The seventh shot A detective story
threatening, as she had looked that first day in the restaurant.
“Wanted? I had thought of nothing else for five—nearly six years! I
used to be mad about him, you see. He made women feel like that.”
“I know he did.”
Barrison spoke naturally enough, but truth to tell, he was feeling a
bit dazed. The Mortimer case was developing in a singular fashion.
It was like one of those queer little Oriental toys where you open
box inside box, to find in each case a smaller one awaiting you. He
wondered whether he was ever to get to the end of this affair. The
further you went in it, the more complicated it seemed to get. But she
was speaking:
“I was very much in love with him. But I never had any illusions as to
his real character. He was rather a blackguard, in more ways than one.
It wasn’t only that he treated women badly—or, anyway, lightly. He was
crooked. I am very sure of that. He gambled, and the men in the company
wouldn’t play with him; they said he didn’t play straight. There was
one elderly man with a daughter, who was his particular crony; they
were both supposed to be shady in a lot of ways—I mean the two men. So
far as I know, the girl was all right. Evidently they stuck together,
too; perhaps they had to, knowing too much about each other! But I saw
the older man at the theater two or three times during rehearsals.”
“What did he look like?” demanded Barrison, struck with a sudden idea.
“Oh, very respectable looking, like so many crooks! Elderly, as I say,
and thin, and——”
“You surely don’t mean Mortimer’s old valet, Wrenn?”
She looked at him in a startled fashion.
“Why, yes, that’s the name. I don’t believe I should have remembered it
if you hadn’t reminded me. The man was Wrenn, I am sure.”
Jim’s pulse was pounding. Light at last, if only a glimmer! He was
really finding out something about Mortimer’s past, really coming upon
things that might have led up, directly or indirectly, to his murder.
“Do you remember anything about the daughter?” he asked.
“Not very much. She rode for us in one or two scenes, but she was
hard to use in the picture. I do remember that she was an awfully
disagreeable sort of girl, and most unpopular. What I wanted to tell
you particularly was that Mortimer had a crooked record behind him, and
that at least one man near him—this Wrenn—knew it. That was one thing.
The other——”
But Barrison could not help interrupting.
“Just a moment, if you don’t mind, Miss Templeton! This is all
tremendously interesting to me—more interesting than you can possibly
guess! It’s just possible that you’ve put me on the clew I’ve been
looking for. Was there any man in that crowd called Blankey, or
Blinkey, or anything like that?”
She shook her head wonderingly.
“Not that I know of,” she said. “But Alan had several particular pals,
he and Wrenn. One of them may have been called that. I don’t know.”
Jim was slightly disappointed, but, after all, he had gained a good
deal already; he could afford to be philosophical and patient.
“And you don’t remember anything about the girl at all?” he insisted.
“Only that she was disagreeable, and could ride?”
“Wait a minute,” said Miss Templeton thoughtfully; “I’ve some old
snapshots tucked away. There ought to be some group with that girl in
it.”
Barrison smoked three cigarettes in frantic succession while she
hunted. Finally, she put a little kodak photograph in his hand.
“There am I,” she said, “rather in the background, dressed up as a
beautiful village lass—do you see? And that’s Alan. He was handsome,
wasn’t he?” Her voice was quite steady as she said it, but it had
rather a minor ring. “And there—that girl over there in the shirtwaist
and habit skirt, is Wrenn’s daughter.”
As Barrison looked, he felt as certain as though he had seen her with
his own eyes, that she—Wrenn’s daughter—was the woman who had been in
Mortimer’s dressing room the night before.
CHAPTER XIX
GLIMMERS IN THE DARKNESS
He raised his eyes to find Miss Templeton regarding him from the other
side of the table with a rather curious expression.
“I had no idea that you would be interested in the Wrenn girl,” she
said. “I thought that my information would point rather toward her
father. Why are you interested in her?”
Barrison hesitated. Charming as he found this woman, he had no mind to
confide in her just yet. He countered with another question, one which
had, as a matter of fact, trembled on his lips ever since he had come
into the room. It was an impertinent question, and he knew that she
would have a perfect right to resent it. Yet there was an indefinable
attitude about her—not familiarity, but something suggesting
intimacy—when she spoke to him, that made him somewhat bolder than his
good taste could justify.
“Miss Templeton,” he said, “you have just told me that you cared so
much for Alan Mortimer that you waited for six years to get in the
same company with him. I know that only a few days ago you were still
sufficiently interested in him to be——”
He really did not know how to put it, but she did.
“Jealous?” she suggested promptly, and without emotion. “Oh, yes, I
was—in a way—insanely jealous. You see, it had become an obsession with
me; I don’t imagine I really loved him any longer, but I was being
cheated of something I had worked for and sacrificed for. Probably, not
being a woman, you wouldn’t understand.”
“Probably not,” said Jim. “And—will you forgive me for adding this?—I
understand even less your mood to-day. Last night you were deeply moved
at the play; I saw that. Perhaps”—he paused; he did not know whether
to speak of the revolver or not—“you were even on the verge of—some
scene—some violent expression of emotion, some——”
She glanced at him, startled. “How did you know that? But, suppose it
were true. Will you go on, if you please?”
“No; I am merely offending you.”
