"Dear Mr. Lyon:
"Could you conveniently call this evening? I shall be at home after seven. Yours sincerely,
"Edith Wolcott."
Lyon looked at the special delivery stamp, remembered Bede, and put the note in his pocket with some anxiety. What was up now? He perceived an urgency in the request which did not appear in the words themselves, and he looked forward to the call with some anxiety. If her nerve had broken down, and she should hurl a confession at him before he could stop her, what should he do about it?
Miss Wolcott received Lyon with the same curiously cold and impersonal manner that had struck him before, but unless he deceived himself, it was a manner deliberately assumed this time to conceal some unwonted nervousness of which she was herself afraid. Her face was as Sphinx-like as ever, but there was an unevenness of tension in her voice which betrayed emotion.
"I sent for you because something curious has happened," she said abruptly, "and I don't know anyone else to talk it over with. I received yesterday, by mail, this letter." And she handed him a single sheet of note paper, on which was written, in a bold hand,
"Remember, I said living or dead.
"Warren Fullerton."
Lyon looked up at her in amaze. "You received this yesterday?"
"Yes."
"Are you familiar with Mr. Fullerton's handwriting?"
"Yes. It is his."
"Can you be positive about that?"
He thought she suppressed a shudder, but her voice was coldly calm as she answered, "I do not think I can be deceived in it. I know it very well."
"May I see the envelope?"
She handed it to him silently. It corresponded with the paper, was addressed to her in the same bold, assured hand, and the postmark was particularly plain. It had been mailed the day it had been delivered. The note and envelope were both made of a thin peculiar grayish-green paper, oriental in appearance, with a faint perfume about them that would have been dizzying if more pronounced. Lyon held the paper up to the light. It vas watermarked, but so faintly that he had to study it carefully before he made out that the design was that of a coiled serpent with hooded head. As he moved the paper to bring out the outline, the coils seemed to change and move and melt into one another. Certainly it would have been a difficult paper to duplicate.
"Was Mr. Fullerton in the habit of using this paper?"
"Yes. It was made for him. He was given to fads like that. And another thing, though a trifle. You will notice he uses two green one-cent stamps, instead of the red two. He always stamped the letters written on that paper with green stamps."
"Does the message convey any special meaning to you?"
Miss Wolcott waited a moment before replying, as though to gather her self-control into available form. "I was at one time engaged to be married to Mr. Fullerton. I was very young and romantic and--silly. I had not known him very long. And almost immediately I had to go east to spend three months with some friends. While I was away I wrote to Mr. Fullerton,--very silly letters. After I came back something happened that made me change my mind and my feelings towards him. I broke the engagement and sent him back his letters and presents. He refused to be released or to release me. It was a very terrible time. He said that if ever I should marry anyone else, he would send my love-letters to him to my husband,--and this whether he was alive or dead."
"Ah! That explains, you think, this phrase?"
"I am sure of it."
"Did the threat make any special impression on you at the time? I mean did it influence your actions at all?"
"It made me determine never to think of marrying." Then, in answer to Lyon's look of surprise, she added, impetuously, "I would rather die than have anyone read those letters. I simply could not think of it. No man's love could stand such a test. To know that his wife had said such silly, silly things to another man,--it would be intolerable."
"But no gentlemanwouldread them."
She shrugged her shoulders lightly. "In a play, no. But in real life, he would be very curious. Or, if he did not read them, he still could not forget them. He would have them in his mind, and would perhaps guess them worse than they were. Besides, you do not know Mr. Fullerton. He would have managed in some way to bring about what he wanted. I cannot guess how, but those letters would have been put where they must be read. He was not one to trip in his plans."
"Did you make any attempt to recover your letters?"
She did not answer at once, and glancing at her Lyon saw that the agitation which she had been holding back seemed to have swept her for a moment beyond her own control. She was trembling so violently that she could not speak, and only the forcible pressure of her slender hands upon the arms of her chair gave her steadiness enough to hold her emotions in check. He turned to the light and busied himself for a minute in a critical examination of the letter. Then he came back to his question--for he was of no mind to let it pass unanswered.
"Did you ever try to recover the letters?"
"Once," she said, in a very low voice.
"And you failed?"
"Worse than failed." She threw out her hand toward the note he still held. "Did he not say, living or dead? Mere death could not interfere when he had set his will upon revenge."
"Then whoever wrote this note," said Lyon, thoughtfully, "must have had knowledge of his purposes as well as access to his private desk and knowledge of his personal peculiarities in regard to stamps. Now, Miss Wolcott, you must help me. Who would be likely to know of your letters?"
"How can I tell? I have hardly seen him for four years until--" She broke off, leaving the sentence unfinished.
"Have you spoken of them yourself to anyone? Any girl friend?"
"No, never."
"To your family?"
"No. I have lived alone with my grandfather since I was fifteen. You know him,--I love him, but he is no confidant for a young girl. I have always been much alone."
"Then, so far as you know, no one could have learned from you of those letters?"
"No one."
"Not Arthur Lawrence, for instance?"
She started, and looked as though he had presented a new idea.
"I never spoke of them," she said, slowly.
"Did he know of your engagement to Fullerton?"
"He never referred to it, but it is probable that he had heard of it. Some one would have mentioned it, probably. I did not know Mr. Lawrence at that time."
