My first impulse was to rouse the house; my second, to wait for Hunter. To turn loose that mob of half-drunken men in such a place seemed profanation. There was nothing of the majesty or panoply of death here, but the very sordidness of the surroundings made me resolve to guard the new dignity of that figure. I was shocked, of course; it would be absurd to say that I was emotionally unstrung. On the contrary, I was conscious of a distinct feeling of disappointment. Fleming had been our key to the Bellwood affair, and he had put himself beyond helping to solve any mystery. I locked the door and stood wondering what to do next. I should have called a doctor, no doubt, but I had seen enough of death to know that the man was beyond aid of any kind.
It was not until I had bolted the door that I discovered the absence of any weapon. Everything that had gone before had pointed to a position so untenable that suicide seemed its natural and inevitable result. With the discovery that there was no revolver on the table or floor, the thing was more ominous. I decided at once to call the young city physician in the room across the hall, and with something approximating panic, I threw open the door—to face Harry Wardrop, and behind him, Hunter.
I do not remember that any one spoke. Hunter jumped past me into the room and took in in a single glance what I had labored to acquire in three minutes. As Wardrop came in, Hunter locked the door behind him, and we three stood staring at the prostrate figure over the table.
I watched Wardrop: I have never seen so suddenly abject a picture. He dropped into a chair, and feeling for his handkerchief, wiped his shaking lips; every particle of color left his face, and he was limp, unnerved.
"Did you hear the shot?" Hunter asked me. "It has been a matter of minutes since it happened."
"I don't know," I said, bewildered. "I heard a lot of explosions, but I thought it was an automobile, out in the street."
Hunter was listening while he examined the room, peering under the table, lifting the blankets that had trailed off the couch on to the floor. Some one outside tried the door-knob, and finding the door locked, shook it slightly.
"Fleming!" he called under his breath. "Fleming!"
We were silent, in response to a signal from Hunter, and the steps retreated heavily down the hall. The detective spread the blankets decently over the couch, and the three of us moved the body there. Wardrop was almost collapsing.
"Now," Hunter said quietly, "before I call in Doctor Gray from the room across, what do you know about this thing, Mr. Wardrop?"
Wardrop looked dazed.
"He was in a bad way when I left this morning," he said huskily. "There isn't much use now trying to hide anything; God knows I've done all I could. But he has been using cocaine for years, and to-day he ran out of the stuff. When I got here, about half an hour ago, he was on the verge of killing himself. I got the revolver from him—he was like a crazy man, and as soon as I dared to leave him, I went out to try and find a doctor—"
"To get some cocaine?"
"Yes."
"Not—because he was already wounded, and you were afraid it was fatal?"
Wardrop shuddered; then he pulled himself together, and his tone was more natural.
"What's the use of lying about it?" he said wearily. "You won't believe me if I tell the truth, either, but—he was dead when I got here. I heard something like the bang of a door as I went up-stairs, but the noise was terrific down below, and I couldn't tell. When I went in, he was just dropping forward, and—" he hesitated.
"The revolver?" Hunter queried, lynx-eyed.
"Was in his hand. He was dead then."
"Where is the revolver?"
"I will turn it over to the coroner."
"You will give it to me," Hunter replied sharply. And after a little fumbling, Wardrop produced it from his hip pocket. It was an ordinary thirty-eight. The detective opened it and glanced at it. Two chambers were empty.
"And you waited—say ten minutes, before you called for help, and even then you went outside hunting a doctor! What were you doing in those ten minutes?"
Wardrop shut his lips and refused to reply.
"If Mr. Fleming shot himself," the detective pursued relentlessly, "there would be powder marks around the wound. Then, too, he was in the act of writing a letter. It was a strange impulse, this—you see, he had only written a dozen words."
I glanced at the paper on the table. The letter had no superscription; it began abruptly:
"I shall have to leave here. The numbers have followed me. To-night—"
"I shall have to leave here. The numbers have followed me. To-night—"
That was all.
"This is not suicide," Hunter said gravely. "It is murder, and I warn you, Mr. Wardrop, to be careful what you say. Will you ask Doctor Gray to come in, Mr. Knox?"
I went across the hall to the room where the noise was loudest. Fortunately, Doctor Gray was out of the game. He was opening a can of caviar at a table in the corner and came out in response to a gesture. He did not ask any questions, and I let him go into the death chamber unprepared. The presence of death apparently had no effect on him, but the identity of the dead man almost stupefied him.
"Fleming!" he said, awed, as he looked down at the body. "Fleming, by all that's sacred! And a suicide!"
Hunter watched him grimly.
"How long has he been dead?" he asked.
The doctor glanced at the bullet wound in the forehead, and from there significantly to the group around the couch.
"Not an hour—probably less than half," he said. "It's strange we heard nothing, across the hall there."
Hunter took a clean folded handkerchief from his pocket and opening it laid it gently over the dead face. I think it was a relief to all of us. The doctor got up from his kneeling posture beside the couch, and looked at Hunter inquiringly.
"What about getting him away from here?" he said. "There is sure to be a lot of noise about it, and—you remember what happened when Butler killed himself here."
"He was reported as being found dead in the lumber yard," Hunter said dryly. "Well, Doctor, this body stays where it is, and I don't give a whoop if the whole city government wants it moved. It won't be. This is murder, not suicide."
The doctor's expression was curious.
"Murder!" he repeated. "Why—who—"
But Hunter had many things to attend to; he broke in ruthlessly on the doctor's amazement.
"See if you can get the house empty, Doctor; just tell them he is dead—the story will get out soon enough."
As the doctor left the room Hunter went to the open window, through which a fresh burst of rain was coming, and closed it. The window gave me an idea, and I went over and tried to see through the streaming pane. There was no shed or low building outside, but not five yards away the warehouse showed its ugly walls and broken windows.
"Look here, Hunter," I said, "why could he not have been shot from the warehouse?"
"He could have been—but he wasn't," Hunter affirmed, glancing at Wardrop's drooping figure. "Mr. Wardrop, I am going to send for the coroner, and then I shall ask you to go with me to the office and tell the chief what you know about this. Knox, will you telephone to the coroner?"
In an incredibly short time the club-house was emptied, and before midnight the coroner himself arrived and went up to the room. As for me, I had breakfasted, lunched and dined on horrors, and I sat in the deserted room down-stairs and tried to think how I was to take the news to Margery.
At twelve-thirty Wardrop, Hunter and the coroner came down-stairs, leaving a detective in charge of the body until morning, when it could be taken home. The coroner had a cab waiting, and he took us at once to Hunter's chief. He had not gone to bed, and we filed into his library sepulchrally.
Wardrop told his story, but it was hardly convincing. The chief, a large man who said very little, and leaned back with his eyes partly shut, listened in silence, only occasionally asking a question. The coroner, who was yawning steadily, left in the middle of Wardrop's story, as if in his mind, at least, the guilty man was as good as hanged.
