Chapter XIV.Mainly a Love SceneJoan had fully intended to see her stepfather before the inquest and to warn him of his danger and get him to tell the truth to her at least. When Ellery came to visit her on the Thursday afternoon—the inquest was on Friday—she had been on the point of setting out for his club, with the set purpose of making him tell her the whole story. Just before dinner time, she knew, was the most likely hour for finding him at home. There would probably be difficulty in persuading him to talk freely, even to her; but she thought that she would know how to manage him. It was still too early to start, however, and she had ample time to see Ellery first. A talk with him was just what she wanted. He would sympathise with her, and, she was sure, he was just the man to help her where Carter Woodman had failed. He would throw himself into the case, and aid her to find out what she ought to do in order to clear her stepfather of the suspicion which lay upon him. Since her talk with Woodman, she had come to realise fully how grave that suspicion was; but she was sure that Bob—she and Ellery had called each other by their Christian names ever since they were children—would not only take her word for it that Walter Brooklyn could not possibly be guilty of the crimes, but be ready to use his wits and his time in proving the suspected man’s innocence. She did not quite tell herself that he would do all this because he was in love with her; but neither did she quite admit to herself that she would not have asked him unless she had been in love with him.There was some embarrassment—of which Joan was fully conscious—in Robert Ellery’s manner as he rose to greet her. “I hope I’m not in the way,” he said awkwardly, blushing as he said it.“My dear Bob, I’m so glad you’ve come. I’ve been pining for some one to whom I could really talk.”“I wasn’t at all sure whether I ought to come. I thought you might prefer to be alone, and you must have your hands very full with Sir Vernon. Of course, I’d have come sooner if I had thought you wanted me.” Again Ellery coloured.“I want you now, anyway. And it isn’t simply that I want to talk. I want to do something, and I want your help.”To help Joan! What thing better could Ellery have asked for? He would do anything in the world to help her. But what sort of help did she need? He longed to tell her that he was hers to command in any way she chose—because he loved her; but all he found himself saying was, “I say, that’s awfully jolly of you—to let me help you, I mean”—conscious of the banality of the words even as he spoke them.Joan went straight to the point. “Bob, the police suspect my stepfather of being mixed up with this horrible affair. In fact, I’m sure they think he is actually guilty of murder. They’ve got hold of something that seems to incriminate him.”Ellery made an inarticulate noise of sympathy.“Of course, Bob, you and I know he didn’t do it. You do think he couldn’t have done it, don’t you?”“It would certainly never have occurred to me to suspect him.”“Of course, he’s quite innocent, and it’s all some horrible mistake. He couldn’t have done such a thing. But I want you to help me prove he didn’t.”“My dear Joan, are you quite sure the police really suspect him? Of course, they have to make inquiries about everybody. Why, I was quite under the impression that they suspected me.”“Suspect you? How dreadful! Whatdoyou mean?”“Well, I had a most inquisitorial visit from the police this morning; and a man in obvious police boots has been following me about all day.”He spoke lightly; but Joan took what he said very seriously indeed. “My dear Bob,” she said. “This is positively awful. But why ever should any one think you—had anything to do with it?”“Oh, just because I failed to give a ‘satisfactory explanation’—I think that is what they call it—of my movements on Tuesday night. You know I walked home after dinner. Well, I wandered round a bit and didn’t get home till midnight. So they argue that I had plenty of time to kill half a dozen people, and insist that I must either prove analibi—or take the consequences. What do you say? Do you think I did it?”“My dear Bob, don’t joke about it. It’s far too serious, if the police are going to drag you into this terrible business.”“No, really, it isn’t serious at all—now at any rate. I am in a position, fortunately, to produce a conclusivealibi. You see, I wasn’t alone, and I’ve found the chap who was with me most of the time, and sent him round to Scotland Yard to tell them it’s all right. I expect the gentleman with the boots will be out of a job before long.”“You’re sure it’s really all right?”“Of course it is, or I shouldn’t have said a word about it. And I dare say what you have heard about the police suspecting old Walter isn’t a bit more serious.”