"He had no reason then to know--or to guess--the importance which you placed upon the recovery of the letters?"
She looked distressed, but her glance was as searching as his own.
"Why do you ask that? What bearing has it on this letter?"
"Perhaps none. But I was trying to narrow down the possible actors. If you on your part have kept the knowledge of these letters to yourself inviolately, then the information about them must have been given out by Fullerton if at all. Do you know anyone to whom he would be likely to confide such a matter,--any confidant or chum?"
She shook her head helplessly. "I know nothing of his friends. My impression is that he had very few. He was a strange, solitary, secret man."
"And yet it must be clear that either he wrote this himself, or it was written on his private paper in his handwriting, by someone who had intimate knowledge of his affairs,--not only of the fact that he had those letters of yours, but of the threat which he held over you in regard to them. Now if he wrote it himself, why wasn't it mailed until yesterday? And who did mail it yesterday, anyhow? If someone was in his confidence and is trying to play upon your fears, we must find out who it is. May I take this letter with me?"
"I don't want to ever see it again."
"And if you receive any other letters or anything comes up in any way bearing on this, will you let me know at once? I am going to try to find out about his office help. And I will leave this letter open to the sunlight for a day. If it was written yesterday, the ink will show a change by to-morrow. If written a week ago, it probably will not. As soon as I learn anything that will interest you, I will let you know."
But as he was departing she detained him, some unspoken anxiety visibly struggling with her habit of reserve.
"You spoke, when you were here before, of the possibility of my being called as a witness. If that should happen, would I have to tell about--this?"
"I do not see how it could come up, unless they could connect Lawrence with it in some way. Of course if they were trying to establish motive,--some reason for Lawrence's quarrel with Fullerton,--it might seem to have a bearing. But you never discussed Fullerton with Lawrence."
"No," she said, but her look was still troubled. "If you are questioned," he said quietly, "you will not have to testify except so far as you have positive knowledge. You will not have to give your thoughts or theories or guesses."
"I see," she murmured, dropping her strange, guarded eyes.
With that he left her. It was too late to take any active steps in the way of investigation that night, so he turned back toward his room, but his habit of keeping on his feet while thinking sent him on a long tramp before he finally turned in at his door. He fancied that he was going over the new elements which Miss Wolcott's confidence had thrown into the problem in his mind, but before he knew it he was making a comparison of the characters of Miss Wolcott and Kittie Tayntor. Of course it was natural to think of Kittie,--she was the only girl he knew in this place, and the only one he had had a chance to talk to for a long time, and she was so funny, with her transparent, theatrical make-believes, and so engaging, with her girlish petulances and revolts! She was like an April day,--a dash of cold rain in your face, a ray of sunshine dancing freakishly around the edges of things, and a white bud curled up close under the wet green leaves to call out the sudden rush of forgiving tenderness which you give only to what is near and dear and simple and your own. Miss Wolcott was, rather, a brooding, tropical day, still with the stillness of motionless heat, silent with the silence of fierce noontide. Low-lying thunder-clouds belonged to her, and the passionate stroke of the lightning, and the deluging tumult of the tempest, and the swift-falling darkness, hiding the hushed passion of Life. How had Lawrence ever dared to love her? But Lawrence was a master of men, in his own way. There was an exuberant power about him which would joy in conquest. His nature was sunny where hers was veiled, but his careless lightheartedness masked a will as unyielding, a nature as passionately strong, as her own. Lawrence, now, would never see the dear, funny charms of Kittie! And with a cheerful sense that, after all, things adjusted themselves very well in this rudderless world, Lyon swung back in his walk.
At the door Olden met him.
"Well, well, well, you're late," he said testily. "What have you been doing to-day?"
"Oh, all sorts of things."
"I don't care about that. What have you been doing about the Lawrence case?"
"I don't know that I have been doing anything." Literally, he didn't know whether he had or not, and he didn't care to share his half-formed suspicions. "I have to take things as they come, you know."
"Haven't you seen Lawrence to-day?"
"No."
"Nor his lawyer, Howell?"
"No."
Olden tapped with his fingers impatiently on the table, for, as before, he had led his guest into the dining room, the only really habitable room in this strange Bachelor's Hall. "Where have you been this evening?"
"Calling on a young lady!"
Olden looked up sharply. "Miss Kittie?"
"No." Then, with a half mischievous desire to play up to the other's hungry interest in the case, he added, "A young lady Lawrence knows and admires. Miss Wolcott."
The bait drew even better than he expected. Olden leaned forward with his arms on the table and his chin on his crossed arms, and Lyon felt the blaze of interest behind the goggles. The air between them tingled with it as with an electric discharge.
"Lawrence admires her, does he?" he said, with a curious deliberation. "Particularly?"
"I think quite particularly."
"How do you know?"
"I merely guessed it, from a look I saw on his face once."
"Do people generally guess it?"
"I rather think not. Gossip hasn't mentioned it."
"And does she believe in him?"
"Well, that is a point I didn't bring into the conversation. This is only the second time I have seen her."
"I didn't mean believe in his innocence. I meant, believe inhim,--in his interest in her?"
Lyon laughed. The man's persistent interest in Lawrence's affairs was curious. "Really, I didn't ask her that either. But I fancy Lawrence is a man to make himself understood in that direction when he wants to."