"I am—I was—Mr. Allan Fleming's private secretary," Wardrop began. "I secured the position through a relationship on his wife's side. I have held the position for three years. Before that I read law. For some time I have known that Mr. Fleming used a drug of some kind. Until a week ago I did not know what it was. On the ninth of May, Mr. Fleming sent for me. I was in Plattsburg at the time, and he was at home. He was in a terrible condition—not sleeping at all, and he said he was being followed by some person who meant to kill him. Finally he asked me to get him some cocaine, and when he had taken it he was more like himself. I thought the pursuit was only in his own head. He had a man named Carter on guard in his house, and acting as butler.
"There was trouble of some sort in the organization; I do not know just what. Mr. Schwartz came here to meet Mr. Fleming, and it seemed there was money needed. Mr. Fleming had to have it at once. He gave me some securities to take to Plattsburg and turn into money. I went on the tenth—"
"Was that the day Mr. Fleming disappeared?" the chief interrupted.
"Yes. He went to the White Cat, and stayed there. No one but the caretaker and one other man knew he was there. On the night of the twenty-first, I came back, having turned my securities into money. I carried it in a package in a small Russia leather bag that never left my hand for a moment. Mr. Knox here suggested that I had put it down, and it had been exchanged for one just like it, but I did not let it out of my hand on that journey until I put it down on the porch at the Bellwood house, while I tried to get in. I live at Bellwood, with the Misses Maitland, sisters of Mr. Fleming's deceased wife. I don't pretend to know how it happened, but while I was trying to get into the house it was rifled. Mr. Knox will bear me out in that. I found my grip empty."
I affirmed it in a word. The chief was growing interested.
"What was in the bag?" he asked.
Wardrop tried to remember.
"A pair of pajamas," he said, "two military brushes and a clothes-brush, two or three soft-bosomed shirts, perhaps a half-dozen collars, and a suit of underwear."
"And all this was taken, as well as the money?"
"The bag was left empty, except for my railroad schedule."
The chief and Hunter exchanged significant glances. Then—
"Go on, if you please," the detective said cheerfully.
I think Wardrop realized the absurdity of trying to make any one believe that part of the story. He shut his lips and threw up his head as if he intended to say nothing further.
"Go on," I urged. If he could clear himself he must. I could not go back to Margery Fleming and tell her that her father had been murdered and her lover was accused of the crime.
"The bag was empty," he repeated. "I had not been five minutes trying to open the shutters, and yet the bag had been rifled. Mr. Knox here found it among the flowers below the veranda, empty."
The chief eyed me with awakened interest.
"You also live at Bellwood, Mr. Knox?"
"No, I am attorney to Miss Letitia Maitland, and was there one night as her guest. I found the bag as Mr. Wardrop described, empty."
The chief turned back to Wardrop.
"How much money was there in it when you—left it?"
"A hundred thousand dollars. I was afraid to tell Mr. Fleming, but I had to do it. We had a stormy scene, this morning. I think he thought the natural thing—that I had taken it."
"He struck you, I believe, and knocked you down?" asked Hunter smoothly.
Wardrop flushed.
"He was not himself; and, well, it meant a great deal to him. And he was out of cocaine; I left him raging, and when I went home I learned that Miss Jane Maitland had disappeared, been abducted, at the time my satchel had been emptied! It's no wonder I question my sanity."
"And then—to-night?" the chief persisted.
"To-night, I felt that some one would have to look after Mr. Fleming; I was afraid he would kill himself. It was a bad time to leave while Miss Jane was missing. But—when I got to the White Cat I found him dead. He was sitting with his back to the door, and his head on the table."
"Was the revolver in his hand?"
"Yes."
"You are sure?" from Hunter. "Isn't it a fact, Mr. Wardrop, that you took Mr. Fleming's revolver from him this morning when he threatened you with it?"
Wardrop's face twitched nervously.
"You have been misinformed," he replied, but no one was impressed by his tone. It was wavering, uncertain. From Hunter's face I judged it had been a random shot, and had landed unexpectedly well.
"How many people knew that Mr. Fleming had been hiding at the White Cat?" from the chief.
"Very few—besides myself, only a man who looks after the club-house in the mornings, and Clarkson, the cashier of the Borough Bank, who met him there once by appointment."
The chief made no comment.
"Now, Mr. Knox, what about you?"
"I opened the door into Mr. Fleming's room, perhaps a couple of minutes after Mr. Wardrop went out," I said. "He was dead then, leaning on his outspread arms over the table; he had been shot in the forehead."
"You heard no shot while you were in the hall?"
"There was considerable noise; I heard two or three sharp reports like the explosions of an automobile engine."
"Did they seem close at hand?"
"Not particularly; I thought, if I thought at all, that they were on the street."
"You are right about the automobile," Hunter said dryly. "The mayor sent his car away as I left to follow Mr. Wardrop. The sounds you heard were not shots."
"It is a strange thing," the chief reflected, "that a revolver could be fired in the upper room of an ordinary dwelling house, while that house was filled with people—and nobody hear it. Were there any powder marks on the body?"
"None," Hunter said.
The chief got up stiffly.
"Thank you very much, gentlemen," he spoke quietly. "I think that is all. Hunter, I would like to see you for a few minutes."
I think Wardrop was dazed at finding himself free; he had expected nothing less than an immediate charge of murder. As we walked to the corner for a car or cab, whichever materialized first, he looked back.
"I thought so," he said bitterly. A man was loitering after us along the street. The police were not asleep, they had only closed one eye.
The last train had gone. We took a night electric car to Wynton, and walked the three miles to Bellwood. Neither of us was talkative, and I imagine we were both thinking of Margery, and the news she would have to hear.
It had been raining, and the roads were vile. Once Wardrop turned around to where we could hear the detective splashing along, well behind.
"I hope he's enjoying it," he said. "I brought you by this road, so he'd have to wade in mud up to his neck."
"The devil you did!" I exclaimed. "I'll have to be scraped with a knife before I can get my clothes off."
We both felt better for the laugh; it was a sort of nervous reaction. The detective was well behind, but after a while Wardrop stood still, while I plowed along. They came up together presently, and the three of us trudged on, talking of immaterial things.
At the door Wardrop turned to the detective with a faint smile. "It's raining again," he said, "you'd better come in. You needn't worry about me; I'm not going to run away, and there's a couch in the library."
The detective grinned, and in the light from the hall I recognized the man I had followed to the police station two nights before.
"I guess I will," he said, looking apologetically at his muddy clothes. "This thing is only a matter of form, anyhow."
But he didn't lie down on the couch. He took a chair in the hall near the foot of the stairs, and we left him there, with the evening paper and a lamp. It was a queer situation, to say the least.
Wardrop looked so wretched that I asked him into my room, and mixed him some whisky and water. When I had given him a cigar he began to look a little less hopeless.
