The Dain Curse Read online

  By the time I had got her into coat and hat, Collinson had come away from the window and was spluttering questions at me. What was the matter with her? Oughtn’t we to get a doctor? Was it safe to take her out? And when I stood up, he took her away from me, supporting her with his long, thick arms, babbling: “It’s Eric, Gaby. Don’t you know me? Speak to me. What is the matter, dear?”

  “There’s nothing the matter except that she’s got a skinful of dope,” I said. “Don’t try to bring her out of it. Wait till we get her home. You take this arm and I’ll take that. She can walk all right. If we run into anybody, just keep going and let me handle them. Let’s go.”

  We didn’t meet anybody. We went out to the elevator, down in it to the ground floor, across the foyer, and into the street without seeing a single person.

  We went down to the corner where we had left Mickey in the Chrysler.

  “That’s all for you,” I told him.

  He said: “Right, so long,” and went away.

  Collinson and I wedged the girl between us in the roadster, and he put it in motion.

  We rode three blocks. Then he asked: “Are you sure home’s the best place for her?”

  I said I was. He didn’t say anything for five more blocks and then repeated his question, adding something about a hospital.

  “Why not a newspaper office?” I sneered.

  Three blocks of silence, and he started again: “I know a doctor who—”

  “I’ve got work to do,” I said; “and Miss Leggett home now, in the shape she’s in now, will help me get it done. So she goes home.”

  He scowled, accusing me angrily: “You’d humiliate her, disgrace her, endanger her life, for the sake of—”

  “Her life’s in no more danger than yours or mine. She’s simply got a little more of the junk in her than she can stand up under. And she took it. I didn’t give it to her.”

  The girl we were talking about was alive and breathing between us—even sitting up with her eyes open—but knowing no more of what was going on than if she had been in Finland.

  We should have turned to the right at the next corner. Collinson held the car straight and stepped it up to forty-five miles an hour, staring ahead, his face hard and lumpy.

  “Take the next turn,” I commanded.

  “No,” he said, and didn’t. The speedometer showed a 50, and people on the sidewalks began looking after us as we whizzed by.

  “Well?” I asked, wriggling an arm loose from the girl’s side.

  “We’re going down the peninsula,” he said firmly. “She’s not going home in her condition.”

  I grunted: “Yeah?” and flashed my free hand at the controls. He knocked it aside, holding the wheel with one hand, stretching the other out to block me if I tried again.

  “Don’t do that,” he cautioned me, increasing our speed another half-dozen miles. “You know what will happen to all of us if you—”

  I cursed him, bitterly, fairly thoroughly, and from the heart. His face jerked around to me, full of righteous indignation because, I suppose, my language wasn’t the kind one should use in a lady’s company.

  And that brought it about.

  A blue sedan came out of a cross-street a split second before we got there. Collinson’s eyes and attention got back to his driving in time to twist the roadster away from the sedan, but not in time to make a neat job of it. We missed the sedan by a couple of inches, but as we passed behind it our rear wheels started sliding out of line. Collinson did what he could, giving the roadster its head, going with the skid, but the corner curb wouldn’t co-operate. It stood stiff and hard where it was. We hit it sidewise and rolled over on the lamp-post behind it. The lamp-post snapped, crashed down on the sidewalk. The roadster, over on its side, spilled us out around the lamp-post. Gas from the broken post roared up at our feet.

  Collinson, most of the skin scraped from one side of his face, crawled back on hands and knees to turn off the roadster’s engine. I sat up, raising the girl, who was on my chest, with me. My right shoulder and arm were out of whack, dead. The girl was making whimpering noises in her chest, but I couldn’t see any marks on her except a shallow scratch on one cheek. I had been her cushion, had taken the jolt for her. The soreness of my chest, belly, and back, the lameness of my shoulder and arm, told me how much I had saved her.

  People helped us up. Collinson stood with his arms around the girl, begging her to say she wasn’t dead, and so on. The smash had jarred her into semi-consciousness, but she still didn’t know whether there had been an accident or what. I went over and helped Collinson hold her up—though neither needed help—saying earnestly to the gathering crowd: “We’ve got to get her home. Who can—?”

