Chapter 7

Death Before Dawn

Yet if an intruder---the murderer---was in there, I'd warn him if I knocked on the door. There seemed only one way of finding out. I stooped down and looked into the keyhole.

All I could see was the desk at the far side of the room. The lamp on the desk wasn't on and the light that shone on the desk came from the right and couldn't be from the overhead bulb.

A flashlight? Someone standing still on the right side of the room, holding a flashlight pointing at the desk. But why would anyone be standing there?

Something else caught my eye; there was a lot of chemical equipment shoved back under the desk itself. Bottles, a rack of test tubes, a retort---and a DeWar flask.

I'm no chemist, but I do know what a DeWar flask is. And the moment I saw it, I knew how Elsie Willis had been killed. Knew, rather, why we had heard the sound of her fall downstairs when we heard it, just after Paul Bailey had walked into the living room.

As I straightened up from the keyhole I lost my balance.

Instinctively my hand grasped the doorknob to regain my equilibrium. And the doorknob rattled!

That ended the advantage of secrecy, and I hurled myself through the doorway.

The flashlight was there, but it was not being held. It was lying flat on the bureau.

There was no one in sight. The killer, then, was behind me on the same side of the room as the bed! I tried to turn around---too late. I didn't even feel the blow that felled me. . . .

Charlie Lightfoot was bending over me, and past him I could see a blur of other faces. Then my eyes came more nearly to focus and I could make out Annabel among them.

Charlie was saying, “Bill, are you all right?”

I sat up and put my hand back of my head. It hurt like hell. I took my hand away again.

“Bill!” It was Annabel's voice this time. “Are you all right?”

“I---I guess so,” I said. And then, quite unnecessarily, “Somebody conked me. I---”

“You don't know who it was, Wunderly?” It was Darius Hill's voice.

I started to shake my head, but that hurt, so I answered verbally instead. Then, because I was beginning to wonder how long I'd been out, I asked Darius:

“How---how long has it been since I left your room?”

“About half an hour. Did this happen right after that?”

“Yes, only a minute or two after. I saw a light under Bailey's door. I busted in and turned the wrong way.”

I tried to stand up. Charlie gave me a hand on one side and Annabel on the other. I made it, all right, but leaned back against the wall for a moment until I got over the slight dizziness.

Other people were talking excitedly and I had time to take inventory. Eric Andressen and Fergus Fillmore were both still fully dressed. Darius had a lounging robe and slippers on but

still wore trousers and shirt under the robe. Paul Bailey, looking sleepy and as though he was suffering from a bad hangover, was sitting on the edge of the bed, a bathrobe thrown across his shoulders over pajamas. Annabel wore a dressing gown.

Charlie Lightfoot and Rex Parker, who was standing in the doorway, were both fully dressed.

I said, “Charlie, who found me?”

“I did, on my way down from the roof. You groaned as I was going by the door. I thought it was Paul groaning but I came in.”

Fillmore asked, “What was the yell that brought us all running? I heard it downstairs.”

Charlie grunted. “That was Paul. He must've been having a nightmare. When I shook him he let out a yowl like a steam engine before he woke up.”

Bailey said, “I thought---

“Hell, I don't know what I thought. I don't remember yelling---but if Charlie says I did, I guess I did.”

“Lecky,” said Darius Hill. “We'll have to let Lecky know.”

“He can't get over here before dawn,” Fillmore pointed out, “unless he wants to run the gauntlet of rattlesnakes. We'd just wake him up.”

Charlie said, “Darius is right. Something else has happened. We ought to let Lecky know. What time is it?”

“Four-thirty,” Hill said.

“Then it'll be light in less than an hour. I'll go find those other snakes. But if I don't find them all right away, I'll escort Lecky over here---beat trail for him. I can take Fergus too, if he wants to get back home.”

Darius Hill had walked over to the window and looked out. “There's a light over at Lecky's house. I'm going to phone now. Let's all go downstairs to the living room.”

We went down in more or less of a group, Darius going ahead. He went into the room where the house telephone was, and the rest of us herded into the living room. All of us were quiet and subdued; none seemed able or willing to offer much comment on the situation we were in.

Darius would probably have been verbose enough, if he'd been there, but Darius wasn't there. He was taking an unconscionably long time at the telephone. For some reason, it worried me.

