The Almost Perfect Murder by Hulbert Footner (reading the story of the TXT) 📕

testimony was making Mr. Punch

sweat, but he couldn’t say anything without showing his hand. However,

Mephisto interfered.

 

“What’s all this got to do with Harris’s shooting Danforth?” he

protested. “You ain’t getting anywhere, miss.”

 

“I’m trying to prove that Danforth was an out-and-out scoundrel,” she

said sweetly. “If I can show Harris that he has a first-rate defence,

he’ll confess and we can all go home.”

 

Mephisto was obliged to make believe he was satisfied, but I doubted it.

 

“Danforth was a scoundrel all right,” muttered Harris.

 

“But I’ll never confess!”

 

Anne Boleyn took a new line. “Where did you get that costume?”

 

“What’s that got to do with it?” he answered sullenly. “I’ve nothing

to conceal. I hired it at Steele Bros., costumiers.”

 

“Who sent you to them?”

 

“President Denby. He told me he seen this Turkish costume there just

my size, and I went and got it.”

 

“How was President Denby masked tonight?”

 

“I don’t know. Nobody knew. He said he could have more fun if they

didn’t recognise him for the president.”

 

“And treasurer Ebbitt?”

 

“I don’t know that neither. He’s a serious-minded man. Maybe he

didn’t come to the ball.”

 

Mme. Storey then resumed her original line of questioning. “When did

President Denby and Danforth first quarrel?” she asked.

 

“Just about that time,” said Harris. “Six weeks ago.”

 

“This would be just after Danforth had been cleared by the police of

complicity in the Creighton Woodley robbery.”

 

“Yeah. Mr. Denby wasn’t on to him then. He wanted to show his

confidence in Danforth and he offered to put him in on the Executive

Committee. But Danforth refused, and there was trouble.”

 

“Did you overhear their quarrel?”

 

“Well, they were in the private office with the door closed and I was

outside,” said Harris. “I just heard a word or two.”

 

“What was it?”

 

“Well, I heard Danforth shout out: ‘When I gave you the layout I

thought it was only talk! You tricked me!’ I didn’t pay no attention.

I knew Danforth was crooked.”

 

“What else?”

 

“Later Danforth hollered: ‘I was an honest man until this happened!

You made a crook out of me!’ That’s a laugh, all right. Mr. Denby

making a crook out of that rat!”

 

“Did you tell Mr. Denby what you overheard?”

 

“No, I made out I didn’t hear nothing just to save trouble.”

 

“Did you hear anything else?”

 

“The last thing Danforth said was: ‘I got hold of the receipt you gave

Tony Yellow for the money. Never mind how. I got it!’ And with that

he came bursting out of the private office–-”

 

Mr. Punch could stand no more. He sprang up, trembling with rage.

 

“You lie!” he cried.

 

“Liar yourself,” retorted Harris. “If Mr. Denby was here, he’d bear me

out! He’s a good friend of mine.”

 

“This is Mr. Denby,” said Anne Boleyn. “Let him speak for himself.”

 

Now, Mr. Punch was a quick-witted man, and he realised if he delayed an

instant in taking up her challenge he would only come off worse in the

end. He snatched off his mask.

 

“Sure I’m Denby,” he cried to Harris. “And I was a good friend of

yours, Frank. But you can’t save yourself from this murder by a tissue

of lies!”

 

The false nose and chin still grotesquely obscured his real features,

but they all knew him now. A murmur of amazement went around. Poor

Harris gaped at him like a clown. The man’s instinct warned him he had

been tricked, but his wits were not sharp enough to work it out.

 

Mr. Punch then turned furiously on my employer. “Who is this woman

that’s so keen about our private affairs?” he cried. “Take off your

mask, miss, and let’s have a look at you!”

 

She coolly lifted it, and faced him out with a dry smile. Mr. Punch

went staggering back.

 

“Rosika Storey!” he gasped. “Oh, my God! The detective!”

 

For a moment there was complete silence in the room. Mme. Storey’s

beauty and her contemptuous assurance laid a spell on them. In her

superb black gown she looked the queen. They stared at her

open-mouthed. Nobody moved.

 

Then Mr. Punch began to recover himself. A dark flush spread

underneath his make-up. He smiled grimly.

 

“Do you realise what this means?” he said to the others. “This woman

is out to smash our organisation. She cares nothing about the murder.

She’s after our benefit funds. Well, you’re all members. Going to

stand for it?”

 

“No! No!” they cried. It was strange to see how they instantly drew

together when their money was threatened. Danforth’s wife and his

mistress forgot their jealousy; even Frank Harris, the poor fool they

were trying to railroad to the chair, joined in with them. He was one

of those morons who can conceive of nothing higher than a blind loyalty

to the organisation. Mephisto obviously was hand in glove with Mr.

Punch now as he had been throughout.

 

They all began to shout together: “She did it! She did it! She shot

Danforth. I saw her do it, I’ll swear to it!”

 

Harris put in: “She come between me and Zuleika and fired at him

crouching down. I felt her there. I smelled her perfume. I’ll swear

to it!”

 

It was like an infernal chorus.

 

“We’ll all swear to it! She can’t get off!”

