that the window was behind her. All at once, without the slightest warning, her nostrils flared. That was it, the thing that had attracted her attention when she first came in here with Nicky, an odor of—turpentine, paint. Only it was stronger now. It was very strong. And its strength was increasing. The wisteria vines, inaudible before, rustled thinly, and the wind, moaning over the roofs, entered the room bodily, lifting the hairs at the back of her neck, bathing her in an icy draft from head to foot.

  Catherine didn’t move. She couldn’t. Without doing so, she knew with a terrible certainty that there was someone outside on the terrace, someone who had opened one of the windows softly and that in a moment she would no longer be alone.

  Chapter Seven - A Plausible Explanation

  “CATHERINE.” At the sound of her name, she turned slowly, her knees weak, her head a puffball. Stephen Darrell was at the raised window, looking in at her out of darkness. He said, keeping his voice low, “Let me in, will you?”

  Mechanically land almost without thought, she mounted the three steps, twisted the key, and descended again into the room. She was still shaking. Stephen locked the door behind him and followed her. They faced each other, Catherine holding herself erect with effort, Stephen standing a few feet away, head a little on one side, as though he were listening.

  The odor of turpentine, of paint, emanated from him. Undeniably he had been here earlier tonight. And someone had returned the leopard with which Mike was bludgeoned to death; she leaned against the bulk of a winged chair for support.

  Stephen pulled off his hat, tossed it to the couch, and smoothed back his hair. There was a daub of green paint on the elbow of his gray topcoat. He said, “They’re gone for good? I thought they’d never go.” His hazel eyes were shining narrowly in a sharpened face. His expression was bleak.

  “You didn’t kill Mike Nye, did you, Catherine?”

  She all but fell to the floor with asto
nishment and outrage. “I kill Mike? I—”

  Stephen Darrell relaxed. He passed a hand over his forehead, rubbing it. “I didn’t think so, of course, but I had to be sure. When I found that silver leopard of yours up there I was—well—it certainly got me.”

  Making her throat function was an effort. “You took it from Mike’s? You brought the leopard down here, put it back—?”

  “And very nearly got nipped for my pains,” Stephen said coolly.

  “How did you get in?”

  “Oh, easily. That window there,” he waved at the window to the left of the door, “was open an inch or two. I came up the fire escape through the apartment below this, the one they’re doing over. I’ve been there waiting for the police and Nicky to go ever since.”

  Catherine sat down suddenly. The room was spinning. She raised her eyes. Stephen was looking at her with solicitude. “That’s right, you’re all in, aren’t you?” he said kindly. “I don’t feel exactly in the pink myself. I want to talk to you, but first—I think I’ll help myself to a drink.”

  “Wait.” Catherine could just barely get the command out.

  “Yes? Go ahead. What is it?”

  “Were you,” her mouth was dry, “were you standing behind the curtains in Mike’s studio when I first went into the living-room and found him? Did you turn out the lights? Did you—?”

  Stephen’s dark brows drew together. He pulled a chair forward, swung it around, and sat down close to her.

  “What’s all this? I don’t get it. Was I where?”

  She told him theft, in short cold sentences, exactly what had happened.

  “So that was it,” he said slowly at the end. “I figured there was something. Listen. I was on my way in to see Nye when you arrived. I wasn’t more than ten feet from you when you got out of the cab and walked into the lobby. I wanted to see Nye alone, so I decided to wait until you left. It was rather late and I didn’t think you’d be long. I was standing there, leaning against a fireplug, when I looked up and saw Nye’s lights go out. That studio window of his is as big as a signboard. You couldn’t miss it. The lights going out while you were still there struck me as—funny. I decided to investigate. I went in, went up in the elevator.”

  He paused to light a cigarette, taking plenty of time over it, threw the match into the fireplace. “When I got out on the tenth floor, Mike Nye’s door was wide open. The hall was dark. You were nowhere in sight. I went into the hall and then on into the living-room. Things were getting queerer and queerer. I switched on the lights. The first thing I saw—besides poor Mike Nye—was that silver leopard of yours on the floor under Nye’s chair. I picked it up. There was blood on it. I was standing there holding the damn thing in my hands when I heard voices. Men were coming into the apartment. I switched off the lights and, as the men came into the living-room by one door, I went out through the studio and bedroom. They didn’t see me. I took care of that. I used the stairs instead of the elevator going down.”

  He blew smoke in a small cloud, watched it float toward the ceiling. “A crowd was just beginning to gather on the pavement outside. I hung around for a while trying to find out where you were, what had happened. Then it struck me that it was important to get the leopard back where it belonged.

  “So,” he shrugged, “I came down here. Over there by the steps was as far as I got when I heard you coming. I shoved the leopard onto the bookcase, made it out of the window and got the window closed, by a hair, as you walked in with Nicky. What I meant to do was to go away and come back when Nicky was gone and you were alone. I waited a little too long. By the time I got down to the apartment on the floor below this, the one they’re redecorating, a detective was parked at the door. I’ve been cooling my heels there since—Now,” he got up, “I’m going to have that drink—and you’re going to have one too, and then we can talk.”

  Catherine watched him walk away until she couldn’t see him anymore. Her eyes were full of tears. She pressed her lids tightly together. Stephen Darrell had found her leopard at Mike’s and had brought it back here because he didn’t want her to be suspected of murder. Her heart swelled with an actual, a physical pain.

