ARTES SCIENT1A VERITAS











COPYRIGHT 1930 BY THE FICTION LEAGUE
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
First Printing —January, 1931
Second Printing—April, 1931


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The HOUSE of MURDER





Chapter One
AN EMPTY JEWEL CASE
JL OR fifteen minutes Ba-
sil Towne had stood face to face with murder. It was
not a pleasant presence, that presence of death intruding
into the fragrant quiet of a peaceful, summer after-
noon.
But, suddenly, Basil Towne faced something more;—
the cold, hard scrutiny from the questioning eyes of a
representative of the police.
The fragile body of the pretty Baroness Hilda lay be-
tween them on the vivid green rug of her drawing
room. She lay where she had fallen, twisted into a
pathetic heap, one arm outstretched. Beyond his own
hasty examination of her pulse, Inspector Lacrosse
would not permit that she be disturbed until the ar-
rival of the medical officials.
Across the room a frightened servant girl with wide
blue eyes hovered, alternately muttering prayers that
her mistress come back to life, and sobbing in semi-
hysteria.
Basil had been gazing down into the inert face of
the Baroness, framed in the coiled plaits of tawny hair
that had so fascinated him. He couldn't believe that the
lips that had been so alive were forever still. An intui-
.7


8
AN EMPTY JEWEL CASE
tive alarm brought up his glance to meet the distinctly
unfriendly stare of the police officer.
In his hand the Inspector held a silk-lined, bronze
jewel case, empty, its cover lifted back. He tapped the
box with a finger and spoke sharply.
"You say that in this case were the Harlequin
pearls?"
"There is no doubt of it," Basil declared. He con-
cealed with an effort his irritation at the other's man-
ner. "The Baroness had promised that I might see them
this afternoon. She invited me to come at four o'clock.
I arrived at that time. There is no question that she
had brought the Harlequins into the drawing room, in
their case, and was waiting to receive me when the—
when this! happened."
From the other side of the room came a cry from the
weeping servant. "Yes—yes indeed, sirs! But two min-
utes—one minute—she had left me, in the hall, to come
in here, the jewels were in her hand, when I heard that
sound 1"
The Inspector silenced the girl with a commanding
gesture that sent her, in a new panic, back into her cor-
ner. During her interruption he had not broken his
stare at Basil. The latter flushed, but met the other's
watery grey eyes steadily.
Lacrosse, a shaggy, heavy-featured man who moved
slowly, grunted at last and stepped across the room
into a panel of low afternoon sun that came into the
room through wide French windows. Three paces from
the windows he stopped, bent to the floor, and looked
back at Basil.
"If you please," he demanded, "be good enough to
show me where the box lay when you discovered it."
The younger man went over and with his foot indi-
cated a spot on the floor full within the shaft of waning
sunlight.


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
9
"Approximately here."
"And it lay—so? On one side, its lid closed?"
"Yes. Evidently the cover snapped shut when it fell.
That is very much what its position was." Basil frowned
and added, apologetically: "I should not have fingered
it, or disturbed it, I know. But I was overwhelmed. I
thought only to verify what was unfortunately too
evident. That—this!—had been done for the pearls, al-
most at the moment of my coming, and that they were
really gone."
Any other than the stolid Lacrosse would have been
impressed by the genuineness of the young man's dis-
tress. His inner horror of the scene he was part of was
written plainly in his face, a troubled face that, at an-
other time, would be almost boyish, with a genial effect
of good humor.
The Inspector rose, leaving the jewel case where he
had placed it on the floor. A uniformed policeman, one
of a pair who had arrived with Lacrosse and had been
ordered to examine the gardens that surrounded the
Baroness' house, appeared at the French windows.
He reported briefly. "We have discovered nothing
yet, sir."
His superior gave him a curt order. "Continue. A
footprint. A disarrangement of shrubbery. Something.
Find something, "Basil was watching him and
angrily clenched his fists when, with a deliberate pause,
the Inspector turned his watery eyes full upon him be-
fore he concluded: "Find something—if you can."
The policeman at the window saluted and disap-
peared to rejoin his companion in the yards. The In-
spector produced from an inner pocket a notebook and
pencil. He spoke in more courteous tone, now, but,
curiously, Basil did not feel relieved. He braced him-
self instinctively.
"While we await the wholly needless arrival of the


10
AN EMPTY JEWEL CASE
medical examiner," said Lacrosse, "I will trouble you to
repeat, if you please, the circumstances of—ah!—four
o'clock."
He began to make entries in his notebook while he
continued speaking.
"I have your name, and that you are an American,
stopping at Mentone. You have stated that you were
sent to France by an American syndicate—did you say,
from Massachusetts?"
"From Worcester, Massachusetts, which happens also
to be my home."
The Inspector made an entry and finished his broken
sentence" to propose the purchase of the Harle-
quin pearls from their last owner, the Baroness von
Stromberg. You have said that the negotiations were
proceeding. It occurs to you to examine the pearls
themselves."
The Inspector poised his pencil and looked at the
other man. "Was that desire prompted by the wish
to assure yourself that the Baroness actually was in
possession of the pearls? Or did you wish to be certain
of their value?"
Basil replied with asperity.
"I could have no occasion to doubt the ability of the
Baroness to deliver the jewel. Any transaction would
have been concluded at a bank. Nor would I be able to
pass upon their value. I have only an amateur's knowl-
edge of gem values. I have explained, and I repeat it,
that I was only curious to see the Harlequin pearls.
I, like anybody else, naturally would get a thrill out
of holding in my hands the world's most famous string
of jewels. The Baroness was very gracious. She quite
understood, if you do not."
The Inspector protested blandly. "I do understand,
sir. Quite. The Baroness agreed that you should come
here, where she has lived virtually alone since the war


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
11
reduced her fortunes, at four o'clock this afternoon.
She would spread before you the Harlequins which she
was hopeful of selling to your syndicate. I quite under-
stand. And now, if you please—will you repeat your
account of what happened this afternoon?"
Basil glanced at the quiet body on the floor, but shut
his lids quickly to blank out the unhappy sight. He
moved so that he might face the Inspector without
conscious vision of the poor Baroness.
"I timed my drive from Mentone," he said, "to ar-
rive here as near to four as possible. I glanced at my
watch while I was passing through the gate that opens
from the road. It was precisely four o'clock then."
"Did you descend to open the gate yourself?"
The servant girl, who remained in the background
and was now moaning quietly, again interrupted. "The
gate is open all day, sir. I am the only servant my poor
mistress has kept. We were to have a cook, another
house girl, and a butler when she had sold her neck-
lace. We were to have grand times again, sir, that's
what she was counting on ."
Lacrosse threatened the girl with a heavy scowl and
a sharp word, but she insisted upon finishing her say.
"I'm explaining, sir, why the gate from the road is
always open. I could not go running to open it at all
times of the day when I must be tidying the house
and attending mistress. So I opened it each morning.
Anyone could come and go without stopping."
The Inspector waited for Basil to continue.
"She has answered that question," he said. "I came
along the motor path, through the front lawns, and
parked my car, it is the blue coupe you see from here,
at one side of the steps that lead up to the porch. I
had just touched the bell when I chanced to turn my
head so that my glance fell into this room through
the windows. If you will stand outside the door, on the


12
AN EMPTY JEWEL CASE
porch, you will see that the wall of this room takes an
angle which permits anyone standing at the door to
see inside quite plainly. You will observe that the cur-
tains are drawn, leaving the view unobstructed.
"I was startled to see the form of a woman stretched
on the floor, where the Baroness lies now. I came to the
window for a closer view. Just then the maid opened
the door."
The Inspector flipped a page of his note book. He
looked at his watch and muttered: "The medical ex-
aminer takes his own time to arrive." He nodded to
Basil, then, to continue.
"To the maid," Basil went on, "I exclaimed, 'Your
mistress!' Without waiting for her to reply, or show
me to the drawing room, I brushed past her and threw
open the doors. The girl behind me screamed when she,
also, saw the Baroness. I called to the Baroness, and
dropped beside her. I realized quickly that she was
dying. The red stain on her frock was slowly spread-
ing. She breathed her last as I bent down to her."
"I think you stated that she did not speak?"
"She was too far gone. It struck me at once, from
the position of the wound, directly over the heart, that
she must have been shot only a minute or two before
I burst into the room. I know from my trench experi-
ence that one dies very quickly from a bullet in the
heart."
There was another cry from the maid. This time, in
her eagerness, she ran into the center of the room, closer
to the body of her mistress than she had as yet ap-
proached it. "That was the sound I heard," she half
screamed. "It was the shot that killed my mistress. Just
before the bell rings. First I hear the sound. I am
scared. I think it is a bullet. Then the bell rings. I say,
No, I am foolish. It is but an automobile noise from
the road. Or I am mistaken and do not hear anything


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
13
at all. I answer the bell. He "She pointed a wildly
shaking finger at Basil. "He pushes open the doors and
then I see!"
The girl's voice, which had risen to a thin scream,
broke. She dug her hands into her face, distorting her
features until her eyes stared through her fingers, two
great wells of horror. Strangely, Lacrosse was silent.
Basil thought the quivering, crouching girl would col-
lapse across the body of her mistress. He started toward
her, to support her.
With a piercing shriek the girl leapt backward,
fending Basil off with both her arms flung out, her
hands flattened against him. Her shrill scream beat
against his ears.
"Don't let him—keep him away. It was him He
killed my mistress—through the window—I heard it
—then the bell!"
Basil froze, his arms still held out in their impulse
to catch and support the girl. He stared while the girl,
overcome by her paroxysm, crumpled at last, into an
unconscious heap beside the lifeless Baroness.
The shaggy Inspector brought him to his senses with
a throaty grunt. He wheeled to meet the watery eyes
calmly studying him.
"The servant's conclusion is interesting, sir," said
Lacrosse. "Unless I am shortly given sufficient reason
to adopt some other theory, I shall ask you to agree
with me that the Baroness von Stromberg was alive and
well, and that the Harlequin pearls were in their case,
when you arrived, at four o'clock."


Chapter Two
THE CRYSTAL SWAN
T
JL HE hysterical accusa-
tion of the servant, he knew her simply as "Marie,"
affected Basil deeply. When his first shock at her
screaming outbreak passed, a cold chill had begun to
creep through him. Her pathetic grief, in that room of
stark tragedy, was bound to add a dangerous impor-
tance to her crazed belief that he had sent a bullet
to the Baroness, from the porch, snatched the priceless
Harlequins from their bronze box, and then calmly
rang the door bell.
In the second of intervening silence between her
collapse and Lacrosse's heavy speech, he realized that his
uncomfortable position had indeed become threatening.
Unless those fellows who were combing the yard found
some evidence of a fugitive who had made an escape
through the grounds!
But the Inspector's deliberate, preposterous charge
roused in him a totally different feeling. Here was a
man who would have no other interest save justice, or,
possibly his own credit. He ought to use good common
sense.
His blunt inferences aroused Basil's hot anger.
Heated retort rose to his lips, but he remembered—
14


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
15
where he was!—and restrained his impulse. He shrugged
his shoulders and observed, grimly:
"It's a long way from Massachusetts!"
Both men were stooping to lift the unconscious
Marie to a couch. The Inspector paused to regard Basil
blankly. The latter nodded coolly.
"If we were in Worcester, I'd punch your head,
you know!"
"We are not in Worcester, sir," Lacrosse returned,
stolidly.
The intended ministration to Marie, who was now
breathing quietly in what could have been to her only
a blessing of oblivion, was interrupted by the noisy
stop outside of a heavy car which had come along the
graveled motor path at furious speed.
Lacrosse stepped around the body on the green rug
and opened the drawing room doors.
"We shall proceed, now, with more order," he said.
"The medical examiner arrives!"
Basil had expected a solemn, long-visaged French
official. Dr. Marsac was an opposite character. Inde-
scribably fat, with short, chubby legs, and face as
round as a plate, set with two eyes which were per-
petually cast in a twinkle. He paused at the threshold,
filling the door space with his wide bulk, his pudgy
hands rubbing their palms together across his great
round stomach.
However, Lacrosse accorded this curious medical ex-
aminer a profound respect. He bowed with stiff for-
mality, first to Dr. Marsac himself, then to a younger,
alert and efficient looking man who, apparently, was
the medical examiner's assistant. This second man car-
ried a case of instruments which, even while he stood
behind his superior, unable to enter the room past that
huge bulk, he was opening in readiness for any
emergencies.


16
THE CRYSTAL SWANT
"The remains have not been disturbed, sir," La-
crosse announced, importantly. "They are at your com-
mand."
Dr. Marsac swept the room with a twinkling glance,
his hands still rubbing. "Well, well! You produce mur-
der, Inspector. Good fortune for the policeman, eh?
But how sad the occasion for the rest of us!"
Dr. Marsac's voice boomed pleasantly. So pleasantly,
in that scene of dread solemnity, that Basil was hurt,—
hurt for the poor, pretty Baroness Hilda, who was
willing to give up the last and greatest of her treasures
that she might live "grandly" the life she loved so well!
That pleasant, booming voice was almost a sacrilege.
Yet, after awhile, Basil was to acknowledge a re-
spect, even more profound than that of Inspector
Lacrosse, for the rotund Dr. Marsac.
The medical examiner stepped into the room.
"Ah! Two of them. Well, well, Inspector! Have two
while you're about it, eh? Do it right when you—
But no! This one breathes!"
With an incredibly long stride for his pudgy legs
he stood over Marie. He beckoned with both short arms
to his assistant.
"You imbecile! You snail! One breathes and you
stand there! Onto the couch. Quickly."
He swung around upon Lacrosse. "Why did you not
put the breathing one onto the couch? You are an
ass, Inspector! You are aware that I cannot stoop."
"She fainted. That is all," Lacrosse explained.
Dr. Marsac immediately dismissed Marie from his
attention, leaving his assistant to revive her.
"Then you are not an ass, Inspector. In this instance.
I withdraw it. I withdraw also my compliments upon
the double nature of your sad crime. Remember that!"
"It is serious enough as it is, sir," the Inspector re-
turned respectfully.


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
17
Dr. Marsac exhibited that he could stoop, when put
to it. He somehow got his knees under him and was
down beside the Baroness. Basil was amazed by the
skillful deftness of the fat fingers that flew to the
still pulse, tested muscles for their stage of rigor mortis,
straightened twisted limbs, and with a tender touch
wrought a peaceful calm in the face that had been pain
wracked.
Lacrosse offered: "She was dead, when I arrived."
"Quite so. Practically instantly. She heard the ex-
plosion but never knew what caused it. Very pretty
woman. Damn shame. You policemen should take bet-
ter care of pretty women!"
While he spoke, voice booming out cheerfully to fill
the room, Dr. Marsac crawled on his ridiculous hands
and knees to where his assistant had deposited his case
on a chair while he worked over Marie, who was now
moaning softly. He clutched the case and brought out
instruments he required to probe for and trace the
bullet. He crawled back puffily to the prostrate
Baroness.
Basil turned quickly away from the sight of the
white breast and shoulder the medical examiner un-
covered. He glanced to the couch where sat Marie, the
assistant standing close by. She shrank from his gaze
as if it stabbed her. He wanted to go to her, but feared
to rearouse her hysteria.
At the windows Lacrosse was conferring with his
two men, who had come onto the porch from the
grounds. The Inspector was demanding:
"But no footprints? On the path? The grass? In the
shrubbery?"
One of the uniformed men answered his chief. "The
paths all are graveled. They'd keep no marks. No one
has been across the lawns or gardens, so far as we can
see, on any side of the house. The bushes along the


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
19
it was a footprint. And their practiced eyes fitted the
mark instantly to Basil's shoe.
"Thank you," said the Inspector heavily. Basil
thought he detected a tone of smug satisfaction. He said,
sharply:
"You'll not be calling that progress? Or a clue of
some kind? You knew they would be mine, right
enough. I have explained them."
"I have a full note of your explanation. As I have
suggested, I shall perhaps ask you soon to enlarge upon
it. The medical examiner is calling."
They stepped through the windows into the room,
Lacrosse pausing to instruct one of his men to take
post at the gate, and the other to stand by within the
windows. Basil, watching through a corner of his eye,
saw a sign pass between the man and his chief—a sign
that clearly had to do with him. A bit of the chill he'd
thrown off returned.
Dr. Marsac was on his feet, beaming genially. He
indicated Marie. "The surviving lady, eh, Inspector?
Professionally, I suggest the quiet of her room. She does
not take death as philosophically as she should. My as-
sistant will remain with her, if you suggest it? Perhaps
she is a witness to—something, eh?"
Dr. Marsac had at least a touch of humanity, Basil
thought. It would be cruel for Marie to remain in the
room longer than necessary. The Inspector agreed at
once.
"I have her story. I shall perhaps want to question
her again, but not now."
Marie went out, on the young assistant's arm. Dr.
Marsac held up two fingers, a misshapen bullet between
their tips. "Such a little thing, gentlemen," he said in
great good humor, "to separate two worlds, this and
the next, is it not?"
He dropped the bit of lead into Lacrosse's palm


20
THE CRYSTAL SWAN
gingerly. The Inspector wrapped it in a bit of paper
and dropped it into his wallet.
"Now then," Dr. Marsac went on briskly, "I take it
the Inspector will want to know all sorts of things,
where the little message of death was delivered from,
matters like that which the police think their business.
So, Inspector?"
"I should be glad to know, sir, whatever you can
tell me that will be of help. I have certain ideas I am
ready to adopt or dismiss, either way, as soon as you
are finished."
"You'll probably dismiss them, Inspector. First ideas
like a first love shouldn't be kept going too long. You
observe that we leave the—ah!—the unfortunate
Baroness where we, you, or," he glanced to Basil mer-
rily, "where you discovered her. For just a little while.
But a pillow for her head. Ah, thank you!" This last,
to Basil, who had quickly brought a cushion from an
Empire davenport which flanked a fireplace in one end
of the room.
With the doctor's nod of assent, Basil lifted the
tawny head and rested it in the hollow of the pillow.
The eyes of the Baroness had been closed by the
ministering fingers of the medical examiner, but Basil
fancied that they thanked him through the curtain of
their lids. He had never been quite so close to the
silence that is death as when he bent to fix the pillow.
He wished he knew, and could say it, a brief prayer of
some sort.
Dr. Marsac watched him. His booming voice com-
mented: "Such a very pretty woman indeed! You
should persuade your criminals to use discretion, In-
spector."
When Basil straightened the medical examiner was
again rubbing his chubby hands across his stomach. He
regarded Basil in a friendly manner.


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
21
"I can tell by the Inspector's watchfulness," he said,
"that you are his suspected criminal. And you are—
what?"
"A business acquaintance of the Baroness only."
Basil's answer was stiff. The other seemed to him more
of a billiken out of a toymaker's shop window than a
government's agent in the disposal of death.
"Ah, well," observed the doctor. "I envy you. To be
suspected of murder on such a pleasant afternoon! An
experience to remember. And our friend Lacrosse's nos-
trils are quivering like those of a bloodhound on the
scent each time he looks at you."
The shaggy Inspector colored angrily and opened his
mouth to speak. Dr. Marsac raised a fat hand, dramati-
cally.
"Don't deny your nostrils, Inspector. They quiver.
And presently they shall quiver, oh! so violently. I
promise you!"
He turned to Basil. "Condone our police friend for
his first ideas, young man. Presently he will have others.
They will be the ones to take seriously."
Basil was at a loss what to say, or how to take Dr.
Marsac. The latter gave him no time to choose a reply.
His good humor seemed to fall, as a cape falls. His
round face took a serious cast.
"Now," he announced, "with the Inspector's per-
mission we shall reconstruct the first episode of today's
affair. When the Inspector has made his comments I
shall produce a little climax that will be wholly outside
my duties as medical examiner. Perhaps the Inspector
will forgive me." He looked to Lacrosse, who managed
a respectful gesture.
Basil had the sense of something impending. This
Dr. Marsac was a strange personality but, suddenly, he
had become impressive. He stood beside a tapestried
chair, flanked by a taboret, at the edge of the green rug,


22
THE CRYSTAL SWAN
slightly across the center of the room and directly in
line with the porch windows.
"The Baroness sat here," he said. "There was a sound
at the windows. An apparition. The Baroness rose. You
will observe the chair has been moved from the taboret,
not by hand, but by a body in it—a little more and
the taboret would have been upset in the riser's haste."
He turned to Basil. "The Inspector will be convinced
that apparition was you, sir. I've no doubt you will
deny it. One always denies such things. So we will
leave it to the Inspector to conclude if, you not being
a stranger, she would have risen so hastily as to have
almost knocked over her taboret."
It occurred to Basil to say: "She expected me. She
was waiting for me."
"One may never foresee the interposition of fate, in
even the most pleasant of rendezvous! She expected you
but, ah! it is a shot, not a greeting, that she received
from the window, which in rising she faced. The di-
rection of the bullet was straight from the window. It
found the heart, true! She stumbled forward. Two
paces. That would be all for one whose heart carries
such a grim intruder. And there, where she now lies—
she fell!"
"Thank you," said Inspector Lacrosse. "I was con-
vinced that the bullet came from the window. Not
more than a moment before the maid servant opened
the doors to admit this gentleman." He glanced at
Basil. "This gentleman telephoned to us. I was on the
ground within ten minutes. We find nothing. Trace of
no one, save"
Dr. Marsac, beaming, finished for him. "This young
man, eh! And he, as his foot marks reveal, was at the
window before our little maid admitted him. No trace
of anyone else? Nothing else, Inspector?"
Lacrosse was puzzled. "Only the motive of the crime.


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
23
I may not have mentioned it before. That box, by
the floor near the windows. The maid informed me,
and this young gentleman agrees, that it had contained
jewels of enormous value."
The Inspector paused to procure effect.
"None other, sir, than the Harlequin pearls. You
know them?"
"Ah!" Dr. Marsac's exclamation was long drawn.
"The Harlequin pearls! I recall. They belonged in a
Stromberg family. The Baroness is the last of her clan.
And so they are gone. Ah me! That explains—the
rest!"
He stood over the pillowed head of the form on the
floor, and beckoned to Lacrosse, who was about to ask
what it was that the theft of the pearls explained—
other than, obviously, the crime that had been done
for them. But Dr. Marsac was continuing, with some-
thing of a stage director's manner.
"I did not have her lifted or disturbed," he said, "for
a reason. A point was missing. I wished to arrive at the
point. We arrive at the theft of the Harlequin pearls,
jewels of destiny! Dear, dear! I should like to have seen
them. But I digress. Who, Inspector, would you prefer
above all others to be your thief of the Harlequins?"
Lacrosse frowned, and ran his fingers through his
shaggy hair. He did not quite know how to take the
medical examiner, whose duties should have finished
when he had certified death, the direction of the bullet,
and contributed what he could from the condition of
the body, its position and marks. Basil studied the two
men, the stolid Lacrosse who would stick stubbornly
to any notion that sank into his skull, and the human
butter ball of a medical examiner who would play the
clown in a morgue.
"I prefer no thief from another," Lacrosse declared,
stoutly. "Or murderer either, so far as that goes."


24
THE CRYSTAL SWAN
Dr. Marsac raised his hands in a protest of contradic-
tion. "But you will, my friend. You will. What will
you say if I present you a thief who is the perfect
match to the Harlequin pearls—like them, the greatest
in her class? Eh? What would you say to that, In-
spector?"
"I don't know what you mean," puzzled Lacrosse.
Basil was certain, now, that events were to take
some unexpected turn. And he made a discovery. The
twinkle had gone from Dr. Marsac's eyes, and those
eyes, seeming to dance over Lacrosse, really were watch-
ing him out of their corners. They continued to return
to him, in that cornerwise twist, while he issued direc-
tions to the Inspector.
"Put your hand under the Baroness. There is a tangle
of gown just above her waist, at her back, which I
caused when I lowered her frock from her chest. There
is something there, caught in the tangle of the dress. I
found it there. But I left it, I wished to preserve to
you, Inspector, the occasion to bring it out with your
own fingers. Am I not thoughtful of the prerogatives
of the police, my friend?"
"What is it?" demanded Lacrosse.
"A pretty little souvenir. Left purposely behind. I
couldn't account for it until you told me jewels were
stolen also. When you have brought out your hand,
dear Inspector, you will know whom to charge with
the murder of our unhappy Baroness and the robbery
of her Harlequin pearls."
With a mystified expression, and somewhat grumpily,
Lacrosse got to one knee, flattened his hand to the floor
and slid it under the lifeless form. Dr. Marsac rubbed
his hands and seemed to repress insistent chuckles.
Suddenly Lacrosse ceased groping. He frowned, then
looked up to the doctor with a jerky lift of his head.
"Bring it out," said the medical examiner.


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
25
The Inspector stood up. In his palm lay a bit of
sparkling crystal, exquisitely carved in the shape of a
tiny swan.
Basil drew closer to examine the little image. Some-
how this was the medical examiner's climax, and he
knew, instinctively, that it would have much to do
with him. Dr. Marsac had never left off that sly
scrutiny of his face—and was watching him now.
Lacrosse spoke at last, lifting his watery eyes to stare
at the medical examiner.
"Good God, sir! This means that it was she—this
—this is her mark!"
"The Swan!" said Dr. Marsac. "And she laughs at
you fellows, as usual. A pretty big case, Inspector."


Chapter Three
A LADY OF DEATH
It was not until the fol-
lowing morning that Basil gathered a coherent under-
standing of the amazement in Lacrosse's stolid face
when he looked up from the little crystal souvenir in
his hand, and of the meaning of Dr. Marsac's: "A
pretty big case, Inspector."
It remained for the ponderously genial medical ex-
aminer to enlighten him.
Upon his arrival in Europe Basil had chosen to stay
at Mentone, close to the border between France and
Italy, because of its proximity to the home of the
Baroness von Stromberg, which sat in one of the small
estates that line that section of the Mediterranean coast.
His quarters were a small but comfortable suite of
rooms in a quiet hotel, the "Riviera," on the broad
Avenue des Italiens.
He finished an early breakfast and went out into
the Avens a for a breath of the mimosa-scented morn-
ing air, and amused himself for half an hour identify-
ing the agent of police detailed by Lacrosse to keep
him under constant surveillance.
He had discovered the police agent, or another in
similar plain clothes garb, within an hour after his
return to his hotel on the evening before. This morning
26


28 A LADY OF DEATH
more than a few feet from Basil, whom he appeared
not to notice.
Basil was of half a mind to execute a quick flank
movement that would bring him face to face with the
police agent, say a pleasant good morning and warn
him of his own menacing shadow. He would take a
considerable amount of amusement from this turning
the tables.
While he deliberated over this impulse, Basil was
thunderstruck.
The little fellow, wraith from the underworld surely!
was pursuing a double purpose. He watched and avoided
the unknowing police agent, but what he wanted was
to speak to Basil unobserved by the other.
There was no doubting it. The little chap had some
sort of message to deliver. And whatever his mission
it must not be detected by Lacrosse's man. For, unmis-
takably, he had signalled to Basil. It was at a moment
when, with a quick darting from the shelter of one
palm tree to another, he had drawn almost within arm's
reach of Basil. He signalled to the American to walk
quickly up, and pass.
But his intuition warned him that the watcher across
the street had paused, ostensibly to look into a house
garden, but really to cast a glance backward across his
shoulder. Instantly the little fellow slunk against a
palm trunk.
Basil passed on. While he pondered this amazing turn
of events he came up to his hotel. A heavy car, shining
black, was drawn up in front. He recognized it, with a
start, as the medical examiner's.
Dr. Marsac's chubby legs propped his wide frame in
the hotel portals and his hearty voice boomed a greeting,
pleasantly.
"I was distressed to leave you yesterday with a dis-
agreeable companion. Gloomy soul, Lacrosse. Gloomy.


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
29
and dumb. I sympathized with you. I would like to
know more of you."
The doctor sighed cheerfully and continued. "I come
to inquire after your night's sleep. Restless feeling, I
imagine, being associated with murder."
"I slept," said Basil shortly, "better than Inspector
Lacrosse would have had me. I suspect that his man
—you can see him if you look directly across the street
—already has reported that l%sa suspiciously innocent
looking this morning."
"Poor Baroness," murmured Doctor Marsac. "And
her priceless pearls. Both gone. And the poor Inspector.
His biggest case gone, too."
"What's that?" Basil exclaimed. "I don't understand.
Has he solved it—does he know?"
"Ah, yes! He knows. But what does he know? That
The Swan is somewhere about. Or was. That she must
have the Harlequin pearls. But that is too much for
our Inspector Lacrosse."
Dr. Marsac assumed a great show of seriousness. He
tapped Basil's shoulder confidentially.
"If you know anything about it, my friend, Lacrosse
will never forgive you. For not confessing to him
straight off, I mean. He'll blame you for holding back
while they supersede him with another man who is
even now on his way from Paris. If this other one
matches you up with The Swan, when Lacrosse
couldn't, the Inspector will be your enemy for as much
of your life as the magistrates may leave to you."
Basil laughed heartily. "I expect to live a long time,
Doctor, and in the free security of my native Worces-
ter."
The medical examiner beamed at once, much relieved.
"I hope so. I hope so. This other man will guillotine
somebody. He has a reputation for that. It may as well
be somebody else."


30
A LADY OF DEATH
"Thank you, Doctor. From the bottom of my heart.
And this other man? A super sleuth of some sort?"
"The Great Giroff."
Basil had not believed for a minute that Dr. Marsac
had dropped in upon him for a polite inquiry as to his
health, or to cement an acquaintance begun under the
tragic atmosphere of yesterday afternoon. At least, not
solely. Now he was convinced that the jolly medical
examiner had some additional purpose. As yesterday,
when he manceuvered Lacrosse into finding, "with his
own fingers," the little crystal carving, so now the doc-
tor glanced keenly at Basil from the corner of his eye
when he said: "The Great Giroff."
Basil gave no sign that he had noticed his visitor's
scrutiny. "That name means as much to me, sir," he
said, "as does that of the precious lady you mention,
The Swan, or the other name I heard a score of times
while Lacrosse and his superiors grilled me, last night,
through two hours at the police bureau."
"Ah, another name?"
"I came away from the grilling with only two defi-
nite conclusions in my mind. One, that the police re-
fused to be satisfied about me. The other, that besides
The Swan they implicate also an individual Lacrosse
muttered about as 'The Man With The Duck's Bill.'
When they sent me home—with a man following me
—I'd learned nothing of either. Now you expect me to
know your Great Giroff."
Basil paused, then proposed that his visitor make
himself as comfortable as he could in such chairs as his
sitting room would afford and perhaps have an early
brandy and soda. He agreed willingly when Dr. Marsac
suggested that, instead of the brandy and soda, he
initiate him into the mysteries of a good, plain Ameri-
can highball.
"If you will be so good as to permit me," said Basil


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
31
when his visitor had expressed an enthusiastic appre-
ciation of the highball, "I shall ask you presently, 'who
is Giroff?' Meanwhile I've a curiosity you'll forgive to
know who the devil is The Swan—and The Man With
The Duck's Bui."
Dr. Marsac's boisterous laughter flooded the room,
his coat shaking violently over quivering rolls of fat
beneath it.
When he had subsided he said: "Forgive me, my
friend. I thought how Lacrosse would enjoy hearing
you. He swears you are the agent of one, The Swan,
and are either The Man With The Duck's Bill or his suc-
cessor. Don't tell me you plan to disappoint him by
turning out to be neither!"
"Over another highball let us suppose that I turn
out to be what I am—a very disappointed bidder for
the Harlequin pearls," returned Basil. He felt that he
ought to be provoked by this clownish medical exami-
ner, but wasn't quite certain.
Dr. Marsac put down his glass and rested a hand on
either stub of knee. A bit of the twinkle went out of
his eyes.
"The Swan," he said, "is a young and beautiful
woman, for what may we say of any woman and re-
main polite, save that she is young and beautiful?
Even though we have not set our eyes upon her. And
The Swan, my friend, is a Lady of Death, whom none
has seen or known unless "the doctor paused. "Un-
less," he finished, "Lacrosse is right and you could tell
us who she is."
Basil smiled in his face and waved his hand toward
the glass on a table by the doctor's chair. "I asked you
to assume, remember? that I couldn't."
Dr. Marsac heaved another of his prodigious sighs.
"Dear, dear! Perhaps you are right. I hope so, but I'd
be fearfully disappointed."


32
A LADY OF DEATH
Basil waited. Dr. Marsac decided to gratify him.
"For a long time Europe has wanted to know more
than it does of the Lady of Death. I fancy you haven't
her kind in Worcester. Eh? A prize for whom any
policeman would give his head, or his imitation of one,
such as Lacrosse's. Whence she comes, or where she
goes, we do not know. Some woman ornaments her
throat or decorates her lovely fingers with a jewel. A
great jewel—so great and well known in the quarters
where jewels are known, that it would seem no one
would dare steal it. Suddenly there is a cry. Perhaps a
gasp. It may be even a shriek of horror. Who knows?
None has been there at the moment. But the jewel is
gone. Its wearer is dead, just as was our lamented
Baroness of yesterday."
The speaker was silent long enough to finish his
drink. He nodded pleasantly to Basil, in mute compli-
ment upon the taste of the highball, rubbed his hands
across his stomach and went on.
"Tragic deaths, all of them. More so, if I may sug-
gest it, than yesterday's. The Baroness mercifully was
shot. That is what would excuse my taking a fancy to
you if I subscribed to the Inspector's theory that you
have replaced, or are, The Man With The Duck's Bill.
Shooting is more merciful than strangling, and all of
the others have been strangled for their jewels. But just
as was the case yesterday, The Swan leaves no doubts
behind her. She enjoys her little joke on the police.
The tiny crystal carving, a swan in miniature, invari-
ably is found with the body. Our Lady of Death has a
rare sense of humor. I should like to meet her."
"You mean, actually," asked Basil, "that she has suc-
ceeded in mystifying the police—through a whole series
of these crimes?"
"The police of every country in Europe," declared
the doctor. "I am told that she is known by her reputa-


34
A LADY OF DEATH
of the unfortunate gentleman, but at the side of the
body, which had been strangled, was the crystal swan.
Its debut, so to speak. It was the lady's first gesture
—the first display of her rare good humor with her
enemies, the police.
"Since then, the crystal swan has shown up periodi-
cally. The last time, I think, was in Munich. A rich
widow celebrated the end of her period of bereavement
with a ball. She had gathered her baubles from their
safety box. She was particular to wear a string of
carved emeralds with a history almost as long as that
of the Harlequin pearls."
Dr. Marsac raised his fat hands to express resignation
to dismay.
"The widow was found by the side of a pool in her
fountain garden. Her throat was bare, save for the
strangler's mark. There was mystery for a day. It re-
mained for Giroff, The Great Giroff who is on his way
to replace our poor Lacrosse, to drop over from Paris
and poke about among the gold fishes in the fountain
pool. He brought up a tiny crystal swan, which must
have slid into the water. The emeralds have retired into
seeming oblivion. The Swan shrouds her disposal of the
rare gems she steals with as much mystery as surrounds
herself."
The doctor had got out of his chair and moved about
the room while he talked. Apparently he enjoyed his
subject.
"You must have more reason than a crystal swan,"
Basil observed, "to identify the strangler as a woman.
A woman isn't good at that method."
"You forget the other, The Man With The Duck's
Bill. Charming picture one gets of him from his soubri-
quet! It is he, The Swan's faithful servant, who is the
strangler. I am particularly interested in his skill. My
brother medical examiners who have had the pleasure


36 A LADY OF DEATH
that I like the ladies I serve to be less resourceful than
your Swan?"
. Dr. Marsac wheeled, again with that incredible agility
which, in the room of the Baroness, had once or twice
utterly amazed Basil. And again the twinkle had totally
disappeared from beneath his huge lids.
"Make no mistake, my young friend, Giroff will bag
The Swan for this murder of the Baroness von Strom-
berg, and whoever has served her, the Duck's Bill or
another, will be severed at the neck quite beyond the
skill at repairs of even a medical examiner."
The twinkle returned as instantly as it had disap-
peared. Dr. Marsac bubbled good cheer while he shook
Basil's hand. His "Au revoir!" from the door was a
booming broadside of hearty friendliness.