  A pudgy man in plus fours offered his services. Collinson and I got in the back of his car with the girl, and I gave the pudgy man her address. He said something about a hospital, but I insisted that home was the place for her. Collinson was too upset to say anything. Twenty minutes later we took the girl out of the car in front of her house. I thanked the pudgy man profusely, giving him no opportunity to follow us indoors.

  6

  THE MAN FROM DEVIL’S ISLAND

  After some delay—I had to ring twice—the Leggetts’ door was opened by Owen Fitzstephan. There was no sleepiness in his eyes: they were hot and bright, as they were when he found life interesting. Knowing the sort of things that interested him, I wondered what had happened.

  “What have you been doing?” he asked, looking at our clothes, at Collinson’s bloody face, at the girl’s scratched cheek.

  “Automobile accident,” I said. “Nothing serious. Where’s everybody?”

  “Everybody,” he said, with peculiar emphasis on the word, “is up in the laboratory;” and then to me: “Come here.”

  I followed him across the reception hall to the foot of the stairs, leaving Collinson and the girl standing just inside the street door. Fitzstephan put his mouth close to my ear and whispered:

  “Leggett’s committed suicide.”

  I was more annoyed than surprised. I asked: “Where is he?”

  “In the laboratory. Mrs. Leggett and the police are up there. It happened only half an hour ago.”

  “We’ll all go up,” I said.

  “Isn’t it rather unnecessary,” he asked, “taking Gabrielle up there?”

  “Might be tough on her,” I said irritably, “but it’s necessary enough. Anyway, she’s coked-up and better able to stand the shock than she will be later, when the stuff’s dying out in her.” I turned to Collinson. “Come on, we’ll go up to the laboratory.”

  I went ahead, letting Fitzstephan help Collinson with the girl. There were six people in the laboratory: a uniformed copper—a big man with a red mustache—standing beside the door; Mrs. Leggett, sitting on a wooden chair in the far end of the room, her body bent forward, her hands holding a handkerchief to her face, sobbing quietly; O’Gar and Reddy, standing by one of the windows, close together, their heads rubbing over a sheaf of papers that the detective-sergeant held in his thick fists; a gray-faced, dandified man in dark clothes, standing beside the zinc table, twiddling eye-glasses on a black ribbon in his hand; and Edgar Leggett, seated on a chair at the table, his head and upper body resting on the table, his arms sprawled out. O’Gar and Reddy looked up from their reading as I came in. Passing the table on my way to join them at the window, I saw blood, a small black automatic pistol lying close to one of Leggett’s hands, and seven unset diamonds grouped by his head.

  O’Gar said, “Take a look,” and handed me part of his sheaf of paper—four stiff white sheets covered with very small, precise, and regular handwriting in black ink. I was getting interested in what was written there when Fitzstephan and Collinson came in with Gabrielle Leggett.

  Collinson looked at the dead man at the table. Collinson’s face went white. He put his big body between the girl and her father.

  “Come in,” I said.

  “This is no place for Miss Leggett now,�
� he said hotly, turning to take her away.

  “We ought to have everybody in here,” I told O’Gar. He nodded his bullet head at the policeman. The policeman put a hand on Collinson’s shoulder and said: “You’ll have to come in, the both of you.”

  Fitzstephan placed a chair by one of the end windows for the girl. She sat down and looked around the room—at the dead man, at Mrs. Leggett, at all of us—with eyes that were dull but no longer completely blank. Collinson stood beside her, glaring at me. Mrs. Leggett hadn’t looked up from her handkerchief.

  I spoke to O’Gar, clearly enough for the others to hear: “Let’s read the letter out loud.”

  He screwed up his eyes, hesitated, then thrust the rest of his sheaf at me, saying: “Fair enough. You read it.”

