The Cat Wears a Mask

A Rachel Murdock Mystery

Dolores Hitchens

Chapter 1

The crowd at the roulette table was about as usual, with one exception—and even the exception could be explained away by the fact that you’re apt to see almost anything in Reno.

Squeezed in between a large blonde in burgundy satin and a blank-faced man whose hands constantly trembled was a little old lady. She looked fresh and chipper in her sprigged muslin gown, straw bonnet with yellow daisies, and yellow lace mitts. The effect was that of a Dresden figurine, demure and delicate; an angel who had wafted unknowing into the bogs of sin. This impression vanished when she lifted her eyes. The eyes betrayed the mischief that went on under the bonnet. She studiously played numbers seventeen, double-O, and the red. She wasn’t winning, but the losses didn’t seem to worry her. There is a lot of play in a dollar’s worth of nickel chips.

The blonde clucked in her throat as the little ball rattled into a niche on the wheel and the croupier raked away the chips. “I knew I shouldn’t have stuck to eleven. Cursed luck. I’ve a notion to move to another table.” She glanced down at the little Old lady curiously. “How are you doing?”

“Not very well,” Miss Rachel Murdock admitted.

“You’ve got a system, I suppose.”

“Well—I thought I had. It looked logical on paper.”

“They always do.” The blonde patted her temples with a lilac-scented kerchief. The club was warm and stuffy. Outside, late afternoon sunlight made a blaze that reflected into the big room from the street. The air-conditioning system was not quite adequate for the combination of cigarette smoke, overcharged nerves, and summer heat. “I think I’ll move,” the blonde threatened again loudly.

The croupier raised his eyebrows, went on stacking chips.

He said montonously, “Place your bets, please. Get your bets down.”

From the rear of the club, where the crap tables stood, a shout rose as someone made his point the hard way. The whirr and clank of slot machines was a steady rhythm from the front. The wheel of fortune made a shadow on the wall as of a giant wagon wheel rolling nowhere.

All at once the blonde opened her purse. “Oh well. Harry!”

The croupier, evidently familiar with the blonde’s moods and methods, cynically dealt her a new stack of chips. Twenty chips, and the blonde handed him a twenty-dollar bill which he stuffed into the slot without offering any change. Not everyone, Miss Rachel realized, played for nickels. She glanced at the blonde with respect for her nerve.

Others were covertly staring too. Perhaps the flattery implied by their silent regard rattled the blonde. She picked the chips up with a brusque, overconfident gesture and began to scatter them on the board. As she bent to reach the double-O she went off balance. A spike heel stabbed the air, then stabbed a fat man who cried, “Ouch!” The blonde’s free hand scrabbled on the lettered felt while the croupier watched with glassy disapproval. She was making a mess of the board.

A ripple of complaint went through the crowd. At about that time the blonde’s other hand opened and the fresh stack of dollar chips rolled briskly in all directions. They hit the floor, and in the sudden hush they were loud, a sound effect for the shadowy wagon wheel up on the wall.

The blonde shrieked. “Harry! Jeez, look what happened!”

Harry’s mouth twitched. He made a careful and suspicious check of the board, then deigned to glance under the table. “Down there. I can see most of them. Ask the folks to help you.”

The crowd about the table was sympathetic, good-natured. They began retrieving chips underfoot, tossing them to the blonde. The fat man made a crack about the probability that she would get back more than she had lost, and everyone laughed. The blonde’s anxiety began to change to an arch petulance.

Harry tidied up the board, poised the little white ball inside the rim of the wheel. The crowd tightened, drew closer.

“Wait a minute,” cried the blonde. “I’ve—I haven’t got all of them.”

“Can it, sister,” muttered the man whose hands trembled. “What’s a buck? Let’s have a roll on what we got down.”

Harry gave the ball a twist, a snap, and it was rolling in the rim of the wheel. But the blonde’s anger was louder than the sound of the little ball. Even though everyone’s eyes were on the wheel, their cars were assaulted by the indignant grief, threats to call the manager, and accusations of thievery the blonde flung forth.

The ball dropped into a slot. Harry cleared the board of losing bets, paid a couple of winners, then regarded the blonde with a stare which had daggers in it.

“I did too lose one!” she snapped. “Somebody’s holding out on me.” She glanced vindictively from one to another.

“But we all have different colors,” Miss Rachel offered. “How could we use, or collect on, a chip belonging to you?”

The blonde’s eyes had turned to slits. “Whoever has it thinks he’ll wait till I’m gone, then buy a few dollar chips and slip it in. Then he’ll cash my buck, or play it. I ought to call the manager.”

The fact that the chip would probably by now have been back on Harry’s side of the table was not the point, Miss Rachel gathered. The blonde was incensed about a matter of principle.

“Somebody here’s a damned thief—” the blonde began.

“Shut up, baby,” said the croupier almost inaudibly.

She shut up, quickly though unwillingly. Then, as if afraid Miss Rachel might have wondered at such meek obedience, she muttered, “Harry’s my husband.”

“Oh,” said Miss Rachel. She thought it over. “Then he’ll watch for that missing chip.”

The blonde pushed all of her remaining chips towards Harry. “Cash me in, darling.” Her tone bit. To Miss Rachel: “I hope he catches it. Harry’s absent-minded, though. If you’re going to be here awhile, keep your eyes open. I’m getting out so the son of—uh”—she was obviously trying to find a word suitable for the ears of a gentle little old spinster—“sea cook—whoever it is—will try his trick sooner.”

“I’ll see what I can see,” Miss Rachel promised.

The blonde left. Some of the excitement and color seemed to leave with her. The table settled down to a series of monotonous plays; a few people drifted off so that the crowd was thinner. Perhaps it was just getting along into the shank of the afternoon, almost dinnertime, when things were normally quieter anyway. No one tried to buy the deep purple chips which the blonde had turned in. Harry yawned once or twice behind his hand.

Miss Rachel glanced at the little watch which hung from a fleur-de-lis pin on the bosom of the sprigged muslin. She wondered how long her sister Jennifer might think was reasonable to spend in the public library, looking up Indian dances—without becoming suspicious.

Miss Jennifer was chronically suspicious these last few years. Recently Miss Rachel had dared complain of it.

“I’ll bear with you,” Jennifer had replied darkly, and with a throat-slitting gesture, unexpectedly vivid, which had startled Miss Rachel. “You can endure a bit of watching in return.”

To escape the watching she had made up the story about going to the library, leaving Miss Jennifer in their hotel room to study the tour map. From Reno they were to head southward by chartered air-conditioned bus, taking in an assortment of ghost towns, the Grand Canyon, a plush resort (thriftily reserved by the tour management during the off season) where Jennifer would no doubt be properly horrified by the nakedness of the play clothes, then the Hopi Indian reservation, Boulder Dam, and home. It was a nice, wholesome tour. “Nobody will kill anybody,” Miss Jennifer prophesied; and, taking in the fresh touristy happiness of their traveling companions, Miss Rachel agreed. This trip was going to be without any excitement whatever, except what she might dig up on her own initiative in which Jennifer called “sin holes.” So here she was in a sin hole, and someone had stolen the blonde’s dollar chip and the puzzle of the theft was at least something to think about during dinner.

There was a soft touch on her sleeve.

She turned. At her elbow was someone young and slender in a green linen dress, flop-brimmed green hat, white gloves, white scarf tied high under the chin. For an instant there was the impact of the girl’s appearance, as of a stranger’s. Miss Rachel had known Gail Dickson from a child—a godchild—and yet she was seeing all over again the sensitive face, deep gray eyes, wren-colored hair, mouth with its hint of stubborn pride.

“Oh,” said Miss Rachel. “Of all people.”

Gail’s smile seemed uncertain. “I’ve been standing and watching you for a while. I wasn’t sure I ought to speak.” She took her hand away, stepped back.

Miss Rachel followed so that they were free of the tight group around the roulette table. She looked at Gail closely, meanwhile. The girl was thinner, there was a new edginess to her chin, and the gray eyes had a guard up. “What a funny idea—to go off without speaking. Why?”

Gail fumbled at the knot in her scarf. “I’m—sort of full of funny ideas these days.” There was something under the words which Miss Rachel couldn’t place—irony, self-amusement, scorn; one of these, she thought. “Mostly, though, because I wanted to talk to you so badly and I felt Miss Jennifer wouldn’t approve.”

“Does Jennifer know something I don’t know?” Miss Rachel asked interestedly. “You haven’t become a—shill, I think, is what they call them. Or taken up running a crap table?”

“Oh no,” said Gail, amused. “I’m still engrossed with my desert daubs. Much the same as those I exhibited in Los Angeles last year.” She seemed indifferent, and this was new in Gail when she talked of painting. “No, it’s Miss Jennifer’s attitude when anyone asks your advice about what she calls—horrors.”

Even the yellow daisies on the bonnet seemed to grow alert. Miss Rachel made a deprecatory gesture. “Jennifer’s just jealous of the excitement I find in life. What is your particular—horror, Gail?”

The afternoon light had faded; some of the big globes had been turned on in the ceiling. By their light Miss Rachel saw the fine sweat that came out on Gail’s upper lip. Gail seemed to find trouble in getting the right words. Finally she said, “Do you know what a Kachina is?”

The yellow daisies were quite still now. “A spirit?”

“A returned ghost of the dead,” Gail corrected.

Miss Rachel blinked. “You’ve seen one?”

“I had a message.” Again there seemed the note of self-scorn that was so elusive. “For myself—it wasn’t important. Though I was a bit surprised that a ghost could be so knowing … Of course, I’m not fooling you with my nonsense.”

“You had a poison-pen letter,” Miss Rachel said slowly.

From a dear, old friend. Shall we go somewhere and have a drink while I tell you about it?”

“Jennifer is getting a nose like a fox these days.”

“Order a vodka collins. She won’t smell that. There’s a bar in the rear here, but it’s always crowded. We’ll go across the street.”

“Whoever told you about vodka?”

“In college, in our literary-society meetings, we served vodka highballs to everyone except the two advisers—the old dears—and they thought everyone was having lemonade like themselves. But that’s part of what I want to tell you—”

They went out into the street, to the high clear twilight of the desert. The street was beginning to bloom with neon. One gambling-club sign overlapped another, and the effect was gay and a little naughty. In the cocktail lounge of the hotel across the street Gail and Miss Rachel found a quiet table, settled themselves in purplish gloom.

“How did you happen to be in Reno?” Gail asked after they had given their order.

“We’re making an educational tour. And you?”

Gail took hold of the table edge. Her fingers were slender and waxy in dimness. “I bolted. I ran out. Reno was the nearest place where I could stay up all night with something to do.” Her voice shook and she cut it off impatiently.

“Don’t be ashamed of being scared,” Miss Rachel told her. “Are you going to let me see your letter?”

“No.”

“Then how do you want me to help you?”

“Tell me how to catch the one who sent it.”

The drinks came then. Above the vodka collins Miss Rachel took a long look at Gail. There was more, she thought, than simple nervous fright over a letter. Something deeper, more galling, shaming, hurtful. “Can you tell me what the letter was about?”

“It referred to—to a silly affair I’d had long ago. A love affair. The sort of moronic love a simpleton offers a superegoist.”

“Oh,” said Miss Rachel. “And how was the thing signed?” “Kachina.”

Miss Rachel thought about it. “As I understand the Hopi tribal legends, the Kachinas are beneficent spirits who return to do good among the living.”

“How they treat you depends on how you’ve behaved.”

“This has, you said, something to do with your college literary society.”

“The letters are made up of cut-out words and phrases from our club yearbook—the year we graduated. That narrows the field, you see. We had very few copies made, and we were a small group …”

Miss Rachel was looking at her curiously. “Letters? More than one?”

“This Kachina is a most impartial spirit.”

“Who else, then?”

Gail hesitated. “Three, that I know of. I saw two of them—Bob Ryker’s, Ilene Taggart’s. Christine, Bob’s wife, got one. Bob caught a glimpse of it, but she wouldn’t let him read it.”

“What were they like, those you saw? As cruel as yours seems to have been?”

Gail flinched and her eyes asked mutely if she was showing it that much. She said, “In a way, they were. It’s hard to judge how much another person is hurt … Bob’s letter referred rather nastily to his drinking, and Bob had had a weird idea that the drinking had been a secret. Ilene’s letter took a dig at her being an old maid.”

Miss Rachel’s white eyebrows went up. “An old maid—at what must be about your age?”

“She is, though. You’d have to see her to believe it.” Gail bent nervously over her drink. “What I had thought of doing was to invite the members of that little society out to my place on the desert. A house party. The Hopi snake dances aren’t far off—I could use them as an excuse and a drawing card. I’m almost at the edge of the reservation, you know. I’d have time to study everybody, I’d have them right in my house where I could test them out.”

Miss Rachel was frowning over a point she had let slip by “You seem so sure that the words were cut from this yearbook. Why?”

Gail’s bright mouth twitched. “We were very arty, as well as literary. We dug up some terrifically long-legged strange type and the book was set in it. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. There couldn’t be a mistake on that point—nor the fact that the only copies available for such whacking-up would be those owned by the members.”

“It seems such an oddly deliberate lead back to that literary club,” Miss Rachel said slowly. “Just who are these people you’re thinking of inviting?”

Gail seemed to be looking down a long channel of the years. Sudden misery flooded her eyes. Then she glanced down at her folded hands. “There are the Rykers whom I mentioned—Bob and Christine. They married after we graduated. Several years afterward. And Ilene—I told you about her. There is Zia, a Hopi girl, one of the few Indian women ever to leave a reservation and go to college. There’s Dave Grubler—we used to call him the Grub in a horrid attempt at humor. He’s pale and slick and there is something sort of dreadfully grublike about him. And then there—there’s another.” Her throat seemed to close over the words.

“Another?”

Gail said quickly, “A—a man named Hal Emerson. I’m not going to ask him to come.”

“Oh? Why not?” Miss Rachel seemed not to see the tight agony in Gail’s face. “You didn’t like him?”

“He—didn’t keep in touch with the rest of us. It——it has to be someone, you see, who knows that Bob drinks now rather more than he ought to. And who knows the way Ilene has changed.”

In the dining room on the other side of the lounge door a string orchestra began playing softly for the dinner patrons. They played “Liebestraum” with a pathetic loneliness. Gail didn’t lift her eyes. She seemed lost in some bitter reflection.

At last she asked, “What do you suggest for catching this creature who sends us letters?”

Miss Rachel drew a big breath—big for her who is so small. “Do you really want my advice on this matter?”

Gail looked up now. Something in Miss Rachel’s tone had caught her attention. “Yes. Very much. That’s why I asked.”

“Don’t touch it,” said Miss Rachel. “Let it alone.”

Gail’s eyes withdrew; the stubborn mouth set itself.

Miss Rachel sighed. “You’re going to do it anyway.”

Gail nodded slowly.

Chapter 2

Miss Jennifer Murdock was sitting bolt upright in a straight chair just inside the lobby door. She wore a prim dark blue taffeta dress and a tight little black hat, under which her hair had the plainness of a peeled onion. There was no nonsense and no fripperies about Miss Jennifer. She was the battle-ax type, accepted the fact and made the most of it.

When Miss Rachel sidled in from the dark street, trying to be unobtrusive, Miss Jennifer poked her with an indignant finger.

“Oh!” said Miss Rachel.

“Yes, Oh!” Miss Jennifer mimicked. “Where have you been all this time?”

Some intuition told Miss Rachel that it had better not be the library. “I ran into Gail Dickson on the street—you can imagine how surprised I was—and we went into a hotel lounge to talk.”

Jennifer looked uncertain, feeling the wind of righteousness going out of her sails. “I looked for you in the library when it was five o’clock and you hadn’t returned.”

Miss Rachel was meekly repentant. “I’m sorry. Time just flew.”

Jennifer sniffed suddenly. “What are you chewing?”

“A mint leaf. I’ve a touch of upset—must have been the fish at lunch.” Miss Rachel’s better nature wondered just when it was she had gotten into the habit of making up such glib lies for Jennifer. She’d been doing it, she realized, for a long time now.

Jennifer herself had been suspicious of the fish. She rose, shook down her assortment of petticoats, and started for the hotel dining room. “I want to hear about Gail. Does she still live in that house that used to be a stage depot?”

Sitting down before an expanse of white linen dotted with crystal, Miss Rachel recalled Gail’s house. She had been in it once, shortly after Gail had bought it with some of the money her father had left her. It was adobe, roofed with sun-bleached tile, and it sat back from the highway on rising ground, surrounded by cottonwood trees and clusters of sage. The front archway faced a sweep of Arizona desert. Mesas and tablelands jutted up against the sky.

“I think we might stay with Gail during our visit to the Hopi reservation.”

Jennifer lifted her eyes off the menu. “Our accommodations are paid for, Rachel. Plus the trip out to the Snake Dance. Had you forgotten?”

Miss Rachel fiddled with her glass of water. “Gail looks thinner—a little lonely. She has the Mexican couple, of course, and I remember them as kindly and dependable—still, I think a bit of company would be good for her.”

Miss Jennifer narrowed her gaze and mentally examined this from all angles, trying to find a trick in it.

Miss Rachel added absently, “Mr. Dickson was a sort of cousin of ours, wasn’t he?”

“Very distant. What did you and Gail talk about?”

“She spoke of her old college friends rather wistfully.”

Jennifer was weakening. “We might get a slight refund from the tour management—or an extra side trip somewhere. Did she actually ask us, Rachel?”

“Ummm-mmmm. Look. There’s crab Louis tonight, Jennifer. And those queer little peaches they apparently stuff with cheese and toast under a flame.”

“I’m having roast beef,” Jennifer declared. “And those peaches have brandy burned over them, Rachel. Don’t pretend you think they’re toasted. They reek of alcohol.”

“So that’s what they reek of!” Miss Rachel waited apprehensively, but Jennifer didn’t demand a more articulate answer about Gail’s invitation.

The talk with Gail had ended in an impasse. Gail was quietly stubborn about going ahead with the reunion of the literary club, getting everybody together at her place—Miss Rachel recalled uneasily how isolated it was—and having it out about the letters. Miss Rachel saw that the letter Gail had received must have touched some old hurt so deep, so agonizing that Gail had never forgotten, and that the emotions connected with the affair were those of self-hatred and abasement. Not pretty emotions nor easily kept bottled up … apt to burst the mind’s control and emerge in ways that were devious and cruel.

It was here that Miss Rachel came up short, remembering suddenly the incident of the lost gambling chip and the angry blonde.

“What are you frowning about, Rachel?”

“Was I?”

“You were. Is there anything about your conversation with Gail that you haven’t told me?”

Jennifer was getting almost psychic. It would be better to have something—a small problem. “Gail was a little worried for fear we might be frightened of the snakes. Some are rattlers, you see, and the Indians handle them quite freely and sometimes they—well, almost get away.”

“The snakes?”

“Into the crowd.” Was she overdoing it, frightening Jennifer so that Jennifer wouldn’t go? She waited uneasily.

“I’ll look it up in the tour catalogue,” Jennifer decided, “and if it’s safe, we’ll go.”

As Miss Rachel recalled, the tour catalogue specifically warned against exploring the abandoned mines of the ghost towns, leaning too far out over the Grand Canyon and the rim of Boulder Dam, and drinking any strange water not recommended by the tour conductor. But there hadn’t been anything about snakes, and so Jennifer should be reassured.

She went back to worrying mentally at the blonde’s missing dollar chip.

How long could Gail have stood in the rear of the crowd, watching? A long while? The mention of time had been Gail’s own. And did the frustration of being hurt by someone you couldn’t reach, couldn’t identify, make you want to strike back blindly and anonymously at somebody else?

She realized suddenly that Jennifer was speaking.

“I’ve told you twice, Rachel, that the tour conductor has found out about our cat.”

Miss Rachel’s eyes grew big with apprehension. The cat had been their secret. Samantha was a big black fluffy cat, independent-looking, and with a dictatorial way of staring down her mistresses which cowed them. She had grown used to travel and now refused to be left at home. So far the presence of the basket between their feet on the bus had passed without notice. Now—

“I was slipping out with her to that little plot of sandy ground in the rear,” Jennifer went on, “that sort of cactus-garden thing, when Mr. Peele popped out from behind a shrub. That Miss Caxton was back there too—rather surreptitiously, as though they might have been holding hands or something.”

Miss Rachel clucked gently, since this was what Jennifer expected.

“He spied the cat under my arm and an unpleasant cunning expression came over his face. I dislike men who wiggle their mustaches.… Well, he wanted to know if I had just acquired the animal, and then rushed on to remind me that the rules of the tour forbade bringing any children, pets, or liquor other than twelve-per-cent dinner wines.”

If Mr. Peele had linked Samantha with liquor, even fleetingly, Miss Rachel felt sympathy for him.

Jennifer’s eyes snapped. “I decided then and there not to take any sass about having brought along our cat, even if we had asked beforehand and been refused. In the middle of his pompous little speech I interrupted to ask if that woman hadn’t been his wife—the plump one with the prominent teeth who waved good-by to him when the bus left Los Angeles.”

“What did he say?”

“He sort of sputtered. She was, of course. While he hemmed and hawed I looked innocently over towards Miss Caxton, who thought she was hidden by the shrubbery, and then told Mr. Peele in a whisper that he had a red smudge beside his mouth and that unless he removed it some of the members of the tour might think it was lipstick. He started scrubbing his face with his handkerchief and Samantha and I went on to the cactus patch.”

“Did he actually have—”

“No, no,” Jennifer said impatiently. “I made up the part about the lipstick. His scrubbing his face like that was an admission of guilt, though. And I don’t think there will be any more trouble about Samantha. What shall we have for dessert tonight? The torte?”

Since Jennifer had, as it were, unmasked the brandied peaches, Miss Rachel accepted the torte. They finished the meal, left the mathematically correct tip figured out by Jennifer, and went up to their third-floor room.

The tour management favored accommodations which were neat, plain, clean, but not gaudy. Their room was small and smelled of fresh curtains and of the violet soap in the bathroom. Or it had. When Jennifer stepped in, she paused suddenly to lift her nose.

The odor was faint, teasing, alien. In the moment before the lights had clicked on Miss Rachel had been aware of ghostly movement at the windows. Now she saw that the panes were up, that the starched white curtains blew inward on the dry night wind. Outside was the glow of neon and the staccato rattle of traffic.

Jennifer went over uncertainly to the windows. “The maid must have been here and thought the room needed freshening.”

“I don’t see the cat.”

They waited and listened. This was the time when Samantha usually woke up and wanted liver or canned salmon.

“She’s inclined to follow people, when she’s bored at being alone,” Jennifer said slowly, “or perhaps the maid took her away because of a rule against pets.”

“The maid has seen her before,” Miss Rachel pointed out. She poked hurriedly into the closet, looked under the bed, opened the bathroom door and called. In the bathroom the odd smell was stronger.

Miss Jennifer came over to sniff. “There has been a maid here. She’s cleaned the bathroom with some sort of patent stuff—or with plain old kerosene. Too lazy to use soap and muscle.”

“Yes, that’s what it’s like. Kerosene.” Miss Rachel switched on the bathroom light and looked into the shower cubicle. Just then there was a faint mewing and scratching from the window. It was a very small window, high in the wall. Miss Rachel stood on the white-enamel stool and pulled the pane inward on its hinges.

Samantha’s black face, indignant green eyes, and flattened ears came through the opening. Her howl was lonesome and angry.

“Someone put her out there,” said Miss Rachel, standing on tiptoe to peer through. “There’s about a three-inch sill. Her fur feels very cold, as though she may have been out for a long while.”

“Who would be so cruel …” Miss Jennifer’s voice died off short at the impact of a new idea. “It wasn’t a maid, Rachel. It was a b-burglar!” Her gaze roamed the room, fastened ferociously on the bed.

“I looked under that,” Miss Rachel told her. “And we haven’t anything worth a burglar’s time.”

“Nevertheless …” Jennifer rushed to her suitcase on the luggage rack, jerked up the lid, stood ominously frozen. “Yes, I felt it. As soon as I’d opened the door tonight, Rachel. In my bones, I knew. Look, my best lisle stockings all smeared and stuck with that greasy chest rub. A mean little trick—someone opened the jar and shook out gobs of the stuff into my clothes. I wish I could get my hands on whoever did it.”

Miss Rachel examined the evidence. “The jar is small and slippery and I think it fell. It struck the side of your suitcase—see the blob there. You’ll need cleaning fluid to get the grease out. The cleaner, I’m sure, is what we smelled in the bathroom. Some of the chest rub got on our visitor, too. So he—or she—found our spot remover and used it and then left the windows open, hoping the smell would dissipate.”

Jennifer had rushed for the bathroom. Now she came back with the little brown bottle of patent cleaner.

“Probably we weren’t supposed to know there had been a visitor, until the accident with the jar,” Miss Rachel went on. “Then, the situation being what it was, the prowler left Samantha out on her perch and simply skipped.”

She examined her own suitcase. Here was a studied neatness much stricter than what she practiced. A great deal of care had been taken so that the garments would not seem to have been moved. Miss Rachel stood quiet, thinking. “Samantha was put out there so she wouldn’t get out of the room and attract attention in the hall. But I’ll make one more check.”

She sat down at the telephone and rang the hotel housekeeper, a woman who managed to sound eminently starched and respectable even over a wire. Had there been any maids on the third floor tonight, doing rooms?

There had not, said the housekeeper. All rooms had been finished by five. Was something missing?

“No, everything’s all right.”

Jennifer snapped: “Aren’t you going to report this, Rachel?”

“Our tour leaves in the morning. We might be delayed over it, if we asked for an investigation.”

“There may be fingerprints.”

“I doubt it. Anyone careful enough not to go around smelling like chest rub would scarcely scatter prints. However, if you’re sure you want to report it to the manager”

“Wait.” Jennifer was sitting on the side of the bed now. A queer light had come into her eyes. “Rachel, are you positive—will you promise me faithfully that you know nothing of this business? That it isn’t part of something dreadful you’re meddling with?”

“I know of no reason whatever for our room being ransacked.”

Jennifer tried to read Miss Rachel’s face, which had become so innocent it was practically vacuous. “I don’t know, Rachel. Some funny things have happened in the past, and when the truth came out you were always at the bottom of the business. If it weren’t that everyone on the tour seems so normal and jolly, so friendly, I’d think you might have dug up some mischief among them.”

“No one could dig up anything except recipes and fishing stories among those people,” Miss Rachel pointed out. “As a matter of fact, this business about Miss Caxton and Mr. Peele was a shock to me.”

She had to get Jennifer’s mind off that tack before Jennifer thought of Gail Dickson.

“Could it have been … No, I’m sure Miss Caxton didn’t know I’d seen her,” Jennifer worried.

“All hotels, even the most respectable, must harbor a prowler now and then, human nature being what it is,” Miss Rachel soothed her. “Harmless and curious cranks. We’re out in the world now, Jennifer, among all sorts of people, and we’ll have to endure some petty annoyances.”

Miss Jennifer went to work on the lisle stockings. She gave Miss Rachel one final sharp glance. “True. But I’m getting more and more of a queer feeling … It’s like the time Aunt Lily was getting ready to run away with that salesman who boarded next door. I was just a child, but I remember the feeling of tension and slyness all through the house, and how things kept disappearing: Mother’s brown suitcase and Father’s top hat and your pig bank and my lace parasol. The first lace parasol I’d ever owned—”

“Aunt Lily paid us back for everything when she got a job.”

“In a—a leg show,” Jennifer reminded; then, getting back to the subject, for Jennifer was like a bulldog with a subject: “And what I’m trying to tell you is that I recall that feeling distinctly, that feeling of invisible scurryings and plottings, and this is it.”

Miss Rachel reflected that Jennifer was growing very acute, almost supernaturally knowing. “If I had a stack of Bibles, which I haven’t,” she said virtuously, “I’d swear on the whole lot that I haven’t any idea whatever of who might have been in our room.”

Jennifer didn’t glance up. She didn’t look convinced, either.

When a decent interval had passed and she could think of an excuse—the cat needing to go out—Miss Rachel hurried down and found a telephone. Gail had mentioned the hotel where she was staying and Miss Rachel tried to reach her there. The room clerk couldn’t raise her, however.

Trying to think of a way to reach Gail without making a nightlong tour of the gambling clubs—or of a way to make that tour without Jennifer knowing—Miss Rachel took her cat out through a side entry and back towards the cactus garden. The darkness was marked by square patches of light from hotel windows above, and in these patches, like little arrangements of still life, odds and ends stood out plainly, framed in black: a dwarf willow in a blue pot, a bed of zinnias around a bird-bath, a gardener’s rake leaning against a bench, on that same bench a hand, a human hand laid neatly on the top bar of the back …

She looked again. It had been a gloved hand, so white and motionless that it had seemed a prop, something put into the picture up at the far corner, next the dark, to make the collection of oddities more interesting. And now it was gone.

The bench was painted gray. The rake made a spindling shadow, a huddle of leaves and twigs at its base like a crouched furry animal. Miss Rachel stopped beside the dwarf willow, called her cat softly, and waited. She sensed the waiting of that other presence too. And an intent regard, since she was between those other eyes and the light.

Something moved on the other side of the bench. The hand came back into the light and beckoned.

She knew what Jennifer would have said. Nobody but a fool would have followed that spectral beckoning. Even a white hand, floating in the dark, has something behind it. Something frightening, perhaps, even dangerous.

So, being as she was, intensely curious and self-confident, she went where the hand seemed to want her.

Chapter 3

Gail had changed her clothes. She wore a dark suit and her hair was tied up with a navy-blue scarf. Only the white gloves were the same. She touched Miss Rachel’s hand with one of hers and the glove was cool from the night air—cool as Samantha’s fur had been from sitting on the window ledge.

“I have an idea I wanted to talk over with you. I’ve been trying to think of a way to get you down here without Miss Jennifer knowing,” Gail explained.

“I’ve been trying to reach you too. Something a little odd happened tonight—while we were at dinner someone went into our room and examined our belongings.”

Gail didn’t speak; there was a moment as of shock. The night sky was big and black, and the dry wind that rattled the shrubbery had a smell of desert sage and of far-off sun-baked earth growing cool under the dark. Finally she said: “You think this may have had something to do with what I told you?”

“It may have. Not seeing your letter, I’m a little in the dark. But someone may be curious as to whom you meet in Reno.”

Gail’s white glove brushed at some blowing tendrils of hair. “I’ll show you the letter. It’s in my room, not far from here—we can duck down the side street.”

“I believe I’d rather stay out where it’s light,” Miss Rachel decided. She took her big black cat under her arm and they went out into Virginia Street where the clubs stood open under brilliant neon signs. In most the slot machines were nearest the door, the roulette and craps and other games farther back. Miss Rachel looked into several doorways interestedly as they went past. “Just a minute,” she said suddenly. “I’ve a dime in my pocket and I have a queer feeling I’ll be lucky.”

She came back with a lot of dimes, having hit the jackpot. Several people were looking curiously after the cat. One man called pleadingly: “How much for the mascot?”

Gail said absently: “I hadn’t thought of anyone following me. I’m trying to think of anyone who knows I’ve come here.”

“Yes. From among your literary club,” Miss Rachel suggested, jingling her dimes richly.

“Just before I left for Reno, while I was upstairs packing, someone called on the phone. I went to the top of the stairs and motioned for Florencia to tell them I’d gone—and as I walked away I think I heard her mention Reno. She didn’t know it was supposed to be a secret. You couldn’t make Florencia believe anyone would run away because of a letter.”

“I see. It might be anyone, then.”

Gail was taking out her key. “Anyone. Except … well, the person who didn’t keep in touch.”

They went into the room. Gail’s hotel was much the same sort of hotel as Miss Rachel’s. It was not elaborate, but it was clean and the furniture looked fairly new. Miss Rachel knew that Gail could not be by any means wealthy—no blackmail motive, therefore—for her parents had left her enough to finish college, probably enough for her to have lived on well into her thirties in some quiet inexpensive place, but no huge sum and not for the spot she had chosen for her home—the big adobe house with its wide broken galleries, fallen tiles, and total lack of plumbing. Fixing up the old place, which had once been a stage depot, had taken a lot of the slim inheritance. She painted desert landscapes and during the last few years had acquired an increasing reputation, probably also a small but adequate income. But the plainness of the room spoke of careful economy.

Gail went to the dresser and untied the scarf, and her hair, brown and shining, shook down into loose curls on her neck. Her figure seemed younger than Miss Rachel remembered it even in Gail’s teens, but it was thinness which gave this impression. Gail’s face was tired, the hollow under her chin gave her a look of exhaustion. “Take that chair nearest the window—it’s the most comfortable. Should I have tea sent up, do you think?”

Miss Rachel sensed the unwillingness, the wish to delay. So she said bluntly, “I’m still quite stuffed from dinner. Where is your letter?”

Gail folded the scarf neatly and slowly, opened a drawer, arranged the scarf inside. All at once her lips twitched, almost a smile. “I’m being silly, I know. It’s just that when a thing means what this does to me, it makes you feel … naked. Like being burned at the stake with your clothes off.” She looked at Miss Rachel briefly, then went to her suitcase and from its tray took out a square white envelope.

She held it out, looking at it. “Why do I keep it with me? I can’t imagine why I do.… Perhaps with a freakish subconscious idea of self-punishment.”

Miss Rachel didn’t try to tell her why she had kept the letter. She opened the envelope. Samantha stuck her head in between Miss Rachel’s eyes and the page and had to be removed firmly. The sheet of note paper was thick, expensive, impersonal. A man’s paper—or a woman’s. Someone used to good things, who wouldn’t send even a poison-pen note on anything cheap—or someone not at all used to good things and wanting to hide it. Pasted across the sheet in uneven lines was a series of words. Some words had been cut entire from another page, some were made up of individually clipped letters. The type, as Gail had said, was unusual. Long-legged, stark, giving the printed words the look of little groups of marching men.

Under the manzanita tree

Whom should you find but little HE

Tore it leaf and branch and roots

Made you kiss his big black boots

KACHINA

Gail was waiting in tight-strung silence.

“Not very well punctuated,” Miss Rachel said at last.

Gail brushed at her hair. “Aren’t you going to ask me what it means?”

“I can see what it means. Does the wording, the phrasing, bring anyone to mind among your literary companions? I presume you used to read each other’s stuff, and everyone writes a little differently.”

Gail sat down on the side of the bed. She had picked up her gloves to put them away; now she twisted them absently. “Bob Ryker always had a knack of making jingles. But he isn’t cruel. He drinks a lot now. I don’t think he’s been awfully happy, married to Christine—not that it’s any of my business.” Her eyes searched Miss Rachel’s face. “You see how it gets to be—you begin to wonder about everyone, about people you’ve trusted for years. And then you find you’re becoming … queer.”

“Yes. And the queerer you get, the more fun your letter writer has for himself.” She thought about it for a moment. “This Mr. Grubler whom you mentioned very briefly—the one the group seems rather cruelly to have nicknamed the Grub—interests me because one of the possible motives behind this rash of letters is revenge. Revenge, perhaps, for years of scorn. Tell me more about Mr. Grubler.”

Gail flushed slightly. “He used to be—he used to like me quite a bit. And I liked him, mildly, without feeling any emotion over it. He’s manager now for some of Christine’s mining properties.” Gail put the gloves down carefully on the counterpane. “I’d better tell you about the idea I had—the reason I was waiting in your hotel grounds for a chance to reach you.”

Miss Rachel put the letter on the small table between them and waited.

Gail looked steadily at the letter. “I know that you didn’t approve of my plan for the house party, but I—I have to know for sure, if I can, who sent this thing to me. It’s just something I have to get out of my system.”

“Then I think you had better go on with it.”

Gail showed a touch of surprise. “Then I thought—if you were willing to help, and since you were going to be in that part of Arizona anyway—that you might want to be at my place when these people arrived.” She drew a breath and hurried on. “I know that it’s asking a lot, that it would mean, skipping a part of your tour.”

Losing a part of the tour didn’t seem to worry Miss Rachel; she was frowning a little, though. “I’m trying to think of what to tell Jennifer.”

Gail lost a little of the bleak look. “You mean you’ll come?”

“Frankly, I had already thought of it. When I saw what had been done in our room. Of course, as I tried to make Jennifer believe, there could have simply been a stray, curious prowler. But I think not—too much care had been taken with my belongings to cover the search. It came over me suddenly that there was going to be more than just the letters.” She looked soberly at Gail.

Gail shivered all at once. “I hadn’t thought of danger. Perhaps it isn’t right, bringing you into the affair.” She took in Miss Rachel’s little figure, the white hair, the gentle air of innocence.

“I’m tougher than I look,” Miss Rachel reminded dryly. “You should ask Jennifer’s opinion sometime. By the way, for Jennifer’s information, you’ll be suddenly ill and want me to go home with you.”

Gail nodded in agreement. The cat, still curious about the paper which her mistress had held and examined, leaped to the edge of the bed and put forepaws on the little table. She sniffed delicately along the fold of the page. On the counterpane her shadow was flat and black, like a silhouette cat cut out for Halloween.

The green eyes slitted all at once, as though something were very funny.

Miss Rachel scolded: “Yes, we know—if we had noses like yours there wouldn’t be any secret about the letter.”

Gail picked up her gloves. The room seemed quiet, the breeze from the window dry and cold. Miss Rachel had a mental image of the desert, lonely and vast, stretching on through the dark to Gail’s house. The open gallery would be empty now, the big rooms silent, the garden rustling perhaps with this same wind. One light, maybe, all alone in Pedro and Florencia’s room. For the rest … ghosts, if you believed in them.

Or Kachinas, if you were Indian.

A week later, on a day breathless with heat, Miss Rachel and her cat stood in an arched doorway and looked out into Gail’s courtyard. A long, sleek new station wagon had just rolled to a stop.

Where the tires had passed, yellow dust spiraled up from the old brick paving and hung motionless in the air. A lizard on the opposite wall seemed baked there from the original adobe. When the motor died there was a moment of intense hot silence.

Behind the wheel was a blond woman with a sharp, pale face and too much vivid lipstick. The man beside her had his head propped against the cushions, as if he had been asleep. His black hair was tousled and he wore sun goggles. Another woman, this one with a plain brown hat and a plain high-collared linen suit and no make-up at all, looked out from the back of the car with a perplexed timid air, as if already regretting she had come.

Gail slipped down the stairs into the hall and came to the door to stand beside Miss Rachel. “Well—this is the beginning. I’m quaking inside, like an idiot.” She brushed at the perspiration on her temples.

The blond woman slid out from behind the wheel, took off a pair of kidskin driving gloves, and spent a minute in plucking and tugging at her clothes. They were smooth, expensive-looking clothes. The black-haired man, opening the door on the other side of the car, seemed to experience a moment of being off balance, of almost falling. He had a kind of lethargy and uncertainty in his movements as he steadied himself against the car. The prim girl in the linen suit—she must, Miss Rachel thought, be Ilene Taggart—clung to a big brown handbag as if it were a shield.

Pedro, Gail’s houseman and gardener, had evidently heard the car. He entered the courtyard by another door and began to lift suitcases from the rear compartment. The blond woman turned on him irritably. “Leave those monogrammed bags where they are. I’ll take care of them.” She seemed suddenly to notice the other man’s difficulty with his legs. “For the love of Pete! That much already?”

The man ignored her. He removed the sun goggles, squinted as if plotting his course across the paving, then ambled over to bend towards Miss Rachel’s shoulder. “You’re real, then. D’you know, you look just like a little porcelain lady my mother used to keep on her mantel. You’re bigger, of course. But that white, white hair and such a little waist … Don’t ever change. Promise.” He waggled a finger at her. There was distinctly a hiccup.

Miss Rachel smiled at him. Under the apparent intoxication was friendliness and warmth. Oddly enough, he didn’t have any trace of a liquor odor. Just a faint spicy smell and a trace of onion—proving that he hadn’t forgotten the vodka cocktails in the literary club. “I’m too old to change now,” she assured him.

He shook his head. “Porcelain ladies never get any older.”

The girl in the linen suit came into the doorway. She stopped there, took a handkerchief out of the immense old-fashioned bag, and dabbed at her face under the brim of the hat. Then she took out a little bottle of smelling salts and had a sniff of it. She repacked the bag with care. Her face never changed from its expression of prim timidity.

Gail took them into the coolness of the hall to make introductions. “Miss Rachel Murdock—this is Bob Ryker. And Ilene Taggart.”

The black-haired man went on smiling at her vaguely, as if he were still imagining her as a porcelain ornament and didn’t want to wake up. Ilene Taggart stuck out her hand. Her palm was damp. One of her nails had a rough edge that scratched a little. “I’m pleased to meet you,” she murmured. Her voice was quiet and colorless.

The blond woman came in, still plucking at her clothes. She was thin and her bones were small. She made Miss Rachel think of a bird, a frail blond bird with a raucous voice. “Miss Murdock?” She didn’t offer her hand.

Gail said smoothly, “This is Mrs. Ryker. Christine.”

“I’ve heard of you,” said Christine Ryker. “You do something—you write, or something.” She stopped to frown.

Ilene filled the empty moment. “If I might have a glass of water, Gail, I’ll take an aspirin.” Her tone apologized for the trouble. She had, Miss Rachel saw, a habit of avoiding looking at people. Now she was staring sidelong at the underside of the stairs where the dark timbering made a pattern of shadow.

