“Yes. Ay thought Ay must do that. Then Ay saw all the police and the dead wagon, and Ay waited more till they took the man away. Then Ay ran fast to my home.”
“What did you take from the body?” Coroner Berg spoke sternly and the already frightened man trembled in his chair.
“Ay take nothing. Ay would not rob a corp. Nay, that I wouldn’t.”
“And you took nothing away from the place?”
The Swede hesitated. He glanced at his wife, and like an accusing Nemesis, she nodded her head it him.
“Tell the truth, Clem,” she cried shrilly. “Tell about the strange bottle.”
“A bottle?” asked the coroner.
“Yes, but it was of no use,” Sandstrom spoke sulkily now. “It was an old milk bottle.”
“A milk bottle? Then it had nothing to do with the crime.”
“That’s what Ay think. But the wife says to tell. The milk bottle, a pint one, was much buried in the ground.”
“How did it get in so deeply? Was it put there purposely?”
“Ay tank so. It had in it——” The man made a wry face, as at a recollection.
“Well, what?”
“Ay don’t know. But it smelled something veryverybad. And molasses too.”
“Molasses in it?”
“Yes, a little down in the bottom of the bottle. Such a queer doings!”
“Have you the bottle?”
“At my home, yes. The wife make me empty the bad stuff out.”
“Why?” and Berg turned to the Swedish woman.
“I think it a poison. I think the bad man kill the good man with a poison.”
“Well, I don’t think so. I think you two people trumped up this bottle business yourselves. It’s too ridiculous to be real evidence.”
The jurymen were perplexed. If these Swedes were implicated in the murder, surely they would not come and give themselves up to justice voluntarily. Yet, some reasoned that if they were afraid of the police, they might think it better to come voluntarily than to seem to hide their connection with it. It is difficult to tell the workings of the uncultured foreign intellect, and at any rate the story must be investigated, and the Swedes kept watch of.
Under the coroner’s scrutiny, Sandstrom became more restless than ever. He shuffled his big feet about and his countenance worked as if in agony. The woman watched him with solicitude. Apparently, her one thought was to have him say the right thing.
Once she went over and whispered to him, but he only shook his head.
“Why did you kill the man?” the coroner suddenly shot at the witness as if to trip him.
Sandstrom looked at him stolidly. “Ay didn’t kill him. Ay bane got na goon.”
“He wasn’t shot, he was stabbed.”
“Ay bane got na knife. And Ay na kill him. Ay heerd his dyin’ words.” The Swede looked solemn.
“What were they?” asked the coroner, in the midst of a sudden silence.
“He said, ‘Ay bane murdered! Cain killt me! Wilful murder!’ and wi’ them words he deed.”
The simple narrative in the faulty English was dramatic and convincing. The countenance of the stolid foreigner was sad, and it might well be that he was telling the truth as he had seen and heard it.
Like an anti-climax, then, came an explosive “Gee!” from the back of the room.
People looked around annoyed, and the coroner rapped on the table in displeasure.
“You have heard this witness,” he said pompously; “we have no real reason to disbelieve him. It is clear that Rowland Trowbridge was wilfully murdered by a dastardly hand, that he lived long enough to tell this, and to stigmatize as ‘Cain’ the murderer who struck him down.”
“Gee!” came the explosive voice again; but this time in a discreet whisper.
“Silence!” roared the coroner, “another such disturbance and the culprit will be expelled from the room.”
There was no further interruption and the inquiry proceeded.
Several employés of Mr. Trowbridge’s office were called. Miss Wilkinson, the stenographer, was an important young person of the blondine variety, and made the most of her testimony, which amounted to nothing. She declared that Mr. Trowbridge had been at his office as usual the day before and that she had written the average number of letters for him, none of which were in any way bearing in this case or of any import, except the regular business of her employer. Mr. Trowbridge, she said, had left the office about two o’clock, telling her he would not return that day, and bidding her go home after she had finished her routine work.
This created a mild sensation. At least, it was established that Mr. Trowbridge had gone from his office earlier than usual, though this must have been presupposed, as his body was found miles away from the city at five o’clock. But nothing further or more definite could Miss Wilkinson tell, though she was loath to leave the witness stand.
