"What did the clerk see? What did this fellow do in the Maplewood Inn lobby?"
"Nothing—came in, bought a pack of cigarettes, and went out."
"Anybody else seen him?"
"Not so far as we've been able to discover."
"Has he ever registered at any of the hotels here?"
"Not that we can find; no, never."
"Funny," ruminated Bristow, "very funny. Yes, I think you're right, chief. Put up the case against Perry until we can do something better or prove it on him absolutely. Of course, if the laboratory test shows that he had human flesh—a white person's flesh—under his finger nails, that will settle it in my mind. There couldn't be any other answer."
"Will the test show whether it's a white person's skin or a nigger's?"
"Of course. There's no pigment in a white person's skin."
"Is that so? That's something I never knew before. Anyway, it certainly will nail him, won't it? But, you don't feel anyways sure Perry's the guilty man, do you?"
"No, I can't say I do. I'll tell you what we've got to consider, and it's not a very pretty theory; either that Morley killed Mrs. Withers, and Miss Fulton knows it; or that Morley and Miss Fulton together killed her; or that, although Perry killed her, we, in looking for the murderer, have come pretty near to stumbling on some sort of a nasty family scandal, something in which Maria Fulton, Enid Withers and George Withers, with perhaps another man, all have been mixed up.
"I mean a scandal ugly enough for all the rest of them to make desperate attempts to keep it hidden, even when Mrs. Withers is dead and gone. Frankly, I didn't believe Withers was in on the murder or that he believes Maria had anything to do with it or knows how it was done.
"But Maria Fulton—that's different. How else are we to explain her behaviour with us when we tried to interview her, the fact of her sudden abhorrence for Morley, the man to whom she was engaged only yesterday?
"And how else are we to explain Morley's unexplained two hours of last night, and his apparent terror today, and his whole connection with the case—the matter of the ring found in his hotel room, and all that? There's something fishy about this thing somehow, something fishy that includes Maria Fulton and Morley.
"This fellow with the brown beard and the gold tooth strengthens the theory of some rotten scandal. He must be mixed up in it some way. I'll bet anything, though, that he had nothing to do with the murder. That's what we want to get at—this inside scandal, this something which existed long before the murder but yet may have led indirectly to the murder."
Greenleaf sighed and passed his hand wearily across his eyes. He had had a hard day, the hardest day of his life.
"But you think my plan for the inquest is all right?" he asked once more.
"Yes; it's the best thing possible. By the way, don't have me summoned to testify. Leave my evidence until the trial. I don't want to wear myself out going down there for merely an inquest."
"All right; I'll fix that. We've enough evidence without yours—enough for the inquest, anyway."
"Thanks."
Bristow looked at his watch, and Greenleaf got up to go.
"I'll be up here between eight and nine tomorrow morning," he said, "if that suits you."
"What for?"
"To get a good look at the grounds back of Number Five. If the murderer dropped anything, I want to be the man to pick it up."
"Oh, I'd forgotten that," Bristow said in a tone indicating his hopelessness of finding anything worth while. "Yes; I'll be ready for you."
Something else was on Greenleaf's mind.
"This Braceway," he said sarcastically, "the smartest detective in the South. He'll be here in the morning. What will we do? Work with him?"
"Sure," Bristow replied heartily, as if to fore-stall the other's dislike of the new-comer. "Even if he were no good, the best thing we could do would be to work with him. And, as he's something of a world-beater, we'll get the benefit of his ideas. By all means, let's all keep together on this thing."
"All right," Greenleaf agreed, his tone a little surly. "Your appointment to my force is O. K. I fixed that this afternoon. Good night."
"Good night—and don't forget to send that stuff off to the Charlotte laboratory tonight. If we can find out who scratched somebody last night, if we can determine who had little bits of foreign skin under the finger nails today, we've got the answer to this murder mystery. That's one thing sure."
Bristow turned off the lights in the living room and went to his dressing room to prepare for bed on the sleeping porch.
"Money," he was thinking as he undressed; "money and fifteen thousand dollars' worth of jewelry. Where has it all gone? That's the thing that will settle this case, and I think—I think I've a pretty good idea of what will be proved about it."
Lucy Thomas in a cell in the Furmville jail sat on the edge of her cot at midnight, staring into inky darkness while she tried to remember the events of the night before. She was not of the slow-witted, stupid-looking type of negro women. The thing against which she struggled was not poverty of brain but the mist of forgetfulness with which the fumes of liquor had surrounded her.
Questioned and requestioned by the police during the afternoon and early evening, she had been able to tell them only that she and Perry had been drinking together in her little two-room cabin. When he had left her, what he had said, whether he had returned—these points were as effectually covered up in her mind as if she had never had cognizance of them.
She did remember, however, certain things which she had not imparted to the police. One was that at some time during the night there had been a struggle between herself and Perry. The other was that at some time, far into the night or very early in the morning, she had heard the clank-clank of the iron key falling on the floor of her house, a key which she had worn suspended on a ribbon round her neck.
She rocked herself back and forth on the cot, her head throbbing, her mouth parched, tears in her eyes. To the white people, she thought, it did not matter much, but to her the fact that she and Perry had intended to get married was the biggest thing in her life.
"I don't know; I don't know," her thoughts ran bitterly. "Ef Perry tuk dat key away fum me, he mus' done gawn to dat house—an' he wuz full uv likker. Ef he ain' done tuk dat key fum me an' den later flung it back on de flo' uv my house, who did do it?"
She sobbed afresh.
"He is one mean nigger when he gits too much likker in him. Ain' nobody knows dat better'n I does. An' he sayed somethin' las' night 'bout gittin' a whole lot uv money. He—"
She moaned and flung herself backward on the cot.
"Gawd have mussy! Gawd have mussy! I done remembuhed. I done remembuhed. He done say somethin' 'bout dat white woman's gol' an' jewelery. Gawd! Dat's whut he done. He done it! Dat's why he wuz fightin' me. He wuz tryin' to git dat kitchen key. An' he got it! He got it! Ef he done kilt dat woman, de white folks goin' to git him sho'ly—sho'ly. An' him an' me ain' nevuh gwine git married—nevuh. Dey'll kill him or dey'll sen' him to dat pen. Aw, my Gawd! My Gawd!"