“Oh, but it is. From their point of view, I’m afraid they have a very strong case.” And Joan told him all that she knew—both what she had heard about Charis Lang from Marian Brooklyn, and what Carter Woodman had told her. Finally, she told Ellery that she had made up her mind to go at once to her stepfather, and try to make him tell her the truth.As Joan told her story, Ellery could not help saying to himself that it looked bad for old Walter. He did not know Walter Brooklyn very well; but all he did know was unfavourable, and he had never heard any one—even Joan herself—say a good word for him. Left to his own reflections, Ellery would not have hesitated to suspect Walter Brooklyn of murder; for he realised at once that the wicked uncle had everything to gain by putting his two nephews out of the way. But Joan knew the man, and he did not; and, if Joan was positive, that was good enough for him. He was so completely under her influence that the idea that Walter Brooklyn was guilty was dismissed almost as soon as it was entertained. Ellery would make it his business to get Walter Brooklyn cleared—he would work for the old beast with the feeling that he was working for Joan himself. Entering at once into Joan’s plan, he applauded her determination to go and see her stepfather, and placed himself unreservedly at her service.“You’re a dear,” she said.While they had been discussing Walter Brooklyn’s story, Ellery’s embarrassment had quite left him; but these words of Joan’s, and her look as she spoke them, brought it back in double force. He felt the blood rushing to his head, and became uncomfortably aware that he was going red in the face. Also, he could not take his eyes off Joan, and somehow it seemed that she could not take her eyes off him. They gazed at each other, with something of fear and something of embarrassment in their looks, and each was conscious of a heart beating more and more insistently within. For at least a minute neither of them spoke. Then Ellery said one word and put out his hand towards her. “Joan,” he said, and his voice sounded to him strange and unreal. He felt her hand grasp his, almost fiercely, and an acute sensation—it has no name—ran right through him at the touch. In an instant, her head was on his shoulder and his arms were round her. She was sobbing, and his cheek was caressing hers. “Poor darling,” he said at last.Joan had meant that talk with Robert Ellery to be so practical, so entirely the opening of a business partnership. She and Bob were to clear her stepfather together; and, when they had done that, who knew what might come after? But there was to be no intrusion of sentiment until the work in hand was completed. In the event, things had not gone off at all as she intended. From the moment of his coming, she had felt a sense of danger—something poignant, yet intensely welcome—in their meeting. This feeling had been dispelled for the time while she told him her tale, and she had half said to herself that now she was safe. Then, in a moment, security had vanished, the sense of tension had come back far more strongly than before, she had felt herself merely a passive thing—as he was another passive thing—in the control of great elemental forces beyond herself. Without a word said, it seemed, a marriage had been arranged.There was, indeed, no need for words between them on this matter of matters that had joined them indissolubly together. They were sitting now on the couch, holding each other’s hands. They could talk business—speak of what must be done to clear Walter Brooklyn—while with the contact of their bodies love interpenetrated them. And Joan could say to herself already that this most unbusinesslike proceeding was the best stroke of business she had ever done. For the immediate purpose she had in view, it had immensely strengthened their partnership. For these twain had become one flesh, and what was near her heart needs must be near his also.As they sat there together, they formed their plan of campaign. It was obviously impossible to make a beginning until Joan had done her best to make Walter Brooklyn tell what he knew. If he were to refuse, their task would be so much the harder; but even the hardest task now seemed easy to them with the power of their love behind them. Whatever his attitude might be, they would still be ready to do their best for him. But surely he would tell Joan. There was no time to be lost. He must be seen at once, and Ellery set to work to advise Joan about the questions she ought to ask.“It seems clear enough that he was in the house. I suppose he will be able to explain that. But we mustn’t be content with getting just his explanation of what he was doing here. Try to find out exactly what he did and where he went that day. We may need to be able to account for every minute of his time.”Joan said that she quite saw how every detail mattered. If he would tell her anything, he would probably be willing to tell the whole story. At all events, she would do her best. It would be wisest, they agreed, for her to go alone; for Walter Brooklyn would very likely refuse to talk if Ellery were with her. But he would walk round to the club with her, and wait while she tried to get her stepfather to see her.So Joan and Ellery walked round to the Byron Club together. There was a strange pleasure—quite unlike anything they had known before—in merely walking side by side. They belonged