"You mean he makes love to every pretty woman he knows?"
"Oh, no, not so bad as that. Lawrence is a gentleman. Still, he is partly Irish. There's an old Irish jingle I used to know about the slow-creeping Saxon and the amorous Celt,--that's the idea. Irish eyes make love of themselves, whenever their owner is too busy about something else to keep a tight rein on them." Lyon had talked jestingly, partly with the idea of erasing the memory of a remark which he began to think had been somewhat less than discreet. He was not prepared for the effect of his words. Olden sprang to his feet and struck the table with his clenched hand.
"Then damn Irish eyes," he cried. "Damn the man who thinks he has the right to make love to any woman who is tender-hearted enough to listen. Damn the man who thinks that as long as a woman will take his easy lies for truth he has a right to lie."
"With all my heart. Though, for that matter, he is pretty apt to damn himself without any help from us. But Lawrence isn't that kind of a man."
Olden had dropped back in his chair and his momentary outburst had given place to a sullen gloom that Lyon guessed had more relation to his own thoughts and to the story he had told so impersonally the other evening than it had to their present conversation. There was something pathetic in the mood he showed,--a strong man bound into helplessness by the Liliputian cords of emotion. When a young man had to have it out with his own heart, it was a fair and square fight, with no odds. But at Olden's age, the thing was not decent to look upon. It was like seeing some old tennis champion going down before play that was only healthy exercise for the youngster in the game. He jumped to his feet.
"Come, I'm going to bed. Good night, Mr. Olden."
"Good night," said Olden, absently. Then he looked up, with an obvious effort to be civil. "Don't think that I have anything against your friend Lawrence or his Irish eyes," he said lightly. "I hope with all my heart that he may be set free,--with all my heart."
"So do I. Good night."
Up in his own room, Lyon's first act was to walk to the window and look across the white expanse of snow to Kittie's windows. The cheerful light answered him, with something of the subtle mischief of Kittie's own solemn air. As he looked, all the lights went out. Miss Elliott's School was wrapped in innocent slumber. Lyon blew a kiss across the night, and then pulled down his own curtain.
He opened Fullerton's strange epistle and studied it again, but the cryptic message remained as cryptic as ever. Pulling out a number of old letters from his own writing case, he compared them with Fullerton's until he found one which corresponded closely, in the blackness of its ink, with Fullerton's. This he laid aside as a standard of comparison. Then he opened the new letter to the air, leaving it where the sun should strike it when it came into the room in the morning. The first point to determine was whether the letter had actually been written by Fullerton before his death, or whether someone still living was carrying out the dead man's sinister wishes.
Fullerton, like a number of other lawyers in Waynscott, had had his office in the Equity Building, and Lyon made it convenient, in the course of his morning's tramp for news the next day, to visit the Equity. As he expected, he found Fullerton's office locked, but he hunted up the manager of the building, and persuaded him to unlock it for him. Perhaps the fact that he was a personal friend made a difference in his willingness, though he pretended to protest at what he called the morbid sensationalism of the press.
"What do you expect to get out of his empty rooms?" he asked.
"I'm working up a story," said Lyon carelessly. "I want to see what I can get in the way of personal idiosyncrasies."
The suite consisted of three rooms,--a large reception room, one side of which was covered with book-cases; a private office at the back; and, adjoining this, a room for the use of a stenographer, as was evident from the typewriter beside the window. There was so little furniture in this room that Lyon saw it could be dismissed in the special inquiry which he had in mind. In the private office a large flat desk occupied the center of the room.
"Is this room the way Fullerton left it?" Lyon asked, taking the chair which was placed before the desk, and glancing about.
"Yes. No one has been here since he left."
"No stenographer or clerk?"
"He has had no clerk for some time, and when he needed a stenographer he called one in from the agency in the building. As a matter of fact, I think his business had fallen off rather seriously in the last few years. He had lost some of his old clients, and he didn't seem to get new ones. Often his office would be locked up and he would be away for days at a time."
"Bad for business, that. Was his office rent paid?"
The manager shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "No. But I have a lien on his library, so I guess I'm safe."
"Indeed! Then he must really have been pretty badly tied up financially?"
"He was pretty obviously going to pieces. You see, his personal tastes were expensive, and they incapacitated him for business. That cut both ways, in the matter of income."
"How about his other creditors, if you have a lien on his library? That seems to be the only valuable property here."
The manager laughed again. "If there was one man here the day after he was killed there were nineteen. They were all ready to attach his books. There was some rather deep swearing. Funny what things come out about a man after he is dead."
"It's more than funny," said Lyon, with an air of saying something worth listening to. He was automatically pulling out one drawer of the desk after another, sometimes merely glancing in, sometimes lightly turning over the contents with a careless hand. "We don't know much of the personal lives of the people about us. Things are not always what they seem." He probably could have kept up the platitudinizing longer if necessary, but he had opened all the drawers. None were locked. There was no scrap of the curious greenish gray paper anywhere, nor, indeed, anything but files of documents obviously legal, and mostly dust-covered. "But his personal belongings were rather gorgeous." He opened curiously a bronze stamp box which matched the other appointments of the desk, and examined the contents. There was a lot of red stamps, but no green. That was about all that he had hoped to discover. It had seemed probable from the first that Fullerton would have his peculiar personal belongings at his own room rather than at his office, but Lyon had wished to eliminate the other possibility.