She sat up again and began to think about Mrs. Withers, how well the slain woman had treated her, how kindly. From that, her thoughts went to ghosts. She fell to trembling and moaning in an audible key. It was not long before a warden, awakened by her cries of terror, had to visit her and threaten bodily punishment if she did not keep quiet.
After a while, she relapsed into her quiet sobbing.
"I think maybe he done tuk dat key. I knows he done lef' me durin' de night, an' I b'lieve he done come back. But I ain't gwine say nothin'. Maybe I don' know. Maybe I is mistuk. De whole thing done got too mix' up fuh me. Maybe he kilt her an' maybe he ain' been nigh de place. But I wish I coul' know. My holy Lawd! I wish I done know all dat done happen.
"Dat key fallin' on de flo'. Who done drap it dar ef Perry ain' drapped it? Dat's whut I'd like to know. Ef he ain' had dat key, ain' nobody had it."
She lay down, weeping and sobbing from unhappiness and terror. Bristow and Greenleaf would have given much to have known her suspicions, suspicions which amounted to a moral certainty.
On the sleeping porch of No. 5, Manniston Road, Maria Fulton lay awake a long time and tortured herself by reviewing again and again the thoughts that had crushed her during the day. Miss Kelly, on a cot at the foot of the girl's bed, heard her stirring restlessly but could not know in the darkness how her long, slender fingers tore at the bed-covering, nor how her face was drawn with pain.
"The overturning of that chair,"—her mind whirled the events before her—"the sound of that whisper, that man's whisper, and the sight of that foot! He wore rubbers. I know he did. He always wears them when it's even cloudy. It was he! It was he!"
Her nails dug into her palms as she fought for something like self-control.
"If it was not he? I would never have fainted—never. That's what made me faint, the sickening, undeniable knowledge that that was who it was. And I loved him! But—but the rubber-shod foot, the size of it! Am I sure? Could it have been——"
She groaned so that Miss Kelly lifted her head from her own pillow and listened intently, trying to determine whether the sufferer was asleep or awake.
"He's not stupid," she swept on, closing mutinous lips against the repetition of sound. "He knew Enid could do nothing—nothing more. I don't understand. Oh, I don't understand! I wonder now why I said I heard nothing.
"I wonder why I lay unconscious on the floor near the dining room door all those hours—until ten o'clock this morning. It was because the knowledge was too much for me to stand—just as it is too much now. And I can't share it with anybody. I'll never be able to get it off my conscience. If I did, they'd hang him—or the other one who——"
At that thought, she screamed aloud, a wild, eerie sound that chilled the blood of even Miss Kelly, accustomed as she was to the cries of suffering and despair. The nurse was at the hysterical girl's side in a moment, holding her quivering body in strong, capable arms.
"What was it? What was it, Miss Fulton?" she asked soothingly.
Maria brushed the back of her hand across her forehead, which was beaded with big, cold drops of perspiration.
"Nothing, Miss Kelly; nothing," she half-moaned. "A bad dream, a nightmare, I guess. Give me something to make me sleep."
She drank eagerly from a glass the nurse put to her lips.
"If I begin to talk in my sleep, Miss Kelly, call me, wake me up, will you?" she begged, the fright still in her voice.
"Yes, I will." This reassuringly while Miss Kelly smoothed the pillows and readjusted the tumbled coverings.
Maria grasped her arm in a grip that hurt.
"But will you?" she demanded sharply. "Promise me!"
"Yes; indeed, I will. I promise."
Miss Kelly meant what she said. She was not anxious to be the recipient of the sick girl's confidences.
Bristow, at his early breakfast, devoted himself, between mouthfuls, to the front page ofThe Furmville Sentinel. It was given up entirely to the Withers murder.
"Murder—murder horrible and mysterious—was committed early yesterday morning," announced the paper in large black-face type, "when the beautiful and charming Mrs. Enid Fulton Withers, wife of George S. Withers, the well-known attorney of Atlanta, was choked to death in the parlour of her home at No. 5 Manniston Road. The most heinous crime that has ever stained the annals of Furmville," etc.
The article went on to recite that Chief Greenleaf of the Furmville police force had been fortunate in securing the assistance of a genius in running down the various clues that seemed to point to the guilty party. Mr. Lawrence Bristow, of Cincinnati, now in town for his health, had worked with him all day in unearthing many circumstances "which, although each of them seemed trivial, led when summed up to the almost irrefutable conviction that the murder was done by a drunken negro, Perry Carpenter," etc.
In spite of this, the paper continued, the dead woman's husband, arriving unexpectedly on the scene, had employed by wire Samuel S. Braceway, the professional detective of Atlanta, who would reach Furmville early this morning and, probably, work with Chief Greenleaf, Mr. Bristow, and the plain-clothes squad in the effort to remove all doubts of the guilt of the accused negro.
There followed a sketch of Braceway which was enough to convince the readers that in him Mr. Withers had called into the case the shrewdest man in the South, "very probably the shrewdest man in the entire country."
"Evidently," Bristow was thinking when Greenleaf rang the door-bell, "while I'm a 'genius,' Braceway's the man everybody relies on when it comes to catching the murderer."
The chief was in a hurry, and the two men, going out of Bristow's back door, walked down to the corner of the sleeping porch of No. 7, the nurses' home. The frail wire fences that had served to partition the back lots of Nos. 5, 7, and 9 had either fallen down or been carried away, but there was a tall five-board fence at the rear of the three lots. From this board fence, the hill sloped down toward the southeast, the direction in which the negro settlement containing the home of Lucy Thomas was located.
Bristow, frankly bored by the belated search, let Greenleaf lead the way.
"I went up to the sanitarium late last night," the chief told him, "and had a long talk with Miss Hardesty. She says the man she saw night before last was right here, just a few yards from this Number Seven sleeping porch; and, it seemed to her, he made straight for the board fence. We'll follow in his footsteps. That will take up to the fence in the middle of the rear line of Number Seven's lot."
He was following this route as he talked, Bristow limping a few yards behind him.
Greenleaf overlooked nothing. The lot had been cleared of last winter's leaves, and the search was comparatively simple, but, if he saw even so much as a small stick on either side of him, he turned it over. They were soon at the fence, about twenty yards from the sleeping porch.
"There's not a trace—not a trace of anything, chief," said Bristow, leaning one elbow on the top board of the fence.