Gail said, “I thought we could all do with a tall, cold drink. Let Pedro take your bags up and Florencia will unpack for you.”

Ilene hesitated. Bob Ryker beamed at her wickedly. “You know you need something stronger than water, child.”

She fumbled with the catch of her bag. “No. No, I don’t at all.”

Christine was amused. “He’s tormented her during the whole trip. Naughty fellow.” She pinched his chin spitefully, so that the marks of her fingers showed on his skin. “But, Gail—not that I don’t trust your help, but I do like seeing to my own things. As perhaps you remember. I’ll have my drink when I come down. What room are you giving me?”

“The second door,” said Gail. “Do you want Bob with you?”

“I think not,” Christine said coolly, “if you have the room. Run along and douse Ilene with water before she passes out on us.” Her eyes paused on her husband. “And you take it easy, darling.”

She went back to the car, which she had, in Miss Rachel’s opinion, been careful to keep in sight, and returned quickly with two small calfskin suitcases ornately monogrammed in gold. She tripped upstairs as they were going out into the lower gallery. In a moment they heard her light steps overhead. The open gallery above led to the bedrooms. Down here next the garden it made a sheltered and shaded place to sit during the heat of the day. At the end next the kitchen was a space used for dining. On the rustic redwood table was a tray with cocktail shaker, ice, and bottles.

With a drink in his hand, Bob turned and surveyed the garden. Since Gail had not been there to encourage Pedro in the trimming, the flowers and vines were somewhat overgrown. “A bit rampant, but it’s nice,” Bob decided. “I’m always properly humble when I see what you’ve done with your old adobe.”

“It’s probably known far and wide as Dickson’s Folly,” Gail answered, but looking pleased at the praise.

Ilene and Miss Rachel were at either end of a long wicker seat. Ilene had gulped down her aspirin, put the aspirin box back into her purse, and now had taken out a small vial of cologne with which she was dampening temples and wrists. Miss Rachel was studying the handbag with some respect. Her cat had found a miniature green lizard under the rim of a potted plant and was sitting frozen and astonished.

The heat caused the garden to exude a junglelike fragrance, warm and flowery. The tinkle of ice, the tap-tap of Christine’s returning steps on the upper gallery, sounded small and drowsy. Afterward, something must have delayed Christine in the hall, for she was a long time coming. Miss Rachel found herself watching the door of the hall curiously. Beside the door was a cactus, blooming in a white stone crock. The blossoms were blood red against the rough white wall.

Miss Rachel thought that she heard the arrival of a car, but she could not be sure. There were a lot of bees in the garden, buzzing steadily. Suddenly they heard a man’s voice, a new voice, deeply masculine with a dry ironic note in it somewhere. Then Christine stepped into view, something about her unpleasantly smug and full of secret fun, and behind her was the newcomer. He was not very tall, but he was rugged and sturdy. He had rough yellow hair, his face looked wind-bitten, and the way he was dressed implied an outdoor bachelor existence.

He came forward and offered Gail his hand. “Did you forget me?”

Gail didn’t speak. She looked at him and shuddered.

Chapter 4

The man who had just joined them took a long, curious look at Gail. She didn’t meet his eyes; she busied herself with something on the table. He turned to the others with a confused expression, gradually changing to anger as he sensed that a trick had been played. Bob Ryker regarded him pleasantly, blankly; Ilene seemed stricken dumb; Christine was obviously hugging herself inwardly at the joke.

When the silence gave signs of becoming explosive, Miss Rachel got up from the wicker seat and came to the table. “I’m Miss Murdock. An old friend of Gail’s family.” She offered him her hand.

He took it gingerly, as if little old ladies were not usual with him. “I’m honored. Hal Emerson is the name.” He bowed a little and gave her back her hand with care.

Gail thrust a drink at him, wordlessly, furiously, and still not looking into his face.

“Do you still write?” Miss Rachel wondered.

His lips twitched. He stared into the drink. “Sometimes—strictly from boredom. I’m a mining engineer, and when I get tired making out reports about the diggings I feel the urge to do verse. Stuff about burros and cactus and the sunset over the Superstitions. The sort of thing they use to fill up the page at the end of Western stories—pulp Westerns, that is.” He looked at the Rykers and at Ilene, as if daring them to sneer.

Ilene got her mouth open and blurted: “I told him about your house party, Gail. I thought you meant everybody—that maybe you didn’t know where Hal was—and that you’d gotten over that romance, or whatever it was—” She stopped, looked apologetic. There was another dead silence. Then Ilene drew a deep breath to go on—probably further to explain a situation that explaining couldn’t help.

But Bob Ryker cut in. “Lord love us! The Grub approaches the garden! Shouldn’t we have a touch of snail bait about?” He paused, shook his head, made a wry mouth. “That seemed funny when we were all together in school. What kind of humor did we go for, anyway?”

Christine glanced at the man who had come out upon the gallery and said slyly, “I’m sure Dave’s outgrown the Grub routine. He should use whatever name has seized his fancy, shouldn’t he?” She turned to Gail with mock contrition. She had a quickness of expression, an exaggeration too, though this last might have been the result of her overuse of cosmetics. “Dave brought Hal up—they came together in Dave’s car. But I just couldn’t resist bringing Hal in alone first. You two used to be so sticky about each other.” She giggled.

Dave Grubler looked washed out and tired, as all very pale people do. He was big in frame, heavily built, and he should have seemed husky. He might actually be as hard, as physically tough, Miss Rachel thought, as Emerson. But the white hair, the toadstool-colored skin, made him seem frail in spite of his size. Dave Grubler—how inevitably the callous students had called him the Grub.

He accepted a drink from Gail, taking several quick looks at her. “Your man Pedro is putting our stuff upstairs, and Florencia’s trotting around with towels and things. How on earth do you keep them, out here where it’s so damned lonely?”

“I’ve been very lucky,” Gail said, “in getting hold of the right people.”

There was an abrupt little silence, as if some of the group were thinking over a meaning buried in the words. Then conversation resumed. Grubler staved close to Gail and made small talk about the weather and her house, and glanced at her in snatches, as if afraid she might resent it. After the first startled anger at seeing Emerson, Gail had retreated into a distant, frozen politeness. The masked look that Miss Rachel remembered was back in the depths of her eyes.

Christine, still being gay and roguish, took Hal Emerson off on a tour of the garden.

Bob Ryker added more gin to his drink when no one but Miss Rachel was looking. Over the rim of his glass he winked at her.

“There’s just one more to come,” Ilene Taggart said suddenly from the other end of the wicker seat. “Zia. She’s lovely, like the Indian maidens on old-fashioned calendars. When she gets here, we’ll all be together again just as we were in college.” Ilene’s gaze was fixed on her lap, on the clasp of her big purse, and Miss Rachel couldn’t be sure that the words were meant for her.

“Only, of course,” Ilene went on more softly, “there is such a difference in being together because you’re all interested in writing and in being together because you are afraid.”

Her tone had been monotonous and quiet. Probably no one had heard what she had said except Miss Rachel. At any rate, here was one who hadn’t been fooled about the purpose of the house party.

Miss Rachel decided that she had better get on with the business upstairs.

As preliminary, she yawned a little, as though Ilene’s soft words hadn’t registered. “The heat makes me drowsy. I believe I’ll go up to my room and lie down.” Her cat ambled towards her, giving up the experiment of outstaring the lizard, and together they went into the hall and up the stairs to the second gallery.

There was a little breeze there, but it was hot. Rachel waited to make sure that Pedro and Florencia were out of the way. To the left, open arches looked out over the enclosed garden, the tangle of flowers and vines, to the sunny Arizona desert beyond. On the right were the bedrooms, a long row of them—once the accommodations for the overnight guests of the stage depot. The wall had been replastered effectively with cream-colored stucco and there were black beams overhead. Beside each door hung a cluster of gourds and pods, painted brightly in Indian colors, the traditional symbol of the welcome and the hospitality of the old Southwest.

The first room was Miss Rachel’s and she ignored it. She experimented at the second, Christine Rykeris, and found it locked. This was no surprise, considering Christine’s desire for privacy with her luggage. Miss Rachel tried a hairpin without any luck.

The third door opened easily. Inside on a luggage rack was a battered bag she recalled Pedro bringing from the station wagon—either Ilene’s or Bob’s. The contents instantly betrayed their owner. There were three bottles of vodka, a little tin of dried onion flakes, a blue scarf, some exceptionally heavy driving gloves, a deck of cards, two clean shirts and two changes of underwear and socks, and a very old pair of felt bedroom slippers.

The closet was bare. The door which led into the adjoining room, Christine’s, was bolted on its other side.

“No letter among his things,” Miss Rachel told her curious cat. “Perhaps he didn’t think it important enough to bring along.”

On the gallery again, she listened. She could hear Christine’s chatter and Bob Ryker being argumentative with Grubler about whether he ought to have another drink. Ilene’s voice kept suggesting a sandwich.

“Listen, my inhibited chick,” Bob answered, “you need a coupla drinks yourself. Keep your sandwiches off me.”

Miss Rachel went into the fourth room quickly, confident that their efforts with Bob would keep them busy below.

A plain black bag on the foot of the bed contained a lot of white muslin underwear of a type which Miss Rachel could not recall having seen displayed in a store for the last twenty years. Ilene must make a special effort to find it. The slips, drawers, and chemises were coarse, shapeless, sexless. In the closet where Florencia had hung them to shake out their wrinkles were Ilene’s other clothes: a rusty brown suit of the kind social workers favor, a dull goose-gray dinner gown, and a play suit which was definitely bashful.

“How old does she think she is?” Miss Rachel worried to· her cat. “What’s come over her? Her figure isn’t bad. She has pretty hair, and the mouse type always attracts a certain number of men …” She dug deeper into the suitcase. Away at the bottom were a black net nightgown and a black chiffon negligee trimmed with sly little pink ribbons. These garments were new, still had price tags hanging from them, and were done up precisely in white tissue paper, as though Ilene wasn’t sure she’d need them.

There was no clue in the room to indicate any note-making.

Her cat growled a little.

Miss Rachel turned to find Ilene just inside the door, her figure stiff with shock. “You—you’re prying into my things! How dare you?”

For a moment Miss Rachel just stood, regretting that for once she couldn’t think of a suitable lie—usually they came readily. Then she found herself blurting something which turned out to be the truth. “I was hoping you’d brought that note—the pieced-together thing you’ve all been getting.”

“Oh—that.” Suspicion died slowly in Ilene’s eyes. “Yes, I brought it. I don’t mind your seeing that.” Her glance touched the suitcase and jerked away. “You won’t know what it means and you mustn’t ask me to explain.” She opened the huge handbag and examined its contents with the air of checking a filing cabinet.

The general appearance of the note was much the same as Gail’s.

Star bright, star bright

Where are all the stars tonight?

Couldn’t have love, did get gold,

And now BR—but it’s cold!

KACHINA

“I don’t mind you seeing it. I rather thought, when I met you, that Gail might have wanted your advice.” Ilene’s fingers twisted the knob of the catch on the handbag. “But you can’t tell her what it says.”

Miss Rachel saw the shamed fear in her eyes. “I won’t tell. Can’t you even explain the reference to the stars?”

“Well … That part must refer to the spell of partial blindness I suffered seven years ago. We were all working on the yearbook and I had charge of the illustrations, and then everything sort of—of blew up for me. Now I’m just near sighted.” She wasn’t looking at Miss Rachel. She was watching the tip of the cat’s tail. Samantha was under the bed, perhaps after another little lizard. “That’s all I can explain. The last two lines don’t mean anything except just meanness and gossip.”

Miss Rachel scanned the message again and then said softly, as if to herself: “These initials—who would B. R. be?”

Of course Bob Ryker must be the answer, and Ilene wouldn’t give it. Her voice was hoarse, hurried. “No, no—they aren’t initials. The cold, you see. My cold, lonely life …”

Miss Rachel asked gently, “Is it?”

Ilene turned and went to the window. “There are lots of ways of not being lonely, ways that don’t show and that people might not understand. Like reading, and helping at the day nursery, and writing letters for the people at the blind institute—” She broke off, pointing to Samantha’s tail. “Like keeping a cat and loving it. I suppose she’s a lot of company for you.”

Miss Rachel laid the note upon the dresser, sensing that Ilene was not going to talk about it any further. “She’s awfully bossy for a pet. I think she has the idea that she owns me, that I’m the one being kept for companionship.”

Ilene smiled briefly. The hot light from the open window showed perspiration on her face.

The cat stuck her head out from under the bed in a sudden attitude of listening. At the same time, beside the window, Ilene stiffened a little. There had been a faint dry rattle, not very near, just loud enough to be sensed in the vibration of the air. The cat came out into the middle of the floor. Her ears twitched.

The sound came again, almost drowsily, as though something scaly and loose-jointed had stirred itself rhythmically and then died away.

Ilenc’s eyes were hollow and afraid. “Did you hear anything?”

Miss Rachel was frowning. “I’m trying to remember. Beads, I think. Dry beads. Amber—like a string of my mother’s I played with when I was small.”

The cat looked towards the window and said something deep and uneasy in cat language.

“I—I thought of paper crackling,” Ilene said.

“Listen.”

They waited, but all they heard for a moment was the slam of a door somewhere along the gallery. Then a last rhythmic whisper, as dry as pebbles being shaken in the bottom of an Indian basket. But torpid and alive … Ilene’s hands were twisted into the window drapery as though she needed support.

The cat put her claws into the counterpane and worked with frustrated energy until Miss Rachel pulled her away.

Ilene tugged at her hat, as though any pressure on her head had become suddenly unendurable. “Was the sound inside the house, do you think?”

“I couldn’t tell.”

Ilene slumped to the edge of the bed. “I must be tired from the trip—tireder than I thought. My nerves are on edge. Perhaps I should lie down until dinner.” The expression of fear, of listening, hadn’t left her.

“We’ll run along.” Miss Rachel took her cat and went to the door. As she went out she caught the quick move Ilene made to look under the bed. N

Christine Ryker was on the gallery, in the act of unlocking her door. Her mouth was tight, the pose of her head angry and nervous. She glanced up at Miss Rachel’s approach, smiled with grim politeness, waited until Miss Rachel was at the stairs before opening her room.

Gail was in the long living room across the hall. This had once been the dining room of the depot. When Gail had bought the place it had been even more a ruin than the rest of the house, since passers-by on the road to Winslow had stabled horses in it. It had taken a lot of work, a lot of money to transform broken walls and floor to what they were now. The ceiling was low, white-plastered. Walls were painted a soft green for coolness. The floor was dark green tiles covered partially with Navajo rugs. The furniture was Spanish oak, massive and dark; Gail was at a desk in a corner beside an open window, making entries in an account book.

She raised her eyes. “Oh. I thought you might be resting.”

“It seemed a good time to talk. Are the others upstairs?”

“Mr. Emerson is still in the garden.” She said the name with frozen preciseness. “But out of earshot, I’m sure. I’ll be through here in a moment. If I don’t keep track of every dime—” She cut off what she had been saying, as if not wanting to trouble Miss Rachel with her affairs. “Sit down in that little chair with the rawhide seat. It’s much more comfortable than it looks. What do you think of these people?”

“I’ve scarcely had time to form an opinion of any of them,” Miss Rachel said thoughtfully. “It struck me that Mrs. Ryker acted peculiarly about her luggage. She keeps her door locked. She was unlocking it as I came down.”

“She and Mr. Emerson had some sort of quarrel over behind the arbor,” Gail said emotionlessly. “I think she went upstairs a trifle angry.” She lifted her eyes from the account book and studied their shadows, close together on the pale green wall. Miss Rachel’s shadow looked a little odd since Samantha, on the window sill behind her, gave her the shape of ears thrust up on the top of her head. “But Christine’s always been nervy and touchy. She has all the money—none of it is Bob’s—and she wants her business affairs run perfectly, and her clothes to be perfect, and a general air of having money to show.”

“Mr. Ryker seems rather wearied and cynical for his age.”

“He’s mildly pickled almost all of the time. As for being weary, there must be times when Christine literally drives him to drink.”

“I’m quite interested in Miss Taggart. I’ve been with her for a little while in her room. Her air of repression verges on the neurotic, or it’s an act. And her habit of not quite looking at anyone is disconcerting.”

“The repression is genuine,” Gail assured her. “Ilene has had an awfully tough time. She’s been an orphan since she was fourteen. In college we were all sure she’d go places as an artist. She did splendid, vivid stuff. Then while we were getting out the anthology she developed some kind of eye trouble—perhaps overwork. She had to quit drawing and reading and feel her way around the campus like a blind person. Losing that chance, and being cut off abruptly from the rest of us, did something to Ilene. She turned bitter, queer, and that air of repression and avoidance of people seemed to develop in her overnight. As for not looking directly at anyone—that’s nearsightedness, a lack of focusing. The worst break of all was that after she left school a great-aunt died and left her some money. Too late, you see. The chance for normal friendships was gone. Now she gets around all right, but she doesn’t ever try to paint anything, not even when I urge her with my own materials out here. And as for looking at a man—I guess she’d die first.”

“What about these letters—she has one, but she could have sent it to herself. And she may feel you all let her down during her illness.”

Gail shook her head. “We didn’t do that, you see. Bob Ryker and I made the most efforts to keep her in the group, but no one passed her up. She made the break of her own free will. And there’s no trait in Ilene of wanting to hurt anyone else. Her bitterness is turned inward.”

Couldn’t have love, did get gold,

And now BR—but it’s cold!

The dry, whispery shaking returned to Miss Rachel’s memory. Ilene had been terrified by it.

Life was cold and frightening when a drowsy rattle could scare you.

Of course they were in snake country here; there was the ever-present danger of a rattler slipping into the place: But there was something more.… Miss Rachel frowned at the attempt to remember.

On a shelf across the room was a row of Kachina dolls, little carved figures representing, in Hopi-Indian fashion, the good and evil spirits of the hereafter. Miss Rachel’s eyes grew wide.

In bright ceremonial colors, the Kachinas seemed to parade along the shelf. And each held, in a miniature hand, a gourd.

Chapter 5

Miss Rachel walked across the room to the shelf of figures. She lifted the center one to examine it more closely. It was surprisingly light in weight, carved from some porous desert wood, and the figure it represented wore a helmet-shaped mask covering the head to the shoulders and topped with a tuft of feathers. There was a stiff white skirt or kirtle from waist to knees, highly decorated boots, circlets of paint at wrists and neck. In the hands were ceremonial objects, a gourd rattle in perfect miniature and a spatula-shaped wand painted with symbols of mountains and storms. The total height was about ten inches.

Gail had taken a sheaf of canceled checks from between the pages of the account book and was ruffling the yellow slips absently. “In the Hopi concept of things, the dead are among the living always. The Kachina dolls, however, are not revered as religious idols. They are more apt to be made as toys for the children. A lot of them, of course, are sold now to tourists. Originally the idea seemed to be that of close, loving association with the dead.”

The little figure had a certain vigor and grace; its colors were bright, primitive, lavish. “Not the white man’s idea of a ghost,” Miss Rachel observed, “though I suppose if you were being haunted, one kind might be as uncomfortable as another. Why should your poison-pen writer choose the name?”

Gail tapped the checks together on the open page of the account book, then thrust them half out of sight between the rear pages. “I’ve tried to figure out a connection. We’re all familiar with the Hopi religious ideas; you can’t live in Arizona and not be. But the idea of the Kachina is that of one all-knowing who has died.” She waited a moment, as if thinking, then closed the account book.

“Mr. Emerson had been out of touch with the others. A figurative death, one might say.”

Gail turned her head. “His … methods are more direct.”

There was a sound at the doorway. Bob Ryker stood there, leaning to the left, as though something had gone awry with his sense of balance. “Somebody’s been in my room, Gail. I don’t mean Florencia, either.” His smile was tight, querulous.

For an instant Gail looked at Miss Rachel, a glance full of guilt and question. Perhaps Ryker didn’t see it. He was at the end of the room, facing the light, behind him the shadows of the hall. Gail asked, “Is something missing from your things?”

“Damned right.” He walked in, still with that effect of imbalance which never quite tipped over, and fell into a deep red-cushioned chair.

Miss Rachel breathed again. She hadn’t taken anything; she could not, in fact, believe that she had left any traces of her visit.

“Who’d want my driving gloves, Gail, and why?” Bob Ryker demanded.

Again the swift, guilty glance from Gail. This time Miss Rachel was a little irritated by it. People wanted you to advise them, and when you did a bit of reasonable poking about …

“What were they like?” Gail asked.

“Heavy as the dickens. Always reminded me of welder’s gauntlets. Not that I ever did any welding.” His smile assured them that he saw the humor of this just as they saw it. “I brought them along because a friend in Phoenix who’s a rock hound wanted me to look over the country out here for some jaspar. I wouldn’t know jaspar when I saw it, but my conscience was happy when I stuck in the gloves. You know—you pick up a bit of stone and tap it professionally with a little hammer and shine it in the light. That kind of rot. I was depending on you for the hammer.”

“I see,” said Gail, plainly at a loss. It occurred to Miss Rachel that Gail had expected Bob Ryker’s Kachina letter to be missing, that she had leaped to the conclusion that Miss Rachel had taken it for examination. “Perhaps Pedro borrowed them for some job or other.” Gail half rose.

Bob Ryker hadn’t moved; his eyes narrowed as he looked into the light. “Do you want to know what I think?”

Gail put a hand on the desk. “Surely.”

He lifted a forefinger so that it stood tall with a crook at the end. “Snake.”

The silence closed in around the word. The room was breathless with heat, with stillness, while Gail stared at that lifted finger and Ryker grinned back.

He went on. “I heard a funny noise when I first went into my room a while ago.”

Miss Rachel remembered the slammed door from the gallery while she and Ilene waited for the repetition of the rattle.

“It wasn’t a loud sound, wasn’t close. I couldn’t locate the source. It had an uncomfortably neat resemblance to the sound made by a nice big fat diamondback.”

Gail shuddered.

“Somebody got an idea from that sound, Gail—just as I did. Not the same kind, though. You understand now why my gloves are gone?”

“No,” said Gail. “That’s … horrible.”

He leaned forward in the chair. “Do you think you fooled any of us about this business with the house party? Don’t you know that we’re all perfectly aware one of us is a nut, a poison-pen nut, and that the purpose of the party is to find out who it is?” He turned to grin with wicked mischief upon Miss Rachel. “And your Dresden-china lady—I think Christine must be the only one who hasn’t placed her by now. Only she’s slow, Gail. Awfully slow.”

Miss Rachel bristled. Then she quieted and looked thoughtfully at Bob Ryker.

Ryker motioned to the row of Kachinas behind her. “I don’t have to be psychic to know what you two were talking about when I came in. The thing is, there’s going to be more than just the letters.”

He was echoing Miss Rachel’s own words to Gail in Reno.

“There is presently going to be some nasty hocus-pocus with a snake. For my own part, I intend to shut myself up with a bottle and get so pie-eyed drunk that a snake will take his life in his hands if he bites me. For you, Gail, you and Pedro and your famous Miss Rachel, For suggest a very quick and private snake hunt of your own. You just might locate the old boy before the fellow with my gloves does.” He stood up, still leaning faintly off center, and ambled off through the door to the hall.

Gail’s eyes were frantic. “What shall we do?”

Miss Rachel didn’t answer immediately.

“You didn’t happen to hear the sort of sound he claims he heard?”

“Oh yes. While I was with Miss Taggart in her room. She caught me rummaging in her belongings. I rummaged in Mr. Ryker’s, too, and I can vouch for the presence of those gloves. They were very heavy. The thing is, Ryker must have come down again after hearing the noise—in order for the thief to get his gloves.”

“We were trying to get him to stop drinking for a while,” Gail explained. “He went up and brought down a quart of his own vodka. Then Dave coaxed him not to open it after all.”

“Who went up first?”

“Christine. She’d had an argument with Hal Emerson.”

“What did Emerson do?”

“I thought that he stayed in the garden, but I couldn’t be sure. I wasn’t watching the hall door particularly. He could have slipped in while I wasn’t looking.” She twisted her hands together in sudden urgency. “Could there be a—a snake loose in the house?”

“The sound I heard wasn’t inside the house. The bedroom windows overhang the courtyard where the cars are parked. I’d say the noise came from there. Send Pedro out there now, just to be sure.”

As if motion, doing anything, were a relief, Gail turned and hurried away.

Miss Rachel picked up her cat and went out quietly into the hall. The house seemed filled with a sudden silence. Up the stairs—her shadow on the wall wore a tail now, Samantha’s, in an odd spot. She stopped before reaching the gallery. Two men stood where the light from an open archway illuminated them—Bob Ryker and Grubler. Ryker was doing the lifted-finger act (it took either practice or a kind of double-jointed-ness, she thought, to get that crook just at the tip so that it gave so much the effect of a peering snake), and Grubler was listening with all expression wiped from his face. Grubler couldn’t turn pale, being as white as he was naturally. Perhaps the frozen look was his reaction to shock. Or maybe he thought Ryker was too drunk to be believable.

Rachel went back down into the hall and someone said, “Hello,” just beyond her elbow.

She looked around. Hal Emerson had come out of the living room; he had a couple of books in his hand.

“I’ve been hoping I’d run into you,” he went on. “Do you have time for a conversation?”

Miss Rachel let her cat hop to the floor. “Certainly.”

“Where would you prefer? Inside?”

“The coolest spot seems to be the space under the gallery,” she pointed out. “And perhaps Florencia can fix us something cool.”

“Some iced tea, then.”

“I don’t know why people always think I should want tea. I’d like a sloe-gin fizz if Florencia and the bottled goods are up to it.”

He looked at her blankly for an instant. “Of course.”

“I think they confuse me with the grandmotherly type,” Miss Rachel went on. “Which I’m not. Any grandchildren I might have been inflicted upon would long ago have disowned me. Jennifer almost has. She’s my sister.”

A few minutes later, as he handed her a pink fizzy drink, he asked soberly, “Am I forgiven now?”

The cat, on the arm of the wicker seat, tried to get her nose into the glass too and had to be firmly set down. “I wasn’t really as cross as I seemed. Sometimes the grandmotherly pose comes in very handy.”

He pulled over one of the keg-shaped seats which matched the redwood table. “I can see that it might. Gail, though—she wouldn’t be fooled, would she? I mean, you and she are old friends?”

“I attended her baptism in the role of godmother.” Miss Rachel gazed reflectively into the pink fizz, “Almost twenty-eight years ago. The year everybody was bobbing their hair. I almost bobbed mine—I did cut the bangs, and then Jennifer caught on and hid all of the scissors. You said we were going to have a conversation.” She looked at him curiously.

He smiled at her with a touch of embarrassment. “But there’s more, isn’t there? More than just family friend, I mean.”

“Did you get a letter, an unpleasant letter made up of pasted words?”

His smile went away. “So that’s it.”

“Did you?”

“Yes.” He downed his whisky-and-water abruptly.

She put out her hand. “Show it to me.”

“Wait a minute. I’m not in on your game. I can keep my problems to myself. I just wondered why Gail had asked this bunch of people here.” His wind-burned face was stubborn, aloof.

“There isn’t time to be coy,” she answered sharply. “And there is something more going on than letter writing. Give it to me.”

Somehow she knew he’d have it with him. He wore a sand-colored sport jacket, an old one; from its pocket he brought forth a note. Expensive paper, long-legged lettering, words that marched poisonously across the page.

Heave-ho, my lad, the wind is free

Though you’ve no lass upon your knee

Make your mark with pick and shovel

And let your love life go to the devil

KACHINA

“Dull, isn’t it?” he asked in a tone he had meant to be flippant.

“The touch of advice is new,” she said thoughtfully. “The other two I saw were just cruel and sly.”

He sat very still for a moment. “Was one of them … Gail’s?”

Gail’s voice answered him. “I’m sure there’s nothing in the affair to concern you.” She had come up quietly. Miss Rachel had seen her; Hal had not, since he had his back to the garden and the entry to the hall. He stood up swiftly, the color flowed into his face under the weathering of wind and sun. Gail went on, “I didn’t ask you here. I hate to be rude, even to an uninvited guest—but would you mind going?”

He looked at her for a while; Miss Rachel could see him getting slowly mad. “Yes, I mind. I mind having my life kicked around, too.”

Gail’s eyes were sick and hollow. “I won’t talk about that.”

He seized her shoulders with his hands. He was stocky and hard in contrast to Gail’s thinness. “You never gave me a chance, never let me explain. I didn’t have any intention of humiliating you.”

She was shaking now as if at the touch of a flame. “Let me go.”

“It was such a minor damned thing, anyway.” The words spilled forth as if held for a long time in embittered readiness. “Why should we have lost seven years, hated each other? Why wouldn’t you ever see me?”

“For shame,” Gail whispered, “in front of Miss Rachel!”

He didn’t even look around, though Miss Rachel instantly put on an indifferent expression. “I don’t think this is shocking her too much. She’s got a lot of sense, Gail. She’s seen a lot of life. Listen to me. You didn’t see what you thought you did, that day in the canyon. The woman followed me, I hadn’t asked her.” He shook her now, angrily, impatiently. “Gail, it’s lives you’re throwing away. Our lives. We’re almost thirty. Time doesn’t wait.”

Gail turned her head. “Let me go.”

“I’ll let you go.” He pulled her against him and put his mouth against hers; and she fought him with fury.

Miss Rachel sat on the edge’ of the seat. So did the cat.

At about the time when Miss Rachel was considering a rear attack with something sharp, he let Gail go. She flattened away from him against a pillar. She wiped her mouth. “I hate you.”

He looked at her calmly. “I’m not going until the others do.” Then he picked up the two books from the redwood table and went off into the hall.

Gail remained against the pillar. Her eyes were unfocused; they seemed to regard some enormous horror. Miss Rachel got up and took her by the hand and led her to the wicker seat. She discovered that she still had Mr. Emerson’s note; she stuck it in the pocket of her skirt.

“Did you and Pedro find a snake in the courtyard?”

Gail raised an uncomprehending stare.

“Snake. Remember?” Miss Rachel tried to do the finger trick as Bob Ryker had; it was a poor imitation, but something registered. Gail drew a breath.

“No. Nothing.”

“Who was the person you found with Mr. Emerson in the canyon?”

Gail shook her head from side to side like a child denying guilt.

“Under a manzanita tree, I think.” Miss Rachel waited and saw the sick shame that crept into Gail’s face, the cringing self-loathing. “Quit looking like that. If Mr. Emerson can endure to talk about it, so should you. Who was the woman who followed him, whom he didn’t want? What were they doing? What did the crack about kissing his, big black boots mean?”

Gail was writhing as if Miss Rachel were applying a torch to her bare flesh. “Don’t—don’t say those things out loud.”

“Who besides yourself and Emerson knew what had happened?”

The mechanical headshaking went on, a numb reaction to inner agony. Outside of beating her with something solid, Miss Rachel felt that this was as far as she could go. The guard had been up for too long.

They sat together in silence. It was very hot, the late end of the day when the desert blazes. Samantha went over to the sunken fishpond for a drink and then remained, fascinated, to peer into the water. Florencia began to rattle pots and pans in the kitchen.

When Gail spoke, her voice was husky and trembling. “I’ve been a fool, a horribly stupid fool; but at least I know it now. I can’t send these people away, though I see that you were right and that they should never have been brought here in the first place. Tomorrow is the Snake Dance. Afterwards … they’ll go.”

Miss Rachel looked at Gail and thought about what she had said and decided that Gail had either made up her mind as to who had sent the letters or simply could not stand Hal Emerson’s presence in her house. The latter, probably, since he seemed connected with an emotional problem she was unable to face.

After a while Gail spoke more calmly. “Do you think we can get through the rest of it without any … trouble?”

“I don’t know.”

The shadow cast by the garden wall had begun to creep towards them under the gallery. The air was lazy and golden. Florencia sang snatches of a Mexican tune. The kitchen door swung open and Pedro came out with a stack of red pottery dishes and left them on the table. His teeth were very white in his brown face when he smiled at Miss Rachel. His eye on Gail was thoughtful, sober. Perhaps he considered the errand to look for the snake a little queer; or that the houseful of guests had made Gail overly nervous.

At dinner it seemed to Miss Rachel that the pervading atmosphere was one of subdued attention, of listening, of strain. Bob Ryker was very quiet, thoroughly drunk, but watchful, Ilene took several surreptitious looks under the table. Dave Grubler asked Gail absently if all the bedrooms unlocked with a common key. Gail assured him they didn’t.

No one said a word about snakes.

Miss Rachel woke up hours later in her dark room, in bed, and remembered that according to the book she had read after dinner, by now the Snake priests of the Hopi tribe would have many dozens of snakes, many of them rattlers, in the under-ground temple on the mesa. Tomorrow they would be brought up, blessed, sent abroad with the Hopi prayers for rain.

She listened uneasily, but there was no sound anywhere. No stealthy rattle, no scaly scrapings … nothing.

The thing she and Ilene had heard in the afternoon—whatever it was—was silent now.

Chapter 6

Miss Rachel chose a blue dress of fine lawn, a blue straw bonnet, blue lace mitts, a miniature parasol sprigged with forget-me-nots. This outfit had caused Jennifer to snort loudly when she had first seen it, and to wonder aloud how demure Miss Rachel could get. “You’re pre-Civil War in that garb, Rachel.”

“I know. Lots of people think we are, anyway.” Thus shutting Jennifer up for that time.

Her cat followed her as she went out upon the gallery.

Christine Ryker was at the next door, locking it. She looked thin, distinguished, and striking in a flame-colored linen suit and a big red cartwheel hat without any crown. The effect, as Miss Rachel had marked in her gestures and make-up, was a little overdone. The impression she made was made quickly, with impact, and then there wasn’t anything to draw your eye back to her. She glanced at Miss Rachel. Little old ladies weren’t one of her enthusiasms, perhaps. She made a face.

“What the devil are you staring at?”

It was bald rudeness, but Miss Rachel smiled. “I was admiring your hat. It’s quite unusual.”

Christine spoke through her teeth. “Some sneak got in and took the feathers off it.” Her glance fell to the cat. “I’ll bet your cat … she slipped in and saw the feathers ruffling there, and tore them off.”

“I’m sure my cat didn’t damage your hat,” Miss Rachel defended. “Your door’s been locked all the time.”

A stupid break. Christine’s eyes widened in outrage. “Yes. How did you know it?”

“I—ah—kept mistaking it for mine.” Rachel’s face felt hot, blushing.

Christine curled her lip. She dropped the key to her room into a big leather purse, cartwheel-shaped like the hat and almost as huge, hanging to her shoulder by a strap. “Did you?” she said flatly, and went off, down the stairs ahead of Miss Rachel to the hall.

Her husband was there, just fastening the catch on a little brown straw lunch hamper. “What’s that thing?” Christine demanded.

He looked up at her with a touch of dry mischief. She was still on the lower step and he below. “Refreshments. Liquid stamina. Do you think I’m going to sit for hours looking at snakes without anything to brace me? I borrowed the basket from Gail, but if you put up a fuss I’ll carry the bottles in my hands. Two of ’em.”

Her long red nails scraped the wrought iron of the railing. Her figure stiffened as she looked at the hamper. “If you feel yourself growing noticeably stinko, dear, please keep away from me. I want to enjoy myself.” With an angry gesture she walked on to the courtyard.

Ilene came down, wearing the high-collared suit of dull brown, carrying the huge brown bag with the worn edges, as hot and travel-worn, apparently, as though she had made the trip and returned. Bob Ryker ambled towards her. “Poor li’l old Ilene. Want me to rub the forehead?”

She looked up shyly, a grateful light in her eyes, as if she were glad he’d noticed her discomfort. “Thanks—I’m all right.” She turned towards the doorway. “Christine seems awfully cross today, doesn’t she?”

“Must be the heat. I’m about as usual, and she’s used to that.”

Ilene glanced sidelong at the hamper. “It’s bad for your heart to drink in hot weather.”

He bent closer, mockingly. “I didn’t know you were interested in my heart, darling.” While she blushed, he took her hand and led her outside.

Miss Rachel gave her cat a parting pat. “Watch yourself while I’m gone; and whatever it was that rattled—leave that alone.”

Samantha’s eyes narrowed as if she understood.

In the courtyard the group was dividing itself between Dave Grubler’s dark blue sedan and Christine’s station wagon. Miss Rachel saw that there was going to be some awkwardness—Hal Emerson was obviously waiting to see which car Gail intended to ride in and she meant to thwart him by grabbing the last place, when one was almost full.

“Silly, aren’t they?” murmured Bob Ryker’s voice into Miss Rachel’s ear. “Shall we share the rear seat in Dave’s car? I don’t crave a lecture, and besides, you smell good. Lavender. Mmmm.”

He helped her into the car with an excess of gallantry. Gail went swiftly to the station wagon, slid in beside Christine, who was at the wheel. Ilene was already in the rear, as she had arrived, looking lost and tired and afraid.

“That stumped him,” Bob chuckled. He opened the little hamper. Inside, neatly together, were two quart bottles, cloudy with some mixture containing the vodka. “Love, love, love. I’ve almost forgotten what it was like.”

All the sunshine in Arizona’s coppery blue sky seemed concentrated upon the top of the mesa. It was breathlessly hot. The Hopi village was crowded with people, both whites and visiting Indians, who were waiting for the Snake Dance ceremonies to begin.

There had been, Gail explained, eight days of ceremonial prayers in the underground temple, or kiva—prayers no white had ever witnessed—and now in the climactic dance the snakes were to be brought forth and handled, in defiance of danger, then released to find their way to the gods of the underworld with the Hopi prayers for rain.

There was as yet no sign in the open square of the priests who were to perform the dances, and the crowd moved restlessly under the sun. Some of the Hopi men had set up little stalls, selling native jewelry, baskets, and iced drinks, and were doing a brisk business. In one stall Miss Rachel found a Kachina doll, brilliantly colored. “That is the Farmer Kachina,” the stallkeeper explained. “Brings fertile crops.”

He went on to explain that the figures were carved of the cottonwood roots washed down into the arroyos. Miss Rachel opened her purse, but Hal Emerson was beside her, offering the Hopi some bills.

“An offering.” He gave her the Kachina doll.

“A bribe?”

“Perhaps. If you’d say a good word—” He broke off.

Miss Rachel glanced beyond him. Christine Ryker was close, bent over a tray of silver-and-turquoise jewelry. The big cartwheel hat made a shadow in which her hands moved, small and cruel and nervous. The feeling that Miss Rachel sensed at that moment from Hal Emerson was one of such utter hatred that it seemed a physical force.

She turned away with the Kachina doll and found a narrow strip of shade under an adobe wall. Two Navajo women in flaring skirts and velveteen jackets moved aside, smiling, to give her room. The crowd was growing noisy and restless. She caught a glimpse of Bob Ryker in a doorway. Perhaps he imagined himself out of sight, or didn’t care—he was opening the little hamper. Ilene was across the open square, bent over and talking with a small Hopi child who carried a puppy.

Miss Rachel turned as someone touched her sleeve.

Gail was behind her; with Gail was an Indian girl. Miss Rachel had expected Zia to be dressed in the native Hopi costume—a long, straight gown of hand-woven dark wool, a white wrap about the shoulders, white buckskin leggings and moccasins—since Gail had explained that Zia had returned almost completely to the ways of her people. Apparently, though, the girl had prepared herself for the trip home with Gail. She wore a corn-colored linen dress, cut very simply. Her figure was small, straight, graceful. A necklace of silver and turquoise at her throat, ancient and heavy work, and her manner of doing her hair, a black mass swirled over her ears in a modified version of the squash-blossom hairdress of the Hopi maidens, were the only Indian touches to her costume. She carried a buckskin bag by its laces. It was well filled and must contain overnight things.

Her hand was cool, her smile friendly, as Gail introduced them. “You’ve never seen the Snake Dance before?”

“No. Isn’t it … dangerous?”

Zia smiled as though the question were familiar. “Not dangerous for the priests of the Snake and Antelope clans. You understand, of course, that the whole ceremony is a prayer for rain. Are you prepared for a downpour?”

Miss Rachel showed a touch of surprise. “Are the prayers answered so quickly?”

“Almost always.” Her eyes were masked now, but her tone held no trace of banter.

Gail broke in. “Zia and I have been talking over the situation in regard to the notes. She didn’t get one, but she feels that those who did should get together and show the messages we received and discuss them openly. I—I agreed with her, at last.” Behind the bravado in Gail’s attitude Miss Rachel sensed the sick reluctance; she sensed, too, that Gail had reached the stage of wishing to flaunt her letter instead of admitting it had hurt her.

The Hopi girl spoke softly. “These letters have done much evil, if they are as Gail described them.”

Miss Rachel’s face had taken on a slightly popeyed look which seemed unwarrantedly apprehensive. Gail turned, puzzled. Across the square a new group of people had arrived, shepherded by a conductor. Miss Jennifer Murdock had left the others, however, and was bearing down in their direction.

“I’d forgotten all about Jennifer,” Miss Rachel admitted guiltily. She was astonished that she had not only forgotten her sister—she had overlooked the fact that Jennifer would expect her to rejoin the tour at once, and before this business at Gail’s house was finished.

