The Back-seat Murder Read online

  He chuckled dismally and gathered his tools.

  “Oh, well,” he sighed, “we’re here today and gone tomorrow. Reckon you’d better have these here winders closed. They’s a heavy rain comin’.”

  He twirled the knob, raising the two windows in the rear, one on each side. Harrington started the engine, realizing he would have to hurry. He heard Garbo slam the side doors shut, and he caught another dolorous mutter to the effect that we’re here today and gone tomorrow. Then he slipped the dutch in and swung into the highway.

  The speedometer went from twenty to thirty, and then to forty, and there Harrington held it The engine was fairly singing now, and he could easily have gone much faster, but the road was slippery and he knew that the brakes were in poor condition and would not be much good in an emergency.

  Garbo’s weather prediction was coming true. It was raining harder and harder. As he set the windshield wiper in motion and closed the window on his right, another prophecy of Garbo’s recurred to him. Mr. Marsh was not long for this world, the man had said. Only idle talk, perhaps, but somehow the words lingered in Harrington’s mind with a prophetic significance. And then he found himself repeating Garbo’s words: “We’re here today and gone tomorrow.”

  He laughed at the absurdity of his own trend of thoughts. It was only empty talk that Garbo had poured into his ears, the meaningless chatter of a lonely man who eagerly seizes the opportunity to talk to someone. Yet it was true that Marsh himself lived in constant fear of death. His demeanor during the past few weeks, not to mention the preposterous letter he had dictated that morning, proved it And now Harrington carried in his pocket a letter in which Marsh named the persons he suspected of plotting his death. Was there ever such a grotesque situation?

  A motor’s horn screamed in the rear, interrupting his thoughts. A glance into the rear-view mirror over the windshield showed a magnificent coach, with a liveried chauffeur at the wheel, approaching at terrific speed. Harrington, with a mental comment on some people’s recklessness, edged over to the side, and the speed monster flashed past him.

  Taking the wheel with one hand, he glanced at his watch. He had been driving nearly three-quarters of an hour, and now the road was becoming a succession of steep hills and declines. Reluctantly, with a thought to the unsatisfactory condition of his brakes, he slowed down a little. The wind had risen, and it was driving the rain through the open window on his left. Already his shoulder was wet. Since he would have no occasion to signal on this open road, he closed the window.

  He would have felt quite snug and comfortable now if he could but have turned his thoughts away from Marsh, from the letter in his pocket, and from the incoherent fears that Theresa had voiced just before they parted in the hall. She had said a very curious thing, he remembered, something to the effect that perhaps Marsh did not intend that the letter should be delivered. What on earth could she have meant by that? A woman’s intuition, perhaps. Intuitions were usually vague and apparently senseless. But this particular intuition—

  A thick exclamation fell from his lips. The wheel slipped in his hand; the car lurched wildly. Without apparent reason, he had just cast another glance at the rear-view mirror, and now he stared into it with the intensity of a man who doubts his senses.

  He blinked his eyes and gave a feeble groan. It couldn’t be, he told himself. It must be some sort of illusion. But there, in the rear-view mirror above the windshield, he saw it clearly—the coarse, crafty and malevolently smiling countenance of Christopher Marsh.

  CHAPTER IV — The Man Behind

  Again the car lurched and slithered. Luckily it was a smooth and straight stretch of road, with no dangerous shoulders. Harrington righted the wheels and glanced again into the mirror, and again his brain reeled. Back there, in the rear seat, sat Christopher Marsh, real as life. He did not move a muscle. He only grinned in a gloating, satisfied way.

  They were plunging down a steep hill now, and the road claimed Harrington’s full attention, even though his brain was awhirl with the picture of Marsh sitting so complacently in the seat behind. Where had he come from? When had he gotten into the car? Not during the stop at the garage, Harrington felt certain, for there had been no other person about, and he had chanced to look behind just a moment before Garbo slammed the doors shut. It was equally certain that Marsh had not been in the car when Harrington left Peekacre. If he had been, he would have been discovered at the garage. It appeared, then, that he must have gotten in while the car was going between thirty-five and forty miles an hour.

