CHAPTER XXRUN TO COVER
Instunned silence the little group eyed Detective Ferguson and his prisoner. Slowly the latter rose from his hands and knees, the handcuffs clinking musically as he knocked against Ferguson’s left wrist to which he was secured.
“Easy,” cautioned Ferguson, and the revolver in his right hand menaced the murderer. “You’ll get no chance to escape now, Jim,” with emphasis, then with reluctant admiration as he scanned Turner’s good-looking effeminate features and his slight trim figure in its woman’s costume. “Say, but you are a pretty girl. I never once suspected you, never.”
“And I’d have kept you fooled,” retorted Turner, “except for you,” addressing Judith. “You were one too many for me with those cursed unseen ears,” and he cast a look of baffled fury at her fan. “I thought you were practically dead to the world when I disconnected that blamed earphone and blindfolded you.”
“You put too much confidence in your own cleverness,” Judith responded. “It would have been wiser if you and your confederate had ransacked Father’s safe in silence, instead of discussing your desperate need, on account of Austin’s murder, of getting away—and thus giving me a clew to your identity.”
“Who is your confederate?” demanded Ferguson. A scowl was his only answer. “Oh, well, you’ll talk more later,” with significant emphasis, “in the Death House.”
Turner’s face was distorted with rage. “To think I’ll have to swing for that hound, Austin Hale!” he stormed. “He welshed on every one, the yellow dog.”
“What was your motive for killing him?” asked Robert Hale, recovering from his stupefied surprise at the course of events.
Turner looked at him in silence for a minute, then at the others in the library. Their concentrated regard fanned his inordinate vanity and—in spite of Ferguson’s words, the Death House seemed remote.
“Why did I kill Austin Hale? Because he penetrated my disguise.” He paused, then continued more rapidly. “It must have been shortly before midnight when I was going to bed—every oneelse had retired and I could hear Anna and the cook snoring in their rooms,”—Anna’s face was a study as she glared at the man she had known as “Maud”—“and I supposed I had locked my bedroom door. I was shaving—had to do it at dead of night,” he interpolated, “when in the glass I saw the hall door open a little way and Austin Hale peered into the room. I was too paralyzed to turn round and he stared at my reflection in the glass, then, collecting himself, he softly closed the door and silently stole away.”
No one cared to break the silence as Turner ceased speaking, a second more and he had resumed his statement.
“I wiped the shaving lather off my face, straightened my wig and crept down the hall. I heard Austin moving about in his room and I went back, but I could not stay there. I don’t know now what brought Austin to my door at that hour, unless he wanted me to aid him in seeing Miss Polly Davis, but he had raised the devil in me. It wouldn’t take him long to establish my identity and then would follow exposure, and that meant, with my record, doing fully fifteen years in the penitentiary.”
“Better that than swinging for murder,” commented Ferguson dryly.
“Not as I felt then,” retorted Turner. “My brain was on fire as I stole downstairs and trailed him to the library. On the way I saw Mr. John Hale’s sword cane in the umbrella stand. I’d seen him open it once or twice to show to Miss Polly.” Ferguson shot a look at Polly and John Hale. They had drawn close to each other and stood listening breathlessly to Turner’s story.
“So some one beside your brother knew about your sword cane, Mr. Hale,” Ferguson remarked with a quizzical smile, and John Hale nodded.
“Go ahead, Turner,” he said, and the prisoner, with a resentful glare at Detective Ferguson, again addressed them, confining his remarks almost exclusively to Judith.
“I knew how to work the spring of the sword cane, for I had played with it several times when Mr. John left it behind, and so I picked up the cane on Tuesday night and stole into the dining room.” In spite of himself, Turner’s voice was not quite steady. It quivered and deepened as he lived over again the events of that fateful night.
“I intended to peek through the portières into the library, for not hearing a sound in there puzzled me. The portières were parted a wee bit and I made out Miss Judith sitting at the far end before the fireplace with her back partlyturned toward me. Then”—his voice changed, holding a note of horror—“Austin Hale loomed up before me, right under the sidelight. I could have touched his shirt-bosom, instead—My God! I lunged and the sword cane struck home.”
“I heard Austin fall,” Turner resumed after a tense pause, “and instinctively tiptoed to the pantry and crouched there in the dark. I heard you come in, Major, and Miss Judith call to you. Then after what seemed an interminable time I crept out into the central hall, found it deserted, and replaced the cane in the umbrella stand.”