There was sudden pushing and clamor. A pulse of excitement ran through the crowd, and Miss Jennifer was swallowed up in its movement. A group of Hopi priests had emerged from the hole leading to the temple and had begun to circle the plaza, meanwhile scattering some sort of meal on the packed adobe earth. As the noise from the crowd gradually died, a primitive rhythm became audible, a beating and stamping accompanied by the rattle of gourds and the thump of drums.

Zia’s voice came. “They are summoning the gods of the underworld to witness the need and the prayer for rain. Rain is our life, here on the desert. If my people have it, they live. If not …”

The crowd of mixed whites and Indians had pushed forward at the start of the ceremony; now there was a wild scramble to move back. A little leafy shrine at one end of the square was visited by each priest in turn, and each came away with a snake. Miss Rachel thought that if a snake may be said to have an expression, these looked tired and short-tempered. A few women shrieked. Now, with the rhythm becoming sharper, the Snake priests danced with the snakes coiled about them—even held between their teeth.

Miss Rachel stood transfixed. It was a scene, she thought, which made you think of man’s beginnings, of his once close association with the earth and with the animals on it. She saw, too, the pattern behind the Snake priests’ performance. With each Snake priest was one of the Antelope clan, circling close, drawing the snake’s irritable attention by means of a little feather-tipped wand. The reptilian eyes were attracted by the moving tuft of brilliant feathers; the scaled heads weaved and turned.

The dancers were painted grotesquely in black and white; with wildly straggling black hair and fringed kirtles, they looked strange and savage. They discarded the snakes after a time by simply dropping them upon the ground. Each snake tried to take his departure as quickly as possible, off into the crowd. There were minor panics when one almost got away. Usually a third priest was at hand with a wand—not always, it seemed, as quickly as he might be.

The crowd grew more and more tensely excited as the number of snakes taken from the shrine increased and were more swiftly discarded. One woman created a near-riot by fainting almost at the feet of a dancing priest. In the group that bent over her was Bob Ryker. His hands were fumbling with the catch of his little hamper—perhaps he intended to offer the fallen woman some of his liquor.

The movement, the heat, the pressure of the uneasy crowd made Miss Rachel want to shut her eyes. But now, she knew, was the important time to keep them open.

She turned to ask Zia if all the snakes were carefully kept count of; the sunny space beside her was empty. Zia and Gail had disappeared into the mob. Miss Rachel, suddenly alert, stood on tiptoe and tried to see over the surrounding heads. An eddy of pushing people caught her; somewhere a woman screamed, “Rattler! Rattler! Get it, somebody!” Then she found herself at the open space. The Snake priests had converged on the heap of entwined, gathered-up reptiles and were picking them up in bunches like so much cordwood, starting now the race for the bottom of the mesa to release these messengers of the underworld, the shadowland where mute gods waited to make rain.

One of the priests had dropped his feathered wand. It had been tossed to within an inch or so of Miss Rachel’s foot. She reached for it curiously—one of the Antelope clan took it gently away. But her eyes followed him, dwelt on the cluster of feathers thoughtfully.

Gail and Miss Jennifer were together at her elbow. Gail looked very tired and Miss Jennifer had a grim air of suddenly being convinced of a lot she had only suspected before. No doubt Gail had mentioned the house party, forgetting that Miss Rachel had been supposed to come home with her because she was feeling ill in Reno and didn’t wish to be alone.

Gail spoke. “We’d better leave now. There is always such a rush to get away. And what Zia said is true—there usually is a quick downpour, sometimes a flash flood, right after the dances.”

They gathered at the cars—there were two more people, now, than when they had come, Miss Jennifer and Zia.

Zia was coolly and relaxedly friendly to the others, exchanging a few reminiscences about college days with them during the few moments they waited. Miss Jennifer wore her putting-to-rights look. It was the look she wore when she straightened linen closets, checked up on the quality of strawberries in the bottom of the basket, and told off men who smoked next to her on busses.

Miss Rachel decided she had best be meek. Very meek.

The first big spattering drops hit the windshield as they turned into the courtyard. Almost weirdly, the answer of the gods to the rain prayers, big soot-colored clouds, had crawled steadily up into the sky on the way home. The earth, too, had darkened. The floor of the desert lay under shadow, and the mesas in the distance, topped with fringes of scrub pine, looked almost black.

The house seemed to have changed in their absence. Gone was all trace of sunlit glare; there was now a warm, sticky foreboding of rain. The arches of the gallery were stark against the gray light, the tiled floor already peppered with sprinklings. Miss Rachel ushered Jennifer into her room, where the cat met them by rising off the bed and stretching herself. There was an instant of extremely pregnant silence.

Miss Jennifer neither sat down nor removed hat or coat. “Rachel, I know now that you came here with a deliberate hope of digging up some sort of frightfulness. There is something queer about this house party.”

Miss Rachel stared at her soberly. “You noticed it so soon?”

“The gentleman with the basket—Mr. Ryker—explained things to me on the ride home.”

“Did you notice what he had in his basket?”

“I noticed what he had been doing … I didn’t have to see the contents of that basket. He kept popping onion flakes into his mouth, but that didn’t keep me from knowing that he was—ah—under the influence.”

Miss Rachel tried desperately to think of something soothing to say. Jennifer gave the room a cursory glance, then continued.

“You may as well get your things together, Rachel. You aren’t staying. We’re rejoining the tour and going on to the dam. It’s a very important dam—what would we do for water in Los Angeles otherwise, considering the rainfall we’ve had this year?—and touring it will be most educational.”

“The house party is over, anyway,” Miss Rachel admitted.

“Then Gail won’t mind if your departure is immediate.” Jennifer had located the cat’s basket and placed it upon the bed with the lid open. Samantha regarded it warily from the other side of the room. “The tour people are sending a car for us. Mr. Peele has been most obliging since I caught him behind that shrub with Miss Caxton. Though I still don’t quite trust that man—”

They both jumped with fright. There had been a scream from somewhere near by, a sharp, furious sound that rose to a shrill note, then seemed cut off sharply. They remained motionless, listening. The room seemed to darken as they waited. The only sound was a quick patter of rain on the sill of the open window.

Christine’s voice came from the gallery, followed by the tapping of her high-heeled shoes. Their door was jerked open and she stood there, a twitching red shape against the gray light and the shadows of the arches.

She transferred a curled piece of paper from her right to her left hand, then bent to rub her ankle. The strip of paper, in the glimpse Miss Rachel had of it, looked heavily watermarked in a dull green color—Miss Rachel thought of a train or bus ticket. Christine’s tone was harsh, venomous. “Your damned cat’s under my bed. It clawed me. Or bit—what horrible fangs it has!”

If she had waited a moment longer, she must have seen the black cat, standing tall and curious at the edge of the bed. But she seemed in a frenzy of rage and frustration; she turned and, running to the top of the stairs, stopped there to fling words back at their door. “I’m going down for an ax. I’m going to chop off your cat’s head—she’s not going to get away with this!”

Miss Jennifer blinked. “She must be insane. Our cat is in our room. We’re leaving as soon as the car comes for us, anyway—we’ll ignore her.”

“No. We can’t ignore her and we must hurry.” Miss Rachel pulled her unwilling sister with her towards Christine’s half open door. “She hasn’t locked it—be careful where you walk.”

Jennifer regarded the floor with astonishment. “Why?”

“I think I can show you why.”

Chapter 7

Ornate silver-backed toilet articles were gathered in a heap upon the dresser. An array of dresses and suits was laid over a chair. There was an odor of perfume in the air, a dry musky scent, and an open suitcase on the bed had a layer of peach-colored lingerie neatly packed in. Apparently Christine had been standing beside the suitcase when she had thought the cat struck her.

Jennifer started for the bed, but Miss Rachel stopped her. “Let’s have a distant look, first.”

She took a coat hanger from one of the dresses and they knelt down some distance from the bed. Miss Rachel reached, lifted the edge of the coarse-woven blue spread. For a moment there seemed to be nothing at all. Then, near the footboard, on the floor, Miss Rachel saw twined glistening mottled coils and a raised coffin-shaped head in which two little eyes gleamed evilly.

Jennifer screamed and bolted. At the door she fell over Florencia, who had lowered her bulk in time to glimpse the thing on the floor and was now screaming in unison with Jennifer. They made a frightful noise. Someone peered in so briefly above their scrambling bodies that Miss Rachel failed to catch who it was. She was trying to back away as quietly and cautiously as possible.

Outside, she closed the door swiftly. Jennifer and Florencia had disappeared at the arched doorway to the stairs. Miss Rachel turned, found herself facing Bob Ryker. He wore his usual air of whimsical naughtiness; in this instant Miss Rachel found herself impatient with it. “We must find your wife at once. She’s been bitten by a rattler.”

His hands clenched. “Where is she, then?”

“She’s downstairs, looking for an ax. She didn’t realize what struck her. Hurry!”

Still he didn’t move. “Where is the snake?”

“In there!” She left him standing and ran for the stairs, a sense of suffocating urgency crowding up into her throat, blood pounding behind her temples. Minutes—seconds—counted now. Through her mind ran the details of what must be done, quickly and without nerves. Tourniquet. An X-shaped incision, deep, in the flesh over the wound. And someone with good teeth, sound gums, no cracks or irritation on lip or tongue, and the cold courage to suck snake venom.…

Ilene was in front of her suddenly, her face like a paper mask in the darkness of the hall. There was a faint frost of rain on her hair, in the lashes above the staring eyes. “What’s happening? Why is everyone running?”

Miss Rachel shook her head. “Which way did she go?”

“Your sister?”

“Christine. She’s been bitten by a rattler in her room.”

Ilene shuddered; the movement of her body rippled in Miss Rachel’s frantic grip. “How horrible.”

“Where did she go?”

“I don’t know.” Ilene turned her face, looking sick.

Miss Rachel moved on towards the garden, then stopped. She had to think, think swiftly and well. Christine might have decided to bring a tool from her car, and on this chance Miss Rachel took a moment to look out in that direction. The cars stood in a row, deserted. From the sky came gusts of rain. Miss Rachel turned back into the hall. Ilene had vanished. In the living room a clock struck the hour, six, with a deep ringing tone. There was another clock, Miss Rachel thought in desperation, keeping time with her running steps. It was Death’s inexorable timepiece.

She hurried through the hall, out into the gallery that faced the garden. Christine may have intended to ask Pedro to lend her an ax. Or she may, considering the mood she was in, have gone off to help herself from the tool shed on the other side of the garden.

Bob Ryker came out into the dusky light, running his hands through his hair. “I don’t see her nor hear her.”

“Every instant counts. She must have a tourniquet above that bite.”

His thin body wavered indecisively, like a long puppet on a string. “I know. I can’t seem to think of what to do. Should I shout for her?”

“Yes, that’s it, shout!”

His voice echoed loudly in the garden. “Christine! Oh, Christine! Come here! Now!”

They waited. Rain spattered in a sudden gust that hissed among the flowers and vines. A shadow, deeper than before, rolled through the sky. Bob Ryker lifted his hands to form a megaphone.

It was then there came a loud scraping noise, a clank and rattle, and Christine came into sight through some vines. She dragged an ax by its handle, the iron head scraping the brick walk. She moved with a slow uncertainty, as if exhausted, and while they stood in that first instant of surprise she stopped and weaved a little and wiped her forehead groggily with the back of her free hand.

Thunder rolled from far off on the horizon. The sky was almost black, and under it Christine’s hair shone with a brassy glitter and her dress was a scarlet patch. She lifted her head and saw them—dimly, perhaps—Bob Ryker frozen in that motion of calling, Miss Rachel coming towards her quickly.

She spoke jerkily. “That damned cat—wait’ll I work it over with this—this—” Her prominent blue eyes grew very wide. A spasm ran over her. The ax handle dropped from her grip to rattle on the paving. She gave a perplexed headshake and at the same moment her hands moved across in front of her eyes as if wiping away a web. She took a single tottering step forward and collapsed.

They carried her to the wicker scat. Dave Grubler was on hand now, firm and sure, knowing what to do. He jerked down the filmy stocking, took a handkerchief from his pocket, knotted it just below Christine’s knee. Using a fountain pen as a lever, he began to twist the loop of cloth tight. His voice was calm. “Got a knife on you, Bob?”

Bob Ryker was standing helplessly at Christine’s head. “There isn’t any use going on with it, Dave—she had a bad heart.” His ragged breath filled the moment of silence. “The first touch of poison did for her, finished her.” He put up a hand to cover his eyes.

Dave took his own knife from his pocket. He looked at Miss Rachel, who was kneeling, her finger tips on Christine’s wrist. “Any pulse?”

“I can’t find any. It doesn’t have to mean she’s dead.”

He pressed his thumbnail to the knife’s handle; the blade opened with a snap. Miss Rachel turned her head. Bob Ryker said, “Oh, good God,” through his hands and from somewhere behind them Florencia whimpered something in Spanish.

There was swift, careful movement on Grubler’s part, then a time of utter stillness, of waiting, that seemed endless. The knife snapped shut. Grubler said wearily, “She’s dead. There isn’t any bleeding.”

Florencia began to pray. Miss Rachel raised herself, looked about. The dull light gave the scene the quality of nightmare. Grubler’s white hair shone as he bent above Christine’s body, removing the useless tourniquet. Florencia knelt under one of the arches, her eyes squeezed shut, her hands clutched under her bosom in supplication. The others—Miss Jennifer, Gail, Ilene, Hal Emerson, Zia—stood at the corner of the gallery like a group done in stone. Shadows were thick, faces stood out starkly white, and as obbligato to Florencia’s broken prayers there was the hiss of rain, the far-off mutter of thunder in the sky.

Gail came forward as though she saw that the responsibility of managing the situation was unavoidably hers. “I think we should move her, until the time the police can get here. The rain will slash in under the arches if the storm grows any worse.” She looked at Bob as if for his permission.

Bob just looked stunned. Grubler sighed and asked, “In her room?”

“You can’t go in there until that snake’s taken out,” Miss Rachel told him.

“Oh—so that’s where—” Grubler stopped, looked curi

ously at the others. “Then it wasn’t a stray she ran into on the grounds somewhere.”

“No,” said Miss Rachel. “It wasn’t a stray.”

All sounds died in that moment of oppressive quiet.

Gail broke the silence. “There is a small empty room—I used to store furnishings in it while I was building here.” She motioned towards the angle where the wall enclosing the garden joined the house.

Bob Ryker spoke jerkily. “You can’t just dump her into an empty room—on the floor.”

“No, Bob. There is a cot there. I’d thought that if we had too many guests for the number of bedrooms, I’d sleep there. It’s clean and it’s … away from everything.”

He looked at her sullenly. “I know what you’re all thinking. That I lived off Christine’s money and stayed drunk and ran around, and that any show of deep grief will be decidedly funny.”

Gail shook her head. “Don’t talk now. Please.”

“I still say you’re not going to put her off into a shed somewhere like a dead animal.”

“All right, Bob. We’ll leave her here.”

“She isn’t even cold yet.”

Gail looked at him, defeat in her gray eyes. Perhaps she sensed that he had to get it out of his system—the self-accusation, the things the others might think but wouldn’t say.

Grubler shrugged, spoke to Gail as he walked away. “I’ll see what I can do about raising the law.”

She nodded. “You know where the phone is.”

Rain blew in at them on a sudden burst of wind. Bob Ryker stood and stared at his wife, at the big drops that had spotted the red linen suit, the broken ones glittering in her hair.

“You’re right, Gail. We’ll move her. Lead the way.”

Set into the angle of the adobe wall was a small square room—Miss Rachel glimpsed the interior, the neat white walls, the cot in the middle of the floor, as Gail threw open the door. Bob Ryker went in, carrying Christine’s body. He shut the door after him, and didn’t come out.

In the hall, Zia came quietly to stand beside Miss Rachel. Her voice held no excitement, no nervousness, only a fatalistic acceptance of what was. “Why didn’t she try to treat herself?”

“She thought the cat had clawed her. She came down for the ax, to destroy the cat, and the delay, the rage, and the sudden exercise all contributed to her death.”

The wide black eyes were cool, expressionless. “Her manner of dying is strange, coming as it does immediately after the Snake Dance in our village. But the fact of her dying was not strange—she seemed so full of anger and malice towards everyone. Just on the ride home, seeing her for that short time, I sensed this.”

“There was a sort of frustration too,” Miss Rachel recalled. “As if what she had done in revenge hadn’t satisfied her.”

Zia studied her obliquely. “You mean she sent the Kachina letters?”

“We may find the proof among her things.”

Pedro came through the hall, carrying a hoe in one hand, a short-handled hatchet in the other. There was sweat on his dark face, uneasiness in his eyes. Gail followed, and Miss Rachel put out a hand to stop her. “Ask Pedro if possible not to kill the snake. It would be better if it could be caught, kept alive for the police to examine.”

Gail stared at her uncomprehendingly.

Miss Rachel went on: “I noticed today at the ceremony that the snakes seemed rather lethargic. We should observe this one, see how it acts.”

Zia’s eyes were curious. “You think this could have been one of ours?” She seemed to think for a moment, then went on quickly: “For a week the snakes in the kiva have been handled by the priests in a series of ceremonies. Much of their venom must have been drawn off. I think if this had been one of those it should have been trying to crawl off into the dark to sleep.”

“That’s what it seemed to be trying to do, under the bed. Mr. Ryker said something about his wife’s having a weak heart. In such case even a small amount of venom—”

From the gallery came a scream. Gail ran up the steps, Zia and Miss Rachel on her heels. Ilene was already there, crouched as if terrified against the railing above the garden. The door of Christine’s room was slightly open. Inside the room Pedro shouted something in a hoarse voice. Ilene shrieked again, “Don’t let it out! Kill it! Kill it!”

Perhaps Pedro thought it was Gail who screamed. Perhaps his reaction was the automatic one of self-preservation. There was a heavy chopping noise inside the room, then a scaly threshing, then a sound as if something like a whip repeatedly striking the wall. Ilene covered her face; her hands looked big and ungraceful, the wrists bony in their narrow cuffs. Gail whispered in a tight, dry voice, “This is nightmare, isn’t it?”

Pedro appeared at the door. There was a gray line around his mouth and his lips were set in a harsh line to hide his fright and loathing. “The snake is dead, though it will move for a while. It cannot bite anyone.” He leaned the hoc against the wall, took out a red bandanna, and wiped his hands carefully. “May I have the skin, señorita? This old one, he is a big culebra and marked with many diamonds.”

“It is for the police to dispose of … probably they will let you have the skin when they are through,” Gail told him.

He seemed satisfied. “Gracias. You will ask them?”

“Yes, I’ll ask them.”

“Someone should be here to watch the door,” Miss Rachel pointed out.

“I will watch, señora.”

Thunder rolled, far away on the black horizon.

“I guess that’s all we can do,” Gail said, looking from one to another. “We may as well go down and wait for the sheriff.”

Florencia had laid a fire on the broad brick hearth, mesquite roots which popped and snapped, throwing phantom shapes across the furniture. The row of Kachina dolls on their shelf had dancing shadows behind them. Window draperies moved on the gusty wind.

Gail hurried to close and fasten the panes.

Miss Jennifer was bolt upright in a chair beside the fire. “I suppose Mr. Grubler told you what he found out over the telephone.”

The tone, directed at Miss Rachel, implied that whatever had happened was her fault. Miss Rachel discreetly kept still. It was Gail who asked, in a tone half of weariness and half of dread, “What did Dave learn?”

Grubler himself answered. He must have been close enough in the hall to have heard the conversation. He came into the room. “There have been some big washouts on the road, Gail. It may be morning before we have anyone here from town. Zia, your rain gods answered with a vengeance, but their timing is a little rough on us here.”

Zia was on a cushion before the blaze. The uneven flame shone in her black hair, touched the soft line of her cheek with pink. If she thought Grubler’s tone a trifle jeering, she made no answer. Her eyes remained cool and sphinxlike.

He walked over to Gail, who had stopped beside her little desk and was looking down at her account book blankly. “You look done to death. Sit down and have a cigarette.” He took out a silver case and a book of matches.

“I must go tell Florencia we could do with something hot—coffee and sandwiches,” Gail said.

“I’ll tell her.”

“And we can’t let Bob stay out there all night with—with the body.”

“A little while of meditating on his sins won’t hurt him.”

Miss Rachel went to the window, pulled the draperies aside, and looked out at the rain. She saw a figure standing alone in the corner of the gallery—Hal Emerson, a raincoat over his shoulders, feet wide apart, the glow of a cigarette in his fingers. She couldn’t read his face. The night was closing in, wet and windy. She could see the tossing of the garden vines, the broken glitter of the fishpond, dimly in the light from the window. Across the garden, the windows of the little room where Christine’s body lay showed no trace of light. She wondered if Emerson were watching that room, waiting perhaps for Bob Ryker to come out of it. There was a hint of purpose, of determination, in the way he stood under the shadow of the gallery.

Miss Jennifer was explaining to Gail that she’d prefer tea, rather strong tea, and that she wouldn’t require anything to eat since if the car the tour management was sending for her could get through she’d have dinner in Winslow.

Grubler corrected her. “Nothing can get out here tonight, Miss Murdock. You’d better resign yourself to staying. Anyway, since you were here when Christine was bitten …”

“I saw nothing Rachel didn’t see.”

“Still,” Grubler insisted politely, “the police will expect you to be here when they come.”

The cat came in then, looked around for Miss Rachel, meowed politely to let her mistress know she was there.

“I should have known,” Miss Jennifer said firmly, “that to follow Rachel out here would mean that I’d find somebody being murdered. It’s as if she’s psychic about it—she feels it coming and hurries to get in at the kill.”

Miss Rachel felt her face grow hot. “That’s not fair, Jennifer. It’s true that I did consider the situation here dangerous, but I thought that, if anything, the presence of a nosy stranger should keep violence away instead of encouraging it.”

Grubler coughed to draw their attention, a small discreet cough.

“Miss Murdock has already stated that the snake which caused Christine’s death was not a stray. On the strength of her statement, I called the sheriff’s office and asked for their help. But since the sheriff and his men are not apt to be here for some time, I think we should let Miss Murdock explain things as she sees them and conduct a bit of investigation on her own.”

He glanced at the others. Ilene acted as if she hadn’t heard; Zia kept on looking impassively into the fire. Gail hesitated, then said, “I guess that might be best.”

Grubler said, “I’ll go after Hal and Bob, and while I’m at it I’ll ask Florencia for some hot drinks and some sandwiches.”

He seemed calmly able to take charge of things.

Miss Rachel, still beside the dark pane, saw that the door of the little room on the other side of the rain-swept garden was opening slowly, that Bob Ryker’s figure was coming out. He was close to the roof of the gallery when he stopped, looked about, and flipped something small and silvery into the fishpond. The object struck the water with a faint glitter, then vanished.

Hal Emerson strode out from under the gallery and Ryker flung around and raised his fists.

Chapter 8

Bob Ryker sat hunched in a chair, his eyes sullen against the fire, his mouth tight. He hadn’t touched the coffee on the table beside his knee, nor the sandwich Gail had offered. “If you’re all so anxious to know what I threw away out there, go fish for it.” He looked from one to another, belligerently.

Grubler said soothingly, “All you have to do is say that it had nothing to do with Christine, Bob—that it has no bearing on the truth we’re trying to get at.” He moved over to lean against the mantel. “We don’t know how Christine died, nor in what way the snake came to be in her room. Could it have been the key to that room you threw away?”

Ryker’s face turned slowly. “Are you trying to say I had anything to do with Christine’s death?”

“We don’t even know what her death was—accident … or something else. Does anyone know whether Christine kept her door locked when she was in the room? Would there have had to be a key used to place the snake there—providing the thing didn’t crawl there of its own accord?”

“She was in a hurry to pack and get away. She seemed suddenly convinced about something. Her mind was made up …” Ryker frowned against the light. “She might have forgotten to lock herself in this one time. Otherwise, and previously, no. I had to give forty-seven passwords to stick my head in.”

Miss Rachel asked, “Could it have been the keys to your wife’s luggage that you threw into the fishpond, Mr. Ryker?”

There was a minute of silence in the room, broken only by the slash of rain against the windows of the long room. The rain was driving in under the narrow gallery that faced the garden. Miss Rachel went on: “How long have you been sure that your wife had written the Kachina letters?”

His eyes, facing hers in the bright glow of the fire, seemed mocking and ironic. “Oh, now look, porcelain lady—you wouldn’t throw me to the wolves, would you?”

“I think you might as well tell the truth. It can’t hurt your wife. It might help unravel the mystery of her death.”

He seemed to think this over with an air of weary disillusion. “If Christine did make up that business with the letters, it wasn’t for any deep reasons of dislike or revenge. There were times when she got terribly bored. She had money, not too much—enough so that she had to spend a lot of time seeing that it stuck with her. Just for a relief from tension, as a kind of prank, she might have done something a little out of line like that.” His glance defied them.

“I see,” said Miss Rachel. “An absent-minded bit of fun.”

Color came up into his hollow cheeks. “You didn’t know her.”

“Not well, no. On the surface she seemed unhappy and frustrated. But since she seems to have had so much more in worldly goods than the rest of the group, the motive—if she wrote the letters—couldn’t have been one of blackmail in the common sense.”

His lips drew back. “Blackmail! If she were here, she’d laugh at you.”

“There are all sorts of blackmail,” Miss Rachel pointed out mildly. She looked up at the man whose pale head was bright in the half-lit room. “Did you receive a Kachina letter, Mr. Grubler?”

He hesitated, glanced at the others. “Is everyone supposed to have?”

“So far, everyone I’ve asked, except Zia.”

The Hopi girl turned an expressionless face. “I shouldn’t have lied. I did receive a letter. It made me angrier than I care to remember. It was about a—a squaw who ran away from the reservation, thinking herself a fine lady, and who found out that white people considered her very funny.” Zia had laced her fingers together tightly; there was a drawn look to the skin under her eyes. But her tone remained cool. “I destroyed the letter. I knew that the words had been cut from the literary club’s yearbook, and I suspected at the first that Christine had made it. She had, even in college, a certain knack of finding one’s weak points.” Her voice grew softer. “Mine was always my people. I was an alien in the white man’s school.”

“Nuts,” said Bob roughly.

“We didn’t feel that way,” Gail insisted.

Zia shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now. I’m home again. When I return to the reservation from my visit here with you, I’ll probably never leave it.”

“And your letter, Mr. Grubler?” asked Miss Rachel.

His mouth twisted. “I was peculiarly vulnerable—if Christine did write those things. I’d done the best I knew how in running a couple of copper mines for her. Profits, of course, rolled in during the war. Afterward, we had to work for our markets. There were times when she may have thought I could have handled things more shrewdly.”

Miss Rachel was studying him curiously. “Your letter, then, referred only to business matters?”

“Yes. That’s right.”

Miss Rachel turned again to Bob Ryker. “May we open your wife’s suitcases?”

He shook his head.

“The police will, you know. You won’t be able to keep them out of things.”

Indecision burned in his eyes. “Let me think for a minute. Gail—could I—is there something left in your little cupboard with the blue doors?”

Gail didn’t say anything; she rose and went out into the dark hall. Florencia was in the kitchen crouched in a corner beside the range since her fright over the snake, with all lights on. Miss Rachel caught a glimpse of Gail’s figure, a slim shadow hurrying through the gallery. The kitchen door opened on a blaze, with Florencia’s mouth opened for a scream in case the intruder were a monster of some sort. Miss Rachel turned from the window to meet her sister’s indignant eye. Jennifer was not charitable about the weakness of tipplers. Plainly she thought that Mr. Ryker should be able to make up his mind without the aid of a drink.

Bob Ryker said nothing until Gail returned with a glass of what looked like whisky and water and set it down by him.

He didn’t pick up the glass at once. His eyes dwelt on the yellowish liquid with a sort of dry self-amusement. “In there,” he said, tapping the glass, “in there, every man’s a king. Even a bum who lives off his wife.” He lifted the drink then, downed it in one swallow.

They waited. Miss Rachel wondered with what emotions—in one mind, at least, there must be a cold fear that something in Christine’s things might be a betrayal.

Ryker looked up briskly. “Let’s not make a public affair out of it. I don’t mind Miss Rachel, nor Gail. But I’m damned if the lot of you are going up there to paw through Christine’s stuff like a lot of ghouls.”

Ilene Taggart flushed. She’d been sitting very quietly, in her familiar attitude of weariness and anxiety, off in the shadows against the wall. “I don’t want to see what Christine had with her. I’m not a bit … curious.”

Grubler broke in. “I am curious. As Christine’s business manager, I ought to have a chance to know what shape her affairs are in.”

“Not you,” said Ryker roughly.

“Why not?”

“I’m damned sure that Christine was ready to give you the sack.”

The room grew still.

Emerson, smoking in a chair that sat in shadow in the farthest corner of the room, said, “It’s going to be much simpler if we confine ourselves to stuff we have proof of.”

“I’ll say what I please, and be damned to you.”

For a minute the two men looked at each other measuringly; then Ryker got up from his chair and walked towards Emerson. “You were going to tackle me outside, weren’t you? Let’s settle it now.”

Emerson rose leisurely, and though his figure was stocky, he gave the impression of being light and sure on his feet. He waited until Bob Rykcr came close, ducked a clumsy right punch, moved in swiftly, and reached out with his open hand to shove hard. Ryker went back staggering, off balance, struck a chair, and sat down hard.

“I could beat your head in and you wouldn’t be able to help yourself,” Emerson said coldly. “You’ve burned yourself out. You’re a mess.”

“Someday he’ll tackle the wrong fellow,” Grubler put in sourly.

Emerson looked over his shoulder, a glance that had dry amusement in it. “He’s your employer now. Did you forget that?”

Grubler shook his head. “There won’t be a business for long.”

Gail went to Bob Ryker, bent over him, pulled at his sleeve. “Let’s go upstairs. You promised we could see what Christine had in her luggage. If there’s proof she was sending the Ka-china letters, we should know it.” The lost, unhappy look was back in Gail’s eyes. It would be best, Miss Rachel thought, to run down the truth about those letters at once.

She stood up, letting her cat drop to the floor.

Ilene murmured, “I think it’s dreadful to pry into a d-dead person’s belongings.”

“Under ordinary circumstances, perhaps. But we’re cut off here, and quite possibly someone among us murdered Mrs. Ryker by letting a snake loose in her room,” Miss Rachel pointed out reasonably. “We’d better do a little work in self-protection before the police come.” She led the way towards the door.

Gail and Bob followed her, the cat running ahead, a blacker shadow among the shadows of the hall. The upper gallery was wet with the slash of rain in through the arches. A bracket lamp threw a thin wash of light over the glistening tiles, showed them Pedro in the doorway.

“Has anyone been here?” Miss Rachel asked.

“Si … I think—I could not see who it was, señora. There was a sound like footsteps, then I thought somebody waited a little while at the top of the stairs, looking at me.” He moved his shoulder blades under his leather jacket. “That was before I remembered the light. When I came to put it on, the footsteps went away. I felt queer in the backbone for a time, I’m telling you.”

Miss Rachel tried to recall the movements of the people in the room below. More than one had left and returned on various errands. Ilene had slipped out for an aspirin. Grubler had gone for Bob and Hal—had there been a little lag in time there, before he interrupted the scene beside the fishpond? She frowned, trying to pin down her impressions.

The person who had slipped up here to stare at Pedro didn’t necessarily have to be Christine’s murderer. There must be a good deal of curiosity about the contents of the luggage.

Gail was sending Pedro downstairs. “Get yourself some coffee and food, and help Florencia clear up. We’ll look things over inside and then lock the room.”

“Shall I take the snake now?”

“Yes, take it away.”

He lifted the hoe from against the wall and disappeared inside, clicking the light on as he went in. He came out in a moment, bearing the dangling body of the snake on the end of the hoe. He paused with an air of apology. “The floor, señorita … I could not kill this old one without …”

Gail turned her face from the limp thing on the hoe. “The floor can wait until tomorrow. Try to calm Florencia. She’s very upset. Don’t take that thing in where she can see it.”

“I’ll put it in the tool shed,” he promised.

Bob Ryker pushed the door wide and Miss Rachel and Gail walked in. The musky perfume was fainter now; the clothes laid over the chair seemed to have taken on the lifeless impersonality of a doll’s. The room smelled of rain from the open window. Bob Ryker walked to the suitcase where the layer of silken underwear made a peach-colored glow. He ruffled the garments from the bottom of the case. “Nothing here.”

“She had two bags, both monogrammed—one, I think, a trifle smaller than the other. It’s the smaller one that’s missing.” Miss Rachel glanced about the room.

Ryker made a gesture of resignation. “You don’t miss much, do you? The little one was the one Christine was careful about—all the time, even at home. She wore the key on a chain around her neck.”

Miss Rachel was in the closet. On a shelf slightly above head height was the smaller calfskin case, Christine’s monogram in gold shining under the closet light. Miss Rachel edged the case off the shelf with her finger tips, carried it to the bed. The contents seemed solid and heavy. The lock held fast. Bob Rykcr took a knife from his pocket, pried the blade under the catch, lifted. His fingers whitened with pressure. Suddenly there was a metallic snap and the lock sprang open.

The cat got upon the bed and tried to get her head into the case and had to be removed firmly to the floor.

Miss Rachel saw that the top of the case was fitted with a tray in which were pockets arid loops holding jars of cosmetics and toilet articles. She lifted out this upper tray, found below it another, a shallow one lined with dark blue plush. A diamond pin and a pair of diamond earrings glittered like tears. Miss Rachel pried at the rim with her nails, then glanced at Ryker. “Originally this jewel tray came out. She’s fixed it into place like a false bottom.”

Ryker went to the dresser, returned with a long nail file. “Try this.”

The plush-lined tray came up with difficulty. Afterward they found that its underside had been fitted with hinges and a small invisible catch set into the leather wall of the case. The hinges splintered the fine, thin wood; then the plush tray was lying out on the bed and the three of them were staring at the things in the bottom compartment.

The cat came for another look, overcome with curiosity.

In the secret space was a sheaf of creamy note paper, a little tube of paste, tiny scissors, and a small book bound in limp brown leather. On the book’s cover, in silver lettering, was We Are Seven.

Miss Rachel lifted the book and riffled its pages. The leaves were raddled by cutouts. A spattering of white rectangles drifted out suddenly upon the bed. Miss Rachel scooped them up. “Here’s something she started. Let’s see what we can make of it.” She began laying out the clipped words.

Bob Ryker laid his hand on hers.

“Please … you’ve proved what you wanted to. Whatever this last piece of mischief was—let it die with her.”

She felt impatience rise in her at his attitude. “The police will most certainly pry into every possible clue to your wife’s death.”

He rubbed his head with an air of weariness. “All right, if they have to, I can’t stop them. Maybe by the time they get here, it won’t matter.” His eyes looked directly into hers; his voice was husky. “You see, I wasn’t much of a husband. You might even say that I was part of the general futility and annoyance that drove Christine into finding the sort of outlet she did. Maybe I can make amends of a sort by doing what I can for her memory. Not whitewashing—the situation’s gone past that. But trying to make you understand. And putting the lid on when it’s done. She’s dead now—let me put the lid on all this.”

He had the plush-lined tray in his hand, ready to drop it back into place, but Miss Rachel stopped him. She had caught a glimpse of color in the bottom of the case, under the note paper and the scissors and the tube of paste. She reached swiftly, brought the object out, turned it on her palm.

Ryker and Gail stared at it without understanding or interest.

She frowned at the memory, the teasing tag end that related itself to this deep purple chip, the echo of anger and suspicion.

In Reno. The blonde. The stack of dollar chips …

Ryker said in a puzzled voice, “What is it? A gambling chip?”

She turned it, studying the color. “How long since your wife was in Reno?”

“Reno? I don’t know. She wasn’t a gambler. She hated gambling. She was a bad loser and she knew it.”

“Did she make a trip of some sort last week?”

“Two days.” An uneasy expression flickered over his face, a look of confusion and, Miss Rachel thought, some undertone of guilt. “What makes you think she’d go to Reno?”

Miss Rachel tried to fathom what was in his voice.

He went on quickly without waiting for her answer: “Las Vegas was more Christine’s town. She liked to run down there once in a while, check in at a big hotel for a day or two, and feel that she was rubbing elbows with the movie crowd. The Hollywood bunch does go there, you know.”

Miss Rachel was remembering Christine’s overuse of cosmetics, the exaggerated facial changes, the startling clothes. The woman had been shallower than she had thought, playing shallow games of looking and acting as she imagined a movie actress would … getting a petty satisfaction out of sending those poisonous letters. Shallow and stupid. Too stupid to know when she had gone too far, when someone was ready to strike back.

Ryker grew quiet, as if knowing the train of Miss Rachel’s thought.’

Gail, too, seemed under some sudden constraint, her face gone paler, her mouth taut. She was staring at the deep purple chip. Obviously she was adding up mentally what Miss Rachel had said, what Ryker had answered, and the solution she got was that Christine must have been in Reno when she was.

She seemed deliberately to be restraining herself from glancing at Bob Ryker. Perhaps she sensed that flicker of guilt or embarrassment and had no wish to add to it by her curiosity. Or perhaps there was something else, deeper, a shared secret between them …

Miss Rachel got the uncomfortable impression that a sort of telegraphy was running between them. It’s queer, she thought, how they never think that a spinster suspects. Actually, spinsters are the most suspicious people alive. They should listen to Jennifer after a church social.

Bob Ryker had gathered up the cut-out letters and words on the counterpane as if he’d suddenly remembered them. He tossed them in upon the little book, the scissors, the note paper. Then he waited, looking at the gambling chip on Miss Rachel’s palm. “Does that mean anything?”

She nodded. “It means that your wife was following Gail, spying on her in Reno. Why should she do that?”

There was no telegraphy now … only utter stillness between them.

Chapter 9

Bob Ryker raised his black brows and his mouth twitched in the wry grin that Miss Rachel recalled from their first meeting in the courtyard. She was wiser now, though—she saw that the mischievous little-boy humor was a mask, perhaps a desperate mask for something quite different. He said jokingly, “I haven’t kept very good track of Christine’s comings and goings for the last few years. I’ve had other things on my mind—when I had a mind. Such as the condition of the liquor supply. And why porcelain ladies in taffeta bother to do anything but just be decorative.”

She felt the warmth of his friendly magnetism. Liquored or sober, he could turn it on like a faucet. The words, the grim situation, meant nothing; they were overwhelmed by the intimate me-to-you sense of mischief. She jerked her mind away as from the edge of hypnosis. She understood in that moment why Christine had been long-suffering about his drinking—and why she might have followed other women, spying on them in a torture of suspicion.

“I happen to know this particular chip,” Miss Rachel said. “I know how it came to be lost. In Reno.”

She knew something else also, her mind told her—that Christine’s letter writing hadn’t been enough. The woman had had other satisfactions. In the back of the crowd surrounding the roulette table she must have heard the blonde’s vituperative lament. And, as in the way she had enjoyed Gail’s agony of dismay when Hal Emerson appeared, she must literally have wanted to hug herself.

Miss Rachel looked up, seeing the wry grin that seemed frozen on his face, and wondered how one went about charting the course of a marriage, exploring what it had done to the two people involved. Did one ask, as she was now, baldly: “Why didn’t you keep better track of your wife? Didn’t you ever suspect that she might be following you?”

He seemed ready for the question; there was no surprise over it. “Oh, Christine used to track me like a bloodhound. She couldn’t believe that it was just drink I wanted. She’d slip in and sit at the rear of the joint, at a dark little table, while I wolfed it down at the bar. But she didn’t have the stamina. She had to give it up.” For a moment, as if at the memory of Christine’s futile spying, his face showed absent-minded regret.

Gail had turned from the bed. She said woodenly, “There isn’t any use staying longer, is there? We’ll leave everything just as it is and lock the room until the police get here.”

Ryker reached for the gambling chip, took it from Miss Rachel’s fingers, dropped it into the bottom of the case. He frowned. “I knew there was going to be some monkey business about a snake. I felt it in my bones. But I didn’t dream … this way.” He dropped the jewel tray in, put the cosmetic tray into the top of the case, and closed the lid.

“Perhaps you thought your wife had planned something unpleasant along that line.”

He seized on it. “Yes, I did. I ran around warning everyone like a fool. Everyone except Christine.” He turned to stare attentively at Gail’s averted head. “I’ll need a drink when I get downstairs.” He said it like a naughty small boy pleading for a cooky.

“Oh, of course. Why don’t you help yourself? The cupboard isn’t ever locked.” Gail was changing the key to the outside.

“Come mix me one.”

The key rattled; Gail had almost dropped it. The edge of the door threw a shadow across her face. “I’d better see how the others are getting along.” Her tone was formal, hostessy.

Miss Rachel put on as innocent and unknowing a look as she knew how. She gathered up her cat and went out upon the gallery, crossed the expanse of wet tiles to the shelter of the arch and the dim landing at the top of the stairs. Big beamed doors, shaped to fit the arch, had been drawn half shut, probably by Pedro on his way down. Behind one of them, at the edge of the top step, she waited in shadow.

She heard Gail’s key, the scrape of the bolt in Christine’s door, then quick steps coming towards her.

Ryker’s voice pleaded, “Hey, wait a minute.”

Gail slowed, stopped. Miss Rachel pictured her turning, looking back at Ryker in the yellow gleam of the bracket lamp.

“Don’t freeze up on me like this.” His tone was humble, coaxing.