  “Here you are.” Stephen put a glass into her hand. “Drink up.” He raised his own glass, drained it. “What brought the police here after they talked to you at Nye’s? Why did they come?”

  All the time he had been talking, his back had been to the bookcase. He didn’t know the leopard was gone. Catherine told him about the detached paw and the little soldering ring that had fallen from it to the carpet when Mike was struck. “The police took the leopard to have it tested.”

  “My God! They—they think you brought the leopard back here, yourself. They—” Stephen was on his feet. The glass he was holding smashed in his gripping fingers. He paid no attention. He dove for the couch, grabbed up his hat.

  “Where are you going?”

  He looked at her over his shoulder. “To the police, to tell them about the leopard, that I brought it back here.”

  “No.” Catherine jumped up, threw herself into his path.

  “Get out of my way.”

  “I won’t. Stephen, you mustn’t—”

  He took her by the arms to push her aside, looking down at her. She looked up at him, her head thrown back. His hand stopped moving. So did Catherine’s breathing. Everything in the room stopped. The night went, and the darkness. The terrible hours she had been through ceased to exist. The sun shone and the world was wide, illimitable, and airy and free—A wild singing sweetness filled her—

  But not for long. It was there, a perfect moment of happiness snatched out of time, and then it was gone, crushed under the weight of facts, of the past and Hat La Mott, of the present and Nicky—

  Stephen Darrell saw the change in her. His hands dropped to his sides. He took a step backward. “All right,” he said in a hard voice. “Say what you want to say. Why shouldn’t I go to the police?”

  Catherine’s nerves were raw. Her involuntary and instinctive response to Stephen Darrell, to his touch, his nearness, angered her. Reaction set in.

  She was in danger, so was Nicky, so were all of them, and they would continue to be—until Mike’s murderer was found. Stephen said he had entered Mike’s apartment after Mike was dead—but what proof was there of that? If he was telling the truth, he wouldn’t be in any real danger. If he was telling the truth—If he had returned the leopard simply and solely out of consideration for her. Insidious little tongues of doubt began to strike at her venomously.

  She dropped down on the edge of the couch and lighted a cigarette, and her doubt deepened and spread.

  Stephen Darrell did an about-face. He did it easily with no sign of struggle. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said musingly. “If I go to the police the only thing I’ll probably accomplish will be to get thrown into clink for meddling—and I can’t say I fancy a sojourn behind bars—not just now.”

  As there had been closeness between them a moment before, now there was distance, miles of it, cold and gray and obscure with fog. Catherine didn’t, couldn’t, believe that Stephen had killed Mike, yet his actions were peculiar. Everything circled around the leopard. He had looked at it, asked about it, during his visit the night before. Having established a mode of entry through the apartment below and up the fire escape, had he come back this afternoon and taken the leopard away?

  His waiting to see her tonight, his coming in when the police had gone, might be a deliberate attempt to seal her lips in case she should have become suspicious of him. Let him do as he pleased. She wasn’t going to force a decision. She got up. “I’m tired,” she said bluntly. “I want to go to bed.”

  “Oh—Yes, yes, of course. You must be tired.” He was abstracted, occupied with other things. He took his elbow off the desk, stood erect, and looked at her thoughtfully.

  “We’ll have to decide something. Suppose we leave it at this—if the police annoy you, seriously, I’ll tell them about the leopard and how it go
t back here. If they don’t, we’ll let it ride for the time being. That all right with you?”

  Catherine tucked in a strand of hair, brushed ash from a fold of her skirt. Anything was all right that relieved her of this man’s presence, from the drive and press of the terrible questions that kept reiterating themselves in spite of the plausible story he had told. She said that that was perfectly all right as far as she was concerned, and then Stephen went, as he had come, up the steps and through the glass door leading to the terrace and the fire escape, saying good night absently, and admonishing her to lock both door and windows after him.

  Catherine did, and went wearily into her bedroom.

  Outside on the landing, the detective, who had been standing with an ear pressed to one of the panels of the crooked white door, straightened and stretched and made for the stairs.

  Half an hour later in his long narrow office on the fourth floor of the 11th Precinct, McKee listened to a detailed account of what had taken place in Catherine Lister’s living-room after his own departure, with thoughtful attention. He hadn’t so much foreseen what had occurred as predicated its possibility. Fire escapes as a means of entry and exit to and from New York domiciles were too usual to be overlooked, which was why he had placed men in the dark garden in the rear of the little house on Lorilard Place as well as at the front.

  When Stephen Darrell, after letting himself down cautiously by his hands from the first-floor fire escape onto a pocket handkerchief of withered glass, left the premises via a fence, another back yard and the adjoining street, two shadows moved unobtrusively in his wake.

  Darrell went directly home to his rooms on East Tenth Street. One of the shadows, first-grade Detective Neubert, said over the phone to McKee, “Pie’s there now—grab him, Inspector?”

  The Scotsman deliberated, his gaze somber on a handful of scattered reports that told remarkably little. The entire case had a queer feel to it, was elliptical, fragmentary, incomplete, as though it were part of a larger story, torn from its context. They had to have the whole thing. Action, by one or more of the participants, might give them a lead. It was worth a try.