"You've been a darned sight better to me than I would have been to you, under the circumstances," he said gratefully.
"I thought we would better arrange about Miss Margery before we try to settle down," I replied. "What she has gone through in the last twenty-four hours is nothing to what is coming to-morrow. Will you tell her about her father?"
He took a turn about the room.
"I believe it would come better from you," he said finally. "I am in the peculiar position of having been suspected by her father of robbing him, by you of carrying away her aunt, and now by the police and everybody else of murdering her father."
"I do not suspect you of anything," I justified myself. "I don't think you are entirely open, that is all, Wardrop. I think you are damaging yourself to shield some one else."
His expressive face was on its guard in a moment. He ceased his restless pacing, pausing impressively before me.
"I give you my word as a gentleman—I do not know who killed Mr. Fleming, and that when I first saw him dead, my only thought was that he had killed himself. He had threatened to, that day. Why, if you think I killed him, you would have to think I robbed him, too, in order to find a motive."
I did not tell him that that was precisely what Hunterdidthink. I evaded the issue.
"Mr. Wardrop, did you ever hear of the figures eleven twenty-two?" I inquired.
"Eleven twenty-two?" he repeated. "No, never in any unusual connection."
"You never heard Mr. Fleming use them?" I persisted.
He looked puzzled.
"Probably," he said. "In the very nature of Mr. Fleming's position, we used figures all the time. Eleven twenty-two. That's the time the theater train leaves the city for Bellwood. Not what you want, eh?"
"Not quite," I answered non-committally and began to wind my watch. He took the hint and prepared to leave.
"I'll not keep you up any longer," he said, picking up his raincoat. He opened the door and stared ruefully down at the detective in the hall below. "The old place is queer without Miss Jane," he said irrelevantly. "Well, good night, and thanks."
He went heavily along the hall and I closed my door, I heard him pass Margery's room and then go back and rap lightly. She was evidently awake.
"It's Harry," he called. "I thought you wouldn't worry if you knew I was in the house to-night."
She asked him something, for—
"Yes, he is here," he said. He stood there for a moment, hesitating over something, but whatever it was, he decided against it.
"Good night, dear," he said gently and went away.
The little familiarity made me wince. Every unattached man has the same pang now and then. I have it sometimes when Edith sits on the arm of Fred's chair, or one of the youngsters leaves me to run to "daddy." And one of the sanest men I ever met went to his office and proposed to his stenographer in sheer craving for domesticity, after watching the wife of one of his friends run her hand over her husband's chin and give him a reproving slap for not having shaved!
I pulled myself up sharply and after taking off my dripping coat, I went to the window and looked out into the May night. It seemed incredible that almost the same hour the previous night little Miss Jane had disappeared, had been taken bodily away through the peace of the warm spring darkness, and that I, as wide-awake as I was at that moment, acute enough of hearing to detect Wardrop's careful steps on the gravel walk below, had heard no struggle, had permitted this thing to happen without raising a finger in the old lady's defense. And she was gone as completely as if she had stepped over some psychic barrier into the fourth dimension!
I found myself avoiding the more recent occurrence at the White Cat. I was still too close to it to have gained any perspective. On that subject I was able to think clearly of only one thing: that I would have to tell Margery in the morning, and that I would have given anything I possessed for a little of Edith's diplomacy with which to break the bad news. It was Edith who broke the news to me that the moths had got into my evening clothes while I was hunting in the Rockies, by telling me that my dress-coat made me look narrow across the shoulders and persuading me to buy a new one and give the old one to Fred. Then she broke the news of the moths to Fred!
I was ready for bed when Wardrop came back and rapped at my door. He was still dressed, and he had the leather bag in his hand.
"Look here," he said excitedly, when I had closed the door, "this is not my bag at all. Fool that I was. I never examined it carefully."
He held it out to me, and I carried it to the light. It was an ordinary eighteen-inch Russia leather traveling-bag, tan in color, and with gold-plated mountings. It was empty, save for the railroad schedule that still rested in one side pocket. Wardrop pointed to the empty pocket on the other side.
"In my bag," he explained rapidly, "my name was written inside that pocket, in ink. I did it myself—my name and address."
I looked inside the pockets on both sides: nothing had been written in.
"Don't you see?" he asked excitedly. "Whoever stole my bag had this one to substitute for it. If we can succeed in tracing the bag here to the shop it came from, and from there to the purchaser, we have the thief."
"There's no maker's name in it," I said, after a casual examination. Wardrop's face fell, and he took the bag from me despondently.
"No matter which way I turn," he said, "I run into a blind alley. If I were worth a damn, I suppose I could find a way out. But I'm not. Well, I'll let you sleep this time."
At the door, however, he turned around and put the bag on the floor, just inside.
"If you don't mind, I'll leave it here," he said. "They'll be searching my room, I suppose, and I'd like to have the bag for future reference."
He went for good that time, and I put out the light. As an afterthought I opened my door perhaps six inches, and secured it with one of the pink conch-shells which flanked either end of the stone hearth. I had failed the night before: I meant to be on hand that night.
I went to sleep immediately, I believe. I have no idea how much later it was that I roused. I wakened suddenly and sat up in bed. There had been a crash of some kind, for the shock was still vibrating along my nerves. Dawn was close; the window showed gray against the darkness inside, and I could make out dimly the larger objects in the room. I listened intently, but the house seemed quiet. Still I was not satisfied. I got up and, lighting the candle, got into my raincoat in lieu of a dressing-gown, and prepared to investigate.
With the fatality that seemed to pursue my feet in that house, with my first step I trod squarely on top of the conch-shell, and I fell back on to the edge of the bed swearing softly and holding the injured member. Only when the pain began to subside did I realize that I had left the shell on the door-sill, and that it had moved at least eight feet while I slept!
When I could walk I put it on the mantel, its mate from the other end of the hearth beside it. Then I took my candle and went out into the hall. My door, which I had left open, I found closed; nothing else was disturbed. The leather bag sat just inside, as Wardrop had left it. Through Miss Maitland's transom were coming certain strangled and irregular sounds, now falsetto, now deep bass, that showed that worthy lady to be asleep. A glance down the staircase revealed Davidson, stretching in his chair and looking up at me.
"I'm frozen," he called up cautiously. "Throw me down a blanket or two, will you?"
I got a couple of blankets from my bed and took them down. He was examining his chair ruefully.
"There isn't any grip to this horsehair stuff," he complained. "Every time I doze off I dream I'm coasting down the old hill back on the farm, and when I wake up I'm sitting on the floor, with the end of my back bone bent like a hook."
He wrapped himself in the blankets and sat down again, taking the precaution this time to put his legs on another chair and thus anchor himself. Then he produced a couple of apples and a penknife and proceeded to pare and offer me one.
"Found 'em in the pantry," he said, biting into one. "I belong to the apple society. Eat one apple every day and keep healthy!" He stopped and stared intently at the apple. "I reckon I got a worm that time," he said, with less ardor.
