The music stopped. There was applause and protracted cries of encore, but Catherine Jones shook her head definitely at the orchestra leader and made as though to leave the platform. The appeals for more continued—again she shook her head, and it seemed to me that her expression was rather angry. Then a strange incident occurred. At the protracted pleading of some one in the front row, the colored orchestra leader began the vamp of the tune, as if to lure Catherine Jones into changing her mind. Instead she turned toward him, snapped out, ‘Didn’t you hear me say no?’ and then, surprisingly, slapped his face. The music stopped, and an amused murmur terminated abruptly as a muffled but clearly audible shot rang out.
Immediately we were on our feet, for the sound indicated that it had been fired within or near the house. One of the chaperons gave a little scream, but when some wag called out, ‘Caesar’s in that henhouse again,’ the momentary alarm dissolved into laughter. The club manager, followed by several curious couples, went out to have a look about, but the rest were already moving around the floor to the strains of ‘Good Night, Ladies,’ which traditionally ended the dance.
I was glad it was over. The man with whom I had come went to get his car, and calling a waiter, I sent him for my golf-clubs, which were in the stack upstairs. I strolled out on the porch and waited, wondering again if Charley Kincaid had gone home.
Suddenly I was aware, in that curious way in which you become aware of something that has been going on for several minutes, that there was a tumult inside. Women were shrieking; there was a cry of ‘Oh, my God!’ then the sounds of a stampede on the inside stairs, and footsteps running back and forth across the ballroom. A girl appeared from somewhere and pitched forward in a dead faint—almost immediately another girl did the same, and I heard a frantic male voice shouting into a telephone. Then, hatless and pale, a young man rushed out on the porch, and with hands that were cold as ice, seized my arm.
‘What is it?’ I cried. ‘A fire? What’s happened?’
‘Marie Bannerman’s dead upstairs in the women’s dressing-room. Shot through the throat!’
The rest of that night is a series of visions that seem to have no connection with one another, that follow each other with the sharp instantaneous transitions of scenes in the movies. There was a group who stood arguing on the porch, in voices now raised, now hushed, about what should be done and how every waiter in the club, ‘even old Moses’, ought to be given the third degree tonight. That a ‘nigger’ had shot and killed Marie Bannerman was the instant and unquestioned assumption—in the first unreasoning instant, anyone who doubted it would have been under suspicion. The guilty one was said to be Katie Golstien, the colored maid, who had discovered the body and fainted. It was said to be ‘the nigger they were looking for over near Kisco’. It was any darky at all.
Within half an hour people began to drift out, each with his little contribution of new discoveries. The crime had been committed with Sheriff Abercrombie’s gun—he had hung it, belt and all, in full view on the wall before coming down to dance. It was missing—they were hunting for it now. Instantly killed, the doctor said—bullet had been fired from only a few feet away.
Then a few minutes later another young man came out and made the announcement in a loud, grave voice:
‘They’ve arrested Charley Kincaid.’
My head reeled. Upon the group gathered on the veranda fell an awed, stricken silence.
‘Arrested Charley Kincaid!’
‘Charley Kincaid?’
Why, he was one of the best, one of themselves.
‘That’s the craziest thing I ever heard of!’
The young man nodded, shocked like the rest, but self-important with his information.
‘He wasn’t downstairs when Catherine Jones was dancing—he says he was in the men’s locker-room. And Marie Bannerman told a lot of girls that they’d had a row, and she was scared of what he’d do.’
Again an awed silence.
‘That’s the craziest thing I ever heard!’ some one said again.
‘Charley Kincaid!’
The narrator waited a moment. Then he added:
‘He caught her kissing Joe Cable—’
I couldn’t keep silence a minute longer.
‘What about it?’ I cried out. ‘I was with him at the time. He wasn’t—he wasn’t angry at all.’
They looked at me, their faces startled, confused, unhappy. Suddenly the footsteps of several men sounded loud through the ballroom, and a moment later Charley Kincaid, his face dead white, came out the front door between the Sheriff and another man. Crossing the porch quickly, they descended the steps and disappeared in the darkness. A moment later there was the sound of a starting car.
When an instant later far away down the road I heard the eerie scream of an ambulance, I got up desperately and called to my escort, who formed part of the whispering group.
‘I’ve got to go,’ I said. ‘I can’t stand this. Either take me home or I’ll find a place in another car.’ Reluctantly he shouldered my clubs—the sight of them made me realize that I now couldn’t leave on Monday after all—and followed me down the steps just as the black body of the ambulance curved in at the gate—a ghastly shadow on the bright, starry night.
The situation, after the first wild surmises, the first burst of unreasoning loyalty to Charley Kincaid, had died away, was outlined by the Davis Courier and by most of the State newspapers in this fashion: Marie Bannerman died in the women’s dressing-room of the Davis Country Club from the effects of a shot fired at close quarters from a revolver just after eleven forty-five o’clock on Saturday night. Many persons had heard the shot; moreover it had undoubtedly been fired from the revolver of Sheriff Abercrombie, which had been hanging in full sight on the wall of the next room. Abercrombie himself was down in the ballroom when the murder took place, as many witnesses could testify. The revolver was not found.
So far as was known, the only man who had been upstairs at the time the shot was fired was Charles Kincaid. He was engaged to Miss Bannerman, but according to several witnesses they had quarreled seriously that evening. Miss Bannerman herself had mentioned the quarrel, adding that she was afraid and wanted to keep away from him until he cooled off.
Charles Kincaid asserted that at the time the shot was fired he was in the men’s locker-room—where, indeed, he was found, immediately after the discovery of Miss Bannerman’s body. He denied having had any words with Miss Bannerman at all. He had heard the shot but it had had no significance for him—if he thought anything of it, he thought that ‘some one was potting cats outdoors.’
Why had he chosen to remain in the locker-room during the dance?
No reason at all. He was tired. He was waiting until Miss Bannerman wanted to go home.
The body was discovered by Katie Golstien, the colored maid, who herself was found in a faint when the crowd of girls surged upstairs for their coats. Returning from the kitchen, where she had been getting a bite to eat, Katie had found Miss Bannerman, her dress wet with blood, already dead on the floor.
Both the police and the newspapers attached importance to the geography of the country-club’s second story. It consisted of a row of three rooms—the women’s dressing-room and the men’s locker-room at either end, and in the middle a room which was used as a cloak-room and for the storage of golf-clubs. The women’s and men’s rooms had no outlet except into this chamber, which was connected