CHAPTER XLVII.An Aid“Mrs. Magin,” Miss MacDonald began, right off, the minute the door had closed behind Danny, “I want to ask you to help me with this case.”“I couldn’t be any help to you,” I said. I guess I was rather tart about it.“Why not?”“One reason is,” I said, “that anybody who doesn’t know any better than to suspicion Danny, in this affair, would need a lot more help, to get anywhere, than I could give them.”“My only suspicion concerning Miss Canneziano,” she answered, “is that she knows more than she is willing to tell. I may be wrong about that. Have you any other reason for refusing to help me?”“Only that you don’t believe a word I say. If you would consider that I am, anyway, trying to be honest, and if you’d do the same with the others, until you are sure that you have reason to do otherwise, I’d consider it an honor to help you, and I’d thank you kindly.”“I am afraid that I don’t entirely understand.”“Crime and wickedness,” I told her, “aren’t the general rules of the world. If they were, all the good people would have to be locked up, for safety’s sake, while the criminals ran loose for lack of space to confine them. Why, instead of doubting my simple word, this morning, when I told you how Sam always lighted a fire, for any excuse, couldn’t you have believed that I was telling the truth, and that whoever put the key in there knew that Sam would light the fire, and so throw suspicion on himself?”“That is possible,” she admitted. “But the key, there, leads me to suppose that whoever put it there, to hide it, would be too stupid for much subtle reasoning. Keys, you know, don’t burn.”“They don’t,” I agreed. “But we never take the ashes out of the fireplace as you did this morning. We open the ash-dump and shoot them down into a barrel in the basement. Every few months the ashes are emptied in starvation field, eight miles or more away from here. Not a bad way to get the key carried off the place, if that was what he wanted. Not a bad way, either, to throw more suspicion on Sam, if the key was found.”“Most criminals are stupid, though,” she clung to her point. “Try as they may, they always make some stupid blunder.”“It seems to me,” I said, “that the ones who get caught are stupid; they are the ones who have made the blunder, left the clue. But look at the number of criminals who get clean away. Not long ago, I was reading some statistics——”“You know what Mark Twain said about statistics? ‘There are three kinds of liars: liars, damned liars, and statistics.’ ”I had to laugh. I think she said that to put me in a good humor, for she went right on to say, “But you haven’t told me, yet, that you will be my assistant in this case.”She couldn’t hoodwink me. “I told you that I’d be no use to you, as long as you doubted every word I said.”“But,” she argued, “by your own admission you tried to shield Mr. Stanley, immediately after the murder; stopping to clean away his—the pipe ashes. If you tried, once, to shield him, wouldn’t you try again to shield him, if you needed to?”“No,” I said, “I wouldn’t. I’ll tell you why. That night, and for several days after, my mind was like a dirty cluttered kitchen. I couldn’t get enough space cleared in it to start thinking, let alone working at it. I have tidied up a place, since then, and I’ve done a batch of thinking. I know, now, that Sam doesn’t need me, nor anyone, to shield him. Any evidence found against him, will be good evidence, in the end, against whoever fixed it to throw blame on him.”“I am inclined to agree with you,” she said. “Now then: Is there anyone here who would benefit by his conviction?”“Am I,” I questioned, “your assistant, or am I not?”“Does it make a difference in your answer?” she questioned in return.“A deal of difference. Being your assistant honor would bind me, wouldn’t it? If I know that you are believing that I’ll help, and tell the truth, I’ll try to. If I think I am to be doubted, anyway, maybe I’ll say what I’d like to say.”She sat and looked straight at me for at least half a minute. “I do believe you,” she said, “and trust you. I have, since I first met you at the station. I can’t help myself. You’re all right, Mrs. Magin, and I know it. I’ll agree to your terms. Now then: As my assistant, is there anyone on the place who would benefit in any way by Mr. Stanley’s conviction?”“In a way,” I said, though it all but choked me, “John would. He is to inherit everything Sam has. But John loves Sam. And John didn’t do it.”“Miss Canneziano would also benefit, then, wouldn’t she, since she is to marry young Mr. Stanley?”“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “John has plenty of his own, right now; and Sam would give them anything and everything they wanted besides, as long as he lived.”“I had understood,” she said, “that Mr. Stanley objected to the marriage.”