Percy Lyon had a natural gift for human nature, as some people have for music or for mechanics. Unconsciously and instinctively, he could read character, and as with all instinctive knowledge, he was utterly unable to say how he reached his conclusions. His judgment had so often proved to be truer than appearances that it had surprised even himself. His success in his newspaper work depended almost wholly upon this gift. In news as news he had little interest, and he often chafed at the routine drudgery of his assignments, but when his work was to "write up" some one, whether it was a drunken tramp arrested for disorderly conduct, a visiting diplomat surrounded with mystery and red tape, a famous actress or an infamous trust-president, he was in his element. He would sit and look at his victim with quiet, dreaming eyes, listen with sympathetic attention to whatever he might say, and then go away and write up a sketch that would reveal the inner life of his subject's mind in a manner that was sometimes startling to the man himself.
"Who told you that?--How did you find that out?" was frequently asked.
And Lyon would laugh and pass it off as a joke, or if pressed, would probably answer, "Why, I don't know; that's what I should do, or feel, or think, if I were in his place.--I got that impression about him, that's all." But the point was that the impressions he received were so apt to be psychologically correct that it seemed almost uncanny. It was something like clairvoyance.
As he turned away from the inquest to carry out the mission that had so unexpectedly been entrusted to him, he felt perfectly convinced, in his own mind, of Lawrence's innocence.
In spite of the quarrel in the morning with its proof of Lawrence's temper and Fullerton's self-control, in spite of the damning fact that Lawrence's cane, broken and hidden, would appear to be the instrument with which the fatal blow was struck, in spite of the curious fact that Lawrence had held his peace when he must have recognized the dead man, Lyon found himself inwardly committed to the faith that Lawrence was not directly involved. He faced and set aside as simply unexplained the fact of Lawrence's presence in the neighborhood. By Donohue's testimony, Lawrence was going in the direction of the tragedy about half an hour before the body was discovered. By Lyon's own knowledge, Lawrence must have been behind him on Hemlock Avenue as he came down that block, else how had he, too, seen the running girl? In other words, he had spent half an hour loitering on the street of a winter night within a compass of two blocks. Of course the mystery involved the girl, for whose good name he was so deeply concerned.
How she was involved he could not even hazard a guess--until he should have seen her. Did Lawrence entertain the thought that she was involved in the affair in any other way than as a possible witness? If she was merely a disinterested witness, would he have felt bound, at such cost, to keep her from being called upon? Lyon felt that was a forced explanation. No, Lawrence must either know or believe that the girl was vitally connected with the murder. Nothing else would explain his anxiety on her behalf. Now, who was the girl? It was luck and great luck that he had so good a justification for calling, as otherwise he would have been forced to invent an occasion. It was beyond all reason to expect him to relinquish the pursuit of such a clue.
He made his way at once to the house where he had seen Lawrence call. His ring was answered by an elderly servant, slow and stiff in her movements. Lyon recalled with a smile his fancy that the running girl might possibly be the maid, hurrying to conceal a tardy return to the house. This woman could not run for a fire.
"Is Miss Wolcott at home?" he asked.
The woman looked dubious and discouraging. "I'll see," she said.
"Please tell her that I will detain her only a moment, but that I have a very important message for her," Lyon said, giving the girl his card and quietly forcing his way past her into the reception room.
The old servant went slowly up-stairs, and Lyon took a swift survey of the room in which he was left, striving to guess the character of the owners. Books, pictures, flowers, all betokened refined and gentle ways of living. Unpretentious as it was, this was evidently the home of cultured people.
A slow step was heard in the hall, and an old man came to the door of the drawing room and looked in at Lyon with a mingling of mild dignity and child-like friendliness that was peculiarly attractive.
"IthoughtI heard some one come in," he said, with obvious pleasure at finding his guess right. "Did you come to see my granddaughter?"
"I have sent up my card to Miss Wolcott," Lyon answered.
"She is my granddaughter. Didn't you know?" the old gentleman asked, in surprise. "I am Aaron Wolcott, you know. Maybe you are a stranger in Wayscott."
"Yes, I am a good deal of a stranger yet."
"What is your name, may I ask?"
"Percy Lyon."
The old gentleman took a chair opposite and regarded him with cheerful interest. "I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Lyon. My granddaughter will be down soon. Eliza, our old servant, is slow because she has rheumatism. She's getting old,--but that isn't a crime, is it? I'll be getting old some time myself, I suppose. But I've got all my faculties yet, thank Heaven."
"Have you lived in this house long?" Lyon asked.
"I built this house twenty-five years ago for my son,--Edith's father, you know. There have been many changes, many changes. He died when he was thirty, and his young wife followed him and left the baby Edith and me alone together. There's something wrong when young people die and old people are left. We should not outlive our children."
