The Unsuspected Read Free

flow."
     
    "Does he talk like that?"
     
    "Oh, lordy, lordy, you have no idea how he talks."
     
    "I've read his—"
     
    Jane put up her hand. "Listen" The bartender had changed stations on the radio. Music was cut off. Instead, there was a voice. Jane's hand came down and her fingers fastened on his wrist. The place was quiet enough so that they could hear clearly. It was easy to hear and to understand that persuasive voice. If you began to listen, it caught you. It wove a musical snare for your attention, and then it spun a web of words to hold you, smooth words that came pouring without effort, pouring forth, delicately inflected, persuasive, fascinating.
     
    "How many masks do we meet in a day?" the voice was saying. The cadences were full of regret and wonder, and a little relish. "How many ordinary human faces, two eyes, a nose and a mouth? The man on the bus, the clerk behind the counter, each has a secret.
    And there are some whose secret is not innocent, but who must wear their masks until they die. I call them The Unsuspected."
     
    Jane's nails went into the flesh on Francis' wrist.
     
    "I myself know such a man." This was Luther Grandison speaking. This was his voice. "Yes, I know a man who has committed that gravest and most interesting of all crimes, the crime of murder, and who never has been suspected at all. No, he lives, and has lived
    for years, wearing his mask, taken for one of us, ordinary, going about his daily business, and yet he did it! I say, he did it!" The voice fell. I say I know. I had better add that the authorities also know. But alas, such knowing is not legal proof." The voice was so
    sorry. It was sorry about everything, but faintly pleased too.
     
      "You see, with all our cleverness, we do not know how to tear the mask from his face. And, indeed, were I to give his name, he might use the law itself to punish me for what he would call libel. And yet"—in a thrilling whisper—"he did it!"
     
    A beat of silence. Then the voice said softly, and it licked its chops with relish now, "Oh, they are among us. The Unsuspected! There's many a murder, not only unsolved but unheard of, unknown . . . unknown. You may be sure, men and women have gone to their
    graves, quietly assisted, with no fuss and no bother."
     
    The voice died. It left its audience with that delicious little shudder that Luther Grandison knew how to give them. His famous trick of putting terror into the commonplace. It was like the little touches in his plays, the Grandison touches, in which he took the ordinary, and gave it just a little flip, and it was terrifying.
     
    Jane opened her eyes. "That's Grandy. You see?"
     
    Francis sat still with angry white face. "The Unsuspected," he murmured. "Has he got the crust to mean himself?"
     
     
    Chapter Two
     
    "Suppose I go to see this lawyer?" His voice was sharp and angry.
     
    "You can't walk in there and say, 'Look, folks, I want to see all the dope on the Frazier fortune.'"
     
    "The law could."
     
    "The law won't!" she wailed. "He's unsuspected. And, Fran, if you try to stir up something that way, I can see what would happen. He'd be ever so gentle with you. But he'd treat you like a museum piece. He'd put you in his collection of psychopaths. By the
    time he got through, everybody would be so sorry for the poor young fiance, unbalanced by grief."
     
    "Like that, eh?" The rich purr of Grandy's voice hung remembered between them. "Well, let that go for a minute," snapped Francis. "Start another way. How did he do it?"
     
    "He's even got an alibi," said Jane despairingly. "Althea was with him. I mean, she saw Rosaleen alive, and after that Grandy was with her all the time, until they found—"
     
    "Althea saw her?"
     
    "Well, heard her speak, anyway."
     
    Francis' eyes lit again. "What if we could show the alibi's a fake?"
     
    "If we could! Fran, do you think a private detective—"
     
    Francis let his lips go into something like a smile. "I think I'll attend