"I'll get something to wash him down," I offered, rising, but he waved me back to my stair.
"Not on your life," he said with dignity. "Let him walk. How are things going up-stairs?"
"You didn't happen to be up there a little while ago, did you?" I questioned in turn.
"No. I've been kept busy trying to sit tight where I am. Why?"
"Some one came into my room and wakened me," I explained. "I heard a racket and when I got up I found a shell that I had put on the door-sill to keep the door open, in the middle of the room. I stepped on it."
He examined a piece of apple before putting it in his mouth. Then he turned a pair of shrewd eyes on me.
"That's funny," he said. "Anything in the room disturbed?"
"Nothing."
"Where's the shell now?"
"On the mantel. I didn't want to step on it again."
He thought for a minute, but his next remark was wholly facetious.
"No. I guess you won't step on it up there. Like the old woman: she says, 'Motorman, if I put my foot on the rail will I be electrocuted?' And he says, 'No, madam, not unless you put your other foot on the trolley wire.'"
I got up impatiently. There was no humor in the situation that night for me.
"Some one had been in the room," I reiterated. "The door was closed, although I had left it open."
He finished his apple and proceeded with great gravity to drop the parings down the immaculate register in the floor beside his chair. Then—
"I've only got one business here, Mr. Knox," he said in an undertone, "and you know what that is. But if it will relieve your mind of the thought that there was anything supernatural about your visitor, I'll tell you that it was Mr. Wardrop, and that to the best of my belief he was in your room, not once, but twice, in the last hour and a half. As far as that shell goes, it was I that kicked it, having gone up without my shoes."
I stared at him blankly.
"What could he have wanted?" I exclaimed. But with his revelation, Davidson's interest ceased; he drew the blanket up around his shoulders and shivered.
"Search me," he said and yawned.
I went back to bed, but not to sleep. I deliberately left the door wide open, but no intrusion occurred. Once I got up and glanced down the stairs. For all his apparent drowsiness, Davidson heard my cautious movements, and saluted me in a husky whisper.
"Have you got any quinine?" he said. "I'm sneezing my head off."
But I had none. I gave him a box of cigarettes, and after partially dressing, I threw myself across the bed to wait for daylight. I was roused by the sun beating on my face, to hear Miss Letitia's tones from her room across.
"Nonsense," she was saying querulously. "Don't you suppose I can smell? Do you think because I'm a little hard of hearing that I've lost my other senses? Somebody's been smoking."
"It's me," Heppie shouted. "I—"
"You?" Miss Letitia snarled. "What are you smoking for? That ain't my shirt; it's my—"
"I ain't smokin'," yelled Heppie. "You won't let me tell you. I spilled vinegar on the stove; that's what you smell."
Miss Letitia's sardonic chuckle came through the door.
"Vinegar," she said with scorn. "Next thing you'll be telling me it's vinegar that Harry and Mr. Knox carry around in little boxes in their pockets. You've pinned my cap to my scalp."
I hurried down-stairs to find Davidson gone. My blanket lay neatly folded, on the lower step, and the horsehair chairs were ranged along the wall as before. I looked around anxiously for telltale ashes, but there was none, save, at the edge of the spotless register, a trace. Evidently they had followed the apple parings. It grew cold a day or so later, and Miss Letitia had the furnace fired, and although it does not belong to my story, she and Heppie searched the house over to account for the odor of baking apples—a mystery that was never explained.
Wardrop did not appear at breakfast. Margery came down-stairs as Bella was bringing me my coffee, and dropped languidly into her chair. She looked tired and white.
"Another day!" she said wearily. "Did you ever live through such an eternity as the last thirty-six hours?"
I responded absently; the duty I had assumed hung heavy over me. I had a frantic impulse to shirk the whole thing: to go to Wardrop and tell him it was his responsibility, not mine, to make this sad-eyed girl sadder still. That as I had not his privilege of comforting her, neither should I shoulder his responsibility of telling her. But the issue was forced on me sooner than I had expected, for at that moment I saw the glaring head-lines of the morning paper, laid open at Wardrop's plate.
She must have followed my eyes, for we reached for it simultaneously. She was nearer than I, and her quick eye caught the name. Then I put my hand over the heading and she flushed with indignation.
"You are not to read it now," I said, meeting her astonished gaze as best I could. "Please let me have it. I promise you I will give it to you—almost immediately."
"You are very rude," she said without relinquishing the paper. "I saw a part of that; it is about my father!"
"Drink your coffee, please," I pleaded. "I will let you read it then. On my honor."
She looked at me; then she withdrew her hand and sat erect.
"How can you be so childish!" she exclaimed. "If there is anything in that paper that it—will hurt me to learn, is a cup of coffee going to make it any easier?"
I gave up then. I had always thought that people heard bad news better when they had been fortified with something to eat, and I had a very distinct recollection that Fred had made Edith drink something—tea probably—before he told her that Billy had fallen off the back fence and would have to have a stitch taken in his lip. Perhaps I should have offered Margery tea instead of coffee. But as it was, she sat, stonily erect, staring at the paper, and feeling that evasion would be useless, I told her what had happened, breaking the news as gently as I could.
I stood by her helplessly through the tearless agony that followed, and cursed myself for a blundering ass. I had said that he had been accidentally shot, and I said it with the paper behind me, but she put the evasion aside bitterly.
"Accidentally!" she repeated. The first storm of grief over, she lifted her head from where it had rested on her arms and looked at me, scorning my subterfuge. "He was murdered. That's the word I didn't have time to read! Murdered! And you sat back and let it happen. I went to you in time and you didn't do anything. No one did anything!"
I did not try to defend myself. How could I? And afterward when she sat up and pushed back the damp strands of hair from her eyes, she was more reasonable.
"I did not mean what I said about your not having done anything," she said, almost childishly. "No one could have done more. It was to happen, that's all."
But even then I knew she had trouble in store that she did not suspect. What would she do when she heard that Wardrop was under grave suspicion? Between her dead father and her lover, what? It was to be days before I knew and in all that time, I, who would have died, not cheerfully but at least stoically, for her, had to stand back and watch the struggle, not daring to hold out my hand to help, lest by the very gesture she divine my wild longing to hold her for myself.
She recovered bravely that morning from the shock, and refusing to go to her room and lie down—a suggestion, like the coffee, culled from my vicarious domestic life—she went out to the veranda and sat there in the morning sun, gazing across the lawn. I left her there finally, and broke the news of her brother-in-law's death to Miss Letitia. After the first surprise, the old lady took the news with what was nearer complacency than resignation.
"Shot!" she said, sitting up in bed, while Heppie shook her pillows. "It's a queer death for Allan Fleming; I always said he would be hanged."