I strolled to the door of the hall without attracting attention and went down the hall and into the room which Darius had entered.

He was at the phone, listening, and I could see from the whiteness of his face that something was wrong.

“. . . .Yes, Mrs. Lecky,” he said. Then a long pause. “You're sure you don't want one of us to come over right away? I know it's almost dawn but---”

He talked a minute longer, then put down the phone and looked at me.

He said, slowly, “Lecky's dead, Wunderly. Good old Lecky. She found him at his desk just now with a knife in his back.”

Then suddenly the words were tumbling out of him so fast that they were hardly coherent. “Good Lord! I thought I knew something about criminology and detection. What a damn fool I was! This is my fault, Wunderly, for pretending to be so damn smart about something.

“My fault. That book. I don't know who's doing these murders---I can't even guess---but he got the idea out of that damned book of mine. Just to be clever, I started something that---”

I said, “But it isn't your fault, Hill. What you wrote in that book is true, in a way.”

“I'm going to burn that manuscript, Wunderly. What business has a fat old fool like me to give advice that---that gets people killed? Somebody's committing murder by the book---and the worst of it is that the book's right. That's why I should never have written it. . . .”

There wasn't any use arguing with him.

“When was Lecky killed?” I asked.

“Just now. Less than fifteen minutes ago. While you were unconscious upstairs, probably.”

“The hell,” I said. “How do you know it was then? You said his wife just found him.”

“She was talking to him fifteen minutes before. He was in his study typing. She'd been in bed but waked up. She told him to come on to bed and he answered.

“Then just now---fifteen minutes after that---she heard the phone ring . . . my call. And it wasn't answered, so she came downstairs and---found him dead.”

“Lord,” I said, “and she had wits enough to answer the phone right away and give you the details without getting hysterical?”

“You haven't met Mrs. Lecky, or you'd understand. Damn! One of us ought to go over there, though. It's almost light enough. Charlie could put his leggings on and---”

“Wait!” I said. “I've got---”

I thought it over a second and the more I thought about it the better it looked. It might work.

“Darius,” I said, “look, if whoever killed Lecky is among the group in the living room---and it must be one of them---then he just got back into this building five or ten minutes ago.”

“Of course. But how---?”

“Murderers aren't any braver than anyone else. He wouldn't have crossed an area where there were rattlesnakes loose without taking precautions. See what I mean? Whoever went over there and back would have put on puttees or leggings under his trousers.”

“I---I suppose he would. And---you think he wouldn't have had a chance to take them off again?”

“I doubt it,” I told him. “He must have been just getting into the building when Paul Bailey let out that yell. And everybody converged on Bailey's room. He'd have to go along to avoid suspicion; he'd be the last one to want to give himself away by being late getting there!

“And since then, he certainly hasn't had a chance to be alone.”

Darius' eyes gleamed. He said, “Wunderly, it's a chance! A good chance.”

He grabbed my arm, but I held back.

“Wait,” I said, “this has got to be your idea---not mine.”

“Why?”

“Your position here, your seniority. Your work. Look some people may figure as you did just now---blame that book of yours for a share of what happened. But if you solve the murders, you'll be exonerated. The credit for that idea doesn't mean anything to me. I'd rather you took it.”

He stared at me hopefully but almost unbelievingly. “You mean, knowing I'm a bag of wind, you'd---”

“You're not,” I said. “You're one of the best astronomers living. And it was that phobia of yours---not your fault---that led you to write what you did. I agree you should never have it published. But in writing it---you stuck your neck out, as far as your colleagues are concerned. It means everything to you to solve the murders. It means nothing to me.”

His hand gripped my upper arm and squeezed hard. “I---I don't know how to thank---”

“Don't try,” I said. “Let's go.”

We went into the other room and I walked over and stood beside Annabel while Hill announced the death of the director. He told them, quite simply, quite unemotionally, what had happened.

And then while they were still shocked by the news, he sprang the suggestion that each man in the group immediately prove he was not wearing protection of any sort on his lower legs.

“I'll lead off,” he said.

He lifted the cuffs of his trousers up as high as the bottom of the lounging robe he was wearing over them, exposing neatly-clocked black socks.

Paul Bailey chuckled nervously. He had seated himself cross-legged in the morris chair, and his rather short pajama trousers were already twisted halfway up the calves of his bare legs. He said, “I believe I can join the white sheep without even moving.”