As he came out of the room, a strange and yet familiar figure passed down the hall toward the elevator just ahead of him,--the heavy figure and white head of Mr. Olden. Lyon glanced back. Lawrence's office was farther down the hall, and Lawrence's law cleric, a young fellow named Freeman, whom Lyon knew slightly, stood in the open door looking after his departing visitor with a curious watchfulness. On the impulse, Lyon turned back.
"What scrape has my most respectable landlord been getting into, that he needs legal advice?" he asked.
"Come in," said Freeman, with evident pleasure. "I'm mighty glad to have you give the old gentleman a character. I began to wonder if there wasn't something suspicious about him."
"Why?"
"He came in a few days ago and asked for Lawrence. I explained why he couldn't see him. He fumed around a little, and finally said he wanted a will drawn up, and couldn't I do it? I thought I could all right, so I got him to give me the items. It involved a lot of little bequests,--he seems to be a retired merchant from somewhere down the state with an interminable family connection,--and I took a lot of notes and told him I would have the will drawn up in a few days. He has been in every day since to make changes and alterations, till I am all balled up. Either I got things badly mixed in my notes or he has forgotten just how his sisters and his cousins and his aunts are arranged. I'll swear he has mixed the babies."
"Well, if he pays you for your trouble," laughed Lyon.
"Yes, he made it clear that he wanted me to charge up my wasted time, but--he's queer all the same. I almost thought to-day that the whole business of the will was a blind, and that he was here for some purpose of his own."
"That sounds more serious. What made you think that?"
"I had gone into the inner room to hunt up my original notes, because he insisted that I had made a mistake, when I heard the roll top of Lawrence's desk pushed up. Lawrence never locks it, but the old man hadn't any business in there, all the same. I came out in a hurry, and there he was, hunting around in the desk. He wasn't a bit fazed by my coming back, either. Said he wanted some paper to write a letter and fretted and fumed over the pen and ink as though the whole outfit belonged to him. I cleared a place for him, and left him writing, while I shifted my own chair so that I could keep an eye on him. He wrote two or three short letters, and tossed something into the waste basket there. Then, when he was through, he picked up the waste basket and began hunting through it. I supposed he wanted to recover what he had thrown in, until I saw him pick out a square envelope and put it with his own papers."
"And you think it was not his own?"
"I know it wasn't, because I knew the paper he was using. As it happens, that basket hasn't been emptied since Lawrence was here. The envelope must have been something he had tossed into the basket,--but I couldn't very well demand the return of an old envelope picked up from a waste basket. Still, I couldn't help wondering whether the man was a sneak thief or a private detective or just a little touched in the upper story."
"Has he been inquisitive about Lawrence's affairs?" Lyon asked.
"The first time he was here he asked a good many questions about him, but I thought that was natural curiosity under all the circumstances. One of his innumerable cousins had married a Lawrence and he wanted to find out if there was any connection between the families. And he really seemed to know something about him, because he insisted that Arthur Lawrence had married a Mrs. Vanderburg."
"But he didn't!"
"No, of course not. But he was a great friend of Mrs. Vanderburg's, and no one would have been surprised if he had married her. There were many who expected that to be the outcome. And when she became engaged to Broughton, whom she afterwards did marry, Lawrence took it hard. There was a serious quarrel, and Lawrence wouldn't attend the wedding. I remember hearing my mother say that if Lawrence had had Broughton's money, Broughton would never have had any show."
"But she wasn't divorced at that time, was she?"
"No, but she could have had a divorce whenever she wanted it. Vanderburg had been missing for ten or twelve years."
This was surprising information for Lyon, and not a little disturbing. Was there, after all, a possibility that even if he established the identity of the fleeing woman as Mrs. Broughton, Lawrence might still be entangled? Lyon felt as though he were trying to pick his way among live wires.
"Did you tell Olden this story?" he asked, remembering the curious interest which that inquisitive person had always seemed to take in Lawrence's affairs.
"Well, he got it out of me, I guess. He knew so much that he could easily pump the balance."
"What did he say?"
"Nothing much. He kept nodding his head, as though he knew it all beforehand. What do you make of it, anyhow?"
"The curiosity of an idle mind," said Lyon, lightly. "There are plenty of people who have an abnormal curiosity about anybody who is accused of crime. But I wouldn't give him too much rope."
The episode gave him something new to puzzle about. Olden's curiosity about Lawrence had been marked from the beginning, and it had not been wholly a friendly curiosity. That much had been apparent. Lyon was accustomed to the curious interest which monotonously virtuous people take in criminals, and he had set down his landlord's desire to talk about the murder mystery to that score. He had shown no curiosity about Fullerton or interest in him. And though he was curious about Lawrence, he seemed very inadequately informed concerning him.
Lyon turned the thing in his mind without being able to make it fit in with anything else. At the same time he determined to find out something more about Mr. Olden at the earliest opportunity. For the immediate present, however, the thing to do was to get into Fullerton's rooms at the Wellington again, and see what discoveries he could make there.
Lyon suspected that he might have difficulty in securing admission to Fullerton's room in the Wellington a second time, and when he made application to Hunt, the janitor who had admitted him before, he found his fears were justified. Indeed, Hunt's dismay at the suggestion struck him as extreme.