Greenleaf, however, was not to be discouraged. After he had walked around again and again in ever-widening circles, he stopped and thought.
"If that nigger was running away and trying to make good time," he exclaimed, suddenly inspired, "he didn't jump the fence in the middle there, where you are. He took a line slanting down toward that negro settlement. The chances are he went over the fence down at that corner."
He pointed to the southeastern corner back of No. 5 and, with his eyes on the ground, began to work toward it.
Barely a yard from the corner, he stooped down swiftly, picked up something and turned joyfully toward Bristow, who still leaned against the fence.
"Look here! Look here, Mr. Bristow," he called, hurrying across to him.
Bristow examined the object Greenleaf had found. It consisted of six links of a gold chain, three of the links very small and of plain gold, the other alternating three links being larger and chased with a fine, exquisite design of laurel leaves, the leaves so small as to be barely distinguishable to the naked eye.
The lame man shared the chief's excitement.
"By George! You've got something worth while. I should say so!"
"What do you make of it?" asked Greenleaf, eager and pleased. "It must have belonged to Mrs. Withers, don't you think?"
"There's one way to find out," Bristow answered, looking at his watch. It was half-past eight o'clock. "Let's go and ask Withers."
They went around to the front of No. 5.
"One of the end links is broken," Bristow said as they ascended the steps. "My guess is that this is a part of the necklace Mrs. Withers wore when she was killed. You remember the mark on the back of her neck. It might have been made by the jerk that would have been required to break these links."
Miss Kelly, answering their ring, told them Mr. Withers had gone to the railroad station to meet Mr. Braceway.
"Then, too," she added, "Miss Fulton's father is due on the nine o'clock train. Mr. Withers may stop down town to meet him."
"I'd forgotten about that," said Bristow. "We'll have to ask your help." He handed her the fragment of chain. "Will you be so kind as to take that back to Miss Fulton and ask her whether she recognizes it, whether she can identify it?"
Miss Kelly complied with the request at once.
She returned in a few moments.
"Miss Fulton," she reported, handing the links back to Bristow, "says this is a part of the chain Mrs. Withers wore round her neck night before last. She wore a lavalliere; it had two emeralds and eighteen rather small diamonds."
"Good!" exclaimed Greenleaf, glancing at the lame man. "I guess that fixes Perry."
"Undoubtedly," Bristow assented; and spoke to Miss Kelly: "I beg your pardon, but is Miss Fulton up this morning, or will she be up later?"
"She's dressing now. She wants to be up to meet her father."
"In that case, I'll wait until later. What I would like to have is a complete, detailed description of all of Mrs. Withers' jewelry. I wish you'd mention that to her, will you?"
Greenleaf was anxious to return to his office.
"This last piece of evidence," he said, "ought to go to the coroner's jury. It clinches the case against Perry. Here's the whole business in a nutshell: the buttons missing from his blouse, one found in Number Five, the other in your bungalow; Miss Hardesty's having seen him the night of the murder; the ease with which he undoubtedly got the kitchen key from Lucy Thomas; the imprint of his rubber-soled shoe on the porch; the finding of this piece of gold chain; and his failure to establish an alibi. It's more than enough to have him held for the grand jury—it's murder in the first degree."
Bristow went back to his porch. Looking down to his left and through the trees, he commanded a view of Freeman Avenue.
"When I see an automobile flash past that spot," he decided, "I'll hurry down to Number Five. I want to be there to witness the meeting between Miss Fulton and her father. It may be possible that, when this scandal—whatever it was—was about to break concerning Mrs. Withers, this family was lucky enough to have a negro hauled up as the murderer. In any event, it's up to me to keep track of the relations between Fulton, his daughter, Withers, and Morley. The psychology of the situation now is as important as any material evidence."
He did not have long to wait. At a quarter past nine he caught a glimpse of a big car speeding out Freeman Avenue. He sprang to his feet, hurried down to No. 5, rang the bell, and was inside the living room by the time the machine had climbed up Manniston Road and deposited in front of the door its one passenger. He was a man of sixty-five or sixty-seven years of age, very white of hair, very erect of figure.
Bristow did not have time or need to formulate an excuse for his presence before Mr. Fulton rushed up the steps to meet Maria. As she came from the direction of the bedrooms to greet him, her expression had in it reluctance, timidity even.
The father and daughter met in the centre of the living room. Bristow, stationed near the corner by the door, could see their faces. He watched them with attention strained to the utmost.
In the eyes of Maria there was a great fear mingled with a look of pleading. The old man's face was deep-lined; under his eyes were dark pouches; and his lips were tightly compressed, as if he sought to prevent his bursting into condemnation.
With a little catch in her voice, Maria cried out, "Father!" and stood watching him.
For a moment the old man's eyes were dreary with accusation. Bristow had never seen an emotion mirrored so clearly, so indisputably, in anybody's eyes. It was a speaking, thundering light, he thought.
The father, without opening his mouth, plainly said to the girl:
"At last, you've killed her! It's all your fault. You've killed her."
Bristow read that as easily as if it had been held before him in printed words. So, apparently, did Miss Fulton. The pleading expression left her face, and, in place of it, was only a flourishing, lively fear.
But Fulton put out his arms and gathered her into them, took hold of her mechanically, displaying neither fondness nor a desire to comfort and soothe.
Bristow quietly left the room and returned to his porch.
"Her father," he analyzed what he had seen, "blames her for the tragedy—possibly believes her guilty of the actual murder. Why? This is a new angle—brand new."
He went in and called up Greenleaf, only to be told that the chief had left word he was to be found at the Brevord Hotel. Telephoning there, he got him on the wire.
"Neither Withers nor Braceway came up here with old Mr. Fulton," he began.
"I know," put in the chief. "I'm down here to meet Braceway now. He and Withers are in conference. Braceway doesn't want to go to the inquest. I'm to take him by the undertaker's to look at the body, and then he wants to run up to see you. Says he won't learn anything important at the inquest; he'd rather talk to you."
"All right," returned Bristow. "That suits me perfectly. When will he be here?"
"In half an hour, I suppose. And I'll run up as soon as the inquest is over."
"I wonder," Bristow communed again with himself, "whether this Braceway is on the level, whether Withers is on the level. What's their game—to find the real murderer or to shut up a family scandal?"
The scandal theory bothered him. He saw no way of getting at it.