"Do you mean that you live here entirely alone with your granddaughter?" asked Lyon, quickly. This was significant.
"Except for Eliza. Eliza is a good servant. Edith isn't much of a housekeeper. She doesn't care for anything but her music. But she's a good girl, Edith is."
"Did you wish to see me?" a cool, low voice asked at the door.
Lyon rose to his feet and bowed. "If you are Miss Wolcott, I have a message for you," he said, and by a pause he conveyed to her the idea that the message was for her alone.
Miss Wolcott regarded him for a moment with an observant scrutiny which she made no attempt to disguise, and then she turned to her grandfather.
"It is time for your walk, Dandy," she said. She got him his overcoat, hat, and stick from the hall, and herself buttoned his coat up to his throat.
"You see how she spoils me," Mr. Wolcott said, with evident pride in his voice. "I'm old enough to look out for myself."
Edith did not speak. In grave silence she gave him his gloves, and watched him put them on while Lyon as intently watched her. She was a tall girl of perhaps twenty-five, with eyes of midnight blackness, broad black eyebrows that drooped in straight heavy lines toward her temples, and black hair that was drawn in smooth, broad bands at the side of her head to repeat the drooping line of her brows. Her mouth drooped too, in lines too firm to be called pensive, too proud to be sad. Altogether it was a face of mystery,--a face not easily read, but not the less powerful in its attraction. Lyon had a swift comprehension of Lawrence's feeling.
If this woman was in any way connected with the murder, the matter was serious as well as delicate. Lyon's pulses began to tingle as a hunter's do when he sees a mysterious "track" which he does not understand.
She let her grandfather out at the front door, and then came back to the room where Lyon was waiting. Calmly seating herself, she bent an inquiring and unsmiling look upon him. It struck him that she had shown nothing of her grandfather's tendency to unnecessary words.
"I have come at the request of Mr. Lawrence, who wished me to bring you a message," Lyon said.
There was something like a flash of light in her shadowy eyes, but whether it meant eagerness or anger, love or hate, Lyon could not say. She bent that same intent, unsmiling regard upon him, with only a deepening of its intentness, as though waiting for his next word with held breath.
"Mr. Lawrence considered it important that I should see you personally and at once, since he could not come himself to explain his reasons for what may sound like an extraordinary request," he went on deliberately.
She moved restlessly. "I have not seen Mr. Lawrence since--"
Lyon interrupted. "Pardon me, may I give you the message before you say anything more? Mr. Lawrence has been arrested on the charge of killing Warren Fullerton--"
"Oh, heavens, has it come to that?" the girl gasped, with horror on her face.
Lyon raised a warning hand. "And his urgent request to you is that you refrain from giving any information which, you may possess in regard to the matter to any one. That of course includes myself."
Miss Wolcott was holding fast to the arms of the chair and her pallor seemed to have deepened visibly, but she did not lose her self-control for a moment.
Lyon would have given much to be able to tell whether the feeling which she obviously held back from expression was fear or concern or contempt.
"You of course saw the account of the murder in the morning papers," he continued, deeming it advisable to put her in possession of the situation as fully as possible. "The inquest was held today, and Mr. Lawrence has been taken into custody,--merely on suspicion, of course. It is known that he had had a quarrel with Mr. Fullerton, and his broken cane was found in the neighborhood."
Miss Wolcott's intense eyes seemed trying to drag out his words faster than he could utter them, but she asked no questions.
"This means that he will be held for the action of the Grand Jury, which will meet in about two weeks. Of course he will have an attorney to present his case. You are not to think that his arrest necessarily means anything worse than the necessity of making his innocence as obvious to the world at large as it is now to his friends. But in the meantime his great and immediate anxiety was that you should be warned to say nothing about the whole matter. Frankly, Miss Wolcott, I don't know whether your silence is to protect him or to protect some one else, but I do know that he was profoundly in earnest in hoping that you would preserve that silence unbroken as long as possible."
"What do you mean by as long as possible?" she asked, slowly.
"If you should be summoned as a witness at the trial, you will of course have to tell everything within your knowledge connected with the affair."
She frowned thoughtfully. "Am I likely to be summoned as a witness?" she asked.
"That will depend on whether the prosecuting attorney or Mr. Lawrence's attorney gets an idea that you have any information in your possession which will help his side of the case."
She sat very still, with downcast eyes, for a long moment. Lyon made a movement of rising, and she checked him.
"One moment. When the trial comes off, will there be any way of my knowing how it is going?"
"It will be fully reported in the papers. You could be present in the court room if you think it advisable."
"I will think of it," she said quietly. Then her splendid self-control wavered for a moment. "If I should feel that I had to talk to some one, to understand things,--would you--might I--"
"May I come occasionally to tell you of any new developments?" Lyon asked, simply.
"Thank you. It will be kind of you."