Coroner Berg was disheartened. He had a natural dislike for the “person or persons unknown” conclusion, and yet, what other one was possible? Perfunctorily, he called the office boy, who was employed in Mr. Trowbridge’s private office.
A few of the audience noted that this was the youth who had remarked “Gee!” with such enthusiasm and gave him a second look for that reason.
“What is your name?”
“Fibsy,—I mean Terence McGuire.”
“Why did you say Fibsy?”
“’Cause that’s what I’m mostly called.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I’m such a liar.”
“This is no time for frivolity, young man; remember you’re a witness.”
“Sure! I know what that means. I ain’t a goin’ to lie now, you bet! I know what I’m about.”
“Very well, then. What can you tell us of Mr. Trowbridge’s movements yesterday?”
“A whole heap. I was on the job all day.”
“What did you see or hear?”
“I seen and heard a whole lot. But I guess what’ll interest you most is a visitor Mr. Trowbridge had in the mornin’.”
“A visitor?”
“Yep. And they come near havin’a fight.”
The audience listened breathlessly. The red-headed, freckle-faced youth, not more than sixteen, held attention as no other witness had.
It was not because of his heroic presence, or his manly bearing. Indeed, he was of the shuffling, toe-stubbing type, and by his own admission, he had gained a nickname by continual and more or less successful lying. But in spite of that, truth now shone from his blue eyes and human nature is quick to recognize the signs of honesty.
“Tell about it in your own way,” said the coroner, while the reporter braced up with new hope.
“Well, Mr. Berg, it was this way. Yest’day mornin’ a guy blew into the office,——”
“What time?”
“’Bout ’leven, I guess. It was ’bout an hour ’fore eats. Well, he wanted to see Mr. T. and as he was a feller that didn’t seem to want to be fooled with, I slips in to Mr. T’s private office an’ I sez, ‘Guy outside wants to see you.’ ‘Where’s his card?’ says Mr. T. ‘No pasteboards,’ says I, ‘but he says you’ll be pleased to meet him.’ Well, about now, the guy, he’s a big one, walks right over me and gets himself into the inner office. ‘Hello, Uncle Rowly,’ says he, and stands there smilin’. ‘Good gracious, is this you, Kane?’ says Mr. Trowbridge, kinder half pleased an’ half mad. ‘Yep,’ says the big feller, and sits down as ca’m as you please. ‘Whatter you want?’ says Mr. T. ‘Briefly?’ says the guy, lookin’ sharp at him. ‘Yes,’ an’ Mr. T. jest snapped it out. ‘Money,’ says the guy. ‘I thought so. How much?’ an’ Mr. T. shut his lips together like he always does when he’s mad. ‘Fifty thousand dollars,’ says Friend Nephew, without the quiver of an eyelash. ‘Good-morning,’ says uncle s’renely, But the chap wasn’t fazed. ‘Greeting or farewell?’ says he, smilin’ like. Then Mr. T. lit into him. ‘A farewell, sir!’ he says, ‘and the last!’ But Nephew comes up smilin’ once again, already, yet! ‘Oh, say, now, uncle,’ he begins, and then he lays out before Mr. T. the slickest minin’ proposition it was ever my misfortune to listen to, when I didn’t have no coin to go into it myself! But spiel as beautiful as he would, he couldn’t raise answerin’ delight on the face of his benefactor-to-be. He argued an’ he urged an’ he kerjoled, but not a mite could he move him. At last Mr. Trowbridge, he says, ‘No, Kane, I’ve left you that amount in my will, or I’ll give it to you if you’ll stay in New York city; but Iwon’tgive it to you to put in any confounded hole in the ground out West!’ And no amount of talk changed that idea of Mr. T.’s. Well, was that nephew mad! Well,washe! Not ragin’ or blusterin’, but just a white and still sort o’ mad, like he’d staked all and lost. He got up, with dignerty and he bowed a little mite sarkasterkul, and he says, ‘’Scuse me fer troublin’ you, uncle; but I know of one way to get that money. I’ll telephone you when I’ve raised it.’ And he walked out, not chop-fallen, but with a stride like Jack the Giant Killer.”