"Go in? No,sir!Nobody goes in. The police are responsible for that room, now. I haven't anything to do with it, and I wouldn't have, not for a farm."
"You let me in before, you know, and the police didn't take it to heart."
"Eh?"
"I mean they didn't mind. Bede knew I was there."
Hunt shook his head. "Mr. Bede says to me that if I let anybody else in, he would have me arrested for killing Fullerton."
"That's nonsense, you know. When did he say that,--when I got in before?"
"No farther back than yesterday he said that."
"Has he been around again?"
"Yes, he has." There was something nervous and dogged about the man's manner that puzzled Lyon.
"Well, see here. I'll make it worth your while to let me in for an hour. You can go along to see I don't steal anything, if you like. I want to make sure of something I overlooked before."
"I tell you I can't, Mr. Lyon, even if I wanted to. The police have put a seal on the door. It can't be opened without their knowing."
"Then pass me in through the window."
Hunt lifted his downcast eyes and gave Lyon a long, curious look.
"You wouldn't want to, if you knew what I know."
"What's that?"
Hunt shuffled and stumbled, but perhaps at heart he was not unwilling to confess his fears in the hope of having them quenched. He looked somewhat shamefaced, however, as he asked, "Do you believe that sometimes the dead walk?"
"I don't know," Lyon answered non-committally. He was more anxious to get at Hunt's ideas than to confess his own. "What makes you ask? Have you seen anything?"
"Well,--not exactly,--"
"I'd like to hear about it."
"Well, it's this way. Mr. Fullerton had a way of throwing the letters he wrote of an evening on the floor right before the door, so that I could pick them up in the morning and give them to the carrier when he came around. I always took in his breakfast tray and his paper,--"
"How did you get in?"
"He could release the lock on his door by a spring from his bedroom. There was nothing too much trouble if it was going to save him some trouble afterwards."
"Go on."
"The letters were always in a certain place,--just where he could toss them easily from the writing table where he sat. They would fall on a certain mat, so that I knew just what to pick up. If I didn't, he would swear to turn a nigger white. Mr. Fullerton wasn't no saint. That's what makes it worse."
"Makes what worse?"
"Why, this that I'm going to tell you. Day before yesterday something possessed me to go in to that room. I don't know what it was,--I just was pestered to go in. I thought I would just look inside, and there, on the rug before the door where they always used to be, was a letter in Mr. Fullerton's hand, on his paper, ready stamped to be mailed."
"This is interesting," said Lyon, with sparkling eyes. "What did you do with it?"
"I didn't rightly know what to do with it at first, I was so took back. I had been in that room five or six times since--since Mr. Fullerton was killed, letting the police in, and you, and going in by myself once to make sure the windows was locked, and there wasn't no letter on the rug, or I'm blind. Now, what I want to know is,here did that letter come from?"
"That I can't tell yet. But what did you do with it?"
"I mailed it. It seemed that it must have been something that Mr. Fullerton wrote that last night he was home and threw down for me to mail, and that somehow, in the excitement, it must have been kicked under the edge of the rug, and then, somehow, kicked out again the last time someone was in the room. At least, I couldn't see what else it could be, so I gave it to the carrier, thinking that it ought to go to the person it was addressed to."
"I think you were quite right. To whom was it addressed?"
But Hunt was unexpectedly reticent. "Mr. Fullerton didn't like to have me talk about his affairs."
"Oh, that's all right. But I think I know about this letter. It was for Miss Wolcott, wasn't it?"
Hunt's surprised look gave confirmation, though his habit of discretion prevented a verbal assent. "That isn't all," he said, hastily, returning to his story. "That was queer enough to set me wondering about it all day, and yesterday, when I went around in the morning, I opened the door just to make myself believe that it really had happened. There on the rug was another letter, just like the one the day before." His eyes sought Lyon's nervously. He seemed to be almost afraid of his own words.
"Another letter for Miss Wolcott?" gasped Lyon, in utter amaze.
"It was just like the first," Hunt persisted doggedly.
"What did you do with it? Did you mail it?"
"I wouldn't touch it. Not for money, Mr. Lyon. Where did that letter come from? That's what I want to know. I wasn't going to have any truck with it."
"But you didn't leave it lying on the rug?"
"Mr. Bede got it."
"Bede! Oh, the devil!" Gasped Lyon. "How did he come to get it?"
"He came in in the morning and I told him what I had seen. I couldn't have stayed in the house without someone knowing. He went in and got the letter, and then he put a seal on the door, so that no one else should get in. He came here again this morning himself and looked into the room, but there wasn't anything on the rug. Do you suppose it was perhaps because the last one wasn't sent? Does he know? I know some as thinks he had truck with the devil while he was alive all right. Say, what do you think about such things, Mr. Lyon?"
"I think you ought to have mailed that letter to Miss Wolcott. Bede has no business with her letters."
"I wasn't going to touch it," said Hunt doggedly.
"Did Bede ask you anything about her?"
"He asked if I knew whether she ever came here to Fullerton's room. I wouldn't know. I never saw her to know her." Hunt was evidently aggrieved over the turn things had taken generally. "Then he wanted to know particularly what that lady looked like that came to see Fullerton that last night,--the one he went out with. I didn't see her, but the elevator boy told, same as Donohue told at the inquest, that she wore a veil and a dark dress and a fur coat, short. Anybody might be dressed like that."
