The Paliser case Part 37

It was certainly _Terra addio_, Jones reflected. Certainly, too, the scene is easy enough to reconstruct But whose was the hand?

Flicking his ashes, he looked about and saw two hands, between which, he also saw, he was entirely free to pick and choose. One hand, slight and fragile, was Ca.s.sy Cara's. The other, firm and virile, was Lennox'.

Lennox had threatened. He had been acidly murderous. He had a motive. He had the opportunity. He knew where Paliser would be. He had been supplied with a seat in that box. The hand was his. It was a clear case.

That was obvious, particularly to Jones, who regarded the obvious as very misleading.

Given the chance, he reflected, and Lennox might have done for Paliser, but he would have done for him with bare fists, never with a knife. It was not Lennox to use one. It was not Lennox at all.

Jones threw him out and pulled in Ca.s.sy Cara.

The case against her was equally clear. Presumably she owned the stiletto which a hat pin is. In addition, she also had a motive. If ever a girl had cause to up and do it, she had. Then, too, the risk was negligible. Any jury would acquit and tumble over each other to shake hands with her. For equity has justice that the law does not know.

Moreover there are crimes that jurists have not codified. Some are too inhuman, others too human. Ca.s.sy's righting of her own wrongs belonged among the latter. Ca.s.sy's, that is, provided she had done it. But had she? Logically, yes. If the police could look behind the scenes, logically they would say to her, "Thou art the man."

But, Jones resumed, logic when pushed far enough becomes incoherence.

The psychologist prefers vision and it would display none to believe that she did it. In the abstract, that is to be regretted. A lovely a.s.sa.s.sin! A beautiful girl slaying a recreant lover! A future prima donna killing a local millionaire! Monty Paliser murdered by the Viscountess of Casa-Evora! And at the opera! If I had ever put anything of the kind in my copy, reviewers would have indolently asked: "Why doesn't this imbecile study life?"

Jones laughed. The enjoyment of one's own ideas--or of the absence of them--is a literary trait. When Dumas wrote, he roared.

Here it is, then, Jones continued. If the police knew certain things they would nab Lennox. If they knew others, they would nab Ca.s.sy Cara.

If they knew more, they would nab me. I should be held as a witness.

This is cheerful, particularly as my sole complicity in the matter has been due to a desire to be of use. But that is just it. Through the enigmatic laws of life, any kindness is repaid in pain.

Pleasurably, for a moment, he considered the altruism of that aphorism.

Then he got back at the murder which, he decided, must have been premeditated by some one who knew where Paliser would be. That conclusion reached, he groped for another. Lennox knew, but did Ca.s.sy know, and, if she did, had she utilised the knowledge?

To decide the point he reviewed the visit of the previous evening.

Ostensibly Ca.s.sy's visit had been occasioned not by any wish to relate what had happened to her, but to acquaint Lennox with the cause of what had happened to him. In view of what had befallen her, the proceeding was certainly considerate. In the misadventures of life, the individual is usually so obsessed by his own troubles that they blind him to those of another. But ostensibly Ca.s.sy had sunk her troubles and had pulled them up, not to exhibit them, but to show Lennox the lay of the land as it affected not her at all but him. The proceeding was certainly considerate--unless it were astute, unless her object had been to employ Lennox for the wreaking of her own revenge.

That was possible, but was it probable?

An ordinary young woman would have gone at it differently, gone at it hammer and tongs. Ca.s.sy's methods were merely finer. That was the common sense view. But was it psychology? The common sense view that is applicable to the average individual is inapplicable to a problematic nature and, consequently, not to Ca.s.sy, who must therefore have had another incentive for her visit, an incentive stronger than the primitive instinct for revenge.

But, Jones asked himself, what are the fundamental principles of human activity? They are self-preservation and the perpetuation of the species. Every idea that has existed, or does exist, in the mind of man is the result of the permutations and combinations of those two principles, of which the second is the stronger and its basis is s.e.x.

That is what actuated Ca.s.sy. She is, or was, in love with Lennox, and told him for no other reason.

That is it, Jones decided. But the course of her true love could not have run very smooth and, knowing that Lennox was otherwise interested, she took up with Paliser out of pique.

Pique! he repeated. But no, that is not Ca.s.sy Cara either. She----

Like a thread snapped suddenly, the novelist's meditations ceased. On the wall before him the dragons alighted, the mask awoke. Between them a canvas was emerging. Dim, shadowy, uncertain, it hesitated, wavered, advanced.

Then, as it hung unsupported in the air--far too unsupported, he presently thought--he looked it over.

To apparitions he was accustomed. They were part of his equipment.