Fibsy paused, and there was a long silence. The coroner was trying to digest this new testimony, that might or might not be of extreme importance.
“What was this man’s name?” he said, at last.
“I don’t remember his full name, sir. Seems ’sif the last name began with L,—but I wouldn’t say for sure.”
“And his first name?”
“Kane, sir. I heard Mr. Trowbridge call him that a heap of times, sir.”
“Kane!”
“Yes, sir.” And then Fibsy added, in an awed voice, “that’s why I said, ‘Gee’!”
The coroner looked at the expectant audience. “It seems to me,” he began slowly, “that this evidence of the office boy, if credible or not, must at least be looked into. While not wishing to leap to unwarranted conclusions, we must remember that the Swede declared that with his dying breath, Mr. Trowbridge denounced his murderer as Cain! It must be ascertained if, instead of the allusion to the first murderer, which we naturally assumed, he could have meant to designate this nephew, named Kane. Does any one present know the surname of this nephew?”
There was a stir in the back part of the room, and a man rose and came forward. He was tall and strong and walked with that free, swinging step, that suggests to those who know of such things, the memory of alfalfa and cactus. With shoulders squared and head erect, he approached the coroner at his table and said “I am Kane Landon, a nephew of the late Rowland Trowbridge.”
A bomb dropped from an aeroplane could scarcely have caused greater excitement among the audience. Every eye in the room followed the tall young figure, as Kane Landon strode to the table behind which the coroner sat. That worthy official looked as if he had suddenly been bereft of all intelligence as well as power of speech. In fact, he sat and looked at the man before him, with such an alarmed expression, that one might almost have thought he was the culprit, and the new witness the accusing judge.
But Mr. Berg pulled himself together, and began his perfunctory questions.
“You are Kane Landon?”
“Yes.”
“Related to Mr. Trowbridge?”
“I am the nephew of his wife, who died many years ago.”
“Where do you live?”
“For the last five years I have lived in Denver, Colorado.”
“And you are East on a visit?”
“I came East, hoping to persuade my uncle to finance a mining project in which I am interested.”
“And which he refused to do?”
“Which he refused to do.”
There was something about the young man’s manner which was distinctly irritating to Coroner Berg. It was as if the stranger was laughing at him, and yet no one could show a more serious face than the witness presented. The onlookers held their breath in suspense. Avice stared at young Landon. She remembered him well. Five years ago they had been great friends, when she was fifteen and he twenty. Now, he looked much more than five years older. He was bronzed, and his powerful frame had acquired a strong, well-knit effect that told of outdoor life and much exercise. His face was hard and inscrutable of expression. He was not prepossessing, nor of an inviting demeanor, but rather repelling in aspect. His stern, clear-cut mouth showed a haughty curve and a scornful pride shone in the steely glint of his deep gray eyes. He stood erect, his hands carelessly clasped behind him, and seemed to await further questioning.
Nor did he wait long. The coroner’s tongue once loosed, his queries came direct and rapid.
“Will you give an account of your movements yesterday, Mr. Landon?”
“Certainly. The narrative of my uncle’s office boy is substantially true. I reached New York from the West day before yesterday. I went yesterday morning to see my uncle. I asked him for the money I wanted and he refused it. Then I went away.”
“And afterward?”
“Oh, afterward, I looked about the city a bit, and went back to my hotel for luncheon.”
“And after luncheon?”
Landon’s aplomb seemed suddenly to desert him. “After luncheon,” he began, and paused. He shifted his weight to the other foot; he unclasped his hands and put them in his pockets; he frowned as if in a brown study and finally, his eyes fell on Avice and rested there. The girl was gazing at him with an eager, strained face, and it seemed to arrest his attention to the exclusion of all else.
“Well?” said the coroner, impatiently.
Landon’s fair hair was thick and rather longer than the conventions decreed. He shook back this mane, with a defiant gesture, and said clearly, “After luncheon, I went to walk in Van Cortlandt Park.”
The audience gasped. Was this the honesty of innocence or the bravado of shameless guilt?