"I shall be very glad to keep you informed." And then he added deliberately, intending that however much she might veil her own sympathies there should be no doubt in her mind as to his position, "I am a friend of Mr. Lawrence's. That is why he entrusted me with this word for you."
She bowed, somewhat distantly, without speaking, and Lyon left.
When he got outside, he allowed himself to indulge in a moment of puzzled and half-reluctant admiration. What superb nerve! Her connection with this mysterious case was evidently a close and vital one, yet she had held herself so well in hand that it was impossible for him to say now, after this momentous interview, whether her sympathies were with Lawrence or not. She had most completely understood and heeded his injunction to keep silence, at any rate. Was the injunction needed, in the face of such self-control? What was it that lay behind that shield? Lyon felt as though his hands were being bound by invisible bands, and he had a frantic desire to break his way clear and force a way to an understanding of things. Turning a corner he came upon the old grandfather taking his leisurely constitutional in the sun, and instantly he realized that Providence had placed in his hands the means of removing some of his assorted varieties of ignorance,--if it is Providence who helps a man when he is trying to peer into his neighbor's business. There may be a difference in the point of view as to that. With a surreptitious glance at his watch, he fell into step beside Mr. Wolcott.
"Your quiet neighborhood has made itself rather notorious," he began, at a safe distance from his objective point. "I suppose you first learned of the murder through the papers this morning. Or did you hear the excitement last night?"
"I heard the grocer boy telling Eliza this morning," Mr. Wolcott answered. "I don't read the paper very much. My eyesight is all right,--my faculties are all as good as ever,--but they print the papers in such fine type nowadays, I don't care to read them."
"Well, Miss Wolcott would surely have read it and noticed about the murder."
"She wouldn't talk about it."
"Of course it is not a pleasant thing to talk about."
"That isn't all. You see, Edith was engaged to marry that Mr. Fullerton at one time."
"Really?" This was so startling a piece of information that Lyon stopped short in his surprise, trying to fit it into its place with the other things he knew or guessed. "Really!"
"Don't let on I told you," said the old gentleman, confidentially. "Edith doesn't like to have me talk about her affairs. But that's the reason she is so strange to-day. Maybe you didn't notice, but she was very quiet all day."
"Do you think that she cared for him still?" demanded Lyon.
"Oh, no, no! That's all past. But it must have given her a queer feeling to have him killed so near her own door. No, she didn't care for him. If he had died in some other way, I think she would have been glad. I'm not sure she isn't glad as it is, though maybe she was a little scared to have her wish come true.--It is kind of awful to have something up there take you at your word."
"What makes you think that she would be glad?"
"Oh, I see things, if I am old. Edith doesn't think I notice, but I know more about things than she guesses. She said once that she wished he was dead.--I heard her."
"Really? How was that?"
"I had gone to sleep on the couch in the library,--not really asleep, of course, but I was lying down to rest my eyes for a moment,--and Edith didn't know I was there. I woke up and saw her standing by the window looking out, and she was so excited that she was talking aloud to herself. She threw up both hands, like this, and said aloud,--'I wish to heaven you were dead, dead, dead!' Then she ran out of the room like a whirlwind, and I got up and looked out of the window. Mr. Fullerton was standing on the sidewalk, looking up at the house. He touched his hat when he saw me, and smiled a nasty, sarcastic kind of a smile, and walked off."
"When was this?"
"Maybe two weeks ago."
"Did you ever speak of it to anyone?"
"Never, not a word. Not to anybody except Lawrence."
"Oh, you told Arthur Lawrence?"
"Yes, you see I like Lawrence, and I thought it was just as well to let him know that there wasn't anything between Edith and Fullerton any longer. I haven't forgotten about such things, even if I am getting to be an old man. You see, if Lawrence heard about that old engagement of Edith's it might make him hold off, so I just thought I'd let him know there wasn't anything to it now. It was all off."
"What did Mr. Lawrence say?"
"Not much. But he made me tell him again just what she said, and what she did. I guess he was glad to have the old man tell him, all right."
"You know Arthur Lawrence pretty well, don't you?" Lyon asked abruptly.
The old gentleman chuckled. "Oh yes, I don't have much chance to forget Mr. Lawrence. Of course it isn't me that he comes to see, but still he's very civil to the old grandfather! A deal more civil than Mr. Fullerton ever was, by the same token. Edith was well off with that old love before she was on with the new."
Lyon was certainly getting more than he had expected. There was not much mystery now about the significance of Fullerton's slur on Lawrence for following in his footsteps, or about Lawrence's resentment. He was so absorbed in his own speculations on the subject that Mr. Wolcott had twice repeated a question before he heard it.
"Do you know if Mr. Lawrence is out of town?"
"No, he is here."
