Odor of Violets, Baynard Kendrick [best short novels .txt] 📗

and receive like dripping acid on his delicate eardrums every soul-scarifying word she had to say.

“Captain—”

“Yes, Cheli.” His voice held rich, full assurance, never betraying the fact that for the moment he had almost ceased to live inside of himself, that his blood had almost ceased to flow under heartbeats, so tense had become his concentration. It was one of those moments when Spud would have told him, “Dunc, you’ve ceased to be a man and become an unemotional machine.”

“—Those men in there, they’re going to—”

“Listen, my dear,” said Duncan Maclain. “There are some things in life greater than the human body; some things even greater than the working of imagination, which is the acme of all fear. Love of humanity is one, and another is faith in an ideal. You’ve been placed on a pedestal which the gods might envy. The lives and happiness of a nation and the preservation of its ideals are in your hands, dependent on your courage and you.”

She suddenly began to cry. “They’re going to put a band around my head and tighten it until I die. I haven’t your strength, Captain Maclain. They said that you’re a man without feeling, told me that I could never break you down.”

“So you’d have me talk?” asked Duncan Maclain, and the glass-edged question silenced the sobbing girl. “You value yourself too highly, Cheli; yourself and me. To save you I’d have to sack a city, throw eight million people at a stroke into a pit of pestilence.”

He stopped, and with him the noise in the basement window to which he had been listening so intently stopped too.

“I’m afraid, Captain.” Her words were scarcely coherent. “They murdered Bella so brutally. I can’t forget it. They said if torturing me didn’t make you talk, they’d start on you.”

The Captain felt that she was stifling an imminent scream.

“They murdered her,” she went on, with hysteria taking command. “They’ll have no pity on a girl. They’ll torture me until I’m dead, and then they’ll start on you!”

“They won’t,” said Duncan Maclain.

Across the cellar the bolt slid back in the door and the Captain heard the methodical tramp of three pairs of feet coming for him and the girl.

A Luger 7.65 coiled back and spat four times with the speed of a striking rattler. Somewhere upstairs the Captain’s ears heard the crash of glass and the splintered fall of a door.

Above his head from the cellar window a voice said, “One miss, one in the middle of the forehead, and two in the eye.”

“You’re a good shot, Mr. Cameron,” said Duncan Maclain.

CHAPTER XXV

1

THE POLICE car with Sergeant King at the wheel worked its way rapidly through streets festooned with Christmas lights overhead and sped out toward West Hartford up Asylum Street hill. In the back, wrapped up warmly, sat Cheli Scott and Duncan Maclain. Sticking close to the rear, nosing occasional late merrymakers out of the way with a quick imperative blast of the klaxon, came Arnold Cameron’s speedy convertible coupé.

It was after midnight when the center of the city dropped behind. The streets grew darker, broken only now and then by the light of some late-closing store. A watery moon battled ineffectively against smoky clouds and finally sank down behind them defeated. As Sergeant King sighted the single yellow square marking The Crags and turned up the hill, it began to snow. They waited some time before Maclain heard footsteps answer the Sergeant’s peremptory ringing and Pierce opened the door.

“Captain Maclain!” the butler exclaimed, taking in the Captain’s disheveled appearance with a trained servant’s eye. “You’ve been hurt, sir—and Miss Scott, is she with you?”

“Yes, Pierce.” Maclain stepped inside. “You might give the Sergeant a hand and help her in out of the car.”

He leaned wearily against the wall, concentrating on the abnormally loud tick of a grandfather’s clock.

Pierce came back in and Cheli’s voice said, “I’m quite all right now, Captain. Pierce has just been saying that the Tredwills are all away.”

“You’ve had a terrible shock,” Maclain told her commandingly. “I’m going to call Dr. Trotter. Get to bed immediately.”

Pierce said, “Mr. Tredwill had a call from Boston. They found Miss Barbara.”

“I thought they might,” put in Arnold Cameron. “That means they’ve washed up the show. I have to get to a telephone right away.”

“There’s one here,” said Pierce.

Maclain heard Cameron go into the closet booth and close the door. He took two steps, opened it, and said, “I wish you’d get Dr. Trotter for Miss Scott before you make another call.”

Cameron’s gray eyes flashed with a quick admiring glint as he said, “Okay.”

“Dominick was to drive Mr. Tredwill and Mr. Gilbert to Boston in the car,” Pierce went on when Maclain had shut Cameron in behind the door. “The ladies insisted they be allowed to go so they took Mr. Stacy along. The cook and parlormaid have gone into Hartford for the night with their people, but they’ll return in the morning. For the moment I’m the only one here.”

“It’s quite all right, Pierce.” Maclain pulled himself together with an effort. He heard Cheli go upstairs and added, “I wonder if you’d see me to my room, Sergeant,” and followed her up, leaning on Sergeant King’s arm.

Pierce came close behind them. “Your dog’s waiting for you in your room, Captain. The police found her when they located Miss Scott’s car. Apparently it was left exactly where you were stopped last night and never moved at all.”

The Captain said nothing. He needed no one to tell him that Schnucke was waiting on the other side of the bedroom door. She had already acknowledged his arrival with a welcoming scratch and a whine. When she broke her rigorous training long enough to put both feet on his chest and caress his nose with a warm soft tongue, it was a moment before he could find the voice to order her down.

Pierce clicked on the lights. “You’ll find everything just where you left it, sir. Your other