Leslie Hoyt looked at Landon curiously. Hoyt was a clever man and quick reader of character, but this young Westerner apparently puzzled him. He seemed to take a liking to him, but reserved decision as to the justification of this attitude. Avice went white and was afraid she was going to faint. To her, the admission sounded like a confession of the crime, and it was too incredible to be believed. And yet, as she remembered Kane, it was like him to tell the truth. In their old play days, he had often told the truth, she remembered, even though to his own disadvantage. And she remembered, too, how he had often escaped with a lighter punishment because he had been frank! Was this his idea? Had he really killed his uncle, and fearing discovery, was he trying to forestall the consequences by admission?
“Mr. Landon,” went on the coroner, “that is a more or less incriminating statement. Are you aware your uncle was murdered in Van Cortlandt Park woods yesterday afternoon?”
“Yes,” was the reply, but in a voice so low as to be almost inaudible.
“At what time were you there?”
“I don’t know, exactly. I returned home before sundown.”
“Why did you go there?”
“Because when with my uncle in the morning he happened to remark there were often good golf games played there, and as it was a beautiful afternoon, and I had nothing especial to do, I went out there.”
“Why did you not go to call on your cousin, Miss Trowbridge?”
Landon glared at the speaker. “You are outside your privileges in asking that question. I decline to answer. My personal affairs in no way concern you. Kindly get to the point. Am I under suspicion of being my uncle’s murderer?”
“Perhaps that is too definite a statement, but it is necessary for us to learn the truth about your implication in the matter.”
“Go on, then, with your questions. But for Heaven’s sake, keep to the point, and don’t bring in personal or family affairs. And incidentally, Miss Trowbridge isnotmy cousin.”
The words were spoken lightly, almost flippantly, and seemed to some listeners as if meant to divert attention from the business in hand.
“But she is the niece of the late Mr. Trowbridge.”
“Miss Trowbridge is the daughter of Mr. Trowbridge’s brother, who died years ago. I am the nephew of Mr. Trowbridge’s late wife, as I believe I have already stated.”
Nobody liked the young man’s manner. It was careless, indifferent, and inattentive. He stood easily, and was in no way embarrassed, but his bravado, whether real or assumed, was distasteful to those who were earnestly trying to discover the facts of the crime that had been committed. There were many who at once leaped to the conclusion that the Swede’s testimony of the victim’s dying words, proved conclusively that the murderer was of a necessity this young man, whose name was Kane, and who so freely admitted his presence near the scene of the tragedy.
“As you suggest, Mr. Landon,” said the coroner, coldly, “we will keep to the point. When you were in Van Cortlandt Park, yesterday, did you see your uncle, Mr. Trowbridge there?”
“I did not.”
The answer was given in a careless, unconcerned way that exasperated the coroner.
“Can you prove that?” he snapped out.
Landon looked at him in mild amazement, almost amusement. “Certainly not,” he replied; “nor do I need to. The burden of proof rests with you. If you suspect me of having killed my uncle, it is for you to produce proof.”
Coroner Berg looked chagrined. He had never met just this sort of a witness before, and did not know quite how to treat him.
And yet Landon was respectful, serious, and polite. Indeed, one might have found it hard to say what was amiss in his attitude, but none could deny there was something. It was after all, an aloofness, a separateness, that seemed to disconnect this man with the proceedings now going on; and which was so, only because the man himself willed it.
Coroner Berg restlessly and only half-consciously sensed this state of things, and gropingly strove to fasten on some facts.
Nor were these hard to find. The facts were clear and startling enough, and were to a legal mind conclusive. There was, so far as known, no eye-witness to the murder, but murderers do not usually play to an audience.
“We have learned, Mr. Landon,” the coroner said, “that you had an unsatisfactory interview with your uncle; that you did not get from him the money you desired. That, later, he was killed in a locality where you admit you were yourself. That his dying words are reported to be, ‘Kane killed me! willful murder.’ I ask you what you have to say in refutation of the conclusions we naturally draw from these facts?”
There was a hush over the whole room, as the answer to this arraignment was breathlessly awaited.
At last it came. Landon looked the coroner squarely in the eye, and said: “I have this to say. That my uncle’s words,—if, indeed, those were really his words, might as well refer, as you assumed at first, to any one else, as to myself. The name Cain, would, of course, mean in a general way, any one of murderous intent. The fact that my own name chances to be Kane is a mere coincidence, and in no sense a proof of my guilt.”