“Not a bit of it. He has asked them to wait a year. That’s all.”“Is there,” she asked, next, “any person at present on the ranch whom you would concede might, possibly, commit a murder?”“Canneziano.”“Yes, I know. And leaving him out of it?”“Well,” I had to hesitate, “I am not sure. Every instinct I have tells me that neither Hubert Hand nor Mrs. Ricker—— No. It is an awful thing to say; but, do you know, Gabrielle Canneziano herself was the only other person who has ever been on this ranch whom I could even imagine doing such a terrible thing.”“I wonder why you disliked her so much?” she said.“Because she didn’t have any of the decent, ordinary virtues,” I answered. “She didn’t know anything about them. Not charity, nor gratitude, nor kindness, nor honesty, nor modesty, nor—nor anything.”“Isn’t it strange that twin sisters, who looked as much alike as these girls did, should be so entirely different as to character?”I had not seen her notes at that time. I did not know that she had written “Innocent” after Danny’s name. I spoke up, pretty hotly.“Strange or not, it is true. In character those two girls were as different as night and day. I never even thought that they looked alike. Who told you that they did?”“I have seen their photographs,” she reminded me. “Chadwick Caufield’s album is filled with them.”“Their photographs may look alike. They didn’t.”“But theydid,” she insisted.“I tell you,” I said, “that they acted so differently, and talked so differently, and dressed so differently, that there was not one bit of likeness.”“A most unusual state of affairs for duplicate twins. These sunshine and tempest relationships are seldom found, outside a Mary J. Holmes’ novel. Miss Danielle Canneziano came here on a most doubtful errand; an errand that amounted to robbery, nothing else——”“If you are accusing Danny——” I interrupted.“Oh, I am not!” There was a flash of temper in that. “Making all allowances for mistakes in time, Miss Canneziano could not have committed the murder herself. But, suppose that her past was not as innocent and blameless as she would like to have you all think. Suppose that a revelation of all she knows, or suspects, concerning her sister’s death, would also bring to light things that she can not afford to have brought to light concerning herself. It is at least reasonable to think that she knows more than she is willing to tell.”“Maybe,” I had to admit. “But I doubt it.”“Why do you so dislike that admission?”“Because John loves her. John is a good boy. I’d hate to see his heart broken.”“Will you forgive me for saying that young Mr. Stanley does not impress me as a man who is very deeply in love?”“I know,” I agreed. “Just now he is a mite put out with Danny. He has been, ever since she accused Sam.”“Considering the circumstances under which Miss Canneziano made that accusation, young Mr. Stanley is acting most unjustly—if that is the case.”“All men are unjust to the women they love,” I told her. “It seems to be a part of it, like a rash with measles.”She smiled at that, and changed the subject.“I wonder whether you noticed,” she said, “that coming up from the station I set a trap for Miss Canneziano. Just for an instant, I fancied that there was more fear than grief in her attitude toward meeting her father. I suggested, you remember, that she see him alone? I wanted to see whether she desired a private interview with him. Her prompt refusal made it evident that she had no secret to give to him, and expected to get none from him. That is in her favor. Still——“Before you go now, since you have agreed to help me, do you mind if I direct a bit? I want you to keep one eye on Miss Canneziano. I want you to keep the other eye on Mr. Canneziano, Mr. Hand, and Mrs. Ricker. Will you do that?”“One whole eye for Danny,” I questioned, “and only a third of an eye for each of the others?”“For the present,” she smiled. “Will you do that?”I said that I would. It was not until after dinner the next day, when I was resting in my own room, feeling as virtuous as the three monkeys, who see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, pleased as Punch over my failures of the past twenty-four hours, that I realized that I just naturally could not carry through a job that went as much against the grain as that job went.We are, I thought, allowed to know some things—just simple, honest knowing. And I knew that keeping a suspicious eye on the girl who had said “bless your heart” to me, on the evening of the second of July, was as sensible as sitting up for Santa Claus.Someone knocked on my door. I answered the knock. Miss MacDonald, all smiles, was standing there.“Let me come in,” she said; and, as soon as my door was closed behind her, “A most fortunate thing has happened.”
