The Greatest Works of S. S. Van Dine (Illustrated Edition). S.S. Van Dine

all right,” Vance assured her. “But why did you think your brother had met the same fate as Miss Julia and yourself?”

      She turned her gaze slowly to him.

      “I don’t know—I just felt it. Ever since I was a little girl I’ve imagined horrible things happening in this house. And the other night I felt that the time had come—oh, I don’t know how to explain it; but it was like having something happen that you’d been expecting.”

      Vance nodded understandingly.

      “It’s an unhealthy old house; it puts all sorts of weird notions in one’s head. But, of course,” he added lightly, “there’s nothing supernatural about it. It’s only a coincidence that you should have felt that way and that these disasters should actually have occurred. The police, y’ know, think it was a burglar.”

      The girl did not answer, and Markham leaned forward with a reassuring smile.

      “And we are going to have two men guarding the house all the time from now on,” he said, “so that no one can get in who hasn’t a perfect right to be here.”

      “So you see, Ada,” put in Von Blon, “you have nothing to worry about any more. All you have to do now is to get well.”

      But her eyes did not leave Markham’s face.

      “How do you know,” she asked, in a tense anxious voice, “that the—the person came in from the outside?”

      “We found his footprints both times on the front walk.”

      “Footprints—are you sure?” She put the question eagerly.

      “No doubt about them. They were perfectly plain, and they belonged to the person who came here and tried to shoot you.—Here, Sergeant”—he beckoned to Heath—“show the young lady that pattern.”

      Heath took the Manila envelope from his pocket and extracted the cardboard impression Snitkin had made. Ada took it in her hand and studied it, and a little sigh of relief parted her lips.

      “And you notice,” smiled Vance, “he didn’t have very dainty feet.”

      The girl returned the pattern to the Sergeant. Her fear had left her, and her eyes cleared of the vision that had been haunting them.

      “And now, Miss Greene,” went on Vance, in a matter-of-fact voice, “we want to ask a few questions. First of all: the nurse said you went to sleep at nine o’clock last night. Is that correct?”

      “I pretended to, because nurse was tired and mother was complaining a lot. But I really didn’t go to sleep until hours later.”

      “But you didn’t hear the shot in your brother’s room?”

      “No. I must have been asleep by then.”

      “Did you hear anything before that?”

      “Not after the family had gone to bed and Sproot had locked up.”

      “Were you awake very long after Sproot retired?”

      The girl pondered a moment, frowning.

      “Maybe an hour,” she ventured finally. “But I don’t know.”

      “It couldn’t have been much over an hour,” Vance pointed out; “for the shot was fired shortly after half past eleven.—And you heard nothing—no sound of any kind in the hall?”

      “Why, no.” The look of fright was creeping back into her face. “Why do you ask?”

      “Your brother Rex,” explained Vance, “said he heard a faint shuffling sound and a door closing a little after eleven.”

      Her eyelids drooped, and her free hand tightened over the edge of the magazine she was holding.

      “A door closing. . . .” She repeated the words in a voice scarcely audible. “Oh! And Rex heard it?” Suddenly she opened her eyes and her lips fell apart. A startled memory had taken possession of her—a memory which quickened her breathing and filled her with alarm. “I heard that door close, too! I remember it now. . . .”

      “What door was it?” asked Vance, with subdued animation. “Could you tell where the sound came from?”

      The girl shook her head.

      “No—it was so soft. I’d even forgotten it until now. But I heard it! . . . Oh, what did it mean?”

      “Nothing probably.” Vance assumed an air of inconsequentiality calculated to alleviate her fears. “The wind doubtless.”

      But when we left her, after a few more questions, I noticed that her face still held an expression of deep anxiety.

      Vance was unusually thoughtful as we returned to the drawing-room.

      “I’d give a good deal to know what that child knows or suspects,” he murmured.

      “She’s been through a trying experience,” returned Markham. “She’s frightened, and she sees new dangers in everything. But she couldn’t suspect anything, or she’d be only too eager to tell us.”

      “I wish I were sure of that.”

      The next hour or so was occupied with interrogating the two maids and the cook. Markham cross-examined them thoroughly not only concerning the immediate events touching upon the two tragedies, but in regard to the general conditions in the Greene household. Numerous family episodes in the past were gone over; and when his inquiries were finished he had obtained a fairly good idea of the domestic atmosphere. But nothing that could be even remotely connected with the murders came to light. There had always been, it transpired, an abundance of hatred and ill-feeling and vicious irritability in the Greene mansion. The story that was unfolded by the servants was not a pleasant one; it was a record—scrappy and desultory, but none the less appalling—of daily clashes, complainings, bitter words, sullen silences, jealousies and threats.

      Most of the details of this unnatural situation were supplied by Hemming, the older maid. She was less ecstatic than during the first interview, although she interspersed her remarks with Biblical quotations and references to the dire fate which the Lord had seen fit to visit upon her sinful employers. Nevertheless, she painted an arresting, if overcolored and prejudiced, picture of the life that had gone on about her during the past ten years. But when it came to explaining the methods employed by the Almighty in visiting his vengeance upon the unholy Greenes, she became indefinite and obscure. At length Markham let her go after she had assured him that she intended to remain at her post of duty—to be, as she expressed it, “a witness for the Lord” when his work of righteous devastation was complete.

      Barton, the younger maid, on the other hand, announced, in no uncertain terms, that she was through with the Greenes forever. The girl was genuinely frightened, and, after Sibella and Sproot had been consulted, she was paid her wages and told she could pack her things. In less than half an hour she had turned in her key and departed with her luggage. Such information as she left behind her was largely a substantiation of Hemming’s outpourings. She, though, did not regard the two murders as the acts of an outraged God. Hers was a more practical and mundane view.

      “There’s something awful funny going on here,” she had said, forgetting for the moment the urge of her coquettish spirits. “The Greenes are queer people. And the servants are queer, too—what with Mr. Sproot reading books in foreign languages, and Hemming preaching about fire and brimstone, and cook going around in a sort of trance muttering to herself and never answering a civil question.—And such a family!” She rolled her eyes. “Mrs. Greene hasn’t got any heart. She’s a regular old witch, and she looks at you sometimes as though she’d like to strangle you. If I was Miss Ada I’d have gone crazy long ago. But then, Miss Ada’s no better than the rest. She acts nice and gentle-like, but I’ve seen her stamping up and down in her room looking like a very devil; and once she used language to me what was that bad I put my fingers in my ears. And Miss Sibella’s a regular icicle—except when she gets mad, and then she’d kill you if she dared,