“Christine followed me to Reno, watched me there—watched every move I made. She trailed Miss Rachel, too, and found out somehow who she was and got into her room to go through her things.”

“You’re trembling … There’s nothing to be afraid of now.”

Gail’s reply was husky, scarcely louder than a whisper. “Are you so sure, Bob?”

There was a moment of hesitation—of surprise, of careful thought, of wary measuring. “What would it mean if I were?”

“That you knew … more than you should.”

He waited again. Then: “Knowing isn’t the same as guilt.”

“What set Christine after me? What did you do or say to get her started?”

“Look, honey child, you knew Christine. Nobody had to start her—on anything. She was born with all sixteen cylinders already primed. The Reno business—that could have meant that she was on the extension when I called your place, when Florencia answered and said something about your going to Reno.”

“That was you, then.” Gail’s tone was flat, dismal.

“Didn’t you know?”

Below, in the dimness of the hall, there was a faint movement, an almost soundless withdrawing. Miss Rachel sensed more than heard the careful step, the soft touch on the knob, the door opening quietly on the outer gallery.

She realized with a jerk that she had not been alone in listening to Gail’s talk with Ryker. Someone had stood below, practically as close as she herself, his ear only a few inches from the floor of the open, railed landing. She went down quickly, looked into the living room, expecting to see at least a part of the group they had left there. The place was empty. It occurred to her that perhaps the entire group had adjourned to the kitchen to make fresh coffee and drinks—a room that was smaller, snugger, more brightly lighted than the big living room.

Gail and Bob Ryker were on the stairs now. In event the other eavesdropper had waited for further listening, she hurriedly slipped out through the door into the outer dark.

She could hear voices and see lights in the kitchen. The gallery was dark, rain-whipped. In the garden was a tossing wetness, black, smelling of torn and broken greenery.

Someone moved towards her. She saw the shape of the raincoat thrown over his shoulders, the broad and stocky form, and she knew him. “Mr. Emerson?”

“We were wondering when you’d be down. I offered to come check up. I’ve just come out of the light—I can’t make out where you are.”

Was he offering this alibi to prove that he was not the eavesdropper? Or was it true?

“I’m over here.” She stood quiet, trying to see if his gaze fixed on her.

“Is Gail with you?”

“No.”

“She’s with Bob? Alone with him?” He said it sharply.

“They’ll be here in a moment.”

He came closer. She caught odors of tobacco and a clean masculine-smelling soap. “I don’t like that—it was Bob, if you recall, who went around impressing everyone with the fact that there was a snake loose in the place yesterday. That could have been an act. A damned clever act—one whose motive I can guess at.”

“I can guess at it too,” she agreed.

“Suppose it was important for the rest of us to think that the snake which killed Christine was already here, that it didn’t arrive with one of us when we came back from the Snake Dance.” His face floated mask-like above his dark clothing. Rain made a silver curtain beyond the eaves of the gallery. “If the snake was here—that alibis one of us.”

She had seen this. She wondered how many others of the group had thought of it. “It clears Zia.”

“Bob was crazy about Zia when we were in college. He never looked at Christine until a long time afterward—after his uncle had kicked him out of his construction business, and the bottle had begun to look a little too good, and she’d inherited her money.”

She told him quietly, “You’re building quite a case against them. Zia wouldn’t be as afraid as some people—as the rest of us, for instance—about handling a rattler. And Mr. Ryker could have stolen his own gloves and the feathers off his wife’s hat.”

He made an abrupt movement of surprise. “Wait. I hadn’t heard about that last.”

“I met Mrs. Ryker on the gallery this morning, just before we went down to the cars. She told me about the missing feathers—I gathered, a red cluster. I noticed afterward that the priests at the Snake Dance used a feathered wand to distract their charges. It was, I think, the first moment that I began to believe Mr. Ryker’s warning.”

“Stealing the feathers—I shouldn’t think he’d do that.” Emerson’s tone was worried, half angry, as if in irritation at this item which didn’t fit. “It gives an Indian touch, something I’d think he’d try to avoid.”

“If Zia was working with him, yes.”

He averted his face, stared off in the direction of the garden. A light from the kitchen outlined his profile. It was a good man’s face, square, clean-cut, honest-looking. A good mask, too, if he needed it to be. “I guess you think I’m in too much of a hurry to get the thing pinned on someone.”

“I can understand why that might be.”

“There was always something—some damned interruption between Gail and me. Her father was sick a lot. She took her writing and painting seriously. Then, when it seemed I might at last have a chance—” He cut off his words, shrugged.

“Just what did happen under that manzanita tree?”

His eyes widened; she saw his face clearly, as if it had paled. “How the devil do you know about that?”

“It was mentioned in Gail’s Kachina letter.”

He turned away again. “She thought that I humiliated her, that I took Christine on purpose to the place where Gail and I had always met.”

“And afterward?”

“I made her go to Christine and apologize for what she’d said to her when she found us together. I was too stupid to see what Christine’s act really was, what her purpose had been in following me up that little canyon, why she thought there was something in her eye and wanted me to try to find it … the oldest trick in the world, I guess, and me the one dope who would fall for it.” His tone was husky with bitterness, with remembering. “Gail apologized. More abjectly than I’d wanted her to.”

Miss Rachel remembered the Kachina letter: Made you kiss his big black boots …

He went on: “She seemed so cold, so frozen after that. I could never penetrate that defense. I could look at her, touch her … she wasn’t there.” He ran his hand over his bare head, a puzzled motion.

“Did you ever tell her that you knew you’d made a mistake?”

“I tried to—thousands of times. But she’d gone away, moved on—the ears I talked to didn’t belong any more to the girl I’d hurt.”

There were hollow steps on the gallery behind them. Gail and Ryker had evidently decided to hunt up the others.

“Will you take my advice, Mr. Emerson?”

He stood arrested, attentive, hopeful. Hopeful of some secret that would break down Gail’s hatred of him. “Surely …”

Go away when this is over and leave her alone.”

He turned his head, disbelieving.

“You’ve done the one thing she’ll never forget—your being here has only made her unhappy.”

His voice roughened. “I’ve wasted seven years …”

“Don’t waste another seven.”

Gail and Ryker were close; they slowed, then Gail walked on quickly, recognizing who was with Miss Rachel. Ryker paused, peered through the gloom. “Huh? Oh, you, Hal. Well, we found the evidence. Everyone might as well know—Christine had sent those letters.”

He leaned against a pillar, wearily. “Why should she have been murdered for it? God knows I didn’t enjoy reading mine, but I didn’t intend to kill her for sending it.”

Emerson moved so that the light from the house was behind him. “I told her yesterday that I was onto her. That’s what the argument was about, out in the garden.”

Ryker let a moment pass blankly, then shook his head. “Funny. I thought she’d made you that proposition—the one about taking Grubler’s place as her mine supervisor.”

Emerson’s figure stiffened. “Did she actually think I’d work for her?”

“She seemed pretty confident. She even had a wacky idea she’d get you pretty cheap.” Ryker was tossing something in his fingers—the key to the room upstairs. Gail must have given it to him to keep.

“You weren’t supposed to know much about Christine’s business affairs,” Emerson said curiously, “and yet you claim to be in on something she had planned for the future—a never-never future, I might add. I wouldn’t have touched her job with a ten-foot pole.”

Ryker began to move off towards the kitchen. “She thought she had you sewed up … somehow.”

They moved in a group towards the light, the men silent, Miss Rachel acutely aware of the tension between them.

On the surface, the people in the room seemed casual enough. Miss Jennifer, evidently with an idea of getting something good out of the enforced stay, had brought a book with her from the living room—from its jacket, a book about Indian customs of the Southwest. Zia and she were looking at an illustration, seated side by side at a breakfast table. Ilene stood beside the big white range, fussing with a glass coffee-maker in which water bubbled and hissed. A corner cupboard—one with bright blue doors—was open, and Dave Grubler was mixing drinks. He glanced at Emerson and Ryker as they entered; his glance was cautious, noncommittal, searching. When he met Miss Rachel’s eye he smiled gravely.

“We’re having a nightcap—various kinds of nightcaps—and then taking a vote. Some of us want to turn in and get some sleep. But the way to do that is to do it together, as a group—no stragglers left to scream out in the middle of the night, or to … get into mischief.” His lips twitched with what seemed an ironic desire to smile. “I might add that the nervous element is still determined to stay up.”

Ilene turned from the stove. Her plain face looked hot, feverish as if with exhaustion. “I’m afraid. I can’t help that. I don’t want to be alone, to lie and look at the dark, to wait …”

He listened to her carefully, almost as if testing the genuineness of the emotion in her voice. “Why not ask someone else to take you in, then?”

“You mean …” She twisted her large-knuckled hands together. Her gaze crawled from Zia to Gail, flickered back suddenly to the table, fixed on Miss Jennifer.

There was no doubt about it, Miss Rachel thought—Jennifer, in her rugged battle-axey style, looked as if she could beat off any murderer alive.

Ilene said hesitantly to Gail: “If you have an extra cot …”

“I have several.”

“And if Miss Murdock wouldn’t mind …” Ilene switched her glance to Miss Rachel. “I could put my cot at the foot of your bed and I wouldn’t be a bit of bother, I promise; I wouldn’t make a sound.”

Miss Jennifer stared at Ilene across the top of the book with a sort of irritated pity. Jennifer had a certain nightly routine she went through-nothing beautifying or remotely in the line of what she scornfully called “fixings,” but full of elaborate and rather odd stretchings and breathings and supposed to be extremely healthful. This routine might appear quite strange to Ilene; Miss Jennifer knew it. Nevertheless she said with a hint of warmth: “Of course you may sleep in our room. We won’t mind your being there.”

Miss Rachel had been wearing a freckle mask at night, a face covering of light elastic cloth, peach-colored, with holes for eyes, nose, and lips. She wondered briefly just how Ilene was going to react to Jennifer’s exercises and her own appearance in the mask.… Never mind, she told herself, it’s too late to worry now—we’ve been queer for years.

When the tea, the coffee, and the drinks had been finished, they went upstairs. Miss Rachel heard Gail instructing Pedro in the lower hall as they went out upon the gallery. Probably Pedro was to keep a watch of some kind. Florencia was by now in bed with her head covered—she had made no appearance in the kitchen.

Hal Emerson set up the cot at the foot of their bed.

He paused at the door. “You won’t forget to lock up?”

He bent, seemed to examine their key rather closely.

“We won’t forget,” Jennifer promised. She closed the door, turned the key in the lock, took the key and put it under her pillow. “Just in case.” She glanced darkly at Miss Rachel.

Miss Rachel made innocent sheep’s eyes at her. “I wasn’t going anywhere.”

They had almost forgotten Ilene, who was sitting on the cot, her figure drooping and shrunken. Now they were startled—Ilene suddenly flung herself on her pillow with a wild, wailing cry.

Chapter 10

At the same moment the house reverberated with the crash of thunder—rocked and trembled underfoot and then settled slowly. Beyond the drawn curtains, rain gushed and pounded on the windowpanes.

Miss Jennifer said sympathetically, “Does the thunder scare you? It does me. When we were small we had a certain closet we hid in, Rachel and I—though of course we don’t have a great many thunderstorms in Los Angeles.” There was the faintest touch of homesickness in the way Jennifer said this last; probably she was thinking at the moment of their big, old-fashioned home in Parchly Heights.

Ilene raised her face. She was not a woman who could cry prettily—crying swelled and reddened her. She sat up, pressing her knuckles into the flesh under her eyes. “I’m sorry to have lost control like that. I seemed to feel an unbearable tension, an overpowering terror. It wasn’t the thunder …”

“We aren’t much protection, I’m afraid,” said Miss Rachel. “Two little old ladies … Perhaps you should have chosen someone quiet and calm, like Zia.”

Ilene’s eyes made a circle of the room, fastened on the door. She licked her lips. “Not Zia. Not any of them …” She repeated, with more emphasis: “It really wasn’t the thunder.”

“What was it, then?”

Ilene made a hollow cup of her hands, stared into it as though it held a secret. When her voice came it was flat; she had erased the fear from it. “I’m just being foolish and nervous. There couldn’t be any danger, really. Dave thinks that Christine may have killed herself after all—done it the way she did to bring suspicion and conflict among the rest of us after she’d gone.”

“That sounds a bit fantastic.”

Ilene shook her head. “Christine must have been horribly unhappy, almost insane, to be doing the sort of things she was. And her heart was bad … she knew the first touch of venom would kill her, that she wouldn’t suffer the agony of an ordinary person who is bitten.”

“Mr. Grubler outlined all this to the rest of you?”

“Yes, and there was something else … he thought that Christine may have known her heart was going to kill her anyway. She’d been selling some of her mining properties—land that hadn’t been proven or that required a lot of investment and supervision to make it pay. She was cutting down, keeping only the best—properties that gave a good income and practically ran themselves. That might have meant that she expected to become an invalid, or even that she was getting the estate into shape to pass it on to Bob.”

“She was planning to hire Mr. Emerson to help in this, wasn’t she?”

Ilene’s glance faltered. “I don’t know.”

“What could she have on Emerson, what hold over him, to make him come to work for her?”

Ilene seemed to hesitate briefly. “I haven’t any idea. I don’t think she could make him do anything he didn’t want to do,” she said primly.

Miss Jennifer had been in the bathroom changing into her nightdress. She came out now, bulky in a voluminous wrapping of flannel, drew back the window draperies, pushed up the pane, and began to breath deeply. Rain began to splash in upon the sill. On the third deep breath Miss Jennifer paused abruptly, choked, then sneezed.

There was a flash of fire outside, a great crackle of lightning that showed the courtyard, the cars drawn up inside the tile-roofed shelter, the glistening adobe walls, the rain-swept bricks, in an unearthly blue glow. Miss Jennifer stiffened, then leaned forward to lay her forehead against the pane. She stifled another sneeze, said curiously, “I saw something down there.”

Thunder rolled again, jarring the glass so that she drew back.… There was only the black night outside now, anyway.

Miss Rachel was watching her. “What was it?”

Miss Jennifer closed the pane, came towards the bed. She was shivering. “I’m not sure. A thing—a brightly colored thing. Indian, I think.”

“I don’t understand,” Miss Rachel said. “Do you mean an ornament of some kind?” At the same moment she wondered how Jennifer had made out such a small object in that brief flash of light.

“No …” Jennifer was oddly evasive. She showed no desire to go back to the window to finish her breathing exercises, either. Instead she crawled into bed and huddled under the covers. “Will you draw the curtains, Rachel? That liquid glitter looks so cold.”

Miss Rachel went to the window and fiddled with the pull cord there. The draperies were heavy, a thick-woven fabric striped with bright primitive reds and greens. She waited, hoping a flash of lightning would come.

Ilene was glancing about restlessly. “I’ve been so forgetful—so stupid.” She looked apologetically at Miss Jennifer in the bed, then held out her hand. “I forgot to bring my nightgown and hairbrush. Will you let me have the key?”

Nothing showed of Jennifer now except the top of her head and her eyes. The eyes, Miss Rachel thought, looked wide and scared—scared for Jennifer, who was usually so fearless because she was almost always so right. Without a word, Jennifer slid her hand under the pillow, then held the key towards Ilene.

“I’ll be right back,” Ilene promised. She unlocked the door, went out, and closed it behind her swiftly.

Miss Rachel began unbuttoning her dress. “What was it you saw in the courtyard, Jennifer?”

Jennifer muttered something under the bedclothes, then sneezed, then said clearly: “Let’s leave the light on all night, shall we? I’m a bit more nervous than I thought.”

Miss Rachel removed her dress, picked up her nightgown, and retired to the bathroom. When she came out she was as voluminously swathed in flannel as Jennifer; however, instead of plain spinsterish white, she had wrung the concession of getting pink flannel with flowery sprigs of blue in it—a touch Jennifer had sniffed over. “The light might keep Miss Taggart awake.”

Jennifer shook her head. “She’s as scared as any of us.”

“I wonder. She wasn’t afraid to go to her room alone for her gown and hairbrush.” Miss Rachel slipped over to the window and peered out. The black pane gleamed under the slash of the rain. “She should be coming back by now.”

“Let her come back in her own good time,” said Jennifer, obviously unwilling to do any worrying about Miss Taggart. “And you might just turn the key while we’re waiting for her.”

Miss Rachel went to the door, opened it a crack, looked out on the gallery. The bracket lamp beside the arch shone on the glassy tiles with a yellowish glow. Beyond, in the dark, was the tossing greenery of the garden. There was no sign of Ilene Taggart. Miss Rachel pulled the door wider. Behind her Jennifer cried, “Rachel! Don’t you dare!”

Jennifer’s tone was the final-ultimatum one she used for paper boys who didn’t hit the doorstep and butchers who weighed their thumbs under the chops. Regretfully, Miss Rachel shut the door.

“What shall I do, then? Stand and twiddle my thumbs until she comes?”

Jennifer said, “Sit on the edge of the bed and explain this Kachina business.”

Miss Rachel sat down, took her cat into her lap, and stroked the silky black ears. Samantha purred with the effect of a motor running somewhere inside her. “As I understand the Hopi belief, the Kachinas are returning spirits—not precisely what we think of as ghosts, but more in the way of familiar, all-knowing, and beneficent minor gods. Each has his special kind of guardianship: crops, health, some phase of family life—”

“Yes, I read something of that in the book I had in the kitchen, and Zia explained more of it. I’m speaking of the letters.”

Miss Rachel reached for her dress, took Hal Emerson’s Kachina letter from its pocket. “All these people have lived in Arizona or New Mexico most of their lives—they all knew of the Indian legends, the Kachina myth and its meaning. The name was signed to these letters to put across the idea that the writer was a mysteriously well-informed checker-upper.”

“I’m sure there’s no such word as checker-upper, Rachel.”

“But you do know what I mean,” Miss Rachel pointed out.

“That doesn’t excuse the mutilation of the language. You’re much too quick at picking up these colloquialisms.”

“Probably I inherit the trait from Mother’s people. They were all on the stage, more or less—”

“Aunt Lily used a kind of runway,” Jennifer sniffed disparagingly.

“She had lovely legs.”

“And no reticence about showing them. Thank goodness that Father, in his kindly respectability, kept Mother from associating much with her family after they were married—”

Miss Jennifer stopped, sat up with a jerk, put a hand on Miss Rachel’s with an effect of caution. “Someone’s turning our doorknob!”

Miss Rachel looked, found all of Jennifer’s alarm justified. The knob was turning—rather shakily and without any sound. “Miss Taggart,” she reassured Jennifer.

“Miss Taggart would knock—she knows we’d let her in.”

They waited. The only sounds were those of the cat’s purring and the running of water on the windows. The knob turned to its limit, then slipped back little by little to its original position. Now the knock came—an almost inaudible tapping.

Jennifer whispered, “Don’t go!”

“I must … it might be Miss Taggart after all, afraid to make any noise because someone’s following her, or something.” Miss Rachel slid over to the door, turned the key softly, let the panel drift in. They saw Gail, wrapped in a dark blue robe, her brown hair blown ragged and flecked with rain. She slipped inside, closed the door, and leaned against it.

“You’re all right? You haven’t been disturbed?” Her eyes jumped from one to another. Perhaps she noted Miss Jennifer’s attitude of being huddled under the bedding. “Nothing’s frightened you?”

Jennifer said nothing. Miss Rachel shook her head. “I’m not very easy to scare. What’s wrong?”

“Zia is sharing my room with me. She was watching the lightning when she thought she caught a glimpse of something below. She’s very upset. I’ve never seen her like this … usually she’s most calm, almost stoic.” Gail again looked at Miss Jennifer. “I’m trying to check up, to find out if we’re all in our rooms and all right.”

Samantha was rubbing her ankles. Gail lifted the cat, stroked it, watched them across the ruff of black fur.

Miss Rachel explained. “Jennifer and I haven’t been out of the room since we all came upstairs. But Miss Taggart has gone for her gown, which she forgot to bring with her.”

Gail’s eyes dropped to the cat. “When did she go?”

“Somewhat after that big flash of lightning.” Miss Rachel was watching her sister; Jennifer wore a stubborn, evasive look and Miss Rachel decided that she wasn’t going to talk willingly about whatever it was that had scared her. “But Jennifer saw something in the courtyard—perhaps the same thing that Zia saw.”

There was a blank moment of silence. Gail looked at Miss Jennifer, a glance that seemed afraid—afraid that Jennifer would tell the truth. It occurred to Miss Rachel in that instant that Gail must know what the object had been. Her hair was frosted with rain, tossed and tangled by the wind—far more than it should have been in simply walking the length of the gallery, checking on her guests. She touched her lips with her tongue, hesitated, asked finally, “What did you think it was?”

“I have no idea what it was,” said Jennifer, retreating a trifle more under the bedding.

“Was it … something Indian?”

Jennifer wouldn’t look at either of them. “It may have been.”

Gail didn’t ask any further questions, which seemed odd. She stood quietly, stroking the cat in her arms. “I suppose Dave’s idea that we should separate, go to our rooms, was a sound one. We needed the rest. But still, if we had stayed together …” She frowned, as if wondering how to finish what she wanted to say.

“Do you mean that one of us is out prowling?” Miss Rachel asked. She was full of impatience, but she didn’t let this feeling show—it was obvious that something was going on and that Gail and Jennifer knew and were being secretive about it. Secretive and scared. Since Gail hadn’t answered, she went on to ask, “How many have you found safely in their rooms?”

Gail’s glance twitched away, her face stiffening. “I haven’t investigated yet—I came here first.”

“Is Pedro standing watch in the lower hall?”

“I told him to put a cot there. When I looked at him a minute ago he was sound asleep.”

“So that he wouldn’t notice what went on,” Miss Rachel pointed out.

“He must be very tired … all the extra work, the excitement … I decided not to wake him.” She turned, and the tangled brown hair hid her face. “Isn’t it time Ilene was coming back?”

“It seems to me she’s been gone much longer than she should be,” Miss Rachel decided.

Jennifer said hastily, “Perhaps she stayed to have (a bath or something. As long as she’s in her room, she’ll be all right.”

“We aren’t sure she’s in her room. I think Gail and I should go and see.”

“Still trying to get out, Rachel—still trying to run down your little horrors! I won’t hear of it—”

She broke off and her eyes popped wide. From outside, sounding far away, someone was screaming—a raggedy thin noise, half smothered in the mutterings of thunder. Gail dropped the cat, spun towards the door. Miss Rachel had snatched up a coat and turned the key, hurrying out to the gallery. The sound was louder now—strangling, half sobbing. It came from the black dripping well of the garden.

Pedro was raising himself off the cot, mumbling and rubbing his eyes, as they rushed past. Gail paused by the door, clicked the switch that illuminated the under gallery, which threw a pale yellow glow into the fringes of greenery. The screams had died to whimpering.

Gail’s hands crept together in the blue sleeves of her robe; she hung back, her look faltering. “The sound seemed over there, past the kitchen—down where the wall forms a corner, where the room is that—that Christine is in.”

Miss Rachel had realized where the whimpering noise was; she asked quickly, “Do you have a flashlight down here?”

“Si; señora.” Pedro loomed behind them, alert now, his black eyes wide under the tangled thatch of his hair. “I have the light. I will lead the way.” He went past them with only a trace of hesitation, of squeamishness. They were close on his heels.

The spot of light showed silver needles of rain, a drowned matting of green stuff, the walk that led past the kitchen entry to the space of wall beyond … and something huddled there, a black shape bent and trembling.

Not until Miss Rachel caught sight of the sly little pink ribbons run through the black net, laced in the cuffs and belt of the black chiffon, did she realize who it was—Ilene, all dressed up in her brand-new gown and negligee. Looking quite distracted and almost pretty, and more feminine than Miss Rachel had imagined she could manage.

Other steps pounded behind them. Hal Emerson, wearing his raincoat over a pair of gray pajamas, walked close, put his hands on Ilene’s shoulders, forced her to look up at him. “What is it? What happened here?”

Ilene’s hair, loosened from the tight sleek knot in which she had kept it, swung below her shoulders as she turned her head. It was pretty, deeply waved hair; it softened her whole face, took away the hollow plainness, the prim timidity. Only the shape of her mouth, the startled eyes, showed fear. “The spirit,” she said hoarsely. “Christine’s spirit. I saw it.” She drew her lips back across her teeth, made the childishly whimpering noise again.

He shook her gently. “Stop that. What are you talking about?”

Bob Ryker came into the circle of light. His face was heavy, showed traces of beard; his eyes were reddened, as if he’d been drinking since going to his room. “Wait a minute. The door is open, isn’t it? Turn your light that way.” He reached for Pedro’s wrist; the round bright spot moved down the path to the room set into the corner of the wall.

The door was open, swung inward a foot or more. Something dangled from the doorknob, a blotch of crimson draggled from the rain.

Ryker walked to the door, put his hand out, took the crimson cluster of feathers in his palm. Then he stood quite still, looking through the opening into the room. Gail drew her breath, touched Miss Rachel’s elbow nervously.

“Bring the light,” said Ryker loudly.

Pedro moved forward, lagging more definitely now, the toe of one foot seeming to catch on the heel of the other.

“She’s moved since I brought her here.” Ryker’s tone was uneven, shaken. “I folded her hands together on her breast.”

Grubler was with them now, his white head towering above the others, his mouth tight and his eyes unbelieving. “What is this—a ghost hunt? What do you mean, she’s moved? Someone moved her, maybe.”

Ryker turned from the doorway, covering his eyes. “Look, then, for yourselves.”

Christine Ryker lay on a cot in the middle of the floor. A white covering had fallen from her, lay in a heap beside the cot. She still wore the bright red linen suit. The suit seemed more rumpled than before. There were mudstains at the edges of her shoes and drops of water shone on her piled yellow hair.

These things, Miss Rachel realized, could be explained by the door’s being open, rain blowing in to wet her hair—and that someone could have borrowed her pumps for one reason or another. But the other, the last—there was no sane explanation for that.

On her hands Christine Ryker wore the heavy leather gauntlets, the driving gloves her husband had lost.

Chapter 11

They were all back in the living room, even to Zia and Miss Jennifer and the cat, who had come down from upstairs. The air in the room crackled with tension, with repressed terror. On Gail’s small desk lay the wet cluster of feathers and the heavy driving gloves.

Behind the desk sat Dave Grubler, wearing the stoic imperturbability of a judge. It was he who had arranged Christine’s body decently, put the white sheet back as it belonged, closed the door, and brought the others here and kept them together. The one thing he hadn’t been able to manage was getting Pedro to stay and guard the body; Pedro had tagged along with the rest.

Miss Rachel confessed to herself that he fitted the role of judge well. The white hair, the colorless features gave him somehow a look of age and wisdom. He was not grublike in the face of this emergency; he was a determined, icily angry man.

“This ornament …” He held up the brilliantly colored but bedraggled feathers. “You claim that this is off Christine’s hat?”

Ryker stared sullenly without speaking. He had seemed to resent Grubler’s taking charge, yet he had made no move to rearrange his wife’s body; had instead seemed to feel a sort of horror towards it.

Miss Rachel spoke. “Mrs. Ryker complained of some feathers being gone from her hat, on the gallery, just before we left for the Snake Dance. I hadn’t seen the hat with the ornament on it, but the color looks as if it would match.”

Zia was sitting on a cushion near the hearth, her usual spot. She didn’t glance up at the others, but kept her eyes on the fire which was beginning to flame again under Pedro’s coaxing. “Christine made much the same remark to me, when we met today at the village. She was watching the Antelope priests in the dance. She seemed struck by the wands they carried.”

“Those feather-tipped things?” Grubler frowned, letting the feathers dangle on the long red thread by which they had doubtless been sewn to the straw and by which they had swung from the doorknob. “Do you make any sense of it?”

“The gloves,” said Ilene in a voice that came out all at once as if on a spasm. “She—she wasn’t dead. Not that first time. She had a snake hidden somewhere. She’s put it into one of our rooms.”

Grubler faced her stonily. “Let’s keep the insanity out of it, Ilene. You’re being rather incoherent, and what you’ve just said—”

Ryker interrupted. “You said Christine was dead, Dave. Nobody else examined her after that snake bite … or supposed snake bite.”

Grubler made a gesture of angry helplessness. “Don’t all go berserk on me … and don’t forget, Bob, that you were with Christine’s body for some time, there in the little room with the cot. You’d have known—you couldn’t have helped knowing—if she were still alive.”

Ryker glanced across the room at Gail. “We covered her at once with the sheet. I didn’t keep my eyes on her. I was—this is going to kill the whole lot of you—I was praying. With my eyes shut.”

“You’d have heard her breathing!” Grubler was leaning across the desk now, his poise shaken, perspiration coming out on his upper lip. “And the whole thing you’re hinting at is—is crazy. Utterly mad. Without motive or pattern.” His eyes swept round the room. “Miss Murdock, won’t you put in a sane word, show Bob where he’s off the track completely?”

Jennifer looked up indignantly and said, “Of all the messes that Rachel has dragged me into, this one’s—”

“I’m sorry,” Grubler interrupted. “I was speaking to your sister.”

Jennifer’s mouth shut with a snap.

Miss Rachel waited a moment, then said thoughtfully, “I’ll admit that the shock of seeing Mrs. Ryker’s body did shake my first opinion of her death. The thought came to me, as perhaps it did to all of you, that the first attack might not have been fatal, as we had assumed, that some spark of life was left—that she had revived after a while and gone out to complete some mischief. There was also the possibility that the whole thing had been a sham. This naturally involved the assistance of Mr. Grubler, to put over the belief in her death.”

Grubler was shaking his head; perhaps he wished now that he hadn’t asked her opinion.

“However,” Miss Rachel went on, “having an accomplice in such a scheme seemed out of character for Mrs. Ryker. We know that she was secretive, that the personality she showed the world was, as the saying is, a ‘front.’ And she would hardly have liked to have been in anyone’s power to the extent that she would have been in Mr. Grubler’s.”

He moved back with an expression of relief, fumbled for cigarettes in the pocket of the overcoat he wore over black silk pajamas.

“The pretense of death would seem pointless, too, unless she was planning some further move—such as a disappearance, leaving doubt as to what had become of her ‘body.’ There has been talk that Mrs. Ryker was organizing her affairs, converting much of her property to cash and streamlining the management of the rest, and this might be construed as a bolster to the theory of a planned disappearance.”

Ryker and Grubler were staring at each other now. Grubler seemed irritated, and Ryker’s attitude was one of animosity. Ryker spoke. “It does add up. Christine would have taken somebody’in on the plot if she’d had to.”

“We’ve looked at both sides of this second theory,” Miss Rachel pointed out. “But briefly, because the evidence is so flimsy. Since Mrs. Ryker is now, without a doubt, dead—”

Ilene shivered inside the filmy black robe. “You don’t know—perhaps she’s still alive! Even now!”

Miss Rachel shook her head. “She’s truly dead. While Mr. Grubler was gathering up the sheet I managed to touch Mrs. Ryker’s hand and her throat. She’s stone cold and her body is stiffening.”

Ilene persisted: “I saw some kind of movement down there beside the door—I was on the gallery, on my way back to your room … something sort of—of flitted into the room … She pulled the lacy ruffles of the negligee close about her.

Miss Rachel was looking at her curiously. “And you went down to see what it was?”

Ilene nodded.

Gail and Miss Jennifer were exchanging glances. Gail was white—so white she looked like something carved out of alabaster, and the shadow under her chin looked blue. Miss Jennifer was pleating the material of her sensible gray wool robe into knobs and ridges over her knee. After that one glance they seemed to avoid each other’s eyes.

“This flitting thing,” Miss Rachel went on, “was, as you previously implied, ghostlike?”

“I—I didn’t think of that at first. Ghosts are white, and this thing—whatever it was—was bright in color.”

“What did you think it might be?”

Ilene looked at the circle of faces, licked her lips, stammered lamely, “I know it will sound insane—that you won’t believe me. But I thought it looked like one of them.” She lifted her hand, pointed towards the opposite wall.

They looked, following where she indicated. On the shelf against the pale green wall the carved figures of the Kachina dolls paraded in grotesque guise, masked and painted and topped with eagle feathers.

“That kind of ghost,” said Hal Emerson, then whistled through his teeth. He had stayed in the background, over by the door, and had taken no part in the discussion about Christine’s death. “What about it, Zia?”

Zia seemed to crouch, to bend towards the fire as if for warmth. She flicked a look over her shoulder at Emerson. “If she saw anything like that, it was a travesty, a mockery, on the beliefs of my people. In our religion the Kachina is a guardian, a familiar and watchful spirit—there is no feeling concerning this that resembles what you feel towards what you call ghosts.” Her tone was quietly bitter. She went back to looking at the fire.

For a little while there was silence except for the popping of the pine and mesquite in the fireplace.

Finally Grubler seemed to rouse himself out of some inner thought. He looked at Miss Rachel. “You were about to sum up what you thought about these.” He indicated the puff of feathers and the gloves. “Before you go on, I’d like to state for the benefit of all of you that there wasn’t any plot between Christine and me. I acted in good faith in giving my opinion that she was dead. If the evidence seems to you to indicate that she revived afterward, then the reviving was an accident.”

Emerson spoke slowly. “It seems more likely that we were meant to think that she revived.”

“There is that possibility, certainly,” Miss Rachel agreed, “though the motive behind such deception is puzzling. Considering the manner in which we found the gloves and the feathers—the feathers almost sure to be noticed hanging from the open door, the gloves prominently displayed on Mrs. Ryker’s body—it might seem that an effort had been made to have us believe that she had revived, taken these things from some place where she had hidden them, and finished some act of mischief which she had already plotted.”

Emerson struck a match and stared at the flame before putting it to his cigarette. The eyes of all the rest were on Miss Rachel, some wearily, some with fearful attention.

She went on: “Doubtless we were supposed to think that she had reached the room after her mission was accomplished, in such a state of collapse that she hadn’t noticed the loss of the feather cluster nor had time and strength to take off the gauntlets.”

Grubler’s mouth twitched; Rachel couldn’t decide whether he had repressed a sour smile or covered some other expression not related to humor.

“Returning now to our two original possibilities: the planned returning-to-life or the accidental one”—Miss Rachel shook her head at Grubler, who was attempting to break in—“we see that acceptance of the first means that Mrs. Ryker must have died subsequently in some manner, possibly by some method quite different from what we had thought. However, belief in the accidental revival implies only that the snake venom eventually accomplished its full effect.”

Ilene rubbed her temples with shaking fingers. “I’m horribly mixed up. Can’t we find some simple clue that will decide what might really have happened?”

“Oh yes,” Miss Rachel said brightly. “Notice the cluster of feathers. They’re much too dry to have hung in the sheltered doorway for as long as they were supposed to—long enough, that is, for Mrs. Ryker to die and for her body to reach its present condition.”

Ilene let out a long shuddering breath, let her head fall back against the chair.

“Furthermore, if Mrs. Ryker had been out in the rain that long past, the raindrops should have been absorbed by her hair. Hair is absorbent, you know.” She glanced about reassuringly.

Emerson stepped to an ash tray, tapped his cigarette into it. “You’re agreeing, then, with my idea—that we were meant to think that Christine revived but that actually—”

“I think she died in the garden, at the time we thought she did. But someone wanted us to think that a flicker of life remained, that she came out of it long enough to accomplish some purpose …”

“What purpose?”

“The errand, perhaps, of the person who tried to put over the deception.”

“I see,” said Emerson slowly. “Then afterward, if something happened to one of us—if there should be another rattler, for instance …” His glance went around the group, stopped on each face for a fraction of a moment. Then he looked at Miss Rachel. “You’ve ruined the act, whatever it was.”

“I meant to,” she explained. “If I hadn’t, if someone hadn’t, there might have been further danger and unpleasantness.”

She felt it, then, in the quietness of the room—the stirring of black hatred, the fury that crept towards her invisibly like a noxious breath. One of them blamed her for the failure; in one brain there was rage, burning like a fire.

But still she wasn’t scared enough to stop. “It would have been clever if it had worked—to put the blame on a dead woman for something you did after her death. Only—there shouldn’t have been any loose ends for us to wonder about—such as whether Mrs. Ryker might have not been bitten at all, but had instead plotted with Mr. Grubler’s help to pretend to die. That made the whole thing too untidy—it involved a necessary belief in either a strangely retributive heart failure on Mrs. Ryker’s part or a second and later murder.”

The fury surrounded her now, dwelt over her; it was like something she could reach out and feel, it was like the sensation of someone standing behind her and breathing down her neck.

“Probably, if there had been time, some method would have been devised to make us think at once that Mrs. Ryker had simply come temporarily awake, gone out, and returned to die of the effect of the original snake bite.”

Grubler’s eyes were wide and bright in his pale face. “Such as?”

“Oh—a note, a few words scribbled on the wall or somewhere—some indication that she knew the venom was creeping up on her at last. Perhaps even some repentant warning, too vague to reveal what she was supposed to have done.”

“But we’re warned now,” Bob Ryker said in a voice suddenly alert. “We’ll have our eyes open, we’ll be watching for something queer to pop up.”

“I suggest, as a beginning, that the men of the party go in a group and search all of the bedrooms.” Miss Rachel touched her eyelids with the back of her hand; she was aware of tiredness, of need for sleep—most of all she was conscious of the thing directed towards her, the evil intelligence full of hatred and anger. “I think Gail had better check with the police again, to see if we can’t get someone out here tonight. And perhaps Florencia would be willing to get up and make us some coffee strong enough to keep us awake until morning.”

After the men had gone upstairs and Gail was getting Florencia, Ilene rose from her chair and murmured that she was cold and that she thought she’d better dress. Miss Jennifer had from time to time cast reproving glances upon the filmy black garments. Now she clucked behind her teeth, and as soon as Ilene was out of the room she said, “Don’t you think it most odd, Rachel, that Miss Taggart should appear in those things when all day she’s seemed so quiet and sensible?”

Zia had gone to the row of Kachina dolls, seemed to be standing there looking at them absently, her mind on something else. There was no way of telling from her quiet face whether she had heard Jennifer.

“Perhaps Miss Taggart is just tired suddenly of being sensible,” Miss Rachel suggested. “The crime has unnerved her.”

But Jennifer was not to be soothed in this way. “She must have brought those garments with her, have purchased them long before she became unnerved, as you say. The change in her, this switching over to these—these—”

“Sexy?” Miss Rachel offered.

—“fast clothes,” Miss Jennifer said hastily, “reminds me of Mr. Dinwiddie’s housekeeper. Remember? We were still in our teens, and Mr. Dinwiddie lived next door, and his new housekeeper wore gray mull dresses all the time and kept her hair in a bun …”

“And then one night there was a fire.”

“And in all the excitement we suddenly caught sight of Mr. Dinwiddie’s housekeeper in a—a quite transparent pink gown.” Jennifer was blushing.

“With ermine tails,” Miss Rachel added. “And quite pretty with her hair down. Do you know, I’ve wanted a nightgown with ermine tails ever since?”

“I don’t doubt it,” said Jennifer in reproof.

“Do you suppose she set the fire to Mr. Dinwiddie’s house?”

Jennifer’s jaw dropped. “What a strange thing to say, Rachel! The fire was a disaster—no insurance, and Mr. Dinwiddie felt disgraced over the appearance of his housekeeper and moved to Sacramento.”

“It may have been a disaster from Mr. Dinwiddie’s point of view, though I think there were alleviating circumstances—don’t you recall the letter from Cousin Julia saying she met Mr. Dinwiddie afterward, some years afterward, and that he was married to a lady who had been his housekeeper?”

Miss Jennifer moved uneasily in her chair. “You get such queer conclusions out of things, Rachel. All I meant to compare was the sudden change in Mr. Dinwiddie’s housekeeper and this change in Miss Taggart—the startling difference in the manner of dress.”

“The way to get full value out of what one learns is to carry comparisons to their limit, Jennifer.”

Jennifer put on her mule’s look. “Miss Taggart is no one’s housekeeper. There wasn’t a fire. No one feels disgraced—not even, apparently, Miss Taggart.”

Zia had reached out to straighten one of the little figures on the shelf. With meticulous care she turned it to face as the others did. The oddly masked little head turned in her hand, the bright colors caught the light.

From outside, from the courtyard, and sounding close as if directly under the wall, came a soft surreptitious rattle—as though something looped and scaly had roused itself, shook itself briefly.

Zia jerked her hand away from the Kachina. She threw a look over her shoulder. In the depths of her black eyes was terror, naked and blazing.

The rattle came again. Softer, sleepier.

Then the room was very still except for the faint popping of the fire.

Chapter 12

The telephone made sounds like a duck—a sick duck with tinny insides. There were scratching noises, then silence, then a girl’s voice saying, “State Police Headquarters.” She seemed tired, snappish, and nervous.

Gail said slowly, “This is Miss Dickson. I have a place out

on the Tachapi Mesa road, about twelve miles—”

“Yes, Miss Dickson. I’ll let you talk to Captain Isleton.”

There was a space of silence. Gail looked across the receiver at Miss Rachel. “Can you hear?”

“Very clearly. She’s giving you a Captain Isleton.”

Grubler bent towards them over the desk. “Do you know any of those fellows down there?”

“I’ve met Isleton—” Gail cut off what she was about to say, gave her attention to the telephone. A man’s voice spoke, but in contrast to the girl’s rather shrill tone, his was deep and slurring. Gail looked at Miss Rachel. “Isleton is already gone, trying to get here.”