The speaker grew more emphatic in voice and gesture as he proceeded, and this did not militate in his favor. Rather, his irritation and vehement manner prejudiced many against him. Had he been cool and collected, his declarations would have met better belief, but his agitated tones sounded like the last effort in a lost cause.
With harrowing pertinacity, the coroner quizzed and pumped the witness as to his every move of the day before. Landon was forced to admit that he had quarreled with his uncle, and left him in a fit of temper, and with a threat to get the money elsewhere.
“And did you get it?” queried the coroner at this point.
“I did not.”
“Where did you hope to get it?”
“I refuse to tell you.”
“Mr. Landon, your manner is not in your favor. But that is not an essential point. The charges I have enumerated are as yet unanswered: and, moreover, I am informed by one of my assistants that there is further evidence against you. Sandstrom, come forward.”
The stolid-looking Swede came.
“Look at Mr. Landon,” said Berg; “do you think you saw him in Van Cortlandt Park yesterday?”
“Ay tank Ay did.”
“Near the scene of the murder?”
“Ay tank so.”
“You lie!”
The voice that rang out was that of Fibsy, the irrepressible.
And before the coroner could remonstrate, the boy was up beside the Swede, talking to him in an earnest tone. “Clem Sandstrom,” he said, “you are saying what you have been told to say! Ain’t you?”
“Ay tank so,” returned the imperturbable Swede.
“There!” shouted Fibsy, triumphantly; “now, wait a minute, Mr. Berg,” and by the force of his own insistence Fibsy held the audience, while he pursued his own course. He drew a silver quarter from his pocket and handed it to Sandstrom. “Look at that,” he cried, “look at it good!” He snatched it back. “Did you look at it good?” and he shook his fist in the other’s face.
“Yes, Ay look at it good.”
“All right; now tell me where the plugged hole in it was? Was it under the date, or was it over the eagle?”
The Swede thought deeply.
“Be careful, now! Where was it, old top? Over the eagle?”
“Yes. Ay tank it been over the eagle.”
“Youtankso! Don’t youknow?”
The heavy face brightened. “Yes, Ayknow! Ay know it been over the eagle.”
“You’resure?”
“Yes, Ay bane sure.”
“All right, pard. You see, Mr. Coroner,” and Fibsy handed the quarter over to Berg, “they ain’t no hole in it anywhere!”
Nor was there. Berg looked mystified. “What’s it all about?” he said, helplessly.
“Why,” said Fibsy, eagerly, “don’t you see, if that fool Swede don’t know enough to see whether there’s a hole in a piece o’ chink or not, he ain’t no reliable witness in a murder case!”
The boy had scored. So far as the Swede’s alleged recognition of Landon was evidence, it was discarded at once. Coroner Berg looked at the boy in perplexity, not realizing just how the incident of the silver quarter had come about. It was by no means his intention to allow freckle-faced office boys to interfere with his legal proceedings. He had read in a book about mal-observation and the rarity of truly remembered evidence, but he had not understood it clearly and it was only a vague idea to him. So it nettled him to have the principle put to a practical use by an impertinent urchin, who talked objectionable slang.
Judge Hoyt looked at Fibsy with growing interest. That boy had brains, he concluded, and might be more worth-while than his appearance indicated. Avice, too, took note of the bright-eyed chap, and Kane Landon, himself, smiled in open approval.
But Fibsy was in no way elated, or even conscious that he had attracted attention. He had acted on impulse; he had disbelieved the Swede’s evidence, and he had sought to disprove it by a simple experiment, which worked successfully. His assertion that the Swede had been told to say that he recognized Landon, was somewhat a chance shot.
Fibsy reasoned it out, that if Sandstrom had seen Landon in the woods, he would have recognized him sooner at the inquest, or might even have told of him before his appearance. And he knew that the police now suspected Landon, and as they were eager to make an arrest, they had persuaded the Swede that he had seen the man. Sandstrom’s brain was slow and he had little comprehension. Whether guilty or innocent, he had come to the scene at his wife’s orders, and might he not equally well have testified at the orders or hints of the police? At any rate, he had admitted that he had been told to say what he had said, and so he had been disqualified as a witness.
