Ned Beaumont put the tip of his tongue between smiling lips, withdrew it, and said: “That’s why he brought her up here, to keep her under cover till the story breaks. Maybe he knew Shad and the boys were here, maybe not. It doesn’t make any difference. He’s getting her off where nobody can find out what she’s done till the papers are out. I don’t mean that he’d’ve brought her here, or would hold her here, against her will– that wouldn’t be very bright of him the way things stack up now–but none of that’s necessary. She’s willing to go to any lengths to ruin her father.”
Opal Madvig said, in a whisper, but distinctly: “He did kill him.”
Ned Beaumont sat up straight and looked at her. He looked solemnly at her for a moment, then smiled, shook his head in a gesture of amused resignation, and leaned back on his elbows.
Eloise Mathews was staring with dark eyes wherein wonder was predominant at her husband. He had sat down. His head was bowed. His hands hid his face.
Shad O’Rory recrossed his legs and took out a cigarette. “Through?” he asked mildly.
Ned Beaumont’s back was to O’Rory. He did not turn to reply: “You’d hardly believe how through I am.” His voice was level, but his face was suddenly tired, spent.
O’Rory lit his cigarette. “Well,” he said when he had done that, “what the hell does it all amount to? It’s our turn to hang a big one on you and we’re doing it. The girl came in with the story on her own hook. She came here because she wanted to. So did you. She and you and anybody else can go wherever they want to go whenever they want to.” He stood up. “Personally, I’m wanting to go to bed. Where do I sleep, Mathews?”
Eloise Mathews spoke, to her husband: “This is not true, Hal.” It was not a question.
He was slow taking his hands from his face. He achieved dignity saying: “Darling, there is a dozen times enough evidence against Madvig to justify us in insisting that the police at least question him. That is all we have done.”
“I did not mean that,” his wife said.
“Well, darling, when Miss Madvig came–” He faltered, stopped, a grey-faced man who shivered before the look in his wife’s eyes and put his hands over his face again.
5
Eloise Mathews and Ned Beaumont were alone in the large ground-floor room, sitting, in chairs a few feet apart, with the fireplace in front of them. She was bent forward, looking with tragic eyes at the last burning log. His legs were crossed. One of his arms was hooked over the back of his chair. He smoked a cigar and watched her surreptitiously.
The stairs creaked and her husband came half-way down them. He was fully clothed except that he had taken off his collar. His necktie, partially loosened, hung outside his vest. He said: “Darling, won’t you come to bed? It’s midnight.”
She did not move.
He said: “Mr. Beaumont, will you–?”
Ned Beaumont, when his name was spoken, turned his face towards the man on the stairs, a face cruelly placid. When Mathews’s voice broke, Ned Beaumont returned his attention to his cigar and Mathews’s wife.
After a little while Mathews went upstairs again.
Eloise Mathews spoke without taking her gaze from the fire. “There is some whisky in the chest. Will you get it?”
“Surely.” He found the whisky and brought it to her, then found some glasses. “Straight?” he asked.
She nodded. Her round breasts were moving the red silk of her dress irregularly with her breathing.
He poured two large drinks.
She did not look up from the fire until he had put one glass in her hand. When she looked up she smiled, crookedly, twisting her heavily rouged exquisite thin lips sidewise. Her eyes, reflecting red light from the fire, were too bright.
He smiled down at her.
She lifted her glass and said, cooing: “To my husband!”
Ned Beaumont said, “No,” casually and tossed the contents of his glass into the fireplace, where it spluttered and threw dancing flames up.