Grubler said, “Ask them about the roads. If they can’t reach us, we might have a stab at getting out.”

Gail said into the telephone, “Can you tell me anything about road conditions?”

She listened for what seemed an inordinately long time, sitting very still and not looking up at either Miss Rachel or Grubler. Finally she laid the telephone in its stand. “There have been some bad flash floods—you know, water collecting in the high canyons and then rushing down in torrents—and some of the highway is out near Winslow. He thinks that we’re cut off up here. They had a report that almost a hundred feet of the road is gone, that Tachapi Creek dug itself a new bed … they’re putting up barricades.” A shudder ran over her. She looked at the window, at the black night beyond and the faintly silvered veil of the rain.

Grubler ran his hand nervously through his white hair. “Couldn’t you impress them with the fact that we’re in danger here, that we have a maniac on the loose plotting God-knows-what with a rattlesnake?”

“The man I just talked with said that three cars are known to have dropped into the flood where the highway went out. They managed to get a line to one; it was caught on something. There had been a family of six people in it. All that they found was a little dog and he was dead.” She lifted her face stubbornly towards Grubler. “One car went through after the barricade was started—they tried to wave him down but he was going too fast to stop. They could hear children screaming for a minute or so. Then …” She folded her hands carefully on the lap of the blue robe, as if to hide their trembling. “You see, I couldn’t make a fuss and demand that they drop what they were doing and come here, even if there was a way for them to get across Tachapi Creek.”

He stared blankly at a spot above her head. “No, I guess you couldn’t.”

Gail went on: “He thought that Captain Isleton might try to reach us by means of the old road to Fort Navajo.”

Grubler’s brows contracted. “You mean there is another road?”

“It’s impassable. Fort Navajo is just a ruin now. I was up there in the spring, sketching. The buildings are almost all collapsed. Part of the mesa fell off into the road and blocked it.”

Grubler’s tone was hoarse and hollow. “We’ve just got to stay here and take it, then.”

She nodded. “Yes, we have to stay, there’s no way out.”

He frowned again. “Who could have made that sound, providing it wasn’t a snake? Providing someone just wants to scare us?” He bit his lip. “I was with Emerson—we were in Ilene’s room. Ryker had gone to get something out of his suitcase, he said—we supposed it was his damned eternal vodka. But he was out of sight.”

“I didn’t hear the sound,” Gail answered. “I must have been in Florencia’s room by then, or perhaps coaxing her through the door to get up. I left Miss Rachel and Miss Jennifer in here with Ilene and Zia.”

“Zia was still with us. Ilene had gone upstairs to put on something more suitable to the night and the weather.” Miss Rachel spoke quietly, so that the group clustered by the fireplace could not hear her.

Gail said patiently, “But Dave has just said that he and Hal were in Ilene’s room—” She stopped, coloring slightly.

Grubler smiled with a shade of distaste. “Let’s don’t jump to such unsavory conclusions. Ilene—” He had turned, raised his voice. Ilene was huddled near the fire. She swung round hesitantly. “Come over here, won’t you? We have a very private question for you.”

She had dressed again in the drab everyday clothes, but there was still a certain difference about her—a touch of lipstick, her soft hair hanging free, a glow of excitement she couldn’t quite suppress. She came over to the desk, stopped, looked from one to another.

Gail asked, “Where were you, Ilene, when you heard the rattling sound?”

Ilene didn’t pause to think about her answer; it was either the truth or she had prepared herself. “I was in Bob’s room. I was passing his door a moment or so previously, and I saw him in there pouring a terrific drink into a water glass, so I went in. I tried to talk to him about keeping sober, but he wouldn’t listen.”

Grubler said with a touch of malice, “That’s where we thought you may have been … inadvertently.”

She went on without seeming to notice his tone. “After we heard that—that rattling sound, I hurried into my room and changed clothes. Then I came straight down here.”

She had made it sound smooth and quick.

Miss Rachel asked carefully, “Mr. Ryker was … where? In just what spot?”

“You mean when the sound came? Why, in front of his dresser. I did say that, didn’t I?” Her eyes met none of theirs; she had twisted her hands together tightly. “He was pouring his drink, you see.”

“It’s not important, I suppose, anyway,” Miss Rachel said, and watched Ilene’s hands slacken in relief.

Florencia and Pedro came in then with coffee, drinks, and food, and Gail hurried over to help them put up a card table, and arrange it as a buffet. Ilene went back to the fire.

Grubler said, “Excuse me. I’ll go give a hand with the table.”

There didn’t seem much necessity for another hand at the table; Miss Rachel kept her eye on Mr. Grubler. He passed close to Gail, evidently offering his help. Gail shook her head and he passed on, mingling with the group before the fire. But within a minute or so he had Bob Ryker with him over by the Kachinas, out of earshot of the rest.

There was enough movement in the room, enough interest in the drinks which Pedro was passing on a tray, for Miss Rachel to get up and go over idly to examine some books near the Kachinas without attracting attention. She could catch something of what Grubler and Ryker were saying.

She glanced across the book she had picked up, towards the fireplace. Emerson was stirring the fire, his square face ruddy with the glow of the flames. Ilene was handing him a piece of wood from the basket. Miss Jennifer and Zia were talking, but Zia’s eyes had settled—idly, it seemed—on Ryker and Grubler. Or perhaps it was the row of Kachina dolls behind them that she studied—Miss Rachel couldn’t quite be sure. Zia nodded as Pedro offered her the tray of cocktails, lifted one off, looked over the rim of the glass, and shifted her glance to Ilene.

She studied Ilene as though something in the other girl was curious, puzzling.

Grubler was speaking quietly. “… and why I’ve told you what I have. The income-tax thing might have been worrying her, and still it isn’t anything that any run-of-the-mill accountant couldn’t have fixed up in a day. She kept too much of the stuff to herself, tried to keep books on it and got lost. If anything happens to me, I wanted you to know. Get an account—”

“What do you mean, if anything happens to you?”

Grubler looked at the floor. “I guess I’ve got the jitters.”

Ryker lifted his drink, drained it. “If there is an income-tax deficit, will it be big?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what her deductions were. I could have helped in listing her expenses—business expenses—but she didn’t let me. It needs checking before the Treasury boys get the return, just in case.”

“I’m not going to worry over it now.” Ryker frowned into his glass.

Zia rose and came to the shelf of books, passing close beside the two men as they stood talking. She hesitated, reading titles.

“That peculiar rattle—I can’t get it out of my head, I know it means something ghastly—” Grubler stopped, glanced sharply at Ryker. “Did you hear it?”

“Plainer than you, I’ll bet. I was looking out through an open window at the courtyard. There was the rain, of course, but I couldn’t miss the other.” Ryker shook the ice in the bottom of his glass.

Grubler stood very still, his eyes fixed on the floor. “You didn’t see anything, did you?”

“Not a thing. How could I? It was as dark as a stack of black cats.” He rubbed his temple with his knuckles. “I’m getting so damned tired that I’m going to have to get some sleep. Somewhere … even in bed with a snake.”

Grubler looked at him nervously from under his thick white brows.

Miss Rachel turned to glance behind her. Zia had disappeared. This whole end of the room was empty. She had the impression that the door to the hall had just finished closing, that it was this movement which had drawn her eye.

No one in the group about the fireplace was watching her. Ryker and Grubler were now facing the row of Kachina dolls.

Her cat was at her heels when she slipped out. She had to wait a moment before letting the door shut, to be sure that the tip of the black fluffy tail was entirely out of danger. Samantha lifted her black nose, sniffed, seemed to listen. Here in the hall, with its high ceiling, the sound and the smell of the rain were more distinct, a flood rushing on the tiles of the old house.

Miss Rachel went up to the arched doorway at the top of the stairs. The yellow light on the gallery illuminated Zia’s figure, directly below it. Zia’s fingers were reaching for the switch.

When the light went out, Zia must have noticed the reflected glow from the hall and Miss Rachel outlined by it in the doorway. She said quietly, “Have you come to watch too?”

Whatever was to be watched, Miss Rachel was willing. She went out on the tiled floor into the dark and Zia shut the heavy door behind her. Miss Rachel sensed, rather than saw, that Zia moved over to the railing. She followed, feeling her way. Zia’s voice came in a whisper: “When it appears again, I shall know.”

“When what appears?”

“The Kachina.”

Miss Rachel recalled Jennifer’s nervousness over the thing she had seen from their window, the secretive glance she had exchanged with Gail. Plus Ilene’s queer story of what had drawn her to the little room at the corner of the garden. “How do you think it’s managed?”

“Nothing very difficult—Gail has a Kachina mask, one she made from a sketch she did at my village. The mask used to hang in the hall. She tells me now that the paint had begun to chip and that she had moved it, intending to repair it eventually. She had put it in the room where Christine lies.”

The disembodied voice was soft and controlled. In it, too, were watchfulness and caution. The rain was a faintly silver mist; Zia was only a shadow, close at hand.

“And the rest of the costume?”

“Not necessarily authentic. Anything bright would do.… You have never seen the Kachina dances?”

“No. I suppose they’re very picturesque.”

“It is only recently that I have begun to appreciate the ceremonies of my people, to see their fitness and their usefulness in our world. I suppose as one grows older one inevitably becomes wiser.”

“It applies to some,” Miss Rachel agreed.

There was a small silence. Then Zia asked, “It’s your cat, isn’t it, that I feel now and then … she’s breathing against my stocking.”

“She’s smelling you. A rude habit, but her way of knowing people.”

“No doubt she can tell many secrets about us.” Zia brushed Miss Rachel as she bent, lifted Samantha, whose eyes gleamed in the dark.

“I never felt that one could fool a cat,” Miss Rachel admitted. “Of course the pose of sphinxlike knowingness impresses you, to start with. Then …” She hesitated, leaning towards the railing under the arch. “Isn’t there a light of some kind below us?”

It had seemed as though a faint, uneven shadow were moving against the curtain of the rain, that there had been a dim illumination of the edge of the garden.

“Yes, someone is down there,” Zia whispered.

The thunder had died. Under the velvet drumming of the rain was a pool of silence, of apprehensive listening, that seemed spread over all the house. Something tickled the back of Miss Rachel’s scalp. Hairs rising, she thought with a touch of self-scorn. Below them was a sound of a step, the scratch of a match, then a feeble yellow glow.

“Por Dios,” said Pedro hoarsely in the lower gallery. “Let my little light live awhile so that the Old One who waits in the corner shall not find my flesh.” He continued to mutter what seemed to be a prayer as he shuffled towards the kitchen. They heard a door open, then the futile clicking of a switch.

Miss Rachel felt Zia’s swift movement towards the light fixture.

Pedro came back, hurrying in darkness.

“It’s true—there isn’t any electricity,” Zia said.

“And no telephone,” said a man’s voice dryly from the doorway. It took Miss Rachel a moment to identify it as Emerson’s. “Do you know, in a way it’s a relief? We were all huddled together there in the living room, cozy in the protection afforded by a couple of little wires strung over miles of desert, not understanding that the floods which could wash out the highway would sooner or later get to the poles and take them too”—there was a dry, ironic chuckle—“and all at once there was just the fire. A scared sputtering little fire that didn’t light up half the room.”

Zia said nothing. Miss Rachel had the impression that she was alert, on edge, and that for some reason she mistrusted Emerson.… Gail’s influence, perhaps. Finally Zia said, “What time is it?”

“After one. Ten minutes or so.” Emerson lit a match, held it to a cigarette, and in its light offered the pack to Miss Rachel and Zia. Zia accepted a cigarette and allowed Emerson to light it. “What were you two doing up here on the gallery?”

“Talking,” said Zia evasively. “As for lights—I suppose Gail has a supply of candles?”

“She sent Pedro to the kitchen for them.” He came over to the railing, threw the glowing match stub out into the dripping dark. “Miss Rachel—that first business about a rattling sound … where were you?”

“I was in Ilene’s room.”

“Ilene was with you?”

“Yes.”

He smoked for a while in silence. “Where was she stand-ing?”

Miss Rachel looked at the black-cotton dark, trying to bring back the details of Ilene’s room. “She was at the window. She had a hand on the drapery.”

Emerson asked quietly, “Why didn’t she want us to know that Bob was at the window tonight when this other thing came … rattler, or whatever it was made the sound?”

Miss Rachel thought about it. “Perhaps she thought the repetition, the sameness of that one detail, might be noticed—that I might notice it.”

“Dave got hold of it right away. Ilene acts terrified. Which is her room?”

He struck another match and stood watching Miss Rachel from the other side of its pin-point yellow flame.

“The third door.”

He walked to it, turned the knob, threw the door open. “We searched up here … there weren’t any snakes in any of the rooms. Anyway, this thing is a fake and Ilene’s in on it.” He went across the room; his figure seemed to narrow and diminish in the faint glow of the match.

They came after, walking uneasily because their errand was one of suspicion, of accusation.

“Damn. Burned myself.” Emerson dropped the stub, lit a new match, gave the package to Miss Rachel. “Keep lighting them while I look this over. There’s a piece of twine here. Feels like fishing line … He twitched something behind the heavy drapery. “Listen.”

His fingers moved again. As dry as beans in a basket came the answering rattle from the outside of the pane.

He pushed up the lower pane, leaned outward, motioned for Miss Rachel to hand him the little box of matches. He struck two while he leaned out into the dark, then drew his head inside. “It’s above, up under the eaves. Of course it would be. We’d have noticed anything hanging down the wall. I’m going to let down the upper pane.”

When he had the upper part of the window open, he climbed to the sill and twisted his head and shoulders through.

Miss Rachel struck a fresh match. At the moment she met Zia’s eyes. They were fixed on Emerson with a look of suspicion.

It was true, she thought—they had no way of knowing what he was doing outside there. Certainly, though, he hadn’t had anything up his sleeves. Whatever he brought in …

He was swinging it in front of their eyes. A gourd, exactly like those in the painted clusters beside each bedroom door.

“Hear that?” He held the neck of the gourd, shook it lightly.

So far as Miss Rachel could tell, it was the same whispering rattle she had heard before.

Chapter 13

Miss Jennifer was sitting upright in bed, surrounded by a little lake of candlelight and buttressed by various implements of self-defense. The gauzy yellow glow softened no lines in her indignant face, mitigated none of the battle-axey determination in her eye. When the door opened slowly and rather slyly she lifted an umbrella off the pillow beside her.

The shadow of the umbrella tip was sharp on the opposite wall, like an uplifted finger of warning. Miss Jennifer breathed through her teeth.

The cat slipped in, looked around, came over to the bed, and studied Miss Jennifer cautiously. Miss Rachel stuck her head through the doorway. “Oh, it’s you,” said Jennifer, letting the umbrella drop. “And high time.”

Miss Rachel came in and shut the door behind her. “What are you doing up here?”

“When the lights failed, those other people began popping in and out of the room like a bunch of rabbity ghosts. They made me nervous. I got some candles from Pedro and came upstairs.” Jennifer punched her pillows higher behind her back. “I don’t intend to sleep, naturally. But a bed makes a sort of natural fort.”

“Have you seen Miss Taggart?”

“No, I have not. Now that you’re here, we’ll lock the door. She can knock if she wishes to get in.”

“Mr. Emerson and Zia and I have been searching for Miss Taggart and we can’t find her.” Miss Rachel went over to the cot and sat down on its edge. “We found rather an odd arrangement in her room.” She explained to Jennifer about the gourd hanging outside the window. “I’m pretty sure it caused that sort of whispery rattle we’ve been hearing. Mr. Emerson thinks that Ilene rigged up the gourd-and-twine arrangement in order to give Mrs. Ryker a fright … a revenge for the note Christine had sent her.”

The candles flickered; shadows moved uneasily in the room. “He’s implying, then, that Miss Taggart had already known the identity of the poison-pen letter writer?”

“Yes. And he has seized, or seemed to seize, on a most simple motive. A harmless and rather childish vengeance against a ruthless, venomous woman.…” Miss Rachel tapped her foot absently and frowned. “There is another difficulty. A problem of time. Miss Taggart didn’t go upstairs as soon as she arrived. I didn’t keep my eye on her all of the time before I slipped away to come upstairs, but I’m fairly sure she was below, either in the gallery or with Mr. Ryker in the kitchen.”

“But if she was downstairs, hadn’t even as yet come up here—”

“Wait a minute. There is one small loophole there—I was in Mr. Ryker’s room first, looking through the things he’d brought, trying to get a line on whoever was writing those letters. I was in his room for some minutes. I didn’t hear anyone go by to another room, but the walls are thick and the doors fit tightly. And she’d have worked quietly and quickly, anyway.”

“I hadn’t heard of this snooping previously, Rachel. Did Gail really ask you to rummage into her guests’ belongings?”

“No. I think the idea rather shocked her, in fact. Going back to Ilene, could she have burst in on me and pretended surprise and mild outrage as a sort of alibi? Could she have realized how clever it would be to have a witness with her, actually in her room, while she pulled her little trick behind the window draperies?”

Jennifer blinked thoughtfully. “Of course, once you discard the idea that the snake was already here, you might as well start speculating as to whether it wasn’t brought into the house from the Snake Dance.”

Miss Rachel got up and roamed the space between the bed and the cot. “Would it be possible, do you think? How thoroughly were those snakes guarded?”

Jennifer shivered. “They seemed literally underfoot.”

“And yet as soon as the dancing was over, all of them were gone, neatly gathered up by the priests, to be disposed of far away from the village.” She watched vexedly as the nosy cat, having climbed the bed, tried to get her nose close enough to investigate a candle. “Keep an eye on Samantha. She’s going to scorch some whiskers. If the snake were brought here from the village, a container had to be provided for it. Fangproof, and something no one would be curious about.”

Jennifer drew the umbrella closer. “Mr. Grubler carried an enormous pair of field glasses. The case hung by a strap over his shoulder. In the car, coming back, I noticed he kept the glasses out to look at the storm clouds.”

“Mr. Ryker had the little lunch hamper which we supposed contained his vodka. Zia brought that big buckskin carryall. Ilene’s purse is roomy enough to store the contents of a pharmacy … she carries a small drug department with her everywhere. Hal Emerson took a package out of the car when we got to the house, something he apparently had bought in the village. About the size and shape of a shoe box—he bumped me with it as we came in and apologized for being clumsy. Even Gail—she keeps a little Indian basket in her car which I supposed she used for shopping. It has a tight lid. She brought it indoors.” Miss Rachel smoothed the white widow’s peak in the middle of her forehead worriedly. “You see, it could have been any of them—if the snake got in that way.”

There was a rap on the door. When Miss Rachel turned the key in the lock, Gail looked in. “Have you seen Ilene recently?”

“Not since coming upstairs,” Jennifer said, hefting the umbrella absently.

Miss Rachel said, “Zia and Mr. Emerson and I were looking for her a few minutes ago.”

“I know,” Gail said. “Zia told me, and then we all searched. She isn’t anywhere. She’s gone.” Gail came farther into the circle of candlelight. Her expression was one of worry, of suppressed fear. “Don’t you think that Ilene behaved very peculiarly tonight?”

“She was very nervous,” Miss Rachel agreed, “but that may have been due to the fact that she was lying. She was scared stiff we were going to find out that Mr. Ryker was standing beside the window when that ratting noise came tonight—she knew, you see, that I’d recall the other rattle, the first one, while she was standing by her window.”

Gail touched her lips with her tongue. “Zia told me about that gourd under the eaves. I can’t understand the purpose behind it, unless it was meant to frighten Christine.”

“We can’t know why the gourd was put where it was until we find Miss Taggart. When you spoke of her acting peculiarly, you included, of course, all that business with the diaphanous nightgown and robe.”

Gail looked back at her blankly. “Yes, I had thought it rather queer.”

“They were the only garments in her entire wardrobe which were what Jennifer calls ‘fast’ and I’d call ‘sexy.’ You told me more than once, in speaking of Miss Taggart, what an old maid she was, how prim and proper, and the girl herself put on an almost pathological display of repression and timidity.”

Jennifer raised the umbrella in the manner of a teacher getting ready for a lecture. “Timidity.… Rachel, you could practically see through those garments.”

“Oh, indeed,” Miss Rachel nodded. “Didn’t it strike you, though, that they had rather the air of a costume? Of something put on to play a part?”

“I suppose so.” Gail frowned into the candlelight. “But strictly out of character for Ilene—her character, I mean, as I’ve known it for years. Of course it’s always possible for people to change.”

“Or to reveal some substratum of desire or of recklessness,” Miss Rachel said. “Like our aunt Lily. She was our mother’s sister, and Father liked her and had arranged a respectable match with a young banker of his business circle. Then Aunt Lily ran off with a traveling salesman and when their romance wilted she joined a leg show.”

Miss Rachel had shed the coat she had put on over her gown previously. With a full set of clothing over her arm, she started for the bathroom.

“What I’m getting at is that Ilene Taggart may have suddenly, in the shock over Christine’s murder, felt free of shyness—free enough to run about openly in the daring negligee. This is a possibility—that she bought those clothes out of wistful longing and then afterward suddenly found the courage to use them.”

Jennifer said curiously, “You sound as if there are other possibilities.”

Miss Rachel left the bathroom door ajar as she dressed. “I think there is a chance that the garments were provided for her.”

Gail’s eyes widened. “You don’t mean …”

“No. Ilene is not the girl to be seduced by a wolf bearing black undies. Nothing obvious like that—but say that she was to assume a part and carry it out. Remember that in addition to wearing these clothes she did something else most strangely out of character.”

Jennifer had suddenly gotten the drift of Miss Rachel’s actions. “If you intend to go out gallivanting around in the dark, with a fiend and heaven knows how many rattlesnakes …

Miss Rachel came out briskly and picked up the coat. “It isn’t too long now until dawn. And I think it most important that we find Miss Taggart. The worst form the search could take would be to have the whole group straggling about in the dark and running into each other at odd and nervous moments. Someone’s too apt to get hurt—even provided something more sinister doesn’t happen. Gail, I suggest you get everyone to stay put for a while and that you and I and Pedro do the looking.”

The umbrella, a black finger of caution, was being shaken at Miss Rachel as she slipped out of the door. Gail glanced back apologetically at Miss Jennifer. “I suppose it’s best to do as she says.”

“It’s utter insanity to do as she says,” Jennifer squeaked. She rushed to the door, locked it after them. “Don’t try to come creeping and wailing back here … She wiped her eyes indignantly. Actually she couldn’t recall a time when Rachel had crept or wailed, either; there had always been that stubborn devilish sense of mischief. “If Father could see you now!” she cried, a last blast of appeal. The only answer was the cat’s.

The cat was at her feet, wanting to get out and be with Miss Rachel.

On the gallery there was a feeling of quiet, of the rain slackening, of a wet gray dawn beginning to gather itself below the horizon.

Gail touched her arm in the dark. “You said that Ilene had done something else quite out of character tonight.”

Miss Rachel was staring out into the misty blackness in the garden. “She was up here on the gallery, according to her story, when she caught sight of what seemed to be a Kachina figure flitting and fumbling around the door of the room where Christine’s body lay. In a spirit of bravery or idiocy—her attitude seemed to combine the two—she went downstairs and out into the garden to investigate. There terror overwhelmed her and we heard her screaming.”

“I see what you mean,” Gail said after a moment. They were on the stairs now; from the hall below came a footstep, a slight cough.

They looked down at Dave Grubler. He was holding a candle stuck into the neck of a bottle. “Gail? I’ve got to talk to you. There’s something you’d better know.”

“About Ilene?” She hurried down, Miss Rachel following. “Have you found her?”

“I think she’s taken a powder.”

“Gone? Is one of the cars missing?”

He shook his head. Candlelight gave him an even weirder whiteness than before; he looked alabastrine, a man cut from stone. “The cars are all there. Anyway, she’d know better than to take one of them. You’d be in adobe mud to your hubcaps ten feet from that courtyard.… She’s run oil, panicked.”

Gail stared up into his face, astonished. “In the night?”

Dave shifted the candle from one hand to another. Miss Rachel noticed that he, like herself, had taken time to dress completely. He looked businesslike, neat, in his dark suit. “Didn’t you and Miss Rachel see her right in there when we were questioning her?” He nodded towards the living room. “I thought she was going to break down for a moment. You must have thought, as I did at first, that she was afraid we’d find out her lie about Bob being at the dresser at the time that rattling sound was made. Now I’m inclined to think that the lie was mechanical, that her mind wasn’t even on it.”

“You mean—she was afraid of someone in the room?”

He looked at her obliquely. “I’m sure of it. I believe, too, that she said something to Zia there in front of the fire.”

For some reason Zia’s suspicious attitude towards Hal Emerson returned instantly to Miss Rachel’s mind. Zia had accepted the discovery of the gourd outside Ilene’s window with a great deal of reservation. Her glances towards Emerson as he worked at the window had been wary, doubtful.

“Where is Zia now?”

Dave glanced about uneasily. “I don’t know. It’s been some while since I saw any of them.”

Miss Rachel went to the living-room door and glanced into the long room. The fire at the far end illumined a little circle—Pedro, Florencia, Bob Ryker with a bottle on his knee, his head propped among cushions, as though he might be trying to sleep. Most of the room was in a kind of twilight. Shadows flitted on the walls and the smell of the fire was strange and smoky.

Florencia and Pedro looked up as Miss Rachel walked towards them in the gloom. Florencia’s mouth made an exaggerated O and her hands performed praying motions. “It’s just me,” Miss Rachel explained, touching Ryker on the shoulder. His eyes opened; he stared at her glassily. “There is something which has to be done, Mr. Ryker.”

He shook his head, straightened in the chair as if throwing off the desire for sleep.

“We have to see what that final letter was—the unfinished one in your wife’s case.”

She saw that the drowsiness left him instantly, though he continued to sit slouched in an appearance of lethargy. “Hmmm? I don’t remember. Was there something else?”

“You know there was. You kept us from assembling it.”

He set the bottle down carefully, then lifted it, offering it to Pedro. Pedro accepted it, murmuring, “Gracias.” Ryker looked sidewise at Miss Rachel. “Poor old Christine—can’t we let her little faults die with her?”

“Your wife didn’t have little faults, Mr. Ryker. She had big ones. When she hated she went overboard at it. She hated every one of these people with an almost psychopathic intensity. I want to see that letter, because I want to know whom she was working on at the last.”

He rose out of the chair, though with an air of reluctance. “We’ll find out, then.”

Gail and Grubler were at the door. Miss Rachel explained the errand; the four of them returned upstairs.

In Christine’s room Ryker unpacked the small case, turned the contents out helter-skelter on the bed, and then stood back. Grubler’s attention was attracted to the gambling chip. “What’s this?”

“It’s evidence that Mrs. Ryker was in Reno last week.” Miss Rachel was busy with the book of poetry, shaking out the scraps of words and letters upon the counterpane.

Grubler frowned. “I don’t see how you figure it.”

“I was in Reno too,” Miss Rachel explained. “A blonde at a roulette table bought a stack of dollar chips. She was pretty ostentatious about it, liked showing off, liked the picture of herself as a freehanded gambling gal.”

Ryker laughed suddenly, a brief bitter sound.

“All at once the stack of chips slipped and began to roll,” Miss Rachel concluded. “The blonde lost her composure. There were some hectic words with the dealer. But then people began to pick up the chips for her. She got them back—all but one. Rave and threaten as she would, that one lost chip never was turned in.”

The candle which Grubler had set on the dresser made a small sputtering sizzle … there was no response for a moment from the other three people in the room. It was as if each stood apart in his thoughts, setting the incident of the blonde and the dollar chip into the picture of Christine Ryker as he had known her.

Grubler gave a sigh. “It fits, all right—it’s the thing Christine would have done if she’d had the chance. I’ll bet she got a kick out of the frothings of the big blonde.”

Miss Rachel bent above the little scraps of paper on the bed. She frowned; the light was poor and flickering and the long-legged arty lettering not too easy to read at random like this. Still, she had something to form the message to now—an idea based on the thing found behind Ilene’s window.

The words emerged little by little:

Maid or wanton, guard your door,

Fork-tongued venom on the floor—

Justice with a tooth of flame

Comes at night to blot your name.

KACHINA

“It’s all here, all complete. I’d hardly expected that,” Miss Rachel pondered. “She just hadn’t assembled it yet. I wonder when she meant to give it to Ilene?”

“To Ilene?” Ryker moved uneasily between the candle and the bed, and his shadow followed on the wall, huge and moth-like. “How do you figure that?”

“It occurred to me—rather late, I admit—that the arrangement we found at Ilene’s window might not have been her doing. You see, Christine had been upstairs alone before anyone else, on the excuse of seeing to her belongings. She had plenty of time for a bit of trickery.”

Grubler knitted his white eyebrows. “She fixed that thing?”

Miss Rachel was looking at Ryker. “She made the trick rattle, she cut out and composed a note which from its opening words would seem to fit Ilene, with a nasty little hint that she knew Ilene was pretending to be something she was not—and then she seems to have stopped. As if”—Miss Rachel’s eye crept over to Gail—“as if she had a doubt, as if she felt she might be making a mistake.”

Ryker didn’t move. His shadow lay across Gail’s face, and slowly, and as if unwillingly, Gail’s eyes lifted towards him.

Miss Rachel saw what it was now—the interchange of thought like a secret means of communication. In it was shame. Shame and fear.

Chapter 14

Miss Rachel finally ran across Zia again quite by accident.

The Hopi girl was sitting motionless in the wicker seat in the under gallery. There was a faint glitter to her hair, as though recently she might have been out in the rain.

Miss Rachel, borrowing Grubler’s trick, had made a candle-holder out of a bottle. She set the bottle on the redwood table. She thought that Zia had more the look of an Indian woman than she had had before. Zia had thrown a bright shawl across her shoulders; her black eyes were obsidian, her pose impassive.

Miss Rachel sat down on the end of a bench. “Have you seen Miss Taggart?”

Zia moved her eyes slightly, enough to take in Miss Rachel’s little figure. “No—not for quite a while. I looked for her and didn’t find her.”

Miss Rachel studied the cool, dark profile. “What do you think of the gourd arrangement outside her window?”

“I don’t believe she made that.”

Miss Rachel waited. She could play Indian too.

Zia decided to go on. “Mr. Emerson seemed so emphatic in his theory, his idea that Ilene had made the trick to scare someone else, that I couldn’.t help wondering if there might be another answer. I saw that the arrangement could have been put there by anyone—perhaps with the purpose of frightening Ilene. I think that must be the solution. Even Christine could have done it.”

“I think now that Christine did do it,” Miss Rachel agreed.

Zia’s glance was quicker, this time. “There is just one stumbling block, one inconsistency. Do you see what it is?”

“Oh yes. If Ilene didn’t put the gourd outside her window, didn’t know it was there, and wasn’t responsible for that first rattling, why did she lie about Mr. Ryker’s being at his window when the second rattle occurred?”

A flicker of admiration shone in the black eyes.

Miss Rachel went on: “Actually, when you think about it, she may not have been lying about the fact that he was at the window. She may have been lying about his being in the room at all.”

“Perhaps in defending him from suspicion she expected to have a hold over him,” Zia said softly. “Poor Ilene! Bob was always her soft spot. He managed to keep her confidence even during the bad time at college, when she thought she was going blind. I suppose she thought of him as a sort of black-sheep hero. And then, often the self-righteous take joy in people like Bob, don’t they?”

“I’ve noticed it,” Miss Rachel admitted. “By the way, Mr. Grubler thinks that Ilene confided something to you while you .were sitting together in front of the fire.”

“She did. About Hal Emerson’s marriage.”

Miss Rachel felt the unexpected shock. She had liked Emerson. “His … marriage?”

Zia explained calmly. “Christine expected him to go to work for her, though everyone knew how he loathed her. She was holding something over him—a secret. He was married two or three years ago. It wasn’t the sort of marriage you talk much about. He was drunk, in a border town, and the woman was a tramp.”

“Oh.” Miss Rachel thought about it, conscious of an odd feeling of sympathy for Emerson. “Docs Gail know this?”

“No. Don’t you think someone should tell her?”

Miss Rachel tried to analyze what she really did think. She had advised Emerson to leave, to forget Gail and let Gail go on to live alone in peace. But now that this other thing was revealed, she was aware of a sort of disappointment. Hal Emerson and Gail were both rather stubborn and hotheaded, and it had been her experience that such people were good for each other. Neither got the worst of things, and they gave each other something to do. “I believe Mr. Emerson should be given a chance to tell her.”

“I think you must like him.”

“I suppose I do.” Miss Rachel spent a moment reflecting that Jennifer always claimed she preferred to like the wrong people—was it true in this case? “Was there a divorce?”

“Yes, a quick one that cost him a lot of money. In Reno, I think. Perhaps that’s how Christine managed to get hold of it—the notices in the paper.”

A hunch began to grow in Miss Rachel’s mind—a hunch concerning the attitude she had sensed between Gail and Bob Ryker. An explanation for the depths of the self-loathing in which Gail had been sunk in Reno.… “Why are you so sure that Gail doesn’t know about this marriage?”

Zia’s expression grew thoughtful. “If she knows, she has found out during the last month or so. I saw her in the spring—she was doing a lot of sketching then and came to the village a number of times—and she let drop the fact that she believed Hal Emerson had never married.”

“Recently … has she said anything like that?”

Zia seemed to consider. The candle flared and spat in the dying wind. Beyond the eaves that thrust out to mark the level of the upper gallery, the rain had softened to a mist. The sky was showing faint iridescent patches of gray. The dim outlines of the growing things in the garden looked beaten and sodden.

Miss Rachel thought irrelevantly at the moment that it was the longest night she’d ever spent in her life.

Zia said, “It seems to me now, thinking back, that she has avoided saying anything at all about him. Her feeling towards him seems to have tightened up, become more bitter.”

Zia straightened on the wicker seat. A fluttering light—another candle—had emerged from the hall door. Behind it Pedro’s face looked darkly haggard and Gail was like a shadow wearing a paper mask. When they were close enough Gail said, “She’s really gone. It must be as Dave said: she started out, probably trying to follow the road, in a moment of panic.”

“Ilene?” Zia asked.

Gail nodded. “We’ve been looking for her—it seems for hours.” She turned to Miss Rachel. “Have you been into the kitchen?”

“Not yet. We’d better go there now.”

Zia came with them. The kitchen, meant to be bright and cheerful, had a ghostly strangeness about it under the candle-light.

“There are some large cupboards here,” Zia said, indicating the storage compartments near the floor.

“I keep canned goods in a couple of them.” Gail stared at the cupboard doors with sudden nervousness. “But they are big. Big … enough.” She put her hand on a yellow plastic knob and pulled outward. Two shelves were visible, well filled with canned foods.

There were three of the big cupboards. The second held dried foods—pink beans in cellophane packs, noodles, soup mixtures—in addition to canned provisions. The third held two large cans, bright as brass in the dim light. “Sugar and flour,” Gail murmured.

“There’s something else back there on the shelf,” Miss Rachel said. “Rags of some sort wadded together. Dustcloths or something.”

“There shouldn’t be anything.” Gail took the candle from Pedro, bent down, then knelt close to the opening and ran her hand in behind the cans.

The things she pulled forth brought an abrupt silence into the room. With a slow falling-apart, a reluctant spreading-out like the death of a scarecrow, the clothes displayed themselves. The high-necked linen suit … the heavy stockings … the virginal, shapeless white muslin underwear … the sensible square-toed shoes.

Gail sprang up. There was an expression on her face as though she must scream, as though some inner wall had given way in her, some defense now utterly breached and flattened by horror and fear. Zia shuddered.

Miss Rachel spoke quickly and quietly. “She hasn’t gone, then. She’s changed her clothes, for some reason, putting back on that sheer gown and negligee.”

She had caught their attention.

“Remember, in Ilene’s bedroom?” Miss Rachel said to Gail. “I remarked that the night things were missing.”

The search had taken them through all of the bedrooms. Ryker had stayed in Christine’s room, repacking the little case. Miss Jennifer had refused to unlock her door unless Rachel were willing to stay inside until the police came. But the rest of the rooms had been investigated by Miss Rachel, Gail, and Pedro, and a special search had been made in Ilene’s room. Nothing had seemed odd except the absence of the night clothes.

Gail shook her head. “She couldn’t be out there in the open like that—practically naked.”

Miss Rachel frowned to herself. “Obviously she changed her clothing in here from some motive of secrecy. It’s almost as if there were some task she was bound to perform, and that after the first failure she must try again.”

Mechanically, Gail was spreading the clothing on a chair.

“Something is false, doesn’t fit,” Miss Rachel worried. “Gail, are you sure that Ilene’s nearsightedness is as bad as she says it is?”

Gail stood staring at the clothing as though mentally recreating the timid, repressed girl who had worn it. “Somehow, I was sure. I can’t recall the incident. Something convinced me, though, that she was almost blind.”

“This Kachina figure which you and Jennifer seemed to have caught a glimpse of—was it carrying a light?”

Gail shook her head. “No. I saw it by means of a lightning flash.”

Pedro asked huskily, tiredly, “Do we search some more now?”

“I think we’d better talk to Mr. Ryker,” Miss Rachel decided.

There was faint gray light now all through the house. In the living room Florencia was nursing the fire. Dave Grubler stood at the window beside the desk, looking out at the ravaged garden. He glanced up as Miss Rachel came in.

Ryker wasn’t there, and she started to withdraw. Grubler beckoned to her.

She crossed towards him. The gray light gave new lines to his face, gleamed on the little desk, the account book with its half-concealed sheaf of yellow and green checks.

She was frowning at the account book as Grubler spoke: “How long ago do you remember seeing those gloves and that cluster of feathers?”

“I think that the last I saw of them was at the time I followed Zia out of the room—that was before the electricity failed.”

“You and Gail and Pedro have been through the house looking for Ilene. Did you notice them then?”

“No. I’m not sure whether the fact that they were gone would have struck me or not.”

Grubler nodded, as though some suspicion had been confirmed. “I think they were taken during that first confusion, after the lights went off.” He ran a hand through his pale hair. “It was the last anyone seems to have seen of Ilene, too.”

Miss Rachel said, “There is one point I’d like to check. When the second rattling sound came, you and Mr. Emerson were in Ilene’s room. Were either of you by the windows?”

“Yes, Hal had gone over there to look at the floor behind the draperies. We’d decided, you remember, that the rooms had better be searched because of what we’d found out there with Christine.”

“He had moved the draperies?”

“I think he was moving them at the time the sound came.” Grubler looked at her curiously. “That’s what it was, wasn’t it—the gourd-and-the-string business you found there afterward?”

“A rather ingenious arrangement,” Miss Rachel agreed. “Working for Mrs. Ryker for so long, as you did—was she mechanically inclined?”

His eyes grew blank. “Wasn’t that gourd business a rather simple affair?”

“For some people.”

He seemed to turn the question over in his mind. “Christine did figure out a few things when we ran into trouble at the mines. Not anything big, nor involving engineering principles. But she did have a knack of getting things simplified, of figuring how to get ore out of narrow pockets without too much blasting.”

“I see.”

He hesitated. “I don’t mean that she did anything startlingly clever. You do think now, don’t you, that she put that thing outside Ilene’s window?”

“I believe she put it there. I wanted to be sure the idea could have been her own. I tried to put myself in Mrs. Ryker’s place, wanting to scare Miss Taggart with the idea of a snake, and it seemed to me I’d have just tied the gourd to the bed-springs and let Miss Taggart be frightened over the possibility there was a snake under the bed. Under-the-bed is a very frightening place to me—I think it’s the influence of my sister Jennifer and her toads.”

He rubbed the point of his narrow chin. “Toads?”

“She was doing something special in Nature Study for Miss Gerrish’s sixth grade. But she didn’t tell me first, and the toads got very restless in the night and Jennifer wouldn’t wake up.”

It seemed to occur to Mr. Grubler all at once that Miss Rachel was a little old lady who liked to prattle about her childhood. His smile broadened with patient humor. “An impression like that stays with one, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose Mrs. Ryker had some sort of unpleasant experience in her childhood, to account for the way she felt about all you people.”

“She had a possessive streak. Of course, I was her employee. She had a hold over me I couldn’t fight. It was the others she seemed to want to torment. She told me once that her parents had separated when she was small, that she saw them at rare intervals, had no chance to feel close to them. That may answer your question.”

Miss Rachel nodded, as though glad to have the point cleared up.

“People felt that emotional grasping in every contact they had with Christine,” Grubler went on. “Some of them thought she was simply nosy. Some of them sensed what it was—an octopuslike enfolding of mind and will—and she scared them. It was hard to get people to do business with her wherever personal contacts were necessary.”

“I can see how she needed you.”

He bent towards her in the candlelight. “I was exactly what she needed. An utterly colorless sort of fellow. Even physically … Don’t feel embarrassed, because I know exactly how I look. People never could be frightened of me. But afterwards, when they were required to meet Christine after all, it was sometimes worse. The minnow … and then the shark.”

His ease in talking about himself didn’t communicate itself to Miss Rachel. She sensed something bitter under the casual attitude.

He broke off the conversation abruptly. “I’d better look about for the gloves and the cluster of feathers. There’s something odd about their being gone.”

“I have a job to do too,” Miss Rachel said.

Pedro and Gail had waited for her at the top of the stairs. The gray light washed in past them through the arched doorway. Zia was on the gallery, looking out across the garden to the stark black horizon beyond, where the tablelands lay jagged under roiling skies.