After that, she apparently dismissed him from her mind, and we talked of her sister. Her mood had changed and it was depressing to find that she spoke of Jane always in the past tense. She could speak of her quite calmly—I suppose the sharpness of our emotions is in inverse ratio to our length of years, and she regretted that, under the circumstances, Jane would not rest in the family lot.
"We are all there," she said, "eleven of us, counting my sister Mary's husband, although he don't properly belong, and I always said we would take him out if we were crowded. It is the best lot in the Hopedale Cemetery; you can see the shaft for two miles in any direction."
We held a family council that morning around Miss Letitia's bed: Wardrop, who took little part in the proceedings, and who stood at a window looking out most of the time, Margery on the bed, her arm around Miss Letitia's shriveled neck, and Heppie, who acted as interpreter and shouted into the old lady's ear such parts of the conversation as she considered essential.
"I have talked with Miss Fleming," I said, as clearly as I could, "and she seems to shrink from seeing people. The only friends she cares about are in Europe, and she tells me there are no other relatives."
Heppie condensed this into a vocal capsule, and thrust it into Miss Letitia's ear. The old lady nodded.
"No other relatives," she corroborated. "God be praised for that, anyhow."
"And yet," I went on, "there are things to look after, certain necessary duties that no one else can attend to. I don't want to insist, but she ought, if she is able, to go to the city house, for a few hours, at least."
"City house!" Heppie yelled in her ear.
"It ought to be cleaned," Miss Letitia acquiesced, "and fresh curtains put up. Jane would have been in her element; she was always handy at a funeral. And don't let them get one of those let-down-at-the-side coffins. They're leaky."
Luckily Margery did not notice this.
"I was going to suggest," I put in hurriedly, "that my brother's wife would be only too glad to help, and if Miss Fleming will go into town with me, I am sure Edith would know just what to do. She isn't curious and she's very capable."
Margery threw me a grateful glance, grateful, I think, that I could understand how, under the circumstances, a stranger was more acceptable than curious friends could be.
"Mr. Knox's sister-in-law!" interpreted Heppie.
"When you have to say the letter 's,' turn your head away," Miss Letitia rebuked her. "Well, I don't object, if Knox's sister-in-law don't." She had an uncanny way of expanding Heppie's tabloid speeches. "You can take my white silk shawl to lay over the body, but be sure to bring it back. We may need it for Jane."
If the old lady's chin quivered a bit, while Margery threw her arms around her, she was mightily ashamed of it. But Heppie was made of weaker stuff. She broke into a sudden storm of sobs and left the room, to stick her head in the door a moment after.
"Kidneys or chops?" she shouted almost belligerently.
"Kidneys," Miss Letitia replied in kind.
Wardrop went with us to the station at noon, but he left us there, with a brief remark that he would be up that night. After I had put Margery in a seat, I went back to have a word with him alone. He was standing beside the train, trying to light a cigarette, but his hands shook almost beyond control, and after the fourth match he gave it up. My minute for speech was gone. As the train moved out I saw him walking back along the platform, paying no attention to anything around him. Also, I had a fleeting glimpse of a man loafing on a baggage truck, his hat over his eyes. He was paring an apple with a penknife, and dropping the peelings with careful accuracy through a crack in the floor of the platform.
I had arranged over the telephone that Edith should meet the train, and it was a relief to see that she and Margery took to each other at once. We drove to the house immediately, and after a few tears when she saw the familiar things around her, Margery rose to the situation bravely. Miss Letitia had sent Bella to put the house in order, and it was evident that the idea of clean curtains for the funeral had been drilled into her until it had become an obsession. Not until Edith had concealed the step-ladder were the hangings safe, and late in the afternoon we heard a crash from the library, and found Bella twisted on the floor, the result of putting a teakwood tabouret on a table and from thence attacking the lace curtains of the library windows.
Edith gave her a good scolding and sent her off to soak her sprained ankle. Then she righted the tabouret, sat down on it and began on me.
"Do you know that you have not been to the office for two days?" she said severely. "And do you know that Hawes had hysterics in our front hall last night? You had a case in court yesterday, didn't you?"
"Nothing very much," I said, looking over her head. "Anyhow, I'm tired. I don't know when I'm going back. I need a vacation."
She reached behind her and pulling the cord, sent the window shade to the top of the window. At the sight of my face thus revealed, she drew a long sigh.
"The biggest case you ever had, Jack! The biggest retainer you ever had—"
"I've spent that," I protested feebly.
"A vacation, and you only back from Pinehurst!"
"The girl was in trouble—isin trouble, Edith," I burst out. "Any one would have done the same thing. Even Fred would hardly have deserted that household. It's stricken, positively stricken."
My remark about Fred did not draw her from cover.
"Of course it's your own affair," she said, not looking at me, "and goodness knows I'm disinterested about it, you ruin the boys, both stomachs and dispositions, and I could use your roomsplendidlyas a sewing-room—"
"Edith! You abominable little liar!"
She dabbed at her eyes furiously with her handkerchief, and walked with great dignity to the door. Then she came back and put her hand on my arm.
"Oh, Jack, if we could only have saved you this!" she said, and a minute later, when I did not speak: "Who is the man, dear?"
"A distant relative, Harry Wardrop," I replied, with what I think was very nearly my natural tone. "Don't worry, Edith. It's all right. I've known it right along."
"Pooh!" Edith returned sagely. "So do I know I've got to die and be buried some day. Its being inevitable doesn't make it any more cheerful." She went out, but she came back in a moment and stuck her head through the door.
"That'sthe only inevitable thing there is," she said, taking up the conversation—an old habit of hers—where she had left off.
"I don't know what you are talking about," I retorted, turning my back on her. "And anyhow, I regard your suggestion as immoral." But when I turned again, she had gone.
That Saturday afternoon at four o'clock the body of Allan Fleming was brought home, and placed in state in the music-room of the house.
Miss Jane had been missing since Thursday night. I called Hunter by telephone, and he had nothing to report.
I had a tearful message from Hawes late that afternoon, and a little after five I went to the office. I found him offering late editions of the evening paper to a couple of clients, who were edging toward the door. His expression when he saw me was pure relief, the clients', relief strongly mixed with irritation.
I put the best face on the matter that I could, saw my visitors, and left alone, prepared to explain to Hawes what I could hardly explain to myself.
"I've been unavoidably detained, Hawes," I said, "Miss Jane Maitland has disappeared from her home."
"So I understood you over the telephone." He had brought my mail and stood by impassive.
"Also, her brother-in-law is dead."
"The papers are full of it."
"There was no one to do anything, Hawes. I was obliged to stay," I apologized. I was ostentatiously examining my letters and Hawes said nothing. I looked up at him sideways, and he looked down at me. Not a muscle of his face quivered, save one eye, which has a peculiar twitching of the lid when he is excited. It gave him a sardonic appearance of winking. He winked at me then.
