Collinson, most of the skin scraped from one side of his face, crawled back on hands and knees to turn off the roadster’s engine. I sat up, raising the girl, who was on my chest, with me. My right shoulder and arm were out of whack, dead. The girl was making whimpering noises in her chest, but I couldn’t see any marks on her except a shallow scratch on one cheek. I had been her cushion, had taken the jolt for her. The soreness of my chest, belly, and back, the lameness of my shoulder and arm, told me how much I had saved her.
People helped us up. Collinson stood with his arms around the girl, begging her to say she wasn’t dead, and so on. The smash had jarred her into semi-consciousness, but she still didn’t know whether there had been an accident or what. I went over and helped Collinson hold her up–though neither needed help–saying earnestly to the gathering crowd: “We’ve got to get her home. Who can–?”
A pudgy man in plus fours offered his services. Collinson and I got in the back of his car with the girl, and I gave the pudgy man her address. He said something about a hospital, but I insisted that home was the place for her. Collinson was too upset to say anything. Twenty minutes later we took the girl out of the car in front of her house. I thanked the pudgy man profusely, giving him no opportunity to follow us indoors.
VI. The Man from Devil’s Island
After some delay–I had to ring twice–the Leggetts’ door was opened by Owen Fitzstephan. There was no sleepiness in his eyes: they were hot and bright, as they were when he found life interesting. Knowing the sort of things that interested him, I wondered what had happened.
“What have you been doing?” he asked, looking at our clothes, at Collinson’s bloody face, at the girl’s scratched cheek.
“Automobile accident,” I said. “Nothing serious. Where’s everybody?”
“Everybody,” he said, with peculiar emphasis on the word, “is up in the laboratory;” and then to me: “Come here.”
I followed him across the reception hall to the foot of the stairs, leaving Collinson and the girl standing just inside the street door. Fitzstephan put his mouth close to my ear and whispered:
“Leggett’s committed suicide.”
I was more annoyed than surprised. I asked: “Where is he?”
“In the laboratory. Mrs. Leggett and the police are up there. It happened only half an hour ago.”
“We’ll all go up,” I said.
“Isn’t it rather unnecessary,” he asked, “taking Gabrielle up there?”
“Might be tough on her,” I said irritably, “but it’s necessary enough. Anyway, she’s coked-up and better able to stand the shock than she will be later, when the stuff’s dying out in her.” I turned to Collinson. “Come on, we’ll go up to the laboratory.”
I went ahead, letting Fitzstephan help Collinson with the girl. There were six people in the laboratory: a uniformed copper–a big man with a red mustache–standing beside the door; Mrs. Leggett, sitting on a wooden chair in the far end of the room, her body bent forward, her hands holding a handkerchief to her face, sobbing quietly; O’Gar and Reddy, standing by one of the windows, close together, their heads rubbing over a sheaf of papers that the detective-sergeant held in his thick fists; a gray-faced, dandified man in dark clothes, standing beside the zinc table, twiddling eye-glasses on a black ribbon in his hand; and Edgar Leggett, seated on a chair at the table, his head and upper body resting on the table, his arms sprawled out.
O’Gar and Reddy looked up from their reading as I came in. Passing the table on my way to join them at the window, I saw blood, a small black automatic pistol lying close to one of Leggett’s hands, and seven unset diamonds grouped by his head.
O’Gar said, “Take a look,” and handed me part of his sheaf of paper–four stiff white sheets covered with very small, precise, and regular handwriting in black ink. I was getting interested in what was written there when Fitzstephan and Collinson came in with Gabrielle Leggett.