“Didn’t you go at all into the library?” demanded Robert Hale harshly.
“Yes, after Miss Polly had been there.” He cast a vicious look in the girl’s direction. “I heard some one sobbing in the library as I started to leave the pantry and peeked in again in time to see you wringing your hands over Austin’s body—you are a weak sister to sob over the man who threatened you with exposure.”
“You—” John Hale started forward, but Major Richards’ tall figure blocked him. “Get out of my way, I’ll throttle that fellow.”
“Not here, you won’t,” interposed Ferguson. “Keep quiet, Mr. Hale, until Turner completes his confession.”
“Tell him to speak more respectfully of Miss Davis—or not mention her at all,” thundered John Hale.
“What happened next?” demanded his brother. “Shut up, John,” and he waved him back. “What did Miss Davis do next, Turner?”
“Cleared out,” succinctly, “first taking a look at the sword cane standing so innocently in the umbrella stand.” Turner’s chuckle was unpleasant. “That left the coast clear for me and I slipped into the library. There the open safe attracted me,” with a side-long glance at Hale. “I had picked up my rubber gloves, used in my house work, when in the pantry and I put ’em on. The open safe was too good a chance to overlook, but I only had time to grab a few bonds and a memorandum which Austin had been looking at”—a gasp escaped Mrs. Hale—“then I beat it up the back stairs to my room, for I heard some one coming down. I guess it was you, Major.”
“It was,” acknowledged Richards. He cast a hesitating look at Judith before continuing. “I did lose my way, as I have already stated, when walking home, and I entered the front door just in time to catch Judith as she fainted. I immediately carried her upstairs and laid her on the couch in our boudoir. I had some cognac thereand quickly revived her.” He paused for a second. “The reading lamp was burning in the boudoir and I concluded that Judith had come downstairs feeling faint and in search of some medicine which, I recalled, had been left in the library. When she revived, she said nothing to me about having gone downstairs, and when I asked her if she needed her medicine, she replied that she did.”
“Please wait, Joe,” Judith interrupted him quickly. “I was dazed—completely unnerved. In fact I had at the time no recollection of fainting in the hall. I thought, until you questioned me the other night, that you had found me unconscious in the boudoir, so I never mentioned that after Mother and Uncle John left for the French Embassy I went down into the library to read and wait for you, Joe.”
“Your silence confused me, puzzled me,” Richards confessed. “In fact—well, you will understand when I tell you that a gold locket fell out of your belt when I unloosened it. As I picked up the locket and placed it by your side on the couch I saw that a gold link fastened to its ring had been forced apart. A few minutes later I went into the library and discovered Austin lying dead on the floor.” He turned to Mrs.Hale. “In stating that I did not know Austin, I told the truth, but I had seen a photograph of him that morning on Judith’s dressing table and the photograph bore his autograph. I was horrified at finding his dead body, and that horror was intensified when, on bending closer, I discovered that a link in his watch chain was bent and twisted—and the link attached to the locket tucked in Judith’s belt had come unmistakably from that chain.”
“Merciful heavens!” Judith gazed at him in horror. “Then you thought—”
“The obvious,” responded Richards. “Your mother had told me that there had been a boy and girl affair between you, that they confidently expected an engagement on your return from Japan—”
“Mother!” Mrs. Hale quailed under Judith’s anger.
“Upon my soul, Judith, you need not take that tone with me,” she objected. “The first intimation we had of your marriage to Joe was a cable announcing it. A nice way to treat parents who had indulged every whim.”
“Need we go into that again, Mother?” protested Judith.
“No; but I was hurt, deeply hurt, and I didnot take kindly to having a son-in-law thrust on us.”
“And so you took it out on him by repeating a lot of nonsense,” exclaimed her husband indignantly. “Well, Richards, I suppose you concluded that Judith and Austin quarreled and she had stabbed him, and reached the hall in a fainting condition just as you entered the house?”
“Exactly, sir; Judith’s silence about Austin—for that she had seen him either dead or alive was proved by her possession of the locket, led me to fear a frightful tragedy,” admitted Richards. “In my agony of mind I did the only thing that occurred to me, I took the watch and chain out of Austin’s vest pocket before sending for the coroner, for I knew it was a clew the police would trace to the bitter end.”
