There is No Return (21 page)

“I don’t know,” she said again.

“For that matter, if Gloria Canby’s evil spirit in possession of your body killed her father, why did the room have to be dark? A lot she’d care who saw her if everything they tell of her is true.”

She caught her breath. “You think — you still think —”

“That you’ve been framed,” I declared firmly. “Granting, which isn’t possible, that you really are possessed of an evil spirit at times, why are all these physical adjuncts necessary, such as my book and Dora Canby’s scissors? It seems the height of the ridiculous to me for an avenging ghost to bother about such trappings.”

She was no fool, however distraught she might be.

“Either I was in a trance when I took those things or I did it deliberately,” she said. “Is that what you believe? That I have been faking all along? That I wasn’t in a trance tonight or any other night?”

“No,” I said, “I have maintained from the first that the trances are genuine.”

“But the professor is dead!” she cried, coming back to the same heart-breaking point. “And still I-I- The trances go on.”

I laid my hand on her arm. “You told Chet Keith that before this week it never happened. Going off like that unexpectedly, out of office hours, he expressed it.”

She glanced at me quickly. “Yes.”

“Where were you the first time it occurred?”

“Where was I?”

“The first time you came to yourself and found that you had been in a trance which you did not expect.”

Her face changed. “It’s hard to remember,” she faltered. “It’s all so-so confused. My mind, I mean.”

I stared at her sharply. Was she making a fool of me, I asked myself. I had to admit that it was possible. I had assumed from the first that she had not been hypnotized into killing Thomas Canby because it was contrary to her moral code, but what did I really know about Sheila Kelly’s moral code? I had only my obstinate conviction of her innocence to sustain my belief that she was incapable of murder, and the girl was an actress. She might very well be winding me about her bloodstained fingers, I told myself with a shudder.

I don’t mind confessing that I suffered a very bad moment before she went on. “I remember going for a walk,” she said slowly.

“Yes?”

I was watching her closely and it seemed to me that she was making an honest effort to struggle through the murk of her thoughts.

“I remember seeing-seeing tombstones.”

“Tombstones!”

“A lot of tombstones, covered with grey moss. Then I-I- Everything is blank.”

“Think,” I urged. “Try to think what happened.”

Her face was deathly white. “I can’t! I can’t!”

I stared at her helplessly. “Suppose,” I said, “you met somebody on that walk, somebody who wanted to gain control of your mind for reasons of his own.”

She looked at me, her eyes widening.

“Suppose that person,” I went on, “attempted to hypnotize you and succeeded. Suppose he or she told you to forget everything that happened. Suppose you were told even to forget meeting such a person.”

She was deathly white. “If I was told in a trance to forget something, I would,” she whispered.

“You may have talked to this person a dozen times but, if he commanded you not to remember, you wouldn’t?”

“No.”

“It is possible he met you down the road more than once.” I glanced at her sharply. “Isn’t it?”

She shivered. “I-I have taken a walk every afternoon this week.”

“It is possible he rehearsed you over and over in your part, the part of Gloria Canby. You wouldn’t remember if he ordered you not to?”

By this time my imagination was in full stride. “The professor weakened your resistance to mental suggestion,” I deducted triumphantly. “I suppose if the truth was known he reduced it to nothing. Somebody has taken advantage of that fact.”

Again hope flared up in her eyes. “You think someone, not the professor, has been hypnotizing me without my knowledge?”

“It’s the only sane explanation if we exclude the supernatural which is preposterous.”

She was trembling. “Somebody has been-been-”

“Framing you for murder,” I repeated doggedly.

“If only I could believe you!” she cried with a sob.

“It’s as devilish a plot as ever existed,” I declared fiercely, “because you have not only been hypnotized into incriminating yourself, you have even been forced to believe in your own guilt.”

Her cheeks blazed. “You almost make me dare to hope.”

I regarded her shrewdly. “Are you the type to go around shedding hairpins all over the place where you have committed a crime?”

She shook her head. “I never shed hairpins.”