“Mrs. Magin,” Miss MacDonald began, right off, the minute the door had closed behind Danny, “I want to ask you to help me with this case.”
“I couldn’t be any help to you,” I said. I guess I was rather tart about it.
“Why not?”
“One reason is,” I said, “that anybody who doesn’t know any better than to suspicion Danny, in this affair, would need a lot more help, to get anywhere, than I could give them.”
“My only suspicion concerning Miss Canneziano,” she answered, “is that she knows more than she is willing to tell. I may be wrong about that. Have you any other reason for refusing to help me?”
“Only that you don’t believe a word I say. If you would consider that I am, anyway, trying to be honest, and if you’d do the same with the others, until you are sure that you have reason to do otherwise, I’d consider it an honor to help you, and I’d thank you kindly.”
“I am afraid that I don’t entirely understand.”
“Crime and wickedness,” I told her, “aren’t the general rules of the world. If they were, all the good people would have to be locked up, for safety’s sake, while the criminals ran loose for lack of space to confine them. Why, instead of doubting my simple word, this morning, when I told you how Sam always lighted a fire, for any excuse, couldn’t you have believed that I was telling the truth, and that whoever put the key in there knew that Sam would light the fire, and so throw suspicion on himself?”
“That is possible,” she admitted. “But the key, there, leads me to suppose that whoever put it there, to hide it, would be too stupid for much subtle reasoning. Keys, you know, don’t burn.”
“They don’t,” I agreed. “But we never take the ashes out of the fireplace as you did this morning. We open the ash-dump and shoot them down into a barrel in the basement. Every few months the ashes are emptied in starvation field, eight miles or more away from here. Not a bad way to get the key carried off the place, if that was what he wanted. Not a bad way, either, to throw more suspicion on Sam, if the key was found.”
“Most criminals are stupid, though,” she clung to her point. “Try as they may, they always make some stupid blunder.”
“It seems to me,” I said, “that the ones who get caught are stupid; they are the ones who have made the blunder, left the clue. But look at the number of criminals who get clean away. Not long ago, I was reading some statistics——”
“You know what Mark Twain said about statistics? ‘There are three kinds of liars: liars, damned liars, and statistics.’ ”
I had to laugh. I think she said that to put me in a good humor, for she went right on to say, “But you haven’t told me, yet, that you will be my assistant in this case.”
She couldn’t hoodwink me. “I told you that I’d be no use to you, as long as you doubted every word I said.”
“But,” she argued, “by your own admission you tried to shield Mr. Stanley, immediately after the murder; stopping to clean away his—the pipe ashes. If you tried, once, to shield him, wouldn’t you try again to shield him, if you needed to?”
“No,” I said, “I wouldn’t. I’ll tell you why. That night, and for several days after, my mind was like a dirty cluttered kitchen. I couldn’t get enough space cleared in it to start thinking, let alone working at it. I have tidied up a place, since then, and I’ve done a batch of thinking. I know, now, that Sam doesn’t need me, nor anyone, to shield him. Any evidence found against him, will be good evidence, in the end, against whoever fixed it to throw blame on him.”
“I am inclined to agree with you,” she said. “Now then: Is there anyone here who would benefit by his conviction?”
“Am I,” I questioned, “your assistant, or am I not?”
“Does it make a difference in your answer?” she questioned in return.
“A deal of difference. Being your assistant honor would bind me, wouldn’t it? If I know that you are believing that I’ll help, and tell the truth, I’ll try to. If I think I am to be doubted, anyway, maybe I’ll say what I’d like to say.”
She sat and looked straight at me for at least half a minute. “I do believe you,” she said, “and trust you. I have, since I first met you at the station. I can’t help myself. You’re all right, Mrs. Magin, and I know it. I’ll agree to your terms. Now then: As my assistant, is there anyone on the place who would benefit in any way by Mr. Stanley’s conviction?”
“In a way,” I said, though it all but choked me, “John would. He is to inherit everything Sam has. But John loves Sam. And John didn’t do it.”
“Miss Canneziano would also benefit, then, wouldn’t she, since she is to marry young Mr. Stanley?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “John has plenty of his own, right now; and Sam would give them anything and everything they wanted besides, as long as he lived.”
“I had understood,” she said, “that Mr. Stanley objected to the marriage.”