In less than an hour he and Braceway were shaking hands on the porch of No. 9. Bristow, studying him rapidly, motioned him to a chair.
Here was no ordinary police-detective type. This man had neither square-toed shoes, nor a bull neck, nor coarseness of feature. About thirty-six years old, he was unusually slender, and straight as a dart, a peculiar and restless gracefulness characterizing all his movements. He seemed fairly to exude energy. He was keyed up to lightning-like motion. He gave the impression of having a brain that worked with the precision and force of some great machine, a machine that never missed fire.
From the toes of his highly polished tan shoes to the sheen of his blond hair and the crown of his nobby straw hat, he looked like a well dressed and prosperous professional man. His dark gray suit with a thin thread of pale green in it, his silver-gray necktie, the gloves he carried in his left hand, every detail of his appearance marked him, first as a "snappy dresser," and second as a highly efficient man.
While they exchanged casual greetings, Braceway lit a cigarette and spun the match, with a droning sound, far out from the porch. He did this, as he did everything else, with a "flaire," with that indefinable something which marks every man who has a strong personality. There was in all his bearing a dash, an electric emphasis.
"What do you think, Mr. Bristow?" He got down to business at once. "Did this negro Perry kill Mrs. Withers?"
Braceway blew out a big cloud of smoke and looked intently at his new acquaintance.
"I've talked to Greenleaf," he supplemented. "I suppose he gave me all the facts you've collected. But Greenleaf—you know what I mean," he waved his cigarette hand expressively; "I wouldn't say he had extraordinary powers of divination. He's a good fellow, and all that, but—what do you think?"
"On the evidence alone, so far," Bristow answered with an appreciative, warming smile, "I'd say Perry committed the crime."
"Oh; yes, sure." He moved quickly in his chair. "On the evidence, but there are other things, other factors. What do you think?"
"I'm afraid that's my trouble," Bristow told him. "I've been thinking so much that I'm somewhat muddled. But I believe there may be something more than a negro's greed back of this thing."
"Now you're speaking mouthfuls," Braceway said, smiling brightly. "Tell me about it."
Bristow told him—about Withers' peculiar behaviour; the whole case against Perry; the illusive personage with the chestnut beard and gold tooth; Morley's suspicious story and actions; and, lastly, Maria Fulton's highly puzzling narrative of what she had seen and not seen in connection with the murder.
Braceway listened with complete absorption, in a way that showed he was photographing each incident and statement on his brain.
"Now," he began with almost explosive suddenness, "let's get this straight. I want to work with you, if you'll let me." He paused long enough for Bristow to nod a pleased assent. "And I believe there's something back of this crime that nobody has yet put his finger on. Mr. Withers believes it. Don't make any mistake about that. Withers is as anxious to get the real criminal as you and I are."
"Let me understand," Bristow said in his turn. "Do you propose that we work on the case with the supposition that Withers is in no way responsible for any part of the tragedy?"
"Absolutely!" snapped out Braceway, thoroughly good natured despite his abruptness. "At least, that's my plan. I'm certain Withers had nothing to do with it."
For the first time, something far back in Bristow's brain stirred uneasily, as if, miles away, somebody had sounded an alarm. Should he trust this man? Would Braceway try to pick up a false scent, try to throw the whole thing out of gear?
Although he, Bristow, had expressed to Greenleaf only last night his confidence in Withers' innocence, would it be wise to hold to such a belief? The future was too uncertain, too apt to produce entirely unexpected things. At any rate, it would be silly to call himself anything of a criminologist; and yet go ahead with a blind, spoken conviction of the innocence of a man who unquestionably had acted in a way to bring suspicion upon himself.
He would wait and see. He purposed to throw away no card that might later take a trick.
"Very good," he said. "That suits me if you're satisfied. You can answer for him, I don't doubt."
"Thoroughly so. In the first place, he and I are close personal friends; went to college together; were fraternity mates; had an office together until I quit practising law and went in for this sort of work. Then, too, I've turned him inside out this morning. He doesn't know a thing.
"And, I might as well tell you now, he didn't hang around Manniston Road night before last after his wife got in. As soon as he saw this Douglas Campbell go home he returned to the Brevord and went to bed.
"No, sirree! Here's what I work on: either Morley killed her, or the negro killed her, or it was done by the mysterious fellow with the gold tooth. How does that strike you?"
"Correctly; I'm with you," agreed Bristow, still with the mental reservation that he would deal with Withers as he saw fit.
"One thing more," added Braceway, and Bristow was surprised to see that he looked a trifle embarrassed; "I want you to handle all the talk that has to be had with Miss Maria Fulton. I'll be frank with you; I have to be. It's this way: I was once in love with her; in fact, engaged to marry her. Do you see?"
"Fully."
He was glad to know at the outset that Braceway was a friend of the family. It might be valuable later.
Braceway threw away his cigarette and sighed with relief.
"I'm glad you understand," he said. "Now, about Withers: things have begun to happen to him already—this morning. Since this has hit him, he doesn't know where he'll get off eventually. I'll tell you."
A few minutes after eight o'clock that morning Mr. Illington, president of the Furmville National Bank, had called at the Brevord to see Mr. Withers, who, still holding his room there, was waiting for the delayed morning train.
Mr. Illington was of the true banker type, fifty years old, immaculately dressed, thin of lip, hard of eye, slow and precise in his enunciation. He had, apparently, estranged himself from any deep, human feeling. The long handling of money had hardened him. His fingers were long and grasping, and his voice was quite as metallic as the clink of gold coins one upon the other.
At Mr. Withers' invitation he took a chair in Mr. Withers' room. He rubbed his dry, slender hands together and cleared his throat, after which he spoke his little set speech of condolence.
Mr. Withers, haggard from grief and lack of sleep, waved aside these preliminary remarks.
The banker put his hand into his breast pocket and drew forth a bulky envelope, from which he produced a long, rectangular piece of paper.
"I knew you would prefer to learn of this at first hand from the bank; indeed, from me, its president. Yesterday, Mr. Withers, a promissory note, a sixty-day note, for a thousand dollars fell due in the Furmville National Bank. You might like to see it. Here it is."
He handed the piece of paper to Withers, who saw that the note had been signed by Maria Fulton and endorsed by Enid Fulton Withers. The husband of the dead woman was too astonished to comment.