“But why did you send the watch to Jennings?” asked Hale. “It was courting discovery.”
“As it turned out, yes; but my idea was that if the chain was repaired no one would suspect a locket had been wrenched from it,” explained Richards. “Then it would not have mattered where the watch was found.”
Hale shook his head. “You laid yourself open to grave suspicion,” he said. “I now understandyour actions and your constrained manner, but—” He stopped. “I missed a playing card out of my solitaire pack several days ago, a Knave of Hearts, to be exact, on which I had scratched the combination of my safe.”
“Robert!” The ejaculation came from Mrs. Hale and her husband turned to her testily.
“I am troubled with amnesia,” he said. “It is just a touch, but I am sensitive about having it known or suspected, and so occasionally I jot down figures and numbers. I play solitaire so continuously that I am never without the safe-combination; but on Friday I missed the card and the next day asked Maud, or shall we say Jim Turner,”—and he indicated the pseudo-maid—“if she had seen the card. She brought it to me later, stating that she had found it on your dresser, Richards, and it led me to believe that you had a hand in Austin’s murder.”
“Is that why you put a dictograph in our boudoir?” asked Richards.
“Yes,” Hale admitted. “I went to the Burroughs Agency, explained my suspicions, and they installed it.”
Polly Davis broke her long silence. “I heard you talking to Mr. Burroughs,” she explained. “I went to the detective agency to ask them toundertake an investigation for me, but your presence, Mr. Hale, frightened me away.” She paused and looked at Judith and her father. “From having seen you on the stairs Tuesday night, Mr. Hale, I began to suspect that you might have killed Austin. I knew that you and he had often quarreled in the past—”
“How about John’s scenes with his stepson?” inquired Hale dryly, and Polly changed color, but she ignored his question as she went bravely on.
“Your offer to increase my salary and your unsolicited loan, Judith, increased my suspicion,” she stated. “I thought that you were trying to bribe me. Then your threat about the locket—”
“What was in the locket?” asked Richards and his father-in-law simultaneously.
Polly looked swiftly at John Hale and then away. She was deadly white.
“Last week,” she began, “I had a letter from Austin in which he said that rumors had reached him of my infatuation for”—she stammered, then went bravely on—“for his stepfather, that if I permitted John to make love to me he would show him a letter I had written. It was a piece of sheer folly, but”—her voice trembled—“the letter was compromising. Austin stated that hekept the letter in a locket I had given him and would bring them both to Washington.”
“What followed?” asked Mrs. Hale, more absorbed in Polly’s tale than in all else.
“I wrote Austin that I did not fear his threat and broke our engagement.” The girl paused. “I have already told you that Austin wired he would be here Tuesday night. I heard that Mrs. Hale and John were going to the French Embassy, I knew that Mr. Hale was ill in bed, and so I came here that night on impulse, trusting to chance to see Austin alone and persuade him to destroy the letter. The murderer,” she shuddered, “has testified that I entered the house after he had killed Austin.” She turned abruptly to Judith. “What was your object in taking the locket?”
“My desire to shield you,” Judith answered. “Austin wrote me at the same time he did you, telling of the existence of such a letter, and that he carried it in a locket to have it in instant readiness. I had no idea that he would be here Tuesday night, and when I found his body as I started to leave the library, I jumped to the conclusion, Polly, that you had killed him and in terror had run away without securing the locket.”
“Would it not have been easier for you to havetaken the watch and chain as well?” asked Richards.
“I feared that if the watch were missing search would be made for it,” she explained. “Whereas, if only Polly and I knew about the locket it would not be missed. I had Polly’s shears in my sewing bag, having picked them up when in Father’s den early Tuesday afternoon. I dropped them after securing the locket, and afterwards came down into the library to get them and found Joe talking to Coroner Penfield and Mr. Ferguson.”
“Polly,”—Robert Hale’s sudden pronouncement of her name made the girl start nervously—“why did you supply Austin with the combination of my safe?”
“I did not give it to him,” she denied indignantly.
“Indeed? Then why did you write this cryptic message, ‘Saw Austin-10-t-b-53-76c,’ over and over on a page of copied manuscript?” and Hale held out the sheet he had shown his brother earlier that day.