38
THE LITTLE FELLOW SHOWS UP
He underwent his cross-examinations, grillings and
the obvious traps set for him by the puzzled Inspector,
with determined patience. Vision of the poor Baroness
Hilda, her stilled face framed in her coils of tawny
hair, still haunted him. The antagonism of Marie, ever
bordering on hysterical outburst, still hurt him.
Marie's heartbreaking grief for the mistress who had
looked forward to "grand times" after her famous
Harlequins would be sold, did more than Lacrosse, or
Dr. Marsac to make The Swan a grim and terrible
reality in Basil's mind. It helped him immeasurably to
put up with the Inspector's dogged persistence in efforts
to find some sort of link between him and the Lady
of Death to whose hands the murder of the Baroness
was laid.
Lacrosse, with his constant surveillance and insin-
uating questionings, seemed such an incapable person to
pit against one whose reputation was as The Swan's,
that Basil wished the man from Paris was on the
ground. From one source and another he learned much
of this "Great" Giroff. As much, perhaps, as anybody
would admit to knowing.
The best man of the Paris bureau, it was agreed.
Cunning, relentless, and with a hawk-like will to twist
his talons deep in the throat of his prey from the un-
derworlds of Europe. A great deal of mystery sur-
rounded him. Most anyone would describe achieve-
ments of The Great Giroff, but none would profess
to have come across him.
"You don't see him," laconically said one of La-
crosse's lieutenants to whom Basil spoke, "you only feel
him at your neck or remember him for life in the con-
vict Colony of the Dead."
With four days passed, Giroff still was unapparent.
Lacrosse had arrived at—nothing in addition to his
crystal souvenir. And, evidently, a grudging satisfac-


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
39
tion at last with Basil's account of himself. His man
was abruptly withdrawn from Basil's footsteps and his
post outside his door.
On the evening of this, his first day's freedom from
Lacrosse's shadowing, Basil stood on the topmost step
of the Hotel de Paris at Monte Carlo and looked out
into the open square in front. Human butterflies and
vultures of the night already were gathering, some to
be preyed upon, others to prey. He repeated his favorite
observation, which had sprung to his lips so many times
of late:
"A long, long way from Massachusetts!"
Something in this reflection decided his plans for the
night. Letters that should have been written long be-
fore, to Worcester.
He crossed the Square, skirted the canopies of a side-
walk cafe, and turned into a dingy street of garages.
At one of these a grimy attendant saluted him. Pres-
ently the blue coupe he had engaged for the length of
his stay in southern Europe, slid into the street.
The garage attendant held open the door. While Basil
was getting into the car he was conscious of a shuffle
and a sharp, whispered word behind him. "While he
settled under his wheel he looked around.
The garage attendant had disappeared. In his place
there stood a wiry, undersized chap whose thin, pointed
face denoted the scum of many races in his blood. In
the half light cast by a solitary street lamp, all that
could be distinguished of that thin face between a long
peaked cap and the muffling collar of a woolen sweater,
were two beady black eyes separated by the bridge of
a broken nose.
Basil started. He recognized the agile little fellow
who, that morning after the murder, had attempted
to speak to him in the Boulevard of the Italians at Men-
tone. He had wondered about that incident many times


40
THE LITTLE FELLOW SHOWS UP
during the past four days. The mysterious chap had
not shown up again. He had wondered what was his
purpose that morning and what had become of him.
Now, he held to the door of Basil's blue coupe!
"Whatever the threat he had whispered to the garage
attendant, it had been efficient. The former was no-
where to be seen.
"Excuse me, Governor," said the little fellow. "I'm
talking fast. You'll be driving along the coast tonight,
maybe?"
Basil's immediate thought was that the mysterious
stranger was about to demand a lift. And he had no
idea of gratifying him. He replied sharply.
"I'm driving as far as Mentone, but I'm driving
alone."
The other touched his cap. Basil would have driven
off, but the little fellow held to the door. He threw a
quick, furtive glance over his shoulder into the dim lit
recesses of the garage behind. When he spoke Basil saw;
that his lips did not move.
"I wasn't asking to go along, Governor. I'm giving
you a tip. Stick to the Upper road, if you're going to
Mentone."
Basil stared at the speaker, too amazed, too far lost
in the sudden obsession of a vague, disquieting premoni-
tion, to ask the other who he was or what he meant.
The swarthy, peaked face moved closer in the door
frame. Again its lips did not move.
"I'm risking my life to do you a favor, sir. Maybe
The Swan will thank me, maybe she won't. I don't
know. Maybe you do."
Basil recovered his wits. "What in the devil are you
driving at? What did you want of me the other morn-
ing—and what are you about tonight?"
The little fellow broke in gruffly. His beady eyes
flashed like miniature coals in the dim light of the


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
41
street lamp. No muscle of his face twitched, but the
black eyes were alive to every stir in the street.
"I mean that affair of the Harlequin pearls. It's not
done with yet. The Swan isn't satisfied. She'll speak
again, quick maybe. Stick to the Upper road. The
Lower road's dangerous, tonight."
He had snapped out his words with amazing rapidity,
his lips uncannily motionless throughout. His beady
eyes returned Basil's stare unwavering. Basil wheeled in
his seat, in an impulse to leap out of the car, catch the
little fellow by the scruff of the neck and—and then
decide what to do with him.
The stranger wheeled and without a sound disap-
peared in the impenetrable blackness of an alley that
flanked the garage.
At that moment a policeman on a bicycle appeared
at the end of the street, observed the car idle against a
curb, and approached. Basil had had enough confer-
ences with the police. It flashed into his mind that this
one, pedalling up on his bicycle, might be a substitute,
detailed by Lacrosse, for the agent he had ostensibly
called off from his trail. The Inspector perhaps had only
tricked him into believing he was no longer under
observation.
And if this was Lacrosse's man, he had no eagerness
to explain such an inexplainable incident as his being ac-
costed with a warning, in which The Swan's name was
used, by such a suspicious character as the little fellow
with the beady eyes.
He kicked his starter and the blue coupe picked its
way out of the grubby neighborhood. He ignored the
sharp scrutiny of the policeman when he passed him.
He crossed the town on a lighted boulevard and a few
moments later was on the Upper road that follows the
sea to Mentone.
Early traffic of the night sped past, an impatient pro-


44 THE LITTLE FELLOW SHOWS UP
That good humor suffered a sudden shock.
Basil ground his brakes, stopping his car in the middle
of the road. His headlights sharply defined a man who
stood in the path of the blue coupe, his arms extended,
a warning barrier.
Basil leaned to the windshield for a closer scrutiny
of the fellow who blocked him. By every kind of meas-
urement he made an evil figure. Tall and burly shoul-
dered, and masked. Either in his hand, or at his belt,
in the daze of his surprise Basil couldn't be sure, there
was the glint of a knife blade.
Basil tested his throttle cautiously. The engine was
still running. He hesitated long enough to hope that he
wouldn't necessarily mangle the cutthroat ahead when
the blue coupe leapt forward.
In that instant of hesitation he lost his opportunity
to make a dash for it. A slimy hand reached through
the coupe's door and roughly broke his grasp of the
wheel. A third thug appeared out of the shadows on
the other side and stuck his head through the opposite
door window.
These two, like their leader in the road, were masked.
Each held a thin bladed knife ready for instant busi-
ness.
"Get down in the road—hands in the air," a guttural
voice commanded.
Basil's thoughts raced quickly. He had little that
was of value. About a hundred dollars or so in Ameri-
can bills, and a few French notes. More than he wanted
to lose, certainly, but not enough to justify an argument
with the fellow on the running board, who held his
knife point uncomfortably close to the back of Basil's
neck.
Basil gave no thought to the strange warning he
had received earlier in the evening. These were foot-
pads come down from the hills beyond the Italian


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
45
border. The Lower road was a perfect hunting grounds.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"You've got the odds, boys. Let's get it over with."
The masked thug who gripped the wheel stepped
back with a surly grunt. Basil got out as cheerfully as
possible. He wondered if they would rob him and let
him go or adopt what he understood to be the tradi-
tional custom: truss him up with a broken bone or
two to render him harmless, and speed their escape in
the blue coupe.
The latter prospect seemed to be most probable. The
big fellow was coming around from in front. He is-
sued harsh, staccato commands and, to Basil's surprise,
he snapped orders in French, an unintelligible argot,
probably a lingo of the thieves, but nevertheless French
and not the Italian of the usual bandits in that vicinity.
Rapidly matters took on a more serious aspect than
Basil had expected. Behind him the thug who had
climbed the running board was racing his motor, test-
ing it for a mad run. The masked figure directly in
front of him showed no sign of searching his pockets,
but remained two paces away, while the leader drew
up. And Basil saw that the big leader, whose chest and
shoulders loomed mountainous as they bore down upon
him, carried his knife poised for a thrust. (
Basil was tensing for a desperate lunge at his ap-
proaching captor, and at least an effort at tripping him
up, when there was a startling interruption to the
affair.
A flood of light from powerful headlights that
seemed to have emerged from nowhere bathed the road.
The sharp report of an automatic was followed by an-
other, and another. A bullet sang uncomfortably close.
From the burly thug coming up with knife poised
there was a surprised grunt of pain. He clutched at his
left wrist and stopped in his tracks. The cutthroat who


46 THE LITTLE FELLOW SHOWS UP
had stepped back to leave Basil to his chief, swung half
around, pawing madly at his shoulder with a volley of
hoarse oaths.
A fourth shot from the neighborhood of the head-
lights, as if the unknown gunner was sending grim
reminder to clear the road, sent the masked scoundrels
scurrying. Miraculously they disappeared, dissolving
into the phantom pines and cypress at the roadside like
shadows going home.
Basil stared into the glare of the dazzling headlights
which belonged to a car that stood fifty yards back
along the road. For an instant they blinded him. Then
he made out the figure of his rescuer, silhouetted be-
tween the two blazing lamps.
A slim figure that stood straight, feet firmly planted
in the dust of the road. To his bewilderment he realized
that his rescuer was a woman. With the dazzling light
behind her he could not see her very distinctly, but
could make out that her arms and shoulders were bare.
A young woman in evening dress!
She did not move, save to summon him to approach
her. In her beckoning hand her pistol still smoked.


48
IN THE LOWER ROAD
he had taken his experience lightly. Before the transi-
tion he witnessed his lips sobered.
She moved at last, taking a quick step forward. Basil
thought he heard a gasp smothered in her throat. Her
eyes, flashing dark searchlights, examined his face. Her
free hand, her pistol still was in the other, lifted to
hover at her throat.
Stepping backward she shot quick darting glances
down the road, past him and behind her, into the dark-
ness beyond her own car. She spoke in a throaty
whisper.
"But you are not !You are an American!" Sur-
prise, dismay, and something very close to curbed panic
was in her exclamation.
Basil was taken back. His wits grappled with their
clear impression that she was disappointed in him, that
she had expected him to turn out to be someone else.
A question flashed into his mind. What sort of rendez-
vous had she expected, there in the fragrant isolation
of the winding Lower road? A rendezvous to which she
had come in low evening gown, with neither wrap nor
scarve, and with a gun ready to bark viciously?
"Please don't tell me," he begged, "that because I
am an American you are sorry to have interfered with
the clubby plans of my departed friends? I could never
forgive myself for getting held up if that were true—
Mademoiselle."
Again he had hesitated over the "Miss," to decide
upon "Mademoiselle" as safest. She spoke in perfect
English, but there was an almost imperceptibly meas-
ured accent. Her voice, though she hardened it, was
melodic and pleasant.
She ignored his whimsical plea and remarked, coldly:
"For what has been done one would be foolish to
have regrets. You are not hurt, then?"
"Thanks to the deadliness of Mademoiselle's aim, I


50
IN THE LOWER ROAD
skin he had ever seen; whitest and purest, like a grain-
less alabaster. He wondered if this impression could be
caused by the touch of silver from the moon, or by thai
grape-black hair that framed her face.
He remembered the tawny yellow hair of the
Baroness Hilda. What a contrast, he reflected, there
would have been if the two heads of hair, the one, flam-
ing yellow and profusely coiled, this one, black as the
grapes of Andalusia and tightly coiffed, could have
been brought together in one room!
His whole body stiffened with the shock of sudden
memory rioting in his brain. The little fellow at the
garage. "The Lower road is dangerous tonight, Gover-
nor! The Swan will speak again!"
The little fellow was deadly earnest. No mistaking
that. He knew—something! "The Swan—the Lower
road !" This girl, who appeared in a sudden flood
of light—her pistol only now ceased its smoking—The
Swan!
He shook his head to drive out of it that sort of
utter insanity. This girl was in her twenties, and it
was no mere witchery of the moon that was convincing
him that she was just about the loveliest creature he had
ever seen.
The twitch of his body at his memory of the chap
at the garage had seemed to arouse the young woman.
Her voice cut the momentary stillness as sharply as
had her bullets.
"Who are you?"
"Beyond that I am Basil Towne, American, as you
have discovered, what shall I say? I did have business
in this part of the world, but I haven't any now, so I
might be called a tourist. I am staying at Mentone—
which is cheaper, you know, than the fashionable re-
sorts along here."
"Basil Towne!"


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
51
She didn't repeat it aloud. Not a whisper escaped her
lips. But he saw those red lips move and he knew, as
surely as if they had shouted, that they repeated for
their mistress alone, his name! And as if it were not
an unfamiliar name.
He had no time to speculate upon that phenomenon.
The girl demanded aloud, with fine scorn:
"Are not all of you Americans rich, then?"
"Not in the sense you infer. That is a pleasant scan-
dal about us. But there are other items of prosperity
than mere money. I, for example, am very rich tonight
in this experience."
She was unconcerned by this effort to break through
her reserve. She stamped her foot in the dust impa-
tiently and turned away. Basil thought she would re-
enter her car, but she stopped and again scanned the
road in both directions with the same appearance of
expectancy that had puzzled him previously.
She made a fascinating figure, erect, tensed, in the
full flood of her headlights. Basil observed that her
gown of gold flecked cloth was well within the daring
reaches of the mode though there seemed to be but a
wisp of it, on one side trailing to the dust that stirred
about her gold slippered feet. She must be French, he
concluded, but was immediately dubious of this de-
cision. Her English seemed to be too natural.
Satisfied with her examination of the road she swung
about and faced him.
"You spoke of business in this part of the world.
You meant—the Harlequin pearls, and the Baroness
von Stromberg?"
Was he right? Were the dark eyes in the pale face
staring at him mockingly?
No! A trick of the thin moonlight. And a reaction
of that foolish speculation that had jumped into his
brain a moment before! That she would know of an


52
IN THE LOWER ROAD
association between a Basil Towne from America with
the newest history of the Harlequins was not unbe-
lievable. The newspapers had mentioned him, and,
doubtless, Inspector Lacrosse had justified whispering
gossip.
"The Harlequin pearls," he agreed. "If my.business
with them could have been concluded faster, the poor
Baroness would doubtless be alive today. I should not
be here and so deeply indebted to Mademoiselle, and
the murderers of the Baroness would still have one less
crime to their records."
"You say, her—murderers?" She stressed the last
word sharply.
Basil did not want to remain on this conversational
track. It was not a subject with which to break through
the aloofness of the strange girl who faced him. He
thought to dismiss it as lightly as he could and tried
another smile in his companion's direction.
"The police have created a pair of them, and thanks
to a curious incident of an hour ago, at my garage in
Monte Carlo, I might have expected to meet one of
them on this road tonight, a most uncharming lady
with a poetical name, 'The Swan.' For the same reason
I ought to suppose that one of those fellows you so
neatly shot off the road might have been her interest-
ing partner, a man with a duck's bill."
Now there was no mistake. No trick of imagina-
tion!
The girl's pistol hand rose with lightning swiftness.
Basil shrank back. He was prepared to hear the bark
of her automatic. His eyes shut instinctively. When he
opened them he discredited his own senses.
The girl's hand had dropped as quickly as it rose.
It was at her side, its arm relaxed. If her face was
whiter, it might have been because there was now more
of moonlight.


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
Si
"I am decided," she said, quietly, "that if I have been
of a service to you, you shall have opportunity to even
the score. Or would you be uncomfortable in the com-
pany of a young woman who routed your assailants for
you?"
There was cool taunt in her tone, and in face of
that, Basil would have put up with any sort of em-
barrassment—or other uncertainties.
"If you'll do the leading, Mademoiselle," he said,
firmly, "I'll follow."
"Very well. I will lead—Mr. Basil Towne. I invite
you to dine with me. If you have already dined, per-
haps you will display your gallantry by bearing with
the parade of dishes. The house to which I shall take you
is not far. It is down there among the pines, below the
road."
Never had Basil Towne been invited to dinner so
coldly, but he replied instantly:
"Shall I follow in my own car? Or am I to ride with
you?"
"I do not wish you to leave yours where "She
broke off, leaving her words suspended. She stepped
back into her own machine, swung her wheel and
manceuvered to turn around.
Basil observed that she drove a great red Renault,
too long and too heavy, ordinarily, for wrists as slen-
der as hers. Yet she swung it around with easy dex-
terity. She moved slowly back along the road, barely
the length of her own car, Basil following in the blue
coupe.
Her unheralded emergence upon the road while the
cutthroats clustered around him was explained by the
narrowness of the hidden opening into which she swung
the Renault. It was barely more than a wheel path and
was completely obscured by overhanging vines and
trees. Basil concluded that she must have been sitting


54
IN THE LOWER ROAD
there by the mouth of the path, her car faced to the
road and screened by the foliage, its engine purring
noiselessly, when he passed the point a little while be-
fore. She must have heard the commotion in the road
and slid out before switching on her headlights.
The wheel path wound among feathery pines -for
several hundred yards, an abandoned estate Basil de-
cided, and brought up at two heavy iron gates which
hung, open, on the rusty remnants of broken hinges.
The Renault entered a wide court yard and the girL
switching off her lights, descended.
In that moment, while he stood beside his own blue
coupe, Basil's every nerve tingled with a disquieting
premonition, an obsession of danger, intangible yet real,
concerning the denouement that would clear his mind.
The feeling stung him as the unexpected touch of a lash.
He couldn't define it, but there it was!
He peered through the dimness at the girl, who stood,
waiting, at her Renault's fender. A slim white ghost of
the night in a ghostly courtyard. The composure of
years in her bearing and manner that contrasted so
strangely with the youth in her voice and body.
But she waited for him. He was afraid her lips would
be curling at his delay. He went up to her. She sur-
prised him by laying white fingers on his arm. And
when she spoke her voice was softer than it had been.
"There is still time for you to turn back, Mr. Basil
Towne. It may be that you will—be sorry."
"Sorry for an evening with you, Mademoiselle?" He
forced himself to speak gaily. "That could never be. I
am ready to swear it."
She raised her hand—there was no pistol in it now!—
to point across the courtyard.
"Do you not recognize, then, the house to which I
am taking you?"
He stared through the darkness and slowly made


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
JJ
out a low, rambling bulk. No window lights shone. He
looked back to his companion, questioning.
"When they told you of The Swan," said the girl, her
voice low but steady, "they must have also told you of
this, the House of Murder."


Chapter Six
THE CYPRESS SCREEN
A.SIL was prepared now
to accept any development as a matter of course. Each
new mystery of the young woman who was leading
him so strangely to some unknown rendezvous was
more portentous than its predecessor, but he felt, oddly,
that if she guided him into some dangerous adventure,
and surely she had hinted as much, it would result in
a denouement that would clear his mind of his per-
sistent doubts, his ridiculous speculations concerning
her.
She impressed him as wanting a companion in what-
ever the evening held in store, for a purpose that events
would justify.
Back in his mind was a stubborn intuition that her
decision to ask him to go with her into this house, so
gruesomely dubbed the House of Murder, was the
result of his identification of himself as one who had
been so closely interwoven in the murder of the
Baroness. But what could there be in that ?Of
what interest to such a one as she? Unless—that cryptic
prediction of the little fellow's, back at the garage!
"The Swan—will speak again—the Lower road!"
The little fellow would persist. He gave up, doggedly,
his puzzlings over his strange hostess, stopped studying
56


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
57
her, and accepted the grim old house and her associa-
tion with it, her presence in the Lower road, much as
he would have accepted a meeting on a Monte Carlo
boulevard and her announcement that she led him to
a box in a crowded theater.
With this resolve to be confident of her, he followed
her with light heart along a crooked walk fringed on
either side by stunted hibiscus trees. Weeds and grass
crept through the crevices of the flaggings. They
circled a fountain basin presided over by a stone cupid.
The basin was empty save for a clutter of leaves and
other garden refuse. One arm of the stone cupid was
broken off at the shoulder.
The empty pool and mangled cupid were striking
symbols of the whole courtyard's decay.
The walk turned at a sharp angle. The low rambling
house loomed close across a stone terrace that flanked
its full length. Once the place must have been an
elaborate villa with carefully attended flowerbeds in a
landscaped yard, but now Basil shuddered before the
stark aspect of the spectral pile.
The girl walked well ahead, but waited for him to
come up, at the steps which mounted to the barren ter-
race. She gave him one of her steady, appraising glances.
He waited for her to speak, meeting her eyes evenly.
"How much have they told you," she demanded in
her toneless voice, "of the event which attached its his-
tory to this house?"
"Only the incomplete recital that is passed out in
scraps," he returned. "A great and famous specialist,
the Dr. Hansard, friend and physician of the Prince
of Monaco, was discovered, strangled, in a clump of
cypress trees. A crystal swan was found. A grotesque
shape, which came to be called 'The Man With The
Duck's Bill,' was seen. Unlike most unsolved crimes,
this one never has been forgotten—or neglected. Its


58
THE CYPRESS SCREEN
mystery is resurrected with every new depredation of
the lady who, I am inclined to believe, is utterly ficti-
tious. A clever invention, merely, of the depraved
strangler, who thus detours the police on confusing
trails."
"You sincerely believe, then, that there is no Swan?"
Down upon him crashed his premonition again. He
thought the violet eyes were mocking once more.
"If you ask me that so seriously, Mademoiselle, I
must assure you that I have no grounds for any beliefs
at all. In America we do not have such things as Ladies
of Death who continue, year after year, to joke the
police. Over here, I should, I suppose, grant you any-
thing. But, won't you tell me more, before we go in, of
what happened—or how—in this house?"
It was not to keep her talking of murder, there in
the moonlight on a summer night, that he framed his
entreaty. He thought, perhaps, to bring out some clue
to her.
She shrugged her shoulders and seemed about to
ignore his question. She thought better of it, however,
and half turned to point across the yard to her left,
to a patch of cypress trees. They were untrimmed now,
and bushy. Once they would have been tall and stately.
He remembered the part they had played. They formed
a circular screen for a tiny enclosure in which there
had been a lovers' bench confronted by a marble Pan.
Dr. Hansard had been found sprawled against this
bench, the crystal swan at his feet. The significance of
the crystal as The Swan's mark became recognized
later when it appeared in a succession of tragic inci-
dents.
The girl was pointing again, to an overhanging bal-
cony, projecting from the upper story of the left wing
of the house. This balcony, Basil observed, was almost
directly over the cypress enclosure.


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
59
"It was from there," she said, "that a number of
guests in this house witnessed the death of Dr. Han-
sard, who had parted from them a moment before to
enjoy his cigar in the solitude of the cypress. If the
occasion arises you may stand with me, tonight, on the
balcony. Now, follow me, please!"
They crossed the terrace to what appeared to be the
only entrance, a narrow passage that pierced the cen-
ter of the long expanse of flat facade. Basil brushed
against stone walls on either side. The sharp whir of a
bat brought him up with a shiver. Then the girl was
silhouetted vaguely against the misty grey light of an
open space at the end of the passage.
A second later he emerged in an inner yard, a patio,
wholly surrounded by other wings of the house. From
this inner yard the entrances to the separate wings
opened. The absence of any lights, to be seen from
the front of the house, was explained. From the right
wing, completely hidden from anyone traversing the
passage from the terrace, lights shone dully through
the windows of a single room, revealing a dim light
within.
In obedience to a silent gesture Basil followed his
guide through wide oak doors which gave to her hand,
and entered a spacious room illuminated by a flicker-
ing candelabra on a center table. The chamber was, he
concluded, elaborately furnished, but had long been
forsaken. Canvas coverings apparently had been only
recently removed. In one corner a piece of furniture
still wore its ghostly shroud.
In the pale glare of the ghostly candles the girl turned
to face Basil. She reached for his hat and dropped it
onto the table beside her.
"We are not to dine alone," she said, in her odd
expressionless manner. "As on the night of Dr. Han-
sard's fate, there are guests. I do not vouch for any


60
THE CYPRESS SCREEN
of them. It is possible they may be entertaining. You
do not mind? If you do"
"I shall not withdraw, Mademoiselle. Nor shall I ask
a question of any kind if you prefer to be mysterious.
But may I not know?"
She interrupted, coolly.
"Who I am? My relation to this house? Yes. Why
have I brought you here? No. The last, I hope you may
never know. I am Jacqueline Ogilvie. My father, Am-
brose Ogilvie, is the owner of this house. He is up-
stairs, on his couch, an invalid."
Something very much like a song arose in Basil's
heart. Mystery of the deadly marksmanship and sinis-
ter mockeries might remain, but this young woman, so
softly lovely despite her cold aloofness, could have
nothing in common with Europe's most fearful queen
of crime! She was saying: "I am Jacqueline Ogilvie.
My father—is upstairs!" He could almost believe he
was listening to the matter-of-fact self-introduction of
a Worcester belle met by chance at a fashionable dance.
Then he looked about the room in which they stood,
into the dank, musty shadows beyond the weird glow
of the flickering candles. His uncertainties returned.
The song trailed away.
She seemed to follow his thoughts as easily as she
traced his glance. At her lips he saw the scornful curl
he didn't want to see there. She nodded.
"You are trying to fit me into the environment.
Very well. We had not occupied this house for many
years before that night when Dr. Hansard smoked his
cigar in the cypress. We had been here then only a
short time. We went away directly after. That was five
years ago, you will recall. My father and I have only
now returned again,"
He exclaimed, earnestly: "But not this time to go
away—so soon?"


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
61
She replied without an instant's hesitation. "That
will depend upon this night's events. And upon you,
Mr. Basil Towne!"
She did not wait to observe the effect of this pro-
nouncement, but crossed the room toward a door that
led into a chamber adjoining. At the knob she paused.
She was in deep shadow, far beyond the radiance of
the candles, but Basil felt, if he could not see, that she
straightened, stiffening her bare shoulders into rigid
lines. He moved close behind her.
The opening door disclosed a dining room, its table
set with shining silver. Again, the only lighting was
from candles, but of these there were great clusters
fixed in high silver sticks strewn the length of the
table.
On one side of the room two men stood, facing the
door, expectant. Of these Basil gained only an instant's
impression. One would be a Spaniard, tall, distinguished
looking. The other, obviously an Englishman, was of a
type already familiar to Basil, neither old nor young,
to be seen wherever Englishmen travel, which is to say,
in all corners of the world; capable of turning out to
be either diplomat, soldier or adventurer.
The other pair, standing farther down the room, on
the opposite side of the table, held his attention after a
start of amazement.
One of these was a woman in a glistening silver gown.
She turned at the opening of the door. Basil caught
the flash of diamonds on bare arms and olive tinted
throat. On lips that were a carmine flame there had
been a trace of amusement, aroused by some sally of
her companion. She looked across the rigid Jacqueline
into Basil's face.
The smile died. She stared from widened, question-
ing eyes and the carmine lips framed an unspoken ex-
clamation.


62
THE CYPRESS SCREEN
Basil's senses quickened. He could not see Jacque-
line's face, for she stood in front of him, the line of
her white shoulders close. But he knew, instinctively,
that she was gazing in a fixed stare at the woman who
was staring at him.
He turned to the woman's companion. There could
be no mistaking that chubby roll of mountainous flesh.
Already the chuckling voice of the genial Dr. Marsac
was booming a surprised greeting.


Chapter Seven
THE DIAMOND CHAIN
j3 ASIL was destined be-
fore the night was over to have full reason in the midst
of tragic chaos, to search his mind feverishly for its
first imprints received and registered after he followed
Jacqueline into the half-lit dining room, chill and for-
saken despite the human life that peopled it.
Try as he might, when that time came, after awhile,
he was unable to keep his memory from turning back,
inevitably, to pale olive fingers that toyed with a rope
of diamonds.
They were across the table from him, the fingers of
Fanya Vidal, the woman who had stood with Dr. Mar-
sac. Long, tapering, they wound in and out of the dia-
mond chain indolently, gracefully. Never still!
They fascinated Basil, exquisite, feline; whenever he
looked back at them he would fancy them as weaving,
always weaving, twisting threads into fateful patterns.
When the time came to remember—while not the stolid
Lacrosse, but "The Great Giroff" faced and spurred
him—he remembered Fanya Vidal first. She and her
weaving fingers dominated the room from the moment
Jacqueline stepped into the pool of light that barely
surrounded the table and presented him to the rest of
the dinner company.
63


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
if he wouldn't loan you money when you needed it?
Needed it, let us say very badly?"
Dr. Marsac chuckled, and turned his twinkling eyes
upon Cardoza, the Spaniard. Basil, his mind alert to
any possible key to the mystery of the situation, of
Jacqueline and her dinner company, took the impres-
sion that Dr. Marsac, who knew that Wellington Bath
had money, also knew that Cardoza needed money—
and very badly.
Before Basil could reply to the doctor's cynicism,
Fanya Vidal murmured:
"And you, dear Doctor? One should not count you
friend until, in an emergency, you should have put the
right powder into a pill, or your scalpel into the cor-
rect spot?"
It was the first time she had spoken. Her voice was
low and husky. Basil thought of the purr of a jungle
leopard. He made at that moment his first mental
record of her. Taller than Jacqueline, of riper contours
and years—she would be thirty perhaps. Her silver
gown was daringly cut, displaying much warm, olive
skin. Every line of her throat was rhythm, but inex-
pressibly—he could think of only one word, "feline."
Dr. Marsac laughed in high good humor and nodded
to Basil. "She thinks of things, this young woman," he
said. "Look out for her. She'll catch you up."
Then Jacqueline took her place at the head of the
table in a tall backed chair, and tapped a Chinese
gong. Its sonorous note intruded musically into the for-
bidding room, seeming to reach out and fill the shad-
owed corners with its golden echoes. The medical ex-
aminer was placed at Jacqueline's right, Cardoza at her
left, with Basil between him and Wellington Bath.
Fanya Vidal, next to Dr. Marsac, was opposite him.
In a doorway that seemed to lead to corridors con-
necting with the kitchens, the servant was vaguely


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
67
she had shot off the road. And knew, too, that he was
sharing that knowledge with her. She was commanding
him, in quiet arrogance, to keep his discovery to him-
self.
He sank back into his chair, remembering his re-
solve, out in the courtyard, to take things as they came
and spare his brain any further futile grapplings with
the fantastic conundrum of the whole adventure.
He could not help wondering, though, about Dr.
Marsac. The medical examiner had assured him, back
in his hotel room at Mentone, that the deserted house
in the Lower road was unfamiliar to him, as was any-
thing concerning its people. Yet here he was, appar-
ently quite at home. No, he wouldn't even ponder
that circumstance.
Jacqueline was talking in clipped phrasings to the
Spaniard. "My father," she was saying, "stood the jour-
ney from England quite well. I regret that I may not
take you to him. He receives no visitors. They excite
him and, I am afraid, irritate him as a rule."
Apparently, then, Cardoza was not a familiar in the
house, or of the Ogilvies. His reply was a formal: "By
no means, Mademoiselle, would I wish to intrude. I
sympathize, deeply, with you and the requirements of
his illness."
"Thank you!"
Her tone was a scornful rejection, courteously but
coldly expressed, of his interest in either she or her
father. Basil watched her, covertly. She sat in her tall
back chair stiffly, as a figure apart from her company,
pale as the linens on the long table. But he detected
the restlessness in the deep violet eyes. They darted
incessantly from Cardoza to Bath, to Dr. Marsac and
to Fanya Vidal, from one to the other in endless round
of fleeting scrutinies.
It was because of them, the darting eyes, that Basil


68
THE DIAMOND CHAIN
first became conscious of a vacant chair at the foot
of the table. Afterwards, he remembered that from
each face to which the violet eyes darted, they re-
turned, inevitably, to cast a passing glance at the empty
chair.
Guillaume, the butler, evidently had fixed its place
after the others were seated. So someone else was ex-
pected? That "someone," undoubtedly, for whom all
in the room had looked when he stood in the doorway
above Jacqueline's stiffly held shoulders.
Was it the same "someone else" Jacqueline had looked
for in the Lower road when she came to his rescue in
her red Renault, her automatic ready?
Wellington Bath, on Basil's left, remained silent. Basil
tried to initiate a conversation of some sort and ven-
tured: "You have, of course, met Mr. Ogilvie, Miss
Ogilvie's father? You are from England, I understand."
Bath, who seemed rather to toy with his food than
eat it, did not look up from his plate. He returned,
curtly: "I never heard of Ambrose Ogilvie until a few
days ago. There is no reason I should have met him
since then."
Basil felt as if one might like the Spaniard, on his
right. But not Bath, on his left.
Across from him, Dr. Marsac was pleasantly discuss-
ing death with Fanya Vidal, whose fingers were weav-
ing the diamond chain.
"My dear lady," he was saying, apropos of whatever
had been said before, "I make it a rule to be cheerful
in the presence of death. It is not a tragedy, but the
happy ending of a long story."
"Do you include all death?"
Basil looked up from the sense-gripping fingers into
Fanya Vidal's face. Small and sensuous and immobile.
No trace on it of inner reflections, nor, he thought,
would there ever be. That face, as perfect as carved


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
69
jade, with its long, drooping lashes, would never show
emotion or reveal a thought if its mistress chose to hide
them. She was choosing now to remain inscrutable.
"All death, of a certainty," Dr. Marsac was insisting.
"It is all alike. We cease to breathe, that is all. The
means may be disease, an accident, or violence—even
strangulation! Up to a point there is life, then there is
not. The transition is not necessarily sad. Except, it is
true, to those who are left behind and are unhappily
affected. For them, on occasion, I consent to be sad."
Basil put away in his mind, to remember when the
occasion should arise, as his intuition shouted at him
that it would, that Dr. Marsac had hesitated, just the
fraction of a second, and that one of his twinkling eyes
stole a side glance at his companion, when he added—
"strangulation."
"The Man With The Duck's Bill," who once had been
seen on the grounds of this weird house on the Lower
road, strangled his victims! Why the thought came to
him, Basil couldn't explain. He merely remembered
afterwards that it did.
"Yes," Fanya Vidal murmured, "I see what you
mean. One who dies is done. Even if it is murder, the
good humor of the philosophic medical examiner is not
disturbed. He is good-naturedly sad only because of
the unhappiness, suffering perhaps, that is caused to
someone who remains alive?"
Dr. Marsac saw that Basil was listening. He beamed
across the table. "I told you," he exclaimed. "Watch
out for her! She will fathom you every time." To
Fanya Vidal, he said: "You appraise me marvelously.
I go away from death quite cheerful. Then I sit down
and become very sad, thinking that someone who must
remain alive has been distressed."
Fanya turned her jade-like face to Basil. Her move-
ment startled him, as if he had been an eavesdropper


70
THE DIAMOND CHAIN
suddenly caught. Her carmine lips quivered with an
indolently repressed smile. She said, silkily:
"The lovely Baroness von Stromberg and the Ameri-
can Mr. Towne, are an admirable example, are they
not, of Dr. Marsac's estimate of death?"
What she meant, he didn't know, but something
stirred within Basil and he flushed, angrily. He recov-
ered himself instantly, and waited. He knew that Jac-
queline was watching, not him but Dr. Marsac; that
Wellington Bath, at his left, had put down his fork;
and that Cardoza on his right had stiffened in his
chair. If he waited, either Fanya Vidal or Dr. Marsac
must occupy the tense silence. The medical examiner
was content to chuckle, however, and to nod in Basil's
direction. It was Fanya Vidal who spoke again.
"The Baroness hardly knew that she was passing
from life to death, if one is to believe the newspaper
accounts. For her there could have been no sense of
tragedy. But Mr. Towne is deprived of the beautiful
Harlequin pearls. One must suffer greatly to have been
deprived of such a treasure." She turned quietly to Dr.
Marsac. "You see, Doctor, I support you!"
"The example is not a good one," Basil declared. "My
interest in the pearls, as I am sure the newspapers must
have pointed out, was only that of a messenger. I was
to receive them, take them to America, and deliver
them. That is all. I assure you that I felt more deeply
the fate of the poor Baroness than the loss of her
jewels."
"Yes, yes! That is true!" Dr. Marsac agreed. He
beamed joyfully, as usual, but the twinkle was out of
his eyes and the chuckle out of his voice. "It is not
with the one who lost the pearls, in the passing of the
Baroness—a charming lady, who should have been pre-
served to us, I am concerned. It is the one who has
them now for whom I am prepared to be sadly grieved.