  Harrington shook his head. No human being could do that. It was flatly Impossible. The only clear fact was that Marsh was now sitting in the back of the car, and it was idle to wonder how he had got there. It was not only idle, but staggering as well.

  The perilous descent was over, though heaven only knew how he had managed it safely. He was at the bottom of the hill now, and he let go the accelerator and put his foot on the brake. It responded grudgingly, but the friction sufficed to lessen the momentum.

  “Go on,” Marsh directed in his habitual bullying way. “Don’t stop.”

  Harrington’s mystification had turned to obstinacy, and now obstinacy turned to disobedience. He bore down hard on the brakes. There came a metallic squeal, the car rolled on a little farther, then stopped.

  “Are you deaf?” Marsh bawled. “I told you to go on.”

  “I heard you,” said Harrington. He threw the clutch into neutral and applied the emergency, then swung around in his seat and stared at the man behind him as if to satisfy himself that he was really flesh and blood. “So it’s really you,” he said foolishly.

  “Of course,” Marsh growled. “Who else would it be?”

  Harrington nodded dazedly. What mystified him was not that the man in the rear seat was Marsh. He would have been just as deeply mystified if it had been any one else. He stared stupidly at the two windows, misty with rain, and the two doors, both locked, as was shown by the upturned handles. And then, in order to steady his brain, he turned and glanced out over a landscape of hills swept by wind and rain.

  It was growing dusk. The horizons were crowding closer and closer. As far as eye could see, there was no dwelling anywhere, no sign of life.

  “Drive on, you fool!” Marsh barked. “Think I want to sit here all night?”

  Harrington turned to him again. The man’s face was, as usual, a little red. The veins at his temples stood out prominently, as they always did when he grew irritated. The eyes were cold and contemptuous. With all this, there were signs of an inner satisfaction—a malicious satisfaction, Harrington thought. The man might have been brooding over a diabolical joke.

  “I didn’t see you get in,” Harrington remarked, his brain still awhirl with the riddle of Marsh’s presence in the car.

  “It’s my car, isn’t it? Do I have to beg your permission to ride in it?”

  “No, but you might explain how you got in.”

  “Damn your impudence!” Marsh snarled. “Now drive on, or I’ll throw you out. Take the next turn to the left.”

  “The left? That’s not the way.”

  Marsh bared his teeth. For an instant he looked as if he was inclined to drive his fist into Harrington’s face, but evidently he thought better o| it.

  “I said the first turn to the left,” he spoke sharply. “I want no arguments. Drive on.”

  As if the matter were settled, he leaned back against the cushion and drew a cigar from his vest pocket.

  “What about the letter?” Harrington asked, determined to elicit some explanation from the man in the rear seat.

  “Never mind the letter.” Marsh was fumbling in his pockets for a match. “I’ve changed my plans.”

  Harrington regarded him obstinately. He had dropped all pretense now of being the respectful and deferential secretary. He cast a long glance up and down the road that wound like a gleaming ribbon under the downpour. There was not another car in sight. The thought came to him that out here, in th
e swirling wilderness, the relationship of master and servant had ceased.

  “Very well,” he said. He reached out his hand and, turning the ignition switch, silenced the humming of the engine. “We stay where we are until you explain a few things.”

  “Oh, do we?” Marsh’s hand came out of his pocket, and with it came an automatic. “Your mistake, Harrington. We go on this moment Start her up and step on her.”

  Harrington gazed contemptuously Into the menacing eye of the pistol. An unreasonable stubbornness was upon him.

  “No, Marsh, you can’t frighten me that way. We are not going on. If we move at all, which is doubtful, we turn back to Peekacre. Unless you explain—”

  He paused. He looked into Marsh’s eyes, and what he saw silenced the words on his tongue. It was murder—cold-blooded, deliberate murder. For a moment his gaze lengthened, and then he turned back and started the motor. A derisive guffaw came from behind, and with it came a puff of smoke. Marsh had lighted his cigar and was enjoying himself. But a glance at the rear-view mirror showed that his aim with the pistol was unwavering.