"Don't wait, Hawes," I said guiltily, and he took his hat and went out. Every line of his back was accusation. The sag of his shoulders told me I had let my biggest case go by default that day; the forward tilt of his head, that I was probably insane; the very grip with which he seized the door-knob, his "good night" from around the door, that he knew there was a woman at the bottom of it all. As he closed the door behind him I put down my letters and dropped my face in my hands. Hawes was right. No amount of professional zeal could account for the interest I had taken. Partly through force of circumstances, partly of my own volition, I had placed myself in the position of first friend to a family with which I had had only professional relations; I had even enlisted Edith, when my acquaintance with Margery Fleming was only three days old! And at the thought of the girl, of Wardrop's inefficiency and my own hopelessness, I groaned aloud.
I had not heard the door open.
"I forgot to tell you that a gentleman was here half a dozen times to-day to see you. He didn't give any name."
I dropped my hands. From around the door Hawes' nervous eye was winking wildly.
"You're not sick, Mr. Knox?"
"Never felt better."
"I thought I heard—"
"I was singing," I lied, looking him straight in the eye.
He backed nervously to the door.
"I have a little sherry in my office, Mr. Knox—twenty-six years in the wood. If you—"
"For God's sake, Hawes, there's nothing the matter with me!" I exclaimed, and he went. But I heard him stand a perceptible time outside the door before he tiptoed away.
Almost immediately after, some one entered the waiting-room, and the next moment I was facing, in the doorway, a man I had never seen before.
He was a tall man, with thin, colorless beard trimmed to a Vandyke point, and pale eyes blinking behind glasses. He had a soft hat crushed in his hand, and his whole manner was one of subdued excitement.
"Mr. Knox?" he asked, from the doorway.
"Yes. Come in."
"I have been here six times since noon," he said, dropping rather than sitting in a chair. "My name is Lightfoot. I am—was—Mr. Fleming's cashier."
"Yes?"
"I was terribly shocked at the news of his death," he stumbled on, getting no help from me. "I was in town and if I had known in time I could have kept some of the details out of the papers. Poor Fleming—to think he would end it that way."
"End it?"
"Shoot himself." He watched me closely.
"But he didn't," I protested. "It was not suicide, Mr. Lightfoot. According to the police, it was murder."
His cold eyes narrowed like a cat's. "Murder is an ugly word, Mr. Knox. Don't let us be sensational. Mr. Fleming had threatened to kill himself more than once; ask young Wardrop. He was sick and despondent; he left his home without a word, which points strongly to emotional insanity. He could have gone to any one of a half dozen large clubs here, or at the capital. Instead, he goes to a little third-rate political club, where, presumably, he does his own cooking and hides in a dingy room. Is that sane? Murder! It was suicide, and that puppy Wardrop knows it well enough. I—I wish I had him by the throat!"
He had worked himself into quite a respectable rage, but now he calmed himself.
"I have seen the police," he went on. "They agree with me that it was suicide, and the party newspapers will straighten it out to-morrow. It is only unfortunate that the murder theory was given so much publicity. TheTimes-Post, which is Democratic, of course, I can not handle."
I sat stupefied.
"Suicide!" I said finally. "With no weapon, no powder marks, and with a half-finished letter at his elbow."
He brushed my interruption aside.
"Mr. Fleming had been—careless," he said. "I can tell you in confidence, that some of the state funds had been deposited in the Borough Bank of Manchester, and—the Borough Bank closed its doors at ten o'clock to-day."
I was hardly surprised at that, but the whole trend of events was amazing.
"I arrived here last night," he said, "and I searched the city for Mr. Fleming. This morning I heard the news. I have just come from the house: his daughter referred me to you. After all, what I want is a small matter. Some papers—state documents—are missing, and no doubt are among Mr. Fleming's private effects. I would like to go through his papers, and leave to-night for the capital."
"I have hardly the authority," I replied doubtfully. "Miss Fleming, I suppose, would have no objection. His private secretary, Wardrop, would be the one to superintend such a search."
"Can you find Wardrop—at once?"
Something in his eagerness put me on my guard.
"I will make an attempt," I said. "Let me have the name of your hotel, and I will telephone you if it can be arranged for to-night."
He had to be satisfied with that, but his eagerness seemed to me to be almost desperation. Oddly enough, I could not locate Wardrop after all. I got the Maitland house by telephone, to learn that he had left there about three o'clock, and had not come back.
I went to the Fleming house for dinner. Edith was still there, and we both tried to cheer Margery, a sad little figure in her black clothes. After the meal, I called Lightfoot at his hotel, and told him that I could not find Wardrop; that there were no papers at the house, and that the office safe would have to wait until Wardrop was found to open it. He was disappointed and furious; like a good many men who are physical cowards, he said a great deal over the telephone that he would not have dared to say to my face, and I cut him off by hanging up the receiver. From that minute, in the struggle that was coming, like Fred, I was "forninst" the government.
It was arranged that Edith should take Margery home with her for the night. I thought it a good idea; the very sight of Edith tucking in her babies and sitting down beside the library lamp to embroider me a scarfpin-holder for Christmas would bring Margery back to normal again. Except in the matter of Christmas gifts, Edith is the sanest woman I know; I recognized it at the dinner table, where she had the little girl across from her planning her mourning hats before the dinner was half finished.
When we rose at last, Margery looked toward the music-room, where the dead man lay in state. But Edith took her by the arm and pushed her toward the stairs.
"Get your hat on right away, while Jack calls a cab," she directed. "I must get home, or Fred will keep the boys up until nine o'clock. He is absolutely without principle."
When Margery came down there was a little red spot burning in each pale cheek, and she ran down the stairs like a scared child. At the bottom she clutched the newel-post and looked behind fearfully.
"What's the matter?" Edith demanded, glancing uneasily over her shoulder.
"Some one has been up-stairs," Margery panted. "Somebody has been staying in the house while we were away."
"Nonsense," I said, seeing that her fright was infecting Edith. "What makes you think that?"
"Come and look," she said, gaining courage, I suppose, from a masculine presence. And so we went up the long stairs, the two girls clutching hands, and I leading the way and inclined to scoff.
At the door of a small room next to what had been Allan Fleming's bedroom, we paused and I turned on the light.
"Before we left," Margery said more quietly, "I closed this room myself. It had just been done over, and the pale blue soils so easily. I came in the last thing, and saw covers put over everything. Now look at it!"
It was a sort of boudoir, filled with feminine knickknacks and mahogany lounging chairs. Wherever possible, a pale brocade had been used, on the empire couch, in panels in the wall, covering cushions on the window-seat. It was evidently Margery's private sitting-room.
The linen cover that had been thrown over the divan was folded back, and a pillow from the window-seat bore the imprint of a head. The table was still covered, knobby protuberances indicating the pictures and books beneath. On one corner of the table, where the cover had been pushed aside, was a cup, empty and clean-washed, and as if to prove her contention, Margery picked up from the floor a newspaper, dated Friday morning, the twenty-second.