And yet, it all proved nothing, rather it left them with no definite proof of any sort. Fibsy ignored the stupid-looking Swede, and stared at the coroner, until that dignitary became a little embarrassed. Realizing that he had lessened his own importance to a degree, Berg strove to regain lost ground.
“Good work, my boy,” he said, condescendingly, and with an air of dismissing the subject. “But the credibility of a witness’s story must rest with the gentlemen of the jury. I understand all about those theories of psy—psychology, as they call them, but I think they are of little, if any, use in practice.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said Judge Hoyt. “I find them very interesting. Doyoualways see things clearly, Terence?”
“It isn’t seeing clearly,” said Fibsy, with an earnest face, “it’s seein’ true. Now, f’r instance, Mr. Coroner, is the number for six o’clock, on your watch, a figger or a VI?”
“I cannot allow this child’s play,” and Mr. Berg looked decidedly angry.
“But that’s rather a good one,” said Judge Hoyt. “Come, now, Berg, do you know which it is?”
“Certainly I do,” Berg snapped out. “It’s the Roman letters, VI.”
“Yessir?” said Fibsy, eagerly. “An’ are they right side up, or upside down, as you hold Twelve at the top?”
Berg thought a moment. “As I hold Twelve at the top, they’re upside down, of course. All the numbers have their base toward the centre of the dial.”
“Then the Six on your watch is VI, with the tops of the letters next the rim of the watch?”
“It is,” said Berg, adding sneeringly, “would you like to see it?”
“Yessir,” and Fibsy darted forward.
The coroner snapped his watch open, and after a brief glance, the boy gave a quick little wag of his head, and went back to his seat without a word.
But the man flushed a fiery red, and his pompous air deserted him.
“Were you right, Berg?” asked Judge Hoyt. “Come now, own up?”
“A very natural error,” mumbled the coroner, and then Detective Groot pounced on him, demanding to see his watch.
“Why, there’s no six on it at all!” he cried and then gave an uncontrollable guffaw. “There’s only a round place with the second hand into it!”
“This tomfoolery must be stopped,” began the coroner, but he had to pause in his speech until the ripple of merriment had subsided and the jury had realized afresh the seriousness of their purpose.
“Hold on Berg, that’s a fairly good one on a coroner,” said Judge Hoyt, a little severely. “Have you looked at that watch for years and didn’t know there was no six on it?”
“I s’pose I have. I never thought about it.”
“It does show the unreliability of testimony intended to be truthful,” and Hoyt spoke thoughtfully. “Terence, how did you know Mr. Berg’s watch had a second hand instead of the six numeral?”
“I didn’t know a thing about it. But I wanted to see ifhedid. It might of been a six upside down fer all o’ me, but most watches has second hands there and most people don’t know it. I got it out of a book. People don’t see true. They think a watch has gottersaysix o’clock, they don’t remember it might mean it but not say it.”
Again Hoyt gave the boy a look of appreciation. “Keen-witted,” he said to himself. “Ought to make his mark.” And then he glanced back to the discomfited coroner.
Now Mr. Berg’s disposition was of the sort that when offended, desires to take it out of some one else rather than to retaliate on the offender. So, after a little further questioning of the still bewildered Swede he turned again to Landon.
“Let us dismiss the matter of the Swede and his evidence,” he said, lightly, “and resume the trend of our investigations. Do I understand, Mr. Landon, that you expect to inherit a legacy from your late uncle?”
Landon’s eyes flashed. “I don’t know what you understand, Mr. Coroner. As a matter of fact, I haven’t much opinion of your understanding. But I know nothing of the legacy you speak of, save that my uncle said to me yesterday, that he would leave me fifty thousand dollars in his will. Whether he did or not, I do not know.”
The statement was made carelessly, as most of Kane Landon’s statements were, and he seemed all unaware of the conclusions immediately drawn from his words.
“Judge Hoyt,” said the coroner, turning to the lawyer, “are you acquainted with the terms of Mr. Trowbridge’s will?”
“Most certainly, as I drew up the document,” was the answer.
“Is Kane Landon a beneficiary?”