  Harrington threw in the clutch and set the car in motion. He chuckled grimly. Marsh’s pistol had not frightened him, but that look in the man’s eyes had gone like an electric shock to his brain. Yes, he had read murder in those eyes. Far more plainly than words could, they had told him that in another moment Marsh would have shot him dead. It was no use debating whether Marsh would or would not do such a thing; Harrington knew. And he was far from ready to die as yet.

  “Don’t forget the left turn,” Marsh called out.

  Harrington laughed again. He knew he would take the left turn when he came to it. It would be either that or death. And death repelled him, not because he feared the process of dying, but because it meant the end of everything. Marsh might kill him later, of course. Perhaps that was his intention. All Harrington could do for the present was to play for time.

  “Now,” said Marsh, and Harrington felt a cold pressure against his neck. In the gathering dusk he saw, a short distance ahead, a road branching off to the left. It was a rough and narrow road winding into a wooded wilderness as black as the descending night, but he slowed down and made a sharp turn. A chuckle sounded behind him. The pressure against his neck eased.

  It was a stiff upward climb now. It grew rapidly darker as they penetrated into the jungle. He switched on the headlights and cast another glance into the mirror. The pistol was lying on Marsh’s knee, ready for instant action. The man was leaning back and smoking his cigar with an air of keen enjoyment. In the surrounding dusk his face, as reflected in the mirror, looked curiously white.

  The ascent grew steeper, the landscape blacker. The engine began to labor, and Harrington shifted into second gear. The road seemed to extend endlessly into the hills and the howling night. Presently they came to a level space. In the distance, a rambling structure with an air of decay and desolation about it stood revealed in the headlights’ glare.

  “Stop,” Marsh directed, and Harrington brought the car to a standstill. A puff of strong cigar smoke drifted across his shoulder. The mirror showed Marsh leaning forward, with the pistol in his hand.

  “Good place to die—eh, Harrington?” he suggested conversationally.

  Harrington’s body tensed. Rigidly he gazed into the mirror above the windshield. Had Marsh directed him to this desolate spot only to kill him? He could see a smile on the man’s face, dark, brooding, horrible. He worked his wits at frantic speed.

  “It’s an appropriate spot,” the other went on. “It’s dark, quiet and rugged. A shot wouldn’t be heard by anybody but the squirrels. A body left lying here wouldn’t be found in a thousand years. See that old ruin straight ahead? It was once a summer hotel. The management went bankrupt because the place was too far from everything. You can’t complain that I haven’t selected a romantic spot for you to die in.”

  Harrington spurred his wits to greater effort. He knew the pistol was leveled at his back. He was positive now that Marsh meant to kill him. Only his wits could save him, and his wits seemed utterly inadequate to the emergency. Again he looked into the mirror, trying to gauge his chances if he should attempt a sudden somersault over the back of the seat.

  Hopeless, he decided. Marsh would shoot at the slightest move, and he would shoot to kill.

  “Why do you want to kill me?” He was sparring for time.

  “Don’t you know?”

  “I know what you said in that absurd letter.”

  “It was true, wasn’t it?”

  “It was ridiculous.” Harrington’s hand moved furtively to the door at his left. Here was another slender chance. He might succeed in throwing the door open and leaping to the ground before Marsh could shoot. But he would have to be as swift and agile as one of the wild beasts that inhabited the jungle on all sides. “I never had the slightest intention of killing you. Neither did Miss Lanyard.”

  “You are a liar, Harrington, and I’m going to kill you.”

  Harrington felt his heart crawling toward his throat He had an agonizing feeling that in the very next moment a deadly slug would tear through his body. He held his breath. But the crack did not come. The man in the rear seemed to take a fiendish delight in playing with his victim. Again Harrington’s hand moved furtively toward the door handle.

  “Your name is not Harrington,” Marsh went on, “and you’re a rotten secretary. You came to me with forged credentials. Oh, I’m on to you. I haven’t said anything, but I’ve had my suspicions. If you didn’t come to me with the idea of killing me, why did you come?”