"We acted as—as leniently in the matter as we could, perhaps more leniently than was strictly proper in banking circles," Mr. Illington was pleased to explain. "I myself called up Miss Fulton on the telephone yesterday, but naturally she was so agitated that she seemed unable to give me any information as to what she intended to do regarding the—er—liquidation of this indebtedness."
"And," concluded Withers, passing the note back to him, "since my wife was the endorser, it's up to me to make the note good, to pay the bank the thousand dollars."
Mr. Illington was glad to see how thoroughly the bereaved husband appreciated the situation.
"Quite right, entirely so," he said. "And will you?"
"Of course."
"Ahem—When?" inquired the banker, assuming an expression of casual interest.
"I haven't that much money on deposit in Atlanta, but I can get it. I return to Atlanta this afternoon. I can send the money to you tomorrow. Will that answer?"
"Oh, perfectly, perfectly," assented Mr. Illington, much reassured. "We are always glad, at the Furmville National, to do the reasonable and accommodating thing. Yes; that will be thoroughly satisfactory.—Ahem! I have a new note here. You might sign it? To keep things regular, in order."
Withers signed the new note. It was for five days.
Illington got to his feet with stiff dignity.
"Glad to accommodate you, Mr. Withers; very glad. I wish you good morning," he concluded, going toward the door.
"Good-bye," replied Withers absently, but looked up suddenly. "By the way, I might like to know something about the disposition of that thousand dollars. Could you tell me anything concerning it?"
Mr. Illington came back to his chair and reseated himself, again producing the bulky envelope.
"I was prepared for just such a request, a perfectly natural request," he answered Withers question, plainly approving of his own forehandedness.
He took from the envelope and passed to Withers a canceled check.
"This," he said, "gives you the information you desire. You see, I gathered from the newspaper reports this morning and from the gossip of the street yesterday afternoon that there might be more or less of—er—a mystery in this—ah—distressing situation. Consequently, I brought along this check which, curiously enough, had not been called for by the maker of it."
Withers, disregarding the banker's remarks, was studying the check. It had been signed by Enid Fulton Withers, to whom the $1,000 loan had evidently been credited at the Furmville National. It was for $1,000, and it was made payable to Maria Fulton. Maria Fulton had indorsed it, and, below her endorsement, appeared that of Henry Morley, showing that the money had passed directly into the hands of Morley.
"That's all I wanted to know," Withers said quietly, giving the check back to Illington. "I'm much obliged."
This time Illington departed, taking himself off with a feeling of having done his duty with promptitude and according to the best business ethics.
His visit had prevented Withers' meeting the train, and Fulton had gone directly to Manniston Road.
Braceway, going to the hotel on the banker's heels, was admitted by Withers, who broke into a storm of futile, highly coloured profanity.
"Brace," he said, "you'll get the devil who's caused all this, won't you? You know what my life has been! You'll get him if you have to tear up heaven and earth."
"Sure! Sure!" Braceway declared. "Keep yourself together. Let me do the worrying. I'll get him if he's above the sod."
"So, you see," Braceway said, in reciting the incident to Bristow, "we're getting a little warm on the scent. This Morley, this wooer of Maria, seems to have his head within stinging range of the hornets, doesn't he?"
"Undoubtedly."
"What do you make of it?" pressed Braceway.
Bristow thought a little while.
"It might be this," he advanced: "Morley is in trouble with his bank, short in his accounts—probably has been for several months. Two months ago, sixty-one days ago, he confided to Miss Fulton that he stood in great danger of arrest, pointed out that he had made a mistake, asked assistance from her, told her a thousand dollars would arrange things.
"But, instead of paying the thousand into the bank, he went to gambling with it in the hope of trebling or quadrupling it and—lost it. In other words, he's been afraid to tell his financée how much he really owed the bank and then played the thousand to win enough to enable him to square himself."
"Once more," observed the Atlanta man, "you speak in mouthfuls."
"Again and further—of course, all this is on the theory that Morley is a pusillanimous kind of man; but he would have to be just that to be taking money from a woman, any woman, much less the one to whom he is engaged to be married—again and further, when he had lost the thousand and saw ruin just ahead of him again, he ran down here and asked for more money.
"Perhaps, Mrs. Withers, at her sister's tearful request, had previously raised more than a thousand for him, had added to that thousand other money obtained from pawning some of her jewelry; and he now insisted that Maria make Mrs. Withers go the limit and pawnallher jewelry.
"By George!" Bristow concluded. "That may explain the quarrel which Miss Rutgers, the trained nurse in Number Seven, heard the two sisters engaged in the day before the murder. Yes; it might. Evidently, Mrs. Withers refused to be bled further. After that, what? What would you say?"
"It's plain enough," Braceway answered. "There was Morley, crazed by the fear of arrest and conviction for embezzlement. There was Mrs. Withers, still possessing and holding enough jewelry to get him out of trouble, if he had time to convert the jewels into cash and to get back to his bank with the money.
"What was the result of that situation? Evidently, he never intended to catch that midnight train. He did what he had planned to do, came back to Number Five, confronted Mrs. Withers soon after her escort had left her at the door, demanded the jewels, was refused; and then, in a blind rage or a panic, killed her and stole the jewels."
"There's no use blinking the fact," said Bristow in a quiet, calculating way, trying to keep in his mind all the other peculiar circumstances surrounding this crime. "From the way we've put it, the thing reads as plainly as a primer. Now, what are we to do? Even now, we haven't the proof on him—any real proof."
"Suppose," said Braceway, "we let him leave Furmville, let him go back to Washington, with the hope that he does pawn the stuff he's stolen?"
"And suppose," Bristow added, "we get a detailed description of all the jewelry Mrs. Withers owned, and wire that description to the police of the principal towns between here and Washington and between here and Atlanta. We'll make the request, of course, that they watch the pawnshops and nab anybody who shows up with any of the Withers stuff?"
"That's it! That's it as sure as you're born!" Braceway struck the arm of his chair and catapulted himself into a standing position. "That will get him—provided, of course, he's desperate enough to take the chance of pawning any of it."
"One other thing," Bristow supplemented. "You said Withers said something to you this morning about your knowing what his life had been. Just what did he mean?"
Braceway reflected a moment,
"There's no reason for your not knowing it," he confided. "Withers had rather a trying life with his wife. It was a baffling sort of a situation. She was in love with him. I haven't a doubt of that. And he was in love with her.