A used towel in the bath-room near-by completed the inventory; Margery had been right; some one had used the room while the house was closed.
"Might it not have been your—father?" Edith asked, when we stood again at the foot of the stairs. "He could have come here to look for something, and lain down to rest."
"I don't think so," Margery said wanly. "I left the door so he could get in with his key, but—he always used his study couch. I don't think he ever spent five minutes in my sitting-room in his life."
We had to let it go at that finally. I put them in a cab, and saw them start away: then I went back into the house. I had arranged to sleep there and generally to look after things—as I said before. Whatever scruples I had had about taking charge of Margery Fleming and her affairs, had faded with Wardrop's defection and the new mystery of the blue boudoir.
The lower floor of the house was full of people that night, local and state politicians, newspaper men and the usual crowd of the morbidly curious. The undertaker took everything in hand, and late that evening I could hear them carrying in tropical plants and stands for the flowers that were already arriving. Whatever panoply the death scene had lacked, Allan Fleming was lying in state now.
At midnight things grew quiet. I sat in the library, reading, until then, when an undertaker's assistant in a pink shirt and polka-dot cravat came to tell me that everything was done.
"Is it customary for somebody to stay up, on occasions like this?" I asked. "Isn't there an impression that wandering cats may get into the room, or something of that sort?"
"I don't think it will be necessary, sir," he said, trying to conceal a smile. "It's all a matter of taste. Some people like to take their troubles hard. Since they don't put money on their eyes any more, nobody wants to rob the dead."
He left with that cheerful remark, and I closed and locked the house after him. I found Bella in the basement kitchen with all the lights burning full, and I stood at the foot of the stairs while she scooted to bed like a scared rabbit. She was a strange creature, Bella—not so stupid as she looked, but sullen, morose—"smouldering" about expresses it.
I closed the doors into the dining-room and, leaving one light in the hall, went up to bed. A guest room in the third story had been assigned me, and I was tired enough to have slept on the floor. The telephone bell rang just after I got into bed, and grumbling at my luck, I went down to the lower floor.
It was theTimes-Post, and the man at the telephone was in a hurry.
"This is theTimes-Post. Is Mr. Wardrop there?"
"No."
"Who is this?"
"This is John Knox."
"The attorney?"
"Yes."
"Mr. Knox, are you willing to put yourself on record that Mr. Fleming committed suicide?"
"I am not going to put myself on record at all."
"To-night'sStarsays you call it suicide, and that you found him with the revolver in his hand."
"TheStarlies!" I retorted, and the man at the other end chuckled.
"Many thanks," he said, and rang off.
I went back to bed, irritated that I had betrayed myself. Loss of sleep for two nights, however, had told on me: in a short time I was sound asleep.
I wakened with difficulty. My head felt stupid and heavy, and I was burning with thirst. I sat up and wondered vaguely if I were going to be ill, and I remember that I felt too weary to get a drink. As I roused, however, I found that part of my discomfort came from bad ventilation, and I opened a window and looked out.
The window was a side one, opening on to a space perhaps eight feet wide, which separated it from its neighbor. Across from me was only a blank red wall, but the night air greeted me refreshingly. The wind was blowing hard, and a shutter was banging somewhere below. I leaned out and looked down into the well-like space beneath me. It was one of those apparently chance movements that have vital consequences, and that have always made me believe in the old Calvinistic creed of foreordination.
Below me, on the wall across, was a rectangle of yellow light, reflected from the library window of the Fleming home. There was some one in the house.
As I still stared, the light was slowly blotted out—not as if the light had been switched off, but by a gradual decreasing in size of the lighted area. The library shade had been drawn.
My first thought was burglars; my second—Lightfoot. No matter who it was, there was no one who had business there. Luckily, I had brought my revolver with me from Fred's that day, and it was under my pillow; to get it, put out the light and open the door quietly, took only a minute. I was in pajamas, barefoot, as on another almost similar occasion, but I was better armed than before.
I got to the second floor without hearing or seeing anything suspicious, but from there I could see that the light in the hall had been extinguished. The unfamiliarity of the house, the knowledge of the silent figure in the drawing-room at the foot of the stairs, and of whatever might be waiting in the library beyond, made my position uncomfortable, to say the least.
I don't believe in the man who is never afraid: he doesn't deserve the credit he gets. It's the fellow who is scared to death, whose knees knock together, and who totters rather than walks into danger, who is the real hero. Not that I was as bad as that, but I would have liked to know where the electric switch was, and to have seen the trap before I put my head in.
The stairs were solidly built, and did not creak. I felt my way down by the baluster, which required my right hand, and threw my revolver to my left. I got safely to the bottom, and around the newel-post: there was still a light in the library, and the door was not entirely closed. Then, with my usual bad luck, I ran into a heap of folding chairs that had been left by the undertaker, and if the crash paralyzed me, I don't know what it did to the intruder in the library.
The light was out in an instant, and with concealment at an end, I broke for the door and threw it open, standing there with my revolver leveled. We—the man in the room, and I—were both in absolute darkness. He had the advantage of me. He knew my location, and I could not guess his.
"Who is here?" I demanded.
Only silence, except that I seemed to hear rapid breathing.
"Speak up, or I'll shoot!" I said, not without an ugly feeling that he might be—even probably was—taking careful aim by my voice. The darkness was intolerable: I reached cautiously to the left and found, just beyond the door frame, the electric switch. As I turned it the light flashed up. The room was empty, but a portière in a doorway at my right was still shaking.
I leaped for the curtain and dragged it aside, to have a door just close in my face. When I had jerked it open, I found myself in a short hall, and there were footsteps to my left, I blundered along in the semi-darkness, into a black void which must have been the dining-room, for my outstretched hand skirted the table. The footsteps seemed only beyond my reach, and at the other side of the room the swinging door into the pantry was still swaying when I caught it.
I made a misstep in the pantry, and brought up against a blank wall. It seemed to me I heard the sound of feet running up steps, and when I found a door at last, I threw it open and dashed in.
The next moment the solid earth slipped from under my feet, I threw out my hand, and it met a cold wall, smooth as glass. Then I fell—fell an incalculable distance, and the blackness of the night came over me and smothered me.
When I came to, I was lying in darkness, and the stillness was absolute. When I tried to move, I found I was practically a prisoner: I had fallen into an air shaft, or something of the kind. I could not move my arms, where they were pinioned to my sides, and I was half-lying, half-crouching, in a semi-vertical position. I worked one arm loose and managed to make out that my prison was probably the dumb-waiter shaft to the basement kitchen.
I had landed on top of the slide, and I seemed to be tied in a knot. The revolver was under me, and if it had exploded during the fall it had done no damage. I can hardly imagine a more unpleasant position. If the man I had been following had so chosen, he could have made away with me in any one of a dozen unpleasant ways—he could have filled me as full of holes as a sieve, or scalded me, or done anything, pretty much, that he chose. But nothing happened. The house was impressively quiet.