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
71
To that one, eventually, the death of the Baroness will
have been a most tragic disaster."
Fragile indeed must have been the platinum links of
the diamond chain hanging from Fanya Vidal's slender
throat! The weaving fingers were toying with it gently,
but it snapped just then. The fingers deftly caught the
break and held the chain together with a barely per-
ceptible interruption of their indolent weaving.
Basil was certain that none of the men had seen. Of
Jacqueline he was not so sure. When he glanced at her
she was staring down the table, toward the empty chair,
her eyes half closed and hard, as he had seen them in
the road across her smoking pistol. All tinge of color
had fled from her face, leaving it ghastly white.


Chapter Eight
THE SWAN SPEAKS AGAIN
c
V^HANGE, as pronounced
as a sudden gust of wind, came over the company with
the arrival of Jules Manton, the belated guest. To
Basil, that change was presaged several minutes before
he actually appeared to claim the vacant chair. He felt
it coming when Jacqueline tapped her Chinese gong
and for the first time received no response from the
silent Guillaume.
Wellington Bath had interposed in the conversation,
holding it to the Harlequin pearls, but removing it
somewhat from the spectre of the Baroness laying inert
on her green rug.
"There has been much in the newspapers," said Bath,
"in London at least, about those pearls. A gloomy his-
tory. Shouldn't think anyone would want them."
He spoke to none in particular, but into his plate,
from which he seldom lifted his gaze. Then Jacque-
line asked one of her direct questions.
"Would you not like to have them? They might be
traded, at least, for a great deal of money."
Bath now glanced up. He replied in the tone of one
who defends himself angrily. "If they came my way as
a matter of money, I would consider them as nothing
but a hard and fast security. The same as a house. If a
72


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
73
house is haunted I might not live in it, but that would
not affect a business transaction."
"Money," said Jacqueline, "never has been associated
with the Harlequin pearls. Always, someone's love for
another."
Basil wondered, when he heard the word "love" pro-
nounced by the inscrutable girl at the head of the table,
how he could have thought for a single instant that she
might turn out to be The Swan.
"Money," he said, "would have been associated with
them in my case, at least." He put away a mental note
that both Dr. Marsac and Jacqueline associated Bath
with money. "There would have been a most unro-
mantic, and certainly not tragic, commission in dollars
and cents, if I had taken the jewels back to Worcester.
And my trip to Europe thrown in. It might not have
been necessary for me even to inspect them, since it
would have been a banker's deal in the end."
"And so it happened that you did not see them?"
Fanya Vidal turned her face full upon him. "What a
pity."
"Yes, yes, a pity," Dr. Marsac agreed happily. "Per-
haps you could tell us what they are like. You have
seen them."
She turned upon him in one of her slow, graceful
movements. "I, Dr. Marsac? Have seen them?"
The medical examiner's laugh boomed out. He was
tremendously pleased with himself. He spoke across to
Basil. "What is it you Americans say? Struck the nail
on the top, eh?"
"Approximately," Basil admitted. "Hit the nail on
the head, to be exact."
"It arrives at the same meaning. But it is of a cer-
tainty, Mademoiselle, that you must have seen them.
You travel much. You impress me that you are—every-
where! They have been worn in Berlin, Vienna, Paris


74
THE SWAN SPEAKS AGAIN
—by the late Baroness and others of their recent posses-
sors. They have changed hands frequently."
Fanya Vidal smiled quietly. "You are a worthy car-
penter, Doctor, with your nails. I have seen them. Mis-
fortune has always stalked them and I am superstitious.
But one may not be superstitious beside one who laughs
so joyously at all things, so I shall remember them for
you. I saw them on the last throat they decorated, on
the charming Baroness, in Berlin."
She would have said more, something she had de-
liberately prepared to say, for a carefully arrived at
purpose, but it was then that Jacqueline intruded the
golden note of her Chinese gong. Fanya sat back,
slightly shrugging her shoulders.
"But who shall describe a pearl?"
"Who, indeed!" Dr. Marsac agreed, ignoring the
change in her mood. "Except to say that women want
them and men get them. Yes, men get them in one
way or another."
Jacqueline's gong had not been answered. Each pre-
vious summons had been responded to by Guillaume,
who appeared in incredulous silence for one with his
awkward frame and lurching gait. Jacqueline rose sud-
denly. While the men, surprised by her move, were only
half to their feet, she disappeared through the corridors
Guillaume had come from and returned to.
Basil did not like the thought of Jacqueline alone
in some grim corner of the gloomy house with the fel-
low who had been about to slit his throat in the road.
Immediately he told himself how foolish this thought
was. Both were a part of the mystery into which he
had entered. He cautioned himself that he must con-
tinue to guard his nerves closely.
She returned to her tall chair as abruptly as she had
gone out. She was nervous, hands and eyes restless.
Cardoza spoke to her, but it was a full minute before


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
75
she realized he had spoken and she answered him as
if there had been no interim.
A moment later Guillaume was framed in the door
from the outer chamber through which Basil had en-
tered. The butler stepped aside to permit another man
to brush past him. This time Basil's brain fairly shouted
at him that here was the man Jacqueline had expected
to meet in the Lower road, across her pistol, and the
man Fanya Vidal had expected to see when she stared
across Jacqueline's shoulders at his own entrance into
the room.
He would be a key—to something!
The new arrival was in evening clothes, as were
Cardoza and Bath. He was thick set, with a "square
head, heavy protruding jaw and coarse, lascivious lips.
His hands were rough, thick and not well manicured.
His whole appearance, including his manner, was
aggressive, and he was in an unpleasant humor. He
seemed to plunge into the room and did not stop until
a steady stare from Fanya Vidal brought him up sharply
at the edge of the pool of light. He took in Basil and
Dr. Marsac with one glance. From that glance Basil
recoiled. In it there was ugliness, and threat. Whoever
he was he was antagonistic to Basil Towne.
Jacqueline's voice cut in evenly. "It is Jules Manton
who arrives late."
The toneless, precise introduction was meant for
Basil and Dr. Marsac. The others knew him. Welling-
ton Bath, at least, was not impressed by his manner of
arrogant bluster. "You might have been more thought-
ful, Manton," Bath said.
"I make my apologies," Manton returned gruffly.
Jacqueline spoke again.
"The Dr. Marsac, who is the medical examiner for
the Bureau of Police. And Mr. Basil Towne of
America."


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
77
Dr. Marsac, however, was not to sacrifice his good
humor.
"My dear sir, what is there to know? A bullet, an
empty jewel case, and—I asked them at the bureau to
let me have the crystal swan as a bauble for my desk,
but they wouldn't! But that is all. For further enlight-
enments we wait, with high impatience, for discover-
ies."
Manton drained a brandy and soda. "You'll wait,"
he said, with a sort of sneering emphasis. "The police
are fools. Too much time has slipped by. Too late to
pick up anything. I understood your big man from
Paris, who's the fellow—Giroff?—was coming to take
charge. What's he done?"
Dr. Marsac heaved a prodigious sigh. "As you have
said, the police are fools. They wait. Or perhaps this
Giroff resolves not to annoy himself further with the
lady of the little swan."
From Fanya Vidal, then, her red lips openly smiling:
"The time does come, doesn't it, Dr. Marsac, when a
man is discouraged if the lady of his heart will not even
grant him access to her?"
Dr. Marsac shrugged his fat shoulders. Jacqueline
rose and there was a confusion of chairs being slid as
the company got to its feet.
For a few minutes Basil stood apart while the others
grouped together, Dr. Marsac, Cardoza and Bath at
one side of the table; Fanya Vidal, Jacqueline and Man-
ton far down the room, deep in its outer shadows.
Manton was talking to Jacqueline. He was excited,
but she was cool, facing him steadily. Fanya Vidal
turned away to stroll languidly to the other group.
Dr. Marsac beamed upon her.
Basil continued to watch the other pair, Manton and
Jacqueline. Once his muscles twitched. The offensive,
uncouth Manton seemed about to take the girl into


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
79
chubby face glowing with pleasure. "Marvellous, my
boy, isn't it," he said, not loudly enough for the others
to overhear, "how the good Mother Fate, if you leave
her alone, will intervene in our concerns at just the
propitious moment?"
"It is, if she does," Basil agreed, puzzled. "You
mean something by that; may I know what?"
"Are we not here? In this house? Do we not observe
an interesting company? Is not the murder of the
Baroness von Stromberg our concern?"
Basil stared, his glass poised in mid-air.
"Drink," Dr. Marsac commanded, under his breath.
Basil drank with his companion, gulping the brandy.
Dr. Marsac laughed when he put down his glass. Un-
der cover of his laugh he said:
"Life is only worth while, young man, if it provides
us our little pleasantries. We have had ours tonight.
We have dined with the murderer of the Baroness, and
the Harlequin pearls have been within arm's reach."
To hold himself in check Basil coughed. Dr. Marsac
turned to beam upon Jacqueline, who was now up to
them. He began to turn a humorous compliment, but
the girl laid her hand on his arm.
"If you please, Dr. Marsac, don't! Spread your good
nature among the others. I have promised Mr. Towne a
little while in the patio."
She hadn't, but Basil did not remind her of that.
The others, apparently, were aware of her intention.
They were watching while Basil went through the door,
with her, into the outer chamber with its one group
of candles. He looked back as he followed her out.
He remembered, afterwards, that Guillaume had come
in, and stood in the far shadows, watching them. Fanya
Vidal, near him, apparently had been speaking to him.
Bath and Cardoza stood together. Manton had not re-
turned to the room.


80
THE SWAN SPEAKS AGAIN
Basil's senses had been numbed by that astounding
confidence, laughed out over a brandy and soda, by Dr.
Marsac. He did not attempt to speak until he and
Jacqueline had passed through the outer room and stood
on the cracked flaggings of the deserted inner patio.
The moon, shining from over Morocco way, was
low in the heavens, casting long shadows. Dozens of
potted palms, brought in from the courtyard by some
past gardener who helped close the estate, stood about
the patio in confusion, their untrimmed fronts sway-
ing idly, black sentinels in the ghostly emptiness. Some-
where near a nightbird was calling. It was the only
sound, save vague noises that seemed to be muffled in
the empty recesses of the encircling wings.
Jacqueline looked up to the second story of the wing
in which they had dined. The light still crept through
the crevices of the shutters of the upstairs chamber.
They gave Basil a subject to speak of while he quieted
the throbbing of his pulse.
"I should like, when there is opportunity, to pay
my respects to Mr. Ogilvie."
She did not answer him, but said: "If you will re-
member, it was not the patio I promised you, but that
perhaps we should stand together on the balcony over
the courtyard."
"And you didn't want them to come finding us?"
he said, attempting a lightness he could not quite feel
—Dr. Marsac had, indeed, startled him.
"They will not dare look for us," she returned, "but
it is on the balcony I wish to stand with you, while
I"
As so many times before, her words trailed off.
"Won't you finish?" he begged.
"Come."
She led across the patio to doors in the opposite wing
similar to the oak-panelled door behind them. These,


82
THE SWAN SPEAKS AGAIN
the feeling of desertion, of barrenness, was even more
pronounced. The floor was uncarpeted. "This floor was
dismantled," Jacqueline said, out of the dark beside
him, "after Dr. Hansard was killed." Her voice began
its interminable spreading again, clashing against walls,
more sharply now because of the unimpaired acoustics,
and to go on, and on, into other rooms. But she sud-
denly cut into it. "I was born in this room," she said.
"My mother died in it."
His brain groped for some expression of sympathy.
None would come to him. There was nothing he could
say that would not be trite, and for trite things he had
no mood while the girl was guiding him through the
antechamber that, he thought, must face upon the
balcony.
"I have put you to a great deal of trouble," she said,
when she had brought him, surely, up to closed inner
blinds. "I wished to talk with you, on the balcony—
nowhere else."
He groped over the inner shutters. "There are fasten-
ings," she said. "At the bottom and top." He found
them. Dust fell into his eyes and over his face, but
presently the shutters gave in. The outer shutters let in
a thin light. To open them was easier. He stepped back
and Jacqueline preceded him onto the stone floor of
the overhanging balcony.
The whole courtyard lay before them. He could
make out the dim outlines of his blue coupe, off to the
left and her long-nosed Renault, and beyond them,
other cars which he had not observed when he drove
in behind her. He found the fountain basin, with its
one-armed cupid, and traced the walk they had followed
to the barren terrace. Far to the right, off in the dis-
tance, the Riviera hills rose, house lights glinting like
distant fireflies. . . .
And just below them, thirty feet, perhaps, from the


86
THE SWAN SPEAKS AGAIN
Her body suddenly relaxed and shrank against him.
He thought she would fall, even while he called to her:
"What is it?" She flung her arms out before her, stiffly.
Basil looked toward the low tangled pines where they
crept close to the cypress grove.
What he saw froze him with horror.
The form of a man in evening clothes, bent, its legs
crumpled under it, falling out of the pines. The body
collapsed without a cry on the outer rim of the cypress.
It lay, when it fell, quite still. Basil swung the girl
he held so that she could not see more than she had
already. He was about to shout an alarm when his im-
pulse was held by a second apparition that followed
the other from the pines.
This one, stooped or bent into a shadowy blur, seemed
to move like a rolling ball, with neither arms nor legs,
but was superhumanly active. It followed the other so
closely as almost to merge into it. It paused when the
other crumpled to the ground, appeared to bend over
the prostrate form, then leapt to its feet and shot back
into the pines.
From somewhere deep down in Jacqueline's throat an
inarticulate whisper rose. "Hurry!"
Basil sprang across the dry carpet of dead grass. He
thought, just a/ he left the terrace, that still another
figure, so short and slight that it could be nothing else
than a deceptive shadow, sprang out of the wall at the
far end of the terrace and also plunged into the envel-
oping oblivion of the pine grove.
This vision he dismissed from his mind. Nothing
could come out of the wall, as that one had seemed to
come. Nothing so slight and agile could be other than
what it seemed, an illusion of his shocked brain or a
moon trick with a palm frond.
Illusion, too, or distorted sound of the night, was
the chuckle he thought he heard, a merry, taunting


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
87
chuckle that at first was close—just off to the right, in
the trees, then farther back, where the figure that leapt
out of the wall had disappeared. Even while he ran
across the grass Basil cried to himself, aloud: "Steady
—steady yourself, old man!"
The man he found was sprawled on his back, his arms
stretched out. His head was caught in the crook of a low
cypress bough and pinioned a foot above the ground,
his shoulders held off the grass by his neck. His evening
linen glistened to the stars.
Basil staggered back. "Good God! Jules Manton!"
With a hope he knew to be futile, he felt for Man-
ton's heart, knowing he would find no tremor there.
His hand fell on a small, hard object, that was resting
on Manton's chest. He brushed it aside. It glittered in
the faded grass, reflecting a hundred glints of the
moon.
Manton's heart was still. His face was contorted with
agony and its last spasm of despair. Basil reached for
. the object he had brushed off his breast. He rose while
he stared at it. He whispered aloud:
"The crystal swan!"
He felt another presence behind him. He thought
Jacqueline must have come up, and swung around to
take her, to shield her from the ugly sight on the
ground with its head still gripped in the cypress.
"Jacqueline!" he exclaimed. "You must not!"
It was not Jacqueline who stood there, but another
presence. He recoiled. It was an impossible manikin of
a man, barely as high as an average man's chest. He
stood motionless, as rigid as the marble Pan in the
cypress circle. Basil's first impression was of a hawk-
like face, deathly white, with monstrous moustachios
that spread on either side to unbelievable reaches.
Malevolent eyes, black as charcoal pools, stared at him
evilly.


88
THE SWAN SPEAKS AGAIN
"Who the devil ?" Basil began, to break off
sharply.
The little figure before him seemed to draw itself up,
its sinister cheeks to inflate, like toy balloons on All
Saints' Eve. The black moustachios twitched.
"Sir! I am he. Giroff!"


90
THE HARLEQUIN PEARLS ARE GONE!
Thus his mind settled down, and he realized that
Giroff was bent over the dead man. While his own
mind was in a daze, Giroff had released the pinioned
head from the cypress, and Manton's body was prone.
Giroff's head, hatless, was against Manton's heart. He
raised and brushed his fingers over Manton's neck.
Basil heard him grunt at his discoveries there. Manton
had been strangled. A flash of Giroff's electric torch dis-
played the telltale mark, a line, cut deep into the flesh.
No finger marks, but a line that began to take on a
deeper blue even while Basil looked into the beam of
torch light.
Giroff's light went out. His fingers flashed over the
body, touching every pocket in the dead man's clothes.
Suddenly he leapt to his feet and, bent almost to the
ground, searched the grass around the body and across
a trail to the edge of the pines. Basil thought he knew
what he was seeking. He opened his palm and held out
the bit of crystal.
"This was on his chest," he said.
Giroff did not rise from his bent over posture, look
up nor interrupt his cat-like searching.
"I saw it," he said, his voice coming up past his
bent shoulders.
With the same lightning decision with which he had
leapt to his feet from over Manton's body, the detective
shut off his flashlight and stood again before Basil, and
again Basil recoiled before the piercing malevolence of
his evil black eyes.
"They are gone, sir!"
Basil was speechless. Had the little runt been looking
for one or more murderers, with his flashlight, in the
grass?
He could utter only a mystified "What—who?"
Giroff's answer was as clear-cut as a knife thrust
through the still night air. "The Harlequin pearls."


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
91
Basil stared into the charcoal eyes, impossibly black
in the chalk white face. "You don't mean?"
"He had them. They are gone." He reached out his
hand. "You will give me the swan."
Basil, stupefied by the little man's startling statement,
and remembering Dr. Marsac's cryptic: "The Harlequin
pearls have been within reach," held out the crystal
bauble silently. Giroff took it and, without a glance
at it, thrust it into some inner pocket. He swung
about, then, to look in the direction of Jacqueline.
Basil remembered her with a shock—for the moment he
had forgotten that she waited, with whatever might
be the secret of her emotions, where he had broken away
from her.
She was a mystic figure, across the dead lawns, her
gold-flecked gown yellow in the dim moon, her face
indistinct but her shoulders a misty white. Basil mar-
velled at her self-control. She was still motionless, as
rigid as a statue.
Giroff turned back. "Take Mademoiselle into the
house," he commanded. "When I am ready, I shall ap-
pear."
Soothing words to call her back to life, and his arms
to lead her, were ready when he reached her. His words
hesitated and his arms wavered when he stood beside
her. An incredibly short time before, measured in mere
seconds, she had been half frantic in some surge of inner
terrors. But he found her calm, deadly calm.
Her face was as inscrutable as while she sat at the
head of her table in the tall-backed chair, or held him
at his distance in the Lower road with her automatic
lifted. In the violet eyes there was no trace of unrest.
As he came up to her he realized, more clearly than he
could actually see, that they watched him quietly, per-
haps even speculatively.
He was so unprepared that to save his soul he could


92
THE HARLEQUIN PEARLS ARE GONE!
not withhold his protest: "But Jacqueline, Manton has
been murdered!"
In his immediate rush of confusion—twice, before,
in the stress he had called her "Jacqueline," but now,
while she was so calm and collected it savored of the
unwarranted—he did not see how she reacted to the
statement that the victim was Manton. He was im-
pressed, however, that she already had identified the
man they had seen collapse to earth.
"I am s©rry, Mr. Basil Towne," she said, and Basil
thought her voice, like Jules Manton, was dead; "I am
sorry I invited you to dine with me."
"But you will believe me, won't you, that if this
had to be—it is here, tonight, that I belong?"
She did not reply, but he was convinced that, at
least, he had warmed some part of her chill. He hadn't
wanted her voice to go back to its cool hardness. It
had softened, on the balcony, and he wanted it to re-
main soft, to him, at least. He felt that if she had
spoken at all, in response to his assurance, her voice
would have been soft.
While they were traversing the passage from the
terrace into the patio it occurred to Basil that those
who had remained in the dining room would have to be
told. They would hardly know what had happened in
the courtyard unless the commotion of he and Jacque-
line rushing through the patio, a few minutes before,
and her cry in the barren room upstairs, had attracted
their attention. This, he concluded, was hardly pos-
sible. In that old house no noises seemed to carry
through closed doors, save weird noises of mysterious
echoes.
In the patio its deathly stillness still reigned. He
glanced up to the lighted windows above. Their shut-
ters still were closed. A- stir, off to one corner of the
patio, a rustling, hissing sound, startled him. Jacqueline


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
93
was close to him; they were just going up the two
steps that led to the oaken doors that closed the portal
to the only occupied wing. She, too, heard the sound
and stopped, her body poised, listening.
There was no repetition. Jacqueline spoke.
"A cat."
He was not certain, somehow, that she was right. No
one may describe a cat's sound as it whisks through a
shadow, but it is a familiar sound. Basil felt, unexplain-
ably, that not a cat, but a human, had been lurking
behind a cluster of the potted palms, standing at the
far end, well out of the moon's low shafts.
He did not take time to dwell upon this thought.
Jacqueline was pushing open the oak doors. A sudden
gust of air blew in and extinguished three of the candles
in the candelabra on the center table in this outer room.
The girl stopped at the table, browsed in a drawer
until she found a supply of candles to replace those
which had been blown out.
Basil waited close behind. It struck him as odd that
she should take the time, or have the fancy, to put fresh
candles in the candelabra. Those that had been extin-
guished required only to be touched with the flare of
one of the others. He decided she was bracing herself.
"Don't you think," he said, gently, "that it would
be better for you not to go in—while I tell them?"
Her father, upstairs in his invalid's room, occurred to
him. He went on, more earnestly now: "There will be
excitement in there, there is bound to be. Sooner or
later, perhaps in a little while, someone will have to tell
Mr. Ogilvie what has happened in your courtyard. Had
it better not be you? And now? And you can remain
with him until "He paused, confused. Giroff would
want them all, he supposed, as soon as he came in.
Jacqueline, also. But the thought of her being part of
an examination was distasteful to him. He knew it must


94
THE HARLEQUIN PEARLS ARE GONE!
be, however, so he completed his sentence; "Until you
are needed."
She seemed to ponder his suggestion, but decided
against it. She turned her face to him, with her trick of
bringing her whole body around with it, so that she
faced him completely. He had noticed that she seldom
spoke to him, or to anyone, from across her shoulders.
Usually she faced them first.
"It is kind of you, Mr. Towne "Instantly his
mind took the satisfaction that this was the first time
she had addressed him otherwise than with his full
name. "I must go in, with you. Before we go, you
shall tell me. That other, in the yard? That second
man. It was Giroff?"
"I can't believe it, but so it seems. He must have
been on the terrace. I saw him, in fact, leap off from
it and shoot into the pines. I thought it could be only
a shadow."
"Did he—find—anything?"
She hesitated for the words with which to frame
her question so simply, yet her tone was steady.
Since he left Giroff, with the figure on the grass,
his mind had been occupied by Jacqueline. He had
forgotten, in that brief intermission of time, "The
Swan." Now, he was uncertain. Should he let the girl
know, that the dread souvenir found by Dr. Hansard,
also had been found with Manton, and almost at the
identical spot in the courtyard? Or should he wait—
upon Giroff?
His indecisions were futile. She read his face.
"He found the crystal swan?" she said. "The Great
Giroff is close, this time, upon the heels of his quarry,
isn't he?"
He wished he hadn't heard. Wished she hadn't spoken
at all, but gone directly into the dining room with
him. He wondered how quickly he would forget, or


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
95
satisfactorily explain to himself, as he had made other
satisfactory explanations throughout the evening, that
ineffable bitterness, harshness,—something almost like
the ring of steel, that had come into her voice this
time.
But she was actually smiling through the candle flare
to him, a wistful, friendly smile, for all the world as
if she spoke of a dance in Worcester that was ended
too soon. The bitterness—harshness—the friendly, wist-
ful smile—he couldn't fit them together.
She gave him no more time. She had started for the
dining room door. He caught up with her, stopped her
at the knob to whisper: "We must go in as if nothing
had happened. I shall tell Marsac first," and then they
faced the dining room company.


Chapter Ten
JACQUELINE
In the second that inter-
vened, before the dining room door stood open, Basil
took a firm grip of himself. A hundred things flashed
into his mind: Jacqueline on the balcony beginning a
confidence that would "horrify his soul"; the diamond
chain; Dr. Marsac; the little fellow at the garage—
and the other things, crashed in upon him and left him
with a resolve to be—alert.
In this mood, he took an exact mental record of the
dining room company when he entered, Jacqueline
preceding him.
Fanya Vidal, sleek, her silver gown glittering, stood
in the foreground, between the door and the table,
well within the light pool, talking with Wellington
Bath. Apparently their discussion had been animated.
Bath was flushed, either anger or excitement in his face.
Basil saw at once that the Englishman, who had been
particularly sullen all evening, was ruffled. At the en-
trance of the pair who returned, he dropped his hands,
from some expressive emphasis, and turned his head
with a jerk.
Fanya turned to glance at the pair with her custom-
ary, languid movement. Basil thought of a panther,
turning his head in mild curiosity. He noted, too, that
96


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
97
she did not look at him, but that her expressionless
eyes fixed at once upon Jacqueline in a penetrating
scrutiny. As on their former entrance together, Basil
felt that Jacqueline was returning that stare with equal
steadiness.
Cardoza sat at the far end of the table, alone. His
fingers twirled a tall stemmed liqueur glass, its bowl
golden with chartreuse. He glanced up moodily.
Dr. Marsac was not in the room. Neither was Guil-
laume, the butler. Basil spoke, to the company in gen-
eral but, since she was closest, more particularly to
Fanya.
"Is there a bit of brandy on the table, or could we
have some? For Miss Ogilvie? She is—not quite well."
Cardoza, who had risen, moved at once toward the
tray which Guillaume had set for Manton earlier in
the evening. A decanter of brandy was only half
emptied. Basil noted that Wellington Bath displayed no
concern that his hostess should require a stimulant.
Fanya murmured sympathy, and added: "Was it a
ghost in the patio? This house is supposed to be full of
them, you know. Dr. Marsac has been telling me that
you couldn't persuade a neighbor with love or money
to come inside the courtyard after dark."
Jacqueline thanked Cardoza for the brandy he
poured. "Mr. Towne is too thoughtful," she said,
quietly. She glanced around the room, into the shadows,
apparently looking for Guillaume, for she went directly
to her Chinese gong, her untasted brandy in her hand,
and struck the gong's golden note sharply.
Guillaume came at once, silent, his cadaverous face
impassive. But Jacqueline seemed to have changed her
mind. "Sorry," she said. "I do not need you." He
bowed and returned to his corridors.
Basil was undetermined, whether to say at once what
had transpired in the courtyard, or try to make care-


98
JACQUELINE
less conversation. He wondered where Dr. Marsac had
gone. He had not departed, of course, for he had not
said his farewells to the hostess, nor had he passed
through the courtyard to his car. Just then the medical
examiner appeared. He came in from the outer cham-
ber, beaming, his fat hands rubbing before his protrud-
ing stomach.
Basil's immediate mental query was: "He was not
in the patio when we came through it. Yet he must
have crossed it, come from it, to have entered this wing
behind us. Still, he could not have been enjoying the
night air on the terrace, or in the courtyard, or he
would have seen, and would not be coming in grinning
like a fat jack just jumped out of a box."
That appeared to be the explanation. Obviously,
there was no other part of the house lighted for him
to roam around in.
Cardoza had gone again to Jacqueline. Basil saw,
to his amazement, that she talked with him quite
coolly. Fanya Vidal had returned to Wellington Bath.
He drew Dr. Marsac aside and told him, as briefly, as
coherently as he could.
"Miss Ogilvie and I were on the balcony overlooking
the outer gardens. She, it seems, was attracted to that
stretch of pines. She rushed downstairs, onto the ter-
race. From there I saw it—or the finish of it. Manton,
falling—pushed—out of the pines. He had been
strangled on his feet. His murderer was behind him,
supporting the body, and while we looked on flung it
toward that cypress grove. I found"
Dr. Marsac, who had not ceased to rub his hands
together, nor quieted the humorous twinkle in his eyes,
exclaimed:
"Dear, dear! Is it not galling? She has laughed again,
am I not right? What you found was—yes?"
"Yes. The crystal swan. On his chest. I gave it to


100
JACQUELINE
breath, left Fanya Vidal to accept the doctor's hospi-
tality. Fanya, however, remained where she stood. The
red lips were curled a little. Basil saw that she appeared
to watch Dr. Marsac, but that really she was looking
at Jacqueline, who stood close to her Chinese gong,
looking down at the table.
"We'll drink this," said Dr. Marsac pleasantly, to
our absent companion at Mademoiselle Ogilvie's charm-
ing repast. To Monsieur Manton. He will not return."
Basil could stand the man's unctuous complacency
no longer. He strode to the table.
"Look here, Dr. Marsac, I have some regard for the
feelings of others, if you haven't. Remember that Miss
Ogilvie!"
"But I remember the Mademoiselle Ogilvie," Dr.
Marsac interrupted, suavely, and now in grave tone. "I
am thinking of her very deeply. But as you will, sir!"
He bowed to the company, as if he spread his apolo-
gies. "Monsieur Manton," he said, "has come upon a
tragic fate. That of Dr. Hansard's, five years ago, and
at almost the same spot. It has but now occurred."
He would have said more, but Fanya Vidal's brandy
glass dropped to the floor. She took a step forward, her
lashes lowered over blazing eyes. Basil fancied that the
olive hue of her skin went white.
Her emotion subsided as sharply as it had arisen.
Jacqueline saved any attention to it from the others.
"I am terribly sorry," she said, with a quick, clipped
intonation, as though she said the first thing that came
to her tongue in order to give Fanya time to fortify
her self-control, "that tonight, of all nights, there
should be such an—event."
Fanya Vidal, her composure regained, walked to the
door into the outer chamber. She walked close to Basil,
and it struck him curiously that at such a moment he
should notice for the first time, and put the thing away


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
101
in his mind to keep, that even in her walk there was
something of the animal, something of the panther.
Graceful, sinuous, she floated, rather than stepped,
across the floor with an undulant sway characteristic
of the primitive savage.
He met her and would have offered a ready condo-
lence. It seemed to him that she had proclaimed, in that
one moment when she was off guard, that the man who
lay on the dead grass outside had been near to her, very
near, and in such a moment Basil would have readily
forgot the break in the diamond chain at Dr. Marsac's
sententious prophecy a little while before.
But she did not see him. She looked straight ahead,
her eyes level, until she reached the door.
Cardoza was first to act upon the realization of what
Fanya was about. He sprang forward to open the door
for her, and behind him, roused now, Wellington Bath
hurried. Bath exclaimed:
"We should have been out there long ago, trying to
do something."
Basil explained to Dr. Marsac, who had calmly fin-
ished his brandy. "But there's nothing we could have
done. Whoever strangled him exercised a fiendish
skill."
"If Giroff had seen any need for me, he would
have sent you for me," Dr. Marsac said. Basil frowned.
"Could he have known that you were in the house?"
"You said, I believe, that he had been hiding here-
abouts? In the thin air, I think it was? He's a better
man than our former associate, Lacrosse. He would
have known who was within if he hung around with-
out."
"I suppose so," Basil agreed.
Minutes passed. The three who had remained in the
dining room were silent. Jacqueline seated in her tall-
backed chair, never moving a muscle, one hand resting


102
JACQUELINE
on the table in front of her, the other dropped across
her knee. Both of the men were conscious that she
constantly looked from one to the other of them, scru-
tinizing, studying them. Twice Basil attempted a word.
Her very posture, the immobility of her face and body,
chilled him. He felt that she, like Fanya Vidal, would
not hear, at least not answer him.
Dr. Marsac was strangely quiet. He poured a brandy,
but did not lift the glass to his lips. Basil took a turn
up and down the room trying hard to collect every
mysterious item of the night's events, since he left the
garage, readiness for the inevitable time when he must
do his best to piece them together into some sort of
pattern. But he observed that Dr. Marsac, who had
poured one brandy and promptly forgot it, before he
had taken a sip, abstractedly poured another, and drank
this one.
It struck him as rather odd that the medical ex-
aminer, who refused to be saddened by death, should
be off his form so suddenly. Yet he was beginning to
feel uneasy himself. It wasn't just right, somehow, to be
sitting and standing there, twenty minutes after a mur-
der had been committed on the threshold, doing noth-
ing. There was nothing to do, a policeman was on the
scene, the medical examiner was on hand, waiting to
be summoned—nothing to do but wait, yet waiting so
long for the policeman to indicate his wishes was nerve-
racking.
Dr. Marsac broke the tension. He announced that he
must, at last, follow the others. "I have the official
duty," he explained, his good humor returned, "to not
remain too long from scenes which unexpectedly bridge
the present and the hereafter."
Before he disappeared he did what was to Basil a
curious thing, under the circumstances. He went down
the table to where Jacqueline sat. He stood by her side,


104
JACQUELINE
He wanted to ask her a thousand questions. They
rushed to his lips in a torrent. And why should she
make them so impossible by that cold, hard warning
that he mustn't spread "traps?" What traps could there
be? That she should fear? Unless !There came the
question crashing down again.
With her uncanny sense of perception she detected
his trouble. She gave him her hand, smiling again, her
wistful smile.
"It's a soft and delicate hand, isn't it, Mr. Towne?
You just can't help wondering how it can shoot so
straight, can you?"
He had a ready answer but just then the room
echoed with the clang of a bell.
Jacqueline stiffened in her chair. Basil started, nerves
tingling.
It was quickly evident that the bell had been rung
from the patio door. Guillaume, who seemed to have the
faculty of being all places at once; who had made his
exit but a little while before through the door into the
rear corridors, now came in from the front part of the
wing.
As always, throughout the evening, he avoided look-
ing at Basil while he silently lurched up to his mistress.
In his hand he held a card, which he handed her with-
out a word.
She took it but instead of looking at it immediately,
she let it drop, with her hand still holding to it, onto
the table before her. It lay in her fingers, face down.
She stared at it, arm's length away from her, but Basil
knew that her eyes were unseeing.
She was silent, motionless for so long that at last
Basil stirred. Her voice came up to him, as from a far,
far distance.
"I am thinking, Mr. Basil Towne "her "Mr. Basil
Towne" was not stiff and formal, but gentle, "that it.


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
would be very nice to have lived, on a quiet, peaceful
street, near you perhaps, in your Worcester."
Only the presence of Guillaume saved his arms from
her. The moment passed. She had brought up the card.
He read it over her shoulder.
"Maximillian Pontius Marie Giroff
Inspecteur
Prefecture de Police
Paris."
At any other time, Basil would have laughed aloud—
at a name and style like that, after seeing the pocket-
sized manikin with the enormous moustachios, out in
the yard. But while he held his ridicule in leash an
indescribable feeling of awe, and fear, stole over him.
"He asks if Mademoiselle will assemble her other
guests," Guillaume said, "while he is received by Mon-
sieur Towne, apart from the others."
"Me, alone?" Basil exclaimed.
"He was precise," Guillaume muttered.
Jacqueline rose. "Fix lights in the drawing room of
the wing across the patio," she commanded the servant.
"We will wait, there. For Mr. Towne and—Monsieur
PInspecteur, you may take more candles into the re-
ception room, in this wing."
Basil crossed the room with her. He expected Giroff
to be waiting in the patio, but he was not to be seen.
"The others must still be in the courtyard," said Jac-
queline. "I will go for them."
Basil insisted upon going through the dark passage
to the terrace with her. "Why he should single me out
is amazing," he murmured.
"I reminded you that you might turn back," Jac-
queline said.