“Exactly,” I said, “and you didn’t kill Thomas Canby or anyone else.”

Tears began to slide down her cheeks. “God bless you,” she whispered.

I cleared my throat. “We’ll have no more of that talk about-about doing away with yourself?”

“No,” she said with a deep sigh, “only if, as you say, somebody in this place has been hypnotizing me, Miss Adams, without my knowledge, who is it?”

For a moment we stared at each other and I could feel the wind going out of my sails.

“I am sure I can’t imagine,” I admitted feebly.

She shuddered and turned so white I made a very rash promise.

“But I’ll find out,” I said.

It was almost an hour later, after certain research explorations of my own, before I succeeded in separating Chet Keith from the telephone to which he had glued himself. Not until then did I understand how, cut off as we were, he managed to acquire the inside information which he did acquire about certain people at the inn.

Thomas Canby’s murder had brought a flock of reporters to the scene, although they could get no nearer than Carrolton. On the other hand, Chet Keith was right in the middle of the excitement.

In return for first-hand stories of the crime he had his fellow newspapermen running down a dozen trails for him, not without protests, as I gathered, listening to the tail end of one conversation.

“Sure, the great reading public isn’t interested in Thomas Canby’s servants, but I am, see?” he informed the rebellious party at the other end of the line. “And you’ll admit that I am in a position to dictate terms. If you want exclusive dope on what’s going on up here, you have to play ball with me, Soaper. Otherwise you get nothing, and how will your managing editor like that, my fine feathered friend?”

Apparently Soaper saw the light, for Chet Keith grinned.

“All right, all right,” he said, “maybe it is highway robbery and grand larceny and a few other things, but, as you have pointed out, you can’t help yourself. So get busy. I want that stuff I asked for at once or sooner than that.”

He replaced the receiver on the hook and looked at me wearily.

“Well, Miss Adelaide?”

The lines on his face deepened as he listened to my new theory of the case. “You think someone, unbeknownst to Sheila Kelly, has been hypnotizing her and forcing her to incriminate herself!” he exclaimed with a grimace. “Imagine springing such an idea upon Sheriff Latham.”

“You might as well wave the proverbial red flag in the bull’s face,” I admitted.

“Even to me it sounds incredible,” he said ruefully, “but, as you remarked, it is the only sane explanation if we exclude the supernatural.”

“Providing the sheriff hasn’t been right all along,” I faltered, “and Sheila Kelly is the murderer and faking all this trance business.”

“Neither of us believes that,” he protested quickly.

“No,” I said, “though it may be just my natural disinclination to string along with the authorities.”

He paid no attention. “Patrick Oliver and the professor put up a job on Dora Canby, a shady job, but not murder. Agreed so far?”

“Yes,” I said crossly, wondering if he was trying to clear his thoughts or mine.

“Then somebody saw a chance to get rid of Canby and hang the crime upon Sheila Kelly?”

“Yes,” I said again.

“So he decided to work a little hypnotism of his own,” he murmured doubtfully.

“He may not have known if it would be successful,” I said, “but I dare say he thought there was no harm in experimenting, and I imagine in her condition it was easy enough to establish a domination over the girl’s mind.” I shivered. “Probably-probably even an amateur hypnotist could have done it without much trouble.”

He stared at me. “Amateur?”

“He needn’t have been adept, or she needn’t. We can’t lose sight of the fact that it may have been a woman.”

“It could have been anybody who was present at the séance last night and who was at the inn when the Gloria manifestations began.”

“Exactly,” I said, not very happily, “and that includes every member of the Canby family. It even includes Jeff Wayne. He arrived here a week ago with Lila Atwood and her husband.”

He gave me a startled look and I frowned. “Did you think any of them could be excluded?”

“Dora Canby hated her husband. She blamed him for the death of their daughter, whom she adored. The motive is there but...”

He shook his head. “If what we suspect is true, the murderer has two qualifications, ingenuity and a brilliant mind.”

“From what I have read upon the subject,” I said, “it doesn’t take brains, so much as will power and a natural gift for it, to be a successful mesmerist.”