Polly stared at it. “My mind was far from my work,” she stammered. “I wrote mechanically on the typewriter any silly sentences that came into my head. I did know your safe-combination,for you had me write it down for you once and the figures dwelt in my memory; but indeed I did not repeat them to Austin.”
“You did not need to,” broke in Mrs. Hale. “I had Austin once open the safe for me, Robert, in your absence. I needed my jewelry, and I supposed he remembered the combination or—”
“Or jotted it down for future use,” Turner interrupted her brusquely. “I found a soiled bit of paper with several numbers torn off on Austin’s bureau when I slipped in his bedroom on my way to bed. He must have refreshed his memory before going down to the library by studying the paper.”
“What was he searching for in the safe?” asked Hale.
“I know,” volunteered Mrs. Hale. She stared anywhere but at her husband. “Austin had very wheedling ways, and sometimes when he was hard pressed for money, he persuaded me to lend it to him.”
“Agatha!”
“I know, Robert, it was foolish.” Mrs. Hale’s voice trembled with a suspicion of tears. “The sum finally totaled four thousand seven hundred and eighty-two dollars.”
“Good Lord!” and Hale eyed her in dismay.
“I had his memorandum of his indebtedness,” she went on, paying no attention to her husband. “I wrote reminding him of it, and that I had placed it in your safe intending to show it to you, Robert—” Hale groaned dismally and his wife burst into tears. “I dared not ask outright about the memorandum as I feared it might be suspected that Austin and I had quarreled over it.”
Judith broke in upon any reproaches her father might have made.
“It was to solve Austin’s reason for opening your safe, Father, that caused me to search it this afternoon in hopes of finding a clew,” she said.
“Where did you get the combination?”
“From your playing card,” she explained. “I knew your absent-minded habits and recalled seeing some pin scratches on the Knave of Hearts which, by the way, I picked up in this library Friday night and later placed on top of my husband’s pack, thinking, as the back of the cards were similar, it belonged to him. So this afternoon after Dr. McLane left I could not rest, the card recurred to me, and I searched my husband’s pack. Not finding it, I went to your den and discovered it among your papers. I had just openedthe safe when Maud”—catching herself up—“that man, blindfolded me.”
“And what induced you to tempt providence again, Turner?” demanded Ferguson turning to his prisoner. “You might have escaped detection but for that.”
“Perhaps,” was the sullen answer. “I knew Mr. Hale had deposited negotiable bonds and a large sum of money there over Sunday—”
Judith interrupted him with an exclamation. “Did you steal my Valve bonds on Tuesday night?”
Turner nodded. “It was all I did get.” His bitter chuckle was brief. “I was well scared after the murder but I dared not bolt for fear of centering suspicion upon me, and then I had no money. I nosed around everywhere looking for something I could steal to raise ready cash. I was afraid to dispose of Miss Judith’s bonds because it might have been traced to me. In my search I found Miss Polly had brought some bonds in an envelope and when she was with Mrs. Hale I sneaked it out.”
“You did?” Polly looked at him in round-eyed surprise. “But I found the bonds there.”
“Sure you did,” again Turner chuckled, “but they weren’tyourValve bonds, but Miss Judith’s.I noticed they were the same, so I substituted hers in your envelope, knowing that I could sell yours without danger of the numbers’ being traced to Austin’s murder.”
“But—but,” Polly turned in perplexity to Richards. “Then the Valve bonds I asked you to sell for me Friday afternoon were Judith’s?”
“Yes, evidently,” Richards addressed Frank Latimer. “I gave Miss Polly my check for her bonds before going to your brokerage office where I sold the bonds to you and put up the cash to cover my margins with you.” Before the stockbroker could answer him, Richards looked at Polly searchingly. “Tell us, Miss Polly, how you contrived to steal the jewelry out of Judith’s bedroom last night when she and I were sitting in the boudoir—the only entrance to the inner room?”
The girl was slow in answering. “After Judith left me last night, I was desperate,” she admitted finally. “I feared the locket would be used to entangle me in the murder, if not convict me of the crime, and I decided to steal it at all costs. I took all your jewelry—which, by the way, has been mailed back to you registered post, Judith—thinking that the theft would then be attributed to an ordinary sneak thief. As tohow I passed you unobserved in entering your bedroom”—for the first time Polly smiled—“some scientific detectives would describe it as a case of psychological invisibility, where the physical eye sees, but the brain fails to record the eye’s message, but”—again she smiled—“you and Major Richards were so absorbed in each other that you never noticed me when I slipped through the boudoir and out again.”