106
JACQUELINE
"I may only repeat, what I said before we went in.
I am glad you brought me in from the road."
From the terrace they saw that Fanya Vidal, Car-
doza and Wellington Bath were grouped, on the dead
lawn, at a distance from the body which, apparently,
still lay where it had fallen, for Dr. Marsac, or a figure
that must be his, stood close to the cypress, apparently
on guard.
Basil suddenly remembered Mr. Ogilvie. "Shouldn't
he be prepared, while I am talking to Giroff?" he asked.
"Not tonight, unless it is necessary."
She started across the terrace to go to the group on
the lawn. Basil waited a moment. Abruptly Jacqueline
turned back, to reach to him both of her hands. He
took them, but that was to be all. She withdraw them
immediately and, with no additional word, went across
the room.
Basil turned back through the passage with a curious
sense of steeling every nerve in his body against the
"man from Paris."
■


Chapter Eleven
GIROFF
G IROFF was still out of
sight. Basil decided to go in and wait.
"Let's see," he mused, pausing at the oak doors.
"What was it Lacrosse's right-hand man said of this
chap from the Paris Bureau? 'The public knows all
about him. He is more of a thrill than a Blubeard. But
one never sees him. If he is after you, sometimes you
feel him at your neck or begin to remember him for
the rest of your life in the convict Colony of the
Dead.'
"Well," he muttered, "among other things that have
happened to me since I left home, I am to be particu-
larly distinguished. I have seen him and now I'm to
give him battle, and I don't know why."
Guillaume had arranged candles, brought in from
the dining room, so that the reception room was fairly
flooded with a soft, brilliant light. The only shadow
remaining was in the far corner leading to the dining
room beyond.
A swift glance failed to disclose Giroff.
Guillaume had been at pains to put the room in
order. The lone canvas covering that had remained, in
the shadowed corner, had been removed, disclosing a
107


10S
GIROFF
tall bookcase, massive and ornate, dusty volumes show-
ing behind its glass doors.
Basil's mind was clouded. What would Giroff ask
him? What should he say? Anything of the affair in
the Lower road, of Guillaume? No! For reasons of her
own, Jacqueline was protecting Guillaume. Whatever
her reasons he would make them his just so long as
he possibly could. Of the diamond chain? But what
would that signify?
He remembered that last gesture of Jacqueline, out
on the terrace. Her hands thrust into his, without a
word, sign of faith and, he was sure of it, assurance
that he could justly believe in her. His heart went
light. He took a cigarette from a cloisonne box on the
center table. It was dry, and powdered in his fingers.
He brought one from his own case and bent to the
candle flare to light it.
He straightened with an exclamation.
Across the flame of the candles, directly in front of
the bookcase, was a spacious reading chair, deeply cush-
ioned. On the very edge of it, his legs barely touching
the floor, sat Giroff, watching him with sombre gaze.
Against the red of the upholstery the ghastly white
face shone like a patch of plaster pierced by two burnt
holes. The preposterous moustachios waxed and pointed
extended straight to either side, almost the breadth of
the man's shoulders.
The nervous lightness in his heart got the best of
Basil. He laughed aloud at the fantastic weirdness of
the fierce brustling puppet lost in a cove of soft silks!
His laughter broke on a sharp discord.
The "man from Paris" slid to his feet. His boring
eyes fixed on Basil with a saturnine intensity. He drew
himself up, as he had in the yard, but this time he
tapped his inflated chest with an unbelievable bombast.
"Sir, I warn you! I am Giroff."


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
109
Basil, in his chaotic mood, wanted to laugh again.
The fellow was so absurd! But he refrained. After all,
Jules Manton, whatever he was, was dead out in the
yard.
"I am sorry," he said, soberly. "My nerves are shot.
I did not see you when I came in."
Giroff's chest let out its air. The moustachios relaxed,
their tips drooping. Basil went on:
"You wished to see me alone? I'll help you in what-
ever way I can. I would like to return to Miss Ogilvie
as soon as possible."
Giroff did not reply at once. He continued to stare
balefully, standing where he was, in a queer, baboon-
like posture, on his toes, leant forward, his dispropor-
tionately long arms dangling at his sides. Basil moved
uneasily to put the flare of the candelabra out of line
between them. Giroff's gaze followed him. Presently he
shot a question.
"The Mademoiselle Ogilvie, to whom you wish to
return, infatuates you?"
Basil colored. "Anything of that sort is nobody's
business but my own."
He glared back at the abridged pirate. Giroff was un-
perturbed. He did not move.
"I repeat. The Mademoiselle is charming. She affects
to be gracious. It amuses her to permit you to become
enamored."
Basil's anger rose to white heat, and he started
toward the other.
"Look here! I don't give a damn who or what you
are. If you make any further!"
A transformation in the man before him held him
speechless with amazement.
Giroff did not move, nor did his eyes. Their fixity
was uncanny. His eyebrows, which were two inverted
Vs, black as charcoal marks, flattened until they were


110
GIROFF
horizontal and joined over his nose. The peaked white
face puffed until its cheeks were round. The mous-
tachios shot upward.
The effect was weird—Mephistopheles in a vest-
pocket edition! Basil recoiled.
The eyebrows returned at once to their upside down
Vs, the moustachios dropped and the cheeks disinflated.
Giroff nodded with supreme satisfaction.
"I am answered," he said. "We proceed. You are
Basil Towne. You were at the home of the Baroness
von Stromberg when a murder was discovered. Pearls
had disappeared. You are in this house when there is a
similar occasion. Again, also, the pearls of the Baroness
have disappeared. My colleague of the Bureau at Nice
regards you with suspicion."
Basil frowned. "Let's get that straight. I thought I
was done with that business. If Inspector Lacrosse
would use his head he would get farther. If you knew
that this man, Manton, was mixed up with the Harle-
quin pearls, why were you not here to act sooner?"
Giroff ignored the question. "Inspector Lacrosse is a
fool," he sneered. "He looks for the wake of a fish
in the dust. His game is under his nose but he wastes his
time sniffing at you."
His process of drawing himself up began again.
Basil expected him to tap his chest, but this time he
didn't.
"I, Giroff, am not a fool."
Basil was relieved. "I am glad of that," he said,
glumly. His mind returned to its disturbance over the
fellow's irritating reference to Jacqueline. Giroff
watched him, but he was aware that the diabolical
black eyes were constantly searching the room, darting
here and there, never still. Basil became more and more
uncomfortable. Because of that weird searching of the
black eyes, he had the uncanny feeling of an unseen


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
111
presence in the room, someone, or something, for which
GirofF was on the alert.
After what seemed to be an interminable interval,
Giroff spoke. Basil noted, with a curious sense that the
inspector had found what he hunted in his examination
of the room, that Giroff was relaxed. The long, wiry
fingers of one hand ministered to the tips of the gro-
tesque moustachios with a boulevard dandy's dainti-
ness.
"I will keep you but a few more moments from the
enchanting Mademoiselle Ogilvie's company," he said,
his sneer still traceable. "Attend, please, my questions.
You are not a friend of the Ogilvie family. You are
not the acquaintance of its dinner guests tonight. La-
crosse would suspect you of being both. I do not make
mistakes. I know that you are not. You did not relieve
the pockets of the strangled Monsieur Manton of the
Harlequin pearls, which they had contained. I am
right?"
Basil knew, instinctively, that if he was to be wary
at all, and wary he must be because of that inexplicable
unrest, the uncertainties about Jacqueline that still per-
sisted, the time was now come for him to be very much
on his guard.
"To a degree, you are right," he admitted, "as to
my acquaintance here."
"There is no degree, sir! I am right. Be pleased to
explain your presence."
Basil had expected this question, and was prepared.
He had been careful to lay out an explanation which
would not embarrass Jacqueline if she were also called
upon suddenly to answer it. "By a purely whimsical
circumstance," he said easily. "I was passing, in the
Lower road. I was held up by some ugly chaps, masked
fellows who were rather ferocious. I was in for a bad
mess when Miss Ogilvie happened to emerge from these


112
GIROFF
grounds, onto the road in her car. The thugs were
frightened off."
Giroff ministered again to his moustachios, and in-
terrupted blandly.
"Mademoiselle's well-timed appearance was empha-
sized by a remarkable marksmanship. Again I am
right?"
Basil was completely taken back. His carefully
planned evasions were thrown into his face.
"If you know," he snapped, angrily, "why waste
time with useless questions?"
Giroff nodded as if he fully agreed. Basil brought
out a fresh cigarette and lit it from the candles. Giroff
had not spoken. When he looked at him he was literally
gripped and bored by the piercing gaze from under
the unthinkable eyebrows.
"My questions lead me to a pretty neck, Monsieur
Towne," the other said, sharply. "A very pretty neck.
You will answer them. You may lie if you wish. That
will not concern me."
Basil was torn between a surge of fury and the
ominous, cryptic note of meaning in Giroff's 'pretty
neck.' An unholy fear crep down his spine. "What
terrible thing was in this little devil's mind?"
"I am not accustomed to being told that I might
lie, not even by a policeman," Basil said sternly. "I
advise you to guard any inferences of that sort."
"Thank you, sir." He was so bland, this time, Basil
could have choked him. "From Mademoiselle's inter-
ference with her pistol, we proceed, if you please."
"She invited me to come in, and to dine," Basil re-
turned. "I suppose you know that, also. At any rate,
I did. That is all."
Giroff grunted. For the first time since he slid out
of the big chair, he moved. He edged around an almost
complete circle, which took him from where he stood,


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
113
well across the end of the room, close to the door that
led into the dining room, and back to the spot he had
left, even with the bookcase. Basil watched him, puz-
zled. Could it be possible that the man was, actually,
taking a strut? It looked that way.
When he had taken his position again, his question
leapt time: "When you came into the patio, with
Mademoiselle, from this wing, to go up to the balcony
over the terrace, you came directly from the dining
room?".
"Yes. Mademoiselle and I, alone."
"Who remained—in the dining room?"
"Everyone else."
"Mademoiselle did not leave you, she was not gone
from you, until you came upon the balcony?"
"We remained together. I was not apart from her
until—on the lawn, I rushed up to where we saw—
Manton falling."
"She did not return, while you waited at the door,
outside, perhaps, for something she had forgotten?"
He pointed to the three half-burned candles Jacqueline
had left on the center table when she replaced them
in the candelabra with fresh ones taken from the
drawer. "She did not come back, to change those
candles, for example?"
Basil remembered the incident. "No, she was not
apart from me. The candles were changed by her when
we came in, at your suggestion, from the yard."
Giroff pondered that reply for a full minute, twist-
ing at both of his moustachios meditatively. He ap-
proached the table and glared down at the candle ends,
lying in disorder where Jacqueline's fingers had dropped
them. He glanced up sharply into Basil's face.
Suddenly he swung about, as if alarmed by some
sound behind him. Basil thought he would leap back
to the spot he had moved from but, with his back


114
GIROFF
turned, he was satisfied to glare into the end of the
room he had just vacated.
What he looked at, Basil could not imagine. There
was nothing but the reading chair and bookcase on
one side, in the shadows; the door to the dining room
in the far wall, and a cluster of candles on a side table
on the other side of the room.
Presently he took his position again near the cush-
ioned chair.
"When you returned to the dining room with
Mademoiselle, who was absent?"
Basil's answer was quick and definite. "The medical
examiner, Dr. Marsac. No one else."
Giroff seemed to catch at the name. "Ah! Dr. Mar-
sac. Dr. Marsac. A pleasant gentleman, the medical ex-
aminer for the Bureau at Nice. His presence would
have been exceptionally convenient if the Monsieur
Manton had been a little less dead."
It was on the tip of Basil's tongue to suggest that
Dr. Marsac knew a great deal that might be of imme-
diate service. He had deliberately taken occasion to in-
dicate some secret knowledge by his amazing statement
that the murderer of the Baroness von Stromberg was
part of the dinner company, and that the Harlequin
pearls were in the room. Or was the good doctor hav-
ing one of his pleasantries at the expense of one who,
he knew, was on edge the whole evening?
And Basil had not ceased to wonder whence Dr. Mar-
sac came when he entered the dining room, after he
and Jacqueline came in from the courtyard. But he
decided to say nothing of this to Giroff. Dr. Marsac
was associated with the police. They could talk to each
other.
Giroff had been watching his face. Basil waited a
further question. Giroff said:
"You were about to speak further of the amiable


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
115
medical examiner. His absence from the room was of
moment—to you. I am right?"
"I was trying to recall anything of value," Basil
evaded. "I think I have fully answered your queries."
Again the pompous little figure was silent for an
interval. Basil observed him with what nonchalance
he could master. The fellow impressed him as a caged
rat, watching every side of him, as if he sought an
opening in his cage's bars. Once his eyebrows flattened,
with their grotesque effect. He stood rigid, only his
moustachios twitching. Then, suddenly, he seemed to
relax again.
"I fancy the others, and Miss Ogilvie, are awaiting
you in the other wing," Basil ventured. "They will be
in a bad state of mind until you have released them."
Giroff had moved and was behind the reading chair.
His head was not far above the back of it.
"Presently," he snapped. "I amuse myself, question-
ing you."
Basil shot back: "You are overdoing your authority.
With a murdered man in the yard, and a houseful of
guests, overwrought?"
Giroff's reply was uttered in staccato exclamations.
"Attend me, sir. I speak. My amusement is a fore-
taste of the immediate future. Within this house to-
night is The Swan. The strangling hands of the Duck's
Bill are within reach, at her command. I, Giroff, shall
have them. You, Monsieur Towne, have led me far. I
salute you. Giroff salutes you, sir."
He paused just a second. His malevolent gaze never
wavered. Basil could see only that part of his body
above his shoulders, but he knew the rest of his body
was crouched behind the chair, as if any minute he
might jump over it and expect his audience to shriek.
"I repeat," he continued, "I shall have The Swan. I
shall have the Duck's Bill. Jules Manton brought the


116
GIROFF
Harlequin pearls. He has lost them. I shall find them
—in this house."
For a moment Basil, staring, thought the man had
gone mad. His posture, his antics, his baleful gaze, all
indicated that explanation. But he wasn't sure. His in-
tuition told him that the grotesque chap knew what he
was about.
He was talking—talking! For some reason, raising
the sound of his voice until it was like so many sharp
barks from an angry dog. It seemed that he was watch-
ing Basil, but his black, piercing eyes were lenses that
took in the whole room at once.
"You, Monsieur Towne, will try to thwart me. You
are a fool, I am Giroff. I do not make mistakes. You
will help me, for I know whom you would protect. I
congratulate the Mademoiselle ."
Basil, amazed by the man's ranting, was so intent
upon him that his senses first received the impression
that the lean white cheeks were inflating. Then that
the bookcase was moving!


Chapter Twelve
THE THIRD CANDLE
It was edging slowly into
the room, swinging inward as if it hung on hinges.
Already there was a hand's breadth between the far
end of the case and the wall behind it.
While Basil stared, the case crept out another inch.
Whoever was behind it apparently was pushing from
an opening in the wall bit by bit, with cautious stealth.
That was what Giroff had been watching! His eyes
had appeared to encompass the entire room, but they
had been returning constantly to the bookcase.
A cry of warning rose to Basil's lips. Giroff threw
up both of his arms in a gesture of command. His
words flowed on, in even tone, but Basil was aware
that he was poised to spring.
"I congratulate Mademoiselle upon her confidence in
you, sir. You will serve her well if the time comes when
she needs you. But The Swan shall fold her wings for
Giroff! She!"
A hand, dimly outlined in the shadows which dark-
ened that corner of the room, appeared creeping around
the bookcase. It held an object that glinted—an auto-
matic. Basil leapt forward. The pistol belched fire at
the spot where Giroff had stood. Its shots, describing a
117


118
THE THIRD CANDLE
wide arc that swept the whole neighborhood of the
chair, beat a drum-like tatoo.
Giroff had dropped from sight. Basil could think only
that he had crumpled. The bullets sent by the hidden
gunner were burying in the chair, its padded uphol-
stery would be a futile shield for anyone behind it.
Basil would have flung himself against the case but
Giroff, like a cat, sprang up before him and blocked
him.
With superhuman agility the inspector leapt upon
the case, caught hold across the top of it, his body
dangling, and with one arm free sought to bring it
farther into the room by using the wall for leverage.
The hand that held the pistol instantly changed
the direction of fire, brought the gun around the cor-
ner of the case and sent its fire parallel with the glass
doors. If Giroff had been standing on the floor he would
have inevitably gone down. As it was his body was
safely above the line of fire. The bullets buried them-
selves harmlessly in the oak doors at the other end of
the room.
The automatic clicked sharply, its magazine empty.
With a snarl that had something of the canine in it
Giroff dropped to the floor, his own pistol in his hand,
and sprang around the case, Basil at his heels. The
sharp snap of a lock cut through his oath. His hands
ran feverishly over the carved ridges of the high wall
panelling.
He gave up suddenly.
"There should be an axe in the kitchen yard," Basil
cried. "I'll hunt one. We can break through the wall."
Giroff touched a section of the panelling with the
toe of his boot. "We could kick it in," he said, shortly.
"We will wait."
"Give him a chance to escape? Good Lord, man!
We've got to go after him."


120
THE THIRD CANDLE
turning them about in his fingers, looking from them
to the candelabra and back again.
Basil was thoughtful. The fellow was beyond him.
Was he forgetting that someone in the house had tried
to kill him a minute before? Someone who was stealing
away in a passage hidden behind the wall, to emerge
somewhere about the premises and, if he—or she!-—
belonged in the waiting company across the patio, take
his—or her!—place there?
Giroff caught some telepathic hint of what was run-
ning through the other's mind. He dropped the candles
and turned about.
"Presently we will cross to the other wing," he an-
nounced, "where Mademoiselle's guests await me. You
will then have returned to the side of Mademoiselle,
as you wished."
Basil would have interrupted angrily, but Giroff
made no pause.
"It is possible, probable indeed, that the shots in
this room were not heard across the patio. The walls
of this house are thick. If that proves to be the case,
as it seems it must be since there is no excitement, you
will be pleased to forget, until I have reminded you
of it, the affair of the bookcase. We are, as you ob-
serve, allowing time for anyone to traverse the con-
cealed passage that leads to this room and take his or
her place with the company in the other wing if that
person belongs to it. If that one is there, I shall know
it immediately. You, however, are to be silent until I,
or circumstances, release you. Am I understood?"
"Perfectly. But if you ask me to include Miss Ogilvie
in that silence, I shall object—and refuse. She is my
hostess. This is her house—or her father's, which
amounts to the same thing, since he is confined to his
apartment, and a brutal and surprising murder has been
committed on her doorstep. I have no intention to


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
121
interfere with any of your actions, or her decisions,
but I shall enter into no concealments from her. She
is entitled to know that a menace lurks in her house."
Giroff slid away from the center table. Halfway to
Basil he stopped. He assumed his baboon-like posture,
leaning forward on his toes, his arms limp. Basil met his
evil stare unflinchingly, but his heart pounded. The
panorama of a dozen incidents flashed across his brain,
as if summoned by the malignant glitter in the charcoal
holes in the saturnine white face. The warning at the
garage; Guillaume on the Lower road; Jacqueline's
mysterious revelations, all made their procession, and
he knew that Giroff was probing him, boring into him,
with an uncanny sense of penetration.
The imp-like form before him straightened. Three
fingers of either hand toyed with the spreading whis-
kers. Giroff appeared to have found what he sought,
and to be satisfied.
"We shall not disagree," he conceded, "over your
duties to Mademoiselle. I shall observe you perform
them, and sympathize with you deeply."
The mockery in his manner was inescapable. "I sup-
pose," he retorted, "one has to put up with your intent,
which is evident, to be obnoxious."
The other was unperturbed, unoffended. "One puts
up with Giroff," he declared, his boasting all the more
amazing because of its quiet impudence. "A few min-
utes ago, Monsieur Towne, I delivered myself of state-
ments that are now confusing your brain. I refer to
my mention of the one who is called The Swan, and
her servant, the Duck's Bill. You have gathered, I be-
lieve, that I talked for a purpose?"
"You certainly were cool," Basil had to admit. "I
don't know how long you had been watching that
bookcase."
"Many have tried to kill Giroff. None has succeeded,


122 THE THIRD CANDLE
none will. I hoped that assassin would venture a little
further out of his hole. He, or she, was either too
cowardly or too crafty. I wait another time. I digress.
I return to the statements I made, with purpose to
encourage my would-be assassin to venture too far for
his own good. Accept those statements, sir. Confide
them to Mademoiselle if you wish."
Basil was convinced that the pompous little bantam
had deliberately thrown down a gage to him, chal-
lenged him. He had read his fears, his doubts, and had
made them into some ominous pattern of his own.
Basil searched his own mind, and all that his brain
gave him was a fear for Jacqueline, fear grown out of
the night's unexplainable things. He wished that he
could talk to someone, to reason everything out—but
never to this bombastic imp whose ridiculous mous-
tachios constantly reminded him of a toy escaped from
a child's playbox.
Giroff made for the door, motioning Basil to follow.
He paused at the center table and again glanced at the
discarded candles. This time he picked up but one.
He waited until Basil came up to him.
"You may confide to Mademoiselle also," he said,
holding the candle before him with his finger tips,
"that this candle was not removed from the candelabra.
You will observe that it is much too large to have been
inserted."
One glance assured Basil that this was true. The
wax wafer Giroff held, and which he had supposed to
have been one of the three replaced by Jacqueline, was
much thicker than the others. It could not be fitted
into the candelabra cups, and it had not been pared, as
candles sometimes are, to fit the smaller receptacle.
"I don't understand that," Basil murmured. "She
took them from the cups and dropped them, just here,
on the table. All three of them."


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
123
"Not this one, you agree," Giroff returned. He said
no more, put the candle in an inner pocket of his coat,
and with Basil behind him went across to the other
wing.


Chapter Thirteen
THE MURDERER OF THE BARONESS
A
XJLT the far end of the
room, by a wonderful marble fireplace, Fanya Vidal
stood alone, gazing down into the fireless grate. Her
profile alone was visible, as exquisitely cut as an Orien-
tal cameo. At the entrance of Basil and Giroff she
turned, slowly. Against the white marble of her back-
ground her silver gown, her softly curved olive shoul-
ders, and the oval cast of her sleekly coiffed head,
composed a harmonious picture of color and voluptu-
ous lure.
Cardoza paced the middle distance of the room. His
frail figure was erect, graceful, and he paced with a
steady step. But his dark face was greyed with a pallor
it had not worn in the dining room.
Wellington Bath, who had been morose during the
tense progress of the dinner, appeared to be the only
one who gave thought to the possible need of Jacque-
line for someone who would stand by. She sat rigid,
inscrutable, in a staff chair drawn close to a massive
oval table with a Florentine marble top. The coldness
of the marble was in her face and poise. Bath stood
over her, talking in a low tone.
Whatever he found of comfort to say to her, Basil
124


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
125
thought, he was earnest about it. He stood straight,
behind the back of the girl's chair.
Dr. Marsac was not in the room, nor was Guillaume.
The medical examiner, it was explained a moment later,
had requisitioned the servant for an assistant in the
first of the last rites to be granted Jules Manton. A
room in the front wing, with windows to the court-
yard, had been assigned by Jacqueline. There, Dr. Mar-
sac was disposing the body temporarily.
"It is hardly necessary," Basil announced, "to pre-
sent Monsieur l'Inspecteur, Giroff, of the Police."
Immediately he had murmured this he went to
Jacqueline's side. Wellington Bath made the English-
man's awkward bow and moved away. The girl seemed
not to move her eyes, yet they caught Basil's and he
believed in her again because of a flicker of light he
fancied he saw there.
Giroff, an incongruous figure in that assemblage, an
oversized dwarf in a room large enough to have been
almost a baronial hall, advanced until he stood a bare
two paces opposite Jacqueline. Basil thought rather well
of his low Continental bow, and cursed himself for sus-
pecting that in its elaborate sweep there was vulgar
mockery.
"My respects, Mademoiselle," Giroff said. "It is the
custom of the Bureau that I apologize for inconvenience
that I may cause, and for certain commands that I, in
the name of the Bureau de Surete, may have to lay on
this house."
Jacqueline did not vouchsafe a reply. Basil watched
him keenly. He had come to know that in every move,
every inflection of this little monstrosity, there was pur-
pose—of some sort. What the purpose, now, in the
exaggerated politeness which he wasn't capable of
making even sound sincere?
He appeared to be offended by Jacqueline's stony


126
THE MURDERER OF THE BARONESS
silence. He straightened suddenly. The eyebrows came
down to horizontal lines. The moustachio tips went up.
The deathly white cheeks inflated—toy balloons again!
And this time he did! He tapped his inflated chest.
"I am Giroff!"
From Fanya Vidal, clear down the room, came a
drawl. "How extraordinary!"
Cardoza watched the little man. Wellington Bath,
who had been moving restlessly, stood still. Basil
fingered the back of Jacqueline's chair nervously. Only
Jacqueline remained apparently at ease.
Giroff, his eyebrows remaining flattened, his mous-
tachios bristling upward, hunched his head in his shoul-
ders, but otherwise did not move, while the malevolent
eyes—how like burnt holes they were! Basil reflected—
peered down the room into Fanya Vidal's face.
She met him on his own ground, Basil could not
refrain from turning to look at her, and saw that she
was at ease, her weaving fingers toying with her dia-
mond chain, the carmine lips curled at both corners.
She met Giroff's piercing gaze steadily.
"Mademoiselle Fanya Vidal," Giroff's voice emerged
from under the moustachios, "who killed the Baroness
Hilda von Stromberg?"
From all in the room save Jacqueline there were ex-
clamations. Wellington Bath stood stock-still. Cardoza
took a step forward, then stopped himself. Basil started.
Jacqueline was ghostly still.
Fanya Vidal's expression gave no signs. She moved
a little into the room, like a Circe emerging from a
marble niche. And if Giroff had been fierce and threat-
ening, she was scornfully taunting.
"Jules Manton!"
"Ah. You know!"
"Monsieur l'Inspecteur, The Great Giroff, has but this
moment informed me."


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
127
"I, Giroff? Inform you?" With a sneer.
"Admit, Inspector, you lose the first round." With
the wraith of a smile at the carmine hps.
"Who killed Manton?" Shot, this question, like a
bullet.
"His death was demanded by The Swan. Her service
was performed by the Duck's Bill." The voice of Fanya
Vidal was quiet, but the taunt, the exasperation was in
it. Her fingers wove the diamond chain. And Jacque-
line did not move. Basil marvelled at her. He was trem-
bling from head to foot. Cardoza had made a strange
move. He had started to go to Fanya, his hands lifted.
But he had conquered the impulse, and turned back.
He lifted his clenched fists, strained white, in a gesture
of supplication. He recovered himself quickly and
thrust his hands into his pockets.
Wellington Bath stared.
A battle was in progress. The only one who seemed
unaffected was Jacqueline. She had leaned her face to
a hand supported on the marble table top.
Giroff's moustachios twitched violently. "You,
Mademoiselle Fanya Vidal, were the mistress of Jules
Manton?"
Cardoza whirled. Only for Wellington Bath's out-
flung arm he would have sprung upon Giroff. The
barrier Bath made brought him to his senses.
Giroff seemed not to have noticed Cardoza. Basil
wondered instantly what Cardoza was to Fanya, or,
perhaps to Manton. Fanya spoke quietly, still drawling.
"I have been the mistress of many men, Monsieur
PInspecteur. Only one of them has been a gentleman.
None was as great a cad as the most fearful detective
of France."
The bristling moustachios came down. The eyebrows
went up to their Vs. The bantam chest disinflated.
Giroff bowed, just a shade of irony in it, but he bowed.


128
THE MURDERER OF THE BARONESS
"I lose the first round, Mademoiselle Fanya Vidal."
Jacqueline interposed. "I do not like your manner,
Monsieur l'Inspecteur, and I dislike your proceedings.
I speak, as you may understand, as the representative
of my father, Mr. Ambrose Ogilvie, who is proprietor
here, but is unable to participate in affairs of the house-
hold. You and Miss Vidal appear to have a common
knowledge regarding Mr. Manton, who was my father's
guest, and mine, tonight. I cannot, of course, interfere
with any official conduct you propose, but it is not the
murder of the Baroness von Stromberg that now
shadows this house, but the death of Mr. Manton. I
believe the police, represented by yourself, are here to
investigate that. May I ask you to confine yourself to
that matter?"
While she spoke Giroff never took his eyes from
hers. He stood motionless, thrust forward on his toes,
his arms limp.
"I respect your feelings, Mademoiselle," he said. Basil
had expected one of his brusque, staccato retorts, and
was astonished that he was unruffled. His tone was firm,
but not harsh. "It is necessary, however, that I correct
you. The death of the Baroness von Stromberg also casts
its shadow parallel with the shadow left by the murder
in your yard. Jules Manton has paid. The Harlequin
pearls, of which the Baroness was robbed, still remain.
Also two crystal swans, one left with the Baroness, one
with Monsieur Manton."
His even, unvarying tone was almost monotonous.
Apparently he made studied effort to keep a quality of
softness in his voice, which naturally was hard and
husky. But Basil saw the tips of the telltale mous-'
tachios twitching upward, the eyebrows coming down.
"Why was Manton killed, Mademoiselle, if not for
the Harlequin pearls? For which he had deprived the
Baroness von Stromberg of her healthful life. Where


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
129
are the Harlequin pearls? Have they, this time, reached
the nest that hatches the little swans?"
Jacqueline replied without a second's hesitation.
"Doubtless you will answer your own questions in due
time. They are of more interest to you than to me, or
to my guests, who now are wholly concerned with
what you want from them bearing upon the horrible
occurrence in the courtyard."
Giroff affected another of his ironically polite bows.
"My compliments, Mademoiselle Ogilvie! We shall see."
He turned away from Jacqueline, to strut down the
room. The girl seemed suddenly to wilt in her chair.
For the first time that night Basil saw her shoulders
droop. Impulsively he bent over her, to lay his hand
over the white, tenuous hand on the table. She looked
up quickly into his face. Her dark violet eyes scanned
its every feature. Then she smiled. It was a wan smile,
and Basil, despite his troubled wonderings, his instinc-
tive fear of Giroff as of a vague but ominous menace,
was gladdened, and vaguely encouraged. He'd stick by
Jacqueline. She was hiding something. She was fighting
Giroff. Throughout that evening she had fought Fanya
Vidal. And Jules Manton, from the moment of his ar-
rival. On the balcony she was about to "horrify his
soul."
Giroff sneered his every mention of her.
She knew, up there on the balcony—or feared—that
something was about to happen. She had broken away
from him to run to one end and to peer down over
the stone balustrade into the pines. She had seen some-
thing there that he hadn't seen. She called him to follow
her down to the terrace—before the collapsing body of
Manton was thrust toward the cypress!
But that wan smile, after the pathetic little droop
of the shoulders, after her firm, sharp clash with Giroff
—had reawakened all of his faith.


130
THE MURDERER OF THE BARONESS
Giroff made a complete circle of the room. Guillaume
had either produced great gilded candelabra from some
other part of the house, or they had been left in the
room. From the ceiling two huge crystal chandeliers
hung, each spreading a forest of incandescent bulbs.
But candles here, as in the other wing, indicated that
the return of the Ogilvies had been too recent for re-
connection of electricity.
Before each candelabra Giroff paused. The others in
the room watched him in their different manners. In
Cardoza's face was suppressed anxieties. Bath was alert
and keen. Fanya Vidal, her beautiful body in careless
repose, followed him without expression in her oval
face. Basil was mystified, but traced Giroff's interest in
the candles, in some fashion to the curious discrepancy
he had discovered among the three half burnt ends in
the reception room across the patio.
Suddenly Giroff wheeled and approached Fanya
Vidal. "Do you use a perfume, Mademoiselle?"
"One does, Inspector."
"Quite so. It is an emphasis of beauty that also
marks a taste."
Her glance questioned him. "Surely you are not in-
terested in my taste for scents, Inspector! Monsieur
Manton was not killed with fumes!"
"Nevertheless, I am deeply concerned, by your choice,
Mademoiselle. It is not a pungent odor that you prefer.
I do not sense it from this distance."
She laughed. It was the first time Basil had heard
her. Like her gown, it was metallic, but musical. "You
may come closer, Inspector. If I shudder, you will par-
don. Your moustachios are horrid."
He glided up to her. The carmine lips were a pome-
granate splash over the top of his head. He stepped
back with a curt, "My thanks!" and strode directly to
Jacqueline. She looked at him wonderingly.


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
131
"And you, Mademoiselle?" he demanded. "You, also,
will affect a perfume?"
Without a word she produced a tiny lace handker-
chief from the V of her gown, and held it toward him.
He did not take it, but bent his face close. His nostrils
quivered slightly. He withdrew abruptly, repeating his
"My thanks!"
Basil had the feeling that he underwent some sort of
disappointment.
He took his first direct notice, now, of Cardoza and
Wellington Bath. To the surprise of both he addressed
them each by name. Basil explained this knowledge to
himself by supposing Giroff and Dr. Marsac had quickly
sketched the dinner party when the medical examiner
went into the courtyard. But Giroff at once indicated
his possession of an astonishingly broad information, by
saying to Cardoza:
"You were content to register three days ago at the
Hotel de Paris, in Monte Carlo, from Madrid, as Felipe
Cardoza, but you also are the Count di Treyagua, of
Toledo. I am right!"
Cardoza was displeased, the mark of anxieties in his
face deepened. He assented readily, however. "I am the
Conde di Treyagua. I trust you will respect my wish
to remain unidentified as other than Felipe Cardoza. It
is my correct name, as you will doubtless know. The
other is not necessary."
"The Count di Treyagua will suffer no unnecessary
inconvenience," Giroff returned blandly. It was possi-
ble that he slightly stressed "unnecessary."
From Cardoza Giroff turned sharply upon Welling-
ton Bath. "It has been your custom, sir, to come from
your estate in England to the Riviera somewhat earlier
in the year than this."
"Since you seem to be informed of my customs,"
Bath snapped, "why discuss them? I come, as a rule,


132 THE MURDERER OF THE BARONESS
in March. There is no significance in my coming again
in July."
Giroff wheeled upon him. "Is there no significance,
sir, that you also arrive in Monte Carlo three days ago,
and that you, like Senor Felipe Cardoza, are sum-
moned, forty-eight hours before, via the long distance
telephone by Mademoiselle Fanya Vidal?"
Cardoza and Bath exchanged a quick glance, and
both looked to Fanya. She did not take her eyes from
Giroff.
"Compliment me, Inspector," she said, sweetly,
"upon my ability to summon my admirers. But have
you forgotten that you are on an official inquiry, and
not here to perform like a mountebank, with an array
of pilfered divinations?"
He seemed to be satisfied to have startled Wellington
Bath and Cardoza. If he had startled Fanya, she did
not show it, and apparently he did not care.
Basil's senses sharpened when he asked Jacqueline if
she would explain, if she had no wishes against it, the
purpose of the gathering at dinner. He had not ceased
to wonder why these people were congregated, and he
knew full well that Jacqueline's inclusion of him, the
stranger she rescued on the road, had its purpose.
Jacqueline promptly resented the inquiry. "One does
not explain dinner guests, Monsieur l'Inspecteur."
He did not press his question. He asked: "You will
not object, Mademoiselle, if I interrogate your guests
individually, when it occurs to me to do so, or that I
examine your household staff?"
"Those who knew Mr. Manton and dined with him
at my table, may decide as they please. As to a house-
hold staff, there is but one servant, Guillaume. He
came with us from England. My father and I had not
discussed engaging additional help. Perhaps we would
have done so, shortly. He is at your disposal."