"She was one of the most fascinating women I ever saw. They used to say in Atlanta that all the women liked her, and that any man who had once shaken hands with her and looked her in the eye was, forever after, her obedient servant.
"But she was never entirely frank with Withers. Naturally, that at first made him regretful, and later it made him jealous. You know his type. I'm not sure that I have the whole story, but that's the foundation of it, and it led to bitter disagreements and fierce quarrels.
"Some of their acquaintances got on to it, and couldn't understand why a woman like her and a good fellow like Withers couldn't hit it off. Things got worse and worse. I don't believe Withers minded her being up here with her sister. The temporary separation came, probably, as a great relief to both of them."
"I see," Bristow said. "Naturally, when, on top of all that, the money began to fly and the jewels went into pawn, he came to the end of his rope—determined to put a stop to the thing."
"Probably," said Braceway, looking at his watch. "But how about our little job—getting the description of the jewelry and having Greenleaf wire it out? I'll go down to Number Five and get it from Withers and his father-in-law."
"You don't mind seeing Miss Fulton?" Bristow asked interestedly.
"Oh, no," he answered, embarrassment again in his manner. "But I don't feel like cross-questioning her. You can understand that. You'll have to take on that end, really."
Bristow thought: "He's still in love with her. I was right about her. There's a lot to her if she can hold a live wire like this." Aloud he said:
"All right. You get the list. In the meantime, I'll telephone Greenleaf to tell Morley he can go to Washington tomorrow if he wants to—but not today."
"Why not today?"
"Because there are some things here you and I had better go over, and I think we'd do well to follow Morley, don't you? That is, if we want to get the goods on him without fail."
"Now that I think of it, yes. Perhaps, both of us needn't go, but one will have to."
He went down the steps, saying Withers had by this time arrived at No. 5 and would be waiting there with Mr. Fulton. Both the father and the husband would accompany the body of Mrs. Withers to Atlanta on the four o'clock train that afternoon.
Bristow, having caught Greenleaf by telephone at the inquest, gave him their decision about Morley's departure the next day, and announced that he and Braceway would like him to send out by wire the description of the Withers jewels. To both of these propositions Greenleaf agreed. Bristow returned to his porch.
"So," he thought, "it's got to be Morley or the negro."
And yet, he decided, in spite of the theorizing he and Braceway had indulged in, there was small chance now of fixing the crime definitely on Morley. He had none of the jewelry, apparently. The police had searched his baggage and his room at the hotel, without success. Indubitably, it would be more likely that a jury would convict Perry. All the direct evidence was against the negro.
Bristow did not deceive himself. It would be a great satisfaction and a morsel to his vanity to prove the negro guilty. He foresaw that the papers sooner or later would get hold of the fact that Braceway was after Morley.
And, although they had hinted at mystery and uncertainty this morning, they had printed their stories so as to show that Greenleaf, backed by Bristow, would try to get Perry. The duel between himself and Braceway was on. He remembered he had discounted at the beginning the idea of the negro's guilt, but that had been before the discovery of the fragment of the lavalliere chain.
Now, he was disposed, determined even, to treat everything as if Perry were the guilty man. He would work with that idea always in mind. In the meantime he would go with Braceway as long as the Braceway theories seemed to have any foundation at all. He did not want to run the risk of being shown up as a bungler. He was anxious to be "in on" anything that might happen.
"So," he concluded, "if Perry is finally convicted, I get the credit. If Morley is sent up, I'll get some of the credit for that also. I won't lose either way.
"Now, about Withers? I've got to handle him by myself. If I were analyzing this case from the newspaper accounts of it, I'd say at first blush that either Withers did the thing or Perry did it. That's what the public's saying now.
"But Braceway stands as a fence between Withers and me. He's a friend of Withers and in love with Withers' sister-in-law. And he believes Withers innocent. That's patent. For the present, I can't do anything in that direction. I've got to dig up everything possible on Morley and the negro—and, in spite of the check business, the chances are against the negro."
He called to Mattie whom he heard moving about in the dining room.
"Lucy Thomas," he said, "is out of jail now. I wish you'd go look for her right away. The inquest is over by this time, and she'll be at home by the time you get there. Bring her back here with you. Tell her it's by order of the police, and I only want to talk to her a few minutes."
"Yas, suh," said Mattie.
"I'm not going to hurt her, Mattie," he said. "Be sure to tell her so."
"Yas, suh, Mistuh Bristow; I sho' will tell her. I 'spec' dat po' nigger is done had de bre'f skeered outen her already."
His eye was caught by the figures of Braceway and Mr. Fulton leaving No. 5. They turned and started up the walk toward No. 9.
"Mr. Fulton," Braceway explained, after the introduction to Bristow, "wants to tell you something about his—about Mrs. Withers. It brings in further complications—hard ones for us."
Mr. Fulton's arms trembled as he put his hands on the arms of a chair and seated himself with the deliberateness of his years. In his face the lines were still deep, and once or twice his mouth twisted as if with actual pain, but there was in his eyes the flame of an indomitable will. He was by no means a crushed and weak old man. Neither the terrific blow of his daughter's death nor the reverses he had suffered in his business affairs had broken him.
"What I have to say," he began, looking first at Braceway and then at Bristow, "is not a pleasant story, but it has to be told."
His low-pitched, modulated voice was clear and without a tremor. His glance at the two men gave them the impression that he paid them a certain tribute.
"Both of you," he continued, "are gentlemen. Mr. Braceway, you're a personal friend of my son-in-law. Mr. Bristow, I know you will respect my confidence, in so far as it can be respected."
They both bowed assent. At the same moment the telephone rang. Bristow excused himself and answered it. The chief of police was on the wire.
"It's all over!" his voice sounded jubilantly. "It's all over, and I want you to congratulate me, congratulate me and yourself. It was quick work."
"What do you mean?" queried Bristow.
"The inquest is over. The coroner's jury found that Mrs. Withers came to her death at the hands of Perry Carpenter."
"And you're satisfied?"
"Sure, I'm satisfied! We've found the guilty man, and he's under lock and key. What more do I want? I'll tell you what, I'll be up to have dinner with you in a little while. I invite myself," this with a chuckle. "You and I will have a little celebration dinner. It is a go?"