  Harrington hesitated. With his hand on the door handle, he cast another glance into the mirror. He could see that Marsh’s hand was steady, that his aim was sure. If he could but shake that deadly aim for a mere instant!

  “Let go that handle!” Marsh bawled, and Harrington recoiled from the pressure of hard steel against his spine. “One move, and you die!”

  Harrington laughed grimly. He would die, anyway. A few seconds or minutes did not matter. He might as well grasp this despairingly slender chance. But the chance would be somewhat improved if, for but a split second, he could divert Marsh’s mind from his murderous aim.

  An inspiration came. With a sharp inward thrill he turned his head and faced the man in the rear.

  “Why did you kill David Mooreland?” he asked.

  And then he saw the face in the dusk grow white. He saw Marsh’s hand tremble. The pistol wavered. This was his chance to jump for his life. But Harrington sat motionless, enthralled and fascinated by the look of devastating fear he saw in the man’s face. The spectacle held him spellbound. He stared and stared.

  And then, as he stared, the face in the dusk changed horribly. The eyes grew round; the mouth dangled open in an expression of overwhelming surprise. Harrington felt he was seeing something unreal, inexplicable. And now Marsh’s chest heaved forward. An awful scream came. It soared piercingly in the scale, broke curiously in the middle, dwindled down to a stream of gasps and groans.

  “Good Lord!” broke shakily from Harrington’s lips.

  It seemed as if the hills and the wet, howling night were still echoing that awful scream. Now Marsh’s head slumped slackly to the shoulder. The lips moved grotesquely, but the movement ceased even while Harrington was staring into the hideously twisted features. Then came a final groan, a rattle the throat. The eyes in the dusky face rolled and grew filmy. Christopher Marsh was dead.

  CHAPTER V — The Abandoned Hotel

  “Dead!” Harrington muttered. He bent in stony rigidity over the back of the front seat The spectacle he had witnessed was brain-stifling and body-numbing. Marsh’s sudden appearance in the car had been mystifying enough. But this—this was positively uncanny.

  Marsh’s body had slumped back against the rear seat It was still sagging and settling itself against the cushions. The face was turned up at a slant, and along the throat, extending toward the neck, there was a reddish trickle.

 
“Murder,” said Harrington. His mind formed the thought mechanically. Yes, of course it had been murder. First the sudden scream, and now the reddish trickle along the throat, testified as to that. But how—Harrington’s mind stood still. It seemed as if the black night itself must have incarnated itself in a murderer’s form.

  Slowly, vacantly, in the dim light thrown back by the lamps, his eyes traveled over the rear of the car. If there had been a murder, there must have been a murderer. The murderer must have stolen up to the car while it was standing here on the hilltop. In some incomprehensible way he had escaped the notice of the two occupants. He had opened one of the rear doors, struck the murderous blow, and vanished. And he had performed the deed so swiftly and quietly that he had been neither heard nor seen.

  Harrington shook his head groggily. No, such a thing was impossible. One of them, if not both, would have seen him. No mortal could commit a murder in such a stealthy fashion. Still, the deed had been done. Marsh was dead. He had died before Harrington’s eyes. Harrington had seen his face convulse in the agony of death. And so he was forced back to the conclusion that the murderer had stolen up to the car, unheard and unseen, and accomplished his deed.

  His brain reeled. His eyes were still traveling about the dusky interior of the car. Four nickel handles, one on each door, gleamed vaguely in the dusk. Harrington’s eyes widened. He stared stupidly at the four nickel fixtures. Three of them were turned up. With the handles turned up, the doors, when slammed shut, locked themselves automatically. The exception was the door on the right side of the driver. That one had to be locked and unlocked with a key.

  A mutter of stupefaction fell from Harrington’s lips. It seemed as if an insuperable riddle had risen out of the night. The two rear doors and one front door were locked from the inside. The windows were also closed. Neither the doors nor the windows could be opened from the outside. How, then, had the murderer reached his victim?