Unsummoned, without incantations they came, sent, one might think, by the muse whom he derided, but more naturally and very simply produced by the machinery in his brain.

Now, as he examined the canvas, its imprecision diminished, the shadows pa.s.sed, the obscurity lifted, the penumbra brightened, outlines defined themselves, the colouring appeared, a colouring, after the manner of Rembrandt, composed of darkness in which there is light and which, as such, reveals.

Jones stood up, turned around and sat down again as gamblers, disquieted by their luck, will do.

Before him still the picture floated. He disavowed it, disowned it. Yet there it was, the child of his fancy, the first-born of the morning, the fruit of his concentrated thought, and as, surprisedly, he considered it, it took on such semblances of legitimacy, that the disavowals ceased. Then, slowly disintegrating, its consistence lessened. It was departing, vaporously as it had come. Jones waved at it, omitting out of sheer abstraction to say Au revoir, yet omitting also, and through equal modesty, to say Eureka!

He pressed a b.u.t.ton. Instantly, as though sprung from a trap, his servant appeared.

"Get Mr. Lennox on the telephone."

The minutes lengthened. Finally the servant reappeared.

"Mr. Lennox is not at home, sir. His man says he's gone to Centre Street. He's been arrested. Mr. Lennox has been arrested. Yes, sir."

Pausing, the servant c.o.c.ked an ear and added: "They're calling extras, sir. Would you wish one?"

Circuitously, through the open door, the cat, her tail in the air, approached and wowed.

Jones leaned over and tickled her in the stomach. The cat hopped up on him. He put a finger to his forehead, held it there, removed it and looked at the man.

"In war-time, with the price of everything going up, it is a criminal waste of money to buy an extra--particularly when you know what isn't in it."

"Yes, sir."

Jones motioned. "Look through the old newspapers. Among the March issues there is one that has an article ent.i.tled 'The Matter of Ziegler.' Let me have it."

The cat, now on his shoulder, purred profusely in his ear. Raising a hand, he tickled her again.

"Mimi-Meow, this Matter of Ziegler may interest us very much and after we have looked it over, I will attend to our friend von Lennox, who seems to have become a Hun."

XXIX

Already over the picked-up codfish, flapjacks, Hamburg steaks and cognate enticements on which the Bronx and Harlem breakfasts, the news of it had b.u.t.tered the toast, flavoured the coffee, added a sweetness to this April day and provided a c.o.c.ktail to people who did not know Paliser from the Pierrot in the moon. That he was spectacularly wealthy was a tid-bit, that he had been killed at the Metropolitan was a delight, the war news was nothing to the fact that the party with the stiletto had escaped "unbeknownst." These people were unacquainted with Paliser. But here was a young man with an opera-box of his own, and think of that! Here was the mythological monster that the Knickerbocker has become. Here was the heir to unearned and untold increments. These attributes made him as delectable to the majority who did not know him, as he had become to the privileged few who did.

Elsewhere, and particularly in and about fashion's final citadel which the Plaza is, solemn imbeciles viewed the matter vehemently. "Young Paliser! Why, there is no better blood in town! By Jove, I believe we are related!"

Or else: "That's M. P.'s son, isn't it? Yes, here it is. I never met the old c.o.c.k but I heard of him long before we came East. A d.a.m.ned outrage, that's what I call it."

Or again: "Dear me, what is the world coming to? What a blessing it is we were not there. They might have come and murdered us all!"

Adjacently, in clubland, old men with one foot in the grave and the other on Broadway, exchanged reminiscences of the nights when social New York was a small and early family party and M. P. led the ball, and at a pace so klinking that he danced beyond the favours of the cotillon--the german as it, the cotillon, was then lovingly called--into a.s.semblies, certainly less select, but certainly, too, more gay, and had horrified scrumptious sedateness with the uproar of his orgies.

The indicated obituaries followed. "Well, at any rate, they didn't murder him for it." "The son now, a chip of the old block, eh?" "Nothing of the kind, a quiet young prig." "The papers say----" "d.a.m.n the papers, they never know anything." "You mean they don't print what they do know." "I mean they don't give us the woman. For it was a woman. I'll eat my hat it was a woman." "Let's have lunch instead."

Generally, for the moment, that was the verdict, one in which the police had already collaborated. But what woman? And, a.s.suming the woman, whence had she come? Where had she gone?--problems, momentarily insoluble but which investigations, then in progress, would probably decide.

At the great white house on upper Fifth Avenue, the servants knew only that they knew nothing. Nothing at all. Already coached, they were sure and unshakable in their knowledge of that. A Mr. Harvey--from Headquarters--could not budge them an inch. Not one!