“You don’t—offend me.” Her tone was singular. “I should really like you
to go on. There was something else that you did not understand. What
was it?”
“It is in the present tense,” he answered. “It’s something that I
cannot understand now. Miss Templeton, you have done me the honor of
asking me here to-day, and of talking to me with a certain measure
of confidence. You have been most gracious and charming, a perfect
hostess. I have enjoyed myself completely. And yet—last night, the man
who has occupied your thoughts and, let us say, your hopes for years
past—was tragically murdered.”
She was silent for a second or two. “Is that what you don’t
understand?” she demanded abruptly.
“Yes. I cannot reconcile the two women I know to exist: The angry,
passionate, jealous woman who looked—excuse me—as though she could have
done murder herself, a short fortnight ago, and the woman who has been
talking to me to-day about her fruitless quest for the Blue Bird of
Happiness.”
“I think that is rather stupid of you, then,” she answered composedly.
“Can’t you see it’s all part of the same thing? The quest for love—for
the unattainable—but, Mr. Barrison, that is something else which
puzzles you, which, in a way, jars on you. I can see it quite well. It
is to you a strange and rather a horrible thing that I should be calm
to-day, giving you lunch—and eating it, too!—talking of all sorts of
things, while he, the man I used to be in love with, is lying dead.
Isn’t that it?”
“That is certainly part of it.”
After a moment, she pushed back her chair and rose restlessly.
“No, don’t get up!” she exclaimed, as he, too, rose. “Sit still, and
let me prowl about as I choose. I am not used to expressing myself,
Mr. Barrison, except in my actions. Words always bother me, and I
never seem able to make myself clear in them. Let me see if I can make
you see this thing, not as I do, but a little less confusedly. In the
desert, a man sometimes follows a mirage for a long time; longs for
it, prays for it, worships it from afar. He is dying of thirst, you
see, and his feeling about it is so acute it is almost savage. The
mirage isn’t real, the water that he thinks he sees is just a cloud
effect, but he wants it, and while he is hunting it, he is not entirely
sane. One day he finds it is not real. All that everlasting journeying
for nothing; all that thirst for something that never has existed!
Men do strange things when they find out that the water they were
traveling toward is nothing but a mirage. Some of them kill themselves.
But suppose, just when that man was losing his reason with the
disappointment and the weariness—suppose just then some traveler, some
Good Samaritan, or—just a traveler like himself, or—some—never mind!”
She choked whatever it was that she had meant to say. “Suppose, then,
some one appears and offers him a real gourd of real water! Does he
think much more about the mirage? He only wonders that he ever dreamed
and suffered in search for it. But—it had taken the sight of the real
clear water to make him see that the other was just a feverish dream.”
She paused in her restless pacing up and down the room, and looked at
him. “Do you understand better now?”
“No,” said Barrison flatly. “It is very pretty, and, I suppose,
symbolic, but I have not the least idea, if you will pardon me for
saying so, what you are driving at.”
“Think it over,” said Miss Templeton, lighting another cigarette.
“One more touch of symbolism for you. Suppose the—traveler—who showed
him the real gourd of water should spill it, or drink it all himself,
or—refuse to share it, after all? What do you think would be likely to
happen then?”
“I should think the thirsty man would be quite likely to shoot him!”
said Jim laughing a little.
She smiled at him. “Ah,” she said, “you see you understand more than
you pretend. Yes, that’s just what might happen——Oh, by the by, Mr.
Barrison, there was something else that I sent for you to say. You know
I warned you in regard to Kitty Legaye?”
“Yes, but it is out of the question,” said Barrison. “I am sure that
Mortimer’s murder was an overwhelming surprise to her.”
“Maybe so,” she said thoughtfully. “But I am sure that, when I rushed
out of the theater last night in that darkness and confusion, I saw
Miss Legaye’s face at the window of a taxicab at the front of the
house.”
“At the front of the house! But that would be impossible!”
“I only tell you what I am certain I saw.”
“Would you be prepared to swear that?”
She considered this a moment. “No,” she admitted finally. “I would not
be prepared to go quite as far as that. I felt very sure at the time,
and I feel almost as sure now. But a glimpse like that is sometimes
not much to go by. I only tell you for what it is worth. And now, Mr.
Barrison, I have an engagement, and I am going to turn you out. You
forgive me?”
“I am disposed to forgive you anything,” said Jim, with formal
gallantry, “after the help you have given me—to say nothing of the
pleasure I have had!”
She made a faint little face at him. “That sounds like something on the
stage!” she protested. “I wish you would think over my—my——”
“Allegory?” he suggested.
“I was going to say my confession. I am sure, the more carefully you
remember it, the simpler it will become. Especially remember your own
suggestion as to what would happen to the niggardly rescuer who might
refuse to be a rescuer, after all!”
Barrison saw fit to ignore this. He shook hands cordially and
conventionally.
“Good-by,” he said. “And thanks.”
“Good-by,” she returned briefly.
As he went downstairs, his face was a shade hot. There were two
reasons for it. For one thing, Miss Templeton’s attitude—the allegory
of the mirage and the gourd of water—what did she mean by it? Was it
possible that she—that she—Jim Barrison was not conceited about women,