"Who has the apartment above?" Lyon asked abruptly.
"It's empty. The people moved out this week."
"What day?"
"Yesterday and the day before."
"Let me look at it. Perhaps I might take it. Is it furnished?"
"No, the furniture was moved out. Come up with me, sir."
Lyon knew the arrangement of the suites in the Wellington. They were all alike, in the corresponding positions. He already knew the arrangement of Fullerton's room, and his chief interest in the apartment above was in its relation to the wall outside. He leaned out of the window to examine it while Hunt was detained in the hall by a passing tenant, and when the man appeared Lyon's mind was made up.
"I'd like to take this apartment for a week. They are making some alterations at the Grosvenor" (those alterations at the Grosvenor were very opportune!) "and I want a place to stay for a few nights. You can put some furniture into the bedroom, can't you? I shan't need anything else. I may not be here more than a night or two."
Hunt looked shrewd. "You needn't think that being in the building makes any difference about the room below, Mr. Lyon!"
"That's all right," laughed Lyon. "Really, what I want is to keep an eye on Bede. And if Fullerton's ghost comes to carry you off because you didn't mail that letter, I'll be here to explain things and make it easy for you."
The arrangement was made without difficulty, and Lyon went away with Hunt's assurance that the bedroom would be habitable when he returned that night. It was his "night off" at the paper, and he had a mind to make the most of the freedom which that circumstance would give him.
Several important things happened before the evening came, and these must be first recounted; but it may as well be mentioned here that when Lyon did return that evening, the bag which Hunt obligingly carried upstairs contained, with a few other trifles, a rope fire-escape and a glazier's diamond.
THE fact that Bede had put a seal on Fullerton's door indicated that the detective had not yet made the examination of the room which unquestionably it was his intention to make. That he should have deferred so important a matter for twenty-four hours could only be explained on the theory that he had some still more important project on hand which was occupying his personal attention.
Lyon intended to get into Fullerton's rooms if possible before Bede did, but the plan which he had hastily formed at the Wellington required the cover of darkness. He could do nothing along that line before night, and in the meantime he felt that he could do nothing more interesting (and possibly important) than to discover what Bede was engaged upon that was so engrossing as to make him postpone the investigation of Fullerton's rooms to another day.
Lyon figured it out like this: Bede had received from Hunt (and undoubtedly had opened and read) a letter from Fullerton addressed to Miss Wolcott. He already knew (as had appeared at their first interview) that Fullerton had at one time been engaged to Miss Wolcott. Therefore the association of her name with his was not a new idea. Yet he had been "shadowing" her yesterday afternoon. Presumably, therefore, he had suddenly come to perceive a new importance in her movements. Was his watchfulness over her the occasion of his present preoccupation? Lyon would have given much for a clairvoyant vision to tell him where Bede was at that moment. Being obliged to trust instead to his reasoning powers, he went to Hemlock Avenue, and walked past Miss Wolcott's house. The house wore its customary air of seclusion and there was no lounger in the street. He walked a block farther, and went into a drug store, where, as he happened to know, there was a public telephone and a gossiping clerk.
"Has Bede been here to-day?" he asked, carelessly.
"Bede who?"
"Don't you know Bede, the detective?--little gray man with keen eyes and a voice that he keeps behind his teeth. I expected to find him here."
"He was here this morning,--or a man like him," said the clerk. "A detective, you say. Gee!"
"What's up?"
The clerk was looking rather startled. "Well, if I had known he was a detective! He gave out that he was the credit-man for the new furniture store around the corner, and asked about several people in the neighborhood that we have accounts with. Our old man has some stock in the furniture concern, so I gave him all the information I could."
"What accounts did he ask about? Do you remember?"
The clerk named half a dozen. Lyon was not surprised to hear Miss Wolcott's among them. He was both surprised and startled to hear Miss Elliott's.
"What did you tell him about these two?" he asked thoughtfully.
"I let him see their accounts in the ledger."
"I wish you'd let me see those same accounts."
The clerk demurred and Lyon, who had noticed a college fraternity pin in the other's scarf, opened his coat. He wore the same pin.
"Oh, all right," said the easy-going clerk, with a laugh. "If I'm going to be fired for giving anything away to a detective, I'll have the satisfaction of helping a Nota Bena anyhow. Here are the account books. Come around here."
He opened a page with Miss Edith Wolcott's name at the top. The latest entry caught Lyon's eye at once.
"Nov. 25, Sulphonal, 6gr., .45."
The date was the date of Fullerton's murder. Lyon pointed to the entry.
"Could you tell me what time of the day that sale was made?"
"That's exactly what the other man asked," the clerk exclaimed, in amaze.
"And you told him--?"
"It was half past nine in the evening. I happened to remember because I leave at half past nine every evening and the night clerk comes on, and just as I was going out Miss Wolcott came in and asked if I could give her something to make her sleep. She said she was too nervous to sleep, and I noticed she seemed all of a tremble. Her hands were shaking when she took the packet."
"Did you tell Bede all that?"
"I guess I did."
"Did he ask you any other questions?"
"Not about Miss Wolcott. He looked a long time at Miss Elliott's account."
"Let me see it, then."
The clerk turned the pages.
