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

be waiting for you to come out. Walk a few blocks up Park Avenue and I’ll pick you up and drive you back to Hartford in Bunny’s car.’ ”

“The use of that car still has me puzzled,” the Colonel admitted.

“I’m coming to it,” said Maclain. “I reasoned things out this way. Norma Tredwill thought there was someone in Gerente’s apartment. Babs must have encountered that person, too.”

“Was there anyone there when Norma was there?” Spud inquired.

“Certainly,” said Maclain. “Cheli. She was in a quandary, too. If Norma hadn’t left as she did, there would have been another job of killing to do. She’d taken care of Babs through fear. Norma might not prove so easy; but Norma left in a panic, leaving Cheli to ransack the place at her leisure, find the Braille instructions in Gerente’s drawer, scent them with violet—”

“Why?” Spud broke in again.

The Captain answered by questioning Colonel Gray. “Did you by any chance, Colonel, round up a blind man in this ring?”

“A Russian Communist cobbler,” the Colonel supplied, “with a place on Third Avenue.”

“I thought so!” Maclain displayed his pleasure by a triumphant smile. “Cheli gave those instructions to Madoc, who had driven to New York with her and Al Rutgers in Bunny’s car. Bunny was away—and using his car was far safer than using her own. She had a happy faculty of shifting blame onto others. Even communications sent her from headquarters were addressed to Norma, as you know.”

“And the blind man?”

“Translated the Braille, Colonel Gray. Cheli scented the instructions so the blind man would know they came from the House of Bonnée. When he heard the translation, Madoc realized he had important information, if he could trick the defense plans of New York’s vulnerable points out of me. Cheli had already left for Hartford with Rutgers and Babs. Madoc took a long chance and impersonated Gerente—”

“A chance that proved too long,” muttered Colonel Gray. “If you hadn’t recognized that fellow’s speech at International, I hate to think what we might have faced today.”

“But I did,” said Duncan Maclain. “Now let’s follow Cheli. She picked up Babs and drove her back to Hartford. She had made previous arrangements by telephone—as she did with my abduction night before last—to have the car intercepted on the way. I wondered at the time I was abducted how that truck knew exactly the time and place to stop Cheli’s car.

“Babs’s abductors drove her around while Rutgers took Cheli back to The Crags and rejoined them. Babs was put in a vacant room over Bunny’s garage—set far apart from the house on the side of the hill. They left her there, doped, and paralyzed with fear. At The Crags, Cheli decided to do a little more investigating while the family was away.”

“And nearly added Mrs. Tredwill to her victims,” put in Colonel Gray.

“She was cornered in the workshop.” The Captain snapped his fingers irritably. “She was the only one in the house besides Norma and the servants. It was infernally dense of me not to suspect her right away.”

“I like it when you’re dense,” said Spud, grinning. “It bolsters my failing ego tremendously.”

Maclain began to tick off points with his fingers. “Don’t forget that the previous afternoon Cheli had sent all the servants away except Bella, who she thought was working with her. She knew that Norma had been in Paul’s apartment, for she saw her there. She took a look at the parcel Norma had brought home, and knew that Mrs. Tredwill had rescued Babs’s galoshes from Gerente’s hall. That suited her fine, for Norma must have thought, as everyone else would think, that Babs had run away.”

Colonel Gray said thoughtfully: “She must have been on to Bella. Why did she pick such a brutal way?”

“On to her?” Maclain repeated. “What did this clever lady think of a co-worker who had vouched for a member of the F. B. I.? Bella knew her peril and was watching Cheli closely. The day I got to The Crags we were down in Gil’s workshop. I wanted to see if there were lingering traces of perfume on Gil’s plans, indicating that they’d been traced. I’d just put it over by pretending that I was smelling the plans for gasoline—”

“Gasoline?” asked Rena.

“I’d wiped my hands with it,” explained Maclain. “It was lucky I did so, for Cheli was with us. If she’d suspected that I was tracing down an odor of violets I’d have gone out with Bella in some similar pleasant way.”

Rena shuddered.

“I heard Bella on the stairs,” Maclain continued, “and thought she was spying on me. I know differently now. She was watching Cheli, who got her that same afternoon. Cheli had a zipper house coat on—and deliberately picked a sanguinary method of killing the girl. Cheli stripped the house coat off and left it in the hall, killed Bella, ran down to her room, where she took a shower, and a few minutes later was downstairs with her house coat back on. Remembering that house coat was a final point which made me certain I had to get Cheli.”

“God above!” breathed the Colonel. “I’d have taken an oath that murder was committed by a man.”

“She did everything possible to make you think just that, Colonel Gray, although I don’t believe she intended to behead the girl. The executioner’s ax she used was heavier than she knew—and sharp as a scalpel, too.”

The Colonel stood up and said, “Before I go, I’d like to know how you located Barbara Tredwill so suddenly.”

“By asking myself why anyone would drag away an untrimmed Christmas tree, unless it was to obliterate footsteps in the snow. Babs escaped, Colonel Gray. She recognized where she was as soon as she got outside of Bunny’s garage. She dashed down the hill, across the road, and up the other hill toward her home; but she was weak from her ordeal, and Rutgers caught her. He took her back to the garage, hurried over to the Tredwill house, and effaced his and Babs’s