A rich color suffused Judith’s cheeks. “Did the locket contain your letter, Polly?” she asked. “Or was Austin’s threat an idle one? I”—with a quick proud lift of her head—“never examined the locket.”
Polly opened her hand bag to which she had clung ever since entering the library, and took out the locket. She held it up that all might see the slightly raised lettering of the word “Mizpah,” then without a word she pressed a spring and from the locket took a many folded thin sheet of note paper. She spread it open and laid it in John Hale’s hand.
“This is a letter of a foolish, indiscreet girl, longing for a little attention, a little of this world’s fun,” she said soberly. “I was caught by the dross, and it was not until I grew to know you, John, that I found pure gold.”
John Hale looked at her and then at the letter.
“Austin telephoned me from New York to meet him here on Tuesday at midnight and to say nothing to any one of his expected arrival,” he stated. “He intimated that he had an important disclosure to make about you. I left Agatha at the French Embassy, and I had just reached the corner when I saw you, Polly, dash down the steps and go up the street. I started to overtake you, then turned back. I could not make up my mind to face Austin then, for I knew I would kill him,” John’s hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically. “Finally, I returned to the Embassy for Agatha and when we walked in here I was confronted with Austin’s dead body. I imagined you had seen him, Polly, and goaded by threats had stabbed him, for I recognized the shears as ones I had seen on your desk in Robert’s den.”
John stopped speaking and looked down at the letter still clutched in his extended hand, then striding swiftly to the fireplace he threw the unread letter on the blazing wood. As it ignited and flared into a blaze, he turned with outstretched hands to Polly who had watched him in an agony of suspense.
“Polly,” he began, and his voice quivered withemotion, “will you take me, for better, for worse?”
Polly’s eyes were blinded with tears, but winking them away, she looked bravely up at him.
“Willyoutake a repentant, adoring fool?” she asked, and John Hale’s low cry of happiness found echo in her heart as, regardless of the others, he slipped his arm about her and led her from the library.
Mrs. Hale watched the lovers disappear, and with mixed feelings, searched hastily for a dry handkerchief. But all she dragged to light out of her bag was a half sheet of note paper.
“Bless me!” she exclaimed. “Here’s that note from Austin to me saying he was going to San Francisco—what did you do with the last page, my dear?” turning to Judith.
“The last page?” echoed Judith; she looked as puzzled as she felt, and Jim Turner answered the question for her.
“I found that paper in Austin’s bedroom, also,” he volunteered. “It was just the half-sheet. Why he brought it with him I don’t know, but anyway I thought it a good plant and slipped the page in the pocket of Miss Judith’s electric, knowing some one would find it.” He turned to Mrs. Hale who had moved a trifle nearer. “I haveyour memorandum of Austin’s indebtedness to you; I kept it for blackmailing purposes, but”—he stopped abruptly, conscious that his voice was a bit shaky.
“How’d you happen to disguise yourself as a woman?” asked Ferguson.
“I used to play in amateur theatricals, and on account of my small size, effeminate appearance and voice was generally cast for a girl’s part,” Turner explained. “I had to lay low after that Shield’s affair—it meant fifteen years in the ‘pen’ if caught. Well,”—with his free hand he dashed away the moisture which had gathered on his forehead and felt his closely shaven head—“I’d rather be hung than endure a living death. Come on, Ferguson,” and without a backward glance he departed in charge of the detective.
Mrs. Hale dropped down on the divan and her expression caused her husband to hurry to her side.
“Are you going to faint, Agatha?” he asked anxiously.
She looked at him vacantly before answering.
“I don’t know,” she said, “how I shall ever get over having my confidential maid turn out to be a man,” and a burst of tears relieved her overcharged feelings.
Richards left husband and wife together and turned to speak to Judith, only to find her gone. A look in the dining room showed that she was not there, and racing upstairs two steps at a time, he dashed into their boudoir. Judith turned from the fireplace and looked at him inquiringly.
“Judith,” his pent-up worship of her spoke in eye and voice, “what can I say to you, my darling, my best beloved? Your faith, your loyalty—”
“Are surpassed by yours,” she answered softly, “dear heart of mine.”