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
133
GirofF appeared undecided for a moment or two.
He bowed to Jacqueline, who had risen and leaned
against the oval table as if she wished the interview
to end. He walked partly down the room toward Fanya
Vidal, but stopped to glare at Cardoza and then turn his
malignant gaze on Bath.
Bath said: "I propose to return to London on the
Express tomorrow morning. I should like to return to
my hotel, at Monte Carlo, as soon as possible. Miss
Ogilvie has promised to either drive me there, or send
her man."
Cardoza took Bath's cue. "There is nothing I can pro-
vide of service to you, Inspector. Like Mr. Bath, I was
not in the courtyard to observe anything of conse-
quence. I am returning to Spain tomorrow. I will go
with Mr. Bath to the Hotel de Paris."
Giroff turned to Fanya, in mute questioning. "I re-
main in the house," she said.
He swung upon Cardoza. "You will not return to
Spain tomorrow," he barked. To Bath he snapped: "You
will not return to London. You will remain. All of
you." He faced Jacqueline. "Mademoiselle can arrange,
is it not so, hospitality for her guests? I desire that they
remain in this house."
"If I find it inconvenient?"
"You may find it so, Mademoiselle. The Bureau de
Surete may not dictate your hospitalities. I shall require,
in that event, that the Conde di Treyagua accept sur-
veillance at his hotel, and that Monsieur Wellington
Bath submit also."
Both Bath and Cardoza protested indignantly. Giroff
heard them through. His eyebrows began to flatten
while they talked, his whiskers to twitch upward. When
they made their indignation clear, he was inflated. His
chest protruded.
Basil had begun, at these signs, to ask himself each


134
THE MURDERER OF THE BARONESS
time: Will he, or will he not? Yes, this time he did. He
tapped his chest.
"Sirs! I am Giroff. You will remain within my
reach."
Jacqueline interrupted by at once offering to have
rooms prepared for the two men. "The house is not in
order," she said. "I will make it as comfortable as
possible."
Bath was inclined to be belligerent. Giroff was firm.
"It is possible I shall desire the details of the Mademoi-
selle Fanya Vidal's conversation, as telephoned from
Monte Carlo to Madrid and to London," he said. "I do
not press the matter now, in respect for Mademoiselle
Ogilvie's opposition. I give you opportunity "and
he glanced at both Bath and Cardoza and then to Fanya,
"to give your confidences when you are so inclined."
He returned to Jacqueline and spoke of Mr. Ogilvie.
"It is required that I pay my respects," he said.
He agreed readily to spare the invalid that night.
Jacqueline explained that her father was paralytic, un-
able to move from his couch, and that he depended for
sleep on intermittent relaxations through the day and
night. He was strongest in the mornings.
"When you decide, tomorrow morning," he assented.
He went out, presumably to join Dr. Marsac. A mo-
ment later Guillaume entered and received Jacqueline's
directions, for the preparation of rooms. When he was
gone, Jacqueline turned to Basil.
"He said nothing of you. Perhaps you are favored,
and are permitted to depart."
Basil took both of her hands, which rested in his un-
resisting. "I fancy he would not dismiss me," he said,
"but if he should, may I not remain, nevertheless? I
shan't trouble you, and I would like to be near you."
"Why?"
He wished that sometimes her quick questions were


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
135
less abrupt. He thought a moment before he replied.
"I can't quite tell you, not quite explain," he said,
"but I feel that you have need of me. And I feel, too,
that perhaps you will—continue the confidence you
were about to give me, on the balcony."
"No," she said sharply, "I shall never do that. The
moment is gone—one of the moments that never re-
turn." Her tone softened. "But I shall need you, Mr.
Basil Towne. I shall be a little happier if you stay."


Chapter Fourteen
GARDENIAS
Jt^ OR more than an hour
Jacqueline was busied with Guillaume preparing rooms
for Bath, Cardoza and Basil. It seemed that Fanya
Vidal had been in the house, staying there, since the
arrival of the Ogilvies which, Basil had gathered, was
at about the time of the death of Baroness von Strom-
berg.
When she left the drawing room, taking one of the
candle clusters with her, to find Guillaume, who was
already moving about in the back wings of the house, a
strained silence fell over the room. Fanya Vidal, ignor-
ing the men, found a book on a small ebony table,
where it might have been left by a last reader years
before. It was covered with dust. Basil went to her, to
brush off the dust with his handkerchief.
She murmured her appreciation of his attention, and
dropped languidly into a tapestried chair half-turned
from the room. Basil watched her covertly. She opened
her volume and held it before her, her head resting
lazily on her chair's head rest. But she did not read.
Basil was certain of that. She stared at the pages with
unseeing eyes.
Cardoza, at whom Basil now glanced with awakened
136


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
137
curiosity, had resumed his interminable pacing. Bath
moved about nervously.
Basil went out, into the patio. A dim light shone
through the entrance to the front wing, in which Man-
ton's body had been disposed. At the door to this wing
Basil paused to listen. He heard Dr. Marsac and Giroff
talking, and moved hastily away. The medical exami-
ner's voice was pleasantly booming, and he did not wish
to eavesdrop. He strolled out into the cooling, breeze-
swept air of the desolate courtyard.
The night was heavy with Mediterranean scents,
magnolia blossoms sent their perfumes from the Lower
road. Some place near mimosa trees were blooming. The
odors, carried on the light breaths of wind, reminded
Basil of Giroff's curious interest in the perfumes of
Fanya Vidal and Jacqueline. He was of half a mind
that the ferocious little monster had been merely show-
ing off.
And the third candle. There, he wasn't showing off.
No mistake about that. Something in the circumstance
of a burnt candle that hadn't come from the candela-
bra, lying on the table in place of one that had, puzzled
the Inspector. He had frankly said so. There was some-
thing about, the fellow that impressed, even while he
made himself appear ridiculous.
Why had he been at so much pains, in the reception
room, to sneer at Basil's interest in Jacqueline? He,
Basil, had said nothing to indicate that he would stand
by Jacqueline in any emergency. Yet Giroff had singled
him out from all the others for that initial conversa-
tion, and had accused him direct of readiness to oppose
him in his efforts to identify the unknown murderer
who had strangled Jules Manton in the pines, and boldly
followed his body into full view of the watchers from
the terrace.
Quick job of strangling, that had been. Someone's


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
139
of life in the yard. A while before there had been an-
other life, but that had been quickly and evilly snuffed.
Only the gardenia remained alive, giving out its pun-
gent fragrance to vie with the magnolias and mimosa.
To quiet his racing thought, Basil counted the blos-
soms. Ten—fourteen petalled patches of white. His
mind returned to Giroff, and his sudden interest in the
perfumes a lady uses to emphasize her beauty.
Across the yard Dr. Marsac's prodigious figure was
silhouetted on the terrace. It was long after one o'clock.
Probably the medical examiner was going home.
"Where had Dr. Marsac been when he took Jacque-
line in, after the apparition of Giroff?" Time and again
the question had recurred to him. Each time he had
answered it promptly to his own satisfaction. "Up-
stairs, with Mr. Ogilvie." But the question would recur,
and Basil put it down to the spell of the night's increas-
ing mysteries with sinister inferences.
Basil got up and was seen by the doctor, whom he
joined on the terrace. The medical examiner appeared
to be greatly pleased.
"An occasion, Mr. Towne, is it not? To be remem-
bered, not so?"
"I have been wondering," Basil declared, "if I'm
not being dogged by bad luck? If not for myself, for
others. First the Baroness, then this. The Harlequin
pearls crop up in both, and I am on the ground."
"Tut, tut, my boy! The Baroness? That was evil
chance. Ordained in this world, not arranged by spirits
of ill luck. If she had been spared, and the pearls come
to you, what then? Perhaps you, perhaps their next
possessor, would have been the victim. They were
wanted by the lady who laughs and has her swan left
to tease us. She would have gotten them—as finally she
got them tonight."
Basil faced the medical examiner squarely. "Dr. Mar-


140
GARDENIAS
sac, in some fashion there was a stage set tonight. I
felt it the moment I entered this courtyard on my way
to the house, where, to my astonishment, I found you.
And there have been two sets of players, or more.
Giroff, Miss Ogilvie, and the others. You've been be-
hind the scenes, to some extent. I would not ask you
for any information you didn't volunteer, but I am
remembering that in the dining room you went quite
out of your way to startle me with the interesting an-
nouncement that we had dined with the man, or
woman, who shot the Baroness that day, and that the
Harlequins were close. Won't you go farther?"
"How much of what I might whisper in your ear
would you take to Mademoiselle Ogilvie?"
Basil answered promptly and firmly. "Every bit of it,
my dear sir, if I thought she ought to know it, or if
she should ask me any questions to which you might
have given me answers."
The medical examiner shook the fat creases of his
shoulders with suppressed laughter. His face beamed.
"Of course! Of a certainty! That would be the pro-
priety. But there is our friend Giroff! He is at work.
He has begun. Perhaps he, ungallant as he is, would
not have us confide in the Mademoiselle. Eh?"
"Of what can he suspect Miss Ogilvie? Was there
anything between her and Manton? Giroff made the
direct charge, in there, that Miss Vidal and Manton
were—more than friends. And this thing tonight was
the work of a strangler. We saw him, Miss Ogilvie and
I, together. Why should she not be confided in? Man-
ton was a guest in her house."
"You forget, my friend, that there is The Swan.
One who, if the underworld and the police are right,
commands the deeds the Duck's Bill performs."
"My God, Marsac! You are not inferring the possi-
bility!"


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
141
"Tut, tut, my boy! She is the daughter, the charm-
ing daughter, of Ambrose Ogilvie, a rich man, I un-
derstand, and a badly crippled one. From what she has
told me, her father must be a great burden, which she
bears with a beautiful fortitude. Did I not, when I
departed as her friend, and before I became the agent
of police as medical examiner—did I not lift her fingers
to my lips?"
Basil was thoughtful for a moment. He asked, sud-
denly: "Have you met Mr. Ogilvie?"
"Tomorrow, it is promised, I meet him for the first
time. A duty call, merely in routine."
Then Dr. Marsac had not been with Ambrose Ogilvie
while he and Jacqueline passed through the patio!
"Where, in that darkened house of unoccupied wings,
could he have been, and why?
Aloud, Basil said, gloomily. "You give me more and
more of riddle, Doctor."
The medical examiner chuckled merrily. He laid the
fat cushioned back of a chubby hand on Basil's chest,
and simulated a hoarse whisper.
"Riddles are bad for the digestion, my American
friend. They disturb the gastric juices. If you persist
in countenancing them, they arouse acidity. In my
private practice I have especially grave demeanor for a
patient with riddles. I employ Greek terms and charge
a stiff fee, to give him something else to think about."
"I am sorry, Doctor. I can't appreciate a joke. You,
in association with the police, may be accustomed to
murders, even one on top of another. I'm not—nor
with dining with a murderer, as Giroff declares Man-
ton to have been." Dr. Marsac rubbed his hands. "You
Americans! You are heavy-minded. Always joke, my
boy, when you see a smash coming up. So Giroff laid
down that card, eh? Then I was right."
"It is beyond me. You knew Manton—I suppose you


142
GARDENIAS
had him in mind—was a slayer. Of the Baroness, Giroff
knew. You permitted him to visit this house, without
molestation. You spoke also of the pearls. Giroff de-
clares he had them. Brought them here with him. Now,
Manton himself is dead."
Dr. Marsac gently urged Basil from the terrace. The
medical examiner was leaving, he said, to convey a re-
port from Giroff, and his own, to the Bureau de Surete
at Nice, via the nearest police telephone. Basil strolled
across the yard with him, toward his car.
"Still troubling with your riddles?" the Doctor said,
with mock reproach. "Me, I do not trouble. Giroff has
a method. Manton, he knew three, four days ago, he
boasts, as the visitor at the house of the Baroness who
departed upon your arrival that day. But he had a
riddle of his own. Our friend Giroff has a cast-iron
stomach. It thrives on riddles. He actually chortles over
them. Can you not imagine The Great Giroff chort-
ling?"
"I cannot," Basil declared.
"I might read you another medical lecture, upon the
stimulating virtues of an active imagination, but I
spare you. Giroff hugged his riddle and watched Man-
ton. And I, upon whom Giroff called for a first-hand
account of the affair of the Baroness—he thinks La-
crosse is a fool, you know—watched Giroff. I reached
a conclusion. I am pleased with myself. My conclusion
was right."
A thought that occurred to Basil earlier came back
to his mind. "The crystal swan was found with both
the Baroness and Manton. To your mind, that links
The Swan with both deaths. Yet Manton, Giroff and
you assert, carried the Harlequins tonight, and tonight
Giroff admits no doubt that the strangler was The
Duck's Bill. Could Manton have served The Swan at
the home of the Baroness, and been removed by her,


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
143
or in spite of her, tonight? Can such a drama be pos-
sible?"
On their way to Dr. Marsac's car they had reached
the isolated stone bench on which Basil had sat, a mo-
ment before, with his moody reflections. Dr. Marsac,
who had been chuckling silently while he was talking,
stopped short, and looked around.
His glance fell on the gardenia bush, its blossoms,
touched with dew, scintillant in the moonlight. He
went over, and with a great heave of his gross body,
filled his lungs with the heavy fragrance. When he
turned back a moon shaft caught and played with the
twinkles in his eyes.
"The scents of a starlit night," he said, hands rub-
bing, "are quite as marvellous gems, in their way, as
pearls. But you were saying ?Ah, yes! You were
wondering about the two crystal swans, but different
murderers? There, my friend, you hit upon Giroff's
riddle. He couldn't understand the first one. But his
stomach is saved. Manton gets himself strangled—a
skillful strangler, that one!—and provides Giroff with
a second swan which explains the first!"
He got into his car and raced his motor. Before he
steered for the crumbling gates and the Lower road
beyond, he beckoned to Basil.
"When you go in you'll probably find Giroff under
your feet, smelling. Looking for perfumes. Tell him
the gardenias are in bloom."


Chapter Fifteen
IN THE PATIO
A
three o'clock in the
morning Basil, fully dressed, smoked a cigarette on a
narrow iron grille outside his windows, overlooking the
patio below. He had had no thought of sleep.
A pregnant, unnatural quiet lay over the house and
the enclosed court. From the Upper road came now
and then the far blast of a horn, for it was the time
motorists were returning from Monte Carlo to Men-
tone, Nice, Bordighera and other towns up the coast.
From the hills behind the Ogilvie grounds the cascade
of a nightingale occasionally filtered down.
In the patio each slight noise was magnified a score
of times by the four stone walls of the four wings
that enclosed it. The stir of a palm frond became the
rustle of a wind-blown tree.
The original designer of the rambling house had
planned a patio which was an intimate world apart
from the grounds outside. It formed a square, flanked
on each side by the grim facade of a two-storied wing,
the front wing divided by the narrow passage from
the terrace. The room prepared for Basil was in the
rear wing, on the second floor. He did not know where
Cardoza, Wellington Bath, and Fanya Vidal had been
144


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
145
put up. He understood that Fanya had been staying
at the house since the arrival of the Ogilvies.
He wondered about her. Curious, that dramatic shot
of Giroff—and her drawling answer, that Jules Man-
ton had killed the Baroness. What was stored about
her, about the rest of these people, back in the head
of the fantastic little satan? Was Giroff merely "let-
ting off steam" when he charged that The Lady of
Death was in this house? And her henchman, the
Duck's Bill? Probably. But he had clashed straight off
with Fanya Vidal. She had challenged him in return.
She'd called him a cad and he hadn't liked that.
Mistress of Jules Manton! He, murderer. She
Jacqueline's guest that night!
Too much of a riddle. Dr. Marsac was right. Riddles
are bad for the health—mental health, at any rate.
Dr. Marsac! "Tell GirofF the gardenias are in bloom!"
Another man might have been counted an unadulter-
ated ass. A body even now in the first stages of rigor
mortis. The print of a strangler on its neck. The slayer
near Giroff had proclaimed it. Everyone knit in
the tangle of a hidden drama, and he would send word
to Giroff that gardenias blossom! An ass—any other,
with his perpetual twinkle and rubbing of chubby
hands, but Dr. Marsac wasn't an ass!
"Deep," Basil reflected. "Damned deep! And in the
depths of him—what?"
The medical examiner had gone, he had explained, to
make the routine reports of the night's occurrence. He
would initiate whatever the processes of dealing with
a murdered body. Basil wondered what these would
be. Manton still was in a room of the front wing. If
anyone kept vigil, it would be Giroff. He had seemed
to disappear while Basil sat in the courtyard or talked
with Dr. Marsac.
Would there be an inquest? And autopsy? Relatives


146
IN THE PATIO
of Manton to notify—and what had brought Manton
here? Jacqueline had resented the probings of Giroff.
Why?
No, he'd not be able to sleep that night! He lit
another cigarette from the stub of another and tossed
the stub into the patio. Its impact with the flaggings
below echoed up like the thud of a small package.
Only two windows opening into the patio showed a
sign of light behind them. These were Ogilvie's, in the
wing on his left. Jacqueline had told him that her
father's lights were never extinguished at night, since
he slept so fitfully. Jacqueline's rooms were also in
that wing. When she left him at his door she disap-
peared down a corridor that turned off to the right—
into this wing on his left. He supposed she wished to
sleep near her father.
Jacqueline! From every other store of his memories
of the evening, from every troublesome incident, his
mind inevitably returned to her.
He thought he heard a sound below. The padded
footfall of a cat, perhaps, because even a sound so
slight would be magnified. He peered sharply into the
dense shadows behind the potted palms which were just
below him. Nothing. Or, if anything, that same noise
he and Jacqueline had heard when they came in from
the yard; he, from Manton's side. A cat, she had said
then. Probably so.
He might as well pass the time thinking of Jacque-
line, not the riddle of her, but the lure of her.
When he came in, after seeing Dr. Marsac through
the gates, she had been leaning against the stones of
the wall, misty and unreal, waiting. She had stirred once
and came down the steps of the entrance into the
drawing room wing to meet him.
"I am very tired," she had said, simply, "but I wanted
to say good night."


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
147
Words crowded to his tongue, and jumbled there.
He wanted to ask her many things, but could only
say: "When you are ready, Miss Ogilvie, you will take
me into your confidence. You will tell me what you
began to tell me on the balcony. I am sure it would
have had its relation to what has happened tonight.
"When that time comes, when you are ready, you will
find me a mighty good partner to have."
"Even a blind promise sometimes is good to hear,
Mr. Towne."
That had hurt him. He had taken her hands, both
of them. She did not resist. If she had been a Worcester
girl, he would have taken her into his arms. But he
couldn't fancy her as a Worcester girl, who had shot
her own butler off the road and then calmly ignored
his villainy and protected him. He'd had no affairs
with home town girls that started off quite so inter-
estingly as that.
So he was content with her hands and had choked a
little.
And she had smiled, one of her rare smiles, that
seemed to come to him from some place far off.
"It is not a blind promise," he declared stoutly.
"You are head over heels in the midst of something.
If I were an European, a Continental with long ex-
perience, perhaps I could say better what I mean, but
my only way is to tell you that I know you have put
your back to a wall and are making a fight. What it
is about, I don't know. I don't even dare think. But
I'd like to stand with you. And I know it—would be,
all right!"
"Are you sure? That it would be—quite all right?"
"I'd swear it. And if I'm wrong, I'd swear it any-
how."
"I'll take back my doubts," she had said then. "They
weren't blind promises. And I shall be a little happier


148
IN THE PATIO
thinking, tonight, that you'd be a faithful friend, as
long as you could be."
"You mustn't make that limitation. We've a way,
you know, we Americans, of carrying on clear
through."
She had pressed his hands, then, and led him to the
door of the room she and Guillaume had made ready
for him.
"It will not be very comfortable," she said, "for I
doubt if a soul has been inside of it for five years, until
tonight. We got as much dust out of the way, into
corners, as we could, and the linen is fresh."
She bade him good night softly and turned down the
corridor, her flickering candle held in front of her.
She turned around and came back.
"I am glad you accepted my invitation to dine."
Her voice was toneless again, held in its queer restraints.
"But I want you to know, should anything happen
that will be—my limitation!—that it wouldn't have
been so if a plan I had could have worked out."
This time she disappeared in the wing to his left,
in which her father lay with his sufferings.
His reflections upon Jacqueline slipped away at the
sudden glow of a half window of light in the wing on
his right, halfway down the patio. It would be in a
room, he decided, that would be almost directly behind
the barren room in the front through which he and
Jacqueline had passed to the balcony—the room in
which she had been born and in which her mother had
died.
Whoever slept there apparently had wakened and
lit a bedside candle. The bed was not in Basil's line
of vision, which cut across the corner of the patio.
His idle thought was that someone else of the dinner
company was sleepless. He shifted his glance quickly
when a form took shape close to the window. Fanya


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
149
Vidal, in pajamas of some light texture, and with a
flaming yellow robe thrown carelessly around her.
The window was, like all others in the house that
he had noticed, undraped and uncurtained. Its shade
had been half raised. He could not mistake Fanya. He
could not see her head or shoulders, but he recognized
the curious, panther-like sway of the figure, yellow
draped, that was silhouetted within the window for a
second, and then blotted out by the hastily drawn
shade.
"Mistress of many men," she had said downstairs to
Giroff. "Only one was a gentleman!" A tragic history
there. Her diamond chain had snapped when Dr. Mar-
sac, early during the dinner, had predicted disaster
for the one who had taken the Harlequin pearls from
the Baroness. Manton had, according to Giroff—and
disaster had settled upon him gruesomely. But Jacque-
line's face had gone hard, on the edge of Dr. Marsac's
sententious prophecy, too!
Unconsciously Basil's glance returned to the lighted
window. He started. Unknown to Fanya the shade had
slipped up when she released it. It had caught a foot or
so above the window ledge. A sweep across the room
was visible. And in the room was a second figure.
Felipe Cardoza!
Basil, in that startled glance, could see only a part
of him, but the Spaniard was easily recognizable. He
had worn full evening dress. Bath had worn a dinner
jacket. The tails of Cardoza's formal coat were plainly
discernible.
The yellow robe of Fanya sweeping close to the
black-coated figure, too close for else than an embrace
or—could it be an agitated appeal?—sharpened Basil's
wits. He could not be guilty of gazing longer beneath
a neglected window shade. He closed his eyes to think.
"Cardoza—the Count of Treyagua,—come surrepti-


150
IN THE PATIO
tiously to Fanya Vidal! To the secret, forbidden pre-
cincts of her sleeping room. No lovers' tryst on a night
like this, with ominous foreboding carried on every
breath of wind coming in from the Mediterranean!"
His brain clung to a fancy that in that fleeting glance
of recognition he had seen Fanya's arms sweep up in
their yellow folds, as if to go around her visitor's neck,
but Cardoza had spread his arms from his sides, in a
gesture of helplessness, or hopelessness. Only a fancy,
for he had turned quickly away, but the fancy was
vivid. To focus his attention and hold it elsewhere, he
began to count the stars in the heavens. He soon tired.
Too many of them took form as faces of Jacqueline.
He glanced at the window again. The candle within
still burned. The shade still revealed a layer of the room.
The yellow robe was out of view, in some obstructed
depth of the room, but Cardoza was visible, pacing
up and down in quick, jerky steps. His arms was ges-
ticulating. He was talking while he walked.
No, not a lovers' illicit tryst!
Basil would have given up and gone into his room.
He was in no mood to count stars, and in that dark and
haunted patio the fascination of a lighted window was
troublesome to resist. He put out his cigarette after a
final puff. He would have got to his feet, but a creepi-
ness suddenly tingled in his spine.
The patio below was alive!
It was a vague thing, that feeling, but gradually it
took possession of him. The patio was coming to life.
For an hour it had been so still, so eerie in its exag-
geration of the least sound, the least rustle of a plant
or leaf, that any life peopling it would give the whole
enclosure life.
And someone was down there. For one fleeting in-
stant Basil rallied himself. What if there was someone
in the patio? Others, like himself, might not be able


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
151
to sleep. And there were five others under the roofs,
not counting Giroff who was bound to be some place
about, and not counting Jules Manton who would never
again be sleepless.
This stubborn resolution to be heedless, passed. Who-
ever was in the patio, if indeed there was anyone, was
hiding. Probably Giroff—but why then, thought Basil,
were his nerves on edge, his whole body tense? For
whatever was holding him was a premonition mighty
close to the occult—and in the presence of Giroff, who
most likely was snooping anywhere, there would be
nothing of the occult.
A slow, dragging sound. Scraps of stone, no louder
than the stir of a leaf, perhaps—but the patio was a
well that sent its sounds upward a hundred fold.
Instinctively Basil looked down the court, toward
the front wing. There were no glints of the moon
there, only a faint, misty grey of light. A lemon tree,
in a pot, cast a shadow against the wall. The tree itself
was vague.
Suddenly he gripped the rail of his window grille
and brought himself to his feet, staring.
A patch of black was yawning in the stone pavement
directly in front of the doors to the drawing room and
the stairs that led up to the second story of the wing
on the right! A second before the silver of the moon
had covered this-space of the patio's walk. The grey
light had been unbroken.
Now that patch of black, square, the size and shape
of a section of pavement flagging!
He shook his head. He was seeing things! A trick of
the moon, of course!
But it was no trick of the moon when the life he
had felt was abroad in the patio began to materialize
out of the patch of black. Someone was emerging from
underground!


152 IN THE PATIO
Whoever it was, he came up quickly. With surpris-
ing agility for his bulk. Even at that distance, the
length of the patio, through the distorting mistiness
of the moon's blanket, Basil recognized the huge, but-
ter-ball shape of Dr. Mar sac!


Chapter Sixteen
THE FIEND UNDERGROUND
JSaSIL watched alertly.
The candle in Vanya Vidal's room had been extin-
guished. Only the dull glow through the crevices of
Mr. Ogilvie's shutters was visible.
Dr. Marsac was clearly outlined, though his wide
frame was distorted by the unsteady moonlight film.
He moved aside from the opening in the pavement and
stood motionless, as if uncertain of his next move. Or
was he attuning his senses to the weird hush?
Basil's first impulse was to descend. He remembered
Giroff, in the reception room, coolly killing time while
the bookcase, shielding a would-be assassin, crept so
stealthily into the room. He decided to take a leaf from
the nervy little inspector.
Dr. Marsac had gone, presumably, to make his reports
to the police, to set in motion the Bureau routine. But
he was here, creeping out from underground, from
under a house with which, he had declared at Mentone,
he was totally unfamiliar!
What could it all mean?
A horrible thought leapt into Basil's mind. Could
Dr. Marsac know more than he pretended of the House
of Murder? Of the crystal swans? Of The Man With
iS3


154
THE FIEND UNDERGROUND
The Duck's Bill whose handiwork lay stark in the dark
room of the front wing?
Thoughts like that wouldn't do at all. Basil settled
back to watch with mere curiosity. Just what could
the jovial custodian of death be up to?
At that distance, in the thin light, he could not see
his face or trace his gaze. He fancied the medical ex-
aminer was keenly scrutinizing the facade of the wing
on the left. In that wing would be Jacqueline; her win-
dows, if they looked to the patio, dark. Ogilvie's room,
indicated by his light. Somewhere, too, would be Guil-
laume, probably in quarters behind the kitchens.
Cardoza and Wellington Bath, he understood, had
been quartered in the same wing as held Fanya Vidal,
on his right.
Giroff, Basil was sure, would be around some place.
He would not be wholly ignoring that earlier attempt
upon his life and its startling testimony that some-
where about the house was one who would kill him to
get him out of the way. Out of the way of what?
Watching Dr. Marsac, Basil fell to thinking about
Giroff and what he knew. But the medical examiner
came suddenly to a decision. To go back whence he
had come! He wheeled and began swiftly to descend
into the opening in the pavement. How agile the fat
bulging billows of flesh were. He disappeared in little
jerks, as if his feet beneath him sought carefully for
each foothold.
Basil slipped silently from his grille, through his
window, and down a stairway that led from his cor-
ridor to the patio below. He had been in an opaque
shadow. He was certain the medical examiner had not
discovered his sleepless vigil.
He hugged the walls of the wing on his right, adopt-
ing stealth intuitively rather than for any reason he
could figure out.


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
155
He had gone along the wall perhaps a dozen feet
when he halted and pressed himself against the stone.
Like the shadow that had darted off the terrace to
plunge into the pines, a form shot out from the em-
brasure of the oak doors, that opened into the recep-
tion room. The doors set back in the wall, forming
a narrow foyer. In this space, apparently, Giroff had
been hidden.
Dr. Marsac had descended, through the pavement,
cautiously, despite his amazing celerity. Giroff took no
precautions at all. He fairly leapt into the pit, to be
swallowed completely in a flash.
Now, Basil's nerves were taut. For a moment he
remained frozen to the wall behind him. Whatever the
tableau to be played out underground, he did not be-
long to it. Like Cardoza, or Wellington Bath, he was a
guest in the house, Jacqueline's guest. The whole affair
of the murder of Jules Manton, of the Harlequin pearls,
was Giroff's.
Giroff had antagonized him. Because of his regard
for Jacqueline. The pompous little fool was suffering
from hallucinations—looking for Swans and Duck's
Bills and reasons for murder—in the environment of
Jacqueline Ogilvie.
But there was that villainous butler, whose villainy
Jacqueline knew and concealed.
His tumbling thoughts ran on. Well, anyhow, it re-
mained Giroff's job—these secret passages and medical
examiners who stole in and out of them. He watched
the black square in the wavering grey of the patio
walk. No sounds came up. He remembered, with some-
thing of a shock, that neither Dr. Marsac nor Giroff
had made a noise. His own cigarette echoed with a plash
when it fell from his grille to the flagging below, but
Giroff had leapt across the patio with no sound of a
footfall.


156 THE FIEND UNDERGROUND
He moved along a little, and looked around him. No
one was stirring about the silent, grimly forbidding old
house. He began to wonder how he would explain his
presence to Giroff when the runt should reappear, prob-
ably tapping his inflated chest.
He considered the advisability of going back quietly
to his grille.
The faint edge of a light shone suddenly in the pave-
ment's square of open black. A dim, hazy radiance, as
if a flashlight glow had been released somewhere far
underground. Almost immediately there was a rumble
of noise, an echo that had thinned to a low thunder
roll.
The light disappeared. Now a volley of muffled
rumbles—shots! So smothered that their bark was lost,
but unquestionably someone had shot out a flashlight,
and was keeping it up.
Scarcely knowing what he did or why, Basil sped
along the wall, and cut across to the spot where the
two men had disappeared. He saw at a glance that an
entire flagging, a full yard square, had been lowered,
dropped like a trap door.
Without an instant's hesitation he dropped as Giroff
had dropped, into the yawning hole.
He sprawled in soft dirt, a hard drop of at least six
feet. His head took a nasty knock against jagged
stones. The blow dazed him momentarily. When he
scrambled to his feet the darkness around him was
impenetrable. His groping hands discovered three walls
of rough stones. Low in the fourth wall of the pit was
an opening. He could not see his hands in front of him
but he was vaguely conscious that this opening led
into a passage, but deeper still. He slid into it, feet first,
cautiously now, for he wasn't sure how far down
would be the level of the tunnelled floor. He dropped
safely, and discovered that he could stand, by lower-


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
157
ing his head and shoulders. It was a tunnel deep enough
for a man to run in, if its roof remained at that
height.
It was far along this tunnel that the shots had been
fired. Basil concluded that it must be a fairly straight
course, else the flicker of a flashlight would not have
shone at the mouth of the pavement pit. The firing
had ceased, but there were other sounds, faint and
indistinct. While he strained his ears Basil could hear
the thumping of his own heart.
For an instant he was torn by indecisions. If Giroff
was in trouble, he should be lunging on to his assist-
ance, of course. After all, Giroff was—official! But if he
was taking care of himself, how would he welcome
interference?
And in any event, if he investigate farther, what
would he come upon?
An unholy fear stole over him. A fear he couldn't
explain.. Not because of Dr. Marsac. Not because of
Giroff. But because Who, in that house, had the
Harlequin pearls? Giroff and Marsac both had de-
clared they were within reach! ~
He shook off this unformed fear and listened. The
sounds were more distinct. A silent struggle was go-
ing on. The stealth of wary bodies. A throaty grunt—
that would be Giroff!
Basil flung his arms ahead of him and plunged for-
ward. His head hit against a ceiling of boards. Along
the sides of the tunnel his hands felt, alternately, soft
earth and upright boards, a foot or so apart, which
prevented cave-ins. Under his feet the earth was un-
covered and distinctly damp. He moved heavily, drag-
ging-
The passage seemed to lead along a straight line. If
it swerved, its bend was imperceptible. Basil's eyes were
unable to pierce a foot ahead, but his senses took on


158
THE FIEND UNDERGROUND
added alertness. His nostrils were aware of the acid
fumes of powder.
The sounds of the silent scuffling came closer. A sharp
exclamation choked off.
Basil crouched low, his palms flattened out at arm's
length and plunged doggedly on. An oath—Giroff!
Then a cry:
"Someone's in the passage! Hurry—straight along.
He's got me—Help!"
Giroff calling for help!
He could not be more than a dozen yards away.
His cry might have been loud, but by some trick of
the underground acoustics it came to him muffled, rum-
bling like the echoes of the volley of shots.
Tearing his feet out of the moist earth underfoot
Basil stumbled ahead wildly. He called:
"It is I—Towne. Coming!"
"Take care. Don't let him get you. Watch your
neck."
Giroff's warnings were uttered with difficulty. He
was in some terrific stress. He appeared to be nearly
breathless, as if he struggled in a fierce grip.
Basil was close. Giroff's breathing, and the short,
hissing breath of another, was distinct. Suddenly, from
out of the heart of the darkness two fiendish eyes,
with great yellow eyeballs, stared at him. Rays of light
seemed to emanate from the uncanny bulbs, they seemed
to send out two parallel beams, like unreal search-
lights.
"Look out!" Giroff shouted. "He's at you!"
A sense of terrible danger possessed Basil. Every
muscle stiffened. His teeth ground.
Of what was behind the two stabbing eyes he could
see nothing. No face, nor were his wits conscious of
a face. Only the two evil eyes spitting fire and drawing
near. Giroff was breathing in fierce gusts. A half groan


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
159
seemed to come from still some other spot in the black
well ahead.
Basil crouched, his back braced against the wall of
the tunnel, just as the two eyes, on the edge of a
sharp hissing sound, stabbed at him. Some flash of in-
stinct, born of Giroff's warning, "Watch your neck!"
caused him to throw both arms upward and hug them
tight to his head.
A black bulk took formless shape before him, bore
down so close that he could see the grey iris surround-
ing the naming yellow eyeballs. Then fingers, cold,
but as hard as steel, gripped for his throat.
A thumb pressed at his neck, but the fingers fumbled
over his protecting arms. The fiend to whom the eyes
belonged—and Basil had the fearful feeling that it
wasn't a human but an animal!—poured a gust of hot,
nauseous breath into his face, and issued a sound that
was half grunt of surprise, half oath.
Basil lunged with a knee and struck flesh, firm hard
flesh with its muscles tensed. A thrust of his arms
threw off the gripping fingers. But the shapeless black
bulk was not retreating. The eyes were still blazing
fire, and pressing in again. The blow with his knee
and the wild lunge of his fists had met flesh, but had
recoiled, ineffective.
Just then Giroff's voice ripped out a triumphant
oath, and there was a crunching impact as his body
struck that of the unseen thing with the flaming eyes
and gripping fingers. A frantic, terrific struggle ensued,
Basil fighting wildly for a hold upon something—and
was suddenly sobered and thrown back by a grunt from
Giroff.
"Let go. You've got me!"
The eyes had gone out. That was the sensation Basil
had. They had been extinguished. He knew dazedly that
the shape was retreating—that it was gone, without a


160
THE FIEND UNDERGROUND
sound. Giroff, his eyes more accustomed to that dense
blackness than Basil's, was completely obliterated for
a moment, as if he had plunged after the other. Then
through his own panting, Basil heard him.
"He's gone. Have you a light? Search yourself for a
light, quickly."
Basil brought his cigarette lighter into play. Its flame
made a well of quavering light. The first thing he was
conscious of was Giroff's white face and his charcoal
eyes, gleaming black fires instead of the flaming yel-
low beams of the other. They were seeking his features
and staring into them.
"Good, Mr. Towne! That time Giroff came near to
losing."
The pale glare of the lighter disclosed a welt begin-
ning to show blue in a thin line around Giroff's neck,
above his crumpled collar. Staring, he felt of his own
throat, where the unknown's thumb would have shut
off his breath if the grasping fingers had not been
checkmated by his upflung arms.
Giroff nodded firmly.
"He's a master at that! One more twist and I would
have been done for."
He held up for Basil to see a short loop of cord.
It appeared to be attached at either end to bits of wood
clasped in the inspector's hand.
Giroff returned, sententiously: "The Man With The
Duck's Bill is restless."
The flare of the mechanical lighter went out, extin-
guished by the gust of Giroff's breath. Basil snapped it
impatiently. Giroff reached for it.
"Here! Let me have it. We must get out of here."
The little inspector could move with greater ease
than Basil, a full foot taller. With the treacherous tiny
flame held before him he slid along the tunnel. He
kicked at an object underfoot and Basil recovered it.


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
161
It was the detective's flashlight. Its lense and bulb
were hopelessly shattered.
"He can shoot straight," GirofF commented glumly.
Basil remembered with a shock to his whole system
his own reflection in the Lower road earlier in the
night. Only, that time, it was "'She' can shoot
straight."
A few feet farther on a glint on the ground attracted
Giroff. He swooped down so suddenly that his flame ex-
pired again. He swore roundly while sparking the flint.
The restored glow revealed an automatic pistol.
"No finger prints there!" Giroff grumbled while he
dropped it into his pocket.
He pressed on at a run. Basil shouted:
"Dr. Marsac! He came down here. Where is he?"
Giroff did not stop. "I've got to find out," he mut-
tered over his shoulder.