Gail knocked at Bob Ryker’s door. There seemed to be movement inside the room, then silence. Finally Ryker’s voice came: “Who’s there?”

“It’s Gail.”

“Oh.” He walked to the door; there was something ragged and tired about the sound of his steps. A key turned and he looked out at them. He took in Miss Rachel, Pedro, and Zia. “A conference again?”

Miss Rachel explained: “We’ve looked everywhere for Miss Taggart. We can’t find her.”

His eyes grew mocking. “You think I’m hiding her?”

“We know that she thought she was protecting you in lying about where you were at one point during the night.”

He drew back a little into the shadow of the doorway. He flattened his lips against his teeth in something that wasn’t quite a smile. It was obvious he had known at once what Miss Rachel meant. “I don’t quite remember where I was at all stages of the evening.”

Pedro, standing politely behind them near the gallery railing, now stepped forward uneasily. “Señorita …” His black eyes were wide, afraid. “There is something wrong down there in that little room.”

They all turned. Gail said huskily, “Wrong? What do you mean?”

“The door is open a little and there is something tied to the knob.” He had forgotten to quench the candle he carried; in the gray light it weaved to and fro, small as a match flame, and trembled with his fear.

The iron railing was cold and wet. The garden looked like a matted and trampled mass of greenery. Blossoms lay beaten into the mud. The fishpond had overflowed.

Miss Rachel took in these details automatically.

At the same moment she realized, with a sense of impatience for her own oversight, that no one had searched the room where Christine’s body lay, in their hunt for Ilene.

What Pedro had stammered out was true. The door of the little room set into the corner of the wall was open. From its knob hung the gay red cluster of feathers.

Chapter 15

Heavy curtains had remained drawn in this room of the dead. The candlelight they brought with them seemed to expand to a smoky brightness that filled the ceiling, reflecting eerily on the objects below.

Ilene lay just inside the door, on her face, her hands flung out in a reaching gesture above her head. The wide skirt of the black negligee was snarled and tom. Her hair had tumbled forward to cover her features. On her hands, grotesque in comparison with the delicate gown and robe, were the thick leather driving gauntlets.

The cot with its sheeted figure seemed undisturbed. Under it lay the broken pieces of a brightly colored Indian mask.

Dave Grubler had joined them as they came through the hall. He pushed forward, bent to touch Ilene’s outstretched arm. Gail knelt opposite, lifting the brown hair that covered Ilene’s face like a veil.

No one spoke for a moment. The unnatural yellow light played on each of them, showed Gail’s quivering unbelief, Grubler’s shocked withdrawal, the sudden fine sweat that came out on Zia’s upper lip. Pedro crossed himself and shut his eyes.

Miss Rachel studied Ilene’s features, noting the heavy raw-hide thong almost buried out of sight in the flesh of the throat.

“Should we try anything?” Grubler asked.

“Cut the thong. Do you know anything about artificial respiration?”

“Yes, but … I don’t think it will do any good. Touch her. There’s a faint beginning of coldness.”

Miss Rachel investigated. It was as Grubler said, there was no use trying anything on Ilene’s body. Breath had been gone too long. Miss Rachel reached for the pieces of the broken mask under the cot. “Is this a Kachina mask?”

It had, she saw, been a complete helmet to cover the head. The carving which indicated the features was shallow but elaborate, lifelike in a primitively stylized sort of way. The paint was brilliant in color but without gloss. Feathers and a set of carved horns resembling deerhorns had made a crest at the top.

Gail was staring at the broken pieces. “I didn’t try to copy the Hopi masks accurately. You understand that in the villages each mask represents a kind of spirit, that there is a religious connotation … this combines the features of several. But it represents no certain Kachina, and I made it of wood, because theirs never are.” Her voice broke, shuddered. “Why should Ilene be here, murdered, with it?”

Miss Rachel had been studying the outstretched form. “It seems as if she might have been carrying it, or holding it, when the murderer struck. And wearing the gloves—with the idea of not leaving any fingerprints, perhaps. The gloves made it very easy to strangle her. She couldn’t have gotten any grip on the thong.”

“This thing …” Grubler touched the end of the thong. “Where did it come from?”

“The mask hung from the wall by it,” Gail said.

Grubler got up and went over to the door and looked out at the garden. “I don’t see how we can be expected to take any more of this. I think we ought to try to get out. Take the cars as far as they’ll make it, then go on on foot.”

Gail glanced at Miss Rachel. “What do you think?”

Miss Rachel found to her own surprise that she agreed with Grubler. Perhaps not for his reasons.… “It would, I think, be safer than remaining here.”

Gail’s throat worked. “And leave—them—here like this?”

“They’re quite beyond harm and we’re not. But we must take a vote on it. Leaving or staying ought to be a voluntary business.”

Miss Jennifer had fallen asleep, not intending to. When she finally heard the rapping at her door and jerked erect, it puzzled her for a moment that the room should be filled with pale colorless light, that the furnishings stood out so clearly, and that the candles burned so small and dim.

She moved stiffly out of the bed and went to the door, removed the key, and tried to peer through the keyhole. Peering, she met an eye.

She couldn’t identify the eye, nor the voice that came through the door panel. Both had about them a strange air of disguise. The voice asked, “Are you going to leave with the others?”

All at once Miss Jennifer felt rather strange; she was unaccustomed to fear and to shudders, and their impact was a clammy shock. “Who are you?”

There was a brief anonymous bit of laughter and then silence. She didn’t even hear any footsteps. The keyhole was full of the same kind of light the room had, the eerie stuff that comes long before dawn.

With the idea that she had been abandoned, in panicky fright Miss Jennifer rushed to the windows and examined the courtyard. The cars stood in a row under the shelter. Beyond the courtyard the long plateau stretched into the distance, a gentle downward slope, a running sea of mud.

She was reassured. No one in his right mind would take a car into that.

All at once she was aware of movement below. Miss Rachel had scuttered into view and was making surreptitious signs for her to open the pane. When Jennifer leaned out, full of curiosity, Miss Rachel hissed, “Was someone at your door a minute ago?”

“Yes,” said Jennifer. “Who was it?”

Miss Rachel shook her head and went away. Jennifer cried after her, “Who’s leaving? Is everyone?” but there wasn’t any answer.

She withdrew into the room, and in a nervous excess of energy she blew out the candles, straightened the bed and the cot Ilene had meant to use (what on earth could have happened to Miss Taggart?), and finally dressed carefully in her outdoor clothes. She spent some minutes in futile reconstruction of what might have happened if the car from the travel agency had come after them in time as promised—Mr. Peele had paid her back in solid coin for finding him behind that shrub with Miss Caxton—and what she and Rachel might have been doing now if they could have rejoined the tour.

She was on edge for Rachel to come back and tell her who had been lurking and peeping at the door. But when someone came, it was Gail.

Gail wore a heavy brown coat and her hair was tied into a brown wool net. There were hollow places under her eyes. She had on gloves and galoshes and she had brought an extra pair of galoshes with her. She set them down inside the door. “We’re going to try the Fort Navajo road. It’s higher, and Dave thinks if we take shovels the men can clear the road enough to get through. But we may have to walk.”

“Someone tried to get into this room a little while ago,” Jennifer blurted. It seemed to her now, in her nervous distraction, that this was what had happened. “Tried the door.… It’ll be a relief to be out in the open, even having to walk.” Gail looked at her, and Miss Jennifer saw that terror flickered just under the surface, that it had been there all the time, a controlled but constant fright. “It’s all my fault,” Gail said. “Miss Rachel told me not to bring them here, she saw the danger in it. I’m as much a murderer as anyone. I murdered Ilene, just by inviting her.”

Jennifer started. “Miss Taggart? She’s …”

“In the room where we had put Christine.” Gail shook her head as if to free it from nightmare. “Wearing those gloves … the cluster of feathers on the door. With the Kachina mask broken—as if it broke when she was strangled and she had dropped it.”

“I saw that mask affair. Someone had it on, in the courtyard …” Miss Jennifer glanced uneasily towards the window, wondering what the vague idea was that skittered through the back of her mind.

Gail turned to the door. “Don’t try to pack anything—we’ll come back when the police do.”

“I’ve got a funny idea that I know something I should tell you,” Miss Jennifer worried.

Gail waited with her hand on the doorknob.

Finally Miss Jennifer shook her head. “I can’t remember.” When Gail had gone she locked the door and stood stone-still in the silence, trying to fix the impression. She went back to the window, had her thought distracted by seeing Hal Emerson down there, square and rugged, his face impassive, smoking a pipe. “Is it a shape, a kind of clothes under the mask, that I half remember? Or is it something about that eye in the keyhole?”

Emerson blew smoke and stared at the cloudy sky. There was no rain now, only a trailing mist that was tugged here and there by the gusty winds. The clear gray light was stronger—as strong, probably, as it would be all day.

Bob Ryker sauntered out and seemed to study the weather. He had the wicker hamper in his hand, carrying it negligently, as though the act had become a habit. He made no move to approach or to talk to Emerson. He inspected the cars indifferently, then turned and, in the act of rubbing his head, pushed his hat back and looked up at the windows. When he saw Miss Jennifer he grinned, whistled softly, and drew one eye down drolly in a wink.

She drew back, flustered. “Making out he’d flirt with me, and I’m old enough to be his mother.” She plucked at her dress, smiled sheepishly before she remembered her upbringing, then in a lather of righteous hurry she unlocked the door and went out to the gallery.

The Indian girl was by the arched doorway, glancing back at her. Miss Jennifer thought approvingly that Zia was very intelligent, nothing like what she had supposed a Hopi girl might be—well, of course, there had been all those extra years in school, not many Indians got that—and she wondered what Zia’s attitude was towards the murders and the panic among the others. Indians were not supposed to show any emotion. Zia hadn’t shown much, except her anger over the pretended Kachina. Miss Jennifer smiled at her politely, uneasily, and asked if the others were ready.

Zia studied the row of doors over Miss Jennifer’s shoulder. “I believe they’ve gone down. Do you think this is wise, leaving like this?”

Miss Jennifer realized that she hadn’t taken any time over her decision to go; that business of the eye outside the keyhole had made up her mind for her, somehow. “If there were any way to know which one of us was a murderer … but of course we don’t know.…” She frowned; the fugitive half-formed idea had skipped across the edge of consciousness again. She wondered vaguely if it had had something to do with the cars. “We can’t leave the guilty one behind with his dead, because we can’t identify him.”

Zia stepped close to her, so close that Miss Jennifer smelled the faint piny perfume she wore, clean and aromatic as desert air, and stared directly into the wide black eyes in which her own spare, erect figure was reflected in miniature. Zia said in a quiet voice, “I know something at last … I know the truth about the Kachina. I figured it out.”

Of course Zia would have a better chance of exposing the business behind that crazy figure than anyone else, Miss Jennifer thought in that first instant of surprise. “You did?”

She saw the intention in Zia’s eyes, the desire to share this knowledge, and sudden warning flared in her. She remembered what Rachel had said over and over about murder, that knowledge was dangerous, that sharing it was downright insanity. The only persons you could share it with were cops … policemen, she corrected herself mentally. Funny how Rachel’s slang crept in.…

Had there been a shadow, momentarily, on the tiled landing beyond the door’s arch? She tried to concentrate; Zia went on.

“The Kachina is always a reflection of the people who conceive it, bring it into being … What are you staring at?” “Nothing.” There hadn’t been a shadow. Or anyway, there wasn’t one now.

“The Kachina which Christine brought into being was cruel, mocking, sadistic. All that she was, this figurative spirit, this letter writer, was also.”

Zia waited, and Miss Jennifer realized that she was expected to make some comment. “A sort of spiritual mirror?”

“You are very acute. Yes—a reflection of self. Even among my people the more warlike pueblos have the warlike Kachinas; the defeated have spirits w’ho come no longer among men but remain in sorrow in the mountains.”

Miss Jennifer said nervously, “Perhaps we’d better go down. The others will be getting into the cars.”

They moved together towards the stairs. Zia went on more quietly, “This figure, the pretended ghost whom you and Gail saw wearing the mask that she had made—even what little we know about it can be revealing.”

Miss Jennifer’s eyes were round.

“Remember Ilene’s actions? She caught sight of the Kachina from the upper gallery—much too far for her, with her poor sight, to have distinguished size or form, even in the brilliance of the lightning flash. It seems logical to suppose that she thought she knew the identity of the figure. She went down, expecting to join in the joke or the game or to give a bit of cautious advice if the pretended Kachina were acting merely out of an excess of drink.”

Miss Jennifer knew whom Zia meant … it had been so obvious that the poor, proper Miss Taggart had been enamored of Mr. Ryker. A timid, half-maternal emotion.

They were at the door of the courtyard.

“She must have been quite sure—unthinking—and then when the truth hit her the shock sent her screaming.”

“The truth?”

“Think about it,” Zia advised. Dave Grubler was standing just outside the doorway. There was no chance to talk any further.

Grubler turned towards them, lighting a cigarette inside his cupped hands. He snapped the match, tossed it to the brick paving. Miss Jennifer met his eyes—peculiarly colorless eyes, and without any trace of nervousness, though he had spoken more of nerves than anyone. It seemed to her that his glance probed and measured, trying to gauge hers and Zia’s attitude towards him. She forced herself to smile, the sort of smile he might expect from a little old lady who hadn’t had much sleep, who was scared to death, and who had a lot of rattlebrained tag ends running through her head but not a theory in the world. No theories, positively. Rachel had told her a thousand times that if you developed a theory the murderer would know it, would smell it out like a bloodhound and kill you for it. She almost wanted to go up to Mr. Grubler and blurt out into his face, “I haven’t any theory at all. Have you?”

Only it might not be Mr. Grubler.

It might be Mr. Emerson, standing in the shadow of the car shelter, his face cold and impassive behind the pipe, his glance straying over to Gail once in a while, where she and Ryker stood between the cars, figuring out a seating arrangement. Mr. Emerson hadn’t seemed to care for Christine Ryker. Perhaps the dislike had boiled up into sudden fury, so that he had brought home a snake from the Hopi pueblo, done up like a gift of some sort, and put it into Mrs. Ryker’s room and let it bite her.

Miss Rachel came out into the courtyard with her cat’s basket over her arm. Jennifer remembered then the mysterious eye outside her door and the fact that Miss Rachel seemed to know something about it. She headed for her sister.

Miss Rachel seemed deliberately to avoid her. With an almost unseemly hurry she managed to get between the cars, opened one of the doors, and put the basket inside. Then she stood listening to the talk between Gail and Mr. Ryker.

“All right, then,” Ryker was saying morosely, “I’ll be good and let you drive the station wagon. You can even put me in Dave’s sedan if you want. I don’t care.”

“I made the suggestion because I don’t think my old car would do it,” Gail explained.

“Sure it wouldn’t,” Ryker agreed. “What hasn’t it got? Brakes? Tires? Compression?”

“It hasn’t any chains and my tires are worn pretty slick.”

“And besides, you feel I’m in no condition to drive.”

He wasn’t being belligerent, merely melancholy. He waited, but Gail didn’t answer. Pedro had come out into the courtyard carrying a couple of spades. Behind him Florencia scuttled along, big-cyed in a black rebozo. Dave Grubler opened the luggage compartment of the sedan and motioned for Pedro to lay the spades inside.

Ryker asked, “Are you taking Pedro and his wife?”

“Of course. I couldn’t ask them to stay when we’re all afraid to.”

Gail took a long look at her house. Miss Jennifer did likewise—not that she expected to see anything strange. They were leaving nothing but Death.

The house looked big, its adobe walls thick and solid among the driven bits of mist. Miss Jennifer thought that its appearance must have been a comfort to those travelers of years ago. A safe repose, secure against the Apache, the highwayman, the weather.

The high windows of the bedrooms were blind and blank, frosted with the damp.… Miss Jennifer searched them nervously, remembering the strange business of the gourd that had been outside Miss Taggart’s window, wondering if they should ever have the truth of that after all—and what had the Hopi girl meant, hinting that Ilene had gone down into the garden to meet the Kachina, thinking she knew who the Kachina was?

Chapter 16

“The way to make an old-fashioned sugar pie,” Miss Rachel explained to Mr. Grubler, at the wheel beside her, “is to take whatever dough you have left after making your regular pics, roll it out thin, dot it with butter, fold over and reroll, dot with butter again, dust thoroughly with brown sugar and cinnamon, and bake in a hot oven.”

“My grandmother used to make them. I thought there was something magic in the process. I think she sprinkled on bits of citron too.”

Grubler spun the wheel hard to avoid a small boulder sticking out of the mud. They were entering a narrow cleft between two small mesas. The car lurched and bumped, the tires slipping in spite of heavy chains, the passengers much aware of a sinking sensation during the skids.

“The sugar pie was simply an economical way to use up leftover dough and help fill the children so that their attack on the real pies would be less ferocious,” Miss Rachel added, hanging onto the door handle. “When Jennifer and I were small we had a certain cook—”

The car gave an especially bad lurch, and Miss Jennifer, in the rear seat, emitted a small scream. Even Zia showed nervousness. The road was climbing, coming out to the top of the tableland, and was bordered by a crevasse in the red, rocky earth.

“—a certain cook, a Mrs. March, who fed us so many sugar pies that we quite lost our appetites. Mother decided that we needed a tonic.”

Miss Jennifer, in the rear seat, frowned; she wondered if nervousness was causing Rachel to prattle on so. She took a sidelong glance at Zia and at Mr. Emerson, over beside the window. They didn’t look very interested over the sugar-pie recipe. Mr. Emerson seemed to be trying to catch a glimpse of the station wagon up ahead. Zia was eying the chasm beside the crumbling road.

“Not sulphur and molasses?” Mr. Grubler asked.

“I was never quite sure just what did go into Mother’s tonic,” Miss Rachel said. “I think she started with a base of white wine and garlic juice and improvised as she went along with whatever else was handy. She was careful, though, not to disturb the clear color. That’s how she got close enough with it before we tried to escape. I almost always thought, before I caught that first whiff, that she was offering me a little glass of water.”

A curious silence seemed to enter the car.

Miss Jennifer wondered what the others were thinking of. On her part, she was remembering Mr. Ryker’s ever-present bottle of vodka. Vodka, like Mother’s tonic, had a strangely innocent resemblance to water.

“White wine and garlic are both very good in their places,” Emerson said, sitting forward suddenly. “Look, I guess I’m a little late—but I can’t help wondering if this was the smart thing to do. The police are almost sure to get through to the house sometime today. This is … well, it’s rather as if we were avoiding them.”

“Not at all,” Grubler argued. “We know that Captain Isle-ton is trying to reach us by way of the Fort Navajo road. Probably we’ll meet him up here somewhere, and much sooner than we’d have contacted anyone in authority by staying at Gail’s place.”

Emerson didn’t say anything for a moment. “Any particular reason, on your part, for wanting to get to the police ahead of the rest of us?”

Grubler bit his lip and seemed to concentrate for a moment on his driving. They were on a lower jagged shelf of a mesa now, crawling eastward toward what looked like tumbled heaps of masonry, clumps of pine and cedar, and a high rectangular arrangement of logs that gave the effect of a deserted gateway.

Grubler muttered, “There used to be an outpost here at this lower entrance to the fort. It looks horribly … dead, doesn’t it?”

Emerson said, “What about my question?”

“The police? Naturally I think they’ll get to the truth. There is a fact or two I intend to put into their hands. This Reno business, for instance. I hadn’t known, until shortly before we left, that Christine had been to Reno during the past week. I knew that Bob had. If Christine was there, she followed him, and my guess is that she suspected him of keeping a rendezvous with a. woman and intended to spy on them. You know how she was. She might be sick to death of his drinking and ready to dig his eyes out for what she suspected of him in the way of being unfaithful. But she wouldn’t want to let him go. The one thing she feared and hated was freedom—for other people, for people she felt she had a claim on.”

Emerson was staring at the back of Grubler’s head. “Any particular woman in mind?”

Grubler said, much too quickly, “No. Even if I did know …

Emerson took out a package of cigarettes, heard Miss Jennifer’s indignant sniff which implied that no gentleman inflicted cigarette smoke on a lady inside a car, put the pack away, and twisted the flat book of paper matches between his fingers. Finally he asked softly, “Ilene? She’s dead—you can’t hurt her now.”

Grubler frowned, shot a sidewise glance towards Miss Rachel. “I don’t think it was Ilene. I won’t say who I thought it was.”

“Gail?”

Miss Rachel was looking down steadfastly at the cat’s basket on her lap. Emerson hunched even farther forward, so that he hung almost over her shoulder. “Miss Rachel, you’ve known Gail since she was a baby. Do you think she’d—” He stopped talking and sat as still as the car’s motion let him. His mouth twisted and grew tight. “It’s true, then.”

It was at least logical, Miss Rachel thought miserably. Too logical to discard. There wasn’t any other way to explain Gail’s despair than as a sick self-hatred, based on the realization that the sudden knowledge of Emerson’s disgraceful marriage had caused her to act recklessly, to throw away what she had always thought of as valuable and well worth guarding. Her good name, or honor, or call it what you wanted. Gail was old-fashioned enough to hate losing it.

But Miss Rachel said determinedly, “The facts may have quite another meaning when you know them all. Remember that it wasn’t Gail whom Christine was planning to frighten.”

“It was Ilene,” Emerson agreed. “Suppose Ilene had been in Reno too, had perhaps followed Bob there. She’d never forgotten the efforts he made to be kind when her sight went bad, and she was a strange, introspective girl. Perhaps lack of other contacts made that feeling of gratitude grow—she had, literally, no one to love. And so, say she had followed him and made a second witness to the fact that he’d met someone secretly. Don’t you sec where that leads? To something much bigger than simple jealousy. To murder—there were two witnesses to that rendezvous, and both of them are dead.”

Grubler drove with his eyes straight ahead. A small sigh came from Zia’s lips; she looked surreptitiously at Miss Jennifer.

“There ought to be some way to clear up a few of the loose ends, just among ourselves,” Emerson went on doggedly. “We can ask Gail outright if she was in Reno with Bob, and we can sample that stuff he carries around with him in a bottle.”

“Sooner than you think,” Grubler put in, jerking a hand off the wheel to gesture ahead.

They had passed through the high open gateway; the dim road then plunged in close under an overhanging bank. From the bank a slice of earth had fallen and broken up into clods and boulders. To the left stood a clump of small, stunted dark green pines. Just this side of the trees the station wagon was stopped; Pedro and Bob Ryker were out and looking at the fallen barrier measuringly.

Grubler half opened his door, leaning out with one hand still on the wheel. He was hatless; the gray overhead light struck his white hair, set it shining. “Trouble ahead?”

“Work,” Ryker said flatly.

Miss Jennifer was peering at the other car. “Do you know, I had a queer presentiment he was going to say there was something wrong with the car. With the motor or something.” She frowned. “I don’t often have hunches. Funny … this one was so strong.”

Miss Rachel shot a glance across her shoulder. But Jennifer shook her head. “I can’t remember why.”

“Digging to do; I’ll go get the shovels,” said Grubler quietly.

Florencia was the only one remaining inside the other car. Gail was walking the narrow rim of the road where dead, sodden grasses gave some protection from the mud churned up by the cars. She came towards them slowly; the gray light gave her skin a pale luminosity, not flattering, almost the color of death itself. She stopped, regarded them with a serious air. She must have sensed something in Emerson, in Miss Rachel—she tugged the collar of her coat higher and asked, “What’s wrong?”

Emerson was next the window; he rolled down the pane and leaned through. His face looked suddenly hard, cruel, full of determination. “There’s a question you should answer, Gail. About Reno. Were you there with Bob?”

Her eyes flinched. She turned for an instant towards Miss Rachel, her gaze searching. “I went alone. Miss Rachel came home with me.”

Emerson said harshly, “All this careful, tony covering-up won’t help when the police tear into our stories. Quit thinking about your reputation. They won’t leave you even the shreds.… Two women were murdered. They could have been murdered because you and Ryker were keeping a secret.”

Something leaped in her eyes before she controlled it: terror, surprise, fury … She put a gloved hand carefully, precisely, on the side of the door beside Miss Rachel. “What do you advise me to do?”

“I think the truth must be much more palatable than what Mr. Emerson believes,” Miss Rachel said sharply. “But it is true that the two women now lying dead in your house were killed for a reason. If we can eliminate motives, it will help.”

“I ran into Bob in Reno just as I ran into you, quite by accident,” Gail said, addressing Miss Rachel only. “We made the rounds of the clubs, had drinks together, saw the shows. I don’t see that I owe anyone an explanation of my actions.”

Miss Rachel looked Gail in the eye. “The police are going to demand an accounting for every moment of that time with Mr. Ryker. Is there anything they can get their teeth into?”

Gail looked at the ground. She seemed to huddle inside the heavy coat.

Emerson said with conviction, “There is, then. What is it? A hotel register?”

Miss Jennifer had had difficulty in following the quiz; the idea that Gail might have been behaving rather “fast” was incomprehensible to her. But when she heard the words “hotel register” she bent on Mr. Emerson her most glacial eye. “Sir, when Rachel and I were young ladies, any man uncouth enough to address us with such insinuations would have been soundly horsewhipped by our father.”

Miss Rachel thought to herself that there had never been a time when anyone would have dared hint such things to Jennifer. Not because of Father—there had been something very battle-axey about Jennifer even as a girl. She had worn her militant respectability as a Crusader his sword.

Emerson had been flushed with anger; during the last few moments he had grown quite pale. “Gail … why don’t you answer?”

Her voice was controlled, a monotone without expression. “It wasn’t the way you think. Bob had been drinking too much. He became quite ill. He couldn’t remember the name of his hotel and it was getting terribly late. I registered for the two of us and stayed with him—about two in the morning I called a doctor for him. I was worried, too, because I thought I had caught a glimpse of Christine in the crowd.… Anyway, my reputation wasn’t worrying me then. You see, I’d just found out that you were—were married.” She threw this last at Emerson on a note of hatred. Then she walked away, very straight and erect, out of sight among the little pine trees.

Emerson sat rigid, gripping the door handle, breathing through his teeth.

Miss Rachel turned around to look at him. “I think what she’s trying to tell you—and is too proud to say—is that she was so disturbed by the fact of your marriage that she temporarily entertained ideas of throwing herself at Mr. Ryker. A sort of revenge—you’d have to be a woman to understand, I’m afraid. But your attitude towards Gail is much too brusque, Mr. Emerson. You won’t get anywhere with her that way.”

“… good horsewhipping,” Miss Jennifer finished, having been talking meanwhile to Zia.

Emerson jerked open the door of the car. His face was blank, tight, as though Miss Rachel’s reprimand and Jennifer’s idea of corrective measures had both gone over his head. He strode toward the station wagon, where Grubler, Pedro, and Bob Ryker stood in a group, hefting the shovels. Emerson walked close to Ryker, took hold of the lapels of his sport jacket, flung him around to face him.

Ryker seemed taken by surprise. He had a shovel in one hand; in the other, the small hamper, which he hadn’t as yet put back into the car. At the expression on Emerson’s face, Ryker threw up the arm holding the hamper. Emerson gripped it, tore it out of Ryker’s hands, threw it aside. “I ought to beat you to death.” His fist was quick; it caught Ryker on the jaw, a sliding blow that reddened the skin and snapped Ryker’s head to one side.

Ryker put up his guard, said through his arms, his voice muffled, “What the devil’s got into you?”

“Reno.” The second blow tore through Ryker’s slipshod guard and snapped his head back, almost taking him off balance.

“Wait … Ryker backed, his eyes bewildered, rubbing his jaw.

He seemed so helpless … Of course, Miss Jennifer reminded herself, he was probably half pickled—one of Rachel’s phrases, again—and in a way deserved what he got. When you allowed Demon Rum—vodka, her thoughts corrected—well, alcohol, to ruin you, you couldn’t expect to do very well at self-defense. Miss Jennifer realized with surprise that she had been bobbing up and down in excitement. Mr. Ryker was going to be murdered, he’d been friendly in a rapscallion sort of way- “Rachel! Can’t you do something?”

Miss Rachel slipped from the car with a deft movement, ran for the fallen hamper. Mr. Grubler was already bending to reach for it when Miss Rachel snatched it up. Probably he had had the same idea as she had and wanted a chance to test it. Only of course—Miss Jennifer thought, in the midst of her anger and excitement—he might not have tested it by drinking so much.

Ryker and Emerson were fighting at the fringe of the trees now. There was a lot of blood on Ryker’s face, great smears of it on Emerson’s driving fists. Miss Jennifer began to shriek. There was Mr. Ryker being beaten into a bloody pulp, being murdered under their eyes, while Rachel stood with a vodka bottle tilted to the sky, gurgling its contents, Zia sat calmly motionless, Mr. Grubler looked confused, and Gail went walking in the pine trees.

She couldn’t quite decide, later, when the fight had begun to go the other way. Mr. Ryker was thin and long-legged, a really much lighter man than Mr. Emerson, and it seemed that Mr. Emerson’s fists would never stop making that smacking sound on Mr. Ryker’s face. Perhaps the beating had made Mr. Ryker grow sober—or perhaps he hadn’t drunk as much as they had supposed. Miss Rachel was making a sour face over the contents of the vodka bottle. At any rate, there was a short lull in the exchange of blows—Mr. Ryker hadn’t struck one as yet, merely gone through some very futile motions—and out of it, with no warning whatever, Mr. Ryker’s fist came up from nowhere and landed on Mr. Emerson’s jaw.

It didn’t make the smacking sound … it made a noise like a hammer hitting a skull.

Zia sat up. She said with satisfaction, “He’ll be all right now.”

Miss Jennifer wasn’t convinced. “He’ll be killed.”

Zia threw her a look out of the corner of her eye. “Bob did a lot of boxing in college. He’s easygoing and slow to anger, it was always just a game to him—but now I think Emerson has really gotten him started.”

Funny, Miss Jennifer thought, that Zia disliked Mr. Emerson so much that out of all the group he was the single one she refused to call by his first name.

Zia went on talking quietly, swiftly, as if in the grip of remembrance. “Bob was always so decent—the decentest one of us, really. Anyone could have seen that. In school, he looked after Ilene when it seemed she was going blind; he was patient with Christine, even in her most horrible moods, and he was the only one besides Gail who ever treated me as anything except a freak.” All at once she bent over, dropping her head as if in pain. Miss Jennifer was startled. Zia said, “That makes it so much worse, doesn’t it?”

Over beside the pines Bob Ryker had quit standing flat-footed for Emerson to pop at. He was moving cagily, his fists up. While Miss Jennifer watched, another blow landed on Emerson’s square jaw and it was Emerson’s turn to stagger and shake his head.

“Worse?” she whispered.

“The Kachina was the murderer. Bob had to be that Kachina.”

“I don’t see …

Zia laid an arm across the back of the other scat, put her forehead against it wearily. “Remember what I told you about the Kachina? That even what little we knew could lead us to the truth? Well, we do know that the secret behind that mask was too much for Ilene’s control. And she had good control, almost psychopathic … And she did love Bob. Terribly.”

It came to Miss Jennifer then—how, loving Mr. Ryker like that, Ilene would have been struck with horror to find him inside that mask … and cold sober, too.

Chapter 17

Ryker stood with his back to the pine trees, wiping his face with a handkerchief. Emerson sat on the other side of the clearing, on a stone, working one of his hands slowly, clenching and unclenching it as though wondering if something inside were broken.

The fight had ended suddenly and indecisively—Emerson seemed all at once to realize that Ryker was going to give him more than he had bargained for. He had blocked a blow, turned his back, and walked off. Ryker hadn’t tried to follow. A look of amusement had come over him, briefly.

Grubler came up to face Ryker, standing a little below on the scattered fringes of fallen pine needles. “You and Hal have been spoiling for a fight ever since you came.”

“Longer than that,” Ryker corrected mockingly.

“You did a lot better than I expected you to.” Grubler narrowed his eyes. “You sobered up damned quick, didn’t you?”

“Necessity is often the mother of sobriety, among other things,” Ryker said. He walked over to where Miss Rachel stood holding the little hamper. He took the handles from her fingers gently. “Where did Gail go?”

“I think she’d like to be alone for a bit.”

“Yes, I guess she would.” He propped the hamper on his knee, spread the handles, lifted the lid. “I thought I might offer to make an honest woman of her, but she might think I was hurrying things a bit. Besides, I’d sort of be getting her on the rebound, wouldn’t I?” His grin was lopsided; there was a lumpy blue swelling extending from his right jaw up into his cheek. He took out one of the bottles, measured its contents with his eye. “My, my! Which one is this?”

Miss Rachel blushed a little. “It’s the vodka.”

“You were testing the contents,” he decided.

“Yes—and then I felt cold and nervous, too.”

He examined the other bottle. “You didn’t use much of the chaser.” He poured some of the clear liquid into his hand, mopped his face, dried it off with the handkerchief. “Not bad. Water has its uses.”

“You’ve been drinking a great deal of it,” she pointed out.

He looked at her obliquely from under the black brows. “Are you going to give me away?”

“I’m afraid it can’t be a secret any more.”

There was a touch of bleakness in his eyes before he remembered to grin. “It started as a gag, out of boredom, out of a queer frustrated anger over the fact that my wife was such a damned better businessman than I was. Then I found out that I could get under her skin with it. Just by carrying my little bottle of water and hiccuping now and then and chewing dried onion flakes … Did you know that married people did things like that to each other? Did you ever think that marriage could be prison, and purgatory, and the livelier tortures of the Inquisition all rolled into one?” His glance ran over her small figure. “You’re such a Dresden-china spinster—I’ll bet you think you missed something.”

Miss Rachel said, “I have a theory that we all make our lives what they are—that, knowing or unknowing, we don’t leave things to chance nearly as much as we think we do.” She smoothed her sprigged muslin skirt. “If I’d really wanted to be married, I suppose I’d have found someone.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Strict father?”

“More, I think, a diffusion of effort. I always had what Jennifer called ‘a bee in the bonnet’ about doing or being something odd. At least, Jennifer thought they were odd. Like wanting to run away and join Aunt Lily’s burlesque troupe.” He didn’t say anything for a minute. Finally: “You believe, then, that I brought it all on myself.”

“Why did you marry Christine?”

“Do you know, believe it or not”—his eyes mocked not her but himself—“I pitied Christine from the bottom of my heart. I think she was the loneliest person I’ve ever known.”

“You never considered that it could have been a pose?”

His face grew blank. “No, I didn’t think that.”

“Lonely people extract a lot of sympathy from others, force loyalty where otherwise there might be disloyalty. Frankly, your wife impressed me as being most self-sufficient and little apt to cling to or feel the need for other people.”

The satyr’s grin faltered. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“No. But it should have struck you that if you could fool Christine with a bottle of water and onion flakes, she could fool you with an affected emotion, a loneliness she had never felt.”

She sensed that under the cynicism he was temporarily nonplused.

“Did your wife catch sight of you with Gail in Reno?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did Ilene?”

“She was such a funny kind of girl. I got a glimpse of her in one of the clubs. I was with Gail, that first evening, the one we spent together. Ilene never mentioned the incident. She must have thought there was something underhanded going on.”

“How did Mr. Grubler know of your trip to Reno?”

“I haven’t any idea.”

Miss Jennifer had walked over from the car. “Rachel, you’re keeping Mr. Ryker from his job. The other men are already busy with the shovels, and Mr. Grubler keeps glancing over this way.”

“Of course—and thanks for reminding me of my duty,” Ryker said, then turned obediently and went off towards the heap of earth blocking the road. He put his hamper carefully to one side, then picked up the remaining shovel.

“I don’t think you should stand around holding private conversations with Mr. Ryker,” Jennifer said darkly. “He may be the murderer.”

“How can I find out whether he is or not if you won’t let me talk to him?”

“It’s a job for the police, Rachel. Come and let’s walk for a bit. I’m feeling a touch of nerves … I’d like to get my mind off what has happened. Zia said that the ruins of Fort Navajo are up above us somewhere and that there ought to be a path to it through these trees.”

“You wouldn’t feel more afraid, wandering around in those pines?”

Miss Jennifer glanced behind her surreptitiously. “Everyone’s accounted for except Gail. And I’m not afraid of her.”

They skirted the fringes of the trees and did finally locate a dim trail. The pines closed in about them, making a soft green light and an aromatic air. The sounds of the shovels receded; so, apparently, did Jennifer’s worries. She hiked briskly along, looking about with interest. They came to an ancient boundary marker of some sort, a narrow tall stone cairn with a flat rock at its top, upon which were chiseled some cabalistic markings. Jennifer went all over it, expecting perhaps to find gold or something. “It’s probably just a degree of longitude. Or the edge of the reservation.” All at once she stopped to frown. “Queer how things sneak up on you.… I’ve just remembered why I thought there would be something wrong with Mr. Ryker’s car.”

Miss Rachel waited. It was very quiet; there was no sound at all here among the trees.

“You know, that Kachina thing, whatever or whoever it was—I saw it in the courtyard from our window and it seemed so grotesque and sort of—well, spooky—that I didn’t want to discuss it.”

This was like Jennifer, Miss Rachel thought. If there was going to be a ghost, she’d want it dressed properly. Wearing sensible shoes, too, no doubt. “What do you think this person was doing down there?”

“It was closing the door of Mr. Ryker’s station wagon.”

“Which door?”

“The one by the driver’s seat.”

“Was it carrying a tool of any sort?”

Miss Jennifer moved restlessly back and forth in front of the stone cairn. “I can’t recall the hands at all, nor anything being in them. Only, when I saw the station wagon stopped by the trees, the idea came over me that something might have been done to the car.”

“Much simpler to damage the motor by lifting the hood,” Miss Rachel commented in a puzzled tone. “There wouldn’t be much you could do from the driver’s side except tear up the wiring under the dash. Then the car wouldn’t run at all, wouldn’t have even gotten this far.”

They walked on a little way, slowly, in silence. What had seemed to be a single clump of pines from below was actually, Miss Rachel realized, a long band of trees which followed the edge of the mesa, rising from one level to another. In places they emerged into open areas at the edge of the cliff. The desert lay stretched out below, a gray-and-purple carpet with a border of fanglike little hills, the dark sky all one dense heavy cloud hanging low.

“Perhaps there was no intention of damaging the station wagon,” Miss Rachel said finally. “The motive might have been one of search, or of retrieving something which had been hidden. The driving gloves, for instance, and that cluster of feathers … the car would have been a logical hiding place for them. The gloves belonged in the car anyway, and the feathers might have been thought to have dropped accidentally from Christine’s hat. I’m sure that it was this person, disguised as a Kachina, who carried out that gruesome business of putting the gloves on Mrs. Ryker’s body. Ilene obviously stumbled into the middle of things, became panic-stricken, and eventually had to be killed for knowing who was inside that mask.”

“That’s what I meant about Mr. Ryker. Zia thinks he’s always been quite sober, whereas poor Miss Taggart had gone along believing him as drunk as a lord. Then, in the shock of knowing the truth, she lost control.”

The path had climbed steeply for the last hundred feet. Now they came out of the trees to a grassy plateau. Out in the middle of the open space was a huddle of fallen buildings, adobe walls almost washed away, old shingles split and crumbling, roof beams standing up gaunt like the bleached skeletons of animals.

Miss Jennifer said uneasily, “We haven’t seen Gail anywhere.”

“Perhaps she didn’t come this way. She may be sitting somewhere, down among the trees.”

“And there’s no sign that the police tried to get through this way.”

“Let’s go and have a look at the road.”

On the opposite side of the clearing, past what had once been a barricade or a fence, the road emerged through the trees and widened, as though picnickers had come this far, parked, turned around and gone back. There were ruts in the soil, tire marks too, though none of these looked very recent.

Miss Jennifer was frowning over a line of footprints along the margin of the road. “Look, Rachel. I’m sure that Gail’s overshoes make this sort of mark. And these seem fresh.”

Miss Rachel agreed. “She must have come up here after all. We’ve passed her somehow. Perhaps she’s in the fort.”

They turned and looked back together; the bleached and silent ruin was utterly desolate under the low gray sky. From this direction it could be seen that originally there had been a square, a parade ground probably, sheltered on three sides by barracks and stables. The tallest ruin, Miss Rachel thought, a two-storied affair with a falling porch, had no doubt been the commanding officer’s residence. Loneliest of all was the flagpole, a straight empty pole with a raveling of rope still fixed to its tip.

“Gives me the willies,” Miss Jennifer whispered.

“Yes, it is depressing. I don’t like this business about Gail—it seems impossible that anyone from the cars could have followed her, or reached this spot before we did. Could we have dawdled more than I thought? Enough so that someone might have cut straight up the slope ahead of us?”

“We did look at the desert now and then when we came to open spots.”

“Let’s have a look at the place.”

They returned at an angle from the way they had come, cutting across the old parade ground, full of holes dug by gophers and prairie dogs and grown tall with grasses which had died.

The two-storied building had a big front room, still furnished with a single chair. It was a big, old-fashioned platform rocker with leather cushions. Grass seed had blown into holes in the leather and sprouted, and lay spread in yellowish streamers like untidy whiskers. The walls were peeling, the floor sagged in its middle. Miss Rachel put her head in at the doorway and said, “Gail …”

“She wouldn’t be in there!”

Miss Rachel experimented with a toe. “Dare I trust the floor, do you think?”

“Rachel, if she were in there, she’d answer.”