"By all means. I'll be delighted to have you, and I want to hear all about the inquest."
Bristow went back to the porch.
"That," he told them, "was a message from the chief of police. He says the coroner's jury has held the negro, Perry Carpenter, for the crime."
Mr. Fulton moved forward in his chair, his hands clutching the arms of it tightly.
"I'll never believe it, never!" he declared, evidently indignant. "Nothing will ever persuade me that Enid, Mrs. Withers, met her death at the hands of an ordinary negro burglar."
"What makes you so positive of that?" Bristow asked curiously.
"Because of what has happened in the past," Fulton replied with emphasis. "I was about to tell you. This man none of you have been able to find, this man with the gold tooth, has been in Enid's life for a good many years. I don't understand why you haven't found him; I really don't."
"We haven't had two whole days to work on this case yet," Bristow reminded him politely. "Many developments may arise."
"I hope so; I hope so," he said sharply. "That man must be found."
"One moment," Braceway put in with characteristic quickness; "how do you know he's been in your daughter's life, Mr. Fulton?"
"That goes back to the beginning of my story." He looked out across the trees and roofs of the town toward the mountains.
"Enid was always my favourite daughter. I suppose it's a mistake to distinguish between one's children, to favour one beyond the other. But she was just that—my favourite daughter—always. She had a dash, a spirit, a joyous soul. Years ago I saw that she would develop into a fascinating womanhood.
"Nothing disturbed me until she was nineteen. Then she fell in love. It was while she was spending a summer at Hot Springs, Virginia. The trouble was not in her falling in love. It was that she never told me the name of the man she loved." He leaned back again and sighed. "She never did tell me. I never knew.
"I never knew, because, when she was twenty, she came to me with the unexpected announcement that she was going to marry George Withers. I was surprised. She was not the kind to change in her likes and dislikes. And I knew Withers was not the man she had originally loved. Nevertheless, I asked her no questions, and she was married to Withers when she was barely twenty-one.
"A year later, approximately four years ago, she and my other daughter, Maria, spent six weeks at Atlantic City in the early spring. It was there that she got into trouble. I could detect it in her letters. Some tremendous sorrow or difficulty had overtaken her, and she was fighting it alone.
"Her husband was not with her. I wrote to Maria asking her to investigate quietly, to report to me whether there was anything I could do.
"Maria's report was unsatisfactory. She knew Enid was distressed and was giving away or risking in some manner large amounts of money—even pawning her jewelry, jewelry which I had given her and which she prized above everything else. The whole thing was a mystery, Maria wrote. The very next mail I received a letter from Enid asking me to lend her two thousand dollars.
"She made no pretence of explaining why she wanted it. She didn't have to explain. I was a rich man at that time, comparatively speaking, and she knew I would give her the money.
"I mailed her a check for two thousand, but on the train which carried the check I sent a private detective—not to make any arrests, you understand, not to raise any row or start any scandal. I merely wanted to find out what or who troubled her. Women, you know, particularly good women, are prone to fall into the hands of unscrupulous people.
"Four days later the detective reported to me, but it was of no special value. He couldn't tell me where the two thousand had gone. If Enid had paid it to a man or a woman, the fellow had missed seeing the transaction. With the description of the jewels I had given him, however, he made a round of the pawnshops in Atlantic City and learned that all of them had been pawned—for a total of seven thousand."
"Pawned by whom—herself?" asked Bristow.
"No. They were pawned in different shops by a man with a gold tooth and a thick, chestnut-brown beard."
"No wonder you doubt the negro's guilt!" exclaimed Braceway.
"Excuse me," put in Bristow quickly, "but did you ever mention this to Mr. Withers?"
"Certainly, not," Fulton answered. "I never told it to a living soul. And as my inquiries had netted me practically nothing, I was obliged to let the matter drop. It was bad enough for me to have interfered with her, my daughter and a married woman, in the hope of helping her. Most assuredly, I could not have distressed her, degraded her, by telling her a detective had been investigating her."
"And that was the end of it?" asked Braceway.
"Not quite. She went back to Atlanta. Withers wanted to know where her jewels were. She wrote to me in an agony of fear and sorrow, asking me to redeem the jewels. I did it. I went to Atlantic City myself. She had sent me the tickets. It cost me seven thousand dollars."
"That was four years ago?" Braceway continued the inquiry.
"Yes."
"Did Miss Maria Fulton at that time know Henry Morley?"
"No; I think not. I think Morley's been a friend of hers for about three years."
The three were silent, each busy with the same thought: that Morley was being blamed for a series of acts at this time which duplicated what had happened four years ago when he was unknown to the Fulton family, with this distinction, that this last time murder had been added to the blackmail or whatever it was. And the theory of his guilt was weakened.
"Mr. Withers has told me," Bristow said, "that there was a repetition of the pawning of the jewels in Washington about a year ago."
"That's true," confirmed Fulton. "But on that occasion I knew nothing of what had happened until Enid came to me, again with the request that I redeem the jewelry. Her husband had arrived in Washington unexpectedly, precipitating the crisis. I gave her the money. The sum this time was eight thousand dollars."
"And that ended it, Mr. Fulton?"
The old man looked out again toward the mountains as if he sought to gain some of their serenity.
"No. That time I asked her what troubled her. I explained that I would blame her for nothing, that I only wanted to help her, to give her comfort. But she wouldn't tell me anything. She declared that nobody could help her and that, anyway, there would never be a repetition of the extortion.
"She wept bitterly—I can hear her weeping now—and she begged me to believe that she had been guilty of nothing—nothing criminal or immoral. I told her I could never believe that of her.
"'It doesn't affect me alone. I'll have to fight it out the best way I can,' was all the explanation she could bring herself to give me. The one fact she revealed was that the man concerned in the Atlantic City affair had also been responsible for her trouble in Washington."
Bristow, absorbed in every word of the story, recollected at once that Mrs. Allen had received the same explanation when she had tried to comfort Mrs. Withers.
"By George!" said Braceway, his voice a little husky. "She was game all right—game to the finish."
"I think," said Fulton, relaxing suddenly so that his whole form seemed to sag and grow weak, "that's all I wanted to tell you. It's all I can tell—all I know. I wanted to show you that this man with the gold tooth and the brown beard is no myth, as you seem to believe.