"He said Sunday he would bring me some new cigars the next time he came. I thought he might come last night, but he didn't. For that matter, Edith wasn't at home last night. Maybe he knew she wouldn't be. But she didn't tellmeshe was going to be out."
"Indeed?"
"No, she didn't. But I found it out. Even if my own eyes are not as young as they were, I can see things that are right under my nose. Edith said she had a headache and would have to go to her room instead of playing cribbage with me. So I had to play solitaire, and I don't like to play solitaire of an evening. When I was young the evening was always the time for society, and I'm not so old that I want to be poked off in a corner to play solitaire. So I went to her room about ten o'clock to see if her head was better. We could have had a game of cribbage yet. Well, she wasn't there. She had gone out without saying a word to me. And while I was looking around she came in by the side door and came up the back stairs. I asked her where in the world she had been at that time of the night, and she never answered,--just went in to her room and locked the door. Now, do you think that is a proper way for a young woman to treat her elders? When I was young, we didn't dare to treatourelders in that way."
"I am sure you didn't," said Lyon, soothingly.
"And do you think it was proper for her to be out so late at night without saying anything to anyone in the house?"
"I am sure Miss Wolcott will be worried if you stay out so long," said Lyon, evasively. "She'll blame me for keeping you talking. Good-by. I am very glad to have met you. Some evening you must let me come and play a game of cribbage with you."
He turned to leave him, and then, with a sudden second thought, he came back. "Tell Miss Wolcott that I fell in with you, and that we had a pleasant chat," he said.
He had sufficient confidence in Miss Wolcott's discretion by this time to feel sure the message would set her to investigating the nature of the conversation, and possibly she would know how to sequestrate or suppress her garrulous relative until the peculiar circumstances of that evening should have faded out of his memory. The circumstances were so peculiar that Lyon could not help feeling it was fortunate that he, and not some police officer for instance, had received the old gentleman's confidences.
Lyon went straight to the jail to report to Lawrence. He had little difficulty in securing admittance, for the sheriff was sufficiently pliable and Lawrence sufficiently important to permit a softening of the rigors of prison discipline in his case. His arrest might, indeed, be considered merely a detention on suspicion until the Grand Jury had formally indicted him, and the sheriff had evidently considered that his duty was filled by ensuring his safety, without undue severity. The room was guarded without and barred within, but in itself it was more an austerely furnished bedroom than a cell, and Lawrence had more the air of a host receiving his guests than a prisoner. That, however, was Lawrence's way. It would have taken more than a stone wall and a locked door to force humiliation upon him. He tossed circumstances aside like impertinent meddlers, and scarcely condescended to be aware of their futile attempts to hamper him.
At the moment he was in consultation with his attorney, Howell,--or, rather, Howell was trying to hold a consultation with him, and, judging by his looks, not very successfully.
"It is unfortunate that your memory should be so curiously unequal," Howell said drily, as Lyon entered.
"If it is equal to the occasion, that's sufficient," Lawrence said carelessly. "Don't you be putting on airs with me, Howell. I'm your associate counsel in this affair. You go and see if you can get me out on bail, and then we'll talk some more. Hello, here's Lyon, of theNews. At last I have attained to a distinction I have secretly longed for all my life. I am going to be interviewed."
"If he succeeds In getting any really valuable information out of you, I'll take him on for associate counsel," grumbled Howell, as he gathered up his papers and took his departure.
"Well?" demanded Lawrence, the instant they were alone. His Celtic blue eyes were snapping with impatience.
"I delivered your message. Judging from the balance of our interview, your hint was accepted."
Lawrence laughed. He threw himself down in his chair and laughed with a keen appreciation of the situation suggested by Lyon's words and a sudden relaxation of his nervous tension that struck Lyon as significant.
"Come, you might tell me something more, considering!" he said.
"There isn't much that I know," said Lyon. But he understood very well what it was that Lawrence wanted and he went over his interview with a good deal of detail. Lawrence sat silent, listening, with his hand hiding his mouth and his eyes veiled by their drooping lids. At the end he drew a long breath and slowly stretched his arms above his head.
"Well, that's all right, and you're a jewel of an ambassador," he said. Then suddenly he pushed the whole subject away with an airy wave of his hand. "You are here on professional business, I suppose. Are you going to write up my picturesque appearance in my barren cell, or do you want my opinion of Yeats' poetry or on the defects of the jury system? By Jove, old man, you'd have to hunt hard to ask for something that I wouldn't give you."
"I am very glad you gave me the opportunity," said Lyon simply. Then he hesitated. He had an instinctive feeling that, as a mere ambassador, he must not presume to assert any personal interest in the situation, and yet he felt there was something which Lawrence might consider important in the old gentleman's revelation. Of course he could not repeat the whole of that conversation! That, luckily, was not necessary. But if he might venture on the friendly interest which he really felt, he must mention one item.