“Perhaps I’d better walk around to the rear and look in at the windows.” Miss Rachel went cautiously the length of the porch; the rotted timbers sagged and trembled. There seemed to be a walkway between the two houses. Loose boards had fallen from the roofs. Shreds of window glass glittered among other rubbish. Then she saw it, very distinct in the wet earth—a single footprint like the ones at the edge of the road.

She stood, measuring angles with her eye. Someone could have stood at the rear, between the two ruined buildings, and had a clear view of the part of the road where Gail had been walking. Could have called, in fact, and been seen.

She debated for a moment, the feeling of urgent fear crowding her. “Jennifer, I’m going to explore the back. You stay out in the open. If I need help, I’ll call. If you see anything funny, scream.”

Jennifer stood as if rooted. “What do you mean, anything funny?”

“Something queer is getting under way … or rather, probably, being finished. Probably a detail or two needed tidying.”

“You think that Gail …” Jennifer was noticeably paler.

“Gail shouldn’t have gone off alone, and I shouldn’t have taken it for granted that the group would remain intact down at the cars.” Miss Rachel picked her way down the narrow area between the houses. It had begun to rain again, big scattered drops that raised the odors of wet earth, dead weeds, and rotted wood from underfoot. At the rear an acre or so of empty space lay between the house and the fringe of pines. Miss Rachel searched it with her eye, then turned right.

On the bare earth under the windows of the old house lay three or four shreds of paper, tiny pieces of a neutral green color which almost escaped Miss Rachel at first. She bent and gathered them. None was as large as her thumbnail. Soggy from contact with the wet ground, they disintegrated as she handled them. She stood on tiptoe beside the wall and looked into the old house. In these rear rooms timbers had fallen through from the ceiling, leaving a ragged hole which showed the empty upper space, then a roof full of holes. “Gail …”

She went on towards the end of the row of buildings, rounded them into the open expanse of the parade ground. Jennifer swung around sharply at the sound of her footsteps. “Did you find her?”

“No.” She ran her eye over the other buildings; none offered any shelter or would be capable of concealing anyone.

“Gail may have gone back to the cars.”

“Yes, we’d better see if she has.” Still she stood there, undecided, her mind filled with dissatisfaction. “Remember Gail’s account book, on her desk? Did you see the canceled checks sticking out of it?”

“I think so. Yellow slips of some kind.”

“And a green one.”

“I don’t remember. … Is it important?”

“Wait here a minute. There’s a stable or some sort of shed, off at the end, not quite as fallen down as the others.” She started off.

“What are you looking for, Rachel?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be bumbling around.”

“I’m coming with you.” Jennifer picked up her skirts, avoided a hole left by some burrowing animal, started nervously at a dried discarded snakeskin, and headed after Rachel towards the ruins of the stables. “Old manure. Never quits smelling … uh …” Her eyes grew big, her step slowed. Miss Rachel had put up a cautioning hand.

“Someone’s on the other side of the wall,” Miss Rachel breathed into her ear.

“Let’s slip away, then.”

“You go around that end, I’ll go this way. We’ll catch them.”

“If it’s the—the murderer, Rachel, we won’t stay alive to catch anybody.”

“Do it anyway.” Miss Rachel gave her sister a shove, then crept to the end of the adobe wall and peered round it. Like a conspirator in a spy story, Miss Jennifer thought in the midst of her indignant fright. Like a child playing cops and robbers. Obviously what was wrong with Rachel was that she had simply never grown up. To resist growing up through all those years, to refuse to take up knitting, to turn down the chance to be secretary for the Parchly Heights Methodist Ladies’ Aid, to read murder mysteries endlessly and go to see motion pictures named Corpses Don’t Like Candy or some such …

Miss Jennifer put her head around the end of the wall. A scream came up into her throat She looked around for a weapon.

Gail Dickson lay face down in the grass.

Mr. Ryker knelt beside her. He had the ends of the brown scarf in his hands.

The scarf was knotted tight around Gail’s throat, and Gail wasn’t moving. She looked huddled and small and dead.

Chapter 18

Bob Ryker lifted his head as Miss Jennifer advanced. Having-been obliged to leave the umbrella at Gail’s house by the edict of no baggage, she had compromised on a two-foot length of spiny stick she had found among the grasses.

He was pale, she noticed. With guilt, no doubt. “She’ll be all right now. She’s breathing regularly. I loosened the scarf just in time.”

“Murderer!” said Jennifer fiercely.

Miss Rachel was with them now, kneeling swiftly, pushing the soft brown hair back from Gail’s face. “Yes, she is breathing. There’s a bump on her temple, though.”

Jennifer held the stick ready. “In the act, the very act, and if you come one step towards me, I’ll beat your brains out.”

Ryker had stepped back, stood there as if confused. “I almost broke my neck getting up here. There’s a sheer face of rock. I don’t think he used that … I think he knew some other way, a cleft in the hill or something.”

Miss Rachel was staring closely at Gail, smoothing the hair back from the temples, taking her pulse … She flicked a look at Ryker. “Who?”

“Emerson. Who else?”

“You were all there, all except Mr. Emerson?”

He frowned down at her. “I guess we were. Pedro and I were working together when I saw all at once that Emerson’s spade was sticking in the dirt and he was gone.”

“You found Gail here, just like this?”

The rain spattered loudly between them, wetting the brown coat that Gail wore, tumbling like jewels through her hair. Miss Jennifer brushed a raindrop off her nose. “Rachel, don’t you believe the evidence of your eyes?”

“He must be given a chance to speak, Jennifer.”

Ryker looked at them with foggy eyes. “She was like that. I thought she was dead. Then I got the scarf loosened.”

“Someone was doing this job as we first walked into the clearing,” Miss Rachel said to her sister. She delved into the pockets of the brown coat, came up with a handkerchief, a powder compact, some shreds of green paper resembling those in the grass. But these were dry. She let Ryker see them. “Do they remind you of anything?”

He stood still. His face suddenly assumed the look of a mask.

“You do know, then.”

“No,” he denied. “Just paper.”

“Check paper. Did your wife use purple ink?”

His tone was dry, husky. “I never knew her to.”

“She hated gambling, didn’t she?”

The mask stiffened. “She hated taking a chance on anything that wasn’t under her control.”

Miss Rachel studied him. “When Gail came up here she walked along the road on the other side of the open field. Someone called or beckoned to her from between two of the buildings. The fact that Gail answered that summons shows that she was unsuspicious … but she became suspicious almost immediately. She began to destroy whatever it was she had in her pocket—something in the form of a green slip of paper which looks like check paper. She threw away a few shreds on the spot at which she joined this other person. It may have been that she had been asked to produce this check.”

His hands opened, then shut into fists. “He’ll answer to me when I find him. There won’t be any interruptions this time.”

“Why don’t you tell me the truth, Mr. Ryker?”

He backed away until he was touching the adobe wall. “Any truths you dig up from here on out are going to be damned unpleasant ones. But I didn’t forge any checks to pay gambling debts in Reno. Are you going to let me carry Gail back to the car?”

“We’ve got our eyes pinned on you,” Miss Jennifer warned.

Ryker threw her a glance into which he managed to force some of the old wicked whimsey. “I assure you that Gail will be as safe as she would in her mother’s arms.”

“Suppose you let me decide that,” said a heavy masculine voice.

They turned as one to meet the stare of a State Police captain in uniform. He was big—the biggest policeman Miss Rachel ever remembered. He had gray hair cropped short under his cap, a pepper-and-salt mustache, a long bony face, and ears so big they gave him a faintly radish aspect. He walked with a firm military step, bent above Gail, felt of her wrist, and examined her temple. “This is Miss Dickson. I know her. What happened here?”

Miss Rachel spoke. “Someone struck her down—you can see the mark—and then tied her scarf very tightly around her throat and left her to die.”

He remained kneeling for a few moments, apparently satisfying himself that Gail was in no danger. He stood up and straightened his uniform. “Now, you people …” His frosty official glance sharpened itself on Jennifer and her weapon, Miss Rachel, Ryker standing mute beside the wall. “Who are you?”

“We’re guests of Miss Dickson’s. This is my sister, Miss Jennifer Murdock. I’m Miss Rachel. And this is Mr. Ryker.”

The pepper-and-salt eyebrows crawled upward. “Ryker? The husband?”

Bob Ryker didn’t reply for a moment. Then he drawled curiously, “Where the devil did you pop up from?”

Captain Isleton’s glance grew chiller yet. “I’ve been in the process of getting up here for most of the night and morning. My car’s just below the clearing”—he jerked his head in the direction of the turn-around space used by picnickers—“with two flat tires and something in the motor that seems to be the result of pulling for hours through the mud. You are Robert Ryker, aren’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“Your wife died as the result of a rattlesnake bite?”

“So far as we were able to tell. There was a snake in her room, there were fang marks on her ankle, and she died.”

“Anything else?” Isleton watched Ryker, who nodded and muttered, “A second death.” Isleton said, “Who was it?”

Ryker seemed deliberately to put on a mask; his eyes grew blank, his face lost all expression. “A Miss Ilene Taggart, poor little devil.”

“Another snake bite?”

“No. Strangled—much like Miss Dickson’s near-disaster. Only Miss Taggart wasn’t found in time.”

Isleton’s glance never changed its frosty impersonal quality, but Miss Rachel had a hunch that his mind was active, that he was studying them in the light of long experience with crime, and that into his consciousness, as neatly as upon the pages of a notebook, all that he saw and heard was being indelibly transcribed. “Who are the survivors?”

Miss Rachel spoke, since he was looking at her. “Besides us, there are Miss Dickson’s employees.” She remembered that Gail had never spoken of Pedro and Florencia as servants; she judged that Gail didn’t like the term. “A couple who have been with her for years, Mexican people. There is Zia, a Hopi girl—I don’t know her last name. Two men—Mr. Grubler and Mr. Emerson, whom we left down at the cars working on the road. I believe Mr. Grubler managed some of Mrs. Ryker’s business interests. Mr. Emerson, I understand, was being approached as a prospective employee.”

“Why were all these people at Miss Dickson’s?”

“To attend the Snake Dance at the Hopi village. They had all been friends in college some seven years ago.”

Rain pelted them on a sudden gust. Isleton shifted his head so that the brim of his hat protected his face. “We’d better move Miss Dickson. The fort … anything like a whole roof in it?”

“There is one room with the walls intact, the front room of that big place.”

Isleton bent, though Ryker had started forward. Gail’s face against the blue uniform was white as a paper silhouette. They rounded the adobe wall, heading for the sagging porch and the door of the ruined house, on the run. Halfway to the door, Miss Rachel stopped short.

Hal Emerson sat half inside a shed which had collapsed, leaving its beams upended in a sort of tepee. He was gray; a trickle of blood ran from his mouth. He must have seen their running forms. His face twitched, then twisted in something like a grin.

Miss Rachel crossed the weedy patch and bent towards him solicitously. The others were out of sight now, inside the other house. They’d be looking for her in a moment, of course. Just now she had this bit of time. She spread her palm in front of Emerson. “Do you know anything about these?”

He closed his eyes for an instant, then concentrated upon the scraps of paper as if with a strong effort. “A check. Someone’s torn it up.”

“Did Mrs. Ryker offer you a check for your first month’s services?”

Shock seemed to run through him. His gaze came up. “I didn’t take it.”

“Didn’t you give it to Gail?”

“No.” He steadied himself, propping an arm against one of the fallen timbers. There were white patches at the corners of his mouth. “Gail wouldn’t … she’s not interested in me any more.” He began to sink forward on his face.

Miss Rachel jerked about, finding Captain Isleton at her elbow. “Oh? And who’s this gentleman?” Isleton asked softly.

“Mr. Emerson. He’s been hurt.”

Isleton knelt and looked Emerson over. “Cut lip. Doesn’t seem to be much other damage. Somebody might have popped him one.” He stood up, rubbed his gray hair with the heel of his hand. “Do you think we’ll find the others one by one, all the victims of little accidents?”

If it was an attempt at humor, it roused no echo in Miss Rachel. “I hope not. One of these people is deadly serious.”

He bent towards her, lowering his voice. “Ryker. Did he kill his wife?”

She stared back so blankly that he made an impatient gesture. “Miss Dickson told me something about you once. She wanted us to meet. She said you’d done some business with the Los Angeles police department, had a friend there named Mayhew.”

“I didn’t do any business with them that they could prevent.”

He looked at her shrewdly. “They weren’t appreciative?”

“They were downright bullheaded.” She glanced down at Emerson’s sprawled form. “Aren’t we going to move him too?”

“He’ll be all right. Now, about Ryker—”

“We’d better get them all together. And I want my cat. She’s in the car. Jennifer can keep an eye on Gail and Mr. Ryker for us, while we go and get the others.”

He blinked at her. “Your sister? That little old—uh—”

“Jennifer is very battle-axey,” Miss Rachel said. “She’ll be quite able to keep things in line.”

“Well … let’s get going, then.”

The pathway through the trees was a windy tunnel, whipped with rain, in which the large official presence of Captain Isleton was like a rock amid the storm. At an open space they came upon Zia and Dave Grubler, standing together. Grubler carried the cat’s basket. He was looking down into Zia’s face, seemed to be listening to her with patience.

Zia jerked about at the sound of their footsteps. “Oh. Miss Rachel, I’m worried about Gail. Was she up above?”

“Miss Dickson’s going to be all right,” said Isleton gravely. He looked from one to the other. “Have you two people been together since Miss Dickson left you?”

Zia looked at Grubler sidewise.

He said promptly, “I was digging at a caved-in spot in the bank, when I realized I was the only one left working. I scouted about, not very far, decided the others had gone completely away, went back to the cars, and picked up Miss Rachel’s basket for her. Zia joined me then.”

“I couldn’t find the path Gail had taken,” Zia explained.

“Neither of you were up as far as the fort?”

Both shook their heads. Zia asked, “Has something happened to Gail?”

“She had a bit of a run-in with somebody up there,” Isleton said. “But she’s going to come out of it. We want everybody up above. This Mexican couple—where are they?”

“Florencia won’t move out of the car,” Zia said. “She has her head covered by her rebozo. I’m afraid she wouldn’t be much help to you in an investigation. I think Pedro started up for the fort right after Miss Rachel and her sister left.”

Isleton’s dark blue uniform was speckled with raindrops. He brushed at them impatiently. “I want everybody. If you people will go on, I’ll find this Mexican woman and bring her up. At the end of this trail, is it?”

“Right below us,” Grubler said.

As Isleton turned away, Grubler held out the basket. “Your cat was yowling when I went to the car. I think she’s been lonely for you.”

Miss Rachel twisted the catch, lifted the lid. Samantha scrambled for freedom, but Miss Rachel held her fast. “Just a minute, Captain Isleton.”

He turned from a distance of about fifteen feet.

“My cat has been out of this basket since I left her.”

He frowned, not seeing what this had to do with his official business. “But she’s all right, isn’t she?”

“There is fresh mud between the pads of her paws. What I’m pointing out, Captain, is that a search has gone on. Someone opened the basket to examine it and the cat got out. She was put back. The mud in her paws was overlooked in the hurry.”

He nodded absently. “I’ll bring this Mrs. Flores up and we’ll hold an inquiry.”

He turned and hurried away. Miss Rachel held her cat gently and soothed her with soft words. Rain spattered across the black fur; Samantha lifted indignant eyes to the sky. A big drop hit her on the tip of her nose and she wiped it away with an enraged paw.

“Is there some kind of shelter at the fort?” Zia asked.

“One big room in a ruined house. I’m sure Captain Isleton wants us to go there. But there is something …” She plunged a hand into the pocket of her skirt, came out with bits of dull green paper. “These scraps—it’s something the murderer has looked for for a long while. Perhaps still is seeking. What do you suppose it was?”

There was abrupt, uncanny silence in the midst of the spattering noises made by the rain.

“It looks like check paper. In fact, I’m sure that’s what it is. The bank Christine used supplied its patrons with much the same color.” Grubler stared at the damp bits on her palm. “Is there writing of any sort—anything that might be pieced together?”

“There are more scraps like this up at the fort,” said Miss Rachel with unnecessary smugness. “We’ll see what, we have when we get them all.”

Zia reached out, touching the fragments with fingers that trembled. “You said there had been a search. Did you mean for this check?”

“I’m quite sure. You see, Mrs. Ryker had something of the sort inside her hand just after she’d been bitten in her room. I caught only a glimpse, and thought at the time of a ticket—train and plane tickets are usually printed on this kind of heavily watermarked paper. Then there wasn’t any sign of whatever it was she’d had, by the time we found her in the garden. It’s evident now that she disposed of it somewhere on her way to the tool house, or perhaps dropped it.”

“Let’s get out of the rain,” Grubler interrupted. “Christine gave a lot of checks. She scattered them like confetti. Unless there’s quite a bit of this one, it will be hard to identify.”

“Of course the person who attacked Gail and left her for dead tried to gather as much of the paper as possible. Gail must have seen her danger; she saw that letting the check be taken from her intact would leave no clue at all. So she scattered as much as she could. But I keep wondering how Gail happened to have it.” Miss Rachel walked swiftly, holding her cat, the basket swinging from her arm.

Grubler walked just at her elbow. “This attack on Gail … it’s hard to realize she’s been hurt. That police captain seemed to think she’d be all right.”

“Yes, he thinks so,” Miss Rachel said doubtfully.

Grubler said with deep uneasiness, “Gail couldn’t be hurt … seriously, could she? And Isleton playing some sort of police game, not letting us know the truth?”

Miss Rachel’s step faltered. “Oh, he wouldn’t do that.” Then sudden fright seemed to seize her. “She did look quite—quite entirely gone, though.”

There was silence, except for their hurrying footsteps and the rain. They came to the level reaches of the meadow. Miss Rachel paused, looked at the toppling ruins of Fort Navajo, put down her cat, straightened herself determinedly. “It’s all the more important, now, that the last little scrap of this green paper be found. It must be gathered up at once.”

Grubler turned to Zia. “Go check up on Gail for us, will you? I’ll stay and help Miss Rachel with her search.”

Zia hesitated for a moment, then hurried away.

There was no sign of Emerson in the fallen shed, no indication of Ryker and Gail and Miss Jennifer—if they were inside the big room, they were well away from the windows.

Miss Rachel trotted about with her head down, obviously looking for paper bits and not paying much attention to where she was going. Her cat watched with an air of uneasy disapproval. Miss Rachel trotted out of sight behind the adobe wall. She didn’t reappear.

When Captain Isleton and Florencia hurried out of the fringe of trees a few minutes later, the cat was still there, sitting all alone, licking its paws.

Chapter 19

When Isleton had hurried back to see what had become of Miss Rachel, Jennifer set herself to making Gail as comfortable as she could. She surveyed the bare and broken room, the sagging floor, the ancient leather-covered chair. “Mr. Ryker, will you see if those cushions can be removed from the chair? They look as though they might. We’ll make a sort of couch.”

Bob Ryker examined the old chair gingerly. Stray grass seeds had sprouted from the stuffing, gave off a smell like hay. “You’d put Gail on this thing?”

“It won’t be bad when we’ve covered it with your coat,” she pointed out. Jennifer had been raised in an age when a gentleman’s coat was considered to be on call at all times, and she’d never forgotten.

“Oh. Of course.” He went to work. The cushions came forth from the frame of the rocker. He tried to pull the dried grass out; it brought the stuffing with it.

“Poke it inside,” Jennifer told him. She showed him how to put the cushions on the floor and to arrange his coat as a covering. They lifted Gail; she was still papery white, but it seemed to Miss Jennifer, holding her wrist, that the pulse was stronger.

She rose and spoke sharply to Ryker. “You’ll please to turn your back and look the other way, and remain turned until I tell you otherwise.”

He stared at her blankly until she repeated her demand; then he walked to a window and stood there looking out. “Is this all right?”

Jennifer hiked up her skirt, loosened one of her four petticoats and let it drop to the floor. It was a very crisp, starched white petticoat; before Ryker could see what it was, she rolled it into the shape of a pillow. Then she slipped it under Gail’s head.

Ryker returned to hover worriedly. “Can’t we help revive her somehow?”

“I’ve a little bottle of smelling salts. We’ll try that.” Jennifer opened her sensible leather handbag, took out a small bottle, loosened the thick glass stopper.

Ryker was walking about with long uneasy strides, his black brows tightened in a frown. “When Gail comes to herself, she should remember who tried to kill her. Until then, she’s in danger. We have no way of knowing who might try to silence her.”

This reminded Jennifer of her previous suspicions of Mr. Ryker. She reached surreptitiously for the thorny stick, drew it close under the hem of her skirt. “She’s had a bad shock. Things aren’t too clear, sometimes, immediately after.”

Ryker stared at her fiercely. “She must remember, as quickly as possible. Don’t you see … if there’s a delay, or any confusion, the danger will be that much worse.”

Miss Jennifer gripped the stick firmly, put on what Miss Rachel called her Warhorse Look, and said in a tone loud enough to rattle the rafters, “I’ll be here.”

Apparently this statement was not impressive to Mr. Ryker. He walked about for a few moments longer, then went over to the door. “I think I’ll have a look outside. Good lord, there’s Hal. He’s staggering around as if he’s lost. And somebody’s bopped him one—at least, he’s bleeding.”

Ryker left the doorway; his steps on the old porch sent groaning noises through all the underpinnings of the old house. Miss Jennifer made no move to leave Gail’s side. She was a little curious about Mr. Emerson and what might have happened to him, but men were men, confusing creatures, and if one of them was wandering about with blood on him, it was no doubt the result of some act of his own.

The inconsistency of men, she thought, was exemplified by Ryker’s attitude—only a short while before, he and Emerson had been at blows, and now he was solicitous because Emerson was bleeding.

She bent above Gail as the girl’s eyelids lifted slowly; the effect was mechanical and unalive, like the workings of a doll’s eyes. The glance Gail gave about her at the ruined place seemed foggy and uncomprehending. She struggled to sit up; Miss Jennifer put an arm behind her.

Gail said, “What are we doing here? What place is this?”

“Oh, goodness,” said Miss Jennifer in dismay.

“Is something wrong?”

Her grip on Miss Jennifer’s fingers was cold and uncertain. Miss Jennifer struggled to crush back the feeling that what Ryker had said was true, there was terrible danger now. So long as Gail didn’t remember, she’d be open to attack by the unknown.

“You must lie quietly and think,” Miss Jennifer instructed Gail firmly. “You must try to recall—”

There had been a faint footstep from the direction of the door, a dimming of the gray light as though some form must fill the doorway.

Gail seemed not to notice. She brushed the back of a hand across her eyes. “There was a check among my canceled ones—a check of Christine’s. I can’t imagine when she put it there, nor why. At the last moment, before we left the house today, I decided to put my account book in the drawer and lock it up. I noticed the green check among my yellow ones. I thought I might ask Miss Rachel about it the first chance I had. But there was someone else …”

No sound at all now, from the door. Miss Jennifer wanted to turn and look, but she felt pinned in place by her own terror.

Gail went on in the same fuzzy, unbelieving tone. “It seems I had an idea, too, that I wanted to talk over with her. About the Kachina, the pretended ghost some of us saw in the courtyard and the garden. I—I can’t quite put my finger on what it was … Something about the mask—”

Miss Jennifer forced her head around slowly. Her spine was a creaking hinge; the bones in it ground and grated upon each other; there was a horrible jerkiness in the way her head moved until she could see the door.

The doorway was empty.

Miss Rachel looked up into the pale eyes that were beginning to show the underlying ferocity as well as a tigerish hunger for safety and peace after the kill. She prattled innocently in the midst of the gray, waiting silence. “I think Gail must have run across this green check among her own canceled ones—there seemed to be a sheaf of them between the pages of her household account book. Remember, on the desk beside that window which had been open?”

“I remember.”

“Well, Mrs. Ryker must have gone downstairs carrying this bit of paper—ticket, I thought at the time—and somewhere along the way to the tool shed she must have begun to feel the first hint of illness. Notice that she didn’t keep the check with her—it was something she hid at once, something she meant to regain when she had fought off this touch of sickness. How handy it must have seemed to her, finding that open window as she passed and a sheaf of checks where her own could remain unnoticed. Have you ever read The Purloined Letter?”

“Something about a theory that we usually overlook what’s in plain sight, wasn’t it? I’ve forgotten, unfortunately.”

“Yes, unfortunately.” Miss Rachel stopped hopping about long enough to titter. “It’s hard to keep things straight in my mind, but remembering back, I’m sure that Gail, in closing up the house this morning, made a final inspection of her desk and noticed the check there at last.”

“This idea just came to you?”

“It’s been skittering about inside my head.”

The smooth voice protested. “Providing the check was actually the motive, as you think it was—wouldn’t the murderer have found it long before?”

Miss Rachel shook her head. “I think not. It’s logical to suppose that the murderer would expect the check to be concealed in a real hiding place, some secret nook or cranny in the courtyard or the garden.”

“Why not in Mrs. Ryker’s room?”

“The room must have been searched first of all, in those minutes when most of us were scattered, searching for Mrs. Ryker right after she’d been bitten. It wouldn’t take long to go through her luggage. Obviously, since she was packing to leave, the check wouldn’t be hidden about the room. Almost at once it must have been plain that she had the check with her.”

Her companion moved a little closer, so that Miss Rachel was pinned in after a fashion against the adobe wall. With an effect of humoring her: “And the search went on?”

“Oh, thoroughly. Of course we were supposed to be distracted and confused by the Kachina masquerade, and the business with the gloves and the feathers, and the possibility of Mrs. Ryker’s being a kind of dead sleepwalker, and poor Miss Taggart playing a part I’m sure she never really understood—”

“Oh? You’ve figured out Ilene’s business too?”

“Perhaps not in all its details, but close enough, I think. Someone had provided her with the black chiffon gown, the black lace robe, and given her instructions about using a bit of lipstick and letting her hair down—”

“Not in character, was it?” The pale eyes bent close, closer. The loose arms tightened at the elbows; the hands came up.

Miss Rachel looked blankly at the curved fingers. “Not at first, not on the surface. The most obvious qualities which Ilene Taggart displayed were those of excessive modesty and repression. But women of that type often cling to a martyr’s complex, too, and some indication of her having such a complex may be found in her reaction to her attack of near-blindness in college. She withdrew from ordinary social life, she let Mr. Ryker make a fuss over her, she deeply appreciated his sympathy. We know now that recently Miss Taggart had good reason to believe that Christine Ryker was driving her husband to drink himself to death, and to carry on with other women. Neither of these things was true, but she didn’t know it. She was in a prime condition to offer herself to him as a rescuer. No doubt she saw herself as pure and selfless, in contrast to Christine’s predatory personality. The thing that would stump Miss Taggart would be the method of getting at Mr. Ryker, the first overture to make him realize her willingness to save him.”

“And that’s where the naughty nightie came in?”

Miss Rachel nodded in satisfaction. “All the murderer had to do was to sketch in the general outline, convince her that a bit of flesh-peddling in the beginning could end in a glorious transformation on Mr. Ryker’s part. Probably the original intention was simply to use her as a distraction, a bait, something to get Christine Ryker worked up enough, furious and disgusted enough, so that getting the suspicious check away from her wouldn’t be too hard. What action Ilene took the first night, if any, we haven’t any way of knowing. It’s probable that the presence of Christine Ryker in the house was too much of a deterrent, that Miss Taggart did nothing but wish for courage. Then Mrs. Ryker’s death brought freedom as well as shock. And Ilene Taggart played her part as well as she was able, and until she signed her death warrant by knowing who was behind the Kachina mask.”

“You make it all seem so clear. This Kachina fellow now, any ideas about that?”

“Well, at first it seemed an unnecessary oddity. We were apparently supposed to believe that Mrs. Ryker’s ghost was wandering about in Indian form, and I’ve been sure from the first it wouldn’t have. She liked chic clothes too well.” Miss Rachel paused suddenly, then pounced, lifted something and flattened it in her palm. “Quite a large bit of the check. We’ll have something for Captain Isleton when he gets back. As for the Kachina mask—it finally occurred to me that perhaps the most significant thing about it was its shape.”

The pale eyes pried into her own. “The shape of the mask? What do you mean?”

“Like a helmet, completely covering the head. Evidently there was something so different, so distinctive … like, oh, for instance, an odd hair color. Like your own very white hair, Mr. Grubler.”

“That’s what I thought you meant,” said Dave Grubler, grabbing for her.

But she had ducked to reach for another invisible speck of paper in that instant. “Are you angry? I’m so sorry.”

“Enough of this,” he laughed. “You’re not the feather-headed little old lady you make out, Miss Murdock. With all your gabble of sugar pies and the foolish giggling—you’ve got a mind much like my own. Neat and sensible. I’ve got to get this over and find Gail and see whether by some miracle she survived what I did to her after she refused to hand me that damned forgery. And in case Emerson’s still around, I’ve got to make sure he didn’t see me before I popped him from around the corner of that shed. I’m a busy man, Miss Murdock. Don’t waste my time by struggling.”

She was in a corner now, hemmed in by the flanks of the adobe wall, with Grubler approaching from the front. Still she made innocent eyes at him. “I can’t understand … I thought you were very fond of Gail, I didn’t dream you’d try to kill her.”

“Murder gets easier as you go along,” he explained dryly.

“The check was—”

“Part of what Christine had set aside to pay income taxes. If I could have gotten away, if Ryker had let me go through the books, I’d have covered that gambling debt. I was in Reno too, you know.”

She tried to wriggle downward. “Yes, I know.”

There was a moment of surprised hesitation. “You know?”

“What you said about the blonde, in Christine’s room last night. You mentioned a big blonde. I hadn’t said she was big. It was a slip, a bad slip. You’d been following Mrs. Ryker.”

“I think she was in Reno to find out whether I owed money there,” he threw at her. “It doesn’t matter. I got my snake with the help of a little Hopi kid who didn’t know what it was all about. … I did Ilene up nicely with the cord off the mask … and now you’re going to trip and fall and bring some timbers down on you …” His face sharpened. “What did you say?”

“I said that Captain Isleton and my cat are watching you from over there.” She pointed across Grubler’s left shoulder.

He laughed; it was the coldest, least sane laughter she’d ever heard. “In that case I’d better hurry, hadn’t I?” His fingers slid round her throat; he dragged her towards him. At the same moment he began kicking at the supports at the rear of the shed.

He is going to kill me, she thought incredulously. I counted too much on Isleton, on his shrewdness and the feeling of danger he should have sensed among these people. Of course I hadn’t explained that it was Grubler who wanted us to leave the house, obviously in order to narrow his search for the forged check … She felt the pulse in her throat, an enormous pounding like a drum, and the strangling fire that was her pent-up breath.

Her cat walked into view around the end of the adobe wall. Samantha’s image was crooked and watery, like a reflection in a bad mirror. Out of mists Isleton’s face followed—wishful thinking on her part, she thought wryly.

Isleton had a gun in his hand. He raised it, sighted, fired. A little smoke drifted away from the barrel.

Or was the smoke and the sound of the bullet only a part of her frantic wish to escape from death?

An expression of utter, chagrined surprise slowly flattened all other emotion from Grubler’s face. He coughed slightly, then raised his fist with sudden energy to strike her. The gun spoke again. Grubler’s hands faltered downward, fell to his sides, then came up in a spasm to clutch at the front of his coat.

Isleton’s voice rumbled in her ear. “How do you feel? Did he hurt you?”

She was clinging to the wall. “I’ll be all right.”

Isleton patted her arm in fatherly fashion—he was young enough to be her son, she thought irrelevantly—and then hurried to bend above Grubler, who had slid down into a half-sitting position against some rotting timber.

“There isn’t much we can do for you,” the captain said after a brief investigation. “We’re too far from a doctor … I don’t think even a doctor could do much. I couldn’t let you kill this little old lady.”

He waited; there was only an occasional flurry of rain, big drops that smashed and spattered when they hit.

“Got anything to say?”

Grubler shook his head. Something like a smile twisted the corners of his mouth. “Ask Miss Murdock. I’m sure she can explain everything.”

Chapter 20

Two nights later in Gail’s living room there was a cheerful fire, soft lamplight, and the tinkle of tea-things as Florencia came in beaming with a tray. The weather had turned cold after the rain, colder for August than Gail said she could remember. The windy twilight had been bitter. But now, inside, with window draperies drawn against the dark, the room had warmth, brightness, and comfort.

Miss Jennifer knitted in a deep chair with her feet stretched out towards the fire. The cat on the floor roused herself once in a while to tap at the yarn ball. Mostly she lay somnolent, slitted eyes fixed on nothing, no part of her moving except the tip of her tail.

Miss Rachel, at the desk, was making jottings in a new notebook.

Gail tended the tea-things when Florencia had put down the tray. She glanced at Miss Rachel. “It’s queer that the house seems so right, so normal again. Leaving it yesterday, I thought I could never endure to come back to live, that it would always have that atmosphere of horror. And ghosts … Ghosts too terrible to face.”

“It’s a lovely house,” Miss Rachel pointed out. “And the people who died here brought death in with them—your house had nothing to do with it.” Her pen made scratching noises.

“Part of the comfort and friendliness is having Pedro and Florencia here,” Gail said softly. “When you think—they’re only a poor Mexican couple, neither of them can read or write—and yet they’re generous and faithful, far more decent generally than the group I asked them to serve.”

“It is the style now to be enthusiastically astonished over the decency of people not quite like ourselves,” Miss Rachel pointed out. “It is an intellectual fad—to me it seems rather an insult to these people of other races and other religions whose decency should have been taken for granted always.” She lay down her pen to take the cup of tea Gail offered. “It’s getting so you can’t sec a good murder picture without sitting through a lot of propaganda in the second feature, and the books about the wrongs done our minorities are crowding the whodunits off the shelves.”

“And good riddance,” said Miss Jennifer, “but don’t let her go on with that subject, Gail. She’s quite long-winded at it.” “Perhaps the only way we can make tolerance widespread is to popularize it,” Gail offered.

“I resent the faddist element. Tolerance shouldn’t be a fashion. It should—”

Jennifer cut in briskly, “What arc you putting in that notebook? Something about what happened here?”

“Yes. I’m thinking of writing the case up for a true detective magazine.”

“Oh no!”

“Isleton gave me permission to use his name in a joint byline and promised to let me have all sorts of pictures and official reports. Plus a photostatic copy of the confession Mr. Grubler signed before he died.”

“Where are you going to begin, Rachel?”

Miss Rachel stirred her tea thoughtfully. “With the character of Christine. A possessive and predatory woman. It wasn’t the threat of prison Mr. Grubler feared, so much as the grip she’d have over him once she completed the evidence of his forgery. Remember that she was merciless. He could have looked forward to a lifetime of drudgery and poverty. With the evidence of the check to keep him in line …”

“I can see his motive,” Gail said, “but I could never forgive him for treating Ilene as he did. To use her as bait in order to get Christine’s anger and attention off himself, then to murder her when her usefulness was over—that was dreadful.”

“I don’t think he knew at the beginning just how suspicious Mrs. Ryker already was of the girl,” Miss Rachel answered. “His mind must have been full of fear for himself, spurred to the edge of panic by the sly warning she threw him openly when she said, at the first and in front of us all, that Dave should use ‘whatever name had seized his fancy.’ An outright accusation of forgery, in light of what we know now. Thus he was genuinely confused by the gourd rattle which Mrs. Ryker had fixed outside Ilene’s window—especially so since he’d just decided to try to get a snake himself at the Hopi village and had stolen Bob Ryker’s gauntlets as the first step in preparation.”

“Those gauntlets … the gruesome way they kept popping up …” Miss Jennifer hitched her knitting closer to her face, shuddered delicately.

“Well, Grubler had shrewdness enough to throw us off about them. He confessed that in addition to slipping them on during the time he was around that rattler, he used them afterward during the search to make sure he left no fingerprints for the police. Putting the gloves on the bodies of Mrs. Ryker and Ilene Taggart was simply a trick to cover the simpler use.”

“How exactly did he slip that rattler into Mrs. Ryker’s room?” Jennifer asked. “It’s a point which isn’t clear to me.”

“He went through the door between her room and her husband’s—it had a much less complicated lock than the outer door, since the two rooms were used ordinarily as a suite. There was no difficulty, when he found it locked from Christine’s side, to slide a piece of paper underneath, punch out the key, and draw it to his side on the paper—this was at the first entry he made, when he stole the cluster of feathers off her hat and investigated the last Kachina letter to make sure that it had nothing to do with him. Then he discovered, according to his confession, that his own door key could work this simple lock, and afterward used that.”

“He was certainly nasty about keyholes,” Jennifer complained. “Peering through my door and giving that ugly little laugh. Like a ghoul or something. Nothing would have made me budge out of the house otherwise.”

“I knew it,” Miss Rachel admitted.

Jennifer studied her with sudden suspicion. “What do you mean?”

“I was the peeper at your keyhole, Jennifer. If you’d have insisted on remaining behind, Mr. Grubler would have been sure that you had his forgery and intended giving it to the police. Something very unpleasant might have happened to you.”

Jennifer was bolt upright. “You! I might have known. I would have known if I’d stopped to consider the habits you’ve cultivated during these past few years. The snooping, the prying, the happy enthusiasm for horrors, the utter abandonment of the behavior Father instilled in us, the craving for murder movies—”

She stopped to think of more faults for Miss Rachel. The cat reached out with a black paw and sent the yam ball rolling across the floor.

“My yam!” wailed Jennifer.

Gail hid a smile and rose to take away the tea-things. When she was out of the room, when the yarn was safely back beside Miss Jennifer, there was a moment of peaceful silence. Then Jennifer leaned forward. “Which one do you think it will be?”

Miss Rachel pretended to be shocked. “Are you going to pry into Gail’s love life?”

“Don’t think you’ll pay me back in any such silly coin, Rachel. You’re as curious as I am. Does she like Mr. Emerson or Mr. Ryker?”

“I haven’t the least idea. Does she have to like one of them?”

Jennifer stared at her, temporarily baffled. “It looks as though there’s a good chance she’ll take one or the other.”

Miss Rachel reflected that the case had, after a fashion, opened with a wager. “I’ll tell you what—” She opened the notebook. “We’ll make a little bet on the outcome. You can have your favorite—Mr. Ryker, isn’t it?”

“What are you doing, Rachel?”

“Making book, I believe they call it. Anyway, I’m keeping track of our bets. I’ll give you odds, since I’m getting Mr. Emerson. Shall we say ten to five?”

“I don’t know anything about gambling!”

Miss Rachel smiled discreetly. “Take it from me—there’s nothing to it.”

Turn the page to continue reading from the Rachel Murdock Mysteries

Chapter One

His hand on the telephone was damp with sweat, tight, trembling. He put the receiver to his ear and heard the uninterrupted singing of the wire.

“Hello.”

The word half-stuck in his throat. With his free hand he loosened his collar, then with sudden savagery tore at his tie, ripping it free and dropping it upon the bed.

“Want to have a little chat?” He put an evil intimacy into the words, a vicious knowingness—and yet, how silly it was even to speak, for of course the person who had called him had hung up the moment he had lifted the phone.

His eyes narrowed. “You think I’m scared? You think you’re giving me the jitters? Nuts.” He laughed, forcing the chuckling noise into the wire, past the closed connections, into that other ear that had not waited to listen. “Who are you, anyway? Not that I give a damn, but just for the record—”

His voice died. He went on holding the phone, but defeat came gradually into his face. It was a young, square face; the hair was blond, and the well-shaped head was set on a good solid neck. Beckett’s build was that of an athlete, lean, strong, and graceful. He waited. The room was darkening, and in the twilight outside the unshaded window a brisk wind was blowing up from the Borrego desert, rattling the spider palms and raising the dust in the corrals.

The cabin was one room and bath. The big room held twin beds made up with brown corduroy covers so that they resembled a pair of couches. The door faced a curving driveway and a patch of garden. On the other side of the garden was the Lodge.

Beckett’s eyes, examining the out of doors through the front window, settled on the lights over there. They made a yellow bloom against the deep gray twilight. On sudden impulse he slammed the receiver down and then lifted it again, and rang McGuffin’s number. The Lodge owner spoke with a southern drawl. “Ol’ Saddleback Rancho. McGuffin speaking.”

“This is Beckett in number six.”

There was a sound as if McGuffin sucked his teeth. “Yes, sir, Mr. Beckett?”

“You put a call through to me from the Lodge just now.”

“Guess I did, yes.”

“Where was it from?”

“From town. From Brickoven.”

“Was any name given? I mean, did the person calling give a name?”

“No, sir. Didn’t your party get through to you?”

“It was a bad connection,” Beckett lied, after a moment’s hesitation.

“Too bad. Want me to try to get them back?”

“No. Was the voice that of a man or of a woman?”

A pause, as if McGuffin were thinking, remembering. “Man.”

“Anything especially you remember about the voice?”

A longer pause. “Had a cold. You know, talked through his nose sort of. Say, if I recall rightly, this same fellow’s phoned you before.”

“I know he has,” said Beckett. “Do you remember whether all of the other calls were put in from Brickoven?”

McGuffin’s attentive surprise in some manner conveyed itself to Beckett; plainly he was now struck by the fact that Beckett knew so little about his caller. “I think one of them came from San Diego, Mr. Beckett. That was several days ago, though. Looks like your friend is getting closer.”