Chapter Seventeen
"WHERE DID HE GO?"
T
JL HEY had gone but a few
yards when the tunnel turned at a sharp angle to the
left. Giroff had no sooner made this turn when he
halted with a smothered exclamation. He dropped to a
knee and held his light to the ground.
The earth underfoot was damper here. Beads of mois-
ture were discernible. The tunnel floor descended deeper
into the earth on a stiff incline. Basil prevented himself
with difficulty from sliding down onto the bent figure
in front of him.
He peered down over Giroff's shoulder. There was
unmistakable evidence of a heavy body recently having
been dragged along the ground. Footprints were plenti-
ful, but they had retained no shape or outline in that
plastic, muddy earth.
Giroff crept forward as fast as he dared venture
against a draft with his precarious flare of light. It
was a heavy weight, or an enormous body that had been
drawn along the ground.
Giroff muttered: "So! There were two of them!"
"Does it mean that they got Marsac?" Basil whis-
pered hoarsely.
The little inspector did not reply but rushed on,
creeping, like a wary cat.
162


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
Apparently he knew his ground. Instinctively, Basil
knew he had been through that tunnel before. Three
feet ahead of them the lighter's radiance became
a nebulous glow. Beyond that the dense, impene-
trable black was intensified. But Giroff grunted a
warning:
"Steady now! We're coming to the end. There's a
two foot step down."
Scarcely had he finished speaking when he leapt to
his feet with a muttered curse. His free hand beat out
in front of him slapping against stone. Exerting all his
will to accustom his eyes to the unsteady light, Basil
made out that the passage was blocked by a stone
slab.
"Closed!" Giroff snarled. "We're trapped!"
"We'd better get out the other way. The Patio,"
Basil exclaimed.
For answer Giroff drew his own pistol and handed
both it and the lighter to him. "Hold the light in front
of you to one side," he commanded. "Back yourself
against the other wall. Train your ears on the passage
behind. If you think you hear a sound, don't wait to
make sure—shoot, straight ahead. He's behind us,
watching."
"Who—for God's sake, who?" Basil cried.
Giroff ignored the impulsive question. His hands,
both free now, flew over the stone slab that blocked the
passage. A grunt gave sign that he had found what he
wanted. A scrape of iron bolts against stone was fol-
lowed by a faint rush of free air that once more extin-
guished the independable flame.
"Quick!" Giroff commanded, now from a farther
distance, his voice hollowed by new acoustics.
His light restored, Basil stepped down into what he
took for a roomy underground chamber, with a stone
flooring. Someone else besides the inspector was in the


164
"WHERE DID HE GO?"
chamber. Someone who was breathing heavily, gasping.
Basil held his lighter high.
He made out Giroff, a few feet away. Another figure
staggered close to him. An instant later Basil recognized
the bulk of Dr. Marsac. When he made out the details
of his face he saw that the medical examiner was
but partially recovered from a daze. His chubby hands
were pressed to his head. Sight of the indistinct form
of Basil apparently brought him sharply to his senses.
"Who's that? Are you all right?"
Giroff grunted an answer that served for a double
reply. "Towne."
Again Giroff displayed a familiarity with his sur-
roundings. He groped his way to an iron ladder fixed
against a stone wall. He called back. "Here! Can you
make it, Doctor?"
"I'm all right now. Head swimming but the air will
fix it."
A moment later the three men stood in the open
air, with the greyish light of coming dawn about them.
They had emerged onto a circular stone flooring that
surrounded an abandoned well, in the midst of the
thicket of pines. Like every other part of the house
and grounds, what had once been a beautifully de-
signed setting for a carved well, was now little more
than debris, marble columns which had circled the
clearing, broken and fallen into pine underbrush.
The iron ladder from the empty well had led them
up through an opening made by one of the floor slabs,
which, like the section of the patio pavement, had
dropped downward like a trap.
Dr. Marsac, marvellously restored, Basil thought, met
Basil's scrutiny with a quizzical expression.
"Delightful feeling, my boy," he said, his joviality a
bit uncertain, but fast returning, "to have escaped
one's own post-mortem."
■


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
165
Basil noticed for the first time the condition of the
medical examiner's clothing. Apparently he had been
dragged on his rotund stomach. His clothes were torn
and stained with the damp earth that was already dry-
ing.
"I'm still wondering what has happened," Basil said.
And in his mind there was another wonder that he
fought, sturdily. Much skin had been scraped from
the medical examiner's hands, but he took one down
from holding his head to rub the other, over his
stomach.
"What happens when you are hit on the head with
sufficient strength and skill, is nothing, my friend. Pre-
cisely. You experience a total interruption without
warning. That is all. I am not sad about it."
Giroff had been creeping on his knees around all
sides of the opening in the stone flooring. If he sought
an evidence of footprints, the grey light of the coming
morning was not clear enough to sort out the confusion
of their own prints. He got to his feet suddenly and
chose a circuitous path through the pines which, appar-
ently, he had used before. Dr. Marsac, still somewhat
uncertain on his feet, and Basil, followed, to come out
at the edge of the courtyard terrace at the spot where
Giroff, earlier in the evening, while Manton's body was
lurching toward the cypress farther down the yard,
had disappeared into the thicket.
It came to Basil in a flash, when they stepped onto
the terrace, that Giroff, hiding there, that earlier time,
had sprung into the pines to cut off the murderer's
retreat to that very underground passage from the
clearing at the well!
Had he been too late? Had the murderer reached his
retreat ahead of him? If that had been so, then The Man
With The Duck's Bill, if it had indeed been he who
had left the crystal swan behind, must have come up


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
167
find something more to do, even in the hour that re-
mained before the dawn began to herald the sun, but if
this were true it was evident he was to be taken into
Giroff's confidence.
Dr. Marsac, after a word with the inspector Basil
did not overhear, went to his car, breezily denying
Basil's offer to drive him to Nice if he still felt too
shaky.
"I owe you my life, Mr. Towne. It is the first debt
of the kind Giroff has ever incurred."
"I am glad to have been watching, and to have had
the inspiration to get down into that hole. He tried to
strangle you? Like Manton?"
Giroff pulled from some place about him the loop
of rope with its curious wood handles. "It was around
my neck. You will examine it tomorrow—or, that is to
say, later today. It is the first time the Duck's Bill has
left his implement behind. I shall regard it with in-
terest."


Chapter Eighteen
GUILLAUME
T
I HE Riviera's warm, mid-
morning sun was pouring into his windows when Basil
awoke. From the patio came the sound of birds come
down from the woods of the hills behind the house,
attracted by the human life that might mean bits of
food.
For a few moments Basil lay dreamily, struggling to
adjust himself to his strange surroundings, a spacious,
almost barren room, so little like his rather cramped
bedroom in his suite at Mentone. His lazy mind, dulled
by the Mediterranean fragrance, grappled with what
seemed to be the flights of a curious dream
A tap on his door brought him up quickly. The
bandits on the road, the murder of Jules Manton, with
whom he had crossed words but a few moments before,
Jacqueline—the balcony, the tableau underground, the
Duck's Bill—a glance from his window revealed Fanya
Vidal, in the patio, in a fresh summer frock, talking
with Felipe Cardoza. Not a dream!
He looked about hastily for a dressing gown, and
remembered how little he had suspected, when he drove
from Monte Carlo the evening before, that he would
sleep under a strange roof. Fearing that it might be
Jacqueline at his door, he called:
168


170
GUILLAUME
to go, and when Basil reached for the silver pot he
forestalled him, and poured his coffee.
"A delicious flavor," Basil commented after an ini-
tial sip. "I noticed it last night, more pronounced in
the demi-tasse than now. We are particular about our
Coffee in America, you know."
"It is an especial importation for Mr. Ogilvie, sir,"
Guillaume explained. "It is grown on a certain planta-
tion in Burma and is roasted by a special process. Mr.
Ogilvie will have no other."
"From that I would gather that Miss Jacqueline's
father has lived in India?"
"For many years, sir. Until shortly before Made-
moiselle's birth. Or perhaps I should say, on the borders
of India. His tea plantations were in Assam, on the
Thibetan border."
"Interesting," Basil murmured. Guillaume was about
to retire when Basil reminded him:
"We were speaking of the house, if you remember.
I am sorry it has been so unhappy for the Ogilvies. I
understand Mrs. Ogilvie died here—in the front room
of the wing on the right."
The night before Basil had set himself deliberately
to make mental notes of occurrences or incidents that
attracted his attention, and to put these notes away in
his mind for reflection if the time should come. He had
begun, even, before the tragic death of Jules Manton.
He had continued afterwards. So it was that his alert
mind took a note that at his mention of Mrs. Ogil-
vie, Jacqueline's mother who had passed away, Guil-
laume's eyelids flickered. Immediately he told himself
that he was exaggerating his "signs," for the servant
Was quite calm.
"That was twenty-three years ago, sir. Before I en-
tered the Ogilvie service."
"Was Mr. Ogilvie ill then?—But I hope you don't


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
171
mind my asking so many questions? If you do, just say
so. I am rather a new friend of Miss Jacqueline's, you
know."
"I didn't know, sir."
This reply was so unexpected, since Basil had not
framed a trick into his remark, that he started and
looked squarely at the servant who knew well enough
when, and how, that friendship had begun. Guillaume
was reaching unperturbed to unwrap the warming
serviette from a fresh bit of toast.
"Yes," Basil observed. "We met, under interesting
circumstances, last night. I thought, perhaps, you would
know. But new friend as I am, I hope to become an old
one. So my curiosity about her house is not idle. Once
it must have been a lovely estate."
"I understand, sir, that Mr. Ogilvie beautified it
considerably when he purchased it. It was by way of
being a wedding present to Mrs. Ogilvie, whom he
brought from India to live here. She did not enjoy it
long. My master neglected to keep it up, after she
died."
"That is a sign of his affection and grief that is
more outstanding than any other could be," Basil re-
marked. "I asked you a moment ago—you didn't no-
tice—if Mr. Ogilvie was ill then?"
"I know only what he has told me, and the Made-
moiselle. He was already a sufferer, with a serious
affliction. He became much worse. When I entered
his service he had become quite incapacitated phys-
ically. He has been confined to his chair and couch
for many years. He permits few but me to serve
him."
Basil would have liked to comment that Mr. Ogilvie
would perhaps have a different i^ea about the loyalties
of his service if the master knew that his servant made
excursions with knife-armed cronies into the Lower


172
GUILLAUME
road bent upon robbery certainly, perhaps assassination.
But, instead:
"I understand, then, that he purchased this place
already standing. It would be interesting to know who
built it, or owned it, before Mr. Ogilvie."
"I do not know, sir. We make but infrequent
trips down here from the London house. We stay only
short periods. Mr. Ogilvie never speaks of the house.
As I have said, sir, it has been very unhappy for
him."
"I can understand," Basil murmured. "His wife dies
here, in what was her wedding present. Her physician
is murdered here. Now, there has been another violent
death. I shouldn't like the place either." He paused,
then added: "Mr. Man ton—was he a friend of Mr.
Ogilvie's?"
Guillaume busied himself with the silver coffee pot
and was solicitous over a strip of crisp bacon which
Basil had left on the tray. Basil shook his head to the
bacon, but accepted the coffee. When he had held the
sugar, Guillaume said:
"I beg your pardon, sir. You were saying of Mr.
Manton?"
"Another question, Guillaume, only. My curiosity. I
wondered if he was a friend of standing with the
Ogilvies."
To all appearances Basil was attending his coffee. Its
unique flavor really had quite captivated him. But
out of the corner of his eye he had never ceased to
watch the servant. He was sure, now, that he detected
a deeper hue on the cadaverous, shrunken face of the
big fellow. It had appeared at his first mention of
Manton. While he manoeuvered the silver pot and
proffered the remaining strip of bacon, it had deep-
ened.
And still Guillaume was delaying his answer. At last,


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
173
however, he said, with obvious effort to control his
voice:
"Monsieur Manton's relations with the master I do
not know. If you will pardon me, sir, I will say, though,
that Monsieur Manton's death is not to be regretted. He
was a scoundrel." Now Guillaume's voice was giving
him difficulty. He had successfully aped the humble in-
flections of the servant. Now his tone had hardened,
with a flavor of venom in it.
"You heard, then," Basil observed quietly, "of the
startling charge made by Inspector Giroff—that Man-
ton had committed a murder, the Baroness von Strom-
berg?"
Guillaume was openly scornful. "Yes, I had heard.
He spoke of it, in my presence, to the medical exam-
iner. I did not refer to that."
"You know something of him, then, on your own
account?"
"He was an ingrate. A blackmailer. He was not con-
tent to kill, but he would torture the living."
Instantly Guillaume appeared to regret his feeling.
He fumbled with the plates on the breakfast tray, and
murmured:
"I beg your pardon, sir. But it is well that Mon-
sieur Banton is dead. He had to be killed."
Basil wanted to think, fast and furiously—to con-
nect, somehow, this lurching masked assassin of the
Lower road, who also was Jacqueline's—and Mr. Ogil-
vie's servant—with the murder in the courtyard. But
he held himself in check, to attempt one more
question, quickly, while Guillaume was in his bitter
mood.
"Blackmailer, you say? But who—or do you know
—was in danger from him?"
A thousand to one the servant wouldn't answer a
question which was so obviously a trap, keyed to probe


Chapter Nineteen
IF GIROFF HAD KNOWN!
G UILLAUME went out
with his customary silence. The door, closing behind
him, made no sound. Basil sat for several minutes study-
ing the silver pot he had asked to be left behind, and
its last cupful of coffee—from India.
"Ask the Count di Treyagua, who calls himself
Cardoza, and Wellington Bath!"
Jacqueline, on the road, knew the bandit she shot
at was Guillaume. Or did she discover it, as he did, in
the dining room? No matter. She knew and had said
nothing of it. Asked him, with her eyes, to ignore his
discovery. Guillaume knew something of Manton.
Hated him, for his hatred was in his voice when
he spoke of him. Knew that he was a blackmailer,
as he said, and surely he indicated, clearly, that Car-
doza and Bath were his victims, either actual or pro-
posed.
Still studying his untouched final cup of coffee, he
reasoned on.
There were three men, then, who might have had—
did have some reason, to kill Manton—himself a mur-
derer. Cardoza and Wellington Bath. People kill, some-
times, to escape the blackmailer. These two, and the
third, Guillaume himself. For he hated Manton for
175


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
177
there? He'd ask him about it, when Jacqueline took
him in to her father, as she had promised she would this
morning. He would introduce it back in Worcester.
Where was he? Oh, yes! If any one of those three
had been the strangler of Manton—but two of them,
Cardoza and Bath, were in the dining room. He had
left them there, with Dr. Marsac, and Fanya Vidal,
when he went into the other wing with Jacqueline.
They were there when he returned with her. Marsac
alone had left the room.
Guillaume? He didn't belong in the dining room and
wasn't in it. Presumably in his quarters down that
corridor he went into and came out from. But was
he in his quarters? And had both Cardoza and Bath
remained in the dining room while he was absent? And
while Dr. Marsac was absent? Fanya Vidal would know.
Would she tell? Manton had been her lover! She had
gone out to his body, her eyelids dropped, her lips
quivering. Perhaps, though, she was one of those
"among the living" Manton would have tortured.
Lovers sometimes tortured their mistresses, and mis-
tresses sometimes helped them to eternity.
He was wandering again from the thought he had.
The crystal swan. Whichever one, whoever in that
house, had killed Manton, left the souvenir of The
Swan, the "Lady of Death,"—double evidence that he
had been The Duck's Bill.
And Dr. Marsac had described the Lady of Death as
one who commanded her servant to kill only for the
sake of jewels.
The Harlequin pearls!
Manton, presumably, had stolen them from the
Baroness von Stromberg. Giroff had said that he
brought them to the house that night. They were gone.
Killed for the Harlequin pearls, not because he was a
blackmailer, or because he "tortured the living."


178
IF GIROFF HAD KNOWN!
He pushed his coffee from him and rose abruptly. His
"reasonings" had taken him around in a circle. The
crystal swan was the riddle that first of all must be
solved—to whom did that point? There were two to
be accounted for, the Lady of Death as well as the
Duck's Bill.
Dr. Marsac had cautioned him against riddles. Bad
for the health! What was it the medical examiner had
said about Giroff's riddle? The first swan, on the floor
under the body of the Baroness, was a riddle that had
been solved, it seemed, by the second—found on Man-
ton's breast!
That was a riddle in itself. How could one solve the
other?
"And so," Basil muttered aloud as he went down-
stairs, "Guillaume has only drawn the circle out, to
include himself, Cardoza and Bath."
In that circle had been Dr. Marsac. But after last
night, he was out of it. The utter ridiculousness of the
fantastic speculations Basil had had about the medical
examiner who took even murder with a booming gusto
was proven in the mysterious underground passage.
He'd had a realistic knock on the head, and, besides,
he was in the confidence of Giroff. They were exploring
together.
How, though, could anyone have disappeared from
that narrow passage below without passing either Giroff
or Basil, when, for one terrible moment of uncertain-
ties, he had been fairly between them—he and his flam-
ing eyes?
At the foot of the steps, before he passed into the
patio, Basil halted, caught at his own coat lapels and
gave himself a sturdy shake. He spoke aloud, judi-
ciously, to himself;
"Now, see here, old man! If Dr. Marsac is out of it,
so is Jacqueline. If he is to be looked at askance, so


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
179
must be Jacqueline. The one is as preposterous as the
other. She has more to answer for than he. We'll close
the circle without him."
Wellington Bath had gone into the house. The patio
was empty. Basil strolled along its walk, coming at last
to the spot close to the front wing that had yawned to
emit Dr. Marsac, then to receive not only he and Giroff,
but Basil himself. He stood over the flagging which, he
estimated, must have been the one that dropped down-
ward.
There was nothing to differentiate one stone slab
from another. Weeds grew between them all. Stealthily
he balanced himself on his toes over the stone he had
chosen and rocked his weight on it. There was no an-
swering give. When he looked up he was momentarily
confused.
Jacqueline was dressed all in white, her simple but
exquisite gown innocent of touch of color or ornament,
open at the throat and semi-sleeveless. Her half-bare
arms and the glimpse of her throat were cool as bleached
ivory. She did not smile, but a gentle quality of friend-
liness was in her voice.
"You slept? I thought not to awaken you until I
was sure you would scold if I held back your breakfast
any longer."
She gave him her hand and he lifted it to his Ops
in his best fashion of the Continental manner. Now she
smiled, a little sadly.
"You don't need to do that, if you'd rather just
shake it. I've rather liked the American way. But I
am anxious—you did sleep?"
"Not until quite early this morning," he said, truth-
fully. "I couldn't."
"Yes, I know. Of your experience. Monsieur Pln-
specteur and Dr. Marsac have told me of it. You gave
a good account of yourself, Mr. Towne."


180
IF GIROFF HAD KNOWN!
He was glad Giroff and Marsac had told her. He
detested his own uncertainties as to whether he would
describe the night to her or not. He had said nothing
of the episode of the bookcase. He had half made up
his mind to say nothing of the other. He was distinctly
relieved.
She turned back to walk with him through the cor-
ridor and onto the terrace.
"And Giroff, and Dr. Marsac, too," he murmured,
"have already been about?"
"Dr. Marsac came early—not long after sunrise, I
think. He is in there now "She glanced back across
the terrace to the windows of the room in which Man-
ton had been placed, "with him. There are others of
the authorities, also. Monsieur l'Inspecteur appeared
later. I am sure he was not absent during the night,
and equally sure that he did not sleep."
He glanced down the terrace to the pines. They were
waving lazily in the warm breeze. They were so dense
that even in the bright sunlight there was no hint of
the abandoned well and its stone platform hidden in
their midst.
"Were you able to tell Giroff," he asked, "anything
of that curious underground corridor? Did you know
of them?"
She answered him at once, but her voice seemed not
to come from her lips, but from far away.
"I told him—all that I could. I knew of it. I did not
know of the other, from behind the bookcase. You see,
he told me of the earlier incident, also."
He could fancy Giroff prowling about throughout
the rest of the night, after they separated on the ter-
race. He wondered what he would do about the tun-
nels, particularly the one that opened to the reception
room. What would he find when he chose to investi-
gate, with serviceable lights to aid him. He thought


182
IF GIROFF HAD KNOWN!
what urged him, at that moment, when chaotic, half-
formed words of devotion, of trust and of a stirred
feeling that was more than all of these, were pressing
at his lips,—what mad impulse it was to draw her to
him, so that she was held tight, and to say
"Jacqueline! You know who it was who killed Jules
Man ton last night! Won't you, my dear one, confide?
Let me help you? I promised last night that I would
stand by. I swear it now, by everything that to me is
holy."
She didn't move in his arms. Her body was limp.
He thought she would fall if he released her. Her
friendly smile had gone, and her lips were quiet, but
firm. She held her lifted face for him to look down
into, to probe its every feature, to drink of its beauty
—but her eyes were closed.
He held her, tightly, waiting. And presently he was
rewarded.
Her eyes opened, slowly, two dark violet suns dawn-
ing up to his. Her hands moved and crept along his
arms, to rest in the hollow of his elbows.
"Yes," she said. "I know who killed Jules Manton.
I know the Duck's Bill. And if you will press me a lit-
tle harder, Basil Towne, you will feel the Harlequin
pearls coiled around my waist, under my gown!"
In his horror Basil cried: "My dear!" And if he
pressed her tighter, it was not to feel the rope of hard
round pellets cushioned against her soft body, but in a
wild panic of desire to never let her go.
She understood, with her ever marvellous intuition.
The red lips smiled again, wistfully, wanly.
"That is all I may confide, my dear American. Will
it be enough, for a little while?"
Tighter, tighter still, until the red lips lost their
smile and quivered. "By God, I swore I'd stand by, and
I will!"


Chapter Twenty
GARDENIAS AGAIN
How long he held her,
and how long she remained in his arms, neither ever
knew perhaps. Assuredly, Basil did not know then or
ever.
Behind them was the House of Murder, its name jus-
tified last night, desolate, forlorn, decayed. Before them
the forsaken courtyard, which once had been beautiful,
now twice christened by violent death, its lawns dead,
its statues and fountains crumbling.
But Basil felt beauty reaching to him. Not quite
come to him, for there were blots on everything in
the world that was lovely—little blots that were round
and hard, "pellets of destiny" Dr. Marsac had called
them. But they only hid the beauty and loveliness that
was his. He held onto her, wishing she could come
forth clean and purged, before he must let her go.
She waited, looking up into his face, her own ex-
pressionless, her eyes darting here and there over his
features. Presently he realized. They were on the ter-
race. Windows looked down upon them. The bright
morning was around them. Anyone might emerge from
the patio and come upon them. He released her with a
deep breath. It had been a long time, but he spoke as
if he finished his oath to "stand by."
183


184
GARDENIAS AGAIN
"You believe, don't you, Jacqueline?"
"I believe. And I am having a little happiness, that
I have never hoped to have."
Together they stepped down from the terrace. When
she was apart from him, only beside, not against him,
full knowledge of his pledge to her swept him down.
She had the Harlequin pearls. One murder had been
committed for them alone. Another was either for
them, or for the blackmailing Guillaume had spoken
of, but in any event the pearls had played their part
in that dread crime. Giroff—the Great Giroff!—was
determined to find them, to find The Swan, to find
The Duck's Bill who would have strangled Basil last
night if he could have mastered him in time—and the
pearls, the key to all else, were about her waist.
She who walked beside him!
Suddenly he threw back his head and laughed,
quietly, so quietly she couldn't have heard, but she did
hear what he said aloud.
"A long, long way from Worcester!"
With that reflection he was himself again.
Jacqueline looked at him, a sharp glance, but was
satisfied with what she saw. She made no comment.
Crossing the courtyard, he had no thought of where
they were going, or where they would stop. His mind
was filled with the wonders of the moment, Jacque-
line's double confession—"I know who killed Manton!"
and that other sweeter confession, that she was willing
to be held in his arms.
He was conscious, at last, that they had come to the
broken stone bench under the gardenia bush. It re-
minded him again of the odd humor of Dr. Marsac,
when he gave him the facetious observation "the gar-
denias are in bloom."
Jacqueline was busy choosing a bloom to pick. Basil
filled his lungs, as Dr. Marsac had done, with the pun-


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
185
gent fragrance. He reached for a blossom and pulled its
twig toward him.
"I think I'll wear one of them," he said. "To re-
mind me throughout the day, of this moment."
He would have plucked a bloom but Jacqueline
caught his wrist. Some sort of alarm was in her eyes.
"Don't, please!" she exclaimed. "These are mother's
and to father they are precious. You are going in to
meet him. He would not like you to have plucked one
of these."
He drew back at once. "Of course not. I didn't
know"
"You couldn't," she helped him. She had plucked
two of the white flowers, and returned to her hunt
for leaf uncrusted twigs with which to bower her blos-
soms. "It is all of the grounds that is left that was
my mother's own, this tree," she explained, in her far-
away tone. "She loved gardenias, and planted this tree.
While we are here I tell father of every bloom, and I
am careful to account to him for them."
She was satisfied with her cluster and turned back
toward the house.
"You will take me up to him now?" Basil asked.
"Presently. You will allow me to go up to him first,
and prepare him. You will discover that he is—very
hard. He suffers a great deal. I have not had a chance
to tell him of you, but I shall, when I take him these
flowers, and then come to fetch you. After you there
will have to be Monsieur Plnspecteur."
"Giroff has not presented his respects?"
"He has not insisted. But he will, I should think."
They were in the patio before Basil spoke again. Then
he asked: "What shall you tell him of me?"
"That I like you," she said simply. "It will help if I
also say that you are fond of gardenias."
With that she was gone, down the patio to the stairs


186
GARDENIAS AGAIN
that led to his own room, but also to the corridor down
which she had gone the night before, from his door to
her own. While he was looking after her, Giroff emerged
from the drawing room wing. He stopped to look across
to Basil, who nodded and waited. The inspector did not
return the nod, but strode up.
"I am permitted by Miss Ogilvie to move about the
house," he said, with a mocking irony for which Basil
could have choked him. "Accompany me, please. I will
talk."
Sound of a door closing behind them proved to be Dr.
Marsac, spruce and beaming, displaying no ill effects of
his adventure of the night before, coming out from the
room in which Manton lay. Giroff signalled him to
follow.
They entered the reception room. Basil glanced
quickly toward the bookcase. Apparently it had been
undisturbed, but Giroff traced his glance and said:
"To the roof, and to the cellar. To where else, I do
not yet know. I will find out soon."
If Basil had disliked that cocksureness of the strut-
ting inspector before, he doubly hated it now. Some
reckless, absurd impulse, impelled him at that moment
to say, with an attempted affectation of casual inter-
est:
"Have you yet discovered—the Harlequin pearls,
for example?"
He could have cut out his tongue the moment he
heard his own words. But it was too late. The whole at-
mosphere of the room was charged by Giroff's instant
stiffening. When Basil, as nonchalantly as he could man-
age, looked at him, the inspector stood in the middle
of the room, in his baboon pose, on his toes, eyebrows
flat and moustachio tips up.
Basil met his glare steadily. Giroff relaxed with a
grunt—a grunt that portended much!


188
GARDENIAS AGAIN
word. But Mr. Towne, he believes the unsaddened medi-
cal examiner"
Giroff had leapt from his chair and for an instant
Basil thought he would throw himself upon the fat Dr.
Marsac. But he drew up at the medical examiner's
toes.
"The candle—that is to say—gardenias?"
Dr. Marsac spread his chubby hands in a gesture of
resignation. Of Basil he inquired, quizzically: "Is not
that, then, an indigestive riddle? Let us repeat: 'The
candle—that is to say—gardenias?'"
He threw back his head, as far as it would go upon
the bulge of his shoulders, and laughed heartily.
Giroff wheeled upon Basil. "Why did you not deliver
the message?"
Basil snapped back: "If I had, I would have felt
like a damned fool. There was no sense to it."
Giroff went back to his chair. He breathed a long
"A-h!" He seemed to be hurt. He muttered, under his
breath, but Basil heard: "There is no sense to it, eh?
No sense to Giroff then, eh? Wait!"


Chapter Twenty-One
THE FALSE CRYSTAL SWAN
JFoR a long time Giroff sat
on the edge of his chair, either silent or muttering to
himself. Ready at any moment to occupy himself with
his own thoughts, Basil turned his back, went over to
the patio window, and looked out. Now it was Cardoza
who was moving about. Basil watched the Spaniard, un-
til a sound from Giroff brought him back into the
room.
But the ferocious bantam behind the whiskers was
talking to himself.
"Gardenias!"
Still thinking of gardenias. Basil became uncomfort-
able and wished Jacqueline would hurry down from
her father and take him away. Some new sort of fear,
that had to do with Jacqueline of course, came over
him with the sinister Giroff so suddenly lost in grim
reflections.
Dr. Marsac was chuckling to himself, now and again,
mightily pleased, somehow, over having given the "man
from Paris" something to think about. Basil came near
to deciding both were demented.
Then Giroff decided to pick up his object in taking
Basil into the room. Without warning he barked out;
189


190
THE FALSE CRYSTAL SWAN
"I am ready, Mr. Towne. We proceed. It is because
you saved me from the Duck's Bill."
"Please don't speak of that so often," Basil objected,
irritably. "I could not have done otherwise."
"Else you would have done otherwise, eh?"
Basil shrugged his shoulders and was silent.
"We are at cross-purposes, Mr. Towne. It is of no
consequence to me. The Swan has been too bold. I shall
have her. To you, sir, I owe my possession of the Duck's
Bill's garrote. Because of you he had to leave it on my
neck last night. That was fatal for him, and for the
lady who commands him."
"I should like to have a look at it, if you don't mind,"
Basil suggested.
"In good time you shall. Mademoiselle Ogilvie is
charming this morning, is she not, sir, frocked in the
white of innocence?"
Basil stared, his indignation rising as a flood, to beat
about his temples. And while his blood boiled and he
stared, Giroff's moustachios went up, bristling. The in-
verted Vs over his fierce eyes came down. But he re-
mained perched on the chair's edge.
"I have found Miss Ogilvie charming at all times,"
he said, coldly. "Do we discuss her?"
Giroff's reply was a succession of a snarling dog's
snaps.
"It would be well if we did. From her you have
learned something this morning that would be of serv-
ice to me. I see it. It is in your face. I read it. What?
You prefer to gloat over it in secret with yourself,
eh?"
Basil could not deny to himself his own guilt. What
kind of human mechanism was this Giroff, who could
read the secrets of faces! What if he should read there
the knowledge that the Harlequin pearls—and he
wished he hadn't given him that foolish dig a moment


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
191
before!—were around Jacqueline's slender waist! He
flared angrily, and made a stubborn pretense.
"You are impertinent, sir," he declared. "You boast
that you are not concerned by what you hold to be my
attitude in this house. Very well. I am not concerned
with you, or your duty in it. I consider you as being
here to solve the murder done last night. It is no con-
cern of mine. Let us have that straight between us."
Giroff bristled so fiercely that Dr. Marsac intervened,
genially.
"We have a clash of temperaments," he said, "that
will fuse eventually into a partnership. I predict it."
Giroff relaxed. "I remain of my mind, sir," he an-
nounced. "I have a purpose. I propose to prepare you
for a certain enlightenment. Attend!"
He slid to the floor and came up to the center table
where, last night, had lain the three candles. Basil ex-
pected him to bring forth from his pockets the disputed
wafer of wax, but he produced two small objects that
caught the sunlight streaming in from the patio and
reflected it with prismatic glints.
Two little crystal swans!
He laid them side by side, stepped back and motioned
Basil to examine them.
Wholly fascinated by the miniature items of death,
Basil approached the table. Bits of jewelry, fine enough
to hang from a platinum chain on a beautiful woman's
throat, but each the symbol of a separate murder!
And, together, emblems of a deadly partnership in
crime that had baffled every resource of half the world's
police through a line of dreadful tragedies!
Dr. Marsac chuckled. Basil wished he wouldn't—
not after that unearthly chuckle he had heard last
night, in the pines, while Manton's body was twitching
into its final rigidity. But the medical examiner was
irrepressible.


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
195
moustachios muffled his words. He had dropped his
gaze to the floor.
"I follow Manton to the house of the first crystal
swan to be left as taunt for the police—the swan of
five years ago. I watch and wait. The Swan will com-
mand her Duck's Bill to punish that effort of Man-
ton to throw the police onto the wrong scent. I watch
for the Duck's Bill while I wait for The Swan."
Now the detective looked up, fiercely.
"I am right! Manton is dead. The Swan has his
Harlequin pearls. Have you attended me, Mr. Towne?"
"I have tried to," Basil was surprised that his own
voice should sound so weak and uncertain. "But still
I can't quite understand"
Giroff fairly exploded. "You are brave. You have
saved my life. That I shall repay. But I am Giroff! I
am not to be deceived. You think to save from me—
The Swan herself!"
Basil had the crystal emblems in his hand. He
crashed them to the table and wheeled in rage upon
the white face and its grotesque whiskers.
"You lie!" he shouted. "No matter what she is, she
is not your Swan."
"Who is not my Swan, Mr. Towne?"
He shot the question with a taunt of his own tri-
umph. Even Dr. Marsac was affected. Some of the
brightness of his twinkle went out of his eyes.
Basil began to fling a hot retort, realized that Giroff's
trap had closed around him hopelessly, and wilted.
"I am sorry, sir, to have spoken as I did. For the
word I used, I apologize sincerely. But I do not apolo-
gize for my implicit faith, my unending belief, in Miss
Ogilvie. I frankly admit she has become my concern.
You continue to irritate me with your foul innuendos,
you say nothing plainly, but your inferences are infer-
nal. You suspect Miss Ogilvie of a connection with


196
THE FALSE CRYSTAL SWAN
your murderous pair, with the thing last night. I do
not apologize for thinking that you are a greater fool
than was Inspector Lacrosse."
Giroff appeared to be satisfied. He nodded senten-
tiously. "That is good, sir. We are no longer at cross-
purposes. You are afraid of your faith in the lovely
Miss Ogilvie. In your heart there are doubts. You have
displayed them. Last night I warned you, sir, in this
room, that I employed you to reveal Miss Ogilvie to
me. You continue in that employ."
He finished with a sneer. Basil longed to have the
Duck's Bill's garrote in his fingers and know the trick
of using it. He fancied that Giroff was grinning at
him, or as close to grinning as that ghastly, fantastic
white face with its monstrous moustachios could come.
He turned away—afraid that the little devil would
actually read in his own face that terrible secret he
hid—the Harlequin pearls at Jacqueline's waist that
very moment!
At that moment Jacqueline entered, on the edge of
a warning noise at the oak doors. She darted a quick
glance at Giroff, then acknowledged a cheerful compli-
ment from Dr. Marsac.
"My father will receive Mr. Towne," she said. She
turned to the medical examiner. "If you please," she
said to him, "you will come, also."


