Read Online The Murder of a Fifth Columnist by Leslie Ford - Free Book Online

arrogance—Corliss Marshall had never been known to make a mistake about a fact. I wondered if it was just possible that his hatred of Pete… But of course I had no way of knowing.
    We met the others in a cluster in front of the library door. I heard Sylvia say something gay and trivial about the glass feathers on top of the lamp shades, and dropped back to join Corliss and Mr. Thatcher. The rest of them moved into the library.
    “I haven’t told you how much I’m enjoying your house, Mrs. Latham,” Bliss Thatcher said.
    I remember that very clearly, just as the three of us came to the door between the two glass tables.
    “Hello,” he said. “Here’s a copy of that thing.”
    He reached under the lamp and picked up the folded salmon-yellow oblong of paper, looked at it an instant and handed it to Corliss.
    “It’s a good sample,” he said. “I wish I could analyze the technique. There’s nothing here I can say definitely is not true—and yet the impression of futility and hopelessness of our ever getting the job we’ve set out to do done is extraordinary. I know that the Army and Navy are not riddled with incompetency and inefficiency… and yet, when I get through reading a couple of these things, I find myself beginning to doubt it and find myself wondering what the hell’s the use of struggling. Let ’em take the whole world, us included, if they want it.”
    Corliss put on his pince-nez that hung around his neck on a slightly flamboyant black ribbon, looked it over and nodded silently, and handed it back to Bliss Thatcher. Mr. Thatcher turned to put it down. I had a vague sense that something was different about the glass table there, the way you have in your own home when an object that’s brightened a particular spot has been moved in dusting and not put back. Then, as I looked down at the table again, it came into my mind instantly. The leather sheath with the jeweled stiletto hilt protruding from it that had sparkled brilliantly under the glass lamp was gone.

7
    I realized that with a little start of dismay, even. It was on the tip of my tongue to say something, but Bliss Thatcher was speaking.
    “If you’ll stop in tomorrow, Marshall, I’ll give you the figures. I’d be glad to see a piece about it.”
    He’d taken my elbow and was propelling me politely through the library door, and the moment for calling their attention to it casually, without seeming to make a scene, was gone. Corliss was saying, “I’ll get away early tonight. I’ll be in first thing in the morning.—My God, it’s hot in here,” he added.
    As we came in I heard Larry Villiers’ elegant voice. “What about Barbara, Ruth? Isn’t she coming down?” Larry would have called the Dowager Queen of China by her first name.
    “She’s gone to bed, the little wretch,” Ruth answered, laughing. “I’d have loved for you all to meet her. Her mother’s my oldest and most intimate friend.” Which is more than most of us can say about ourselves, I remember thinking with a corner of my mind that wasn’t, like the rest of it, going around in half a dozen indecisive circles.
    I didn’t know what to do. The impulse just to blurt out, “Look—somebody’s taken the jeweled stiletto off the table, and maybe one of us is going to get hurt with it, and whichever one of you has it give it up instantly,” was almost overwhelming. My reason kept saying, “Don’t be a hysterical fool. Maybe Ruth brought it in here to show some one while you were upstairs, and it’s on the mantel or on the desk in plain sight. If you call attention to it, everybody will know what’s in your mind, and Larry Villiers will see you never live it down. You don’t call your hostess’s friends potential murderers—or thieves at the best. Lady Alicia might be a kleptomaniac, and her maid will bring the thing back in the morning —you don’t know. You don’t know anything about it.”
    My friend Colonel Primrose says a woman ought never to try