 

Which shows how much dependence you can place on human testimony!

 

Mr. Punch, however, had more sense.

 

“Quiet, you fools!” he shouted with an angry gesture. “You couldn’t

touch her. She has too much prestige. She’s too clever for you.

She’d go on the stand and make monkeys of you all. Besides, there’s

this other strange woman. They’re in together. They would support

each other on the stand.”

 

Mephisto furiously shook his fist at us. “These spies shan’t wreck our

organisation!” he cried.

 

“Sure!” agreed Mr. Punch cunningly. “The money is rolling in without

the slightest risk to us, and we want to enjoy it! If we stick

together we five can make a little central finance committee.”

 

This appealed to their cupidity.

 

“What will we do with them?” cried Mephisto.

 

All faces were unmasked now except for Mephisto’s grinning headpiece.

 

“Well,” began Mr. Punch. He paused, and that hideous smile spread

between hooked nose and chin. “She’s a clever woman, but she and her

fellow spy are only mortal…. And this is a nice quiet house!”

 

The two women cried out a little. They were willing to swear our lives

away, but outright murder scared them. As for me, all the blood in my

veins turned to water. I moved closer to Mme. Storey. She was smiling

scornfully. The black pit of the front drawing-room yawned at our

backs.

 

“Leave this to me,” Mr. Punch said to the women. “I’ll take the

responsibility. All you’ve got to do is to stand by me afterward.

There’s a grand cellar under this house,” he went on, smiling. “And

the family won’t be back for three months.”

 

Mephisto drew the gun he had kept all this time and coolly reloaded it.

 

“Put it up!” said Mr. Punch sharply. “We’ll do this quietly.”

 

Mme. Storey affected to laugh with quiet amusement.

 

“Look in the back room,” she said.

 

All five heads turned as one. She touched my hand, and we melted

noiselessly into the darkness behind us.

VI

We had only one second’s respite, of course. They discovered they had

been tricked, and Mr. Punch yelled: “Watch the basement stairs! It’s

the only way out! Come on, Ebbitt!”

 

Mme. Storey seized my hand, and we headed diagonally across the front

drawing-room for the main hall. As we reached it, our pursuers came

tumbling out of the middle room. The grand stairway was immediately

before us, and we sprang up. There was no other place to go. Terror

lent wings to my heels. I never ran so fast in my life.

 

As Mr. Punch came through the lower hall, he paused to press some

switches, and the whole central well of the house became flooded with

light. Punch and Mephisto leaped up the stairs after us.

 

We opened the first door we came to, ran in, slammed it, and shot a

bolt. Almost immediately the two men flung themselves against the

other side. This was one of the principal bedrooms of the house.

 

Immediately it was only too apparent to us that the windows were

boarded up like those below, and we could neither escape that way nor

summon help. We had only run from one trap into another.

 

We heard the men run along the hall outside, and immediately guessed

there was a way into our room from the front. I was for trying to find

the communicating door, but she prevented me.

 

“Must get out of this,” she muttered.

 

She softly drew the bolt, and we stole out into the stair hall again.

Frank Harris and the two women were watching at the foot of the stairs.

All three of them were infected with the blood lust now.

 

The third floor of the house was all cut up into a maze of small rooms

and passages in which we lost ourselves hopelessly. In the dark it was

impossible to figure out the plan. We could no longer hear our

pursuers—crouching in wait at some strategic corner, we supposed. It

was agonising not to know.

 

“There must be back stairs,” whispered Mme. Storey. “Look for them.”

 

In slowly feeling our way along the wall of a passage, I leave you to

imagine my feelings when my groping fingers suddenly touched fingers

exploring from the other direction.

 

I screamed like a madwoman. Luckily the man was scarcely less startled

than I. Mme. Storey and I dashed away down the passage, collided with

the wall at the end, crossed some sort of open space, and hid ourselves

in another passage before we dared draw breath.

 

“We are in the front of the house now,” she whispered. “We must find

the back stairs.”

 

Finally the suspense became unsupportable. Having crept back to the

beginning of the passage, we peeped around the corner. There they

crouched waiting, Punch and the Devil, the latter still masked.

 

They sprang at us and we fled back through the passage. We were

quicker than they. There was a door around the corner, and we got it

closed and bolted behind us as they flung themselves against it. I

heard Punch roar with laughter.

 

“We’ve got them now!” he yelled.

 

We were in a small bedroom, evidently a servant’s room, with a window

opening on the air shaft. Through the skylight at the top of the shaft

we saw that day was breaking. I heard Punch say: “Drive your foot

through a panel of the door!”

 

A tiny room opening on a shaft and those fiends outside! Our position

seemed absolutely desperate and I’m afraid I began to cry. Mme.

Storey’s face was sternly composed.

 

The door held for a brief while against Mephisto’s furious blows, and

Mme. Storey still had a trick up her sleeve. There was the window of

another room cater-cornered across the air shaft, and while I steadied

her she leaned far out of our window and got it opened. We then with

considerable difficulty crossed over from sill to sill. I never could

have made it had not the Devil been at my heels.

 

The room we entered was evidently lived in, and I