Was there anything behind the words except a tactless attempt at humor? Beckett frowned at the phone, his jaw bulging. He felt his teeth grate. “So he is.”

“If he calls again, I’ll see it gets through okay.”

“Thanks. By the way, Mrs. Beckett’s over there, isn’t she? Playing bridge, perhaps? Have you seen her?”

“Seems I noticed her in the Big Room a while ago.”

“Tell her I’m making a short trip into town, will you?”

“Roger. Will you be eating with us tonight then, Mr. Beckett?”

“No, I’ll have a sandwich in town. I’m not very hungry.” Beckett hung up the phone and stood there in the half-dark fumbling with his collar. He picked up the tie off the bed, jerked it into place, reknotted it. He was going to have to get out quickly, before Pris received the message about his leaving. She’d come flying, wondering what was up. And he didn’t want to see Pris just now; he was becoming convinced that the telephone calls concerned her somehow, that they were made by some character in her extravagant past.

By one of the ex-husbands, perhaps.

He went over to the chest of drawers and looked at himself in the mirror that hung above them. The faint light gave him a ghostly pallor and silvered his light hair. He leaned close to the glass, jutting out his jaw. “If I get my hands on you, you’ll wish you never saw a phone.” In his mind’s eye he spoke not to his own image, but to that of some faceless villain on the other side of the mirror.

Then he turned and walked out of the room.

The wind hit him as soon as he was free of the doorway. It was full of the desert smell, of the long reaches of empty sand, sunbaked cactus, and dry sage. Old Saddleback Ranch sat at the apex of a fanlike rise; at its back were the Borrego hills and miles of rough wilderness lying westward between the desert and the sea. At the foot of the rise, giving the ranch a spectacular view, the Borrego desert stretched like a flat sink, as smooth in its lack of vegetation as if some giant had swept it bare by hand.

Beckett walked up the driveway to the open shelter where the cars stood. It was of redwood framing and corrugated iron, the crudest possible excuse for a garage. The moment he’d seen it, Beckett had begun to suspect what had proved the truth: that Old Saddleback Ranch had been recently and hopefully converted, by amateurs, from a down-at-heels wreck.

Some minutes later, in the Lodge kitchen, McGuffin was speaking to his wife. McGuffin was a tall, stooped man of forty with black hair going gray and a general air of leisurely indolence. “Mr. Beckett won’t be eating. Going to town.”

Mrs. McGuffin was all of fifteen years younger than her husband, a sandy blonde, stockily built, with fresh reddish complexion, dressed neatly in a blue-checkered house dress. She was opening cans on the sink. “That’s good. We’ll have enough steak, then. Gimme a pot for this soup, Mac, off the rack yonder.”

He handed her the pot. “I told his wife.”

A look passed between them. Mrs. McGuffin smiled, showing her white teeth. “How’d she like it?”

“Didn’t like it a bit. Took out over there, but he was high-tailing it by then. I saw his car go by,”

“I’m glad he’s gone,” Mrs. McGuffin said, adding water to the canned mixture in the pot. “He never says anything, but the way he looks at the stuff when you put it on for dinner—”

“Yeah,” McGuffin agreed. He picked up an apple from a bowl on the big refrigerator. “Like he expected better.”

Mrs. McGuffin put the pot containing the soup on the range, lit the butane burner beneath the pot, and said earnestly, “I’m not going to start spoiling them. We gotta make us a profit, Mac. We just gotta!”

“We’ll make it.” The apple crunched loudly between McGuffin’s teeth. He surveyed the big, shabby, smoke-marked kitchen with satisfaction. “We’ll have a new flock of dudes come Monday. What’re you worrying about?”

“Nothing, I guess. You going to pound them steaks?”

“Think they’ll need it?”

She looked at him disgustedly over the top of the pot. “Listen, Mac, them steaks is right off the behind of that bull where he sat hisself down. They’re tougher than a mother-in-law’s heart. Beat them till they holler.”

McGuffin smiled as though what his wife had said had amused him. He went to a cupboard drawer and rummaged in it, finally bringing up a cleaver.

“I said beat them, not whack them to ribbons,” she corrected scornfully.

“Okay, okay!” He inspected the drawer for another moment, then some sound at the door caused him to look round. “Oh, yes, ma’am.”

Priscilla Beckett stood in the hall doorway. “May I have a glass of water, please? I’d like to take some aspirin.” At McGuffin’s friendly nod she came forward into the kitchen. She looked about thirty, a dark-haired slender woman of medium height. She wore a blue linen dress with a bright red patent belt and red sport sandals to match. “Thank you,” she said to McGuffin, who had handed her the water.

Under their amazed eyes she downed six aspirin, two at a time.

“That’d make me sick,” Mrs. McGuffin volunteered. “You must have quite a headache.”

“Yes, I have.” Priscilla looked at the window, at the garden, barely visible in the dying twilight, and the road that led away toward town. “Why did Mr. Beckett go to town?”

McGuffin carefully inspected the bitten areas on the apple. “I don’t recall that he said, exactly, ma’am.”

Priscilla had put the aspirin box back into the pocket of the blue linen dress. She took her eyes off the window long enough to shoot a measuring look at the two people opposite. “Did anything happen? Did he get a message?”

“Arrrrh!” McGuffin seemed to have hurt a tooth on the apple. He explored his mouth with one finger, gingerly, his eyes squinted half-shut. “Bridgework,” he said to Mrs. Beckett.

She was not to be put off. A touch of anger sparkled in her striking gray eyes. “Did someone call him on the telephone?” She waited; McGuffin assumed an almost moronic expression of ignorance. She went on: “He’s been expecting a Mr. Todd to call.”

(Mr. Todd was the name of the lawyer who’d gotten her her last divorce. Beckett had never met him.)

“Todd? Hmmm?” McGuffin stared in perplexity at the blank wall. “It might of been Mr. Todd. Guess I didn’t get the name.” McGuffin’s experience as a landlord had been short, but his knowledge of people was extensive, and one thing he’d learned: there was no telling what a woman might do with the information she squeezed out of you. The most innocent remark could be dynamite.

Priscilla Beckett was tapping a toe on the worn planks of the kitchen floor. “The call came from the village?”

“Don’t know. The phone rang, and there he was. Course it wasn’t long distance. Could have been one of the other ranches, though.”

“It was the village, then,” said Priscilla. Her gray eyes regarded McGuffin’s unhappy writhings with contempt. “That’s where he’s gone. May I borrow your station wagon?”

McGuffin would have liked to refuse, but the brochure he and Marion had composed so enthusiastically together had contained the reckless phrase: The Ranch station wagon will be available at all times to guests … Something they’d copied from another booklet, no doubt. The car was good-looking, only two years old, and in excellent shape. It had been a bargain and the first decent transportation they’d ever owned. McGuffin’s heart flinched at the thought of Mrs. Beckett driving it, in a temper, over the rough road between Old Saddleback and Brickoven—ten miles of almost uninterrupted, spring-busting chuckholes. “I’d be happy to take you,” he offered.

“I prefer to go alone.”

Her gray eyes baffled him. They were the color of smoke—seething, cold icy smoke, if such there was anywhere, and they gave an effect of seeing not just himself, in jeans and plaid shirt and high cowboy boots, but further back, the old neighborhood, his background until he’d inherited Uncle Johnny’s little nest egg: an old and run-down and somewhat slummy district in Fort Worth, Texas. In other words, Mrs. Beckett could make him feel small.

Mrs. McGuffin rightly sized up her husband’s unhappy silence. “You’ll stay and have dinner first, won’t you, Mrs. Beckett?”

Priscilla’s glance flickered over the four empty soup cans on the sink. A touch of irony deepened the gray of her eyes. “As excellent as I know the meal will be, I’m afraid I’ll have to miss it. I, too, want to see Mr. Todd.” The lie about Mr. Todd amused her; she spoke it with relish. There was always this moment in her marriages when things began to go queer, when she began to fight fire with fire and deception with deception. She always felt rather good.

“I’ll get the car out for you,” said McGuffin dejectedly.

Mrs. McGuffin said nothing. She stirred the soup with ferocious interest and kept from looking at Mrs. Beckett.

McGuffin went out to the garage and in the darkness under the corrugated shelter he stroked the smooth, shining fender of the station wagon as one might pet a favorite horse. “Real pretty,” he said to himself. “A right smart little auto.” He got in, stepped on the starter, listened hopefully while it spun without catching. Then the motor came to life with a purr. “Oh hell.”

Mrs. Beckett was waiting at the door of her cabin. She had a red wool jacket thrown over her shoulders and her black hair was tied back with a net. McGuffin slid out and she got into the car, and under her touch it sprang away like a spurred mustang.

McGuffin stood in the drive, watching the red glow of the disappearing taillight. The desert looked wide and lonely under the darkening sky. Far in the distance, against another fringe of hills now black with night, the twinkling brightness of the little lights of Brickoven made him think somehow of a toy merry-go-round. McGuffin sighed, pushed his hat back, and drew a long breath of the dry, sage-smelling wind.

Beckett turned into the main street of Brickoven. The business district contained three blocks. There were vacant lots between the stores, cafés, and other establishments. Of the three bars in town, he preferred the Silver Spring; but this would be the first place Pris would look for him if she had followed. The Wahoo was noisy and dirty, and the Blue Mug was high-priced and sold the weakest drinks—it catered to the supposedly sophisticated tastes of the dudes from the ranches; and featured leopard-skin upholstery, a deep purple gloom, and a young male soprano who sang dirty songs. Of the three, it was always the emptiest. But Pris would look there finally too.

He wanted a drink—no, several drinks—and he wanted Pris out of the way and gone back to the ranch before starting out to find if he could the man who talked through his nose. The man who took the trouble to ring him up and then didn’t wait to say anything. The conniving bastard who was trying to get his goat …

It was then, as he drove slowly down the neon-lit street and looked in perplexity at the store fronts, that he thought of the Mexican cantina on the other side of town.

It couldn’t be exclusively Mexican; he recalled the crudely lettered sign, painted on the broad side of a fruit crate: Wines and Cocktails.

He turned the car at the next corner and drove left. A huge wash, the bed of some ancient flood, cut down out of the hills and divided the town. On the other side of a small wooden bridge lived the Spanish-speaking population of Brickoven. Most of the Mexicans were employed at the adobe brickworks which gave the town its name. Their houses were small, mere unpainted shacks. The streets were crooked and had neither paving nor arc lights. Beckett drove slowly; he thought the district looked a bit sinister after dark. The only open door with a light behind it was that of the cantina.

Beckett parked his car and went inside. The room was low-ceilinged, full of cigarette smoke and liquor fumes. It was illuminated by bare bulbs which left none of the squalor to the imagination. He sat down at a table and a waiter came over—a Mexican with a drooping mustache and a look of cynical patience. The waiter mopped at the table with a wet rag, then glanced at Beckett as if just noticing his presence.

Beckett was looking at the bar. He ran his tongue over his lips. He wondered if the Mexican bartender could be trusted to mix something decent. Well—he’d take a chance. “Give me a martini,” he told the waiter.

The waiter’s obsidian black eyes didn’t flicker. “Yes, sir.” He went away and appeared to hold a secretive conference with the bartender. There was much shrugging and many explosive gestures. The waiter returned to Beckett. “With gin?” he inquired.

Beckett told him in detail just how to make the martini. The waiter went back to the bartender and apparently relayed the information accurately, for the drink, when it came, was very good. Beckett sipped at it, felt some of the nervous anger drain out of him.

He was on the second martini when the girl walked in.

She was young—perhaps twenty-three or four, slender and small, reddish haired, with a noticeably square set to her shoulders and a quizzical manner of tilting her head. She looked around, standing just inside the door, obviously taking in the fact that she was the only woman in the place and that the Mexican men, behind their impassive faces, were studying her with curiosity and a touch of resentment.

Beckett set down his glass with a jerk, then brushed it in lifting his hand. It tipped and rolled, the liquid streaming on the table. Beckett didn’t appear to notice; he was staring at the girl. “Nancy!” He wasn’t aware that he had said the name aloud until the girl looked at him—looked quickly, and then glanced away again as if embarrassed.

It wasn’t really Nancy, of course—the resemblance must be superficial, more a matter of the way she held herself, the tilt of the head, than any physical likeness.

Because Nancy was dead…. Cover your awkwardness, you fool, he told himself.

He forced himself to rise, to stand as if he had been waiting for her, and in response—and feeling, perhaps, the animosity of the others in the room—the girl began to walk toward him.

Chapter Two

The resemblance seemed to grow as she walked across the floor, and when she stopped by the table and looked up, her head tilted, her lips touched by a half-smile, he froze in the grip of a shattering astonishment. He felt that he stood at the core of some cataclysm, in a vacuum in which speech or motion was impossible. He made some gesture finally—wooden, indefinite, neither inviting nor repelling. She followed it, then glanced into his face. “Hello.”

The voice was the same, and you can’t disguise a voice. “You are Nancy!” he cried.

She shook her head in indulgent denial. “No, I’m not. I’m Bonnie. Bonnie Broone.” She looked at a chair with dry significance. “Did you intend to ask me to sit down?”

“I’m sorry. Do join me.” He forced himself to get control of his runaway emotions. The manner was much unlike what Nancy’s had been—this girl was cool and smooth. Hard, perhaps. Nancy had been like a child, shy and uncertain. Of course, after all these years …

She was speaking. “I just got into town. I’m on my way to one of the guest ranches. Thought I’d look the place over, wandered in here, and—brrr! Mexicans don’t entertain their women over cocktails, it seems.”

“It seems not.” His answer sounded to him like the echoing of a parrot. Stiff, fumbling, gauche. What must the girl think of his behavior? He tried a smile, leaned toward her a little across the table. “May I order you a martini?”

She looked at the bartender, as he had done, and at the men scattered along the bar and at the other tables. “Everyone seems to be having wine, or beer. Do you suppose he knows how to mix a cocktail?”

“I just gave him six easy lessons, and now he does martinis perfectly,” Beckett told her. This was better. The pulse in his head had started to die down. He could breathe without feeling the iron constriction of fright. “I spilled mine”—he saw her glance flickering over the mess on the table—“like a fool. The waiter will bring a couple of new ones.”

He lifted two fingers in a gesture to the bartender.

“Accidents happen in the best, and so on,” she said easily, putting her purse on the table. It was a puffed suède bag, dark green, matching the suède pumps she thrust out toward him as she crossed her ankles. Her suit was green too—soft green wool with a sort of shining hair through it, like angora. The clothes looked expensive, and they complimented the russet-auburn of her hair. He offered his cigarette case and she took one out, accepted a light, blew smoke with a sighing breath. She sat sidewise to the table, looking at the room. “It’s a dump, isn’t it?”

“There are much better bars in the other part of town.” She didn’t look at him; she didn’t show any question as to why he wasn’t in those better bars. “I was always a sucker for atmosphere,” she said, “and it’s certainly thick in here.”

“Do you speak Spanish?”

“Very slightly. I can order eggs—huevos—and if I were dying of thirst I could point to my mouth and gasp, ‘Agua!’” Now she glanced directly at him. “Do you?”

He shrugged. “Oh—so-so. ¿Cómo es?”

She smiled, the half-smile that made it seem that he was looking at Nancy, who was dead. “Bueno. Y usted?”.

He spread his hands. “That’s my limit. I never did learn what came next.”

The waiter brought them the two martinis.

She lifted the small, thick-stemmed glass. “Here’s to a beautiful friendship.”

“To you.” He drank with her.

There was almost a feeling of camaraderie between them, now that the initial awkwardness had worn off. She commented on the cantina, wisecracked over the appearance of some of the customers, and let fall a few facts about herself. She was on vacation from San Francisco; she’d come down to the desert to get some of the fog out of her bones. She was crazy about horses, loved to ride, liked country life. She’d been married. The marriage was over. She had some independent means left her by her parents, but she also had a job. She was a legal secretary. The job was a tough one; she needed the change she had planned for herself here.

“I forgot to ask,” he said, “what ranch you’re stopping at?”

She flipped open the green purse and took out a card. “Old Saddleback. Sounds reliable.”

“That’s where I’m staying.”

She gave him a sidewise look. “How is it?”

“God knows I don’t want to disappoint you in advance, but the food’s awful. Take some supplies out with you to nibble on—fruit and crackers and cheese, if nothing else. The owner’s wife does the cooking, and she’s a fright.” His mind recoiled from its memories of canned soup, underdone potatoes, soggy salads, tough meats. “Better yet, go to another ranch. There’s more than one.”

She frowned, splitting the little card at the corner with her thumbnail. “I’d be throwing quite a bit of money away. I sent a check with my reservation.”

“Oh, Lord.”

“So I guess I’m stuck. Well, we can steal snacks together, anyway.”

“I’m married.” He blurted it out in the crudest possible way, and heard himself, heard the bald words, with almost a sensation of physical nausea. He gripped the glass, stared miserably into his cocktail. Why didn’t she just get up and leave him? He wouldn’t blame her.

He stole a glance at her.

She was sipping serenely at her own drink. “I thought you might be,” she said after a moment. “The good-looking ones always are.” She tapped her cigarette out upon the card, wadded the card, and dropped it to the floor. “You can bring your wife to share my crackers and roquefort. Or doesn’t she mind the food there?”

“She doesn’t seem to.”

“It wasn’t much after dinnertime when I walked in here,” Bonnie Broone said thoughtfully. “Did you just skip a meal?”

“I couldn’t face it!” He groaned; he managed to put a bit of mockery, a touch of overdoing, into it. “The mystery of the thing is what’s getting me. I’m never sure but what she’s confused ground cork with the coffee, or made the piecrust with laundry starch. Or dropped a few chunks of old inner tube into the stew.”

She smiled. “Sounds lovely. Your wife didn’t come with you tonight?”

“No.” He bit off the word. In the back of his thoughts was the conviction that Pris would have followed. Pray God she didn’t think of this cantina.

“You haven’t told me much about yourself except that you are married.”

He made a shrugging, deprecatory motion. “If you’re interested—I’m pushing thirty, I’ve been married exactly five weeks, my people were Presbyterians, I grew up in Portland, Oregon, I went to college for two years and nine days, and I like girls who let strange men buy their drinks.”

Her eyes flickered at the last few words; he had the sinking feeling that he might have offended her. But still she hadn’t hesitated about walking over …

“Two years and nine days? Isn’t that an odd length of time for a college career?” She took her own cigarette case from her bag, put a cigarette between her lips, waited for him to offer a light.

“The third year was just going to be too tough,” he admitted. “I ducked out after the third session on Parasitism in the Lobster.”

She waited until the new cigarette was going good, then asked the question he dreaded. “What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a singer.”

It was too quick. It sounded defensive. It sounded as if you expected people to accuse you of thinking up a soft line to keep out of work and to live on your wife’s money without embarrassment.

“A professional?” she asked. There was nothing in her voice, nothing in her eyes that remotely resembled contempt or even vulgar curiosity.

“I’m not doing anything right now,” he said. “When this—uh—honeymoon thing is over, we’re going East. New York. I’m going to give television a whirl.” Into his mind’s eye came a picture, a painful composite of all the agency waiting rooms he’d known, the final dingy one where he’d heard of the job in Las Vegas….

She broke in upon his thoughts. “I see a piano in the corner. Do you suppose they’d mind if we used it?”

He looked. The piano hadn’t registered with him before; it was in a dark nook, pushed out of the way and draped with a dingy cover, silenced long ago by the juke box full of tinkling Mexican songs. “I’ll ask the waiter. Do you play?”

“Popular stuff,” she said lazily.

The waiter came, took the request back to the bartender, argued, made piano-playing gestures as though the bartender were deaf and had to be made to understand, then returned to Beckett. “With music?” he asked.

“With fingers,” Beckett said, repeating the piano-playing movement in an exaggerated way. The waiter smiled cynically.

“It will be all right, señor.”

“Cut the canned stuff and we’ll entertain the customers,” Beckett told him.

The waiter’s black eyes grew meditative, the overgrown mustache drooped. “In the juke box are many nickels,” he suggested delicately.

“Here. This will take care of any loss.” Beckett handed him a couple of dollars. “Two new drinks, amigo. Bring them to the piano.”

The girl rose, took her bag, and followed Beckett to the dark corner where the piano stood. Beckett pulled off the dirty covering and touched a few keys. It wasn’t bad. The girl came close, then leaned over and ripped out a series of chords. Her hands were very white in the gloom—almost ghostly, Beckett thought. He listened. He could see that she played with finesse and sureness. Her technique was firm and lively. He liked it.

She pulled out the stool and sat down, and began to pick out a tune. “How’s about ‘Somewhere’?” she asked. “Like it?”

The melody started, and he let his voice come up from a whisper, the way he’d been doing that night in Las Vegas when Pris had decided she wanted to meet him.

“Somewhere …

Somewhere I’ll find you—

To know you,

To tell you

How lonely I’ve been …”

He was leaning on the piano, she was looking up at him, her head tilted. It was good to be singing. The Mexicans were looking at him from all parts of the room. He wondered how many of them understood English, and whether the wistful and rather pathetic words had any effect. The faces were impassive.

Through the open door he could see a patch of velvet dark, a few spiraling bugs, a match flare as someone out there lit a cigarette—some passer-by drawn by the singing. Then he thought of Pris. She’d hear him, she’d know who it was, if she were anywhere in the vicinity, even driving past. His voice faltered.

The girl didn’t stop. The music continued softly under the touch of her fingers. “What is it? Lose a beat?”

Silly to be upset, worried. If Pris was out there, the damage was done, she’d already seen him. So what? “Let’s try something else.”

“Sure.” Her hands drifted about—a melody began to shape itself in the scattered chords.

Wanting you …

Every day I am wanting you

Every night I am longing to …

Hold you …

He had actually opened his mouth, formed the first word with his lips, before the thing hit him.

She went on playing slowly and softly, not looking up—watching the keys. She must have heard the tom sound he made. It was hardly human—it didn’t seem human to him. “Something wrong?” she asked, the melody making ghost echoes under her words.

“That song—”

“Don’t you like it?”

“Like it?” He choked on the words. “Nancy and I always—” He cut it off; he was suddenly full of heart stopping fear. “You are Nancy!”

The melody continued, softly, plaintively, inexorably. “No, I’m not. I told you. I’m Bonnie Broone.”

“There are too many things—the hair, the voice, the way you hold your head. And now the song—”

The piano didn’t falter. He had the feeling that he was talking against more than the girl, against more than her passive opposition. The piano conjured up remembrance, and mockery, and old pain, all in one. He leaned against it, gripping the wood with his fingers.

“Stop!”

She went on playing. “You act as if you were afraid of me,” she said. “Do I frighten you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry. I wanted you to like me.”

He stared down at her bent head, the words he would like to say reeling in his brain. He thought: It’s crazy, but I love you. You’re the spirit, or fetch, or whatever they call the returned image, of the only woman I ever really wanted, the one woman who made me feel like a man.

“You’re trembling,” she said. “Are you ill?”

“No—not ill.”

“Do you want to try another song?”

His mind seemed to emerge suddenly from whatever shadow had possessed it. He had a clear, icy view of himself, ass that he was, acting like a fool because this girl, this stranger, had played a tune familiar to him. That’s all it was—an old, familiar song. Nancy hadn’t even liked it, much; she’d let him sing it to her because it expressed something he’d wanted to say, something that would sound too silly put into matter-of-fact prose.

He was getting a grip on himself. Perhaps it was because of the girl’s casual coldness. Perhaps it was the unwinking attention of the Mexicans. “I’ll sing this one.

“Wanting you …

Every day l am wanting you …”

He brought it out, a husky whisper that ran around the room, that made everything very quiet; a lonely sound that made the night seem lonelier. He thought once that the girl’s hands fumbled on the keys, that her bent face concealed some expression that she didn’t want him to see.

“Every night I am longing to …”

He became aware of an inner weariness, a depth of soul tiredness that sickened him. How foolish it had been to try to duplicate what he had had with Nancy. Pris’s money had blinded him; he’d fooled himself, tried to convince himself that this was love again, because of the security he thought Pris might offer.

He went on singing. It was only gradually that he realized that the Mexicans were no longer paying attention, that they were watching the door. He looked over that way. Pris stood there against the dark, looking very chic in the blue linen dress with its wide red belt. He quit singing.

The girl glanced at the door as if she, too, had been expecting some arrival. “Your wife?”

“Yes.”

“I think the concert is over.” Bonnie Broone rose from the stool, took her bag from the top of the piano, and sauntered back to the table where the two cocktail glasses stood, unnecessarily close together, and a dead giveaway. Pris’s gaze followed her, took in the glasses. Pris started across the floor.

Feeling like a sheep, a fool, Beckett followed the girl.

They met at the table. The two women sized each other up. Then, as cool as mint, Bonnie Broone said, “Won’t you join us, Mrs. Beckett?”

“I’ll be glad to.” Pris sat down in a chair the waiter placed for her. The waiter showed a glint of amusement. Beckett got the impression that the whole room was amused, that all the other customers were inwardly grinning over the discomfiture of the Americano with his two hostile women.

“I’ll have whatever it is you two have been drinking,” Pris decided with dangerous humility.

“Martinis. Three,” Beckett told the waiter.

“I heard the song,” Pris offered. “Sorry I broke things up.”

Bonnie didn’t reply, though the remark had been directed her way. She was taking in the details of Priscilla’s appearance a little at a time, with short, surreptitious glances.

“You didn’t break it up,” Beckett said. “It just never did get started. Did it, Miss Broone?”

Their eyes met. “We’d need more practice to get anywhere,” she said.

Pris studied her nails. “Perhaps that can be arranged.”

“We’ll meet again,” Beckett said.

Pris was obviously trying to figure him out, trying to find out if they were old friends and if they’d met here by arrangement, on a date. For some reason, and in spite of his former nervous dread that she might follow, Beckett found that he hardly cared. He had come into town to find the lousy bastard who had been making anonymous phone calls, and that didn’t seem to matter any more, either. The situation was empty and tasteless and—admit it—shabby.

The only thing that had any fire, any ache, was the memory of Nancy.

The martinis came. Miss Broone waited only long enough to drink hers with decent slowness. Then she pushed back her chair and stood up. “I’m awfully glad you came to my rescue, Mr. Beckett. The martinis were swell.” She held out a hand, right in front of Pris’s nose.

“I’ll see you to your car.” He got up, hearing Pris gasp with anger and seeing the look, hard as flint, that came into her face.

Chapter Three

It was cool outside and the night wind had the faraway smell of desert hills in it. A couple of cactus owls were making a soft whooooing noise in a thicket across the road. The lights of Brickoven were a cheerful glow in the distance.

She turned beside the car. “You needn’t have come, really.”

He couldn’t see her very clearly. He could make out the shape of the car by the glitter of the chrome bumpers and the gleam along the top of the roof. There was a pale spot that must be her uplifted face. What he wanted to do now, the urge that seized and shook him, was something he must not do. “I had to be sure that you got away all right. You’ll see a sign on a post in town—Old Saddleback—and an arrow pointing to the right, about three blocks beyond where you turn into the main stem.”

“Thanks.”

He waited, but she made no move to get into the car. He could hear her breathing, deep and sighing, as though she liked the smell of the desert wind. She had turned so that the glow from the cantina penciled a pale line along her profile. “Good night for now,” he said.

“Good night.”

He wished that he could see her better, could read the expression in her eyes. “I’ll see you at the ranch tomorrow.”

“Perhaps we will meet each other there.”

Silence closed in between them. The only sounds were the wind and the soft hooting of the owls in the thicket. “You think I’m a fool,” he said.

“You haven’t any idea what I think,” she answered, and now she opened the door of the car and slid in under the wheel. The lights bloomed on the dash when she started the motor, and he caught the smile she wore—the half-smile that was a kind of question too.

He said it inside himself: “Good night … Nancy.”

She looked through the window at him. She was pulling on a pair of black kid driving gloves she’d picked up off the seat. Her hair was full of russet lights. “You’d better go in to your wife.”

He turned swiftly in reproof, not waiting until the car rolled. Pris was still at the table. The Mexicans were watching her intently. She had taken a bunch of toothpicks out of the little cup and was building a tower in the cocktail glass. The whole thing tottered and crumpled when Beckett bumped the table in sitting down.

He thought a sigh went through the room. Pris gave him a glance that was poisonous.

His coming had been a signal; the waiter arrived with two more drinks. Beckett took the liquor down a way. He was beginning all at once to feel light-headed and drowsy. Of course, he thought, he’d been nuts to drink on an empty stomach. He tried to think of something to say, to make conversation with Pris, but there seemed nothing except explanations, and these he perversely refused to utter. Let her think what she liked.

It was Pris who spoke finally. “You’d better have something to eat, hadn’t you, darling?” She appeared to lean toward him out of a fog. “You look very drunkie all of a sudden.”

“I am drunk,” he decided.

“Let’s not have that again. I’ll order something for you.”

He waited in silence until the waiter put the bowl of chili and the plate of wilted crackers in front of him. Then he rose slowly, with what he thought was dignity, and stalked outside to the car.

He drove to the ranch, searching ahead of him all the way for the lights of Bonnie Broone’s car. He didn’t see them, and when he turned into the Old Saddleback drive no strange car was parked at the Lodge. He went on to the garage; his headlights swept the cars which were already there. They were all familiar. There was the Cadillac belonging to the fat middle-aged couple with sinus trouble. There was the new Ford owned by the jerk who wore lavender riding pants. Plus Miss Toffet’s ancient Packard—Miss Toffet was about thirty-eight, a small, sunburned mummy with an incessant high giggle like a colt on a sunny day feeling his oats. These were there, and no more.

Beckett parked his car in its stall, switched off the lights, and left. At the end of the garage he almost bumped into a shape which seemed to have risen from the ground to lean against a supporting timber.

“Evening,” said McGuffin.

“Hello,” said Beckett. Then his anger burst. “You gave me a hell of a fright. Why didn’t you speak?”

McGuffin was picking his teeth. He went on picking them. When he smiled, Beckett could make out the white shine in his mouth. “Don’t know. Guess I figured you saw me.”

“If there’s anything I hate, it’s a damned creep.”

McGuffin said nothing. Actually, there was little to say unless the man wanted a fight.

Beckett went on to his cabin, walking unevenly, loathing himself. Why did he always have to open his big mouth? He should have ignored McGuffin. What was the man, anyway? Some kind of transplanted hick, trying to make a go of a dude ranch that didn’t have a prayer of yielding a profit. The bad food would soon take care of the customers. Then McGuffin could start going barefooted again.

Beckett went into the cabin and without taking off any of his clothes, or turning on the light, he fell upon the bed. He lay there looking at the dark. He could catch a whiff of Pris’s perfume now and then from the row of bottles on the dresser. A tap was dripping in the bath.

He tried to think back, to figure out why the evening had turned into such a mess. He shouldn’t have gone to town, he thought—the nut on the telephone, making those anonymous calls was even more deserving of being ignored than McGuffin.

If he hadn’t gone to town, he wouldn’t have met the girl who looked so amazingly, so frighteningly like Nancy.

He turned, as if the thought of her stung him, and looked at the big window and the star-spattered sky. Loneliness engulfed him as he remembered the girl he had loved a long time ago.

McGuffin watched Beckett’s departure without any feeling of anger. In McGuffin’s mind, he himself was a man of property, of importance, while Beckett—since Mrs. Beckett had the money, obviously, and wrote all their checks—Beckett was no better than a tramp. He could be ignored.

McGuffin waited by the garage until Priscilla brought in the station wagon. When he was alone with it, he took a flashlight from his pocket and inspected the car for damage. There were no dents or gravel pits in the fenders. One spring looked down a bit, but it might have been so before she made the trip. McGuffin squatted on his heels, flicked the light about, and meditated. He enjoyed being in the open, and alone. He was pleasantly aware that all around him lay land that was his, and that the Lodge and the cabins were upon it. The wind that blew here was his, the smell of sage, the hooting of owls, the sparkle of starshine that fell from the sky. All of these were a part of his comforting wealth.

And the car—the beautiful car that was so sleek, so strong.

On the second day following this, shortly after noon, Miss Rachel Murdock heard the doorbell ring. She was in her room, lying on an exercise board with her feet fifteen inches higher than her head, and doing belly-ins. This was a new activity, and one that irritated her sister Jennifer almost into fits. Spinster ladies on the far side of sixty were much better off knitting, or collecting for bird refuges, or quilting for Eskimo orphans, than they were worrying about their figures. As for health, in Jennifer’s opinion it was best improved by ginger tea, a hard mattress, and walks. Lying with your head down was dangerous.

Miss Rachel was taking the risk. She had on a pair of rompers which she had made in private, in order not to annoy her sister further, and her silky white hair was tied on top of her head with a ribbon. When the doorbell rang, she paused with her stomach drawn up into her lungs, and waited to see what Jennifer would do.

Jennifer had had several skirmishes during the past week with steel-willed, fast-talking, door-to-door salesmen. She was having a peephole installed on the front door, and meanwhile she was inclined to ignore the bell.

Miss Rachel put a hand on the floor and prepared to get off the board when she heard Jennifer’s steps finally go by in the hall outside. There was a short spell of silence, then the murmur of a masculine voice. Miss Rachel, bitten by curiosity, went to the door and opened it a crack. Her room was at the top of the stairs with the front hall just below. She listened. It was a man, and Jennifer was letting him in.

Her tone of voice even seemed friendly. This seemed odd, as Jennifer’s attitude toward male visitors was inclined to resemble that of a Mother Superior toward a rapist climbing the wall of a nunnery. She put the visitor into the parlor and then came up the steps. Miss Rachel stood so that the rompers were out of sight.

Miss Jennifer actually wore a smile, softening the battle-ax propriety she ordinarily affected. “We have a visitor, Rachel. Rod Bruell. You remember—Agatha’s boy.”

Miss Rachel nodded through the crack in the door. Rod Bruell was a distant relative, the son of a second cousin on their mother’s side. He’d been a variety of things, mostly theatrical; right now, she understood, he was a television producer in Hollywood. A nice man, well-mannered, good-looking, friendly, and companionable.

Jennifer added: “He asked me to see if you’d come down. There’s something he wants to ask you.”

“I’ll be there immediately.”

“You’re dressed, aren’t you?” Jennifer asked, trying to peer around the door.

“I’ve been exercising.”

“Oh. I thought you looked unnaturally flushed,” Jennifer reproved. She withdrew, as though Miss Rachel’s current madness might be catching. “I’ll tell him you’re coming:.”

“Yes, do that.”

Jennifer went away, and Miss Rachel threw on her clothes quickly and combed her hair. In about five minutes she looked her usual self, a sort of Dresden-china figure in sprigged dimity, smelling of lavender, with only the wicked glint in her eyes to give hint of the mischief that spun in her head. She found Jennifer and Mr. Bruell in the parlor.

He rose as Miss Rachel entered. They hadn’t seen him in perhaps a year. She recalled, as she shook hands, that within that time he had been married and divorced—a very short and chaotic affair, according to Agatha, his mother. There were silver patches over his temples now. He was perhaps thirty-five or -six, good-looking in a way that was not particularly striking, with well-groomed clothes and a general air of health and vitality.

His handclasp was firm and warm. “You’ll forgive me for barging in without telephoning in advance?”

“Of course,” Miss Rachel told him, Jennifer echoing.

He sat down again. “I was driving into downtown L. A.—I haven’t been there in years, it seems, since my work keeps me out in Hollywood—and I was puzzling over this affair as I drove. Suddenly I found myself at the intersection of Parchly Heights and Sunset Boulevard, and I thought about you and wondered whether you might help me.”

Miss Jennifer’s face stiffened a little, as though some warning were echoing in her mind. She looked sharply from Rod Bruell to Miss Rachel.

He folded his hands across his knees and inspected a fresh manicure. “I was married, you know. Not for long. I don’t want to talk about that, or any of my troubles—in fact, I haven’t any compared to this other thing. You see, it involves my ex-wife. She has remarried.”

“I understand,” said Miss Rachel.

“She’s married a fellow a little younger than herself. He’s a singer. She picked him up in Las Vegas. I gather that at the time he was rather down on his luck. Broke.”

“Your former wife has money of her own?”

Rod Bruell nodded. “Not a large amount. She has income from a trust, and a few rentals in San Francisco—business properties.”

“This affair you wanted to talk about to me concerns her recent marriage?”

“Yes.” He hesitated, and a flicker of discomfort showed in his eyes. “There’s something in the background, though, which will have to be explained first. You see, Priscilla was married twice before she married me. There are three ex-husbands. I’ve met the other two, and—well, this will seem the incredible part”—He took out a handkerchief and coughed into it briefly.

The room grew very quiet. Miss Jennifer’s back was as stiff as a poker and her face betrayed her inner opinion of Priscilla’s marrying marathon. Bruell continued—“but each one of these other men claims that Priscilla tried to murder him during their marriage. I know she almost killed me.”

Now the quiet was deathly. Jennifer took on a pink haze; she seemed to radiate heat. Miss Rachel gave her a nervous glance and said, “Each of you?”

“Every last one.”

“How long has she been married this time?”

“Just a few weeks.”

“Has something happened?”

“I’m afraid—yes. Or, rather, it’s going to. A friend of mine called me from this little town—it’s out near the desert, and there are dude ranches thereabouts—and he’d seen Pris with her new husband and he thought trouble was brewing.”

She frowned at him. “Outside of risking an unpleasant scene by warning him—and perhaps being misunderstood—I don’t see what else you could do.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that.”

Jennifer had been getting up steam all this while; now she exploded. “Rachel! Don’t you dare meddle in this business!”

“We’re trying to prevent a crime,” Miss Rachel pointed out virtuously.

“I know what you’re doing,” said Jennifer. “You’re cooking up a horror. I can smell it.”

“What does it smell like?” Miss Rachel wondered interestedly.

“Brimstone.”

Bruell seemed a trifle disconcerted. “I—I wouldn’t want to cause an argument between you. Miss Rachel, I thought you carried out your investigations on a semi-professional basis.”

“I want to,” Miss Rachel said. “I even made plans to have a small office—I was going to convert one of the pantries—and have a dictating machine and a part-time secretary. I get lots of requests to have these cases written up, you know. As it is, I have to turn them over to a true-crime writer. Jennifer won’t let me work the way I should.”

“I can imagine the characters who’d be creeping in and out of the house all hours of the day and night,” said Miss Jennifer. “Office, indeed! Pest hole!”

There was a short, uncomfortable silence. Rod Bruell looked surreptitiously at his hat. Forestalling flight, Miss Rachel asked, “Aren’t your motives a little mixed up in this?”

He stared embarrassedly at the floor. “What do you mean?”

“Since you are not acquainted with the new husband, your worry could hardly concern his welfare. Therefore I must conclude that your real anxiety is for your ex-wife.”

A touch of color stung his healthy cheeks. “You’re right. I’m still very fond of Pris. This fellow she’s recently married—from what I’ve heard of him, I’m afraid he’s apt to give Pris a shabby deal. And she won’t take it. She has a temper. She loses it very easily.”

Miss Rachel appeared to think it over. Finally she said, “These murder attempts—what were they like? Do you know the details of those made against the first two men?”

“Just the bare facts. Colonel Nova tripped on a piece of string tied at the top of a flight of stairs. He has a stiff leg now, but his neck is intact. John Wilder—he was the first—says that Pris baked and served him a poison pie. I don’t think he suffered any permanent damage.”

She waited; he was biting his lip. Plainly he hated to talk about what had happened to himself.

At this moment Miss Rachel’s big black cat walked into the room and looked things over with a lazy green eye. She’d just had lunch. She made some remarks in cat language about the quality of the food, then sat down to lick her fluffy black fur. Bruell said, “Good-looking cat you have there. What’s his name?”

“Her name is Samantha,” said Miss Rachel. “You asked that same question the last time you were here. Aren’t you going to tell me how your wife almost killed you?”

“She tipped over a canoe in the middle of a lake. I can’t swim. I damned near drowned.” He said it all in a rush, and suddenly in the depths of his eyes Miss Rachel saw the fear—the horror and helplessness he had felt when the boat was over and he had found himself in the water.

“You’re still fond of her?” she asked with a touch of disbelieving.

“She didn’t mean to hurt me,” he said quickly. “It was just—temper. She said I could swim if I wanted to, that I was just too lazy to learn, and then something about her father teaching her by throwing her into deep water. I’m afraid I told her something uncomplimentary about her father at that point. The next instant I was flopping into the drink.”

“How did you get out?”

“Some people in a nearby boat finally got me. Pris didn’t seem to understand, even at the end, that I actually couldn’t swim.”

“It sounds like a tantrum,” Miss Rachel admitted. “But the first two attempts couldn’t have been so casual. Baking a pie takes a bit of time. Even tying a string to the top of a flight of stairs can’t be the impulse of an instant.”

He squirmed on the chair, and Miss Rachel realized that this was something he had figured out for himself and didn’t want to believe.

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About the Author

Dolores Hitchens (1907–1973) was a highly prolific mystery author who wrote under multiple pseudonyms and in a range of styles. A large number of her books were published under the moniker D. B. Olsen, and a few under the pseudonyms Noel Burke and Dolan Birkley, but she is perhaps best remembered today for her later novel, Fool’s Gold, published under her own name, which was adapted into the film Bande á part directed by Jean-Luc Godard.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1949 by Dolores Hitchens

Cover design by Ian Koviak

ISBN: 978-1-5040-6695-2

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