198
AMBROSE OGILVIE
"You stated at Mentone," he said, "that you still
looked forward to viewing the House of Murder. A
few nights later I find you a guest in that house. Do
you pardon my curiosity?"
Dr. Marsac was immensely good natured. "Not at
all! Not at all! Mademoiselle Ogilvie herself came to visit
me. At my offices in Nice. She came not to the police
medical examiner, she explained, but to Dr. Henri Abe-
lard Marsac, of whom she was pleased to say she had
heard creditable accounts. She desired my observations
of her father while he remained in residence here."
"But how curious," Basil murmured. "I mean, that
since their home is in London, she did not engage a
Harley street specialist. English people usually stick to
their own, don't they?"
Dr. Marsac rubbed his hands and smiled broadly.
"You do not compliment the fame of Dr. Henri Abe-
lard Marsac, my boy."
Basil was confused and began a mumbled protest.
Dr. Marsac cut him short.
"Nor do you take into account that Mademoiselle
Ogilvie is deep, very deep. And now, my boy!" He
patted one of his fat hands on Basil's shoulder in a sort
of elephantine prankishness. "We exchange accounts.
What brought you, last night, into the Lower road? The
Upper road is a shorter route to Mentone."
The medical examiner's silent laughter shook his wide
shoulders so violently, that Basil was sure that he har-
bored some version of his own.
But he maintained, stoutly: "A chance choice of
routes. I have driven the Upper road frequently, to
Monte Carlo. I like variety. That is all."
The medical examiner delivered himself of one of
his irritating chuckles. A fat finger poked at Basil.
"Ask Giroff, when you and he are in good humor with
each other, about a little fellow almost as little as


202
AMBROSE OGILVIE
In the wheel chair there was a stir. The invalid's
whole body seemed to squirm under the pile of cover-
ing. His head rolled off the cushion and hung, pitiably
horrible, over the side of the chair, limp. Dr. Marsac,
with an exclamation, moved to spring around the
table to the man's assistance. A quick gesture from
Jacqueline stopped him. She went behind the wheel
chair and lifted her father's head. Basil thought her
body must be frozen. She moved as unfeelingly as
would an animated block of ice. She lifted her father's
head, her hand pressed under its cheek, and let it slide
from her palm back to its hollow in the mustard-hued
pillow.
Strange, unintelligible mutterings escaped the sag-
ging, colorless hps in the parchment face. Basil closed
his eyes, his heart aching for the girl to whom this
living dead thing was father!
Dr. Marsac had retired while Jacqueline rearranged
the blankets. He had moved back so silently that Basil,
startled that he was no longer beside him, looked around
sharply. The medical examiner had drawn back down
the room, to stand beyond the first circle of the green
lamp's brightest glare, and examining the portrait in
the gold frame.
Jacqueline was busy with her father, soothing him
—not with her voice, for she did not speak, but with
her hands, which seemed to fly about his head. The
incoherent mutterings were still escaping the loose lips.
Basil did not want to turn around, to see! until Jac-
queline should give some sign. He studied the portrait
at which Dr. Marsac was gazing.
When his eyes were accustomed to the effect of the
green light on the canvas, Basil's first impression was
of a life-size portrait of Jacqueline, in a costume of
.many seasons before. There was no mistaking the face


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
203
and the alabaster white shoulders, the sculptured throat
and tenuous arms.
Nor the violet eyes and beautiful mouth.
But there was a happiness, a gentleness in the violet
eyes the artist had perpetuated, and a rising laughter
in the soft red lips, that were not Jacqueline's. Not of
the Jacqueline he had known since she stood between
her blazing headlights on the Lower road.
It came to him suddenly that the lady of the portrait
would be Mrs. Ogilvie, Jacqueline's mother—who had
died in the emptied room of the balcony.
"The American. Towne. Why don't he look at me?"
Basil turned hastily and stepped back to the table.
"I am indebted to Miss Jacqueline," he said, "for bring-
ing me in to you. If we disturb you, I shall be sorry
indeed."
The withered hand with the long emaciated fingers
was lifted again, but this time it did not drop. It
reached, shaking and uncertain, across the table. Basil
took it at once, gently, careful not to add to its pain.
The touch sent shivers to the base of his spine, but he
did not recoil.
"You won't disturb me. Jacqueline likes you. She
said so. I like you. It is Marsac who disturbs me. Don't
let him come near me. Do you hear?"
"I hear you, sir. Dr. Marsac would not distress you,
I am certain."
"You don't know. You are young. Many things
you've got to learn. One of them, never trust Marsac."
The wrinkled face lifted from its cushion, and did not
fall to one side as Jacqueline, who reached quickly, evi-
dently thought it would. The high-pitched voice pitched
higher still, almost to a senile scream. "Be careful of
Marsac!" the sick man cried. "Get him away from Jac-
queline's picture. Get him away, I say, then come back
to me! I like you."


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
205
see her sometime. If you do happen to see her don't
tell her."
Again that senile stir in the blankets, that lifting
of the head.
"Promise me that you won't tell her. Go—go"
The withered hand raised to point down the room to
the portrait—"Go look at her. Tell her I didn't send
Marsac to look at her, then come back and promise
you'll not tell her that Ambrose must get worse and
worse and can never be cured."
Basil understood! The woman in the gold frame had
been a Jacqueline too. And Mr. Ogilvie was not only
sick of body, but sick of mind—and lived in his en-
feebled brain with the other, the first Jacqueline.
The Jacqueline of the present, still standing rigid
behind her father's chair, still ice, appealed to him with
a glance. He went down the room and stood before
the portrait. The lovely Jacqueline who had not been
turned to ice looked down at him, her warm, happy
smile forever ready to burst into being. He went back,
questioning the living Jacqueline and to receive from
her a slight nod.
"I will not tell her," he said.
"That is good. Jacqueline said she liked you. Ameri-
can, hey? If she is pleased with you, it is all right."
Mr. Ogilvie's head sagged forward, until its support
was a roll of quilt which Jacqueline lifted on his
chest. Basil thought he slept. Jacqueline came around
the table and quietly laid her fingers on his arm. Her
lips framed "Thank you!"
But she did not lead him out. She left him standing
at the table to arrange the papers on the table, of which
there were several, and to move other little items, of
which he took no account. He watched her fingers only.
How cold they looked!
One familiar sight obtruded itself. The pair of gar-


206
AMBROSE OGILVIE
denias. They were in a small Ming vase, down the table
where Ogilvie could look at them when his head was
back on his cushion. Jacqueline fluffed the leaves of the
twigs she had included, and stirred the blossoms. Basil
remembered—her mother had been fond of gardenia
blossoms. That was why, then, their Ming vase stood
where Ogilvie could always see them.
He wondered why Jacqueline had not told him more
of her father, why she had not better prepared him for
this painful experience.
She came up to him, her flutterings finished. "I think
he is asleep," she said. "We will go. I still have to bring
him, I suppose, Monsieur Giroff."
Ogilvie, apparently, had not been asleep. He stirred
and threw back his head. "Giroff!" he said, shrilly.
"Bah! He is an ass. I will not be pestered by asses.
Jacqueline does not know that Jules Manton was killed
at her house. Giroff will tell her. He will bray like an
ass. I will not have him."
The man's head dropped again. Jacqueline had been
standing close to Basil, so close that he could feel, in-
tuitively, a dropping of her shoulders. But she said
nothing, only touched his hand and he followed her as
noiselessly as he could on the stone floor out of the
room.


Chapter Twenty-Three
A SCREAM FROM WITHIN THE HOUSE
M ANTON'S body was be-
ing taken away, borne on a stretcher by four bearers
in mortuary white, when Jacqueline and Basil reached
the patio. Basil would have drawn his companion away,
but she stiffened her body against his urging hand, and
they remained to silently watch the ceremony over
which Dr. Marsac was presiding.
Neither Wellington Bath, nor Cardoza, nor Giroff
was in sight.
Fanya Vidal, still wearing her fresh summer frock,
but with a black scarf of chiffon wound about her
neck, came out and went up to the cortege. Dr. Mar-
sac gave a low-toned order and stepped back. The
bearers laid their burden gently on the pavement and
turned away.
Fanya stood for several minutes over the bier. She
stooped, then, with the feline grace that marked all of
her movements, and lifted a corner of the white cov-
ering. For a long time she gazed into the face of the
man who, if Giroff had been right, had been her lover.
She rose suddenly. The bearers lifted the stretcher and
carried it out, Fanya looking after them.
She came down the patio, walking slowly. Basil felt
that Jacqueline braced herself for the inevitable meet-
207


208 A SCREAM FROM WITHIN THE HOUSE
ing. He wondered what there could be between these
two, the one who had admitted that she knew her lover
had killed the Baroness von Stromberg, and the other
who carried a dread, secret knowledge of the Duck's
Bill. He would have withdrawn, and left them to-
gether, but Jacqueline, sensing his impulse, caught his
hand covertly, and, by her touch, held him.
Fanya did not seem to notice them until she was
quite close. Then she looked straight to Jacqueline,
without acknowledging Basil's presence. For a space of
time that must have drawn into seconds the two women
looked at each other, neither speaking, both faces ex-
pressionless.
It was Fanya who moved first.
She drew the black scarf from her neck, the only
symbol of mourning Jules Manton had earned, and
crushed it into a ball in the palm of her hand, and
reached it to Jacqueline. "I think you knew," Fanya
said. "If you do, you will know what I mean when I
say that there will be nothing of Jules Manton left be-
hind when you have burned that. Guillaume made me a
fire, in the library, a little while ago. My bit of black
for Manton belongs with its ashes."
Jacqueline spoke softly. "Yes, I know. Do Cardoza,
and Bath, know of the—ashes?"
"They enjoyed the fire, both of them," was all that
Fanya said. Jacqueline seemed to understand. She was
motionless until the other had disappeared within the
house, then a light sigh escaped her.
The sound of the sigh had instant effect upon Basil.
He drew Jacqueline farther from windows and corri-
dors which might hold listeners.
"Dear one! Don't keep me out of your confidence
longer! You can't go on with what must be your ter-
rible knowledge. You are over a precipice—there is
something for me to do, something that will help. I


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
209
know, now, how alone you are—your father is only a
helpless care. Tell me—what to do!"
"You agreed to trust," she reminded him, "and wait
—for a little while."
"Oh, my dear girl! You don't know how fully I
believe that anything you have done, or will do, is jus-
tified. But you must understand. You are hiding the
cause of two murders close at hand—the pearls. You
are keeping a knowledge that is fatal—of one of those
murderers. Giroff knows things. If he doesn't, he thinks
he does. We must forestall him."
Half aloud, she murmured: "He knows—too many
things!"
"Then you realize that every moment of delay is
danger to you? If you will give me the Harlequins
now, I will turn them over to Giroff. I will tell him
only what you command me to tell him. I'll defy him
to get anything more out of me. Or, if it is necessary,
I'd even"
What he was going to say horrified him when he
realized its impulse. She lifted her face to his, her lips
curved in a smile of gentle wonderment. And then she
asked quietly:
"You'd hide them? You'd keep them from him?
You'd take that guilt to yourself to protect me? That
is what you would say, isn't it?"
"Yes. It frightens me to think of it, but God knows
that I would, and feel that I was doing right if it
were called for. But is it?"
"No, it would do no good. Monsieur Giroff shall have
his pearls, and you, perhaps, will take them back to your
Worcester after all. They are very beautiful."
His heart would have cried out, "And you, too!"
but he controlled himself.
"Can't we go to Giroff together? Or can't I go—
now?"


210 A SCREAM FROM WITHIN THE HOUSE
She seemed uncertain for a moment, and he thought
she would weaken, but she said:
"No, not for a little while longer. As I said out
there in the courtyard. Perhaps tonight. Perhaps tomor-
row morning, not later—you will know everything.
You see, dear friend, I want a little more time to be a
little closer to you, and to have you come closer to me
before"
She let her pause draw out.
"You are close to me now, my dear," he exclaimed,
fervently. "As close as ever a precious thing could
be."
"You must wait."
He watched her cross the patio, and go into the
drawing room wing, the ball of black Fanya had given
her, crushed in her hand. He would have given years
of his life, at that moment, to know what else she
carried, within her black-crowned head, if by his know-
ing he could lift the weight of Giroff from his heart.
He wanted to get as far from the house and its peo-
ple as possible to some spot in the courtyard or the
grounds behind it where he would be free of Giroff,
unlikely to come across Cardoza or Bath, or Dr. Mar-
sac—somewhere where he could be by himself and pass
the hours that must elapse before Jacqueline was ready
for him.
"Perhaps tonight," she had said. It would not be long
to wait, if only Giroff would let him alone.
He had reached the narrow corridor to the terrace
and yard beyond when some unseen force seemed to
push at him, to hold him back. With sudden sense of
unknown fear he looked behind him. The patio was
deserted. A shutter of Mr. Ogilvie's room had been
opened, or it had blown open, and the old man's rasp-
ing voice, cut now and then by Giroff's gruff tones,
came down faintly.


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
211
The thought struck him immediately that Giroff
had not waited to be taken in to the sick man by
Jacqueline, but must have gone in unannounced, shortly
after he came down with her. On the edge of this
thought Giroff appeared at Ogilvie's window and him-
self closed the shutter with a sharp slam.
Puzzled by the impulse that had made him pause and
look back into the patio, he was about to pass on out
into the yard, when he heard a sound that stabbed
him as a knife would.
Faint, smothered. But unmistakable. A scream,
choked off suddenly—Jacqueline!
Somewhere, in the house, Jacqueline was in the hands
of someone who had smothered that startled cry for
help!


Chapter Twenty-Four
THE NOTE
In a saner moment Giroff
would have been the last man on earth Basil would
have called into any new mystery in that house, but in
the first instant of alarm his name rose automatically
to his tongue.
"Giroff!" he shouted up to Ogilvie's shutters. "This
way!"
Then, frenzied, he ran blindly into the drawing
room. Wellington Bath and Fanya Vidal were in there,
both standing, and both, he saw at a glance, had heard
the cry.
He remembered, in a flash, that Jacqueline had still
carried the black ball of Fanya's crushed scarf. Fanya
had said—"drop it into the fire" in the library. He had
not been in the library but knew, vaguely, that it
joined the drawing room, with a connecting door. Fanya
stood near this door.
"In there!" Basil cried. He tore at the door and cursed
under his breath when it refused to give. "Locked.
On the inside," he exclaimed. Then to Bath:
"Help me—we've got to break it in!"
Bath did not move. "Don't be too excited," he ad-
vised coolly. "No one would harm her, I imagine."
212


214
THE NOTE
Giroff, in the center of the room, his shoulders
hunched and his eyebrows flattened, turned slowly
about, his eyes searching every feature of wall and
furniture.
"We can't stand here," Basil exclaimed. "God! when
I think of those eyes last night—the garrote—and now
its Jacqueline! We must get her—somehow."
He realized how foolish his bordering on hysteria
was, but each passing second crazed him more. He
wondered if he had been mistaken after all—if the
6cream had come from some other room.
Giroff suddenly leapt for a door. "I'm going into
the cellar," he shouted back. "While I'm gone strip
those cases of their books—every inch of them."
He went out through the drawing room. Basil knew
what he meant by ordering him to strip the bookcases,
which were open shelves built into the walls. It was
from behind a bookcase in the reception room the un-
known gunner attempted to find Giroff with his stream
of bullets.
The cases were built in sections, of varying lengths,
separated by oak panels that reached from the floor to
the level of the highest shelf. Basil tore furiously at the
long rows of books, piling them ruthlessly onto the
floor. But every shelf was solidly built to the wall.
He gave up, with an anguished cry at his own fu-
tility. The emptied cases revealed nothing. He must
have been mistaken. Must be wasting time in this room
while Jacqueline was even now lying dead in some
other. But the doors locked!
Why was Giroff in the cellars? What could he be
doing so long?
Like the inspector had done, he stood in the center
of the room searching every nook and cranny left un-
cluttered by the debris of scattered books. Nothing of-
fered hope in a further search.


218
THE NOTE
suspicious reach of wall or wine-cask tier. Basil called
to him. "Shall I go for more lights?"
Giroff called back. "Go. Bring candles and oil lamps.
Go back the way we came, but be cautious."
Groping, Basil found the opening in the wall and
soon was in the deserted library. He unlocked the door
to the drawing room and faced the company there,
Fanya Vidal, Cardoza and Bath, and, in the back-
ground, Guillaume who, apparently, had been told by
Fanya to remain in the room until Giroff returned.
Basil ignored an anxious inquiry by Cardoza, and
summoned Guillaume to help him gather candelabra
and a lamp or two.
"All that we can carry," he demanded. "Two of the
oil lamps from the bedrooms, and hurry. I'll take you
into the cellars with me."
Guillaume hurried out to find the lamps. Basil
clutched at the nearest of the clusters of candles held
in their silver sticks. Both Bath and Cardoza were say-
ing something, offering help, and Bath at least was
discounting the need for anxiety. Basil continued to
ignore them. He passed into the library and would have
hurried down with his candles, to return for Guillaume
and his lamps, when Fanya Vidal's calm voice stopped
him.
She held out her hand. In it was a crumpled bit of
paper.
"I noticed it a moment ago, on the table in the draw-
ing room," she said. "It was in plain view, quite evi-
dently meant for us to find."
Basil's arms were occupied by the great candelabra.
He glanced at Fanya impatiently, puzzled.
"But what is it? Don't keep me waiting, please. Don't
you understand, even now he may be killing her."
She shook her head, slowly. For her cool calm Basil
could have struck her.


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
219
"No, I don't think so. Put down your candles and
read it. I would rather you did, yourself."
He took the paper, a bit of fly-leaf torn from a book.
He had never seen Jacqueline's handwriting, but he
recognized the firm characters he saw by unerring in-
tuition. \
"He will not harm me. Do not be alarmed." Below
the written line was her name, in bold flowing hand,
the final "e" trailing off into a flourished line that fin-
ished in a flare of formless curls.
Basil stared until the words and their letters flowed
together. At first a great relief surged over him, but
immediately he was fearful again. He forgot his candles
and plunged toward the yawning panel. Fanya stopped
him with a quiet drawl.
"Think twice, Mr. Towne, before you give that to
Monsieur l'Inspecteur. I have the opinion it was meant
for you, alone."


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
221
"Give that to me, Monsieur Towne!"
Giroff! His eyebrows so flat drawn that they
made a single line across his white face. His moustachio
tips reaching for his ear tops. His eyes black exclama-
tion points.
"Give it to me!"
He stepped through the open panel into the room.
His flashlight still was in one hand. The other reached
for the paper. Fanya turned to leave the room. Giroff
barked:
"Wait!"
She stopped at the table, her back turned. Her fingers
idly turned the leaves of the book that had given up
part of its fly-leaf.
Basil handed the note to Giroff without a word. "I
think, Inspector, I would have brought it down to you,"
he said.
Giroff took it across the room to a window.
"Do you think she wrote it?" Basil demanded,
breathlessly.
"She wrote it. There is no doubt."
He read it aloud, to himself: "He will not harm me.
Do not be alarmed." He repeated even the signature:
"Jacqueline!"
"Do you believe it? Isn't it probable she was com-
pelled to write it?"
Basil wanted to believe, but dared not.
Giroff shot him a look, then returned his attention to
the paper itself. He did not reply. He turned the paper
over in his hand, and held it to the light. To himself
Basil muttered—"Oh, the damned fool! Does he look
for watermarks—the damned, damned fool! Why will
he not act?"
He seemed to find something to examine through the
reverse side of the torn sheet. He started, suddenly, and
pressed closer to the window, for more light. Basil saw


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
223
"I have learned much," Giroff returned shortly. "I
am not disturbed for Mademoiselle—at the present. I
am disturbed only by this!" He held up Jacqueline's
note. "Who left it on the table in this room, for Made-
moiselle Vidal to find at a timely moment?"
The puzzle in the faces of both Cardoza and Bath
was genuine, Basil could have sworn.
"What are you driving at?" Bath demanded. "No-
body left anything on this table."
"I am not so sure that anyone did," Giroff said, and
he looked straight to Fanya. She took him up without
hesitation.
"The fact remains, Inspector, that it lay on the table,
very openly, for any of us to see."
"And you were first to observe it? When?"
"While Mr. Towne was gathering his candles. The
candelabra are quite heavy, I am sure. Perhaps I won-
dered if one would drop to the floor. It occurred that I
watched him, while he passed the table. I think I saw
the paper then, and it was then that it attracted my
curiosity."
Basil felt that to be a long speech for Fanya Vidal,
she who usually spoke in brief, incisive drawls. Giroff
turned to Cardoza.
"You, sir, left this room to go into the patio with
Mademoiselle Vidal? To appear at the library window?
Yes?"
If he thought to confuse the Spaniard, who had not
been in the room at first, he failed. Cardoza corrected
him at once.
"I did not leave the room, sir. I was in the courtyard,
and heard the noise of your going through the window.
I hurried back. Mademoiselle Vidal was outside, with
Bath. He joined me."
Giroff grunted. "Mr. Bath and Mademoiselle emerged
from the drawing room?"


224
GIROFF IS MYSTERIOUS
"That I do not know. They already were in the patio
when I ran in."
Giroff turned to Bath. "When you and the Mademoi-
selle came into the patio did Mademoiselle leave you?"
Fanya drawled: "You may ask concerning me, of me
direct, Inspector. You might be polite, you know, de-
spite your curiosities."
"Very well, Mademoiselle. You left the room with
Mr. Bath. You did not come up to the window, as did
he and Sefior Cardoza, to inquire of the proceedings
within. What did you do?"
"Stood quite still, enjoying the sun, I think."
"You returned to the room before you met Guil-
laume, the servant? Or not until after?"
"I've quite forgot," she said, sweetly. "I seldom keep
track of myself. Perhaps Mr. Bath observed."
"You came in with us, I think," Bath said, thought-
fully, "and went out again. I am not sure."
"Then it is most probable that you went out, Made-
moiselle, to intercept the servant. You spoke with him.
You were not giving him orders in the absence of the
mistress of the house. You were conversing. Of what?"
Fanya toyed idly, not with her diamond chain, but
with a rope of jade beads which had taken their place
about her throat. The carmine lips smiled, tantalizingly.
"I might say that we talked of the sun I was enjoying.
But one doesn't talk of the sunlight with servants, do
they, Inspector?"
He waited. Basil wondered, why his moustachio tips
didn't go up. He seemed unaroused by Fanya's mock-
ery. She added:
"So I might as well confess—we conversed. Of
Mademoiselle Jacqueline's scream and her disappear-
ance. Quite simply it was that I was first to tell Guil-
laume what had happened, or that something seemed to
have happened, to his mistress. Satisfied, Inspector?"


226
GIROFF IS MYSTERIOUS
movement. Basil saw that the hand that had toyed with
her beads was still, rigid, against her throat.
Giroff relaxed and drew back.
"I shall know, soon," he said. "There is no need to
be hurried."


230
GARDENIAS OR GUILLAUME!"
Giroff scowled at him. "I do not play, Monsieur
Towne. Ever. I but confirm myself. The medical exam-
iner corroborates me. Attend!"
With one of his long, fleshless fingers, he pointed to
that trailing flourish after the signature, and traced it
to its formless scrawl at the lift of the writer's pencil.
But Giroff's finger nail was tracing form into that
scrawl.
All at once it dawned upon Basil.
There WAS form in that scrawl. It was NOT mean-
ingless. Jacqueline had twisted her pencil into a clearly
outlined letter "G." When at last he had discovered it,
the letter glared out from the paper, distinct as the
words above it.
"I think she meant Guillaume," Giroff commented.
"I shall find out."
"He, The Man With The Duck's Bill?" Basil was awed
by the light that seemed to settle about him. Guillaume
on the Lower road, masked, his murderous knife in his
hand! And Jacqueline knew!
Giroff said nothing. He folded the paper and dropped
it into his pocket. After a silence that drew through a
minute or two, during which Giroff seemed to be about
his thinking, the Inspector announced:
"I must see Ogilvie. He must be told of his daughter's
disappearance. You, Monsieur Towne, shall accompany
me. You will do the talking."
They found Guillaume. Giroff said nothing of the
scene in the drawing room, when the servant had de-
liberately given the lie to Fanya Vidal, but commanded,
brusquely:
"Monsieur Ogilvie must receive me. Monsieur Towne
accompanies me."
"I will see if it is possible," Guillaume said. "He sleeps
much at this time."
"If he sleeps, awaken him," Giroff returned* "He


232
"GARDENIAS OR GUILLAUME!
size, were hanging limp—and his sallow cheeks were
blown out until they seemed at the point of bursting.
He was staring at something on the table. A fixed,
piercing stare, that was like a beam of black light. Basil
traced it, dazed. It was a gaze so evil that it was like a
silent exclamation.
But there was nothing on the table, save a book, some
papers, and the Ming vase into which Jacqueline had
fixed her gardenias that morning. There had been two
blossoms, but one had disappeared. The other sent out
a grateful fragrance in that musty room of the green
light.
Giroff gave no heed to Basil's wondering stare. He
remained rigid, poised on his toes.
"Tell him to get out," Mr. Ogilvie whined. "Giroff,
I mean. Jacqueline doesn't want him."
Giroff came to life. He slid up to the table and over
it he bowed, low. "My compliments," he murmured, "to
the Madame Ogilvie. Tell her, I shall soon go away."
With that cryptic speech he was gone. Basil looked
after him as he hurried down the room. When the door
had closed behind him, Basil returned to the duty in
hand.
"Miss Jacqueline, that is to say your daughter, sir, has
had an unfortunate experience. Have you been told that
she is mysteriously gone from the house? That she was
heard to scream?"
But the old man had fallen asleep. His head had
dropped forward onto his chest. He breathed regu-
larly, his thick nostrils quivering with every breath.
Basil didn't know what to do. At last he decided there
was nothing to do, nothing to be gained at the hands
of this paralytic who lived only in his memory of a
wife dead these many years.
He turned down the room and went out softly.


234
FANYA VIDAL SCREAMS
abominable whiskers is on a track at last! I believe he
will conclude our enjoyable uncertainties."
"But why does he take the plight of Miss Jacqueline
so calmly?" Basil had demanded. "He had accused me
of hiding knowledge and my own suspicions from him,
but now he has much to go upon. He lets slide that
conflict between Mademoiselle Vidal and Guillaume over
the unexplained note from Miss Ogilvie. But there was
enough reason for him to sweat them both—and lead
to something. However, he was content. I am afraid he
is as stupid as he acts."
Dr. Marsac had laughed, then, his particularly boom-
ing, roaring laugh. He tapped Basil's shoulder and
whispered, loud enough for the whole grounds to
echo it:
"We must wait. Giroff is obsessed by gardenias. He
even counts the blossoms on the tree. Go count them
yourself, my boy. There are twelve. When there are
only ten, says The Great Giroff—lo!—he will have the
Duck's Bill, The Swan, and restore to us Mademoiselle
Jacqueline. Let us wait and see!"
With that the medical examiner had waddled away,
rolling like a hogshead.
He made it plain that he did not wish to be fol-
lowed.
Basil was left with only his thoughts of Jacqueline
for company. What was Giroff doing about her? Ap-
parently nothing. But, certainly, he was doing some-
thing.
There had been something strange in the detective's
manner in old Ogilvie's room that morning. Change,
too, had come into the manner of Dr. Marsac—a very
subtle change.
And Jacqueline's note! How had she delivered it?
Through whom? There would be the answer to the
whole conundrum of the House of Murder. Had she


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
235
really concealed that "G" for a purpose? Did she intend
it to have a meaning? "Gardenias or Guillaume!" said
Girofif.
Basil fell to wondering if, after all, he were not walk-
ing in a dream. He strolled about the grounds of the
old house smoking cigarette after cigarette. Giroff's
car, which had turned up from some place after the
murder of Manton, was gone from its place between
the blue coupe and Jacqueline's Renault. Presently the
detective appeared, swung his dilapidated Citron into
place, and met Basil near the Cupid fountain. He
stopped before the eager questioning, the complaint and
the anxiety combined in the American's expression.
In the peaked white face of the "man from Paris"
there was a quizzical expression. He looked at Basil
without speaking.
"I don't know how to take you," Basil blurted out.
"You discover in some miraculous way that Mademoi-
selle Fanya lied to us about finding that note from Miss
Ogilvie. You face her with her deception and you allow
her to mock at you. You do nothing about it. You
obtain from Guillaume his frank statement that he
found the note in the reception room, and from the
way he gave you that information we must believe it—
and yet you"
"Must we believe it?"
"You mean that you doubt the servant's explana-
tion?"
"I know that he did not find it in the reception
room."
Basil threw up his hands. "Good Lord! What is be-
hind it all?"
Giroff ministered to his moustachios with the care of
a boulevard dandy, first one tip, then another. Under
them his lips were invisible, only the pointed droop of
his sharp chin, but the American thought that the gro-


236
FANYA VIDAL SCREAMS
tesque little Frenchman smiled—something like a sword
fish would smile.
"Behind it all, Monsieur Towne, is, first of all, The
Swan, the elusive Lady of Death. But behind her is the
Duck's Bill, behind those two is Mademoiselle Jacque-
line"
Basil protested with a ready gesture of desperation.
The moustachio tips twitched ominously, but Giroff
went on, calmly:
"is Mademoiselle Jacqueline. And if we continue
we shall come to gardenias."
"Oh, damn you and your gardenias!"
Basil was beyond himself. He wheeled and would
have strode away, but Giroff, with the agility of a
miniature ape, sprang in front of him. Under the
moustachios there was no hint of smile.
"Monsieur l'Americain! Hold! I am Giroff. It is not
that I permit myself to be damned. But you have saved
my life. In the passage from the patio. Is it not so?"
"I have asked you not to harp upon that."
"What you ask is of no account. But I, Giroff, accept
a saving of his life from no man. Be good enough to
understand that I repay. I shall restore to you the
Mademoiselle Jacqueline who can shoot so straight that
she saves you from the knife of her own servant, our
Guillaume—I shall restore her. Take her away then,
please, to your Worcester!"
Basil was appalled. So Giroff had known, too, that
Guillaume had been the masked bandit in the road?
And knew, of course, of that part of the Lower road's
episode. What didn't he know!
He could only exclaim: "You knew that?"
The little fellow straightened. "I am Giroff," he said,
simply.
He strutted off, then, like Dr. Marsac had, with no
other word.


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
237
Late in the afternoon there were glimpses of him in
the courtyard, hurrying in and out of the drawing room
wing, slipping into the grove of pines. He seemed to
haunt the grounds like a phantom. Basil supposed he
was tracing those inexplainable passages which honey-
combed the old house. He approached him several times
but each time the Inspector forestalled him by going
hastily away, plainly avoiding him.
Dinner was served in the dining room, prepared by a
servant who had been brought for the day from Men-
tone by Dr. Marsac. It was a gloomy meal, Cardoza and
Bath eating in silence, Fanya Vidal appearing only for
the coffee. After Basil had escaped to the patio Giroff
slipped up to him.
"Be good enough, Monsieur Towne, to remain in your
room tonight. Or until I summon you."
Basil protested that he would be unable to remain
patiently idle. Night was approaching—and the vision
of Jacquiline, hostage in some secret prison—if indeed
she still was alive, would torture him if he remained
quiet.
"You will assist Mademoiselle and me, by remaining
indoors," Giroff insisted. "I permit you your window
grille. But if you observe me moving around, you will
not approach me."
"Why be so mysterious?"
Giroff's only reply was: "Sir!"
During the earlier hours of the evening Basil tried to
read. He chose the book from the library with half its
fly-leaf torn away. While he held it in his hands, nor
at any time afterward, could he have told its title nor
what its text was about. Page after page turned under
his fingers and left his memory blank as to the page
before.
He tried to sleep but dreamed each time of flaming
eyes searing the white flesh of Jacqueline's slim straight


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
239
of Jacqueline, and had fallen asleep at last with several
in his mind but all had her face and all wore gorgeous
pearls.
One of these, in his dreams, clutched at her pearls
and screamed. It was a very real and piercing scream.
It tingled in his ears, echoing up from the patio again
and again.
He awoke, trembling. While his wakened senses were
gathering, he heard the scream again and bounded out
onto the iron grille.
The night had passed. The sun was not yet risen, but
the patio was grey in morning light. Giroff was in the
center of the square, still, staring into the dining room
wing. Basil wondered why he stood so motionless while
somebody screamed.
Suddenly his brain registered a disturbing impression.
There were two Giroffs. Not one, but two. There was
one Giroff standing in the patio, motionless, poised, his
shoulders hunched. But another Giroff bounded from
the wing on the right, from the drawing room doors,
and leapt across the patio. Hallucination, of course,
Basil concluded, and ran down to the court and up to
the Giroff who stood there.
The big moustachios and the eyebrows in the form of
inverted Vs faced him. But this little fellow did not
have the round, piercing eyes of the real one, nor the
dead white face. Basil recoiled. The little fellow staring
up at him had the eyes he would never forget, the beady
pin points of the chap who had accosted him at his
garage in Monte Carlo!
"The Chief has gone in there," said this masquerader,
pointing to the reception room. "You may go in. I fancy
another one has gone."
Basil did not stop to solve the mystery of the mas-
querade in Giroff's whiskers. He rushed into the house
and through the corridor from the dining room. Here


240
FANYA VIDAL SCREAMS
were Guillaume's quarters. The servant's huge body was
stretched on the floor, and bent over it, hysterically
calling his name, was Fanya Vidal, her flaming yellow
robe masking her pajamas.
The real Giroff stood a pace from the body, looking
down balefully. He lifted a hand toward Basil. Fanya
was crying:
"Guillaume—my brother! My only friend—
brother!"
She cried it over and over, her sculptured hands flut-
tering about the cadaverous face, tears dropping onto
the pain-twisted mouth.
Dr. Marsac materialized from somewhere. "More than
an hour," he said, in response to Fanya's mute appeal.
"It is too late for anything to be done for him." He
added, after an inspection of the dead man's throat:
"The garotte."
Basil muttered, half aloud: "Guillaume! Fanya
Vidal's brother!"
Giroff heard and said, in a low tone: "I have known
it." He then drew Basil away, leaving Fanya with her
dead. Once out of the room he was galvanized into
action. "Come!" he shouted. "We will count the gar-
denias!"
Basil followed him into the courtyard, and was close
behind when the Inspector reached the gardenia tree.
Giroff counted the white blossoms hurriedly.
"Ten—and last night there were twelve!" he an-
nounced. He stood for a moment in deep reflection.
Basil saw the moustachio tips twitching. When he
turned around the white face was puffed, the eyebrows
flat. "I am an ass, sir! Instead of watching in the cellars
I should have watched here." He pointed to the earth
close to the tree. "See! There are the footprints—of the
Duck's Bill!"
Basil saw them, but they were formless tracks. Who-


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
241
ever had made them had wrapped his feet, or padded
them. And the prints were lost on the garden's stone
walks from which the Mediterranean breeze had blown
all traces. "Go into the patio," Giroff ordered sharply.
"Send my man to me here. You may wait until I join
you there."
"Your man—the other Giroff? Who spoke to me at
my garage?"
Giroff seemed to twist his face into his malevolent
grin. "I was not idle tonight while he who watched
thought I kept vigil in the patio."
"But why—why did he warn me off the Lower road
that night? Why"
Giroff dismissed him to his errand with an impatient
gesture.
"Later I shall tell you."
The watcher in the patio, whose moustachios and eye-
brows were now easily recognizable to Basil as clever
make-up, took the summons silently. A moment later
he seemed to return, but it was the real Giroff who
appeared. He motioned the American to follow, through
the drawing room to the library. Cardoza and Bath
were in the room, pacing nervously. The Spaniard
turned quickly and, with an effort to conceal his agita-
tion, said abruptly:
"Monsieur Giroff, in the face of this new terrible
happening, I am decided to speak. I can not remain
silent any longer."
Giroff swung upon him. "You will tell me at last,
sir, why you were a guest in this house. You will tell me
what you know of Fanya Vidal?"
Bath interposed gruffly. "I did not know that she had
a brother. If I had known, I would not have thought
him to have been Guillaume, a servant."
Cardoza ignored the Englishman's interruption. "You
have spoken of your knowledge, Monsieur Giroff, of the


242
FANYA VIDAL SCREAMS
long distance telephone conversation between Mademoi-
selle Vidal and myself, which resulted in my coming to
Monte Carlo."
The detective glanced to the Englishman. "Also she
telephoned to Monsieur Bath, to London."
Bath merely grunted. Cardoza continued. "I feel
grieved for Mademoiselle at this moment. The horrible
fate of her brother, who is, I must explain, a half
brother only, son of the same mother but of a different
father, is a blow to her—as we see. One sympathizes."
Giroff nodded, as if understood, but his voice did not
soften. "Why was there a conflict between brother and
sister over the source of the bit of paper on which was
the handwriting of Mademoiselle Ogilvie? Which one
protected the other? Can you tell me that, Senor Conde
de Treyagua?"
Cardoza protested with a gesture. "You go out of
your way to remind me of my identity, Inspector. You
threaten to bring upon me the embarrassments I fear.
They are, I suppose, unavoidable. You need not
threaten."
"I do not threaten, Sefior. Nor do you reply."
"I know nothing of the reasons for dispute over
Mademoiselle Ogilvie's reassuring note. Nor of the
whereabouts of the Mademoiselle. With her, I have had
no concern."
An exclamation from the Englishman was followed
by a terse observation which Basil, impatiently await-
ing termination of the scene, heartily echoed.
"Mademoiselle's dramatic disappearance, kidnapped un-
der our noses, in a house which has been visited twice—
three times, now!—by a fiendish murderer, seems not
to concern Monsieur Giroff, either."
Giroff glared at him, but returned his attention to
the Spaniard.
"Mademoiselle Vidal," Cardoza said, still fighting


246
FANYA VIDAL SCREAMS
the speaker directed to Wellington Bath, who had re-
sumed his pacing up and down the floor.
"Ah!" The Inspector's exclamation was a hissing
round. "You, Monsieur Bath, were to provide the Sefior
with his money? I am right. You, too, were summoned
by Mademoiselle Vidal. She can command of you, also.
Again I am right."
"Too damned right!" Bath muttered. "She had us all.
But not now. For my part, I forgive her—with that
villainous fellow dead across the court and she claiming
him as a brother. He probably was an ally of Manton.
With both of them gone !" He shrugged his
shoulders, expressively, glancing at Cardoza.
Basil remembered the scene in the patio, Fanya giving
Jacqueline her rumpled black scarf and asking that it
be burned in her fire. She had mentioned "ashes" that
were all that was left of Manton, and that Cardoza and
Bath had "enjoyed the blaze."
GiroflF seemed to be lost in deep thought. Basil
watched him closely. He glanced from one to the other
of the two men who had been Fanya Vidal's or Man-
ton's victims, and presently his moustachios began to
rise and bristle.
"It has not been explained," he said at last, "why you
met in this house, guests of Mademoiselle Ogilvie. You
are summoned by the Mademoiselle Fanya, who is black-
mailing you—through Manton. I am right. Monsieur
Bath is to have concluded for him an arrangement by
which he supplies money to Senor Cardoza—for Man-
ton. That arrangement—it is to be entered upon here!
Messieurs! You tell me much. You tell me nothing!
Who is The Swan?"
The shot was so unexpected, Giroff's manner had
changed so suddenly, that both men were aghast. Bath
exclaimed:
"What has your Swan to do with all of this?"