"Make no mistake about him, gentlemen. He has ability, ability which he uses only for unworthy ends." The old man sucked in his lips and bit on them. "He's elusive, slippery, working always in the dark.
"He's low, base. He wouldn't stop at murder. And I'm certain he was the principal figure in my daughter's death. Nothing—no power on earth—nobody can ever make me believe that Enid was murdered by the negro. It doesn't fit in with what has gone before."
"If there's any way to find this man, we'll do it," Bristow assured him.
Braceway sprang to his feet.
"You can bet your last dollar on that, Mr. Fulton," he said heartily, "If he's to be found, we'll get him."
The old man got to his feet. The recital of his story had weakened him. His legs were a little unsteady. Braceway took him by the arm, and they started down the steps.
"Will I see you again this afternoon?" Bristow called to the Atlanta detective.
"I rather think so," Braceway threw back over his shoulder. "As soon as I've had lunch I want to talk to Abrahamson. Chief Greenleaf seems to have neglected him."
Bristow hesitated a moment, then limped down the steps.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Fulton," he said, overtaking the two, "but is there nothing more, no hint, no probable clue, you can give us about this mysterious man?"
"Absolutely nothing," Fulton answered wearily. "I've told you all I know."
"You gave him—rather, you gave your daughter for him a total of seventeen thousand dollars, counting the loan of two thousand and the cost of redeeming the jewels both times. I beg your pardon for seeming insistent, but is it possible that you passed over that much money without even asking why she had been obliged to use it? Not many people would credit such a thing."
Fulton smiled, and for a moment his grief seemed lightened by the hint of happy memories.
"Ah, you didn't know my daughter, sir," he said. "She was irresistible, not to be denied—one of the ardent flames of life. If she had asked me, I would have given her treble that amount—anything, anything, sir."
Bristow thought of what had been said of her in Atlanta: that all women liked her and that any man who had shaken hands with her was her unquestioning servant. Surely such a woman would have been irresistible in her requests to her father.
He ventured another line of inquiry:
"When you arrived at Number Five this morning, I was in the living room, and I saw the meeting between you and Miss Maria Fulton. I came away as soon as I could, but I couldn't help noting your expression as you greeted her. It seemed to me that there was accusation in it."
"There was," the old man assented. "Enid had written me that Maria had been pressing her for money, too much money. Naturally, when I heard of the—the tragedy, I coupled it with the old, old thing that had always been a burden on Enid—money. And this time I blamed Maria. Of course, however, that was a mistake."
"I see," said Bristow.
He returned to his porch and sat down. He went over all that the father of the dead woman had told him. So far as he could see, it had only served the purpose of strengthening the case against Morley. Let it be discovered that Maria had known Morley at the time of the Atlantic City affair, and the case would be fixed, irrefutable. And Braceway would win out.
Of course, there was still one chance. There was the bare possibility that Morley had gone to No. 5 to murder Enid if he did not get more money from her, and that he had been frustrated by the fact that the negro Perry had forestalled him and done the murder first. Having advanced it, Bristow did not care to abandon the theory that Perry was the guilty man.
An automobile whirled up Manniston Road and stopped in front of No. 9. His physician, Dr. Mowbray, sprang from the car and up the steps.
"Good morning, doctor!" the patient called out cheerily.
"Hello!" answered Mowbray crustily. "But what's the big idea in your trying to do a Sherlock Holmes in this murder case?"
The doctor was overbearing and opinionated. He had many patients, who were in the habit of knotowing to him and obeying his instructions implicitly. It was something which he required.
"Sit down," invited Bristow. "I'm not doing any Sherlock Holmes stuff, but I thought I ought to help out if I could."
"Well, you can't!" snapped Mowbray, with quick, nervous gestures. "You'll be in your grave before you know it. You can't stand this." He shot out his hand and produced his watch with the celerity of a sleight-of-hand performer. "Let me feel your pulse."
Bristow surrendered his wrist to the professional fingers.
"Just what I thought—twenty beats too fast. And your respiration's a crime. Have you had any rest at all, today or yesterday?"
"Not much, doctor."
Mowbray glowered at him.
"Well, you'll have to have it! You ought to be in bed this minute. If you don't carry out my instructions, I'll drop the case. You know that."
"I'm sorry, doctor, but I can't spend my time in bed now," Bristow said as persuasively as he could.
"I'd like to know why! Why? Why?"
"I'm going to Washington tomorrow, although that's a secret. I merely confide it to you in a professional way, and——"
"Going to Washington! Man, you're mad—mad! You'll have a hemorrhage or something, and die—die, I tell you!"
"Nevertheless," Bristow insisted, "I must go."
"About this murder?"
"Yes."
"Very well!" snorted Mowbray, rising like a jumping-jack. "Go—go to the North Pole if you wish. I'm through! I can't treat a man who defies my orders and advice. Good morning, sir."
Bristow gave him no answer, and he ran down the steps and threw himself into his car.
"Mistuh Bristow, Lucy's done come," said Mattie, at the living room door.
Bristow started to leave his chair, but changed his mind.
"Tell her to wait a few minutes," he said.
He began to think and to determine just what he wanted to find out from Lucy, what she would say and what he wanted her to say. It would not do to question her before he felt sure of what she knew and what she must confess. He rocked gently in his chair, going over several times the evidence he desired. His face was hard-set, almost like marble, as he stared at the mountains. He was thinking harder at that moment than he had done at any time since the murder.
He had it now. She had given Perry the key to the Withers kitchen—or, better still, Perry had taken it from her—and she remembered every detail of it, his departure from her house and his return with the key. That was what she had to confess. Inevitably, he argued, that would be her story, or else she would have no story at all.
He thought of Braceway. He made now no secret of the fact that a struggle between himself and the Atlanta man was on—not openly, but thoroughly understood by both of them—a fight for supremacy, a contest in which he sought to convict Perry while Braceway worked for the conviction of Morley.
Braceway had the added incentive of wanting to run down the man who had destroyed his friend's home life; and Braceway believed that Morley and Morley's money entanglements had, in some way, caused the tragedy.
Well, he, Bristow, would see about that! He knew he had the best of the argument so far—and he looked forward to a double pleasure: the applause that would come to him as the result of Perry's conviction, and his own personal gratification at besting Braceway at his own game.
He went into the unused bedroom and told Mattie to send Lucy Thomas to him there. While he waited, he closed the two windows.