to each other now. But the answer to Ellery’s inquiry of the Club porter was that Mr. Brooklyn was out, and that he had left word he might not return to the Club that night. Joan did not at all like the expression on the porter’s face as he gave this information. She saw that he at any rate had strong suspicions, presumably put into his mind by the police.Asked whether he could say where Mr. Brooklyn was, the porter did not know. He might, perhaps, be at his other Club, the Sanctum, in Pall Mall. Or again, he might not. He had not said where he was going.Inquiries at the other Club were equally barren. Mr. Walter Brooklyn had not been there that day. He might come in, or he might not. And again Joan saw from the porter’s manner that here too her stepfather was under suspicion of murder.Joan left at each Club a message asking Walter Brooklyn to ring her up at Liskeard House immediately he came in. This was all that could be done for the moment; and to Liskeard House they returned, having suffered a check at the outset of their quest. Ellery promised to spend the evening scouring London for traces of Walter Brooklyn; and in the mind of each was the half-formed thought that he might have fled rather than reveal what he knew. Each knew that the other feared this; but neither put the thought into words. They arranged to meet again on the following morning, and Ellery was to ring up later in the evening to report whether he had traced Walter, and to hear whether any message had come to Joan from either of the Clubs. Then, after the manner of lovers, they bade each other farewell a dozen times over, each farewell more lingering than the last. At length Ellery went; for he was due at Scotland Yard, where he hoped to find that hisalibihad been accepted, and the last trace of suspicion removed from him. It would be awkward to be followed about by the man in police boots wherever he went with Joan, and it would be awkward to have the police know exactly what they were doing in Walter Brooklyn’s interest. The police boots had followed Joan and him on their visits to the two Clubs, and now, as he left Liskeard House, Ellery saw their owner leaning against a lamp-post opposite, and gazing straight at the front door. Never, he thought, had a man looked more obviously a detective—or rather a policeman in plain clothes. Even apart from the boots, he was labelled policeman all over—from his measured stride to the tips of his waxed moustache. As Ellery turned down into Piccadilly, he heard the man coming along behind him.
Joan had fully intended to see her stepfather before the inquest and to warn him of his danger and get him to tell the truth to her at least. When Ellery came to visit her on the Thursday afternoon—the inquest was on Friday—she had been on the point of setting out for his club, with the set purpose of making him tell her the whole story. Just before dinner time, she knew, was the most likely hour for finding him at home. There would probably be difficulty in persuading him to talk freely, even to her; but she thought that she would know how to manage him. It was still too early to start, however, and she had ample time to see Ellery first. A talk with him was just what she wanted. He would sympathise with her, and, she was sure, he was just the man to help her where Carter Woodman had failed. He would throw himself into the case, and aid her to find out what she ought to do in order to clear her stepfather of the suspicion which lay upon him. Since her talk with Woodman, she had come to realise fully how grave that suspicion was; but she was sure that Bob—she and Ellery had called each other by their Christian names ever since they were children—would not only take her word for it that Walter Brooklyn could not possibly be guilty of the crimes, but be ready to use his wits and his time in proving the suspected man’s innocence. She did not quite tell herself that he would do all this because he was in love with her; but neither did she quite admit to herself that she would not have asked him unless she had been in love with him.
There was some embarrassment—of which Joan was fully conscious—in Robert Ellery’s manner as he rose to greet her. “I hope I’m not in the way,” he said awkwardly, blushing as he said it.
“My dear Bob, I’m so glad you’ve come. I’ve been pining for some one to whom I could really talk.”
“I wasn’t at all sure whether I ought to come. I thought you might prefer to be alone, and you must have your hands very full with Sir Vernon. Of course, I’d have come sooner if I had thought you wanted me.” Again Ellery coloured.
“I want you now, anyway. And it isn’t simply that I want to talk. I want to do something, and I want your help.”
To help Joan! What thing better could Ellery have asked for? He would do anything in the world to help her. But what sort of help did she need? He longed to tell her that he was hers to command in any way she chose—because he loved her; but all he found himself saying was, “I say, that’s awfully jolly of you—to let me help you, I mean”—conscious of the banality of the words even as he spoke them.