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
247
"Everything, Messieurs! The Swan—and the Harle-
quin pearls! You have not mentioned those. Manton
brought them to this house. He was killed for them."
Cardoza replied: "I knew nothing of them—until
you appeared in the house, after the occurrence in the
courtyard—Manton's death. But I was supposed to buy,
from Manton, some sort of jewelry. Bath was to loan
me the money, and take the jewelry as security. Upon
the conclusion of that transaction I was to receive from
Manton my letters to Mademoiselle Vidal. Of the jew-
elry I was to purchase I had been assured, only, that it
was suitable for "He paused, controlled himself
with an effort, and finished: "Suitable, Monsieur, for the
young woman who is about to honor the Conde de
Treyagua with her hand, and for whose sake I would
have gone far to procure the documents in Jules Man-
ton's possession. Now you have the whole story. The
death of Manton has relieved me. It has benefited my
friend Wellington Bath. But you may not accuse us of
complicity. The circumstance of his murder protects us,
and, you will agree—neither of us could be your Duck's
Bill, with other deaths at his door."
"He's told you the God's truth," said Bath. "What
has happened here is uncanny. I don't know what it all
means—there's something we none of us know."
"I still am not informed," hammered Giroff, "why
your interesting transactions in result of your past ad-
mirations for the beautiful Mademoiselle Vidal were to
be consummated in this house—with Mademoiselle
Ogilvie as your hostess."
Cardoza, who had walked toward the end of the
room, swung around. "I will tell you this, Inspector, in
addition. Fanya Vidal is the illegitimate daughter of
Ambrose Ogilvie. She had informed me of this, before
my acceptance of her proposal that we meet here. She
explained that her mother, an Eurasian, was dismissed
s


248
FANYA VIDAL SCREAMS
by Ogilvie, on his tea plantations, when he learned that
previously, and by another Englishman, she had borne
Guillaume. I believe, but it is only a belief, that she or
Manton, probably he, has blackmailed Ogilvie as profit-
ably as I have been blackmailed."
Again there sounded the detective's long-drawn
"A-h!"
He swung on his heel until he faced Basil. The Amer-
ican was certain now that the thin lips were shaped to a
diabolical grin. The charcoal eyes shot black gleams.
"Monsieur Towne!" he barked. "I begin with the
candle that released the odors of a strong perfume.
That perfume, sir, was the fragrance of gardenias. I
arrive at ten gardenias where there were twelve. But
before I arrive at that deduction of two gardenias two
occurrences intervene. Mademoiselle Ogilvie is abducted
under our very noses. Guillaume, a brother to Mademoi-
selle Vidal, is the victim of the Duck's Bill. Do you
attend, sir, while I trace events?"
"Why, yes!" Basil stammered. Giroff's whiskers were
twitching violently. His little body seemed to vibrate,
fairly bursting with suddenly stirred energy.
"The man Manton brought the Harlequin pearls of
the Baroness von Stromberg to this house. That I know.
He was killed but the pearls were not left with him.
Was it Guillaume who administered the garotte of the
jungle Nogas to Manton? And abstracted from the
pockets of his victim the rare jewels? No. Guillaume
was not the Duck's Bill. He is dead, the marks of the
garotte on his neck. Is it possible that Guillaume,
though he had not killed Manton, had possessed himself
of Manton's stolen pearls? And was himself killed for
them?"
Vision of Jacqueline, the Harlequins coiled at her
waist, rose before Basil. Involuntarily, he shook his head,
not knowing what he did. He heard himself murmur-


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
249
ing, under the spell of Giroff's hypnotic gaze: "He did
not have them. They have been in the possession
of"
He caught himself just in time. Or was it in time?
The little detective's whiskers had relaxed. His eye-
brows had risen to their accustomed Vs.
"He did not have them?" Giroff repeated, so low it
was only a whisper.
"That you know! They were in the possession of
someone else, eh? A-h!"
Basil blundered a protest. "You're mad—I see what
you think. I don't know anything about them—I was
only surmising!"
He would have blundered farther. Giroff stopped him
with a quiet lift of a talon-like hand. "A-h! I am
Giroff!" The detective's inevitable bombast was as soft
as his former murmur. "I search in the pines for the
footprints of the slayer of Manton, the footprints of
the Duck's Bill. I find them. Misshapen by feet
wrapped in cloths. But also I find the footprints of
Mademoiselle Ogilvie. I can not explain them. They
become plain!"
Basil was furious. He advanced upon the preposterous
little fellow menacingly. "You are out of your mind,
you fool! Jacqueline's footprints on her own grounds
are not to be held as strange. I did not say"
"You did not say, Monsieur Towne? Of a certainty.
But did I not wt>n you that you would tell me much,
without words? You have told me that Mademoiselle's
'G' did not signify 'gardenias,' but 'Guillaume.'
Mademoiselle has been removed—by Guillaume. Why,
if not for the Harlequin pearls of which she, as you
have told me so plainly, was possessed? Guillaume got
them and—the Duck's Bill has at last collected them!
Again am I indebted to you, Monsieur Towne. It is a
heavy score for Giroff to repay."


250
FANYA VIDAL SCREAMS
Basil would have borne down upon him but he turned
suavely to Cardoza and Bath. "Messeiurs! My apologies
for detaining you. I know the Duck's Bill. I shall have
The Swan. Meanwhile—Messieurs are free to depart!"


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
this decision, if we assume that Guillaume knew he
would be bringing the pearls to a rendezvous with some-
one in this house. Events indicate that Guillaume knew
many things. He was foiled, however, by Mademoiselle.
Why?"
Again that abrupt "Why?" Basil exclaimed: "Inspec-
tor! Do you think I can answer your questions? Solve
these—Dr. Marsac calls them, riddles?"
Giroff's whiskers twitched. "I do not ask questions,
Monsieur, for which I have not already the answer. It
is Giroff's way. Was it not that Mademoiselle, who
shoots so straight, would have taken for herself the
Harlequin pearls from her guest, Manton? Of a surety!
Not Guillaume, her servant, but she, herself, must have
them. That is two persons who know Manton brings
the pearls. Guillaume and Mademoiselle. And both wish
them. Is it not that there must have been a third person,
that one to whom Manton expected to safely deliver the
jewels? A third person who was—and is—in this house?
A third person of whom both Guillaume and Mademoi-
selle knew, and would outwit? Is it not so?"
"But who? The Duck's Bill, you will say, of course.
But what can he have to do with the house—or, I mean,
its people?"
"That, Monsieur, I know! I shall present you to him,
in due time. We return to our sequence of events. I
assume that Mademoiselle, having foiled Guillaume only
to discover that it was you she preserved to herself, not
Manton, invited you into the house either in irony with
herself, or for a more definite reason."
"She had a reason. She said so." Basil could not spare
this opportunity to put in a word for the girl. "And
she would have told me, on the balcony over the court-
yard, if—if we had not been interrupted."
"By Man ton's murder! Very well. But she did not tell
you. I shall not ask what her reason was, for 1 do not


2H
FANYA SPEAKS
know the answer. Perhaps she will tell me, when she is
with us again."
Basil's anxieties were immediately recalled. "Will she
be with us? Why are you so certain she is safe?"
"Her note, Monsieur! Her 'G' meant 'Guillaume.'
That is certain. Her note was carefully written, not in
stress. And Guillaume brought it to us at a risk, which
he would not have undertaken if she had been harmed."
Basil interrupted suddenly. "Fanya Vidal must know
what has happened to her! You brought out her com-
plicity when you faced her with Guillaume! Why do
you not make her talk?"
"I wait. I remarked that Mademoiselle brought you
into the house. And that I have yet to learn why. It
occurs that Manton arrives safely and wanders into the
courtyard, where Dr. Hansard retired five years ago.
Like Dr. Hansard, he is strangled. Almost I catch the
Duck's Bill, for I am watching. But he escapes. And
where he escapes me, at the very spot, there appear, in
the morning, the footprints of Mademoiselle. Is that not
interesting?"
"And she will explain, I am sure?" Basil stubbornly
argues.
"Perhaps. We pass the strangling of Guillaume him-
self, now, and come to the gentlemen who have just left
the house. Messieurs Cardoza and Bath. They are
brought by Mademoiselle Vidal—the one to purchase
jewels, the other to advance the money. It is a business
transaction. It might be consummated in a hotel, at
Monte Carlo. Why does Manton desire the arrangements
made here, in this house?"
Basil suddenly was alert. "You say you do not ask a
question unless you know the answer to it. Do you
mean—you know why they came here, to the Ogilvie
house, with Miss Ogilvie as their hostess?"
"I know. The jewels Cardoza spoke of, were to have


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
25J
been the Harlequin pearls. And if he had been ex-
torted into purchasing them—it would have been Car-
doza who would have felt at his neck the garotte of
the Assam head-hunters—not Manton. Either The Swan
changed her mind, or Manton was tricked. That I do
not know."
Basil's composure gave way. "God! You talk of The
Swan. You talk of the Duck's Bill—as if they walked
in our midst—yet there are only five of us. Fanya,
Ogilvie, Marsac, Jacqueline—and I—and I suppose we
shouldn't count Dr. Marsac, save that he, like me, is a
visitor in the house. I tell you it's all a fantastic dream.
All that is real is that—Jacqueline has disappeared.
Manton first, and now Guillaume—gone forever. Who
is next?"
He rumpled his hands through his hair, more exas-
perated because Giroff merely glared at him, his ridicu-
lous whiskers twitching. He would have burst out
again, but the booming voice of Dr. Marsac invaded
the room.
"Let us not consider the future, my boy. There re-
mains the present. We must grieve with Mademoiselle
Vidal."
Basil wheeled upon the medical examiner angrily.
"Please, sir! Must we have mockeries again? If you re-
fuse to be sad at the spectacle of death, will you not
realize that one who lives may be in this house in a
worse state than death?"
The medical examiner's round face sobered. "There,
sir, I am with you. Behold! I become sad for the liv-
ing." His fingers brushed chubbily at the American's
shoulder. "When the Mademoiselle Ogilvie is returned
to us, my friend," he said, "be very kind to her. She
is a most remarkable young woman, and deserving."
Basil's heart leapt at the earnestness, the genuine
kindliness that had entered the medical examiner's


256
FANYA SPEAKS
booming voice. He would have pressed him but Giroff
interrupted.
"You have visited the room of the green lamp? You
have informed Monsieur Ogilvie of the fate of Guil-
laume?"
Dr. Marsac chuckled. "Guillaume's master refuses to
be depressed by his untimely end. His principal regret
appears to be that his house was not also cleaned of
Giroff!" The medical examiner laughed loudly at this
pleasantry by the sick man upstairs. When his voice
was in control again he added, "For Guillaume's pass-
ing, he congratulated himself that now he can sleep
oftener and in more peace. When I left him he was
nodding in temporary oblivion, quite undisturbed. He
has an admirable outlook upon the incident of passage
from this life to another."
Through the court window, Fanya Vidal could be
seen entering the patio from the wing which held her
brother's body. She crossed the court, apparently intent
upon passing to her apartment or entering the drawing
room adjoining the library. Giroff slid up to Dr. Mar-
sac and whispered hoarsely.
"Be brief, sir! The gardenias?"
The medical examiner nodded in high good humor
to Basil. "His mind refuses to be else than horticultural,
eh?" he remarked in a chuckling aside. But to Giroff
he said, tersely, for Fanya Vidal could be heard in the
next room:
"Two blossoms were in the Ming vase."
Giroff grunted and appeared to be content with the
information thus conveyed that on Mr. Ogilvie's table
were the fragrant blooms that were a memory link with
the days of the first Jacqueline.
Fanya Vidal appeared at the door. Basil marvelled that
on the olive-hued face there were no traces of its re-
cent tears, and in her poise no hint of the emotion she


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
257
had surrendered to but a little while before. Her fingers
toyed with the chain she was again wearing. She studied
the three men who faced her, calmly. Giroff watched
her evilly, balanced on his toes, his arms limp—a baboon
again!
She walked slowly into the room. Basil thought she
would walk over the ferocious little Inspector, for she
did not pause until she stood so close to him that he
must peer up at her from under flattened eyebrows. A
quiver traced her carmine splash of lips, then she said,
softly:
"Fate is on the side of the Great Giroff! Death nar-
rows the field, does it not?"
It seemed that she taunted him. Basil held his breath
for a bark of venom from the lips under the up-tipped
moustachios. But Giroff's voice was almost gentle.
"I am considerate, Mademoiselle. I do not gloat."
"Merci, Monsieur l'Inspecteur. It is good of you. I
have loved but one thing, in this life—my brother."
"I am sorry you did not find it a duty of your love
—to have saved him. You have known The Swan and
The Duck's Bill."
For a moment the red lips were tight, as if she held
them in the grip of a firm will. Then they eased. She
glanced at Basil.
"I think I would have saved him, Inspector, if Mon-
sieur Towne had not chosen to bring his blue coupe into
the Lower road."
"But Mademoiselle!" Basil began. Giroff stopped him
with a quick gesture. Fanya's lips traced a bitter smile.
To the Inspector she said:
"I would have killed Jules Manton with my own
hands that night, to take from him the pearls for which
he had killed the Baroness von Stromberg. Guillaume
would not hear of it. It had to be done, he agreed, if I
were determined. He was the bandit, as I think you have


258
FANYA SPEAKS
known, who would have taken him off the road—and
killed him, I am sure. Jacqueline and Monsieur Towne
together interfered."
"That I have known, or have reasoned," Giroff said.
"Will you tell me why you, who belonged to Manton,
would have thus betrayed him? Who was it you wished
to save through depriving him of the Harlequins?"
She shook her head, her bitter smile appearing again.
- "No, Monsieur l'Inspecteur! I fancy you are nearing the
end of your long hunt. I shall not help you. Find Jac-
queline—if you still need a key, perhaps she will give it
to you."
Basil could not restrain an interjection. "Where is
she, Mademoiselle? Will you not help us—or me!—
that much?"
"If I knew, I would tell you," she returned. "Guil-
laume did wrong. He was desperate. Where he put her,
I do not know. Unless it was "She paused to study
Giroff for a moment. "You were nearly trapped in the
tunnel from under the patio," she said. "You see, I
know! The Duck's Bill escaped you. Have you discov-
ered how?"
"Yes," Giroff declared. "The passage from the re-
ception room across the court and the tunnel to the
yard from the patio, both connect with an opening
to the cellar. I discovered the Duck's Bill way of egress
to the cellar. I have examined it again. She is not there."
"Then I cannot help you. Guillaume knew of other
hiding places. I do not."
"It is of small matter," Giroff said, to Basil's bitter
disappointment. "I shall find her. You came to say
something of your own choosing to me, Mademoiselle.
I wait."
For the first time she lost her self-control. With a
little sob, choked in her throat, she turned away from
the white face that confronted her so sombrely and


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
259
leaned against a table. Dr. Marsac went quickly up to
her. She lifted a reassuring hand to him.
"It is for the living you feel, isn't it, Doctor?" she
murmured. "You are feeling for me, Merci!" She
turned to Gixoff. "One does not ask concessions from
the Great Giroff. But I ask of you, Monsieur llnspac-
teur, to remember of Guillaume that he has never taken
a life, though he would have taken Manton's, whose
life was forfeit under any circumstances. Jacqueline has
not trusted him, but he would have served her—
loyally."
It was from Dr. Marsac that she received some meas-
ure of the assurance she wanted, for Giroff turned away
abruptly in silence. The medical examiner said:
"He will be released to you—when it is possible. I
shall intercede with the Inspector, and it is more than
possible that he will admit that I have served him."
Giroff wheeled, as abruptly as he had turned away,
"The medical examiner discovered a gardenia tree.
He has a nose for perfumes. It was of great help. Will
you tell me, Mademoiselle, what becomes of the second
gardenia—when there is but one in the Chinese vase?"
She returned his stare levelly. "Only Guillaume knew
that. And now, I think, Jacqueline. If I knew, I would
not tell you—unless Jacqueline wished it."
Giroff dismissed her with a grunt. Dr. Marsac led her
from the room.


Chapter Twenty-Nine
IN THE CELLAR
w ITH Fanya gone Gi-
roff retired within his own thoughts. He paced the
room in short, jerky steps, his whiskers twitching furi-
ously. Basil spoke to him several times, and received no
attention. The house was strangely still. The rustle of
the pines in the courtyard, stirred by a breeze that came
down from the hills, could be heard through the open
windows of the library.
Dr. Marsac crossed the patio, going in, Basil sup-
posed, to whatever his professional ministration to the
servant who had been garotted. He made no sound as
he crossed the stone slabs. Cardoza and Bath had gone.
Basil wondered if they had driven away together in
Jacqueline's long-nosed Renault. Everywhere there
seemed to be the peace and quiet of the Mediterranean.
There was only Giroff, the fierce little enigma, who
walked up and down, up and down, the long narrow
library room, so fast that it seemed that he ran an
endless marathon.
Basil would have gone out, unable to stand or sit
quietly in the tenseness of an atmosphere pregnant
with imminent things. Giroff barked at him one word:
"Wait!"
260


262
IN THE CELLAR
but with an upward lift. Giroff, with a hissing sound
from between his teeth, sprang to the wall panel and
pressed its spring. To Basil he said:
"Come, sir! The Duck's Bill is mine!"
Basil joined him in something very near to ft daze.
Giroff thrust a small automatic into his hands. "This
time," he said, "if the blazing eyes appear too. close
—shoot between them. I do not think it will be neces-
sary—but be prepared."
Before he finished he was creeping down the stairs
in the wall. He manipulated the swinging stone silently.
A flush of dank air swept Basil's face. He slipped quietly
to the cellar floor and stood beside the unseen form of
his companion.
A finger on his arm guided him. Giroff was creeping
around the cellar, hugging its tiers of wine casks. Sud-
denly he halted in his tracks. Basil, close behind, was
caught unawares and stumbled over him. The fingers
on his arm gripped in silent warning. Instinctively Ba-
sil interpreted that warning.
There was someone else in the cellar! There was no
sound, no stir. But something alive, some human pres-
ence was close. Giroff was turning his whole body
slowly, his senses feeling for the location of the other
presence. He appeared to sense it at last. His grip of
Basil's arm relaxed. An instant later his flashlight shot
its beam to a spot on the same side of the room they
were traversing, and only some ten yards distant.
At the same instant that Basil cried out: "Jacque-
line!" there was a rush and a sharp contact. Jacqueline,
of whom Basil had caught a flashing vision, erect and
poised, still wearing her white frock, against a hugh
wine cask, had thrown herself into the spot beam,
thrown herself upon Giroff!
The flashlight, darkened, clattered to the floor. Gi-
roff's pistol barked and was followed by his oath. Basil


264
IN THE CELLAR
Basil soothed her. "Who, my dear? Save who? What
does it all mean?"
She did not reply. Basil urged her toward the open-
ing in the wall, into which Giroff had disappeared. The
faint glow of his light, far underground, guided him.
"Follow him," Jacqueline said, softly. "And be as merci-
ful as you can!"
Basil's movement in the wake of Giroff had been an
impulse. At Jacqueline's plea he halted, catching her to
him in a fast grip. "Be merciful to whom?" he de-
manded. "Jacqueline—will you not explain? I shall not
leave you an instant."
Apparently she was herself again, for she released
herself. "Please!" she said. "I will go up into the house.
I am very tired. Tell—tell Monsieur Giroff—I shall wait
for him. I am quite calm."
"But where have you been?"
"Until a little while ago—shut in. Is it not sufficient
that I am again free? And safe? Follow him, please. I
can see quite well."
Her tone was cool dismissal. She slid from Basil's de-
taining hand. He flashed his cigarette lighter and saw
the white gown clammering into the opening of the
library passage. From far in the tunnel Giroff had en-
tered, the Inspector's voice came dimly, calling his
name.
For a moment Basil hesitated between seeking out the
way to Giroff and following Jacqueline. But she had
asked him to remain with the Inspector. Guided only
by the flare of his lighter, he picked his way along a
tunnel, broader than the passage under the patio, and
completely walled in. How far he advanced he could
not determine. The passage twisted to the right and
left. Around one bend a hazy light glowed. He came,
a few steps farther along, to a chamber on his right, a
square space in which an oil lamp burned on a table.


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
265
Basil thought Giroff must be here, but one glance con-
vinced him that he couldn't be. The chamber, with its
swinging stone portal similar to the others which shut
in the house's mysterious underground passages, was
barely large enough for its cot, its chair and table. From
some place there was ventilation, for the oil lamp's flame
burned steadily. It came to Basil that here was where
Jacqueline must have been! Signs of her were unmis-
takable.
Giroff was calling to him again, and his voice was
close. He pressed on. The flame of his pocket lighter
was no longer necessary, for Giroff's flashlight was near
—around another bend of the wide passage!
"Come, Monsieur Towne!"
He was crouched in the center of the tunnel, before
what seemed to be a perfectly solid space of side wall.
His flashlight played over the wall in a steady circle,
however, as if he sought a crevice, or sign of spring or
button. His pistol was pointed levelly before him.
"What have you found?" Basil exclaimed.
And Giroff's answer was instantaneous. "The nest of
The Swan and The Duck's Bill!"
When Basil was beside him, Giroff murmured: "Bend
low, Monsieur, do you not discover them?"
Basil obeyed automatically. He bent almost to the
ground. Then he sprang upright. "I smell them—Gar-
denias!"
Giroff nodded. "Through this wall! Find your way
back into the house. Send me my man, Duroc. You
may remain—with Mademoiselle!" Steeling his mind
against all reflections, all effort to cope with the drama
and mystery coming so suddenly to their denouement
—refusing to attempt any hazarding to himself, Basil
groped back along the passage obediently. He found the
little Duroc in the patio, with Dr. Marsac beside him,
and a third figure which Basil recognized as that of the


266
IN THE CELLAR
stolid Inspector Lacrosse, from the Provincial Bureau
at Nice.
Dr. Marsac halted Basil with a chuckle. "Your old
friend, Monsieur Lacrosse! He comes again, you see,
when the murder has been done. He will seek foot-
prints and fingerprints before we remove the body of
Monsieur Guillaume. I have told him you were not near
when Guillaume surrendered his life."
Lacrosse nodded curtly to Basil, showed his disgust
with the medical examiner, and turned into the recep-
tion room wing to view the scene of Guillaume's death.
Dr. Marsac turned at once to the American.
"He has found him?"
"I suppose so. Who, I don't know. But he wants Mr.
Duroc."
"You will show me the way?" the little fellow ex-
claimed, rushing into the house. Basil led him to the
cellar and to the opening by the great wine cask.
"In there—follow it until you come to him," he said,
and then sought Jacqueline.
She was in none of the first story rooms with which
he was familiar. He did not know just where her own
apartment would be, save that it must be in the same
wing with her father's. He paused for a moment out-
side Mr. Ogilvie's door, debating whether to go in. She
might be with her father. While he hesitated, Mr. Ogil-
vie's door opened and Fanya Vidal came out.
She was startled by his presence in the corridor and
closed the door behind her sharply. Basil explained his
search immediately.
Fanya appeared to be relieved.
"There is one room to which she often retreats. Come
with me."
She led him down the corridor, past his own door,
and around to the drawing room wing. At the end
of the hall she paused. "In there is the barren room—


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
269
the items his mind recalled, struggle as he would. He
wondered why he stood there, Jacqueline before him,
gazing out so silently, motionless, and was about to
swing her around and plead with her to come to life,
when he turned to a sound behind him.
Giroff!
Jacqueline wheeled and threw out an arm. The In-
spector toyed with his moustachio tips. "To you,
Mademoiselle Ogilvie, my compliments," he said, in a
low tone. Then, so suddenly that Basil recoiled, the
whiskers shot up. The ghastly white face took on its
most ferocious expression, its eyebrows flattened. His
voice was brusque and hard.
"You will come with me, Monsieur Towne. Giroff
repays you the saving of his life."


Chapter Thirty
THE MAN WITH THE DUCK'S BILL
In the library, before they
scrambled into the wall panel, Giroff handed to Basil
the little automatic which had been clutched from him
by Jacqueline, and which she had dropped to the cellar
floor.
"Keep it this time, Monsieur," he said. "If there is an
emergency, use it. I doubt there will be."
Basil followed across the cellar, into the wide under-
ground passage, and around its sharp bends. Giroff's
flashlight lit the way. They passed the tiny chamber
with its burning oil lamp, its cot and chair. Giroff
turned sharply to enter this room. He stopped and
swung around. Basil, every nerve trembling, and faced
him questioning.
"Monsieur l'Americain," said Giroff, "we enter, soon,
the chamber of The Swan. I have seen her. She waits
for us, for you, and for me. At her feet you will find
—a gardenia! On her neck are the Harlequin pearls.
Are you prepared, sir?"
"I am in a dream, Inspector. I am prepared for
everything—and nothing!"
"That is good sir. It is the proper attitude. Be ex-
pectant of anything—and of nothing! And be good
270


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
271
enough to remember—I have a regard for the Mademoi-
selle Ogilvie. I commend her to you."
"I will go through hell for her, sir."
He said it simply, an outpouring from his hysterical
brain and heart. The little man who, it was said, gloated
over his victims, glared at him for a full minute, then
waved his flashlight ahead. Two more turns and they
came upon Duroc, backed against the passage wall, his
gun pointed straight ahead of him into a blaze of light
that escaped an opening in the opposite wall. Duroc did
not move as the others came up, save to wave his free
hand in a gesture which Giroff, but not Basil, under-
stood. Duroc glared straight before him—as if he
watched an animal about to spring. Giroff threw an arm
in front of Basil, stopping him.
"When I summon you!" he commanded. Then he
moved stealthily until he was in front of Duroc. Basil
saw him wheel, his gun replacing Duroc's, pointed at
whatever was within the opened chamber.
"I am returned, Duck's Bill! I, Giroff! I am come to
take you—to my Lady Guillotine!"
Bombast, Basil thought, but what a triumphant
thrust after all! Whoever it was that faced the detec-
tive's gun—he had been sought for years and now was
trapped, his hunter victorious, pistol pointed, summon-
ing a vision of the guillotine! The American shuddered.
Giroff was creeping, inch by inch, into the opening
—another of the balanced stone doors—and into the
lighted chamber beyond. He was wary, watchful. Who-
ever was in the underground chamber he entered made
no sound, though Basil thought he heard labored,
wheezy breathing.
Giroff had disappeared completely, but Duroc was
clearly visible in the glow that laid across the tunnel
floor. The wiry little chap was bent upon the scene in-
side the chamber. In another second Basil's impatience


272
THE MAN WITH THE DUCK'S BILL
would have mastered him, and he would have rushed
directly into this scene, but just then Duroc stepped
back and motioned the American. In an instant Basil
blinked in the full brilliance of a score of clustered
candles in a candelabra set on a pedestal.
The American gasped, brushed his hands across his
eyes as if to clear them of a phantasy, and then, con-
vinced that what was before him was real, hastily
scanned the room.
It was not a large chamber, barely the size of an ante-
room, but in it were countless objects—and all of them
the familiar belongings of a beautiful woman's boudoir.
There stood Giroff, stepped aside from the opened stone
door, his back against the tunnel wall, crouched, his
pistol levelled. But at his first glance around the chamber
Basil could see no one else.
No one else, save what at first he thought was a
woman—a beautiful, exquisite woman—and a woman
who was Jacqueline! He cried out to her—"Jacque-
line!"
He thrust out his arms, but was drawn back by a
grunt from Giroff.
No, it was not Jacqueline! Not the living one, but
that other one, who had died so many years before.
The Jacqueline of the painting in Mr. Ogilvie's green-
lamped room. Carved, of some warm-tinted stone that
seemed to impart the flush of blood and life to the bare
shoulders and arms, the lovely, smiling lips, and the
sculptor had succeeded in almost animating the beauti-
ful face.
The figure was garbed, not in its sculptor's draperies,
but in a velvet gown of the fashion of years before,
the modest decollete that would have been the mode in
the days of the first Jacqueline. The velvet still retained
its sheen, though the lace that fringed its bodice was
yellowed and lay limp over the curve of stone breasts,


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
273
which held, between them, a pungent gardenia bloom
fresh from its trees.
This Jacqueline of stone, in life size, seemed to be
stepping from her vanity table just behind—from the
cloisonne bottle and gold boxes spread in confusion be-
fore her mirror—to greet with a smile the only visitor
who could be welcome in her boudoir—her husband.
It was all so lifelike, so uncannily real—the vanity
table; a negligee, yellow and dusty, thrown across a gilt-
backed chair, as if she had gowned herself without a
maid, and was leaving—even a bit of discarded day
lingerie tossed carelessly onto the floor!—that Basil
could not accept the make-believe for a full minute,
though he knew that the smile was stone and the ex-
quisitely modeled shoulders lifeless.
He shot a half-dazed glance into every corner of the
room. His senses were alert to the unseen presence Gi-
roff covered with his unwavering automatic, but he
could not find it. Slowly his brain was admitting that
the figure before him was a death masque—done in
stone and costumed in the garments of the living, and
that the veinless throat and pulseless wrists were lit-
erally ablaze with jewels!
Jewels worth a city's ransom. Jewels that would feed
a starving populace. Huge rubies that smouldered
blood-red in the grape-black hair; chokers of carved
emeralds nestling close to the shapely neck; sunbursts
of diamonds fastened to the velvet gown until they
were a shining armor! The stone wrists were heavy with
bangles that could have been created only by the world's
most famous jewelers, and dimming the luster of every
other gem, there hung from the throat a long, shim-
mering rope of!
With a start and an exclamation Basil realized that
he was gazing at last upon the Harlequin pearls!
He had never seen them, but he knew them. "Pellets


274 THE MAN WITH THE DUCK'S BILL
of destiny" Dr. Marsac had called them. A double river
of opalescent clouds rolled into priceless globes, they
hung from the stone throat, glimmering to the waist
of the old-fashioned gown. Basil could not restrain
himself from making the needed test of his senses. He
reached a shaking finger to touch and lift the drooping
curve of the marvellous pearls.
For the first time he heard the voice of Giroff from
behind him.
"The Harlequins, Monsieur l'Americain! They hang
from the throat of The Swan."
"We're dreaming!" Basil cried. "Look. The Man With
the Duck's Bill—without his wax nose!"
The Inspector pointed jerkily along the level of his
gun—behind the image of Jacqueline's young mother.
Basil would have stepped in front of the detective for
an unobstructed view, but a word of warning stopped
him. He moved to the opposite side of the stone figure
and saw him at last .
A man who crouched close to the earth floor of the
chamber, half hidden by decaying cretonne draperies
that hung from the vanity table. A man with a huge
frame, apparently, but with no flesh. His face was
wrinkled parchment, drawn and yellow, and a hand that
quivered ceaselessly in front of the shrunken face, was
like a great bird's talon.
"Mr. Ogilvie!"
With his cry still echoing in the stuffy chamber, Basil
looked to Giroff. The moustachios were pointing up-
ward, ferociously. The eyebrows were flat. He was
more of a miniature Satan than ever.
"He brought to her one too many gardenias," Gi-
roff said, sententiously, his eyes remaining steadily upon
the form crouched at bay by the vanity table.
Stupefied, Basil looked again at the Ogilvie who, quite
apparently, was not an invalid—not the helpless para-


THE HOUSE OF MURDER 275
lytic his world had so long thought him. The black
glasses were absent. Green eyes that glinted fire, even in
the candle light, were deeply sunk in the parchment
face—the eyes of the maniac!
"Jacqueline likes you, Towne," said the cackling
voice. "I've talked to her about you. She'd like you to
have her daughter. Now that you are here, and can
talk to her yourself, tell her you'll give her daughter
jewels, and gardenias. Jacqueline always wanted jewels.
She always liked gardenias. I've given them to her."
The cackling voice broke into a chuckle. The green
eyes blazed and turned upon the detective.
"Giroff, here," Ogilvie continued, chuckling, "will
be taking me away pretty soon. I won't be able to take
care of Jacqueline's daughter. I told her I would, when
she died, but I can't now. You take care of her, Towne.
Give her jewels. She will be like her mother. She will
want the best jewels in the world. Get them. I got
them. She likes gardenias, too. Have a tree for her. I've
got one here and I've got another in London and an-
other in Paris. Don't forget, Towne!"
Utterly horrified by the spectacle of the lunatic,
crouched to Giroff's gun, cornered in the very shrine
of his murderous maniacal devotion to the wife who
had died so soon after her first childbirth, Basil turned
helplessly to the Inspector. Giroff nodded.
"Tell him," he commanded tersely, "that you will
stand by Mademoiselle Jacqueline."
Something stirred Ogilvie to his feet. He loomed an
ungainly, fleshless ghost of a man. Giroff brought his
pistol up sharply and did not move.
"He does not need to stand by Jacqueline," the old
man shouted. "I've done that. You'll be sending me to
join her, Giroff. I'll stand by her then, and forever.
I mean her daughter—the girl upstairs. Stand by her,
Towne!"
s


THE HOUSE OF MURDER
281
horror—Her husband—come from the guillotine!
Ah!"
Giroff's final exclamation was a long-drawn hiss. And
at that moment Basil realized what he had been doing
while he backed Ogilvie along the cavern wall. He
had been forcing him behind a low, iron-wrought table
with a white marble top, on which were albums and
little stacks of age-marked letters, some of them still
unopened—removed, no doubt, from Mrs. Ogilvie's
boudoir after her death, and placed here, just as they
were.
The old man was now behind the table, while Giroff
crouched in front of it. Giroff spoke again, still sneer-
ing, and Basil observed that while he talked he pushed
the table stealthily across the corner of the chamber
walls, hemming Ogilvie in the angle.
"Remember Dr. Hansard, Ogilvie," Giroff was say-
ing. "You killed him, didn't you, because your fevered
brain believed that he had permitted your Swan to die?
Remember the others—you killed them for jewels your
money couldn't buy. Remember them all, down to the
traitor, Jules Manton, who killed the Baroness von
Stromberg before you could get to her. Down to your
Guillaume, who had been persuaded by your other
daughter, Fanya Vidal, to break away from you—and
who would let her daughter, the living Jacqueline, im-
peril him by giving the Harlequin pearls and the truth
about you—to me. All of them—Ogilvie—remember.
I shall give you time. I am going out—I am going out,
Ogilvie, and leave you alone—to remember, and to
wish you might go to your Swan, to your first Jacque-
line who waits for you—in some other manner than
from the guillotine. And think, too, while I am gone,
of the living Jacqueline. Her daughter. Your daugh-
ter. She'll suffer, too, and The Swan will be doubly
sorrowful—if her father must go into eternity with