"We charge everything that is prescribed for anyone at the school to Miss Elliott's account, and show on our bill who it was for," said the clerk. "That's what these names mean." He pointed to the names "Miss Jones," "Miss Beatly," etc., opposite each item. Lyon was distinctly startled to catch the name "Miss Tayntor" at frequent intervals.
"Has she been ill?" he asked with quick concern, and then added lamely, "She's a--sort of cousin of mine."
The clerk grinned.
"Gunther's chocolates."
"Oh!"
Lyon studied the entries assiduously for the next few moments. Among the latest were a number of charges, "for Mrs. W. B." Had that meant anything to Bede?
"Did Bede ask about any of them in particular?" he inquired by way of answering his own query.
"He wanted to know who Mrs. W. B. was."
"What did you tell him?"
"Told him they were Dr. Barry's prescriptions. They were marked that way. That's all I know."
"Remember anything else he asked about?"
"No. That's about all."
Lyon went into the telephone booth and called up Dr. Barry.
"Hello, Barry. This is Lyon. I want to know how Mrs. W. B. is getting along."
"Now see here, Lyon, don't you think you are crowding things a little? There really hasn't been time for any radical change since noon."
"What do you mean?"
"I told you at noon that she was not to be disturbed for several days yet."
"Toldme?"
"Well, I told the boy who telephoned for you."
"I have not authorized anyone to telephone for me.
"What? Why, someone telephoned in your name, and you have been such a nuisance about the case that I thought of course it was you again."
"Did you happen to mention the lady's name, or only her initials?" asked Lyon.
Barry hesitated so long in answering that Lyon could only draw the most serious conclusion.
"I can't say," Barry answered, with some constraint.
"It's important I should know, Barry. You know she was very desirous of keeping her visit here unknown, and if you have been giving it away, I must at least know the facts, so as to head off trouble if possible." He threw all his earnestness into his voice and Barry yielded a reluctant reply, saying,
"It is possible that I did. I thought it was your message."
"Did he ask anything else in particular?"
"No. Excuse me, I'm very busy." And the 'phone shut off.
Lyon walked out and back up Hemlock Avenue. He was breathing quickly as though he had been running.
"If I were Bede I think I should be rather proud of myself, making two such hauls as that in one morning. At this rate, Bede will soon know all that I know myself and a little more," he said to himself. "Is it possible that he will attach any significance to Miss Wolcott's purchase of a soporific on the fatal 25th? Good Lord, I wish she had stayed at home that evening! That visit to the druggist at half-past nine brings her very close to the scene of the murder. Did she go for a sleeping powder before or after the murder? Is it possible after all--" He shook his head impatiently at his own suggestion.
"At any rate, I must let Howell know at once that Bede has discovered Mrs. Broughton. Something will come from that, and soon. I suspect we'll have to defy dear Dr. Barry. He deserves the limit of the law."
He was within half a block of Olden's. He determined to go there to telephone. It was the nearest place and incidentally it would enable him to get Kittie's latest report on Mrs. Broughton's condition.
As he entered the hall. Olden met him,--if indeed this wild-eyed man, whose goggles lay crushed on the floor and whose white wig sat askew upon his own black hair, could be the sedate and decorous Olden. He fairly hurled himself at Lyon, crushing his arm with an iron grasp.
"The curtain is down,--have you seen? What does it mean? Where is she? Has she gone away? Can't you speak? What do you know about it?Wherehas she gone?" His questions piled one upon another unintelligibly.
"What in the world do you mean?" gasped Lyon. "The curtain--" He tore himself away and rushed upstairs to his window. Kittie's curtain was down to the very bottom in the left hand window. "Gone!" he exclaimed, in blank bewilderment.
Olden had followed close.
"She pulled the curtain down just now,--just before you came in. I was watching,--I have been watching all the time,--I saw her come and pull it down."
"How did you know about the curtains?" asked Lyon, realizing for the first time that Olden was betraying knowledge that he was not supposed to have.
"I heard what you said at the 'phone. I knew what you came here for, of course,--that's why I let you come,--you were to help me watch without knowing it,--and now she has gone,--slipped away before our very eyes,--"
"Who are you?"
"Woods Broughton." He pronounced the name with careless impatience, as though he had never tried to keep it a secret. "What are you going to do? We must find her."
"Come downstairs," said Lyon, adjusting himself to the new situation. "We must telephone to Howell."
Howell was not an imaginative man, and it took some time to make him grasp the double idea that Mrs. Broughton had disappeared and that Lyon's landlord had suddenly turned out to be Broughton himself. The whole thing was irregular, and he felt himself confused and embarrassed. But he agreed that he must come at once for a consultation.
"I think we shall get along better if we are quite frank," said Lyon, while they were waiting for Howell. "Will you explain your object in disguising yourself, so that we may know just where we stand in relation to each other?"
"To find out what her secret was," Broughton answered, passionately. He clenched his hands till the knuckles were white, and his heavy-featured face, shaped by half a century of business life into lines of impassive self-control, was wrenched by emotion that was half pitiful, half ludicrous. "To find out what hold this man Lawrence has upon her,--to kill him, perhaps,--"
"Lawrence? Good heavens, what nonsense!" cried Lyon. "What made you connect her with Lawrence in any way?"
"I told you that it was a letter that came from Waynscott that first upset her. She had been happy before that I swear it. She was happy and content as my wife. Then his letters came--"
"What made you think they were from him? Did you see any of them?"