  I read:

  “To the police:—

  “My name is Maurice Pierre de Mayenne. I was born in Fécamp, department of Seine-Inférieure, France, on March 6, 1883, but was chiefly educated in England. In 1903 I went to Paris to study painting, and there, four years later, I made the acquaintance of Alice and Lily Dain, orphan daughters of a British naval officer. I married Lily the following year, and in 1909 our daughter Gabrielle was born.

  “Shortly after my marriage I had discovered that I had made a most horrible mistake, that it was Alice, and not my wife Lily, whom I really loved. I kept this discovery to myself until the child was past the most difficult baby years; that is, until she was nearly five, and then told my wife, asking that she divorce me so I could marry Alice. She refused.

  “On June 6, 1913, I murdered Lily and fled with Alice and Gabrielle to London, where I was soon arrested and returned to Paris, to be tried, found guilty, and sentenced to life imprisonment on the Iles du Salut. Alice, who had had no part in the murder, no knowledge of it until after it was done, and who had accompanied us to London only because of her love for Gabrielle, was also tried, but justly acquitted. All this is a matter of record in Paris.

  “In 1918 I escaped from the islands with a fellow convict named Jacques Labaud, on a flimsy raft. I do not know—we never knew—how long we were adrift on the ocean, nor, toward the last, how long we went without food and water. Then Labaud could stand no more, and died. He died of starvation and exposure. I did not kill him. No living creature could have been feeble enough for me to have killed it, no matter what my desire. But when Labaud was dead there was enough food for one, and I lived to be washed ashore in the Golfo Triste.

  “Calling myself Walter Martin, I secured employment with a British copper mining company at Aroa, and within a few months had become private secretary to Philip Howart, the resident manager. Shortly after this promotion I was approached by a cockney named John Edge, who outlined to me a plan by which we could defraud the company of a hundred-odd pounds monthly. When I refused to take part in the fraud, Edge revealed his knowledge of my identity, and threatened exposure unless I assisted him. That Venezuela had no extradition treaty with France might save me from being returned to the islands, Edge said; but that was not my chief danger: Labaud’s body had been cast ashore, undecomposed enough to show what had happened to him, and I, an escaped murderer, would be under the necessity of proving to a Venezuelan court that I had not killed Labaud in Venezuelan waters to keep from starving.

  “I still refused to join Edge in his fraud, and prepared to go away. But while I was making my preparations he killed Howart and looted the company safe. He urged me to flee with him, arguing that I could not face the police investigation even if he did not expose me. That was true enough: I went with him. Two months later, in Mexico City, I learned why Edge had been so desirous of my company. He had a firm hold on me, through his knowledge of my identity, and a great—an unjustified—opinion of my ability; and he intended using me to commit crimes that were beyond his grasp. I was determined, no matter what happened, no matter what became necessary, never to return to the Iles du Salut; but neither did I intend becoming a professional criminal. I attempted to desert Edge in Mexico City; he found me, we fought; and I killed him. I killed him in self-defense: he struck me first.

  “In 1920 I came to the United States, to San Francisco, changed my name once more—to Edgar Leggett—and began making a new place for myself in the world, developing experiments with color that I had attempted as a young artist in Paris. In 1923, believing that Edgar Leggett could never now be connected with Maurice de Mayenne, I sent for Alice and Gabrielle, who were then living in New York, and Alice and I were married. But the past was not dead, and there was no unbridgeable chasm between Leggett and Mayenne. Alice, not hearing from me after my escape, not knowing what had happened to me, employed a private detective to find me, a Louis Upton. Upton sent a man named Ruppert to South America, and Ruppert succeeded in tracing me step by step from my landing in the Golfo Triste up to, but no farther than, my departure from Mexico City after Edge’s death. In doing this, Ruppert of course learned of the deaths of Labaud, Howart and Edge; three deaths of which I was guiltless, but of which—or at least of one or more of which—I most certainly, my record being what it is, would be convicted if tried.