"I met Miss Wolcott's grandfather," he said, with the casual air of one who is filling in a conversational break. "He inquired if you were in town,--said he had expected you to call Monday night, but supposed perhaps you had not done so, because you knew Miss Wolcott was to be out."
Lawrence looked up sharply.
"He said that, did he?"
"Yes. He seemed to be cherishing a grievance because she had gone out without notifying him, and because she let herself in by the side-door when she returned at ten o'clock."
Lawrence looked at him with concentrated gaze.
"I wonder to how many people he has confided his grievance," he said slowly. "He doesn't see very many people, and he is apt to forget things in time. We'll have to hope for the best. Here's to his poor memory!"
"If the subject isn't revived! But I gathered that he doesn't read the papers."
"No, his eyesight is really very bad, though of course he won't admit it. If worst came to worst,--I mean if his testimony came into the case,--it would not be difficult to cast some uncertainty on the time. He couldn't read the face of a watch, I feel sure."
"Then here's to his poor eyes," said Lyon with a smile.
And Lawrence laughed and shook hands with him with a tacit acceptance of his partisanship that bound Lyon to him more strongly than any formal words could have done. Indeed, when Lyon went away he considered himself pledged, heart and soul, to Lawrence's cause. No henchman of the days of chivalry ever felt a more passionate throb of devotion to an unfortunate chieftain than this quiet, self-effacing young reporter felt for the brilliant and audacious man who was so evidently determined to play a lone hand against fate. This feeling was in no respect lessened by the possibility which he had been forced to consider that Lawrence might in fact be much more nearly involved than he had at first supposed. Men had been swept away from the moorings of convention and morality by the passions of love and hate ever since the world began, and Lawrence, for all his breeding and gentleness, was a man of vital passions. No one could know him at all and fail to recognize that. And he had loved Miss Wolcott and hated Fullerton; that was clear. But the question of whether he was, in fact, guilty or innocent, was merely secondary. The first question for Lyon, as for any true and loyal clansman it must always be, was merely by what means and to what extent he could serve him. And that settled once and for all the question of his own obligation to speak. The cause of justice might demand that he should give Howell a hint as to important witnesses. The language in which he mentally consigned the cause of justice to the scaffold was not exactly feminine, but the sentiment behind it was peculiarly and winningly feminine. If Lawrence wanted this thing, he should be allowed to have it, and the cause of justice might go hang.
At the same time, he was absorbed in a constant speculation on the facts of the case. The little light he had gained only made the darkness more visible. If Lawrence had indeed struck the fatal blow, how had it come about? Had he encountered Fullerton and Miss Wolcott together, and had there been a sudden quarrel with this unexpected termination? Then Miss Wolcott was the sole witness, and Lawrence's injunction to silence was easy enough to understand. That was of course the most obvious explanation, though on that theory it was hard to understand Lawrence's amazement when his cane had been produced at the inquest. On the other hand, if Lawrence's tale was true about his being behind Lyon on Hemlock Avenue, then his persistent evasion of all really conclusive proof of his alibi must be due to his determination to shield Miss Wolcott. Did he think it possible that she herself was the murderer? It was necessary to consider even that possibility. Lyon recalled the girl's sphinx-like composure, and he was by no means sure that it might not cover passional possibilities which could, on occasion, burst into devastating force. She was the sort of woman who would be quite equal to taking the law into her own hands if she felt it expedient to do so. Lyon knew the brooding type. If, for instance, she loved Lawrence, and if she felt that Fullerton stood between them, and particularly if she had any cause for bitterness against Fullerton which would make her feel that in slaying him she was an instrument of justice,--well, tragedies were happening every day that were no more difficult of belief. She was not an ordinary woman; and when a woman breaks through the lines of convention she will go farther than a man. She had had a grudge against Fullerton, she had prayed for his death, she had been on the spot when he was killed. Whether she struck the blow herself or not, it was clear that her connection with the affair was intimate. If she was the woman Donohue had seen in Fullerton's company when they left the Wellington together, it would seem that she had been agitated to the point of sobbing aloud as she walked beside him. Any emotion that could reduce Miss Wolcott to sobs must have been powerful. All this Lawrence knew as well as Lyon, but it was conceivable that he knew more. Had he been a witness of the murder, if not an actor in it? How had his cane come to be on the spot unless he had been there himself? And the fact that Fullerton's overcoat had been turned seemed to indicate a deliberate attempt at concealment which did not accord with the girl's frantic flight from the spot. Some one else had been involved in that, some one with steady nerves and a cool head. In all the uncertainty, the one thing clear was that Lawrence had been so concerned about protecting the girl that he had almost seemed to invite rather than to repel suspicion. Whether the Grand Jury would consider the evidence against him as strong enough to warrant an indictment remained to be seen, but if it did not, it would not be because of any efforts on Lawrence's own part. That unfortunate public quarrel in the Court House was a serious complication, and since the murder that point had been much before the public. Half a dozen different versions had been given by as many positive eye-witnesses. That they differed so widely in detail only made the public more certain that there must have been something very serious in it. The wiseacres who had prophesied that something would come of it took credit to themselves.