Joan went straight to the point. “Bob, the police suspect my stepfather of being mixed up with this horrible affair. In fact, I’m sure they think he is actually guilty of murder. They’ve got hold of something that seems to incriminate him.”
Ellery made an inarticulate noise of sympathy.
“Of course, Bob, you and I know he didn’t do it. You do think he couldn’t have done it, don’t you?”
“It would certainly never have occurred to me to suspect him.”
“Of course, he’s quite innocent, and it’s all some horrible mistake. He couldn’t have done such a thing. But I want you to help me prove he didn’t.”
“My dear Joan, are you quite sure the police really suspect him? Of course, they have to make inquiries about everybody. Why, I was quite under the impression that they suspected me.”
“Suspect you? How dreadful! Whatdoyou mean?”
“Well, I had a most inquisitorial visit from the police this morning; and a man in obvious police boots has been following me about all day.”
He spoke lightly; but Joan took what he said very seriously indeed. “My dear Bob,” she said. “This is positively awful. But why ever should any one think you—had anything to do with it?”
“Oh, just because I failed to give a ‘satisfactory explanation’—I think that is what they call it—of my movements on Tuesday night. You know I walked home after dinner. Well, I wandered round a bit and didn’t get home till midnight. So they argue that I had plenty of time to kill half a dozen people, and insist that I must either prove analibi—or take the consequences. What do you say? Do you think I did it?”
“My dear Bob, don’t joke about it. It’s far too serious, if the police are going to drag you into this terrible business.”
“No, really, it isn’t serious at all—now at any rate. I am in a position, fortunately, to produce a conclusivealibi. You see, I wasn’t alone, and I’ve found the chap who was with me most of the time, and sent him round to Scotland Yard to tell them it’s all right. I expect the gentleman with the boots will be out of a job before long.”
“You’re sure it’s really all right?”
“Of course it is, or I shouldn’t have said a word about it. And I dare say what you have heard about the police suspecting old Walter isn’t a bit more serious.”
“Oh, but it is. From their point of view, I’m afraid they have a very strong case.” And Joan told him all that she knew—both what she had heard about Charis Lang from Marian Brooklyn, and what Carter Woodman had told her. Finally, she told Ellery that she had made up her mind to go at once to her stepfather, and try to make him tell her the truth.
As Joan told her story, Ellery could not help saying to himself that it looked bad for old Walter. He did not know Walter Brooklyn very well; but all he did know was unfavourable, and he had never heard any one—even Joan herself—say a good word for him. Left to his own reflections, Ellery would not have hesitated to suspect Walter Brooklyn of murder; for he realised at once that the wicked uncle had everything to gain by putting his two nephews out of the way. But Joan knew the man, and he did not; and, if Joan was positive, that was good enough for him. He was so completely under her influence that the idea that Walter Brooklyn was guilty was dismissed almost as soon as it was entertained. Ellery would make it his business to get Walter Brooklyn cleared—he would work for the old beast with the feeling that he was working for Joan himself. Entering at once into Joan’s plan, he applauded her determination to go and see her stepfather, and placed himself unreservedly at her service.
“You’re a dear,” she said.
While they had been discussing Walter Brooklyn’s story, Ellery’s embarrassment had quite left him; but these words of Joan’s, and her look as she spoke them, brought it back in double force. He felt the blood rushing to his head, and became uncomfortably aware that he was going red in the face. Also, he could not take his eyes off Joan, and somehow it seemed that she could not take her eyes off him. They gazed at each other, with something of fear and something of embarrassment in their looks, and each was conscious of a heart beating more and more insistently within. For at least a minute neither of them spoke. Then Ellery said one word and put out his hand towards her. “Joan,” he said, and his voice sounded to him strange and unreal. He felt her hand grasp his, almost fiercely, and an acute sensation—it has no name—ran right through him at the touch. In an instant, her head was on his shoulder and his arms were round her. She was sobbing, and his cheek was caressing hers. “Poor darling,” he said at last.