“Yes; to the extent of fifty thousand dollars.”
It was impossible not to note the gleam of satisfaction that came into Landon’s eyes at this news. Hoyt gave him a stare of utter scorn and Avice looked amazed and grieved.
“You seem pleased at the information, Mr. Landon,” the coroner observed.
Landon favored him with a calm, indifferent glance and made no response.
Berg turned again to Miss Wilkinson, the blonde stenographer.
“Will you tell me,” he said, “if you know, what caused Mr. Trowbridge to leave his office early, yesterday?”
The girl hesitated. She shot a quick glance at Landon, and then looked down again. She fidgeted with her handkerchief, and twice essayed to speak, but did not finish.
“Come,” said Berg, sharply, “I am waiting.”
“I don’t know,” said Miss Wilkinson at last.
Fibsy gave a quick whistle. “She does know,” he declared; “she takes all the telephone calls, and she knows the G’uvnor went out ’cause somebody telephoned for him.”
“Is this true?” asked Berg of the girl.
“How can I tell?” she retorted, pertly. “Mr. Trowbridge had a lot of telephone calls yesterday, and I don’t know whether he went out because of one of them or not.Idon’t listen to a telephone conversation after Mr. Trowbridge takes the wire.”
“You do so!” said Fibsy, in a conversational tone. “Mr. Berg, Yellowtop told me just after the Guv’nor went out, that he’d gone ’cause somebody asked him over the wire to go to Van Cortlandt Park.”
“Tell the truth,” said Berg to the girl, curtly.
“Well, I just as lief,” she returned; “but it ain’t my way to tell of private office matters in public.”
“Make it your way, now, then. It’s time you understand the seriousness of this occasion!”
“All right. Somebody, then,—some man,—did call Mr. Trowbridge about two o’clock, and asked him to go to Van Cortlandt Park.”
“What for? Did he say?”
“Yes, he said somebody had set a trap for him.”
“Set a trap for him! What did he mean?”
“How do I know what he meant? I ain’t a mind-reader! I tell you what he said,—I can’t make up a meanin’ for it too. And I ain’t got a right to tell this much. I don’t want to get nobody in trouble.”
The girl was almost in tears now, but whether the sympathy was for herself or another was an open question.
“You have heard, Miss Wilkinson, of testimony that means to be true, but is—er—inexact.” The coroner smiled a trifle, as if thus atoning for his own late slip. “Therefore, I beg that you will do your utmost to remember exactly what that message was.”
“I do, ’cause I thought it was such a funny one. The man said, ‘you’d better come, he’s set a trap for you.’ And Mr. Trowbridge says ‘I can’t go today, I’ve got an engagement’ And the other man said, ‘Oh, c’mon. It’s a lovely day, and I’ll give you some stephanotis.’”
“Stephanotis!”
“Yes, sir, I remembered that, ’cause it’s my fav’rite puffume.”
“Was Mr. Trowbridge in the habit of using perfumery?” asked Berg of Avice.
“Never,” she replied, looking at the blonde witness with scorn.
“I don’t care,” Miss Wilkinson persisted, doggedly; “I know he said that, for I had a bottle of stephanotis one Christmas, and I never smelled anything so good. And then he said something about the Caribbean Sea——”
“Now, Miss Wilkinson, I’m afraid you’re romancing a little,” and the coroner looked at her in reproof.
“I’m telling you what I heard. If you don’t want to hear it, I’ll stop.”
“We want to hear it, if it’s true, not otherwise. Are you sure this man said these absurd things?”
“They weren’t absurd, leastways, Mr. Trowbridge didn’t think so. I know that, ’cause he was pleasant and polite, and when the man said he’d give him some stephanotis Mr. Trowbridge said, right off, he’d go.”
“Go to the Caribbean Sea with him?”
“I don’t know whether he meant that or not. I didn’t catch on to what he said about that, but I heard Caribbean Sea all right.”
“Do you know where that sea is?”
“No, sir. But I studied it in my geography at school, I forget where it is, but I remember the name.”
“Well it’s between—er—that is, it’s somewhere near South America, and the—well, it’s down that way. Did this man speaking sound like a foreigner?”
