Fifty Candles (1926)/Chapter 4
IV
As I stood there with Henry Drew’s dead body at my feet and those silly candles flaring wanly at my side, I heard the big clock in the hallway strike the half-hour, and then the scurry of feet on the stairs. Cleared now of its first amazement, my mind was unusually keen. Henry Drew done for at last! By whom? Again my eye fell upon the open French window, and stepping to it I looked out. My heart stopped beating—for amid the shadows and the fog I thought I saw a blacker shadow, which passed in the twinkling of an eye.
I stepped quickly from the room. The light from the window at my back penetrated a few feet only on a narrow veranda, from which steps led down—into a garden, I judged. It was unexplored country to me, the dark was impenetrable, but I stepped off into tall damp grass almost to my knees.
The tule-fog seemed glad to have me back. Its clammy embrace was about my ankles; from the bare branches of the trees above, it dripped down on my defenseless head. I took several steps to the right, and ran into an unexpected ell of the house. As I stood there, uncertain which way to go, something brushed against my face, something rough, uncanny, that sent a shiver down my spine. Wildly I swung my arms in all directions, but they touched only empty air and fog.
Still swinging my arms, stumbling amid flower-beds, hunting in vain for a path, I continued to explore. My feet caught in a tangle of vines and I came near sprawling on the wet grass. Righting myself with difficulty I stopped and looked about me. The light from the room I had left was no longer visible. I was lost in a jungle that was only the Drew back yard. For a moment I stood tense and silent. How I knew it I can not say, but I was conscious that I was not alone. Close at hand some human creature waited, holding its breath, alert, prepared. I did not see, I did not hear—I felt. Suddenly I lunged in the direction where I imagined it to be—and instantly my intuition was proved correct. I heard some one back away, and then quick heavy footsteps crunching on a gravel walk.
He had shown me the path, and for that I thanked him. Following as speedily as I could in his wake I came to a gate in the high wall at the rear. It was swinging open. Through this, no doubt, the murderer had gone, and I stepped out into the alley. I could see no one; there was no sound whatever. Then I started and almost cried aloud—but it was only an alley cat brushing against my legs.
My quarry had vanished into the fog, and to look for him would be to hunt the proverbial needle in the good old haystack. It came to me then that I had been all kinds of a fool, rushing out of the Drew house like that at the moment of my gruesome discovery. I had not meant to come so far, of course—but here I was, and there was nothing to do but hurry back. How about Mary Will? Had she, perhaps, been the second person to enter the dining-room, and been frightened half to death by what she found there?
I swung on my heel to reenter the garden—and at that instant the gate banged shut in my face. The wind? Nonsense, there was no wind. With a sickening sense of being tricked I put my hand on the knob. I turned and pushed. As I expected, the gate was securely locked on the inside.
What should I do now? Wait here at the gate, holding my friend of the fog a prisoner inside? Useless, I reflected; there must be many ways of escape—a neighbor’s yard on either side. Before I had waited five minutes he would be well on his way to safety. No—I must get back to the house as quickly as I could. Since I could not return by way of the garden only one course remained—I must follow the alley until I came to a cross-street, then travel that until I came to the street where Henry Drew’s house stood. But what was the name of the street where it stood? All at once I realized that I hadn’t the faintest idea. No matter, I must get back to that front door somehow. A short distance down an alley lamp made an odd shape in the fog. I hurried toward it. Just beyond I stepped out into the crossstreet, and paused. Left or right? Left, of course.
The clammy yellow fog stuck closer than a brother. On my feet I wore patent leather pumps, recently purchased on my return to human society in Shanghai. Their soles were almost as they had left the shop, and I slipped and skidded unmercifully on the damp sidewalk. A small matter—but one that somehow filled me with a feeling of helplessness and rage. What a spectacle I must present! Served me right, though. I had no business at Henry Drew’s confounded party.
As best I could I hurried on, staring at the house-fronts. But their owners couldn’t have told them apart in the mist. My search was hopeless. I had given up and was standing beneath a street lamp, when I heard footsteps.
Debonairly out of the fog walked Parker, the ship’s doctor, humming a tune as he walked. He stopped and stared at me. A fine sight I must have been, too—wild-eyed, with evening clothes, no overcoat, no hat.
“Good lord, Winthrop!” he said. “What’s happened to you?”
There was no friendliness in his tone, and it came to me suddenly—a sickening premonition—that this was the last man it was good for me to meet just now. I resolved to make the best of my plight.
“Parker, a terrible thing has happened. Old man Drew has been murdered.”
“You don’t say? Who killed him?”
“I don’t know. How the devil should I?” His cool unconcerned tones maddened me. “I had reached the house, and was waiting for him in the library. Hearing a cry, I ran into the dining-room. He was there—dead—on the floor.”
“Really? And now you are wildly running the streets. Hunting for a policeman, perhaps?”
I was not unaware of the sneering implication in his words, but I strove to keep my temper.
“I’m trying to get back to the house,” I said calmly. “As I was standing beside the old man’s body I saw some one moving outside an open window.”
I outlined briefly the series of small adventures that had followed. He heard me out, then tossed away his cigarette, and I saw a faint smile on his cruel face. It occurred to me that I would have to repeat my story—repeat it again and again—and that I was destined to see that smile of unbelief on other faces.
“Very interesting,” said Parker, still smiling. “I wish I could be of some help, old man. But as a matter of fact I’m in the same fix as you. I started to walk to the house, and lost my way.”
“At any rate,” I answered, “you must know the address.”
“Don’t you?” He laughed loudly. “I say, that’s funny.”
“To you, perhaps,” I said.
“Pardon me. My sense of humor breaks out at most unseemly times. I do know the address, of course. The house is on California Street.” He mentioned a number.
“There are no street signs on the lamps,” I said.
“No. But at each corner the name of the street is carved in the sidewalk. Let’s try that.”
We walked along to the nearest crossing. Neither of us had a match; but by stooping and running his fingers along the damp walk Parker came upon the name carved in the stone. I leaned over beside him, and we began to spell it out. It was in such a silly posture that Riley the policeman found us as his big bulk emerged from the fog.
“What the hell?” said Riley, not without reason.
“It’s Riley!” I cried. “Good enough!”
“Who are you?” he wanted to know.
“A friend of Mr. Drew,” I told him. “I was there a while ago when you called to see if everything was O. K.”
“Sure,” he said. “You was sitting in the library.”
“Of course. Riley—Mr. Drew has been murdered.”
“Murdered! He can’t be. I was just talkin’ to him.”
I told him of the events since his call at the Drew house, and repeated the lame story of my actions following my discovery of the crime. He made no comment.
“How about you?” he said, turning to Parker.
“I met this young man by chance,” Parker told him. “I was on my way to Mr. Drew’s house, where I had been invited for dinner, and I became confused in the fog.”
Riley shook his head.
“I don’t mind sayin’ you both sound fishy to me,” he remarked. “We’ll go back to the house. You lads follow me—wait a bit. Second thoughts is best. You lead the way.”
He pointed with his night stick, and meekly we set out. Riley pounded along at our heels. We must have been far afield for we walked some distance, passing several corners where motorcars honked dubiously. At last Riley halted us before the Drew house, and we climbed the steps. Finding the door unlocked we entered, with Riley close behind.