Joan had meant that talk with Robert Ellery to be so practical, so entirely the opening of a business partnership. She and Bob were to clear her stepfather together; and, when they had done that, who knew what might come after? But there was to be no intrusion of sentiment until the work in hand was completed. In the event, things had not gone off at all as she intended. From the moment of his coming, she had felt a sense of danger—something poignant, yet intensely welcome—in their meeting. This feeling had been dispelled for the time while she told him her tale, and she had half said to herself that now she was safe. Then, in a moment, security had vanished, the sense of tension had come back far more strongly than before, she had felt herself merely a passive thing—as he was another passive thing—in the control of great elemental forces beyond herself. Without a word said, it seemed, a marriage had been arranged.
There was, indeed, no need for words between them on this matter of matters that had joined them indissolubly together. They were sitting now on the couch, holding each other’s hands. They could talk business—speak of what must be done to clear Walter Brooklyn—while with the contact of their bodies love interpenetrated them. And Joan could say to herself already that this most unbusinesslike proceeding was the best stroke of business she had ever done. For the immediate purpose she had in view, it had immensely strengthened their partnership. For these twain had become one flesh, and what was near her heart needs must be near his also.
As they sat there together, they formed their plan of campaign. It was obviously impossible to make a beginning until Joan had done her best to make Walter Brooklyn tell what he knew. If he were to refuse, their task would be so much the harder; but even the hardest task now seemed easy to them with the power of their love behind them. Whatever his attitude might be, they would still be ready to do their best for him. But surely he would tell Joan. There was no time to be lost. He must be seen at once, and Ellery set to work to advise Joan about the questions she ought to ask.
“It seems clear enough that he was in the house. I suppose he will be able to explain that. But we mustn’t be content with getting just his explanation of what he was doing here. Try to find out exactly what he did and where he went that day. We may need to be able to account for every minute of his time.”
Joan said that she quite saw how every detail mattered. If he would tell her anything, he would probably be willing to tell the whole story. At all events, she would do her best. It would be wisest, they agreed, for her to go alone; for Walter Brooklyn would very likely refuse to talk if Ellery were with her. But he would walk round to the club with her, and wait while she tried to get her stepfather to see her.
So Joan and Ellery walked round to the Byron Club together. There was a strange pleasure—quite unlike anything they had known before—in merely walking side by side. They belonged to each other now. But the answer to Ellery’s inquiry of the Club porter was that Mr. Brooklyn was out, and that he had left word he might not return to the Club that night. Joan did not at all like the expression on the porter’s face as he gave this information. She saw that he at any rate had strong suspicions, presumably put into his mind by the police.
Asked whether he could say where Mr. Brooklyn was, the porter did not know. He might, perhaps, be at his other Club, the Sanctum, in Pall Mall. Or again, he might not. He had not said where he was going.
Inquiries at the other Club were equally barren. Mr. Walter Brooklyn had not been there that day. He might come in, or he might not. And again Joan saw from the porter’s manner that here too her stepfather was under suspicion of murder.
Joan left at each Club a message asking Walter Brooklyn to ring her up at Liskeard House immediately he came in. This was all that could be done for the moment; and to Liskeard House they returned, having suffered a check at the outset of their quest. Ellery promised to spend the evening scouring London for traces of Walter Brooklyn; and in the mind of each was the half-formed thought that he might have fled rather than reveal what he knew. Each knew that the other feared this; but neither put the thought into words. They arranged to meet again on the following morning, and Ellery was to ring up later in the evening to report whether he had traced Walter, and to hear whether any message had come to Joan from either of the Clubs. Then, after the manner of lovers, they bade each other farewell a dozen times over, each farewell more lingering than the last. At length Ellery went; for he was due at Scotland Yard, where he hoped to find that hisalibihad been accepted, and the last trace of suspicion removed from him. It would be awkward to be followed about by the man in police boots wherever he went with Joan, and it would be awkward to have the police know exactly what they were doing in Walter Brooklyn’s interest. The police boots had followed Joan and him on their visits to the two Clubs, and now, as he left Liskeard House, Ellery saw their owner leaning against a lamp-post opposite, and gazing straight at the front door. Never, he thought, had a man looked more obviously a detective—or rather a policeman in plain clothes. Even apart from the boots, he was labelled policeman all over—from his measured stride to the tips of his waxed moustache. As Ellery turned down into Piccadilly, he heard the man coming along behind him.