It was merely from curiosity, and with no idea of the discovery he was about to make, that Lyon went to Hemlock Avenue that evening at ten to retrace the course he had taken the night before. He wanted to fix the scene in his memory definitely, and to take note of what he had seen and what he might have seen if he had looked. He stopped at the place where he had seen the running girl, and looked about. Certainly she had come from Sherman Street, and, cutting diagonally across Hemlock Avenue, had crossed the field of his vision squarely. He shut his eyes for an instant to recall the scene. She ran well,--he could see now that swift, sure flight. Was it possible that the statuesque Miss Wolcott could ever forget herself in that Diana-like run? Somehow the picture, as he now looked at it, was not like Miss Wolcott. It was lither, quicker, than he could imagine her. Yet there was no question about her running in at the Wolcott house. Stay, was he so sure of that? He had not seen her enter. She had simply run in by the walk that led to the side door. Could she have gone through the Wolcott yard on her way elsewhere? If the running girl was not in fact Miss Wolcott, then his whole theory fell down. Trusting to luck and the inspiration of the moment if he should be challenged, Lyon coolly followed the concrete walk past the side door into the Wolcott back yard. It was a sixty foot lot, running back about a hundred feet. At the front it was unfenced and open to the street, but at the back and on the two sides back of the rear line of the houses it was enclosed by a close board wall six feet high. By the posts and the clothes lines here, it was evident that the back yard was consecrated to Eliza and wash day. So far as might be seen, there was no gate in the enclosing wall. Was there an alley beyond or did this lot abut on the lot which faced on the next street south,--Locust? Lyon felt that might be an important question, and he went down to the corner of the lot and pulled himself up by his hands to look over the top of the wall. He satisfied himself of two points,--that there was no alley between this lot and the adjoining one, and that the board which he had laid his hand upon was not firm. He bent down to examine it. It was a broad board near the left corner of the wall. It was fastened to the upper cross-piece of the fence by a single large spike, and the lower end was unnailed. The effect of this was that while it hung straight in its place so long as it was untouched the lower end could be easily swung on that upper spike as a pivot, leaving a triangular aperture at the bottom quite large enough for a slender person to squeeze through. To test it, Lyon pulled himself through, and swung the board back into its place. He found himself in a large enclosed space, boarded in on all sides except the front, where a high wire fence separated it from the street. With a certain astonishment, Lyon recognized his surroundings. He was in the enclosed grounds of Miss Elliott's Private School for Girls on Locust Avenue,--a highly select and exclusive establishment. Was it as easy to get out as to get in? He hesitated a moment before deciding on further explorations, but the trees in the yard gave him the aid of convenient shadows, and he cautiously followed the wall around the lot, trying each board. There were no more secret panels. Everything was as firm as it looked. He had thought to get out by the gate on Locust Avenue, for it somehow touched his dignity to crawl out by the little hole that had admitted him, but to his surprise he found that the wire fence, which enclosed the lot on the front, came up to the house itself in such a way that no exit could be made on that side except through the house. Moreover the fence was too high to jump, even for him. Emboldened by the fact that the house was as entirely dark as though it were vacant, Lyon made another and even more careful examination of the enclosing wall. There was no break, and he was forced to make his way out, as he had come in, by Miss Wolcott's back yard.
He regained the open street with a tingling pulse. Perhaps his discovery meant nothing,--but perhaps it meant everything. It might enable him in time to tell Lawrence that the running girl was not Edith Wolcott. The sudden recognition of that possibility excited him keenly. Could it be that Lawrence had mistakenly jumped to the same conclusion that he had? Were Lawrence and Miss Wolcott both keeping silence, each to shield the other, while the guilty person made her escape through the sacred precincts of Miss Elliott's select school? He would interview Miss Elliott to-morrow.
It was two o'clock in the afternoon of the next day before Lyon found it possible to carry out his plan to interview Miss Elliott. As he approached the Select School on Locust Avenue, he noticed a doctor's runabout fastened before the door, and, as he came up, a young physician whom he knew well. Dr. Barry, came down the steps. Lyon had often found it useful to assume a curiosity when he had it not, and he at once seized his opportunity.
"How is your patient?" he asked with an assured air.
"What do you know about my patient?" Barry asked in obvious surprise.
Lyon in fact knew so little that he deemed it advisable to answer this question with another.
"Will she be able to see me?"