“Even so, Dora Canby strikes me as the most spineless person I ever met.”

“Because she shrinks from strangers?”

“Because she’s too timid to call her soul her own, much less to establish a diabolical control over another person’s soul.”

I sniffed. “Has it occurred to you that, in spite of considerable pressure brought to bear by her husband, an extremely ruthless and domineering man, Dora Canby has gone right on living precisely the life she prefers to live?”

“I suppose in a way she has.”

“Doesn’t it denote marked will power, the way she was able to close her eyes consistently to her daughter’s real character, the way she still seems able to do so? It’s been my observation that meek people often manage in an unobtrusive way to be as stubborn as mules.”

He scowled. “When I think back it rather leaps to the eye that Dora Canby has never missed a chance to drive home the theory that Sheila is the reincarnation of her dead daughter and consequently the murderer.”

“Precisely,” I said and gave him a quizzical glance. “Are you familiar with the experiments which Duke University is conducting into mental telepathy and thought transference?”

I could see that he was startled by my apparent irrelevance.

“Only superficially,” he said. “I once listened to the radio program devoted to the subject. Once was enough.”

He was referring to the program sponsored by the manufacturers of a nationally known article. It is supposed to be a test of little-known mental powers. They are called ESP tests, I believe, which stand for ‘extra-sensory perception’ or something. At any rate you are requested to concentrate while certain senders in the studio perform certain mysterious rites. The night I listened they tossed coins, and the great invisible audience was asked to make an effort to catch the mental vibrations and write down upon a score card by means of pure telepathy whether the senders turned up heads or tails. I have always, no matter what Ella Trotter says, been open to conviction, so I concentrated and was prepared to write down my impressions, the trouble being that I received no impressions.

“According to the announcers,” I informed Chet Keith, “they have had remarkable results from astounding numbers of people, but I take it that, like myself, you drew a blank.”

He grinned. “Yet you aren’t precisely a weak-minded woman.”

I went on with some severity. “Quoting from Doctor Rhine’s book, science is being compelled to recognize ‘New Frontiers of the Mind’, as he titled it. That is, it appears to be true that thought can be transferred without speech and at considerable distance.”

He was watching me narrowly. “After the radio anything seems possible,” he admitted.

I nodded. “The theory is the same. Certain individuals seem to have natural receptive gifts; that is, they operate like radio reception sets. Others function better as senders. There does not seem much rhyme or reason to it. At least so far science has not been able to lay down positive laws as to what types of minds will react favourably to the tests. It seems to be just one of those talents you are born with, talents, so the inventors of the principle claim, which you may possess to the fullest extent without realizing it, unless it is called to your attention.” I was staring at him very hard. “No doubt many people have had it called to their attention by the radio program which you mentioned.”

He flushed. “What in heaven’s name are you leading up to?”

I could no longer master my excitement. “There was a piece of information which I wanted,” I said, “so I set Fannie Parrish to work upon it. As a result I have been supplied, if not inundated, with information.”

“Will you please come to the point!”

“Several weeks ago in the Canby drawing room in New York a large group took the ESP tests.”

His lips tightened. “Go on.”

“As I understand it, the whole Canby family was present with the exception of Thomas Canby who, it seems, professed the greatest scorn for that sort of thing. Mrs Canby, on the other hand, since her daughter’s death has been unwholesomely interested in anything which savours of the occult. That, of course, is why it occurred to Patrick Oliver at once that she would prove an easy victim for the professor.”

“Occult?” he repeated. “It is my understanding that the sponsors of these experiments do not claim any superhuman quality for them. Don’t they insist upon putting telepathy on a scientific basis, as an extraordinary but not other-worldly quality of the human brain?”

“Of course,” I said impatiently, “though I don’t suppose Dora Canby ever accepted that explanation.”

“You said the party in the Canby house took the ESP tests,” he repeated in a chastened voice.

“According to Fannie Parrish’s report, Judy Oliver proved uncannily accurate at receiving thought waves.”

“Judy Oliver!” he exclaimed.