“Not a bit of it. He has asked them to wait a year. That’s all.”
“Is there,” she asked, next, “any person at present on the ranch whom you would concede might, possibly, commit a murder?”
“Canneziano.”
“Yes, I know. And leaving him out of it?”
“Well,” I had to hesitate, “I am not sure. Every instinct I have tells me that neither Hubert Hand nor Mrs. Ricker—— No. It is an awful thing to say; but, do you know, Gabrielle Canneziano herself was the only other person who has ever been on this ranch whom I could even imagine doing such a terrible thing.”
“I wonder why you disliked her so much?” she said.
“Because she didn’t have any of the decent, ordinary virtues,” I answered. “She didn’t know anything about them. Not charity, nor gratitude, nor kindness, nor honesty, nor modesty, nor—nor anything.”
“Isn’t it strange that twin sisters, who looked as much alike as these girls did, should be so entirely different as to character?”
I had not seen her notes at that time. I did not know that she had written “Innocent” after Danny’s name. I spoke up, pretty hotly.
“Strange or not, it is true. In character those two girls were as different as night and day. I never even thought that they looked alike. Who told you that they did?”
“I have seen their photographs,” she reminded me. “Chadwick Caufield’s album is filled with them.”
“Their photographs may look alike. They didn’t.”
“But theydid,” she insisted.
“I tell you,” I said, “that they acted so differently, and talked so differently, and dressed so differently, that there was not one bit of likeness.”
“A most unusual state of affairs for duplicate twins. These sunshine and tempest relationships are seldom found, outside a Mary J. Holmes’ novel. Miss Danielle Canneziano came here on a most doubtful errand; an errand that amounted to robbery, nothing else——”
“If you are accusing Danny——” I interrupted.
“Oh, I am not!” There was a flash of temper in that. “Making all allowances for mistakes in time, Miss Canneziano could not have committed the murder herself. But, suppose that her past was not as innocent and blameless as she would like to have you all think. Suppose that a revelation of all she knows, or suspects, concerning her sister’s death, would also bring to light things that she can not afford to have brought to light concerning herself. It is at least reasonable to think that she knows more than she is willing to tell.”
“Maybe,” I had to admit. “But I doubt it.”
“Why do you so dislike that admission?”
“Because John loves her. John is a good boy. I’d hate to see his heart broken.”
“Will you forgive me for saying that young Mr. Stanley does not impress me as a man who is very deeply in love?”
“I know,” I agreed. “Just now he is a mite put out with Danny. He has been, ever since she accused Sam.”
“Considering the circumstances under which Miss Canneziano made that accusation, young Mr. Stanley is acting most unjustly—if that is the case.”
“All men are unjust to the women they love,” I told her. “It seems to be a part of it, like a rash with measles.”
She smiled at that, and changed the subject.
“I wonder whether you noticed,” she said, “that coming up from the station I set a trap for Miss Canneziano. Just for an instant, I fancied that there was more fear than grief in her attitude toward meeting her father. I suggested, you remember, that she see him alone? I wanted to see whether she desired a private interview with him. Her prompt refusal made it evident that she had no secret to give to him, and expected to get none from him. That is in her favor. Still——
“Before you go now, since you have agreed to help me, do you mind if I direct a bit? I want you to keep one eye on Miss Canneziano. I want you to keep the other eye on Mr. Canneziano, Mr. Hand, and Mrs. Ricker. Will you do that?”
“One whole eye for Danny,” I questioned, “and only a third of an eye for each of the others?”
“For the present,” she smiled. “Will you do that?”
I said that I would. It was not until after dinner the next day, when I was resting in my own room, feeling as virtuous as the three monkeys, who see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, pleased as Punch over my failures of the past twenty-four hours, that I realized that I just naturally could not carry through a job that went as much against the grain as that job went.
We are, I thought, allowed to know some things—just simple, honest knowing. And I knew that keeping a suspicious eye on the girl who had said “bless your heart” to me, on the evening of the second of July, was as sensible as sitting up for Santa Claus.
Someone knocked on my door. I answered the knock. Miss MacDonald, all smiles, was standing there.
“Let me come in,” she said; and, as soon as my door was closed behind her, “A most fortunate thing has happened.”