"You newspaper men beat the devil! How did you find out she was here? She particularly wanted to keep it quiet. Miss Elliott called me in with as much secrecy and mystery as though her guest were a royalty traveling incog., and here I find you on the steps ready to interview her for the benefit of the whole public."
"You don't understand," said Lyon quietly. "The only way to keep things out of the newspapers is to take the newspaper men into your confidence. By the way, is her ailment serious?"
"Puzzling. Disordered state of the nerves," said Barry, frowning.
Lyon laughed. "Don't put on professional airs with me."
"That's straight. It looks very much like nervous shock. I don't at all approve of her seeing visitors."
"Then why don't you forbid it?" fished Lyon with curiosity.
"I'm too young and she's too important," laughed Barry as he jumped into the runabout. "I haven't the nerve to give orders to the wife of a multimillionaire." And he drove rapidly off.
Lyon rang the bell with a feeling of exhilaration. He was making progress.
"While the neat servant who answered his ring took his card to Miss Elliott, Lyon waited in the reception room and hastily reviewed his facts. The wife of a multimillionaire traveling incog., and suffering from nervous shock. How could he surprise Miss Elliott into giving him her name? In a few minutes Miss Elliott stood before him, looking from his card to him with a severe and discouraging air. It was an air which Lyon had encountered before when pursuing the elusive interview.
"I am not here in my professional capacity," he said with a disarming smile. "I wanted to make some personal inquiries about your school in behalf of a friend in Cleveland."
Miss Elliott softened. "This is not a very good time to see the school," she said. "This is the Thanksgiving vacation, you know, and the pupils and teachers have all gone home."
"I didn't think of that. When did they go?"
"The term closed last Friday. The pupils all scattered on Saturday. We resume class work next Monday."
"Then you have been practically alone in the building with your servants this week," Lyon said blandly. This was significant. The murder had taken place on Monday evening, and it was a big gain to know that he might eliminate a score of Miss Elliott's pupils from connection with the running girl. It seemed to make the problem much simpler.
"Might I look over the building?" he asked as Miss Elliott responded to his last question with a somewhat chill bow. "My friend will be interested In knowing the general plan of the school rooms."
"I shall be glad to show them to you." said Miss Elliott.
Lyon listened deferentially while Miss Elliott explained the uses of the various rooms through which she conducted him. The building was a large square old-fashioned house, the first floor of which contained Miss Elliott's own suite, several large school rooms, and, in the rear, some rooms into which she did not take him, and to which she vaguely referred as "my resident teachers' apartments." Lyon guessed at once that this was where her distinguished guest was quartered,--a guess which was confirmed when the second story was thrown wholly open to him. He took special note of the window fastenings and saw at once that it would be the simplest thing in the world to throw open a window and slip out into the large inclosed yard.
"Your high wall suggests a convent school," he said with a smile. "Are your young ladles as carefully secluded as that wall would suggest?"
"That is one of the features of the school," Miss Elliott said, somewhat primly. "We aim to give the care and guidance of a home to our pupils. During lesson hours and at all other hours, they are safeguarded, and are never unattended. We know exactly where they are all the time, and what they are doing."
"A wise arrangement."
"During the school year, this large yard is our outdoor gymnasium. The girls take their exercise here free from all observation. There is no entrance to the grounds, except through the house."
"An admirable plan. In fact, your arrangements are all so admirable that I do not wonder at the reputation which your school has achieved. And the social atmosphere is, I know, of the best."
"We are exceedingly particular about whom we admit," conceded Miss Elliott, with modest gratification.
"Oh, I am aware of that, and of your distinguished patronesses. The name of the lady whom you are at present entertaining is alone a sufficient guarantee. Oh, don't be afraid that I am going to put an item about her in the paper! A newspaper man respects confidences, and I understand that she does not wish her presence here to be heralded abroad. In fact, I may say that professionally I am quite ignorant as to her presence here, but personally and privately,--you understand,--" And he smiled intelligently.
Miss Elliott bowed. "Mrs. Woods Broughton is an old personal friend," she said simply. "She used to live in Waynscott, you know, before her marriage. There are so many people here who used to know her that she would have no chance for a quiet rest if it became known that she was here, and she is very much in need of a quiet rest."
Lyon looked sympathetic. "Yes, a nervous shock I understand from Dr. Barry. I hope she is improving."
"I think she is in better spirits than when she came, though any nervous disturbance is hard to understand."
"Will she remain after the school reopens?"
"Necessarily, for awhile. She is not in condition to travel."