“N—no, not exactly.”
“Like an American?”
“Yes,—I think so.”
“Explain your hesitation.”
“Well,” said the girl, desperately, “he sounded like he was trying to sort of disguise his voice,—if you know what I mean.”
“I know exactly what you mean. How did you know it was a disguised voice?”
“It was sort of high and then sort of low as if making believe somebody else.”
“You’re a very observing young woman. I thought you didn’t listen to telephone conversations of your employer.”
“Well, I just happened to hear this one. And it was so—so queer, I kind of kept on listenin’ for a few minutes.”
“It may be fortunate that you did, as your report is interesting. Now, can you remember any more, any other words or sentences?”
“No sir. There was a little more but I didn’t catch it. They seemed to know what they was talkin’ about, but most anybody else wouldn’t. But I’m dead sure about the puffumery and the Sea.”
“Those are certainly queer words to connect with this case. But maybe the message you tell of was not the one that called Mr. Trowbridge to the Park.”
“Maybe not, sir.”
“It might have been a friend warning him of the trap set for him, and urging him to go south to escape it.”
“Maybe sir.”
“These things must be carefully looked into. We must get the number of the telephone call and trace it.”
“Can’t be done,” said Detective Groot, who being a taciturn man listened carefully and said little. “I’ve tried too many times to trace a call to hold out any hopes of this. If it came from a big exchange it might be barely possible to trace it; but if from a private wire or a public booth, or from lots of such places you’ll never find it. Never in the world.”
“Is it then so difficult to trace a telephone call?” asked one of the jury. “I didn’t know it.”
“Yes, sir,” repeated Groot. “Why there was a big case in New York years ago, where they made the telephone company trace a call and it cost the company thousands of dollars. After that they tore up their slips. But then again, you mighthappento find out what you want. But not at all likely, no, not a bit likely.”
Avice looked at the speaker thoughtfully. The night before she had asked the number of a call and received it at once. But, she remembered, she asked a few moments after the call was made, and of the same operator. Her thoughts wandered back to that call made by Eleanor Black, and again she felt that impression of something sly about the woman. And to think, she had the number of that call, and could easily find out who it summoned. But all such things must wait till this investigation of the present was over. She looked at Mrs. Black.
The handsome widow wore her usual sphinx-like expression and she was gazing steadily at Kane Landon. Avice thought she detected a look in the dark eyes as of a special, even intimate interest in the young man. She had no reason to think they were acquaintances, yet she couldn’t help thinking they appeared so. At any rate, Eleanor Black was paying little or no attention to the proceedings of the inquest. But Avice remembered she had expressed a distaste and aversion to detectives and all their works. Surely, the girl thought, she could not have cared very much for Uncle Rowly, if she doesn’t feel most intense interest in running the murderer to ground.
She turned again toward the coroner to hear him saying:
“And then, Miss Wilkinson, after this mysterious message, did Mr. Trowbridge leave the office at once?”
“Yes sir. Grabbed his hat and scooted right off. Said he wouldn’t be back all afternoon.”
“And you did not recognize the voice as any that you had ever heard?”
“No, sir.”
“And you gathered nothing from the conversation that gave you any hint of who the speaker might be?”
Whether it was the sharp eye of Mr. Berg compelling her, or a latent regard for the truth, the yellow-haired girl, for some reason, stammered out, “Well, sir, whoever it was, called Mr. Trowbridge ‘uncle.’”
Again one of those silences that seemed to shriek aloud in denunciation of the only man present who would be supposed to call Mr. Trowbridge “uncle.”
Berg turned toward Kane Landon. For a moment the two looked at each other, and then the younger man’s eyes fell. He seemed for an instant on the verge of collapse, and then, with an evident effort, drew himself up and faced the assembly.
“You are all convinced that I am the slayer of my uncle,” he said almost musingly; “well, arrest me, then. It is your duty.”
His hearers were amazed. Such brazen effrontery could expect no leniency. And too, what loop-hole of escape did the suspect have? Motive, opportunity, circumstantial evidence, all went to prove his guilt. True, no one had seen him do the deed; true, he had not himself confessed the crime; but how could his guilt be doubted in view of all the incrimination as testified by witnesses?