  “I do not know how Upton found me in San Francisco. Possibly he traced Alice and Gabrielle to me. Late last Saturday night he called upon me and demanded money as the price of silence. Having no money available at the time, I put him off until Tuesday, when I gave him the diamonds as part payment. But I was desperate. I knew what being at Upton’s mercy would mean, having experienced the same thing with Edge. I determined to kill him. I decided to pretend the diamonds had been stolen, and to so inform you, the police. Upton, I was confident, would thereupon immediately communicate with me. I would make an appointment with him and shoot him down in cold blood, confident that I would have no difficulty in arranging a story that would make me seem justified in having killed this known burglar, in whose possession, doubtless, the stolen diamonds would be found.

  “I think the plan would have been successful. However, Ruppert—pursuing Upton with a grudge of his own to settle—saved me from killing Upton by himself killing him. Ruppert, the man who had traced my course from Devil’s Island to Mexico City, had also, either from Upton or by spying on Upton, learned that Mayenne was Leggett, and, with the police after him for Upton’s murder, he came here, demanding that I shelter him, returning the diamonds, claiming money in their stead.

  “I killed him. His body is in the cellar. Out front, a detective is watching my house. Other detectives are busy elsewhere inquiring into my affairs. I have not been able satisfactorily to explain certain of my actions, nor to avoid contradictions, and, now that I am actually suspect, there is little chance of the past’s being kept secret. I have always known—have known it most surely when I would not admit it to myself—that this would one day happen. I am not going back to Devil’s Island. My wife and daughter had neither knowledge of nor part in Ruppert’s death.

  “Maurice de Mayenne.”

  7

  THE CURSE

  Nobody said anything for some minutes after I had finished reading. Mrs. Leggett had taken her handkerchief from her face to listen, sobbing softly now and then. Gabrielle was looking jerkily around the room, light fighting cloudiness in her eyes, her lips twitching as if she was trying to get words out but couldn’t.

  I went to the table, bent over the dead man, and ran my hand over his pockets. The inside coat pocket bulged. I reached under his arm, unbuttoned and pulled open his coat, taking a brown wallet from the pocket. The wallet was thick with paper money—fifteen thousand dollars when we counted it later.

  Showing the others the wallet’s contents, I asked:

  “Did he leave any message besides the one I read?”

  “None that’s been found,” O’Gar said. “Why?”

  “Any that you know of, Mrs. Leggett?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Why?” O’Gar asked again.

  “He didn’t commit suicide,” I said. “He was murdered.”

  Gabrielle Leggett
screamed shrilly and sprang out of her chair, pointing a sharp-nailed white finger at Mrs. Leggett.

  “She killed him,” the girl shrieked. “She said, ‘Come back here,’ and held the kitchen door open with one hand, and picked up the knife from the drain-board with the other, and when he went past her she pushed it in his back. I saw her do it. She killed him. I wasn’t dressed, and when I heard them coming I hid in the pantry, and I saw her do it.”

  Mrs. Leggett got to her feet. She staggered, and would have fallen if Fitzstephan hadn’t gone over to steady her. Amazement washed her swollen face empty of grief.

  The gray-faced dandified man by the table—Doctor Riese, I learned later—said, in a cold, crisp voice:

  “There is no stab wound. He was shot through the temple by a bullet from this pistol, held close, slanting up. Clearly suicide, I should say.”

  Collinson forced Gabrielle down to her chair again, trying to calm her. She was working her hands together and moaning.

  I disagreed with the doctor’s last statement, and said so while turning something else over in my mind.

  “Murder. He had this money in his pocket. He was going away. He wrote that letter to the police to clear his wife and daughter, so they wouldn’t be punished for complicity in his crimes. Did it,” I asked O’Gar, “sound to you like the dying statement of a man who was leaving a wife and daughter he loved? No message, no word, to them—all to the police.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” the bullet-headed man said; “but supposing he was going away, he still didn’t leave them any—”

  “He would have told them—either on paper or talking—something before he went, if he had lived long enough. He was winding up his affairs, preparing to go away, and—Maybe he was going to commit suicide, though the money and the tone of the letter make me doubt it; but even in that case my guess is that he didn’t, that he was killed before he had finished his preparations—maybe because he was taking too long a time. How was he found?”