I had fallen feet first, evidently, and then crumpled up unconscious, for one of my ankles was throbbing. It was some time before I could stand erect, and even by reaching, I could not touch the doorway above me. It must have taken five minutes for my confused senses to remember the wire cable, and to tug at it. I was a heavy load for the slide, accustomed to nothing weightier than political dinners, but with much creaking I got myself at last to the floor above, and stepped out, still into darkness, but free.
I still held the revolver, and I lighted the whole lower floor. But I found nothing in the dining-room or the pantry. Everything was locked and in good order. A small alcove off the library came next; it was undisturbed, but a tabouret lay on its side, and a half dozen books had been taken from a low book-case, and lay heaped on a chair. In the library, however, everything was confusion. Desk drawers stood open—one of the linen shades had been pulled partly off its roller, a chair had been drawn up to the long mahogany table in the center of the room, with the electric dome overhead, and everywhere, on chairs, over the floor, heaped in stacks on the table, were papers.
After searching the lower floor, and finding everything securely locked, I went up-stairs, convinced the intruder was still in the house. I made a systematic search of every room, looking into closets and under beds. Several times I had an impression, as I turned a corner, that some one was just ahead of me, but I was always disappointed. I gave up at last, and, going down to the library, made myself as comfortable as I could, and waited for morning.
I heard Bella coming down the stairs, after seven sometime; she came slowly, with flagging footsteps, as if the slightest sound would send her scurrying to the upper regions again. A little later I heard her rattling the range in the basement kitchen, and I went up-stairs and dressed.
I was too tired to have a theory about the night visitor; in fact, from that time on, I tried to have no theories of any kind. I was impressed with only one thing—that the enemy or enemies of the late Allan Fleming evidently carried their antagonism beyond the grave. As I put on my collar I wondered how long I could stay in this game, as I now meant to, and avoid lying in state in Edith's little drawing-room, with flowers around and a gentleman in black gloves at the door.
I had my ankle strapped with adhesive that morning by my doctor and it gave me no more trouble. But I caught him looking curiously at the blue bruise on my forehead where Wardrop had struck me with the chair, and at my nose, no longer swollen, but mustard-yellow at the bridge.
"Been doing any boxing lately," he said, as I laced up my shoe.
"Not for two or three years."
"New machine?"
"No."
He smiled at me quizzically from his desk.
"How does the other fellow look?" he inquired, and to my haltingly invented explanation of my battered appearance, he returned the same enigmatical smile.
That day was uneventful. Margery and Edith came to the house for about an hour and went back to Fred's again.
A cousin of the dead man, an elderly bachelor named Parker, appeared that morning and signified his willingness to take charge of the house during that day. The very hush of his voice and his black tie prompted Edith to remove Margery from him as soon as she could, and as the girl dreaded the curious eyes of the crowd that filled the house, she was glad to go.
It was Sunday, and I went to the office only long enough to look over my mail. I dined in the middle of the day at Fred's, and felt heavy and stupid all afternoon as a result of thus reversing the habits of the week. In the afternoon I had my first conversation with Fred and Edith, while Margery and the boys talked quietly in the nursery. They had taken a great fancy to her, and she was almost cheerful when she was with them.
Fred had the morning papers around him on the floor, and was in his usual Sunday argumentative mood.
"Well," he said, when the nursery door up-stairs had closed, "what was it, Jack? Suicide?"
"I don't know," I replied bluntly.
"What do you think?" he insisted.
"How can I tell?" irritably. "The police say it was suicide, and they ought to know."
"TheTimes-Postsays it was murder, and that they will prove it. And they claim the police have been called off."
I said nothing of Mr. Lightfoot, and his visit to the office, but I made a mental note to see theTimes-Postpeople and learn, if I could, what they knew.
"I can not help thinking that he deserved very nearly what he got," Edith broke in, looking much less vindictive than her words. "When one thinks of the ruin he brought to poor Henry Butler, and that Ellen has been practically an invalid ever since, I can't be sorry for him."
"What was the Butler story?" I asked. But Fred did not know, and Edith was as vague as women usually are in politics.
"Henry Butler was treasurer of the state, and Mr. Fleming was his cashier. I don't know just what the trouble was. But you remember that Henry Butler killed himself after he got out of the penitentiary, and Ellen has been in one hospital after another. I would like to have her come here for a few weeks, Fred," she said appealingly. "She is in some sanatorium or other now, and we might cheer her a little."
Fred groaned.
"Have her if you like, petty," he said resignedly, "but I refuse to be cheerful unless I feel like it. What about this young Wardrop, Jack? It looks to me as if theTimes-Postreporter had a line on him."
"Hush," Edith said softly. "He is Margery's fiancé, and she might hear you."
"How do you know?" Fred demanded. "Did she tell you?"
"Look at her engagement ring," Edith threw back triumphantly. "And it's a perfectly beautiful solitaire, too."
I caught Fred's eye on me, and the very speed with which he shifted his gaze made me uncomfortable. I made my escape as soon as I could, on the plea of going out to Bellwood, and in the hall up-stairs I met Margery.
"I saw Bella to-day," she said. "Mr. Knox, will you tell me why you stayed up last night? What happened in the house?"
"I—thought I heard some one in the library," I stammered, "but I found no one."
"Is that all the truth or only part of it?" she asked. "Why do men always evade issues with a woman?" Luckily, woman-like, she did not wait for a reply. She closed the nursery door and stood with her hand on the knob, looking down.
"I wonder what you believe about all this," she said. "Do you think my father—killed himself? You were there; you know. If some one would only tell me everything!"
It seemed to me it was her right to know. The boys were romping noisily in the nursery. Down-stairs Fred and Edith were having their Sunday afternoon discussion of what in the world had become of the money from Fred's latest book. Margery and I sat down on the stairs, and, as well as I could remember the details, I told her what had happened at the White Cat. She heard me through quietly.
"And so the police have given up the case!" she said despairingly. "And if they had not, Harry would have been arrested. Is there nothing I can do? Do I have to sit back with my hands folded?"
"The police have not exactly given up the case," I told her, "but there is such a thing, of course, as stirring up a lot of dust and then running to cover like blazes before it settles. By the time the public has wiped it out of its eyes and sneezed it out of its nose and coughed it out of its larynx, the dust has settled in a heavy layer, clues are obliterated, and the public lifts its skirts and chooses another direction. The 'no thoroughfare' sign is up."
She sat there for fifteen minutes, interrupted by occasional noisy excursions from the nursery, which resulted in her acquiring by degrees a lapful of broken wheels, three-legged horses and a live water beetle which the boys had found under the kitchen sink and imprisoned in a glass topped box, where, to its bewilderment, they were assiduously offering it dead and mangled flies. But our last five minutes were undisturbed, and the girl brought out with an effort the request she had tried to make all day.