"I found one, partly burnt, in the fireplace in her bedroom. I could make out the signature plainly,--it was Arthur Lawrence."
"You could read nothing else?"
"No, but I, found her unfinished answer in her writing desk."
"What did she say?" asked Lyon, in a calm voice.
Broughton struggled to keep his voice steady. "She said that she was the most unhappy woman in the world,--God, I had been so happy!--that he had been right in warning her against marrying me, and that she must see him. I had no chance to read more, for she was coming, and I could not let her suspect I had seen anything. But I made my plans from that moment. I told her that I was called away on a sudden business trip. As I expected, as soon as I was off, she started for Waynscott. I followed her, in this disguise. She went at once to Lawrence's office,--"
"His law office, in the Equity Building?"
"Yes. Then she went to Miss Elliott's. That was on a Monday. Monday night, you will remember, Lawrence killed Fullerton, and the next day he was arrested. That stopped their plans, whatever they were. She has kept her room at Miss Elliott's, and I took this house, which happened to be vacant, so that I could keep a close watch on her. She has never gone out. Dr. Barry has been to see her, as you know. I have had Phillips get a daily report from Barry, under color of wiring to me.
"Then you came along, Mr. Lyon. I had seen and heard enough to know that you were a friend of Lawrence's, so I took you in, because I wanted to know everything about him that I could. And I knew that for some reason you were watching Grace. Phillips had tracked you there several times, and he followed you into the florist's shop and got possession of Grace's order for unlimited flowers to be sent to Lawrence. Her flowers for him! I wonder I have kept my senses. But I could do nothing but wait until Lawrence was released,--as Grace was waiting over there for his release! You needn't pretend to be surprised,--you know yourself the connection between them,--that's why you have been keeping a watch on her,--I saw that from the room you selected,--"
"You are quite right as to that, though I think you are quite wrong as to other things."
"What other things?"
"About Lawrence. He isn't that sort of a man. If anyone had a hold upon Mrs. Broughton, it would seem to have been Fullerton."
"Fullerton!"
"You have been very frank, Mr. Broughton, and it is only fair that I should be equally frank. We have been very anxious to have an interview with Mrs. Broughton as soon as her health would permit, Howell and I, because we have reason to believe that she may be able to throw some light upon the Fullerton murder. She may be wanted as a witness."
"You are mad,--utterly mad," gasped Broughton. "What could she possibly know about that?"
"She was with Fullerton when he left the Wellington at eight o'clock."
"I don't believe it!"
"I don't think there can be much question about that. She had obviously been to consult him on some legal matters. But, frankly, we only know enough to make it very important we should know more. And we have been very anxious to avoid publicity, if possible, for her own sake, and possibly for Lawrence's."
Poor Broughton looked dazed. "I don't understand. Fullerton was her lawyer,--"
"Yes."
"And you think she was with him when Lawrence killed him?"
"We are in hopes that she may be able to explain what did actually happen. She certainly was with Fullerton earlier in the evening. Beyond that we don'tknowanything, and we really haven't even a coherent theory."
"But it was Lawrence with whom she was corresponding,--it was Lawrence who had wanted to marry her and who would not go to her wedding,--it was Lawrence who came to see her as soon as my back was turned!"
Lyon shook his head. "You don't know what lies under all that. Fullerton may have had some hold on her, and Lawrence may have been acting as her friend merely. Ah, here is Howell. He will tell us what to do now."
Howell had had time to adjust his mind to the facts Lyon had telephoned, and when he came in he seemed more curious regarding the personality of the famous man before him than anything else. Lyon explained briefly what he had told Broughton about the situation.
"Well now, Mr. Broughton, you know as much as we do," said Howell. "You see that it is highly important we should get at Mrs. Broughton's testimony. Barry has been keeping me off, so this young man evolved a somewhat fantastic plan of getting inside information as to her condition. I hope the code has missed fire, somehow, for it would be exceedingly unfortunate if the prosecution should get hold of her before we do. It is quite on the cards, Mr. Broughton, that we may want you to take your wife away,--quite out of reach as a witness. It depends on what she has to tell us,--and that we must find out as soon as possible."
"How,--if she is gone?"
"That is the first thing for us to ascertain. Lyon, you must take me over to Miss Elliott's School at once. We want to find out all we can, and immediately. If I may make a suggestion, Mr. Broughton, you will await our return here instead of accompanying us. It may possibly prove that your disguise should not be disclosed at this juncture."
Broughton did not demur. He was obviously too much overwhelmed by the uncertainties of the situation to take the initiative in any direction.
"Don't be long," he said, with a wistfulness that sat strangely on his heavy features. "If she has really gone, I must know it. I must have the police search the town for her at once."
Howell and Lyon walked away leaving him standing in the doorway, looking after them in helpless impotence.
"That complicates things," said Howell.
Lyon nodded.
"If there is any connection between Lawrence and Mrs. Broughton--"
"There isn't, of the sort he thinks."
"If there is any connection, it may supply the motive for the assault on Fullerton. I'm afraid we aren't going to get much help for our side from this interview, but I'd rather know the worst than be tied up in ignorance."
"If Mrs. Broughton will talk!"
"Well, we shall soon see," said Howell, as he rang Miss Elliott's bell.