Lyon left the building in so abstracted a state of mind that he fairly ran into a man on the sidewalk. With a hastily muttered apology, he hurried on. The discovery that the mysterious woman was Mrs. Woods Broughton was, in a way, staggering. As well connect any other national celebrity with small local affairs. Mrs. Woods Broughton's name was known throughout the country, not only because of her husband's wealth and position, but because of the more or less romantic circumstances attending her marriage. She had been Mrs. Vanderburg when Broughton met her and fell in love with her, and everybody knew that the divorce which she had procured shortly afterwards had been merely a preliminary to the brilliant wedding which had set the newspapers agog. It had been a very decorous and unsensational divorce, without a breath of scandal, for Vanderburg had been an unknown quantity for so many years that no exception could be taken to the deserted wife's action in securing legal recognition of her practical and actual independence. Still, the need of securing a divorce might never have occurred to her if Woods Broughton had not come into her life. Lyon remembered the story in its general outline, though he had forgotten that the scene of it was Waynscott. The papers had been featuring the wedding at the time he began his career as a reporter in Cleveland, and the whole affair had taken on a special and personal interest to him from the fact that about six weeks later he had himself met the divorced husband, Vanderburg, under dramatic circumstances. He had been traveling a long afternoon in Ohio, and had struck up a traveling acquaintance with a clever, cynical, world-worn man in the smoking car. Percy Lyon's experiences at that time had been somewhat limited, and he had never before encountered the particular variety of liveliness which this sophisticated traveler afforded. He had apparently been in all quarters of the globe, and if his tales had something of a Munchausen quality, they were none the less entertaining for that. The interruption of his last tale had been tragic. There had been a sudden grinding of the wheels on the rails, a tearing crash, and then confusion, horrible and soul-shaking. When Lyon began to think consecutively again, he found that he was frantically tugging at the crushed seat which was pinning his companion to the floor of the overturned car. Help answered promptly to his shout, and they soon had the man out, but he was unconscious and so badly hurt that the physician shook his head gravely.
"Better telegraph for his friends, if you can find out who they are."
Lyon, in the absence of any closer acquaintance, had searched the unconscious man's pockets for a clue to his identity, and in an inner pocket he found an old note-book with the name "William H. Vanderburg" written on the fly-leaf. The name had suggested nothing to his mind at the moment, and while he was looking further for an address, the man's eyes had opened slowly and taken the situation in with full intelligence.
"You have nothing to do with that book," he said harshly. "If it's my name you are hunting for, Enoch Arden will do for my headstone. I have no friends to notify, and you will please me best if you bury me and forget about me, and particularly keepthatname out of the papers. I have a right--" But the effort was too much. He gasped and fell back dead. Lyon had been so impressed by the stranger's peculiarly commanding personality that he had respected his wish to be left unidentified. He considered that the bare accident that he had stumbled upon the man's real name did not justify him in disregarding the owner's wish to keep it concealed, and he did not change his view when he saw that a bunch of newspaper clippings which had fallen out of the note-book related to the divorce granted to Grace Vanderburg. Lyon reviewed the situation as fully as it was known to him. Mrs. Vanderburg had secured a legal separation in the courts and had married again. The decree was based on the representation that William H. Vanderburg had deserted his wife and had been unheard of for over twelve years. Whether William Vanderburg had intended to make difficulties or not, Lyon had no means of guessing, but if he had, certainly his death had closed the incident for ever. The unintentional witness slipped the old note-book into his own pocket and allowed the railroad company to bury the body of "One unidentified man."
That was all three years in the past, or thereabouts, and now he had been brought most curiously across the path of that dead man's former wife. Truly, the Goddess of Accident was throwing her shuttle with what almost looked like design. Was his imagination running wild in suggesting to him a possible identity between this woman of uncommon experience, wealth, and social standing, and the woman who had fled in a panic from the scene of Fullerton's murder? He felt that he was in danger of making himself absurd by harboring such a thought for a moment, but with the desire which was characteristic of him to get at the bottom facts, he went directly to the office of the clerk of the Circuit Court.
"I want to verify some dates in connection with that Vanderburg divorce case," he said, to the lounging official in charge. "Would it be possible for me to look at the record?"
"I have the papers right here, as it happens," the clerk answered. "Curious you should call for them. I made a transcript of that case for Warren Fullerton a week or two ago."
"Did you, really?" Lyon exclaimed in surprise. "What did he want it for?"
"Dunno. He was Mrs. Vanderburg's attorney, you know."
"I didn't remember," said Lyon thoughtfully. It was beginning to look interesting. There was, then, an established relation of some sort between Mrs. Broughton and Fullerton. Just what did it mean?
He felt that he was on the way to finding out when he reached his rooms that evening, for he found awaiting him a special delivery letter containing the following somewhat imperiously worded invitation:
"Mrs. Woods Broughton will be greatly indebted to Mr. Percy Lyon if he can call upon her this evening. She appreciates his courtesy in respecting her wish that her visit should not be made a matter of public gossip. He will add to her obligations by giving her an opportunity for a personal interview."
Lyon got into his evening clothes with a jubilation that does not always accompany an evening call. He felt that the fates were playing into his hands.